Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Land of Bad: Two Hemsworths Fighting Abu Sayyaf

Air Force Captain Eddie Grimm, call sign “Reaper,” does all his flying from a drone terminal, but he still gets credit for combat hours. Grimm is about to rack up a lot of them, because he has no intention of going home until the Special Operators he is watching over safely catch their e-vac. Unfortunately, his drone only carries a very finite payload of missiles in William Eubank’s Land of Bad, which releases today on VOD.

The mission is too realistic for comfort. Four operators must rescue a CIA asset from Alexander Petrov, a Russian arms dealer operating in a remote region of the Philippines controlled by the Wahhabi terrorist group, Abu Sayyaf. Honestly, this premise could be happening today or tomorrow. It will only be Sgt. J.J. “Playboy” Kinney’s second boots-on-the-ground operation, but the rest of the team, led by hardnosed Master Sgt. John “Sugar” Sweet is as tough as they come. Since Kinney is the Tactical Air Control Party officer, coordinating with Reaper, he should never have to fire off his gun during the mission. Of course, he will have to anyway, when Abu Sayyaf starts killing women and children.

Things get really messy, really quickly, turning the small patch of rain forest into the “land of bad” Kinney was warned about. As the presumed sole survivor, Reaper will try to guide Kinney to the rendezvous site, like Danny Glover and Gene Hackman in
Bat 21. However, Reaper can rain down fire on Abu Sayyaf positions, which is a handy extra advantage, but he must strategically pick his shots.

Land of Bad
is probably the best action/war movie featuring the U.S. military since Warhorse One, with which it shares several thematic similarities. Perhaps most notably, both films have the guts to make real-life terrorist organizations the bad guys. In the case of Johnny Strong’s film, it is the Taliban. For Land of Bad, it is the Islamist terrorists, Abu Sayyaf (and to a lesser extent, Russia).

Arguably, the dialogue, co-written by Eubank and David Frigerio, rings with even greater authenticity. Throughout their ordeal, the special operators can segway from casual flippancy to deadly seriousness and then shift back, with complete naturalness—and it sounds totally legit.

The action scenes are also both realistic and cinematic looking. It certainly does not hurt that Eubank has two Hemsworths to put through their paces. Liam helps flesh out Sgt. Kinney a bit more than you might expect, giving him some human neuroses, as well as a commando physique. Plus, Brother Luke is hard as nails playing the steely Sgt. Abell. Yet, neither can out bad-cat Milo Ventimiglia as the Master Sgt.

Monday, March 18, 2024

Late Night with the Devil

Unlike his successors, The Tonight Show during the Johnny Carson era really was a show for everyone. He regularly featured jazz musicians, like Buddy Rich and Joe Williams, as well as opera singers and classical musicians. It was hard to compete against his broadly based appeal, so his fictional second-place rival, Jack Delroy will try something desperate. Of course, horror fans know it will be a bad idea to invite a demonically possessed girl as a live studio guest, but he does it anyway in director-screenwriter-tandem Cameron & Colin Cairnes’s Late Night with the Devil, which opens in theaters this Friday.

In the 1970s, Delroy quickly became a strong second-place late night talk show host, but lately his show has been stagnating. Even the burst of sympathy that followed his beloved wife’s death was not enough to challenge Carson. Lately, the show has gotten somewhat Jerry Springer-ish. However, this special Halloween show will take it to a whole new level. In addition to Christou the psychic, Delroy has invited Lilly D’Abo, a girl who allegedly carries a demon inside her. Thanks to author and parapsychologist Dr. June Ross-Mitchell, she supposedly has control over the evil entity trying to possess her.

To add further stress, Carmichael Haig, formerly Carmichael the Conjurer, a former magician turned paranormal debunker (clearly inspired by James “The Amazing” Randi) is also invited to be the obnoxious voice of skepticism. Right, what could possibly go wrong?

Essentially,
Late Night is a found footage film, showing the chaotic events as recorded by the show’s cameras, including the live feed during commercials. However, it does not feel like found footage. Instead, it is more like watching a “real” movie. The art and production direction are incredible. This is a crazy horror film, but it still manages to inspire nostalgia for the couch-sitting talk shows of the era. Delroy’s backstory, as a member of a reputed ritualistic “old boy’s” club adds even further dimensions of sinister intrigue.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Cinequest ’24: Shift

Some jobs are supposed to be boring or you are not doing them right. Late-night security guards are a good example. That is what Tom does for a living and he does it really badly. He starts to hatch all sorts of suspicions during the long nights he works at a 24-hour storage facility in director-screenwriter Max Neace’s Shift, which screens as part of the 2024 Cinequest.

Tom is a loser, who wants a job that will help him embrace his loserness. Your Storage in Washington Park, Chicago looks like just the ticket. His boss Hal seems a bit shifty, so to speak, but it is hard for Tom to pin down exactly how. Aside from a little mopping, Tom can just sit on the creaky office chair Hal dubbed “Grace Kelly” and watch the security monitors. Since it is the late 1990s, he does not have a smart phone to distract himself. Instead, he listens to Iris Keen, a DJ, who combines true crime talk with soul and adult contemporary.

Being relatively conscientious, Tom notices one of the cameras has slipped out of position. It happens to cover the unit rented by Mr. and Mrs. Jones, two of their regular customers. That is suspiciously convenient, because Tom knows he saw Mrs. Jones bring a younger man into the Your Storage one night, but he never saw him left.

As Tom’s voyeuristic paranoia escalates, Grace Kelly offers her commentary like a sarcastic Greek chorus. Yes, the chair talks, via silent subtitles. It might sound questionably eccentric, but the subtitles are unobtrusive and they are often archly droll. Frankly, “she” is funny enough to earn
Shift a lot of extra goodwill.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

First Look ’24: Limitation

There is a reason Putin thought he could get away with invading Ukraine. It is because Russia already got away with sabotaging a democratically elected government in Georgia. Zviad Gamsakhurdia was elected Georgia’s first president with 87% of the vote. Less than a year later, he was toppled in a coup orchestrated by former Communists and street thugs. Filmmakers Elene Asatiani and Soso Dumbadze show it going down in real-time, through primary video sources foraged from the internet in the documentary, Limitation, which screens during this year’s First Look.

It starts out triumphant and full of hope, as Gamsakhurdia’s campaign smoothly segues into a victory lap. Yet, simultaneously, the anti-democratic elements immediately started demonstrating on the streets, with a vehemence that quickly crossed over into violence. Western critics argued Gamsakhurdia’s nationalist rhetoric was not sufficiently inclusive towards non-ethnic Georgian minorities, but you do not hear any such arguments from the Russian-backed coup-instigators.

Eventually, Gamsakhurdia and his supporters barricade themselves in a government building, eerily paralleling the 1993 Russian coup attempt, but the results were different. All the footage was apparently recorded by eye-witnesses and bystanders, but two clips feature “behind-the-scenes” footage of Western journalists, recorded by third parties, rather than their camera crews. ABC’s Sheila Kast gets credit for asking the putsch-promoters a tough question, but Christiane Amanpour largely peppers Gamsakhurdia with “your-detractors-charge-you-with-this” style questions, basically recycling their propaganda.

Friday, March 15, 2024

NCIFF ’24: Dounia, the Great White North

Poor Dounia desperately misses her father. You can blame Iran and Putin for that, because they enabled and encouraged the carnage Assad unleashed on his own country, particularly her hometown (as seen in her first film, Dounia: The Princess of Aleppo). Fortunately, Dounia and her grandparents found safe refuge in Quebec, where they have been largely welcomed by their new northern provincial community. Her mother died in Syria, but they still hope to be reunited with her father, whose fate remains unknown at the start of Marya Zarif & Andre Kadi’s Dounia: The Great White North, which screens during the 2024 New York International Children’s Film Festival.

Dounia and her grandparents never come out and say it, but it seems like they find it weird that they must learn French after coming to Canada. Hopefully, the local version of identity politics-tribalism never turns violent, because Dounia’s family has seen more than enough of that.

Dounia forged a fast friendship with Rosalie, the girl next-door, who also happens to be the daughter of the school teacher. Even though she is starting to fit, Dounia worries constantly over her missing father, so their classmate Miguizou introduces them to her grandmother, whose Atikamekw wisdom might help the Dounia’s spirit animal guide her father to sub-Arctic Quebec. That might sound like a longshot, but this is a fable, not an expose or a white-paper report.

The Great White North
is also a quickie, clocking in just under an hour, making it highly appropriate for the under-10-year-old target demo. The animation might be a bit simple for serious connoisseurs of the medium, but it captures the look and feel illustrated children’s books.

First Look ’24: 1489

If you wonder what a Pax Putania might be like, look at the Caucasus. Spoiler alert: it isn’t very peaceful. Despite its security pact with Russia, Armenia was routed by Azerbaijan, a more “allied” Russian ally, during the 2020 fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh. Most of the breakaway Artsakh region were Armenian speakers who more readily identified with Armenia, which makes Russian pretenses for invading Ukraine even more hypocritical. Tragically, Shoghakat Vardanyan’s brother Soghomon was a casualty of the conflict. Perhaps even more cruelly, Soghomon’s fate remained unknown when his sister picked up a camera and started documenting the family’s Kafkaesque anguish in 1489, which screens during this year’s First Look.

Soghomon Vardanyan was a musician, not a fighter, but he answered his nation’s call. Unfortunately, Armenia will be forced to accept humiliating terms after their military defeat. Vardanyan and her parents have few illusions, because they know Soghomon’s unit was nearly decimated in a disastrous engagement. They still try to hold onto some hope, but they feel mixed emotions when the body they are summoned to identify turns out to be another false alarm.

1489
(titled after an identification number related to Vardanyan’s brother) is a quiet, intimate long-take film. Intuitively, Vardanyan develops the sort of embedded documentary filmmaking techniques Wang Bing has perfected over a two-decade span. She captures some heart-breaking family drama, while also participating in it.

The Bloody Hundredth, on Apple TV+

They did it the hard way, which was the right way and the American way. The 100th U.S. Army Air Force Bombardment Division flew in broad daylight, carefully bombing legitimate military targets. As a result, they suffered tremendously high mortality rates. In contrast, British Bomber Command flew night missions, largely dropping their payloads anywhere in the vicinity of large urban areas. You can directly compare the Hundredth’s conduct during WWII to that of the IDF’s today, conscientiously striving to minimize civilian casualties, despite the elevated risks for their own. The Hundredth’s service and heroism have been dramatized in the amazing nine-part series Masters of the Air. In addition to the concluding episode, Laurent Bouzereau & Mark Herzog’s one-hour companion documentary, The Bloody Hundredth also premieres today on Apple TV+.

Sadly, neither Maj. Gale “Buck” Cleven or Maj. John “Bucky” Egan, the two most prominent Airmen featured in
Masters of the Air, are still with us. However, Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal and Harry Crosby, who also played significant roles in the series, discuss their wartime experiences at length.

The veterans of the 100
th make a critical point that is not readily apparent from the series. The skeleton of the famous B17 consisted of aluminum rather than steel, so any kind of ordinance would cut right through it. They took a lot of fire and a lot of flak—and did not always live to talk about it.

Bloody Hundredth
provides a concise but descriptive recap of the missions chronicled in the series. At times the scenes of aerial combat are so impressive and immersive in Masters of the Air, viewers might lose sight of the bigger picture, with respect to the overall tides of war. Bloody Hundredth provides wider context, explaining how the Hundredth needed to control the skies of Europe, to secure the Normandy landing.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Manhunt, on Apple TV+

In John Ford’s classic Prisoner of Shark Island, Dr. Samuel Mudd is portrayed as an innocent man unjustly convicted of abetting the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. That view has predominated in the media, thanks to the efforts of the Mudd family, who elicited a letter from Jimmy Carter attesting to their ancestor’s innocence. Not so fast argued historian James L. Swanson, who linked Mudd to John Wilkes Booth well before the assassination. Edwin Stanton makes the case against Mudd and the rest of the co-conspirators, even including Jefferson Davis, in creator Monica Beletsky’s seven-episode Manhunt, adapted from Swanson’s book, which premieres tomorrow on Apple TV+.

Lee has just surrendered, so Pres. Lincoln will finally enjoy an evening at the theater, against the advice of his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton. For those wondering, Lincoln’s friend and bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon, the subject of
Saving Lincoln, does not appear in Manhunt. Obviously, Lamon’s substitute that night was not as diligent.

Grieving his friend, Stanton immediately takes charge of the investigation. Given Booth’s apparent involvement in an underground Confederate fifth column network, the manhunt falls under his jurisdiction. However, Stanton also understands the need to assert and maintain his authority, because he mistrusts the new president, Andrew Johnson, a unionist Southern Democrat, who was put on the ticket to shore up border state support. Right from the start, Johnson clearly signals his intention to scale back Reconstruction. However, he supports Stanton’s relentless hunt for Booth, especially since he was also one of the cabal’s targets.

The Mudd family is not going to enjoy
Manhunt, because it unequivocally portrays him as an accomplice, at least after the fact, as well as a racist and often violently abusive former slave-owner. Indeed, it would be a mistake to call Manhunt revisionist history. It is more like revisionist-revisionist history. After years of portrayals of Mudd as a railroaded Samaritan and Johnson as the victim of partisan politics, Beletsky and company, by way of Swanson, argue they were both villains who profoundly damaged our country. Frankly, after watching Manhunt viewers will wonder why Kennedy and Ted Sorenson included one of the Republican Senators who voted against convicting Johnson in Profiles in Courage.

Beyond that,
Manhunt is a decent dragnet-thriller and even better political thriller. Stanton’s pursuit of Booth is just as important as his efforts to maintain the scope of Reconstruction. They are different manifestations of the same desire to preserve and defend America. Series directors Carl Franklin (One False Move and Devil in a Blue Dress) and John Dahl (Red Rock West and The Last Seduction) clearly know how to build suspense on both the large and small screens, which definitely broadens the accessibility of Manhunt. However, the history and politics are never dumbed-down.

Tobias Menzies is also terrific as Stanton, portraying him as a keenly intelligent man of principles, who does not suffer fools gladly. However, he also expresses all the grief and idealism that made him so compatible with Lincoln. Glenn Morshower (Agent Pierce in
24) is appropriately slimy as Johnson, in a flamboyant but not cartoony kind of way. In contrast, Patton Oswalt is badly miscast as Union Army intelligence chief Lafayette Baker. He looks conspicuously out of place, because he lacks sufficient gravity.

Exhuma: Feng Shui Horror

Feng Shui is one of those things you can’t help believing in when its bad. At this secluded grave site, it is really, really awful. A shaman, a geomancer, and their crony-partners (walk into a bar and then) rather ill-advisedly disinter the remains, but that will be a profound mistake in director-screenwriter Jang Jae-hyun’s Exhuma, which opens tomorrow in theaters.

Something is tormenting the latest infant scion if a wealthy Korean-American family. Apparently, it recently finished off the father’s older bother and has moved on to the firstborn of the next generation. At least that is what Hwa-rim sensed. She is the shaman recruited by the Korean wing of the family. It turns out the great-grandfather is the likely supernatural culprit, but she will need the help of a veteran geomancer, like crusty old Kim Sang-deuk, to fight him.

Lately, Kim and his undertaker-sidekick Ko Young-geun have been scraping out a living by selling Feng Shui-vetted grave-sites, but he knows his stuff. According to the boy’s father, the mean old man was buried in an unmarked grave on eerie-looking mountain, on the advice of a dubious Japanese monk. Frankly, Kim never scouted there, because the vibes are so bad. However, Hwa-kim and her assistant/vessel Bong-gil are convinced the
  four can perform a cleansing ritual and then whisk the body away for cremation, but, of course, it will not be so easy.

Along with Na Hong-jin’s
The Wailing, Exhuma proves Korean Shamanic horror can be as potent as Catholic demonic horror. Exhuma is not quite as unhinged as Na’s film, but it has a quite slow-building eeriness that is distinctive. There are no jump scares, just loads of atmosphere and creepy lore.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Apples Never Fall, in The Epoch Times


Peacock's new Liane Moriarty domestic thriller APPLES NEVER FALL is essentially a soap opera-style mystery, but it is fun to watch the great Sam Neill scowl his way through it. EPOCH TIMES review up here.

One Life: Sir Anthony Hopkins as Sir Nicholas Winton

Sir Nicholas Winton has been called the British Schindler, but his heroic rescue work went almost completely unrecognized until 1988. Of course, hardly anyone knew who Oskar Schindler was before the 1993 film. To this day, few people have heard of Varian Fry and the noble Raoul Wallenberg died in a Soviet prison, most likely sometime in the late 1950s. The modest Winton never sought fame, so he is surprised when it belatedly finds him in James Hawes’s One Life, which opens Friday in theaters.

When the National Socialists invaded the Sudetenland, most of the UK government buried their heads in the sand, but a young stockbroker of Jewish German heritage sprang into action. Hinton arrived in Prague as a representative of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, who believed his expertise in finance and bureaucratic paperwork could come in handy. The local chair Doreen Warriner was focusing on the most at-risk political refugees, because she barely had the bandwidth to handle them.

However, Winton is so struck by the appalling conditions endured by the largely but not exclusively Jewish children in makeshift camps, he launches an ambitious campaign that becomes known as the Kindertransport. British immigration authorities are not quite as obstructionist as the notoriously antisemitic Breckinridge Long in the U.S. State Department, but they require a fifty-pound deposit to insure the children would not burden the state, in addition to visas and pre-arranged foster parents to care for them. Back in England, Winton starts plugging away, with the help of his committee colleagues and his mother Babi, who was hard to say no to.

It is pretty mind-blowing Winton and his colleagues conducted this major fundraising campaign and logistical challenge using type-writers and regular mail service. However, the anti-Jewish hatred they encountered is depressingly commonplace in 2024. What would Winton think about his Labour Party’s persistent scandals involving antisemitism?

Screenwriters Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake go out of their way to point out Winton’s left-leaning politics. Yet, the film takes on a new sense of urgency post 10/7. (In a twist of fate, its UK debut came less than a week after Hamas's savage mass murders, abductions, and weaponized rapes.)

Whether or not you can push outside events out of your mind, Sir Anthony Hopkins is still a marvel as the late-1980s Winton. He portrays the righteous rescuer with deep sincerity and humility that is very moving. You might not pick Hopkins and Johnny Flynn out of a crowd and assume they were related, but he plays 1930s Winton with similarly keen earnestness. We quickly believe they are the same man, seen decades apart.

First Look ’24: Solaris Mon Amour

Cineastes sometimes forget Tarkovsky’s Solaris was not the first adaptation of the Stanislaw Lem novel. It certainly wasn’t Soderbergh’s either. In 1968 there was an early Russian film released, often referred to as Solyaris. Even before that, there were Polish radio productions in 1962 and 1970, each predating Tarkovsky and Soderbergh. Filmmaker Kuba Mikurda samples audio from both Polskie Radio plays in this hybrid documentary that in a very abstract way also condenses the themes and story of Lem’s novel in Solaris Mon Amour, which screens during this year’s First Look.

For those who know the book (which Lem started writing in 1959, the same year Resnais’s
Hiroshima Mon Amour was released, so there you go) and films, Mikurda’s audio excerpts are readily identifiable as Solaris-ian. The images are culled from vintage 1960s Polish industrial and educational science films that have nothing to do with Lem, but marry-up rather aptly with the audio passages. Scenes of protozoa and microscopic cell structures fittingly match discussion of the sentient “sea” on planet Solaris, while protagonist Kris Kelvin’s alienation is nicely represented by star fields and remote figures traversing alien-looking terrain, or the like.

As a result,
Solaris Mon Amour sort of is Solaris, but you need to know some of the various Solarises to fill in the gaps. Ironically, that now makes Tarkovsky’s Solaris one of the more “accessible” versions.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Remembering Gene Wilder

Ironically, this late comedic actor is probably most beloved for one film that was a flop when it first released and another that was a huge hit, but its director admits it would be almost impossible to produce in today’s “problematic” Puritanical climate. Those films are Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Blazing Saddles. Of course, he also starred in Young Frankenstein, co-written with his good friend and creative collaborator, Mel Brooks. Fittingly, Brooks has much to say about his late comrade in Ron Frank’s documentary, Remembering Gene Wilder, which opens Friday in New York.

Frank incorporates extensive excerpts from Wilder’s narration of his memoir’s audio book, but Brooks is still one of the most prominent voices in the film. He met Wilder through his future wife Anne Bancroft, when they were both appearing on Broadway together. Both Brooks and Bancroft thought Wilder would be perfect for a film he was developing, which would become
The Producers.

At the time,
Willie Wonka was seen as a career setback, but he rebounded with Blazing Saddles. Then, Wilder started writing a treatment for Young Frankenstein, rather fortuitously meeting Marty Feldman and Pete Boyle through his new agent.

Frankly, it is rather amazing how huge Wilder looms in our collective cultural memory, based on less than 40 on-screen credits. Of course, there were the films co-starring Gilda Radner and his collaborations with Richard Pryor. Their final, under-appreciated film together,
See No Evil, Hear No Evil introduced Wilder to his second wife Karen, who taught him lip-reading and coached him how to respectfully portray a deaf character.

Degas & Cassatt, Graphic Novel

He was an artist, but not a bohemian. Heaven forbid, anything but that. He is considered an early Impressionist, but he was really a bridge between the grubby “bohemians” like Monet and the hidebound Academic school. He genuinely respected few colleagues, but the similarly “in between” Manet was one. The American Mary Cassatt was another. Cassatt looks back on her difficult, ambiguous relationship with Edgar Degas in Salva Rubio’s graphic novel Degas & Cassatt: A Solitary Dance, illustrated by Efa (Ricard Fernandez), which goes on-sale today.

Degas was a man of contradictions. He essentially made Impressionism with a series of exhibitions, even though he decidedly never identified with the movement. He remains best known for his paintings of ballerinas, who were largely considered “women of questionable virtue” at the time. Yet, he was suspected to be celibate or even sterile.

Cassatt wondered too. She found him trying, but there was still a strong rapport between them. Yet, nothing of a romantic nature ever happened between them. She will try to puzzle out why that was, Rosebud-style, as Rubio’s narrative unfolds.

Monday, March 11, 2024

One Percent Warrior, Starring Tak Sakaguchi

Do not call Toshiro Takuma “Jackie,” like some of these Yakuza do. He prefers ‘Bruce,” in honor of the Master (who stayed true to Hong Kong). Realism is important to Takuma. That is why he is only now working on his second film. Due to twist of fate, Takuma happens to be scouting a remote location where two rivals Yakuza clans happen to be fighting over a hidden cache of cocaine. Of course, Takuma is way too much for either of them to handle in Yudai Yamaguchi’s One Percent Warrior, which releases tomorrow on BluRay.

Takuma’s skills are so legit, real-life martial arts schools would gladly hire him. (Only one percent of martial artists truly master their discipline, he sneers.) However, his commitment to authenticity is largely lost on the film industry. His first film has become a cult hit, but producers prefer flash and sizzle over his guts and grit. When a possible funding opportunity arises, Takuma heads out on a scouting mission with Akira, his last remaining apprentice.

Instead, the ruthless Takenouchi dragged Maria, the daughter of a recently deceased Yakuza chairman, to the deserted zinc factory, in search of his cocaine stash. Of course, Takuma quickly rescues Maria, leaving her in Akira’s care, as he picks off Takenouchi’s henchmen one by one. Soon, a rival faction led by Shishidou also barges in. They share Takenouchi’s determination to recover the old man’s drugs, but Shishidou’s daughter Ami also seems to have an unhealthy interest in Maria as well.

Sunday, March 10, 2024

NYCIFF ’24: Where is Anne Frank

If you want to be depressed, search X/Twitter for “Anne Frank” and “ballpoint pen.” Then report everything that comes back for “violent event denial,” because attempts to question the legitimacy of Anne Frank’s diary are just another manifestation of Holocaust denial. A film about Frank should not necessarily be timely, but in today’s climate, it is. Sadly, Ari Folman’s latest animated feature takes on even greater significance, post-10/7 than when it first started screening. Folman re-introduces Frank to viewers from a different perspective, that of Kitty, her imaginary friend, in Where is Anne Frank (produced with the cooperation of the Anne Frank Fonds), which screens during the 2024 New York International Children’s Film Festival.

Like most intelligent pre-teens, Frank had an active imagination. She created Kitty to serve as her muse in many of her diary entries. In a manner worthy of superhero origin stories, Kitty will come alive when lightning breaks through a window, striking the original diary displayed in the Anne Frank Museum. She recognizes the building, but since she only knows what Frank told her, Kitty has no idea what happened to her friend or the other residents of the famous attic.

Initially, she huddles in the corner, invisible, as zombie tourists shuffle in and out. However, Kitty is shocked when Peter, a Dickensian pick-pocket starts talking to her. As she approaches the diary, she becomes more visible to others. Or something like that. Frankly, the rules of who can see her and when are vague and inconsistently applied. Initially, this feels like a credibility issue. However, as we watch the confused Kitty struggle with the unpredictability of her new existence, it becomes another unlikely source of sympathy for her. Regardless, Kitty will search all the landmarks of Amsterdam that bear Anne Frank’s name to learn the fate of her late friend.

Through flashbacks, Folman visits many of the incidents recorded in Frank’s diary, but Kitty’s perspective gives them a fresh twist. It is sort of like seeing events referenced in Virginia Woolf’s
The Waves from Percival’s perspective, or Charlie’s Angels from that of Charlie Townsend, depending on your preference for high or low culture.

One aspect that lands much differently post-10/7 is the way Kitty befriends and champions a squatter community of Malian immigrants. Folman’s film reminds us of the Jewish people’s history of progressive humanism. Yet, the world did not reciprocate their compassion after Hamas’s mass-murder, gang rapes, and abductions. Quite the contrary.

Saturday, March 09, 2024

NYCIFF ’24: The Concierge

Retail analysts keep predicting the extinction of the department store. If that happens, the Hokkyoku Department Store would then match its clientele. Somehow, the store exists somewhere outside of time. Inside, humans wait on customers who entirely consist of extinct species. The newest employee is a bit clumsy, but she is earnest and conscientious. Nevertheless, retail is still tough work in Yoshimi Itazu’s anime feature The Concierge, based on Tsuchika Nishimura’s manga, which screens during the 2024 New York International Children’s Film Festival.

Akino once stumbled into the Hokkyoku as a little girl, finding herself dazzled by the elegant concierge. Now life (or is it afterlife? The film and manga keep discreetly vague on that point) has come full circle for her, since she was hired as the Hokkyoku’s newest concierge. Her colleagues recognize her kind heart, especially Eruru. Akino thinks he is a customer she literally keeps stepping on, but he is really the president. He is also a great auk, so don’t call him a penguin, even though he enjoys sliding across the polished floors of the mall, as if they were ice flows (which is a pretty cute bit of business).

Unfortunately, Toudou, the Snidely Whiplash-like floor manager is constantly on her case. The pressure keeps mounting with each nearly impossible request, like the customer searching for a discontinued fragrance. Fortunately, a lot of her co-workers are willing to pitch in to help, including Eruru behind-the-scenes.

Friday, March 08, 2024

Hunting Housewives, on Lifetime

This is not The Most Dangerous Game. These women will not be hunted for sport. They are not the subjects of a contest produced for the pleasure of dark-web viewers either, although Karla Dodds’ husband will rely on techniques he developed as a reality TV producer. He simply wants to kill her and he assumes the husbands of her three friends feel the same way in Marco Deufemia’s Hunting Housewives, which premieres tomorrow night on Lifetime.

Dodds and her three besties, Joli Symons, Sharrell Bouvier, and Rebel Carron-Whitman think they are being whisked away for a weekend getaway at an exclusive, unlisted spa. Instead, her husband paid the pilot to crash their private plane and then hunt down the survivors. He can’t shoot straight, but he can down the plane exactly in the remote area of forest where the arrogantly entitled and menacingly manipulative Mark Dodds set up all his surveillance cameras.

Then the creepy TV guy invites the other three husbands over to watch the drama unfold live, in his man-cave. Evan Whitman is so shocked and violently outraged, Dodds is forced to lock him in the panic room. Andre Bouvier and Jared Symons are also shocked, but they stifle their outrage, so Dodds will not draw his gun on them as well.

Hunting Housewives
is no Hard Target or The Hunt. It isn’t even Hunted. Frankly, it doesn’t even fit in the “people-hunting-people” sub-sun-genre. Despite Mark Dodds’ voyeuristic glee, this master plan is not about sport. It is simply a ridiculously overcomplicated murder scheme, probably more befitting a supervillain wearing tights. Seriously, you would think there would be an easier way to go about it.

Of course, we could roll with a dubious premise, if it came with solid action or suspense, but
Hunting Housewives has too many execution issues, starting with the fact nobody can even hold a gun in a competent, credible manner. For Denise Richards, this is a step back from credible VOD action work in Altitude (not a great movie, but she helped elevate it).

Richards still delivers all the housewives’s best lines with appropriate attitude. Yet, most of the relatively limited entertainment comes from Mark Ghanime snarling his way through the unlikely scheme. Along with Richards, Kym Johnson Herjavec, Melyssa Ford, and NeNe Leakes serve up plenty of reality-TV-worthy rich housewife sass, which is probably what the target audience is looking for, but that is about it.

NYCIFF ’24: Kensuke’s Kingdom

This Michael Morpurgo novel is sort of like Island of the Blue Dolphins with primates. You can also think of it much like The Cay, but in this case, the pre-teen boy is marooned with an elderly Japanese soldier and a dog (who is definitely a trade-up from a cat). Either way, young Michael will learn a lot about mother nature’s creatures and human nature in Neil Boyle & Kirk Hendry’s animated adaptation of Morpugo’s Kensuke’s Kingdom, which screens during the 2024 New York International Children’s Film Festival.

After they both lost their jobs, Michael’s parents decided the responsible thing to do would be buying a boat and sailing around the world, with him and his sister. Their logic is hard to follow (isn’t school supposed to be important for kids?), but this is a movie, so, fine, so be it. Yet, it turns out to be a questionable decision when Michael and his dog Stella are washed overboard during a storm.

Miraculously, both Michael and Stella land on the beach of a remote desert island. Without any visible means of foraging for food or fresh water, they would die were it not for the provisions mysteriously left for them each morning. Despite his mercy, Kensuke wants nothing to do with the boy and his dog. When they do finally meet, Michael’s awkward clumsiness angers the old Japanese man. However, an understanding grows between them, especially when Michael deduces the fate of Kensuke’s family in Nagasaki. They will also join forces to protect the island’s orangutans and gibbons from evil outsiders.

Morpurgo’s story (from the author of
War Horse and Private Peaceful) is very much in the tradition of the aforementioned young adult novels, but the island setting and the primate characters make it particularly well suited for an animated treatment. The lush tropical environment and Kensuke’s Ewok-baroque bamboo home are visually striking. The animals also look great. Honestly, it is hard to go wrong when you give the audience a clever dog and a bunch of monkeys.

Thursday, March 07, 2024

Love Lies Bleeding, Co-Starring Ed Harris

1989 was a great year for most Americans. The Berlin Wall came down, we had a president we could respect, and the movies were consistently entertaining. However, Lou is going through some tough times, largely because of her beyond dysfunctional family and its criminal activities. She finally meets someone she really likes, but the stranger has plenty of her own baggage in Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding, which opens tomorrow in theaters.

In 1989, the steroid scandals had yet to rock cycling and MLB. Yet, juicing was already a fairly open (if dirty) secret in the bodybuilding world, even in the grubby desert-town gym Lou manages. One day she notices Jackie, a drifter with ambitions of competing in an upcoming women’s contest in Vegas. The attraction is indeed mutual. Unfortunately, Lou introduces Jackie to steroids during their early courtship, which will have dangerous implications when their relationship comes under stress.

Much of that stress will come from Lou’s family, particularly her brother-in-law J.J., who physically and emotionally abuses her sister Beth, and her slimy kingpin father Lou Sr. The old man runs a lot of highly illegal business out of his gun range. Jackie happens to work there as a waitress in the canteen. All that pre-existing family tension will soon boil over, leading to one-darned-thing-after-another, including murder.

There is some deep grunge in
Love Lies Bleeding—like Grand Canyon deep. This is sleazy, lurid stuff, just as Glass intended it. However, she takes viewers on a wild third-act flight of fancy that is a bridge too-far-out there. She should have stuck with what was working, because all the needles and grime are massively provocative.

Of course, the great Ed Harris makes a terrific villain, strutting through the picture as Lou Sr. Glass gives him a lot of color, like his massive hair extensions and a weird love of bug-collecting, but Harris plays him with shrewd understatement. As a result, his quiet hardnosed-ness is absolutely magnetic on-screen. Likewise, Dave Franco is exceptionally slimy as the irredeemable, mullet-sporting J.J.

Night Shift

There is a good reason why so many horror films are set in hotels. You never know what might be behind all those doors. There is The Shining and The Innkeepers, but obviously it all started with Psycho. As it happens, the All Tucked Inn rather resembles the Bates Motel. It is a sleepy motor inn off the highway, with about twenty rowhouse-style rooms and considerable taxidermy mounted on the office walls. This will be Gwen Taylor’s first night as the overnight clerk and it might also be her last in the China Brothers (Benjamin & Paul)’s Night Shift, which releases tomorrow in theaters and on VOD.

Teddy Miles, is a little weird, but in awkward horndog kind of way, rather than in a creepy Norman Bates fashion. Once he leaves, the strange happenings start, leading Taylor to suspect the motel is haunted. Her fears will be confirmed by Alice Marsh, one of the few guests, who explains she wanted to stay in the All Tucked Inn, because of its uncanny reputation. Taylor sees several ghostly figures that come and go, but the stalkerish car that keeps cruising around the motel might be entirely mortal, but even more dangerous—especially because she thinks she might know who it is.

Initially,
Night Shift is an effectively ambiguous mixture of supernatural and psycho-killer elements. Unfortunately, the China Brothers’ screenplay falls back on one of genre fans’ most despised plot twist. We have seen this one many times before, but this time it feels like a particularly cheap contrivance.

Wednesday, March 06, 2024

The Princess Warrior: Mongolia’s Khutulun

If you like the idea of Hua Mulan, but are put off by the way the Chinese Communist Party has exploited her legend in propaganda, then it is time to embrace Princess Khutulun. The celebrated warrior was far more distinguished, as the great-granddaughter of Genghis Khan and the inspiration for Puccini’s Turandot, and she has the extra, added advantage of being real. In contrast, the legend of Mulan is largely considered to be exactly that—a legend. Khutulun’s father Kaidu wanted to marry her off to shore-up political alliances, but she knows that would be a waste of her talents in S. Baasanjargal & Shuudertseg Baatarsuren’s The Princess Warrior, which releases Friday on VOD and Film Movement Plus.

Despite their illustrious lineage, Kaidu’s enemies launched a sneak attack against the house of Ogedei. They successfully stole the clan’s relic and nearly assassinated Kaidu. Ironically, he was saved by the clumsiness of Abatai, a former Ogedei servant boy who was banished by a capricious high official. Of course, it really wasn’t clumsiness, as he will eventually explain to Khutulun.

Unfortunately, Kaidu’s eldest son is an impetuous idiot, so Khutulun takes it upon herself to chase down the relic, while brother #2 raises an army for the anticipated battle. She sets off chasing the thieves with her trusty band of comrades, who sound like a menagerie: Bear, Hawk, Wolf, and crusty old Eagle. Although the Zoo Crew is initially skeptical, Abatai will join their ranks, when Khutulun understands his true identity.

There is a lot of rock-solid hack-and-slash action in
Princess Warrior. Somewhat surprisingly, screenwriters Baatarsuren and Boldkhuyag Damdinsuren play down Khutulun’s super-heroic fierceness, portraying her in very fallible and human terms. Nevertheless, Tsedoo Munkhbat is clearly more comfortable in the action scenes than the romantic melodrama.

NYICFF ’24: Puffin Rock and the New Friends

Puffins look like they share the same tailor as penguins and they have a similar charm, but they are not as overexposed in pop culture. So far, the Netflix series Puffin Rock, co-created by Irish animator Tomm Moore, has been the best place to find puffins. After two seasons, the inhabitants of Puffin Rock get a feature of their own in Jeremy Purcell’s Puffin Rock and the New Friends, which screens as part of the 2024 New York InternationalChildren’s Film Festival.

Oona is still a bright and curious young puffin, who often gets into adventures with her friends, but always dutifully cares for her younger brother Baba. Even after two full seasons, he still looks like he is freshly hatched. Mossy the pygmy shrew and May the rabbit remain her besties, but she is about to make some new pals.

Initially, Isabella is rather standoffish when her colony relocates to Puffin Rock. The narrator blames climate change, but viewers will suspect it was the rising crime and punitive tax rates of blue-state puffin colonies that drove them out. Regardless, Isabella is reluctant to putdown roots again. That includes making friends.

In contrast, Oona and her buddies form a fast friendship Marvin, a youthful otter who also found his way to Puffin Rock. Quick thinking Oona realizes Mavin is such a prodigious digger, he can help the expanded puffin colony dig warrens to protect their new-comers from an approaching storm. Unfortunately, Isabella will completely torpedo the plan and endanger the entire colony. First, she misinterprets Marvin’s intentions when he burrows up near her mother’s egg, so she removes it from the nest. That is a big puffin no-no. When the colony freaks out over the missing egg, she is too embarrassed to come clean, so she blames Marvin.

See how much trouble unchecked immigration can cause. Of course,
New Friends is trying to make the exact opposite point, but at times, the narrative almost contradicts its sentiments. It hardly matters though, because Oona is such a likably plucky character. She is just a darned good puffin kid, which makes spending time with her a pleasure.

As was also true for the series, Chris O’Dowd’s narration is wildly charming. Although omniscient and off-screen, his voice becomes another character. He has a touch of blarney and a touch of sarcasm, but his tone is always gentle and warm.

Tuesday, March 05, 2024

The Piper, with Julian Sands

It is hard to figure what the cheapskate Hamelin villagers were thinking. Maybe targeting their kids was a bit unexpected, but obviously he could always just drive another swarm of rats back into town. They were tragically penny-wise-pound-foolish, which understandably angered the Piper. It sounds crazy, but a musician suspects he is still ticked off in director-screenwriter Erlingur Thoroddsen’s The Piper, which releases this Friday in theaters and on digital.

Renowned composer Katharine Fleischer is in a rather agitated state, trying to burn the last surviving copy of her infamous first concerto, but she immolates herself instead. It had not been performed since its infamous premiere, which caused fatal rioting within the concert hall. This was bad news for Melanie Walker, because Fleischer was her patron at the orchestra. As a single-mother, she needs her chair for the insurance, to cover her young daughter Zoe’s treatment for her hearing impairment.

Gustafson, the pretentious maestro wants to perform Fleischer’s “Children’s Concerto” as a tribute, even though the composer always refused his requests while she was alive. Walker was supposed to use her connection to the family to secure the manuscript, but she resorts to pilfering it from Fleischer’s attic. Unfortunately, Fleischer managed to burn several pages, including the third movement, so Walker must channel her mentor to reconstruct the lost passages. While working on the score, she experiences lost time and weird visions. Strange things also start happening around her, including the disappearance of her colleague’s son Colin, who usually spent rehearsals with Zoe, whether they wanted to or not.

Fleischer’s concerto is sort of like the musical equivalent of the forbidden films that lead to madness in
Fury of the Demon and the “Cigarette Burns” episode of Masters of Horror. There are similar examples of evil, overpowering records, like Black Circle and Dead Wax, but Thoroddsen still offers some reasonably distinctive variations on the theme.

The late, great Julian Sands also brings a lot to the party, preening and chewing the scenery as the arrogant Gustafson. Sands really was an underappreciated horror master, who will be missed. Charlotte Hope is a decent horror heroine, but Alexis Rodney is more memorable as her brainy ethnomusicologist platonic friend, Philip, who helps provide a framework for understanding the uncanny power of the Piper’s music.

Monday, March 04, 2024

French Rendez-Vous ’24: The Book of Solutions

Where is that “toxic masculinity” when we need it? You will ask too, after spending time with Marc Becker, an overly sensitive man-child, whose self-centered artistic pretentions will cause more angst and frustration for those around him than any macho swaggering ever could. Becker has a twee artistic vision for his work-in-progress film, but he appears psychologically incapable of finishing it, despite the labors of his inexplicably loyal enablers in Michel Gondry’s The Book of Solutions, which screens during this year’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

The indie production company bankrolling Becker’s debut film just got a look at his incomprehensible four-hours-plus cut and understandably decided to re-edit it themselves, to hopefully salvage something. Instead, Becker, Charlotte, his faithful editor, and Sylvia, the producer he treats like an assistant, go rogue, bundling up all the hard drives, so they can finish the film guerilla style in the country home owned by Becker’s Aunt Denise.

Lovely Aunt Denise immediately sympathizes with the other two women, because she has been putting up with Becker’s delusional self-indulgence for years. Unfortunately, returning to her welcoming farmhouse exposes Becker to a host of fresh distractions, like his old “Book of Solutions” an amateurish collection of aphorisms intended to serve as a blueprint for life, but in fact, consists of a laundry list of counterproductive instructions, like “always drive in second gear.”

This “love-letter” to cinema desperately needed a sternly worded studio memo.
Book of Solutions is so quirky and precious, it will make you retch your guts out. Apparently, the running time is only 103 minutes, but it feels like it drags on for four or five hours. This is not what love for cinema should look like. In contrast, Kim Jee-won also follows a difficult filmmaker struggling to realize an idiosyncratic vision in Cobweb, which considerably bolder, smarter, edgier, and more visually striking (as well as infinitely more watchable).

Sunday, March 03, 2024

French Rendez-Vous ’24: The Temple Woods Gang

If a Saudi prince is willing to (allegedly?) assassinate a prominent journalist like Jamal Khashoggi, what do think the royal family might do to punish a working-class gang from a French housing complex? The poor knuckleheads do not realize the implications of stealing from the royal family until it is too late in director-screenwriter Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche’s The Temple Woods Gang, which screens during this year’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

Bebe’s gang are small-time criminals, but they are not such bad guys. In fact, Monsieur Pons rather likes his lunkheaded fellow residents of the Temple Woods project. They were always polite to his recently deceased mother and despite some good-natured ribbing, always show respect to the veteran. Yes, Pons served in Africa, as a sniper—a fact that might be significant later.

While Pons mourns his mother, Bebe’s crew plans and successfully executes a hold-up of the prince’s courier. They were interested in the suitcases full of cash, but the prince is more worried about the cache of sensitive documents. In fact, he is so offended by their disrespect, he has his fixer call in Jim, the family enforcer, to teach them a lesson. Frankly, the blokes do not even notice the papers until things get ugly and brutal. (If there is one lesson to draw from
Temple Woods it is if you ever find yourself unexpectedly holding secret Saudi documents, head directly to the Israeli embassy, which these guys never think to do.)

Temple Woods
is not really a heist or a payback movie. Instead, it is an extremely moody exploration of urban angst and violence. Ameur-Zaimeche de-emphasizes action, quickly staging the carjacking, but devoting considerably more time to two musically-focused scenes. There is method to the madness, because real-life vocalist Annkrist’s rendition of her song “La beaute du jour” during the funeral for Mother Pons is arrestingly beautiful.  Watching the prince get down to an Algerian Rai DJ is far less potent.

In fact, Annkrist might just qualify as the star of
Temple Woods, but Regis Laroche is memorably both humane and steely as the sad, middle-aged Pons. Although played by thesps with widely varying degrees of professional experience, the Temple Woods guys all look and sound like real knock-around street toughs.

Saturday, March 02, 2024

French Rendez-Vous ’24: Just the Two of Us

Blanche Renard’s husband is so controlling, you have to wonder how he keeps his job. The constant calls and surprise visits must take time away from his banker work. Regardless, he definitely keeps her under his thumb, steadily depleting her resolve to resist. Of course, he was initially all charm as viewers see in Valerie Donzelli’s Just the Two of Us, which screens during this year’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

Blanche’s identical twin Rose was a little skeptical when Gregoire Lamoureux swept her sister off her feet, but she mostly kept her doubts to herself. Of course, the courtship was appropriately romantic, but soon after their marriage, he relocates them to a northern provincial town, blaming an unwelcome transfer. The arrival of their young daughter distracts Renard, but around young Stella’s fifth birthday, she decides it is time to go back to work. Clearly, Lamoureux does not approve, but she still has enough will of her own to apply for and accept and teaching position.

From then on, things are different. Lamoureux obsesses over every perceived flaw and guilt trips her relentlessly. He calls her at work relentlessly (to such an extent her co-workers really should be suspecting something). The controlling and emotional abuse grows so severe, Blanche secretly arranges a date with a stranger via an app, as a desperate act of defiance and a reality check. Indeed, she confirms not all men are like Lamoureux. Unfortunately, Jerome Vierson is such a decent guy and attentive lover, Renard gives herself away.

Just the Two of Us
(no connection to Grover Washington Jr.) sounds like a conventional kitchen sink drama, but stylistically, it feels very different. Labeling it an “erotic thriller” is wildly misleading. However, cinematographer Laurent Tangy’s extremely intimate framing and washed-out color palette gives the present-day film a 1970s vibe. At times it almost resembles found footage. It is distracting for five minutes or so, but over time, the claustrophobic atmosphere creates a feeling of entrapped solidarity with Renard. Frankly, it is difficult to breathe during the stressful third act.

Frankly, Donzelli engages in some shameless manipulation, but she maintains such an elevated level of tension, she gets away with it. The celebrated cast also completely shed their famous images and submerge themselves into the domestic pressure cooker. Virginie Efira creates two very distinct personas as the Renard sisters. Rose is refreshingly forceful, whereas Blanche desperate descent is absolutely harrowing to witness.

NYICFF ’24: Magic Candies (short)

These candies are actually good for you. We do not know whether they are sugar-free, but they do wonders for the heart. It turns out they are the perfect pick-me-up for a sad little boy in Japanese anime filmmaker Daisuke Nishio’s animated short film adaptation of Heena Baek’s Korean children’s book, Magic Candies, which screens today as part of the 2024 New York International Children’s Film Festival.

Dong-dong is too shy to make any new friends on his own, so he tries to convince himself he is happy playing by himself. A wise old shopkeeper knows better, so he sells the young boy a bag of magic candies. Dong-dong has no idea what to expect, but when he starts munching on them, he discovers each has an unexpected power. Soon he has a conversation with his beloved pet dog, listens to his over-worked single-father’s thoughts, and receives a much-needed message from his dearly departed grandmother.

Somehow, the candies give him exactly what he needs. It is all really quite beautiful. Baek’s book may have been written for a kindergarten audience, but its deceptively simple and deeply wise story could make it a popular children’s-book-for-adults. Nishio renders it into 3D animation with warmth and grace, retaining the spirit of its fantasy and the look of the original illustrations.