Month: August 2011

By Joe Bendel. Rachel Singer understands the dark side of human nature. After all, her ex-husband Stephan Gold is a high-ranking cabinet official, and her daughter Sarah Gold is a journalist. In fact, Gold’s new book has reopened a number of old wounds for her parents. Singer and Gold were part of a three agent Mossad team charged with capturing “The Surgeon of Birkenau,” a National Socialist war criminal clearly modeled on Mengele. Though they were supposedly forced to kill the doctor when he attempted to escape, we quickly discover there is something wrong with the official story in John Madden’s restructured The Debt (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Based on Assaf Bernstein’s Israeli film of the same title, The Debt first presents the account of the fateful mission that made Singer a national icon in Israel. It is that story Sarah Gold told in her bestselling book, which Singer dutifully agrees to help publicize. Yet, when press reports surface of a senile patient in a Ukrainian nursing home claiming to be the notorious Surgeon, Dieter Vogel, she and her ex take it deadly seriously. So does David Peretz, the third member of the team, who was always too troubled by the events that transpired in 1965 East Berlin to enjoy their heroic celebrity.

Now a wheelchair-bound senior intelligence official, Gold’s field ops days are behind him. Though the conscience plagued Peretz has recently reappeared, he will be in no condition to deal with the Surgeon. It is up to Singer to covertly enter Ukraine and finish the job. While she cases the sanatorium, The Debt flashes back to East Berlin, showing how it all really went down.

As adapted by screenwriters Matthew Vaughn & Jane Goldman and Peter Straughan, Madden’s Debt closely hews to the plot and structure of the original. However, the new version plays up the three Mossad agents’ romantic triangle and also adds a bit of a moralizing “truth is important” spin to the ending. However, like the source film, The Debt never suggests Singer’s team had the wrong man, only faulting their execution, the result of stress exacerbated by generational guilt and sexual tension. Indeed, The Surgeon is presented as evil incarnate, played with icy menace by Jesper Christensen.

When casting an actress of a certain age for a somewhat action oriented film, Helen Mirren is pretty much the extent of the short list. Though she brings the appropriate presence and credibility to the 1997 Singer, the heart and guts of the film remain in 1965 (as was the case with its predecessor). Madden cranks up the claustrophobic tension in their “safe” flat quite effectively, while making it vividly clear how the legacy of the Holocaust weighed on the team as first generation children of survivors.

Frankly, Sam Worthington is surprisingly compelling as the young but already too tightly wound Peretz, suggesting he might actually be a very good actor, who just had the mixed luck to be in utterly terrible but hugely successful films like Avatar and Clash of the Titans. Yet, perhaps the greatest surprise is Jessica Chastain, who rises to challenge of playing the same character as Dame Helen in the same film. In fact, she might even get the better of her, investing the younger Gold with equal measures of strength and vulnerability.

Though it still has not fixed the problematic third act showdown, The Debt remains a leanly muscular morality play-thriller. While the English language version might be a bit more inclined to cast the Mossad in an unfavorable light, there is never any ambiguity as to the Surgeon’s truly malevolent nature. A surprisingly faithful and well executed remake, The Debt should definitely satisfy those who enjoy a John Le Carrré-esque story, who have do not already know the twists and turns of the original. It opens today (8/31) in New York at the Angelika Film Center.

Posted on August 31st, 2011 at 6:14pm.

By Joe Bendel. To be young and crazy in the 1960s only meant one thing: prepare yourself for some generous helpings of electro-shock treatment. Unfortunately, the beautiful and institutionalized Kristen has even greater problems in John Carpenter’s The Ward, which is now available on DVD.

After burning down a remote farmhouse while mysteriously decked out in her night-gown, Kristen is delivered into the care of Dr. Stringer. He does not seem like a bad fellow, but his nurse is evidently still out of sorts from all the trouble she had with that McMurphy character. Yet, despite their aggressive battery of pharmaceuticals, Kristen is often left unattended with the other four young women in her ward.

Iris, an artist, is initially the most welcoming of the group.  Emily is the assertive one, often assuming the role of protector for Zoey, who seems to suffer from an acute case of arrested development. Conversely, Sarah, the catty sexpot, specializes in generating bad vibes. It would all be like a CW show in an insane asylum, except that the spirit of a former patient is apparently trying to kill them all.

Just about every horror movie fan wants the new John Carpenter film to be a triumphant return to form. As a result, there is a temptation to forgive a lot in The Ward. Truthfully, though, it is just a serviceable genre picture at best that relies far too heavily on scares derived from stuff sneaking up behind character and going boo, rather than genuinely tapping into the fear of the unknown. Even the spooky old nut house is not all that memorable, particularly when compared to that of the Vicious Brothers’ Grave Encounters.

To its credit, the cast is fairly game. Though not a scream queen in the Carpenter-Jaime Lee Curtis tradition, Amber Heard is quite credible as the take-charge Kristen, which is essential a given where the film is headed. Jared Harris is not exactly Peter Cushing either, but he is still pretty good as Dr. Stringer, projecting an ethically ambiguous erudition appropriate to the genre.

Though it is reasonably well executed, the big twist might frustrate genre fans as well, because we have seen it before in films of relatively recent vintage. (Here’s a hint: in one such movie Alfred Molina played the head-shrinker.) However, the biggest disappointment of The Ward is the absence of that unquantifiable but instantly recognizable eerie atmosphere that permeates the classic Carpenter canon. Judged on its own merits, The Ward is a mediocre to sort-of okay b-movie, with some featured performances arguably exceeding the industry standard. Yet compared to They Live, The Thing, the original Halloween, and even Prince of Darkness, it is rather watery beer, but fans can still check it on DVD.

In established horror movie tradition, Mary Kee’s threatening calls are coming from inside her own apartment. The ‘from thirty years in the past’ thing is a neat trick, though. While never explained, viewers should just go with the cosmically crossed line set-up if they can find Matthew Parkhill’s The Caller (trailer here), which opened this past Friday. Continue reading Thriller Double Feature: LFM Reviews John Carpenter’s The Ward, The Caller

By Joe Bendel. Imagine the world’s first 3D erotic film coming from the Disney studios while the Old Man himself was still running the show. It is almost as shocking that Hong Kong filmmakers would blaze that trail (particularly post 1997 hand-over), but such is the case. As a result, all serious film historians must surely take due note of Christopher Sun’s Sex and Zen 3D: Extreme Ecstasy (trailer here), currently playing in mainstream New York theaters.

Based on Li Yu’s novel The Carnal Prayer Mat, something of the Ming Dynasty equivalent of Fanny Hill, S&Z tells the story of the talented but shallow scholar Wei Yangsheng, who chunks away his respectable married life to partake in the hedonism of the nefarious Prince Ning’s secret vice lair. In return for his expertise with antiquities, the Prince allows him nearly free reign with the women. Unfortunately, his shortcomings, if you will, lead to considerable embarrassment for the faithless scholar. Not one to take things laying down, Wei Yangsheng approaches the outwardly beautifully (but androgynous where it counts) Elder of Bliss to teach him the cosmic secrets of carnal pleasure. The first step: a transplant, in 3D. You’ve been warned.

Of course, everyone is probably wondering the same thing about S&Z: just how much Zen does it really have? In truth, only a bit. The scholar’s old teacher is a Buddhist monk, whose piety draws the ire of Prince Ning. There is a lot of sex, though.

Kind-of-sort-of rebooting the early 1990’s HK softcore Sex and Zen franchise, the 3D S&Z’s nudity is almost entirely from the waist up, except for what might be described as comedic prosthetics. However, there is a lot of simulated action going on (which in a bit of a miscalculation, gets rather dark in nature down the stretch), so it should probably be considered more of an NC-17 film than a hard R. Continue reading New Dimensions in Sexual Freedom: LFM Reviews China’s Sex & Zen 3D

By Joe Bendel. The oppressive Ceausescu regime tightly controlled the flow of information in Romania. Yet somehow, stories of official corruption and incompetence secretly spread like wildfire, perhaps even getting embellished here and there, as good anecdotes often are.  Cristian Mungiu and his four credited co-directors collect six iconic urban legends of life during the Ceausescu era in their inspired anthology film, Tales from the Golden Age (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York at the IFC Center.

The Communist propaganda machine constantly insisted Romanians were living in a “Golden Age.” Since they were literally starving, average citizens were far from convinced. In fact, the so-called journalists at the state-controlled Scinteia newspaper are among those taking their lumps as part of Tales’ sardonic nostalgia. In The Legend of the Party Photographer a front page story on French President Giscard d’Estaing’s state visit causes no end of trouble for the staff. For whatever reason, Ceausescu took his hat off during the official reception, but d’Estaing did not. To the panicked propagandists, this implies socialism showing improper deference to capitalism—something the workers cannot be allowed to see.

Indeed, petty absurdity runs rampant throughout Tales. Sometimes it explicitly skewers the apparatchiks of old, as in the opening episode, The Legend of the Official Visit. Sort of an Orwellian rewrite of The Inspector General, it depicts the arbitrary and often contradictory demands placed on a provincial village ahead of an impending motorcade drive-by. Of course, as legend has it, things did not go according to plan.

Other episodes are more circumspect in their criticism of the previous regime, but the prominent role played by foodstuffs speaks directly to the acute shortages experienced under the glorious years of socialism. It is eggs that preoccupy the characters of The Legend of the Chicken Driver, a not-so fond ode to a time when clerks and deliverymen often illicitly exploited their access to food. Likewise, the title character demonstrates the absolute worst method to kill an ill-gotten hog in The Legend of the Greedy Policeman. Continue reading Collectively Laughing at Communism: LFM Reviews Tales from the Golden Age