Month: June 2012

LFM Reviews The Sword with No Name

By Joe Bendel. She was a queen who advocated modernization and greater contact with the west. Niall Ferguson would approve, but many at court did not, particularly those aligned with the Imperial Japanese. Empress Myeongseong could only count on the support of one man, and it was not the king. At least that is the speculation of Kim Yong-gyun’s fictionalized epic The Sword with No Name, which screens this Tuesday as the latest selection for the Korean Cultural Service’s Korean Movie Night in New York.

Mu-myeung knew the queen when her name was Min Ja-yeong. Their chance meeting made quite the impression on the freelance ruffian. Recognizing that he is no match for a noble-born woman, he enlists (the hard way) with the palace guards to serve as her protector. She will need it. While the king trifles with his concubines, the queen forges a potentially game-changing alliance with Russia. Japan is not amused. Neither is the king’s father Daewongun, the former regent, who still very much considers himself the power behind the throne. Various factions will orchestrate uprisings and assassination attempts targeting Queen Min (as she was also known), but they will have to go through the devoted Mu-myeung first.

In recent years, Korean cinema has not been all that flattering in its characterizations of former kings. Sword is no exception, depicting King Gojong as a dissolute tyrant, much like his brethren in King and the Clown, Frozen Flower and Shadows in the Palace. There is also plenty of precedence for the brooding swordsman Mu-myeung, but Cho Seung-woo plays him with enough grit and angst to make him fresh, nonetheless.

However, the queen is something else entirely. Not just an early feminist role model, she can be seen as a progressive visionary, understanding the value of close diplomatic relations with the west and a less insular approach to statecraft in general. Had her policies been adopted, the next fifty years of Korean history might have been more pleasant. A smart and luminous screen presence, Soo Ae’s performance as Queen Min is a model of restraint and sensitivity.

There is something for just about everyone in Sword, but occasionally some of the Matrix-style action sequences escalate a bit over the top. In truth, it is the love story that really packs the wallop here. There is something quite beautiful about the queen and her protector’s star-crossed love, sustained over years by the merest incidental contact. It is impossible to find the same depth of feeling in western film. Instead, we would see two ill-fated lovers rolling their eyes in disbelief at the social circumstances blocking their union.

Like a late Joseon era Bodyguard without the annoying theme song, The Sword with No Name delivers all the intrigue and tragic romance fans of historical sagas could ask for. Though a bit slow out of the blocks, it locks in soon enough, hitting its stride with some heavy yearning and cool swordplay. Highly recommended, Sword screens for free this Tuesday (6/19) at the Tribeca Cinemas, courtesy of the Korean Cultural Service.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on June 18th, 2012 at 4:50pm.

Dramaville Goes Noir: LFM Reviews Inside Men

By Joe Bendel. Incentives matter. A cash-processing depot manager is put through the wringer by his superiors for the occasional irregularity in his accounts, but if an armed robber sticks a gun in his face, they will grant him time-off and provide counseling. If he is ever going to steal from the apparently impenetrable Larson House, he ought to do it in a big way. That is pretty much his plan in the four-part Inside Men, which premieres this Wednesday on BBC America’s Dramaville showcase.

The unassuming John Coniston is like a Bob Cratchit, promoted to management. He is keenly aware that neither his boss nor his subordinates respect him. When viewers first meet Coniston, he is having a bad day. Masked gunmen are forcing him to open the vault, while an accomplice holds his wife and newly adopted daughter hostage. However, there is more to this story, as the series title ought to indicate.

Yes, Coniston is in on it, but there are complications he never anticipated. Having caught his chief security guard Chris Lebden and loading dock worker Marcus Riley skimming mere tens of thousands off the top, he recruits them for a far more ambitious take: the lot of it.

Constantly flashing forward and backwards between the September heist and the planning stages six months earlier, Inside Men requires fairly close viewer attention. While there is plenty of skullduggery afoot, it is really more of a dark character study. Writer Tony Basgallop and director James Kent show us step by step how it all goes down, twisting viewer assumptions here and there along the way.

Warren Brown as Marcus Riley in "Inside Men."

The deceptively bland Coniston is clearly the key piece to the conspiracy. Steven Mackintosh convincingly sells his burgeoning empowerment as a criminal mastermind. Indeed, some of his best scenes involve the grudgingly respectful relationship he forges with Kalpesh, the purveyor of criminal support services reluctantly brought into the scheme. Though his character arc is quite intriguing, it is still hard to believe Coniston would put his family through such trauma, despite the safeguards he puts in place.

As Riley, fellow Luther alumnus Warren Brown makes a credible enough good-time knucklehead, while emerging UK TV star Ashley Walters is appropriately intense as the conflicted Lebden. However, the most invigorating supporting turn might come from Irfan Hussein, playing Kalpesh with icy flair.

Inside Men could well be too cold-blooded and intricately pieced together for fans of cozier British mystery television. Unabashedly naturalistic in its depiction of human nature, it definitely follows in the tradition of more fatalistic film noir. Even though it ends on a bit of a flat note, it is smart television, keeping a fair amount of surprises in store for engaged audiences. Recommended for those who enjoy a dark criminal yarn, Inside Men begins this Wednesday (6/20) and concludes July 18th (skipping Independence Day), on BBC America.

Posted on June 18th, 2012 at 4:49pm.

Women’s Basketball, Women’s Freedom in Iraq: LFM Reviews Salaam Dunk @ The 2012 Human Rights Watch Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. There was no Title IX in Iraq under Saddam. In fact, the general idea of gender equity that motivated the landmark legislation remains scarce throughout the region. Yet, two years after its founding, the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS) fielded a pioneering women’s basketball team. They never won a game during their first season. David Fine documents their second in the truly inspiring Salaam Dunk, which screens as part of the 2012 Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York.

Their students are the future leaders of Iraq. Offering a rigorous academic program in the relatively sheltered environment of Sulaimani, AUIS makes a point of recruiting a cross section of Iraq’s population. As a result, the nascent women’s basketball team boasts a roster of Arabs, Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, and Christians. They are led by Coach Ryan, a visiting American English lecturer. Tough but supportive, he is a refreshing antidote to all the wrong sorts of coaches who have made the news recently. However, everyone is keenly aware that his fellowship ends with the current academic year.

For students from Baghdad, Sulaimani is an island of stability, yet many still worry about their families. Nearly all team members have lost friends or family to violence. As Coach Ryan observes, his team has faced more in their still young lives than most of those watching their documentary will ever have to contend with. Not merely an extracurricular activity, basketball becomes something uniquely “theirs.” It bonds the young women together and gives them a sense of identity. They also want to win.

Probably no genre traffics in shopworn clichés like the sports documentary, but Salaam is something else entirely. When the coach consoles his team after a hard loss that their gutty performance is more important than a “W” or an “L,” it is not hollow. It is a profoundly heavy moment. Notions of sportsmanship and the “healing power of sport” take on very real meaning here.

Director-editor-co-cinematographer Fine gives viewers a full sense of players’ personalities, as well as that of their coach and student-manager. They are all bright and immensely likable. Indeed, the experience of AUIS in general and the women’s basketball team in particular appears to be a successful social catalyst, bringing the diverse team together, despite their religious and ethnic differences. This does not mean Salaam is uneventful. The AUIS team just saves their drama for the court (or the classroom or the debating society).

This is a great documentary. The term “crowd-pleaser” just does not cover it. While the circumstances of the Iraq War unavoidably hang over the young Iraqis, Salaam scrupulously avoids politics, as such. It is one of the best sports docs in years, but it is not really about games and stats. It is about a group of young scholars becoming athletes and leaders, who will inspire audience confidence in Iraq’s future. While the HRW festival is always a radically mixed bag, Salaam Dunk and the opening night selection, Alison Klayman’s Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, the Sundance alumnus profiling the Chinese dissident artist, are two films that should absolutely not be missed. Highly recommended, Salaam Dunk screens this Saturday (6/16), Sunday (6/17), and Monday (6/18) at the Walter Reade Theater.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on June 14th, 2012 at 11:29am.

Pulp in the City: LFM Reviews The Girl from the Naked Eye

By Joe Bendel. In Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa, a petty criminal forms an ambiguous bond with the upscale prostitute he is hired to drive. It is a good movie, so try to forget it, temporarily. While their relationship is superficially similar, this tale of a working woman and her schlepper is all about pulp and revenge. Yes, the title character will unfortunately only be appearing in flashbacks throughout David Ren’s The Girl from the Naked Eye (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

A self-described hash-up, Jake is taking the death of his high class call girl associate Sandy rather hard. Deep in debt to the mob, he took a job with the Naked Eye, a strip club whose sleazy proprietor Simon makes his real money running the top girls as prostitutes. Jake used to be Sandy’s driver, but requested a new assignment right before her murder. His feelings for her will become clear from his series of ruminative flashbacks.

In the present day, Jake only has one concern: making the killer pay. Obviously, he wants to know who saw her last, but Simon will not willingly give up her client list. A savage beat-down later, Jake is on the trail, but he will have to contend with Simon’s thugs and his crooked cop partner, who is in serious damage control mode.

This must be strip club week for the indie movie release beat, with Eye hitting theaters along with Mathieu Demy’s more heralded Americano. Ironically, Eye’s lack of pretense earns it a limited nod over its self-serious French competitor. Though far from classic, at least it feels no need to apologize for a little sex and violence.

A lurid, grindhouse vibe.

Indeed, action director-co-star Ron Yuan makes several key contributions, including an inventively staged (and decidedly un-Raid-like) fight sequence, in which Jake and four security guards all become increasingly battered and exhausted as it stretches on. He also gives the film a jolt of energy as Simon, delivering a surprising number of laughs and developing real anti-chemistry with Brandy Grace, who makes quite an impression as Angela, his caustic mistress and top earner.

Eye also features two entertaining more-or-less cameos, including Sasha Grey, appearing fully clothed as a bystander in Simon’s hotel for hookers. Dominique Swain has a bit more substantial role as Alissa, a not yet disillusioned lady of the evening, who gives the dense Jake a few helpful tips, via Nancy Drew. Both give brief lifts to the film’s moody luridness. Every bit helps, especially since leads Jason Yee and Samantha Street are bit bland in their dramatic scenes together as Jake and Sandy. Still, the former is quite convincing in his action scenes.

Trying too hard to be noir, Eye is weighed down by narration that would be over the top even for a parody (which it might possibly be). Nevertheless, the colorful supporting cast deserves props for embracing the grindhouse vibe. Clearly a B-movie best saved for late night cable viewing, The Girl from the Naked Eye nonetheless opens tomorrow (6/15) in New York at the AMC Empire.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on June 14th, 2012 at 11:28am.

LFM Reviews The Woman in the Fifth

By Joe Bendel. Tom Ricks is a writer, so he must be a little off. With only one obscure novel to his name, the American cuts an underwhelming literary figure, but he has enough issues to earn a restraining order from his French wife. Following her and their daughter to Paris does little for his overwrought state of mind in Pawel Pawlikowski’s The Woman in the Fifth, which opens this Friday in New York.

Less than thrilled to see him, Nathalie Ricks promptly calls in the gendarmerie. Beating a hasty retreat, Ricks finds himself penniless at the flop-house motel run by gangster Sezer. To pay for his room and board, the novelist accepts a job working as a sketchy subterranean watchman for one of Sezer’s criminal endeavors. He figures it will give him time to work, but his writing is definitely not of the healthy variety. The only bright spot are his semi-regular assignations with Margit Kadar, an elegant and alluring widow of a Hungarian novelist perhaps even more obscure than Ricks, living in Paris’s 5th arrondissement.

While his ex shuns his reconciliation attempts, Ricks attracts the romantic attention of Ania, the Polish immigrant waitress at Sezer’s tavern, who also happens to be the mobster’s lover. This profoundly destabilizes the novelist’s situation. It also starts a chain of events leading Ricks to suspect a hitherto unknown force is meddling in his affairs.

Kristin Scott Thomas and Ethan Hawke in "The Woman in the Fifth."

Based on the novel by Douglas Kennedy, Fifth blends elements of genre cinema in ways that would be spoilery to discuss in detail. However, Pawlikowski is more interested in presenting an extreme psychological study with a distinctly Continental art film sensibility than aiming for mere thrills or chills. Never rushing the revelations, Pawlikowski still deftly creates sense that all is not right with his protagonist and his world.

Leading a multinational ensemble, Ethan Hawke and his terrible French accent are effectively moody and withdrawn as the socially problematic Ricks. Polish actress Joanna Kulig, recently seen (and very much exposed) in Malgoska Szumowska’s Elles, is also quite credible as the glammed-down Ania. Yet, Kristin Scott Thomas is the crucial piece of the film’s puzzle. Always an intelligent presence, she is absolutely perfectly cast as the sophisticated Kadar. The audience instantly shares Ricks’ interest in her—and of course her accent is always flawless, in both French and English.

Fifth’s slow build and emotionally detached approach to Ricks’ existential drama might be difficult for some viewers to whole-heartedly embrace. However, it is a smart, stylish film. Indeed, cinematographer Ryszard Lenczewski’s chilly gray color palette nicely suits the on-screen mystery and alienation. It is the sort of film viewers will kick around in their heads for days after screening it, which is an increasing rarity. Highly recommended for fans of European cinema with a dark twist, Woman in the Fifth opens this Friday (6/15) in New York at the Village East.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on June 13th, 2012 at 10:39am.

What Better Way to Spend Bloomsday? LFM Reviews In Bed with Ulysses

By Joe Bendel. In addition to its now universally acknowledged literary significance, the effort to publish James Joyce’s Ulysses in the face of widespread censorship was the major publishing story of its day. Actually, the novel’s publishing history is still unfolding. Many scholars recently rejoiced when it – along with most of Joyce’s early works – went into the public domain, liberating them from what they considered an unreasonable and erratic estate executor. It should make this year’s Bloomsday celebration quite lively. Irrespective of Stephen Joyce’s controversial stewardship, Joyceans in Brooklyn will also be able to mark June 16th, that fateful day spent with protagonist Leopold Bloom, by attending the premiere theatrical engagement of Alan Adelson & Kate Taverna’s In Bed with Ulysses, which began this Monday at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema.

Throughout Bed, Adelson and Taverna celebrate Joyce’s language, but not necessarily his personality. Indeed, many leading Joyce scholars make no bones about the author’s self-centered neuroses. They certainly do not make him sound like a particularly pleasant husband, plundering his relationship with wife Nora for his autobiographical novels, while bizarrely prodding her to justify his extreme jealousies. Still, it provides good fodder for documentaries.

Fortunately, his work is something else entirely. In staged readings of Ulysses, performed by established legit actors, including Kathleen Chalfant (known for the original New York production of Wit) reading in the Molly Bloom persona, the film luxuriates in the rhythms and ribald tartness of Joyce’s language. While we do not hear anything to make the typical Brooklyner blush, there might be just enough to make a PBS broadcast, as is, a tad tricky.

All of the performers have a good feel for Joyce’s words and the archival images of 1904 Dublin that often accompany their readings give viewers a vivid sense of where the novel came from. Adelson and Taverna also incorporate a fair amount of focused and on-point expert interviews, the most notable being novelist and Joyce biographer Edna O’Brien, an impressive literary figure in her own right. Of course to nobody’s surprise, grandson-executor Stephen Joyce never makes an appearance.

James Joyce, Marilyn Monroe reading "Ulysses."

In Bed with Ulysses is an easily digestible combination of Joyce biography and Ulysses crib notes, with fair servings of Irish history and theater arts mixed in. Obviously, Irish cultural institutions should be very interested in the film, but its exploration of Bloom’s Jewish heritage and the extent to which Limerick’s 1904 anti-Jewish riots and boycotts informed the novel should expand the demographic audience considerably. Yet, the Joyceans who continue to be intrigued by the literary icon’s revolutionary novels are the real target market.

Informative but never too heavy, In Bed with Ulysses is readily recommended for those who appreciate literary biography or looking for a way to ease into the somewhat intimidating novel. It is also a chance for borough loyalists to support Brooklyn filmmakers at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema, before the scrappy art-house goes into temp space while their current location is redeveloped. It runs there until at least Sunday (6/17), which indeed includes Bloomsday this Saturday (6/16).

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on June 13th, 2012 at 10:38am.