Month: October 2013

Keanu Reeves & Tiger Chen Show Their Chops: LFM Reviews Man of Tai Chi

By Joe Bendel. It was Tiger Chen who really knew kung fu. He was the stuntman responsible for Keanu Reeves’ martial arts training during the production of the Matrix trilogy and he made quite an impression. For his directorial debut, Reeves introduces Chen to the world with his old school beatdown, Man of Tai Chi, which opens this Friday in New York.

“Tiger” Chen Lin-hu is the last student of Master Yang, a great Ling Kong Tai Chi teacher. In contemporary Beijing, Tai Chi is mostly associated with old men doing their “soft” qigong in the park. However, Chen is starting to get noticed in the above board MMA world for his traditional “hard” practice of the ancient discipline. He also catches the eye of the shadowy Donaka Mark. When shady developers conveniently threaten to condemn his master’s temple, the lowly deliveryman becomes easy prey for Mark’s overtures.

Initially, Chen truly does not understand what he is getting involved in. However, as he notches victories in Mark’s underground fight circuit, Chen starts to enjoy the money and adrenaline. Unfortunately, the matches make him more aggressive, jeopardizing his relationships with his master and Qingsha, the cute-as-a-button paralegal helping him save the temple. Nonetheless, he cannot help noticing the stakes escalate with each bout.

Hong Kong police captain Sun Jing-si knows where it all leads: fights to the death broadcast over secure online connections for Mark’s exclusive clientele. Always a step behind the malevolent mastermind, she needs an informant to take the place of the one Mark just killed – someone like Chen, if she can find him.

With Tai Chi, Reeves had the good sense to make a film he would enjoy for his maiden directorial outing. Frankly, he shows serious action helmer chops, staging fight sequences that are crystal clear and easy to follow. There are no barrages of close-ups here. Reeves gives us the full Fred Astaire body shots, precisely so we can appreciate the technique of his main man, Chen.

The results are convincing. While Tai Chi is not the most original narrative under the sun, it deliberately harkens back to the gritty low budgets classics that launched the careers of legends. Chen maybe is not the most expressive actor you will ever see (after all, Reeves is his thesp-mentor), but his earnest gee-whiz persona works well in the context of the film. Oddly enough, Reeves is a bit of a surprise here, making a dynamite villain with his piercing stare and apparently insatiable appetite for the scenery around him.

Karen Mok is also seriously hardnosed as Sun, bringing real supporting heft to the film. Simon Yam adds further HK action cred as Superintendent Wong, her suspiciously unhelpful superior. Qing Ye is not exactly a natural on-screen either, but she still represents Chen’s lost innocence rather effectively. Yet for genre fans, nobody tops Shaolin veteran Yu Hai, doing his thing with stately gravitas as Master Yang. Bizarrely though, The Raid’s Iko Uwais is completely wasted in a mere tease of a cameo.

Reeves might not be Clint Eastwood’s successor as the next great actor-director, but Tai Chi is a pretty slick calling card. If need be, he should easily find a second career as a straight-to-DVD action director, which is considerably higher praise than it sounds (those cats actually have to be good). Likewise, Chen might not be the next Daniel Day-Lewis, but watching him kicking butt is hugely entertaining. Way better than you think, Man of Tai Chi is recommended for martial arts fans and Karen Mok admirers when it opens this Friday (11/1) in New York.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 28th, 2013 at 9:58pm.

James Toback & Alec Baldwin Want to Make a Movie: LFM Reviews HBO’s Seduced and Abandoned

By Joe Bendel. Alec Baldwin loves making movies so much, he is now a boring talk show host. Perhaps this was the last hurrah for the star of Rock of Ages. He and director James Toback hit the Cannes Film Market hard in search of financing for a prospective indie production, simultaneously filming a documentary of their cold calling, at least guaranteeing they would not leave empty-handed. There is plenty of pitching but not a lot of closing in Toback’s Seduced and Abandoned, which airs this evening on HBO.

The idea is to remake Last Tango in Paris in Iraq during the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saddam. Baldwin will play the Brando role, re-conceived as a rightwing military advisor and Neve Campbell will step into the Maria Schneider part, transformed into a leftwing journalist. Campbell cannot make the trip to Cannes, but Baldwin and Toback assure her they would never make the film without her. However, they do not make it past their second pitch session before they start throwing her under the bus. They still love Neve, but maybe she can play the maid who comes to change their sheets.

Before long, they are also pitching actresses like Jessica Chastain, Diane Kruger, and Bérénice Bejo, along with prominent sales agents and the assorted eccentric millionaires. Of course, Last Tango in Tikrit sounds so gob-smackingly un-commercial we almost have to wonder if it is all an extended Borat gag, except Baldwin and Toback take themselves so seriously. On behalf of the nation’s film critics, I would like to thank the Cannes financiers for not stampeding to fund what sounds like a Frankenstein combination of The Canyons and The Green Zone.

Of course, in addition to the market, there is also a film festival going in Cannes, allowing the fundraising duo an opportunity to talk to some world cinema’s leading lights. Since S & A is a documentary about the movies, Martin Scorsese duly sits for an interview. Perhaps the best sequence involves a sit-down with Bernardo Bertolucci in a hotel suite named in his honor, at which time the Tango auteur gives them his blessing for their pseudo-remake. Among the many other big name participants, James Caan has some particularly colorful things to say about the industry.

If you want to hear Toback and Baldwin kvetch than brother, this is the film is for you. If only they were as funny as they think they are. Toback captures some amusing inside baseball moments at Cannes and he incorporates some cleverly selected film clips, but Todd McCarthy’s Pierre Rissient: Man of Cinema delivers far more behind the scenes details. Harmless but conspicuously self-absorbed, Seduced and Abandoned airs tonight (10/28) on HBO.

LFM GRADE: C-

Posted on October 28th, 2013 at 9:55pm.

Strange Things Happen in Utah: LFM Reviews Skinwalker Ranch

By Joe Bendel. It is an area notorious for weird happenings, but this is northern Utah, so they can’t be blamed on drunken misperceptions. In fact, a private paranormal research team could probably use a stiff shot when things start going bump in the night in Devin McGinn’s Skinwalker Ranch, which launches on VOD and screens in select cities this Wednesday.

Some locals believe the home video purportedly showing a young boy whisked away by supernatural forces is legitimate, while some suspect it is a hoax concocted by his father. Desperate to find his son, distraught rancher Hoyt Miller welcomes a team of scientists from Modern Defense Enterprises and a journalist recruited to serve as a neutral observer, hoping they can supply some answers. They wire the house and surrounding property with motion sensor cameras and settle in, but they will not have long to wait. An unearthly high pitched tone rudely awakens them their first night in the field, with subsequent uncanny events preventing them from getting much sleep thereafter.

Although not entirely found footage, a great deal of Skinwalker unfolds from the perspective of the surveillance cameras. By genre standards, McGinn shows admirable patience in the early going, nicely setting the scene and establishing the ranch’s atmospheric nooks and crannies. For a while, it is surprisingly creepy, thanks to his skillful use of suggestion and mystery to build the tension. Unfortunately, the conclusion seems rather rushed, but with horror movies, a good set-up often compensates for a weak ending.

Although the helmer directing himself is usually a red flag, McGinn is actually quite respectable as Cameron Murphy, the semi-skeptical journalist. Jon Gries is also better than average as the poor, suffering Miller. Frankly, Skinwalker earns a recommendation just for casting the eternally cool Michael Horse (a cult favorite from Twin Peaks) as Ahote, a vaguely shaman-esque figure who offers the helpful advice to get the good golly out of there.

Skinwalker’s fusion of the horror and alien abduction genres is hardly original, but the execution exceeds expectations. After all, for a low budget programmer, not bad is pretty good. Recommended for a Halloween outing with like-minded viewers, Skinwalker Ranch screens this Wednesday (10/30), Devil’s Night, in theaters throughout Texas, Florida, and Alabama.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on October 28th, 2013 at 9:51pm.

Her Father’s Voice: LFM Reviews Blood and Ties

By Joe Bendel. The so-called “Hwaseong Murders” were South Korea’s first recorded serial killings, but the statute of limitations expired before the murderer was uncovered. The case’s impact can still be discerned in Korean cinema’s fascination with serial killers and the ticking prosecutorial clock. Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder was transparently based on the Hwaseong killings and it is easy to see its influence on Jung Byoung-gil’s Confession of Murder. The notorious crimes also directly inspired Kook Dong-seok’s Blood and Ties, which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

Jung Da-eun’s working class father Soon-man never had much, but he made sure she never lacked for anything. Now a grown adult, she still lives at home with the ever dedicated single parent. All her grad school friends adore dear old dad too, but after watching a lurid new documentary, they cannot help noticing how similar his voice sounds to that of a notorious child abductor. The unknown perpetrator was only recorded during a brief ransom call, but he even uses one the senior Jung’s favorite catch phrases.

Thoroughly confused and suspicious, Jung’s daughter starts poking around. The sudden appearance of Shim Yoon-young further amplifies her anxiety. He is obviously an unsavory character, but seems to share some murky history with her father. As the media trumpets the imminent expiration of the statute of limitations, Jung Da-eun struggles with her doubts and loyalties.

From "Blood and Ties."

B&T is a wicked high concept thriller with ample opportunity for high tragedy, but it does not guard its secret closely enough. The set-up is downright sinister and the top-shelf primary cast maintains the intensity, but viewers will always have a pretty good idea where it is all headed.

Son Ye-jin comes apart at the emotional seams quite convincingly as Da-eun, but it is Kim Kap-soo who commands the film as her father. Somehow he projects steely malevolence and pained sensitivity simultaneously, thereby providing both sides of his character’s Rorschach. Without Kim’s perfectly modulated performance, B&T would not work to any extent. While the supporting cast is mostly adequate, Lim Hyung-joon is also distinctly slimy as the all kinds of bad news Shim.

Based on a story by Kook’s mentor, filmmaker Park Jin-pyo, B&T taps into some deep-seated anxieties, but it is driven by the work of Kim, Son, and Li. Recommended for thriller fans looking for a blend of Mary Higgins Clark and James Patterson, Blood and Ties opens this Friday (11/1) at the CGV Theater in Los Angeles and next Friday (11/8) at AMC Bay Terrace in Flushing, Queens.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on October 28th, 2013 at 9:48pm.

Invasion Alert: LFM Reviews War of the Worlds; Premieres on PBS Tues., 10/29

By Joe Bendel. Prior to October 30, 1938, Orson Welles was considered a talent to watch, but his Mercury Theater on the Air did not have a proper sponsor and it regularly got beat by a variety show featuring ventriloquist Edgar Bergen with his dummy Charlie McCarthy (it was a great act for radio, because you truly couldn’t see his lips move). Then Welles staged an innovative adaptation of H.G. Wells’ science fiction classic and suddenly everything changed. American Experience marks the 75th anniversary of Welles’ controversial broadcast with War of the Worlds, which airs this coming Tuesday on most PBS stations.

Orson Welles performing "War of the Worlds."

Welles was already a cottage industry before he transplanted War of the Worlds to Grover’s Mill, New Jersey. Best known as a stage director, he frequently performed on radio, often without credit. The media and the smart set closely followed his career, but he had yet to breakthrough with Middle America. For his weekly radio showcase, Welles had a notion to adapt the Martian invasion novel. Producer-adult supervisor John Houseman thought it was a terrible idea, but Welles had his way as usual. However, the script just didn’t come together until they decided to stage it as a series of breaking news bulletins. This was not a completely original strategy. It was inspired by Archibald MacLeish’s radio play Air Raid, which had just aired with much less fanfare.

According to American Experience’s historical experts, most listeners missed Welles’ introduction, dial-twisting over to the Mercury Theater once Bergen had finished his shtick. As most everyone knows, a mild panic then ensued. All the talking heads try their best to excuse away the mass hysteria, arguing that the stress of the Depression and the constant news flashes trumpeting European war left the general public primed to believe Welles’ Americanized War of the Worlds. Maybe there is a kernel truth to that, but that would have been one heck of an exclusive for CBS to score.

Just about everyone now recognizes Welles as one of the most important film directors of the Twentieth Century, but AE’s WOTW reminds us he was also probably one of the greatest radio directors as well. Director Cathleen O’Connell and tele-writer Michelle Ferrari include some fascinating behind-the-scenes details of the in/famous broadcast, but the black-and-white dramatic recreations of angry listeners’ letters of complaint are rather corny and just generally unnecessary.

Arguably, Welles’ fictionalized news flashes represent an early forerunner to found footage genre films, in which a carefully produced narrative deliberately approximates some form of on-the-fly documentation. O’Connell and her battery of experts, including Welles’ daughter Chris Welles Feder, nicely put the episode in the context of Welles’ career and the development of mass media. Easily recommended for fans of Welles and Wells despite the over-stylized recreation interludes, American Experience’s War of the Worlds premieres on PBS Tuesday the 29th (10/29), seventy-five years after the fateful broadcast, nearly to the day.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 25th, 2013 at 12:54pm.

LFM Reviews Letters from Pyongyang @ The 2013 Korean American Film Festival in New York

By Joe Bendel. If you know someone in North Korea, then you have just cause to be concerned for their well-being. With reports re-surfacing of widespread famine and worse, losing contact with family in the closed Communist nation would not inspire optimism. When the annual letters from filmmaker Jason Lee’s uncles stopped coming, his father became understandably anxious, embarking on a family fact-finding mission documented in Lee’s short film, Letters from Pyongyang (trailer here), which screens during the 2013 Korean American Film Festival in New York.

Getting into the DPRK requires superhuman bureaucratic hoop-jumping, even from Canada. After getting more no’s than Stephen Merchant in a singles bar, Lee and his father finally received the requisite approvals for their visit. However, in a massively anticlimactic turn of events, they learn Lee’s two uncles died several years ago, just prior to embarking. They continue on anyway, hoping to pay their respects and connect with the family they have never known.

What follows vividly illustrates the stilted nature of tourism in oppressed countries. The Lees’ minders show them plenty of imposing Socialist monuments, but they are only allowed a brief meeting with their extended North Korean relatives in the lobby of their hotel. Presumably, Lee the filmmaker has little to say about this conspicuous police state behavior because Lee the nephew is concerned about his uncles’ families. That is completely understandable but highly problematic from a cinematic standpoint, resulting in too many scenes of Lee and his father duly taking in one epic statue after another.

Documenting family members living under a ruthless regime is obviously a tricky proposition, but Yang Yonghi walked that fine line rather deftly with her more forthright documentary Dear Pyongyang. Arguably, the more her family members were on-camera and the wider she exhibited her film, the more protected they were as a practical matter. While perceptive viewers can always glean something from a peak behind the DPRK’s iron curtain, Letters lacks than insight and drama of Hein Seok’s Seeking Haven, also screening at this year’s KAFFNY. For voracious North Korea watchers, it screens tomorrow (10/26) at the Village East as part of the Forgotten War Shorts programming block.

Posted on October 25th, 2013 at 12:52pm.