February 2014 – Page 3 – LFM: Libertas Film Magazine

LFM Reviews Beijing Love Story

By Joe Bendel. Beijing is a lot like New York. It is a tough city, but you can still find some wildly romantic backdrops there. Five couples of varying ages and degrees of matchedness will go through love’s ups and downs all over the Chinese capital, as well as during a romantic side-trip to Greece in Chen Sicheng’s Beijing Love Story, which opens tomorrow in New York.

Unlike his married boss Wu Zheng, Chen Feng is a decent enough guy. Unfortunately, he does not have much money or legal Beijing residency. Nonetheless, the outrageously cute Shen Yan still falls for him at a hipster singles’ party. Can their romance survive the pressures of money woes and a surprise pregnancy? Her wealthy ex and the painful in medias res opening say no, but viewers should not put too much stock in either.

Meanwhile, Wu’s tomcatting is about to catch up on him. Somewhat disappointed by his lack of faithfulness, his wife Zhang Lei tries to take a page from his playbook, possibly complicating the life of her boss and platonic friend, Liu Hui in the process. He has an assignation of his own to worry about. He is meeting his mysterious mistress, Jia Ling, for a weekend in Greece. Since the two lovers are played by “Big Tony” Leung Ka Fai and Carina Lau, you would expect things to heat up here and they do.

Liu will play Jia’s games in Greece, but he is always serious about being Liu Xingyang’s father. However, she is rather upset with him, because he will not allow her to appear on a national talent show with her string ensemble. Smitten Song Ge is happy to lend a sympathetic ear and maybe even her transportation money if he can earn enough from after school jobs and maybe borrow some from his grandfather, “Old Wang.” Of course, Wang has his romantic difficulties as well. His cousin keeps fixing him on with blind dates, but his heart is never in it, even with a recently returned expat, who should be well out of his league.

Without question, Beijing works best when it follows the Liu family. Leung and Lau have scorching chemistry and the Greek locale inspires the film’s most visually stylish sequences. In contrast, the innocence and exuberance of Song’s courtship of Liu Xingyang is like a breath of fresh cinematic air. As teenaged Liu and Song, Nana Ou Yang and Liu Haoran come across like good kids at heart, but with massive screen presence.

BeijingLoveStory2 — From "Beijing Love Story."

The other interrelated couples are not necessarily dead weight, but they do not deliver the same satisfaction. Frankly, Yu Nan is absolutely terrific as the wronged Zhang, but her storyline functions more as a transition from Chen & Shen to Liu & Jia than as a fully developed arc in its own right. Wang Qinxiang is also surprisingly moving as Old Wang, but Chen really pulls out the manipulative stops for the closer. He also shows big city Beijingers at their most annoying during the initial tale of his namesake (played by the writer-director). Tong Liya’s Shen has all kinds of charisma, but there is only so much she can do for this underwhelming slacker love story.

It is not often we have a Valentine’s appropriate film to recommend for February 14th, but this year we have one. Based on Chen’s hit television series of the same name, Beijing Love Story hits more ambiguous notes than viewers might expect, but that is a good thing. Ultimately, it is the veteran superstars (Leung and Lau) and the ridiculously young looking stars of the future (Nana Ou Yang and Liu Haoran) who really sell it. Recommended for Valentine viewing, Beijing Love Story opens tomorrow in New York at the AMC Empire, from China Lion Entertainment.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on February 13th, 2014 at 12:21pm.

LFM Reviews Frontline’s Syria’s Second Front, Children of Aleppo

By Joe Bendel. You can draw a lot of conclusions about people simply from judging the groups trying to kill them. Most western observers are utterly baffled by the bedlam of the Syrian Civil War. However, it is pretty easy to side with the initial rebel groups who rose up against the Assad regime and now find themselves battling a virulently Islamist faction in the north, once the particulars of the conflict are established. This Tuesday, PBS’s Frontline broadcasts Syria’s Second Front and Children of Aleppo, two boots-on-the-ground reports from Syria documenting the precarious state of the original, largely secular rebels and the dire conditions faced by sympathetic civilians.

ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is supposedly so extreme and violent, al-Qaeda wants to keep them at arm’s length. Presumably, they will patch things up if ISIS takes operational control of Syria, which is not outside the realm of possibility. They have little use for secular society and a special enmity for reporters, whom they are perfectly willing to execute on sight. Nevertheless, Muhammad Ali, a daring independent journalist with a memorable name, has infiltrated ISIS controlled territory with a team of Free Syrian Army aligned rebels.

When ISIS eventually leaves town, everyone is relieved to see them go. Frankly, many of the local citizenry are quite courageous expressing their hopes for a free secular democratic state. However, the prospects are rather iffy, even if the fractious rebel forces can unite against both ISIS and Assad. Second Front offers some cautious optimism on this score, but it is tempered by the shocking footage of the better organized ISIS brutally administering Sharia Law.

According to Children of Aleppo, an estimated 11,000 children have been killed in the course of the Syrian conflict. Most parents opted to shelter their sons and daughters outside the country. One FSA captain is a notable exception. He and his wife still live in their once fashionable Aleppo flat with their son and three daughters. The captain’s comrades are now like extended family to his girls, which would be almost heartwarming, if their familiarity with the sounds of war were not so tragically well developed.

Those who have seen Matthew VanDyke’s Not Anymore will also recognize his footage of a twelve year old protest singer, who just started performing for his camera as a shell landed nearly on top of them. Both survived, but she evidently now lives in Qatar. Frankly, VanDyke’s film is even more effective than the Frontline films at putting a human face on the Syrian civil war. Although it is now available online, interested New Yorkers can see VanDyke’s short doc on the big screen on February 28th as part of the 2014 Winter Film Awards. In contrast, Syria’s Second Front better establishes the ideological and geopolitical context for the various factions.

The one-two punch of last month’s Secret State of North Korea and the upcoming Syria’s Second Front make this Frontline’s strongest season perhaps ever. Both broadcasts represent solid investigative journalism conducted in countries that do not recognize press freedoms. Highly recommended, Frontline’s twofer of Syria’s Second Front and Children of Aleppo air tomorrow night (2/11) on most PBS stations nationwide.

LFM GRADES: A-/ A-

Posted on February 11th, 2014 at 12:37am.

LFM Reviews The Hourglass Sanatorium, Presented by Martin Scorsese

By Joe Bendel. Smuggling a censored film was a trickier proposition in 1973. Instead of a flash drive, you had to schlep cans of film. Nevertheless, Wojciech Has managed to convey his banned, mind-bending prestige production to Cannes, where the jury led by Ingrid Bergman awarded it the Jury Prize. While never explicitly political, it is easy to see why Has’s The Hourglass Sanatorium would be too much for a risk averse Communist apparatchik to countenance when it screens as a handpicked selection of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema, hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Based on the novel and short stories of Bruno Schulz, Hourglass is never intimidated by the constraints of narrative. Józef is traveling to a remote sanatorium, where his lower middle class merchant father Jakub is a patient. Actually, his father is already dead everywhere else except the decaying sanatorium. Within the crumbling walls, the randy inattentive staff apparently has the power to roll back time to a point where his father is still living. Through the strange power of the sanatorium, Józef is able to revisit his past through his subconscious (or vice versa) for a series of chaotic encounters with his sort of late father. Or something like that.

You could debate just what Hourglass is until the cows come home, but no way, no how is it Socialist Realism. Meaning that densely ambiguous spells nothing but trouble for a professional censor. To make matters worse, Has chose not to soft pedal the main characters’ Jewish heritage while the Polish Communist Party was still engaged in its campaign of anti-Semitic purges. At times, Has even evokes images of the Holocaust, even though the work of Shulz (himself a fatal victim of National Socialism) predated WWII.

Hourglass1 — From "The Hourglass Sanatorium."

Good for Berman for digging Hourglass. It will not be to everyone’s tastes. However, it is visually stunning. The depth of vision Has employs with his swooping camera is truly dizzying. It might be heresy to suggest, but Hourglass could be that rare classic worth giving the 3D fixer-upper treatment. Ironically, the film authorities clearly opened the coffers during the production stage. The work of art director Andrzej Halinski is absolutely baroque, even decadent in an evocatively decayed way. Viewers may well wonder if Hourglass was an early influence on a young Tim Burton or Terry Gilliam.

Hourglass is an auteur’s film in just about every way, rather than an actor’s showcase. It is dashed difficult to forge an emotional connection with the audience amid all the trippiness, but at least Jan Nowicki looks convincingly lost as Józef.

Undergarments are rather loose in Hourglass, so parents should be strongly cautioned. More to the point, it is sure to raise questions with no objective answers. This is definitely high-end cult cinema, but those who appreciate extravagant set pieces and dark fantasyscapes will dive into the experience. Recommended for the adventurous and literarily inclined, The Hourglass Sanatorium screens this Friday (2/14) and Sunday (2/16) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on February 10th, 2014 at 12:28am.

LFM Reviews Easy Money: Hard to Kill

By Joe Bendel. When on work release, convicted cocaine smuggler Johan “JW” Westlund seizes the opportunity to get back to “work.” This was not always his world, but he will find there is no going back to the upright, respectable existence he once led in Babak Najafi’s Easy Money: Hard to Kill, which opens this Friday in New York.

There were a lot of casualties at the end of the first Easy Money film, but somehow Mrado Slovovic survived, despite being run-over by a car and shot at close range by Westlund. One might expect the wheelchair-bound hitman to hold a grudge, but he and Westlund bond when they become cellmates. It must be all that shared history. Once a promising business student, Westlund lent his analytical skills to an up-and-coming coke syndicate to subsidize his extravagant lifestyle. In retrospect, it was not such a great plan for the future. Trying to go straight, Westlund develops a game-changing stock-trading program, only to find during his first furlough his so-called partner has double-crossed him.

Slightly put out, Westlund chucks in the work-release song-and-dance, arranging to break Slovovic out instead. He might be paraplegic, but Slovovic is still one bad cat. He also knows the daily routine of the Serbian mob’s unassuming money launderer. While they work on their hasty caper, small time South American trafficker Jorge and lowly Lebanese enforcer Mahmoud are also making their desperate plays for survival. Naturally all three alumni from the first film will come together in some fashion during the third act.

Viewers should be able to readily follow Hard to Kill even if they did not see the franchise opener, but the constant parade of faces that are supposed to be familiar will be more rewarding to those who have. Regardless, HTK is slick, stylish, and strangely multicultural, but hardly in a way that embraces global fellowship. This is not a film that will have you humming “It’s a Small World,” but it might scare you straight, unless you live in Colorado, where these sorts of things are practically legal.

Joel Kinnaman, the star of AMC’s The Killing and the RoboCop reboot so coincidentally opening just before HTK, is suitably flinty as Westlund, but Dragomir Mrsic out hardnoses everyone as Slovovic, while still expressing his acute disappointment in himself as a father. Likewise, Fares Fares makes a compelling sad sack as the luckless Mahmoud.

Since Easy Money: Life Deluxe has already released in Sweden, it is a safe bet anyone who survives the second cut will be back to try their luck a third time. HTK does not break a lot of new ground, but the intriguing relationship that develops between Westlund and Slovovic elevates it above more routine Scandinavian crime dramas. Recommended for those who enjoy gangster films with healthy doses of violence and irony, Easy Money: Hard to Kill opens this Friday (2/14) in New York at the Cinema Village.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on February 11th, 2014 at 12:19am.

Our Post-Zombie Future: LFM Reviews The Returned

By Joe Bendel. This is why we really shouldn’t demonize pharmaceutical companies. We might really need them sometime, especially in the post-zombie future. Medical science has developed a cure for newly infected zombies. Naturally, there is a catch. It depends on a protein extracted from the spinal columns of full blown, incurable walking dead and must be administered shortly after contamination. However, as treatment improves, there are fewer sources of the serum and more cases requiring it. This leads to an inevitable problem of scarcity in Manuel Carballo’s The Returned, which opens in Los Angeles this Friday.

You would think they would hardly notice an influx of zombies in Canada, but there is indeed a rabble rousing crowd of fear mongers making life difficult for Dr. Kate. She is the lead physician for her hospital’s “Returned” ward and a prominent fundraiser for synthesizing the serum. She also happens to be romantically linked with Alex Green, a Returned musician, whom she met while overseeing his treatment.

With stockpiles of the protein growing scarce, the mob is turning on the Returned and those who treat them. Things get really bad when a band of radicals attack her ward, making off with confidential Returned files. Already exhausting their black market options, the doctor and her hipster patient will soon be forced to take desperate measures.

Clearly, the market for zombie-related entertainment remains undiminished if even the post-zombie scenario of BBC America’s In the Flesh is subject to the old “homage” treatment. At least series writer-creator Dominic Mitchell gives viewers a fair number of old school zombie flashbacks. In contrast, The Returned is distinctly light in the shuffling horde department, but it takes its message of tolerance painfully seriously.

As a zombie film almost entirely without zombies, The Returned is bound to disappoint the majority of zombie junkies. Still, Emily Hampshire and Kris Holden-Reid make a ridiculously attractive couple who show flashes of chemistry in their scenes together. They are actually reasonably compelling when navigating the ethically ambiguous terrain of post-zombie (or maybe not so post) life.

To its credit, The Returned offers up a clever bit of business involving the Bela Lugosi near classic White Zombie (still underappreciated as the granddaddy of all zombie movies). Frankly, it is a better vehicle for Hampshire than Good Neighbors, so it might lead to more work for her down Hollywood way. Regardless, Carballo really should have dialed down the teaching moments and ratcheted up the action around the midway point, instead of going all in for angst. The Returned is a competent production, but it is already late for the party. For die-hard Canadian zombie fans, it releases this Friday (2/14) in L.A. at the Laemmle Music Hall, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

LFM GRADE: C

Posted on February 11th, 2014 at 12:09am.

LFM Reviews Monuments Men

By Joe Bendel. They were the elite of America’s elite, but they readily answered the call to serve. Recruited for their knowledge of art and architecture, this special corps was tasked with preserving important cultural landmarks and restituting plundered artwork, despite having no real operational authority. The nearly 345 men and a handful of women who served in the Allied armies’ Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) program are boiled down to eight cultured but courageous souls in George Clooney’s The Monuments Men, which opens today nationwide.

Even today, the scale of the National Socialist war machine’s systematic looting boggles the mind. Old masters were eagerly sought to fill Hitler’s Fuhrermuseum, a grandiose monstrosity planned for his hometown of Linz, while art deemed “degenerate” was destroyed. Alarmed by the threat to Europe’s artistic legacy, Frank Stokes (modeled after George Stout) is given the go-ahead to form the Monuments Men. Like a Harvard-educated Billy Ocean, he proceeds to recruit a clean half-dozen, including James Granger, the Met’s curator of medieval art (based on James Rorimer), sculptor Walter Garfield (strongly suggestive of Walker Hancock), and ballet impresario Preston Savitz (transparently inspired by one of the best known Monuments Man, Lincoln Kirstein).

Initially, Stokes mostly encounters hostility from his fellow officers, who understandably place the safety of their men far above that of a few statues or a pretty fountain. However, with the help Sam Epstein (based on Harry Ettlinger, one of the last surviving Monuments Men), a German-speaking Jewish immigrant enlisted man, Stokes’ men start developing leads on the National Socialists’ vast caches of stolen art. Nevertheless, even though the military tide has turned in the Allies’ favor, the clock is ticking furiously for the Monuments Men. Retreating Nazi forces have been instructed to destroy the secret art stashes, as part of the infamous Nero Decree. Making matters more complicated, the Soviets also deployed so-called Trophy Brigades on a mission to re-plunder art looted by the National Socialists as supposed “war reparations.”

To their credit, Clooney and co-screenwriter-co-producer Grant Heslov (adapting Robert Edsel’s nonfiction book) make the distinction between the Monuments Men and the Trophy Brigades as clear as day and night. They consistently honor the sacrifices made by the Monuments Men, getting genuinely patriotic down the stretch. In a big picture sense, the film does right by its heroic subjects. However, it gets rather bogged down in a draggy midsection, wherein the Magnificent Seven plus Epstein split up for a series largely unnecessary misadventures. Still, the third act picks up the tempo quite nicely.

Stokes/Stout is a perfect vehicle for the smooth-on-the-outside, deep-on-the-inside screen persona Clooney has developed over the years. We can easily believe he is both a learned scholar and officer material. John Goodman, Bill Murray, and Bob Balaban just sort of do their shtick as Garfield/Hancock, architect Richard Campbell, and Savitz/Kirstein, but Downton’s Hugh Bonneville gives the film unexpected heft and tragic dignity as Donald Jeffries, an art world cad seeking redemption.

Anyone interested in the Monuments Men and the National Socialist campaign of pillage should watch Berge, Newnham & Cohen’s The Rape of Europa, which is easily one of the best documentaries of the last ten years. Clooney dramatizes their story well enough, but just barely legs out a double rather than knocking it out of the park. Still, for those looking for a stirring war story with a dash of American exceptionalism, it is the only game in town this week. Recommended as a serious but reasonably entertaining WWII film, Monuments Man opens in wide release today (2/7), including the AMC Empire in New York.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on February 7th, 2014 at 3:36pm.