May 2014 – Page 3 – LFM: Libertas Film Magazine

A Portrait of the Artist Under House Arrest: LFM Reviews Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case

By Joe Bendel. It is the product of eighty-one days of solitary confinement and rough interrogation. Recreating scenes from his ordeal, S.A.C.R.E.D. is already recognized as one of Ai Weiwei’s masterworks, as well as a devastating critique of the Communist Party’s police state tactics. At least the government did its best to prevent any distractions from delaying its completion—by confiscating his passport and placing him under house arrest. The artist’s difficult year spent as a prisoner in his own home-studio (known as 258 FAKE) is documented in Andreas Johnsen’s Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case, which opens this Friday in New York at the IFC Center.

Ai Weiwei is one of the most important artists in the world today, as his famous sunflower seed installation at the Tate Modern and the current retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum well attest. However, Teacher Ai claims he never initially set out to be a political artist, but was forced down that path by the government’s reaction to his work and activism. Those who have seen Alison Klayman’s Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry or Teacher Ai’s own films, particularly Disturbing the Peace and So Sorry, know the artist as a compulsively outspoken, larger than life figure. It is rather shocking to see the nearly (but not completely) broken Ai Weiwei who emerges from almost three months of illegal detention early in Fake.

As a condition of his so-called parole, Ai Weiwei is forbidden to speak with the media, particularly international reporters. He duly complies, at least for a while. Suffering from memory gaps and nightmares, Teacher Ai is literally a pale shadow of his former self. Yet, as his health returns that familiar spirit also perks up.

Once again, the Communist government provides an inadvertent assist, by requiring Teacher Ai to post a considerable bond during his appeal. Much to the artist’s stunned amazement, there is a massive outpouring of support on his behalf, as 100 Yuan note paper airplanes start sailing over his wall, at no small risk to the donors. Their heartfelt messages move him deeply. Frankly, if viewers do not get a little choked up at this point, they perhaps missed their true callings as Communist torturers (as sleep deprivation is widely acknowledged as a form of torture, it is indeed fair to say Teacher Ai was tortured while in custody).

Essentially, Fake picks up where Klayman’s documentary left off, making them excellent companion films. Of course, it is hard to go wrong with any film that captures Ai Weiwei being himself. Although we might expect Teacher Ai to be far more guarded on camera following his incarceration, the opposite appears to be true. Not only do we hear him talking candidly about the lasting effects of his imprisonment, we also witness (quite touching) scenes of him interacting with his young son, Ai Lao.

Arguably, we see more of Ai the private citizen than Ai Weiwei the public figure. Of course, that rather makes sense, considering he could not leave his home without government permission during this time. Nevertheless, the injustice of his persecution is clearly and thoroughly established. Largely observational in his approach, Johnsen’s trust in his subject’s cinematic presence and compelling work (be it artistic, political, or both) pays off handsomely. A source of inspiration and outrage, Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case is highly recommended for all viewers who value free expression when it opens this Friday (5/16) at the IFC Center.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on May 15th, 2014 at 1:18pm.

It Happens in London, Too: LFM Reviews Honour

By Joe Bendel. In her bestseller Londonistan, British journalist Melanie Phillips argues that Britain’s pluralistic liberal values are steadily eroding due to the rise of Islamist ideology from within. At one point, Mona’s brother makes a similar point, but he brazenly considers himself part of the process. Kasim happens to be a police officer, who is determined to murder his sister out of a perverse sense of family duty in Shan Khan’s simply but evocatively titled Honour, which launches today on VOD.

Mona scandalized her Muslim Pakistani family by pursuing romance with a Punjabi Hindu colleague. For that, she must die. However, she proves to be unexpectedly elusive for the severe Kasim and his somewhat reluctant younger brother, Adel, so they enlist a specialist. Ever since his release from prison, the unnamed bounty hunter has carved out a niche for himself, based on referrals from the imam he served time with. Just how the heavily tattooed white supremacist formed an alliance with the devout Muslim remains unspoken, but one can easily assume they bonded over targets of mutual hate.

Nevertheless, the nameless thug-for-hire is starting to develop a conscience, especially after witnessing the savage treatment of his last highly pregnant target. It will be ironic if the former Aryan gang member teaches Mona’s family a lesson in real honor, but in all honesty, Kasim and his cold-blooded mother set the bar awfully low.

As usual, Paddy Considine is totally money-in-the-bank as the bounty hunter. It is a gritty punch-to-the-gut portrayal of soul-sickness and redemption, yet it is not really his movie. Instead, Atlantis co-star Aiysha Hart shoulders a disproportionate share of the film’s load, acquitting herself rather well. In fact, she seems to get stronger as the film progresses, vividly expressing understandable feelings of fear, pain, and betrayal. While the ad-hoc alliance between her and Considine’s grim brooder might strike some viewers as a bit too pat, their rapport helps considerably to sell it on-screen.

Hard to pigeon-hole, Honour rather effectively straddles the border between thrillers and social issue dramas. Arguably, Khan’s out-of-sequence temporal narrative gets a little too cute for its own good, but it does accentuate the suspense at several key junctures. More importantly, he masterfully maintains the tension, conveying a visceral sense of Mona’s bereft alienation.

Honour is not pitch-perfect, but it certainly pulls the audience in and keeps us hooked. It is also quite a bold film. Keep in mind, this all takes place in London (or rather a Glasgow doubling for London)—the financial capitol of Europe and beacon of freedom during two world wars—not some mountain hamlet in Afghanistan. Recommended as a film and as well a social critique, Honour is now available through VOD platforms, with a theatrical release to be announced sometime in the summer.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on May 15th, 2014 at 1:12pm.

LFM Reviews Chinese Puzzle

By Joe Bendel. The interconnected group of friends and lovers from Cédric Klapisch’s L’Auberge Espagnole and Russian Dolls represent a European microcosm, but to pursue their second chances at life and love they appropriately congregate in Lower Manhattan. Chinatown will see an influx of Francophone expats in Klapisch’s Chinese Puzzle, which opens this Friday in New York.

Novelist Xavier Rousseau is way behind on his latest deadline. He has been a bit distracted by the dissolution of his marriage to the British Wendy. Following his soon to be ex-wife to New York for the sake of his kids, Rousseau kind of-sort of experiences fatherhood again as the sperm-donator for his best pal Isabelle and her Chinese-American partner Ju. With little money and fewer prospects, Rousseau crashes in Ju’s hipster-friendly Chinatown apartment. It will become quite homey when he hosts his former lover Martine and her two children during their New York vacation.

Will sudden proximity rekindle their relationship? Fortunately she is rather understanding of his green card marriage to a second generation Chinatown New Yorker, but keeping up appearances for immigration will lead to a lot of door slamming and mad dashing about. Yet, somehow it all still represents the mature phase of his life.

Although Puzzle is the concluding film of what Klapisch calls “The Trilogy of Xavier’s Travels” (picture that on the DVD boxed set), it easily stands alone. However, those who are emotionally invested in the prior two installments will take great satisfaction from the nontraditional familial bonds that develop between the characters. In fact, it might be the most unabashedly optimistic and upbeat film for all concerned, propelled along by Loïk Dury and Christophe “Disco” Minck’s infectiously peppy Cesar Award nominated score.

Chinese Puzzle 1 — From "Chinese Puzzle."

Like a comfortable old shoe, Romain Duris exudes loser likability as Rousseau. He also shares some pleasant (if not exactly scorching) screen chemistry with Audrey Tautou’s Martine. In a nice change of pace following films like The Kid with the Bike and Hereafter, Cécile de France shows a keen facility for slightly naughty physical comedy as the Belgian Isabelle. Strangely, the American marketing campaign is not playing up House of Cards’ Sandrine Holt as Ju, but she adds some class and dignity to the proceedings.

Puzzle is a breezy and buoyant film, but it is not utterly vacuous. It clearly celebrates family and friendship, suggesting that playing the cards one has been dealt might just turn out to be a blessing. That it is an unusually attractive cast of characters grappling with impending middle age just makes it all the more cinematic. A can’t miss for fans of Xavier’s previous travels, Chinese Puzzle is recommended for Francophiles and international rom-com audiences when it opens this Friday (5/16) in New York at the Angelika Film Center downtown and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema uptown.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on May 15th, 2014 at 1:07pm.

LFM Reviews Miss Zombie @ The 2014 Seattle International Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Could you ever fall in love with a zombie? Don’t answer too quickly. The point at which humanity ends is open to debate in Sabu’s intimately stripped down Miss Zombie, which screens during the 2014 Seattle International Film Festival.

In the very near future, zombies are a fact of life, but Dr. Teramoto is still rather surprised when an old colleague ships him one for safe-keeping. As long as they do not feed Shara meat, she should remain docile, but her instructions come with a handy pistol, just in case (hello Chekhov). In spite of the neighbors’ protests, Shara soon settles into a Sisyphean existence scrubbing the Teramotos’ flagstone veranda.

However, Shara seems to inspire very human-like responses from those around her. Teramoto’s wife Shizuko feels pity for her, while their son Kenichi is fascinated by her mysterious presence. Unfortunately, the doctor’s lecherous groundskeepers act on their vilest impulses towards her, with his silent acquiescence. When tragedy unexpectedly strikes, Shara’s relationship with the family will become far more complex.

Miss Zombie has the general sensibilities of the zombie film Joseph Losey never made. To a large extent, the human exploitation of zombies represents more conventional class and gender conflicts (which are present too, barely contained beneath the film’s surface). It also directly explores notions of human sentiency, hinting at lingering sense memories from Shara’s previous life.

Without question, Ayaka Komatsu gives the finest zombie performance probably ever. She is the film’s lynchpin, anchor, and all-around MVP. Watching her so subtly yet so vividly project her stirrings of memory and consciousness is absolutely heartbreaking. Bub from Day of the Dead simply cannot hold a candle to her. She also gets some key support from Makoto Togashi and young Riku Onishi, as Shizuko and Kenichi Teramoto, who figure prominently in the emotionally heavy third act.

Fortunately, Sabu’s relatively simple but deep-as-the-ocean story is worthy of her efforts. For a genre film, Miss Zombie packs a shocking wallop of a punch. Daisuke Sôma’s mostly black-and-white cinematography is also unusually stylish, conveying a vibe that is part old school Romero and part Cassavetes.

With Miss Zombie, Sabu really raises the stakes for zombie films. The same old shuffling hordes simply will not cut it anymore. It ranks alongside the original Night of the Living Dead, but takes viewers to a very different place. Highly recommended for genre fans and those who appreciate social allegories of any stripe, Miss Zombie screens Friday (5/16), Saturday (5/24) and Sunday (5/25) during this year’s Seattle International Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on May 15th, 2014 at 12:59pm.

LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Talking With Director Steven Knight About His Innovative and Enthralling Film Locke

[Editor’s Note: the post below appeared this week at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. Locke may just be one of the best films of 2014. Superbly written and directed by Steven Knight and featuring a dazzling performance by Tom Hardy, Locke is a must-see for anyone who believes that human character is still the most compelling subject of the cinema. I saw Locke earlier this year when it played to rave reviews at Sundance, and spoke with Knight about his innovative and deeply personal film which is expanding this week to theaters nationwide.

In the film, Tom Hardy plays construction engineer Ivan Locke, a man who takes as much pride in the firm foundations of his buildings as he does in his unshakeable code of personal responsibility. One night, Locke leaves a construction job to drive from Birmingham to London to fulfill a mysterious promise. Along the way, he makes and receives a series of wrenching phone calls that bring his sense of personal duty into conflict with everyone and everything he loves.

I’m a big fan of films that use new digital tools to experiment with the traditional structure of the movies. , Locke succeeds at being both formally inventive and emotionally gripping. The entire movie, with the brief exception of the opening and closing shots, takes place in the interior of a car and features only one actor on-screen, Tom Hardy. At the Sundance premiere of Locke, director Steven Knight told me that he and his talented team used Red digital cameras to shoot the film continuously from beginning to end each night, like a stage play.

Stripped down to the bare essentials as a result, Locke focuses on what matters most: character, emotion, and story. The film proves that even in the contemporary cinema, with its obsession with surface visual effects, movies can still delve below the surface and capture something essential about human nature in much the same way literature can.

In Locke this is largely done through the power of the close-up. In the best movies, the close-up serves to bring emotional transparency to a film, whereby the candor of an actor and the attentiveness of a director work together to draw out the inner life of a character onto the big screen. And it’s there on the big screen that the human face takes on mythic qualities, elevating specific human experiences into universal truths. On the big screen there’s no place to hide as an actor – but if one is as talented as Tom Hardy, one doesn’t need to. Hardy sensitively pulls off Ivan Locke’s volatile and heartbreaking mixture of machismo, passion, humor, anger, and doubt – depicting Locke like a bear trapped in a cage of his own making.

I spoke with Steven Knight (Academy Award nominated screenwriter for Dirty Pretty Things) at the Sundance premiere of Locke and asked him how he pulled off such a technically complicated and emotionally wrenching film. The interview has been edited for length.

GM: I’d like to ask you about the innovative way you made the film. Why did you choose to do such a tight character study and film it in these continuous takes? Tell me about your process.

SK: I just finished making a film with Jason Statham the conventional way [2013’s Redemption]. And two things occurred. One was: anything we shot from the car at night was beautiful, and I thought the thing to do would be to make an installation of that – make it as a piece of art with just the moving traffic patterns.

And then, I also asked the question of myself: the basic task here is to get a lot of people into a room, turn the lights off, and get them to look at a screen for 90 minutes. That’s the basic job you’re doing. [But] are there other ways of doing it? So I thought that maybe that beautiful frame of the moving road could be the theater. And … it would need to be one man, and if you’re going to get one man, it better be Tom Hardy. So I approached him and I said I want you to do a play, effectively. I want to shoot it as a play, but in the environment of a car. He was really keen, read the script and the next weekend we were shooting it. The whole point all the way through was to shoot it in sequence so that it’s an actor’s performance. Don’t split it up, don’t turn it into a conventional way of shooting it. And I think the rewards are immense, because the actors feel like they are in control of their own performances. Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Talking With Director Steven Knight About His Innovative and Enthralling Film Locke

Victorian London by Night: LFM Reviews Penny Dreadful on Showtime

By Joe Bendel. George Sanders played Dorian Gray for MGM, so he never could have guest-starred in one of Universal’s multi-monster meet-ups. Showtime’s newest series hints at what strange cinema that might have been. It also makes you wonder how anyone survived Victorian London, with its vampires, re-animated corpses, and generally unsanitary living conditions. The former will be the most pressing issue in the first two episodes of writer-creator John Logan’s Penny Dreadful, which premieres this Sunday.

When a mysterious woman offers American Wild West performer Ethan Chandler some “night work,” he agrees, because she is played by Eva Green. Unfortunately, it turns out turns out she really needs his sharpshooter skills. Vanessa Ives and Sir Malcolm Murray require some back-up when they venture into a vampire’s lair, in search of his long missing daughter. Frustratingly for them, the search will continue, but at least Murray recruits an intense young anatomist to perform all his vampire autopsy needs: Victor Frankenstein.

Needless to say, what Chandler witnesses is a bit unsettling. It is the sort of thing that requires a lot of binge drinking to process in episode two. Proceeding accordingly, Chandler makes the acquaintance of Brona Croft, an Irish working girl, who will soon count Dorian Gray as a client. Since this is premium cable, Gray and his appetites will clearly be supplying most of the sex and nudity quota each week.

Representing a quarter of Dreadful’s initial eight episode run, “Night Work” (currently available online) and “Séance” are definitely hooky-grabby and absolutely loaded with macabre atmosphere. Helmed with style by J.A. Bayona (director of The Orphanage), they get a lot of mileage from their classic horror tropes. In a few cases, you basically know what is coming, but jump anyway. However, the second episode is further distinguished by the titular séance, which gives Green an opportunity for a massive William Shatner level freak-out. It is not quite at the level of Isabelle Adjani’s supernatural paroxysms in Possession, but that will probably be never be equaled by anybody.

For the most part, Green does her slinky, smarter-than-thou thing and it works like a charm. Timothy Dalton, the criminally underappreciated Bond (after all, Pierce Brosnan succeeded him and we know how that worked out), is appropriately steely as Murray, with a spot of mature dash. While not exactly a naturally strong screen presence, Henry Treadaway’s Frankenstein compensates with plenty of twitchy scenery chewing. Frankly, Josh Harnett broods rather effectively as Chandler, but the jury is still out regarding just what Reeve Carney’s Gray brings to the party. Conversely, even though we hardly meet him in the first two installments, Danny Sapani is clearly poised to become a potential fan favorite as Murray’s imposing majordomo.

It feels like Dreadful will soon be a binge-watching favorite, making good on the unfulfilled promise of the Van Helsing film. With Skyfall’s Sam Mendes on board as executive producer, it has the quality period trappings of BBC historicals, but its heart is closer to late period Hammer films. So far, so good, Penny Dreadful is definitely recommended for vintage horror fans, when it premieres tomorrow (5/11) on Showtime.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on May 10th, 2014 at 11:09am.