Day: July 8, 2014

LFM Reviews Beautiful New Bay Area Project, Seventh Code @ The 2014 New York Asian Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Romantic clichés require two to tango, but that is usually not a problem in the movies. Instead, rom-com tropes are dashed upon the rocks of genre cinema in a new long short and a short feature by Japanese J-horror auteur turned art-house favorite, Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Sure to have a long shelf life on the international festival circuit, Kurosawa’s Beautiful New Bay Area Project and Seventh Code played as a double bill during the 2014 New York Asian Film Festival.

Prepare yourself for a look at the seedy side of urban redevelopment in Bay Area (originally conceived as part of a themed anthology). Amano’s family has always ruled the Yokohama port and continues to do so, even though he is a mere wastrel, figurehead president of the family development business. They have ambitious plans to transform the waterfront, but he is more interested Takako, a beautiful laborer. Evidently, he has dreamed of her, but this means nothing to her.

Frankly, it is not exactly clear who or what she is, but she takes her work as a longshoreman and her father’s name very seriously. Enraged by her rejection, Amano steals her ID tile and instructs security to forcibly remove her should she come to reclaim it. That she does—far stronger than anyone expects.

In all honesty, the story of Bay Area does not make much sense and it looks like it was filmed with the cheapest digital camera available at Wal-Mart (not to mention grossly violating the principle of Chekhov’s gun, or rather Chekhov’s norovirus), but it is an awful lot of fun when Takako starts taking care of business. Kurosawa considers this his twenty-nine minute foray into action filmmaking and he duly delivers a series of fan pleasing fight sequences. Tasuku Emoto might not be much as Amano, but Mao Mita is likely to become a lot of NYAFF patrons’ new movie crush as the lovely and steely Takako.

At first blush, Akiko seems to have little in common with Takako. She is the ostensibly innocent protagonist of the hour-long Seventh Code, who has followed the mysterious Matsunaga to Vladivostok, because she was deeply taken with him during a chance meeting in Japan. Hardly knowing her, Matsunaga encourages her to return home, but when she persists, his dodgy Russian associates steal her luggage and passport, leaving her in the middle of nowhere.

However, it will take more than that to get Akiko to give up. Eventually, she will find limited work and friendship with an expatriate Japanese restauranteur and his Chinese girlfriend, Hsiao-yen, while continuing her search for Matsunaga. Yet, now and then, Kurosawa drops hints there might be more to this story than meets the eye.

From "Seventh Code."

In contrast to Bay Area, Code looks fantastic. Kurosawa effectively takes viewers on a walking tour of Vladivostok’s back alleys, giving the audience a vivid rough-and-tumble sense of place. He also stages another first-rate fight scene and maintains a general vibe of weirdness. While the big surprise might be easy to anticipate, Japanese pop star Atsuko Maeda turns it quite agilely as Akiko. It is a nice acting debut vehicle for her, even though Chinese television host Aissy steals a number of scenes outright as the ambiguously ambitious Hsiao-yen. Unfortunately, Kurosawa has a hard time wrapping-up Code, tacking on a number of false endings and a completely random performance from Maeda, perhaps intended to satisfy her fans.

While both films are a bit of a mixed bag, they are brimming with energy and spectacularly showcase the talents of Mita, Maeda, and Aissy. They fit well together, but represent another curve ball for cineastes familiar either with his previous genre work, like Pulse, or his more sensitive recent releases, such as REAL or Tokyo Sonata. Recommended for fans of action and espionage films with resourceful leading ladies, Beautiful New Bay Area Project and Seventh Code screened this week at NYAFF, so expect them to pop up at more fests shortly.

SEVENTH CODE : LFM GRADE: B+
BEAUTIFUL NEW BAY AREA PROJECT: LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on July 9th, 2014 at 12:00am.

The Angela Mao Ying Collection: LFM Reviews The Tournament

From "The Tournament."

By Joe Bendel. Who knew kung fu was so bureaucratic? Not surprisingly, the Chinese Kung Fu Association is all about keeping up appearances and closing ranks. Unfortunately, Master Lau finds himself effectively black-balled when his son and a fellow student are humiliated in Thailand by Muay Thai fighters. However, he also has a daughter. There will be some avenging to do in Feng Huang’s The Tournament, which is included in The Angela Mao Ying Collection now available from Shout Factory.

Fighters are not legally responsible for deaths in the ring during Thailand’s mixed martial arts matches. Nevertheless, Pepsi evidently signed on as a sponsor. Eager to showcase Muay Thai’s dominance, agents regularly try to recruit Chinese Kung Fu practitioners, offering them large sums just to participate. When loan sharks kidnap the sister of one of Master Lau’s students, he and Lau’s son Hong reluctantly accept. Hong loses badly, but at least he survives. His friend is not so lucky. The shame wrought by the scandalized Kung Fu Association effectively kills Master Lau as well.

Despite their denigration of Lau’s Kung Fu, nobody can best his daughter, Siu Fung. Yet, she only outrages the provincial fools further when she vows to study Muay Thai, in order to develop tactics to beat it. The Association’s decent but ineffectual director has a colleague in Thailand who can help. Under his tutelage, Hong and Siu Fung (with a new boyish coif) will win some redemption in the ring, but this earns them further enemies amongst their mobbed-up opponents.

Arguably, Tournament is a sort of MMA movie-forerunner, in which Kung Fu, Muay Thai, and karate all face each other at some point. It also offers a rare look at Mao without her trademark braids. However, Sammo Hung’s presence as co-action director and one of Lau’s pig-headed colleagues is a welcome guarantee of quality control. He deals with the gloves and pads well enough, but the action in the ring pales in comparison to Mao’s three major throw-downs, including an Odysseus-like coda in which the returning Siu Fu and Hong must eject an interloping Japanese karate dojo from their father’s studio.

From "The Tournament."

Of course, Mao is in her element as the disciplined, outside-the-box Siu Fu. Her frequent co-star Carter Huang is reasonably serviceable (again) as Hong. Hung also gets a chance to show some of the charisma that would be apparent in later films. However, the villains are a rather interchangeable lot of moustache-twisting types.

The Tournament might be a bit programmatic (in a Golden Harvest sort of way), but it is a fine example of Mao and Hung doing their thing, which is also worth seeing. Frankly, it would be nice to have a few more like this. Easily recommended for Mao fans and martial arts connoisseurs, The Tournament is now available on DVD as part of Shout Factory’s Angela Mao Ying Collection.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on July 9th, 2014 at 11:59pm.