Month: January 2015

LFM Reviews Once Upon a Time in Shanghai; Now on DVD/Blu-ray

By Joe Bendel. Ma Yongzhen is one of China’s favorite Robin Hood-ish gangsters. Film and television versions of his story (including the Shaw Brothers’ Boxer from Shantung) often transplant Ma to the wild and woolly Republican 1930s, but the first film version of the Nineteenth Century bumpkin-turned racketeer was the 1927 silent Shandong Ma Yongzhen. A new supercharged remake/reinvention of the 1972 Shaw Brothers fan favorite takes even more liberties with Ma’s story, but if he has any surviving descendants, they are not likely to object to the heroic portrayal of the martial artist in Wong Ching-po’s Once Upon a Time in Shanghai, which releases this week on DVD and Blu-ray, from Well Go USA.

Ma Yongzhen came from the dirt poor provinces to make his fortune in Shanghai. Ironically, he has exactly the sort of skills to make it in the go-go city, but he promised his sainted mother he would never become a gangster. To remind him to temper the power of his iron-fist, she gave him his only valuable possession: a jade bracelet.

Living in a slum watched over by the kindly Master Tie, Ma quickly gets a lay of the land. Through a series spectacular sparring sessions, Ma earns the trust and a legit job from Long Qi, a gangster-club owner more closely resembling the historical Ma Yongzhen. The brash Long Qi has taken over a sizable portion of the Ave Gang’s territory, but he is asking for trouble with his outspoken anti-Japanese sentiments. When the Axe Gang and the Japanese form an alliance, Ma will be pulled into the fray to protect everyone halfway decent.

OUATIS is definitely following the buddy movie playbook, but screenwriter Angela Wong somewhat inverts the formula, by having the naïve country boy stay strong and start to reform the hedonistic crime lord. Even so, the narrative is rather simplistic, but the film’s grit and tragic vibe will appeal to genre audiences nonetheless.

The martial arts sequences choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping and Yuen Cheung-yan are obviously the important thing here—and they deliver. Fortunately, Philip Ng and second lead Andy On have the skills and bearing for the often brutal but wildly cinematic beatdowns. There is no question they can carry this stuff off. Veteran martial arts stars Sammo Hung and Chen Kuen-tai (the 1972 Ma Yongzhen) lend the film further street cred.

From "Once Upon a Time in Shanghai."

After working his way up through a series of increasingly prominent supporting roles (Lionel, the undercover cop stepson in From Vegas to Macau), Ng gets his shot playing the hero here. His turn as Ma is not exactly a bases-clearing homerun, but Ng is not bad at all. He has a strong presence, develops some reasonably believable romantic chemistry with Michelle Hu’s Tie Ju (the somewhat judgmental daughter of Master Tie), and excels in the fight scenes. Although Andy On goes a bit over the top with Long Qi’s outrageous preening and weird bursts of laughter, it sort of works anyway, because this is a genre that rewards attitude – which he brings in generous servings.

Indeed, most action enthusiasts will want to see more of Ng and the more established On after Wong’s Ma Yongzhen reboot, which says a lot. If you are looking for impressive martial arts action and can easily overlook some predictably excessive anti-Japanese propaganda, then it is a safe bet. Recommended for martial arts and historical gangster fans, Once Upon a Time in Shanghai is now available for home viewing from Well Go USA.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on January 14th, 2015 at 11:08pm.

LFM Reviews Giuseppe Makes a Movie

By Joe Bendel. Wrap your head around this—Giuseppe Andrews has made more full length features than either Terrence Malick or Quentin Tarantino. Andrews would consider Garbanzo Gas his tenth “proper” feature, but there were ten or so earlier films that just didn’t come together the way he hoped. Of course, Andrews will be the first to admit “proper” is a decidedly subjective term in his case. Adam Rifkin documents Garbanzo’s whirlwind preproduction and two day shooting schedule in Giuseppe Makes a Movie, which opens this Thursday at Anthology Film Archives.

Andrews lives in a Ventura trailer park, next to his producer-father, Ed, a former back-up musician with the Bee-Gees. After previous stretches of veritable homelessness, both men feel they have finally put down roots. The experience gives them a clear affinity for their regular cast-members, most of whom are either homeless or living a half step away. Yet, they have made lasting friendships and scored quick pocket money through their work on Andrews’ films.

Based on the behind-the-scenes footage of Garbanzo and the judiciously selected clips of his precious movies, an Andrews joint looks darned near unwatchable. Yet, despite his obvious eccentricities, the micro-budget auteur comes across quite well adjusted and even sort of insightful. Unlike Ed Wood or American Movie’s Mark Borchardt, Andrews harbors no illusions about the level of his artistry. Nor would he argue he just needs some time to hone his craft, like the ambitious filmmaking duo in Journey to Planet X. Instead, Andrews more or less acknowledges he is a Z-grade filmmaker, but he is okay with that, which is cool.

In fact, Andrews is clearly well versed in European auteurs like Fassbinder and Buñuel, has a normal girlfriend, and maintains an obscenely healthy diet. Naturally, lunacy is inescapable on his sets, but his shoots are considerably calmer than you would expect. Frankly, aspiring micro-budget filmmakers should check out his technique, because he must be doing something right, considering how prolific he is. Arguably, he is a real professional, at least by some weird standard. Maybe Martian.

There are plenty of head-shakingly insane moments in GMaM, but for the most part, it is Andrews’ earnestness and energy that propels the film along, as well as the camaraderie of his ensemble players, such as Vietnam Ron, Sir Bigfoot George, Walt Dongo, and “Spit.” It is pretty hilarious watching “the magic” happen, but Andrews’ affection for these outsiders’ outsiders is rather endearing. Recommended for idealistic cineastes and those who appreciate the micro-budget scene, Giuseppe Makes a Movie opens this Thursday (1/15) in New York, at Anthology Film Archives, where they are also screening Andrews’ Garbanzo Gas and In the Garden, so good luck with those if you’re going.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on January 14th, 2015 at 11:07pm.

LFM Reviews Pretty Rosebud

Pretty Rosebud Official Trailer from Devolver Digital Films on Vimeo.

By Joe Bendel. Cecilia “Sissy” Santos is a political consultant who feels deeply guilty when she succumbs to adulterous temptation. Yes, that sounds far-fetched, but if you can accept it, there are merits to be found in Oscar Torre’s Pretty Rosebud, written by and starring his real life wife Chuti Tiu, which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

Apparently, Santos works for a combination boutique PR agency and political consulting firm, but it’s not clear what they do during odd numbered years. Regardless, she at least has a going career with opportunities for advancement. That is more than her lay-about husband Phil can say. He resents his wife’s status as the sole breadwinner, but he refuses to even consider anything less than his previous gig. In all honesty, his ambition has dried up and his sex drive essentially followed with it.

However, Sissy Santos has this boxing trainer (conveniently played by Torre, who looks the part). She regrets it afterward, but of course her husband is still his same insufferably entitled self. Time spent with her traditional Filipino family does not help much either, especially when they complain about her golden boy brother’s divorced Anglo girlfriend. To make matters worse, she has plenty of candidates for further adultery at work, including the congressional nominee, whose campaign she is assigned to.

Tiu might be writing from a Filipina perspective, but the issues Santos wrestles with should resonate with audiences from diverse ethnic backgrounds, with old school parents. Arguably, she really stacks the deck against dumb old Phil, but her scenes with the family’s Catholic priest are surprisingly well written and more than fair to the priest. In fact, the good Father just might have some helpful, nonjudgmental counsel to offer.

From "Pretty Rosebud."

Obviously, Rosebud was conceived as a showcase for Tiu (a former Miss Illinois), but she proves to be equal to the challenge of carrying the picture. She is a striking presence, but the maturity tempering her sexuality is something you almost never see on film. It is a bold, vulnerably exposed performance. While Torre has limited screen time as Alejandro the trainer, he helps generate the necessary heat to set in motion all the subsequent conflicts. Richard Yniguez’s Father Antonio also nicely bolsters the film’s forgiving tone. In contrast, Kipp Shiotani certainly makes viewers contemptuous of Phil, which seems to be his assignment, while the Santos parents are mostly played as broad, churchy stereotypes.

Rosebud is a small intimate film, but it juggles some heavy themes relatively dexterously. If nothing else, the gym scenes ought to convince DirecTV they need Tiu and Torre for the next season of Kingdom. Recommended for those who appreciate a frank, women’s POV adultery drama, Pretty Rosebud opens this Friday (1/16) in Los Angeles at the Arena Cinema.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on January 14th, 2015 at 11:06pm.

Farce in the Stalinist Era: LFM Reviews Dying for It

By Joe Bendel. Nikolai Erdman was censored by Stalin’s minions, banished to Siberia, and befriended by Mikhail Bulgakov. His life might sound more conducive to tragedy than farce (although the Bulgakov connection could go either way), but he wrote a truly devastating satire of Stalinist society that was never allowed to be produced in Russia during his lifetime. For her “free adaptation” of The Suicide, Moira Buffini, the playwright and screenwriter of Byzantium, unleashes the slamming doors of stage farce, but retains Erdman’s original bitterly caustic sensibility in Dying for It, which officially opened last night at the Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater.

Even by the awful standards of the era, Semyon Semyonovich Podeskalnikov is a pathetic loser. Unable to find employment, he sponges off his wife, Maria “Masha” Lukianovna. He bitterly hates himself for it and passive-aggressively torments her for allowing it. After a dubious attempt to reinvent himself as a professional tuba player falls humiliatingly flat, Semyonovich resolves to just do the only decent thing and end it all. Initially, Lukianovna does not believe he could do something so rash, but plenty of others do.

As word spreads (thanks in part to the communal living arrangements and of course alcohol), various dodgy types start pressuring Semyonovich to make his suicide a statement for their cause. Who could believe there were so many disgruntled people in Uncle Joe’s USSR, aside from the embittered priest and once prosperous intellectual, but they start coming out of the woodwork. Even the self-loathing state-sponsored sell-out poet lobbies Semyonovich to kill himself for art. Finally, Semyonovich gets some attention and respect. The only downside is the presumed finality of it all.

One of the most striking aspects of Buffini’s channeling of Erdman is how seamlessly it blends high and low forms of humor. There are plenty of jokes that are easy to get, but there is also quite a bit implied about the state of Mother Russia and human nature—and that is where much of the arsenic lies. Presumably, the less than flattering portrayals of priests and intellectuals could have appealed to the Party’s prejudices. However, throughout the play, starvation, misery, and state indifference are constant realities. The truth is everyone has to prostitute themselves to some extent, just to survive—and those who are most closely aligned with the Party are crying the most on the inside.

From "Dying for It."

As Semyonovich, Joey Slotnick has the perfect sad clown presence, constantly dialing up and down a vast array of unappealing character traits while maintaining the audience’s rooting interest. Clea Lewis, former co-star of the Ellen sitcom, also regularly steals her scenes as Kleopatra “Kiki” Maximovna, an aging seductress hoping Semyonovich will attribute his final exit to her charms, in order to keep up her reputation. C.J. Wilson’s large presence is also felt anchoring the production as the earthy but down-to-earth former soldier Alexander Petrovich Kalabushkin.

It is easy to see from Buffini’s adaptation why Erdman’s Suicide was a non-starter during the Soviet years. First and foremost, laughing at social ills was not exactly the sanctioned dialectal method for advancing history to the next level. Even more fundamentally, it ruthlessly cut through all the pretext and pretense of Party propaganda poppycock. Buffini’s refinements give ample opportunities to a talented ensemble to dig into the material, thrusting and parrying with her razor-sharp words. Highly recommended, the Atlantic’s production of Dying for It runs until January 18th.

Posted on January 9th, 2014 at 1:01pm.

LFM Reviews Dark Summer

By Joe Bendel. Daniel Austin must spend his summer under house arrest, but he will be confined to a seriously broken home. Even though his absentee mother and absconded father will not be around, he will still have company. That will be a very bad thing in Paul Solet’s Dark Summer, which opens midnight-ish tonight in New York at the IFC Center.

Kids and the internet can be a bad combination, especially in Austin’s case. When he developed a crush on the slightly gothy, sad indie rock listening Mona Wilson, he hacked all her online accounts, because he is a socially stunted weirdo. Obviously, he was caught—hence the ankle bracelet and the regular drive-by visits from his P.O., the gruff but cranky Stokes. At least his outsider pals, Abby and Kevin, manage to smuggle him a laptop to catch a neighbor’s wifi. That night, a suicidal skype call from Wilson unleashes a whole mess of supernatural trouble.

Summer follows relatively close on the heels of Gerard Johnstone’s Housebound, but it turns out the world really did need two house arrest chillers, or at least midnight movie patrons will be nicely satisfied with them both. Housebound’s wickedly macabre sense of humor probably means it is more fun, but Summer establishes its own horror movie identity to a pleasantly surprising extent. Mike Le’s screenplay has some clever twists and turns, but it is really going somewhere specific, rather than just stringing together a series of jump-scares.

Summer also represents a major step up for Solet after the middling Grace. He picks up the pace this time around, but not at the expense of setting the scene and building the atmosphere. Wisely, Solet also refrains from showing too much in the early scenes, letting the uncertainty of Austin’s situation reinforce the claustrophobic vibe.

Clearly, Peter Stormare got the horror movie memo, because he hams it up just enough as Stokes. Whenever he pops-in, you know he will deliver some genre goodness. In contrast, Keir Gilchrist exudes anti-charisma, but it is appropriate for Austin. Oddly, he and Stella Maeve (pretty solid as Abby) look like they might be brother and sister. While their resemblance is not as (unfortunately) striking as Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan in The Great Gatsby, the added layer of creepiness sort of works in context for Summer.

Yes, Austin is in for a darned dark summer, but that still probably sounds okay to New Yorkers invigorated by yesterday’s single digit temperatures. Regardless, horror genre fans should be impressed how Solet invigorates the conventions of Grudge-style horror. Indeed, it is way better than you would expect from the hum-drum one-sheet. Recommended pretty highly for anyone looking for a moody supernatural outing, Dark Summer opens late tonight (1/9) at the IFC Center.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on January 9th, 2014 at 1:01pm.

National History as Family Saga: LFM Reviews Ode to My Father

By Joe Bendel. Yoon Duk-soo twice found himself trying to outrun a rampaging Communist army, but he was never a secret commando. He was an average Korean, who just witnessed a lot of history from an uncomfortably close vantage point. With Yoon’s sweeping life story, director (JK) Youn Je-kyun pays tribute to his parents’ generation throughout Ode to My Father, which opens in New York this Friday.

Yoon and his family were originally from Hungnam in the North, but they had to flee the Chinese forces that had broken through the Allied defenses. Somehow, fourteen thousand Koreans found refuge on the SS Meredith Victory, captained by Leonard LaRue, after the Merchant Marine freighter dumped all of its munitions cargo to accommodate them. Yoon, his mother, his older sister, and their infant brother would make it. His father and the younger sister he was assigned to protect do not. It is not his fault, but Yoon will blame himself all his life and his passive-aggressive mother will let him.

The Meredith Victory’s evacuation is still considered the largest military humanitarian operation in history. Instead of the chaotic sequence depicted in the film, the actual loading process was reportedly quite orderly, lasting nearly a day. Frankly, it seems particularly unfair to depict Cap. LaRue as a cold fish who reluctantly acquiesces to Korean pleas for deliverance, given the fact he joined a Benedictine order after the war and was henceforth known as Brother Marinus. The entire crew of the Meredith Victory probably deserves better.

Regardless, life marches on for Yoon. To support his brother’s studies and his sister’s irresponsibleness, the duly appointed head of household accepts work as a German Gastarbeiter coalminer. The work is as punishing as it sounds, but the pay was considerable for 1963 ROK. Fortunately for Yoon, West Germany was also recruiting Gastarbeiter nurses, like his future wife, Youngja.

To save the family’s Gukje market and pay for his entitled sister’s wedding, Yoon will pack his bags again, signing on as a civilian technician supporting the American forces in Vietnam. Youn and screenwriter Park Soo-jin draw powerful parallels between the Hungnam evacuation and the chaos following the fall of Saigon, without belaboring their points or the audience’s patience. In fact, it is probably the strongest chapter of the necessarily episodic film. However, Yoon has at least one more Forrest Gump-ish date with destiny, as a participant in the landmark 1983 KBS broadcasts reuniting divided Korean families.

From "Ode to My Father."

Ode is currently a massive Korean box-office hit, so you know it will not be afraid of a little sentimentality. Wisely, experienced character actor Oh Dal-su is on hand to sprinkle about a little vinegar whenever things get too saccharine. In fact, as Yoon’s best pal Dal-goo, he develops some convincingly down-to-earth buddy chemistry with Hwang Jung-min. Staten Island’s Yunjin Kim, recognizable from American television shows like Lost and Mistresses, also has some nice moments as Youngja, but her screen time is nowhere near equal to that of the central Yoon.

It is too bad the treatment of Cap. LaRue is most likely to annoy those who are most familiar with him as a historical figure. Otherwise, Ode’s resilient story of family and friendship, featuring a network television star, might really resonate with American audiences, especially in military markets. Without that early anti-American veneer, it could have possibly generated far wider word of mouth, but instead it will just play to the established audience base. That is a shame, because the work of Hwang and Oh give it real heart. Recommended (with mild reservations) for loyal fans of the cast and Korean family dramas, Ode to My Father opens this Friday (1/9) in New York, at the Regal E-Walk.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on January 8th, 2014 at 10:08pm.