Month: February 2015

By Joe Bendel. Joseph Heller’s Yossarian has nothing on Private Tamura. He is caught in a miserable catch-22 and the only thing that will dislodge him from his vicious cycle will be a further downturn in Japan’s fortunes of war. There is absolutely nothing heroic about combat throughout intense auteur Shinya Tsukamoto’s faithful but bloody remake of Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain, which screened during Film Comment Selects 2015.

Tamura is suffering from a nasty case of tuberculosis and maybe some mild shell shock. Deemed too sick to serve effectively by his arrogant commanding officer, Tamura is ordered to check into the nearest field hospital on Leyte. However, the medical staff refuses to admit him, considering him too healthy to merit a spot on their disease floor.

Back and forth he trudges between the camp and the hospital, repeatedly being turned away by each, until Allied attacks essentially eliminate either option. Receiving word the Imperial forces have belatedly ordered them all to regroup at Palompon, Tamura falls in and out of small ragtag bands of retreating Imperial soldiers, but his increasingly desperate countrymen might represent a more immediate danger than the Yanks he is supposedly fighting.

The 1959 Plain has to be Ichikawa’s darkest, bleakest film. Tsukamoto does not exactly match its dour existentialism, but he certainly never whitewashes its atmosphere or implications. In terms of tone, the recent Plain could be described as one part Samuel Beckett and two parts Apocalypse Now, but with liberal helpings of severed body parts. Tsukamoto’s Plain is definitely not for the faint of heart, but it is considerably more accessible than the full-on assault to the senses delivered by his Tetsuo series.

It is safe to say vanity had nothing to do with Tsukamoto’s decision to direct himself as Tamura. He is never flashy, but it is grimly compelling to watch the soul steadily seep out of him. You absolutely believe his is just a shell of a person, which is certainly some kind of performance.

Plain is truly serious stuff, intended for discerning audiences, but there might be enough gore to placate his loyal cult-following. It covers all the bases Ichikawa did, nearly beat for beat, yet it is unquestionably and readily identifiably a Tsukamoto film. Together with his co-cinematographer Satoshi Hayashi, Tsukamoto gives his slow descent into tropical madness a distinctively sweaty, feverish, and slightly surreal look that is equally transfixing and disconcerting. One of the better remakes of a genuine classic you will see in sometime, Tsukamoto’s Fires on the Plain is recommended for those who appreciate uncompromising anti-war cinematic statements after its screening at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s Film Comment Selects.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on February 25th, 2015 at 9:55pm.

By Joe Bendel. Love hurts, especially for a ninja. Getting your chakra ripped out also kind of stings. Poor Naruto Uzumaki will just have to go through these things as a rite of passage (although he maybe could have skipped the latter). In fact, he is a bit older and perhaps fractionally wiser in the canonical capstone anime feature The Last: Naruto the Movie, which opens tomorrow in select cities.

For fans of the Naruto franchise, The Last pays off in a major way. This is no mere one-off shoehorned between the 72 volumes (or 700 chapters of manga), six hundred some television episodes, and ten feature films. It explains the manga’s final epilogue that was generally well received by fans, but came as a bit of a surprise nonetheless. What transpires in The Last will have a direct bearing on the course of Uzumaki’s life, but if that were not enough, the stakes are also apocalyptically high.

As the film opens, Uzumaki basks in his newfound popularity resulting from his heroic war service. Girls are finally talking to him—they are even getting pushy competing for his attention. This rather distresses the shy Hirata Hyuga, who has long carried a torch for the oblivious Uzumaki. Yet, when Hyuga’s younger sister Hanabi is kidnapped, she and Uzumaki are thrown together in the rescue party.

It seems her abduction is related to a doomsday plot launched by Toneri Otsutsuki, the last descendent of one of the great ancient clan leaders of the series’ intricate mythology. He intends to crash the moon into the Earth with the help of the Hyuga clan’s superhumanly enhanced eyes. Obviously, Uzumaki is super-motivated to stop Otsutsuki, especially when he realizes he is falling for his former classmate, Hyuga.

Unlike the previous Naruto film, The Road to Ninja, there is no jetting off to an alternate reality and back before anyone is the wiser. Everything counts this time around in a big way. It fills a major remaining gap in Naruto’s saga, wrapping it up in a way that keeps faith with the characters and their fans. For longtime readers and viewers, The Last is more closely akin to the MASH’s emotional sign-off than the wimpering final episode of Seinfeld.

There is considerable character development in The Last (especially by series shōnen anime standards) and a good deal of action. However, the old school hand-to-hand combat always looks far better on screen than the big fiery cosmic clashes, which all sort of blend together after a while. Nonetheless, the focus in The Last is particularly personal, freezing out many long-term supporting players in favor of Uzumaki and Hyuga.

Surely, the Naruto team can go back to the well for plenty more canonical adventures, but The Last would be a very satisfying place to definitively end it. It is a relatively self-contained story arc, so new arrivals should be able to follow and enjoy it well enough, but it really pays dividends to those who have invested in the series—and that’s actually pretty cool to see. A must-see for Naruto loyalists and a strong feature for shōnen enthusiasts in general, The Last: Naruto the Movie opens in select markets beginning this Friday (2/20), with a number of screenings scheduled in New York at the Village East starting this Saturday (2/21).

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on February 19th, 2015 at 7:40pm.

By Joe Bendel. Evidently, former Iranian megalomaniac Ahmadinejad did not think much of shorts. That was a good thing. Rather than compromising her artistic integrity to receive official state sanction for a feature, Rakshan Bani-Etemad embarked on a series of short films that were comparatively less regulated by the authorities. With his successor projecting a more conciliatory face, she has since joined them together into a braided narrative. You would hardly know it from watching the finished product, which flows together in an intricate Short Cuts kind of way. She presents a bracing vision of an Iran beset by all manner of social pathologies, but it is always most difficult for the women in Bani-Etemad’s Tales, which screens during the 2015 edition of Film Comment Selects.

In recent years, Bani-Etemad has largely worked as a documentarian for reasons explains above, but those who know her previous narratives will find even deeper meaning when her old characters return for call-backs in Tales, criss-crossing each other as they deal with life’s challenges. Fittingly, the two best segments, by far, are the first and the last, but there is still plenty of interesting material in between.

We will sort of see events unfold from the POV of an intrepid but much censored documentary filmmaker, who kinds of acts as Bani-Etemad’s surrogate. As some might know from Under the Skin of the City, the cabbie driving him into the city is deeply in debt from an ill-advised foray into crime. However, it will be his second fare, his sister’s childhood friend who has since been tarnished by scandal that delivers the first real jolt of stinging, naturalistic drama.

From there, we will witness the cabbie’s mother try to navigate the red tape of a Kafkaesque bureaucracy, eavesdrop on two grown children jokingly (we assume) planning to fake an abduction, and witness an abusive husband confront his acid-scarred wife (the eponymous character from Nargess) in her women’s shelter. Eventually, Bani-Etemad brings it home with an intimate but biting verbal sparring match conducted by one of the shelter’s reformed drug addict counselors and the organization’s mini-van driving, who is shuttling her and a new client back to their home base. In some ways, their exchanges are peculiarly Iranian, yet there is a universality to their increasingly heavy conversation that hits you on a deep level.

In a strange way, the secondary tone of Tales constantly shifts between late night existentialism, free-wheeling absurdity, futile romanticism, and outright tragedy. Yet, the bedrock feeling of helplessness is always present. It features a consistently strong ensemble, especially Mohammadreza Forootan and Mehraveh Sharifinia as the cabbie and the fallen woman of the first tale and Baran Kosari and Peiman Moadi as the mismatched couple in the closer.

We like to think Iran has its own special problems rooted in its oppressive system of governance, which it clearly does, judging from the travails of Bani-Etemad’s characters. However, we generally presuppose they are immune to more worldly issues, like drugs, street crime, illiteracy, economic inequities, and AIDS as a result. Tales acts as a corrective to that assumption. They actually have both kinds of societal ills. It is also an engrossing film that really takes us into its characters’ long dark nights of the soul. Highly recommended, Tales screens this Friday (2/20) and Sunday (2/22) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s Film Comment Selects.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on February 18th, 2015 at 11:09am.

By Joe Bendel. Just imagine if Peter, Paul and Mary started out as a quartet with a dude named Billy Bob singing baritone. That never happened and the Korean folk duo Twin Folio were never part of a trio, but a new behind-the-music drama will suppose they were for the sake of “what if?” Considering most of Twin Folio’s greatest hits were sad love songs, it only stands to reason that love played a role in breaking apart their fictional precursor trio in Kim Hyun-suk’s C’est Si Bon, now opening in New York.

In the 1960s, South Korea lagged a bit behind the American Folk Revival, but they tried to make up for lost time in the trendy Mugyo-dong neighborhood. The C’est Si Bon club was like the early Village Vanguard, except it was all folk, no jazz. During the regular amateur nights, Yoon Hyeon-ju and Song Chang-shik regularly battle each other for victory, developing solid fan-bases and a pitched rivalry. Impresario Kim Choon-sik wants to combine their talents to launch his folk label, but wants an easier going third member to act as a buffer between them. His prospective producer-songwriter Lee Jang-hee just happens to cross paths with Oh Geun-tae, a naïve scholarship student from the sticks, with a perfectly complimentary baritone for the envisioned C’est Si Bon Trio.

Initially, Yoon and Song vibe Oh pretty hard, but their voices just fit together. Although they accept him professionally, they all compete for the attention of Min Ja-young, the queen of the C’est Si Bon social scene, who is struggling to make it as an actress. Surprisingly, Oh seems to have the inside track to Min’s heart, but if you think they will ride off into the sunset together, you haven’t heard a lot of folk songs or seen a lot of tragically romantic Korean box office hits.

It seems strange to make a film about the creation of Twin Folio in which the duo plays such a tangential role, while still forthrightly addressing the marijuana scandal that put their careers on ice for years. Regardless, Kim includes plenty of music for their fans, inventing new backstories for their most popular tunes. It will surely be much more meaningful to the faithful, but those not deeply steeped in the Korean folk scene will still be able to pick up on the film’s shout-outs and call-backs.

The musical numbers are organically integrated into the narrative and the candy-colored 1960s-1970s period details look great. It also should be admitted Oh’s early bashful courtship of Min is appealingly sweet. Unfortunately, an extended third act denouement set forty-some years later rather unsubtly drives the film’s points into the ground. Nevertheless, Jang Hyun-sung almost single-handedly saves the contemporary flashforward as the older, but wiser and hipper Lee.

Frankly, as the young Oh and Min, Jung Woo and Han Hyo-joo are so cute and earnestly sensitive, it is hard to believe they could let contrivances tear them asunder. Yet, such are the demands of Korean tent poles. It works for what it is, sort of like Iain Softley’s Backbeat, but with more yearning and crying. A can’t miss for Twin Folio fans and a guilty pleasure for those who secretly enjoy a shamelessly sentimental movie musical, C’est Si Bon is now playing in New York, at the Regal E-Walk.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on February 18th, 2015 at 11:08am.