Month: July 2015

By Joe Bendel. Feudalism was never any fun for the peasants. It was especially hard for the farmers, woodsmen, and iron-workers of Sanchu. They were regularly transferred from lord to lord, so each could collect his taxes within the same year. In 1726, they rose up and said enough. Unfortunately, factionalism would be their undoing. The cowardly Jihei was not much help either. It is through his unreliable eyes that viewers witness the revolt and its aftermath in Juichiro Yamasaki’s Sanchu Uprising: Voices at Dawn, which screens as the closing film of this year’s Japan Cuts, the Festival of New Japanese Film in New York.

Jihei’s brother-in-law Shinroku is probably the only member of his wife’s more well-to-do family who likes the roguish black sheep. As the various lords continue to exploit the region, Shinroku naturally expects Jihei to join the brewing rebellion. However, the not-terribly-principled Jihei has decidedly mixed feelings. Sadly, his worst instincts are stoked by the spirit of Manzo, a recent friend, who took the fall with the Shogunate authorities years ago for a dodgy scheme Jihei was running. Guilt mixed with fear will not lead to good decision-making for the sad sack Jihei.

Shinroku and Jihei are farmers, as is the charismatic leader of the rebellion. However, the woodsmen provided the movement’s critical mass. When they are sold out at the bargaining table, Shinroku knows the samurai and nobles will be able to successfully divide and conquer.

Even though it is a downer, Sanchu’s first act chronicling the ill-fated Uprising is by far the strongest. Watching the older and sadder Jihei wrestling with his angst and misgivings is not nearly as compelling. Frankly, the post-uprising sequences are over-stuffed with inconsequential encounters and meta-postscripts set in the present day. Still, there are some striking black-and-white animated interludes that give the film an unusual flavor.

Although his character is a problematic focal point, Naohisa Nakagaki shows an impressive range as Jihei. The large ensemble is wildly talented, particularly Kano Kajiwara, who is quite touching as the long-suffering Tami. However, they are often laboring against Yamasaki’s artificial stylization. Yet, that strangely seems to work in the case of Ayako Sasaki’s discordant, percussion-heavy experimental jazz score. It is certainly not the sort of music that lulls you into complacency.

Almost three hundred years after the Uprising, governments are still leveling punitive taxes on the productive classes. Indeed, during its best moments, Sanchu leads us to question just how far we have socially advanced since the feudal times. It is an uneven film, but when it connects, it hits hard. Recommended on balance for those who appreciate Jidaigeki films with a contemporary sensibility, Sanchu Uprising: Voices at Dawn screens Sunday night (7/19), at the Japan Society, as the closing film of Japan Cuts ’15.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on July 18th, 2015 at 9:59pm.

By Joe Bendel. You have to give credit to these four hard-partying Kolkata club kids. When they stumble into a Hostel-like hotel, they have the good sense to get the heck out of there. Unfortunately, it turns out to be a case of out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire in Q & Nikon’s Ludo, which screened tonight during the 2015 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal.

Ria and her BFF Payal are girls who just want to have fun. They have hooked up with two slicksters who just want to have sex. Ria and Payal are not opposed, at least not after some drinking and dancing, but finding a motel that is no-tell enough in socially conservative Kolkata is a tricky proposition. After scrambling out of the aforementioned suspicious love hotel like Shaggy and Scooby, they resolve to just sneak into the mall after closing. The air conditioning is the key selling point.

It is all good, clean fun for a while, until the four carousers realize they are not alone in the mall. They are sharing the space with two Grunge-ish evil entities who have one thing on their minds: blood. Just who are these malevolent beings? Q and Nikon are glad you asked, because most of the third act is dedicated to their backstory—and it’s a killer. It involves an ancient, sentient dice game that is profoundly evil, but fatally seductive.

Q and Nikon are two filmmakers, but grateful poster designers will never have a problem laying out their names on a one-sheet. Ludo’s jaded perspective on modern Indian life will come as no surprise to those familiar with Q’s banned opus Gandu. Nevertheless, even by horror film standards, it is an unusually dark film, in every sense of the word. It depicts the world as a predatory place, dating back centuries. While Q & Nikon are short on proactive recommendations, they seem to take perverse glee in giving the finger to polite Bengali and Bollywood cinema. There are no sentimental love songs here, but driving club music is certainly a prominent element of their cocktail.

The small ensemble, led by Subholina Sen, is sufficient to the task, performing at a level equal to what you might see in a typical Blumhouse film. Although it was probably shot on a shoestring, Devika Dave’s design team created some suitably creepy props. Q & Nikon also fully capitalize on their nocturnal urban settings.

Knowing the subversive cultural context of Ludo definitely adds to its enjoyment, but it is the energy and attitude that really hook viewers. It is a relatively straight forward narrative, yet Q & Nikon manage to upend several genre clichés. Enjoyably strange and gory, Ludo is exactly the adrenaline shot to the heart South Asian horror cinema needs. Recommended for fans who want to see something different, Ludo screened tonight (7/18) as part of this year’s Fantasia.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on July 18th, 2015 at 9:59pm.

By Joe Bendel. By the standards of the Seoul police force, Det. Go Gun-soo is only moderately corrupt—a few minor payoffs here and there, no big deal. He is also a reasonably decent father, so we can root for him with a clear conscience while also enjoying every one-darned-thing-after-another that falls on his thoroughly compromised head in Kim Seong-hun’s A Hard Day, which opens Friday in New York.

This day has already been one Go would prefer to forget. He has just been served divorce papers from his soon-to-be ex-wife while preparing for his mother’s funeral. It is an especially inconvenient time for the service, considering Internal Affairs is breathing down his neck. In his rush to cover up some incriminating evidence, Go apparently runs over some mysterious derelict with his car. He feels real bad about it, but what’s done is done. To save his neck (or so he thinks), Go manages to stash the body in his mother’s casket just before the burial.

Of course, Go soon figures out that was no vagrant; that was a prime suspect, who was somehow in league with the crooked Lt. Park Chang-min. Park is not simply a little bent like Go. He is a full blown gangster and he makes it his business to torment Go.

Kim visits more trouble upon poor, meatheaded Go than Job himself endured, but his wickedly black humor makes it all sadistically fun to watch. Somehow he keeps topping himself with clever plot twists and super-charged fight scenes. It is slick, tense, and loaded with cynical attitude. Yet, it is the “gee-whiz-now-what?” face of Lee Sun-kyun (better known for Hong Sang-soo dramedies) that really sells the bedlam.

This is definitely a testosterone driven film, featuring a hardnosed ensemble that really looks like a shady police precinct, especially Jeong Man-sik and Shin Jung-kuen as Go’s exasperated colleague and his world weary squad chief, respectively. Cho Jin-woong is also just flamboyantly evil enough as Lt. Park, without ever going excessively over the top.

It is just impressive to see A Hard Day careen about at such a deliriously breakneck speed. The energy and the humor never flag, while it ends on a rather ironic but wholly satisfying note. For fans of action movies and police corruption thrillers, A Hard Day is indeed the real deal. Highly recommended, it opens tomorrow (7/17) in New York, at the Village East.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on July 17th, 2015 at 6:35pm.

By Joe Bendel. There is nothing more tiring than depression. Nobody illustrates that better than Terako. She sleeps away most of her days, waiting to act cute and shallow when she meets her married lover. That is how he wants things to be. It is most definitely problematic, but it is hard to judge him or her too harshly in Shingo Wakagi’s Asleep, which screened as a selection of this year’s Japan Cuts, the Festival of New Japanese Film in New York.

Terako has good reason to be depressed. Her best friend Shiori recently committed suicide and her lover will probably never be fully emotionally available to her. That is because she met Iwanaga after his irreversibly comatose wife’s accident. Clearly, he is still coming to terms with his wife’s state, but enough time has elapsed for him to seek companionship or whatever.

These are the sort of things Shiori always understood better than Terako. She was natural empathetic, yet it was she who took her own life. Ironically, her exotic line of work may have somehow taxed her psyche. Somewhat like the characters in Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty, she would sleep beside wealthy men in a non-sexual manner, to console them when they woke in the night. That meant unlike Terako, she had to force herself to remain conscious throughout the long dark hours of the soul.

Banana Yoshimoto’s source novel and Wakagi & co-screenwriter Kai Suzumoto’s adaptation are not called Asleep for metaphorical reasons. It is a languorous film that shows its star, Sakura Ando, in many states of repose and partial undress. Frankly, there is probably a little too much of that. Granted, Wakagi is trying to instill a sense of inertia, but the first two acts definitely have a vibe of stifling uniformity. However, when Terako engages with Shiori in flashbacks and tentatively challenges Iwanaga, the film is quite compelling. In fact, Wakagi more-or-less pays off all our waiting with a terrific borderline magically real confrontation in the third act. You just have to get that far.

Ando’s performance is rather gutsy, considering how strictly she closes off her emotions. Nevertheless, she vividly conveys all sorts of issues undermining the young sort-of mistress. Arata Iura is just as restrained as Iwanaga. When you see him walking with Terako, he looks like he might shatter if he tipped over. However, the expressive Mitsuki Tanimura truly haunts viewers as the doomed Shiori.

Wakagi’s disciplined aesthetic approach is impressive, but its lethargy is contagious. There are just a handful of moments that carry the film, but they are honest and deep. Respectfully recommended for those who with a taste for intimately raw relationship dramas, Asleep screened at the Japan Society, as part of the 2015 Japan Cuts.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on July 17th, 2015 at 6:35pm.