Month: August 2015

By Joe Bendel. This is not Steve McGarrett’s Hawaii. Behind the luxury hotels, sex and drugs are openly sold, with nary a cop in sight. Even though they are locals, a junkie-pimp and his prostitute-girlfriend have a hard time making it on Waikiki’s mean streets in James Sereno’s Paradise Broken, which MarVista Entertainment releases this week on VOD platforms, including Vudu.

Ray Geronimo and Misha Domingo vaguely dream of owning their own beachfront bungalow, but their day-to-day concerns solely focus on their next hit of smack. Towards that end, Geronimo reluctantly started pimping Domingo out. It was really her idea. She thinks they can do better if they join forces with the Mainlander known only as “Pimp” (seriously, that is all it says on his business cards), but Geronimo sees him as just another outside exploiter. He would rather poach the gangster’s greenest new street-walker. However, Geronimo’s expansionist plans incite Domingo’s jealousy, leading to a messy split at an inopportune time.

Whether together or apart, Geronimo and Domingo will do junkie things as junkies do, which isn’t very pretty to watch, but it is relentlessly honest. Similarly, Sereno is determined to reinforce the notion of two radically different Hawaiis, immediately following up every glamour shot of the coast line or the night club with an up-close-and-personal look at the underclass squalor of Dante’s life.

As Geronimo, Dante Basco (a veteran of the Awesome Asian Bad Guys) is a tightly coiled spring, always ready to explode with rage. Nadine Nicole Heimann is also plenty erratic as Domingo, while Katherine Emily Mills is a disturbing picture of innocence as the girl he tries to recruit. However, the demonically charismatic Khalil Kain steals scene after scene as Geronimo’s more ruthless rival. Some might consider it a dubious honor, but Kain’s nameless antagonist might be the most distinctive movie pimp performance since Morgan Freeman’s Oscar nominated turn in Street Smart.

Although there is a bit of an over-reliance on flashback devices, Sereno’s execution is still pretty smooth and the ensemble performances are faultless. Still, there is no getting around the fact this is one downer narrative. Nevertheless, it is genuinely a film of and by Hawaii, featuring some breakout-worthy work from its principals. Recommended for those who appreciate gritty, street smart dramas, Paradise Broken launches this week on VOD, from MarVista Entertainment.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on August 12th, 2015 at 10:09pm.

By Joe Bendel. If you don’t work in publishing, you might not realize how many Harry Potter wannabes have been pitched, published, and forgotten since the series started hitting bestseller lists. It is easy to lump Lady Georgia Byng’s Molly Moon series in with the rest of the field of imitators, but at least they have a cute dog. They also have a nice theme of empowerment for young girls judging from Christopher N. Rowley’s big screen adaptation of her first adventure, Molly Moon and the Incredible Book of Hypnotism, which opens this Friday in select cities.

Molly Moon is an orphan, whose pluck rubs Miss Adderstone, the mean-spirited headmistress, decidedly the wrong way. Fellow orphan Rocky Scarlet is her best friend and probably future boyfriend, but they’re only eleven, so that will have to wait. Adderstone is so strict, Moon can only read quietly to herself when she sneaks off to the village library. It is there she happens across a rare hypnotism instructional book. This antiquarian volume really works, which is why bumbling smalltime crook Simon Nockman is so desperate to find it.

Experimenting with her new powers, Moon first mesmerizes Miss Adderstone’s snarly pug Petula with great success. She soon follows-up by hypnotizing Edna, the dreadful orphanage cook and Miss Adderstone. Life is suddenly livable in the waifs’ home, but when she neglects the high maintenance Scarlet, he up and gets himself adopted. Moon follows him to London, where things get even more complicated, thanks to Nockman.

Moon’s first outing is much more modest in scope than the Potters, but they skew towards a younger audience. Frankly, the closer you are demographically to Mademoiselle Moon, the more you are likely to enjoy her film. Still, grown-ups can at least appreciate her resiliency, as well as her aversion to self-pity and habit of accepting responsibility. Basically, she is a good kid who gets caught up in some unusual situations.

Young Raffey Cassidy is quite well cast as Moon, displaying an appropriately winning screen presence and plenty of energy. In contrast, Dominic Monaghan (from Lost and Lord of the Rings) would probably prefer to forget the shtick and pratfalls that were required of him as the nebbish Nockman. Emily Watson has probably never been as mousey and milquetoast as she is as Miss Trinkleberry, the only kind-hearted orphanage staff-member, which is certainly saying something. However, Joan Collins’ scenery-chewing appearances as Nockman’s villainous mother are rather amusing in a nostalgic kind of way.

There is nothing objectionable in screenwriter Chris Hurford’s adaptation of Byng’s children’s book and there is a good deal of merit to its spirited protagonist. With its respectable production values and Rowley’s healthy pacing, it makes a decent programming choice for kids (but it will not overwhelm their parents). Recommended accordingly, Molly Moon and the Incredible Book of Hypnotism opens this Friday in theaters and also releases on iTunes.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on August 12th, 2015 at 10:08pm.

By Joe Bendel. In the post-apocalyptic future, two technicians will wrestle with some thorny issues of lifeboat ethics. They happen to be in charge of lifeboat maintenance, but they are not as stable as you might hope. Complications will most definitely arise in Christian Cantamessa’s AIR, the first theatrical release from Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman’s Skybound shingle, which opens this Friday in New York.

Due to war, pestilence, and plague, the Earth’s surface atmosphere has become toxic. An elite lucky few were sent into suspended animation in deep subterranean bunkers. In each lifeboat-like shelter, two not so lucky technicians are roused every six months to run diagnostics and check the sleepers’ vitals. They only have one hour and fifty nine minutes to get back in their pods before all the oxygen is sucked out of the bunker and back into the tanks.

Unfortunately, both Bauer and Cartwright are showing signs of stress. The former is becoming increasingly aggressive, while the latter is seeing visions of one of the suspended scientists he clearly fancies. However, his mental projection of Abby often manages to give him rather timely advice. He will need it when his personal pod suffers a malfunction.

The apocalypse is usually more compelling on a personal level than on a big macro plane—and AIR is a good case in point. There is something very effectively old school about the one set (albeit a rather complex one, impressively rendered by Brian Kane’s production team) and its two or three character dynamic, depending one’s point-of-view. Cantamessa has a firm handle on close-quarters action, dexterously slamming airlocks and sending Bauer and Cartwright shimmying through air-ducts. Despite its claustrophobic nature, AIR is still quite cinematic looking.

No stranger to Kirkman or playing twitchy survivors, Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus has instant credibility as Bauer, yet he still manages to keep the audience off balance with his erratic behavior. Djimon Hounsou is also well cast as Cartwright, the strong, silent, hallucinating type. Although nobody could really sink their teeth into a role like the apparitional Abby, Sandrine Holt still has the perfectly cerebral yet sensitive presence to memorably haunt Cartwright and the film.

AIR is another fine example of how inventive filmmakers can make tight, tense, relatively action-oriented science fiction with hardly any visual effects to speak of. Granted, it is small in scope, but frankly that is rather refreshing in such an overly bloated genre. Recommended pretty enthusiastically for fans of Kirkman and post-apocalyptic SF, AIR opens this Friday (8/14) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on August 12th, 2015 10:08pm.

By Joe Bendel. Probably no sport has had a rougher decade than pro-cycling. With most of its recent champions disgraced by doping scandals, there should at least be opportunities for young emerging cyclists. Unfortunately, three former teammates cannot all be champions. However, the sport itself should definitely benefit from the treatment it gets from Hong Kong action auteur Dante Lam in To the Fore, which Magnum Films just released in New York.

Chiu Ming has power. Qiu Tian is a plugger who can climb. Together they are perfectly matched “lead-outs” who should be able to guide the Taiwanese Team Radiant’s star Korean sprinter Ji-won to victory. Unfortunately, just when they start gelling as a team, their sponsor leaves their owner-manager high and dry. Suddenly free agents, they each sign on as sprinters for competing teams. Ji-won is already on the verge of advancing to next professional class, but Qiu is physically unsuited to his new role, while Chiu has trouble controlling his emotions. In between some spectacularly cinematic races, Chiu and Qiu will also compete for the affections of Shiyao, a Mainland indoor track racer recovering from a pulmonary embolism.

If you enjoy cycling, Lam brings the goods with authority. Although there is no fighting per se, his action chops still serve the racing sequences remarkably well. Lam makes it easy to follow the team strategy as it unfolds, while cinematographer Pakie Chan captures the in-race events with remarkable clarity. Lam and co-screenwriter Silver Lam Fung also shrewdly vary the competitions, making their way through the streets of Kaohsiung City, the Italian Alps, a mobbed-up betting track in Busan, and the Tengger Desert. Naturally, each course has its particular challenges.

Somehow, Lam and company manage to steer clear of most of the moldiest sports movies clichés. The interpersonal stuff is still fairly workaday stuff, but Wang Luodan elevates the material as the reserved but engaging Shiyao. Eddie Peng does his cocky Taiwanese Tom Cruise thing as Chiu, but it fits the part. Choi Si-won has the least room to stretch as Ji-won, the Iceman to Peng’s Maverick, but he certainly has the appropriately cool look. However, Shawn Dou manages to scrape out a rather impressive character development arc as Qiu.

Regardless, To the Fore is really all about the cycling. Despite the potential repetitiveness, Lam keeps the energy level cranked up and establishes meaningful stakes for each and every race. It is a great looking film that fully capitalizes on its diverse panoramic locales. Recommended for fans of cycling and sports films in general, To the Fore is now playing in New York at the AMC Empire.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on August 12th, 2015 at 10:07pm.

By Joe Bendel. The term “practical effects” could soon become the equivalent of “shade-grown organic” for genre film connoisseurs. It denotes authenticity in an era of CGI fakeness. It usually also means a few cast-members got slimed for real. That certainly seems to be the case in special effects artist Alec Gillis’s Harbinger Down, which opens today in Westchester.

To stretch her pompous professor’s research budget, Sadie has booked their whale tracking expedition passage on her grandfather’s crab trawler, the Harbinger. Old Graff runs a tight ship, but Sadie comes from a long line of seafarers, including her late parents. Therefore, the crew immediately takes a liking to her and resents her prima donna professor. When she finds an old, hitherto unreported Soviet space capsule through her whale scans, her prof. swoops in hoping to claim the glory for himself.

Of course, dredging the long frozen pod may not be the best of ideas. It is immediately suspicious since it was apparently shot up at a time when the Soviets were supposedly not launching Moon missions. It is also clear the cosmonaut did not burn up. It turns out he was killed by a lethal parasite that is now fully thawed and mutating like mad. At least the Professor will be the first one infected.

When the slimy extraterrestrial entity starts wreaking havoc on the icebound ship (which happens quickly), you can see the delight Gillis and his special effects partner-producer Tom Woodruff, Jr take in creating nasty, slithering things. Harbinger is definitely an old school throwback to the 1980s creature horror of The Thing, Gremlins, and Aliens, with Lance Henriksen giving it extra added legitimacy as salty old Graff. His genre movie authority remains undiminished. If you were stranded on a rusted crabber with an alien parasite running amok, you would want a skipper like him.

In fact, the supporting characters are unusual well-drawn for a set-up-the-pins-and-knock-them-down horror film. Naturally, Henriksen does his thing, but Winston James Francis and Milla Bjorn are terrific playing off each other as the mismatched crew members, Big G and Svet, respectively. As the professor, Matt Winston (son of special effects legend Stan Winston) also makes a satisfyingly detestable villain, so his cosmic payback is rather enjoyable to watch, even though it means big trouble for the rest of the Harbinger crew.

The space parasite is the central monster in Harbinger, but the Soviets of the 1980s and the neo-Soviet Russian government of right now are also part of the problem, which makes the film more geopolitically astute than ninety-nine percent of recent genre releases. It is also decidedly slime-obsessed. It understands what creature feature patrons want and can’t wait to give it to them. Recommended for fans of Henriksen and practical effects, Harbinger Down opens today (8/7) at the Picturehouse in Pelham.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on August 7th, 2015 at 2:53pm.