Category: 4. Joe Bendel

Epic Epicness: LFM Reviews Warriors of the Rainbow—Seediq Bale

By Joe Bendel. For the aboriginal peoples indigenous to Taiwan, decapitating an enemy’s head in battle was an essential rite of manhood. In the early twentieth century, the occupying Japanese began the systematic suppression of aboriginal culture. It would cost them a whole lot of heads. Originally well over four hours long, Wei Te-sheng’s Warriors of the Rainbow: Sediq Bale in its more theatrical booking-friendly two and a half hour international cut opens this Friday in New York.

Mouna Rudao was one of the fiercest Seediq warriors ever. When the Japanese confiscate his collection of skulls, they are duly impressed. Unfortunately, as chief he must watch as the old ways atrophy under their oppressive rule. The tattoos of manhood are becoming scarce. However, this will change during the 1930 Wushe Uprising.

It started with a misunderstanding between Mouna’s family and the local Imperial authorities, snowballing from there. The Seediq forces strike first, ambushing the Japanese at a major sporting exhibition. Things only get bloodier thereafter. Frankly, Mouna knows their revolt is doomed to fail, but at least the young Seediq men will die as warriors, crossing over the Rainbow Bridge to their equivalent of Valhalla.

Submitted by Taiwan as their most recent official foreign language Academy Award candidate, Rainbow was released as two films in most Asian markets. However, the edited and cobbled together international version makes perfect sense from a narrative standpoint and includes plenty of Braveheart-style action. One suspects the axe fells disproportionately heavily on the female cast, including the great Vivian Hsu, who are rarely seen in the 150 minute cut until an emotionally devastating scene late in the picture.

It is too bad Mel Gibson went more or less insane, because he would have been the perfect celebrity “presenter” for Rainbow, executive-produced by John Woo, no less. There are death-scenes that will make you exclaim out loud. Yet, despite the frequent references to the Rainbow Bridge, there is little that could be deemed mystical or New Agey about the film, at least in its international configuration. It also resists the temptation to glorify Seediq traditionalism, unequivocally suggesting tribalism undermined their efforts to defeat the Imperial Japanese with a united front.

Lin Ching-Tai is all business as the steely old Mouna. He might just the best middle-aged action hero since the Eastwood of decades ago. Yet young Lin Yuan-Jie might be the most engaging member of the ensemble cast. There is absolutely nothing cute or cloying about his riveting work as Pawan Nawi. Japanese actor Sabu Kawahara also somehow manages to elevate the role of the stereotypically severe General Kamada Yahiko, while Chie Tanaka is memorably vulnerable as the wife of a relatively sympathetic Imperial officer.

Rainbow parallels the pronounced trend in current Mainland and Hong Kong films depicting Japanese characters in explicitly villainous terms. Indeed, the impulse to constantly re-fight WWII is becoming rather suspicious. Be that as it may or may not be, there is no denying Rainbow delivers the epic action goods. This is a big, bloody picture, serving as a perfect example of the bold filmmaking fostered by Fortissimo Films. Definitely recommended for fans of large scale historical action films, Rainbow opens this Friday (4/27) in New York at the AMC Empire.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on April 23rd, 2012 at 2:36pm.

Tribeca 2012: LFM Reviews Headshot

By Joe Bendel. This Thai anti-hero’s career trajectory follows quite a circuitous course – starting as a cop, next becoming a hitman, only to later seek peace as a Buddhist monk. It is safe to say his perspective changes dramatically in Pen-ek Ratanuang’s karma noir Headshot (trailer here), one of the clear highlights of the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.

Keep an eye on Tul’s hair. It will serve as a telling indicator during Headshots many flashbacks. Indeed, Tul will have much reflecting to do. When viewers first meet him, he is preparing for his latest hit. Tul kills his target. He always does. However, he takes a bullet to the head in the process. It turns out to be one of those freak events. Tul survives, but he now sees the world upside down.

As we learn during his reveries, Tul was an honest cop who was framed for crossing a crooked politician. Upon his release, he is recruited by a sketchy doctor with weird eugenic-like theories on the nature of evil to serve as the assassin for his secret cabal. Now that his vision is inverted, Tul wants to retire. Right, good luck with that.

Headshot has all the film noir elements, including two beautiful femme fatales, one hard-boiled killer-for-hire, venal public officials, mysterious grudges, a lot of rain, and a fair helping of Buddhist theology. Pen-ek (sometimes billed as Tom Pannet) has crafted a slick, cerebral thriller, dexterously slipping some curveballs past viewers caught up in the nefarious on-screen business. Even though the constant flashing backwards and forwards can be a bit confusing at times, he steadily cranks up the tension, while maintaining an ominous sense of fatalism. It should also be noted, the majority of the film is seen right-side up, with only a few brief scenes representing Tul’s new POV, so potential viewers should not fear leaving the theater with a monster headache.

Nopachai “Peter” Jayanama is an absolutely dynamite seething anti-hero with serious action cred. His Tul broods like nobody’s business. Celine “Cris” Horwang is also a smart and dynamic screen presence as Erin, the innocent bystander repeatedly pulled into the ex-assassin’s murky morality play. Likewise, Chanokporn “Dream” Sayoungkul is appropriately alluring and vulnerable as the woman initially sent to ensnare Tul.

Headshot is the rare film that should thoroughly entertain gangster genre movie fans and also satisfy art-house crowds. In short, it is the complete package. Very highly recommended, Headshot screens again this Thursday (4/26) as part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: A+

Posted on April 23rd, 2012 at 2:14pm.

What The Khmer Rouge Didn’t Destroy: LFM Reviews Golden Slumbers @ The 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Martin Scorsese needs to dispatch an emergency film preservation team to Cambodia. From 1960 to 1975 about 450 films were produced in the Southeast Asian country. However, only about thirty films survived the Khmer Rouge. The Chinese-backed Communists considered cinema just another form of capitalist decadence (which is sort of true – when it’s really good). Davy Chou surveys what was lost with the handful of surviving film industry veterans in his outstanding documentary Golden Slumbers, which screens at the San Francisco Film Society’s 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival.

Despite being the grandson of the once prominent Cambodian director Vann Chan, many of the filmmakers who were able to escape execution (most of whom endured harsh transit conditions to seek refuge in France) were initially reluctant to talk to Chou. However, Yvon Hem eventually relents, taking Chou on a tour of his long abandoned Bird of Paradise studio (named for the Marcel Camus film that launched many film careers in the country, including his own). Less reticent is Dy Saveth, the former Elizabeth Taylor of Cambodian film, now working as a dance instructor. To this day, the hill where she once filmed a climactic scene still bears her name.

Obviously the genocidal murders and forced labor camps are the greater crimes of the Khmer Rouge regime. Yet the devastation of the nation’s cinema is not merely a footnote to the wider tragedy—it is a tragedy unto itself. Listening to the movie patrons and movie-makers discussing their beloved films, now presumably lost forever, is deeply moving. Clearly lives and livelihoods were lost, but average Cambodians’ treasured memories and cultural heritage have also been destroyed by an ideology of death. Watching Slumbers stirs the same emotions as the sight of a charred family photo album at a fire scene.

The lost world of Cambodian cinema.

Slumbers also bear an unexpected but apt comparison to Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film, featuring many directors and actors forced to relate their films like oral history. Yet Chou is able to convey a sense of them through movie posters, radio commercials, and soundtrack records (many of which remain widely popular). He also stages his talking head interviews in ways that are often quite visually stylish.

For any movie lover, the loss of a nation’s cinematic legacy is truly lamentable, but it is particularly so in this case. From the tantalizing descriptions heard throughout Slumbers, many of the popular Cambodian films of the pre-Khmer Rouge era sound like high-end Bollywood, but incorporating darker supernatural and mythological elements. Though it is impossible to know with certainty, if you are reading this review there is indeed a strong likelihood these films would have been your cup of tea.

One can only hope Chou’s documentary leads to the discovery of some of these lost treasures in forsaken film vaults someplace. Nonetheless, as a film in its own right, Slumbers is quite accomplished. It is an intelligently constructed and elegantly executed cinematic elegy that absolutely puts to shame the vacuous tributes to Hollywood glamour that aired during the recent Academy Awards. Profoundly moving, Slumbers is one of the best documentaries selected for a major festival this year. It screens this coming Saturday (4/28) and the following Tuesday (5/1) and Thursday (5/3) during the 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: A+

Posted on April 22nd, 2012 at 9:34pm.

Tribeca 2012: LFM Reviews Sleepless Night

By Joe Bendel. Crooked cops are as French as frog legs and escargot. But in fact, there are varying degrees of police corruption, as viewers can see in Frederic Jardin’s cops vs. cops vs. drug dealers shoot-out Sleepless Night, which screens during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.

Vincent and his even more corrupt partner Manu just relieved some couriers of a huge shipment of cocaine. Unfortunately, he took a stiletto wound in the process. Without time to be properly stitched up, he must quickly bundle his son off to school and then show up at the station to play innocent. Events take a turn for the worse when the kingpin Marciano abducts the lad, demanding the coke as ransom. Into the lion’s den, or in this case Marciano’s club Le Tarmac, Vincent goes. When the even more corrupt internal affairs officer swipes his hidden coke, the desperate father starts improvising. That is when things start getting good.

Poor, morally compromised Vincent bleeds in every corner of the up-scale hipster disco/restaurant/pool hall, but he always gives as good as he gets. The kitchen gets a particularly messy going-over, worrying the staff to no end. And every time Vincent returns to their domain, the film gets an invigorating jolt of energy.

Tightly helmed by Jardin and stylishly lensed by frequent Eastwood cinematographer Tom Stern, Sleepless Night is sort of like an adrenaline-charged, action-driven variation on the brooding Paris By Night, which screened at French Rendezvous earlier in the year. As Vincent, Tomer Sisley (a.k.a. Largo Winch) is not as cool as Roschdy Zem, but he is still one bad cat.

While not exactly legendary, Sleepless also has some respectable villains, including Serge Riaboukine, whose somewhat larger than life Marciano clearly enjoys the trappings of gangster life. French rapper Joey Starr also brings the appropriate ferocity as Feydek, Marciano’s impatient buyer. Also making quite the impression in a small role as a bystander helping Vincent, Dutch-Russian-Korean model Pom Klementieff should definitely have a future looking alluring in films.

Although Sleepless Night wastes some time up top, over-establishing what a disappointing father Vincent is, once it gets going it becomes a thoroughly entertaining roller-coaster. Not quite at the level of Gareth Huw Evans The Raid: Redemption, but a pretty impressive excursion into action filmmaking nonetheless, Sleepless screens tonight (4/22), Thursday (4/26), and Friday (4/27) during this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, with a theatrical release slated for May from Tribeca’s film distribution arm.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on April 22nd, 2012 at 9:31pm.

Tribeca 2012: LFM Reviews Eddie – the Sleepwalking Cannibal

By Joe Bendel. The Canadians and Scandinavians are all very polite, right? Maybe so, but there are those who are also pretty twisted. Happily, we will be meeting a two of them in Boris Rodriguez’s wonderfully aptly titled Eddie – the Sleepwalking Cannibal (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.

Lars Olafssen has an international reputation and a chronic case of painter’s block. Since he can no longer create art, he figures he might as well teach and the Koda Lake Art School is remote enough for him to do so anonymously. (Those Canadian winters are hardly intimidating for a Dane.) Yet, as soon as he arrives, he starts getting pressure to paint, both from the school’s dean and his serpentine agent. Having given up on his artistic career, Olafssen just wants to fit in and impress the skeptical colleague he is attracted to. Toward that ends, he agrees to look after Eddie, the traumatized man-child of the school’s recently deceased patron.

Guess what Eddie the gentle giant does in his sleep? Actually, it usually just involves small woodland creatures. However, getting in his way while sleep-walking can be dangerous, as Olafssen observes. Much to his shock, the sight of blood actually spurs the artist’s long dormant creative juices. Let the carnage facilitation begin.

As great as its title is, Eddie – the Sleepwalking Cannibal does not quite do the film justice. Sure, there is plenty of sleepwalking cannibalism, but this is a surprisingly droll and sophisticated picture. While it mashes up plenty of horror elements, it is the “artistic” mentality that really gets thoroughly skewered.

A nearly lifelong veteran of arthouse cinema, a twelve year-old Thure Lindhardt debuted in Pelle the Conqueror and was somewhat recently commanding the screen as Danish resistance hero Bent Faurschou-Hviid (a.k.a. Flame) in the riveting Flame and Citron. As Olafssen, he is more than just a good sport. He portrays the painter’s mounting creepiness quite credibly and seamlessly. An effective on-screen counterpart, Dylan Smith plays poor Eddie with a keen physicality, suggesting a tragically reluctant monster, roughly in the tradition of Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolfman.

Eddie – the Sleepwalking Cannibal is a smart, fun film. It will not disappoint the genre enthusiasts who regularly attend Tribeca’s Cinemania (formerly Midnight) screenings, but will also appeal to a wider audience of festival patrons. Really good stuff, the Sleepwalking Cannibal screens again this coming Saturday (4/28) as this year’s Tribeca Film Festival continues at venues throughout Lower Manhattan.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on April 22nd, 2012 at 9:29pm.

Tribeca 2012: LFM Reviews Graceland

By Joe Bendel. One crooked Filipino congressman is used to handing out the traditional sort of bribes, but when his daughter is kidnapped, he also has to give a little financial consideration to get the cops to do their job. Unfortunately, they are determined to hassle his former driver, whose daughter was also abducted. To save her, he will have to navigate Manila’s seediest back alleys without the help of the openly antagonistic police in Ron Morales’ Graceland, which screens during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.

Though ostensibly a driver, one of Marlon Villar’s primary duties is to clean up after his boss Rep. Chango’s predatory indulgences with underage girls—or at least it was his job. Given the soul-deadening acts Villar witnessed, he is shocked when the congressman summarily fires him. The timing is particularly bad, considering his hospitalized wife desperately needs a transplant. That is also why suspicion immediately falls on him after the kidnapping. In what was to be his final task for his former employer, he picks up his daughter Evie and her best friend Sophia Chango from school, only to be waylaid by armed thugs.

Unfortunately, complications arise during the kidnapping that put Villar in a particularly tight spot. In a way, it is like a dark twist on the botched kidnapping in Kurosawa’s High and Low, but unlike Toshirō Mifune’s upstanding Kingo Gondo, Chango cannot be relied on to do the right thing. In fact, it quickly becomes clear the case directly involves the politician’s bad karma.

Granted, Graceland is not at Kurosawa’s level, but it is an intense dark crime drama that totally pulls off some audacious hide-in-plain-sight twists. However, it is not likely to delight the Filipino tourism bureau, depicting unhygienic slums, where shocking vice is carried on with near impunity, thanks to widespread police corruption.

Of course, for a desperation-in-the-city noir, such a setting works perfectly – as does Arnold Reyes, the terrific lead. As Villar, he broods ferociously, but is no superman. In the complex role, he keeps viewers on the edge of their seats and fully vested in his fate. In memorable support, Menggie Cobarrubias radiates sleaze as the dishonorable congressman, while Dido de La Paz brings a feral cunning to the corrupt Det. Ramos.

Tightly helmed by Morales, Graceland works every step of the way and completely holds together in retrospect. With its visceral sense of place and Reyes’ powerhouse performance, it is one of the best films so far at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Highly recommended, it screens again tonight (4/21) and next Saturday (4/28).

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on April 21st, 2012 at 12:57pm.