Category: Sundance Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. They know the blues in Memphis. One star-in-the-making also happens to be particularly good at giving the blues. In fact, the blues are downright contagious in Tim Sutton’s Memphis, which screens during this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Willis Earl Beal essentially plays a fictionalized version of himself. His electric bluesman is poised to break out, yet he keeps self-sabotaging. When you get him talking, he has some colorful things to say. Unfortunately, like many characters in the film, he is prone to amble about deserted parking lots and other pretentious art cinema backdrops.

Granted, Memphis offers plenty of local color. Sutton often stops by the local Hallelujah church for a fix of gospel choir and ambiguous ruminations on the role faith plays in the lives of its average working class members. Clearly this is a depressed city (at least this is the case for the neighborhoods Sutton and Beal traverse), but to his credit, Sutton presents a nuanced portrait of the city’s economic and social realities.

Featuring Beal’s tunes and the supplemental music of Scott Bomar, Memphis gets the soundtrack right. However, you would be hard pressed to find a narrative in there. Still, Beal has two truly great scenes that might be cobbled together into a compelling short. In contrast, the rest of the film feels like snoozy filler.

Honestly, any film that looks and sounds as good as Memphis should never be such a chore to watch. Beal demonstrates his potential star power, but he needs more to work with than the skeletal bones of Sutton’s screenplay. Overall, it is a real disappointment. For blues diehards heedless of our warnings, it screens again Saturday (1/25) in Park City as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: C-

Posted on January 24th, 2014 at 3:21pm.

By Joe Bendel. It turns out that old “fight fire with fire” idiom also applies to zombie uprisings. The National Socialist zombies are back and they are on the march in Tommy Wirkola’s Dead Snow; Red vs. Dead, which screens during the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

If you forgot the intricate plot of Snow 1, Snow 2 is considerate enough to bring us all back to speed. Martin was the only one who survived when an army of Nazi zombies attacked his friends’ ski lodge. However, he did not make a clean getaway. A few days later, he wakes up in a hospital, finding himself an accused mass murderer, with the arm of the undead Standartenfuhrer Herzog mistakenly grafted in place of the arm he self-amputated, Evil Dead-style. To make matters worse, his new limb seems to have a homicidal mind of his own, further reinforcing everyone’s erroneous assumptions. At least it comes in handy during his escape.

Eventually teaming up with three American zombie hunters and a goth kid working at a provincial WWII museum, Martin hatches a daring plan to stop the Herzog’s zombies before they can fulfill their final orders: the mass execution of a defiant coastal town. Thanks to his zombie augmented arm, Martin can raise his own loyal zombie minions, so he heads into the mountains in search of the mass grave entombing Herzog’s Russian nemesis and his Red Army troops. That actually sounds like a workable plan, right?

With R vs. D, Wirkola proves there is still some life left in the Norwegian Nazi zombie genre after all. Frankly, part two far exceeds the original. While the first film was content to coast on the novelty of its premise, largely staging a conventional zombie siege, Wirkola’s follow-up more fully capitalizes on the possibilities of such a distinctive zombie apocalypse. Opening the film up to the wider world also raises the stakes and the body count dramatically.

There are some big gory laughs in R vs. D and some clever hat-tips for fans. In fact, some of the bits might even break new zombie ground. Vegar Hoel is pitch perfect as Martin, the conscience-stricken zombie hunter. Jocelyn DeBoer and Ingrid Haas also bring a blast of energy to the proceedings as Zombie Squad members constantly arguing the age old question: Star Wars vs. Star Trek. They should make geeks very happy indeed.

Clearly, R vs. D has all the elements to be the feel-good hit of the year or at least the Little Miss Sunshine of this year’s Sundance. It is truly a triumph of the human spirit, with plenty of flying body parts as an added bonus. It is probably safe to say Thomas Edison invented moving pictures precisely so the world would have films like this. Highly recommended for zombie fans (considerably more than its predecessor), Dead Snow; Red vs. Dead screens again today (1/24) in Salt Lake as part of the Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on January 24th, 2014 at 3:17pm.

By Joe Bendel. Presumably, this is not what Al Gore had in mind when he invented the internet. A Jakarta journalist obsessed with the death videos posted online by a Tokyo serial killer starts following suit when he crosses into vigilante slayings. Soon thereafter, they strike up an unlikely IM dialogue, but it is not what you would call a friendly rivalry. Things will get bloody in the Mo Brothers (Timo Tjahjanto & Kimo Stromboel)’s Killers, which screens during the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

Bayu’s unsuccessful attempts to bring down a well-heeled, politically connected sexual predator short-circuited his career and indirectly caused his separation from his wife. Watching the videos posted by Shuhei Nomura only further stokes his anger management issues. It all finally boils over during an attempted mugging (and worse). Suddenly, Bayu is in the Bronson business.

In contrast, the sadistic and precise Nomura is a cold blooded killer. He gets sick satisfaction from killing, but he plans each prolonged murder out to the last detail. However, Nomura will make an uncharacteristic mistake or two, making their months of correspondence a rather chaotic time for them both.

Frankly, Killers might be too much even for veteran midnight movie patrons. Some of the sequences with Nomura are downright scarring, as well as scary. Nevertheless, the Mo Brothers certainly know how to stage a hyper-violent action sequence. For instance, Bayu has a hotel getaway melee scene that ranks with the hallway fight scene in Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy (the real one, not the cheap remake). About as tense as genre films can get, Killers is an unrelenting white knuckle viewing experience from the first frame up to the last.

Despite its unseemly milieu, Killers features a top drawer cast working at the peak of their powers. Japanese TV heartthrob Kauzki Kitamura is disturbingly cold and creepy as Nomura, while Oka Antara’s Bayu broods like nobody’s business. However, the finely nuanced Rin Takanashi (so exquisitely vulnerable in Kiarostami Like Someone in Love) gives the film some heart and soul as the prospective victim who starts to awaken emotions in Nomura (which is definitely one of those goods news-bad news kind of things).

With Killers, the Mo Brothers definitely announce themselves as adrenaline charged filmmakers to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, long stretches of the film are just no fun to watch. Brutal but effective, Killers is specifically recommended for experienced cult film connoisseurs when it screens again this Saturday (1/25) in Salt Lake as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on January 24th, 2014 at 1:05am.

By Joe Bendel. In Texas, they do not need “stand your ground laws.” Instead, they apply the “did he have it coming” standard. As a result, not too many people are concerned when Richard Dane accidentally kills a home intruder, least of all the police. However, the deceased’s ex-con father seems somewhat put-out by it all in Jim Mickle’s Cold in July, which screens during this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Dane is hardly an action hero. He truly did not intend to kill Freddy Russell when he interrupted the burglar at work. The situation just made him understandably jumpy. Ray Price (the cop on the case, rather than the Nixon speechwriter) is happy to sweep the entire incident under the rug, but not Ben Russell. Released just in time for his estranged son’s funeral, he soon starts threatening Dane and his family. At first, Price assumes he is just posturing, but things escalate quickly.  Then the first game-changing shoe drops.

Adapted from Joe R. Lansdale’s novel, July starts out as a conventional home invasion-revenge thriller, but radically shifts gears in the second act, veering into Andrew Vachss territory. While it appropriately has the dusty noir look of Jim Thompson films, it is way darker than even The Killer Inside Me. There are scenes here that sensitive viewers might wish they could “unsee.”

Regardless, it is brutally effective when it gets down to business. The late 1980’s period details also help the film’s thriller dynamics, taking the internet and cell phones (aside from a running Gordon Gekko style gag) out of the picture. It all ends in a bloody and ironic place that should satisfy genre fans.

Michael C. Hall does decent work as Dane, but he is simply overwhelmed by the seriously hardboiled Sam Shepard, seething like mad as the senior Russell. Yet, Don Johnson chews more scenery and out hardnoses everyone as Jim Bob Luke, a sort of gunslinger recruited into the bloody family feud. As a further bonus, Mickle’s co-writer Nick Damici adds some distinctively noir seasoning as Price, the shady copper.

Stylish, intense, and at times blackly comic, July is a slickly executed criminal morality play. However, it might be too strong for Lifetime and Hallmark Channel viewers. Recommended for hardy film noir connoisseurs, Cold in July screens today (1/20) in Salt Lake and tomorrow (1/21), Thursday (1/23), and Saturday (1/25) in Park City, as part of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on January 20th, 2014 at 9:25pm.