Category: Narrative

By Joe Bendel. Who would have known a pagan Irish ghost could carry such a grudge? Annie Sawquin was done wrong during the days of Old New York, so her vengeful spirit is not about to let Lower Manhattan off the hook centuries later. Frankly, she has a right to feel put-out. Unfortunately, every year on Halloween, the specter takes out her frustrations on three innocent children. Mike Lawford’s son Charlie was taken last year, but he hasn’t given up hope of finding him. At least as a tenured professor he will have plenty of time to look in Uli Edel’s Pay the Ghost, which opens this Friday.

In his quest for said tenure, Lawford somewhat neglected his wife Kristen and son, so when the good news comes on October 31st, the newly secured faculty member takes Charlie out to celebrate at the annual Halloween carnival. It is rather conveniently located, since like most struggling academics, the Lawfords own a brownstone in Greenwich Village. Unbeknownst to Lawford, Charlie has been acting strange for the last few days, because he has been targeted by uncanny forces.

One minute Charlie is there, the next he’s gone. It is hard to explain that to his wife, who openly blames Lawford for their son’s disappearance. Yet, as they approach the one year anniversary, both parents have strange supernatural experiences that suggest Charlie is reaching out for their help. Soon, she even starts to forgive Lawford, in light of all the macabre bedlam they encounter. Enlisting the help of Hannah, Lawford’s colleague and mentor, they trace back a series of historical and folkloric clues to Sawquin, a Celtic Pagan, who was scapegoated for a plague sweeping through early Colonial New York. Lawford just might be able to rescue his son, but he has a limited window. Once Halloween is over, the die is cast and last year’s victims will be consigned to the other side forever.

Believe it or not, even though Ghost represents a collaboration between Nic Cage and the director of the infamous Madonna vehicle Body of Evidence, it really isn’t that bad. Apparently, Edel discovered the magic word that convinced Cage to turn down the mania. Maybe it was “IRS.” Regardless, he indulges in minimal nostril-flaring throughout what is arguably his most restrained performance in years.

Sarah Wayne Callies from the Walking Dead is passable enough as Kristin, but it is not what you would call a showcase role for her. As Det. Reynolds, Lyriq Bent does not have much to either, except defend the honor of New York civil servants, but he wears the part well after playing the cop in all those Saw movies. However, Veronica Ferres (known for films like Saviors in the Night and Adam Resurrected, who must have been confused to find herself in an upstart genre movie like this) adds some much appreciated class and seasoning.

Edel maintains an atmosphere of foreboding and nicely capitalizes on the Lower Manhattan-looking locales (courtesy of Toronto). Screenwriter Dan Kay’s adaptation of Tim Lebbon’s novella also accentuates the intriguing backstory and old world details. It all hangs together quite cohesively until quite late in the third act, which is downright impressive by horror movie industry standards. Recommended for horror fans looking for something with a Halloween theme, Pay the Ghost releases on iTunes and opens in select markets this Friday (9/25).

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on September 23rd, 2015 at 11:35pm.

By Joe Bendel. This horror show of family is brought to you by the daughter of a legend of horror cinema. Asia Argento’s father Dario is probably the best known master of the Giallo genre. Young Aria (Asia Argento’s legally registered name at the time of her birth) is the daughter of a romantic leading man actor and a musician, but it is hard not to draw parallels. Both even have famous composer grandfathers. However, one can only hope Aria’s life is entirely fictional, because it is the sort of chaotic mess that could generate a lifetime’s worth of baggage. Growing up is darned near impossible for the protagonist of Argento’s Misunderstood, which opens this Friday in New York.

Aria is the one common child shared her recently divorced parents, but she has a step-sister with each of the exes. Her relationships with all four are rather complicated, because it is clear she is the favorite of neither parent. Aria primarily lives with her mother and the rather dreary Donatina, until the temperamental Swiss pianist loses patience with her daughter and packs her off unannounced to her father. According to the regular pattern, the shallow, self-absorbed actor will let her stay with him and the noxiously manipulative Lucrezia for a few days, before sending her back.

For days at a time, Aria will ping pong back and forth. Some nights she will even sleep on the street. However, these might be the happiest interludes in the film, because she falls in with a free-spirited group of bohemians colonizing the local park. She probably should have stayed with them, but like everyone else in the film, Aria is keenly aware of social standing. Her parents might be a train wreck, but they give her serious cred at school. Yet, it is never enough to turn the head of the thuggish kid she crushes on.

If Argento had cranked up the family’s horribleness just a fraction further, Misunderstood could have veered into campy horror. Instead, she keeps the tone grounded and the lunacy relatively restrained. As a result, Aria’s life is just plain emotionally harrowing. She is the ultimate poor little rich kid, whose dysfunctional parents are total monsters precisely because they are so human. They really could exist.

Charlotte Gainsbourg and Italian television star Gabriel Garko are so pitch-perfect as the narcissistic parents, it is truly frightening. Yet, the true revelation is Giulia Salerno as Aria. She covers an unusually wide range as the smart but impetuous nine year-old, dealing with just about every form of family angst under the sun. Yet, she always keeps it grounded and real, even when everyone else around her is going bat-scat crazy. She is remarkable, as is Alice Pea as Angelica, her inevitably estranged best friend forever.

Misunderstood is an absolutely exhausting film, but it is not without dark humor. However, most of the laughs come from a recognition of how Argento keeps relentlessly one-upping the outrageous behavior, without ever taking things over the top. It might just feature the best performance from a young screen thesp since Josie Xu’s star-making turn in Starry, Starry Night. Recommended for those who appreciate extreme family dramas, Misunderstood opens this Friday (9/25) in New York, at the IFC Center.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on September 23rd, 2015 at 11:34pm.

By Joe Bendel. If you thought campus speech codes were restrictive, try living by the mysterious rules and regulations governing this liberal arts college. It is never named, but it might as be Matrix U. Campus security is unusually fit and they respond to violations with suspicious swiftness in Cathy Scorsese & Kenneth M. Waddell’s Campus Code, which releases today on VOD from MarVista Entertainment.

Yes, Cathy Scorsese is the daughter of Martin, who pops up in a small role as the campus doctor, along with Ray Liotta who appears as the responsible bartender. This is not Goodfellas 2, though. In fact, Campus Code (or Campus Life, as it was once known) was briefly rather notorious for the bizarre litigation it spawned. Still, Campus is strange enough to be considered on its own weird merits.

Regardless, Scorsese’s doctor does not inspire much confidence. Fortunately, Ari seems to be okay without his services. In the first twenty minutes, he will fall from a thirteen story building and have a large pane of glass impaled in his head, without suffering any adverse effects. Of course, it still rather alarms Becca, the Good Samaritan, who drags Ari down to the infirmary for Scorsese’s close-up. He sort of returns the favor by saving her from the creepy Elliot.

Ari already had a bone to pick with the preppy perv, for bootlegging the original t-shirts designed by his partner Arun. Everyone digs Arun’s art, but nobody more so than the desperately smitten Izzy. Arun is also into Izzy, but he has a secret in his closet preventing him from fully committing. She too has a deep dark secret, which the goth rabble rousing Griefers are holding over her. They are demanding her support for some sort of self-governing petition that never makes much sense, even when the big reveals start coming fast and furious. Into the mix comes Greta, a cool transfer student, who sets out to falsely befriend Izzy, in order to put the moves on Arun.

For some reason, these six students are somehow suddenly exempt from the laws of reality, while the rest of the student body appears blissfully unaware of all the disturbing madness exploding around them. There will be sufficient answers to explain who and what everyone really is. Some of it is even rather clever. The problem is that Waddell and Michael Simon’s screenplay never establishes a baseline for reality, before upending it. Nor do they flesh out any characters before throwing them into the Matrix-esque maelstrom. Granted, they certainly do not waste any time on dry exposition, but it is hard to bring out the respective personas amid all the reality-problematizing noise.

Still, Hannah Hodson and Jesse McCartney are undeniably charismatic as Becca and Ari. They also benefit from their characters’ tougher, hipper attitudes. In contrast, Alice Kremelberg and Ritesh Rajan sort of blend into the background as the more passive Izzy and Arun. However, this is not a problem for Conor Leslie’s Greta, who turns out to be an engagingly forceful pseudo-femme fatale.

Code more-or-less makes sense when it is all said and done, but there are bushels of loose ends lying about. You have to wonder if considerable explanatory matter was cut for budgetary reasons. Yet, the legitimately twentysomething-looking cast is energetic to mostly sell the madness in the moment. It is all sort of grubbily entertaining for those who dig head tripping sf concept films. Recommended accordingly for the indulgent genre fan, Campus Code releases today (9/22) on VOD platforms like VUDU and iTunes, from MarVista Entertainment.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on September 23rd, 2015 at 11:34pm.

WORLD OF TOMORROW : Teaser trailer from don hertzfeldt on Vimeo.

By Joe Bendel. One thing animation always does better than live action is showing the world from a radically different perspective. Some of the films selected for Ron Diamond’s annual curated animation showcase take viewers into space and eons into the future. Others give us fresh terrestrial vantage points. Although necessarily uneven, the highs of this year’s program are particularly lofty because it includes one of the few short films that has racked up more reviews and accolades than most features, Don Hertzfeldt’s thought-provoking World of Tomorrow. Space and time travelers lead the way in the 17th Annual Animation Show of Shows, which screens this Thursday in Los Angeles.

Wisely, the really big show starts with one of the best selections, but rather than an exercise in future speculation, Janette Goodey & John Lewis’s The Story of Percival Pits is a wonderfully old fashioned fable. Employing unusually elegant stop-motion animation, it tells the tall tale of a boy who decides to live his life entirely on stilts. As he matures into a man, he recommits himself to the stilt life, building them ever higher to the point he can no longer partake of human society. It is sort of a sad story, but also somewhat Promethean, narrated with appropriate sensitivity by Mark Hadlow.

In comparison, Tant de Forets, Geoffrey Godet & Burcu Sankur’s rendering of Jacques Prévert’s deforestation verse feels like mere filler. Likewise, Conor Whelan’s Snowfall is also decidedly small in scope, introspectively examining a gay man’s emotional response when he is “rejected” by a straight man with whom he thought he was clicking. That would be fine subject, indeed one that is rarely addressed, but the computer animated characters are not very expressive.

However, it is followed by Lynn Tomlinson’s Ballad of Holland Island House, one the most aesthetically adventurous films in the Show of Shows. Using oil-based clay, it follows the rising waters encroaching on an abandoned Chesapeake island house, while accompanied by a haunting sea chanty. Stylistically, Amanda Palmer & Avi Ofer’s Behind the Trees is also somewhat abstract, but it is basically just a short punchline of a film constructed around the slightly nutty things Palmer’s husband says when he is half-asleep that so charm her.

With Konstantin Bronzit’s We Can’t Live Without Cosmos, we finally reach what could be considered the centerpiece of the Show of Shows. It is an increasingly surreal ode to friendship and meditation on loss, focusing on two cosmonauts training for the next big launch. Our POV characters are the class of their class, but it is a one-man rocket. That leaves the second place finisher to watch in horror as the alternate, when tragedy strikes the mission. Cosmos has a retro-Soviet Star City look, yet some of his imagery is still surprisingly haunting. Ultimately, the mysterious trumps all the cold antiseptic hardware. Believe it or not, it would fit well thematically programmed with Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey.

Although not as high concept, Isabel Favez’s Messages Dans L’Air proves old animation staples like cats looking to scarf down an unsuspecting fishbowl inhabitant still work when executed with wit and style. It is refreshingly old school, even if the pastels are modern. It is also quite funny.

Iranian sibling filmmakers Babak & Behnoud Nekooei seem to invite allegorical interpretation for Stripy, which celebrates the nonconformist impulses of a worker drone tasked with painting straight barcode lines in a box factory. Even though they not so surprisingly avoid any mention of politics in their biographical vignette, any form of dissent in Iranian cinema is a worthy development. It is also visually striking and upbeat, like an unambiguously optimistic Brazil, accompanied by Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5.

Unfortunately, Ascension just doesn’t work, but Melissa Johnson & Robertino Zambrano’s Love in the Time of March Madness, an autobiographical account of life as a very tall, former basketball playing woman has a lot of heart. Shrewdly, Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow concludes the Show of Shows, because it is a tough act to follow, earning mention alongside the likes of H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon. Check out a full review here.

There are more than enough substantial and satisfying films to carry this year’s Show of Shows, especially if you have not yet seen World of Tomorrow at Sundance or via vimeo VOD. We Can’t Live Without Cosmos is a worthy companion film in terms of ambition and intelligence. The Story of Percival Pots and Stripy also have some heft to them and they look terrific. Animation fans really need to catch up with all four, so the 17th Annual Animated Show of Shows is convenient opportunity to do so. It screens this Thursday (9/24) at the Arclight in Los Angeles and October 5th at the Spectrum 8 in Albany, with more cities announced here.

Posted on September 23rd, 2015 at 11:34pm.

By Joe Bendel. During the Captive Nations era, Kazakhstan was the whipping post of the Soviet Union. The Republic was a dumping ground for many nationalities forcibly exiled after WWII (de facto ethnic cleansing), suffered widespread famine as a result of agricultural collectivization, and endured Party campaigns against regional cultural diversity. The reclusive Ilyas is a case in point, even though the rugged mountain man is almost completely oblivious of the macro forces conspiring against him. He is simply incapable of conforming to meet the demands of socialism in Yermek Tursunov’s Stranger (Zhat), Kazakhstan’s official foreign language Academy Award submission, which screens at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Ilyas was in awe of his father, Yedige. The experienced hunter was also his only family in the world, so when Yedige was inexplicably picked up in the dead of night during Stalin’s purges, it understandably devastates young Ilyas. However, instead of relying on other’s charity, Ilyas disappears into the mountains, living on game and the proceeds of his pelts. Sadly, he leaves behind the great love of his life, Kamshut, who will be forced to marry his true-believing contemporary.

In time, Ilyas develops quite the reputation. Naturally, he is invited to join the fight against Stalin’s former allies, the German National Socialists, but the Great Patriotic War means nothing to him. He simply has no reference points for it. Unfortunately, this will cause resentment as Stalin’s bungling prolongs the war and the village’s horrible suffering. When Ilyas finally starts to lose a step, there are those who will take advantage.

In a way, Ilyas is an archetypal holy fool, but in terms of temperament, he is much more closely akin to the classic western mountain man. Tragically, he is also a man very much out of step with the ideological madness of his time. He is like a Dostoyevsky hero transplanted into a John Ford film. Clearly, Tursunov understands both disparate traditions and reconciles them remarkably well.

Ilyas is not exactly chatty, but Erzhan Nurymbet’s powerful presence does not need much dialogue. He expresses his mournful regret and guilelessness with forceful directness. He is a symbol, but he is also a flesh-and-blood character. His desolate fate is not just an allegory to unpack. It has deep emotional resonance.

Tursunov paints on a big canvas, but he still shows a delicate touch with the intimate scenes Ilyas steals with his beloved Kamshut. Frankly, there is a little Doctor Zhivago reflected in their star-crossed love and the tension between tradition and nature on one hand and Communist materialism on the other is very much in keeping with the themes of Wolf Totem. Stranger also has its share of wolves as well.

Cinematographer Murat Aliyev captures the grandeur and unforgiving harshness of the steppe, contrasting the spectacular vistas with the grubby, shabby atmosphere of the village. It is a haunting film that spells out the particulars of Soviet oppression in no uncertain terms, while giving the commissars and apparatchiks precious little face-time. Very highly recommended (particularly for Academy voters), Stranger screens again today (9/19) as part of this year’s TIFF.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on September 20th, 2015 at 2:24pm.

By Joe Bendel. Where would you rather live, a far future apocalyptic dystopia or Brooklyn today? A time traveler chose the latter, but she is having understandably mixed feelings about it. Yet, just as she starts to restart a life in our presence, her future past complicates matters in Alexis Boling’s Movement + Location, which is now playing in New York.

Kim Getty is reluctant to make attachments, because she understands how awkwardly she fits into this era. Once she traveled back in time, there was no going back. Time travel technology only goes one way. Typically, people travel back by themselves, but Getty thought she had a way she and her husband could back the jump together. Somehow they were separated, but on the first day of each month she visits the arrival point, hoping he will finally appear.

Getty’s only real contact is with her coworker Marcel, with whom she does field work for a homeless outreach service. During their rounds, she notices a homeless fifteen year-old girl has the same markings of a future time traveler. Through a lot of fast talking she manages to get Rachel back to her place, but she found herself agreeing to a date with Rob, the earnest beat cop in the process. Amber, her BKLN party girl roommate is rather surprised to learn Getty has a “sister,” but Getty is just as surprised to find she might be falling for Rob. Unfortunately, Rachel’s teenaged naivety threatens to call attention to the deliberately low profile Getty, in precisely the wrong ways.

With its Brooklyn setting, you could almost think of M+L as mumblecore science fiction, but it is much more substantial than that. However, it is definitely a quiet, character-driven piece. There are no scenes of naked Terminators arriving through a portal of lightning bolts. Time travel just somehow happens off camera and we just need to accept it. Instead, screenwriter (and lead) Bodine Boling focuses on the psychological repercussions of such an extreme, irreversible situation.

Boling duly impresses as the brittle and reserved Getty. She also develops some refreshingly sweet romantic chemistry with Brendan Griffin’s Officer Goodguy. In fact, it is Griffin who really grounds the film and gives it heart. Likewise, the commanding screen presence of theoretical physicist Haile Owusu brings to the table as Marcel contributes further depth and integrity to the unusual character study.

There are times when you might forget M+L is a speculative fiction story. Still jazz musician Dan Tepfer’s evocative minimalist score gives it a vaguely disconcerting, science fiction vibe, while subtly underscoring the intimate dramatic action. Like so many genre films, the Bolings sort of lose control of the conclusion, but at least ninety-five percent of the film is remarkably assured, which is more than good enough for a high passing grade. Recommended for those receptive to a mature, emotionally realistic science fiction chamber drama, Movement + Location is currently playing in New York at the Cinema Village.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on September 20th, 2015 at 2:23pm.