Category: Narrative

By Joe Bendel. Cai Bing is sort of like a Chinese Miss Marple, but in addition to her fellow villagers’ business, she also knows a heck of a lot about breeding hogs. It was not always so. The former university professor was sent down to the provincial breeding station during the height of the Cultural Revolution, but she adapted to her new environment remarkably well. She has just been rehabilitated, but before she returns to her old life she will help the local bumbling police captain hunt down a mysterious sex offender in Zhang Bingjian’s North by Northeast, which screens during the 2015 Montreal World Film Festival.

By applying Chinese medicine to pig husbandry, Cai produced some big hogs. She also found more personal contentment than she expected, even “adopting” Xiao Cui as her granddaughter. Frankly, she has made the best of the Cultural Revolution, all things considered, but she still does not suffer fools gladly. According to her withering judgement, Li Zhanshan, the village constable, is one such idiot.

Li and his tiny militia have been chasing the serial rapist known as “Liumang,” a loaded colloquial term meaning thug, pervert, or something in between. Unfortunately, the case gets personal for Cai when Xiao is raped by Liumang. Using Chinese medicine and deductive reasoning, Cai will try to guide “Footprints” Li’s investigation in more promising directions. Yet despite her wisdom, the mystery will outlast the waning Cultural Revolution.

While Northeast boldly invokes Hitchcock right there in its title, it is a bizarre tonal mishmash. It is probably safe to say you will never find a sunnier, more upbeat film about sex fiends and the Cultural Revolution. Seriously, do not try this at home, but somehow Zhang pulls it off. Of course, it all starts with Li Bin’s wildly charismatic and wonderfully acerbic performance as Cai. Acidic on the outside, but sweet and sentimental deep down, like Marianas Trench deep, she raises the cozy sleuth bar well above anything Margaret Rutherford or Angela Lansbury ever did. If you were ever a victim of a crime, you would want her giving the cops what-for on your behalf.

It is a tall order hanging with Li, but Ban Zan grows into the job, playing “Footprints” Li with far less shtick than his character’s pear shape and general level of incompetence would suggest. In fact, he gets as serious as the plague during the masterfully dark third act. He is indeed a major reason why this film will surprise you.

Where Xin Yukun’s A Coffin in the Mountain feels like a twisty top tier Coen Brothers’ movie as exemplified by a Fargo, Northeast is more closely akin to their bold but uneven mid-level films, like Hudsucker or O Brother. Still, that means there is more to recommend it than ninety-five percent of films can lay claim to. Li Bin is unquestionably the X-factor. Her turn as Cai is a thing of beauty and a force of nature. Recommended for her vinegary power and Zhang’s considerable style, North by Northeast screens this coming Tuesday (9/1) and Friday (9/4), as part of this year’s Montreal World Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on August 28th, 2015 at 2:28pm.

By Joe Bendel. It looks a lot like Thailand, but the use of Khmer lettering somewhat upset Cambodia. The anarchy and mass killings engulfing the fictional Southeast Asian city also rather parallel the brutal fall of Phnom Penh, which could be the real reason for the Cambodian government’s censorship decision. On the other hand, the head of state’s official garb bears a vague resemblance to that of the King of Thailand. Unfortunately, we will not have time to learn if he is also jazz lover and amateur musician, like Bhumibol Adulyadej. The dear leader is about to become the dearly departed, unleashing murderous bedlam in John Erick Dowdle’s No Escape, which opens this week in wide release.

After his tech start-up crashed and burned, Jack Dwyer accepted a middle-manager position with Talbott, an international engineering firm. He is in the process of relocating his family to a country that is one hundred percent not Cambodia but happens to border Vietnam, where he will help construct a water plant. For this he should die, according to the ninety-nine percenters that are about to launch an insurrection. It’s nothing personal, just ideology.

As the terrorists work their way through the Dwyer’s hotel, summarily executing guests room-by-room, Dwyer scrambles with wife Annie and two daughters to safety. He will get some heads-up assistance from Hammond, a suspiciously cool-under-fire Brit. However, things start to get truly desperate when the leftist guerillas call in the helicopter gunships to strafe their presumed safe haven on the roof.

No Escape would be a nifty thriller (sort of like Bayona’s The Impossible, if the tsunami came packing an AK-47), had it not felt compelled to periodically bring the action to a screeching stop in order to blame everything on western imperialism, or is it globalism in this case? In any event, we are responsible, please chastise us. That would be Pierce Brosnan’s job as Hammond, who assures Dwyer the men who just murdered scores of innocent bellhops and office workers are only trying to protect their families, like you Jack. Of course, such moral equivalency is simply farcical.

Believe it or not, Owen Wilson shows some real action cred as the super-motivated everyman. Brosnan also takes visible delight in Hammond’s dissipated tendencies, providing some much needed shtick-free comic relief. Sahajak Boonthanakit also compliments him rather nicely as “Kenny Rogers,” Hammond’s country music loving local crony. However, the film suffers from the lack of a focal villain—a Robespierre to incite the mob.

Despite the shortcomings of the script co-written with his brother Drew, Dowdle certainly has a knack for filming riot scenes. In fact, the first act is quite impressively stage-managed, as we see the Dwyers cut off from contact with the outside world, reacting to dangerously incomplete information. At times, No Escape is a very scary film, but it is frequently undermined by its inclination to lecture. As a result, it falls short of the visceral intensity and unrepentant black humor of the Eli Roth-produced Aftershock. No Escape very nearly could have been great, but instead it is marked by stop-and-start inconsistencies. Still, Brosnan fans will be happy to hear No Escape represents a return to form for the Bond alumnus after a half dozen or so B-level movies, when it opens nationwide this week, including at the Regal Union Square in New York, but not in undemocratic Cambodia.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on August 27th, 2015 at 9:15pm.

By Joe Bendel. Female shape-shifters in the movies tend to be highly sexualized, like Nastassia Kinski in the Cat People remake or Sybil Danning in Howling II. In contrast, Marie is pretty repressed, but she is a product of her coastal Danish environment. You could easily imagine John Calvin preaching in their wooden church. However, she will undergo some dramatic changes in Jonas Alexander Arnby’s When Animals Dream, which opens this Friday in New York.

As the film opens, Marie is rather concerned about a persistent rash and strange tufts of hair growing in places where they shouldn’t be. Her elevated stress level will not help. She has just started work at a fish cannery, which is even less glamorous than it sounds. She makes fast-friends with a couple of the cool kids, including Daniel, who might even be potential boyfriend material. Unfortunately, she also quickly finds herself on the wrong end of the sexual harassing “pranks” of the sociopathic Esben and his cronies.

Frankly, the entire village is rather standoffish towards Marie. They fear she will turn out to be her mother’s daughter. For some time, her father has kept her formerly wild and beautiful mother zoned out on tranquilizers and anti-psychotic medication. Of course, when her werewolf nature starts to assert itself, the village doctor inevitably prescribes the same treatment for her, with her father’s acquiescence.

WAD is a wildly moody, thoroughly hypnotic, revisionist feminist take on lycanthropy. There will be plenty of painful deaths down the stretch, but it is more a riff on the mad-woman-in-the-attic trope than an exercise in gore. Nevertheless, when the film gets down to snarling business, it is unabashedly cathartic.

Lycanthropy as feminist survival strategy is all very good, but it is Sonia Suhl who really sells it as Marie. Beautiful, but in a freakishly ethereal way, Suhl’s very presence is unquantifiabaly disconcerting. Yet, she still gives an impressively real performance in her feature debut, viscerally expressing all of Marie’s social awkwardness and pent-up resentment. It is her movie, but the other Mikkelsen (Mads’ brother Lars) adds further layers of anguished ambiguity as Marie’s father, Thor, who will slowly strangle his loved ones to ostensibly save them from the potential mob with pitchforks that constitute their village.

Hollywood could conceivably remake WAD, but it has a distinctly dark, Scandinavian soul. There is a Nordic chill in its bones. Northern Jutland native Suhl also could not possibly be anymore Danish. As horror films go, WAD is definitely a slow build, but it is also a steady build that pays off handsomely. Recommended for adventurous werewolf fans, When Animals Dream opens this Friday (8/28) in New York, at the Village East.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on August 27th, 2015 at 9:14pm.

By Joe Bendel. Depression runs in Catherine’s family. They are also one of the leading causes of depression in others. Ostensibly, she has come to her friend’s summer home to relax and get away from her troubles, but she will really just do her best to make everyone around her miserable in Alex Ross Perry’s acutely unsettling but undeniably riveting Queen of Earth, which opens this Wednesday in New York at the IFC Center.

Catherine has just been dumped by James, the boyfriend with whom she was so lovey-dovey during last year’s trip to Virginia’s family vacation home. The timing is particularly bad, coming soon after the death of her father—a tragedy made worse by the unspoken circumstances involved. Back then, Virginia did not like James at all, but she does not seem to be judging him too harshly now.

As Catherine settles in, as best she can, Perry flashes back to her happier, co-dependent days with James. Virginia was not expecting her to bring him the summer prior, so she made no secret of her resentment. Catherine also immediately clashed with Rich, Virginia’s neighbor and potential love interest, who is decidedly not intimidated by artsy, pseudo-intellectuals like Catherine. A year later, James is out of the picture, but Rich is still there, expecting to get lucky with Virginia and rubbing her the wrong way.

Vexed by memories and annoyed by Rich and Virginia’s insensitivity, Catherine slides deeper into depression, perhaps losing her handle on reality in the process. If you ever doubted depression is absolutely a genuine health risk, just spend some time with Queen. Many of the dangers are readily apparent, while some are eerily implied. Yet, despite Catherine’s massively unreliable POV, it is definitely fair to say profoundly bad things are going on in that summer house.

You can argue how best to classify Queen, but it bears obvious comparison to Polanski’s Compulsion and Elisabeth Moss’s lead performance will completely chill you to your bones, so some might call it horror. However, it also has the uncomfortable intimacy of Cassavetes and even, Heaven help us, Ingmar Berman. Moss’s work is bold and disturbing, but tightly controlled and carefully calibrated. There absolutely no foaming at the mouth or similar such Meryl Streep shtick on display here. The film is also quite an ensemble piece, featuring first-rate supporting turns from Catherine Waterston and Patrick Fugit as Virginia and her friend with benefits. Frankly, nobody is remotely “likable” in this film, but you cannot tear your eyes away from them.

Cinematographer Sean Price Williams has amassed plenty of credits (including the terrific documentary Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo and the highly entertaining Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead), but Queen might be the film that gets him award recognition. He gives Queen an undefinably retro look, amplifying the dramatic power with his long-held close-ups. It is a distinctive film in all senses that is likely to be regularly studied and re-examined for years to come. Recommended for admirers of psychological dramas (with the emphasis on psycho), Queen of Earth opens this Wednesday (8/26) at the IFC Center.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on August 25th, 2015 at 2:59pm.

By Joe Bendel. Poong-chun, Deok-ki, and their lady comrade-in-arms Seol-rung were once dreaded warriors leading a rebellion against Goryeo Era tyranny. Unfortunately, betrayal cut short their uprising, along with the principled Poong-chun’s life. However, it was not jealousy that tore the trio asunder. It was more of a case of miscommunication. Of course, the tragedy compounds mightily when Poong-chun’s daughter seeks to avenge her murdered parents in Park Heung-sik’s Memories of the Sword, which opens this Friday in New York.

For years, Seol-hee has been rigorously trained by Wol-so, a blind tea house proprietor, to wreak vengeance on her enemies. Wol-so has kept many secrets, including her real identity: Seol-rung. She is not the only one living under a new name. Deok-ki is now Yoo-baek – a general so competent, he is naturally despised by his colleagues in court. The feeling is mutual.

When Yoo-baek observes the masked Seol-hee crash his martial arts contest, he immediately recognizes Seol-rung’s style. When news of her escapade reaches Seol-rung, it forces her hand. Revealing herself and Yoo-baek as Seol-hee’s familial enemies, Seol-rung casts out the girl with only her father’s sword. It is sort of a case of tough love, but it confuses Seol-hee no end. Nevertheless, it is suddenly healthy for her to be far away from Seol-rung.

At a youthful twenty-four (looking more like twelve), Kim Go-eun (who exploded onto the scene a mere three years ago in Eungyo, aka “A Muse”) notches her first action lead here as Seol-hee. In fact, she is rather perfect for the role, looking young and vulnerable, but flashing some convincing moves. Yet, Jeon De-yeon truly delivers the romantic angst and a fair number of beatdowns as the very complicated Seol-rung. In contrast, international superstar Lee Byung-hun seems to be somewhat distracted as Deok-ki/Yoo-baek, as if he were waiting for his next G.I. Joe script to arrive, but Lee Kyoung-young makes an unusually hardnosed Yoda as the trio’s powerful and reclusive teacher.

There are some spectacular martial arts sequences in Memories, as well as some Crouching Tiger-esque scenes of skipping across rooftops and treetops that defy logic and gravity, but still look quite cinematic. Indeed, Park elevates the film with a good deal of visual poetry. Genre fans will also appreciate how he steadily deepens the impassioned tragedy with each new revelation. Recommended for action fans who appreciate classy production values and a bittersweet payoff, Memories of the Sword opens this Friday (8/28) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on August 25th, 2015 at 2:59pm.

By Joe Bendel. Compared to the Mountain Vista Motel, the Bates Motel is quite a going concern. Like Norman Bates, Ted Henley also has mommy issues, but his absentee mother ran-off with a truck driver, abandoning him and his shell of a father long ago. That has not helped his moral-ethical development much. However, there is good reason to suspect the nine-year old is naturally inclined towards sociopathic violence. We will watch as his nature and lack of nurture lead to horrific results in Craig William Macneill’s The Boy, which opens tomorrow in New York.

The Bates Motel comparison is inescapable, but frankly, everything about Henley screams future serial killer. Even his name evokes memories of Bundy and Hinckley. As the film opens, Henley’s pa pays him a quarter for each roadkill carcass he cleans off the mountain highway skirting round their usually vacant motel. Henley has devised ways to entice more small varmints to their death, hoping to earn enough money for a bus ticket to visit his disinterested mother. Of course, these killer instincts will steadily escalate over time.

William Colby is first outsider to get caught up in Henley’s schemes. He happens to have the misfortune of barreling into a deer grazing on Henley’s highway chum. With his car totaled, Colby will be staying for a while. Decidedly not the former CIA director, this Colby has a mysterious past of his own, which fascinates Henley for all the wrong reasons.

The Boy is a decidedly slow building thriller, but it really does build, with the tension slowly increasing second, by discernable second. This is only Macneill’s second full feature and his first as the sole helmer, but it is remarkably disciplined. He shows the sort of mastery of unitary mood Poe advocated for short story writers. Macneill never indulges in cheap gore just to placate genre fans, but The Boy is absolutely not a tease. When it gets where it is going, it is pretty darned jarring.

Young Jared Breeze is perfectly cast as Henley. A first blush, he looks like an innocent toe-headed scamp but when you peer into his eyes, you see the psychotic hellion. Unfortunately, the film’s midnight genre credentials mean David Morse will probably receive limited recognition for one of his best film performances as the tragically in-denial and self-loathing Mr. Henley. Rainn Wilson also does some career best work as the erratic Colby.

In fact, there will probably be a bit of an expectations disconnect for The Boy as a former SXSW midnight selection released under Chiller’s theatrical banner. It is an unusually accomplished work from Macneill and his cast that would appeal to fans of art house auteurs, like maybe Refn Winding and Gaspar Noe. Highly recommended for discerning horror and psychological thriller fans, The Boy opens todday (8/21) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on August 21st, 2015 at 10:33am.