Category: Watch Movies!

By Joe Bendel. The sleazy Byun Ho-sung is not exactly Rumpole, but the lack of a corpse is the sort of loose end he masterfully exploits. However, at times it is unclear whether his client really wants to beat the rap. A rather complicated case unfolds both inside and outside the courtroom in Heo Jong-ho’s The Advocate: a Missing Body, which opens this Friday in New Jersey.

After winning a spectacular product liability victory for a big pharma company, Byun is personally requested by the charismatic CEO Moon Ji-hoon for an apparently hopeless charity case. His former driver Kim Man-suk is accused of killing the woman he was allegedly stalking. He was arrested in the dead woman’s apartment with blood on his shirt and his prints on the supposed murder weapon. There was a lethal amount of blood splattered, but the body is absent.

Yet, just as Byun starts to make hay over other crime scene irregularities, Kim up and confesses in open court. Obviously, Byun smells a fix. With the assistance of his long suffering office manager, Mr. Park, Byun starts to follow the trail of clues back to Moon. Unfortunately, the shady company will push back hard.

Frankly, it is sort of a shame The Advocate eventually evolves into a conspiratorial legal-medical thriller, because it starts out as a refreshingly intriguing old fashioned murder mystery. Still, even though it is ostensibly a breezy comedy-thriller, Heo is not afraid to go dark for an extended period of time, which is cool. In fact, there is no way you can come out of the film with a higher regard for lawyers. Unfortunately, the dastardly Moon and his corporate crimes are predictably shopworn elements by now.

Nevertheless, the high stakes intrigue offers a perfect showcase for the hardnosed and rubber-faced Lee Sun-kyun. Arguably, The Advocate could be considered the “Order” follow-up to the “Law” of his breakout hit A Hard Day. He takes a similar licking here and keeps on grimacing. A chameleon-like Kim Go-eun stands her ground against him as the principled prosecutor Jin Sun-mi, who is still hung up on Byun, her former senior at school. Jang Hyun-sung’s Moon is an adequate but not inspired villain. However, Hong Song-duk really anchors the film as the mysterious and troubled accused.

There are enough clever twists and turns unleashed at regular intervals to maintain the suspense and a good sense of fun. Although it is not as super-charged or wickedly sly as A Hard Day, The Advocate is slick and professional, just like the sort of mouthpiece you would want to litigate on your behalf. Entertaining in a swaggering with attitude kind of way, The Advocate: a Missing Body is recommended for thriller fans when it opens this Friday (10/23) at the Edgewater Multiplex Cinemas in New Jersey.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 23rd, 2015 at 11:31pm.

By Joe Bendel. It is the post-apocalyptic story of a boy and his drone. A few years ago, drones were a cause for concern among civil liberties activists, but they have apparently moved to more media-friendly causes. As a result, the field has been cleared for drone enthusiasts to rehabilitate the image of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Thanks to the active collaboration of the drone community, UAVs will have their post-apocalyptic day in Rotor DR1, which just released on DVD from Cinema Libre.

In the future, apes will evolve from men, but before that, a catastrophic virus will wipe out most of the human population. It is a bleak world, where drones have more to fear from humans than vice versa. That is because the rag tag survivors covet the drones’ power source. Those uber-batteries are the only real currency left. Kitch (once known as Mitchell Scott, Jr.) survives by harvesting power cores and selling them to Hashtag, a dodgy intermediary working for 4C, who runs the only remotely organized outfit in the area.

One fateful day, Kitch captures a drone unlike any he has seen before. That would be DR1, a next generation prototype. Out of curiosity, Kitch starts to patch it up, leading to the stunning discover that it just might hold clues to the whereabouts of Kitch’s missing and presumed dead father, Dr. Mitchell Scott. The senior Kitch was the CEO of Medix, a company that specialized in medical delivery drones and infectious disease drones. Rightly or wrongly, many survivors blame Dr. Scott for the lousy state of the world. However, Kitch is determined to track down his old man, with the help of DR1 and 4C’s rebellious niece, Maya.

Although originally produced as a web-series, DR1 hangs together quite cogently as a feature. Apparently, the collective judgement of the drone community is usually pretty sound. There are a few plot holes big enough to drive a tractor-trailer through, but the aerial shots of the drones flying are impressive (frankly, the drone race is way cooler than Phantom Menace’s pod race) and the post-industrial, post-apocalyptic locales (Northeastern Ohio) truly look like a scarred wasteland. However, it seems the drone community likes its portentous narration, because there sure is a lot of it.

Even though he was stuck with excessive voiceover work, Christian Kapper’s turn as Kitch is impressively complex and understated. Tom E. Nicholson also makes a strong impression as 4C—sort of like a mature, less shticky Kevin Smith, while David Windestål scores points with his “guest appearance” as the drone scientist turned drone hunter. However, it should be noted the quartet of credited screenwriters never try to invest DR1 with a personality (a la Number 5 in Short Circuit). The implications of that are admirably realistic, but not particularly cinematic.

Regardless, it is nice to see a pro-science science fiction movie, especially one that falls within the post-apocalyptic subgenre. This might be the first film of the decade that does not demonize pharmaceutical companies, which certainly distinguishes it from the field. In many ways, it is an intriguing speculation on the future of UAV and AI technology. Recommended for fans of apocalyptic science fiction and the drone pilot reading over your shoulder, Rotor DR1 is now available on DVD and Blu-ray, from Cinema Libre.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on October 23rd, 2015 at 11:31pm.

By Joe Bendel. What does China want? Pretty much the whole world. They tried copying the best parts in Beijing World Park, as seen in Jia Zhangke’s The World, but the results are a little kitschy. However, they were much more ambitious and thorough when secretly replicating the Austrian lakefront village Hallstatt, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Both Chinese and Austrian observers wrestle with the cultural significance of the Guangdong Hallstatt in Ella Raidel’s Double Happiness, which screens during the 2015 Margaret Mead Film Festival at the American Museum of Natural History.

When Hallstatt hotelier Monika Wenger discovered her guest was a Chinese architect working to copy her picturesque inn and the rest of the city’s picture-postcard market square, she was understandably put out. After all tourism is her business. She has since resigned herself to the situation, because what choice does she have? Hallstatt’s mayor chose to embrace the project, hoping it would generate more Chinese tourist trade, but that seems optimistic. Provocatively, one Beijing talk show host finds ironic logic in the project, arguing since China has destroyed its past, it must now copy other countries’ historical landmarks.

Yet, Hallstatt, China is just a jumping off point for a larger consideration of urban planning—a noble pursuit Shenzhen planner Wu Wenyuan finds nearly impossible because of the Special Economic Zone’s explosive growth. Frankly, it is perfect example of the folly of centralized planning. By the time her department’s Soviet-style long-range plans are officially approved (a process that apparently takes years, not months), the population projections prove to be hopelessly inadequate.

Frustratingly, there are questions beyond the obvious issues of cultural appropriation Happiness largely ignores, such as the environmental impact of the construction process. The fact that the project was developed by the mining company China Minmetals might not inspire tremendous confidence on that score, yet the systemic environmental degradation of China is only tangentially referenced. Also, the implications of copying the iconic architecture of the Evangelical Church of Hallstatt without respect to its sacred function is problematic, but churchy kind of stuff does not seem to interest Raidel.

Still, there is an eccentric charm to the film’s impressionistic interludes, featuring actress Yaki Cang as our audience surrogate. Raidel also has a remarkable sense of composition, capturing some incredible images of Hallstatt in Austria and China. In some ways, Happiness has a greater kinship with Jia’s 24 City, because of its concern for hyper development and hybrid structure. It has its flaws, but Double Happiness also delivers some intriguing visuals and commentary. It is recommended on balance, especially since it screens with the entertaining short doc China Remix this Friday (10/23), as part of the AMNH’s Margaret Mead Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on October 21st, 2015 10:57pm.

By Joe Bendel. Finally, the two greatest Draculas are together in one film. It is a posthumous collaboration between Bela Lugosi and Sir Christopher Lee, but that is all the more fitting. Many of the greatest voices in horror cinema bring to life five classic Edgar Allan Poe stories in Raúl García’s Extraordinary Tales, which opens this Friday in New York.

Between 2004 and 2014, former Disney animator García unleashed his inner fanboy producing a series of Poe short films that paid tribute to the dark bard of Baltimore, as well as other icons of classic horror cinema and graphic art. They are now finally collected and connected by a framing device naturally set in a gothic cemetery. Poe’s spirit now resides in a raven, but an anthropomorphized Lady of Death tries to convince the writer to accept his final resting, by using his own stories as grim object lessons.

The figures of García’s interstitials and the first tale, The Fall of the House of Usher, are a bit blocky, but the backgrounds are wonderfully atmospheric. Usher is also stratospherically elevated by the late, great Sir Christopher’s drippingly macabre narration. He sounds as sonorously sinister as ever, which make Usher a delight.

However, for classic monster fans, nothing can top García’s The Tell Tale Heart, which was Oscar short-listed as an animated short in 2005. Using a non-professional proof-of-concept recording taped by Lugosi’s agent in the late 1940s when he was trying to package a Poe-themed stage show, García truly taps into the psychologically perverse essence of the story. Rather than phoning it in, Lugosi fully draws out all the twisted drama. With all its hisses and pops, it rather appropriately sounds like some sort of ghostly spirit broadcast. Visually, García’s stark black & white animation, conceived as an homage to Argentine comic artist Alberto Breccia, is also absolutely arresting.

Julian Sands does not exactly have the same stature, but the Warlock and Arachnophobia actor is certainly no stranger to a horror movie set. His narration for The Fact in the Case of M. Valdemar is right on the money, yet he is completely up-staged by García’s visuals. In this case, he renders the story in a style that evokes the pulpy look of EC Comics. It is definitely cool looking, but the master touch is the mesmerist narrator, who bears a surely not coincidental resemblance to Vincent Price.

Frankly, Guillermo del Toro is not a natural born voice-over artist, but the Mexican auteur sounds duly authentic narrating arguably the most faithful English language adaptation of Spanish Inquisition-set The Pit and the Pendulum to date. In fact, the entire film remains remarkably true to Poe’s source material. The expressionism of Pit also makes it one of García’s most sophisticated looking and psychologically engaging tales.

With The Masque of Red Death, Extraordinary ends on a mostly wordless high point. Roger Corman himself, the self-made mogul who helmed all the great Poe adaptations starring Price, has only one line of dialogue as Prince Prospero, but it is worth the wait. Instead of chatter, García builds tension and foreboding by showing the silent figure of death glide through the Prince’s hedonistic bacchanal.

García has truly assembled a horror connoisseur’s dream team by incorporating the work of Poe, Lugosi, Lee, Corman, del Toro, and sort of Price and Breccia into one enormously satisfying film. Even though it is distributed by GKIDS, Extraordinary Tales might be too intense for youngsters, but kids old enough to stay up for Corman classics on the weekends should enjoy its spookiness. García maintains an impressively eerie mood, but older fans might just get caught up in nostalgia for our old midnight movie idols. Either way, it is thoroughly entertaining film. Highly recommended for horror and animation fans, Extraordinary Tales opens this Friday (10/23) in New York, at the IFC Center.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on October 21st, 2015 at 10:55pm.