Category: Trailers

LFM Reviews Double Happiness @ The 2015 Margaret Mead Film Festival

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.

From "Double Happiness."
From “Double Happiness.”

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.

LFM Reviews China Remix @ The 2015 Margaret Mead Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. There is no pathway to citizenship in China, but there are plenty of immigrants. For instance, Guangzhou is now known as the center of China’s West African expat population. While many work as traders, shipping clothes and consumer electronics back to their clients for a small commission, some enterprising African hip hop musicians have found success catering to this growing market. Yet, despite their superior hipness, they face the same legal barriers. Melissa Lefkowitz & Dorian Carli-Jones follow three such performers as they go about their lives and business in China Remix, which screens during the 2015 Margaret Mead Film Festival at the American Museum of Natural History.

Dibaocha, Flame Ramadan, and Ivan Manivoo have all found varying degrees of success in Guangzhou. The former two artists already have a number of releases to their credit. Dibaocha is particularly well-established, as both the godfather of the local hip hop scene and the father of two, with his Chinese wife, Cherrish (yes, with two r’s). Yet, Manivoo a student leader as well as a rapper and an all-purpose wheeler-dealer, probably has the brightest future. Yet, their music careers are all essentially off-the-books.

Clearly, Dibaocha has put down roots, but he still must go to great lengths to renew his visa. As a result, he is by far the most vocal in his criticism of Chinese immigration policies. Of course, anyone hoping the CP will loosen up is delusional, especially when their internal Hukou system of residency permits forbids native born rural Chinese from legally working in big cities.

From "China Remix."
From “China Remix.”

Indeed, if one thing comes shining through China Remix with crystal clarity it is the spectacular class stratifications and disparities of contemporary China. If you doubt it, take a gander at the Victoria’s Secret fashion show produced to celebrate the opening of a luxury condo high-rise in Guangzhou. Manivoo certainly seems to enjoy the gig when hired to rap as the models strut down the runway, but it constitutes conspicuous commercialism, even by Manhattan standards.

Since it clocks in just under thirty minutes, China Remix can hardly be exhaustive, but it dives into its subjects’ world with both feet. We get a sense of the energy of the Guangzhou hip hop and African music scenes, as well as the attitudes of the immigrant community. Lefkowitz & Carli-Jones keep the pace brisk and give viewers a good taste of the music in question, which the performers would probably appreciate. Well worth seeing, China Remix screens this Friday (10/23) with Double Happiness, as part of this year’s Margaret Mead Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on October 21st, 2015 at 10:56pm.

LFM Reviews Extraordinary Tales

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.

From "Extraordinary Tales."
From “Extraordinary 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.

LFM Reviews Grozny Blues @ ArtDocFest/Riga

By Joe Bendel. Taita Yunusova was released a mere nineteen hours after she was abducted. She would know better than most how fortunate she was. Yunusova is one of four middle-aged women independently documenting the horrors of the Chechen Wars and the subsequent human rights violations of Putin’s puppet, Ramzan Kadyrov. Although no longer held captive, you wouldn’t exactly say Yunusova and her colleagues are “safe.” However, by selecting Nicola Bellucci’s Grozny Blues, in which they prominently appear, for their fifteen-film documentary shortlist, the European Film Academy will help spread awareness of the activists and the constant danger they face. Fittingly, Grozny Blues screens this coming Wednesday at the Riga International Film Festival, as one of the ArtDocFest selections programmer Vitaly Mansky doubted he could present in Moscow under the current regime.

Yunusova, Zargan Makhadzhieva, Tais Titieva, and the exiled Zainap Gaishaeva do not look like independent filmmakers, but they document the devastation of their country and the oral history of grieving family members, because someone has to do it. In many ways, they are living in a hostile environment. Like a lord currying favor with his emperor, Kadyrov demands Chechens kowtow to the despised Putin. Increasingly, he uses stringent Islamification policies to maintain control, even while Putin uses the specter of Islamic terror to justify his harsh pacification campaigns. Chechnya is a man’s world, affording little rights to the four citizen archivists, but it is an old man’s world, since most of the younger generations were wiped out in the Chechen Wars.

Frankly, Bellucci’s approach is less authoritative than that of his subjects. Instead of facts and figures, he prefers to give viewers an impressionistic sense of life in Grozny and the surrounding provinces. It was probably quite picturesque once, but the many bombed out buildings and the massive public portraits of Kadyrov and Putin are an ever-present blight on the country.

GroznyBluesWe also get to meet the Chechen Archive’s neighbor, the Blues Brothers Café. Arguably, the proprietor is just as idealistic and even more impractical than Yunusova and company. After all, he is trying to run a legit, no heavy metal or grunge, blues club in Grozny. Of course, the system is stacked against him too. He has discovered a promising young talent, but as a woman, she cannot perform in his club after five o’clock.

You might say Bellucci’s style is observational and maybe even a little roundabout, but he clearly understands what he is seeing. When you listen to the women explain their trials and tribulations, including a shotgun marriage to avoid legal problems, it exposes Putin’s rhetoric as the propaganda it is. There is definitely terrorism going on, but most of it is conducted by Kayrov’s militias. Likewise, since the dramatic Grozny-City Towers fire seen briefly in the film was attributed to safety violations, it probably can also be traced back to the notoriously corrupt regime.

Instead of a formal indictment, Grozny Blues is like a mastercut of small, telling moments all spliced together. By going micro, we see just how systemically dysfunctional the Chechen Republic has become. As its subjects become more widely known internationally, they will probably be less likely disappear in the dark of night. Therefore, the mesmerizing and alarming Grozny Blues is recommended with considerable urgency when it screens this Wednesday (10/21) during ArtDocFest/Riga.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on October 21st, 2015 at 10:54pm.

LFM Reviews When Bette Met Mae @ The 2015 NewFest

By Joe Bendel. Mae West practically single-handedly saved Paramount from bankruptcy, while Bette Davis was the first actress to bring a little glamour to the hardboiled Warner Brothers studio. Yet, despite their mutual admiration, it took decades for the two movie stars to finally meet. Optometrist and volunteer bartender Wes Wheadon was a fly on the wall when they did and he has the standard audio cassette recording to prove it. With the help of lip-synching actors, he recreates the lively early 1970s dinner party in the hybrid documentary When Bette Met Mae, which screens during the 2015 NewFest.

Davis had four husbands and West never had a shortage of men, but both became gay icons, in part through drag show impersonations. It was a phenomenon they discussed on that night in 1973, so WBMM is not so out of place at NewFest. Sadly, the movie business had largely forgotten them at this point, but Davis still worked regularly in television, resenting nearly every minute of it. Having invested wisely in real estate, West did not need to work at all. Still, neither was the type to sit about idle.

Despite its obvious artificiality and the disorienting distance between the on-screen figures and their voices, it is rather lovely to hear the real life Davis and West again, in any context. The former was especially her tart-tongued self, venting her spleen against agents, producers, and former SAG president Ronald Reagan. In retrospect, most historians give Reagan credit for standing up to the moguls, but clearly anything less than a May Day storming of the studio barricades would not impress Ms. Davis.

Wheadon, who had already been pulled into Bette Davis’s orbit through mutual friends at the dinner party, serves as an easy-going and informative host. He augments the gossipy conversation with some intriguing background and context on the often overlooked later years of the two stars’ lives. It is particularly amusing to hear New York publicist Gary Springer (whom those of us who cover film and theater know and respect quite well) speak of an evening at Town Hall his father produced. Conceived as a sort of 92Y-style Q&A, it became a command appearance for the royal Davis to receive her adoring fans (who were apparently 99% gay men). Nevertheless, since the breezy forty five minute dish session constitutes the core of the film, Wheadon can barely stretch it past sixty minutes.

From "When Bette Met Mae."
From “When Bette Met Mae.”

Karen Teliha and Victoria Mills are both the respective spitting images of Davis and West, but Teliha also shows a command of the former’s instantly recognizable mannerisms. She seems comfortable in Davis’s skin, whereas Mills does not. However, the night was largely Ms. Davis’s show, so we can just watch and listen to her do her thing.

The graphics and Jack Anderson’s cinematography have a retro vibe that look like they might have been produced in 1973, along with the muffled audio. Yet, there is something appealing about its throwback grunginess. It is also a NewFest selection that could draw a lot of straight fans, because Mae West was Mae West and Bette Davis was smoking hot in The Letter and The Man Who Came to Dinner. Recommended for fans of Golden Age Hollywood, When Bette Met Mae screens Thursday afternoon (10/22) with the short film, Who Stole the Ruby Slippers, during this year’s NewFest.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 21st, 2015 at 10:54pm.

LFM Reviews The Diabolical

By Joe Bendel. Madison is a conscientious mother, but since the death of her emotionally disturbed husband, she has been saddled with a difficult mortgage and a problem child. Unfortunately, she cannot sell her son Jacob, because that would be wrong, or her house, because it is haunted. The family is stuck between a rock and a supernatural place in Alistair Legrand’s The Diabolical, which opens this Friday in select theaters.

By now, Madison, Jacob, and his younger sister Haley fully accept they are living in a haunted house. They have simply seen too much, too frequently, to remain in denial. Madison has brought in paranormal researchers, but they have all beat hasty retreats. So who’s she gonna call? Maybe Nikolai, Jacob’s cool science teacher, who she has been seeing on the sly.

Unfortunately, when it rains for Madison, it pours. Just as Jacob was finishing his mandated counseling sessions for his last “incident,” he launches into another fight at school. Ostensibly, she seems to catch a break when her mortgage company offers to buy back her house at favorable terms as part of a dodgy development scheme. However, an unseen force refuses to let Jacob and Haley leave the property, attacking their nervous systems as soon as they advance past the front porch.

DiabolicalActually, things are not what they seem in Diabolical, but it would be telling to explain how so. Technically, we have seen all the elements Legrand eventually reveals in some form or another in any number of previous films, but he gives them all a deeply sinister twist, while telegraphing absolutely nothing. His execution is unusually tense and creepy. With co-writer Luke Harvis, Legrand taps into the current mortgage-based economic anxieties, without overplaying the topicality card. Viewers just get a visceral sense Madison is physically and emotionally trapped in that house.

Despite still looking like a supermodel, Ali Larter is quite compelling as Madison. Frankly, her work as the anxiety and guilt-ridden mother compares favorably with Essie Davis in the over-hyped Babadook. (The Diabolical addresses similar themes, but does a better job taking care of the genre business.) Arjun Gupta’s work as Nikolai is also notable for its subtlety and intelligence, especially when grading on a horror movie curve.

This is turning out to be a very strong season for horror films—and The Diabolical definitely reinforces and advances that trend. Larter and Gupta show actors can still ply their craft in genre films, while Legrand maintains a distinctively uncanny atmosphere. Recommended with enthusiasm for horror fans, The Diabolical opens today (10/16) in Los Angeles at the Arena Cinema and also releases on iTunes.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on October 16th, 2015 at 1:59pm.