Category: Trailers

LFM Reviews East Side Sushi

By Joe Bendel. It’s tough working a fruit cart in Oakland. Juana would know. She is about to be held-up and roughed-up by the thugs targeting cart workers. Frankly, it is hard to make a go of anything in the economically distressed city, but its sushi restaurants seem to be uncharacteristically healthy. Juana will still have to create her own opportunities to become a sushi chef in Anthony Lucero’s East Side Sushi, which opens today in Los Angeles.

Even before the robbery, Juana wanted a better way of life. She thinks she might have found it in one of the Japanese restaurants owned by Mr. Yoshida. You could say he is reasonably progressive in that all kitchen employees receive health benefits, but he has very definite ideas about who can prepare sushi up front. They have to be male and Asian, preferably Japanese, or at least trained in Japan. She is neither, but as she learns from Aki, the talented but timid sushi chef, she starts to harbor ambitions. She also makes her new found passion for sushi relatively palatable for her daughter and father by incorporating poblanos and jalapenos. Maybe she’s onto something there.

East Side is a hard film to take critical stock of, because it takes absolutely no risks, but there is no denying its earnestness and the charisma of its principles. If enough people see it, East Side could be a word of mouth smash, precisely because its predictable arc is like comfort food. Still, there are moments that stay with you. Lead Diana Elizabeth Torres truly brings tears to viewers’ eyes when she desperately declares “I deserve an opportunity.” You can just hear centuries of the American dream welling up under her.

Likewise, Yutaka Takeuchi is terrifically understated as Aki. Roji Oyama also brings unexpected nuance to Mr. Yoshida. However, old Pops is an annoying combination of bluster and soft cultural prejudice. In general, the restaurant ensemble is much better than the home ensemble, but Torres is terrific working with both.

Maybe the big sushi roll-off does not completely follow the standard issue template, but it does not deviate too far. Yet, there is no denying the film takes you to a satisfying place. All kinds of nice, East Side Sushi is recommended for people who do not go to the movies very often and want to see something a lot like the last thing they really enjoyed when it opens tomorrow (9/18) in Los Angeles at the NoHo 7.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on September 18th, 2015 at 2:32pm.

LFM Reviews Montana

By Joe Bendel. It’s good for a lad to aspire to a career. Young Montana thought he was apprenticing to be a drug dealer, but when his bosses double-cross him, the adolescent learns the assassin’s trade instead. Revenge will be had by mentor and protégé alike in Mo Ali’s Montana, which opens this Friday in limited release.

Dimitrije was a Serbian assassin during the Balkan Wars, but there were things even he wouldn’t do. He tried to escape with his wife and son, but they were captured by an especially vicious militia leader. Dimitrije escaped, but not before his family was killed by the man now known as the London drug kingpin Lazarus. Bent on revenge, Dimitrije has tracked Lazarus’s operations, taking out pawns at strategic moments. Thus far he has spared Montana.

Montana wants to rise through the ranks of the gang, like the henchmen he looks up to. He no longer attends school, but he still has one straight friend, Jess, a prospective girlfriend. Yet, unbeknownst to him, it was Lazarus’s men who killed his father. Therefore, they consider it only a matter of time before they have to rub him out as well. That day will come sooner rather than later. Needless to say, he survives long enough to hook up with Dimitrije, who will become his personal Miyagi for assassination and urban warfare.

From "Montana."

So maybe Montana is not blazingly original, following in the tradition of Leon, the Professional and scores of deadly apprentice films, but the execution is impressively crisp. There are some nifty action sequences and the payback is duly cathartic. It might be a B-movie, but Lars Mikkelsen deserves credit for bringing his A-game. As Dimitrije, he gives the film tragic gravitas, as well as borderline psychotic tendencies. Young McKell David also shows tremendous promise in the title role. Even when Montana is acting out, he is relatively easy to take. He also develops some appealing ambiguous chemistry Sinead Michael’s Jess.

Looking distinctly Mem Ferba-ish, Darrell D’Silva appropriately chews all kinds of scenery as Lazarus. However, British TV star Ashley Walters and Game of Thrones fan favorite Michelle Fairley are strangely underutilized as Lazarus’s duplicitous lieutenant and the DCI incredibly oblivious of her massively corrupt Detective Constables.

Granted, Ali and screenwriters Jeremy Sheldon and Peter Lowe are following an established formula, but they clearly recognize the elements that make it work. Thanks to an engaged cast it clicks together quite competently and satisfyingly. Recommended for fans of gritty, action driven revenge dramas, Montana opens this Friday (9/18) in Los Angeles, at the Arena Cinema.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on September 18th, 2015 at 2:31pm.

LFM Reviews Horizon @ The 2015 Toronto International Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Georg Guðni Hauksson did something rather remarkable. The Icelandic artistic came up with an original approach to traditional landscape painting. His work was internationally hailed, but he tragically died at the peak of his productivity. Fridrik Thór Fridriksson & co-director Bergur Bernburg survey Guðni’s work and try to evoke its spirit in Horizon, which screens during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

In some ways, Guðni’s timing was perfect. He attended Icelandic art school in the 1980s, at a time when that was suddenly the thing to do. He duly experimented with loud, fast, punk-inspired styles, but it was his secret landscape work that would eventually make his reputation.

Although perfectly representational, his landscapes look otherworldly and almost avant-garde. Rather than outlining shapes and then filling in colors, Guðni’s laborious method involved the meticulous layering of horizontal lines, one atop another, sort of like a weaver’s loom. The resulting work was often stark, but undeniably Nordic. There are no online records of his art being used on ECM record jackets, but his work would certainly be compatible with Manfred Eicher’s aesthetic.

Fridriksson & Bernburg incorporate long excerpts from archival interviews with Guðni, but they are not as revealing as one might hope. However, they get some helpful context from Icelandic art critics and Guðni’s contemporaries, as well as actor Viggo Mortensen, who published a book with Guðni at his specialty imprint, Percival Press. They also punctuate the talking heads and close-ups of paintings with impressionistic scenes of the Icelandic fields and valleys that so inspired him.

Guðni’s paintings are quite striking once you acclimate yourself to his distinctive look and the nature scenes are perfectly pleasant, but what really makes the film is the haunting minimalist soundtrack composed by Sigur Rós sideman Kjartan Hólm. Frankly, it really sounds like something that could be released on ECM, which is high praise indeed.

Horizon is an earnest and thorough examination of Guðni’s oeuvre that should give any open-minded viewer a keen appreciation of vision. However, even with Mortensen’s participation and support, it is hard to envision it getting a wide American distribution, so if you are in Toronto and are intrigued to any extent, you should see it now. Recommended for contemporary art connoisseurs, Horizon screens again tomorrow (9/15) and Saturday (9/19) as part of this year’s TIFF.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on September 15th, 2015 at 10:31pm.

LFM Reviews Born to Dance @ The 2015 Toronto International Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. It is not just kiwis and hobbits in New Zealand. They also have hip hop. It speaks to working class Maori kids like Tu and his friends, who are looking for their place in society. They have all kinds of moves, but the national hip hop dance competition has long been dominated by Kane’s well-funded, widely-sponsored K-Crew. A grudge match is brewing between them in Tammy Davis’s Born to Dance, which screens during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

If Tu does not figure his post-high school life out fast, his Sergeant father will enlist him in the army. He thinks he sees his opportunity when K-Crew, the reigning dance champions, invite him to audition. This is no mere cattle call. For weeks, Tu will travel to Auckland to participate in the long term process-of-elimination tryout. Naturally, he keeps it secret from his own crew, led by his lifelong platonic pal, Vonnie. Only his semi-delinquent buddy Benjy knows the truth.

Of course, Tu has the right stuff, but all the special attention he gets from Kane’s girlfriend Sasha could be a problem. Frankly, she knows he is pretty scummy, but her snobby, absentee parents only let her stay in New Zealand to dance as she wishes as long as she is still part of a winning squad. She therefore needs Kane.

BTD features a ridiculously charismatic cast in a total Arthur Murray dance-by-numbers screenplay. It is a lead pipe cinch Tu and Kane will eventually face each other. Yet, that hardly matters as long as Davis and choreographer Parris Goebel keeps the energy cranked up. There are some cool dance sequences distributed throughout BTD, but nothing tops the wildly inventive moves Tu’s crew uncorks during the first round of the nationals. On the other hand, it is hard to take K-Crew seriously, because most of their routines bring to mind Mike Myers doing Dieter on Sprockets.

From "Born to Dance."

Former So You Think You Can Dance contestant Kherington Payne shows more presence than you would expect from Sasha. In contrast, Tia-Taharoa Maipi is likably enough, but a bit of a dramatic lightweight as Tu. However, Stan Walker is the real breakout discovery, demonstrating considerable range and all kinds of dance floor cred as the sensitive bad boy Benjy.

Yes, there are some real moments, but Goebels’ choreography is still not as distinctive as Yako Miyamoto’s taiko drumming and dancing that so distinguished Make Your Move. Nevertheless, BTD has more fire and grit than an army of Step Up clones. The fact that Tu, Benjy, and Vonnie are Maori is very important to the narrative, but it is not belabored to the point of distraction. This is a dance film not a social issue drama. In fact, it is a rather enjoyable one, in an underdog-Horatio Alger-kids from Fame kind of way. Recommended for dance movie fans, Born to Dance screens again this Friday (9/18) as part of this year’s TIFF.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on September 15th, 2015 10:31pm.

LFM Reviews A Heavy Heart @ The 2015 Toronto International Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. New Yorkers have a special awareness of the cruel realities of ALS, because of Lou Gehrig. For example, in pre-bucket-challenge days, the New York ALS chapter launched successful give-$4 drives, in honor of his retired number. Sadly, many champion boxers have also succumbed to the neurological disorder. Herbert Stamm was a serious contender during the dark days of the GDR, but he never raised a belt over his head. He took as many blows as any champ, but his massively bad karma will make matters even worse. Stamm faces a slow but inevitable final count in Thomas Stuber’s A Heavy Heart which screens during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

Stamm has always relied on his brawn. Even in his less than golden years, he scrapes by gigging as loan collector and a bouncer. His only hope for the future is Eddy, the talented young fighter he trains. He even feels a bit like a surrogate father to the scrappy up-and-comer. Stamm has an actual genetically-verifiable daughter, but they have not had a relationship for years. He did not necessarily intend to abscond from Sandra’s life. Those prisons tattoos did not happen spontaneously, after all. Stamm was just too embarrassed or too self-absorbed to reconnect. He will soon regret that quite bitterly.

It starts with a simple slip in the shower and a bit of muscle cramping, but it is not long  before he gets the grimly fatal diagnosis. Suddenly, he cannot afford to push away the emotionally needy Marlene, whom he had been transparently using for drunken one night stands. He also dearly wishes to reconcile with Sandra, but her resentment runs deep. Soon, Stamm will only find comradery and respect from his old tattoo artist buddy, but their carousing becomes rather poignant.

So yeah, good times at the movies. Regardless, if you want to see a master class in precisely controlled screen acting, Peter Kurth’s lead performance delivers with quiet power. Kurth, who was rather charming as the down-to-earth but utterly befuddled title character in Schmitke, put considerable weight on his physical frame and his psyche. You can see both slowly disintegrate over the course of the film. It is excellent work that never gets too showy or Streepish. It is Kurth’s film, nearly to the exclusion of all others, but Edin Hasanovic and Udo Kroschwald add real grit and character as Eddy and Bodo the loan shark, respectively.

Stuber occasionally overindulges in unsubtle manipulations, but the gravitas of Kurth’s performance helps muscle the film through such sequences. It is an unusually unsentimental star turn in a film that compulsively discourages false hope. Recommended as a fine vehicle for an actor’s actor, A Heavy Heart screens again today (9/14) and Friday (9/18), as part of this year’s TIFF.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on September 15th, 2015 at 10:30pm.

LFM Reviews The Man Who Saved the World

By Joe Bendel. We joked about shoddy Soviet technology, but it was no laughing matter to Col. Stanislav Petrov. One night while commanding a Soviet early warning station, the system erroneously reported the launch of five American nuclear missiles. In contradiction of standing policy, Petrov insisted on visual verification before proceeding with his own launch. Danish filmmaker Peter Anthony follows the older and crotchetier Petrov as he starts to receive his global accolades and dramatizes that 1983 Cold War night in The Man Who Saved the World, which opens this Friday in New York.

It is rather eerie how history repeats itself. On the night in question, Petrov’s colleagues were still brazenly justifying the accidental shooting down of KAL flight 007, even though it was an obvious mistake and an international PR disaster. Years later, Russian backed Ukrainian separatists similarly bragged about shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, before realizing their stupidity. In 1983, the incident further heightened the tension for Petrov’s colleagues in the Soviet Air Defense, priming them to expect western retaliation. That is exactly what they assumed was happening, but Petrov was not so sure.

Flashing forward from the dramatic recreations, we see the Petrov of today is rancorous and unsociable. Even though he was profoundly right, the 1983 incident did not lead to his promotion, but rather the contrary. Frankly, he never really had much affinity for the military, but when his wife finally succumbed to her long term illness (perhaps not receiving the fullest possible medical treatment, as the film maybe sort of implies), Petrov became an angry, bitter man. He will be quite the handful for Galina Kalinina, who agrees with some trepidation to serve as Petrov’s translator during his NGO-sponsored tour of America.

Probably nobody ever saved so many by doing so much or so little, depending on how you look at it. Russian actor Sergey Shnyryov viscerally conveys the extreme stress Petrov withstood during the longest twenty minutes of his life. However, the real life Petrov’s oracle of doom act gets a little tiresome. Yes, the 1983 near launch is deeply scary, but it was precipitated by Russian systems failures. However, his warnings of nuclear Armageddon certainly argue against welcoming further nations into the nuclear club, especially those governed by religious extremists with vast fossil fuel deposits and a history of supporting terrorism. Seriously, what rational person would want to see a country like that go nuclear?

Petrov is also a Kevin Costner fan, who conducts himself like a worthy ambassador when Petrov and Kalinina visit him on set. The Colonel also met De Niro, but Mr. Tribeca is predictably monosyllabic in his cameo. However, nobody is more awkward than the desperate-to-be-recognized Matt Damon, whom Petrov does not know from Adam.

The film compellingly recreates the slightly Strangelovian 1983 Soviet war room and Petrov scores some convincing points. Unfortunately, Anthony refused to ask the swords-into-ploughshares Colonel some blindingly obvious questions about Russian military interference in Ukraine and Georgia, or he refused to answer. Either way, the absence of such discussion is embarrassingly conspicuous, to such a point that it actually takes a toll on the film’s credibility. As a result, it only really holds up when directly covering the fateful night of 1983. Feeling inconsistent and incomplete, The Man Who Saved the World truly inspires mixed emotions when it opens this Friday (9/18) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on September 15th, 2015 at 10:30pm.