Category: Trailers

The Glasnost Soundtrack: LFM Reviews Scorpions: Forever and a Day

By Joe Bendel. Frankly, the Scorpions were almost as skeptical as everyone else when they announced their “farewell” tour. Of course, with each extension, the question looked increasingly moot. Nevertheless, the tour finally ended, but Katja von Garnier was there to document their relentless string of stadium concerts in Scorpions: Forever and a Day, which is now available on DVD from MVD.

The Scorpions were the original road warriors, so all the current members are unsure how they will keep themselves once they retire from active touring. Right from the start, they granted themselves a loophole for special one-off gigs. They just wanted to avoid looking ridiculous by staying too long at the Headbangers’ Ball. After all, the band has recently joined the Rolling Stones in the exclusive ranks of rock band still active after their fiftieth anniversary.

Von Garnier also chronicles the creation story, growing pains, and international success of the band. Founding guitarist Rudolf Schenker has been the only constant since they formed in 1965, but for many fans, the Scorpions’ history really starts four years later when lead vocalist Klaus Meine joined. Even if you are not a metalhead, the two veteran band-members are surprisingly interesting and engaging to meet on screen. For instance, despite the decades of touring (and everything that implies) Meine remains happily married to his longtime wife (although the doc rather implies there is more to the story than they care to share).

In contrast, Schenker is sort of the bad genius guru of the band. He had the vision to drag the Scorpions to Russia in 1988 when the Communist government was still giving rock music the bureaucratic stink eye. They lost money on that initial show, but when they came back one year later, they found the seeds they had sown had sprouted a large popular following during the Glasnost thaw. Their Russian experiences inspired “Winds of Change,” which became the power ballad anthem of Glasnost and the Fall of the Berlin Wall (recorded by a German band, singing English lyrics, the band duly notes). Mikhail Gorbachev does not appear in many rock docs, but he turns up here (and he’s still a fan).

From "Scorpions: Forever and a Day."
From “Scorpions: Forever and a Day.”

You have to give any band credit when they hit the fifty year mark, no matter how many personnel changes they have had. Although following the tour is repetitive by its nature, von Garnier does her best to exploit drama when it arises. Will Meine get voice back in time for the concert at Paris’s Bercy Arena? No spoilers here.

In any event, Forever is a solidly entertaining, highly accessible rock documentary. For perspective, it is on par with The Other One: the Long Strange Trip of Bob Weir and considerably superior to Janis: Little Girl Blue. Highly recommended for Scorpions fans and worth checking if you are somewhat intrigued or baffled by the band’s longevity, Scorpions: Forever and a Day is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from MVD.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on December 18th, 2015 at 1:48pm.

LFM Reviews Son of Saul

By Joe Bendel. In National Socialist concentration camps, Jews who served as “Sonderkommando” were afforded modest privileges and allowed comparatively free movement within the confining walls. Yet, it was undeniably hellish duty. Charged with escorting prisoners into the gas chambers and cleaning up after the mass executions, their first order of business was often to dispatch their predecessors. The new Sonderkommando’s families frequently followed soon thereafter. Consequently, they had no illusions about their ultimate fate. It is rather understandable why the most significant uprising at Auschwitz-Birkenau was planned by the Sonderkommando. Saul Ausländer is part of the rebellion’s inner circle, but he will be distracted by an even more profound crisis in László Nemes’ Son of Saul, Hungary’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which opens this Friday at Film Forum.

Frankly, Son of Saul might be most effective if viewers are not fully briefed on what to expect. It is safe to confirm, this is indeed a Holocaust story, incorporating a very real event, executed with unusually personal immediacy. The resulting viewing experience is not merely bracing. It is sort of like being Tasered. However, judging from some colleagues’ reactions, it may well be that the more forewarned you are, the less potent Nemes’ approach will be, so proceed with caution.

It starts as just another day in the National Socialist death factory for Ausländer, until he sees a body that cracks his defensive shell. Like Ausländer, we see him only after his death. While not strictly adhering to Ausländer’s as-seen-through-his-eyes POV, Nemes largely limits his shots to what would easily be within his field of vision. As an experienced Sonderkommando, he is somewhat desensitized to the horrors that would have been horrific centerpieces of other Holocaust films. Instead, we get a sense of the kinetic maelstrom of death he must navigate.

To further emphasize its restrictive scope, Son of Saul was composed expressly for the pre-widescreen Academy aspect ratio. The audience is immediately aware just how much they are not seeing, necessarily feeling disoriented as a result. Nemes forces the audience to figure out Ausländer’s relationships to other Sonderkommando through the dramatic context of what follows. This is a remarkably physical film that is just as choreographed as any musical or martial arts extravaganza.

Evidently, Ausländer reluctantly agreed to help scrounge supplies for the revolt, because he understood how little he had to lose. However, when he thinks he recognizes the body in question, he starts recklessly improvising a scheme to prevent the requisite autopsy and find a Rabbi to say Kaddish. He will knowingly jeopardize the imminent uprising, but his mission is equally defiant in its way.

From "Son of Saul."
From “Son of Saul.”

For most of the cast, simply surviving the non-stop bedlam constitutes quite a performance. However, Géza Röhrig is quietly devastating as Ausländer. Essentially, he shows us the stirrings of a long dormant soul struggling to assert itself. It is a painfully honest, desperately lean performance that will shame this year’s histrionically indulgent award-seeking performances (we’re looking at you, Carol).

Son of Saul is not exactly immersive, but it gives the audience a visceral sense of the confusion and dehumanization necessary to make the gas chambers run. This is an exhausting film, but also a uniquely powerful one, unlike almost any other well-meaning holocaust narrative. Highly recommended, it opens this Friday (12/18) in New York at Film Forum.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on December 16th, 2015 at 7:02pm.

LFM Reviews Dreams Rewired

By Joe Bendel. If Guy Maddin set out to adapt a ten year-old Wired magazine article, the result would probably look a lot like this, but the resulting film would not be so smugly assured of its insightfulness. That must be the difference between the Canadian and Austrian temperaments. Martin Reinhart, Thomas Tode, and Manu Luksch suggest our current digital era is only one of many successive information revolutions that constantly recalibrated the speed of Twentieth Century life. They will illustrate their point through the collage of rarely seen but suitably ironic early cinema clips that constitutes Dreams Rewired, opening this Wednesday at Film Forum.

So perhaps the more things change, the more they stay the same—or rather maybe the only constant is change? One of those is the general gist of Rewired. The trio of co-directors plus their fourth co-screenwriter Mukul Patel somewhat convincingly suggest the magnitude of innovation wrought by the internet and wireless communication is not so very different than societal transformation brought about by the telegraph, telephone, radio (the original wireless), and forms of moving pictures.

They probably have a point there, but they never really take it to a deeper level. Instead, the film is really more about the cascading images of retro-futurism and technological anxiety culled from the films of Thomas Edison, Alice Guy, Dziga Vertov, Carl Dreyer, Rene Clair, and Louis Feuillade. Both Chaplin and Keaton make cameo appearances, but probably the most readily identifiable clips come from Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, which turned out not to reflect the future after all.

From "Dreams Rewired."
From “Dreams Rewired.”

Throughout Rewired, the audience waits for Reinhart, Tode, Luksch, and Patel to step up their analysis, but it stays at the level of “look at how impressed people were with their televisions and switch boards.” As a result, the real reason for watching the docu-essay is the wild imagery they have assembled. If you want to see Teutonic men in tights and space helmets, this is film you have been waiting for. A game Tilda Swinton also plays along, narrating the repetitive thesis and sometimes providing archly anachronistic contemporary dialogue for some of the scenes the filmmakers incorporate.

If you enjoy retro-futuristic space opera, there are amusing bits and pieces in Rewired, but you are probably better off revisiting episodes of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet or classic films like Metropolis and Destination Moon (neither of which suited the purposes of Reinhart, etc., etc.). It sounds like brainy fun, but it really plays like an internet supercut. Problematically lightweight, Dreams Rewired is bound to leave viewers wanting more (of something, anything) when it opens this Wednesday (12/16) in New York, at Film Forum.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on December 16th, 2015 at 7:02pm.

LFM Reviews The Magic Mountain @ The AFI’s 2015 EU Film Showcase

By Joe Bendel. Where could a mountaineering Polish dissident go to most effectively fight communism in the 1980s? Obviously Afghanistan. Of course, getting there was no easy feat and staying alive once he arrived was even trickier. However, the late Adam Jacek Winker was not easily dissuaded. Anca Damian tells his extraordinary story in the animated documentary The Magic Mountain, which screens as part of the AFI’s 2015 EU Film Showcase.

For Winker, opposing the spread of communism was a decidedly personal matter. His cousin and uncle were among those murdered by the Soviets at Katyn. He was able to get out of Poland while the getting was relatively good, but he also felt guilty about abandoning his homeland in a time of prolonged suffering. As a result, he was always looking for a way to take the fight back to the Soviets. While living in Paris, he was a bit of a gadfly, providing unwanted reality checks for the French communists’ Labor Day festivities, but he was truly called to Afghanistan.

Since Winker only had a French “refugee” passport, getting to Afghanistan, by way of Pakistan, was a complicated process. However, once there, Winker fell in with the mujahedeen relatively quickly. He had the extreme good fortune to join up with Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, the “Lion of Panjshir,” an ardent foe of communism, who later rejected the Taliban’s oppressive fundamentalism just as vigorously. Alas, Mountain also serves as an elegy to the assassinated Massoud, as well as his somewhat eccentric Polish friend and comrade.

From "The Magic Mountain."
From “The Magic Mountain.”

Indeed, some the most poignant moments of Mountain focus on Winker’s efforts to promote and then memorialize the fallen Afghan hero. Yet, with respects to her central figure, Damian never descends into blinkered hagiography. Winker’s fault are readily identified, making him the stuff of classical tragedy, but viewers will understand where his zeal came from, and admire him for harnessing it.

Mountain incorporates archival photos of Winker and Massoud into the distinctive and diverse work of its team of animators and artists, including Theodore Ushev, Tomek Ducki, Matei Focsa Neagoe, Dan Panaitescu, and Raluca Popa. Frankly, a few sequences are almost excessively stylized to the point of self-defeating abstraction, but other visuals are absolutely arresting. Regardless, the film is always powered along by its sweepingly dramatic narrative.

Winker really was a character—a heroic character. He was also a principled individualist, who did not let his experiences in Afghanistan blind him to the dangers of Islamist ideology in his final years. Basically, he stayed on the right side of history, every step of the way, making his life story quite fascinating and instructive. Very highly recommended for fans of animation and biographical documentaries, The Magic Mountain screens this Saturday (12/12) as part of the AFI’s EU Film Showcase.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on December 10th, 2015 at 1:00pm.

Old School Beat Down: LFM Reviews Close Range

By Joe Bendel. Think Mexican drug cartel violence ends at our super well-guarded border? Colt MacReady knows better. Fortunately, the AWOL commando with authority issues is a match for any narco-terrorist outfit, but the situation his family finds themselves in is more real than we would like to admit. Regardless, bad guys are in for a big hurting in Isaac Florentine’s lean and mean Close Range, which opens this Friday in select theaters.

MacReady’s widowed sister Angela Reynolds remarried the wrong sleazy drug smuggler. When he tried to skim a few bucks off his last payment, the cartel abducted his step-daughter Hailey. That would be MacReady’s niece Hailey. He might not be around much, but he still isn’t about to stand for that, so he rescues her in the slam-bang opening sequence.

Of course, the cartel is hot on their trial, but their corrupt tool, Sheriff Jasper Calloway slows down MacReady and his family until the out of sorts Garcia Cartel arrives. Despite the wreckage MacReady left in Mexico, old man Fernando Garcia assumes a handful of guys can handle MacReady while he holds Angela and Hailey hostage. Right, good luck with that plan.

CloseRangePosterClose Range is not exactly what you would call pretentious, but it delivers plenty of old school, hardnosed action. This is what Scott Adkins and Isaac Florentine do better than any other tandem working in film today—and in Close Range they just do it without a lot worrying about character development or other extraneous business. Frankly, Adkins’ glowering presence is all the character establishment we really need. Imagine how awesome the next Batman movie would have been if he had been cast instead of Ben Affleck. We are all still bitterly disappointed about that, since his widely reported screen test gave us so much false hope.

To be fair, the criminally underrated Nick Chinlund manages to dig out an effective character development arc for the cowardly Calloway. When he and Adkins’ MacReady have their final face-off, it is as serious as a heart attack. For what it’s worth, Caitlin Keats and Madison Lawlor deal with Florentine’s furious pace and constant hail of bullets gamely enough, even if these were not the roles they had in mind during their time at the Actor’s Studio or wherever they trained.

It really is a pleasure to watch an unfussy action film, in which the fights and shoot-outs are clearly framed and pristinely watchable. Adkins has the chops and Florentine knows how to show them off. Anyone who grew up with Cannon’s Chuck Norris, JCVD, and Michael Dudikoff movies will have a nostalgic good time with it (sort of in the tradition of Avenging Force). Recommended for genre fans, Close Range is now available on VOD and opens this Friday (12/11) at the Arena Cinema in Los Angeles.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on December 8th, 2015 at 8:32am.

LFM Reviews American Hero

By Joe Bendel. You’ll notice nobody is calling Melvin “the greatest,” or even relatively good. Frankly, on a lot of days the “hero” part is a bit of a stretch. Unlike Ralph Hinckley, he lacks a steady job, but he has plenty of vices. However, he has largely mastered his powers, but how he uses them is a constant source of frustration for his friends and family in screenwriter-director Nick Love’s American Hero, which opens this Friday in New York.

Melvin drinks, inhales drugs, sleeps around, and moves large objects with the power of his mind, such as it is. He is currently barred from seeing his son, pending a psych evaluation. This bothers Melvin, but not enough to make him clean up his act. That in turn bothers his wheelchair bound best friend Lucille—he’s a he, who suffered a spinal injury during the first Gulf War. A documentary crew is following Melvin, but it isn’t pretty. Since he is being filmed and all, maybe he will finally get his wake up call and resolve to put his telekinetic powers to use on behalf of Katrina-distressed New Orleans neighborhood. Or not.

AmericanHeroConsidering how much juvenile behavior it depicts, Hero is a remarkably sober and mature film. Acting like an Animal House reject just isn’t cute anymore for the people surrounding Melvin. Love is astute enough to understand that it is not funny. It’s sad. For a scruffy independent production, the special effects are also uncommonly polished and professional grade. The film also has a strong sense of place, capturing the look and rhythm of NOLA life in the outer wards.

Looking like a lifelong stranger to Schick and Gillette, Stephen Dorff is so charismatically disreputable, he maintains audience sympathy even at his most hedonistic nadir. He looks comfortable with the action sequences, but fully taps into Melvin’s pathos. Eddie Griffin is also dramatically less annoying as Melvin than his typical screen appearances. That is not to say he does not induce plenty of cringing, just not to his usual extent. Regardless, they forge some not bad buddy chemistry together.

Love happens to be British, but he has a fine eye and ear for local color. Years ago, the only way superhero movies could be credible was as small scale character studies, like Greatest American Hero or Hero at Large. American Hero feels like a refreshing return to that tradition. It is a nice little film that is affectionately recommended for superhero fans when it opens this Friday (12/11) at the Village East in New York and the Zeitgeist Arts Center in New Orleans.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on December 8th, 2015 at 8:32am.