LFM: Libertas Film Magazine – Page 20 – LFM: The Voice of Freedom in Movies & Pop Culture

LFM Reviews How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) @ The 2015 Hawaii International Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Thailand is one of the most tolerant Southeast Asian nations of same-sex relationships. They also have a long tradition of transgender acceptance, although redlight district stereotypes remain an issue. In 2005, the government lifted the ban on LGBT soldiers in the military. That sounds progressive, but Ek would have preferred the old, unenlightened system. As the primary support of his bratty younger brother, he cannot afford the honor of conscription. Nor can he bribe his way out, like his well-heeled boyfriend. Corruption rather than discrimination is the driving issue of Texas-born Josh Kim’s How to Win at Checkers (Every Time), Thailand’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which screens during the 2015 Hawaii International Film Festival.

The checkers-playing Ek and Oat were orphaned by their father’s untimely death, but they have each other. They also have a place to stay with their Aunt and her mischievous daughter Kwan, but she depends on Ek to cover the boys’ expenses. He is in a committed long-term relationship with his former classmate Jai, but if you think that is going to last, you haven’t seen very many social issue dramas. We can tell from the confusing framing device, something tragic will befall Ek, but an embittered Oat will survive and thrive.

The impending draft lottery looks like the destabilizing event. The stealthy Oat knows Jai’s parents have bought his way out of service, which means there will be one less black card in the hat for Ek to pick. If he pulls out red, it means two years fighting insurgents. Frankly, it is a bizarre ritual they presumably stage because of its ostensive transparency, but when the fix is in, everyone can tell.

It is interesting to see a film with LGBT relationships front-and-center, in which sexuality is not an issue. Even the crooked old officers running the rigged lottery seem perfectly accepting of Ek and Jai’s transgender friend Kitty (perhaps unfortunately so). Things might not be perfect, but Thai society certainly appears healthier than fundamentalist Iran, which the Obama administration seems willing to make a nuclear power, or notoriously homophobic Cuba, which it can’t wait to normalize relations with. Yet, the administration has put the deep freeze on U.S.-Thai relations following the military coup and partial power-sharing arrangement.

Regardless, the young cast is remarkably accomplished and utterly natural on screen. Thira Chutikul does a heck of a slow burn as Ek, while Natarat Lakha shows real star power as the protective Kitty. However, young Ingkarat Damrongsakkul really carries the dramatic load as Oat. It is his coming-of-age story, and he makes every wince-inducing moment of it all too believable.

Aside from the off-key wrap-arounds (the problem perhaps being all grown-up and jaded Oat looks like he is maybe thirteen years old), Kim’s execution is remarkably sure-footed. He clearly prefers small telling moments to big melodramatic explosions, for which we’re grateful. Kim also shrewdly employs and contrasts rural and urban settings for atmospheric effect. It is a nice film that should have more mainstream appeal than a thumbnail sketch would suggest. Recommended for those who appreciate the coming-of-age genre, How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) screens this Friday (11/13), next Friday (11/20), and the following Saturday (11/21) at this year’s HIFF.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on November 12th, 2015 at 9:25pm.

LFM Reviews Love & Peace @ The 2015 San Diego Asian Film Festival

From "Love & Peace." — From “Love & Peace.”

By Joe Bendel. It is sort of like Gamera meets the Island of Misfit Toys. It is also a Christmas movie, because why wouldn’t it be? Pet turtles go kaiju in Love & Peace, the glam-rock fable only Sion Sono could tell, which screens during the 2015 San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Ryoichi Suzuki once harbored punk rock dreams, but now he is a bullied salaryman with a balky intestinal track, laboring for a decidedly unhip music publisher. For some reason, his severely outsiderish co-worker Yuko Terashima might kind of like him, but Suzuki is incapable of acting on his massive crush. The only bright spot in his life is Pikadon, the baby turtle he co-dependently dotes on. However, when Suzuki’s nasty coworkers shame him into giving Pikadon the flush, it nearly crushes his spirit.

Down Pikadon goes, swooshing through the sewers to a subterranean shelter for cast-off pets and toys. There he enjoys the protection of a kindly tinkerer, who fixes them up and gives them the power of speech through his magic pills. However, the old man (gee, who does he sound like?), accidently gives him the wrong Matrix pill. Instead of the power of speech, Pikadon is now able to grant his former owner’s wishes, but each time he grows in proportion to the significance of the wish fulfilled. From there, things gets strange—and big.

L&P is sort of the Christmas movie David Bowie never made with Sid and Marty Krofft. It is a strangely earnest and innocent film, yet Sono still manages to make redemption slightly creepy. Be that as it may, if you like turtles, this is the film for you.

In fact, the old school practical Pikadon effects are wonderfully charming and nostalgic. Kumiko Asȏ is also impressively subtle and down to earth as Terashima, sort of like a post-punk version of Marcie in Peanuts. Toshiyuki Nishida similarly balances kindliness and anti-social weirdness quite adeptly as the old man. However, there is over-the-top and there is Hiroki Hasegawa’s Suzuki, or “Wild Ryo,” as he comes to be known, who is equally annoying during his put-upon doormat days as he is as an egotistical sell-out rocker.

Regardless, you come to a Sion Sono film for some spectacle and he delivers accordingly. Although they are radically different films, L&P is much like Tokyo Tribe in that both are dazzlingly accomplished feats of art direction. Mise-en-scéne doesn’t get much more insane than his recent films. He certainly isn’t repeating himself either. Sono even proves he is quite the songwriter, penning tunes that are equally catchy performed as grungy protest anthems or cheesy power ballads. For Sono’s fans it is his latest must-see film, while for general cult film enthusiasts, it could become a Christmas tradition, along with Santa Stinks and Black Christmas. Recommended for kaiju connoisseurs as well, Love & Peace screens this coming Monday (11/11) and Wednesday (11/11), as part of this year’s SDAFF.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on November 6th, 2015 at 11:35am.

LFM Reviews Madonna @ The 2015 New York Korean Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. There is a horrific organ harvesting scheme afoot in this swanky hospital, but the vibe is more Theodore Dreiser than Robin Cook. Everyone more-or-less knows the ruthless son of the hospital chairman will have the heart literally ripped out of a pregnant comatose street walker, killing both mother and child in the process. Sadly, this is just another injustice to befall the young woman, as a recently hired nurse’s aide learns during the course of her case history research in Shin Su-won’s Madonna, which screens during the 2015 New York Korean Film Festival.

Moon Hye-rim is in desperate financial straits, but there is no shortage of money around her while she is on the job. She works in the exclusive VIP ward of an elite, well-funded hospital. Chairman Kim Cheol-oh is by far their most important patient. Clearly, his ventilator dependent body has had enough of life, but his son Kim Sang-woo will go to any length to prolong his miserable existence, primarily for financial reasons. Once the chairman dies, his fortune will be donated to charity, leaving virtually nothing for the entitled son. However, the junior Kim also seems to take sadistic satisfaction from his father’s miserable state.

Having exhausted their Chinese suppliers, Kim intends to plunder the heart of Jang Mi-na, a very pregnant young prostitute, nick-named Madonna because of her full figure. Frankly, it is questionable just how brain dead she truly is. However, everyone understands perfectly well the donation procedure will kill the baby. Moon agrees to track down a next of kin to sign Kim’s dubious consent forms, but in the process, she learns the magnitude of the tribulations endured by Jang.

Madonna is probably the most thoroughly and unremittingly heartbreaking film since Tetsuya Nakashima’s utterly draining Memories of Matsuko. Both films completely pummel the audience from start to finish, giving only us the leanest, subtlest payoffs imaginable. Yet, both are profoundly moral films. Yes, on a surface level, Madonna is a scathing indictment of class privilege and unchecked male sexual predation. Yet, it cuts far deeper, addressing basic human issues of empathy and exploitation.

In her feature debut, Kwon So-hyun is absolutely extraordinary as poor Jang. It is a harrowing performance, forcing her to endure all manner of physical and verbal abuse, but she is utterly convincing every step of the way. She never resorts to cheap histrionics, earning tears fair and square. Indeed, if she does not have you at least a little choked-up before it is all said and done, than you’re pretty suspect as a human being.

Although it initially appears to be the lead role, the ultra-reserved Moon is actually a rather thankless part. However, Seo Young-hee still quite compellingly portrays the slow awakening of her conscience. In contrast, the large supporting cast of exploiters and indifferent bystanders are credible enough, but largely pedestrian compared to the remarkable Kwon.

Shin will totally put you through the wringer, but it is worth it to witness the arrival an enormous young talent. Madonna should absolutely be the start of something big for Kwon So-hyun. Highly recommended for those who appreciate socially charged drama with a pinch of a noir thriller thrown in for garnish, Madonna screens this Sunday (11/8) at the Museum of the Moving Image, as part of the 2015 NYKFF.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on November 5th, 2015 at 3:18pm.

LFM Reviews The Shameless @ The 2015 New York Korean Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. It is hard for a femme fatale to age gracefully. Kim Hye-kyung might look like she is, but the hostess is having a particularly tough time of it, due to the constant harassment of loan sharks and mobbed-up businessmen. She fell for the wrong guy and never stopped falling. Undercover Detective Jung Jae-gon is probably an even more wrong guy, but he manages to insinuate himself into Kim’s life just the same in Oh Seung-uk’s The Shameless, which screens during the 2015 New York Korean Film Festival.

Once, Kim was the kept woman of a high-ranking VP at Jay Investments. Unfortunately, there were some betrayals and a number of bad investments. The upshot is Kim now owes hundreds of thousands to her creditors, including Jay Investments, but has little hope of paying off her debt through her toil in a hostess bar. To make matters worse, whenever Park Joon-kil comes calling, he usually takes on more debt in her name. Yet, she can never deny him.

Det. Jung is technically a cop, but his division is about as rogue as it gets. He still takes orders from his mentor, even though the senior officer was forced to resign by a corruption probe. Jung’s latest assignment is to find Park and cripple him in retribution for killing a rival mob associate. Knowing Park always returns to sponge off Kim, Jung tries to get close to her, posing as her lover’s former cellmate. Despite their frosty initial meeting, Kim soon hires Jung to be the club’s muscle. As they spend time together, some major sexual tension develops. There might even be some emotional substance to it, deep down somewhere in their malfunctioning psyches.

You can call Shameless a noir or a melodrama, but either way, Jeon Do-yeon’s performance as Kim is absolutely staggering. To get a sense of the impact of her work, try breaking ten boards with your head. They both sting like Hell, but the results will amaze you. This is the kind of meaty, complicated role Hollywood actresses over thirty-five would commit blue murder to land. Jeon nails it with a perfectly modulated, harrowingly realistic feat of screen acting.

From "The Shameless." — From “The Shameless.”

Even the gruffly charismatic Park Sung-woong’s Park Joon-ki is swimming in Jeon’s wake. Nevertheless, Kim Nam-gil deserves credit for keeping up to any extent as the icily reserved, borderline sociopathic Det. Jung. However, Kim Min-jae makes a memorably odious villain in the person of Min Young-ki, who apparently works as Jay Investment’s chief liaison to gangsters and crooked coppers.

Jeon took best actress honors at Cannes for Lee Chang-dong’s Secret Sunshine, which was also pretty impressive, but her work as Kim Hye-kyung truly deserves a standing ovation. Even though it has been fifteen years since he last helmed a feature, Oh also definitely holds his end up. His striking sense of visual composition and blighted urban backdrops further elevate Shameless above and beyond the realm of conventional gangster melodrama. Highly recommended, The Shameless screens this Saturday (11/7) at the Museum of the Moving Image, as part of the 2015 NYKFF.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on November 5th, 2015 at 3:18pm.

LFM Reviews Confession @ The 2015 New York Korean Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. There are not a lot of 1980s style video arcades left in the world. Unfortunately, one of the few remaining in Seoul is about to go up in smoke. What starts as a dodgy scheme quickly turns tragic in Lee Do-yun’s Confession, which screens during the 2015 New York Korean Film Festival.

While playing hooky from their middle school graduation, In-chul, Hyun-tae, and Min-soo nearly died during a mishap in the mountains. In-chul was able to return with help just in the nick of time, but for a while it looked like he had abandoned his chums. As grown-ups, the trio are still inseparable. Although Hyun-tae has married, the slick In-chul and slow-witted Min-soo treat his lovely deaf wife Mi-ran and loving daughter Yu-ri like family.

Oddly, In-chul is closer to Hyun-tae’s mother than her own son. Although the details are vague, Hyun-tae, the squeaky clean fire-fighter resents her dubious dealings, whereas In-chul can relate only too well. Naturally, when she hatches a plan to torch the subterranean arcade for the insurance money, In-chul is the one she calls. After much browbeating, Min-soo agrees to help his sleazy pal. Inevitably, things go spectacularly sour, leading to the accidental death of Hyun-tae’s mother (fire in a basement dive is just an awfully bad idea). Soon, Hyun-tae is hunting the perpetrators, utterly oblivious to his friends’ involvement, while a humorless insurance investigator suspects all three amigos.

As noir morality plays go, Confession makes A Simple Plan look upbeat and whimsical. Accidentally killing your pal’s mom is pretty darned Biblical stuff. In fact, screenwriter-director Lee gives the deceit and betrayals genuinely tragic heft. The way he calls back to their boyhood misadventure is particularly heavy, almost Shakespearean.

Those elegiac highs help smooth over some of the rough patches, including Hyun-tae’s profound lack of intuition. That the only sympathetic grown woman in the film never has any spoken dialogue is also slightly problematic. Nevertheless, Lee is devilishly adroit at dropping one darned thing after another on In-chul. Ju Ji-hoon plays the increasingly desperate In-chul to the hilt, with just a touch of Nic Cage mania, but not too excessively much. Ji Sung is perfectly fine as the ploddingly righteous Hyun-tae. However, the dignity and reserve of Lee Kwang-soo’s work as the potentially offensive Min-soo really saves the film’s bacon.

Confession never breaks any new cinematic ground, but it sure closes strong. If you enjoy noirs served with grit and angst than you will find it to be a rich feast. Recommended for thriller fans, Confession screens this Saturday (11/7) at the Museum of the Moving Image, as part of the 2015 NYKFF.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on November 5th, 2015 at 3:17pm.

LFM Reviews Friends and Romans

By Joe Bendel. The great Charlton Heston played Mark Antony twice, in little seen film adaptations of Julius Caesar produced twenty years apart. That is all well and good, but Nick DeMaio is more interested in the 1953 Joe Mankiewicz version starring Marlon Brando. Not surprisingly, Brando is an icon for the blue collar Italian American actor, who specializes in extra work on mafia movies. DeMaio is determined to produce and star in a staging of Julius Caesar to broaden his acting horizons. However, along with his gangster extra cronies, he will unknowingly cast a real life Mafia boss and an undercover Fed in his very Italian-American Caesar. Complications will ensue, as they do, in Christopher Kublan’s Friends and Romans, which opens this Friday in Jersey and Long Island.

DeMaio was in Godfather III, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos, but he only had one slightly embarrassing speaking part. Nevertheless, the movie extra work has nicely supplemented his income as a wholesale produce deliveryman. Still, the broad ethnic stock characters are starting to bug him. He would like to be taken seriously as an actor, so he latches onto Shakespeare’s Caesar as the vehicle to make it happen.

As luck would have it, he rents the abandoned theater where real life mobster and aspiring actor Joey “Bananas” Bongano is hiding out. Even though he is wanted for murdering a Broadway producer (seriously, that is probably just a misdemeanor), he can’t stop himself from auditioning for DeMaio. FBI agent “Paulie” Goldberg also successfully auditions, suspecting DeMaio and his cronies are involved with the secretive Bongano, whose features and thespian pseudonym remain unknown to the Feds.

Granted, FAR is a bit sitcom-ish, but it is immensely likable. Kublan and co-screenwriters Michael Rispoli and Gregg Greenberg also incorporate a number of clever references to Shakespeare’s original text. Frankly, it is a much smarter film than one might expect, even though there are no shortage of jokes derived from Italian stereotypes.

As DeMaio, Rispoli balances goofiness and earnestness rather well, never overindulging in either. We just so get exactly who he is supposed to be, but he still wears well over the course of time, like a broken-in pair of shoes. Annabella Sciorra is grossly underemployed as Angela DeMaio, but at least she develops some pleasant chemistry with Rispoli. It is also nice to see her character support her husband’s eccentric ambitions right from the start, rather than merely serve as an emasculating dream-deflator.

Almost by necessity, most of the gangster-looking supporting cast is serving up shtick of some kind, but Paul Ben-Victor’s shtick is funnier and flashier than the rest as Dennis Socio, DeMaio’s limo driving buddy, who agreed to direct because he once did a limited run of Tony & Tina’s Wedding on the Island.

FAR is not exactly getting over-distributed this weekend, but it is destined to become a word of mouth sleeper hit on DVD and VOD. It gently spoofs gangster movie conventions, before tying everything up in a big “feel good” bow. You can be snarky all you want, but it works at the audience level. Recommended for fans of backstage comedies, the entertaining, low stress Friends and Romans opens this Friday (11/6) in the Tri-State Area.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on November 5th, 2015 at 3:16pm.