LFM: Libertas Film Magazine

By Joe Bendel. It turns out people do not know everybody’s business in small towns. After having visions of Hell Fire, Old Dutch set out to make amends with everyone he wronged, but his confessions have shocked the rural community. Apparently, this is particularly true of Ben’s Uncle John. Although we do not see how the fatal chain of events transpired, there is no question the titular carpenter is disposing of Dutch’s body in the opening scenes of Steven Piet’s Uncle John, which opens this Friday in New York.

He might be a murderer (manslaughter seems the more fitting charge), but John is not a bad sort, really. In fact, he is a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy according to Ben. As part of his pseudo-courtship of a new co-worker, the Chicago-based web designer explains how Uncle John raised him after his mother died and his father absconded.

As Ben hesitantly puts the moves on Kate, we see John scramble to cover his tracks and deflect the suspicions of Dutch’s delinquent younger brother Danny Miller. Fortunately, the sheriff does not share Miller’s line of thinking, but he keeps popping by at inopportune moments. However, Uncle John will really have to start tap-dancing when Ben brings Kate home for a spur-of-the-moment visit.

At first glance, Uncle John looks like two completely different films—Fargo in Wisconsin and About Last Night in Chicago—stuck together by a mere familial connection, yet somehow Piet makes it click. Partly that is because we get a powerful sense of how important the characters are to each other, even when living miles apart, but there is also a hard to define atmosphere of unease permeating the entire film. Whatever it is, it just works.

Of course, it is no secret how much John Ashton brings to the film as Uncle John. Best known as Sgt. Taggart in the Beverly Hills Cop franchise, Ashton has worked steadily in the industry for years, but with Uncle he finally gets a career-defining role. He flat-out knocks it out of the park with his quiet, slow-boiling performance. At times, you can practically see the steam rising from his head, as Uncle John struggles to keep it together. Alex Moffat and Jenna Lyng are also charismatic and develop convincing ambiguous chemistry together, but they would probably be the first to admit Ashton is leading this parade.

As strong as the cast is, they cannot do their thing in a vacuum. Fortunately, Piet has a pitch-perfect understanding of the upper Midwest as a geographical place and a state of mind. Frankly, Uncle John looks and feels more genuine than obvious comparative films like Fargo, Blood Simple, A Simple Plan, and A Single Shot. He also shows an unusual keen intuitive sense of how much to reveal and when. It is a strangely effective thriller precisely because it is not compulsively thrillerish. Highly recommended for fans of small town noirs, Uncle John opens this Friday (9/18) in New York, at the Village East.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on September 15th, 2015 at 10:26pm.

By Joe Bendel. G.H. Hardy said mathematics is a young man’s game and the world still believes him. This should therefore be Nathan Ellis’s time to shine. However, the young math whiz will always feel out of place in the world, even if he lands a spot on the UK International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO) team in Morgan Matthews’ A Brilliant Young Mind, which opens this Friday in New York.

Ellis is “on the spectrum” to use the film’s preferred term for autism. He has a savant like talent for recognizing patterns, but human relationships are almost beyond his grasp. His father Michael was the only one the lad ever opened up to. Unfortunately, he was killed well before his time in an auto accident (it kind of looks like it was his fault, if that mitigates the tragedy for you). Regardless, his grieving mother Julie is now stuck raising a temperamental son, who refuses to let her touch him.

Despite the cold shoulder he is oblivious of, Julie Ellis devotes herself to Nathan and his math-based obsessive compulsions. She finally gets a break when Martin Humphreys agrees to tutor Ellis, with an eye towards the IMO. He too once competed at the Olympiad, but was undone by his self-sabotage and the onset of his MS. Somehow, Humphreys maybe gets through to Ellis just a little bit. There is also a burgeoning attraction between him and Julie Ellis, but he does not feel he can pursue it. Eventually, Ellis will join the other prospective UK team members to train in Taipei with other national teams. It is there that he will meet the charming young Zhang Mei from the Chinese team, who will get past even more of his defenses, much to his arrested adolescent confusion.

A Brilliant Young Mind is inspired by Matthews’ IMO documentary Beautiful Young Minds, which explicitly invokes the Oscar winning A Beautiful Mind. Clearly, title originality was not a priority. Regardless, there is plenty of room for another film that takes maths (as they say in Britain) seriously.

Yet, building a film around a confoundedly reserved character like Ellis is a challenge Matthews never fully licks. Asa Butterfield (a.k.a. Ender Wiggins, who arguably might be a tad on the spectrum himself) is actually quite convincing as Ellis, but it is mostly a one-note give-you-nothing performance. That’s a reality the film scrupulously observes, but it makes it feel wildly unbalanced, because everyone around him is so much more interesting.

Jo Yang is wonderfully smart and sensitive as Zhang Mei, somehow developing chemistry with someone who hasn’t any of his own. However, Rafe Spall really lowers the emotional boom during the scenes in which he wrestles with the indignities of his progressively worsening condition. Sally Hawkins also makes you ache for Julie Ellis, to the point that you would forgive her for resorting to a murder-suicide pact. Eddie Marsan also does his thing as the slightly obnoxious, but rather shrewd UK coach.

There are some truly fine performances in ABYM, but James Graham’s screenplay trots out way too many clichés. Let’s be honest, everyone is doing great if we can believe Zhang Mei is interested in Ellis. Adding another jealous UK team member is really pushing it, but it presents an easy way to advance the action. Still, the scenes in Taipei look great and take Ellis out of his comfort zone in a way that we can believe will be healthy for him. Mostly recommended for those who appreciate watching a cast of fine British character actors, A Brilliant Young Mind opens this Friday (9/11) in New York, at the Angelika Film Center.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on September 10th, 2015 at 11:14pm.

By Joe Bendel. By now, when we see twins in cinema, we assume at least one is evil—maybe both (as in The Shining, The Krays, and Full House). Evil is probably too strong a word for Lukas and Elias. It might be fairer to say they are intense. They are also rather confused by their mother’s seemingly arbitrary behavior following her countenance-changing surgery. Their family drama will take a decidedly macabre turn in Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala’s Goodnight Mommy, Austria’s recently announced foreign language Oscar submission, which opens tomorrow in New York.

This is the sort of film that is dashed difficult to review because Franz and Fiala build it around some audacious misdirection. They either keep you looking in the wrong direction, or they don’t. Regardless, it is probably safe to say this family is massively dysfunctional. For some reason, the mother seems to prefer Lukas over Elias, whom she is currently giving the silent treatment. Of course, her behavior makes no sense to the brothers. Since they are inseparable, they would both be equally culpable for whatever triggered her annoyance.

Her strange comportment coupled with her unrecognizable new features lead the lads to conclude the bandaged woman in the house is not really there mother. At this point, they commit to an antagonistic course of action that will often be difficult to watch. Unfortunately for the woman, their house is quite remote and apparently sound-proof.

Produced by festival favorite Ulrich Seidl, Goodnight Mommy is the sort of horror film that explores corrosive psychological pathologies in the much the same manner as Polanski in his prime. There is also a big third act revelation that changes viewers’ perspective on everything that came before. Whether you see it coming or not, it is impressive how slyly the film is cut together leading up to that point.

Lukas and Elias Schwarz are frighteningly believable as the extreme twins. They are all kinds of twitchy, yet they keep us consistently off-balance and hesitant to pass judgement. If they have seen their own movie, they should probably be in therapy now. Susanne Wuest also maintains the ambiguity, while playing some truly harrowing scenes. (Wuest also made a strong impression in Marco Kalantari’s The Shaman, proving critics ignore short films at their peril.)

Even with Seidl’s imprimatur, it is somewhat surprising Austria has submitted a genre film for Oscar consideration, albeit one that is quite polished and rather challenging. After all, within the last ten years, they have won twice with The Counterfeiters and Amour, garnering a third nomination for Revanche. However, what really baffles is the decision not to release Goodnight Mommy in time for Mother’s Day. Seriously, it’s a natural tie-in. Recommended for fans of horror and dark psychological thrillers revolving around children, Goodnight Mommy opens tomorrow (9/11) in New York, at the East 86th Street Cinema.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on September 10th, 2015 at 11:12pm.

By Joe Bendel. Most ballets tell tragic stories, but the Maoist-era Red Detachment of Women caused them. It certainly contributed to the woes of Lu Yanshi’s family during the Cultural Revolution. Their wounds will never fully heal, even when he is finally “rehabilitated” and released from his prison camp in Zhang Yimou’s straight-up masterpiece Coming Home, which opens this Wednesday in New York.

Lu Yanshi was a college professor—and therefore a class enemy during the Gang of Four’s reign of terror. Further compounding his guilt, Lu escaped from his labor camp, finding the half-starved life of a fugitive more bearable. Naturally, the Communist Party responded by pressuring his family. Lu’s wife Feng Wanyu will bear any risk to protect him, but their daughter, Dan Dan, has absorbed too much of the omnipresent propaganda. She is a gifted ballet dancer, but she could very well lose the lead role in Red Detachment of Women she has worked so hard to win. Convinced to inform on her father, she learns the hard way what sort of opportunities are available to the children of traitors.

Gaining nothing, Dan Dan’s relationship with her mother is nearly irreparably poisoned. Unfortunately, the years Feng spends separated from Lu are not kind to her. By the time he is released, Feng is already suffering from mild dementia. Due to some cruel form of amnesia, she is unable to recognize Lu. Worse still, she sometimes mistakes her distraught husband for the predatory Officer Fang, who used Lu’s safety to extort sexual favors from Feng, like any good Communist would. However, Lu quickly reconciles with his deeply remorseful daughter.

If you think there is a better performance to be seen in a film this year than Gong Li’s turn-for-the-ages as Feng, you either have profoundly faulty aesthetic judgement or were simply even more struck by the achingly poignant dignity of Chen Daoming’s Lu. Watching Lu as Feng unknowingly tells him about himself is more devastating than a thousand Old Yellers getting shot. What they are doing is actually very complicated. They are playing scenes with each other in the moment, but also with each characters’ ghosts from the past. Yet they pull it off brilliantly. It is their work that leaves a lump in your throat, but Zhang Huiwen is still quite touching as the disillusioned Dan Dan—and also convincingly graceful in her dance scenes.

Frankly, Coming Home is not trying to be a political film, because the terrible implications of the Cultural Revolution need no belaboring. They are ever-present and inescapable. Instead, it is an exquisite tragedy, rendered with incredible sensitivity and humanism. Zhang has gone big with epics like House of Flying Daggers and made Fifth Generation-defining classics with Gong Li, like Red Sorgum and The Story of Qiu Ju, but with the perfectly balanced Coming Home he expresses the pain and confusion of hundreds of thousands of families on a painfully intimate canvas. If you only see one film this year, you want it to be Coming Home. Very highly recommended, it opens this Wednesday (9/9) in New York, at the Angelica Film Center downtown and the Lincoln Plaza uptown.

LFM GRADE: A+

Posted on September 9th, 2015 at 5:29pm.