Month: February 2012

Oscar Gets Juiced: LFM Reviews Bullhead

By Joe Bendel. It is hard to believe Belgium has any comparative advantage in the beef packing industry. Regardless, watching the Flemish bovine mafia ply their cattle with hormones will not inspire global consumer confidence. One angry breeder takes massive doses himself. Regrettably, he has a very good reason for such treatments, which viewers see in painful detail early in Michaël Roskam’s Bullhead, Belgium’s surprise best foreign language Oscar nominee, opening this Friday in New York.

Jacky Vanmarsenille resembles the bulls he sullenly tends (hence the title). He looks all man, but an incident in his childhood left him somewhat less so. To compensate, he has built up his body, but the constant cocktails of testosterone and steroids have exacerbated his anger issues. Poorly socialized, Vanmarsenille’s resentment metastasizes over time. When figures from his past suddenly reappear, his behavior becomes more erratic. Unfortunately, this leads his family to discount his warnings not to get involved with Marc De Kuyper, the duplicitous Godfather of growth hormones.

Bullhead is quite an unlikely Oscar contender. Indeed, Belgium raised many eyebrows when it submitted Roskam’s film instead of the Dardenne Brothers’ French language The Kid with a Bike, but they seem to have known what they were doing. This is a tough picture that is difficult to pigeon hole. As a character study, it broods in a class by itself. Indeed, there may be no protagonist that is as equally sympathetic and scary as Jacky Vanmarsenille. Yet, its gangster movie elements are not mere window dressing for the naturalistic morality play. Roksam’s screenplay also reflects Belgium’s Flemish-French divide in ways not especially flattering to the latter, adding a further layer of context for those who can pick up on it.

Without question though, the key to the film is Matthias Schoenaerts, who really is quite extraordinary as Vanmarsenille. His physical transformation into the hulking protagonist has been compared to De Niro’s bulking up for Raging Bull, but that is really the least of it. With little dialogue, he conveys volumes, keeping the audience fully invested in his character, even when he commits terrible deeds. This is ferociously intense work. Jeroen Percival provides an effective counterpoint as the nervous Diederik Maes, Vanmarsenille’s oily childhood friend and polar opposite physically, sexually, and temperamentally.

Bullhead’s deliberate pacing and wince-inducing plot developments might discomfort less adventurous viewers, but under Roksam’s sure hand they become high tragedy. In truth, few films so directly address what it means to be both a man and a monster. On Oscar night, it will be the longest of long shots, but Bullhead can go toe to toe with any of its fellow nominees, including Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, considered the frontrunner amid a very strong foreign language field this year. Highly recommended, Bullhead opens tomorrow (2/17) in New York at the Angelika Film Center and AMC Empire and next Friday (2/24) in San Francisco at the Bridge Theatre.

Posted on February 16th, 2012 at 10:33am.

From Taipei to Beijing: LFM Reviews Love

By Joe Bendel. They are two cities so alike, but so far apart. Can a man from Taipei find love in Beijing? There are even greater obstacles facing eight interconnected individuals, but somehow love finds a way in Doze Niu Chen-Zer’s Love (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York, following a special Valentine’s sneak earlier this week.

Father of Ni and sugar daddy to the professional celebrity, Zoe Fang, “Uncle” Lu lives well in Taipei. Having just broken off an affair with the beautiful but needy Fang before it could really start, Lu’s business associate Mark leaves for Beijing hoping to buy property. Instead, he meets disastrously/meet-cutes the attractive but disorganized realtor Jin Xiao-ye.

Although Uncle Lu offers stability, Fang is drawn in spite of herself to Kuan, the stammering busboy older brother of Yi-jia, Ni’s best friend who is pregnant by Ni’s boyfriend, Kai. Feeling understandably betrayed, Ni breaks with both, leaving Kuan to look after his sister while his Notting Hill relationship with Fang slowly percolates.

Love clearly sounds like another Chinese-Taiwanese variation on multi-character rom-coms typified by Valentine’s Day and (Heaven forbid) New Year’s Eve. However, Doze Nui’s film and its thematic predecessors such as Wing Shya and Tony Chan’s Love in Space work so much better, perhaps because they are never afraid of a little emotion or melodrama. Unlike Gary Marshall schmaltz, one never gets the sense the cast-members are rolling their eyes off camera. On the contrary, everyone involved with Love seems to understand when you have deep feelings for someone that may not be reciprocal, it is a very serious matter.

Love also has the benefit of legitimate chemistry within its ridiculously attractive ensemble. Perhaps past familiarity helped. After pining for (Ivy) Chen Yi-han in Cheng Fen-fen’s Hear Me, (Eddie) Peng Yu-yan becomes the object of her unrequited affections this time around, as Kai. He makes a credible knucklehead again, while her turn as Yi-jia is just as sweet and vulnerable. Likewise, Amber Kuo is equally sympathetic and engaging as Ni.

However, the (somewhat) senior cast members really provide the romantic seasoning. Superstar Shu Qi is absolutely radiant, putting Julia Roberts to shame as Fang. She also convincingly expresses her character’s desire to find self worth through productive work, an appealing theme largely foreign to Hollywood and American indie productions (“Work? Huh, wha?”). As in his previous film Monga, Doze Niu provides himself a key assist in a supporting role. Although the comparative old timer, he brings far more charisma to Uncle Lu than can be dismissed as Woody Allen-style vanity casting. One could well imagine a single middle aged woman would be very interested in meeting him.

Aptly titled, Love is/was perfect Valentine’s Day fare, but not unrealistically so. It is pretty clear not every character will have a spot on a loveseat when the music stops. Yet, it is an impossible movie not to like. Recommended for all the secret sentimentalists out there who can safely go to foreign films without losing their cineaste street cred, Love officially opens this Friday (2/17) in New York at the AMC Empire and in San Francisco at the AMC Metreon, from China Lion Entertainment.

Posted on February 16th, 2012 at 10:29am.

LFM’s Sundance Diary & Final Thoughts on the Festival

LFM's Joe Bendel, Govindini Murty & Jason Apuzzo at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

By Govindini Murty. Sundance sets the tone for the entire film industry in North America. Its spirit of supporting creativity, talent, and scrappy innovation is one we heartily applaud here at Libertas. We also applaud the fact that in recent years Sundance has become a home to so many pro-freedom films. To name just a few, these have included Mads Brügger’s daring expose of North Korean Communism The Red Chapel (2010), Chris Morris’ brilliant satire of Islamic terrorism Four Lions (2010), and Lee Tamahori’s intense anti-Saddam Hussein thriller The Devil’s Double (2011).

The 2012 Sundance Film Festival continued this tradition. Pro-freedom films screened at the festival included: Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, about dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s efforts to expose the brutality of the Communist Chinese government; The Other Dream Team, about the Lithuanian basketball team and their struggle to overcome Soviet influence; Putin’s Kiss, about the turn toward authoritarianism amongst the Nashi youth movement in Putin’s Russia; and Mads Brügger’s The Ambassador, a witty and politically-incorrect expose of corruption in central Africa. There were also a host of entertaining and well-made narrative dramas and comedies this year. A few we at Libertas enjoyed included The Raid, Grabbers, and Shadow Dancer.

LFM's Jason Apuzzo & Govindini Murty with Joseph Gordon-Levitt at Sundance 2012.

Jason and I arrived at Sundance on Monday, January 23rd. Libertas super-contributor Joe Bendel had already been at the festival since opening night on January 19th, and had managed to fit in an astounding number of films that first weekend. Because we admire the Zen warrior-monk focus Joe brings to writing movie reviews, the first thing we did when we arrived in Park City was meet up with Joe on Main Street – the central artery through which all things Sundance flow. Snow flakes were falling and the lights were twinkling on the picturesque street as we all met up in front of the famed Egyptian Theatre.

Slipping and sliding through the snow and invigorated by the air of good cheer around us, we headed with Joe down the street through the crush of festival goers and filmmakers to plan our film-going strategy. With approximately 180 films showing at Sundance, many playing simultaneously in multiple venues, careful coordination is integral to having a successful Sundance experience. As we hurried down Main Street, we ran into Paul Giamatti (looking avuncular with a fuzzy beard), and Jason spotted Kate Bosworth (there promoting her thriller Black Rock). Jason wanted to ask her whether she did her own surfing in Blue Crush, then thought better of it.

The first Sundance film we had scheduled for that night was an 11:45pm screening of Grabbers – a campy, sci-fi Irish alien-invasion movie. Sundance’s Park City at Midnight screenings are where the festival shows its genre films, and the raucous crowds that attend these screenings often provide a lively show of their own. The screening of Grabbers was great fun, with the mostly drunken crowd hooting and hollering throughout the screening, and we agreed the film had a good chance at getting distribution. In fact, Jason spotted some distribution execs he recognized walking into the theater. We would have stayed for the Q & A with the filmmakers, but it was 2:00am and we were scheduled to attend the coffee chat with Stan Lee at 9:00 the next morning. This was something we would have to get used to at Sundance: sleep deprivation.

LFM's Jason Apuzzo & Govindini Murty with Stan Lee at the 2012 Slamdance Film Festival.

Tuesday, January 24th’s highlights were most definitely Slamdance’s two-hour coffee chat with Stan Lee in the morning, followed by the screening of his film With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story that afternoon. Slamdance is the fun, ‘alternative’ festival to Sundance, and is really worth a visit.  Jason has already described this wonderful event with Stan Lee in detail, but let me just add how charming, witty, and delightful Stan is in person. He was truly gracious when we met him, with a big smile on his face and a roguish twinkle in his eye. We bonded with him over our mutual love of classic film and all things Errol Flynn, and had fun asking him questions about his work and inspiration during the course of the two-hour master class/coffee chat. We would have loved for Joe to have attended this event with us, but Joe was scheduled to leave Sundance Tuesday morning for New York, so we bid him adieu the night before. Continue reading LFM’s Sundance Diary & Final Thoughts on the Festival

LFM Reviews Shadow Dancer @ The Berlin/Sundance Film Festivals: A Timely Drama on the Dangers of Ideological Fanaticism

Andrea Riseborough in "Shadow Dancer."

By Govindini Murty. The internecine conflict in Northern Ireland has provided potent cinematic subject matter for decades. Shadow Dancer, starring Clive Owen, Andrea Riseborough, and Gillian Anderson, is the latest film to dramatize this fraught topic. Directed by James Marsh (Man on a Wire) and currently screening at the Berlin Film Festival, Shadow Dancer tells the story of a young woman torn between loyalty to her radical IRA family and her efforts to protect her young son by becoming a spy for the British.

What is so striking about Shadow Dancer is that it portrays the British government in a positive light as it attempts to negotiate peace with the IRA – while portraying the radical IRA cadres who oppose the British as unregenerate fanatics.

Andrea Riseborough & Clive Owen at The Berlin Film Festival.

When I recently saw the film at Sundance I asked director James Marsh and actress Andrea Riseborough if they intended the film to have a pro-British message. Marsh immediately assured me that the film was non-political and was intended purely as a drama examining the predicament of one particular IRA family. Riseborough differed from him, saying that she thought the film was sympathetic to the IRA.

This discrepancy suggests how hard it is to remain neutral in depicting political subject matter in the movies; one inevitably has to make choices about what to show or not show on-screen, and these choices in turn affect the perceived politics of a film.

As for the film’s meaning, it will be viewers ultimately who will be the ones to decide.

In Shadow Dancer, Andrea Riseborough (of Madonna’s W.E.) plays Colette McVeigh, a young single mother caught up in the terrorist activities of her staunchly IRA family in Belfast during the waning years of “the Troubles” in the early 1990s. Radicalized by the death of her little brother years before, Colette has been aiding her two IRA brothers, Gerry and Conor, in a series of bombings, shootings, and assassinations against the British and their loyalists. Unbeknownst to her family, Colette has been having second thoughts about the violence she is perpetuating – especially since she is now the mother of a small boy. When she half-heartedly drops off a bomb in a London subway without setting off the detonator, British intelligence picks her up.

British MI5 agent Mac (Clive Owen) persuades Colette it’s time to renounce her IRA terrorist ways and become a secret agent for the British. It’s either that or go to jail for twenty-five years and give up hope of raising her young son herself. Colette chooses to become a British agent, but her brothers’ continued terrorist activities, combined with the paranoia of a sadistic local IRA boss, place Colette in one moral quandary after another. Does she help the British and prevent further killings – but endanger the life of her family at the hands of the suspicious IRA? Or does she keep working for the IRA and take part in more assassinations, only to be arrested and locked away in jail by the British? A budding romance with Mac – her decent, well-intentioned MI5 handler – makes things even more complicated for Colette. Continue reading LFM Reviews Shadow Dancer @ The Berlin/Sundance Film Festivals: A Timely Drama on the Dangers of Ideological Fanaticism

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo & Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post and AOL-Moviefone: The Most Provocative Filmmaker in the World: A Conversation With Mads Brügger on The Ambassador

Filmmaker Mads Brügger, director of "The Ambassador" at the Sundance Film Festival.

[Editor’s Note: The post below appears today on the front page of The Huffington Post and AOL-Moviefone.]

By Jason Apuzzo & Govindini Murty. His documentaries have been among the most provocative films featured in the Sundance Film Festival over the past several years. Bolder even than Sacha Baron Cohen, he’s punk’d both the North Korean communist government and now, in his new film The Ambassador, the Central African Republic and the corrupt diplomatic culture that supports it.

He’s one of Europe’s funniest and most controversial filmmakers, although most Americans haven’t heard of him — yet.

The name of this lanky, cerebral enfant terrible is Mads Brügger.

In Brügger’s previous film The Red Chapel (read the Libertas Film Magazine review of the film here), winner of Sundance’s 2010 World Cinema jury prize for documentaries, the filmmaker pulled off one of the most dangerous and politically provocative stunts in cinema history by infiltrating North Korea as part of a fake socialist comedy group. Operating under the watchful (and vaguely confused) gaze of the North Korean government, Brügger’s cameras proceeded to document the bizarre, Orwellian nether-world of today’s Pyongyang and its frightening cult of the ‘Dear Leader.’

In his new film The Ambassador (read the Libertas Film Magazine review of the film here), which recently screened at Sundance, Brügger now attempts an even more complex and daring stunt by purchasing a Liberian diplomatic title and infiltrating one of the most dangerous places on Earth — the Central African Republic (CAR) — as an ersatz Ambassador. His purpose? To expose the illegal blood diamond trade — and the corrupt world of CAR officials, bogus businessmen and shady European and Asian diplomats that it benefits.

Like a tragicomic version of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, The Ambassador takes viewers into a rarely-seen world of European influence-peddlers who exploit the African continent — and the amoral retinue of African officials, petty businessmen and hangers-on who are complicit in the exploitation.

Along the way Brügger and his hidden cameras have close encounters with everything from an obese ex-French Legionnaire heading the CAR’s state security (who is assassinated shortly after talking to Brügger), to armed militias in the middle of Africa’s ‘Triangle of Death,’ to a diamond smuggler with a secret child bride and potential terrorist ties, to a tribe of inebriated pygmies organized by Brügger to staff a match factory.

Mads Brügger talks with Jason Apuzzo at Sundance.

It all makes for a potent, carnivalesque and politically incorrect experience — and one that exposes the mutual racism (of Europeans toward Africans, and Africans toward Europeans) that makes central Africa such a hotbed of corruption and violence.

In the midst of all this is Brügger himself — a tall, soft-spoken Danish journalist (and son of two Danish newspaper editors) with an ironic sense of humor and an uncanny ability to transform himself into the kind of diffident European grandee that African officials are accustomed to exploiting — and being exploited by — well into the 21st century.

Along with my Libertas Film Magazine co-editor Govindini Murty, I sat down with Brügger at the Sundance Film Festival to talk about his funny, horrifying and highly controversial new film. With a shaved head, and wearing a skull ring from DC Comics’ The Phantom, Brügger arrived looking very much the part of an experimental European director.

Apuzzo: What got you interested in [corruption in the Central African Republic] as subject matter for a film?

Brügger: I like doing films that divert from their own genre. I wanted to do an Africa documentary without all the usual semiotics and codes of the generic Africa documentary. You know — NGO people, child soldiers, HIV patients, and so on. But also I wanted a film where you would meet all the people you usually don’t get to see – you know, the kingpins, the players, the ministers who live a very secure and comfortable life away from the scrutiny of the media. So I thought that if I could purchase a diplomatic title, I could gain access to this very closed realm of African state affairs and politics. It’s pretty much a ‘let’s-see-what-happens’ project. Once we set off to do this, who will we meet? What kind of people will I run into?

Mads Brügger talks with Govindini Murty at Sundance.

Apuzzo: How did you prepare to become a corrupt European diplomat?

Brügger: [Laughs.] I prepared for almost three years, because I wanted to really go into detail with my persona. I would go to receptions, embassies in Copenhagen, especially the Belgian embassy because they have a lot of African diplomats coming there. I noticed all the telltale signs, the do’s and don’ts of how diplomats behave and carry themselves. For instance, when they’re having cocktails they like to fold their napkin into a triangle and then wrap it around the glass. I think it’s because they don’t want to leave fingerprints, but I don’t know for sure. [Laughs.]

The most popular cigarette amongst African diplomats are red Dunhills. The most popular liquor is Johnny Walker Black Label. You know, things of that order. At the same time, I also wanted my ‘character’ to be packed with various archetypes, and characters from comic books: Dr. Müller in Tintin, Bernard Prince (a Belgian comic book hero), even the Man with The Yellow Hat from Curious George. Continue reading LFM’s Jason Apuzzo & Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post and AOL-Moviefone: The Most Provocative Filmmaker in the World: A Conversation With Mads Brügger on The Ambassador

LFM Reviews the 2012 Oscar Nominated Shorts: Live Action

By Joe Bendel. Last year, Luke Matheny won the best live action short Oscar for God of Love and delivered the best acceptance speech of the night. He had respectable competition for the former but practically none for the latter. This year’s field also looks relatively competitive, but viewers can judge for themselves when the Academy Award nominated live action shorts program opens this Friday in New York at the IFC Center.

If this year’s Oscar nominated short form animation has a Canadian flavor, the live action shorts have a slight Irish disposition, at least according to some definitions. As it happens, one of the best contenders hails from North Ireland. Regardless of identity issues, Terry George’s The Shore (trailer here) is probably the film to beat. It hardly hurts that George is a highly regarded filmmaker, already twice nominated in screenplay categories. The Shore also stars an actor viewers will recognize: Ciarán Hinds, currently seen in finer theaters as “Soldier” in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Yes, The Shore addresses the troubles, but not in a polarizing context. Twenty-five years ago, Jim Mahon’s grandfather was spooked by the escalating violence and trundled the young man off to the American relations. He has finally returned with his grown daughter to make peace with his former best friend and the woman he jilted. Although it is more of a drama than a comedy, Shore has a wry, knowing sensibility that should appeal to popular audiences. Rather than dwell on Belfast’s battle scars, George captures the picturesque landscape of Northern Ireland. One of the great actors of our day, Hinds is perfect as the conflicted Mahon and Kerry Condon is appealingly smart and down to earth as his daughter.

Unfortunately, the proper Irish contender is not nearly as rich. An incompetent choir boy is offered a chance to redeem himself in Peter McDonald’s slight Pentecost. However, the big mass plays out as a childish rebellion fantasy at the expense of the mean old Catholic Church.

Though also relatively short, Andrew Bowler’s genre comedy Time Freak (trailer here) is easily the most entertaining live action nominee. An obsessive scientist has developed a time machine, but his regular guy best friend is alarmed by the self-defeating ways he has been applying his breakthrough. A very funny film, Freak is similar in tone to some of the original Twilight Zone episodes that played it strictly for laughs.

There are not a lot of laughs in Max Zähle’s Raju (trailer here). There are not a lot of surprises where this international adoption morality play is headed either, but it is executed quite well, especially for a student film. Shortly after Jan and Sarah Fischer adopt the title character, he disappears under mysterious circumstances. However, as the German would-be father searches for Raju, he learns troubling facts about Raju’s circumstances. Filmed on the streets of Kolkata (a.k.a. Calcutta), it conveys a sense of the city’s teeming poverty and sets up the protagonists’ ethical dilemma rather effectively.

Another international award winning student film, Hallvar Witzø’s Tuba Atlantic offers an Academy-friendly blend of quirk and heart-string pulling. Given exactly six days to live, grouchy old Oskar Svenning sets out to contact his estranged brother in America via the monster tuba they constructed on the shore. Although he stubbornly refuses help, a young Evangelical Christian insists on acting as his “angel of death.” While innocent Inger might sound like a hopeless caricature, Ingrid Viken plays her with a fair degree of innocent charm. Granted, it is unabashedly sentimental, but the unrestrained war Svenning wages against the pesky seagulls is frequently quite amusing.

Either Time Freak or The Shore would be deserving Oscar winners. Both are thoroughly engaging and satisfying films. If not at the same level of accomplishment, Raju and Tuba are certainly perfectly respectable, falling somewhere on the spectrum between good and nice. Altogether, the 2012 live action Oscar nominees are a strong group, mostly recommended as films in their own right as well as for their Academy Award interest. They open this Friday (2/10) in New York at the IFC Center as part of the annual showcase of nominated short films.

Posted on February 9th, 2012 at 10:55am.