Month: June 2012

LFM’s Focus on Film Festival Coverage

Joe Bendel, Govindini Murty & Jason Apuzzo @ The 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.

By Govindini Murty. As Libertas readers know, we’ve long been advocates of film festivals, especially those that celebrate independent film. Because they empower individual filmmakers to try out new ideas, film festivals are a crucial way to inspire the spirit of freedom and innovation in the culture. And did I also mention that they’re a lot of fun? Where else can you hang out with fellow film fanatics, see great films, meet talented filmmakers, and return to your own creative work buzzing with renewed energy and ideas?

That’s why we’ve been stepping up our film festival coverage here at Libertas. Jason and I had the chance to attend the Sundance Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival this year, and we also just finished attending the LA Film Festival. All three festivals have been terrific experiences. And of course, Libertas’ own Joe Bendel, the Zen master of the independent film review, has already been doing a fantastic job these past two years covering pretty much every film festival on the planet (maybe even in the known universe).

As a result of our indie focus, Indiewire has added us to Criticwire, which means that you can click on our names on their Criticwire page and find letter grades and film reviews for all the independent and mainstream movies we’re seeing.

To also make it easier for Libertas readers to find our film festival reviews, we’ve created new categories in the ‘Articles’ drop down menu above for each of the major film festivals we’re covering. We’ve created a new Sundance category, a Tribeca category, and an LA Film Festival category. Click on one of those categories and you will see all the reviews we’ve posted for that festival going back to the launch of Libertas Film Magazine.

We’ll add more festival categories as we proceed – and remember to go out and support these films! If a movie isn’t playing in a theater in your area, then remember that many of these movies are also available on your cable provider’s VOD, Netflix streaming, Amazon on-demand, or iTunes.

Posted on June 25th, 2012 at 11:41pm.

LFM Reviews Nameless Gangster @ The 2012 New York Asian Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Though still a young democracy, by the early 1990’s the South Korean government had run out of patience with the unchecked lawlessness of organized crime. Choi Ik-hyun became one of their top targets. He did not look like much of a criminal, but he was very organized. It is time to get your gangland beatdowns on as the New York Asian Film Festival comes roaring in with a whole new slate of fresh selections. Yun Jong-bin’s Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time will deliver plenty of said when it screens at the 2012 festival this Saturday.

Choi is a low level customs inspector, corrupt in the pettiest of ways. His family was once wealthy and respected, but their fortunes have fallen. However, he remains hyper-connected amongst the larger Choi clan hierarchy. Stumbling across a shipment of heroin, Choi parlays it and his surname into a business relationship with the Busan mob’s top gun, Choi Hyung-bae.

This Choi looks the part of a gangster. Though initially skeptical of the doughier Choi, the steely cool gangster comes to appreciate the value of the older man’s connections and his skill at exploiting them. For a while, they become a very profitable team. However, Choi Ik-hyun’s greed and vanity will lead him to flirt with his “god-son’s” chief rival, Kim Pan-ho, destabilizing their alliance. Gangsters always do that kind of thing.

From "Nameless Gangster."

Nameless is far broader in scope than a mere series of gangland rumbles. Nonetheless, when the Choi and Kim factions start bashing each other fifty shades of black and blue, it is quite impressively cinematic. Still, Yun is more concerned with the zeitgeist of the time, the ROK’s years of transitional democracy, while depicting the base cunning of a wanna-be consigliere.

Indeed, special festival guest Choi Min-sik is quite compelling as his slovenly namesake. It might sound like a role quite removed from the ferocious serial killer he played in I Saw the Devil. Yet both characters are small men who react desperately when their method of empowerment is threatened. However, it is Ha Jung-woo who really makes a lasting impression. Icily fatalistic, but not without the capacity for explosive rage, his Choi Hyung-bae is exactly the sort of performance that makes great gangster films tick. Likewise, Kim Seong-gyoon has a nice flair for ruthless and reckless villainy as the younger’s Choi’s lead enforcer.

It’s been a while since there was a mob movie with the sweep and ambition of Nameless. It certainly is good to have another one. Despite the wider historical context, Yun keeps the action gritty and violent. It is a big picture, but it has a tight focus. Enthusiastically recommended, it screens this Saturday (6/30) and next Tuesday (7/3) as part of the 2012 New York Asian Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on June 25th, 2012 at 11:40pm.

LFM Reviews Unforgivable

By Joe Bendel. Evidently Venice is a lot like New York. You will find a lot of writers and realtors there. One fateful day, a French mystery novelist walks into a former fashion model’s real estate agency. It will be the start of a very complicated relationship for the lead characters in André Téchiné’s latest pseudo-thriller, Unforgivable, which opens this Friday in New York.

There seems to be an inverse relationship between Francis’s creative productivity and his domestic happiness. He came to Venice to write in seclusion, but took up with Judith instead. At least she had the perfect rental for him: a secluded old villa on the island of Sant’Erasmo. Happy with his new home and lover, Francis has not written a word in months. Fortunately or unfortunately, that will all change when his ostensibly grown daughter Alice comes to visit.

Either to get back at Francis or her vastly more responsible ex, Alice disappears without warning, apparently taking up with a penniless aristocratic drug dealer. Not inclined to let things be, Francis hires the half-retired private detective Anna Maria, Judith’s former lover turned awkward platonic friend, to shadow his daughter across the continent. As Francis’s escalating emotional neediness turns to jealousy, he hires Anna Maria’s delinquent son to shadow Judith in turn.

Based on Philippe Djian’s novel, Unforgivable is a perfect example of Téchiné’s knack for skirting the boundaries of the thriller genre without fully crossing over. He toys with plenty of noir conventions, such as a mysterious disappearance, a smarmy underworld figure, and a whole lot of skulking about the streets of Venice. Yet Téchiné is more concerned with his characters’ extreme emotions—the passion, jealousy, and contempt driving their actions.

Perfectly cast as Francis, André Dussollier projects the appropriate sophistication, arrogance, and insecurity, while still connecting with something fundamentally human and sympathetic about the character. However, the real pleasure of Unforgivable is seeing Carole Bouquet (the most under-appreciated “Bond Girl” ever, from the pinnacle film of the Roger Moore era, For Your Eyes Only) as Judith, the mature femme fatale. Indeed, it is a smart, delicately calibrated performance.

Capitalizing on the mysterious Venetian backdrop, Unforgivable is like a film noir for those who avoid on-screen violence and cynicism. It is literate and worldly, yet compassionately forgiving of its characters’ self-defeating foibles (title notwithstanding). Highly recommended for French film connoisseurs, it opens this Friday (6/29) in New York at the IFC Center downtown and the Beekman Theatre uptown.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on June 25th, 2012 at 11:39pm.

LFM Reviews Return to Burma @ The 2012 Los Angeles Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Coca-Cola may have just announced its imminent return to Burma, but China maintains a chokehold on its client state’s closed economy. Such is the situation an expatriate construction worker finds on his homecoming. Regardless of potential political liberalizations, economic opportunities remain few and far between in Midi Z’s Return to Burma, which screens during the 2012 Los Angeles Film Festival.

After years of working and saving in Taipei, Wang Xing-hong is returning home. He had planned to travel with his co-worker Rong, but instead he will carry his countryman’s ashes. Transferring from bus to bus he hears the saccharine radio jingles proclaiming the promise of progress through new elections. Yet he arrives home to the same depressed provincial town, except now maybe even more so.

Traveling between Taiwan and Burma is an expensive and complicated proposition. Clearly, Wang would prefer to stay and put down roots. Simultaneously, his sporadically employed younger brother is about to leave for Malaysia in search of work. The fact the neighboring country offers greater opportunity than the more richly resource-endowed Burma is a testament to decades of government mismanagement and plunder. Yet, that is the state of things.

The pseudo-characters of Return are a lot like New Yorkers compulsively discussing comparative rents and maintenance fees at a dinner party. Viewers will leave knowing the market wage for just about every form of manual labor in the country as well as the start-up cost for numerous small service proprietorships. The lesson is clear—do not relocate to Burma. By the way, Midi Z and his colleagues obviously call it Burma and not Myanmar, unlike the military junta and the legacy media.

Shot surreptitiously on the streets of Yangon and Mandalay, with non-professional actors kind of-sort of playing themselves, Return is the first domestically produced Burmese feature (evidently ever). It was also more or less illegal. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is closely akin stylistically to the Digital Generation school of independent Chinese filmmakers. Deliberate and observational rather than action-driven or chatty, the film is really all about conveying the experience of Burma’s underclass—and that includes everyone except the top military and government officials.

It is probably a small miracle the Burma-born Taiwan-based Midi Z and his crew-members were not imprisoned during the Return shoot. They earn considerable kudos for vividly capturing the atmosphere of Burma. There are times when you can practically smell the humid night air. Still, the languid pace and hardscrabble living conditions have a rather claustrophobic effect. It is a worthy but wearying look inside the isolated society. Recommended for dedicated Burma watchers (but not necessarily casual connoisseurs of Asian cinema), Return to Burma screens this Friday (6/22) and Saturday (6/23) as an International Showcase selection of the 2012 LA Film Fest.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on June 19th, 2012 at 8:45pm.

LFM Reviews Reportero @ The Human Rights Watch Film Festival/The L.A. Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. For years, Mexico’s best journalism has been done in Tijuana. Frankly, with the rise of the drug cartels’ power, Tijuana might be the only place in the country where real journalism is practiced with conviction. However, the staff of the resolutely independent news weekly Zeta has paid a heavy price for their journalistic integrity. Bernardo Ruiz documents their dangerous mission covering the drug lords and the crooked politicians abetting them in Reportero (trailer here), which screens as part of the 2012 Human Rights Film Festival in New York and also at The Los Angeles Film Festival.

Based on the experience of Zeta staffers, one could justifiably ask if Mexico ever had a free press, as such. Founded to investigate the widespread corruption of the long ruling socialist PRI party, Jesús Blancornelas made a crucial decision to print the newspaper on the American side of the border. This would be more expensive, but far more secure. While the PRI is now temporarily on the outs, the drug traffickers have become even more proactive buying-off or outright intimidating journalists. Indeed, Zeta has suffered its share of assassinations, including very nearly their founder, Blancornelas.

Ruiz adopts old school investigative journalist Sergio Haro as his primary POV figure. No stranger to death threats, Haro has fearlessly raked the muck of Baja California. Though a family man, he comes across as an existential champion of the underclass, who nonetheless needles the leftist PRI every chance he gets. While not the most animated screen presence, Haro clearly walks the walk. His stories should be considered blockbusters, but the guilty continue on, with evident impunity.

Ruiz’s dry observational style tries its best to drain all the sensationalism out of the film, but Zeta’s four-alarm headlines speak for themselves. Indeed, the crusading publication’s war stories are exactly that. Their scoop concluding the film is quite a jaw-dropper, but it is the memorial to one of two fallen comrades that really says it all.

It is nearly impossible to consider Mexico a functional state after viewing Ruiz’s profile of Zeta. Fascinating but deeply scary stuff, Reportero is a bracing tribute to the new weekly’s principled journalists (and the staff of a short lived daily paper Haro founded in between his Zeta stints). While it is an ITVS production destined for PBS broadcasts, it is well worth seeing the longer festival cut, because these details are devilishly important. Recommended for anyone concerned about press freedoms or the social-political health of our southern neighbor, Reportero screens at The Human Rights Film Festival next Thursday (6/21), Friday (6/22), and Saturday (6/23) at the Walter Reade Theater and tonight (6/18) at The Los Angeles Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on June 18th, 2012 at 4:54pm.

The Legacy of The Khmer Rouge: LFM Reviews Brother Number One @ The 2012 Human Rights Watch Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. For one New Zealander, a Canadian, and a British subject sailing through Asia, straying off course became a capital crime. It was their profound misfortune to anchor within the territorial waters of Cambodia while the country was held in the inhuman grip of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, or the Khmer Rouge as they would subsequently be known. In 2007, Rob Hamill had the opportunity to testify on behalf of his late brother in the first trial of a Khmer Rouge official for crimes against humanity. Annie Goldson followed Hamill’s quest for justice, or at least a measure of closure, in Brother Number One, one of a handful of must see films at this year’s typically uneven 2012 Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York.

The film’s title carries a rather odd double meaning. Pol Pot, the Robespierre of the nationwide genocide, was dubbed “Brother Number One” in Communist propaganda, whereas Kerry Hamill was the first of three brothers. Charismatic and athletic, the elder Hamill brother left New Zealand in search of seafaring adventure. The 1970’s still felt like the 1960’s for him and his mates, who were largely oblivious to the horrors underway in Cambodia.

Canadian Stuart Glass was killed during the attack on their small yacht, which was probably a small mercy. Hamill and the British John Dewhirst were captured and transferred to the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, commanded by Kaing Guek Eav, a.k.a. “Comrade Duch.” In his own words, Duch’s prisoners were to be “smashed.” This entailed torture, the extraction of a false confession, and an agonizingly slow execution.

As he prepares his “Civil Party” statement, Hamill visits the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and talks to the handful of survivors, getting a painful sense of his brother’s final months. He also interviews several former Khmer Rouge officials, who are not exactly forthcoming. More satisfying are his meetings with Dewhirst’s sister and his brother’s girlfriend, bonding through their shared grief.

Kerry Hamill (right) and his girlfriend.

Though it is an intensely personal story, Brother vividly establishes the scale and ferocity of the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror. The walls of victim photographs at Tuol Sleng speak for themselves. We do learn a bit about Duch, the subject of The Bookkeeper of Death (recently seen on PBS World), but Rob Hamill is appropriately granted the floor throughout the documentary. Frankly, it is quite amazing how well he keeps it together as he confronts the ghosts haunting his family.

An Olympic rower at the Atlanta games, Rob Hamill is indeed a compelling POV figure. He certainly puts a human face on the nearly inconceivable tragedy of so-called “Democratic Kampuchea.” Yet, the documentary never feels manipulative or exploitative. Goldson wisely stays out of the picture, resisting the temptation of putting any sort of explicitly personal stamp on the film. Nor are there moments of quiet observational slack. Brother has a compelling narrative, which Goldson and her co-director-dp Peter Gilbert and co-editor James Brown hew to quite tightly.

Brother Number One clearly illustrates how vicious ideology can be. It also reminds viewers how one murder can devastate an entire family. As for resolution, that is another matter entirely. That is indeed why Brother Number One is a timely and important film. One of three highly recommended films at this year’s New York edition of HRWFF, along with Salaam Dunk and Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, it screens this coming Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (6/19-6/21) at the Walter Reade Theater, with Goldson and Hamill in attendance all three nights.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on June 18th, 2012 at 4:51pm.