Author: Joe Bendel

The Bhatts Do 3D: LFM Reviews Raaz 3

By Joe Bendel. The Bhatts are back and they are Bhattier than ever. Shortly after giving the world Sunny Leone’s mainstream-ish debut, India’s sensationalistic filmmaking family has returned with the first Bollywood horror movie to receive an R rating from the MPAA. Not to worry, it is almost entirely for scenes of supernatural terror. There is plenty of uncanny skullduggery afoot in Vikram Bhatt’s thematic stand-alone sequel Raaz 3 (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Shenaya Shekhar used to be the hottest thing going in Bollywood, but she got ever so slightly older. Now, it is the younger, cuter Sanjana Krishnan who gets all the plum parts and awards. That does not sit well with Shekhar, who also carries a deeper grudge against the oblivious starlet, for reasons which will be revealed in good time. Not exactly a model of emotional stability, Shekhar is ripe for the enticement of the dark side.

The demonic Taradutt is always willing to make a deal and Shekhar is definitely someone he can do business with. Her goals are simple: to preserve her celebrity status and make Krishnan suffer. Taradutt is happy to oblige with some black magic. However, her rival will need frequent doses of his soul-enslaving potion. The Mickey-slipping job will fall to Aditya Arora, Shekhar’s indebted lover who happens to be directing Krishnan’s next picture. Though guilt-wracked, Arora complies, only to find himself falling for Krishnan as she succumbs to Taradutt’s evil influence.

If you are going to see a Bhatt-helmed film, go to one of Vikram’s supernatural forays rather than Pooja’s naughty melodramas. As far as horror-paranormal romance crossovers go, Raaz 3 has its moments. The scenes involving Hindu deities and demons work rather well, making a nice change of pace from typically materialistic horror films. Since its characters work in Bollywood, the film can also sneak in dance numbers in ways that do not sacrifice verisimilitude. Still, the cast is stuck with some absolute howlers in Shagufta Rafique’s script and nobody’s performance is exactly subtle in the first place.

Give her credit, though, Bipasha Basu vamps it up something fierce as Shekhar, always in cleavage-emphasizing wardrobe that must have restricted the poor woman’s breathing. Anything for art. At least she gets it. Emraan Hashmi just lacks presence as Arora. Instead of a tortured brooder, he just looks somewhat nauseous. In the innocent victim role, Esha Gupta’s Krishnan is sorely underwritten, but she is aces in her big dance number.

See Bipasha Basu in 3D in "Raaz 3."

Cinematographer Pravin Bhatt gets the dark and stormy atmospherics right, but the CGI is of sub-Hollywood standards.  Frankly, the 3D is also completely unnecessary here. The only instances where it really works are during the musical interludes. Most of the time, it is more of a distraction than an enhancement. For Bollywood fans, the songs are palatable, but not distinctive.

Bipasha Basu’s demon-loving diva could go toe-to-toe with Eva Green’s Angelique Bouchard in Burton’s Dark Shadows reboot. They are the real reasons to see both films, which is definitely something in either case. Recommended for those who enjoy a campy, larger-than-life star-turn rather than for likely to be disappointed horror genre fans, Raaz 3 opens today in New York, with the 2D version playing at the Big Cinemas Manhattan 1 and the 3D running at the AMC Empire. It also opens in the Bay Area, with 3D screenings at the AMC Mercado and Cinemark Union City, with the 2D showing at the Fremont Big Cities 7.

Posted on September 7th, 2012 at 12:42pm.

A Family Survives Mao’s Cultural Revolution: LFM Reviews Mulberry Child, Narrated by Jacqueline Bisset

By Joe Bendel. Paradoxically, it might have been the ardent loyalty of Jian Ping’s persecuted parents that saved them during the Cultural Revolution. At least, they never said anything incriminating their children would have been forced to repeat. Yet, the lingering trauma of the experience makes it difficult for her to relate to her Americanized daughter, Lisa Xia. By exploring their family history, the two women come to terms with their own relationship in Susan Morgan Cooper’s hybrid-documentary, Mulberry Child, which opens this Friday in New York at the Quad Cinema.

True believers, Hou Kai and Gu Wenxiu met and married through the Chinese Communist Party. They bought into the Party’s early rhetoric, which proved to be a profound mistake during the “Anti-Rightist Campaign.” Trying to defend a wrongfully accused colleague, Hou only succeeded in putting himself in the Party’s crosshairs. Despite some trying moments, Jian’s father made it through the first reign of terror, demoted but relatively unscathed. The Cultural Revolution would be a different story entirely.

As a school administer, Jian’s mother was directly in the line of fire. To make matters worse, her father’s history as a one-time Japanese POW was a red flag for the empowered zealots. As the institutionalized madness escalated, Jian’s father was imprisoned and her mother was held a de-facto captive in her school’s boiler room, forced to write self-criticism and pressured to denounce her husband. Largely raised by their grandmother, the children went months without seeing either parent.

How cowardly and cruel must an ideology be that it would force a seven year old girl to condemn her father in school? Yet, the Maoist cult continues to seduce Western academics who never had to live through it. Somehow, though, Jian’s parents still cling to their faith, as if by acknowledging that the source of the horror they lived through—the Chinese Communist Party—would somehow make all their suffering for naught.

Gu Wenxiu (actor Bruce Akoni) and Hou Kai (actress Jody Choi) in film.

Jian and her daughter can apprise the past with more clarity, but they remain susceptible to a romanticized vision of contemporary China. Ironically, their big coming together moment happens during the Beijing Olympic Games, against the backdrop of the striking Bird’s Nest stadium, designed by Ai Weiwei. Yet, the government’s relentless campaign against the artist and teacher ought to undermine the superficial images the Party tries to present to the world.

Nonetheless, when looking backward, Mulberry is quite forceful and moving. Combining Jacqueline Bisset’s voice-overs with dramatized episodes from Jian’s memoir, Morgan Cooper vividly conveys an innocent child’s perspective on an era of state sanctioned insanity. Jody Choi and Bruce Akoni Yong are particularly affecting as young Jian and the much abused Hou (“The Big Traitor”), respectively. However, the candid-style mother-daughter conversations do not carry the same dramatic weight. Yes, there is something universal to their generational disconnect, but it pales in comparison to her experience visiting her father in prison—unaccompanied because only a seven year old girl could visit a suspected enemy of the state without reprisals.

Of course, the difficulties survivors like Jian have expressing affection are the least of the Cultural Revolution’s tragic legacy, but it is what most directly affects her and her daughter. Sensitively produced, Mulberry Child is recommended for its up-close-and-personal insight into the chaos unleashed by Mao’s regime (rather than its wishful thinking for today’s China) when it opens this Friday (9/7) at New York’s Quad Cinema.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on September 4th, 2012 at 2:34pm.

The Birth of the Han Dynasty: LFM Reviews White Vengeance on Blu-ray/DVD

By Joe Bendel. Power corrupts and the pursuit of power corrupts just as absolutely. This is the lesson an ancient mystery man has for a pompous scholar and his students, startled while paying their respects in the first Han Emperor’s tomb. He will tell them the real story of the Hongmen Banquet and the struggle to succeed the fallen Qin Dynasty in Daniel Lee’s mistitled White Vengeance (trailer here), which is now available on DVD and Blu-ray today from Well Go USA.

The tyrannical Qin Emperor is dead and nobody misses him, least of all Han leader Liu Bang and Chu nobleman Xiang Yu, rival generals who forged an uneasy alliance against the Qin. Of course, the emperor’s death prompts a rather obvious question: who will succeed him? Fearing for his own neck, the caretaker emperor decrees the first to control the Qin capitol of Xianyang wins the throne, hoping to play the warriors against each other. It works.

As sworn brothers turned bitter rivals, there are still a lot of unresolved issues between Liu Bang and Xiang Yu, particularly concerning the royal consort Yu Ji, the latter’s lover entrusted to the former for safekeeping. Among many things, Vengeance is an elegantly austere, almost chaste, love triangle.

There is also plenty of period warfighting in Vengeance, rendered with grit and scope. Lee is definitely in his element staging huge clashes of armies. He really shows viewers exactly what it means to be outflanked and why it is a bad thing. Yet, the film’s real battle is that between the military strategists, Xiang Yu’s longtime family advisor Fan Zeng and the freelance Obiwan Zhang Liang, who sides with his rival because of Liu Bang’s professed lack of ambition. When the two counselors match wits during a game of weiqi, the stakes are significant and bloody.

Liu Yifei in "White Vengeance."

Boasting an all-star HK and Chinese cast, Vengeance features memorable supporting performances from top to bottom. Not surprisingly, Anthony Wong dominates the film as the blind but all-seeing Fan Zeng, instantly bringing the gravitas necessary for the cunning yet classically tragic figure. Still, as the crafty Zhang Liang, Hanyu Zhang holds his own with the recognizable Johnnie To veteran.

Unfortunately, neither Feng Shaofeng nor Leon Lai displays the same commanding screen presence as the rival generals. Actually, they are rather bland. In contrast, Jordan Chan packs quite the late inning punch as Han loyalist Fan Kuai, while (Crystal) Liu Yifei is appropriately orchid-like as Yu Ji, but she also makes the most of a bigtime dramatic close-up down the stretch.

Lee rather dexterously shifts viewer sympathies in ways that might even be considered subversive. Indeed, there is definitely a point in Vengeance about the high cost of taking and keeping power. What they say about good intentions still holds true. An ambitious historical epic with plenty of action, White Vengeance is recommended with considerable enthusiasm for fans of Hong Kong cinema. It releases today (9/4) on DVD and Blu-ray from Well Go USA.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on September 4th, 2012 at 2:32pm.

LFM Reviews The Tall Man

By Joe Bendel. It is the town even country music forgot. It has the grim name of Cold Rock, Washington, but it might as well be called “Stimulus Village.” When the mine closed, the jobs disappeared, but that was just the start of their problems. A prolonged epidemic of child abductions continues to plague the town. Sketchy sightings of a shadowy figure have given rise to a new urban legend, but one desperate woman will confront the truth behind the bogeyman in Pascal Laugier’s The Tall Man (trailer here), which opened Friday in New York.

Julia Denning is registered nurse and the only remaining medical care-provider left in Cold Rock. While her late husband was a beloved pillar of the community, many of the locals never really warmed to her. Yet, she stays out of a sense of duty. Then one fateful night, she wakes to find little David has been spirited away. More resourceful than her neighbors, Denning gives chase, nearly reclaiming David from his abductor. However, when Lieutenant Dodd, the big city copper on loan to the overwhelmed small town, deposits the battered and distraught Denning at the local diner for safekeeping, she finds her fellow townspeople are acting suspiciously squirrely.

There is a huge game-changing twist in Tall Man, but Laugier drops it comparatively early in the game. Instead of an M. Night Shyamalan ending intended to make viewers feel stupid for buying into his films’ ostensive premises, Laugier allows at least a good third of the picture to explore the implications of his revelation. While the big surprise eventually leads to credibility questions that would be spoilery to explain, it is executed quite smoothly.

Jessica Biel in "The Tall Man."

As Denning, Jessica Biel plays a critical role selling the gotcha, rather decisively subverting the woman-in-jeopardy archetype. Stephen McHattie (star of Pontypool, probably the best zombie film since the original Night of the Living Dead) brings genre cred and a cool, steely presence to Lt. Dodd. Unfortunately, the rest of the ensemble is largely underwhelming as underwritten stock characters. Still, it is somewhat amusing to see William B. Davis, the cigarette smoking man in The X-Files, as the ineffectual Sheriff Chestnut. You wonder why they keep re-electing him, given the circumstances.

Tricky to categorize, Tall Man largely inhabits the zone where horror movies and dark thrillers overlap. Laugier is quite effective establishing the dark, eerie vibe, but his third act-denouement suffers from a lack of tension. Still, The Tall Man is far more distinctive than other disposable horror-ish films that stumbled into theaters this year, such as ATM and Beneath the Darkness. Soon to be an interesting VOD or rental choice, The Tall Man just does not quite have enough thrills or scares for current New York City movie ticket prices. Maybe worth keeping in mind for later, it opened Friday (8/31) at the AMC Village 7.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on September 4th, 2012 at 2:32pm.

Bombs and Bikes: LFM Reviews Quick on Blu-ray/DVD

By Joe Bendel. Safety first, kids. Remember, you never know what some psychopath could sneak into your helmet, so you are better off not wearing one – regardless of how recklessly you might race through the city’s streets. One biker turned messenger learns this the hard way in Jo Bum-gu’s Quick, which releases today on DVD and Blu-ray from Shout Factory.

In 2004, Han Ki-su broke up rather spectacularly with his girlfriend, Choon-sim. It is a heck of a pile-up. Seven years later, she has reinvented herself as Ah-rom, the lead singer of an up-and-coming girl group, while he has de-invented himself as motorbike deliveryman. Still fearless on a bike, Han delivers a bomb for a mysterious client unaware of its contents. There will be more where that came from. Unfortunately, his ex Ah-rom will become a part of the madness when she books Han to whisk her off to a gig. Putting on his helmet, she sees a rather ominous countdown clock where there shouldn’t be one. As the voice on Han’s cell phone explains, he has thirty minutes to make a series of deliveries or the helmet goes boom.

While Quick owes an obvious debt of inspiration to Speed, it could also be considered the motorized forerunner to Premium Rush – but with a more talented cast. There will be plenty of breakneck weaving through traffic and unlikely Evel Knievel jumps. There is also a yakuza backstory to the mad bomber’s crime spree so convoluted, even the cops can’t keep it straight. For stunt driving, though, Quick is hard to beat. The hospitalized stuntmen seen visited by cast members during the closing credits can attest to that.

Granted, Kang Ye-won is considerably less annoying than Sandra Bullock, but her character’s initial diva act is a bit cringy for a while. If nothing else, having a bomb attached to your head ought to inspire clarity of thought. Still, she looks good in vinyl as her character eventually settles in and gets serious.

Frankly, the humor in Quick is rather broad and does not travel well. Fortunately, Lee Min-ki never goes for laughs as Han, mostly brooding like a rebel without a cause, except when he is raging against their tormentor. As biker movie protagonists go, he is pretty good really. However, since the identity of the evil mastermind is kept secret until well into the third act, Quick does not have a lot of moustache-twisting villainy.

To recap, Quick has a whole lot of explosions and chase scenes. It is also nice to see the fim’s shout out to the stunt personnel, given the rate the Korean film industry chews them up and spits them out (at least according to stuntman-filmmaker Jung Byung-gil’s documentary Action Boys, which screened at NYAFF four years ago). Never lacking adrenaline, Quick is easily recommended for action fans. It is now available at most online retailers from Shout Factory.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on September 4th, 2012 at 2:30pm.

LFM Reviews Jet Li’s Flying Swords of Dragon Gate in IMAX 3D

By Joe Bendel. It was a time when eunuchs terrorized the land. However, a handful of wandering knights are willing to challenge them, even at the cost of their lives. Good multi-taskers, they will still find time for a bit of treasure-hunting in Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, Tsui Hark’s monster 3D return to the legendary Dragon Gate Inn world, which opens a special two-week IMAX-coming-straight-at-your-head limited engagement this Friday in New York.

Sort of but not really a sequel to Raymond Lee’s 1992 Dragon Gate Inn (produced and co-written by Tsui), Flying 3D picks up three years later in movie time. Dragon Inn burned to the ground and the femme fatale proprietress disappeared under murky circumstances, but since there was a demand for a sketchy flophouse right smack in the middle of sandstorm alley, the inn has been rebuilt by a gang of outlaws. While they might roll the occasional guest, they are really more interested in the legend of the fabulous gold buried beneath the sands.

Two mysterious swordsmen calling themselves Zhou Huai’an will find themselves at the remote outpost after tangling with the corrupt eunuch bureaucracy. One Zhou has just rescued Su Huirong, a potentially embarrassing pregnant concubine from the forces of the East Bureau. This Zhou also happens to be a she and she has some heavy history with the man she is impersonating. For his part, the real Zhou Huai’an has just barely survived a nasty encounter with the East’s top agent, Yu Huatian.

The doubling continues when fortune hunter Gu Shaotang shows up at the inn with her partner Wind Blade, a dead-ringer for the evil Yu. Add to the mix a group of rowdy, hard-drinking Tartar warriors, led by their princess Buludu and you have a rather unstable situation. Before long, sides have been chosen and a massive gravity-defying battle is underway, as the mother of all sandstorms bears down on Dragon Gate Inn.

Frankly, the 3D in Flying is so good, the initial scenes are a bit disorienting. Tsui probably has a better handle on how to use this technology than just about any other big picture filmmaker, dizzyingly rendering the massive scale of the Ming-era wuxia world. Flying is also quite progressive by genre standards, featuring not one but three first-class women action figures. When the headlining Jet Li disappears from time to time, he really is not missed. Of course, when it is time to go mano-a-mano in the middle of a raging twister, he is the first to step up to the plate.

All kinds of fierce yet genuinely vulnerable, Zhou Xun is fantastic as Ling Yanquiu, the Twelfth Night-ish Zhou Huai’an. Likewise, Li Yuchun is a totally convincing action co-star as the roguish Gu, nicely following-up on the promise she showed in Bodyguards and Assassins. Yet Gwei Lun Mei upstages everyone as the exotically tattooed, alluringly lethal barbarian princess. Her Buludu is both more woman and more man than Xena will ever be. In contrast, Chen Kun is a bit of a cold fish in his dual role, which suits the serpentine Yu just fine, but does not work so well for Wind Blade.

Throughout Flying, Tsui chucks realism into the whirlwind and never looks back. If you are distracted by scenes that look “fake,” many of the CGI fight scenes will have you beside yourself. On the other hand, if you enjoy spectacle, you really have to see it. Surpassing its predecessor in nearly every way, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate is a whole lot of illogical fun. Highly recommended for everyone still reading this review, it opens for two weeks only this Friday (8/31) at the AMC Empire.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on August 30th, 2012 at 1:25pm.