Author: Joe Bendel

LFM Reviews Tag @ Fantasia Fest 2015

By Joe Bendel. Mitsuko is a sensitive hafu (multi-ethnic, half-Japanese) high school girl, who writes poetry. This makes her an excellent candidate to be the “Final Girl.” Unfortunately, she will be the lone survivor, over and over again. She quickly wearies of the macabre phenomenon in Sion Sono’s genre-defying, reality-problematizing Tag, which screens today during the 2015 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal.

It is a beautiful day for a class trip. Unfortunately, some sort of supernaturally malevolent wind will sheer off the top of Mitsuko’s bus, decapitating all of her classmates and adult supervision. This might be the most school girls Sono has killed off in a single swoop since Suicide Club, so you know he will make the gory most of it. Preserved through happenstance, Mitsuko flees in a panic, but her survival instincts force her to dodge the murderous gale.

Soon, Mitsuko stumbles across another all-girls high school, populated with unfamiliar students that all seem to recognize her. The tough-talking ambiguously-yuri-ish Aki takes her under her wing, claiming to be her BFF. Together with Yuki and Sur (short for “surreal”), they ditch their first class for some girl bonding by the lake. Tragically, horrifically apocalyptic events will shake the school during second period. With Aki’s help, Mitsuko will once again survive, but when she reaches town, she discovers she has transformed into Keiko, a twenty-five year-old woman on her wedding day. Considering the lack of men in this world, it is safe to assume the groom is no prince. However, just when things look hopeless, Aki reappears. Yet, that means the process also repeats, transforming the former Mitsuko once again.

Tag is allegedly based on the same Yosuke Yamada novel that inspired the hit Chasing World films and TV show, but even if you have seen the entire Battle Royale-esque franchise, it will not explain anything that happens in Sono’s faithless non-adaptation. It is all Sono and it takes some wild metaphysical twists. This is not your 1980’s dead teenager kind of movie, not by a long shot.

Despite all the bloody mayhem, character counts in Tag. In fact, Erina Mano and the Austrian-Japanese Reina Triendl are rather extraordinary, all things considered, as the third and first manifestations of Mitsuko/Keiko/Izumi. In contrast, poor Mariko Shinoda seems a little overwhelmed by the wedding bedlam, inheriting the character at her most passive. However, if you are looking for transgressive mischief, her Keiko segment is tough to beat. Arguably though, the film really gets its heart from Yuki Sakurai’s career-making work as the fiercely charismatic Aki.

Arguably, we are really living in a golden age for cinema—one in which both Sion Sono and Takashi Miike exist and release new films on a monthly basis. In Sono’s case, Tag is the third of six films scheduled for Japanese release this year. It is also one of his most distinctive, somehow managing to subvert our genre expectations at every turn, while generating a truly massive body count. Very highly recommended for experienced cult cinema connoisseurs, Tag screens tonight (8/3), as part of this year’s Fantasia.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on August 3rd, 2015 at 5:42pm.

LFM Reviews Catch Me Daddy

By Joe Bendel. Provincial West Yorkshire is a tough area to find work, but it ought to be the perfect spot to lay low. Unfortunately, it is not far enough off the grid for one Pakistani woman and her Scots boyfriend. When discovered by her family and its hired thugs, they have no other options except desperate flight in Daniel & Matthew Wolfe’s Catch Me Daddy, which opens this Friday in metro Los Angeles.

Maybe Aaron is not the world’s greatest catch, but you cannot question his willingness to commit. By continuing his relationship with Laila, he is knowingly risking his life. As the film opens, he is far stricter when it comes to security than the somewhat in-denial Laila. Of course, his concerns will be vindicated when her brother Zaheer catches her flat-footed in their trailer. She barely escapes in the subsequent struggle, rendezvousing with Aaron in town. Her father’s associates and a pair of Anglo strong arm men follow hot on their heels, looking for any weakness they might exploit.

Rational parents simply endure it as best they can when their daughters get involved with disappointing boyfriends, whereas Muslim fundamentalists, like Laila’s restauranteur father, plot to murder their daughters and their forbidden significant others. These are called “honor crimes,” but there is nothing honorable about them. Although systemically under-reported, the number of recently recorded honor crimes committed in the UK is significant enough for even the BBC to take notice. Not surprisingly, Catch touched a bit of a nerve with British audiences, even though the Wolfe Brothers scrub the film of any references to Islam, leaving viewers with the impression this must be some sort of dark manifestation of Punjabi culture.

On the other hand, the warts-and-all depictions of Laila and Aaron are shrewdly effective. Hardly idealized martyrs for pluralistic tolerance, they are realistically messy and flawed, which is precisely why they do not deserve what lies in store for them. Sameena Jabeen Ahmed’s lead performance is quite remarkable. At times she is almost childlike, yet she must deal with some absolutely horrific realities. As her less showy partner, Connor McCarron does yeoman work, keeping their relationship and the film completely grounded. Gary Lewis also adds some potent vinegar to the film, keeping the audience off balance with his portrayal of Tony the cocaine addicted ruffian, who passes for the voice of reason amongst Laila’s pursuers.

From "Catch Me Daddy."

Catch is a strange film, in that it wants to spotlight the prevalence of honor crimes, but it does not want to address why they happen. Yet, it is hard to completely sweep the 800 pound gorilla under the rug. Indeed, the implications of Laila’s situation speak for themselves, thanks to some extraordinary performances.

It is all wrapped up in a grittily striking package, thanks in large measure to Robbie Ryan, who has already amassed a filmography that suggests he will be one of the few cinematographers whose work will become the stuff of future retrospectives. Catch just might be his best film to date (or at least the equal of Wuthering Heights). He vividly captures the desolation of the Yorkshire moors evoking a sense of moodier, revisionist westerns. It is an aesthetically severe film, but it has considerable merit and great urgency. Highly recommended overall, Catch Me Daddy opens this Friday (8/7) in LA (Beverly Hills) at the Laemmle Music Box and it screens this Saturday (8/8) in Williamsburg at Videology. Also note, a VOD release is scheduled for 9/1 from Oscilloscope Laboratories.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on August 3rd, 2015 at 5:42pm.

LFM Reviews Lady Psycho Killer @ Fantasia Fest 2015

By Joe Bendel. This college coed’s pathological aversion to men is not the product of freshmen indoctrination programs (although that probably did not help matters). She is quite literally insane, but do not judge her too harshly. Maniacal killing runs in her family. Montreal’s loutish frat boys are in for the slice & dice treatment in Nathan Oliver’s satirical Lady Psycho Killer, which screens today during the 2015 Fantasia International Film Festival in that very same Montreal.

Ella is suspiciously naïve and socially stunted. It is not just because she was home-schooled by her clingy mother. There is something off about her that her “edgy” psych professor will inadvertently turn loose. The only assignment of Prof. Douglas’s introductory class is to do something outside your normal bounds of behavior and write a paper about it. Ella decides to go to a strip club. Good choice.

Of course, when the manager inevitably starts sleazing on her, Ella ends up offing the creep. There is a lot of blood, but she likes it. Soon, she starts prosecuting her private war on the sexes, one sexually overbearing scumbag at a time, or in some cases, two at a time. However, she is not sure what to do with Daniel, the lacrosse-playing frat boy. He seems to genuinely like her—and he might be even shier than her. Eventually, her mother realizes what Ella is up to, but she understands. Her long absent father was the exact same way.

Somehow Oliver and co-screenwriter Albert I Melamed pull off quite a nifty trick in LPK. They have written a film all about gender politics that touches on just about every hot button social issue you can think of, yet it never comes across as didactic or hackneyed. The gory humor undoubtedly helps a lot. The crazy casting is also sure to please genre fans. If you have Michael Madsen, Malcolm McDowell, Daniel Baldwin, and Ron Jeremy on your Rotisserie B-movie team, than LPK will score you a lot of points, including a bonus for McDowell serving as executive producer.

The idea of Michael Madsen as an aging hipster freshman psych professor should unnerve any parent. Even though he tries to play it straight, it is hard not to laugh during his scenes. Be that as it may, nobody can top Kate Daly’s big screen debut as Ella. She is over-the-top nuts, but still projects a sense of pathos, while also nailing some wickedly droll narration. It is sort of like Reese Witherspoon’s arrival in Legally Blonde, but with buckets of blood.

To its credit, the humor in LPK is consistent funny and it flows organically from the dramatic situations, reflecting a fan’s appreciation of the slasher genre. Despite its themes and motifs, it never feels like a Ms. Magazine article grafted onto a psycho killer story. It gets everything right that a film like Girls Against Boys gets wrong. In fact, it is quite a bit of fun in a grisly, blood-splattered kind of way. Recommended for fans of sardonic horror films, Lady Psycho Killer premieres this evening (8/2), after services, at this year’s Fantasia.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on August 2nd, 2015 at 6:39pm.

LFM Reviews Strayer’s Chronicle @ Fantasia Fest 2015

By Joe Bendel. Evidently, humanity is a lot like Microsoft Windows. Future editions might have new features that sound really cool, but they are far less stable. In the 1990s, two very different secret experiments attempted to hasten the next stage of human evolution. Both endowed their test subjects with super-powers, but left them with drastically shortened life expectancies. One group faithfully serves as the project leader’s clandestine task force, while the other went underground, but they will face their destiny together in Takahisa Zeze’s Strayer’s Chronicle, which screens today during the 2015 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal.

Based on Takayoshi Honda’s novel, Strayer will be inevitably compared to the X-Men no matter how strenuously it objects. The similarities are obvious, but there is a dramatic difference in tone. While the Marvel franchise uses mutants as a metaphor for intolerance, often lurching into ham-fisted didacticism, Strayer is more concerned with its heightened sense of mortality. These super-heroes will all die soon, but straight-laced Subaru’s government-aligned team appears to be doing better than Manabu’s outlaw Ageha group.

Subaru has loyally served Koichiro Watase, the scientist responsible for his condition, but he is concerned about the recent “burn-out” of a team member. Their next assignment will be protecting a prominent molecular scientist and ethicist, whose insight into their condition attracts the attention of Ageha as well. Naturally, they mix it up during their initial encounters, but their attitudes towards each other soften as both factions get a fuller sense of the big picture. In fact, Manabu will send one of his members to Subaru’s group, because they will be better able to protect her. Having determined Aoi is able to reproduce, unlike her sterile comrades, she might actually have a future to protect.

From "Strayer’s Chronicle."

Even if Strayer “borrows” some concepts here and there, it develops plenty of cool twists of its own, like Subaru’s power to see a few seconds into the future, which means he always knows where and when to move in a fight. On the other hand, the power stealing abilities of Shizuka (played by Sara Takatsuki, who does not get enough screen time) closely resemble those of Rogue. The multi-leveled government conspiracy also has no shortage of forerunners, but it takes on eerie apocalyptic and existential dimensions in Strayer.

Perhaps Zeze and co-screenwriter Kohei Kiyasu do not reinvent the mutant wheel, but they stage some wildly cinematic action scenes. What really distinguishes Strayer from the rest of the super hero pack are the very real stakes involved. Far from invulnerable, any character could go at any time, as if they are on Game of Thrones. After all, they are literally dying before our eyes. Featuring some vividly realized special effects and a popular youthful cast, Strayer is an impressively ambitious foray into superhero movie making by Zeze, the former indie auteur. Recommended for fans of near future science fiction and conspiratorial thrillers, Strayer’s Chronicle screens tonight (8/2), as part of this year’s Fantasia.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on August 2nd, 2015 at 6:39pm.

Buckley v. Vidal: LFM Reviews Best of Enemies

By Joe Bendel. Ostensibly, they both came to debate, but they had very different agendas. William F. Buckley, Jr. was there to present a cogent world view, while Gore Vidal came to engage in character assassination. Nearly as many sparks flew on the makeshift ABC News set as on the streets of Chicago when the conservative and leftist commentators occasionally discussed the 1968 party conventions. Morgan Neville & Robert Gordon chronicle the blow-by-blow in Best of Enemies, which opened this Friday in New York.

The media loves to remind us Buckley lost his cool with Vidal, calling him a “queer” and offering him a punch in the face. They usually neglect to mention Vidal was goading him, calling him a “crypto-nazi,” as if Buckley would have anything to do with National Socialism. To their credit, Neville & Gordon give viewers the full context, including the fact that Vidal agreed to his ten debates with Buckley with the explicit intention of getting personal, in the nastiest, most destructive way possible. It is also rather eye-opening to hear how Vidal pre-tested his “ad libs” with a sympathetic press corps.

Logically, a good deal of Enemies is devoted to the verbal blood sport of their convention debates. However, there is a fair degree of media analysis, arguing Buckley v. Vidal was the watershed moment that unleashed a tidal wave of full throated punditry. Perhaps, but what is most striking is how cut-rate the ABC News operation was in 1968, a time when the networks did not have a heck of a lot of competition. The ABC convention operation was so cheap, their prefab convention soundstage literally collapsed, forcing them to use a makeshift replacement many considered an improvement.

In addition to generous archival clips of the combatants, Kelsey Grammer and John Lithgow also read from the assorted writings of Buckley and Vidal, respectively, with all the appropriate feeling and attitude they demand. Neville, Gordon, and their editor Aaron Wickenden keep it snappy and never get bogged down with talking head analysis. Most importantly, they do not play favorites in the way they present the controversies.

Sadly, Buckley passed away in 2008, but it is nice to hear him again, even under what were frustrating circumstances for him. Evidently, the filmmakers were able to interview Vidal before his death, but according to the directors’ notes in the media kit, he was so bitter and off-putting they declined to use the footage. That says plenty. Recommended as a time capsule of late 1960s politics loaded with sarcasm, Best of Enemies opened this Friday (7/31) in New York, at the IFC Center downtown and the Lincoln Plaza uptown.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on August 1st, 2015 at 3:43pm.

LFM Reviews The Sound of Redemption @ Sound + Vision 2015

By Joe Bendel. What was someone as young and talented as jazz musician Grace Kelly doing in San Quentin? She was playing in a unique tribute concert for Frank Morgan, her late, great mentor. Morgan himself was always the first to admit he spent far too much time incarcerated there, due to drugs and flawed decision-making. However, Morgan finally left prison for good in 1985 just in time for a mini-renaissance of interest in the old school bop tradition. N.C. Heiken’s chronicles his tumultuous life and beautiful music in The Sound of Redemption: the Frank Morgan Story, which screens this Sunday as part of Sound + Vision 2015.

In a way, music was in Morgan’s blood. He was the son of Ink Spots member Stanley Morgan, but that was a decidedly mixed blessing. Frank Morgan heard Charlie Parker at a young age and was profoundly influenced by his music. Unfortunately, he also developed a Bird-like heroin habit. Like most junkies, Morgan resorted to crime to pay for his habit, but he was especially industrious and/or reckless.

There was indeed a time when people considered the sixteen piece San Quentin Warden’s Band the best big band in California without any intended irony. For years, it was his only gig. Despite all his promise, Morgan was nearly unknown beyond the circle of musicians who played with him when he was literally just a kid, or had had their own stint in the San Quentin Band.

Man, the 1980s were a good decade, especially for real deal jazz greats like Morgan. However, Morgan’s third act not one of absolutely unalloyed triumphalism. In fact, Heikin nicely tempers the inspirational with the darker backsliding realities of life. Things were as they were, but the music remains.

At the heart of the film is the rather remarkable concert featuring Morgan’s friends and colleagues, performing the standards he was most associated with. Even though we do not hear the man himself in these sequences, they have the right spirit nonetheless. They are also very shrewdly edited. In one memorable scene, we clearly see one resident audience member nodding along knowingly as trombonist and master-of-ceremonies Delfeayo Marsalis explains just how much Morgan lost as a result of his habit.

From "The Sound of Redemption."

Heikin is also wise enough to show Kelly’s absolutely devastating performance of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in its uninterrupted entirety. Frankly, seeing her in front of that rough-looking crowd will alarm a lot of us jazz fans who remember her as the twelve year-old prodigy who exploded onto the scene (with Morgan’s encouragement), but she is in her early twenties now. Regardless, her rendition is exquisitely fitting. Morgan was inspired by Bird, but he had a tender way with ballads that was more like an alto version of Dexter Gordon (a former Central Avenue comrade).

By following up the chilling yet strangely elegant North Korean expose Kimjongilia with her sensitive and swinging portrait of Morgan, Heikin might just become our new favorite filmmaker. Her instincts are sharp and reliable, while her aesthetic sensibilities are unerringly sophisticated. Executive produced by hipper-than-you-knew mystery novelist Michael Connelly, Sound of Redemption does right by its subject, as well as his fellow musicians (especially including Kelly, Marsalis, pianist George Cables, legendary bassist Ron Carter, drummer Marvin “Smitty” Smith, and alto player Mark Gross, who all gigged on the central prison concert, sounding fantastic). A bittersweet treat, Sound of Redemption is very highly recommended when it screens this Sunday (8/2) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s Sound + Vision.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on August 1st, 2015 at 3:42pm.