Category: Movie Reviews

By Joe Bendel. She retired in 1992, but she is still one of the biggest stars around. She brought down the house presenting the Asia Star Award to her frequent co-star-action choreographer Sammo Hung and if the producers of the proposed Expendabelles film cannot lure her into a big screen return than they simply should not bother going any further. Viewers can appreciate her power and presence in Shout Factory’s 3-DVD Angela Mao Ying Collection, which includes Jeong Chang-hwa’s Broken Oath.

Lotus Liu never knew her mother, but she inherited her drive for revenge just the same. After four turncoats murdered her father, the principled General Liu, her mother Yee-mei was consigned to the remote Wolf’s Teeth Island prison, where she dies during childbirth. Thousand Hands, Lotus’s not so rehabilitated pickpocket god-mother, raises her as her own daughter, but never reveals her birth mother’s tale of woe, in hopes of breaking the cycle of violence (in addition to her titular oath). Right, good luck with that.

Eventually, Lotus is expelled from her Buddhist nunnery, discovering her true origin story shortly thereafter. With the help one of Thousand Hands’ stealthy-fingered associate, Lotus proceeds to hunt down her father’s four betrayers one-by-one. So far, so good, but she is not quite sure what to make of the mysterious stranger, who frequently materializes to point her in the right direction.

Often cited as a fan favorite, Broken was Mao’s final film for Golden Harvest (considered the successors to the Shaw Brothers as the next great HK distributor-production house). It is easy to see why. While technically a period wuxia film, it definitely has the sensibilities of a 1970s revenge thriller. There are also the exotic Devil’s Island style prison scenes, a small army of undercover cops targeting enemy #4, and a dash of Buddhist teachings.

Most importantly, there are some spectacular fight sequences featuring Mao and her co-stars, including Hung as a featured bodyguard. Action directors Yuen Woo-ping and Hsu Hsia frequently mix martial arts styles to play to the strengths of each cast-member, but they always keep it dazzling cinematic and impressively kinetic.

Mao electrifies Broken, brooding with intensity and throwing down with authority. She is unquestionably the star, even though the big fight sequences are distributed surprisingly equitably amongst the ensemble. Wang Lai also lends the affair plenty of grace and dignity as Thousand Hands, while Ho Mei makes a strong impression in her brief but fan-serving appearance as the wronged Madame Liu.

Broken Oath seriously delivers the goods for martial arts connoisseurs in general and Angela Mao Ying fans in particular. It is a perfect opener for Shout Factory’s highly recommended collection, now available on DVD. More coverage to come.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on June 18th, 2014 at 9:40pm.

By Joe Bendel. As a hitman for the mob, Gon is sure to have mother issues. He is also living with a case of soul-crushing guilt. Not surprisingly, he acts somewhat erratically on his latest job. In fact, he starts protecting the woman he is supposed to kill. It turns out they have been tragically linked by fate in Lee Jeong-beom’s No Tears for the Dead, which opens this Friday in New York.

When a crooked investment banker tries to sell the Chinese Triad’s offshore banking information to the Russian mob, Gon is dispatched by their Korean allies to kill everyone involved. Unfortunately, there were two very awkward complications. Gon accidentally killed the banker’s young daughter, but he failed to recover the flashdrive in question. He and his boss have very different opinions regarding which is more important.

Gon would prefer to sink into oblivion, but the boss insists he travel home from America to finish the job. Unbeknownst to her, the little girl’s grieving mother Mo-gyeong will soon have possession of the Macguffin, but of course she will not recognize it for what it is. The Korean mob and the crooked cops they have bought and paid for are determined to make her disappear, but they did not anticipate Gon going rogue. However, he will have to be a bit cagey when Mo-gyeong asks just who is he and what is it all to him?

There is just no getting around the depressing nature of the first half of Tears. Nevertheless, the mayhem gets pretty spectacular when the bullets start flying.  Although the climax is highly reminiscent of the original Die Hard, the shootouts and beatdowns are staged with admirable bravado. Brian Tee (recognizable from The Wolverine and Tokyo Drift) also makes quite a charismatic villain, calling out Gon as his sworn brother Chaoz.

Superstar Jang Dong-gun seethes and broods like mad, while showing off first class action chops. Kim Min-hee is frighteningly credible portraying Mo-gyeong on the way down, but she does not sell her rage-to-live nearly as convincingly. It is also worth noting that the little girl playing the little girl is so expressive, it is like a knife to the gut.

Frankly, the first half is downright morose and angsty, but the second half delivers with all guns blazing (literally). Fans of Lee’s breakout hit The Man from Nowhere will be happy to see him further refining his formula mixing dark, emotionally resonant drama and adrenaline-charged, up-close-and-personal melee. Recommended for genre fans with a taste for the existential, No Tears for the Dead opens this Friday (6/20) in New York at the AMC Empire.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on June 18th, 2014 at 9:35pm.

By Joe Bendel. It is sort of like Fincher’s The Game, with the economic sensibilities of Glengarry Glen Ross. Supposedly its origins trace back to ancient Rome, but savvy Asian film fans will recognize its first cinematic manifestation came in Chukiat Sakveerakul’s 13: Game of Death. Daniel Stamm re-conceives the macabre Thai thriller in New Orleans, where the desperate will still be tempted to commit the most heinous crimes throughout 13 Sins, which has just been released on DVD.

Elliot Brindle would agree with Alec Baldwin, sales is a “tough racket.” Recently fired from his firm for not being sufficiently predatory, Brindle is already drowning in debt. In addition to his pending wedding to his pregnant girlfriend, Brindle suddenly must also cover his developmentally disabled brother’s outpatient treatment and care for his ailing racist father.

Things are looking pretty depressed for Brindle, but from out of the blue, a mystery caller offers him one thousand baht (sorry, make that dollars) to kill the fly buzzing around his car. Yes, their apparent surveillance is a little disconcerting, but he does it anyway and the money is immediately deposited in his account. The voice of character actor George Coe then offers him more money to eat the fly, which he does, knowing it is just protein. Those were the first two challenges out of thirteen. Of course, they escalate in severity, but Brindle is already hooked. Failure will result in the forfeiture of his winnings, but all the felonies he is about to commit will be wiped clean with ultimate victory.

Stamm and co-adapter David Birke cleverly devise challenges that are graphic and game-worthy, but not so repellent they irreparably sabotage our rooting interest in Brindle. There are some okay twists to the tale, but the big one stretches credibility. For the most part, Stamm keeps the film humming along slick and tight, without belaboring the class warfare undercurrent.

13 Sins also benefits from ever-watchable genre vets Ron Perlman and Pruitt Taylor Vince as the tight-lipped Det. Chilcoat and the twitchy conspiracy theorist Vogler, respectively. Stamm has them standing around more than he should, but they each deliver one of the film’s two best lines in perfect deadpan style.

In contrast, Mark Webber is a rather weak lead, but he is still convincingly earnest and put-upon as poor Brindle. Frankly, Tom Bower frequently up-stages him as his snarling old man. On the down side, Devon Graye’s performance as brother Michael is just problematic on multiple levels.

By thriller standards, 13 Sins is serviceable enough, but it never fully captures the flavor of its NOLA setting. Frankly, that was a lost opportunity to give the film a more distinctive identity. A professional return to familiar territory, 13 Sins is passable but not essential viewing for fans of dark thrillers with a dash of horror seasoning. It is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Anchor Bay and Radius TWC.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on June 18th, 2014 at 9:30pm.

By Joe Bendel. Suppose Schrödinger’s cat threw a dinner party. He would probably serve tuna and quantum physics. The notion of quantum superposition made famous by the hypothetical feline becomes a question of life and death for a group of hipsters when a comet crashes their soiree in James Ward Byrkit’s sf mindtrip, Coherence, which opens this Friday in New York.

Mike and Lee are hosting some of their closest friends, as well as Amir’s annoying girlfriend, Laurie, who also happens to be Kevin’s ex, before he started seeing Em. Although she is attractive, Em is highly insecure and nearly paralyzed with regret over her past mistakes. She is therefore less than thrilled to see Laurie, but the comet will provide some timely distractions, spontaneously cracking cell phones and knocking out the power grid.

Noticing a nearby house still has power, Amir and Hugh (the oldest of their circle) leave to investigate, but return thoroughly spooked. They also bring back a rather puzzling box. Panic and mystery ensue. However, a key clue might be found in some notes left by Hugh’s scientist brother referring to Schrödinger’s cat.

According to that classic thought experiment, given a certain set of Rube Goldberg pre-conditions, a cat placed in a box that has equal chance of being dead or alive when the container is opened, simultaneously exists in both states until an outside force interrupts, forcing the two existences to collapse into a single reality. Determining how it applies to them will be an unsettling experience.

Byrkit takes that cryptic premise and runs with it, steadily raising the stakes and cranking up the anxiety. Following Darren Paul Fisher’s Frequencies and Richie Mehta’s I’ll Follow You Down, Coherence heralds a mini-renaissance for concept-driven micro-budget science fiction with virtually no special effects. Eventually, Byrkit employs a bit of SFX trickery, but it is far from the point of the film and spoilery to address in any meaningful way.

Considering how head-spinning Byrkit & Alex Manugian’s story gets, it is hard to imagine sending the cast out to do it cold improv style, but that is largely what they did. Mostly just armed only with their prepared situation and character notes, the ensemble somehow makes it work. Indeed, it is certainly never a problem for them to look confused or panicked, which is required throughout most of the second two acts.

Frankly, casting Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Nicholas Brendon as Mike, a washed-up former Roswell co-star is so meta-inspired, Coherence could have coasted into conventional riff on Night of the Comet and still satisfied fans. In fact, Brendon loses his cool rather spectacularly as Mike.

Although she initially seems rather vanilla, Emily Foxley’s Em deftly pulls off a critical pivot late in the game. Demonstrating consistency under difficult thesp circumstances, Hugo Armstrong anchors the film and handles the egghead material with authority as the more down to earth Hugh. Bill Clinton would also be interested to know former Miss America and elusive Paula Jones witness Elizabeth Gracen chews her share of scenery as Hugh’s New Agey wife Beth.

Coherence is a smart, tense genre outing that thoroughly shows up big budget tent-poles with its superior inventiveness. Byrkit and company take a lot of risks, but they all payoff significantly. Highly recommended for fans of sf and cult cinema, Coherence opens this Friday (6/20) in New York at the Village East.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on June 17th, 2014 at 4:50pm.

By Joe Bendel. It might be summer, but Eric Rohmer characters never get a vacation from their personality hang-ups. Strangely, they are still good company, thanks to the auteur’s feather-light touch. Despite its place in one of Rohmer’s great thematic film series, the Tales of the Four Seasons quartet, as well as a young cast predominantly dressed for the beach, A Summer’s Tale is only now getting a proper American theatrical release, when it opens this Friday in New York.

Gaspard is a dedicated musician, who has recently completed a master’s degree in mathematics, but he is not very smart when it comes to women. He has come to Dinard in Brittany for a short holiday before his first adult job commences, in hopes his pseudo-girlfriend Léna will join him there. Much to his frustration, but not necessarily his surprise, she has flaked on him. In spite of his general mopiness, an attractive ethnology student waitressing in her aunt’s café takes a liking to Gaspard. Also separated from her lover, Margot assures Gaspard there will no possibility of romance between them, but she encourages him to pursue Solène, a casual acquaintance of hers.

After a bit of prodding, Gaspard successfully acts on her advice. Yet, just as his fling with Solène threatens to get serious, Léna resurfaces. Will he sabotage his flawed romance of the moment for an even more problematic relationship from the past, while taking for granted all the chemistry we can plainly see in his platonic friendship with Margot? It puts the socially awkward Gaspard in quite a quandary, but Margot is openly dismissive of his self-centered confusion.

Most viewers will not be very impressed by Gaspard’s whiny vacillations either, but Amanda Langlet’s Margot is a different story. It is worth enduring his neurotic dithering so we can hear her undercut him. Formerly the young star of Rohmer’s Pauline at the Beach, in thirteen years Amanda Langlet had matured into a charismatic young woman, whose charm and intelligent presence consistently elevates Summer. It is strange that she has been so rarely seen by international cineastes outside Rohmer films, yet Melvil Poupaud’s star continued to rise after his gawky turn as Gaspard.

Aurelia Nolin is not exactly a household name either, but viewers can well understand why Gaspard has such a hard time getting over her. As is usually the case for Rohmer’s screenplays, Summer is a talky film, but the primary cast makes his often brutally honest dialogue sound natural and spontaneous. It is very Rohmeresque, even though it is not set in his familiar Paris. In fact, he consciously anchors Summer along the Brittany coast, capitalizing on the local color and sea shanties.

Always a considerate host, Rohmer carefully marks the passing of each day leading up to Gaspard’s scheduled departure and deliberately identifies the relevant landmarks for the audience. Even after the HD restoration, Summer never dazzles visually, but it still makes Dinard look like a lovely place to visit.

There are profundities to be found amongst Summer’s prosaic exchanges. It can be pointed at times, but it is never a rude or crass viewing experience. Sharply observed but scrupulously forgiving of human foibles, it is a classic example of the Rohmer style. Highly recommended for Francophiles and those who appreciate intimate chamber comedy-dramas, A Summer’s Tale (finally) opens this Friday (6/20) in New York at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on June 17th, 2014 at 4:45pm.