Category: Movie Reviews

Strange Things Happen in Utah: LFM Reviews Skinwalker Ranch

By Joe Bendel. It is an area notorious for weird happenings, but this is northern Utah, so they can’t be blamed on drunken misperceptions. In fact, a private paranormal research team could probably use a stiff shot when things start going bump in the night in Devin McGinn’s Skinwalker Ranch, which launches on VOD and screens in select cities this Wednesday.

Some locals believe the home video purportedly showing a young boy whisked away by supernatural forces is legitimate, while some suspect it is a hoax concocted by his father. Desperate to find his son, distraught rancher Hoyt Miller welcomes a team of scientists from Modern Defense Enterprises and a journalist recruited to serve as a neutral observer, hoping they can supply some answers. They wire the house and surrounding property with motion sensor cameras and settle in, but they will not have long to wait. An unearthly high pitched tone rudely awakens them their first night in the field, with subsequent uncanny events preventing them from getting much sleep thereafter.

Although not entirely found footage, a great deal of Skinwalker unfolds from the perspective of the surveillance cameras. By genre standards, McGinn shows admirable patience in the early going, nicely setting the scene and establishing the ranch’s atmospheric nooks and crannies. For a while, it is surprisingly creepy, thanks to his skillful use of suggestion and mystery to build the tension. Unfortunately, the conclusion seems rather rushed, but with horror movies, a good set-up often compensates for a weak ending.

Although the helmer directing himself is usually a red flag, McGinn is actually quite respectable as Cameron Murphy, the semi-skeptical journalist. Jon Gries is also better than average as the poor, suffering Miller. Frankly, Skinwalker earns a recommendation just for casting the eternally cool Michael Horse (a cult favorite from Twin Peaks) as Ahote, a vaguely shaman-esque figure who offers the helpful advice to get the good golly out of there.

Skinwalker’s fusion of the horror and alien abduction genres is hardly original, but the execution exceeds expectations. After all, for a low budget programmer, not bad is pretty good. Recommended for a Halloween outing with like-minded viewers, Skinwalker Ranch screens this Wednesday (10/30), Devil’s Night, in theaters throughout Texas, Florida, and Alabama.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on October 28th, 2013 at 9:51pm.

Her Father’s Voice: LFM Reviews Blood and Ties

By Joe Bendel. The so-called “Hwaseong Murders” were South Korea’s first recorded serial killings, but the statute of limitations expired before the murderer was uncovered. The case’s impact can still be discerned in Korean cinema’s fascination with serial killers and the ticking prosecutorial clock. Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder was transparently based on the Hwaseong killings and it is easy to see its influence on Jung Byoung-gil’s Confession of Murder. The notorious crimes also directly inspired Kook Dong-seok’s Blood and Ties, which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

Jung Da-eun’s working class father Soon-man never had much, but he made sure she never lacked for anything. Now a grown adult, she still lives at home with the ever dedicated single parent. All her grad school friends adore dear old dad too, but after watching a lurid new documentary, they cannot help noticing how similar his voice sounds to that of a notorious child abductor. The unknown perpetrator was only recorded during a brief ransom call, but he even uses one the senior Jung’s favorite catch phrases.

Thoroughly confused and suspicious, Jung’s daughter starts poking around. The sudden appearance of Shim Yoon-young further amplifies her anxiety. He is obviously an unsavory character, but seems to share some murky history with her father. As the media trumpets the imminent expiration of the statute of limitations, Jung Da-eun struggles with her doubts and loyalties.

From "Blood and Ties."

B&T is a wicked high concept thriller with ample opportunity for high tragedy, but it does not guard its secret closely enough. The set-up is downright sinister and the top-shelf primary cast maintains the intensity, but viewers will always have a pretty good idea where it is all headed.

Son Ye-jin comes apart at the emotional seams quite convincingly as Da-eun, but it is Kim Kap-soo who commands the film as her father. Somehow he projects steely malevolence and pained sensitivity simultaneously, thereby providing both sides of his character’s Rorschach. Without Kim’s perfectly modulated performance, B&T would not work to any extent. While the supporting cast is mostly adequate, Lim Hyung-joon is also distinctly slimy as the all kinds of bad news Shim.

Based on a story by Kook’s mentor, filmmaker Park Jin-pyo, B&T taps into some deep-seated anxieties, but it is driven by the work of Kim, Son, and Li. Recommended for thriller fans looking for a blend of Mary Higgins Clark and James Patterson, Blood and Ties opens this Friday (11/1) at the CGV Theater in Los Angeles and next Friday (11/8) at AMC Bay Terrace in Flushing, Queens.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on October 28th, 2013 at 9:48pm.

Invasion Alert: LFM Reviews War of the Worlds; Premieres on PBS Tues., 10/29

By Joe Bendel. Prior to October 30, 1938, Orson Welles was considered a talent to watch, but his Mercury Theater on the Air did not have a proper sponsor and it regularly got beat by a variety show featuring ventriloquist Edgar Bergen with his dummy Charlie McCarthy (it was a great act for radio, because you truly couldn’t see his lips move). Then Welles staged an innovative adaptation of H.G. Wells’ science fiction classic and suddenly everything changed. American Experience marks the 75th anniversary of Welles’ controversial broadcast with War of the Worlds, which airs this coming Tuesday on most PBS stations.

Orson Welles performing "War of the Worlds."

Welles was already a cottage industry before he transplanted War of the Worlds to Grover’s Mill, New Jersey. Best known as a stage director, he frequently performed on radio, often without credit. The media and the smart set closely followed his career, but he had yet to breakthrough with Middle America. For his weekly radio showcase, Welles had a notion to adapt the Martian invasion novel. Producer-adult supervisor John Houseman thought it was a terrible idea, but Welles had his way as usual. However, the script just didn’t come together until they decided to stage it as a series of breaking news bulletins. This was not a completely original strategy. It was inspired by Archibald MacLeish’s radio play Air Raid, which had just aired with much less fanfare.

According to American Experience’s historical experts, most listeners missed Welles’ introduction, dial-twisting over to the Mercury Theater once Bergen had finished his shtick. As most everyone knows, a mild panic then ensued. All the talking heads try their best to excuse away the mass hysteria, arguing that the stress of the Depression and the constant news flashes trumpeting European war left the general public primed to believe Welles’ Americanized War of the Worlds. Maybe there is a kernel truth to that, but that would have been one heck of an exclusive for CBS to score.

Just about everyone now recognizes Welles as one of the most important film directors of the Twentieth Century, but AE’s WOTW reminds us he was also probably one of the greatest radio directors as well. Director Cathleen O’Connell and tele-writer Michelle Ferrari include some fascinating behind-the-scenes details of the in/famous broadcast, but the black-and-white dramatic recreations of angry listeners’ letters of complaint are rather corny and just generally unnecessary.

Arguably, Welles’ fictionalized news flashes represent an early forerunner to found footage genre films, in which a carefully produced narrative deliberately approximates some form of on-the-fly documentation. O’Connell and her battery of experts, including Welles’ daughter Chris Welles Feder, nicely put the episode in the context of Welles’ career and the development of mass media. Easily recommended for fans of Welles and Wells despite the over-stylized recreation interludes, American Experience’s War of the Worlds premieres on PBS Tuesday the 29th (10/29), seventy-five years after the fateful broadcast, nearly to the day.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 25th, 2013 at 12:54pm.

LFM Reviews Letters from Pyongyang @ The 2013 Korean American Film Festival in New York

By Joe Bendel. If you know someone in North Korea, then you have just cause to be concerned for their well-being. With reports re-surfacing of widespread famine and worse, losing contact with family in the closed Communist nation would not inspire optimism. When the annual letters from filmmaker Jason Lee’s uncles stopped coming, his father became understandably anxious, embarking on a family fact-finding mission documented in Lee’s short film, Letters from Pyongyang (trailer here), which screens during the 2013 Korean American Film Festival in New York.

Getting into the DPRK requires superhuman bureaucratic hoop-jumping, even from Canada. After getting more no’s than Stephen Merchant in a singles bar, Lee and his father finally received the requisite approvals for their visit. However, in a massively anticlimactic turn of events, they learn Lee’s two uncles died several years ago, just prior to embarking. They continue on anyway, hoping to pay their respects and connect with the family they have never known.

What follows vividly illustrates the stilted nature of tourism in oppressed countries. The Lees’ minders show them plenty of imposing Socialist monuments, but they are only allowed a brief meeting with their extended North Korean relatives in the lobby of their hotel. Presumably, Lee the filmmaker has little to say about this conspicuous police state behavior because Lee the nephew is concerned about his uncles’ families. That is completely understandable but highly problematic from a cinematic standpoint, resulting in too many scenes of Lee and his father duly taking in one epic statue after another.

Documenting family members living under a ruthless regime is obviously a tricky proposition, but Yang Yonghi walked that fine line rather deftly with her more forthright documentary Dear Pyongyang. Arguably, the more her family members were on-camera and the wider she exhibited her film, the more protected they were as a practical matter. While perceptive viewers can always glean something from a peak behind the DPRK’s iron curtain, Letters lacks than insight and drama of Hein Seok’s Seeking Haven, also screening at this year’s KAFFNY. For voracious North Korea watchers, it screens tomorrow (10/26) at the Village East as part of the Forgotten War Shorts programming block.

Posted on October 25th, 2013 at 12:52pm.

Days Gone by in North Korea: LFM Reviews The Girl from the South @ The 2013 Korean American Film Festival in New York

By Joe Bendel. It was mostly guys with a whole lot of facial hair. In frat house parlance, the final Soviet-funded World Youth and Students Festival was a real sausage party. For obvious reasons, the South Korean delegate made quite an impression on José Luis García. Since the 1989 Communist youth confab was held in Pyongyang, Lim Sukyung became a minor media sensation. Decades later, García tracked down the so-called “Flower of Re-Unification” for the documentary profile, The Girl from the South, which screens during the 2013 Korean American Film Festival in New York.

García happened to be in Pyongyang by chance, taking his brother’s place in the Argentine delegation at the last minute. To his credit, García was quite curious how the Communist youth congress would address the still fresh massacre in Tiananmen Square. The answer—stony silence, aside from an impromptu punk rock protest from the Scandinavians—was rather unsatisfying. Then Lim blew into town, ready to decry South Korea’s restrictions on contact with the North at every public gathering. Fascinated by her, García recorded as many of her appearances as he could with his consumer video camera. After all, she was one of the few delegates not trying to look like Che.

From "The Girl from the South."

Loaded with irony, García’s home movies of the Pyongyang get-down are easily the best part of the film. Frankly, it isn’t even close. Although García suggests he was more-or-less apolitical in his youth, he captures all the absurdity and pretension of international Communism’s last gasp before crashing into the dustbin of history. One can easily see how this material could be reworked into a wickedly satirical narrative feature.

Unfortunately, the Lim he meets some twenty years later is not particularly interesting to spend time with and decidedly uncooperative. Evidently, Lim served a short prison term after returning to the Republic of Korea and would subsequently suffer a terrible family tragedy, but she never opens up to García about anything. As a result, the film’s second two acts are about as illuminating as a wiki entry.

Granted, GFTS presents a sharp contrast between idealized memories and the disappointments of reality, but that does not exactly make gripping viewing. García never pushes Lim with obvious questions regarding North Korea famines and labor camps, but he never really succeeded in getting her to sit for a proper interview. Thanks to her overt manipulations, his climatic one-on-one quickly descends into an exercise in futility. García practically bangs his head on the table out of frustration and most viewers will be tempted to do the same.

Of course, there is no corresponding “Girl from the North,” because anyone returning to the DPRK after publically criticizing the country’s militarism would be consigned to a death, along with their entire family. García probably gets that, but he was too hung up on getting something—anything—from Lim. Girl from the South has some fascinating moments, but they are largely front-loaded. Mainly recommended for hard-core North Korea watchers, it screens this Saturday (10/26) at the Village East as part of this year’s KAFFNY.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on October 24th, 2013 at 3:45pm.

Mumblecore Horror: LFM Reviews Toad Road

By Joe Bendel. It seems like there are so many gateways to Hell, people must be accidentally dropping in all the time. There is that stairway in Stull, Kansas, the portal in Amityville, and a Hellmouth in Cleveland (according to Buffy). Supposedly, the Seven Gates of Hell are also located in York County, Pennsylvania, outside Hellam Township, logically enough. A slacker and his formerly together girlfriend will get really high and head out in search of the urban legend in Jason Banker’s Toad Road (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

It is hard to understand why Sara, the studious college student, is attracted to the seriously under-achieving James, especially when the audience first spies him. When he passes out dead drunk, his so-called friends commence with the sort of fun and games we really do not need to see. Nonetheless, James somehow seduces her into his world of hardcore drug use and chronic irresponsibility. One pleasant summer day, they set out to find their kicks on Toad Road, the mythical forest byway that reportedly leads to the Seven Gates. That sounds like a great idea, provided they drop acid first.

Naturally, things get a bit confused as they stagger about the woods. Eventually, James comes to, shivering in snow. While it only seems like a few hours have passed, James learns that he and Sara have been missing for six months and he is now the primary suspect in her disappearance.

Although Toad is billed as a horror movie, the most terrifying aspect of the film is the state of the current twenty-nothing generation. In all honesty, Banker really is not going for traditional genre scares. He is more interested in the druggy mind-trip he tries to approximate on-screen. Indeed, watching Toad gives the sensation of some rather nasty chemical side-effects. Still, his use of the Seven Gates mythos is metaphysically unsettling and frankly quite smart. Toad actually becomes scarier as the memory unpacks it over time. Unfortunately, many of the interpersonal scenes of James and his cronies serve as a vivid reminder of how annoying mumblecore can get.

Toad is almost guaranteed to inspire a strange cult following, especially in light of the tragic loss of lead actress Sara Anne Jones at the terribly young age of twenty-four. Banker’s aesthetic choices are so hallucinatory it makes it difficult to thoroughly judge the film’s performances, but Jones had a real presence and never wilted amid his surreal excesses.

Banker and his co-cinematographers, Jack McVey and Jorge Torres-Torres give the picture a distinctive look that is eerily otherworldly yet still bleak and depressing. This is the work of a zero-budget auteur, but it does not add up to very much fun. Intriguing and maddening in equal measure, Toad Road is recommended for the most adventurous ten percent of cult film fandom’s bell curve.  It opens tomorrow (10/25) in New York at the Cinema Village.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on October 24th, 2013 at 3:40pm.