Category: Movie Reviews

By Joe Bendel. Forget about secret society rituals. These elite prep school kids are too busy keeping their classmates down. They are the top ten in their class and they will kill to keep it that way throughout Shin Su-won’s Pluto, which screens during the 2013 Korean American Film Festival in New York.

Kim June was the top student in his public high school, but that does not impress anyone in his new school, particularly not his American roommate, Yu-jin Taylor, the top man in their class. Supposedly, this is his big opportunity. He was only admitted because a suicide opened up space for him. That was Yung Su-jin’s roommate. Now the slacker computer major is out to settle the score with the ruling elite. Kim sort of likes her, but the working class transfer student opts to curry favor with the privileged ten instead.

As part of their “rabbit hunting” initiations, Kim does their dirty work in exchange for inside information on approaching exams. Naturally, Taylor and his cronies clearly have no intention of letting him into the club. However, as viewers can readily glean from the film’s complicated flashback structure, it is a very bad idea to play mind games with someone as tightly wound as Kim.

While Pluto’s class warfare themes are obvious and inescapable, Shin’s uncompromising screenplay surpasses mere polemics, portraying the sociopathic will-to-power at its rawest. This is not the sort of film that will have anyone saying “so there” when it ends. Kim might be our protagonist, but he is not an exactly a downtrodden POV character audiences would like to identify with. Surprisingly, his nemesis Taylor turns out to be the most nuanced of the lot. Of course, his cronies do not much care for his sudden subtle dimensions of character.

Pluto boasts some considerable star-power, thanks to Kim Kkobbi appearing as Yung, a relatively modest but intriguing supporting role. Lee Da-wit is eerily soulless and desperate as the hollow-looking Kim. Yet, it is June Sung who really keeps viewers off-balance as the not exactly remorseful Taylor.

Many of the sins of prep school dramas past repeat again in Pluto. As if required by an unwritten law, all the adults are ridiculously dense and the cops are problematically passive. Still, Shin raises the stakes for all future prep students behaving badly, making a film like Tanner Hall look tame and pale in comparison. Despite some clumsy excesses, it is mesmerizing, in-your-face filmmaking. Recommended for the reasonably jaded, Pluto screens this Friday (10/25) at the Village East as part of this year’s KAFFNY.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 23rd, 2013 at 1:09pm.

By Joe Bendel. It is not precisely finished, but it makes a cogent and compelling statement. Mania Akbari started shooting an intensely personal Cassavetes-style examination of a disintegrating marriage, but halted the production mid-way through when the Iranian government started arresting many of her prominent filmmaking colleagues. Relocating perhaps indefinitely to the UK, Akbari reshaped her footage into a more experimental-feeling long short film or short feature. There are rough edges to the resulting From Tehran to London, but they were both a choice and a necessity. A fascinating work on multiple levels, Akbari’s film screens during the 2013 Noor Iranian Film Festival in Los Angeles.

Ava is a poet and an artist who feels unfulfilled in her marriage to the well-heeled Ashkan. However, the way they bicker and grouse like a prematurely old couple suggests there must have been some feeling there originally. They certainly know each other very well, but neither suspects the other harbors deeper feelings for their trusted house servant, Maryam.

Eventually, scandal will shake their household, but viewers will not see it. Instead, Akbari resorts to straight out telling us what would have happened. Obviously, there are all kinds of abrupt tonal shifts and sudden temporal jumps. Akbari hardly had the luxury of returning for pick-up transitionals. Yet, her kit-bashing techniques speak volumes regarding the wider circumstances.

Frankly, from what viewers can tell, the story of Ava and Ashkan could only be considered political around the margins. Certainly, it would have (and does) address issues of gender roles and sexuality in contemporary Iran, but the Albee-like marriage is the centerpiece. In fact, the initial scenes of the couple sparring are surprisingly grabby. There is real bite to the chemistry shared by Neda Amiri and Bijan Daneshmand. Through the moody lightning and suggestive sound of rain outside, Akbari and her crew create a sense of foreboding that is unusually eerie.

Although quite accomplished as a director, Akbari is still probably best known as the nearly unseen driver in Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten. In front of the camera, she is quite convincing as Ava’s more conventional worrywart sister, Roya. She also deserves tremendous credit for her commitment to free expression, starting the film with a dedication to: “all those filmmakers in Iran, who have served a prison sentence and the ones who are still in prison.” That alone is worth seeing on the big screen.

At just over forty five minutes, Tehran easily pulls viewers in and leaves them wondering “what if?” Yet, it should be considered definitive, as the very particular product of its time and place. Challenging, intriguing, and maddening, From Tehran to London is a significant film that deserves greater attention. Highly recommended, it screens Tuesday (10/22) as part of the Noor Iranian Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on October 19th, 2013 at 11:55am.

By Joe Bendel. Louis Lester’s band swings so hard, many of their fans assume he is an American, but he is really a born and bred British subject. Several high society types will take an interest in them, but that will not always be a good thing during the course of Stephen Poliakoff’s Dancing on the Edge, a six night mini-series beginning this Saturday on Starz.

Stanley Mitchell is a progressive jazz fan, but he is also a bit of an operator. He sings the praises of the Lester band, hoping his magazine Music Express will rise with their tide. While not to the manor born himself, Mitchell knows many of the right people, like Arthur Donaldson, a man of leisure who happens to appreciate real deal jazz. Through Donaldson’s connections and Mitchell’s glad-handing, the Lester band books some high profile gigs, eventually becoming the house band at the formerly staid Imperial Hotel.

For a while, it seems like everyone will enjoy the good life together, especially when the mysterious American tycoon, Walter Masterson, starts inviting the band to his lavish parties, along with the wealthy but somewhat emotionally codependent Luscombe siblings. The interracial romance brewing between Lester and Sarah, a photographer close to the Luscombes, obviously portends future trouble, but the erratic Julian Luscombe’s reckless pursuit of the band’s lead singer will lead to more immediate problems.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is about to become an Oprah superstar through 12 Years a Slave, but his turn as Lester is arguably his best work since Dirty Pretty Things. In many ways, it is a treatise on “cool” as a defense strategy and a personal aesthetic. Rigidly controlled, Ejiofor still shows us all the gears turning in his head. Arguably, the major historical influences on his Lester are the suave sophistication of Ellington (whose 1930’s small big band could be a model for the Lester outfit) and the not-so-passive aggressive aloofness of Miles Davis to come in later years.

In contrast, Matthew Goode gives Mitchell a slightly manic edge, nicely playing off the tightly wound Ejiofor in their smartly written scenes together. (If you’re asking whether he rings to someone who has written about and championed jazz, the answer is yes.) Probably nobody is more over-exposed for Anglophiles than Tom Hughes right now, but while he was conspicuously miscast in About Time, The Hollow Crown, and The Lady Vanishes, he is sort of perfect for the boyishly creepy Julian Luscombe. Like Hughes, John Goodman brings out the messy human dimensions of grandly indulgent Masterson, a role that could have easily descended into gross caricature.

In fact, one of writer-director Poliakoff’s great strengths is the manner in which he preserves some degree of audience sympathy for all his characters despite their often horrid actions. Shrewdly, he also maintains considerable ambiguity regarding certain relationships, instead of beating viewers about the head, as a less artful production might. Dancing does right by the music as well, featuring a soundtrack of original era appropriate swingers and ballads, recorded by real life working jazz and studio musicians, who also appear in character as the Lester band. If jazz advocates will have any gripe with Dancing it will be the lack of development for the musicians, besides Lester and his two vocalists.

Like the best of television, Dancing quickly hooks in viewers and keeps them emotionally invested throughout. Poliakoff captures the exhilaration of the after-hours jam, but also incorporates pointed references to the ominous rise of National Socialism, Britain’s lack of military preparedness, and the rather dubious character of the future temporary Edward VIII.

Nicely crafted in all respects, Dancing on the Edge is recommended for fans of swing music and British television when it premieres this Saturday (10/19) on Starz. As a note, the fifth installment is technically the finale, but an epilogue follows the next week (11/23), which purports to collect Mitchell’s aborted interviews with Lester. Initially, it seems to be a DVD-extra kind of thing, but it might conceivably set up a sequel series in its final moments.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on October 17th, 2013 at 9:49am.