Movie Reviews – Page 292 – LFM: Libertas Film Magazine

LFM Reviews The Woman in the Fifth

By Joe Bendel. Tom Ricks is a writer, so he must be a little off. With only one obscure novel to his name, the American cuts an underwhelming literary figure, but he has enough issues to earn a restraining order from his French wife. Following her and their daughter to Paris does little for his overwrought state of mind in Pawel Pawlikowski’s The Woman in the Fifth, which opens this Friday in New York.

Less than thrilled to see him, Nathalie Ricks promptly calls in the gendarmerie. Beating a hasty retreat, Ricks finds himself penniless at the flop-house motel run by gangster Sezer. To pay for his room and board, the novelist accepts a job working as a sketchy subterranean watchman for one of Sezer’s criminal endeavors. He figures it will give him time to work, but his writing is definitely not of the healthy variety. The only bright spot are his semi-regular assignations with Margit Kadar, an elegant and alluring widow of a Hungarian novelist perhaps even more obscure than Ricks, living in Paris’s 5th arrondissement.

While his ex shuns his reconciliation attempts, Ricks attracts the romantic attention of Ania, the Polish immigrant waitress at Sezer’s tavern, who also happens to be the mobster’s lover. This profoundly destabilizes the novelist’s situation. It also starts a chain of events leading Ricks to suspect a hitherto unknown force is meddling in his affairs.

WomanFifth1 — Kristin Scott Thomas and Ethan Hawke in "The Woman in the Fifth."

Based on the novel by Douglas Kennedy, Fifth blends elements of genre cinema in ways that would be spoilery to discuss in detail. However, Pawlikowski is more interested in presenting an extreme psychological study with a distinctly Continental art film sensibility than aiming for mere thrills or chills. Never rushing the revelations, Pawlikowski still deftly creates sense that all is not right with his protagonist and his world.

Leading a multinational ensemble, Ethan Hawke and his terrible French accent are effectively moody and withdrawn as the socially problematic Ricks. Polish actress Joanna Kulig, recently seen (and very much exposed) in Malgoska Szumowska’s Elles, is also quite credible as the glammed-down Ania. Yet, Kristin Scott Thomas is the crucial piece of the film’s puzzle. Always an intelligent presence, she is absolutely perfectly cast as the sophisticated Kadar. The audience instantly shares Ricks’ interest in her—and of course her accent is always flawless, in both French and English.

Fifth’s slow build and emotionally detached approach to Ricks’ existential drama might be difficult for some viewers to whole-heartedly embrace. However, it is a smart, stylish film. Indeed, cinematographer Ryszard Lenczewski’s chilly gray color palette nicely suits the on-screen mystery and alienation. It is the sort of film viewers will kick around in their heads for days after screening it, which is an increasing rarity. Highly recommended for fans of European cinema with a dark twist, Woman in the Fifth opens this Friday (6/15) in New York at the Village East.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on June 13th, 2012 at 10:39am.

What Better Way to Spend Bloomsday? LFM Reviews In Bed with Ulysses

By Joe Bendel. In addition to its now universally acknowledged literary significance, the effort to publish James Joyce’s Ulysses in the face of widespread censorship was the major publishing story of its day. Actually, the novel’s publishing history is still unfolding. Many scholars recently rejoiced when it – along with most of Joyce’s early works – went into the public domain, liberating them from what they considered an unreasonable and erratic estate executor. It should make this year’s Bloomsday celebration quite lively. Irrespective of Stephen Joyce’s controversial stewardship, Joyceans in Brooklyn will also be able to mark June 16th, that fateful day spent with protagonist Leopold Bloom, by attending the premiere theatrical engagement of Alan Adelson & Kate Taverna’s In Bed with Ulysses, which began this Monday at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema.

Throughout Bed, Adelson and Taverna celebrate Joyce’s language, but not necessarily his personality. Indeed, many leading Joyce scholars make no bones about the author’s self-centered neuroses. They certainly do not make him sound like a particularly pleasant husband, plundering his relationship with wife Nora for his autobiographical novels, while bizarrely prodding her to justify his extreme jealousies. Still, it provides good fodder for documentaries.

Fortunately, his work is something else entirely. In staged readings of Ulysses, performed by established legit actors, including Kathleen Chalfant (known for the original New York production of Wit) reading in the Molly Bloom persona, the film luxuriates in the rhythms and ribald tartness of Joyce’s language. While we do not hear anything to make the typical Brooklyner blush, there might be just enough to make a PBS broadcast, as is, a tad tricky.

All of the performers have a good feel for Joyce’s words and the archival images of 1904 Dublin that often accompany their readings give viewers a vivid sense of where the novel came from. Adelson and Taverna also incorporate a fair amount of focused and on-point expert interviews, the most notable being novelist and Joyce biographer Edna O’Brien, an impressive literary figure in her own right. Of course to nobody’s surprise, grandson-executor Stephen Joyce never makes an appearance.

James Joyce, Marilyn Monroe reading "Ulysses."

In Bed with Ulysses is an easily digestible combination of Joyce biography and Ulysses crib notes, with fair servings of Irish history and theater arts mixed in. Obviously, Irish cultural institutions should be very interested in the film, but its exploration of Bloom’s Jewish heritage and the extent to which Limerick’s 1904 anti-Jewish riots and boycotts informed the novel should expand the demographic audience considerably. Yet, the Joyceans who continue to be intrigued by the literary icon’s revolutionary novels are the real target market.

Informative but never too heavy, In Bed with Ulysses is readily recommended for those who appreciate literary biography or looking for a way to ease into the somewhat intimidating novel. It is also a chance for borough loyalists to support Brooklyn filmmakers at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema, before the scrappy art-house goes into temp space while their current location is redeveloped. It runs there until at least Sunday (6/17), which indeed includes Bloomsday this Saturday (6/16).

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on June 13th, 2012 at 10:38am.

Things Happen for a Reason: LFM Reviews Accident

By Joe Bendel. Ho Kwok-fai is not living in a random universe. Accidents happen for a reason: money. He would know. He is the mastermind behind a team of “accident choreographers.” Unfortunately, they have apparently attracted the wrong sort of attention from a competitor in Accident (trailer here), Soi Cheang’s moody thriller produced by HK action legend Johnnie To, which releases this week on DVD and Blu-ray from Shout Factory.

Though not quite as Rube Goldbergian, Ho’s team are like a Final Destination movie unto themselves. Just ask the Triad boss in the opening sequence, while you can. “The Brain” runs the show with tick-tock precision, but a dark cloud seems to hang over their latest gig. “Uncle” starts to show signs of dementia and the necessary rain will not come. Then the wheels come totally off.

Going underground, Ho starts surveilling an insurance executive he suspects played a part in the disastrous non-accident. Already haunted by his wife’s fatal auto crash, his psyche will sink to some pretty low places. Rather than a standard hitman-on-the-run film, Accident treads a more existential path, in the tradition of Coppola’s The Conversation (granted, it is not exactly in the same league).

In the years since To’s Election epic most of what American audiences have seen of Louis Koo were romantic or comedic features, like Mr. and Mrs. Incredible, Magic to Win, and All’s Well Ends Well 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2009. Nonetheless, he shows plenty of screen grit in Accident, brooding like mad, yet getting stone cold medieval when necessary. As a bonus, Lam Suet, To’s regular comic relief specialist, brings his usual energy, but plays Ho’s stout but not shticky henchman “Fatty” with considerable restraint.

Viewers who have seen a lot of Hollywood-produced thrillers will probably be downright shocked by Accident, precisely because of their preconditioning. Indeed, Cheang is willing to take it in a direction studio filmmakers never would, which is cool. Of course, knowing it is produced by To and his Milkyway Image team is something of a seal of approval in and of itself. Enthusiastically recommended for fans of noir thrillers and HK cinema, Accident is now available on DVD at online and quality brick-and-mortar retailers everywhere.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on June 13th, 2012 at 10:37am.

LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post and AOL-Moviefone: “We’ve All Been Brainwashed”: China’s Dissident Bloggers Speak Out in High Tech, Low Life

[Editor’s Note: the post below appears today on the front page of The Huffington Post and AOL-Moviefone.]

By Govindini Murty. Even as Chinese dissidents like Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo and artist Ai Weiwei suffer physical imprisonment, hundreds of millions of their fellow Chinese citizens are suffering a form of mental imprisonment thanks to their nation’s system of internet censorship. For example, the Chinese government recently blocked on-line searches for words relating to the 23rd anniversary of the June 4th, 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, censoring the terms “Tiananmen square,” “June 4th,” the number twenty-three, the words “never forget,” and even images of candles. The award-winning documentary High Tech, Low Life, currently screening at film festivals in the U.S., UK, and Australia, profiles two dissident Chinese bloggers who are working to challenge this Orwellian system.

Directed by Stephen Maing, High Tech, Low Life was in part funded by a Kickstarter campaign publicized on The Huffington Post and was an official selection of the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival. High Tech, Low Life documents the work of 57-year old blogger Zhang Shihe (known as “Tiger Temple”) and 27-year old Zhou Shuguang (known as “Zola”), two of China’s best-known “citizen reporters.” Even as the Chinese government uses internet technology to stifle dissent, these brave bloggers find creative ways to circumvent “The Great Firewall of China” and publish the truth about human rights abuses to the world. Along the way, Tiger and Zola suffer official harassment, familial disapproval, eviction, and arrest.

Blogger Zola describes in the film the vast apparatus of internet censorship that exists in China:

“There are 440 million netizens in China, 40,000 internal police monitor them, and 500,000 websites are blocked in China.” [Despite this,] “if an incident happens anywhere, netizens and citizen journalists will flock to the scene from all over the country. The censors might stop some of us, but they can’t stop all of us.”

Tiger Temple expands on the morally corrosive effect of the government’s censorship: “We’ve all been brainwashed. We’ve been listening to lies for too many years.” Although material prosperity may have improved in China, Tiger argues that life today is as bad as it was under Mao’s dictatorship. As Tiger puts it, the Chinese people are “complacent because they feel powerless.”

Tiger Temple and Zola could not be more different in style. The older, more experienced Tiger is a writer and former publisher living in Beijing who becomes closely involved in his subjects’ lives, bringing them food, money, and legal help. Tiger’s father was a high official in the Communist Party, but the family was persecuted by Mao during the Cultural Revolution in the ’60s. Tiger recalls how he and his family were beaten, evicted from their home, and exiled to the countryside. It was then, as a 13-year old, that Tiger says he started “roaming the country.”

Tiger’s entry into blogging was almost accidental. Returning home one day from viewing an exhibition of Monet paintings in Beijing, he saw a woman being stabbed to death on the street by a man as bystanders watched. Horrified but unable to prevent the murder, Tiger grabbed his camera and documented its aftermath instead. He notes that when the police showed up, they were angrier at him for taking the photos than at the murderer himself, because such scenes would normally be censored from the press. Tiger went on to publish the photos online and caused a sensation, becoming known as China’s first “citizen journalist.” Tiger adds that he calls himself a “citizen” and not a “citizen journalist” because that way the government can’t ban him.

Years later, Tiger makes lengthy journeys on bike through the countryside to report on the lives of the rural poor who have suffered in the rush to urbanization. He is even on occasion tailed by agents of the government. In one trip documented in the film, Tiger bicycles 4000 miles to Er Loa, a village devastated by the illegal flooding of toxic waste by the local government. The floods of waste have caused the farmers’ homes to collapse and have made farming impossible. Villagers tell Tiger that local officials have warned them that if they complain too much they will be arrested. Not only does Tiger take photos and video of the environmental devastation, he also brings the villagers flour and noodles to feed them and tells them he has forwarded their information to a university in Beijing where law students are working to file a legal complaint with the authorities. Tiger interests an NGO in their case, and the farmers are ultimately brought to Beijing to speak at the Civil Society Watch’s Environmental Protection Conference.

highlow2 — The blogger Zola at the Great Wall of China.

China’s Exploitation of Tibet: LFM Reviews Old Dog

By Joe Bendel. In news of yet more outrageous but hardly surprising interference in Tibetan affairs, China has just announced an open-ended ban on foreign tourism to the occupied country. However, friends and admirers of the Himalayan nation can still get a glimpse into the on-the-ground realities there through Pema Tseden’s narrative feature Old Dog, which screens tonight at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema, as part of the 2012 Brooklyn Film Festival.

Not content with Tibet’s sovereignty, China also covets its dogs. For the Chinese nouveau riche, nomad mastiffs are the newest status symbol. It is a seller’s market, assuming unscrupulous dog merchants do not steal the traditional family canines first. Dog-nappings are so pervasive, Gonpo figures he might as well sell his father-in-law Akku’s beloved pet and at least get some money for him. Akku does not see it that way, enlisting the help of his a local copper kinsman to retrieve the shaggy pooch. Unfortunately, the dog brokers are not about to forget about so prized a pooch.

If Jia Zhangke remade Old Yeller, it might look something like Old Dog. Helmed by Tibetan auteur Pema Tseden (a.k.a. Wanma Caidan when he is in China), it is a slight departure for distributor dGenerate Films, the independent Chinese cinema specialists. However, Tseden’s naturalistic documentary-like approach is quite in line with the Digital Generation style for which they are named. He and cinematographer Sonthar Gyal capture the sweeping grandeur of the landscape, as well as the hardscrabble nature of life for Tibetans, both in cities and in the countryside. It is also clear the last fifty-three years have been devastating for contemporary Tibetan architecture.

Amongst a cast clearly at home on the Tibetan Steppe, Lochey gives a remarkably assured performance as Akku. Deeply human and humane, his character bears witness to the steady corrosion of traditional Tibetan values, but he does not necessarily do so silently. Drolma Kyab’s performance as the hash-up son-in-law Gonpo is also quite honest and engaging. Indeed, the small ensemble is so completely unaffected and natural on-screen, Old Dog could easily pass for a documentary. Yet it has a very real dramatic arc.

Already the focus of a career retrospective at the Asia Society (amounting to two films at the time), Tseden is a filmmaker of international stature. Taking some subtly implied but recognizable jabs at Chinese hegemony over Tibet, Old Dog is his boldest film yet. Cineastes will earnestly hope there will be more to follow. Quietly powerful, Old Dog is highly recommended during this year’s BFF. It screens tonight (6/8) at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema, with Tseden appearing for Q&A afterward, as well as this Saturday (6/9) at IndieScreen in Williamsburg.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on June 8th, 2012 at 8:09am.

Terrorism in Turkey: LFM Reviews Labyrinth @ The 2012 Brooklyn Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Turkey is still the modern, secular republic founded by Ataturk, but there are those who would like to turn back the clock. Nobody understands that better than the agents of Turkey’s counter-terrorist agency. They will risk their lives to thwart a violent group of Islamist fanatics in Tolga Örnek’s Labyrinth, which screens during the 2012 Brooklyn Film Festival.

A horrific homicidal suicide bombing has murdered 95 innocent souls, including thirty Americans and five Brits. Unfortunately, the shadowy mastermind (who never delivers the bombs himself, mind you) is working on a more ambitious attack. For Fikret, the moody Turkish Jack Bauer, it is not just an assignment, it is personal. He is out to avenge the partner kidnapped and presumably murdered by the newly resurfaced terrorist ringleader.

Fikret has one ace card in his hand. He has been running a confidential informative more-or-less off the books, whose brother has fallen in with the elusive terror cell. He only trusts Rasim’s identity with his loyal colleague (and prospective romantic interest), Reyhan. A valuable source, Rasim is coveted by British intelligence, who offer information on Fikret’s missing partner in return for the mystery source. The proposition is not appreciated.

Frankly, the tension between the Turkish and British security services never escalates beyond trash talking. In point of fact, Labyrinth is a refreshing corrective to the notoriously anti-American and anti-Semitic Valley of the Wolves: Iraq, the Turkish Islamist agit-prop film co-starring Gary Busey and Billy Zane. Here, it is the Islamists who are explicitly identified as the terrorists, freely murdering their own more moderate co-religionists for the sake of their extreme agenda. Of course, their preferred target is Turkey’s Jewish community. They even use inconvenient terms such as “the caliphate” in the pre-bombing videotapes. The American military only appears in passing, productively collaborating with their Turkish counterparts on a mission in Northern Iraq.

While there are some moments of inspired movie violence, Labyrinth is more cerebral than action-oriented. As Fikret, Timuçin Esen power broods like nobody’s business, while also developing some nice chemistry with Meltem Cumbul’s smart and mature Reyhan. They make it clear they care about each other in ambiguous ways, without ripping their clothes off. As for their quarry, the effective supporting ensemble is flat-out chilling when portraying the face of Islamist terror.

We could be proud of Hollywood if it finally tackled terrorism with a film like Labyrinth. That it was produced in Turkey is downright shocking, in a good way. Engrossing and tragically realistic, Labyrinth is a standout selection of this year’s BFF. Highly recommended, it screens again this Sunday (6/10) at IndieScreen in Williamsburg.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on June 7th, 2012 at 6:19pm.