Category: Narrative

By Joe Bendel. For centuries, Greeks have maintained a commanding share of the global shipping business. Arguably, Ioannis Varvakis was part of that tradition. He specialized in re-routing Ottoman shipments. He was a proud pirate, but he became a Russian officer and nobleman, while never relinquishing his Greek identity. Yannis Smaragdis, Greek cinema’s prestigious bio-pic specialist turns his attention to the swashbuckler in his English language production, The Pirate (a.k.a. God Loves Caviar), which just released on DVD and is still available on multiple VOD platforms from Vision Films.

The dreaded pirate Varvakis will end up old and infirm, living as a secret captive in a remote British “clinic” for infectious diseases. We know this because the film starts at this cheery point, telling his story in competing flashbacks. Lefentarios, a dodgy veteran of the Greek resistance, will explain to the British superintendent how he goaded the buccaneer into more direct action, while Varvakis’s former servant will explain to a group of street urchins how great his former master truly was.

Varvakis had always fought the Turks ship to ship, claiming the spoils for his efforts. However, at Lefentarios’s urging, Varvakis hatches an unlikely plan to wipe out the entire Ottoman fleet (apparently by setting his ship on fire and pointing it toward several hundred Ottoman vessels). Needing safe haven, Varvakis offers his services to Catherine the Great, who appoints Varvakis her personal agent for the Caspian.

The mostly reformed rogue makes decent coin tending to her interests, but he becomes vastly wealthy when he develops methods to ship caviar without spoilage. Russians love caviar. So do the Persians, which lends his operations additional strategic significance. Catherine is well satisfied with Varvakis, bestowing rank and title upon him. Unfortunately, his personal life is a mess.

Frankly, the Greek resistance to the Ottoman occupation is not exactly over exposed in Western media. The Pirate’s home viewing release comes at an opportune time, countering Russell Crowe’s ripping well-made Water Diviner, which views Greco-Turkish conflicts through the lens of Smyrna. However, Smaragdis devotes an awful lot of time to Varvakis’s loveless marriage to the unfaithful Helena, his strained relationship with a grown daughter from a previous union, and the whiny son who can never live up to his father’s expectations.

Even though it is a minor role, John Cleese not surprisingly delivers all the best lines as McCormick, the British administrator. Sebastian Koch (still best known in America for The Lives of Others) has the appropriate presence for a figure of Varvakis’s stature, but despite no shortage of makeup, he never looks like he is the right age for the character’s successive stations in life. In contrast, Evgeniy Stychkin never ages a day as Ivan, the loyal servant who manages to make his way to Varvakis’s double-secret island prison without arousing any suspicion. Of course, Catherine Deneuve does her stateliest as Catherine II, but her screen time is limited.

The Pirate was a big hit domestically, arriving to bolster national spirits in a time of austerity. Tellingly, the Greeks would look to a pirate, who lives off contraband appropriated from others, as a source of inspiration. Still, there is something appealingly old school about its earnest approach to historical drama. You can practically hear the voiceovers announcing “special guest stars” Cleese and Deneuve. Recommended for those looking for some unselfconscious, slightly creaky, throwback entertainment, The Pirate (a.k.a. God Loves Caviar) is now available on DVD, as well as on VOD services like iTunes, DirecTV, and Vudu.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on May 26th, 2015 at 3:54pm.

By Joe Bendel. Unit 831 was sort of like the USO, except they managed a brothel to keep the early 1960s Nationalist Chinese Military’s morale high. They were not comfort women. It was more complicated than that. A young enlisted man will learn just how complicated in Doze Niu Chen-zer’s Paradise in Service, co-produced by none other than Hou Hsiao-hsien, which screens during the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival.

Lo Pao-tai has the physique to be a frogman, but he literally cannot swim to save his life. Washing out of the Sea Dragons training program, he is transferred to serve out his remaining mandatory term of enlistment at a local Unit 831 brothel. His first day will be quite an eye-opening experience for the naïve young man. However, in his new assignment, he will periodically meet and greet some of his former comrades, including the grizzled Sergeant-Major Chang Yung-shen. In fact, he will see quite a bit of the veteran sergeant, since he has fallen for Chiao, a.k.a. Number 8, the top girl at Lo’s “teahouse.”

Unfortunately, Chiao is a bit of a game-player, whereas Ni-ni is the exact opposite. She came to work at the teahouse under rather tragic circumstances. She and Lo soon become friends, but not yet with benefits. Their courtship will be a slow business that often must be deferred by more pressing Unit 831 business.

Yes, there is probably no better place to come of age in a hurry than a military cat house. While Niu makes it plenty clear just what goes on there, the vibe of the film is strangely innocent. In a way, its concerns are not so very different than Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues, but can you imagine how delighted his sex-obsessed Eugene Jerome analog would have been with this sort of service detail?

The time capsule-like period details of Paradise are often quite eye-opening. The idea of armed conflict with the Communists was hardly idle speculation for the military stationed on Quemoy, where each side constantly blasted propaganda through loud speakers at each other. There is definitely a sense that both sides are in a not so “Cold” War staring contest.

While the setting of a military brothel could easily lend itself to comedy (“no time for procurers”), Niu plays it achingly straight, often diving into pure melodrama. However, the cast sells it like an ensemble of champions. Ethan Ruan has never been better as the innocent Lo, developing some deeply felt chemistry with Regina Wan Qian’s Ni-ni. She is also terrifically sensitive yet restrained as the inherently respectable prostitute. Like a Taiwanese Tommy Lee Jones, Chen Jianbin rock solidly anchors the film as the gruff but vulnerable sergeant, while Miao Ke-li steals scene after scene as Cher, the older, brassier working woman.

Although the Taiwanese military is not exactly eager to talk about the now defunct Unit 831, Paradise never feels like an expose. In fact, there is a strange feeling of camaraderie that develops between the women and the staff. Whether you find it credible or not, that vibe really distinguishes the picture. When it finishes, you feel like you were briefly stationed at Quemoy, which is something. Recommended for fans of the big name Taiwanese and Mainland cast (who do not disappoint), Paradise in Service screens today (5/18), and next Tuesday (5/26), as part of this year’s SIFF.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on May 18th, 2015 at 10:05pm.

By Joe Bendel. Chief Detective Choi’s latest investigation represents something of a conflict of interest. He is under considerable professional and political pressure to close the case quickly, regardless of the truth. Technically, he also happens to be the killer, but you would hardly call him the mastermind of screenwriter-director Baek Woon-hak’s dark thriller The Chronicles of Evil, which opens this Friday in Queens.

After years of plugging, Det. Choi is on the verge of a national appointment. He has just received the presidential service medal, so if he can avoid entanglements for the next few months, his career should be made. Unfortunately, after a night celebrating with the Detective Squad, Choi’s cabbie waylays him, taking him to a remote park, where he tries to kill the baffled flatfoot. Leathery old Choi turns out to be more than his assailant can handle. However, after killing the man in self-defense, Choi covers up the incident rather than risk the inevitable controversy. This will be a mistake in retrospect.

The next morning, the top brass is outraged when a corpse is found very publicly dangling from a crane at a construction site. Of course, Choi recognizes him. To satisfy his superiors, he will have to clear the case quickly, but he knows the DNA under the vic’s fingernails and the blurry CTV images of a passenger in backseat will inevitably lead back to him. Therefore Choi must try to ferret out his mystery antagonist, while struggling to cover his own tracks.

In a way, Chronicles somewhat parallels Kevin Costner’s breakout hit No Way Out, but Baek gives the story some grittily distinctive cops-and-stalkers twists. He shrewdly positions Choi as a figure compromised enough to deserve his predicament, but decent enough to root for. Baek nicely keeps one darned thing coming after another, getting flat-out Biblical down the stretch.

Recognizable to genre fans from Huh Jung’s Hide and Seek, Son Hyun-joo is perfectly cast as Det. Choi. He looks like a migraine personified and has vinegary world weariness sweating out of every pore. Ma Dong-seok (a.k.a. Don Lee) is also reliably charismatic and hardnosed as Choi’s chief deputy, Det. Oh. This is a manly ensemble that has little time for romantic subplots or comic relief. They are all about covering-up and settling scores. When you spy a somewhat metrosexual character, be suspicious—very suspicious.

Baek is a wickedly smooth director, who pulls the audience through this murky morality tale at warp speed. Even though it is a supporting role, Chronicles (along with The Fives, Kundo, and Nameless Gangster) suggests Ma/Lee has enough cult/genre credibility for Hollywood to start calling. They could use someone with his action cred and screen presence. Highly recommended for fans of anti-heroic cop thrillers, The Chronicles of Evil opens this Friday (5/22) at the AMC Bay Terrace, in Flushing, Queens.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on May 18th, 2015 at 10:05pm.

By Joe Bendel. At various times, the public sale of alcohol was illegal throughout what was then Bombay State. Of course, for the mobbed-up nightclub managed by Johnny Balraj, Prohibition was good for business. The new vocalist is not bad either, but their inevitable romance gets caught up in an underworld power struggle in Anurag Kashyap’s Bombay Velvet, which opened Friday in New York.

Balraj and his sworn-brother Chimman grew up on the streets together, but it is Balraj who has the necessary crazy to go far in gangtserism. Even when he starts fronting the swanky Bombay Velvet club in the early 1960s, he still blows off steam fighting in underground steel cage matches. Technically, it is Balraj’s business, but it is really part of the newspaper mogul and syndicate boss Kaizad Khambata’s vast empire. Still, Balraj has a free hand to hire talent like Rose Noronha. She makes quite the impression on him. Unfortunately, she is a plant sent to seduce Balraj by Jimmy Mistry, the ambitious editor of a rival Communist newspaper.

It works. Balraj falls for Noronha hard, but as her star rises, it becomes mutual. Of course, when undesirable elements from her past try to assert themselves, it leads to friction. Frankly, Balraj does not think much of either Khambata or Mistry, but he stays in business with his ostensive boss in hopes of getting a piece of the action. In this case, the pie getting sliced up is the massive real estate fortune to be made from the anticipated development of Bombay/Mumbai’s Nariman Point business district.

In a way, Velvet echoes the infighting gangsters and politicians of Yoo Ha’s real estate-driven Gangnam Blues, but at times viewers can see the not so subtle influence of De Palma’s Scarface. Probably the only thing separating the wildly erratic Belraj from Tony Montana is a small mountain of cocaine. He has the Tommy Gun.

Regardless, Velvet is clearly Kashyap’s most commercial film to date. He is no stranger to underworld intrigue having helmed the gritty epic Gangs of Wasseypur, but he really cranks up the glossy flashiness this time around. Yet, since the film is largely set in a jazz club, he can have his cake and eat too, by confining the ample musical numbers to the Velvet stage. In fact, they work rather well. Amit Trivedi’s tunes, sounding like Bollywood show-stoppers as arranged by Nelson Riddle, should definitely get heads nodding.

Ranbir Kapoor makes Balraj’s unstable lunacy strangely charismatic. You would never want to be anywhere near such a person, but he is consistently fun to watch. Likewise, Karan Johar shamelessly chews on the scenery as the flamboyantly snide and villainous Khambata. Manish Choudhary is also terrifically sleazy as the greedy Red Mistry. Oddly enough given his prominence, Kay Kay Menon gets somewhat shortchanged on screen time, even though his honest Inspector Kulkarni is a potentially intriguing character.

For fans of Wasseypur, it is important to note there is no shortage of dead bodies in Velvet. It has a high polished sheen, and some appealing big band vocals, but it is really about getting down to business. An impressively mounted decade-spanning period production, Bombay Velvet is recommended for fans of the gangster genre and high-end Bollywood while it plays in New York, at the AMC Empire.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on May 18th, 2015 at 10:03pm.

By Joe Bendel. For the residents of a provincial Henan village, the local mountain is like their East River. It is a handy place to dump a body. Nobody asks too many questions when a newly charred corpse pops up, perhaps because everyone is complicit in something during the course of Xin Yukun’s A Coffin in the Mountain, which screens at the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival.

Xiao Weiguo is an oddity—a village chief who never sought to profit from his position. His semi-estranged son Xiao Zongyao finds that hopelessly old-fashioned. His visit home has been awkward, as usual. However, he is looking forward to an assignation with his on-again-off-again girlfriend, at least until she drops the pregnancy bomb. To make matters worse, local lowlife Bai Hu overhears their conversation. When he threatens to inform Xiao’s father, things get a little rough. At least they were already on the mountain, so they will not have to travel far to dump the body.

Meanwhile, Li Qin tries to convince her lover, Wang Baoshan to kill her abusive degenerate of a husband, Chen Zili. Apparently somebody did the deed, but probably not the self-centered Wang. Regardless, Li Qin is not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Of course, nothing is as obvious as it first appears as Xin’s braided stories overlap, intersect, and refer back.

Coffin looks like a depressing Chinese indie, but it is really a wickedly droll, blackly comic noir in the tradition of the early Cohen Brothers. By now, the nonlinear narrative gimmick has been done to death and usually done poorly, but Xin and co-screenwriter Feng Yuanliang make it look fresh and insidiously clever. It is a pleasure to watch Xin smoothly fit his pieces together. Yet, the film is so matter-of-factly understated, it often takes a beat or two for the audience to realize they have had the rug pulled out from under them again.

Although there are no big names to speak, the entire cast is dynamite, particularly Sun Li as Li Qin, the working class Chinese equivalent of Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. However, as Xiao Weiguo, Huo Weiman steals the film outright in the third act with his slow burning intensity and quickly escalating frustration. As he pulls his hair out in exasperation, we just have to shake our heads in appreciation for Xin’s twisty and twisted gamesmanship.

This is a terrific film that consistently confounds expectations right from the start. It should herald the discovery a refreshingly original filmmaker and at least half a dozen new talents in front of the camera. Very highly recommended, The Coffin in the Mountain screens this Saturday (5/16), Monday (5/18), and Thursday (5/21) at this year’s SIFF.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on May 14, 2015 at 4:54pm.

By Joe Bendel. Leave it to JCVD to give an urban legend a Taken twist. Deacon, a hardboiled kidnapping & recovery specialist will wake up in an icy Manila bathtub sans one kidney. However, he has a very particular set of skills, skills that he has acquired over a very long career that will help him track down that kidney, because it was already spoken for. Deacon was supposed to donate it to his ailing niece and he is not about to disappoint in Ernie Barbarash’s Pound of Flesh, which opens this Friday in select theaters.

Deacon has yet to meet his niece and he has been estranged from his brother George for years, but a man has to do what a man has to do. Unfortunately, that means Deacon is also pretty easy to set up. When he saves a damsel in distress, who happens to be just his type, it leads to a woozy night on the town and an ice bath. George, the devout Catholic is rather disappointed in his carelessness. Of course, Deacon is not about to take this lying down, even if has just gone under the knife. Reconnecting with Kung, a dodgy former comrade, Deacon pops some morphine and starts following the trail of the organ harvesting ring.

Maybe you think you have seen this all before, but keep in mind, in this case, Van Damme uses a Gideon Bible to beat the snot out of people. You can call that getting Biblical. However, it really isn’t objectionable, considering how seriously Pound handles issues stemming from George’s Catholicism.

Frankly, the combination of Van Damme and an unpretentious action-specialist like Barbarash inspires a great deal of confidence. As in Assassination Games and Falcon Rising, there are no over-the-top set piece spectacles in Pound. Instead, the film is all about Van Damme putting his foot in the bad guys’ behinds. Barbarash understands how to show off his stars’ skills, giving us full body shots and absolutely no shaky cams.

Indeed, Van Damme still does his thing in Pound. All his strengths and weaknesses remain what they always were, which is good or bad, depending on your perspective. He is deliberately playing a somewhat older cat, but he has not lost much in terms of physique and flexibility. Aki Aleong adds some extra veteran seasoning as the crafty old Kung. The Manila backdrops also helps give Pound a distinctive flair.

Sadly, Pound is dedicated to the memory of co-star Darren Shahlavi, probably best known as Twister in Ip Man 2. He also had massive skills and considerable presence. Pound showcases the former more than the latter, but as Drake the chief henchman, he is definitely a worthy opponent for Deacon. Shahlavi could have very easily broken out with genre fans, becoming something like the next Scott Adkins, so his early death and its mangled reporting in the media is especially tragic.

Despite off-screen misfortunes, this is just a fun film that happens to be better executed than cinema snobs will give it credit for. When Van Damme makes a film with Barbarash you can be assured of a certain level of quality control. If you want to see a dude with one kidney kicking an organ harvesting gang several shades of black-and-blue than Pound is your ticket. Recommended for Van Damme fans, Pound of Flesh releases on iTunes and in select markets this Friday (5/15), with a special Saturday (5/16) screening scheduled at the Arena Cinema in Los Angeles.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on May 14th, 2015 at 4:45pm.