Category: Narrative

LFM Reviews Gangnam Blues

By Joe Bendel. This is a Korean gangster movie all New Yorkers will relate to, because it is all about real estate—and the high cost thereof. In 1970, an increasingly over-crowded Seoul needed to develop the sleepy backwater district of Gangnam. For those in the know, there was a land rush to scope up parcels before the civic expansion plans were announced. Of course, only politicians and gangsters would have that sort of insider information. It is dashed difficult to tell the difference between the two in Yoo Ha’s Gangnam Blues (a.k.a. Gangnam 1970), which screens this coming Thursday as part of the free Korean Movie Night series at New York’s Asia Society.

Kim Jong-dae and Baek Yong-ki are sworn brothers who left their orphanage together hoping to scratch out some sort of life in the rough & tumble Gangnam district. Arguably, in the late 1960s, there are more thugs to be found there than paved roads. Kim and Baek briefly run afoul of some of Kang Gil-soo’s men, but the clan leaders chooses to recruit them for a job rather than inflict punishment. They will join a busload of hooligans sent to disrupt a political rally. Unfortunately, the job quickly goes sour, leading to the temporary disgrace of Kang’s political ally.

Separated during madness, Kim and Baek will not see each other again for three years. Kim will return to Kang, living as his adopted son. Having seen the writing on the wall, Kang tries to retire from crime, living a modest life as a launderer (of clothes). Despite his outward obedience, Kim longs to see Kang lead his old clan back to prominence. Secretly, he has laid the groundwork to facilitate that goal, but it inevitably leads to conflict with the rival gang Baek joined. Discovering themselves on opposite sides of a potential gang war, Kim and Baek form their own personal non-aggression pact. Of course, they will eventually have to make some hard choices about where their loyalties truly lay.

If you are thinking about that rap song, just forget it. Gangnam is now one of Seoul’s most prosperous and prestigious districts, so its hard fought development represents one of the grandest cases of “gentrification” ever. Imagine buying up Greenpoint or Williamsburg before the hipsters moved in. Those are the stakes at play in Blues.

From "Gangnam Blues."

Frankly, this is exactly the sort of Korean film that best translates for American audiences. It is a big, sweeping gangster story, but told from a distinctly personal perspective. Although not blood relations, there is something almost Biblical about Kim and Baek’s relationship. The grungy period look adds to the appeal, evoking memories of cynical 1970s cops-and-robbers films.

Korean TV superstar Lee Min-ho is impressively earnest and edgy as the tightly wound Kim. In contrast, Kim Rae-won is rather cool and distant as Baek, but that is rather the point. Regardless, neither of the young toughs can match the veteran hardnosedness of Jung Jin-young’s Kang, who towers over the large colorful supporting cast. There are dozens of seedy characters conspiring with and against each other, but Kim Ji-su stands out as Min Sung-hee, Kim’s early tutor in real estate speculation.

At times, viewers could really use a scorecard to identify which gang is aligned with which crooked politico. Still, that degree of sophisticated plotting is quite refreshing. For action fans, Blues also boasts a massively awesome gang fight scene in the middle of a mud-splattered cemetery. Highly recommended for fans of Korean gangster epics, Gangnam Blues screens (for free) this Thursday (5/7) at the Asia Society on Manhattan’s fashionable Upper Eastside.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on May 6th, 2015 at 9:56pm.

LFM Reviews The Shaman @ Tribeca 2015

By Joe Bendel. Imagine the Terminator franchise, but with metaphysics replacing artificial technology. In the year 2204, humanity has been in a state of constant war for seventy-three years. Not content simply developing the latest lethal hardware, the warring factions have also weaponized shamanism. Great battles are joined in the Netherworld, where shamans try to convert or kill the souls of machines existing in our plane of reality. One such spiritual intermediary will face his most dangerous mission yet in Marco Kalantari’s epic short film The Shaman, which screened at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival (as part of the Interference programming block).

It might be a short film, but it is long on concept. Clearly, writer-director-producer-editor Kalantari can only establish the basic essentials of this shamanistic dystopia in the film’s mere eighteen minutes. Through the help of sympathetic musical accompaniment, shamans like our unnamed titular character are able to cross over to the realm where the souls of machines exist in corporal form, at least for the duration of the tune. The Shaman’s target is the soul of the Colossus, a devastating new Death Star-like battle droid. Unfortunately, the Colossus seems to be expecting him. Nevertheless, the Shaman insists on an unusually short composition, perhaps out of respect for Kalantari’s budget.

Frankly, a short film with this level of special effects would have been unimaginable ten years ago. Kalantari creates a sinister futuristic landscape of enormous scope that is initially maybe a bit reminiscent of the Terminator, but he takes it in a wholly original direction. If this short was produced in the hope it will lead to an expanded feature, it is likely to win the requisite backing, because in this case, seeing is believing.

The very idea of a massive space battles also being waged on the subconscious level and within the soul is heady stuff and even a little disturbing. It is a rich vein Kalantari should be able to profitably mine over multiple films. Hopefully, he will bring back Susanne Wuest, because she is terrific as the Soul of Colossus. He also gets a key assist from cinematographer Thomas Kiennast (who also lensed the moody strudel western Dark Valley). He gives this universe a darkly distinctive look, while Kalantari blends the trappings of science fiction and fantasy quite effectively.

Minute for minute, The Shaman has considerably more ideas than most big budget genre movies. Easily the best science fiction at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, it is prime candidate for later genre fests like Fantasia. Highly recommended, indie sf fans should definitely keep an eye out for it.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on May 6th, 2015 at 9:55pm.

LFM Reviews Over Your Dead Body @ The 2015 Stanley Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. If you are playing the part of an unfaithful lover who meets a grisly supernatural end opposite your real life lover, it is bad karma to betray her off-stage, especially if she arranged the gig for you. Unfortunately, Kousuke Hasegawa is exactly that sort of cad. Life will duly imitate art in Takashi Miike’s Over Your Dead Body, which screens during the 2015 Stanley Film Festival.

Hasegawa and Miyuki Goto have the leads in the classical macabre kabuki drama Yotsuya Kaidan, adapted for the screen many times, including as Nobou Nakagawa’s pretty awesome The Ghost Story of Yotsuya. As the cast rehearses, a great deal as meta-ness unfolds backstage. Like his character, the sociopathic ronin Tamiya Iemon, Hasegawa is cheating on Goto (cast as the tragically trusting Iwa) with the younger actress playing her younger on-stage rival, Ume.

Iemon will do cruel and evil things to destroy Iwa to be with Ume. In ostensive real life, Hasegawa is maybe not as proactively duplicitous, but he clearly has no regard for Goto’s feelings. However, there are ominous portents of a malevolent force afoot. Eventually, even Hasegawa starts to pick up on the bad vibes.

Despite the bring-it-on title, OYDB is a remarkably restrained horror film, especially from a master of mayhem like Miike. In truth, it represents a return to the austere elegance displayed in his moody Jidaigeki tragedy Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai. That might disappoint the faithful at the Stanley, but it certainly constitutes distinctive filmmaking.

From "Over Your Dead Body."

Indeed, the play within the film would be well worth seeing in its own right. Watching the massive sets created by co-art directors Yuji Hayashida and Eri Sakushima rotating on and off the stage is quite an impressive sight. There is also a really creepy doll used as a surrogate for the play’s infant. Frankly, it is surprisingly easy to get caught up in Iwa and Iemon’s story.

Kô Shibasaki scores a knockout punch as Goto, coming undone like Glen Close in Fatal Attraction, but with far greater subtlety. Likewise, well-regarded kabuki actor Ebizô Ichikawa is appropriately reptilian as Hasegawa and Hasegawa in the role of Iemon. There is a cast of dozens on the set within the film. Yet, only Miho Nakanishi gets much screen time of substance, but when her entitled Ume gets caught up in Iwa’s wrath, it is a great scene.

Miike has probably already made ten films since wrapping OYDB, but it would be an awful shame if it was lost in the shuffle. It is one of the most darkly sophisticated life-parallels-art films you will see, easily putting to shame Polanski’s overhyped Venus in Fur and the very odd but well-intentioned 1915. Highly recommended, Over Your Dead Body screens tomorrow (5/2) and Sunday (5/3) as part of this year’s Stanley Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on May 2nd, 2015 11:38am.

LFM Reviews Reality

By Joe Bendel. Something about Philip Glass’s Music with Changing Parts brings to mind Torgo’s theme from Manos: the Hands of Fate. That is not a criticism. In fact, it is another reason why it works so well as the soundtrack to Quentin Dupieux’s latest mind-trip. Reality with get twisted up and bent over double in Dupieux’s ironically titled Reality, which opens tomorrow at the IFC Center.

Her name is “Reality” and her hunter father just bagged a wild boar. Nobody believes her, but she knows she saw a blue VHS tape pop out of its stomach while her Pops was removing the entrails. She will duly retrieve that tape, but the director filming her story will take his sweet time before he lets us watch it. His name is Zog and he is driving his French producer Bob Marshall to distraction with his cost-overruns. Marshall is the decisive type. He is fully willing to fund Jason Tantra’s horror movie if he can produce the perfect groan of misery to express its essence.

In between his groan sessions, Tantra works his day job as a camera man for a cooking show hosted by a man in a rat costume suffering from phantom eczema. All that scratching is starting to turn viewers against him. Frankly, the viewing experience can be trying in Reality, as when Tantra accidentally takes his wife to see his film before he starts making it. Rather upset with the sound mix, he tries to stop the screening, so he can fix it in the future. Then things start getting strange.

As weird as Dupieux’s first act undeniably is, it is nothing compared to the lunacy that follows. Dreams and films will interrupt and fold back into each other, as each strange subplot doubles back and refers to itself. Edited by Dupieux (a.k.a. Mr. Ozio), Reality has an extremely complex structure mere mortals could not even begin to diagram.

Granted, Reality lacks the warmth and sweetness that made Wrong such an unexpected pleasure, but it is still a blast to watch Dupieux juggle an infinite number of balls in the air. Each new reverse is a thing of beauty onto itself. It is easy for actors to get overwhelmed in such an auteurist spectacle, but John Glover gives one for the ages as the supremely confident Zog. Alain Chabat’s Tantra is like an everyman from an alternate universe (and maybe he is), while Napoleon Dynamite’s Jon Heder really looks like he is suffering from a nasty rash in that rat suit.

By now, you really should know within a 99.99 degree of certainty whether Reality is your cup of tea or not. If you’re not sure, go anyway, because part of Reality’s subversive fun is watching other audience members getting confused and upset. Highly recommended for Dupieux fans and connoisseurs of cult cinema, Reality opens tomorrow (5/1) in New York, at the IFC Center.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on April 30th, 2015 at 4:49pm.

LFM Reviews Hyena @ Tribeca 2015

By Joe Bendel. If they hadn’t become corrupt cops, Michael Logan and his team probably would have been football hooligans. Unfortunately, there probably isn’t enough time for the husky louts to go less crooked. Karma will be harsh to some in Gerard Johnson’s Hyena, which opens this Friday in New York, following its U.S. premiere at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.

After plundering a large quantity of cocaine in a night club shake down, Logan’s team is in the mood to party. That is often the case, but this time Logan has bigger fish to fry. He has a meeting with his partner in a new Turkish drug trafficking scheme. This is not an undercover operation. It’s an investment. Inconveniently, Logan secretly witnesses the psychotic Albanian Kabashi Brothers murdering his contact. At least Logan manages to secure their first shipment. The Kabashis will be looking for that.

Things will steadily go from bad to worse for Logan. Initially, he tries to forge a temporary working arrangement with the Kabashi Brothers, but nobody believes that will last. He also must contend with an Internal Affairs investigation, while his mates become increasingly erratic and drug-addled. Seriously, how hard could it be to bust these knuckleheads?

From "Hyena."

Yes, we have seen this all before—and we’ve seen it better. The opening sequence is a stylistic tour-de-force, but from there on Gerard is indecisively torn between old school exploitation movies and affected art cinema. To a large extent, you can determine a film’s pretentiousness by comparing the amount of screen time devoted to the back of the protagonist’s head as they grimly trudge onward versus more conventional (and engaging) frontal and profile shots. In Hyena, the ratio is nearly one-to-one, which means tough sledding.

When we can actually see his face, Peter Ferdinando is pretty good as Logan. Likewise, Ben Wheatley regular Neil Maskell is obviously on comfortable ground as Logan’s sleazebag subordinate, Martin. His Kill List co-star MyAnna Buring also brings some verve to the film as Logan’s exasperated girlfriend, Lisa. Inexplicably, cult favorite Mem Ferda is almost completely wasted in what is effectively a cameo as Turkish crime lord Akif Dikman. Like Buddy Sorrell on the old Dick Van Dyke Show, he spends most of his screen time lying on a couch. Yet, he is still cool.

Speaking of Ferda, Hyena obviously follows in the tradition of Luis Prieto’s Pusher remake, but it cannot match the frenetic energy. Johnson tries to compensate with 1970s era pessimism and nihilism, but that gets old after the first act. However, fans of The The will get an nostalgic charge out of their original soundtrack. Not recommended, Hyena opens this Friday (5/1) in New York at the Cinema Village, after screening as a midnight selection at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: D

Posted on April 29th, 2015 at 11:57am.

LFM Reviews Far from Men @ Tribeca 2015

By Joe Bendel. Nobel Prize Laureate Albert Camus is associated with existentialism, but he was really a determined foe of all totalitarian “isms.” He is also closely linked to his Algerian birthplace, with good reason. In addition to his celebrated novels The Plague, The Stranger, and the posthumously published but still quite good The First Man, Camus’s most anthologized short story, “The Guest,” is also set in Algeria. Screen-writer-director David Oelhoffen thoughtfully but not entirely faithfully adapts Camus’s story as Far from Men, which opens this Friday in New York, following its U.S. premiere at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.

Daru is a former military officer trying to make amends for his mysterious past by serving as a school teacher in a remote village. The meditative life seems to suit him, but it will be rudely interrupted by Balducci, the gendarme. Whether he wants to or not, Daru has been tasked with escorting Balducci’s Algerian prisoner to the nearest French outpost in Tinguit, where he will likely be executed. That night, Daru makes it clear to the man named Mohamed, he is welcome to escape at any time. However, the admitted murder seems perversely intent on facing French justice. He does indeed have his reasons, which constitute some unusually smart writing on Oelhoffen’s part.

Unfortunately, Mohamed’s family did not have the blood money to buy peace after he justifiably killed his cousin. As a result, Daru will find himself in the middle of an intra-family feud, as well as increasingly violent uprising led by many of his former Algerian army colleagues. Fortunately, Daru is a crack shot with a rifle, because he will have to shoot his way out of a lot of trouble.

Essentially, Oelhoffen trades the icy cold irony of the Camus story for the tragic sweep of a revisionist Algerian western. Cinematographer Guillaume Deffontaines fully exploits the craggy terrain’s epic big sky country possibilities. After playing the Gloomy Gus in self-consciously arty films like Jauja and Everybody has a Plan, Viggo Mortensen finally finds the right vehicle for his simmering tough guy intensity. It also further burnishes his polyglot chops, this time showcasing him in French. Reda Ketab’s performance as Mohamed is almost too impassive as Mohamed, but it still sort of works for a pseudo western, in the moody Anthony Mann tradition.

Frankly, Far from Men is exactly the kind of film the pretentious Jauja should have been, but so wasn’t. It critically engages with a lot of hot button issues, including colonialism and tribalism, but never at the expense of its lean and mean narrative. Visually striking and tightly disciplined, Far from Men is recommended for fans of Mortensen and historical drama when it opens this Friday (5/1) in New York at the Cinema Village, following hard on the heels of its well-received screenings at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on April 27th, 2015 at 1:22pm.