Category: Narrative

By Joe Bendel. It is sort of like Fincher’s The Game, with the economic sensibilities of Glengarry Glen Ross. Supposedly its origins trace back to ancient Rome, but savvy Asian film fans will recognize its first cinematic manifestation came in Chukiat Sakveerakul’s 13: Game of Death. Daniel Stamm re-conceives the macabre Thai thriller in New Orleans, where the desperate will still be tempted to commit the most heinous crimes throughout 13 Sins, which has just been released on DVD.

Elliot Brindle would agree with Alec Baldwin, sales is a “tough racket.” Recently fired from his firm for not being sufficiently predatory, Brindle is already drowning in debt. In addition to his pending wedding to his pregnant girlfriend, Brindle suddenly must also cover his developmentally disabled brother’s outpatient treatment and care for his ailing racist father.

Things are looking pretty depressed for Brindle, but from out of the blue, a mystery caller offers him one thousand baht (sorry, make that dollars) to kill the fly buzzing around his car. Yes, their apparent surveillance is a little disconcerting, but he does it anyway and the money is immediately deposited in his account. The voice of character actor George Coe then offers him more money to eat the fly, which he does, knowing it is just protein. Those were the first two challenges out of thirteen. Of course, they escalate in severity, but Brindle is already hooked. Failure will result in the forfeiture of his winnings, but all the felonies he is about to commit will be wiped clean with ultimate victory.

Stamm and co-adapter David Birke cleverly devise challenges that are graphic and game-worthy, but not so repellent they irreparably sabotage our rooting interest in Brindle. There are some okay twists to the tale, but the big one stretches credibility. For the most part, Stamm keeps the film humming along slick and tight, without belaboring the class warfare undercurrent.

13 Sins also benefits from ever-watchable genre vets Ron Perlman and Pruitt Taylor Vince as the tight-lipped Det. Chilcoat and the twitchy conspiracy theorist Vogler, respectively. Stamm has them standing around more than he should, but they each deliver one of the film’s two best lines in perfect deadpan style.

In contrast, Mark Webber is a rather weak lead, but he is still convincingly earnest and put-upon as poor Brindle. Frankly, Tom Bower frequently up-stages him as his snarling old man. On the down side, Devon Graye’s performance as brother Michael is just problematic on multiple levels.

By thriller standards, 13 Sins is serviceable enough, but it never fully captures the flavor of its NOLA setting. Frankly, that was a lost opportunity to give the film a more distinctive identity. A professional return to familiar territory, 13 Sins is passable but not essential viewing for fans of dark thrillers with a dash of horror seasoning. It is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Anchor Bay and Radius TWC.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on June 18th, 2014 at 9:30pm.

By Joe Bendel. Suppose Schrödinger’s cat threw a dinner party. He would probably serve tuna and quantum physics. The notion of quantum superposition made famous by the hypothetical feline becomes a question of life and death for a group of hipsters when a comet crashes their soiree in James Ward Byrkit’s sf mindtrip, Coherence, which opens this Friday in New York.

Mike and Lee are hosting some of their closest friends, as well as Amir’s annoying girlfriend, Laurie, who also happens to be Kevin’s ex, before he started seeing Em. Although she is attractive, Em is highly insecure and nearly paralyzed with regret over her past mistakes. She is therefore less than thrilled to see Laurie, but the comet will provide some timely distractions, spontaneously cracking cell phones and knocking out the power grid.

Noticing a nearby house still has power, Amir and Hugh (the oldest of their circle) leave to investigate, but return thoroughly spooked. They also bring back a rather puzzling box. Panic and mystery ensue. However, a key clue might be found in some notes left by Hugh’s scientist brother referring to Schrödinger’s cat.

According to that classic thought experiment, given a certain set of Rube Goldberg pre-conditions, a cat placed in a box that has equal chance of being dead or alive when the container is opened, simultaneously exists in both states until an outside force interrupts, forcing the two existences to collapse into a single reality. Determining how it applies to them will be an unsettling experience.

Byrkit takes that cryptic premise and runs with it, steadily raising the stakes and cranking up the anxiety. Following Darren Paul Fisher’s Frequencies and Richie Mehta’s I’ll Follow You Down, Coherence heralds a mini-renaissance for concept-driven micro-budget science fiction with virtually no special effects. Eventually, Byrkit employs a bit of SFX trickery, but it is far from the point of the film and spoilery to address in any meaningful way.

Considering how head-spinning Byrkit & Alex Manugian’s story gets, it is hard to imagine sending the cast out to do it cold improv style, but that is largely what they did. Mostly just armed only with their prepared situation and character notes, the ensemble somehow makes it work. Indeed, it is certainly never a problem for them to look confused or panicked, which is required throughout most of the second two acts.

Frankly, casting Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Nicholas Brendon as Mike, a washed-up former Roswell co-star is so meta-inspired, Coherence could have coasted into conventional riff on Night of the Comet and still satisfied fans. In fact, Brendon loses his cool rather spectacularly as Mike.

Although she initially seems rather vanilla, Emily Foxley’s Em deftly pulls off a critical pivot late in the game. Demonstrating consistency under difficult thesp circumstances, Hugo Armstrong anchors the film and handles the egghead material with authority as the more down to earth Hugh. Bill Clinton would also be interested to know former Miss America and elusive Paula Jones witness Elizabeth Gracen chews her share of scenery as Hugh’s New Agey wife Beth.

Coherence is a smart, tense genre outing that thoroughly shows up big budget tent-poles with its superior inventiveness. Byrkit and company take a lot of risks, but they all payoff significantly. Highly recommended for fans of sf and cult cinema, Coherence opens this Friday (6/20) in New York at the Village East.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on June 17th, 2014 at 4:50pm.

By Joe Bendel. It might be summer, but Eric Rohmer characters never get a vacation from their personality hang-ups. Strangely, they are still good company, thanks to the auteur’s feather-light touch. Despite its place in one of Rohmer’s great thematic film series, the Tales of the Four Seasons quartet, as well as a young cast predominantly dressed for the beach, A Summer’s Tale is only now getting a proper American theatrical release, when it opens this Friday in New York.

Gaspard is a dedicated musician, who has recently completed a master’s degree in mathematics, but he is not very smart when it comes to women. He has come to Dinard in Brittany for a short holiday before his first adult job commences, in hopes his pseudo-girlfriend Léna will join him there. Much to his frustration, but not necessarily his surprise, she has flaked on him. In spite of his general mopiness, an attractive ethnology student waitressing in her aunt’s café takes a liking to Gaspard. Also separated from her lover, Margot assures Gaspard there will no possibility of romance between them, but she encourages him to pursue Solène, a casual acquaintance of hers.

After a bit of prodding, Gaspard successfully acts on her advice. Yet, just as his fling with Solène threatens to get serious, Léna resurfaces. Will he sabotage his flawed romance of the moment for an even more problematic relationship from the past, while taking for granted all the chemistry we can plainly see in his platonic friendship with Margot? It puts the socially awkward Gaspard in quite a quandary, but Margot is openly dismissive of his self-centered confusion.

Most viewers will not be very impressed by Gaspard’s whiny vacillations either, but Amanda Langlet’s Margot is a different story. It is worth enduring his neurotic dithering so we can hear her undercut him. Formerly the young star of Rohmer’s Pauline at the Beach, in thirteen years Amanda Langlet had matured into a charismatic young woman, whose charm and intelligent presence consistently elevates Summer. It is strange that she has been so rarely seen by international cineastes outside Rohmer films, yet Melvil Poupaud’s star continued to rise after his gawky turn as Gaspard.

Aurelia Nolin is not exactly a household name either, but viewers can well understand why Gaspard has such a hard time getting over her. As is usually the case for Rohmer’s screenplays, Summer is a talky film, but the primary cast makes his often brutally honest dialogue sound natural and spontaneous. It is very Rohmeresque, even though it is not set in his familiar Paris. In fact, he consciously anchors Summer along the Brittany coast, capitalizing on the local color and sea shanties.

Always a considerate host, Rohmer carefully marks the passing of each day leading up to Gaspard’s scheduled departure and deliberately identifies the relevant landmarks for the audience. Even after the HD restoration, Summer never dazzles visually, but it still makes Dinard look like a lovely place to visit.

There are profundities to be found amongst Summer’s prosaic exchanges. It can be pointed at times, but it is never a rude or crass viewing experience. Sharply observed but scrupulously forgiving of human foibles, it is a classic example of the Rohmer style. Highly recommended for Francophiles and those who appreciate intimate chamber comedy-dramas, A Summer’s Tale (finally) opens this Friday (6/20) in New York at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on June 17th, 2014 at 4:45pm.

By Joe Bendel. It was a dirty war Iran launched against itself. From 1988 through 1998, over eighty writers and reformist intellectuals are now thought to have been assassinated at the behest of high-ranking clerics and intelligence officials. Eventually, the nebulous outlines of the conspiracy were exposed by journalists subsequently railroaded on dubious criminal charges. Tackling the so-called Chain Murders (or events very much like them) would be a perilous course of action for any Iranian filmmaker hoping for official sanction, but as it happens, Mohammad Rasoulof has already been sentenced to a twenty year filmmaking ban. Produced entirely underground, Rasoulof’s Manuscripts Don’t Burn is a jaw-dropping feat of artistic integrity, which opens a week long engagement at MoMA this Friday.

Khosrow and Morteza are blue collar workers. They abduct, torture, and assassinate intellectuals thought to hold counter-revolutionary ideas by their Islamist masters, especially those looking to publish their work. The memoir of dissident writer Kasra would be particularly incendiary because it addresses the role played by the current intelligence minister in the attempted assassination of twenty-one public intellectuals on their way to a writers’ conference in Armenia.

In an effort to protect his manuscript, Kasra has sent copies to two of his lucky intelligentsia friends. Unfortunately, the secret police already have this intel, so Khosrow and Morteza are soon dispatched to torture the poet Kian and eventually fake his suicide. It is an assignment that comes at a bad time for Khosrow. Unlike the more mercenary Morteza, he fervently believes in the righteousness of the state ideology. However, his wife is convinced their son’s severe health issues are a form of divine retribution for the crimes he has committed. To make matters worse, the apparatus of terror has been slow to make the payments he so desperately needs for his son’s surgery.

The word bold just does not do Burn justice. Rasoulof shines a spotlight on censorship, torture, state-sponsored murder, and religious hypocrisy, all of which look even worse than one would imagine. If he missed a third rail, it would have to be the condition of women under the misogynist regime, but Burn offers more than enough to process as it is. Employing a cast and crew of expatriate Iranians, all of whom remain uncredited for their protection, Rasoulof’s film feels relentlessly authentic. Yet, despite the power of its indictment, Burn still functions as a taut political thriller.

Hopefully, one day soon we will safely know the identity of Rasoulof’s artistic collaborators. For now, we can only give them a collective ovation, but the fearless actor playing Kian deserves special mention. The Academy and its brethren should review their bylaws regarding anonymous work, because his performance as the suave, world weary poet truly merits award consideration. Likewise, the screen thesp cast as Khosrow creates a deeply riveting portrait of guilt and fanaticism, making it impossible to dismiss the film as mere polemics.

Like the work Jafar Panahi produced in defiance of his own filmmaking ban, Burn is about as independent as a film can get. It is also a masterwork from an accomplished artist. The allusion to Mikhail Bulgakov makes it even timelier, given Russia’s recent military adventurism with respects to its former Soviet era captive nations. Tragically though, the title is rather ironic—manuscripts really do burn—and so do writers. Very highly recommended, Manuscripts Don’t Burn opens this Friday (6/13) at MoMA, as part of their ongoing ContemporAsian film series.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on June 12th, 2014 at 8:24pm.

By Joe Bendel. During the late 1960s, the New Left popularized the slogan “the personal is political.” They did not do Nelly Senff any favors by doing so. When she crosses over to West Berlin, she cites “personal reasons” as her motivation, but the Allied security services are primed to distrust such evasive answers, for good reason. Senff quickly learns she might be unwittingly caught amidst a wider conspiracy in Christian Schwochow’s West, which screens during the 2014 KINO! Festival of German Films in New York.

Senff was once a leading scientist in East Germany, much like her late Russian partner, Wassilij. He was an erratic presence in her life and that of their son, Alexej, but they still miss him dearly. Therefore, it is a bit of a shock when Senff learns that her roguish lover was also a Stasi courier, who perhaps faked his death to escape their grasp. Keen to find out his whereabouts, the various agencies withhold Senff’s requisite approvals until she gives them answers. That means for the foreseeable future, she and Alexej will be stuck in the gray, institutional Marienfelde Refugee Center and not legally employable.

The respectable West is not nearly comparable to Petzold’s Barbara or Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others, but it never seeks to excuse or deny the human rights violations of the GDR regime. From what we see and hear in the film, life in the East was pretty bad. There is a fair amount of moral equivalency going on, but the Americans emerge looking the best, thanks to the sympathetic presentation and portrayal of CIA agent John Bird, playing with finely nuanced sensitivity by Jacky Ido.

For similar reasons, the obvious comparison between Nina Hoss’s Dr. Barbara Wolff and Jördis Triebel is not favorable to the latter. She does a fine job expressing Senff’s mounting paranoia, but she cannot reach the same levels of diffident defiance and quiet vulnerability.

Frankly, in terms of its structure and tenor, West is a bit erratic. Just when it is poised to become a Brezhnev era Third Man, it pulls back from the brink, settling for more domestic dramas. Still, it definitely convinces viewers government buildings are no place to raise a child. It also takes seriously the notion of Stasi persecution targeting GDR defectors.

Ultimately, West works towards a hopeful statement rather than an angry one, making it an interesting film to see in conjunction with Dercourt’s A Pact, also screening during the festival. It is a work of some merit, but it lacks the moral heft and tragic pay-off of its more heralded predecessors. Recommended with minor reservations, West opens this year’s non-MoMA KINO! with an invite only screening at the Museum of the Moving Image today (6/12), in advance of a forthcoming New York theatrical release.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on June 12th, 2014 at 8:18pm.

By Joe Bendel. Is a former old East German informer really the Devil? He is rather Mephistophelean. Yet, in their school days, Paul Meier sort of got the better of Georg Schmidt. Meier’s karmic bill comes due years later, with substantial compounded interest, in Denis Dercourt’s A Pact, which screens during the 2014 KINO! Festival of German Films in New York.

The earnest young Meier was so smitten with Anna, he forged a supposed love note from her to him, in hopes of spurring the arrogant Schmidt to dump her. Surprisingly, it works. However, before stealing some other schmuck’s girl, Schmidt extracts a promise from Meier that will loom large. At some unknown point in the future, Meier must return his presumptive new girlfriend, should Schmidt duly request her.

One Unification later, Meier is reasonably happily married to Anna and the proud father of two classically German looking teenagers. Much to his surprise, the new boss of Meier’s investment banking firm turns out to be the very same Georg Schmidt. Initially, things are rather awkward between the two ex-friends. Of course, Schmidt is not exactly a touchy feely sort of fellow. He is, after all, the son of an East German cop, who knew how to drop a dime to further his interests. The doctored blackmail pictures Schmidt received of Meier in an apparently compromising position with his assistant do not help matters. Even worse, the international market turns against copper commodities, after Meier took a bullish position. At least he can still count on the firm’s security chief Daniel as a friend and ally.

Neither Meier nor the audience seriously considers his pal’s suggestion that Schmidt just might be Satan or some sort of djinn, but Meier’s paranoia will entertain just about any other possibility. Frankly, he is such a hapless victim, many viewers will probably start rooting against him. Still, it is hard to root for Schmidt, but Dercourt obliges with a third act, forehead-slapping game-changer.

A Pact is a tonal traffic jam that leaves dozens of question hanging unresolved, but it is never dull. It starts out as an East German Jules & Jim, detours through Jeffrey Archer territory and evolves into a payback thriller. Viewers who are easily annoyed by cinematic head-fakes will probably find more than they can take here. Still, it goes about its murky business with German professionalism. At times, Dercourt (the French expat) takes things over the top, but that is not such a bad thing.

As Schmidt, Sylvester Groth is memorably severe and calculating, setting the atmosphere of intrigue quite nicely. Poor Mark Waschke’s Meier is required to be a bit of a doormat, but Sophie Rois brings all kinds of barely submerged crazy as Schmidt’s fateful girlfriend, Yvonne. Likewise, Marie Bäumer is rather credibly ticked off with the disappointing men in her life, while Johannes Zeiler steals scenes in bulk as the resourceful womanizer, Daniel.

As in a great Hawthorne novel, the GDR past continues to exert a malevolent influence on lives in the present. Frankly, this is not a film a former East German apparatchik with a guilty conscience could enjoy. It clearly implies there are many who still remember the Communist era and are not willing to forgive. Recommended for those who enjoy psychological thrillers with the occasional melodramatic indulgence, A Pact screens this Friday (6/13), Sunday (6/15), and next Tuesday (6/17) as part of this year’s KINO! at the Quad Cinema.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on June 12th, 2014 at 8:12pm.