Category: Watch Movies!

By Joe Bendel. With the release of ScarJo’s Lucy looming, we can expect the publicity campaign to wax rhapsodic about the significance of a female action hero. Of course, Michelle Yeoh has been kicking butt and carrying action films for decades. So has Angela Mao. Cheng Pei-pei also did it before Johansson and did it far better in King Hu’s Shaw Brothers classic, Come Drink with Me, which screens during BAM Cinématek’s retrospective, All Hail the King: the Films of King Hu.

Drink would be Hu’s definitive film for legendary producer Run Run Shaw, but also his last. Furthermore, it introduces the first of Hu’s many strong woman protagonists: Golden Swallow, the daughter of the scrupulously just provincial governor. A gang of outlaws has abducted her brother, expecting to exchange her for a colleague due to be executed for his crimes. Instead, the old man dispatches Golden Swallow to recover her brother and dispense some justice.

Kind of-sort of disguised as a man, Golden Swallow marches into the bandit’s favorite tavern, looking for trouble. They try to oblige, but she far outclasses mere henchmen. Needless to say, they vow to return, with their boss, Jade-Faced Tiger to continue the “negotiations.” To make things fairer, she will make a secret ally in Drunken Cat, the local lush, who is considerably more dangerous than his easygoing façade would suggest.

Come Drink is hardly the most complex wuxia story ever filmed, but it delivers several striking action sequences. Indeed, the fight scenes are vintage Hu, as deeply influenced by ballet as martial arts. It is not hard to gather why Golden Swallow’s exploits are often identified as a forerunner to Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It is also easy to see how it launched Cheng Pei-pei to overnight superstardom. She has poise, presence, and all kind of moves. (It is hard to fathom mistaking her for a man, but that is a genre convention we just have to go along with.) Even though he sings and clowns as Drunken Cat, Yueh Hua more than holds up his end, bringing to mind Donnie Yen with his earnestly likable badassery.

In fact, there is something appealing about Golden Sparrow being her family’s designated action figure. She is impressive, but not super-heroic. Both she and Drunken Cat have their physical and emotional vulnerabilities, but they demonstrate humanist virtues as well.

Thanks to Hu’s mystical trappings and striking backdrops, Come Drink With Me easily ranks amongst the higher end of Shaw Brothers productions. Nor can anyone argue with Cheng’s iconic work as Golden Swallow. A briskly paced tale of good versus the corrupt, Come Drink With Me is a film all wuxia connoisseurs should catch up with eventually. Highly recommended, it screens this today (6/8) at BAM as part of their King Hu retrospective.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on June 8th, 2014 at 12:08pm.

By Joe Bendel. They are not exactly the Garson Kanin & Ruth Gordon of horror movies. Frankly, the one thing two would-be screenwriting partners lack more than talent is inspiration. However, a quick stay at an artists’ resort will provide the latter, in the worst way possible. The bodies pile up, as well they should, in Steve Kopera’s slasher-spoof The Cabining which screened during the seventeenth Dances With Films.

Bruce is the hopelessly irresponsible one, while Todd is the earnest sad sack. Neither can crank out a halfway watchable scene, even by slasher movie standards. On the plus side, they have a tentative investor lined up for their first film, but if they cannot produce anything reasonably filmable, Todd’s uncle will put his money in a cousin’s heavy metal recording instead. After having their egos handed to them by their writing group, Todd reluctantly agrees to Bruce’s plan, regrouping for a few days at the Shangri-La retreat.

Right, so Shangri-La is a luxury cabin deep in the woods. You know what happens next, except for the surprisingly spirited courtship between Todd and the sarcastic Mindy, a real literary-grade writer also staying at the retreat. Meanwhile, guests act suspicious and/or dead, while Bruce recklessly pursues the disinterested but not completely unwilling Celeste.

There is no getting around the fact Cabining is a meathead movie, but it is an oddly ambitious one. Kopera and co-writer David Silverman get a lot of mileage out of approaching the brink of shopworn horror clichés, but doing a 180º at the last moment. As a result, there is quite a respectable balance of smart and dumb laughs.

Kopera’s brother and co-producer Mike demonstrates solid timing and an easy likability as Todd. He also develops some appealing chemistry with the scene-stealing Angela Relucio’s Mindy. The film really hums when they are bantering. Conversely, Bo Keister’s Bruce is all about clumsy shtick, but Richard Riehle brings some on-target lunacy as Todd’s uncle, Sarge.

Admittedly, Cabining is no Blythe Spirit, but if you have seen your share of crap-goes-down-in-the-woods movies than you will find it consistently entertaining. It’s a scruffy indie, but it’s funny. Recommended for midnight movie patrons, The Cabining screened Friday night as part of this year’s Dances With Films, in Hollywood, CA.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on June 8th, 2014 at 12:02pm.

By Joe Bendel. As a Pope Francis kind of priest, young Father McCready is uncomfortable with traditional ideas of demons and exorcisms. In contrast, his headmaster, Father Jenkins, is an old school Benedict XVI kind of clergyman. Unfortunately, the senior priest’s diagnosis will prove correct for one of their students. Things get Exorcistic in Tom Lewis’s The Periphery, which screened during the seventeenth Dances With Films.

Essentially, Cassie Stevens died and came back to life. Unfortunately, the young girl her drunken goth friends ran over was not so fortunate. Frankly, her second lease on life turns out to be more of a curse than a blessing. Not only must she endure the public shame and survivor’s guilt resulting from her accident, something sinister has apparently followed her from the other side. Initially, she can only see it vaguely out of the corner of her eye, but it steadily gets closer and more belligerent.

They say in the film: “evil hides in the periphery,” which sounds heavy. More importantly, it prevents Lewis from over-exposing the malevolent entity, forcing him to suggest rather than show, which is always a winning horror movie strategy. His instincts are not always so on target, particularly the opening narration (“I’m Cassie Stevens and I see blurry androgynous figures”) that makes it sound like a television pilot. The general tone is also surprisingly dour and downbeat.

However, like Blatty and Friedkin, Lewis addresses his themes of good, evil, and redemption with scrupulous seriousness. He also establishes an effective dichotomy between the secular reason of Stevens’ psychiatrist, Dr. Switzer, and the faith of Father Jenkins. In fact, the best things going for Periphery are the distinctive supporting turns from Larrs Jackson (with his incredible radio voice) and executive producer Myron Natwick as Dr. Switzer and Fr. Jenkins, respectively. The young kids just don’t have the presence of the veteran cats.

True, Periphery is simply nowhere near the Exorcist’s level, but Lewis (an attorney specializing in film production work in his other life) nicely handles some third act revelations and maintains a menacing vibe throughout. It is also compelling to watch the re-assertion of Fr. McCready’s flagging faith, at least for the bad stuff. (Still, you have to wonder where Stevens’ supposedly concerned parents are constantly disappearing to in the middle of the night.) While certainly a B-movie, it is considerably better than you would expect. Worth checking out for die-hard horror fans, The Periphery screened during this year’s Dances With Films in Hollywood proper.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on June 6th, 2014 at 10:24am.

Styria Trailer from Styria on Vimeo.

By Joe Bendel. The Austrian state of Styria was once home to jazz musician Wolfgang Muthspiel and disappointing former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was also where the vampire Carmilla Karnstein haunted her victims in J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s gothic classic. The fictional Communist era Hungarian hamlet of Styria will also fall prey the undead seductress. It is a shift that works rather well, adding an additional layer of menace to Mauricio Chernovetzky & Mark Devendorf’s The Curse of Styria, which screens during the seventeenth edition of Dances With Films.

Something terrible happened to Laura Hill’s’ mother at an early age, but her art historian father refuses to speak of it. It is just her and him now, but he is mostly wrapped up in his work. Dr. Hill has dragged her to a remote Hungarian castle to remove a series of culturally significant murals. However, the clock is ticking. As a symbol of class exploitation and imperialism, the government will soon demolish the creaky old fortress, regardless of what national treasures it might contain. As Dr. Hill races to finish his work, his government liaison, General Spiegel, regularly drops by to be unhelpful and intimidating.

One day, Mme. Hill witnesses a young woman flee Spiegel’s custody, following a car accident and an altercation. That would be Carmilla. She will also start visiting the castle frequently, but only at night. Initially, Lara is delighted to have a companion, but Carmilla exerts an unhealthy influence over her, physically and mentally. There seems to be a lot of that going around, given the recent wave of suicides amongst Styria’s teenage girls.

Unlike previous adaptations, Styria does not leeringly exploit Carmilla’s lesbian overtones. Instead, Chernovetzky & Devendorf concentrate first and foremost on atmosphere, which is not such a bad strategy for a supernatural film. The late 1980s Communist setting also heightens the foreboding vibe. Granted, they could have just moved the story a few feet over the Slovenian border, but that might have complicated the viewing experience with inadvertent Balkan baggage.

Polish actor Jacek Lenartowicz (seen briefly in Wajda’s masterwork, Katyn) is gleefully evil as Spiegel, clearly portraying a self-aware agent of oppression, who realizes his time may soon be up. Always reliable, Stephen Rea is consistently credible as the concerned but deeply flawed father, especially compared to the sort of clueless parents typically encountered in horror movies. Unfortunately, Eleanor Tomlinson is a bit colorless as Laura Hill, but it is easy to believe her self-destructive slightly goth-ish teen would be highly susceptible to Carmilla’s supernatural overtures. Likewise, Julia Pietrucha is certainly no Ingrid Pitt, but she conveys a respectable air of danger.

In truth, Styria is better described as a gothic film than a horror or vampire movie. Grzegorz Bartoszewicz’s cinematography is appropriately moody. Likewise, the evocative work of production designer Jim Dow and art director Ian Dow is somewhat in the Hammer period tradition, but more austere. Smarter and more refined than most genre films, but bloodier than BBC productions of Wilkie Collins, The Curse of Styria is recommended for literate vampire fans when it screens Sunday night (6/1) at this year’s Dances With Films.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on May 30th, 2014 at 9:08pm.

Karaganda from Max Weissberg on Vimeo.

By Joe Bendel. If you want to know why Russia held the Winter Olympics in a town without snow and spent so much money on sub-standard construction, you might ask the Ganavim ba Hok or Thieves By Law, but that probably would not be a good idea. They survived the Czars and would survive the Communists, often plying their criminal trades behind bars. Given their power, one Jewish gulag prisoner is convinced joining the “Vors” represents his best chance to save his wife in Max Weissberg’s short film Karaganda, which screens during the seventeenth edition of Dances With Films.

During Stalin’s reign of terror, approximately 18 million Soviet citizens were condemned to the gulag system of prison work camps. Like Siberia, Kazakhstan was a prime location, because of its harsh climate and forbidding landscape. Smuggler Vladimir Bershstein has been sentenced to such a gulag somewhere in the vicinity of Karaganda, but it might as well be the dark side of the moon. At least he is not a political prisoner, like work detail partner Aleksei, but his Jewish heritage is nearly as reviled. Yet, knowing his wife Elena was also condemned to a women’s camp not far from his own torments Bershstein even more than his Soviet jailers.

In spite of Aleksei’s warnings, Bershstein is convinced he can only save Elena by earning an invitation to join the so-called Vors. Of course, it is easier said than done. After all, the guards themselves are afraid to cross the heavily tattooed gang, for good reason. To be considered for membership, Bershstein will need a killing to his name, but that will be the easy part.

The Thieves By Law are definitely a scary bunch, but Weissberg does not let the Soviets off the hook either. What comes to pass in Karaganda is truly Russian style tragedy, portending future repercussions that could be explored in a future feature length version. Still, in just under half an hour, Weissberg covers more plot than a lot of slow cinema indulgences, without skimping on characterization or atmosphere.

He also has the benefit of a strong cast and crew. As the intense Bershstein, Konstantin Lavysh is clearly a gold medal contender for brooding. While his character is more outgoing, Nikita Bogolyubov really centers the film as the decent but somewhat unpredictable Aleksei. Both have strong presences that never wilt under the existential weight of Terrence Laron Burke’s striking black-and-white cinematography and the bleak, forbidding backdrops.

There is more ambitious filmmaking in Karaganda than a festival full of precious navel-gazing indies. Recommended both as a self-contained film and as the start of a potential saga, Karaganda screens this Saturday (5/31) as part of Competition Shorts Group 2 at this year’s Dances With Films.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on May 29th, 2014 at 9:27pm.