Category: Watch Movies!

By Joe Bendel. It starts with a gratuitous sex scene, closely followed by a generous helping of gratuitous violence. Obviously, there is no call for subtlety here. Whether or not it really is Old Scratch stirring up mischief or the demonic spirit of a notorious serial killer hardly matters. Either way there will be big trouble in Adrián García Bogliano’s Here Comes the Devil, which opens today in New York.

In time, the prologue will make more sense, as is often the case with good prologues. For the time being, our story revolves around Sol and Félix, two reasonably humdrum parents on holiday with their adolescent son and daughter. To squeeze in some adult quality time, they let Sara and Adolfo go explore a nearby craggy hill. When they are not back by the appointed time, panic and recriminations replace passion. Making matters worse, this particular corner of northern Mexico seems to have some sort of sinister history.

When the kids suddenly turn up the next morning, everything seems to be okay. Yet, they now seem strangely distant. Initially, Sol and Félix fear something might have happened with the slow-witted man they caught suspiciously eying Sara at the gas station at the foot of the hill. However, it becomes increasingly difficult to rationalize away all the uncanny incidents occurring around the house.

Devil is sort of like a throwback to 1980’s horror films, but with a taste for post-2000 excess. Ironically, it probably has more sex than blood, but it still definitely is not for the squeamish. Regardless, Bogliano creates a profoundly creepy atmosphere, nicely building off the somewhat confused but still intriguing backstory.

Mexican pop idol Laura Caro makes a surprisingly strong horror movie mom and Francisco Barreiro (also seen in the original We Are What We Are) is at least sufficient to the task as the more passive Felix. Befitting its genre status, Devil also features several small but memorably colorful supporting turns, such as Enrique Saint Martin as the severe-looking gas station manager, who might know only too well just what is going on here.

Devil’s midsection actually boasts some rather inspired developments that definitely set it apart from the field. Bogliano makes the most of his ominous yet seemingly everyday locales (filmed in Tijuana and neighboring Tecate), maintaining the effectively portentous vibe. Well crafted by horror industry standards, Here Comes the Devil is recommended for mature genre fans when it opens today (12/13) in New York at the Cinema Village, just in time to help us get in the holiday spirit.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on December 13th, 2013 at 7:29pm.

By Joe Bendel. Gangsters have a strong sense of history, probably because the past is constantly coming to bite them. Lee Joon-seok is a case in point. He will have all sorts of unfinished business on his hands after serving his seventeen year prison sentence in Kwak Kyung-taek’s Friend 2: the Legacy, which opens today in New York.

Lee is doing time for ordering the hit on a rival gang leader, who was once his childhood best friend. The turncoat was sort of asking for it, but it still bothers Lee from time to time. Shortly before his release, Lee is visited by a casual social acquaintance from his youth. Her son Choi Seong-hoon is a fellow prisoner, who has been marked for death after crossing Lee’s outfit. Much to his surprise, Lee extends his protection to the young thug, eventually taking him on as a protégé when they are both released.

They will be busy. Lee finds the syndicate his father first organized has been largely hijacked by Eun-gi, a cold-blooded boardroom gangster who exploited the vacuum left by Lee’s incarceration and the failing health of their Chairman. Obviously, Lee is not about to let this stand, even when a fairly obvious revelation threatens to undermine his relationship with the volatile Choi.

Friend 2 probably has four or five flashbacks too many, periodically revisiting not just Lee and Choi’s tumultuous backstories, but also giving viewers the highlights of the gang’s formative days under Lee’s enterprising father. The latter are almost superfluously tangential, but they are executed with a good deal of style and provide a lot of gangster genre goodies, so its worth going along with them, even if they confuse the narrative thread.

Regardless, Yoo Oh-seong is unquestionably Friend 2’s steely MVP. He is all hardnosed business as Lee, yet he still suggests hints of that troubled conscience buried somewhere deep within him. Kim Woo-bin is certainly convincingly erratic as Choi. Frankly, Friend 2 is not a great showcase for women’s roles, but the always reliable Jang Yeong-nam works wonders as Choi’s still attractive and resilient mother.

The gangster themes of family, loyalty, and betrayal are pretty standard stuff by now, but Friend 2 executes them with energy and conviction. The hits and brawls are always quite cinematic and the period scenes are nicely crafted. Propelled by Yoo’s serious-as-a-heart attack performance, Friend 2 is a solidly entertaining (if not exactly game-changing) crime epic, recommended for those who appreciate that specific genre and Korean cinema in general. It opens today (12/13) in New York at the AMC Empire.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on December 13th, 2013 at 7:25pm.

By Joe Bendel. The story of the Yang Family Generals and their noble sacrifices has been told on film before, including twice by the Shaw Brothers. Still, Ronny Yu and his co-screenwriters, Edmund Wong and Scarlett Liu, give it a fresh twist – and an English title obviously intended to evoke Spielberg’s post-D-Day blockbuster. They certainly have plenty of tragedy and bloody warfighting to work with. Death comes swiftly but the stain of dishonor is eternal in Yu’s Saving General Yang, which releases this week on DVD and Blu-ray from Well Go USA.

Nobody is more celebrated throughout the Song Dynasty for keeping the Khitan at bay than General Yang Ye. That also means he has made plenty of enemies, the fiercest being Yelü Yuan, the Khitan commander, who blames Yang for his father’s death in battle. However, Yang’s more politically astute rival Lord Pan poses a greater snake-in-the-grass danger. Despite Yang’s proven military leadership, the emperor appoints Pan as supreme commander of the Imperial Army, essentially demoting Yang to frontline general. He will regret that decision.

Of course, the first chance Pan gets, he retreats, leaving General Yang in the lurch. Rather than moving in for the kill, Yelü allows the wounded Yang to regroup on Wolf Mountain, fully expecting the Yang Brothers will try to rescue their besieged father. It is not just war for him, it is personal.

Obviously, the Yang clan is in for a lot of mourning, but at least the brothers die spectacular deaths. Yu and action Stephen Tung Wai know how to stage a battle scene, emphasizing brutal realism instead of super human heroics. These might be some of the roughest, least exaggerated action sequences you will see in a year of wuxia films. On the other hand, when it comes to romance, Saving largely punts. At the least we briefly meet Ady Ang as Princess Chai, who definitely seems like the sort of Imperial royalty you would consider taking home to meet your parents. (Unfortunately, both Yang and Pan have a son who had that same idea, which is how most of this trouble starts in the first place.)

As the titular general, veteran HK actor Adam Cheng is aces at projecting a commanding presence. Likewise, Young & Dangerous franchise alumnus Ekin Cheng is appropriately steely as the first Yang son, Yang Yanping. However, numbers two through seven are largely indistinguishable from each other. All we really know about Vic Chou’s Yang Sanlang (#3) is his prowess with bow-and-arrow, but frankly that’s good enough, considering his role in a massive third act archery duel with Yelü’s chief lieutenant.

Saving’s big battle set pieces are quite impressive, with set designer Kenneth Mak and cinematographer Chan Chi-ying crafting a first class period production with epic sweep and down-and-dirty grit. If you like hot-blooded war films circa 986 AD, this one delivers. Just don’t ask for any extraneous characterization or whatnot. Recommended as red meat for genre fans, especially those who appreciate the enduring story of the honorable Yangs, Saving General Yang is now available for home viewing from Well Go USA.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on December 11th, 2013 at 1:05pm.

By Joe Bendel. Perhaps the only job Arif would allow his fiancée Rafina to take might be Prime Minister. He is an ardent supporter of the exiled Benazir Bhutto, because her party pays him to be. With little education or prospects, he clings to his chauvinism when Rafina finds unlikely success in the Pakistani fashion industry. Despite Bhutto’s example, Rafina will have to overcome constant opposition to pursue her modeling career in Sabiha Sumar’s Good Morning Karachi, the centerpiece selection of this year’s South Asian International Film Festival in New York.

The very notion of a Pakistani Models Inc. sounds like a healthy step in the right direction, but Sumar and her co-writers, Malia Scotch Marmo and Samhita Arni, are not exactly overflowing with optimism. Set in the days leading up to Bhutto’s assassination, Karachi will obviously intersect with tragedy sometime in the third act. However, it resists the temptation to completely intertwine the fate of its characters with that of real world figures. Arguably, Bhutto’s shadow is more of a reality check than a dramatic device.

Yearning for relative independence, Rafina convinces Rosie, a close friend of the family, to find her a spot with her employer: Radiance, an exclusive beauty salon operated by a modeling agency. Of course, Rafina will not have to labor long before her unspoiled beauty lands her in front of a camera. As it happens, she has the perfect look for a difficult client. Naturally, Arif feels betrayed by her success and Rafina’s mother worries about the sort of attention she might attract. She is not being unduly concerned, given the film starts in media res, as masses of Islamist protestors set fire to fashion billboards.

As fashion model melodramas go, Karachi is a pretty good one, especially considering the general state of Pakistani society. Shrewdly, Sumar does not over-venerate Rafina’s virtues. She makes mistakes and sometimes passively accepts the easier but not necessarily best course of action. She is human and therefore has a right to live her life as she sees fit, which she rather steadfastly does her best to do. However, the film’s attitude towards Bhutto is much more ambivalent, clearly questioning why her administration did so little to improve the outlook for forward thinking women like Rafina.

As Rafina, Amna Ilyes commands the screen, conveying the runway ingénue’s naiveté, without coming across nauseatingly immature. Beo Raana Zafar also adds mountains of dignity as her beloved auntie Rosie. The rest of the cast is a bit spotty, with Yasir Aqueel perhaps being the spottiest as the flyweight Arif. Still, everybody earns some props for appearing in a film that seriously addresses gender issues in Pakistan.

Sumar’s aesthetic restraint and artistic honesty keeps Karachi on course and even keeled the whole way through, while cinematographer Claire Pijman works wonders wonders with Rafina’s lower middle class neighborhood, making it glow suggestively. Sure, to some extent you grade on a curve to encourage a film like this, but Karachi will keep just about any viewer focused on and invested in its business on-screen. Recommended for those interested in women’s issues and/or Middle Eastern-South Asian cinema, Good Morning Karachi screens this Friday (12/6) as the centerpiece of the 2013 SAIFF.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on December 5th, 2013 at 8:23pm.

By Joe Bendel. They were gypped out of those long promised canals, but there might just be some form of bacterial life on the Angry Red Planet. Of course, that turns out to be a very bad thing in Ruairí Robinson’s The Last Days on Mars, which opens this Friday in New York.

The first manned mission to Mars is about to head home, destined more for footnote status rather than lasting fame. However, at the eleventh hour, the ambitious Marco Petrovich thinks he may have unearthed the brass ring—bacterial life. Unfortunately, a freak accident causes his death and leads to the apparent disappearance of another crew member. Yet much to everyone’s surprise, Petrovich and his colleague return to base a short time later. Of course, they are not really alive—they are undead and spreading their infection the way zombies do.

Hoping to hold out until the scheduled arrival of their transport ship, the crew of the Tantalus Base applies their scientific expertise to the contagion, but it turns out to be a distinctly slippery biological agent. Human nature also takes an ugly turn as the situation deteriorates.

Right, so first contact is kind of rough. Zombies on Mars might sound distinctly pulpy, but Robinson’s distinguished cast sells it with conviction. Liev Schreiber brings instant credibility as the grizzled but psychologically damaged chief engineer Vincent Campbell. Likewise, Romola Garai classes up the proceedings as his medic lover, Rebecca Lane. Johnny Harris (from BBC America’s The Fades) has a natural talent for getting all panicky and twitchy on-screen. Still, Olivia Williams overwhelms them all as the unrepentantly undiplomatic senior science officer, Kim Aldrich.

In a sense, Last Days is the more stylish and competent version of Roger Christian’s klutzy B-movie, Stranded. Both achieve an effectively claustrophobic vibe, but the former is a vastly more polished package overall. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan (probably best known for his work with Andrea Arnold) gives everything an appropriately dark, crimson-hued look, while production designer Jon Henson’s team creates a convincing near future, other worldly environment.

Last Day’s thematic predecessors are many in number and vary considerably in quality. Nevertheless, the combination of Mars, zombies, and some first class British character actors guarantees a certain level of genre entertainment. What screenwriter Clive Dawson’s adaptation of Sydney J. Bounds’ short story lacks in originality is largely made up for through Robinson’s slick execution. Recommended for its horror flavored science fiction (and vice versa), Last Days on Mars opens this Friday (12/6) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on December 4th, 2013 at 3:33pm.