Category: Watch Movies!

By Joe Bendel. Duane Jones only had two lead roles in his trailblazing film career, but they were both truly iconic for genre film connoisseurs. The first was George Romero’s enduringly popular Night of the Living Dead. Remaking such a familiar film was a perilous proposition, as both makeup artist Tom Savini and team of filmmakers not affiliated with Romero have proved on separate occasions. Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess is a different story. Less well known, the 1973 experimental exploitation film exists in both director and studio cuts, making issues of authenticity more complicated. Nevertheless, Spike Lee remains devotedly faithful to Gunn’s narrative throughout Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, which releases today on DVD and BluRay.

Dr. Hess Greene is an independently wealthy anthropologist, who specializes in the Ashanti people and their cultural obsession with blood (which Dr. Wiki has never heard of). He is about to commence a major research project when his jittery new research assistant, Dr. Lafayette Hightower stabs him repeatedly with a ceremonial Ashanti knife, before blowing his brains out. Strangely, Dr. Greene does not die. He merely wakes up rather the worse for wear, with a powerful thirst—for blood.

Eventually, Hightower’s hot but cold ex-wife Ganja comes looking for her disappointing former husband, but finds the very rich and highly interested Greene instead. Of course, he also happens to be undead. As they fall for each other he starts planning for their eternal future together, but Greene’s new existence will become more draining (in more ways than one) than he ever anticipated.

Yes, Ganja and Hess will essentially become vampires, but neither film really plays up the traditional Universal/Hammer/Anne Rice motifs. These are very existential vampires, isolated by privilege and addiction, like Howard Hughes or Brian Wilson. It is never exactly scary, but there are several sly “here-it-comes” moments. Lee also manages to maintain a distinctively icy vibe throughout the film.

Arguably, the best thing going for Sweet Blood is its soundtrack. This is easily Bruce Hornsby’s best and most jazz-oriented film work yet. Featuring contributions from prominent musicians like Vernon Reid on guitar, Lew Soloff on trumpet, Esther Noh on violin, Clark Gayton on trombone, and Patience Higgins and Stacy Dillard on tenor, it often sounds somewhat akin to his terrific debut jazz release, Camp Meeting.

If that were not enough, the soundtrack also includes licensed tracks from Milton Nascimento’s Journey to Dawn album, as well as performances from the church band previously seen in Red Hook Summer, with Jonathan Batiste returning as the Hammond B3 organist, “TK Hazelton.” It all might sound too upbeat and soulful for a tale of quiet undead desperation, but it really helps pull viewers through many scenes that would otherwise be rather slow and aesthetically severe.

From time to time, Sweet Blood does indeed intersect with the world of Red Hook. Considering how painful his last original narrative film truly was, this would sound like a very bad idea on paper. Yet, the excursions to the “Little Church” give the new film greater depth and heart. Frankly, unlike Lee’s ill-advised remake of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, Sweet Blood is a pretty good film. Perhaps it is time Lee swore off originals and just stuck to reboots and sports docs.

As Greene, Stephen Tyrone Williams is cold fish, by design, but almost to a fault. However, it is great fun to watch Zaraah Abrahams ravenously chew the scenery Ganja Hightower, the temptress who will not be denied. Naté Bova also makes a strong impression as Tangier Chancellor, Hightower’s potential rival turned target of seduction. By genre standards, Sweet Blood is quite sensual, but Lee must have directed Abrahams’ horny-porny scene with Bova in a raincoat. It is the one time the film’s disciplined restraint goes out the window.

Be that as it is, Sweet Blood gets under the skin precisely because it is mostly so reserved and cold-blooded. It is not one hundred percent successful, but it is an intriguing outing from a filmmaker who hasn’t been interesting outside of New York sports documentaries for some time. Recommended for fans of Lee and Gunn’s 1973 cult classic, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus is now available on DVD from Anchor Bay and Gravitas Ventures.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on May 28th, 2015 at 9:52pm.

By Joe Bendel. The image in your mind’s eye of a bridge in Bosnia-Herzegovina is probably the destroyed and subsequently rebuilt Stari Most in Mostar. Nevertheless, there are plenty of bridges in the capital city of Sarajevo, architecturally and metaphorically. Indeed, they serve as both backdrops and symbols in Bridges of Sarajevo, an anthology film conceived by French film critic Jean-Michel Frodon, which screened during the 2015 Bosnian Herzegovinian Film Festival in New York, now underway at the Tribeca Cinemas.

Yes, anthology films are usually uneven and Bridges is especially so, with the highs being particularly high and the lows being Jean-Luc Godard. Happily it starts off with a strong entry, Kamen Kalev’s “My Dear Night,” depicting the final hours of Archduke Franz Ferdinand much like a moody, almost Shakespearean tragedy. True, we know how it must end, but Samuel Finzi is quietly riveting as the doomed aristocrat. It is probably the one segment that has both the merit and the elastic capacity to be expanded into a feature.

WWI is a major focus in Bridges, continuing with Vladimir Perišić’s somewhat experimental “Our Shadows Will,” which overlays audio excerpts from Gavrilo Princip’s pan-Slavic, crypto-socialist confession with contemporary scenes of disaffected nationalist and leftist youth. It is a bold juxtaposition, but Perišić simply does not have the time to fully develop the idea.

Leonardo di Costanzo’s “The Outpost” is a technically polished segment portraying the exploited enlisted Italian peasantry struggling with the horrors and absurdities of WWI. The tactile feeling of the constituent film is impressive, but it is more of a sketch than a full dramatic arc. Likewise, Angela Schanelec’s “Princip, Text” takes much the same approach as Perišić’s contribution, but it is less provocative. Cristi Puiu also shows a preoccupation with text, much in the spirit of Porumboiu’s Police, Adjective. As satire, “Das Spektrum Europas” seems to cut both ways, eavesdropping on a tired married couple as they dissect Keyserling’s early Twentieth Century analysis of the Balkans from an anti-American and borderline anti-Semitic perspective.

Godard’s “The Bridge of Sighs” is an eight minute mashed together collage that is more watchable than his last two features, for what that’s worth. Regardless, if you seriously follow or cover world cinema, you really need to see it, just to be able to render a fuller judgement on his late career years. Sergei Loznitsa’s “Reflections” is also collage-like in form, but visually it is exceptionally arresting. Essentially, Loznitsa overlays Milomir Kovacevic’s war photographs with present day Sarajevo street scenes, achieving a truly ghostly effect.

Marc Recha’s “Zan’s Journey is more or less an exercise in oral history, but his subject’s memories are truly moving. Aida Begić (whose feature Children of Sarajevo played the 2013 BHFF) incorporates many such voices into “Album,” selecting several brief but unusually telling recollections of the workaday trials of life during the war.

Then Isild Le Besco adds a graceful humanist touch to Bridges with “Little Boy,” the story of a plucky five year old survivor, now living with his grandmother. Themes of youth and the loss of innocence also factor prominently in Ursula Meier’s concluding “Quiet Mujo,” featuring an extraordinary lead performance from Vladan Kovacevic, as a young orphan who encounters a grieving professional woman at a cemetery’s boundary between Muslim and Christian sections.

Frankly, the contributions of Meier, Loznitsa, and Kalev easily justify a ticket to Bridges. Recha, Le Besco, Begić, and Perišić also have some real substance to offer. For film snobs, it even represents an opportunity to catch up on recent work from major auteurs like Meier, Puiu, and (Heaven help us) Godard. While viewers need to go in understanding some pieces work better than others, the entire package is highly recommended because the good parts are so good. It screened as part of this year’s Bosnian Herzegovinian Film Festival in New York.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on May 27th, 2015 at 9:55pm.

By Joe Bendel. There is a reason some people stay in hostels even when they can afford nicer digs. They crave those brief but memorable incidental encounters. Travel is broadening, especially for those coming from or going to Berlin in the five-part multinational anthology film A Quintet, which screened during the resiliently scrappy 2015 Bosnian Herzegovinian Film Festival in New York.

Of the five constituent short films, one of the best is the late night tale set in Sarajevo—a fact that should hardly surprise anyone. In Kosovar filmmaker Ariel Shaban’s “The Tourist,” a disgusted Sarajevan reluctantly protects a German visitor from the consequences of his hedonism. Slowly, a connection is forged, but the fatalistic Bosnian understands better than the naïve German that their friendship mostly likely expires when the sun rises. Bosnian actor Armin Omerovic is terrific as the Samaritan, but what really distinguishes “The Tourist” is the way Shaban captures the strangely calm feeling one gets when completely lost in an Eastern European city late at night, when you do not speak the language. If you have ever been there, you will recognize it immediately.

Lebanese filmmaker Elie Lamah’s “Friend Request” is the other head-and-shoulders high point and it also happens to be the boldest. Rami, who coincidentally happens to be a Lebanese filmmaker, has been enjoying the German festival that programmed his film, until a colleague invites a group of Israelis to join them for drinks. While the Israelis are more than happy to overlook past tensions between their countries, Rami is not so gracious. However, he has some reason to be cautious, since, as he pointedly reminds everyone, he could be tried for treason by his government merely for associated with citizens of Israel. Nevertheless, he might just start to loosen up a little when he walks back to the festival hotel with Ayala, the Israeli director.

“Friend Request” packs a real punch precisely because Lamah never resorts to facile sentimentality or Pollyannaish takeaways. Instead, he suggests in no uncertain terms, hatred and misunderstanding are allowed to persist when average people like Rami are afraid to take the tiniest of stands.

There are also some lovely performances in Sanela Salketić’s opener, “The House in the Envelope.” It is a small story about a Turkish woman briefly returning home from Germany and the cabbie she keeps hailing, but it is a crowd-pleaser. Screenwriter Demet Gül brings a wonderfully subtle and refined presence to the film as the expat Leyla, while Salketić fully capitalizes on the Istanbul backdrops.

Despite its brevity, the narrative of Roberto Cuzzillo’s “Polaroid” is oddly (but not intentionally) disjointed. However, the work of cinematographer Roberto Montero and segment composer Enrica Sciandrone is quite striking. Unfortunately, Mauro Mueller’s New York-set closer, “The Cuddle Workshop” is about as cloying as it sounds.

A Quintet is all about fleeting moments and there are enough good ones in the film to make it worth your time. Recommended for fans of Bosnian-Kosavar-Turkish-Lebanese-German-Italian cinema, it screened at the Tribeca Cinemas, as part of this year’s BHFFNYC.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on May 27th, 2015 at 9:55pm.

By Joe Bendel. The 1967 Mofilm adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s short story “Viy” is considered the first Soviet horror movie, aside from whatever real life torture porn might be hidden away in the KGB archives. Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Stepchenko originally set out to remake Gogol’s tale, but the scope of their long stop-and-start production expanded over the years. The guts of the macabre story are still there, but there is also plenty of witch-hunting and map-making in Stepchenko’s Forbidden Empire (as it was bafflingly retitled for the international market), which launches today on VOD.

British cartographer Jonathan Green hopes to make his fame and fortune mapping the sleepy hamlets of southern Europe and Ukraine, so he can return home to claim his loyal fiancée from her judgmental father. However, he will reluctantly find himself swept up in the dirty dealings of a small village. As will soon be explained to Green, when a wealthy Cossack’s daughter died under suspiciously supernatural circumstances, a baffled divinity student was brought in to pray over her body for three bump-filled nights, per her last request. The precise blow-by-blow of that third night will be revealed over time. Regardless, the aftermath was disturbing enough for the sheepish villagers to seal off the church and shun it thereafter.

Distressed that his daughter never had a proper funeral, the Cossack hires Green to map the area surrounding the church. You might well ask why, but it certainly shakes things up. Before long, Green and a mute servant girl are accused of witchcraft, while the malevolent spirit known as Viy continues to terrorize the village with impunity.

Empire is a weird viewing experience, due to a number of factors, including the feverish religious imagery, the fairy tale-like stylization of the sets and backdrops, and the disembodied dubbing voices. Frankly, this film would probably be a good deal better with subtitles. Czech Airlines used to show a garish looking 1960s fairy tale film, sans subtitles, during the breakfast service of its New York bound flights. Watching Empire produces a similarly disorienting effect.

Ironically, the best sequences by far are those that harken back to the original Viy source material. It is impossible to not appreciate the scene in which the coffin animated by foul spirits chases the divinity student throughout the church, trying to ram him like a sinister bumper car. That is the kind of stuff movie magic is all about.

On the other hand, when the narrative focuses on Green, it wildly veers from broad shticky comedy to demonic horror, throwing in didactic jabs at religion’s supposed hostility towards science and reason for good measure. Reportedly, without the story’s rustic, folkloric elements, the materialistic Soviet authorities never would have greenlighted the 1967 Viy. However, they would have loved Stepchenko and co-screenwriter Aleksandr Karpov’s depiction of the venal, power-hungry priest.

There are a lot of bald dudes with Fu Manchu mustaches in Empire, so it is often devilishly difficult to differentiate the various cast-members. However, Jason Flemyng (probably just famous enough to justify some British co-production investments) is a good sport, pivoting at a moment’s notice to be goofy one moment and resolute the next. This is a loud, dark, defiantly illogical film, but at least the resulting spectacle is a strange sight to behold. In short, it is a mess, but in bizarrely compelling, can’t-stop-watching kind of way. Recommended accordingly (I guess), Forbidden Empire hit VOD platforms last weeek and recently had a special screening at the Arena Cinema in Los Angeles.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on May 27th, 2015 at 9:54pm.