Category: Watch Movies!

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 Peggy Guggenheim—Art Addict @ Tribeca 2015

By Joe Bendel. Without Peggy Guggenheim, there would be no Jackson Pollock, at least not as the modernist icon as we have come to know him. Dozens of important Twentieth Century artists were supported and nurtured by Guggenheim. She was the preeminent American gallerist before the term came into vogue and amassed a personal collection that would rival the Barnes. Her passionate career is chronicled in Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s Peggy Guggenheim—Art Addict, which had its world premiere at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.

Amy Madigan played Guggenheim in Ed Harris’s Pollock bio-picture, so you know it had to be an important role. By Gilded Age standards, her branch of the Guggenheims was not so fabulously wealthy, but it would be a gross understatement to call them “comfortable.” Her family life was somewhat problematic, considering her father perished on the Titanic, but his mistress survived. Awkward, right? Supposedly not exactly a great beauty, Guggenheim never looked for high society validation, but she had a keen interest in grubby intellectuals and a true eye for beautiful and/or provocative art.

In addition to Pollock, Guggenheim was an important early collector and exhibitor of artists like Clyfford Still and Robert De Niro, Sr. (and ever so coincidentally, her documentary screened at Tribeca). At one point, she was married to Max Ernst, but their union sounds like a bit of a train wreck. Regardless, she fortuitously collected early works from towering figures of modern art, much like Albert Barnes. Frankly, it would be prohibitively expensive to amass equivalent collections in today’s market.

It is just jaw-dropping to see the collected pieces now ensconced in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, idyllically located in Venice. Originally, it was not affiliated with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on 89th Street, but a joining of forces would launch the Guggenheim as perhaps the first truly multinational museum. Plus, she reportedly took scores of lovers, which Vreeland’s experts allude to, without getting excessively gossipy.

Art Addict is an appropriately classy package that moves along at a brisk pace. J. Ralph’s upbeat soundtrack also keeps the energy up, sometimes evoking the spirit of the Hot Club era. After watching the film, audiences just have to give Guggenheim credit for doing it her way and snagging the best pieces. Not to belabor the point, but Vreeland (granddaughter-in-law and documentarian of Diana Vreeland) clearly understands the social eco-system in which Guggenheim rebelled and thrived. The result is a well-balanced, nicely contextualized portrait. Highly recommended for art lovers, Peggy Guggenheim—Art Addict screens next month at the Nantucket Film Festival (exact dates tk), after premiering at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: B+

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

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 A Sinner in Mecca @ The 2015 Hot Docs

By Joe Bendel. The extra security provided openly gay Muslim filmmaker Parvez Sharma at this year’s Hot Docs is an ominous development, but in a perverse way, the death threats prompted by his latest film constitute a ringing endorsement. Nonfiction-filmmaking does not get much gutsier than Sharma video-documenting his hajj. Frankly, it is a bit surprising the ever-so open Saudi government granted his hajj visa. They probably already regret it, but not for reasons you suspect. Ignore the overheated internet trolling and honestly engage with the issues raised by Sharma’s A Sinner in Mecca when it screens again at the 2015 Hot Docs in Toronto.

Sharma had already been on the receiving end of a minor fatwa, because of his prior documentary on the Muslim LGBT experience, A Jihad for Love. After marrying his partner, Sharma decided to take his hajj, hoping to reconcile his faith with his sexuality. Of course he will secretly document the process. He is a filmmaker. That is what he does. Frankly, nobody is more aware of the potential danger for an internationally recognized LGBT activist in Wahhabist Saudi Arabia than Sharma. He was consciously risking his life to make the film, but he was completely unprepared for the rampant exploitation and abuse all pilgrims must endure.

Critics of Sharma will latch onto his sexuality because they are homophobic (and misogynistic and anti-Semitic), but the real arsenic in the film are the many scenes exposing the Saudi government’s neglect and overt commercialization of Islam’s holiest site, bar none. Tellingly, one fellow pilgrim tells Sharma: “I’m glad they don’t allow non-Muslims, so the Western world cannot see this.”

As Sharma struggles to complete the pilgrimage rituals, he must navigate filthy streets teeming with rubbish, amid what is supposedly a holy and protected city. Unquestionably though, the most disturbing incident comes when Sharma relates a conversation he had with a man whose wife was sexually molested while circling the Kaaba, which Muslims consider to be the first house of worship, constructed by Abraham. Apparently, this is not an uncommon experience.

From "A Sinner in Mecca."

Much of Sinner would be legitimately horrifying, even if Sharma was not constantly worried his true identity might be revealed. That is why the coda in which he declares his faith is renewed feels completely out of place and inconsistent with everything that preceded it. One suspects that Sharma is trying to convince himself for his own personal reasons. We have to respect that, but the footage he covertly shot (on mini-handhelds and his iPhone) speak thunderously.

First and foremost, Sinner thoroughly indicts the Saudi custodianship of Mecca. If you really wanted to be provocative you could argue the global Muslim community would be much better served if Mecca were in Israel, because the Israeli government understands how to respect and preserve artifacts and landmarks associated with other religions (exhibit A: the Dead Sea Scrolls). Regardless, Sharma’s hajj is a very personal act, but his documentation has much greater implications. Bold and stingingly truthful, A Sinner in Mecca is very highly recommended when it screens again tonight (4/30) and Saturday (5/2), as part of this year’s Hot Docs.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on April 30th, 2015 at 4:48pm.

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.