Category: Watch Movies!

By Joe Bendel. Dental issues are an occupational hazard for trumpeters. That’s why Louis Armstrong always recommended they develop a singing voice—to save on the chops. Unfortunately, David Johnson has more than his share of health concerns. Just when he starts booking gigs as a bandleader, his resurgent epilepsy threatens to permanently end his career in Neil Creque Williams’ short film David’s Reverie, which screened as part of the shorts program at BAM’s 2015 New Voices in Black Cinema.

During the first big club date Johnson books for his band, he collapses on stage. He thought his childhood surgery was supposed to prevent such seizures, but apparently it was not as successful as he hoped. Of course, the attending physician prescribes some medication, but Johnson fears the side effects that dulled his spectacular technique in the past. How much can he risk for the music—and will it be worth it?

Clocking in at about twenty minutes, Reverie is a real jazz drama rather than a narrative that uses jazz trappings for seasoning. Johnson’s arguments with his father about the relative importance of technique versus “feeling” really cuts to the core of jazz. Johnson has tons of Marsalis school chops, but he has yet to find his uniquely expressive voice. Williams has a strong, holistic understanding of the issues and challenges surrounding the music. You have to wonder if he is somehow related to Neal (with an “a”) Creque, the soul jazz organist and keyboard player. Regardless, it is always a good sign when a film has a jazz consultant (Supa Lowery Brothers in this case).

Brandon Fobbs (a former regular on The Wire) is terrific as Johnson. He has the sharp, Wynton-esque “Young Lions” look down cold, but also connects on a deeper level, expressing Johnson’s insecurities and resentments. His scenes with Mark E. Ridley as his musician father and Channing Godfrey Peoples as the band’s saxophonist are as good as anything you’ll see in any award-trolling feature.

Reverie will resonate for anyone who knows someone struggling to make it on the jazz scene. It is a very human and humane film that once again reminds us life is not fair. Highly recommended, David’s Reverie screened at BAM, as part of the New Voices in Black Cinema short film program.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on March 30th, 2015 at 10:59pm.

By Joe Bendel. The UniverSong competition is like Pop Idol, but more nationalistic. Israel has never placed highly, despite their assiduous but counterproductive efforts. However, this year they might have an outside chance when six Tel Aviv neighborhood friends are unexpectedly tapped to represent their country—provided they stay true to their own voices in Eytan Fox’s Cupcakes, which opened last Friday in New York.

Based on the Eurovision Song Contest (which Israel has participated in since 1973), UniverSong is a big deal to for Anat, the bakery owner (care to speculate as to what her specialty might be?). Unfortunately, her husband’s sudden decision to abscond to Thailand puts a damper on her viewing party. The massive egg laid by Israel’s contestant does not help either. To cheer her up, five neighbors sing her an improvised “Sun Will Come Up Tomorrow” style ditty. It actually sounds pretty good thanks to her friends’ heart and the acoustic guitar accompaniment of lesbian alt-rocker Efrat.

In fact, it sounds so good, out-and-proud school teacher Ofer submits his cell phone video to the UniverSong equivalent of the Israeli Olympic committee, who decide to think outside the box and select the amateurs. The presence of former beauty queen turned business woman Yael probably did not hurt. Of course, everyone but Ofer is initially reluctant to participate for their own reasons, but eventually all but Dana, the press secretary to the Orthodox minister of culture, comes around. Even Keren, the shy blogger (is there really such a thing?) signs on for the contest. Unfortunately, the national organizers are determined to make them as cheesy as Israel’s last crash-and-burn competitor.

If you enjoy compulsively upbeat Israeli pop, your film has arrived. It is all very poppy and peppy and candy-colored, but audiences will be hard pressed to remember much by the time the closing credits stop rolling. Yet, Cupcakes is significant in one respect. It paints a vibrant portrait of Israel’s diversity and tolerance.

Everyone knows Ofer and Efrat are gay and lesbian, but that does not stop anyone from rooting for him. Ofer is matter-of-factly entrusted with the nation’s young skulls full of mush, frequently putting on drag shows for his appreciative charges—with no protests. Even his difficult romance with the closeted son of the Israeli UniverSong sponsor is a decidedly low stakes issue. One of the Israeli UniverSong organizers says “we are proud of our proud contestants,” lamenting they did not have an Arab member, as well. Of course, that is hardly likely to happen given said gay and lesbian band-mates.

The cast convincingly come across like comfortable friends with years of shared history together. Their casual moments together feel right. Actress-model Yael Bar-Zohar brings surprisingly rich subtlety and maturity to her ex-Miss Israel namesake, whereas Ofer Shechter over indulgences in shtick as his flamboyant namesake. Separately, Dana Igvy, Keren Berger, and Anat Waxman are a bit dull as their namesakes, but they click as an ensemble.

Fox and co-writer Eli Bijaoui manage to sidestep the worst possible clichés in the third act, but they are not afraid of a little sentimentality either. It is a pleasant but hardly essentially look at contemporary Israel’s inclusiveness. Recommended for fans of Fox’s previous box office hits and Babydaddy from Scissor Sisters (who wrote the “Song for Anat”), Cupcakes opened last Friday (3/27) in New York, at the Quad Cinema.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on March 30th, 2015 at 10:13pm.

By Joe Bendel. He was born into a Maronite Catholic family and wrote his best known work in English, but Kahlil Gibran was subsequently embraced as a symbol of Arab culture. Without question, his best known work is The Prophet, arguably the original break-out New Age bestseller, whose celebrity admirers include Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and Salma Hayek. Her regard for the instantly recognizable Knopf title was such that she produced a big screen animated adaptation of the book few would have thought adaptable. The ambition and animation are definitely impressive, but the source material remains unwieldy in Roger Allers’ Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, which screened during this year’s New York International Children’s Film Festival.

In order to give the film a central storyline, Allers took some liberties with the framing device. The exiled prophet Mustafa (here more of a hipster painter and poet) is indeed bidding a fond farewell to the citizens of Orphalese, but he will not simply hop on the tall ship and sail off into the sunset. The oppressive Pasha and his thuggish police sergeant are planning permanent measures to halt his progressive influence before they let him go anywhere. The resulting narrative is like a weird passion play, with the assorted peasants in the countryside and merchants in town celebrating his presumed release with much feasting and drinking. At each stop along the way, Mustafa gives the crowd a pithy bit of prose poetry wisdom impressionistically rendered by a diverse roster of animators.

No longer is Almitra a seer. She is now the rebellious mute daughter of Kamila, the widowed housekeeper hired to tidy up the prophet’s exile cottage. Sharing a connection with the island’s seagulls, she is the first to suspect the fate awaiting Mustafa. Presumably, these liberties taken with the text pass muster with the Gibran establishment, given their active role in the production.

Regardless, the film as a whole is necessarily uneven, since Allers and Hayek-Pinault (as she is billed here) deliberately embrace its episodic structure. Not surprisingly, the best sequences are “On Love” animated by Tomm Moore (Song of the Sea) and “On Marriage” crafted by Joann Sfar (The Rabbi’s Cat). The abstract nature of the texts are also particularly well suited to the styles of Nina Paley (Sita Sings the Blues) and Bill Plympton (Cheatin’). However, the other four parables largely blend together.

Following in the footsteps of Richard Harris’s Arif Mardin-produced musical interpretation of The Prophet, Liam Neeson continues the Irish Gibran tradition as the voice of Mustafa. To be fair, his husky, reassuring tones are rather well suited to the film. Hayek-Pinault is perfectly serviceable as Kamila. (Since she is once again playing a mother facing difficult circumstances, Prophet should really be considered a companion film to Everly and the two should be screened together whenever possible). Quvenzhané Wallis gets precious little actual dialogue as Almitra (but perhaps that is just as well), while Alfred Molina does his best to keep up with the slapstick humor directed at his pompous Sergeant.

Whatever you do, always observe the authorial possessive in the title, like “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Although the film’s cultish impetus is a little creepy, it is intriguing to see such a high profile attempt at impressionistic, non-narrative animated filmmaking. Unfortunately, some of the contributing filmmakers are better suited to the task than others. A strange hybrid, Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet is recommended for animation enthusiasts who want to see something a little outside the norm (whereas younger viewers will probably find it indulgently lecture-y) when it screened as the closing film of the 2015 NYICFF.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on March 27th, 2015 at 12:48am.

By Joe Bendel. There is no greater public health crisis than a zombie apocalypse. In this case, it is directly linked to a contaminated water supply, but high population density, unprotected sex, and some wicked strong weed are also contributing factors. Once infection takes hold, it runs like wildfire through a Lagos slum in C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s Ojuju, which screens during the 2015 New Voices in Black Cinema at the BAM Rose Cinemas.

People think Romero (hat tip intentional) is a little strange, because the slacker actually seems to be serious about fulfilling his obligations to his highly pregnant girlfriend, Alero. Nobody is more confused by this then his former hook-up Aisha, but his buddies Emmy and Peju also have a hard time adjusting to his domestic bliss. Alas, it is not to last.

The first victim we see fall prey to the shufflers will be Fela, the local drug dealer, who has been selling some particularly potent product lately. He also samples the wares more than he should, so the strange figure staggering towards him just doesn’t set off the alarm bells it should. Inevitably infected, he and his crony begin the feverish process of transformation, despite the local prostitute’s efforts to care for his mystery illness. Soon, nearly the entire neighborhood except Romero, Emmy, and Peju are part of the shuffling horde. Unfortunately, there are limited egress points for the largely self-contained slum, so getting out of Dodge will be a tricky proposition.

Those who might be expecting the weird evangelical perspective often reflected in Nollywood films can just forget it. Ojuju will not begrudge its socially disadvantaged characters a little sin while the sinning is good. Everyone tokes up a little to get by, even the incredibly foul-mouthed adolescent known simply as “the Kid.” What really makes the zombie (or ojuju) outbreak so devastating are the hard facts of life in a Nigerian slum. Obasi gives us a vivid sense of what they are like, including the bottleneck exit and the razor wire encircling it.

While Ojuju was obviously shot on a micro-budget, the gritty, low-fi aesthetic nicely suits the zombie genre. Obasi delivers enough gore to mollify genre fans, but the sweaty, claustrophobic vibe is what really generates the mounting dread. He also tacks on a long, almost entirely unrelated coda, but it largely works as a short film in its own right, so just consider it a bonus.

Perhaps Ojuju’s nicest surprise is the ensemble’s professionalism. Ranging from solidly presentable to legitimately polished, they are consistent in a good way, with Gabriel Afolayan and Chidozie Nzeribe particularly intense standouts as Romero and Fela, respectively. Making a virtue of its rough edges, Obasi exceeds expectations for his scrappy upstart zombie film. Recommended for undead fans, Ojuju screens this Friday (3/27) at BAM, as part of this year’s New Voices in Black Cinema.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on March 27th, 2015 at 12:45am.

By Joe Bendel. Seriously, why bother assassinating a government official of a failed state? A small team of mercs will do so anyway, because a job is a job. Unfortunately, the shadowy outfit managing the contract has started tying up loose ends. Those would be Jim Terrier and his former comrades-in-arms. He just might be the only left who isn’t part of the conspiracy, but he should be enough to bring them all down in Pierre Morel’s The Gunman, which opened this Friday in New York.

For a while, Terrier was really enjoying the Congo assignment. While secretly working for Lawrence Cox’s death squad, he volunteered as a relief coordinator by day to maintain his cover. That is how he met and fell hard for Annie, the professional do-gooder. Unfortunately, just when both their romance and the country’s civil war are heating up, Terrier is assigned to the team taking out an uncooperative natural resources minister looking to renegotiate terms (in real life, the mining companies would just say fine, call us when you have a working legal system). Since he will be the trigger man, Terrier will have to vanish afterwards, leaving Annie to the creepy advances of Felix, his smarmy corporate contact.

Haunted by his collective guilt, Terrier returns to Congo, hoping to do penance, like Jack Bauer in the two-hour special 24: Redemption. However, when an unusually well-equipped hit squad shows up gunning for Terrier, he realizes someone is out to get the old gang, but they all seem to be dead, except for him and the suspiciously chipper Cox. Felix also seems to be acting excessively obnoxious, but that is just sort of how he is. For understandable reasons, his wife Annie has mixed emotions seeing Terrier again, but the sparks are still there. She tries to guilt trip him, pointedly asking: “what did you expect showing up after all this time,” but since they just slept together, things are probably exceeding his expectations (but not necessarily ours).

Frankly, the early scenes of the hard-bitten assassins doubling as relief logistical specialists are rather intriguing and hint at dramatic possibilities the film opts not to take. Of course, we have to deal with the film as it is and not what it might have been. Granted, the narrative drive and internal logic start to sag in the second act, with the former rebounding and the latter utterly imploding down the stretch, but nobody can blame Sean Penn. Gunman is really his coming out party as a middle aged action figure, where he indeed shows he has the chops and the presence. He also clearly put in the time at the gym.

However, Idris Elba is even more impressive, getting second billing over Javier Bardem for maybe two days of work, tops. Appearing as DuPont, the Interpol agent, he just drops in, makes an extended treehouse analogy and then disappears until it’s time for the mopping up. Yet, he is still totally badass. Ray Winstone does his old hardnosed thing as Terrier’s trustworthy associate Stanley and Mark Rylance’s Cox chews on a fair amount of scenery. Frankly, it is hard to know what to make of former Bond villain Bardem, but at least he isn’t playing it safe as the whiny, petulant Felix. On the other hand, it is safe to say Jasmine Trinca (so subtle and earthy in Valeria Golino’s Honey) is woefully wasted as the problematically passive Annie.

There are some nicely executed old school actions scenes in Gunman, but some sequences are undermined by questionable editing. On several occasions it looks like Terrier is in the immediate path of assorted perils, only to find him safely outside the line of fire an abrupt cut or two later. Taken helmer Morel gets the attitude right, but he largely keeps the film on a medium tempo rather than a break neck speed. You just leave the theater suspecting in most alternate universes, this movie is totally awesome, but the one we get is just okay. It will satisfy hardcore Penn fans, but the rest of us should feel no urgent need to rush out to see it when it opens this Friday (3/20) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on March 22nd, 2015 at 1:18pm.