Category: Trailers

By Joe Bendel. What was a classy lady like Renée Le Roux doing running a casino in Nice? Unfortunately, she did not have much time at the helm of the Palais de la Méditerranée before getting forced out by the Mafia. Pardon, make that: eased out by a rival casino operator with reputed underworld ties. It would be a bitter defeat for Madame Le Roux, costing her far more than control over the casino. André Téchiné adapts her memoir of the so-called “Nice Casino War,” but he de-emphasizes the Scorsese-esque elements throughout In the Name of My Daughter, which opens this Friday in New York.

The Palais was once tightly held by the Le Roux family, but when Madame Le Roux assumed the directorship of the casino, they barely retained a fifty-one percent stake. Many of the minor shareholders were opposed to her appointment, requiring her slightly estranged daughter Agnès to duly vote in favor of her mum. It was a victory orchestrated by her legal advisor Maurice Agnelet, who made something of an impression on the recently divorced Agnès. He happens to be married, but that does not mean much to either of them. Frankly, he is not nearly as attracted to her as she is to him. However, when Madame Le Roux refuses to appoint him as her general manager, he starts manipulating her daughter (and her shares) to extract revenge.

The daughter will indeed betray the mother, but from that point on, the chain of events gets mysteriously murky and tragic. Agnelet will ultimately face trial three times, yet Téchiné prefers to handle such dramatic red meat in the film’s postscript. Arguably, the intrigue and duplicity of the Casino War could have challenged the gangsterism of Cédric Jimenez’s The Connection, but Téchiné prefers to zero-in on the emotionally fraught mother-daughter relationship. The screenplay co-written by Jean-Charles Le Roux, who excised himself and his brothers from the picture, focuses on his anguished mother rather than the defiant Angelet.

Nobody can lord over an elegant old-money casino like Catherine Deneuve. If you had shares in the Palais, you would vote with her, too. Despite some unnecessary passage-of-time makeup, she rock-solidly anchors the film as Madame Le Roux. She instantly suggests a sense of Le Roux’s comfort in this exclusive world, as well as the long and thorny history she shares with both her daughter and former advisor. Guillaume Canet’s Agnelet is not exactly flashy, but he is convincingly cold-blooded, thin-skinned, and borderline sociopathic. On the other hand, Adèle Haenel’s turn as Agnès, the needy hipster, often rings hollow, sounds flat, or some such metaphor, but as you might surmise from the title, she will not be around for the closing credits.

The seductive and captivating thing about Téchiné films like Thieves and Unforgivable is the way they incorporate thriller elements while skirting the boundaries of genre cinema. Yet it becomes almost perverse in the case of the Casino War and the three resulting murder trials. Nonetheless, Téchiné pulls viewers into the story and through the film with a strong directorial hand that characteristically feels deceptively light. Recommended in spite and because of his auteurist idiosyncrasies, In the Name of My Daughter opens this Friday (5/15) in New York, at the IFC Center and the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on May 12th, 2015 at 10:52pm.

By Joe Bendel. In the future, teleportation is possible as a form of data-transmission. “Slipstreaming” is sort of like faxing yourself across the solar system. Unfortunately, data corruption can be a nasty side effect. Maybe that happened to the “t” and the “y” that ought to be in the title. Regardless, a galactic rescue team will risk data corruption and an airborne psychosis-inducing pathogen in Shane Abbess’s Infini, which recently opened in the Tri-State Area.

Of course, the future is miserable, because it always is. To support his pregnant wife, Whit Carmichael joins the slipstreaming SWAT team, but his first day will be a doozy. While he is still suiting up, an entire squad returns infected with a crazy bug, shooting up his regional command center. His only means of escape is slipstreaming to the far distant Infini mining colony from which they came. The East Coast team is subsequently dispatched to Infini with orders to secure Carmichael as well as the ominous cargo payload someone or something heaved in the direction of Earth.

Although only a few minutes have elapsed on Earth, several weeks have already passed for Carmichael. You know, relativity and all. The good news is if Carmichael lives, his wife will hardly know he was gone. The bad news is the utterly baffling in medias res prologue suggests he is in for some major trouble.

Somehow, Infini’s narrative manages to be both simple and incomprehensible at the same time. On the other hand, it looks terrific. Although shot on a shoestring budget, production designer George Liddle (whose credits include Dark City and Daybreakers) and art director Peter “Babylon” Owens (whose nickname inspires confidence in a genre film) have crafted a fully realized and convincing looking interstellar environment.

Australian reality TV star Daniel MacPherson is shockingly effective as Carmichael, the frazzled everyman. Harry Pavlidis also adds some grizzled gravitas as Menzies, a senior extraction team member. Strangely though, Grace Huang, a future action star poised to breakout big (following notable work in RZA’s Man with the Iron Fists franchise and the short film Bloodtraffick) isn’t given much to do in Infini, except milling about in the cold. She is not the only one just waiting for “it” to get her.

A lot of talent and effort went into Infini, but you have to wonder how many people really watched it all the way through. There are several impressive scenes, but as a viewing experience it is rather choppy. That happens in independent genre filmmaking. Abbess and his cast and crew should have a lot of good films in their future, in part because Infini was probably something of a teeth-cutter. For those who want to support, Infini is now playng at the AMC Loews Jersey Gardens.

LFM GRADE: C

Posted on May 12th, 2015 at 10:51pm.

By Joe Bendel. If testosterone were enough to solve a problem like human trafficking, Det. Nick Cassidy could pretty much lick it single-handedly. Even with the whole world allied against him, Cassidy will still basically take that one-angry-cop approach. Fortunately, he will eventually team-up with a Bangkok copper proficient in Muay Thai. At that point, all bets are off in Ekachai Uekrongtham’s Skin Trade, which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

Serbian gangster Viktor Dragovic stands atop a global trafficking empire, but the most important hub is in Thailand. Much to his regret, one of his more talented sons is killed by Cassidy during the course of an operation on the Jersey docks. In retaliation, Dragovic gets Biblical, killing Cassidy’s wife and daughter and leaving him for dead. The thing is, you can never leave a cat like Cassidy dead enough. Despite about fifty bullets wounds, Cassidy drags himself out of the hospital and hops on a plane to Thailand for some stone cold vengeance.

Sure, so far, so good. However, things get a little dicey when corrupt FBI Agent Eddie Jones frames Cassidy for the murder of Bangkok cop Tony Vitayakul’s partner, about five minutes after landing. While Cassidy works his way through Dragovic’s organization, Vitayakul pursues the rogue cop. He also frets over his girlfriend, Min, a victim of trafficking now serving as an undercover informant.

Just get a load of this cast: Tony Jaa, Dolph Lungren, Ron Perlman, Michael Jai White, Peter Weller (as Costello, Cassidy’s crusty captain), and Celina Jade. You’re probably thinking: “what, no Michael Ironside?” He must have had a conflict. Needless to say, if you have Jaa and Lungren fight each other and then square-off against Perlman and White, you are on psretty solid ground.

Indeed, Jaa’s moves do not disappoint. The indestructibleness of Lungren’s Cassidy becomes almost a running gag, but let’s face it, the man looks like a tank. White clearly enjoys getting his villainy on as Jones, and he hasn’t lost a step since the criminally under-appreciated Falcon Rising either, while Perlman chews the scenery like an old genre pro. Jade shows off a few moves here and there, but the Legendary Assassin star is definitely the one who gets short-changed in the action department.

Skin Trade follows in the long, noble tradition of taking a serious issue (often with tragic implications) and turning it into an exploitation movie. To his credit, co-writer-producer Lungren started developing the idea when he read about a particularly egregious trafficking case, so consider your consciousness duly raised. He and his co-writers display a style similar to his character’s, relentlessly plowing straight ahead. At least it’s serviceable and the action sequences deliver plenty of red meat. Come for the martial arts and stay for the payback when Skin Trade opens this Friday (5/8) in Los Angeles, at the Sundance Sunset Cinemas (and New Yorkers can catch it on June 12th at MoMI or get it now VOD via iTunes).

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on May 6th, 2015 at 10:39pm.

By Joe Bendel. There are two kinds of people—those who look forward and those who look back. Dan Landsman is definitely a rearview mirror kind of guy. As he gears up for his high school reunion, he will painfully illustrate why such a neurotic approach to life is so deeply unprofitable. Prepare to squirm when Landsman makes a last ditch effort for popularity twenty years after graduation in Jarrad Paul & Andrew Mogel’s D Train, which opens this Friday in New York.

After college, Landsman stayed in the same Pittsburgh suburb, attending community college, taking an office job, and marrying the nicest girl from high school who would talk to him. At every meeting of the high school alumni committee, he offers up a textbook example of trying too hard. Smarting from the rejection he continues to invite, Landsman hatches an unlikely plan to convince Oliver Lawless to attend the reunion, so he can hopefully ride on his coattails of coolness.

Lawless was the sort of roguish popular kid everyone wanted to hang with. After graduation, he left for Hollywood, where he barely scrapes by on commercial work. However, Landsman and their fellow alumni see him as the embodiment of all their unfulfilled dreams and aspirations. Landsman will indeed trek out to California to woo Lawless, but the cover story he fabricates about a potential business meeting inconveniently blows up in his face when his technophobe boss, Bill Shurmur, insists on accompanying him. Nevertheless, Landsman manages to meet-up with Lawless, but things get a little out of hand, with much awkwardness ensuing.

The good news is Lawless is coming to the reunion. The bad news is Lawless is coming to the reunion. Frankly, you may never see another film that so thoroughly confuses humiliation with humor. D Train is a truly a cringe fest. Anyone with a shred of empathy will be extremely uneasy watching Landsman’s degradation, but Paul & Mogel keep pouring it on. It gets to be punishing—for the viewer.

You have to give Jack Black credit for taking it and liking it. As Landsman, his desperate neediness is uncomfortably convincing. It makes you think he could do an entire postscript to Kevin Pollak’s Misery Loves Company by his lonesome. On the plus side, believe it or not, James Marsden turns some surprisingly nice moments as Lawless and it is always amusing to watch Jeffrey Tambor do his thing as Shurmur.

It is hard to judge D Train, because the cast always hits their marks and inhabit their characters pretty credibly. Eventually though, all the piling-on poor Jobish Landsman just makes you shake your head. This year, there were at least two films at Sundance that used Erasure’s “A Little Respect,” but Seoul Searching is exponentially more fun because it remembers both the good and the bad of high school (and Korean culture camp). Honestly, it is a real shame Paul and Mogel were apparently so unhappy during high school, but hopefully making this movie helped them work through some of their issues. An exhausting film, D Train will should bring out Jack Black fans nonetheless when it opens this Friday (5/8) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

LFM GRADE: C

Posted on May 6th, 2015 at 10:38pm.

By Joe Bendel. Drug dealers will tell you the weight of kilos can vary quite considerably. Scientists also suspect this is true, but they must prove it with data. Towards that end, Marie Ernst will be lugging the Norwegian prototype kilo to a conference in Paris, where a new international standard will hopefully be set. With her life at a crossroads, the trip might just offer an opportunity for personal discovery as well in Bent Hamer’s 1001 Grams, which opens this Friday in New York.

Ernst’s day-to-day responsibilities largely entail certifying various public pumps and scales to ensure the measurements are on the up-and-up. It is the sort of solitary detail-oriented work she seems to be well suited for. Having recently divorced her caddish husband, she has no real social life to speak of. Aside from her father Ernst Ernst, the director of the laboratory, Marie Ernst has little meaningful human contact. When her more garrulous father falls ill, she assumes his place at the Paris conference, where there are plenty aloof delegates quite like her. However, the institute has a surprisingly smart and engaging gardener named Pi (an unmeasurable constant, you see), whose company she finds pleasant.

Unfortunately, Ernst will have to deal with some family business before she can finally take control over her own life. Worse still, she has a mishap with the Norwegian national kilo. In isolation, all the fuss over a weight in a bell jar seems rather ridiculous, but Hamer makes the characters’ passion for precision measurement look like a noble eccentricity.

As a filmmaker, Hamer is one of the few stylists who can rival the whimsical visuals of Wes Anderson and even Jacques Tati. Frame after frame in 1001 Grams has such a strikingly composed look, one wonders how long it took Hamer to artfully arrange each scene. There is always the danger that sort of self-consciously idiosyncratic approach can descend into overly precious quirkiness. However, 1001 Grams is permeated with such maturity and grace, it never becomes cloying or shticky in any manner.

Ana Dahl Torp plays Ernst with a profoundly Scandinavian reserve, but the way she slowly and subtly expresses her stirrings of an emotional awakening is beautiful to behold. Laurent Stocker of the Comédie Française comes across like a nice earthy chap as Pi, while Stein Winge adds gravity and humanity as old Ernst Ernst, but Torp must quietly carry 1001 Grams for long stretches on her own. It is a feat she repeatedly pulls off quite remarkably.

There are numerous references, analogies, and call-backs revolving around the act of measurement that could have been absolutely grating in the hands of another filmmaker. Yet, Hamer makes them feel effortlessly light. He fluidly guides the pieces together into a seamless whole. A truly lovely film, 1001 Grams is highly recommended for general audiences when it opens this Friday (5/8) in New York, at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on May 6th, 2015 at 9:59pm.