Category: Trailers

By Joe Bendel. They say gambling is a victimless crime, but not in Jim Bennett’s case. Anyone too closely linked to the degenerate literature professor could find themselves in a world of collateral hurt. The same goes without saying for Bennett, but that seems to be part of his wildly self-destructive plans. Several very large debts will inevitably come due in Rupert Wyatt’s Christmas Day release, The Gambler, a loose remake of the moody 1970s James Caan vehicle considered to be partially inspired by the Dostoyevsky novel of the same name.

Bennett’s beloved grandfather has just passed away, leaving him nothing, because he is a total mess. He shouldn’t need an inheritance, as a gainfully employed academic with one reasonably well received novel under his belt. Unfortunately, Bennett can rack up debt quicker than a president with no private sector experience. We will see him do it during the first of many trips to an underground casino.

Bennett has amassed $240,000 in gambling debts to the Korean mob, led by the severe Mr. Lee. You really do not want to owe him money. To keep playing and keep losing, Bennett borrows fifty K from loanshark Neville Baraka. You really, really do not want to owe him money. He is up briefly, but eventually he blows through that as well. After being rebuffed by his wealthy mother, Bennett explores the possibility of yet another loan from Russian mobster “Frank,” who is a real character. You really, really, really do not want to owe him money. In fact, Frank is so hardcore, he even gives Bennett pause. Nevertheless, it is only a matter of time before they do business together.

Wyatt’s Gambler is way better than you would expect, but it is almost entirely due to the villains. John Goodman’s Frank gets a good number of laughs throughout the film, but he is still scary as all get-out. Given his record of memorable supporting turns in award-contending films (Argo, The Artist, Inside Llewyn Davis), Goodman arguably deserves an honorary Oscar by now. As usual, he makes the film. Likewise, Michael Kenneth Williams regularly upstages his more famous co-star as the flamboyantly ruthless Baraka, while Alvin Ing also makes quite an impression as the icily intense Mr. Lee. Even Anthony Kelley earns some notice as Lamar Allen, Bennett’s star basketball player student, who may or may not shave some points for his prof.

To an extent, Mark Wahlberg convincingly falls apart as Bennett. However, he conspicuously overplays screenwriter William Monahan’s vastly overwritten, bombastic, self-loathing classroom lectures. You’d think he was trying to be Meryl Streep in Osage County, but at least he is not half as embarrassing. On the other hand, the role of Amy Phillips, Bennett’s student-slash-potential love interest-slash-witness to his implosion is not exactly what you would might similarly describe as overwritten. Frankly, Brie Larsen, last year’s indie sensation in Short Term 12, looks like she regrets every minute playing her.

Regardless, Wyatt keeps the pace brisk and cinematographer Greig Fraser gives it all a hazy City of Angels noir sheen. It is often quite visually dynamic and whenever he needs help, Wyatt can count on Goodman for an injection of adrenaline through the film’s breastplate. Recommended for those who enjoy distinctive heavies, The Gambler opened nationwide on Christmas day, including at the Regal Union Square in New York.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on December 29th, 2014 at 2:38pm.

By Joe Bendel. Depending on who you ask, Margaret Keane’s big-eyed children paintings are either a precursor to George Rodrigue’s gallery-accepted Blue Dog paintings or a spiritual forerunner of Thomas Kinkade’s kitsch. Either way, the key point for her new bio-film treatment is that they really were her paintings and not the work of her credit-stealing husband. It is a strange story, but it is told in a disappointingly conventional manner in Tim Burton’s Big Eyes, which opened this Christmas in New York.

Margaret Ulbrich packed up her daughter and walked out on her first husband at a time when such drama was scandalous. She relocated to San Francisco to pursue her dream of making it as an artist, but the only eye her work catches is that of Walter Keane. He too fancies himself an artist, but the real estate broker only has a talent for salesmanship. Convinced she needs taking care of, Ulbrich soon marries the brash Keane, believing their mutual interest in art will be a good thing.

One fateful night at Enrico Banducci’s hungry i club, Keane manages to sell one of his wife’s big eye paintings, but he kind of, sort of allows the purchaser to believe he is the artist. One thing leads to another and soon Walter Keane is a media sensation. Although she is troubled by the arrangement, Ms. Keane keeps churning out big eyes to feed her husband’s growing pop culture empire. However, despite his secret fraud, Walter Keane is bizarrely vexed by the proper art world’s snobbish appraisal of his (meaning her) work, leading to some odd confrontations with the profoundly unimpressed art critic John Canaday, who really ought to be considered the hero of this picture.

Of course, MDH Keane (as she starts to sign paintings) will eventually have enough of her husband’s manipulations and deceit. Running off to Hawaii, Keane re-starts her life after joining the Jehovah’s Witnesses. When she is finally ready, she will assert her claim to the Big Eyes body of work, precipitating a court battle for rights to the Keane brand.

There are many aspects of Big Eyes that will make people want to like it. After all, how often do films feature Cal Tjader jamming in Banducci’s club or portray Jehovah’s Witnesses in a favorable, empowering light? Unfortunately, Burton’s uninspired made-for-cable vibe and Christoph Waltz’s overly manic performance always feel at odds with each other. The climatic courtroom scenes are particularly problematic, coming across as excessively jokey, without ever delivering a good punch line.

At least Waltz is trying. As Margaret Keane, Amy Adams and her woe-is-me victim routine simply fade into the background. Their teenaged daughter also periodically wanders in and out of the film, but good luck remembering anything she says or does. Still, Burton and a fine supporting cast make the pre-hippy San Francisco scene come alive on-screen. Jon Polito flat out steals the film as the charismatic Banducci, while Terence Stamp’s Canaday is a tart-tongued joy. Danny Huston also adds some desperately needed acerbic flair as journalist Dick Nolan, who narrates the film as if it were a newspaper column.

Given Burton’s name in the credits, viewers will be waiting for Big Eyes to get good and crazy. Unfortunately, Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski’s screenplay is the cinematic equivalent of a Reader’s Digest condensed book. You can pick up the general outline, but the distinctive idiosyncrasies are largely glossed over. The results are disappointing, especially for Burton fans. Mostly just okay, Big Eyes probably only satisfied Keane collectors when it opened nationwide on Christmas, including at the Angelika Film Center in New York.

LFM GRADE: C

Posted on December 29th, 2014 at 2:38pm.

By Joe Bendel. Uruguay hosted the first FIFA World Cup in 1930. It was a full sixty-five years before Sepp Blatter joined the international sports organization, but the fix was still in, nonetheless. The Yugoslavian National Team will bear the brunt of the tournament’s dubious officiating, but they will make history just the same in Dragan Bjelogrlić’s See You in Montevideo, which Serbia selected as their official foreign language submission for the upcoming Academy Awards.

It was not easy getting to Uruguay. It took an entire film (Bjelogrlić’s Montevideo: Taste of a Dream, submitted in 2011) for poor earnest Aleksandar “Tirke” Tirnanić and roguish Blagoje “Moša” Marjanović to unite their team and win the honor of representing Yugoslavia at the World Cup. The transatlantic passage was no picnic either, entailing much seasickness. Even when they arrive, the Yugoslavian team still can’t get any respect. Expected to go one-and-out, they are booked in a divey hotel, while the rest of the field will stay at palatial resort. Nobody gives them a puncher’s chance when they draw Brazil in the first round, but since they face-off halfway through the film, it might be safe to assume they have an upset in them. However, impartial officiating goes out the window when Yugoslavia is matched up with the host nation in the semis.

The National Team’s 1930 run is still the best international showing for both Yugoslavian and Serbian football-soccer to date and it is a pretty good sports story. However, two films both clocking in with a running length of about two and a half hours hardly seems economical. Frankly, each could have easily come in under ninety minutes, but they love the all Serbian 1930 Yugoslavian team in Serbia, so Bjelogrlić takes his time.

This time around, Bjelogrlić and his co-writers Ranko Božić and Dimitrije Vojnov prospect for more laughs and pile on the subplots. Sometimes they do not make much sense, like that featuring the game Armand Assante as Hotchkins, an American looking to sign players for some sort of American soccer tour, which would have gone over like a lead balloon in depression-era America. However, Tirnanić’s romance with Dolores, a Uruguayan beauty, is rather sweet and appealing, even if her lunatic brother’s subplot to the subplot is way too over-the-top.

Regardless, Petar Strugar convincingly transitions Marjanović from dashing cad to world-weary sportsman. Assante chews scenery like he hasn’t eaten since American Gangster. It is a head-shakingly odd performance, but strangely enjoyable. Elena Martínez generates plenty of heat as Dolores and forges some respectable screen chemistry with Miloš Biković’s otherwise plodding Tirnanić. However, Branko Đurić is defiantly shticky and manipulative as Paco, a Croatian expat who befriends Mali Stanjoe, the team’s young Dickensian mascot.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the second Montevideo installment is the nostalgia for Yugoslavian identity. While the previous film often expressed pride in the team’s Serbianess, the players explicitly demand respect for Yugoslavia this time around. Despite the weirdness of Assante’s Hotchkins, the film also portrays the American team in a consistently favorable light, suggesting they were good sports, much like Jackson Scholtz in Chariots of Fire. In fact, the conclusion serves as a cool example of sportsmanship and old fashioned love of the game.

Evidently, there is even more to the team’s story that was chronicled in a companion television series. One of the smaller sports networks ought to pick-up the entire Montevideo franchise, because the sport is growing in popularity here, but 1930 still represents America’s peak World Cup performance, so far (just as it does for Yugoslavia and Serbia). It certainly deserves a wider international audience than the FIFA-bankrolled United Passions. Easily one of the most accessible films of this year’s foreign language submissions, See You in Montevideo did not make the Academy shortlist, but at least it had a buzzy special screening in Los Angeles last Monday, hosted by Deadline’s AwardsLine. Recommended for sports fans who do not mind a little sentimentality, it will screen again soon at the 2015 Palm Springs International Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on December 23rd, 2014 at 11:46am.

By Joe Bendel. Where can you go for a no-questions-asked organ transplant? If you said China, you win a free kidney, symbolically speaking of course. However, the dodgy McHospital Yu-ri’s father has been referred to has a strict bring-your-own-organs (BYOO) policy. Young-gyu’s gang is supposed to take care of all the messy parts during the passage over, but things kind of get out of hand in Kim Hong-sun’s Traffickers, which Well Go USA released this week on DVD and Blu-ray.

Young-gyu used to be Korea’s top trafficker in human organs until an incident led to the very public death of his intended victim and his young protégé. From then on, he scraped by as a conventional contraband smuggler. Unfortunately, when his latest shipment is served up to the police, Young-gyu has no choice but get the old gang back together for another score.

Unbeknownst to her, Yu-ri is Young-gyu’s new client. Having arranged through a broker to have a brand-spanking new heart meet her father at the Chinese hospital, Yu-ri only knows Young-gyu as the strange man who sometimes initiates awkward, vaguely threatening conversations. The truth is the smuggler has fallen in love with the ticket agent during the considerable time he spends in the port, but being a smooth talking seducer is not one of his many faults.

While onboard the slow boat to China, Yu-ri helps the newlywed Sang-ho search for his missing wheelchair-bound wife Chae-hee. Obviously, she has not given much thought to where her father’s new heart will come from, but desperation can lead to short-sightedness. There will also be further coincidences linking the fateful circle of passengers.

Frankly, the premise of Traffickers is a little forced, especially given the substantiated allegations of state-sponsored organ harvesting in prison camps (why risk attracting outside attention when you can simply order up a heart from a prisoner of conscience?). Kim and co-screenwriter Kim Sang-myung go with it nonetheless, focusing on humanity at its most distressed, building to (yeah, yeah, yeah, mild spoilerish alert) a real downer of an ending. Yet, somehow the film is still quite entertaining to watch.

Functioning as sort of a riff on The Lady Vanishes, Traffickers features several tense near misses and a great action show down. A supporting player who shall remain nameless also pulls off a massively effective character swerve, earning unrestrained audience loathing. For his part, Im Chang-jung broods solidly as the world weary Young-gyu. As usual, Oh Dal-su adds plenty of vinegary grit as Young-gyu’s soused saw-bones. Although deliberately stiff at first, Yo Joon-hee turns it up down stretch as Yu-ri.

So yes, organ trafficking is a bad business, no matter how you might get involved with it. Kim capitalizes on the claustrophobic ship’s setting rather adroitly and keeps the pace distractingly brisk. Just about the entire narrative fails the logic test in retrospect, but viewers really won’t notice in the moment. Recommended for those who enjoy dark thrillers, Traffickers is now available on DVD, Blu-ray, and digital platforms from Well Go USA.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on December 23rd, 2014 at 11:45am.

By Joe Bendel. W.B. Yeats is not often quoted in animated features, but his poem “The Stolen Child” is very definitely a source of inspiration for Tomm Moore’s latest film. If that sounds too serious for your viewing pleasure, take comfort from the presence of a big lovable fur ball of a dog named Cú—that being the Gaelic word for dog. There will also be selkies and assorted faery folk. Yes indeed, you can expect a generous helping of Celtic lore in Moore’s truly lovely Song of the Sea, which opens this Friday in New York.

Presumably, Ben’s mother Bronagh died in child birth with his little sister Saoirse, but there is more to the story than he realizes. The truth is Bronagh was a selkie, a mythical shape-shifting seal woman, who can live on dry land for years, yet must eventually return to the sea. Saoirse is her mother’s daughter, who was born with a selkie coat to wear as she transforms, but her lighthouse keeper father keeps it hidden under lock-and-key for fear of losing her, too.

Ben is supposed to look after his sister, but he often loses patience with the young girl. She has yet to speak a word, but she can make music worthy of Steve Turre with the shell Ben keeps as a remembrance of their mother. For the most part, the outdoorsy island life suits both children, but their bossy grandmother insists on relocating them to Dublin. Unfortunately, taking Saoirse that far from the water is not a good idea, but the faithful Cú will help guide them home. Along the way, they will meet several Fae beings who have a personal stake in restoring the young selkie’s powers.

Song of the Sea pretty much has it all when it comes to animated movies. Moore taps into some deep Celtic legend to tell a mature, psychologically complex coming-of-age story. Plus, Cú is just huggably adorable. The hand drawn animation is also a thing of beauty. While Moore’s figures are deliberately simple and anime-esque (in a big-eyed kind of way), his landscapes and fantasyscapes are breathtakingly lush. He also integrates music into the film in a culturally organic manner that powerfully underscores the on-screen mood and sometimes helps drive the narrative.

Granted, Saoirse hardly makes a peep in Song, but her character development arc packs quite an emotional wallop. Viewers older than your correspondent (by decades) were fighting off the sniffles at the conclusion of the screening we attended. Even if you have a heart of stone, you will completely invest in her story, in spite of yourself. Older boys will also readily identify with Ben, who has navigated much of life’s confusions largely on his own. Together, they will negotiate several highly fantastical turn of events, but it is their sibling relationship that anchors the film.

This year, GKIDS has two legitimate Oscar contenders in Song and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, both of which conclusively demonstrate animation can be a legit form of art. Each is also rather tragic, but in a wholly satisfying sort of way. Yet, Song is still safely kid-friendly (thanks again to Cú). Frankly, they ought to be in contention for best picture overall, but GKIDS will probably have to settle for an animation nomination for one or the other. Highly recommended, Song of the Sea opens this Friday (12/19) in New York at the IFC Center.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on December 18th, 2014 at 8:56pm.