LFM: Libertas Film Magazine

By Joe Bendel. George Lam is like the Kurt Wallander of the Hong Kong police force. At least this inspector has good reason for being moody. Still grieving his wife’s unexplained suicide, Lam will tackle a deeply disturbing case in Roy Chow Hin Yeung’s Nightfall (trailer here), which screens on the opening night of the San Francisco Film Society’s eagerly anticipated second annual Hong Kong Cinema Festival.

Eugene Wang has just been released from prison. Convicted for the murder of a famous opera singer’s teenage daughter, he had to drastically harden himself to survive his sentence. When said opera singer, Han Tsui, is discovered brutally beaten to death, suspicion naturally falls on Wang. It is pretty clear, though, that Tsui’s death is no great tragedy for his younger daughter, Zoe, who has grown to become the spitting image of Eva, the older sister she never knew she had.

Of course, Lam is the best and worst detective for a case like this. A habitual scab-picker, he cannot help delving into the darker corners of the human psyche. If you consider passing out dead drunk in the middle of the afternoon hard-boiled, than he is amongst the hardest boiled. He is not much of a father, though, nor is he a good candidate for romance. Yet, his younger, cuter partner Ying Au-yeung still has eyes for him – probably because he is played by Simon Yam.

Basically, Nighfall is a contest between Yam and Nick Cheung to see who can be more intensely wound up. Cheung’s Wang probably wins that one, but Yam also brings an appealingly rumpled charisma to the party. As a mystery, Christine To Chi-long’s script telegraphs every revelation well in advance, but it is a dynamic showcase for the antagonists, eventually going mano-a-mano on a sky-gondola to Lantau.

Yam versus Cheung is definitely the main event here, but there are some fine contributions from the big name supporting cast. Cantopop superstar Kay Tse is an energetic and realistically grounded presence as Ying, whereas the Shaw Brothers veteran Gordon Liu adds even more grizzle as an old corrupt copper. Janice Man looks exquisitely ethereal as Zoe and Eva, but she never has much to express besides vulnerability. However, Michael Wong’s turn as the late Tsui is in a category by itself, beyond over-the-top.

Cinematographer Ardy Lam has a knack for shooting scenes at great heights while maintaining the noir vibe. Frankly, the film might actually peak with the first scene—an adrenaline charged throwdown in a prison shower room, but Yam is always compulsively watchable and especially so here. In fact, one can easily see his George Lam becoming a franchise character. Very satisfying for fans of HK movies, Nightfall screens this Friday (9/21) at the New Peoples Cinema in San Francisco as part of the opening night of their 2012 Hong Kong Cinema Festival.

Also screening Friday night is Pang Ho-cheung’s Love in the Buff, a well written look at the pitfalls of romance with a highly attractive cast and an appealingly swinging soundtrack. Recommended for movie-goers looking for something smart but not too heavy, it also screens Sunday (9/23).  See the full review here.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on September 18th, 2012 at 2:18pm.

By Joe Bendel. Batko Stamenov is like a character in a Samizdat novel come to life, but not necessarily in a good way. The former informer is a figure of existential absurdity rather than defiance. He is still dangerous, though, but to whom is the question in Emil Christov’s The Color of the Chameleon (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival.

On her deathbed, Stamenov’s mother confesses she really is his mother, whereas he had always been told she was his aunt and adoptive-mother. This does little to develop his sense of belonging. Stamenov is ingratiating by nature, but also reflexively deceptive—swell traits to the secret policeman who recruits a student as an informer and agent-provocateur. Stamenov’s first assignment has him infiltrating a literary club obsessed with the underground novel Zincograph. Like the fictional Samizdat protagonist, Stamenov also takes work in a state zinc etching plant, which happens to be a fine place to pick up some chemical know-how.

Stamenov commits many questionable acts, beginning by signing up as an informer in early 1989, when the writing was already on the soon to be toppled Wall. He has two eggs containing secret instructions should Communism fall in either Bulgaria or the Soviet Union. This is not a good sign. Yet, the task just seems to appeal to Stamenov for non-ideological reasons. When terminated by the official intelligence service, he starts recruiting his own informers for a phony agency just like the protagonist of Zincograph.

Adapted from screenwriter Vladislav Todorov’s real life novel titled Zincograph, Stamenov’s anti-heroics could easily lend themselves to an outrageously over-the-top big screen treatment, but Christov’s approach is rather severe and chilly. Frankly, it takes a while for the film to come together, as Stamenov largely creeps about unappealingly. However, the third act is an intrigue-fueled doozy, making some razor-sharp points about the state of post-Communist Bulgaria, in between the twists and turns.

Chameleon is a film for everyone who enjoys movie references (remember the Bulgarian couple in Casablanca?), thinly veiled critiques of politicians you will never recognize, and liberal helpings of paranoid gamesmanship. There is also an unhealthy preoccupation (as if there were any other kind) with the evil effects of “onanism.” Such is Communism’s continuing legacy for Stamenov.

Looking a lot like a Bulgarian Jude Law, pop star Ruscen Vidinliev’s Stamenov is one cold fish, but he is convincingly calculating and sociopathic. He keeps the film moving along well enough, while the supporting cast provides plenty of color. Rousy Chanev brings the right sort of Machiavellian charisma to bear as Stamenov’s former handler, while Deyan Donkov is notably intense and just plain interesting looking as the Mr. Clean hardball fixer pursuing the freelance saboteur.

The politics of Chameleon are rather ambiguous, particularly for viewers not deeply steeped in the Bulgarian scene. Yet the lingering toxicity of the old regime is unmistakable. Clearly, it spawned a culture of lies and deception that Todorov and Christov argue cannot be easily shrugged off. A slow starter very much worth sticking with, The Color of the Chameleon is recommended for literate, “free-thinking” viewers when it screens again this coming Sunday morning (9/16) as part of this year’s TIFF.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on September 17th, 2012 at 10:25am.

By Joe Bendel. Don’t say “Happy Festivus” to Mayor Bob Revere. He is sick and tired of substituting the word “holiday” for Christmas and he is going to do something about it. In the process, he just might heal his family in Darrell Campbell & Kevin McAfee’s Last Ounce of Courage (trailer here), which opens nationwide today.

Fifteen years ago, Tom Revere willingly enlisted, with full knowledge he would fight in a Middle Eastern war. He wanted to serve his country and follow in his decorated father’s footsteps, even though it meant temporarily leaving his pregnant wife Kari. He never returned. Nobody took it harder than his father Bob. Emotionally withdrawing from life, the pharmacist-mayor is basically going through the motions until his daughter-in-law moves back to town with the grandson he hardly knows.

It turns out Christian Revere is something of a rebel, doing subversive things like sneaking Bibles into the public high school. At one point, he challenges his grandfather as to why his town no longer publicly celebrates Christmas. It is a question the Mayor has no good answer for. Suddenly, the town’s crèche is out of mothballs and media-lawyer Warren “The Hammer” Hammerschmidt is seriously bent out of shape.

While not exactly perfect, Campbell and McAfee step up the evangelical filmmaking game with Courage. The main performances are all professional grade, including those from several genuine “name” actors, and there are some well conceived plot points. Shrewdly, screenwriter Campbell casts the teenaged Revere and his friends as the rebels in their uber-P.C. high school, which is quite representative of current reality. The cleverest bit involves their plan to hijack the school’s winter space alien visitation play and turn it into a Christmas pageant. And though Campbell, McAffe, and company clearly faced severe budget constraints, the war scenes are rendered in rather dramatic fashion.

Indeed, the best scenes in Courage feature the younger cast members, including Hunter Gomez as the grandson and Jenna Boyd as the daughter of his late father’s best friend. Unfortunately, Mayor Bob’s campaign to save Christmas is pretty clunky stuff. Still, it is always cool to see Fred “Black Caesar” Williamson, even if he does little more than villainously chomp his cigar as Hammerschmidt. Action movie veteran and real life veteran Marshall Teague also does quite respectable work as Mayor Revere. He just has too many over-written speeches down the stretch.

Frankly, you have to dig pretty deep into the cast before you find the awkward performances that have given faith-based productions a bad name. It is also pretty mind blowing to think Jennifer O’Neill of Summer of ’42 fame is in such a radically different film, but here she is, portraying Mrs. Revere with admirable conviction.

However, like previous films produced with the evangelical market in mind, Ounce has a hard time resisting the temptation to preach. The trick is to embed the message rather than stopping to announce it. Still, Last Ounce of Courage carries the official Chuck Norris seal of approval, so you’d probably better go see it. Better safe than sorry. It opens nationwide today (9/14) and opened in select theaters, including the AMC Empire in New York, this past September 11th.

Posted on September 14th, 2012 at 12:33pm.

By Joe Bendel. It is an area so cold and remote, even Germans find it depressing. Yet, a mysterious crime boss envisions it as the next winter playground for the rich and beautiful. He is clearly rather cracked—a fact that leads to many complications for the hitman-protagonist of Tomasz Thomson’s Snowman’s Land (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Being a hired killer was a real grind for Walter, even before he botches a workaday assignment. With his contractor down on him, the slovenly Walter needs to lay low for a while. Out of nowhere, he is offered the seemingly perfect gig, subbing for a colleague somewhere vaguely to the east. Essentially, he is to house sit the mountain villa of a notorious gangster widely thought to be dead. As it happens, old Berger is alive and as erratic as ever.

Walter will have a buddy for this assignment, but the presence of the unstable Micky will prove a mixed blessing at best. When the younger thug accidentally kills Berger’s unfaithful trophy wife Sibylle in a freak accident, Walter’s peaceful retreat becomes anything but. Things will get bloody as Burger and Kazik, his lieutenant with a “third eye,” start demanding answers.

Snowman might be German, but it is stylistically compatible with the recent bumper crop of Scandinavian thrillers, featuring a similar brew of lethal black-and-blue comedy against a Nordic backdrop. Thomson keeps the double-crosses coming at a good clip, without excessively plundering the Tarantino playbook. He and cinematographer Ralf Mendle actually create a pretty creepy vibe, as Walter’s colleagues and tormentors descend into madness. While starting as a gangster movie, Snowman almost evolves into a Carpathian Shining.

Jürgen Riβmann has the appropriate morose hound-dog presence as Walter, the comparative gentle giant of an assassin. However, the film’s real strengths are its villains, played with set-chewing dash by Reiner Schöne and Waléria Kanischtscheff, as Berger and Kazik, respectively. Though not long for the film, Eva-Katrin Hermann’s Sibylle makes a convincingly shrewish femme fatale. Suffering in comparison, Thomas Wodianka comes across somewhat blandly as the immature Micky.

While not redefining any genres, Snowman is quite an entertaining, character-driven one-blasted-thing-after-another thriller. Sort of a chamber gangster piece, Snowman’s Land is recommended for those who appreciate laughs derived from blood and paranoia, when it opens this Friday (9/14) in New York at the Cinema Village.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on September 10th, 2012 at 12:34pm.