JB on WILD (2016) which plays on Ovid September 16th

Joe Bendel saw WILD a couple years ago at Sundance. I am reposting his review which originally ran at JB Spins to tie into the running on Ovid.TV starting on the 16th.

Wolves are solitary creatures, but they mate for  life. Perhaps that is why Ania is attracted to them. By ‘attracted,” we mean in the most provocative way possible. The call of the wild is strangely seductive to her in Nicolette Krebitz’s Wild (trailer here), which screened during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

Ania is a mousy office drone, but her blowhard boss can see just enough of the swan beneath her ugly duckling exterior to skirt the boundary of sexual harassment. Yet, Ania hardly seems to notice. She just plugs away, maintaining her emotional distance from everyone around her. One night, she locks eyes with a wolf on the edge of the woods surrounding her drab apartment building. Strangely, it is her first real connection that we know of. Soon she is leaving meat for it, hoping to win its trust. After an aborted attempt, she successfully entraps and smuggles him into an abandoned flat in her complex.

Initially, the wolf is generally not receptive to her plans. He is rather loud, hostile, and smelly, demonstrating several reasons why exotic pets are such a terrible idea. However, as their “courtship” progresses, Ania and the wolf come to an understanding. Yes, it will have a physical component. Yet, she is not just drawn to the wolf. She also finds his “lifestyle” enticing.

It is important viewers do not confuse the various films simply titled Wild. One features a beautiful actress doing awards caliber work and the other is a light-weight Reese Witherspoon vehicle. Fortunately, this is the former (though technically it is the later production). It also seems to bear comparison to Roar, the notorious Tippi Hedren film, in which the cast was regularly mauled by poorly trained lions. Human-wolf proximity is downright intimate here as well. It all gets rather alarming for safety reasons, rather than prurient concerns. However, wolf trainers Zoltan Horkai and peter Ivanyi deserve credit for the masterful control, as does lead actress Lilith Stangenberg for her nerves of steel.

Frankly, it is a bit of a surprise Stangenberg did not walk away with this year’s performance award. This is one of the darnedest empowerment arcs you will ever see, but she makes every animalistic step believable. Krebitz’s aesthetic is pretty severe and she lets the film get a slow start out of the blocks, but somehow she manages to take the potentially lurid material and make it feel dignified and cerebral.

Too bad Sundance does not have an animal handling award, because Wild would have won in a landslide (the same would have been true for White God last year). If you want to see a film about human-lupine relations and not feel guilty or embarrassed about it afterward than this is the one you have been waiting for. It is also worth seeing for the rest of us, thanks to Stangenberg’s fearless (in several ways) breakout performance, so expect to see it programmed aggressively, following its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

JB on The Other Side of Everything which hits Ovid August 11

Alas, revolutions often fail and one fallen regime usually just begets another that is equally corrupt, or worse. Those are the archly fatalistic observations of Prof. Srbijanka Turajlić—and she ought to know. She was a prominent leader in the Otpor resistance that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic. Before that, her family was branded suspicious bourgeoisie class elements by Tito’s Communists. In fact, her subdivided family townhouse still bears the witness to the Communist era of appropriation and plunder in Mila Turajlić’s highly personal documentary, The Other Side of Everything, which screens On Ovid.TV

For Turajlić the personal is inescapably political, due to her mother’s activism. She stood shoulder to shoulder with her students, because she refused to be as passive as her parents had been when confronting injustice during the Communist era. It started when a jackbooted internal security agent arrived unannounced, consigning the large family to two rooms in their fashionable building. For decades, their own neighbors spied on them through peep holes within their [formerly] own home. As late as the mid 2010’s, Rada the nonagenarian is still holding on, in the two grubby rooms right behind Srbijanka Turajlić’s walls.

Although Other Side is ostensibly about family history, it is a remarkably helpful document for making sense of the current Serbian political climate. Partly, it is because Turajlić and her family have had such a unique vantage point to observe Serbian and Yugoslav history. In fact, her grandfather was a signatory to the original document creating Yugoslavia as a unified political entity, decades before Tito’s rise to power. Nearly a century later, he will play a small part in a tellingly ironic and symbolic development when a grand oil painting of the ceremony is discovered, walled up in the national legislature.

Most of the time, Other Side should not even be described as a two-hander, because Turajlić the filmmaker does her best to keep herself behind the scenes. However, Prof. Turajlić is an undeniably forceful personality, who easily commands the screen. Despite her disappointments, she is still razor-sharp and actively engaged socially and politically (despite her claims to the contrary).

Almost perversely, Prof. Turajlić will absolutely charm viewers, yet leave them deeply pessimistic regarding the prospects for free, democratic civil society in Serbia. She will never bore you, that’s for sure. Given its personal focus, Other Side represents a radical departure from Mila Turajlić’s previous documentary, Cinema Komunisto, but together they provide remarkably compelling, fully contextualized understanding of the Serb and Yugoslav national experience over the past eighty-some years. Very highly recommended.

JB on Mr Jones (2020) which is playing the NY Polish Film Festival 2021

In times of crisis, some reporters set a valiant standard of professionalism, while others cravenly betray their commitment to the truth and free expression. Do not count on the journalistic establishment to accurately identify the former or the latter. Today, Walter Duranty is widely recognized as a willing stooge, who knowingly covered up Stalin’s genocidal crimes. Yet, the Pulitzer board refuses to rescind his Pulitzer Prize and his old employer, the New York Times has declined to return it. Gareth Jones exposed the Ukrainian Holodomor, the deliberate, systemic starvation of millions of Ukrainian—the very story Duranty tried to hide from the world. Agnieszka Holland (who was imprisoned in Czechoslovakia and exiled from her native Poland) tells the Welsh journalist’s tragic-heroic story in Mr. Jones.

Initially, Jones did not come to Moscow to dig up dirt on the Communist system. The plan was to secure an interview with Stalin, in hopes of convincing the dictator to open a second front against the newly ascendant Hitler (alas, Germany and the USSR would sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact four years after the events of this film). However, when Jones arrives in Moscow, he finds his (fictionalized) good friend Paul Kleb (a transparent reference to Paul Klebnikov, the Forbes journalist suspiciously murdered while investigating Putin) has been killed by petty street crime (in the workers’ paradise), according to Duranty, through whom the Soviets grant or withhold western journalists’ access.

The last time Jones spoke to Kleb, he mentioned a potentially explosive scoop. In short order, Duranty’s German colleague Ada Brooks confirms the open secret of widespread Ukrainian famine, but she counsels Jones to go along, to get along. Instead, he risks his life and liberty to investigate the Ukrainian genocide first-hand.

Mr. Jones is very much a historical expose, in the tradition of Holland’s masterwork, The Burning Bush, but in many ways, it also functions as a gripping thriller. Viewers can almost literally feel the eyes of the early surveillance state on them as Jones secretly pursues the truth. At times, Holland and production designer Gregorz Piatkowski make 1930s Moscow literally resemble the dystopia of 1984. Clearly, this is deliberate, since Holland flashforwards to George Orwell writing Animal Farm (inspired by Jones’ reports) as a recurring motif.

James Norton is well-cast as Jones, convincingly conveying his initial naiveté and idealism, as well as his profound revulsion and righteous outrage. Yet, the real horror comes from Peter Sarsgaard’s chillingly calculated Duranty. You will be hard-pressed to find a more unsettling film villain—and he is scrupulously based on a real-life (Pulitzer Prize-winning) figure. Sargaard’s performance and Holland’s depiction of the Holodomor largely overshadow much of the film, but as Brooks, Vanessa Kirby still has some memorable moments, late in the third act.

Screenwriter Andrea Chalupa (who wrote and directed the excellent short documentary, Stalin’s Secret Genocide) shrewdly shapes the well-constructed narrative. This is a tense, suspenseful, and surprisingly literate film. It also blasts out a much-needed cannon-shot of truth. Even to this day, Russian nationalists and Putinists still deny the truth of the Holodomor and the journalistic establishment continues to sweep Duranty’s duplicity under the rug. Yet, Holland and Chalupa do not merely expose journalistic malpractice. They really cut to the heart of the matter when a skeletal Ukrainian woman explains to Jones: “They are killing us. Millions gone. Men came and thought they could replace the natural laws.” (It is not clear from the closing credits who plays her, but her brief work is devastating.)

Mr. Jones vividly illustrates the potential dangers to democracy when journalists start with their ideological conclusions and tailor their reports accordingly. Indeed, the contempt Duranty and Brooks express for the notion of objectivity sounds eerily similar to what we are hearing today. Perhaps Holland is not entirely objective herself, but her direct observation and lived-experience of the Soviet Socialist era informs her filmmaking in very personal and relevant ways. This is a powerful film that leaves viewers in a state of deep disquiet. Very highly recommended, 

Joe Bendel on WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES (2020), which opens Friday 7/10

Technically, they are not zombies in the Walking Dead sense. They are zombies like the “She’s Not There” British invasion rock band. Of course, they are a kiddie band, but they have grown up awfully fast. Death has brought them together and death might just be what breaks them apart in Makoto Nagahisa’s We Are Little Zombies, which screens during the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Death will be their constant companion. As fate dictates, the four youngsters meet at the crematorium hosting their parents’ funerals—that’s right, all eight of them. Yet, strangely, they feel little emotion, which even they find somewhat odd. Instead, they band together, trashing their apartments and taking refuge on the streets. They have contempt for the future, living only in the now.

Of course, their stories are uniquely awful. Hikari Takami’s parents died when their tour bus had a fatal collision. They had been hoping to save their marriage by taking a strawberry lovers’ tour (at least they managed to avoid a divorce). Yuki Takemura’s parents committed suicide to escape their creditors. Shinpachi Ishi’s parents were killed in a gas fire at their greasy wok restaurant. Ikuko Ibu’s ‘rents were murdered by her stalker music teacher, because he thought she wanted him to do it—and maybe she did. Ibu is the oldest of the four, so naturally the boys all develop a crush on her.

Yet, it will be Takami who leads their band, “The Little Zombies,” filtering his Gameboy soundtracks through old school synthesizer modulators. Their street performances go viral, launching them to pop idol status, but you can guess the path of their career trajectory.

Little Zombies is not a horror movie, but it is definitely a massive cult film. With its intrusive 8-bit soundtrack and seizure-inducing rapid-editing, it is like an all-out assault on the senses. It is an exhausting film, but you have to respect Nagahisa’s ability to maintain the breakneck lunacy. Even if it makes your eye-sockets bleed, it is a heck of an accomplishment. As an added bonus, Nagahisa’s screenplay is riddled with clever, postmodern breakings of the fourth wall and self-referential wackiness.

Frankly, it is pretty amazing how deadpan Keita Ninomiya, Satoshi Mizuno, Mondo Okumura, and Sena Nakajima remain, despite the maelstrom of insanity swirling around them. It is a different sort of performance, maintaining stoic discipline rather than emoting, but they fulfill their duties faithfully. Recommended for fans of Sion Sono at his most out-there, We Are Little Zombies screens in Covid free theaters and VOD starting Friday

Joe Bendel on 30 For 30: Be Water (2020)

Joe Bendel originally filed this  review of BE WATER when  the film premiered at Sundance in January. With the film in heavy rotation on the ESPN networks because of the lack of sports I'm reposting the piece now.

Bruce Lee is one of handful of movie stars who are just as popular now as they were at the height of their careers. He even spawned a cottage industry of films about his first great Wing Chun master Ip Man, targeted at fans hungry for more, because his family so tightly controls rights to his likeness. With their cooperation, Bao Nguyen chronicles his life through the words of those who knew him best in the ESPN-produced documentary Be Water, which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Action fans already know the broad strokes of Lee’s story, as well as many of the finer details. Lee was a cocky kid who was sent to America to avoid trouble. Despite the hardships of life as an immigrant, he gained some notoriety as a Kung Fu instructor, but struggled to translate it into a Hollywood acting career. Instead, Lee returned to Hong Kong, where his martial arts films produced by Golden Harvest launched him into international superstardom. Yet, he would tragically die just as he was poised to attain crossover-Hollywood stardom. None of this will be spoilery for anyone interested in this film.

Frankly, Be Water largely revisits the same biographical ground covered in Pete McCormack’s I am Bruce Lee. In fact, both films are structured around the famous “Be water, my friend” interview with Pierre Berton, but Nguyen takes a dramatically different stylistic approach. There are no talking-head shots in Be Water (aside from interview footage of Lee himself). Instead, the disembodied voices of colleagues and family reminisce over photos and video of Lee. It should keep the focus squarely on the legendary subject, yet Nguyen feels compelled to constantly put Lee’s career in the context of the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, as if he needs to justify our continuing interest. Seriously, he’s Bruce Lee—there’s no call for such defensiveness.

Nevertheless, the film undeniably benefits from the cooperation of the Lee family, who clearly opened their archive to Nguyen, and the Iosanto family (student and co-star Dan and his daughter Diana Lee, the goddaughter of Bruce Lee). Nevertheless, hardcore fans will find Serge Ou’s Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks does a better job covering Lee’s tenure with Golden Harvest. On the other hand, Be Water is a better source for Lee’s pre-Hong Kong Hollywood career.

It is always fun to watch Bruce Lee and hear stories about the legend, so you can’t go wrong with Be Water. Still, many fans would rather it focus on Lee’s career and skills, rather than trying to posit him as a representative of his turbulent times. Good but not great

Joe Bendel on Abe (2019) which hits DVD on Tuesday

If only they had more fusion cuisine at Taba, maybe then there would be peace in the Middle East. Or perhaps not. A thirteen-year-old aspiring chef in Brooklyn tries to bring his mixed Israeli-Palestinian family together with food, but their divisions might be too deep for his culinary efforts to heal, despite some help from Brazil in Fernando Grostein Andrade’s Abe, which hits VOD on Friday.

Abe prefers “Abe,” but his family calls him Abraham, Avraham, Avi, or Ibrahim, depending on which side is doing the talking. His mother and her parents are Jewish Israeli, his paternal grandparents are Palestinian Muslims, and his father is a “plague on both your houses” atheist. As you might guess, family gatherings are super awkward. Frankly, they bicker so much, they never enjoy Abe’s cooking.

For a thirteen-year-old, Abe is pretty good at the basics (or so he thinks), but he needs a bit of coaching when it comes to more ambitious creations. Chico Catuaba is the chef he has in mind to mentor him. The Bahia native once had his own restaurant, but now sells his unique brand of Brazilian-Jamaican fusion cuisine in his pop-up kitchens throughout Brooklyn. Initially, Catuaba is suspicious of Abe and the potential child labor legal problems he might bring, but the young teen’s sincerity wins him over. However, he will make sure Abe pays his dues first, before giving him real kitchen responsibilities.

Andrade’s film boasts a lithe and lively Brazilian soundtrack, featuring co-star Seu Jorge on two tracks (“Imigrantes” and Veloso’s “Meia Lua Inteira”), Tulipa Ruiz on “Sal E Amor,” and musical supervisor Jaques Morelenbaum’s solo cello arrangements of Jobim’s “Brigas Numcas Mais” and “Samba de Uma Noto So.” It sounds fantastic and the food looks delicious, so it is easy to forgive the formulaic aspects of Lameece Issaq & Jacob Kader’s screenplay. In fact, Andrade executes the culinary coming-of-age tale with a light touch, dialing down the obvious clichés and potentially fraught politics as much as possible. Instead, he focuses on the diverse, likable ensemble of characters.

Noah Schnapp from Stranger Things is appealingly energetic and earnest as Abe. However, the perfectly cast Seu Jorge frequently steals the show as Catuaba. Anyone who has seen him perform knows he has serious charisma and a voice that could take work away from James Earl Jones, but he also wields a kitchen knife with authority. As Abe’s parents, Dagmara Dominczyk and Arian Moayed also convincingly look and sound like a loving couple, whose relationship is under strain and stress. As a bonus, the great character actor Mark Margolis adds some crusty flair as Abe’s Jewish grandfather, Benjamin.

Abe is a very nice little movie with a terrific soundtrack. The notion of refracting the Middle Eastern conflict through the microcosm of a Brooklyn family might sound like a ham-fisted, finger-wagging cinematic lecture, but Andrade mostly makes it work, by not forcing it too hard. Recommended for fans of foodie movies and Seu Jorge, Abe hits home video Tuesday.

The Slamdance award winner Vast of Night (2019) is heading to Amazon Prime

It really was a weather balloon. If you doubt it, check out the articles in The Skeptical Inquiry debunking the Roswell UFO myth. It is a good story, but it is just a story. Nevertheless, the need to believe has made New Mexico ground zero for the flying saucer faithful. Apart from the Roswell rumor-mongering, New Mexico’s wide-open deserts and low population density make fictional Cayuga, NM a suitable location for paranormal goings-on in Andrew Patterson’s The Vast of Night, the plucky microbudget winner of the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival.

Vast of Night is ostensibly an episode of a 1950s science fiction anthology show called Paradox Theater that we start watching on a vintage black-and-white vacuum tube television, before the picture morphs into the evocatively washed out color of the characters’ world. Everett is a cocky high school student who works part-time for the local AM radio station. Everyone in town probably assumes he and Fay will eventually become a couple, but for now, they just bicker too much. Tonight, he is happily helping her get the hang of the new portable tape recorder she just ordered from Montgomery Ward.

Nearly everyone in town will be at the big high school basketball game, but he will be on the air at WOTW and she will be covering the town’s telephone switchboard. When reports of strange lights in the sky start to come in, the ambiguous couple will be able to coordinate their efforts to investigate. It turns out, something downright Roswellian might be afoot, based on claims of “Billy,” a former US Air Force officer, who calls into Everett’s show.

Frankly, it is shocking how well put together Vast is, especially given its extreme budget constraints. It is definitely one of the best looking, smartest written X-Files-esque films in decades. Patterson and cinematographer Miguel Ioann Littin Menz give it an intimate vibe with their claustrophobic long takes, but they also capture a sense of the lonely emptiness of the small town when their restless camera pans from one location to another during transitional scenes. Strange Invaders, the cult favorite from 1983, would be a logical comparison title, in terms of themes and vibe, but Vast is a far superior film.

The period details and visual effects are definitely impressive, but the chemistry between Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz, as Fay and Everett, respectively, is what really elevates Vast. They are terrific together and they both absolutely knock out of the park screenwriters James Montague & Craig W. Sanger’s long, knotty passages of dialogue. They also get first class support from the rest of the ensemble, including the pitch-perfect heard-but-not-seen Bruce Davis as Billy and Gail Cronauer, who holds viewers absolutely rapt as Mabel Blanche, another eye witness of sorts.

Vast of Night is a film you really should see in a darkened theater, because it would be a shame to let the distractions of mundane life break the spell Patterson and his actors cast over the audience. Granted, the story itself is hardly groundbreaking, but Patterson’s mastery of mood, the palpable sense of place, and the work of his two co-leads are really quite special. Very highly recommended, The Vast of Night should have a long life ahead of it with genre film fans, after winning the Audience Award at last year’s Slamdance Film Festival.

Joe Bendel on Light from Light which hits home video starting March 31

Ordinarily, psychics and “paranormal investigators” are con artists by definition, because obviously. However, Sheila is different. For one thing, she does not accept any fees for her services. Furthermore, she readily admits she is not even sure she has any psychic abilities. Nevertheless, she will try to help a grieving widower find some closure, perhaps by contacting his deceased wife’s ghost in Paul Harrill’s Light from Light, which screens during opens today the Quad in New York.

Sheila’s real job is working behind the counter of an airport car rental agency. She has some experience investigating hauntings, but all the gear belonged to her very ex-boyfriend. Nevertheless, she agrees to get back into the game when asked by the kindly Father Martin. He heard her on the radio discussing the possibly predictive dreams she had during childhood and concluded she might be able to help the recently widowed Richard.

After begging and borrowing sensors and cameras, Sheila presses her son Owen into duty as her assistant, but she gets his not-quite-girlfriend Lucy as a bonus volunteer. Together they wire up Richard’s converted country house on edge of the Smoky Mountains, where odd things have been afoot, like flickering lights and objects moving of their own accord. The three not-really-Ghostbusters genuinely hope they can help the earnest fishery warden, but the initial findings will be ambiguous—and complicated.

Frankly, Light is not exactly a supernatural genre film, at least not in a conventional sense, but the ghostly plot points ultimately give it a powerful, bittersweet kick. Yet, minute-by-minute and scene-for-scene, Harrill’s main focus are the fleeting connections humans manage to forge. Every flesh-and-blood character in Light is a good person, whom we come to care about quite a bit. That very definitely includes Father Martin, possibly the most sympathetic man of the cloth to appear on-screen in years. Harrill also penned one of the most touching, yet realistic and grounded mother-son relationships you will see on film in many a blood moon.

Marin Ireland invests the working-class Sheila with genuine grace and dignity. She forges ambiguously poignant chemistry with Richard, played by Jim Gaffigan in what might be his career-best work. It is a quiet and restrained performance, but he makes the widower’s pain and confusion immediately palpable. Atheena Frizzell is shockingly touching as lovesick Lucy, while David Cale gives it all a tinge of compassionate gravitas as Father Martin.

Light is a big, muddy river of a film. It is quiet, but it runs deep. It also looks terrific, thanks to Greta Zozula’s striking cinematography, which captures the mysterious lushness of the Smokies. It is sort of like a rural Personal Shopper, but it is subtler and more humanistic. Very highly recommended, Light from Light hits VOD starting March 31.

VOD/DIGITAL RELEASE DATES:

3/31/20 – iTunes/Apple TV
3/31/20 – Cable VOD (Spectrum, Comcast, Cox)
4/14/20 – Amazon, Kaleidescape
5/26/20 – Blu-ray & DVD

Joe Bendel on Louise by the Shore which plays Saturday at Animation First

The beaches of Normandy and Brittany are still regularly invaded by armies of tourists, who also retreat with similar clockwork precision. A seventy-something vacationer will liken herself to Robinson Crusoe when she misses the last train out of the seasonal seaside town. Yet, her months of solitude will not be such a hardship in Jean-François Laguionie’s remarkably graceful animated feature Louise by the Shore, which releases today on DVD from First Run Features.

Due to a malfunctioning clock, Louise misses the last train out of town. The town is now completely deserted and effectively cut off from the outside world by a freak storm. Despite her initial concerns, she soon finds the sea will provide sustenance and a small garden plot will nicely augment her diet. Fashioning the lifeguard stand into a makeshift hunt and using the luxury hotel’s outdoor showers, she lives rather pleasantly on the beach. She even finds companionship when she meets Pepper, a stray mutt, who sometimes has the power of speech.

Shore is a deceptively simple, but emotionally complex film about a woman of advanced years re-learning how to live in concert with nature and finally coming to terms with painful memories from her childhood. It is not about slapstick gags or catchy tunes (although Pierre Kellner’s piano compositions and Pascal Le Pennec’s orchestral score are arrestingly beautiful). Instead it is a memory play of sorts and an exploration of Madame Louise’s insecurities and unresolved issues. Plus, there is a dog you’d love to scratch behind the ears.

Laguionie is probably best known for the visually distinctive GKIDS release, The Painting, but Shore has an even more sophisticated look. Using a pastel color palate, his hand-drawn animation deliberately evokes the look of water-color painting and urbane French illustrators. It is all quite beautiful, but Laguionie’s style also potently evokes the feeling one gets from being in a familiar place at a time that completely changes its vibe, like visiting an old school yard after graduation.

Shore is a mature and refined work, but Laguionie employs quite the light touch. We are never pummeled with big melodramatic takeaways. Instead, he inspires wistful sighs and wry smiles. This is a perfect an example of animation as a high art form. Very highly recommended, Louise by the Shore plays Saturday at FAIF's Animation First Festival. For information and tickets to the screening go here.

Joe Bendel on AWAY which opens Friday in theaters

Beautiful but forbidding, this island exists somewhere between the natural world and your subconscious. To survive, a young boy must survive the elements and an archetypal monster that could be real or a product of his own unconscious fears—or both. It is only seventy-five minutes, but animator-director-screenwriter-producer-editor-composer Gints Zilbalodis’s Away will likely be one of the most memorable (and possibly divisive) films that has premiered at the 2019 Fantasia International Film Festival.

The boy wakes hanging from a tree, dangling by his parachute, when suddenly he comes face to face with the monster. He extricates himself in the nick of time, but the monster follows and follows. Despite his best efforts, he cannot shake the silent hulk, even with the help of the timely warnings provided by the yellow canary, who becomes his traveling companion. At least the scenery is beautiful to behold.

Whether you love it or hate it, give Zilbalodis credit for crafting a remarkably distinctive piece of animated cinema. There is no question, some people will not love it, given its complete lack of dialogue and heavy symbolic weightiness. We never really get to know the boy as a character, but that hardly matters. It is all about the journey and the spectacle (the sight of the giant is especially haunting). Many of have already compared Away to Michael Dudok de Wit’s The Red Turtle, which is apt, but try to imagine a teaspoon of A Monster Calls thrown into the mix.

If you buy into Away, it becomes a hypnotic cinematic experience. Visually, it is a true stunner. The details of the island’s environment look as if they could be of our Earth, yet somehow the way they are put together feels alien and exotic. Even if you can only engage with Away on a surface level, you should still appreciate Zilbalodis’s artistry.

Away looks awesome, but it also sounds quite striking, thanks to Zilbalodis’s minimalist soundtrack, which could pass for the work of Philip Glass. It is an amazing work of auteurist animation in the truest sense, given how many roles Zilbalodis played. Away really is its own cinematic island. Very highly recommended, Away should be on GKIDS radar following its North American premiere at this year’s Fantasia.

Joe Bendel on LIGHT FROM LIGHT which hits theaters today (and info on this weekends Q&As at the Quad in NYC)

Ordinarily, psychics and “paranormal investigators” are con artists by definition, because obviously. However, Sheila is different. For one thing, she does not accept any fees for her services. Furthermore, she readily admits she is not even sure she has any psychic abilities. Nevertheless, she will try to help a grieving widower find some closure, perhaps by contacting his deceased wife’s ghost in Paul Harrill’s Light from Light, which screens during opens today the Quad in New York.

Sheila’s real job is working behind the counter of an airport car rental agency. She has some experience investigating hauntings, but all the gear belonged to her very ex-boyfriend. Nevertheless, she agrees to get back into the game when asked by the kindly Father Martin. He heard her on the radio discussing the possibly predictive dreams she had during childhood and concluded she might be able to help the recently widowed Richard.

After begging and borrowing sensors and cameras, Sheila presses her son Owen into duty as her assistant, but she gets his not-quite-girlfriend Lucy as a bonus volunteer. Together they wire up Richard’s converted country house on edge of the Smoky Mountains, where odd things have been afoot, like flickering lights and objects moving of their own accord. The three not-really-Ghostbusters genuinely hope they can help the earnest fishery warden, but the initial findings will be ambiguous—and complicated.

Frankly, Light is not exactly a supernatural genre film, at least not in a conventional sense, but the ghostly plot points ultimately give it a powerful, bittersweet kick. Yet, minute-by-minute and scene-for-scene, Harrill’s main focus are the fleeting connections humans manage to forge. Every flesh-and-blood character in Light is a good person, whom we come to care about quite a bit. That very definitely includes Father Martin, possibly the most sympathetic man of the cloth to appear on-screen in years. Harrill also penned one of the most touching, yet realistic and grounded mother-son relationships you will see on film in many a blood moon.

Marin Ireland invests the working-class Sheila with genuine grace and dignity. She forges ambiguously poignant chemistry with Richard, played by Jim Gaffigan in what might be his career-best work. It is a quiet and restrained performance, but he makes the widower’s pain and confusion immediately palpable. Atheena Frizzell is shockingly touching as lovesick Lucy, while David Cale gives it all a tinge of compassionate gravitas as Father Martin.

Light is a big, muddy river of a film. It is quiet, but it runs deep. It also looks terrific, thanks to Greta Zozula’s striking cinematography, which captures the mysterious lushness of the Smokies. It is sort of like a rural Personal Shopper, but it is subtler and more humanistic. Very highly recommended, Light from Light is playing at the Quad Cinemas in New York.

If you are planning on seeing it at the Quad opening weekend you may want to know that there will be the following Q&A's

Friday 11/1 @ 7pm - Director Paul Harrill and actors Marin Ireland and David Cale

Saturday 11/2 @ 7pm - Director Paul Harrill and actor Marin Ireland

Monday 11/4 @ 7pm - Director Paul Harrill and actor Jim Gaffigan,
moderated by producer Elisabeth Moss

With ONE CUT OF THE DEAD opening Friday, here are Joe and Nate's thoughts on the film

The much loved zombie film ONE CUT of the dead is coming to theaters on Friday. to that end I am posting tag team reviews where Joe Bendel and Nate Hood  wax poetic about it.

It takes a little time to figure out exactly what’s going on in Shin'ichirô Ueda’s ONE CUT OF THE DEAD. But as the film barrels on, the bits and pieces click into place and one can’t help but smile at Ueda’s cleverness and the sheer complexity of his undertaking. This is a film that works best when audiences go into it completely cold with no preconceptions. But since the phrase “Please go see this movie” is about 395 words short of my minimum for reviews, I’ll have to let part of the cat out of the bag. But only a small part.

The first thirty minutes are presented as a found footage movie about a film crew shooting a cheesy zombie film at an abandoned factory when—surprise!—real zombies attack. Filmed in one long take with a handheld camera, it’s awkwardly paced, irregularly acted, and most crucially, not scary. The whole things reeks of unintentional camp, from a middle-aged make-up artist demonstrating women’s self-defense techniques straight out of Diedrich Bader’s karate class in Napoleon Dynamite to a twist revealing the director went insane a long time ago and deliberately led the film crew to the zombie-infested site so he could film their “real fear.” (This director is responsible for the single genuinely entertaining part of the documentary when he suddenly reappears after seemingly being bludgeoned to death, throwing open one of the side doors of the car the surviving actors are trying to escape in, pushing a zombie into it, and maniacally screaming “Action!”) It finally ends with an amateurish climax where the Last Girl—an actress who’d been berated by the insane director for blowing takes with her mediocre acting skills—confronts her freshly zombified co-star and behind-the-scenes love interest with an axe. She raises it, begs him to come around, steels herself, and pauses as if she forgot her line or that she’s on a roof being attacked by a zombie. She raises it a second time. Again she chokes. A third time, and she finally manages to chop his head off. With the zombies defeated, the camera pulls back into the sky for a bird’s-eye view revealing she’s standing in a giant pentagram of blood. And then the film abruptly jumps a month into the past where we watch the producers, director, film crew, and cast get together to plan the fateful zombie shoot we just watched.

I refuse to spoil what happens next, but please believe me when I say that it’s nothing you might expect. One Cut of the Dead represents everything great about the New York Asian Film Festival: a celebration of bold new talents, unexpected genre mashing, and audacious filmmaking that leaves your mouth on the floor.

Rating: 9/10

It was supposed to be the Rope of zombie movies, filmed in one continuous shot. Then the zombies attack for real. However, if you think that sounds crazy, wait until you see it all again from a different perspective. Zombies get the mash-up treatment like never before in Shinichiro Ueda’s One Cut of the Dead (trailer here), which screens during the What The Fest.

Higurashi is a bullying director a thousand times worse than Peter O’Toole in The Stunt Man. He has so little regard for cast and crew safety, he awakens the zombie curse hanging over their remote location, an abandoned industrial site, where the Japanese military reportedly staged sinister occult experiments during WWII. As crew-members turn into feral zombies, Higurashi finally gets the realistic performances he wants from his terrified thesps.

However, there is much more going on outside the camera’s field of vision. In a complete change of tone, the film goes from a Night of the Living Dead rip-off to a worthy successor to Noises Off. It is hard to explain out of context, but Ueda’s editing is absolutely masterful. You just need to see it for yourself.

One of the many cool things about Cut is how completely Ueda and his cast commit to each phase of the film. The second and third acts are so wickedly clever, precisely because we were with the cast-members when they were running for their lives during the opening set-up.
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Takayuki Hamatsu could possibly give the performance of the year as Higurashi. He certainly shows phenomenal range. Yet, Harumi Syuhama arguably eclipses his lunacy as Nao, the makeup artist who turns into a berserk killing machine and also acts pretty nuts in the third act as well. Mao develops some smart but endearing chemistry with them both as her namesake, an aspiring filmmaker.

Eventually, Cut evolves into a hilarious valentine to underdog independent genre filmmaking. It would pair up nicely with Graham Kelly Greene’s criminally overlooked Attack of the Bat Monsters. In fact, at one point a character in the Cormanesque spoof rather wistfully states: “in the future, people will watch these movies and laugh, but they’ll never understand how hard we worked on them.” That sentiment also perfectly fits Cut. It is a total winner that will charm the pants off horror fans. Very highly recommended

Last Witness (2019) Chain Film Festival

You would have thought the British government would have learned their lesson on appeasement, but apparently not. It has only been a few short years since the end of WWII, but the new Labour government is determined to avoid embarrassing the Soviets. The last thing they want to do is open a formal inquiry into the 1940 mass murder of 22,000 Polish prisoners of war, police officers, community leaders, and clergy in the Katyn Forest. However, a disillusioned journalist will try to force their hand when he discovers a fugitive dissident who saw enough to set the historical record straight in Piotr Szkopiak’s The Last Witness, which August 13th at the Chain Film Festival.

Stephen Underwood did not serve in the war, due to a childhood injury that left him blind in one eye. His brother John rose up through the ranks, becoming a captain, but he still feels guilty, because he caused the accident. Captain Underwood is assigned to a Polish displaced person’s camp. The mood there is quite bad, since the British government no longer recognizes the Polish government in exile. Despite the respect accorded to Col. Janusz Pietrowski of the Polish Home Army, the British government would much prefer to see the Polish asylum seekers return home, where they would surely be imprisoned or worse.

This is especially true of Mason Mitchell, a young, fast-tracked British Home Office official. Underwood does not think very much of him. The reporter happens to be engaged in an affair with his wife, Jeanette, who is also serving at the Polish camp. Her husband does not much care about such things, but he would never divorce her, for social and professional reasons. One day, Underwood spies a Russian trying to pass for a Polish refugee. Intrigued, he discovers that man was a farmer outside of Smolensk, who witnessed uniformed Polish soldiers executed by NKVD and Russian military personnel, rather than the Germans, as the Soviets claimed until 2010. Unfortunately, his interest also draws the attention of Soviet agents.

Szkopiak’s film strictly focuses on the cover-up rather than the war crime, unlike Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn, which encompasses both. However, it is important to keep in mind both filmmakers had direct connections to the massacre. Wajda’s father was murdered by the Soviets, whereas for Szkopiak, it was his grandfather. Arguably, Katyn was Wajda’s final masterwork, whereas Last Witness is essentially a dark but largely conventional thriller.

Yet, Szkopiak’s screenplay, co-written with Paul Szambowski, is bursting at the seams with fascinating political nuggets that are true to the historical record. The so-called “O’Malley Report” really exists and the British government most definitely did its best to suppress it. Even more provocative are the hints that Mr. Mitchell is perhaps a contemporary of the Cambridge Five and their treasonous ilk. Frankly, there are aspects of this film that will be too smart for some viewers and too honest for others.

Alex Pettyfer’s performance as the civilian Underwood is grimly reserved and tightly disciplined. It is impressive in its way, but it probably would have better served the film in a supporting role rather than the primary lead. Henry Lloyd-Hughes makes Mitchell unambiguously slimy, while keeping viewers guessing on several other points. Will Thorp gives the film steely gravitas as Col. Pietrowski (perhaps his best work to date), while Robert Wieckiewicz is terrific as the man who knew too much (a more complicated role than one might assume).

Periodically, we give lip service to the truth as a higher ideal when it helps grind our political axes, but too often, the commitment is disingenuous and short-lived. Katyn is a case in point. Putin is doing his best to walk back the Russian government’s official declaration of guilt, to the complete disinterest of our factionalized media. This is therefore a timely and much needed film in many ways, but it also functions as a gripping (and galling) historical thriller. Highly recommended, The Last Witness plays August 13th at the Chain Film Festival.

One Child Nation (2019) opens Friday

With ONE CHILD NATION opening Friday I am reposting Joe Bendel's review from Sundance.

From 1979 to 2015, there was a regime very much like that in The Handmaid’s Tale, but instead of prohibiting abortions, they mandated them—along with involuntary sterilization (of mothers, not fathers). When China’s notorious One Child Policy was in full effect, the Communist government relentlessly intruded into bedrooms and families’ lives. The draconian mandate has been relaxed to a “Two Child Policy,” but the guilt and emotional pain persists for the parents who were forced to comply. Filmmakers Nanfu Wang & Jialing Zhang expose the resulting trauma, both on a national level and within Wang’s own family throughout One Child Nation, which screens during the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival.

As a poor rural family, Wang’s parents were allowed to have a second child, as long as they were at least five years apart, but it was still strenuously discouraged. She quite pointedly remembers the shame she felt in school when it was discovered she had a sibling. However, when Wang had her baby boy, she started to reconsider all the propaganda she had been fed during her youth.

As the New York-based Wang starts to ask questions of her Chinese family, she discovers unknown cousins who were abandoned (ultimately, to their death) and a profound sense of shame amongst nearly all her relatives. Being good documentarians, Wang and Zhang do not stop there. They follow the trail, interviewing the village headmen and family planning apparatchiks who enforced the policy. They also challenge preconceptions of the human traffickers who effectively saved thousands of abandoned infants by “selling” them to orphanages, which supplied the lucrative Western adoption market.

One Child Nation addresses a lot of hot-button issues, including the role of human traffickers in China, the pervasiveness of state propaganda, the overwhelming cultural gender preference for boys (and the inequalities that come with it), and the systematic deception of Chinese orphanages that lied about the background of their charges and often split up twin siblings. Yet, every topic arises organically out of the filmmakers’ investigation. This is a tight, focused film—it just happens to have an awful lot to say.

Wang’s Hooligan Sparrow might just be the gutsiest documentary ever made, so it is a heavy statement to call One Child Nation a worthy follow-up. It might sound like it is old news to the half-informed now that the Communist Party is flogging its Two Child Policy, but she and Zhang make it crystal clear how profoundly the One Child Policy damaged China’s social fabric.

Frankly, this is sometimes a difficult film to watch. The images of cast-aside fetuses and babies will surely break your heart and possibly turn your stomach (wisely, these are incorporated sparingly—just enough to establish the truth). Very highly recommended (especially for Women’s March participants).

Joe Bendel on The Lodge (2019) Fantasia 2019

Step-parenting is always a tricky proposition, but it is especially so for Grace. As the sole survivor of a suicidal death cult, she has sort of already lost one “family.” Her prospective stepson and stepdaughter are less than thrilled to welcome her into their family. It is hard to form a conclusive judge about them or her in Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala’s The Lodge, which screens during the Fantasia.

Grace’s father was the charismatic leader of an apocalyptic Christian cult that committed mass-suicide Hale-Bopp-style. She was left behind to tell their tale, like the characters left standing at the end of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Should that make us trust her more or less?

Regardless, Richard fell for her hard while writing a retrospective piece on the cult. Aidan and Mia were already seriously unhappy with his decision to take up with Grace, but when their mother Laura is suddenly ushered out of the movie, Grace becomes the focus of their hard feelings. Hoping to bring peace to their awkward family unit, Richard books a getaway vacation at an isolated mountain lodge. Right, what could go wrong—aside from Richard getting called back to work just before a severe storm cuts off Grace and the two resentful children from the outside world?

Maybe Grace is a victim in all this, or maybe not, but either way, her cult backstory is massively creepy. Franz & Fiala frequently return to images of the mass suicide, which are especially disturbing, because they deliberately emulate news footage of the Heaven’s Gate cult. It is arguably exploitative, but undeniably effective.

In fact, The Lodge is consistently unsettling because of its uncertainties, starting first and foremost with the true nature of Grace’s character. Riley Keough’s subtle, ambiguous performance gives viewer plenty to support any interpretation. Likewise, as Aidan and Mia, Jaeden Lieberher and Lia McHugh make two of the most suspicious and intense kids to appear on film since the off-the-rails twins in Franz & Fiala’s Goodnight Mother.

If you want to get technical, there are probably some serious logical issues within The Lodge, but Franz & Fiala’s command of mood and atmosphere is so strong, we don’t even notice in the moment. The chills are further heightened by Thimios Bakatakis’s appropriately icy cinematography. However, the recurring use of a dollhouse motif is probably a mistake, because it automatically brings to mind comparisons to Ari Aster’s Hereditary. Recommended for fans of high-end horror, The Lodge screens July 31 at Fantasia.

Joe Bendel on We Are Little Zombies (2019) Fantasia 2019

Technically, they are not zombies in the Walking Dead sense. They are zombies like the “She’s Not There” British invasion rock band. Of course, they are a kiddie band, but they have grown up awfully fast. Death has brought them together and death might just be what breaks them apart in Makoto Nagahisa’s We Are Little Zombies, which screens during the Fantasia Fest

Death will be their constant companion. As fate dictates, the four youngsters meet at the crematorium hosting their parents’ funerals—that’s right, all eight of them. Yet, strangely, they feel little emotion, which even they find somewhat odd. Instead, they band together, trashing their apartments and taking refuge on the streets. They have contempt for the future, living only in the now.

Of course, their stories are uniquely awful. Hikari Takami’s parents died when their tour bus had a fatal collision. They had been hoping to save their marriage by taking a strawberry lovers’ tour (at least they managed to avoid a divorce). Yuki Takemura’s parents committed suicide to escape their creditors. Shinpachi Ishi’s parents were killed in a gas fire at their greasy wok restaurant. Ikuko Ibu’s ‘rents were murdered by her stalker music teacher, because he thought she wanted him to do it—and maybe she did. Ibu is the oldest of the four, so naturally the boys all develop a crush on her.

Yet, it will be Takami who leads their band, “The Little Zombies,” filtering his Gameboy soundtracks through old school synthesizer modulators. Their street performances go viral, launching them to pop idol status, but you can guess the path of their career trajectory.

Little Zombies is not a horror movie, but it is definitely a massive cult film. With its intrusive 8-bit soundtrack and seizure-inducing rapid-editing, it is like an all-out assault on the senses. It is an exhausting film, but you have to respect Nagahisa’s ability to maintain the breakneck lunacy. Even if it makes your eye-sockets bleed, it is a heck of an accomplishment. As an added bonus, Nagahisa’s screenplay is riddled with clever, postmodern breakings of the fourth wall and self-referential wackiness.

Frankly, it is pretty amazing how deadpan Keita Ninomiya, Satoshi Mizuno, Mondo Okumura, and Sena Nakajima remain, despite the maelstrom of insanity swirling around them. It is a different sort of performance, maintaining stoic discipline rather than emoting, but they fulfill their duties faithfully. Recommended for fans of Sion Sono at his most out-there, We Are Little Zombies screens July 16th at Fantasia.

Joe Bendel on The Gangster, The Cop and The Devil (2019) Fantasia 2019

There are two basic strategies serial killers can opt for to select their prey: obsessive observation and stalking or pure randomness. The latter has the advantage of following no discernible patterns for the police to trace. The downside is a potential target like Jang Dong-su. The beefy gangster is really hard to kill and he has an army of foot soldiers to search for his mystery assailant. Frankly, the killer would probably be better off if the ethically ambiguous national copper Jung Tae-seok finds him first in Lee Won-tae’s deliciously twisted The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil, which tomorrow at the Fantasia Festival.

Jang is played by the mighty Don Lee (Ma Dong-seok), so nobody in their right mind would mess with him. Of course, that is precisely the case with the psychotic “K.” He thinks he has the drop on Jang with his usual minor fender-bender M.O., but it takes more than a few stabs to kill the Paul Bunyon-esque crime lord.

Initially, Jang’s gang assumes the attack was the work of a rival faction, but he calls off the war when he comes to. Not surprisingly, he is inclined to solve the matter personally rather than cooperate with Jung’s investigation. However, they forge a tentative alliance to coordinate intel and resources to track down the killer. They start betraying and double-crossing each other almost immediately, but they still keep returning to their basic agreement, for the sake of preventing further murders and scoring some stone-cold payback, so, yeah.

South Korea has always demonstrated a clear comparative advantage when it comes to producing serial killer thrillers, but GCD takes the genre to new sinister heights. Lee Won-tae came up with the mother of all high concepts and his execution barrels forward with the energy of a runaway freight train. Plus, it is just jolly good fun to watch Don Lee and Kim Moo-yul scheme, fight, and bicker together as Jang and Jung, respectively. Lee could very well be the only man in the world who could credibly play Jang, who we can easily believe would survive multiple stab wounds to the torso. Train to Busan already made him a star, but GCD should definitely be a next-level-up movie for him.

Yet, maybe the biggest surprise is how well Kim hangs with him. He is spectacularly sleazy and nakedly self-serving, but we also believe he genuinely wants to stop the murders. As K, Kim Sung-kyu is undeniably creepy and coldly clammy, but he is somewhat overshadowed by the larger-than-life flamboyance of Lee and Kim Moo-yul.

GCD is so wickedly clever, the American remake rights have already been snapped up. Unfortunately, it was Sylvester Stallone who nabbed the hot property, which doesn’t inspire much confidence anymore. On the plus side, Don Lee is already attached to reprise his portrayal of Jang, which is cause for cautious optimism. Regardless, there can be little doubt the original will be the better film—and it is the one opening this week. Very highly recommended, The Gangster, The Cop, the Devil plays tomorrow at Fantasia.

Joe Bendel on Zhang Yimou's SHADOW (2018) Fantasia 2019

Commander Yu of the Pei Kingdom is a bit like Field Marshal “Monty” Montgomery (and Saddam Hussein). He uses a double. “Use” really is the right word. The Machiavellian Yu will exploit his other self while openly defying his king in Zhang Yimou’s masterwork Shadow, which opens tomorrow in New York.

The Kingdoms of Pei and Yang have struck an uneasy alliance, but the latter enjoys the stronger position, because they hold the strategically important city of Jingzhou. That does not sit well with a fervent Pei nationalist like Yu, but the cruel and cowardly king has dug in his heels. Rather than challenge Yang’s claim to the city, he will instead sacrifice his beloved sister as a marriage offering. However, Yu upsets his plans by having his “shadow,” the peasant-born Jing, challenge Yang’s legendary commander, Yang Cang, to a mano-a-mano for-all-the-marbles duel.

Of course, this enrages the Pei King, who is all too willing to rule as a de facto vassal of Yang, as long as his authority is obsequiously respected. Meanwhile, Jing develops free-agent inclinations of his own. The only ally Yu can fully count on is his wife (only referred to as “Madam”), whose loyalty is unconditional, even though her romantic affections are starting to shift to Jing.

Shadow was relatively unheralded before its Western festival debut, but it ranks up there with Zhang’s finest wuxia epics, which is saying something. Without question, it is one of his most visually stunning films, clearly inspired by Chinese ink-wash and charcoal drawings. Technically, this is still a color film, but Zhang largely utilizes an austere but striking color palette of blacks, whites, and grays.

The big martial arts set pieces are equally amazing to behold, if not more so. The umbrella fighting techniques practiced by Yu (played by Jing) might sound eccentric, but they are lethally cinematic. The same is true of the epic-worthy set design, including the awe-inspiring Ying-Yang battle platform.

Deng Cao truly covers the waterfront in the dual role of Jing and Yu. He chews plenty of scenery as both hero and villain, but he also shows off his tremendous action chops. Zheng Kai is spectacularly slimy and downright odious as the King, while Hu Jun is gruff but dignified as General Yang. However, it is Sun Li who truly grounds the film as the noble, long-suffering Madam Yu.

The imagery is arresting, the fight scenes are super-charged, and the drama is the stuff of classic high tragedy. Taken altogether, Shadow makes the case for Wuxia as the ultimate artistic flowering of action cinema. It is a great film from a master filmmaker. Very highly recommended, Shadow plays at Fantasia July 14 and 15

Joe Bendel on FURIE which plays NYAFF July 11 with Veronica Ngo in attendance

In the movies, human traffickers are woefully inept at cost-benefit analyses. In Taken, someone should have decided to quietly return Liam Neeson’s daughter on the condition of no questions asked. That is even more true of Hai Phuong. The former gangster has a pretty lethal skill set of her own, but it is her mama bear protectiveness that makes her so formidable in Le Van Kiet’s Furie, which plays at the New York Asian Film Festival July 11.

Hai was once a gangster, which is why she is still estranged from her family. All she really needs is her daughter Mai, who is unwisely snatcher away from her one day in the country market. They had been fighting before her abduction, so Hai is especially distraught. She will doggedly follow their trail all the way to Saigon, where she used to haunt the streets during her earlier criminal years.

Yep, that is about the size of Furie. This is not exactly what you would call a complex narrative structure, but it finds virtue in its simplicity. This is the sort of old school beat-down that defined Hong Kong action movies in the 1970s and 1980s. Kiet sets up the pins and Ngo knocks them down. Why complicate something so brutally effective?

Ngo’s action chops are already well-established, but she performs some of her grittiest, most cinematic fight scenes yet as Hai. She really takes it to the level of Villainess, but the mother-daughter relationship is also quite touching, thanks to the rapport she shares with young Mai Cat Vi, playing her namesake. Viewers will really, really root for Hai to rescue Mai and to dish out the payback the traffickers so richly deserve.

Phan Thanh Nhien is appropriately steely as Luong, the honest copper, but he is a distant second fiddle compared to the ferocious Ngo (and Hai). However, Hoa Tran’s scenery chewing presence and ferocious physicality makes trafficking gang leader Thanh Soi a more than worthy nemesis. Frankly, her character exits too soon—and with too much finality.

Kiet and Ngo deliver some juicy red meat for action fans. This is a lithe, street smart movie that only has one speed: full throttle. So, it’s a simple, straight forward review for an unfussy, gleefully violent film. Highly recommended for patrons of marital arts films and Vietnamese cinema, Furie Plays July 11 at the New York Asian Film Festival with Veronica Ngo in attendance. For tickets and more information go here.

Fantasia is two weeks off- go buy tickets

With two weeks until Fantasia starts in Montreal I just wanted to remind that tickets are on sale (go here) and that you should be planning your trip to Canada to partake in the cinematic goodness.

We are looking forward to the festival with Lorcan Finnegan VIVARIUM at the top of our list and almost everything else a close second. I and the rest of the Unseen Films staff have been huge fans of his since we first ran across him several years ago.

While it is impossible to discuss a festival specifically until we actually wade into the films  I do want to tell you that before we even step off the  cliff  there will be a ton of coverage from both myself, and Mr Joe Bendel who is going to be on the ground this year. I will be reposting reviews of around 20 films that have played at other festivals (BLISS, COME TO DADDY, DEPRAVED, HOUSE OF HUMMINGBIRD, WHY DON’T YOU JUST DIE to name just a few) or have played here in the states before their Canadian premiere at Fantasia. Additionally we will have coverage of another 15 films also playing at the New York Asian and Japan Cuts festivals which will be paralleling the festival (For example look for reviews of HARD-CORE, MASTER Z, and THE FABLE as part of our NYAFF coverage this weekend).

We are going to have you covered with more reviews than you is humanly possible so keep reading -but more importantly:GO BUY TICKETS.

Blinded by all the cinematic goodness that is Fantasia