Stay AT Home Fest Bonus Film: The Indian Lake Project

Half hour film about a website trying to unravel a potential government program to use children in mind control experiments.

A brief look at the Brooklyn Film Festival which starts Friday and runs to June 7

Wanna see some great films for free?

As with everything these days of Covid 19,  the Brooklyn Film Festival has gone on line. They are screening the films for free but you have to register to get access and they are being grouped into two hour blocks. Part of a recent press release read as follows:

"...all Brooklyn Film Festival films will play for free via BFF’s website for the whole duration of the festival, but viewers must first open a free account and can begin to pre-register [now] on the BFF website at https://www.brooklynfilmfestival.org/bff-audience-registration. The video server will be hosted by Vimeo. Audience voting will be limited to one vote per account. BFF will also organize parallel live events such as filmmaker introductions and Q&A sessions on the BFF website, Facebook and other social media"

They are running a lot of good and a few great  films so if you want to lose yourself for ten days I suggest you get yourself registered. (Hey I know I should say more but after singing its praises for a decade I don't know what else to say other than you know how good the festival is because I keep going back)

I know, now that you realize that you can access 140 films you are probably wondering which of them are good.  To be honest I have not had a chance to see everything, however I have seen a few and based on that might I suggest the following.

ALIVE- a wicked short film about a handicapped woman wanting to find love...or sex. Its a neat little film that becomes glorious in it's ending.

MR SAM- a young man has fallen in love...with a corpse. A wicked charming short film that I would love to see expanded. This was one of the best films of any length I saw in 2019.

LEWISTON is a short about two communities in the town of Lewiston and this is so good it needs to become a feature film.

MACABRE- based on a true case of murder and mayhem it follows a police officer sent to subdue killers known as the Necrophil Brothers.

HIGHER LOVE- one of 2020's very best films concerns a father trying to keep the mother of his child sober and out of trouble. It will move you.

THE BLACK EMPEROR OF BROADWAY is the story of Charles Gilpin who rose to prominence by starring in O'Neill's Emperor Jones. Shaun Parkes gives an Oscar worthy turn in the lead. It is a towering achievement and a must see.

EROTIC FIRE OF THE UNATTAINABLE- a 60 something woman searches for love. It has literate dialog is endlessly quotable.

FITNESS! or a Story about SWEAT is the second short film from Kana Hatakeyama.  Its a very funny look at one woman's quest to get fit.  It is also proof that s Hatakeyama is destined for great things.

There are more of course but that should get you started (besides I still haven't had a chance to see everything that I was sent)

Reviews start hitting tomorrow and will land through the festival.

For more details on the festival go here.

Yesteryear (2020)

With this year's Covid 19 outbreak causing a desire for a lost simpler time, director Chris Esper takes a look at how we view our past through home movies. The result is film which will hit you like a ton of bricks as it  sends ripples of nostalgia through you.

Made up of home video and film footage from his family as well as from other sources Esper replays moments in our lives, from getting the camera, to birthdays, Christmas, vacations, Fourth of July and other events. There is a no narration we only hear the words from the films or the gentle score. The result is a connection to that part of our memories where we connect to to these seemingly simpler times.

Was the world ever this simple? Probably not. But it is how we tend to remember it, the good times shorn of the bad stuff. A decade or so on how we remember today will be via the funny videos we made and not the uncertainty we never record. Esper's film reminds us that years from now we will remember the good and not the bad.

Esper's film is a quiet stunner. It is a film of it's time. It is a cry into the  night that we will get through these difficult times and remember them fondly on the other end. It is a lovesong to the memories that give us hope for tomorrow.

Were the whole Covid 19 thing not happening I would be almost certain that Esper's film might end up in the running for an Oscar, but then again it it isn't big and showy rather it is quiet and reflective. It's more the thing that makes the hair stand up on your neck and you take into your heart forever instead of making you go wow before you move on to the next thing.

Oscar likes the big wow films.  Personally I prefer the small ones which is why I loved YESTERYEAR.

YESTERYEAR is part of the Stories In Motion series and will be released sometime this week.

Nate Hood's Quarantine Qapsule #49 Capricious Summer [1968] ★★★½

Sometimes a film doesn’t have to be ground-breaking or influential to be good. Sometimes, it’s enough to just be pleasant. And Jiří Menzel’s Capricious Summer is a very, very pleasant film. Vaguely set at some point in Interwar Czechoslovakia, the film largely takes place in a lakeside bathhouse in an idyllic countryside warm with the drowsiness of summer. Portly vacationers sun themselves on the dock in between sudden cloud bursts that drown half-drunk glasses of wine. Men float in the water, puffing at cigars as their wives playfully flirt with their friends. There’s liquor in the cups, sausage on the tables, and thoughtful conversation on the lips of everyone. Jirí Susi’s cinematography suggests delicate pastels as if everything, even the water and grass, has been gently bleached by the sun. It’s the kind of cinematic world you’d love to crawl into. And within this world Menzel weaves a wistful comedy of love and foolishness.

The film follows the romantic fortunes of three friends: Antonín Dura (Rudolf Hrusínský), the grouchy owner of the bathhouse, ex-soldier Major Hugo (Vlastimil Brodský), and a priest named Roch (František Řehák). The three fall in love with Anna (Jana Drchalová), a dancer in a circus that’s come to town led by magician and tightrope walker Arnostek (Menzel). The film sees all three attempt to seduce the eager and willing Anna, yet fail at the very last moment. When the brutish Antonín corners her in his bathhouse, his demeanor melts into that of a nervous child, leaving him incapable of doing anything more than giving the dancer a foot massage. When the Major takes his turn at Anna’s circus, his seduction is suddenly interrupted when Antonín is rushed into their lodging after taking a terrible fall during his tightrope act. And when the hapless Roch tries to cozy up to her with a collection of Ovid’s love poetry, he gets attacked by a group of villagers. Eventually the frustrated Anna leaves the town in a huff.

The film plays almost like a light-hearted prediction of Luis Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), another comedy about sexual frustration, but lacking the Spaniard’s characteristic misanthropy. Capricious Summer is very obviously a bemused fantasy instead of a surrealist indictment of human nature—we never get the impression that we’re supposed to dislike the characters, even as they go behind each other’s backs or attempt adultery.

Aurora (2018)

This is the "true" story of the alleged crash of an airship in 1897 Aurora Texas in a storm. Allegedly the ship broke apart and was thrown in a well while the occupant was given a Christian burial. Attempts to find the ship and the occupant over the years have failed.

Taking the crash as a starting point the film imagines that people in the town found the and brought him to the sheriff's office. What happened next is the film, but it isn't giving anything away to say that there is a monster involved.

I believe that Randi pointed me toward the Kickstarter campaign for AURORA and  liking what I saw I instantly threw some cash at the project in the hope of seeing the finished product. I am so glad I did.

The film is, for most of it's running time, a killer homage to black and white 1950's B science fiction films. Running a lean 30 minutes this film beautifully generates more tension than most five or six other recent feature length horror films combined. Gloriously it does so using just words and shadows. The film is mostly people talking about what happened and it creepy as all get out.

If the film has any flaw it is in the brief monster sequence. Looking like the man in a suit that it is, it never looks real. Yes, it looks cool, but it never looks right with it's fixed mouth and over sized hands causing groans within the context of the film This is one one the very few fils where you don't want to see the monster..Fortunately the rest of the film is so good that you can't help but not mind.

Sadly AURORA illustrates a problem with many Kickstarter projects, they fade away. Yes, a good number of them get completed. Yes, they will play festivals. But at the sametime the projects then vanish never to be seen again. I only knew about the film because I kicked in money. If I hadn't I would never have known.  And lest you think that this film didn't have some sort of profile at one point realize that best selling Author Neil Gaiman was hot on the project enough that he is quoted in the material for the film and thanked in the credits. (additionally it also suffers from having a title that it shares with dozens and dozens of others, but that is another story)

Ultimately AURORA is a great film. However it is a film you need to search out, because the festival run appears to be winding down (and in the age of covid certain) and because it really is that good.
Here is the IMDB page. Here is the film's page.

Stay At Home Fest Bonus FIlm STUNTS

Robert Forster in murder mystery set on the making of a movie. Great fun

The Man Standing Next (2020) hits home video May 26

A fictionalized look of the events that transpired in the 40 days leading up to the assassination of Korean President Park in October 1979 by Kim Gyu-pyeong, one of the directors of the KCIA the Korean Intelligence Service. The film has Lee Byung-hun as Kim going to the US to stop his predecessor from selling his memoirs and telling the Americans what is going on in Korea. Kim gets th memoirs, but also his eyes opened as he is told about all the dirty laundry of President Park. This sets things in motion that eventually lead to the shooting.

I am kind of unsure how to react to THE MAN STANDING NEXT. On it's own it is a solid political drama or thriller that ends in a political assassination. I had a really good time watching it but often felt a bit lost. I  didn't have a firm handle on the actual events, with my memories of Koreagate being a tad vague despite following it when it was going down. I had the sense that had I better handle on the history I would have liked it more.

When I finished the film I went back and read about the actual events. While I didn't grasp everything, knowing about how Park came to power, the steps he took to remain in power and all of the events in the decade prior to the killing put things in a new light. I appreciated the the film more because I understood the reference to what was happening and had happened.  I think knowing Korean history makes it a better film. It also explains why this was is one of Korea's top films at the box office this year.

However even not knowing all the details this is a solid thriller. Its an edge of your seat tale that makes you wonder what is going to happen next.

Recommended.

Nate Hood's Quarantine Qapsule #48 Under the Sun of Satan [1987] ★★

It’s difficult to evaluate Maurice Pialat’s Under the Sun of Satan without also considering its reputation as one of the most controversial winners of the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or. The first French film to win the Palme in twenty-one years since Claude Lelouch’s 1966 romance A Man and a Woman—which famously shared the award with Pietro Germi’s The Birds, the Bees and the Italians—it received a rare unanimous jury vote. The award ceremony’s audience responded with a raucous chorus of boos, leading to one of the most infamous moments of Cannes history when Pialat took the stage and responded “You don’t like me? Well, let me tell you that I don’t like you either!” So whether fairly or unfairly, it will always be subjected to debates over whether or not it deserved the Palme and if it cheated the “proper” winner out of its due.

Even a cursory glance at the year’s main competition slate raises eyebrows. Did the film truly deserve to win over Souleymane Cissé’s Yeelen, one of the very greatest West African films ever made? Or Tengiz Abuladze’s maddeningly overlooked glasnost fantasia Repentance? Or, perhaps most infuriating of all, Wim Wenders’ transcendent Wings of Desire? The answer to all of these is, in this critic’s humble opinion, a resounding, definitive no.

Whatever truth, beauty, or meaning the jurists saw in Pialat’s ponderous religious drama in 1987 hasn’t survived to the present day. Based on a book by Roman Catholic novelist Georges Bernanos, the film follows a priest played by Gérard Depardieu living in 1920s France who, in the midst of a crisis of faith, has an unexpected encounter with Satan while traveling down a country road. The experience leaves him shellshocked, but also capable of peering into the soul and inner thoughts of the people around him, powers which he uses in a disastrous attempt to save the soul of a pregnant teenager named Mouchette (Sandrine Bonnaire) who murdered one of her lovers.

Unlike Robert Bresson who adapted two of Bernanos novels into two of the most starkly powerful theological dramas of mid-century European cinema—Diary of a Country Priest (1951) and Mouchette (1967)—Pialat gets lost in sententious dialogue and philosophical ouroboroses, resulting in a film that glazes the eyes and numbs the mind despite its ravishing beauty. There’s little meaning, and even scarcer theological truth, in this confusing, opaque blob.

Funny Pains (2020) hits VOD May 26th

All over the place look at stand up comedy is framed as a look at comic Wendi Starling who we watch perform, write, go through her daily life and struggle with mental illness.

I am not sure what to say about FUNNY PAINS. As something to make you laugh it is a really good. One can't go very long without smiling or laughing, something that increases whenever we get into the rooms where Starling and other comics are hanging out talking. This film will most assuredly make you laugh a lot.

On the other hand the film was edited via a food processor by caffeine addled chihuahuas on speed. The film starts with a combination recollection and a stand up bit as Starling talks about having manic incidents that include Hugh Jackman appearing to tell her he isn't real but it would be all okay. It then leaps off to follow her through her day and then pauses periodically to have comics sit around talking before more of Starling on the street or performing. Who in the hell edited this and can I hit them with something big and heavy like Buick?

There is no real ground work there is just randomly put together bits that drive everything forward before bouncing backwards and sidewards. You really don't get any sense of Starling other than she is a crazily busy comic who performs, does a podcast and still needs a day job. And frankly I could have read that sentence before seeing the film and I would have known just as much at the end.

In all honesty as a film FUNNY PAINS is a fucking mess.

On the other hand it is god damn hysterically funny as the jokes fly from start to finish. This is a solid laugh producer.

If you want a good well made film look elsewhere. If you want to laugh this film is just the ticket

Stay at Home Fest Bonus Film THE MESSIAH OF EVIL

A scary early 1970's film from the director of HOWARD THE DUCK

JAPAN SOCIETY ANNOUNCES FIRST ONLINE-ONLY EDITION OF JAPAN CUTS FOR THE 14TH ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF NEW JAPANESE FILM

Plans for North America's Largest Contemporary Japanese Cinema Festival + Opening Night Selection July 17–30, 2020

NEW YORK, May 22, 2020–In light of the ongoing international situation with COVID-19, the organizers behind JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film have decided to take this popular annual event at Japan Society out of its usual form and craft a completely online version of the festival. Partnering with Festival Scope and Shift72 as the streaming platform and technology service, the festival team is hand-crafting 14 days of unique screening opportunities for Japanese cinema lovers, serving the Society’s dedicated audiences in New York City but also, for the first time, making the festival available to viewers throughout the United States.

“While nothing can replace the thrill of welcoming filmmakers and audience members together into our auditorium, we are excited by the new possibilities opened up by putting the festival online this summer,” says K. F. Watanabe, Deputy Director of Film at Japan Society. “Our programming team is committed to maintaining the high quality of film offerings and intimate feeling of community provided by JAPAN CUTS within this reimagined format while also finding ways of engaging new audiences across the country and supporting Japanese film culture.”

Set for July 17-30, the online edition of the festival will offer a diverse slate of around 30 feature films and shorts programs on a VOD model, with a limited number of virtual tickets and access geoblocked to the U.S. Recurring thematic festival sections such as Documentary Focus and Experimental Spotlight will return, and a new competitive section dedicated to early-career independent filmmakers will be introduced. In addition, live and pre-recorded virtual Q&As, discussion panels, and video greetings from filmmakers and programmers will round out the dynamic and interactive program.

A live virtual Q&A will be scheduled and hosted on the festival’s opening day, July 17, with Shinichiro Ueda, director of the JAPAN CUTS 2020 Opening Film selection Special Actors. The filmmaker is best known for his breakout 2017 indie debut One Cut of the Dead, a low-budget zombie film written and directed by Ueda that was an unexpected box office hit in Japan—where it screened across 340 theaters and surpassed 2 million admissions from word of mouth—and an international festival sensation. Special Actors is Ueda’s much-anticipated follow-up feature, an ensemble comedy about an oddball acting troupe infiltrating a cult, which had its theatrical run in Japan in late 2019. The film has not yet screened in North America and will make its online streaming debut with JAPAN CUTS courtesy of international rights holder Shochiku.

“I am honored to have my film selected as the opening film [for JAPAN CUTS] among the many others included in the festival,” wrote Ueda through email. “Though we are in a situation where it is difficult to travel, I am happy that at least this film can travel and reach people overseas in North America. Unpredictable twists and turns await you in this film, but try not to faint like the main character—and please enjoy this fun movie journey!”

The full lineup of JAPAN CUTS 2020 films and panels will be released in late June.

About JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film

Emphasizing the diversity and vitality of one of the most exciting world cinemas, JAPAN CUTS gives cinephiles their first (and sometimes only) chance to discover the next waves of filmmaking from Japan. Founded in 2007, the festival presents the biggest Japanese blockbusters, raucous genre flicks, peerless independents, arthouse gems, radical documentaries, and avant-garde forms, along with unique collaborative programs, workshops, and panels put together with the cooperation of other international organizations. Special guest actors and filmmakers join the festivities for Q&As, award ceremonies, and the post-screening parties and receptions audiences have come to expect, with live music, food, and drinks. 2020 is the first year that JAPAN CUTS will not be physically hosted at Japan Society since its inception.

About Japan Society

Founded in 1907, Japan Society in New York City presents sophisticated, topical and accessible experiences of Japanese art and culture, and facilitates the exchange of ideas, knowledge and innovation between the U.S. and Japan. More than 200 events annually encompass world-class exhibitions, dynamic classical and cutting-edge contemporary performing arts, film premieres and retrospectives, workshops and demonstrations, tastings, family activities, language classes, and a range of high-profile talks and expert panels that present open, critical dialogue on issues of vital importance to the U.S., Japan and East Asia. Japan Society is located at 333 East 47th Street between First and Second avenues (accessible by the 4/5/6 and 7 subway at Grand Central or the E and M subway at Lexington Avenue). www.japansociety.org

Credits

JAPAN CUTS is sponsored by Shiseido Americas with additional support provided by Sapporo U.S.A, Inc. Japan Society Film's programs are generously supported by the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Endowment Fund and Gaia Holistic Health Foundation/Dr. Kazuko Tatsumura-Hillyer. Additional season support is provided by The Globus Family, David Toberisky, Geoff and Fumi Matters, Laurel Gonsalves, James Read Levy, Masu Hiroshi Masuyama, Akiko Koide and Shohei Koide, Dr. Tatsuji Namba, George Gallagher, David S. Howe, Michael Romano, Hiroshi Tsuyuki and Yasuko Tsuyuki, and an anonymous donor.

Nate Hood's Quarantine Qapsule #47 Monstrum ★★★

Heo Jong-ho’s Monstrum is a film that wears many hats—or, er, many gats. On the one hand it attempts to be a lavish historical epic that elevates the iconography of the sixteenth century Joseon period to the same levels of splendor as ancient China and Japan. In South Korea’s continuing bid for Southeast Asian cultural superiority, it only makes sense that they’d want to make ancient Korea as iconic and instantly recognizable as China’s Forbidden City and imperial court or Japan’s august shiro and indomitable samurai. The film’s also a kaiju movie, centering on a giant monster known as “Monstrum” that lives on Mount Inwangsan near the capital city. The creature ravishes the countryside, destroying whole villages and infecting the survivors with plague. Looking like a pustule-ridden shisa with gorilla arms, Monstrum is a terrifying, agile, and indestructible beastie.

Meanwhile, the film also features Game of Thrones style realpolitik scheming, frequently focusing on the inner machinations of the Joseon court and the Prime Minister’s ruthless Machiavellian scheming to undermine and overthrown the emperor. In the midst of all this, the film’s also a family survival drama reminiscent of Roland Emmerich’s disaster movies, following disgraced former general Yun Kyum (Kum Myung-min) as he’s summoned by Emperor Jungjong (Park Hee-soon) to hunt down Monstrum. He takes with him his doltish but devoted second-in-command Sung Han (Kim In-kwon) and his headstrong adopted daughter Myung (Lee Hye-ri), both of whom get their own subplots and characters arcs. And finally, Monstrum tries to be a big-budget action movie, combining traditional creature feature destruction with wuxia-flavored Korean martial arts fights.

Does it all work?

Not particularly. For in addition to everything previously mentioned, the film also tries to be an allegory. Who are the real monsters, it asks, the shisa-gorilla or the scheming, despotic politicians (who for the first half of the movie are implied as having invented Monstrum as an urban legend to help discredit Jungjong)? The answer, of course, is that the giant monster is the real monster, rendering all its metaphors about the dangers of unchecked political ambition moot. The film has serious structural issues, too, with a third act that goes on and on and on. Still, if Monstrum is a mess it’s an admirable one, the product of too much ambition, not a bottom-line driven lack of it.

Hero Tomorrow (2007)

With the Covid lockdown in force I'm going through stacks of stuff in order to see what has to be kept and junk. I am finding a number of DVDs that pushed behind things. In a bag of stuff from a semi-recent New York Comic Con I found my signed copy of HERO TOMORROW by Ted Sikora. Double checking as to whether I reviewed it for Unseen or not, I found I did not. (Apologies to Mr Sikora)

HERO TOMORROW is the name of the comic shop where David's girlfriend works. David is a wannabe comic writer and artist whose character Apama is an spirit animal like Wolverine. No one is interested and so he spends his days cutting grass, getting stones, working on his comic and getting yelled at by his parents. When his girlfriend gives him a costume based on his character things begin to slide as David imagines himself as Apama.

Dry humor mixes with low key drama to form a solid little film. This a beautifully crafted small film that has a nice warm heart at it's center. I love that it walks into the field where comics crashes into reality so we see the troubles of being a superhero as David's flights of fantasy don't always go well. You can't just become you're secret identity.

While the film isn't perfect, the performances are uneven for example, the film still moves us with it's humanity.

Worth a look. (it can be streamed on Amazon)

Stay At Home Festival Bonus Film: The Falcon's Brother

After finding that the Falcon series was turning into a variation of The Saint series George Sanders bowed out and his brother Tom Conway took over. Great fun and the series just got even better after the fact.

Nate Hood's Quarantine Qapsule #46 The Champ [1931] ★★★★½

Child actors in the early days of Hollywood weren’t really expected to act the same way adults did. They were coached to act like adults, adopting their vocal cadences and physical mannerisms while delivering their lines at the top of their voices like they were yelling into a WWII walkie-talkie. Even in the days before naturalistic acting when performances were deliberately mannered and stagy, child acting frequently felt like broad pantomime.

And for most of King Vidor’s The Champ, child actor Jackie Cooper gives a typical child performance for his era. He plays “Dink,” the eight-year-old son of Andy “Champ” Purcell (Wallace Beery), a former world heavyweight champion boxer who crawled into a bottle after losing a championship bout and never came back up again for air. When Dink isn’t stomping around like a hood three times his size, he’s flicking his emotions on and off like a light switch, all sudden weepy hysterics that appear and vanish in a moment. But there’s one scene where Cooper’s pretense of adulthood vanishes. While visiting his birth mother’s palatial mansion, he loiters around a candy bowl, greedily grabbing all he can stuff into his pockets before jumping over a nearby handrail and pulling himself onto the roof. It’s a magnificent little scene where we see a child actor being an actual child on camera.

This moment is only one of the many small miracles in The Champ, a masculine weepy masquerading as a sports flick. Written by Frances Marion (for which she snagged her second Academy Award), the film is pure machismo melodrama, a devastating portrait of sacrificial fatherhood. Beery gives a career-best performance as Champ, a hurricane of a man whose gruff demeanor masks a sentimental devotion to his son for which he’d happily humiliate himself—just as long as he isn’t too busy destroying himself with booze and gambling.

Cooper too is a portrait of wide-eyed familial devotion. (Another of the film’s small miracles: an early scene where the two share a hotel bed and Dink curls up next to Champ after he hogs all the covers in his sleep.) Vidor, with his enthusiastic belief in family and mankind’s better nature, was the perfect choice for director as he never rolls his eyes at his material; what could’ve come across as schmaltz hums with the belief that what we’re seeing is somehow sacred and true.

Venus Rises: The Web Series

Venus Rises is a three episode web series set after the fall of earth about a private on a refueling ship who gets involved in the war between the rich on Mars and the workers on Venus who are revolting toward their masters

Excellent low budget science fiction film is unfairly lost to the ages. I picked up a copy of the series several years ago at NY Comic Con but only recently got around to watching it. I am now kicking myself since the series in infinitely better than the vast majority of direct to video scifi films I have encountered
Well written and good looking the series goes from start to finish. I really want to see what happens next... which means I'm going to have to break down and gt the comic books since the story continues there.

Highly recommended the series can be had on DVD or flash drive and can be found here. (it runs n hour total)

Stay At Home Festival Bonus Film FBI GIRL

Kate Nash: Underestimate The Girl hits vod Friday

This is a repost of y review from when the film played DOC NYC last year.

Portrait of British sing Kate Nash who rapidly rose in the music industry only to be suddenly let go by her label.

Music filled bio is full of good music and scenes from the life of a rock star (at one point she says she’s only had one day off in the previous year) that acts as a good introduction to the woman and her music. While the film is enjoyable, a little goes a long way with a bit too much polish making this not so much a full on bio but more a promotional puff piece. Don’t get me wrong I liked it but after a while I was full.

Recommended for fans

Nate Hood's Quarantine Qapsule #45 A Taxing Woman [1987] ★★★

Juzo Itami’s A Taxing Woman dares to ask how much of a bastard does a villain need to be to make us root for a tax auditor. The answer: pretty damn bad. Inspired by his experiences with the Japanese National Tax Agency after the smash success of his debut The Funeral (1984), the film is a fascinating—although certainly exaggerated—look into the inner workings of Japanese tax investigators.

The film follows the various adventures of Ryōko Itakura (played by Itami’s wife Nobuko Miyamoto), auditor extraordinaire who makes up for her crippling lack of social etiquette and parental concern for her five year old son with an almost idiot savant talent for figuring out tax dodge schemes. Her main target in the film is Hideki Gondō (Tsutomu Yamazaki), a love hotel magnate with his hands in a number of very unscrupulous and illegal cookie jars.

Much like the films of Steven Soderbergh and the true crime gangster dramas of Martin Scorsese, A Taxing Woman is a film primarily about process, lovingly lingering on Japanese methods of tax dodging and tax auditing. Watching it, we learn how to create shell companies “owned” by terminally ill cancer patients designed to be dissolved at a profit upon their deaths, how to double-dip into a restaurant’s food supplies so the owners can get their personal groceries written off as business expenses, and how to make pachinko machine earnings disappear before they can be accounted and declared as income. But inversely, the film also methodically explains how each of these schemes can be detected and foiled by someone as brilliant and tenacious as Itakura. (Pro-tip: always check that the bills you smuggle out of your pachinko parlor aren’t marked…)

But for all the film’s love of process, it fumbles the handling of its characters. Itakura’s characterization fluctuates from scene to scene from bumbling do-gooder in over her head to fearless eighth-dimensional chess playing schemer. Likewise, the film does little to earn our sympathy for her despite her heroics in taking down Gondō because it makes a point of showing her to be downright sociopathic in her treatment of hardworking non-criminals who make simple accounting mistakes with their taxes. The film also attempts a recognition of mutual respect between Itakura and Gondō like they were Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in Michael Mann’s Heat (1995), but it never really works.

Mysteries of Lisbon: The Complete Miniseries (2010) hits virtual theaters 5/22

With the full miniseries five and a half hour miniseries hitting Virtual Theaters on Friday I am reposting my review from the 2010 New York Film Festival.  The version I saw ran just over four and a half hours. My notes indicate that I was told that most of the missing material are the opening and closing of each of the 55 minute episodes and recap material as well as "next time" teasers.

One thing I should have really discussed when I wrote this originally was  that the problems I have with the plot are the problems with the novel. This was written in installments over a long period of time and was simply supposed to be a soap opera that keep people coming back to the publication each week or whatever. It was not  planned out by Camilo Castelo Branco as a grand novel, it was just written so he'd get paid, the result it is plot that goes to a certain point when it suddenly wraps up because Branco was told it was time. My notes from the Q&A with the screenwriter indicate they knew there are "plot problems" but went with it understanding that was how it was written.

The film is based upon The Homonymous Novel by Camilo Castelo Branco. It was written in a serial fashion in I believe they said weekly installments. When it was put together the book filled well over one thousand pages.

The film is like being trapped in a pinball machine filled with mayo. The story and film immerse you deeply into the time and place that the film takes place but it's construction pings you around constantly from pillar to post as character after character stops the present story to tell you a story about the past. It's wheels with in wheels and stories with in stories.

The primary focus of the story is a young boy named Pedro daSilva who living in an orphanage that is run by a Father Dinis. As the film unfolds we are primarily following his story, but with long detours into the lives of everyone around him, all of whom have multiple identities and some connection to nobility. There are love affairs, duels, death, revenge, convents,rescues and several other things I'm forgetting.

Is it exciting?

Not particularly. The trouble is that the story is so fractured that it never seems to build up a real head of steam. Honestly I was bored for much of the first hour. It finally clicked, I think because it was throwing so much out it had to hit the mark eventually. The blame is partly the source novel which was written on the fly to fill a page count and had to keep readers interested. This leads to weird turns and some inconsistencies in the story (The time frames are messed up).

The film is also very silly. I know some of it, like the servant who is a refugee from The Ministry of Silly Walks was intentionally put in there, other things I'm not too sure about. A suicide of an unnamed character brought chuckles from the people behind me.

I'm not sure what director Raul Ruiz was up to at times since listening to the screenwriter talk he said that the director added bits to make things memorable. However other things like long takes that don't seem to end or serve a point confuse me since they seemed more like filler.

The film itself ends on a note of uncertainty, at least as far as I'm concerned. Its one of those was it real or was it all a fevered dream sort of things that feel like a cop out. I don't know how the book ends so I can't say. What I can say was that the ending kind of sent the film crashing down for me. I think I could have taken the numerous WTF moments that pop up here and there during the preceding four hours and twenty five minutes had the ending lead to something. It doesn't and your left with a story that just sort of hangs there with all of these odd moments that make no sense (the previous mentioned suicide).

I know the problem with the incestuous nature of all of the characters somehow knowing everyone in a manner that is way too neat comes from the book, but the rest of it...is just weird.

I know that I could have forgiven the film had the film been about something, other than the notion of identity which is obvious and too small a notion to fill five hours of screen time. It would have worked in a 90 minute movie, but almost five hours was too much to ask. Had the film not had an aire of being about something more it could have worked, I mean the old movie serials run about as long and are about nothing but motion. This film is touted to be about something, but I find it's about...nothing.