MoMA’s To Save and Project returns for 20th Edition

Posted on January 11, 2024 by admin

One of the highlights of the cinematic year is To Save and Project: The MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, this year in its 20th edition. A collection of preservations and restorations from around the world, the series is a way to adjust our sense of the history of cinema.

To Save and Project opens with The Black Pirate, introduced on January 11th by Oscar-hopeful Alexander Payne. Starring Douglas Fairbanks, the movie is a perfect example of the problems facing film archivists in trying to present an authentic version of Fairbanks’ vision.

Fairbanks started planning the movie after he finished The Mark of Zorro, and decided early on to shoot in Technicolor. He and DP Henry Sharp tested the negative for months. Fairbanks hired Swedish artist Carl Oscar Borg to supervise the production design, and had illustrator Dwight Franklin prepare what we would call today storyboards of individual sequences. Another important contributor was Belgian fencing instructor Fred Cavens.

By the time Fairbanks donated The Black Pirate to The Museum of Modern Art, the Technicolor process he used was already obsolete, and the film materials were subject to shrinkage. Subsequent releases of the film used alternate takes and footage from 16mm prints. Assembling the most accurate version possible has taken years. This 4K digital restoration of the image is by The Museum of Modern Art and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the Golden Globe Foundation.

While the restoration is sensational, the movie itself can be a chore. Fairbanks had been making movies for over a decade at this point, and his brand of exuberant, light-hearted action was beginning to wear thin. The Black Pirate was an enormous production, with life-size sets and scores of extras, but the story itself boiled down to confrontations between Fairbanks’ pirate aristocrat and his numerous enemies.

Pacing in individual scenes can be superb, and some of the stunts and swordfights are exceptional. The sight of Fairbanks slicing his way down a furled sail with just a hand-knife is one of the defining images of his time. And you are unlikely to see The Black Pirate in better conditions than at MoMA.

As for the rest of the series, just a glance at the directors involved— Chantal Akerman, Agnieszka Holland, Alain Tanner, Agnès Varda, Wim Wenders, Tsui Hark, Pietro Germi, Buster Keaton, Wong Tim-lam—shows how wide-ranging the schedule is.

Also how relevant. Here’s Joseph Losey’s 1971 melodrama The Go-Between, whose score by Michel Legrand was repurposed for Todd Haynes’ May December. Also the uncut version of Dangerous Encounters: 1st Kind, a thriller by Tsui Hark that was first banned and then shredded by censors. It would be impossible to film today given the political climate in Hong Kong.

Film preservation used to be focused on silent cinema, and then on Hollywood auteurs. Like Arrowsmith, a 1931 drama directed by John Ford. Based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith received four Oscar nominations. MoMA is showing a restoration by the Library of Congress based on lead Ronald Colman’s personal print that includes ten additional minutes of material.

Today the concept of preservation and restoration has broadened to include world cinema, shorts, experimental films, even music videos—all of which are represented in this year’s To Save and Project. Acclaimed archivist Rick Prelinger will show two programs of sponsored movies on January 14th. January 27 finds a program of orphan films on 16mm. It’s also a day to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of DEVO, with rock videos, concert footage, and other material related to the rock group.

Milestone Films is represented by a new restoration of The Dragon Painter (January 20), produced by and starring Sessue Hayakawa, one of the earliest Asian-American stars in Hollywood. Immediately prior is a screening of the 1929 German film Pavement Butterfly starring Anna May Wong, who left Hollywood for Europe to find better projects.

The complete schedule can be found here: https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5664

Photos: The Black Pirate. 1926. USA. Directed by Albert Parker. Courtesy The Museum of Modern Art Stills Archive

Di yi lei xing wei xian (Dangerous Encounters: 1st Kind). 1980. Hong Kong. Directed by Tsui Hark. Courtesy Spectrum Films

Pavement Butterfly / Großstadtschmetterling: Ballade einer Liebe. 1929. Germany/UK. Directed by Richard Eichberg. Courtesy DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt

Posted in Film Festivals | Leave a comment

Jason Statham back in business as The Beekeeper

Posted on January 10, 2024 by admin

Action icon Jason Statham stars as the titular Beekeeper, an assassin retired from a top-secret, off-the-books branch of government designed to eliminate threats when all else fails. Statham keeps his bees at retired teacher Phylicia Rashad’s farm. When evil scammers steal her money, she commits suicide. That sets Statham off on a mission to kill anyone associated with the scammers. Also blow up their offices. But he can’t injure innocent civilians or any of the many law enforcement operatives who are soon on his tail.

Set in Springfield and Boston but shot mostly in Great Britain, this is the sort of brain-dead filler pushed into theaters before more “solid” material follows in the spring. Twenty years ago Statham (along with Corey Yuen and Luc Besson) changed action movies forever with the Transporter franchise. Its action was tough, physical, and logical, and it was clear that Statham did most of the stunts himself.

Since then he’s alternated between middling-to-fair action films and better-made comedies like Spy. No other action star among his contemporaries has been as successful for so long, largely because Statham is an outstanding physical performer. Also, he limits his dialogue the way Eastwood did with Leone.

But it’s 2024, and age has reduced Statham’s speed and range. He doesn’t kick as high, spin as fast, or jump as much. His fights are poorly staged and repetitive, mostly knocking a bad guy down while others wait their turn. Every now and then a nice touch emerges, like the kick Statham delivers while passing a groping villain on a staircase. But you don’t see a lot of combinations, or variations on previous moves. It’s just one punch after the other.

The Beekeeper moves lethargically, apart from action scenes where Statham kills everyone, sets offices on fire, and flees without a scratch. These bits test credulity. At one point he fights his way up three flights of stairs filled with foes, throws himself out a window, then pops to his feet and walks away.

Occasionally the script flips to smooth, oily ex-CIA director Jeremy Irons, who delivers his few lines expertly. Minnie Driver shows up twice as the current CIA director. Emmy Raver-Lampman is solid as an FBI agent pursuing Statham, as is her partner Bobby Naderi. Josh Hutcherson hams it up futilely as a drugged-out bad guy.

Writer Kurt Wimmer’s dialogue is heavy on things like, “He’s a beekeeper,” with many asides about hives. Director David Ayer has a good feel for tension, but less for pacing.

Statham remains a guilty pleasure, and I never tire of watching him administer a beating. It’s good to see him back in the action genre after misfires like the execrable Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre and what amount to cameos in things like Fast X. But The Beekeeper is little more than a place-holder in his career.

Credits: Directed by: David Ayer. Written by: Kurt Wimmer. Produced by: Bill Block, Jason Statham, David Ayer, Chris Long, p.g.a., Kurt Wimmer. Executive Producers: Andrew Golov, Thom Zadra, Mark Birmingham. Director of photography: Gabriel Beristain. Edited by Geoffrey O’Brien. Production design by Ben Munro. Starring: Jason Statham, Emmy Raver- Lampman, Josh Hutcherson, Bobby Naderi, Minnie Driver, David Witts, Michael Epp, Taylor James, Jemma Redgrave, Enzo Cilenti, with Phylicia Rashad and Jeremy Irons.

Photos: Top: Jason Statham stars as Clay in director David Ayer’s THE BEEKEEPER. An Amazon MGM Studios film. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios © 2024 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved. Center: (L to R) Jason Statham as Clay and Jeremy Irons as Wallace Westwyld in director David Ayer’s THE BEEKEEPER. An Amazon MGM Studios film. Photo Credit: Daniel Smith © 2024 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.

In theaters January 12, 2024.

Posted in Action, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Andy Lau stars in I Did It My Way

Posted on January 10, 2024 by admin

Andy Lau continues his remarkable resurgence in the crime thriller I Did It My Way, yet another variation on Infernal Affairs. Lau plays George Lam, lawyer for a drug ring so powerful it has evaded legal consequences for its crimes.

Battling him is Eddie Fong (Taiwanese star Eddie Peng), a tough, by-the-books cop working under Chung Kam Ming (veteran HK actor Simon Yam). The cops are hindered by corrupt judges and by Lam’s legal expertise. Both crooks and the police have informers, moles who leak details about payoffs and stings. When loyalty is for sale, no one can be trusted.

I Did It My Way is a big production, filled with elaborate sets, massive shoot-outs, and extended chases. The script tries to be up-to-date by incorporating cryptocurrencies, virus-infected social media, and armies of hackers, but its view of the internet is mostly silly montages of lights pulsing through wiring.

Director Jason Kwan, who is also the director of photography, gives the movie a strong, vivid style, with plenty of moody close-ups to go along with the chaotic shoot-outs.

But Kwan can’t do much with a script filled with obvious twists and reversals, with confrontations that lead nowhere, with a narrative that’s needlessly complicated and at the same time largely irrelevant to the central drama.

That narrative core is the relationship between Lam and his enforcer Sau Ho (Gordon Lam Ka Tung). Long-time friends who rose through the crime ring together, they rely heavily on each other. With a wife and child, the blue-collar Sau has the life Lam thinks he wants, especially when the lawyer loses his own family.

The relationship between Lam and Sau is by far the most intriguing element of I Did It My Way, primarily because of the work by two exceptional actors. This has been a great year for Andy Lau, who won a lifetime achievement award last November at the Busan International Film Festival. He reunited with his Infernal Affairs costar Tony Leung Chiu Wai in The Goldfinger, and is absolutely brilliant in the show business satire The Movie Emperor (yet to be released in the US).

But the best performance in the movie belongs to Lam Ka Tung, an actor who has built an impressive resume over two decades, and whose recent work has been revelatory. He was unforgettable as a down-on-his-luck army veteran in Hand Rolled Cigarette, and irresistible as a possibly psychotic spiritual master in last year’s Mad Fate.

Here Lam’s hangdog Sau—bitter, resentful, unable to be honest with anyone—is simply heartbreaking. He conveys so much with a look, a drag on a cigarette, the way he slumps his shoulders. Lam and Lau have worked together for years, and have an easy familiarity here that’s always fun to watch.

Unfortunately, their work is almost erased by the action scenes. Noisy, messy, poorly choreographed, the film’s shootouts are loud and repetitive without adding enough to the story. They (and Peng’s weirdly uninvolving cop) drop I Did It My Way from top-notch to serviceable.

Credits: Director: Jason Kwan. Produced by Li Yaping, Connie Wong, Andy Lau. Director of photography: Jason Kwan. Action director: Chin Ka Lok. Starring: Andy Lau, Lam Ka Tung, Eddie Peng Yuyan, Cya Liu, Simon Yam, Lam Suet, Philip Keung, Hedwig Tam.

In theaters January 12, 2024.

Top: Eddie Peng, Andy Lau. Center: Andy Lau, Cya Liu. Photos courtesy Well Go USA.

Posted in Action, Asian, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Ranbir Kapoor is an Animal in his latest blockbuster

Posted on December 5, 2023 by admin

Clocking in at over 200 minutes, Animal is a film defined by excess. A multi-generational crime drama, it topped the global box office on its opening weekend. It is the highest-grossing opening of star Ranbir Kapoor’s career. Bigger, longer, bloodier: Animal is all that and more.

Kapoor plays Vijay Bilbar Singh, son of one of the wealthiest men in India. Bilbar Singh (played by Anil Kapoor) is a stern, unyielding, often-absent business magnate who has treated his wayward son with anger and disdain. Vijay fully earns that criticism. Arrogant, ill-mannered, impulsive, privileged, he’s the type of student who brings a machine gun to class when his sister is insulted.

Vijay falls for Gitanjali (an affecting performance by the lovely Rashmika Mandanna), from a lower-class family, and takes her to London to escape his father’s wrath. His sisters Reet (Saloni Batra) and Roop (Anshul Chauhan) remain close to home; in fact, Reet’s husband Varun (Siddhant Karnick) becomes a kind of surrogate son to Singh.

Everything changes when assassins attack Singh on a golf course. Vijay returns home to take over the company while his father recovers. He roots out traitors within the organization, including its security force. Vijay hires new bodyguards from the family’s home village, then a body double to portray his father in public.

It turns out another family has a grudge against Singh for apparently icing them out of its share of his fortune. The brothers behind the attacks include Asrar, Abrar, and Abid; Aziz, a fourth brother, will figure into the closing credits. Vijay and his men hole up in a luxury hotel, where they are attacked by scores of Asrar’s men.

That’s just the first half. The rest of the film includes a coma, a heart transplant, Vijay’s affair with and betrayal by Zoya (a very appealing Tripti Dimri), the mute Abrar’s marriage and subsequent wedding-night foursome with his previous two wives, and several attempted reconciliations between Vijay and his father.

Not that the plot matters. Animal is a star vehicle for Ranbir Kapoor, and he makes the most of his role. He’s a lover, an intellectual, a neglected son, but most of all an animal with no control over his feelings. It’s a part with a lot of physicality, a lot of hair changes, and a lot of weird digressions.

Vijay’s rants are the most unpredictable element of Animal, which is otherwise overheated versions of familiar gangster scenes. Vijay talks at length about underwear, and in fact forces an arms dealer to give up his pair. He talks about standards of beauty, a “self-reliant India,” food, cars, anything. He can be funny and surreal at times, but frequently overbearing.

Kapoor goes full-out in his performance. Take a scene where he addresses workers at his father’s steel foundry. It’s a rousing exhortation to work together for the common good — for “victory” — until he starts to go off the rails by promising to strangle his enemies. It’s a brilliant moment in a troubling scene, especially since he’s wearing a uniform embroidered with a swastika. He later raises his arm in a familiar salute.

Vijay actually tries to justify the swastika later in the movie (it’s not “slanted” so it can’t be Nazi). By that time he’s also predicted, “Someone will surely die for me and I will get a transplant.”

Director Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s action scenes are gigantic and chaotic but not especially well choreographed. The attack on Vijay’s hotel is the most complicated set piece in the film. After fighting off hatchet-wielding goons under three lighting schemes, Vijay is told that 200 more fighters are approaching. He mounts a sort of monster machine gun on a golf cart and shoots everyone into submission. It’s a fun but completely unbelievable scene that left me exhausted more than satisfied.

Insane on so many levels, Animal is also noteworthy for the bloodiest closing credits I have ever seen.

Credits: Director: Sandeep Reddy Vanga. Producers: Bhushan Kumar, Pranay Reddy Vanga, Murad Khetani, Krishan Kumar. Writer: Sandeep Reddy Vanga. Director of Photography: Amit Roy. Editor: Sandeep Reddy Vanga. Production Designer: Suresh Selvarajan. Costume Designer: Sheetal Iqbal Sharma.Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Bobby Deol, Rashmika Mandanna. Language: Distributors: Moksha Movies and Nirvana Cinemas. Hindi and Telugu with English subtitles.

Posted in Drama, India | Leave a comment

Life is a cage fight in Rumble Through the Dark

Posted on November 3, 2023 by admin

You don’t expect a dark, gritty boxing drama from Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, but that’s exactly what Rumble Through the Dark is. Set in a grim world of fight clubs, liquor stores, traveling carnivals, and orphanages, the film batters its characters and viewers with a story of brutal revenge couched as moral uplift.

Adapting his novel, screenwriter Michael Farris Smith starts Rumble with an infant abandoned by its mother, then skips to an illegal fight club where former champ boxer Jack Boucher (Aaron Eckhart) is trying to earn enough money to save his mother’s home.

Self-medicating with alcohol and pills, Jack risks a heart attack with every fight. He’s also losing his memory after repeated blows to the head. Plus he hasn’t paid taxes on his mother’s house, and is deep in debt to fight club proprietress Big Momma Sweet (Marianne Jean-Baptiste). A big score at a local casino might help extricate Jack from his troubles.

But Skelly (Joe Hursley), a bounty hunter hijacks Jack and his truck from a gas station. Their subsequent fight on a highway leads to a stylishly shot crash through a corn field that leaves Jack unconscious and Skelly near death.

Make that dead after a passing carnival operator asphyxiates him in a mercy killing. Annette (Bella Thorne), a tattooed fortune teller in the carnival, finds Jack’s cash in an envelope and pockets it as Jack watches from nearby.

The film switches storylines to Annette, an orphan searching for her father. She’s unsure about keeping the money, especially after she’s threatened by tilt-a-whirl operator and ex-con Ricky Joe (Mike McCall). When Jack rescues her from Ricky Joe at a convenience store, Annette thinks he’s been sent as a sign.

Annette tails Jack, learning that his mother suffers from dementia in a nursing home. Clues convince her that Jack is her father. But first Jack has to fight one more cage match to appease Big Momma Sweet.

Directors and brothers Graham and Parker Phillips have a good feel for the film’s backwater bayou milieu. The cinematography by David J. Myrick is appropriately dark and moody, but the directors find ways to highlight the futile desperation in their characters.

That said, Michael Farris Smith’s plotting is too derivative. One or two twists and Rumble could be Nightmare Alley, a Gothic filled with con men and born losers. Take two steps the other way, and this is a Southern-fried Fight Club, complete with pointed messages and telegraphed symbolism. Rumble is compelling enough in a grungy way, but it is not offering anything new.

Aaron Eckhart has made a career out of over-performing in vehicles that don’t deserve him. He’s all sinew and bone here, spitting blood, tearing up motel rooms, hallucinating about his mom. He elevates Rumble considerably, but never quite rescues it.

What about Bella Thorne? Annette reminded me of her title role in Girl, an underrated thriller written and directed by Chad Faust that came out during Covid. There she played someone not especially well-educated, but fiercely committed to her goals. Here she’s equally determined to find some way to connect to Jack Boucher.

Thorne doesn’t have the same level of support in Rumble that she did in Girl, but she does what she’s asked to do the best she can. Like everything else in Rumble Through the Dark, it’s not quite enough.

Opening in theaters through Lionsgate on November 3, 2023.

Photos courtesy Crooked Letter Picture Company.

Credits: Produced and directed by Graham Phillips, Parker Phillips. Produced by Cassian Elwes, Cleta Ellington. Written by Michael Farris Smith. Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Bella Thorne, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Ritchie Coster, Amanda Saunders, Mike McColl, Christopher Winchester, Joe Hursley.

Posted in Action, Drama | Leave a comment

Shah Rukh Khan’s Jawan: Blockbuster is the latest stage in his comeback

Posted on November 1, 2023 by admin

Shah Rukh Khan is the whole show in Jawan, his second blockbuster adventure in less than a year. Despite a strong supporting cast, Khan dominates the film, performing the kind of over-the-top heroics that have made him a box-office favorite.

Absent from the screen since 2018, Khan made a riveting appearance in 2022’s otherwise so-so Brahmastra Part One: Shiva, then thrilled his fans in January with Pathaan. Jawan is more of what his base likes: a fearless, swaggering character; gross injustices to be avenged; melodramatic flashbacks; big production numbers.

It’s narrative is all over the place, rehashing scenes, subplots, and story lines from easily recognizable movies like The Matrix and Fast and Furious. If anything, Jawan has too much plot. A subway hijacking, a corrupt arms dealer, amnesia, girls with guns, farmer suicides, a single mom with a matchmaking daughter, another mom briefly saved from hanging because she is pregnant, military raids, highway chases, and more.

Jawan leaps backwards and forwards in time, often for no real purpose. The three screenwriters, including director Atlee, manage to pull everything together by the end, but the ride is a lot rockier than it has to be. The musical numbers feel more like interruptions than integral to the plot.  While the action scenes are fun, they, like Khan’s dancing, are indifferently executed.

None of this matters to Khan’s fans, who will buy any preposterous twist. Khan survives being shot five times and falling out of a helicopter, for example. He survives being repeatedly smashed in the face with a heavy chain. He survives two-story falls, truck crashes, and a scene-stealing ten-year-old who interrogates him about marrying her mother.

Atlee has helmed several huge Tamil blockbusters, often with Nayanthara, who plays Khan’s love interest Narmada here. A hostage negotiator with the police, she’s betrayed by bureaucracy and winds up in jail—like most of the characters who try to defeat oily villain Kalee Gaikwad (Vijay Sethupathi).

Superstar Deepika Padukone, who was a memorable foil in Pathaan, doesn’t show up until the second half of the film, where she plays Khan’s wife Aishwarya. She is as arresting and effective as always, so good she threatens to tilt the film out of balance.

It says something about the plot that Khan can marry Nayanthara as well as Padukone. In fact, he plays so many roles in Jawan that viewers might lose track. He’s a prison warden, a bald terrorist, a cigar-smoking soldier shooting machine guns like Schwarzenegger, a tech whiz, a father, son, husband, lover, and conscience of a nation. He is, in effect, the whole show.

Jawan is always entertaining, perhaps working best when it is at its most preposterous. Like a big production number in the women’s prison which lasts from day to night, Khan sporting a half-dozen outfits while sending out seriously mixed signals about criminal justice.

For me, the only honest emotions in Jawan came during a scene where Khan meets ten-year-old Suji (Seeza Saroj Mehta), daughter of his future wife. “I’m looking for a papa,” she tells him in forthright tones. It’s staged with admirable clarity and simplicity. “I need a papa to whack my teacher for me,” she adds, after forcing Khan to admit he dyes his hair. I’d watch a whole movie with those two.

Jawan is currently streaming on Netflix in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu languages.

Credits: Directed by Atlee. Screenplay by Atlee, S. Ramanagirivasan. Dialogues: Sumit Arora. Cinematography: G. K. Vishnu. Edited by Ruben. Music by Anirudh Ravichander. Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Nayanthara, Vijay Sethupathi, Deepika Padukone, Seeza Saroj Mehta.

Posted in Action, Asian, India | Leave a comment

Back to school with The Re-Education of Molly Singer

Posted on September 28, 2023 by admin

Let’s go back and fix things. Movies have built on that premise for years. Countless sci-fi films. Comedies like Back to School and 21 Jump Street. (The Stephen Chow franchise Fight Back to School may be the funniest example.) Half of the road trip movies are journeys to the past to reconcile or avenge. In a way, even a comedy like No Hard Feelings forces it star to confront mistakes in her past.

And now there’s The Re-Education of Molly Singer, a Lionsgate comedy dumped onto digital and on-demand platforms September 29. Starring Britt Robertson as Molly, a self-destructive young lawyer working, or avoiding work, at a firm run by Brenda (Jaime Pressly), it’s the work of horror director Andy Palmer (Camp Cold Brook) and writers Todd Friedman and Kevin Haskins.

Bright, broad, and only intermittently witty, Re-Education is like a community college version of No Hard Feelings. After Molly loses an important case, Brenda fires her, then offers her a job coaching her socially maladjusted son Elliott (Ty Simpkins) through his freshman year at college.

Molly drags along her buddy Ollie (Nico Santos), gets a room in a converted firehouse, and reverts to the same drunken partying that got her fired. She also sort of fixes up Elliott with Lindsay (Good Trouble star Cierra Ramirez), gets him into a fraternity, does something or other with her life and dreams and goals, and successfully defends herself against charges of kidnapping.

This last plot twist hinges on a pervert who’s been taping everything at the firehouse, and a sort of slapstick chase to get the evidence to court on time. It’s the sort of writing you’d find on the old Nickelodeon series Victorious, which made me wonder: who wants to watch this?

Really, what is the audience for Re-Education? It’s shot like a TV sitcom or a Beach Blanket Bingo movie, it’s filled with worn-out stereotypes (dumb jock, horny cougar, gay buddy), it tackles issues of absolutely no interest to college students, and it’s almost never, ever funny.

Robertson puts in a committed performance, leaning on her character’s grating personality even as it makes her less sympathetic. So does, surprisingly, Pressly, who is quick and efficient. Everyone else seems to be playing a version of a role copied from some other teen-oriented comedy.

Slapdash, visually dull, with a nondescript soundtrack, The Re-Education of Molly Singer falls short on so many levels it doesn’t even qualify as fluff.

Credits

Director: Andy Palmer. Writers: Todd Friedman, Kevin Haskins. Cast: Britt Robertson, Ty Simpkins. Nico Santos, Cierra Ramirez, Holland Roden, Wendie Malick, Jaime Pressly. Photo: Britt Robertson, Ty Simpkins, Cierra Ramirez. Courtesy Lionsgate.

In theaters, on digital and on demand: September 29, 2023

Posted in Comedy, New Releases | Leave a comment

Barber: Private eye blues in Dublin

Posted on September 20, 2023 by admin

Slow-paced and dignified, Barber plays by genre rules. Set in Dublin, the story follows private eye Val Barber (Aiden Gillen) as he investigates the disappearance of a young co-ed. It’s a mystery more interested in character than plot, one that offers very little in the way of action or suspense.

Director Fintan Connolly, who co-wrote the script with producer Fiona Bergin, understands the detective formula. A former cop, Barber antagonizes crooks and police alike. Like most movie private eyes, he’s hard-bitten, heartbroken, the keeper of secrets, and last resort of the exploited.

Barber harbors a pretty big secret that is telegraphed early on, one that affects his private life as much as his work. Bergin and Connolly saddle the detective with additional problems: Kate (Aisling Kearns), a slightly brain-damaged and demanding daughter; Monica (Helen Behan), a needy ex-wife who’s in a disappointing relationship; and Tony Quinn (Liam Carney), Barber’s nemesis, an angry, abusive cop who’s on the take.

Other characters from the past haunt Barber, but in true hardboiled fashion he soldiers on. Clues lead to Eunan Brady (Nick Dunning), a high-profile politico under Quinn’s protection. Barber keeps asking the wrong kinds of questions, despite the target on his back.

Fans of the genre will find enough to enjoy in Barber. Connolly tries to take a realistic approach to the plot. The chases, stake-outs, interrogations, and clues are all reasonably convincing, if not especially fresh. Dark alleys, quiet pubs, the occasional mansion or high-end restaurant could have come straight out of an Irish Chandler novel.

Barber’s character is not especially compelling, at least the way Gillen portrays him. Even so, the plot forces him to confront issues in his life he’s tried to avoid. And by continuing his investigation despite risk to her personal and public life, Barber eventually takes on heroic characteristic.

Still, Barber is so low-key viewers will have plenty of time picking apart plot points or questioning characters’ choices. Covid leaves a pall over the production. Masks appear and disappear, you can spot social distancing posters on hospital walls, and the entire film has an emptiness recognizable from pandemic times.

Dublin looks beautiful in Owen McPolin’s cinematography, and several grace notes lift the film out of the ordinary. Like the map of Dublin behind Barber’s office desk, or the slightly askew help from his secretary Oxana (Irma Mali). What distinguishes Barber the most is the fact that its lead characters are believably troubled people who are just trying to do their best.

Credits

Directed by: Fintan Connolly. Written by: Fiona Bergin & Fintan Connolly. Produced by: Fiona Bergin. Starring: Aidan Gillen, Aisling Kearns, Gary Lydon, Helen Behan, Deirdre Donnelly, Liam Carney.

In theaters and on demand September 22.

Photos: Aiden Gillen as Val Barber. Courtesy Brainstorm Media.

Posted in Drama, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Asteroid City review: Aliens out West

Posted on June 16, 2023 by admin

Years and years and years ago Wes Anderson made Bottle Rocket, a clever comedy about hapless crooks who are outwitted by a smarter crook. It was modest, unassuming, and confident, with excellent production design and cinematography and smart performances by the Wilson brothers and James Caan.

Flash forward three decades to Asteroid City, a leaden, overstuffed piece of whimsy about UFOs or something in the American Southwest. Or, if you belong to a certain school of critics, a brilliant take on existential dread. Anderson, like his followers, has swallowed the hype.

People do fall for Anderson’s affectless shtick, some over and over. Maybe it’s the kitsch, the pastels, the airless compositions, the insect-like line deliveries, the swirl of cultural allusions crowding every scene. Maybe Anderson’s followers identify as outsiders, underappreciated influencers, so-square-they’re-hipsters.

Me? I’m tired of complicated camera movements that end up meaning nothing. Or giant sets designed to look like giant sets. Or the Tinkertoy editing. Or talented actors reduced to speeding through clotted dialogue while trying not to emote.

I’m especially tired of Anderson’s attitude towards all this. When he played a Kinks song in The Darjeeling Limited, it complemented the narrative. Although weirdly out of place, it made sense. It didn’t feel ironic or snarky or cruel.

The Western themes in Asteroid City, on the other hand, are treated in a manner I find downright malicious. The starchy, too-tight clothes; the campfire putdowns; the pathetic hoedown — Anderson seems to hate everything about the West, from the endless horizons to the grit-covered picnic tables. When he sticks a distorted Slim Whitman singing his big hit “Indian Love Call” in the background of people bickering, he’s condemning it the same way cultural insiders mocked it for decades. Slim’s “weird,” and aren’t you cool for noticing?

And hey, how about all those call-outs to Warner Bros. animation? Not just the Road Runner landscapes. There’s that madcap chase, police speeding after a car, guns blazing, sirens howling, bisecting the frame and going nowhere. If you miss the joke the first time, you’ll get a few more chances to savor it because it’s an allusion! It’s punctuation! Maybe the West in that period just didn’t seem real. Maybe it was like a cartoon.

And all that mania about aliens! With the military and everything. Maybe that affected adults trying to have relationships, you know, people like movie stars and scientists and single dads who take photographs. Maybe that all means something.

In his best work Anderson seems attuned to adolescence, the push-and-pull of romance, the short but focused attention spans, the bewilderment over the larger world. Here the kids are snotty brats testing each other over pointless trivia.

Not that the parents are any better. Like their kids they’re terrified of sex, they resent authority, they have no answers. Wrap that up in cotton-candy colors and splash some mean-spirited music over it and you’ve got Asteroid City, a black hole of a movie that sucks pleasure right out of you.

Directed by Wes Anderson. Screenplay by Wes Anderson. Story by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola. Produced by Wes Anderson, Steven Rales, Jeremy Dawson. Director of Photography: Robert Yeoman, A.S.C. Production Designer: Adam Stockhausen. Film Editor: Barney Pilling, A.C.E. Additional Editor: Andrew Weisblum, A.C.E. Costume Designer:  Milena Canonero. Music by Alexandre Desplat.

Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton.

Photo Courtesy of Roger Do Minh/Pop. 87 Productions/Focus Features. ©2022 Pop. 87 Productions LLC

Posted in Comedy, New Releases | Leave a comment

The lost dreams of Past Lives

Posted on May 30, 2023 by admin

Quietly devastating, Past Lives follows two childhood friends as they face the paths their choices have left them. Made with remarkable skill and precision, it is a wrenching account of how dreams die.

Childhood friends in Seoul, Nora and Hae Sung separate when Nora’s parents emigrate to Canada. Twelve years later they reconnect over the internet, Nora pursuing a career as a playwright, Hae Sung studying engineering after compulsory military service.

It takes another twelve years for the two to meet in person, when Hae Sung (now played by Teo Yoo) visits Nora (Greta Lee) in New York City. By now Nora has married Arthur (John Magaro), who is understandably anxious about his wife seeing her childhood sweetheart.

Writer and director Celine Song’s screenplay strips the film’s plot down to narrative basics. Romance in movies is built around delay, the inability of its leads to find happiness together. Song mines this element expertly (24 years is a long time to wait), building plausible reasons for Nora and Hae Sung to separate and reunite.

But Past Lives is more than a romance, it is a clear-eyed examination of how two characters (and by extension, a third) turn into people they never expected. Headstrong, impetuous, Nora finds her way changing as the world constricts around her. Stalwart, patient, Hae Sung must accept how his choices have shaped him. And Arthur learns that he can never truly know his wife, no matter how long they are together.

Song’s background in theater is clear in her  elisions. The script glides from moment to moment, condensing and expanding time. Nora’s affair with Arthur unfolds in a few, brief scenes that stretch across years. Song isolates key moments between young Nora and Hae Sung, holding on situations that will reverberate throughout their lives.

Nora and Hae Sung are searching for a past that may never have existed, at least not the way they understand it. “This is where I ended up,” Nora admits to herself as one point.

Cinematographer Shabier Kirchner singles out these two characters in a teeming world. He frames Nora so that her memories become our memories. A tilt down from the Seoul skyline finds two young children climbing stairs. Years later, a similar tilt from the Manhattan Bridge finds two old friends walking along an East River path. Precise but unassuming, Kirchner continues a string of excellent work that includes Bull and Small Axe.

Keith Fraase’s editing is key to the movie’s success, never more so than during the final scenes. And the music by Christopher Bear & Daniel Rossen maintains Song’s elemental style.

In a story about choices, Song has made all the right ones. No movie this year shows the hurt of lost dreams like Past Lives.

Written & Directed by Celine Song. Produced by David Hinojosa, p.g.a., Christine Vachon, p.g.a., Pamela Koffler, p.g.a. Executive Producers: Miky Lee, Hosung Kang, Jerry Kyoungboum Ko, Celine Song, Taylor Shung, Christine D’Souza Gelb. Director of photography: Shabier Kirchner. Production designer: Grace Yun. Edited by Keith Fraase. Music by Christopher Bear & Daniel Rossen.

Cast: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro, Seung Ah Moon, Seung Min Yim.

Photo courtesy A24.

Posted in Asian, Drama | Leave a comment