The Unrepentant Cinephile

by Jason Coffman

  July 13:

  Super Dark Times (USA, dir. Kevin Phillips)

  In a suburb somewhere in the American Midwest in the 1990s, lifelong best friend Zach (Owen Campbell) and Josh (Charlie Tahan) do what bored teenage boys did before the internet. They ride their bikes around town, watch scrambled cable porn, and hang out with people they’ve grown up with whether they like them or not. When Josh kills one of these acquaintances in a tragic accident, Zach tries to cover it up along with the younger kid Charlie (Sawyer Barth) who saw it. The timing couldn’t be worse: both boys have a crush on classmate Allison (Elizabeth Cappuccino), and she begins making her move on Zach. But while Zach tries to keep things from falling apart without pushing Allison away, Josh can’t hide his fraying sanity. True to its title, Super Dark Times is a pitch-black “coming of age” story that perfectly evokes the era in which it takes place. The young cast is great, but Amy Hargreaves is particularly affecting as Zach’s mom Karen. Despite its subject matter, the film manages a few moments of surprising bleak humor and its moody cinematography by Eli Born and excellent score by Ben Frost conjures an almost palpable sense of dread.

  The Villainess (South Korea, dir. Byung-gil Jung)

  Sook-hee (Ok-bin Kim) goes on a rampage and murders an entire compound of goons to get at their boss before the police show up and take her into custody. In the confusion, sensitive data was stolen from the crime boss, but the shadowy organization to whom said information belongs thinks Sook-hee could be an asset. She is taken on as a reluctant trainee to become a sleeper cell, living a normal life until she is activated to perform difficult assassinations. As Sook-hee tries to adjust to her prosaic new life, her work causes her to cross paths with the crime syndicate run by her deceased husband Hyun-soo (Jun Sung). As she finds herself in the middle of a tightening web of intrigue, will Sook-hee be able to figure out who is really on her side? The Villainess is a wild hybrid of insanely over-the-top action sequences—including a lengthy opening fight shot mostly in first-person—and soapy melodrama. The overall balance tips a little too much toward the latter, but the action set pieces are so hyperactive viewers will probably want the extra time to breathe before the next one kicks in. The cinematography is also ludicrously flashy: by the time the camera swings under a moving motorcycle, you get the feeling even Ryûhei Kitamura would probably think it’s a little much. Still, for sheer inventive mayhem The Villainess is in a league of its own.

  July 14:

  Tilt (USA, dir. Kasra Farahani)

  Joseph Burns (Joseph Cross) and his pregnant girlfriend Joanne (Alexia Rasmussen) return from a trip to Hawaii so he can return to work on his sprawling documentary film project and she can resume studying for her med school finals. But something has happened during the trip, and Joseph finds himself wandering away from his film to walk the city streets at night tempting fate and doing terrible things. As he rails against Donald Trump in the run-up to the recent presidential election and studies the so-called “Golden Age” of post-WWII America, Joseph’s hold on his sanity becomes increasingly tenuous. Tilt is a bleak, unsettlingly intimate portrait of a character at the end of his rope, propelled by a strong lead performance by Joseph Cross. It ends with something of a sick punch line, but there’s no doubt that Tilt will linger in viewers’ minds long after the credits roll.

  Japanese Girls Never Die (Japan, dir. Daigo Matsui)

  In the midst of a rash of beatings of men by a group of women in school uniforms, a pair of graffiti artists paint stencils of a “missing” poster of Haruko Azumi (Yû Aoi) all around their city trying to mimic Shepard Fairey’s “OBEY” street art. In a parallel story, Haruko and another woman a decade older than herself work at a small sales company with two men who do nothing and make nearly ten times their salaries. She falls into a vaguely defined sexual relationship with an old classmate in a desperate attempt to make a human connection and find some respite from the drudgery of her life. Daigo Matsui’s Japanese Girls Never Die recalls the work of Shunji Iwai, and not just because star Yû Aoi was in Iwai’s All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001) and Hana and Alice (2004). Matsui presents the doubled stories in jumbled timelines, and he’s interested in small moments and details of his (mostly female) characters’ lives. This includes some characters’ preoccupation with technology and social media, a favorite subject of Iwai’s. It’s considerably brighter and funnier than much of Iwai’s work, though, and has humorously absurd bookends in which the girl gang is lured to a movie theater showing an animated film. It may feel like a lot of work to put the pieces together, but in the end Japanese Girls Never Die is a rewarding and strangely optimistic story.

  July 15:

  Gurgaon (India, dir. Shanker Raman)

  Young architect Preet (Ragini Khanna) returns home from school to find her father Kehri Singh (Pankaj Tripathy) has become a powerful politician and land developer. Kehri is eager to welcome Preet into the family business and enlists her to design a new city center in Gurgaon, and also wants her to settle into an arranged marriage. Preet’s older brother Nikki (Akshay Oberoi) has become an entitled lout, gambling much more than he can afford and partying all the time. When Nikki makes a huge bet and loses, he finds himself in debt to his ruthless bookie and hastily comes up with a plan to kidnap Preet and get the money he owes from his own father as a ransom. As one might expect, things quickly go south. Gurgaon is a solid crime drama/thriller reminiscent of the films of Shanker Raman’s contemporary Anurag Kashyap (Gangs of Wasseypur, Psycho Raman), and Kashyap has been a champion of the film in their home country. It’s not surprising, as Raman stylishly and methodically puts the pieces of an inevitable tragedy into place and draws tensions to the breaking point. The performances are great, especially Akshay Oberoi as the amoral Nikki. It may not quite reach the heights of Kashyap’s best work, but it gets damned close without feeling like a tribute act.

  Savage Dog (USA, dir. Jesse V. Johnson)

  Narrator Valentine (Keith David) tells viewers the story of Irish exile Martin (Scott Adkins), imprisoned in Indochina in 1959 and forced to fight. When a British special agent gets too interested in what’s going on in the prison run by former Nazi Steiner (Vladimir Kulich), Steiner gives Martin his walking papers. Unable to leave the island where he has landed without a passport, Martin takes a job as a bouncer for Valentine’s bar and falls in love with Steiner’s disowned daughter Isabelle (Juju Chan). Before long, Steiner and his right-hand man Rastignac (Marko Zaror) find Martin and enlist him as a prize fighter. As anyone who has ever seen an action movie will guess, the deal goes sour and Martin undertakes a mission of brutal revenge. Savage Dog is a weirdly slapdash production that feels just barely a step above Steven Seagal’s recent output. This impression is not helped by some astonishingly awful CG effects that would shame Birdemic. Far too much time is spent setting up the inevitable rampage of vengeance that takes up most of the film’s final act, but once it gets up and running Savage Dog manages some impressively gruesome action. As much fun as that is, it’s kind of a slog getting there.

  The Honor Farm (USA, dir. Karen Skloss)

  It’s prom night, and Lucy (Olivia Grace Applegate) is set on losing her virginity to her boyfriend to cap off the evening. But her best friend Annie (Katie Folger) just got dumped, and when Lucy’s boyfriend gets too drunk to do anything but puke in their limo, the girls set off on their own and meet Laila (Dora Madison). Laila and her friends are heading to the titular honor farm, an abandoned prison complex where legend has it many men died. Why is Laila so obsessed with the honor farm, and who else might have late-night business there? The Honor Farm takes a lot of familiar elements—none-too-bright teenagers, drugs, abandoned buildings—and does very little with them. There’s a lot of talk about what is real and what isn’t, and occasionally the film flirts with a horror-tinged take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But by the end of The Honor Farm’s 75 minutes (including credits), it seems like nothing that has come before has had any real impact on any of the characters other than Lucy
meeting cute smart guy JD (Louis Hunter). It feels like a huge chunk of the film is missing; whether that’s by design or because of budgetary or other constraints is unclear, but whatever the reason The Honor Farm is a slight, unsatisfying exercise in frustration.

  Fantasia International Film Festival 2017: Dispatch #2

  Originally published on Daily Grindhouse 23 July 2017

  July 16:

  The Final Master (China, dir. Xu Haofeng)

  Chen Shi (Fan Liao), the last remaining Master of the martial art of Wing Chun, arrives in Tianjin in hopes of opening a school to teach his discipline. Grandmaster Zheng (Shi-Chieh King) warns him that the martial world of Tianjin is insular, and he will not be allowed to establish himself directly—in order to open a school, Chen Shi would have to defeat the masters of eight other Tianjin schools—but that he may train a local to fight on his behalf. Chen marries beautiful but disgraced Tianjin native Zhao Guohui (Jia Song) and begins training Geng Liangchen (Yang Song), a “coolie” who also happens to be a martial arts prodigy. But forces both inside and outside the martial world conspiring against Chen and his student may lead to the end of Wing Chun despite their best efforts. The Final Master is the third film by wildly idiosyncratic director Xu Haofeng, and it arrives at Fantasia after receiving a brief theatrical run in a handful of North American theaters last year. Like his previous films The Sword Identity and Judge Archer, a dense web of machinations form the backdrop to its main storyline, which is punctuated by a series of fight scenes very unlike anything else being made today. It feels like there are fewer action sequences than in his previous features, but that scarcity is more than made up for with a lengthy, spectacular final fight. It probably won’t win Haofeng any converts, but The Final Master is another unique feature from one of the most interesting filmmakers currently working in China.

  Animals (Austria, dir. Greg Zglinski)

  Nick (Philipp Hochmair), a professional chef, and his wife Anna (Birgit Minichmayr), an author of children’s books, are taking a six-month sabbatical from city life so Nick can work on a new cookbook and Anna can focus on her first novel aimed at adult readers. They enlist Mischa (Mona Petri) to house-sit for them, but before she even makes it out of the building with their keys she slips on a skateboard and suffers a concussion. On the way to their cabin, Nick and Anna have a car accident that leaves Anna with a head injury as well. As time begins to move strangely, the tensions in Nick and Anna’s marriage begin to surface in unsettling ways. Meanwhile, after Nick and Anna’s upstairs neighbor Andrea (with whom Nick had been carrying on an affair) commits suicide, Mischa is stalked by Andrea’s ex-boyfriend who believes Mischa is Andrea. Animals takes a cue from Robert Altman’s Images and its countless imitators by placing its lead characters in a remote location and breaking down reality around them to obscure what is “really happening” and what may be hallucination or madness. Unfortunately, it’s never made clear what actually is going on in either of the film’s parallel storylines other than that it seems that every character has some sort of head trauma that might explain away everything (or nothing). Despite a few effective moments of dread, Animals is too focused on being impenetrable to be satisfying on a dramatic level.

  July 17:

  Have a Nice Day (China, dir. Jian Liu)

  This might sound familiar: a group of none-too-bright low-level criminals chase a bag of money around a city, their paths criss-crossing over the course of one eventful evening. The big twist in Have a Nice Day is that this story is presented as an animated feature as opposed to live action. As such, it’s disappointing that nothing much is really done with the medium. One character has a couple of sci-fi inventions he uses sparingly, and there’s a brief (although very funny) reverie between two characters presented as a karaoke video that also looks like a propaganda film. The animation is quite basic, mostly just one step up from a typical Adult Swim show, and the drawing of the characters is similarly spare. This is a problem in that it’s tough to read much emotion in them, and likewise the backstories for all the characters are virtually nonexistent. It has its modest moments, and the whole thing runs under 80 minutes including credits, but Have a Nice Day feels more like a long proof of concept video than a full-fledge feature film.

  Senior Class (South Korea, dir. Hong Deok-pyo)

  Shy college art student Jung-woo is fixated on his beautiful and talented classmate Ju-hee, but she seems utterly unapproachable to him. He writes and illustrates a webcomic about his longing, but his best friend Dong-hwa is less interested in romance than in conquest. One night Jung-woo reluctantly agrees to run an errand to a hostess club for Dong-hwa and is shocked to find Ju-hee works there to make money for school. She asks Jung-woo to keep his discovery secret, instantly creating a bond and a precarious power dynamic between them. Senior Class is a low-key drama about young people making bad decisions that happens to feature a few explicit sex scenes, but its real hook is that it is not live action. The film uses the same style of CG animation as Seoul Station, which was directed by this film’s co-writer and producer Yeon Sang-ho. From certain angles, its characters look hand-drawn, but they are actually 3D models. The detail in the faces of the characters is often striking and effective in conveying a wide range of emotions, but wider shots and especially the characters’ somewhat stilted walking reveal the style’s limitations. Like Have a Nice Day, another animated feature at this year’s Fantasia, Senior Class does little with the possibilities offered by animation over live action. Other than the short sequences animating Jung-woo’s web comic, there’s nothing fantastical about the action of the film. It’s refreshingly frank and unafraid to paint its young characters in a deeply unflattering light as they struggle with their emotions and the consequences of their actions, but it’s tough not to be distracted by wondering why this story was told in this particular manner.

  July 18:

  Bitch (USA, dir. Marianna Palka)

  Following an unsuccessful suicide attempt that none of her family notices, Jill (writer/director Marianna Palka) confronts her monstrously selfish husband Bill (Jason Ritter) about the toll the stresses of her life is taking on her. Bill works constantly and maintains an affair with a co-worker, leaving Jill to take care of the house and their four kids entirely on her own. When Bill reacts to Jill’s desperate plea for help with anger and disgust, Jill snaps. Stripping naked and locking herself in the basement of their home, Jill begins to behave like a wild dog. This happens at the worst possible time for Bill, whose company is in serious jeopardy. He asks Jill’s sister Beth (Jaime King) for help, but she quickly becomes overwhelmed when she realizes the state of her sister’s life and marriage. For his part, Bill seems mostly worried that someone outside the family will find out about Jill’s behavior, and his self-centered nature may result in serious repercussions for his entire family. Bitch was clearly a passion project for its star/writer/director, but its schizophrenic tone will likely confound most viewers. Its opening suicide scene is harrowing, but it and other similarly unpleasant scenes (Palka is genuinely scary as Jill the “dog”) are jarringly scored with “wacky” music. The score uses the mouth harp more than probably every movie made in the last year combined. This tonal dissonance only gets worse when the film attempts to make a sharp turn from dark comedy to earnest family drama as Bill learns some important lessons about family. The cast does great work with the material, but the film’s uncomfortable mish-mash of tones will probably not sit well with most audiences.

  Sequence Break (USA, dir. Graham Skipper)

  Oz (Chase Williamson) is a young loner who repairs old arcade machines for Jerry (Lyle Kanouse) full-time. Sadly the business is on the brink of closing, and after breaking the news Jerry orders Oz to go out and get drunk while Jerry prepares to leave town for a couple of weeks. At the bar Oz runs into Tess (Fabianne Therese), who had been in the shop earlier that day to shop for a birthday present. While Oz and Tess get to know each other, a man (John Dinan) sneaks into the shop and leaves a package—a
circuit board. Oz finds the board and installs it, and soon after he plays it strange things begin happening that distract him from his budding romance with Tess. The game has a powerful hold over Oz that he can’t explain, and the gameplay sessions start to look less like old school arcade play than Cronenbergian body horror. Can he discover the secret of the game before it consumes him? Sequence Break is the debut feature as writer/director for actor Graham Skipper, who has made a name for himself in popular indie horror films such as The Mind’s Eye and Beyond the Gates. This is very much cut from the same cloth both in its casting (Williamson co-starred in Beyond the Gates, Therese appeared in Southbound and Starry Eyes) and in its look and feel, including a synth score by Van Hughes. Cronenberg is clearly the principal influence here, with an arcade machine’s joystick and buttons changing into gooey (sex?) organs and all manner of unidentifiable liquids oozing onto and out of its circuit board. There is some impressively weird imagery here and some great practical effects and low-tech visual trickery, but overall Sequence Break feels a little slight. There’s just not much to it, although it is done well. This could be a side effect of Skipper wanting to avoid the pitfall of many debut filmmakers who can’t seem to get out of their own way; at 80 minutes, the film never wears out its welcome.

  Fantasia International Film Festival 2017: Dispatch #3

  Originally published on Daily Grindhouse 26 July 2017

  July 19:

  Shock Wave (Hong Kong, dir. Herman Yau)

  A year and a half after undercover cop and explosives technician Cheung J.S. (Andy Lau) busted most of the crew of ruthless crime lord Peng Hong (Wu Jiang), Cheung’s life seems to have settled down. He’s an expert at defusing bombs and he even has a long-term girlfriend in Carmen Li (Jia Song), a schoolteacher. But now Peng Hong has returned for revenge, and the stakes are much higher than last time he was in town. When his army of henchmen take hundreds of hostages in an underground traffic tunnel, can Cheung stop him before an unprecedented disaster befalls Hong Kong? Shock Wave is the latest feature from legendary Hong Kong director Herman Yau, whose resume includes the notorious Category III shockers The Untold Story (1993) and Ebola Syndrome (1996). Here he teams up with Andy Lau, one of the all-time most iconic Hong Kong actors, for a film that somewhat recalls the 90s heyday of Hong Kong action cinema but with some modern tricks. There is some very effective use of drone camera to cover a lot of ground where a lot of action is happening in some of the tunnel scenes, and the CG here is for the most part totally serviceable. The action is peppered with occasional splashes of gore and almost comically brutal comeuppance for some of the villains, just to remind the audience who’s behind the camera. Shock Wave is a tense, action-packed and surprisingly emotional ride well worth taking.