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Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 17 July 2024

FILM REVIEWS:

 

THE BEAUTIFUL SUMMER  (LA BELLA ESTATE) (Italy 2023) ***
Directed by Laura Luchett 

 

Turin, 1938. Young Ginia has just left the countryside with her brother in search of a new life in the city. Though Turin lies in the shadow of a rising fascistic government and her brother yearns to return home, Ginia is more optimistic about the future. In a short time, she excels in her work as a seamstress at an atelier, gaining new clients with her designs and impressing her otherwise irascible employer. Restless and seeking adventure, Ginia soon finds it in a beautiful, enigmatic young woman named Amelia. Though similar in age, her new friend’s sensuality and confidence among the bohemian artists she socializes with embolden Ginia to begin modeling for the male painters in her circle.  A whirlwind affair ensues, and the young seamstress finds herself swept up in this new and unfamiliar world, all the while never escaping Amelia’s spell. The young women grow closer, and Ginia makes an emotional journey toward self-discovery over the course of one beautiful, sun-dappled summer.

Making a life in the countryside is hard work.  We do not belong to the big cities.  These are the words spoken by Ferucci to her sister Ginia as they discuss their possible futures.  She has bruised hands from overwork as a seamstress and the brother has almost given up his University studies believing that University is mainly for wealthy people.  The siblings illustrate the struggle of the poorer country folk compared to their more fortunate city counterparts.  The siblings argue but they care for each other.

From the stunning cinematography of the countryside that includes scenes of the lakes, rivers and woods, there is an obvious bias of the film towards life in the country as opposed to the city.  Yet Ginia is seduced by the city as she grows fond of a girl that she had just met, Amelia who works as a model for painters, often using nude for them.

The same-sex relationship between Ginia and Amelia is gradual.  Ginia first eyes Amelia emerging from the water of a lake after swimming, her nipples observably erect from her wet top, the appearance similar to Ursula Andress and Halle Berry as they emerged from the water in the James Bond films.  They meet again at a bar and their friendship goes from there, leading to a relationship that is unacceptable at the time.  Their first kiss occurs only after the one-hour mark of the film - quite a wait.  In the meantime and also after, Ginia flirts with a painter.  From her looks during the lovemaking, courtesy of the camerawork, one can see from her facial expressions that Ginia is quite uncomfortable while making love to a male.  In one scene she says” “There is too much light.”  Too bad as the male is quite good-looking.

Because of the period and the fact that the film is set in the Italian countryside, it is reminiscent of the disturbing recent Italian film FIREWORKS about two boys who find love who are eventually murdered by the villagers in disapproval - a disturbing true story.  This film is one of the best I have seen this year and is now available on demand.  THE BEAUTIFUL SUMMER is a fleeting, light coming-of-age story that celebrates the Italian countryside,  The music and light treatment of the period piece is also reminiscent of Fellini’s AMACORD.

The Locarno Audience Award Nominee premiers via VOD and Digital and streams on SVOD (Movement Plus) on August the 9th

Trailer: 

BORDERLANDS (USA 2024) ***
Directed by Eli Roth

 

BORDERLANDS is based on a video game.

Borderlands is an action role-playing first-person looter shooter video game franchise in a space Western science fantasy setting, created and produced by Gearbox Software and published by 2K for multiple platforms.  The series consists of seven games, each with multiple downloadable content packs.  The series has received critical acclaim and commercial success for its loot-driven multiplayer co-op gameplay and its sense of humour. It is one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time. so a film adaptation of the series is inevitable and arrives this week.

It is difficult to get excited with a film adaptation of a video game.  But BORDERLANDS has two things going for it.  Firstly, it is a highly successful, well-known and critically acclaimed video game and secondly, it is directed by Eli Roth, though the reshoots were done by Tim Miller (DEADPOOL) due to a conflicting schedule.

` Like the video game, the film’s setting takes place on the planet of Pandora, a horrid planet where law and order is absent and anarchy exists to its fullest.  The planet contains a vault that contains the secret tooth Universe, which in this case is all the tech information needed to rule the Universe, in short AI.  The planet has many vault hunters looking for the location of the vault and the key to opening it.

Lilith (Cate Blanchett), an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past, reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora to find the missing daughter of the universe's most powerful S.O.B., Atlas (Edgar Ramirez). Lilith forms an alliance with an unexpected team – Roland (Kevin Hart), a former elite mercenary, now desperate for redemption; Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), a feral teenage demolitionist; Krieg, Tina's musclebound, rhetorically challenged protector; Tannis, the scientist with a tenuous grip on sanity; and Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black), a persistent wiseass robot. These unlikely heroes must battle alien monsters and dangerous bandits to find and protect the missing girl, who may hold the key to unimaginable power. The fate of the universe could be in their hands but they'll be fighting for something more: each other.

Academy Award Winner Catt Blanchett lends her acting chops as the action hero in the film. She is, as usual good but do not expect any groundbreaking performances of the TAR or CAROL quality.  Cate Blanchett was cast as Lilith in May 2020.  Speaking of her decision to join the project, Blanchett said: "The gun-slinging stuff was so much fun. I got absorbed in that whole world. I think there also may have been a little Covid madness.  An impressive cast rounds off some solid comic performances.  Thank God the annoying Jack Black can only be heard and not seen.  Motor-mouthed Black is actually quite good here, as in KUNGFU PANDA.

It appears that filmgoers love humour in action-packed sci-fi futuristic action movies as in the recent record-breaking DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE

BORDERLANDS which hosts $100 million to make is from Lionsgate Studios.  The film opens Friday, August the 2nd.

Trailer: 

CUCKOO (USA/Germany 2024) ***

Directed by Tilman Singer

 

Reluctantly, 17-year-old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) leaves her American home to live with her father (Marton Csokas), who has just moved into a resort in the German Alps with his new family. Arriving at their future residence, they are greeted by Mr. König (Dan Stevens), her father's boss, who takes an inexplicable interest in Gretchen's mute half-sister Alma (Mila Lieu). Something doesn't seem right in this tranquil vacation paradise. Gretchen is plagued by strange noises and bloody visions until she discovers a shocking secret that also concerns her own family.

The film introduces audiences to a horrible event that results in what is known in science as an emaciated twin.  The young step-sister is the surviving twin while in the womb of her pregnant mother.  In the case of pregnancy continuation, the dead twin will progressively transform into “fetus papyraceous” due to the absorption of the soft tissues, and placental and amniotic fluids.  The dead fetus will be found compressed between the amniotic sac of the survival twin and the uterine wall.   A wide range of structural abnormalities have been reported in the surviving twin such as neural tube defects, optic nerve hypoplasia, hypoxic-ischemic lesions of the white matter (multicystic encephalomalacia), microcephaly (cerebral atrophy), hydranencephaly, porencephaly, hemorrhagic lesions of white matter, posthemorrhagic hydrocephalus, and bilateral renal cortical necrosis.  All this is pretty scary.

At the film’s 30-minute mark, director Kruger has his audience guessing as to what the hell is going on.  The female protagonist has just escaped from everyone at the resort where she is staying and working and taken off, on a whim with a French girl from Paris in a car.  She has stolen all the cash from the resort’s cash register.  They have a catastrophic road accident which then leaves her in the hospital.  Before this 30-minute mark, Gretchen sees a mysterious woman that is as yet unexplained.  She is accosted by a so-called detective to help solve a murder case.  Her father has had enough of her. Alma suffers from epileptic fits.  No one works at the reception of the resort after 10 pm the time weird things start to happen. If ever a film has sparked interest in the audience or created anticipation, this film is the one that excels.   The question then comes as to whether the re of the film can live to the early build-up and whether all the mysteries can be explained creditably.

Unfortunately, the film starts showing cracks during the second half.  Not every incident can be explained, like the toilet scene, and a few of these seem to be put there just for jump scares.  The repeated jolts in time -why so many characters suffer the same demise are not explained.

Performances-wise, Hunter Schafer as the 17-year-old serves the horror feature well.  British actor Dam Steves appears all weird here, sporting a German accent and trying his best to pass for German.

CUCKOO plays for horror and scare effects, coming from plot and camera techniques while paying less attention to story continuity or ending.  (A similar recent horror film is LONGLEGS.)

CUCKOO is in theatres on August 9th.

Trailer: 

DANCE FIRST (USA/UK/Belgium/Hungary2023) ***
Directed by James Marsh

The film documents the life of Irish writer’ Samuel Beckett, from his childhood, his friendship with James Joyce until the incarceration of the latter's mentally ill daughter Lucia Joyce, his relationship with his future wife Suzanne Dumesnil, his time as a fighter for the French Resistance during the Second World War, his postwar literary rise and subsequent Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969, his affair with translator Barbara Bray and his later life right until his death in 1989. Throughout the film, Beckett carries out an interior monologue

There are two ways to shoot a biopic.  One is to tell the story straightforwardly, whether in chronological order or non-chronological order with the often use of flashbacks - commonly used in most biopic films.  The other is a risky varied approach as in DANCE FIRST, the biopic of Irish Pulitzer Prize Winner Samuel Beckett using a style befitting to what the world has claimed as one of the best writers of the century and a literary genius.  The biopic unfolds with Beckett speaking to himself as his story unfolds.

Literary genius Samuel Beckett lived a life of many parts: Parisian bon vivant, WWII Resistance fighter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, philandering husband, and recluse. But despite all the adulation that came his way, he was a man acutely aware of his own failings. The biopic is entitled DANCE FIRST, titled after Beckett’s famous ethos Dance first, think later.  The film is a sweeping account of the life of this 20th-century icon.

Samuel Barclay Beckett, who passed as recently as in December 1989, was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and tragicomic experiences of life, often coupled with black comedy and nonsense.  His work became increasingly minimalist as his career progressed, involving more aesthetic and linguistic experimentation, with techniques of stream-of-consciousness repetition and self-reference.   He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the Theatre of the Absurd.  His most notable play is WAITING FOR GODOT written originally in French and translated also into English.  A resident of Paris for most of his adult life, Beckett wrote in both French and English.  During the Second World War, Beckett was a member of the French Resistance group Gloria SMH  and was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1949.  He was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The film begins with the older Beckett (Gabriel Byrne) at the ceremony where he wins the Novel Prize and the money.  He climbs up through the theatre to a cave where he meets himself and together they try to decide what to do with the cash!   This chat provides the scenario for a retrospective of the man's life.   As Beckett often used in his writing, a technique called ‘stream of consciousness’, this method issued in the telling of his life story in the biopic.   (In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which [sic] pass through the mind" of a narrator.)

This method used in the biopic by director Marsh (MAN ON WIRE, THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING) is admirable though it does not really work in terms of dramatic impact but serves to often blur the story which the audience has to decipher.  Byrne’s performance is lacklustre compared to Aikden Gillen who plays his younger counterpart.

At its best, the film captures the spirit of love and regret as well as the process of growing old but it fails to account for Beckett’s genius - what it is that literalists really like and where his genius originated from.

DANCDE FRIST does provide a comprehensive account of  his life and his philandering ways.

Trailer: 

INSIDE THE MIND OF A DOG (USA 2024) ***
Directed by Andy Knight Mitchell

 

Writer’s note: I am a dog owner and a proud one at that.  My puppy, a Rhodesian Ridgeback (Lucy) just turned one on August 2nd.  I am thus affected by this documentary INSIDE THE MIND OF A DOG, and I am hoping to benefit from some insights.

Netflix’s new doggie documentary INSIDE THE MIND OF A DOG aims to explore the ancient and complex human-dog relationship, reveal cutting-edge research and offer at-home tips for dog owners everywhere.  The doc begins by saying that most people might know the inside of the mind of a dog but modern studies have discovered more information that will benefit both the canine and the human species.   Following three main characters – a brilliant, super-trained border collie; a precocious pug; and a lovable rescued mutt – the doc’s team of elite canine experts from across the globe, dive deep into our best friend’s hidden mind, to answer everyone’s biggest canine questions.

The doc is filled with fun facts that one might already know or not know.  The average number of a litter is 6, the record being 24.  Dogs have nose prints just as human beings have unique fingerprints.  Dogs are as unique as their nose prints are, and researchers are trying to find out why.  Dogs understand human gestures better than apes as shown in the finger pointing cognitive experiment.  Puppies are born blind and deaf and their sight develops only after a period of three weeks.  The sight of newly born puppies finding their way to the milk of their mother and feeding on her is just such an endearing sight, powerful enough to warn the heart of the most evil villain.  The reason dogs are so adorable are their sad puppy eyes, the white part that can be seen that absolutely drives humans crazy. Friendliness rules.  Dogs use this element to bond with humans and survive.  The most popular dog breed was the golden retriever now overtaken by the  French bulldog.  My own dog breed was shown at the beginning of the doc as a standing tall canine Rhodesian Ridgeback, standing tall, bred originally from Africa.

The doc’s information comes from many sources including a canine research facility dedicated to understand the behaviour of dogs.  Canine Companion is another started up by Charles Schultz’s Peanuts and Snoopy.  The disc includes segments of the training of guide dogs.

The director of the film is Andy Knight Mitchell, a four-time Emmy Award winner, returning to direct the new documentary following the 2022 movie INSIDE THE MIND OF A CAT.  It did quite well on Netflix following its release in August 2022.  It was featured on Netflix's daily top 10s in over 49 countries and in the global top 10s for a single week, picking up 6.99 million hours of TV time.  Andy Knight Mitchell

has worked for most distributors, including National Geographic, Disney+, Nat Geo Wild, Discovery, and Animal Planet.  

INSIDE THE MIND OF A DOG, total entertaining for both dog lovers and non-dog lovers with insight and fun-filled facts, is available for streaming on Netflix this week. 

Trailer: 

IT ENDS WITH US (USA 2024) ***

Directed by Justin Baldoni

 

The new female-slanted romantic drama centering on female abuse IT ENDS WITH US  is based on the romance novel of the same name, by Colleen Hoover, published by Atria Books on August 2, 2016.  Based on the relationship between her mother and father, author Hoover described it as "the hardest book I've ever written.”

The IT in the title of both the book and the film refers to the abuse of the Bloom family - the abuse faced and suffered by both the mother and daughter at the hands of violent men.  The meaning is only made clear at the end of the movie bringing the film to a satisfactory explained closed ending.

IT ENDS WITH US could have been titled THE ABUSE ENDS WITH US, but then the entire story would have been too pious and expected.

IT ENDS WITH US, the first Colleen Hoover novel adapted for the big screen, tells the compelling story of Lily Bloom (Blake Lively), a woman who overcomes a traumatic childhood to embark on a new life in Boston and chase a lifelong dream of opening her own flower shop business.  A chance meeting with charming neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni who also directed the movie) sparks an intense connection, but as the two fall deeply in love, Lily begins to see sides of Ryle that remind her of her parents' relationship.  (i.e. the violent abuse)  When Lily's first love, Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar), suddenly reenters her life, her relationship with Ryle is upended, and Lily realizes she must learn to rely on her own strength to make an impossible choice for her future.

The film’s treatment of abuse can be looked upon in two ways.  In the first, it is romanticized and accepted, as Lily accepts Ryle’s abuse of her as being acceptable only because the abuse was different from her mother’s.  Ryle always has an excuse which Lily always readily accepts.  Finally, however, she separates from him at the end with the words “It (the abuse) ends with us) referring to the baby born of the abuse which is Ryle’s rape).  The story also offers Ryle an excuse for his violent behaviour which is attributed to the traumatic accidental killing of his younger brother when Ryle was a child.

Despite being directed by a male, the film has a strong female slant from the source material with a female author and a strong female protagonist supported by a lively performance by Blake Lively, pardon the pun.  The male characters are treated as secondary and mere pawns in the story, subject to where the plot of the film leads.

The flashbacks shown of Lily’s parents’s abuse are vague and it is difficult to determine what exactly is going on, despite the scene being repeated a number of times.  If this is director Baldoni’s purpose to reflect the vagueness of Lily’s own memory, then why show it a number of times? One can hardly tell too if the father was having sex with the mother or another woman or even with his daughter in the room, which makes the story confusing at that point.

Running at 130 minutes and despite being a female-slanted film and its questionable treatment of the sensitive topic, IT ENDS WITH US engages both genders with what abuse and violence can do to a relationship.

Trailer: 

LOLO AND THE KID (Philippines 2024) **
Directed by Benedict Mique

 

“Say it’s only a PAPER MOON, sailing over a cardboard sky.  But it’s only make-believe if you believe in me."  So go the words of the theme song of the 1973 Peter Bogdanovic hit starring real-life father and daughter Ryan O’Neal and Tatum O’Neal about a father and daughter con team that won the hearts of moviegoers everywhere and made PAPER MOON a classic hit.  There are many things that can be learned from that movie, but apparently, the new Netflix Filipino film LOLO AND THE KID about a kid and grandpa con team, fails to have taken up any pointers.

The opening scene of LOLO AND THE KID introduces the protagonists of the movie, LOLO which means grandpa in Filipino and his supposedly grandson.  They sit on a curb eating rice mixed with soya sauce as observed by a sympathetic couple.  Gemma and Alan admit that they want to adopt the kid, making it clear that they have tried everything to have kids before, but nothing worked for them. This request throws Grandpa Lolo off, but he agrees, leaving Kid behind, who seems distraught. This is a tearjerker scene which is perhaps the film’s best moment as it is revealed later than it is one that has fooled the audience.  It is revealed that this was all part of their con, and the duo leaves the house with plenty to sell and earn some money.

Unfortunately, the film falls apart right at this point.  The two continue to dupe others and as the audience is already familiar with the scheme, it gets boring quickly.  In PAPER MOON, the scams are different and there are other twists in the plot that make the film more intriguing with hardly a dull moment, aided by Tantum O’Neal’s fantastic performance earning her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, also making her the youngest winner in Oscar history.

In LOLO AND THE KID, however, director Mique plays at the heartstrings of the viewers instead, as many Filipino movies do, falling into cliched melodrama. But in contrast, the characters are also quick to play with the emotions of other people to earn a living.

As expected and as cliches go, things change, and Lolo realizes that Kid can’t live like this forever, so he makes a difficult decision on behalf of both of them. It is insightful to examine how PAPER MOON avoids this pitfall by ending the story before this consideration occurs.

Joel Torres who plays Lolo, the grandpa does his best in his role but is unable to save the film.

LOLO AND THE KID plays like a melodramatic pauper’s version of the Peter Bogdanovic’s classic PAPER MOON in which two family con artists set up to make a living act at the expense of sympathetic victims.   It lacks originality, humour and drama making a dry and ultimately boring 90 minutes.  The awful dragged-on climax aimed at tearing the heartstrings is too much to bear.

LOLO AND THE KID is a Philippines Netflix original film that opens for streaming this week.  Best to rent PAPER MOON again and watch that instead.

Trailer: 

SUGARCANE (USA/Canada 2024) ***
Directed by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie

  

The film begins with an advisory warning.  The film is about Indian and residential schools and contains discussions on sexual violence.

SUGARCANE is the name of an Indigenous Reservation in British Columbia, Canada.  The doc serves as a tribute to the resilience of Native people and their way of life.  SUGARCANE is the debut feature documentary from Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, which is a cinematic portrait of a community during a moment of international reckoning.  

It all began in 2021 when evidence of unmarked graves was discovered on the grounds of an Indian residential school run by the Catholic Church in Canada.  The doc spent time investigating and excavating a few graves.  Since then and after years of silence, the forced separation, assimilation and abuse many children experienced at these segregated boarding schools was brought to light, sparking a national outcry against a system designed to destroy Indigenous communities.   Services and gatherings with interviews of those attending attest to the importance of these meetings.

Canadians have been bombarded with the news of uncovered graves, and indeed many, many more have been discovered since then, and not only in the province of British Columba.  The doc takes a personal look at this shameful segment of History of Canada by focusing on Julian and his family and how they had been affected by the news.

As most Canadians have already been bombarded with so much news of the unmarked graves in residential schools, there is nothing new that Canadians have not already heard of.  But by looking from Julian’s family’s perspective, all the bad stuff has been made more credible and unaccepting.  It makes a difference when one hears a testimony firsthand compared to the reading of what has happened in the news.

A woman tells of her Indigenous experiences.  We were given all these strict rules to obey and the ones that broke them were the people in charge.  She woman also testified of herself being sexually abused and when she informed the authorities, they did not believe her.

A segment of the doc is devoted to the procedure of the investigation.

Set amidst a groundbreaking investigation, SUGARCANE illuminates the heartbreak and beauty of a community breaking cycles of intergenerational trauma and finding the strength to survive.

After making its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year — where it won the U.S. Documentary Competition Directing Award — the film went on to receive the Center for Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award from the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and the 2024 Filmmaker Award from the Margaret Mead Film Festival. To date, SUGARCANE has won over a dozen awards, including Best Documentary Feature Awards from Mountainfilm, the San Francisco International Film Festival, the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival and Sarasota Film Festival, along with Special Jury Prizes at the Seattle International Film Festival and the International Film Festival of Boston.

SUGARCANE opens in the U.S. and Canadian Theatres August 9. 

Trailer: 

Details

Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 07 July 2024

FILM REVIEWS:

 

THE CHAMPION (EL CAMPEON)(Spain 2024) ***1/2
Directed by Carlos Theron

 

In the light of the current football craze as the world watches the world’s best team play for the Eurocup, comes this Spanish comedy about a champion footballer, who is Spain’s top scorer.  From the age of 6, his father has groomed Diego to be a footballer, arming him for all the right clubs, etc.  He is called, a champion, just as the title of the film implies.  But Diego, the champion can also be described as a hooligan.  He was given a red card after head-butting not the football but his team captain, and suspended for two games and maybe a third. 

So, this hot-headed football star has had it all until a fight gets him benched and assigned a new tutor: a reclusive academic who'll teach him to face his fears.  Though advertised as a sports drama, it is a light one with many humourous light touches.  The teacher discovers that Diego suffers from dyslexia.  

  At its best, THE CHAMPION captures both the spirit of the sport of football as well as the problems associated with dyslexia.  It is a sensitive and moving story encapsulated in an occasionally brilliant script

 

The film is about two highly different personalities.  Though it sounds like a movie with a story to avoid, a story of how two mismatched characters interact and learn from each other - the film ends up quite endearing.  The character study makes good observations, revealing similarities as well as differences between the two, otherwise, hotheads, one keeping it all inside and the other always letting it out on someone else.  And the whole thing works, thankfully for the two actors who play the two leads.  At its best, the film is moving demonstrating the resilience of the human spirit.

THE CHAMPION, filmed in Spanish, opens for streaming on Friday the 12th on Netflix.

FLY ME TO THE MOON (USA 2024) ***½

Directed by Greg Berlanti

 

It has been almost 50 years since Peter Hyams’ famous action thriller CAPRICORN One graced the screens about a totally faked Mars Mission landing.  The caption went like this: “Would you be shocked if the greatest moment in history never happened?”  Elliot Gould discovered the truth in the film and had to fight for his dear life.  Something sort of similar occurs in FLY ME TO THE MOON.  The actual moon landing! The United States figures might not be as glamorous as the actual one occurring and decides to have a fake one filmed and teslas to the world instead.

FLY ME TO THE MOON is set during the 1960s Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union. a relationship develops between the NASA director, Cole Davis (Channing Tatum) in charge of the Apollo 11 launch, and the marketing specialist, Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson)  brought in to fix NASA's public image and stage a "backup" fake Moon landing.  She brings in her own director, described as the best director no one has heard of, Lance Vespertine (Jim Rash) to do the honours of filming the fake moon landing.  Lance is a perfectionist and needles to say, impossible to work with.  At one point, Kelly says that she should have got Kubrick instead.

But FLY ME TO THE MOON is a romantic comedy, the type of the 60’s the typical Rock Hudson and Doris Day pairing but with the roles reversed in this one.  Tatum plays the prissy follow-the-rules shy romantic while Johnson plays the brash independent female who is a con artist at heart.   The film works as a romantic comedy as the romance plays second fiddle to the NASA story, where the audience is drawn to the intrigue of NASA and its problems.

The film contains a great assortment of ‘moon songs including of course “Fly Me to the Moon” the 1954 song by Bart Howard, and the classic 1961 “Moon River” performed by Aretha Franklin.

FLY ME TO THE MOON is Greg Berlanti’s feature-directing debut.  Though his name is not that well known, Berlanti once made Time's list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2020.  In the 2017–2018 television season, Berlanti tied Jerry Bruckheimer's 2005–2006 record in having 10 different live-action scripted television series airing on various networks and digital platforms and took sole possession of the record, with 14 airing in the 2018–19 television season, having signed the most expensive producer deal at that time (June 2018) with Warner Bros.  But it is Johansson’s movie.  Besides serving as one of the film’s producers, she delivers a stellar performance as Kelly the female sweet-talking con artist.  Her performance is so good that director Berlanti omitted the dialogue and scene where she convinces two cops to pardon a shop breaking in to give her an escorted ride back to Nasa.  Omitted dialogue is very effective but not so widely used if the audience knows the gist of what is to be said as in Hitchcocks TORN CURTAIN and Spielberg’s SAVING PRIVATE RYAN where the tactic was used,

Though running a bit long over 2 hours, the chemistry of the two leads Tatum and Johansson works well making FLY ME TOTHE MOON  a successful and entertaining romantic comedy with the backdrop of the Nasa moon landing. 

LONGLEGS (USA 2023) ***½

Directed by Osgood Perkins

 

The new horror film LONGLEGS begins old-school Italian Gallo style with the screen all red, and one can tell that something terrible is going to happen.  FBI agents including Lee Parker are briefed that a serial killer is in the neighbourhood and they are to go door-to-door asking questions while being fully aware of how dangerous the killer is.  Lee and her partner are in the squad car and the partner leaves her in the car to do the door questions.  Lee then tells him that the killer is in the next house.  And to call it in.  When asked how she skins and she replied that she has a hunch.  Her partner goes to the door of the house and knocks on the door.  The partner is then blasted with a shotgun.  The scene pays homage to Gallo Maestro Dario Argento who has made incredible horror slasher films including SUSPIRA, OPERA, THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMMAGE, and his latest DARK EYES.  In his movies there is always some danger behind a door or curtain, and before any reason can be given the thing behind the barrier has lashed out and killed its victim.  The same can be said in this scene i which no reason needs to be given that Lee has the hunch the killer is in that house, and the killer does away with the victim in the same horrific way tight one would expect from Argento.

The film unfolds in three chapters, the first one untitled.  Not that it matters!

The story is set in the 1990s. New FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) was assigned to an unsolved case involving a Satanic serial killer known as Longlegs (Nicolas Cage).   As the investigation becomes more complicated with occult evidence uncovered, Harker realizes a personal link to the killer and must act quickly to prevent another family murder.

Watching LONGLEGS is like getting one’s senses jarred, not once but many times and with different means, be it sudden loud screeching sounds or sudden appearing frightening scenes.  It feels like the answer to a riddle is given and then it is a task to figure out the question.  Not everything makes sense and there are non-chronological moments.  One one confrontational scene between mother and daughter, the mother tells her that the daughter is allowed to grow up.  “What do you remember, mum?  the daughter asks.  “I forget but there are things in your room that will help you remember.”  is her mother’s reply.  At its best, the tactics used by writer/director Nichols work as a fresh and scary horror movie and at its worst, one is left trying to figure out what the last segment meant.

LONGLEGS is not Osgood Perkins's first feature. Perkins wrote and directed the horror films The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015) and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016), and directed the dark fantasy-horror adaptation Gretel & Hansel (2020).   He is also the second elder son of Anthony Perkins who starred as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’ Psycho.  He also played Norman

Nicholas Cage, the Academy Award Winner for LEAVING LAS VEGAS who loves playing weird roles has one of the weirdest I’m his career as the serial killer LONGLEGS.  When he first appears, he is totally unrecognizable, looking like a team with his long white hair and screechy voice.  Yes, and Cage’s character gets weirder as the story progresses.  Cage also serves as the producer of the film.

Trailer: 

SISI & I (Sisi & Ich)(Austria/Germany/Switzerland 2022) ****
Directed by Frauke Finsterwalder

 

Sissi (or Sisi) is the name often used for Empress Elisabeth.  Many films including the series THE EMPRESS from Netflix, a 1955 Austrian film SISSI and the recent CORSAGE have been made on the Empress, a famous figure in History.  Some history is useful in the appreciation of the new handsome period piece SISSIS and I.

Elisabeth, nicknamed Sisi, was Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary from her marriage to Emperor Franz Joseph I on 24 April 1854 until her assassination in 1898. Elisabeth was born into the Ducal royal branch of the Bavarian House of Wittelsbach but enjoyed an informal upbringing before marrying her first cousin, Emperor Franz Joseph I, at 16. The marriage thrust her into the much more formal Habsburg court life, for which she was unprepared and which she found suffocating.  The birth of a son, Crown Prince Rudolf, improved Elisabeth's standing at court, but her health suffered under the strain.  The death of Elisabeth's only son and his mistress Mary Vetsera in a murder-suicide at his hunting lodge at Mayerling in 1889 was a blow from which the Empress never recovered.  In 1890, she had the palace Achilleion built on the Greek island of Corfu the setting of the film. The palace featured an elaborate mythological motif and served as a refuge, which Elisabeth visited often. She was obsessively concerned with maintaining her youthful figure and beauty, developing a restrictive diet and wearing extremely tightlaced corsets (hence the title of the recent film CORSGE) to keep her waist looking very small. The story of the Empress is told and given from a different point-of-view as the title of the film implies, that of her Lady-In-Waiting, Irma played by Academy Award Nominee Sandra Huger (ANATOMY OF A FALL).  She calls the Empress a stupid cow in one scene and ‘your majesty’ in the next,

The film opens in the late 19th century. The single, middle-aged Hungarian countess Irma Sztáray, (Huller)  having rejected marriage and the convent, is forced by her overbearing mother to apply to be handmaiden to the increasingly reclusive Empress Elisabeth of Austria, aka Sisi (Susanne Wolff).  An extravagant and temperamental woman, Sisi has been separated from her husband for many years and is living in an aristocratic women-only commune in Corfu, Greece. After a humiliating interview by her predecessor, Irma arrives at the estate seasick and heatstruck and is immediately put through her paces by her new mistress. Though initially uncertain, Irma soon bows to the will of the Empress in all things, curbing her healthy appetite to match Sisi's obsessively restricted one and parting with her frou-frou ribbons and lace to adopt Sisi's preferred, Japanese-influenced style. Irma falls madly in love with the Empress, and as they travel from Corfu to Algiers, Bavaria to England, the two develop a co-dependent bond – though naturally, only as close as Sisi will allow. But when they return to Vienna, their lives change drastically. After her husband the Emperor rapes her, Sisi pressures Irma to murder her with a shiv, blaming an Italian anarchist.

SISI & I can be distinguished from the other films made of the Austrian Empress as this one is told from the pout of view of her Lady-In-Waiting, Irma and best of all played with constraint and elegance by Sandra Huller.  Director Frauke Finsterwalder creates an irrelevant tale full of detail, pleasures and decadence that feel so important to Sissi and Irma.  A wonderfully and stunning film and is entertaining from start to end.

SISI & I opens theatrically July 12th.

Trailer:  

TOUCH (Iceland/USA 2014) ***

Directed by Baltasar Kormakur

 

TOUCH is a senior love story of regrets and missed opportunities. It also encompasses two enormous events or rather catastrophic world disasters that affect the lives of everyone living on the planet - the bombing of Hiroshima (and Nagasaki) ending the Second World War and the COVID-19 pandemic.  These events affect the lives of the film’s protagonist and it is up to him to use the strength of the human will to overcome the difficulties.

Kristofer (played in the younger self by Pálmi Kormákur, the director’s son) is a young student in London who because of the tumultuous times of protests had to quit his studies,   He finds work, initially as a dishwasher at a Japanese restaurant (also in London) called Nippon, which is the old name for Japan.   He meets and gradually falls in love with the owner's daughter.  But separation ends their romance from the part of the father who takes his daughter back to Japan after finding that she is pregnant with child.

The time is the present 2020 and widower Kris When his doctor advises him that is time to tend to unfinished business, Kristofer takes the advice to heart.  He closes his Rekyavik restaurant, mutters a quiet “Forgive me” to a framed photograph of his late wife, and flies to London, just as COVID-19 pandemic restrictions are ramping up.  He stays at a hotel that is just about to be in lockdown mode.

The story contains a few too many coincidental incidents, and thoughts can be blamed on the source material, which is the novel of the same name.  One is the coincidence of the dementia and the other is that he is free to travel as his wife has already died.  Other coincidences include him meeting another widower, who shares the same demise and who also helps him in his journey.   It is a journey to search for a loved one.  As the film moves very slowly, one can feel the effects of a difficult search

The two timelines are intercut with the film moving forwards and backward, in fact rather clumsily in flashbacks.  At least with different actors playing the couple in different stages, one can tell when the setting is in the '60s and during the Pandemic.

The film is shot in both Japan and London, and the period atmosphere is effectively captured under the limitations of a tight budget.  For example, the older double-decker London bus is shown but with no other vehicles on the street.

The two lovers eventually meet at the end, in a satisfactory climax.  This can be compared to Jacques Demy’s LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG in which the lovers just miss each other in a tear-jerking finale.

This reviewer could be nasty and say that the film TOUCH, because of its theme, pace and characters is a film for old people, but I would rather say that TOUCH has the older audience as its target audience.  And to this effect, TOUCH succeeds,  but it is difficult to see the youth getting excited about a 50-year-old love romantic saga.  They have to wait their time.

Focus Features and Universal Pictures Canada will release TOUCH In-Theatres Nationwide on Friday, July 12th

Trailer: 

WILD WILD PUNJAB (India 2024) **
Directed by Simarpreet Singh

 

In the tradition of movies with goofy losers like the HAROLD AND KUMAR, HEY DUDE WHERE’S MY CAR and THE HANGOVER movies comes this film set in Punjab about 4  yes, goofy Punjabi goofballs who have nothing to do but hang around to complete one nonsensical task.  WILD WILD PUNJAB as the comedy is appropriately called is a nonsensical and goofy comedy that tests one’s patience more than testing one's funny bone.

The (irrelevant) premise of the movie goes like this:  Khanne has had a breakup. He's upset, but he has friends like Arore, Jainu and Honey Paaji who encourage him to face this breakup head-on and move on. They embark on a trip across Punjab to help Khanne find the closure he desires.

The four friends are an assortment of losers who are introduced in the film one by one.  The first is a college dropout staying in college because of his mixed martial arts ‘abilities’.

Arore (Sunny Singh) is introduced as a sex fiend, banging away girl after girl in a car that belongs to the second loser dude Jainu (Jassie Gill) who lives under his greedy father’s thumb.  The dad is busy counting the loot dowry given by the ‘papaji’ of sonny boy’s would-be-bride.  The father threatens Jaini that if he misbehaves, he will go back 26 years in time and use a condom - perhaps the film's one of the few funny jokes.  The third is the chubby and annoying Khanne (Varun Sharma), the one been dumped.  He cannot get over it and his friends, with him, are now travelling in the fourth’s SUV to her wedding to yell at her: ‘I’m Over You!” in front of all the wedding guests.  This person is drunk in the car all the way, creating more annoyance besides silly and unfunny shenanigans.  These include quite a few comedic set-pieces that are generally sillier than funny.  One is the toll gate fight in which the four engage in some kick-box choreography that also includes Khanne peeing on the toll barrier.  His pee apparently can set the toll gate on fire (Really?) and they make off without a scratch,  The fourth and thankfully the last is Honey Paaji (Manjot Singh), a rich dude of has a result of his father’s successful transport company, who owns his prized (cannot leave a scratch on it) SUV they are all driving up in.

The one positive thing about the film is its Punjabi setting which North Americans seldom see.  The costumes streets, and celebrations are all quite colourful (while stereotyping to an extent) though the shenanigans of the four are not that different from the youth of the Western countries.  The wedding is an excuse for some Bollywood song and dance numbers, the choreography with the 4 dancing in unison not being too bad.

 The wedding is an excuse for some Bollywood song and dance numbers, the choreography with the 4 dancing in unison not being too bad.

While a little entertaining, this goofy teen Punjabi comedy about drunken loser friends is nothing to write home about. Forgettable for sure, but not really good guilty entertainment.  One of the 4 friends says at one point in the movie: This is no HANGOVER movie!:  He is absolutely right!  WILD WILD PUNJAB: country of origin: India; and filmed in Hindi) is a Netflix original film that opens for streaming this week the recent Wednesday.

Trailer: 

VANISHED INTO THE NGIHT (Svaniti Nella Notte) (Italy 2024) **

Directed by (dirreto da) Renato de Maria

 

In the Pierre Morel actioncter TAKEN starring Liam Neeson that spun several sequels,  Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), a former government operative, is trying to reconnect with his daughter, Kim. Then his worst fears become real when sex slavers abduct Kim and her friend shortly after they arrive in Paris for vacation.  The new Netflix thriller from Italy VANISHED INTO THE NIGHT follows the rescue of a couple’s taken children, Giovanni and Bianca by the father in what is a mediocre action mystery thriller that suffers from a sluggish pace despite some fine performances of its leads.  This film is based on the 2017 Argentinian/Spanish thriller SEPTIMO (THE 7TH FLOOR) directed Patxi Amezcua, a box-office success and thus this remake.  Director Amexcua is one of the three co-writers for this script.

The film opens with a family outing on a luxurious boat in the sea where the family of four, Pietro (Riccardo Scamarcio) and Elena (Annabelle Wallis) and the two children swimming in the sea.  The father and mother find the two kids missing only to discover that they have hidden in the boat.  The next scene has the couple in a lawyer’s office arguing over custody of the two kids.  From here, it is obvious that there are problems with the script.  It is immediately confusing not to say disconcerting to see the loving couple arguing and separating over the two kids in two scenes next to each other.  There is also the question of the purpose of the two children hiding to fool their parents, as this has nothing to do with the rest of the story, except for the fact that they do disappear one night under the watch of Pietro.  From the scene in the lawyer’s office, the audience learns that the couple do not make the perfect pair.  Elena was addicted to opiates after being given addictive painkillers while Pietro accumulated a huge gambling debt of $250,000 euros.

The children disappear when staying with the father.  At night they disappear without a trace and Pietro receives a ransom call.  Pietro assumes that is the creditor that is responsible and goes to see Nicola, an old crooked acquaintance that he now has severed ties with,  Having no choice, he agrees to be a drug mule using his boat. As it turns out there is more mystery than action in the kidnapping story.  The only action is a fight between Nicola and Pietro later in the film and the mystery occurs when the kids suddenly appear at their mother’s house and the kids are in no way aware, as Elena too, of any kidnapping.  Pietro figures out the mystery’s solution, which is the main twist in the story.  The trouble is that the twist occurs too early and the film ponders clumsily after that,

The script has a good story but is executed a bit clumsily resulting in a lacklustre mystery thriller without much action or suspense. At best the cinematography around the Bari area in Italy is quite stunning. Bari is a port city on the Adriatic Sea and the capital of southern Italy’s Puglia region. Performances by the two leads are ok.

The film is shot in Italian and English.  VANISHED IN TO THE NIGHT opens for streaming this week on Netflix.

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Details

Written by: Gilbert Seah

Parent Category: Articles

Category: Movie Reviews

Published: 01 July 2024

The American Independence Day weekend proves to be a boom for new films opening.  Netflix has two winners opening - GOYO and the Japanese animated THE IMAGINARY.  And also streaming is the long-awaited Eddie Murphy BEVERLY HILLS COP: ALEX F.  For family, DESPICABLE ME 4 is the best of the franchise and for action films, KILL from India is action-packed aboard a crowded train.

 

FILM REVIEWS:

BEVERLY HILLS COP: ALEX F (USA 2024) ***
Directed by Mark Molloy

 

The 4th installment of the BEVERLY HILLS COP franchise which began in 1984 when Eddie Murphy was a mere 22 years of age begins with the same hit song ‘The Heat is On’  from that film playing at the film’s start.   Eddie Murphy’s Alex Foley has highjacked a snow plow and raced through the streets of Detroit demolishing cars in the city in a high-speed chase.   It is a high adrenaline-fuelled chase scene well executed with enough energy of hilarity and crashes that should keep the audience’s blood pumping.

So effective is this tactic of combining a super popular tune to a car chase that the same is repeated with the Pointer Sisters' song “Neutron Dance” with another chase this time with Foley on a parking cop’s scooter.  And then one-third time with a lesser-known song and another chase.

Eddie Murphy is now 60.  The latest in the franchise BEVERLY HILLS COP: ALEX F is produced by both Murphy as well as Jerry Bruckheimer.  Has Murphy still got what it takes?  Apparently he has as he is still able to keep audiences laughing with his outrageous shenanigans - as when he touts the name Foley against the name Saunders that his estranged daughter has taken to conning victims with his sweet talk and calling them names like ‘Smart Pants’.  Murphy has trouble getting his character’s sincerity believable on screen.  In his defense, audiences come to see this film to laugh not to watch serious drama.

Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley, a street-smart police lieutenant from Detroit, Michigan, who frequently travelled to Beverly Hills to investigate crimes that previously had mutual colleagues or friends of his wounded or killed.This time, Foley returns to Beverly Hills after his daughter Jane's (Taylour Paige) life is threatened. She and Axel team up with her ex-boyfriend, Detective Abbott Bobbitt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)  and his old pals, John Taggart (John Ashton) and Billy Rosewood, (Judge Reinhold) to uncover a conspiracy.

Two good cameos deserve mention.  One is the return of Bronson Pinchot as Serge, a former art gallery salesman turned weapons dealer who worked for Victor Maitland. Pinchot returns to the role after 30 years from Beverly Hills Cop III.  The other is actor Luis Guzmán as Chalino Valdemoro.  Kevin Bacon plays the villain,  corrupt cop wearing Rolex and thousand dollar shoes.

Murphy has come a long way since his first BEVERLY HILLS COP film in 1984.  Murphy was nominated for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor DREAMGIRLS but did not win, likely because he lost his clout with his comedy NORBITT released the same time as DREAMGIRLS in which he played Norbitt, Norbitt’s over-obese wife Rasputia as well as Mr. Wong.  Someone this silly should not deserve the Oscar. This thought was likely in the minds of the Academy voters.  Murphy was almost the MC for the Oscars - he would have been perfect and hilarious but had to bow out due to some controversy at the time.  Murphy is still the funny donkey in SHREK.

BEVERLY HILLS COP: ALEX F is a long-anticipated Beverly Hills Cop Netflix original.  It succeeds as forgettable entertainment as his fans should not be disappointed.

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DESPICABLE ME 4 (USA 2024) ****
Directed by Chris Renaud

 

One might think that with the 4th installment of the DESPICABLE ME franchise, the filmmakers would have run out of ideas with Gru (Steve Carrell) and his minions, but truth be told, DESPICABLE ME 4 is the best of the series yet.  Not only is DESPICABLE ME 4 full of fresh ideas but the voice characterizations and animation are top-notch aided by several fresh and hilarious comedic set pieces, the funniest happening at the film’s start as a parody of an Awards ceremony.  DESPICABLE 4 is so far the most entertaining animated feature this year and not only for kids loving those pesky cutesy minions.  The trailer is funny enough but more hilarity is on screen not shown in the trailer.

DESPICABLE ME is an American media franchise created by Sergio Pablos, Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio.  It centres on a former supervillain turned secret agent named Gru, his adoptive daughters, Margo, Edith, and Agnes, and his yellow-coloured Minions. The franchise is produced by Illumination Paris, and distributed by its parent company Universal Pictures.

At Lycée Pas Bon, Gru's alma mater, set in a remote castle in a mountainous region, a reception is taking place: the Award for the Best Pupil among the alumni of the year 1985 is awarded to Maxime Le Mal, who has equipped himself with embedded cockroach body parts. But Gru and Anti-Villain League (AVL) agents manage to arrest him at the end of the ceremony. Following his escape from prison, he and his girlfriend Valentina seek revenge on Gru and his family, including his baby son, Gru Jr.  The AVL puts the whole family into relocation for their protection, under new identities, with only three Minions. Gru's new name is Chet Cunningham, a salesman for solar panels, while Lucy is excited to become a hairdresser. The rest of the Minions are moved to the AVL headquarters, where five of them are augmented with superpowers. But the short career as superheroes of these Mega-Minions is a flop. In their new well-off residential town, Gru and his family meet their new neighbours, the Prescotts, and their teenage daughter Poppy. The latter recognizes Gru and blackmails him into a spectacular robbery: stealing Lycée Pas Bon's mascot, Lenny, a ferocious badger. Gru, Gru Jr and the three Minions ally with Poppy on this mission. They all go home with Lenny, but the badger's collar contains a tracker. Maxime is thus informed of the secret location of Gru and his family and kidnaps Gru Jr. in his flying cockroach vessel. Gru finally saves him with the help of Poppy.

Several hilarious comedic set pieces include a supermarket chase down the food aisles, Poppy’s engineered heist that also includes a chase by the old headmistress in a wheelchair, the Mega Minions, the tennis games and the beginning Awards ceremony.  Will Farrel and Steve Coogan steal the show in their voice characterizations the former as the villain and the other a James Bond type M.

For information, the franchise began with the 2010 film of the same name, which was followed by three sequels, Despicable Me 2 (2013), Despicable Me 3 (2017), and Despicable Me 4 (2024) and by two spin-off prequels, Minions (2015) and Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022). The franchise also includes many short films, a television special, several video games, and a theme park attraction. 

DESPICABLE ME 4 opens July 4th.

Trailer: 

GOYO (Argentina 2024) ***½

Directed by Marcos Carnevale

 

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes i.e. Goya was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  His paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th- and 20th-century painters.  Goya is often referred to as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns.  The new romantic comedy/drama GOYO features an autistic protagonist who loves to paint, which is a name probably a derivation of the famous painter’s name Goya.

A young autistic museum guide lives by a strict routine until he falls in love with his coworker and must confront a whirlwind of new, intense emotions.

One can tell from the start of a film how the movie will turn out.  The same can be said when watching the first few scenes of GOYO.  The audience sees Goyo, an autistic man (he has Asperger’s) taking his pill medication, capsules in blue and black, also the colour of his checked shirt.  Such coordinating details imply that a lot of details will be put into the filming.  And indeed this can be experienced as the film progresses.   The film’s setting is Buenos Aires, observable from the words on the side of the metro train at the station in one scene,

GOYO is a rare film made with not only care but with sensitivity considering the issues covered.  A romantic comedy where the girl faces prejudice when her friends warn her of her beau not being normal,  Yet it is most moving when someone tells her she cannot expect more when someone loves and admires her this much, does tons for her and loves her unconditionally.  And him being cute as hell too.  

Nicolás Furtado portrays the autistic Goyo with his hair slicked back and with his gait with his arms unmoving by his side.  Her facial mannerisms with his sudden stares all reliably reflect a person with autism.   Goyo is irritated with loud sounds, especially sudden ones.   The dialogue reflects his character’s accuracy with numbers.  He remembers dates while being good with numbers and historical data.  The film also celebrates women’s independence.  The security guard he falls for has just kicked her husband out and has to look after her two sons, the elder one exhibiting teenage rebelliousness,  She puts him in place.  Yet, the film shows her as a vulnerable person, having to smoke up to calm her nerves,  The care and thought that goes into the making and writing of this film are very impressive.  The best trailer used in the script - Goyo cannot and does not lie.

The film compels one to admire diversity while reflecting on one's values as well as others’ prejudices.  The film also contains extra with Down syndrome, celebrating diversity in film.

GOYO is a Netflix original film that opens for streaming this week.  Don’t let the romantic comedy genre put you off as this is a rare and endearing film moving and brave as well.

Trailer: 

THE IMAGINARY (Japan 2023) ***½
Directed by Yoshiyuki Momose and written by Yoshiaki Nishimura,

 

The much anticipated Netflix original animation THE IMAGINARY by Studio Ponoc based on hand drawing animation, the dominant form of animation before the switch to computer-generated animation, is based on the 2014 British children's novel written by A. F. Harrold and illustrated by Emily Gravett.  It is about a small girl, Amanda, and her imaginary friend, Rudger.  The book has been described as not quite as innovative as it might be, but nevertheless a winningly whimsical celebration of the imagination, beautifully enhanced by both black-and-white and full-color illustrations.   (Kirkus Reviews found it "Wonderfully entertaining”)

The Japanese title of the film THE IMAGINARY is Yaneura no Rajā, which means  'Rudger in the Attic’. Rodger is the name of Amanda’s imaginary friend.

In a world where imaginations can live and be eaten by others, Rudger, an Imaginary boy, can be seen by no one but his creator, a young girl named Amanda. Their shared existence is confined to the attic of Amanda's residence, where they delve into her vibrant imagination.  Always protect each other - Never cry! However, Imaginaries are subject to an inexorable fate: dissolution with human forgetfulness. Baffled by this eventuality, Rudger clings to a glimmer of hope, embarking on an inconspicuous odyssey after Mr. Bunting, who hunts Imaginaries, arrives at Amanda's doorstep. His journey leads him to the enclave referred to as "the town of Imaginaries", a sanctuary for forgotten Imaginaries. This encounter initiates a monumental voyage that steers the course of familial bonds and cherished connections, shaping their forthcoming trajectories.

There are deeper issues dealing with imaginary playmates.  The most pressing issue is whether an imaginary playmate would do more harm than good for the child in particular.  Why would a child have an imaginary playmate?  The best reason even is the child’s loneliness which leads to the classic joke: I was so alone as a child that even my imaginary playmate refused to play with me. (the origin of the joke: the play STEEL MAGNOLIAS).  The next question is the issue of what determines the nature of the imaginary friend.  Horror films often use psychological troubling issues of the mind to create a monster.  The reason for Rutger’s existence is not given till half the film has passed.

The source material is British.  There are two versions of the film, a Japanese-voiced and an English-voiced version.  But the British setting is kept, with English names for the story’s characters and words in English (like the signs on shops and on busses) in the Japanese version.  The villain has a British name, Mr. Bunting.

The film takes flight into a world of imaginaries in the part where Rudger discovers others of the same, and many taking different shapes and forms such as Snowflake the pig and other animals and mechanical distortions.

THE IMAGINARY is an imaginative and worthwhile watch from another Japanese Animation Studio that takes a fresh look at an English children’s novel - imagination that can turn into hope and then into reality.  It opens for streaming this week on Netflix.

Trailer: 

JUNE ZERO (USA/Israel 2023) ***½

Directed by Jake Paltrow

Shot in super 16mm in Israel and Ukraine, writer/director Jake Paltrow’s JUNE ZERO is an ambitious film that puts his mark with some insight based on true events in which Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, whose one signature would send thousands of Jews to their death in gas chambers, is being tried.  And he is convicted.  During the trial, he did not deny the Holocaust or his role in organizing it but said he was simply following orders in a totalitarian Führerprinzip system.  He was found guilty on all of the charges and was executed by hanging on 1 June 1962.  The trial was widely followed in the media and was later the subject of several books and of this Paltrow film, including Hannah Arendt's 'Eichmann in Jerusalem', in which Arendt coined the phrase 'the banality of evil' to describe Eichmann.

Why is the film called JUNE ZERO?  The film’s title references a tabloid that keeps popping up in the story (based on a real magazine from that era, kind of a cross-between Charlie Hebdo, Playboy and New York Post).  “June 0” is the date printed on the execution issue, so as not to commemorate the event.

The anthology-styled film contains three stories bookended by the first about a Palestinian boy’ coming-of-age while working for a Jewish oven maker.  All stories are based on the fact that the State of Israel is facing the question of how to keep Adolf Eichmann's grave from becoming a neo-Nazi pilgrimage site and how they got to keep him alive and out of public publicity before his execution.

The stories include Eichmann’s Jewish Moroccan prison guard, an Israeli investigator who also happens to be a Holocaust survivor and David, a precocious and clever 13-year-old Libyan immigrant.  The three are inexorably connected through the parts they played in this seminal moment of Jewish history.  The best story is the one of the boy David while one of the guards is glorified and the one of the survivors least pressing.  According to the press notes, director Jake Paltrow who co-wrote the script with Israeli writer Tom Shova drew inspiration from his father (late filmmaker Bruce Paltrow) who passed on a deep interest in World War II and Jewish history to him. 

Paltrow’s film contains moments of suspense (the barber cutting the prisoner’s hair), lightheartedness (David’s shenanigans) and sensitivity (the Israel investigator’s experiences).

Added authenticity is provided with the film shot in 16mm, giving it a period feel, as well as being voiced mostly in Hebrew.

JUNE ZERO underscores the notion that shared traumas have the power to forge the strongest bonds and give rise to unexpected moments of triumph and connection.  The film stands as a fable on the current Hamas and Israel war on how Palestinians and Jews could function together utilizing the best of their human abilities.   As the film delves into the complexities of the human experience during this pivotal trial, it serves as a poignant reminder that history's impact can be both diverse and unifying.

JUNE ZERO opens in theatres on July 5th at the Varsity.

Trailer: 

KILL (India 2023) ****
Directed by Nikhil Nagesh Bhat

 

The title KILL appears only after the one-hour mark of the film.  The action is so fast and furious no one would’ve noticed the title not appearing on the screen as yet,

When army commando Amrit (Lakshya) finds out his true love Tulika (Tanya Maniktala) is engaged against her will, he boards a New Delhi-bound train in a daring quest to derail the arranged marriage. But when a gang of knife-wielding thieves led by the ruthless Fani (Raghav Juyal) begin to terrorize innocent passengers on his train, Amrit takes them on himself in a death-defying kill-spree to save those around him — turning what should have been a typical commute into an adrenaline-fueled thrill ride.

The train saga pays a nod to the famous Bong Jung-Ho’s SNOWPIERCER in which different classes of people are kept in different carriages of the train.  In KILL, the train bandits are stuck within one lot of carriages while the wedding party is in others.

Several factors make KILL more interesting and entertaining than most martial arts action flicks besides the fact that all the action-taking place in close-quartered train carriages.  The story involves a father-and-son relationship of the bandits.  The father and son never agree on anything and when things spiral out of control with the bandits, the father and son still argue, as to what to do with one of the hostages on the train, the train transport owner.  Another is the romance built into the action plot.  The main action lead’s character was planning to elope with the daughter of the wealthy transport owner.  The fight sequences are all masterly executed with more than a touch of violence.  There are tons of beatings and punches but the characters never stay down and never seem to have any broken bones.  They keep coming up fighting.  In many films like this, the fights look ridiculous but in KILL< the excitement is maintained.  Also inserted into the mix are characters like a cousin of the head bandit, who is a strongman that cannot be defeated, just like the tough baddie Odd Job, the Korean with the steel bowler hat in James Bond’s GOLDFINGER.

KILL is inspired by real-life train robberies in India by a class of criminals known as “dacoits,” KILL laces its high-concept premise with familial melodrama that cuts across both sides of the battle lines.  Desperate to protect Tulika and her family, Amrit and Viresh parry all manner of knives into gangster heads, shoulders, knees, and toes and, as the body count rises, so too does the ire of the crooks, especially that of the clan’s psychotic black sheep Fani, portrayed with charismatic lunacy by Raghav Juyal.  The climax includes a violent fight to the death, as in most classic action Hollywood films, of the hero and villain.  A predictable fight yes, but a necessary one in the true classic tradition.

Indian director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat proves to be a force to be reckoned with.  He already has multiple film and television credits including Long Live Brij Mohan (2017), The Gone Game (2020) and Hurdang (2022).  KILL premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year to become the runner-up winner for the Midnight Madness Section.

KILL, action aboard a packed train ranks with THE BEEKEEPER as the top 2 action films of 2024.

Trailer: 

MAXXXINE (USA 2024) ***
Directed by Ti West

 

MAXXXINE, is, as slasher horror fans of filmmaker Ti West and Hollywood slasher queen Main Goth already know, the third of the trilogy of ‘X’ films beginning with X and PEARL.  PEARL is the best of the lot - hard shoes to fill, but their latest MAXXXINE isn’t half bad either.

The X movies proved to be surprise hits for the A24 movie studio (their most recent being their largest production ever, CIVIL WAR), garnering acclaim from both critics and horror fans alike, doing immense success at the box office.  X and  PEARL were made around the same time during the pandemic (to their credit) and released in 2022.  PEARL was a prequel to X, and featuring Mia Goth’s character of a young girl (similar to SHOWGIRLS, but meaner and more daring) insatiable desire for fame and stardom at all costs.  MAXXXINE pays tribute to the Bette Davis (and Joan Crawford) classic WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? with young Maxine trying to please her father as a child star as Baby Jane Hudson did in the film.

In 1980s Hollywood, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break.  But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood, a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past.  Of course, Maxine discovers the one responsible and takes things into her own hands.

The impressive cast includes Kevon Bacon.  Bacon plays a private investigator who is good at the job but not good at taking care of himself.  He gets beaten up by Maxine with his nose broken and a plaster (the Brit term for Band-Aid) across his nose, looking pretty much like Jack Nicholson in Roman Polanski’s masterpiece CHINATOWN.  Director Ti West pays tribute to  CHINATOWN.  One wishes Bacon’s character survives but unfortunately does not.  Bacon is an excellent actor and he is always a pleasure to watch on the screen, regardless of the character he plays.  Director West obviously knows this and uses it to his best advantage.

But the prize performance belongs to Elizabeth Debeicki who plays the talented and impossible-to-work-with director of Maxine’s movie,  The actors playing the two detectives trying to solve the case of the serial killer are also entertaining to watch.

Director West’s slasher horror black comedy is still an entertaining watch given the over-used plot of a novice actress trying to succeed in Hollywood.  But Mia Goth is quite the prized actress and a pretty good one at that, as can be observed in her audition film at the art of the film.  In that scene, she really nails it.  And her character does say to the rest at the auditions to go home as she had already nailed the part.

Already passed on June the 25th, but audiences can get back to where it all began when Ti West’s deadly slasher PEARL is returning to theatres with a special sneak peek of MAXXXINE for a one-night-only special event!  (Pearl – Fan Event Featuring MAXXXINE Sneak Peek – June 25, 2024).  For Toronto, the event took place at the The Fox Theatre, Toronto)

Ti West and Mia Goth make an excellent pair of filmmakers.  One wonders what comes next after the trilogy.

Trailer: 

 

POPULATION PURGE (USA 2024) **

Directed by Brian Johnson

 

There are ripoff films and films that do worse than ripoffs.  The new action dystopian film POPULATION PURGE belongs to the latter category.  The film rips the word ‘purge’ from the box-office successful THE PURGE franchise.  From the title POPULATION PURGE, one would immediately connect the film to one of the PURGE films but this film has nothing to do with the Purge film franchise except that both are dystopian action horror films,

It is easy to see the reason the film is so named.  Though the franchise has received a mixed critical reception, it has grossed over $450m overall, against a combined production budget of $53m.   THE PURGE films are written and in some cases also directed by James DeMonaco. The films present a seemingly normal, crime-free America in the near future. However, the country is a dystopia that observes an annual event known as "the Purge", in which all crime, including murder, is legal for a 12-hour period.

In a dystopian world where a radical government has unleashed a deadly poison to control the population, only those with blood type AB-positive remain unscathed. But instead of outright death, the rest of the population is left to suffer in a state of chronic illness, causing widespread chaos and panic. As the majority slowly succumbs to the effects of the poison, their only hope lies in receiving transfusions of AB-positive blood from the few immune survivors, like Charlie and his granddaughter Maya. Living in the decrepit remains of an abandoned amusement park, Charlie is a renegade supplier of blood to the underground market. But their sanctuary is threatened by the iron-fisted rule of District 22's ruthless warden, Onslow, who will stop at nothing to save his own dying son. As Charlie and Maya fight to defend their haven and their own sanity, the eccentric duo must navigate through a world of danger and betrayal.

Though the premise is relatively simple, the script and direction of the first 15 minutes are terribly confusing and one wonders who is who and what which group are survivors and which are not.  Once it is established who Charlie and his granddaughter are and who the members of District 22 with the warden are, the film starts to flow, but not necessarily for the better.

The actors either resort to over-acting with screaming and venting at the top of their lungs or just really poor laughable performances.  It might have come across as quite entertaining and funny but they are too loud and annoying.

Director Johnson makes no special effort to make any of his characters particularly likable.  If one dies, no one really cares.  The action sequences are executed with not much aplomb either, with many victims down away with by shotgun or crossbow.

POPULATION PURGE was written by Brian Johnson and Toby Osborne and directed by Johnson. To give the film some credit it did win awards at numerous festivals including Best Feature Film / Best Cinematography at the 2023 Los Angeles Cinematography Film Festival, Best 1st Time Director of a Feature Film at the Best Actor & Director Awards, and Best Feature Under $250,000 at the 2023 International New York Film Festival.

POPULATION PURGE  will be released on digital platforms on July 9, 2024.

Trailer: