A Haunting in Venice (2023) ☆☆☆(3/4): Poirot attends a séance

Posted on September 15, 2023 by kaist455

Kenneth Branagh’s new film “A Haunting in Venice” is another mystery tale associated with Hercules Poirot, a Belgian detective character in many of the works of Agatha Christie. His two previous Poirot films, “Murder on the Orient Express” (2017) and “Death on the Nile” (2022), were a little too ponderous to have some fun with, and it was rather difficult for me to get accustomed to that huge mustache on Branagh’s face which might make Christie roll in her grave. However, this time, I finally get used to his interpretation of that brilliant Belgian detective, and I also like the spooky mood and nice stylish touches of the film in addition to finding its whodunnit plot more engaging in comparison.

Branagh and his screenplay writer Michael Green, who already worked with Branagh in his two previous Poirot films, made a wise choice in case of selecting another Christie novel to adapt. Compared to “Murder on the Orient Express” or “Death on the Nile”, “Hallowe’en Party” is a relatively minor work which is also one of those disappointingly sub-standard ones during Christie’s later years, so it was probably much less burdensome for Branagh and Green to change the story and characters here and there.

Their result is quite different from the novel although you can notice several references to the novel if you have read it (I read it again, in English this time, a few years ago, by the way). While the original story is set in a country town in England, Branagh and Green move it to Venice in the late 1940s, and several substantial characters in the novel are presented in very different appearances although their names remain mostly intact.

In case of Poirot, Branagh plays his character a little more seriously than before. As Venice and its citizens are still struggling to recover from the devastating effects of the World War II, Poirot is leading a reclusive life without any particular interest in using his little gray brain cells again, but then there comes an unexpected visitor eager to pull him out of his current retirement. That figure in question is a novelist named Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey, who dials down her usual comic persona to some degree here in this film), and she wrote a bunch of successful mystery novels based on Poirot, which incidentally made him a lot more famous around the world.

Oliver wants Poirot to attend a séance to be held at a shabby mansion belonging to a retired opera singer named Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly). As a man of reason and common sense, Poirot does not believe much in ghost or afterlife much, but he agrees to join her anyway because he is asked to debunk a medium invited to this séance, which is incidentally for reaching out to the ghost of Drake’s recently diseased daughter who died under a rather questionable circumstance.

As Poirot and Oliver come to Drake’s mansion, the eerie sense of dread and anxiety is gradually accumulated around the screen. As cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos frequently emphasizes the dark and moody textures of a rainy Halloween evening surrounding Venice, Hildur Guðnadóttir’s sparse bass score brings extra ominous quality to the screen, and we are more unnerved as a few disturbing things happen around Poirot shortly after he arrives at the mansion along with Oliver.

The tension surrounding the first half of the film culminates with the expected arrival of the medium, who is played by Michelle Yeoh with delicious gusto. Right from when he meets the medium, Poirot senses something fish about this figure, but then he cannot help but become quite disturbed just like many others around him when the séance leads to some questions about the death of Drake’s dead daughter. Was it just an accident or suicide? Was it actually involved with whatever is lurking somewhere inside the mansion? Or….

So far, I have been discreet about not telling too much to you, but I can tell you a bit about how the movie skillfully toys with those and several other possibilities in addition to even making Poirot question whether his shrewd mind is actually influenced by something in the mansion. As a matter of fact, there is even a little precocious kid who seems to see dead people just like that kid in “The Sixth Sense” (1999), though you may also wonder whether he has read too much of Edgar Allen Poe stories. While Jude Hill, a young actor who was the charming center of Branagh’s Oscar-winning film “Belfast” (2021), is poignant when his character shows more feelings behind his flat attitude later in the story, Jamie Dornan, who already worked with Hill in “Belfast”, is effective as the boy’s mentally struggling father, and Kelly Reilly and Camille Cottin, who plays a neurotic housekeeper working in the Drake’s mansion, also bring some life and personality to their respective supporting roles.

On the whole, “A Haunting in Venice” is a solid improvement one or two steps above Branagh’s two previous Poirot films. Branagh seems to be more comfortable with the story and characters in this time, and that is not so surprising how he had lots of stylish fun in “Dead Again” (1991), another mystery thriller film coupled with supernatural elements. I must say that I had a pretty good idea of what was going on, but, when Poirot is about to explain all to everyone else in the mansion (Is this a spoiler?), I paid full attention to him nonetheless in this time, and that is an achievement to say the least.

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Love Life (2022) ☆☆☆(3/4): A low-key drama of love and life

Posted on September 13, 2023 by kaist455

Koji Fukuda’s new film “Love Life” calmly follows the emotional struggles of its two main characters who come to reflect a lot on love and life after one shattering incident. This is surely a familiar melodramatic setting, but the movie thoughtfully handles its story and characters with enough sensitivity and sincerity, and we come to care more about their complicated matters of love and life along the story.

At first, the movie seems to be about a little family conflict. As Taeko (Fumino Kimura) and her second husband Jiro (Kento Nagayama) are preparing for a little private party for not only a little recent achievement of Taeko’s young son but also the 65th birthday of Jiro’s father, everything seems to be going well on the surface, but then we come to learn that Jiro’s father does not approve much of his son’s recent marriage just because Taeko was an divorcée with the son from the previous marriage when Jiro married her several years ago. While he has been like a real dad for Taeko’s son, Jiro still wants his father to show some recognition on his current married life at least, and this conflict between them causes a very awkward moment among them and others at one point, though it is quickly resolved mainly thanks to Jiro’s no-nonsense mother.

When the party is eventually started as more people come later for congratulating Jiro’s father and Taeko’s son, the mood becomes lightened up more than before, but that is when something really bad happens to everyone’s shock. The camera only observes the following aftermath of this devastating incident from the distance, but the resulting grief and anger are quite palpable under the calm surface to say the least, and this situation subsequently reaches to a sort of breaking point when Taeko’s ex-husband comes later after belatedly learning about what happened.

With this unexpected appearance of her ex-husband, Taeko and Jiro’s situation becomes more complicated than before. Her ex-husband, who is incidentally a Korean Japanese guy with hearing disability, has often been homeless since he left Taeko and their little son for some reason at that time, and Takeo, who has worked in a local charity organization for homeless people, is willing to help him a bit even though she still does not like him much. She initially thinks that is all she can do for him, but, what do you know, she finds herself helping him much more than expected when her husband subsequently happens to be absent for a while. When Jiro’s parents move out to somewhere, she lets her ex-husband stay in a nearby apartment of Jiro’s parents, and she also helps him get employed at a local junk shop.

What does she exactly want from him? Wisely not spelling out the answer to us, the movie lets us gather Taeko’s desperate reach toward any kind of consolation or resolution. As she comes to spend more time with her ex-husband, she feels a bit better than before, and he is certainly willing to help her when she needs to do something for resolving her remaining grief and trauma.

Meanwhile, the movie also shows what is going on in case of Jiro, who turns out to spend some time with a certain woman in his past. As talking with each other, Jiro and that woman remember more of how much they were close to each other time in the past, and Jiro cannot help but wonder what his life would have been if he had not cheated on her because of Taeko at that time. As they meet again later, she turns out to have something regretful to reveal to Jiro, and all Jiro can do for her is consoling her a bit, though he and she also see that there is still some feeling left between them.

Steadily maintaining its low-key mood as usual, the movie eventually arrives at its last act where a few unexpected things happen to Jiro and Taeko. While it does not take much time for Jiro to see what has been going on during his absence, the situation becomes rather humorous instead of being melodramatic – even when Taeko’s ex-husband happens to need to go back to his hometown in South Korea for a certain family matter of his. I will not go into details on what follows next, but I can tell you that the movie gives us one powerful moment of complex emotions as Taeko lets herself left alone under the rainy sky.

The main cast members of the film are all solid in their nuanced natural acting. Fumino Kimura is often poignant as her character tentatively struggles with grief and anger along the story, and she is particularly wonderful when Taeko comes to find some peace and quiet inside a certain space she has never wanted to enter since that incident. On the opposite, Kento Nagayama dutifully complements his co-star during their several key scenes, and Atom Sunada is also effective as Taeko’s ex-husband, who is mostly nice but not exactly someone she can rely on.

On the whole, “Love Life”, which is inspired by a song of the same name by musician Akiko Yano, is basically another gentle Japanese human drama of healing process, but it is a fairly engaging one coupled with good mood, storytelling, and performance at least. Although I have never seen Fukada’s several previous works including “Harmonium” (2016), the movie shows that he is an interesting filmmaker to watch, and I guess I should check out some of his previous works while waiting for whatever will come next from him.

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One Fine Morning (2022) ☆☆☆(3/4): Some uncertainties in her daily life

Posted on September 11, 2023 by kaist455

Mia Hansen-Løve’s new film “One Fine Morning” is another nice slice of life you can expect from her. Although it may not be one of her better works, there are a number of good things including that plain but palpable realism observed from many of Hansen-Løve’s works, and it is also anchored well by another stellar performance from its talented lead actress.

Léa Seydoux, a charismatic French actress who has been more prominent as appearing in a number of acclaimed films ranging from “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” (2011) to “Crimes of the Future” (2022), plays Sandra Kienzler, a young single mother who has worked as a translator/interpreter. During the early part of the film, we observe how busily Sandra goes back and forth between her work and her several family matters including her young daughter and her ailing father, and we gradually gather how much she has been accustomed to this constantly busy status of hers.

However, Sandra cannot help but feel frustrated as her father’s medical condition becomes worse day by day as expected. Due to a neurodegenerative disease called Benson’s syndrome (This does exist, by the way), her father’s cognitive and sight abilities have been seriously deteriorated, and this is quite devastating to him because he was a respected philosophy teacher before being confined to his little apartment due to his illness. As a daughter influenced a lot by her father’s intelligence and sophistication, Sandra is also saddened a lot by her father’s ongoing medical deterioration, but there is really nothing she can do about that, and there eventually comes a point where she really should consider sending him to any suitable facility for old people out there.

At least, her mother, who incidentally divorced her husband a long time ago but still cares about the man she once loved, is willing to help Sandra finding a nice facility to take care of her father, but, alas, it turns out that they do not have many options right now. There are some recommendable ones, but they will have to wait for a while, and her father’s medical condition keeps getting worse as before. In the end, Sandra and her mother decide to send him to a hospital instead, but he cannot stay there that long, and this certainly causes another headache for Sandra and her mother.

Meanwhile, life goes on as usual for Sandra, and there comes a little unexpected change on one day. She happens to encounter an old male friend of her, and, as they come to interact more with each other, they come to sense something mutual developing between them. When he later shows Sandra where he works, she seems simply fascinated with his interesting academic research (He is a cosmochemist, by the way), but then, what do you know, she and he soon come to recognize their mutual feelings to each other, though he has been married for some time.

When they consequently come to face and handle the consequence of their romantic passion, he turns out to be rather indecisive about whether he really should leave his wife and their little kid, and Sandra is not so sure about their relationship either. Maybe she should end their relationship once for all, but she and he keep finding themselves drawn to each other, and she does not know what to do about that.

To our little surprise, Hansen-Løve’s screenplay leisurely rolls its heroine’s personal matters along the story without much resolution, but it is often engaging to observe small but precious human moments from that. While mostly sticking to Sandra’s viewpoint, the movie shows some attention to several substantial supporting characters, and I was particularly amused by a couple of humorous scenes involved with Sandra’s mother, an irrepressibly vivacious woman who seems to have had her own interesting life just like her ex-husband. In case of Sandra’s father, it is surely heartbreaking to see him fading bit by bit due to his illness, and there is a bittersweet moment mainly driven by a little piece of his writing later in the story.

The movie lags a bit at times in its slow narrative pacing, but Seydoux’s solid performance carries it to the end, and she is simply fabulous here as subtly illustrating her character’s gradual development along the story. Although many matters remain unresolved for her even at the end of the story, Sandra comes to learn a bit about how to deal and live with these matters, and Seydoux’s expressive face is crucial in conveying that to us in the final scene of the film.

Around Seydoux, several good supporting performers come and go as occasionally having each own moment to shine. While Nicole Garcia often steals the show as Sandra’s mother, Pascal Greggory brings enough pathos to his seemingly thankless role, and Melvil Poupaud clicks with Seydoux well enough to make us understand why their respective characters cannot easily quit each other.

Overall, “One Fine Morning” does not engage or touch me as much as Hansen-Løve’s two previous films “Father of My Children” (2009) or “Things to Come” (2016), which was incidentally included in my inconsequential list of 10 best films of 2016. Nevertheless, it is still a fairly admirable character drama to be appreciated for its strong aspects including Seydoux’s nuanced acting and Hansen-Løve’s sensitive handling of story and characters, and I recommend you to give it a chance someday.

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The Innocents (2021) ☆☆☆(3/4): A little terror among kids

Posted on September 11, 2023 by kaist455

Norwegian film “The Innocents” is a dry but undeniably dark and intense supernatural horror story revolving around several little kids. Although I am your average seasoned moviegoer, there are several moments which actually made me cringe a lot during my viewing, and I must tell you that this is definitely not for kids even though the movie mostly sticks to its young characters’ limited viewpoints.

At first, the movie focuses on the problematic relationship between a young girl named Ida (Rakel Lenora Fløttum) and her non-verbal autistic older sister Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad), who have just moved into a drab suburban apartment complex neighborhood along with their parents on one summer day. Because she is usually expected to take care of her older sister during their parents’ absence, Ida is often annoyed with Anna, and the opening scene shows Ida impulsively committing a little cruel thing to Ida when their parents are not watching.

When she is spending some time with Anna at a playground outside their apartment building, Ida happens to meet and then befriend a boy named Ben (Sam Ashraf). Because he is a loner just like her, Ben willingly shows Ida his little private place in a nearby forest, and he also demonstrates a certain special power of his. He is actually capable of telekinesis, but Ida simply thinks it is just a trivial magic trick, and there is a little amusing moment when she innocently attempts what he just did in front of her.

However, it does not take much time for her to realize that her new friend’s ability is not a magic trick at all. When Anna is approached by a neighborhood girl named Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim), they somehow form a psychic connection between them, and it later turns out that Anna has a telekinetic power just like Ben. Thanks to her supportive connection with Aisha, Anna can actually speak a bit, and that certainly delights her parents.

Without wasting any time at all on explaining the supernatural abilities of its several young main characters, director/writer Eskil Vogt’s screenplay handles their circumstance as straight as possible while they come to show more power along the story. As his power seems to grow day by day, Sam also comes to show more of his dark sides fueled by his harsh domestic environment, and that surely unnerves Ida more. She already knows how cruel and vicious Sam can be (There is a horrific scene early in the film which will repulse any cat-lover out there), but then there eventually comes a point where she and the other two girls must draw a line between them and Sam.

As Sam comes to emerge as the antagonist of the story, we are served with a series of chillingly disturbing moments happening in the middle of the mundane daily background. Besides his growing telekinetic ability, Sam somehow finds a way to control the minds of others, and this certainly threatens Ida and the other two girls more than before. At least, Anna seems to be a powerful match against him for now, but she and Ida often find themselves limited by their parents, who do not have any idea on what is really happening to their kids even though they do care a lot.

While reminiscent of similar genre flicks such as “The Chronicle” (2012), the movie takes a relatively more subdued approach to its supernatural elements, but what is gradually culminated under Vogt’s skillful direction is often tense and compelling enough to hold our attention. The low-ley depiction of its several young main characters’ supernatural abilities seems rather plain and simple on the surface, but it is more dramatically effective than expected thanks to small visual/aural details to notice. As a result, the expected showdown moment around the story works with considerable intensity and suspense even though it is silently unfolded in the middle of another ordinary day in the neighborhood.

The four young main cast members of the film are all commendable in their unadorned natural acting, and, considering those truly disturbing moments in the film, I can only hope that they were thoughtfully handled throughout the shooting. As the center of the film, Rakel Lenora Fløttum is believable in her character’s desperate struggle with the increasingly dangerous situation around her, and there is a little poignancy in how Ida comes to bond with her older sister much more than she ever imagined. While Sam Ashraf, Alva Brynsmo Ramstadand, and Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim hold each own place well in the film, a few adult performers in the film also leave some impression at the fringe of the story, Ellen Dorrit Petersen has her own small moment when her character tactfully asks a few serious questions to Ida later in the story.

On the whole, “The Innocents” is a bit too dark and disturbing for me at times, and I still wince as recollecting some of the most unpleasant moments in the film, but it is worthwhile to watch at least for its admirable technical aspects including mood and performance. Vogt, who previously made a feature film directorial debut with “Blind” (2014), has been mainly known for co-writing several films of Joachim Trier including “Oslo, August 31st” (2011), “Thelma” (2017), and “The Worst Person in the World” (2021), but “The Innocents” shows that he is also a talented filmmaker with his own genre playground to explore, and it will be interesting to see what he will do next after this striking genre piece.

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Sleep (2023) ☆☆☆(3/4): Her husband’s disturbing sleeping problem

Posted on September 7, 2023 by kaist455

South Korean film “Sleep” seems to be a certain kind of story and then ends up becoming something much different. This is an odd mix of horror thriller and black comedy swinging back and forth somewhere between “The Exorcist” (1973) and “Repulsion” (1965), and I appreciated this interesting genre hybrid even though I often observed its story and characters from the distance while being more aware of its plot mechanism.

The movie begins with the disturbing opening scene showing how something weird begins to happen for Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) and her husband Hyeon-soo (Lee Sun-kyun) in the middle of one night. She happens to see husband going through a sort of sleepwalking, and then she is more disturbed as things go bump in their little apartment no apparent reason. While she looks around here and there in the apartment, the movie naturally dials up the level of suspension and dread, and we accordingly get a nice variation of a certain genre cliché around the end of the scene.

However, Hyeon-soo does not remember anything about what happened to him at last night, and Soo-jin becomes more baffled and concerned as Hyeon-soo continues to show a series of peculiar sleepwalking behaviors. At one point, he suddenly seems to be so hungry that he devours a number of raw stuffs in the refrigerator, but, again, he has no memory about that at all, and that certainly unnerves Soo-jin more to say the least.

After Hyeon-soo almost gets himself killed later due to his ongoing sleep problem, he and his wife eventually go to a clinic for finding what is really happening to Hyeon-soo. The doctor is willing to help them as much as possible in addition to giving some advice in addition to prescribing a drug for Hyeon-soo, but that does not satisfy Soo-jin much. As things do not get better for her and her husband at all, she worries more while also coming to sleep less than before, and she has a good reason for that. She is currently going through the later stage of her pregnancy, and endangering her baby is surely the last thing she wants.

However, no matter how much she tries in one way or another, it seems that there is not any sensible way to solve their little domestic problem. When her mother drops by the apartment along with a shaman later in the story, the shaman ominously warns to Soo-jin and her husband that there is a ghost in the apartment, and that seems more possible to Soo-jin as she struggles more with her increasingly frustrating situation day by day. Is it possible that there is actually a ghost somewhere in the apartment? Is it really true that the ghost has some insidious purpose behind its frequent haunting of Soo-jin’s apartment?

As Soo-jin’s state of mind gets more troubled by this frightening possibility, the movie doles out more disturbing moments coupled with some dark sense of humor. Some of them may make you wince for good reasons, but the movie thankfully presents these scenes with enough skill and restraint at least, and you may actually be amused a bit by one particular scene which may take you back to that infamous moment in “Fatal Attraction” (1987).

Maybe she should have distanced herself from her husband from the very beginning, but Soo-jin lets herself stuck with her husband just because of her firm belief in marriage, and she becomes more obsessed with solving their domestic problem. Not so surprisingly, there eventually comes the breaking point for her, and that is where the movie becomes more ambiguous about what is actually going on around her.

Around that narrative point, director/writer Jason Yu’s screenplay puts more distance between us and its heroine, but the movie still holds our attention nonetheless thanks to Yu’s competent direction. As cinematographer Kim Tae-soo frequently stays around its two main characters in their supposedly cozy domestic environment, a sense of isolation around them feels more palpable along the story, and that is further accentuated by Soo-jin’s several absurdly drastic measures against her husband’s sleep problem. When their apartment is turned into something quite different around the end of the story, we are quite surprised at first, but we also see the inevitability of this sudden change, and we come to brace ourselves as its main characters are driven further into their extreme circumstance.

The movie depends a lot on its two lead performers, who show considerable commitment as their respective characters swirl around each other from one end to the other. While Jung Yu-mi does a good job of embodying her character’s gradual emotional disturbance along the story, Lee Sun-kyun steadily functions as her solid counterpart throughout the film, and Kim Gook-hee provides a bit of cheerfulness at the fringe of the story as one of the neighbors in the apartment building.

On the whole, “Sleep” is a well-made genre flick to be admired for its commendable technical aspects, and Yu, who previously worked as the assistant director Bong Joon-ho’s “Okja” (2017), demonstrates his considerable filmmaking skills here. Although this is his first feature film, he clearly knows how to engage and entertain us, and it will be interesting to watch whatever will come next from him in the future.

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Joy Ride (2023) ☆☆☆(3/4): Asian Girls Trip

Posted on September 5, 2023 by kaist455

The arrival of “Joy Ride” is sort of inevitable in my trivial opinion. After boys had all those raunchy funs in numerous R-rated comedy films such as “Superbad” (2007) and “The Hangover” (2009) during last two decades, girls also went all the way for adult comic materials as shown in a number of recent female comedy films such as “Girls Trip” (2017), and now it is young Asian ladies’ turn for throwing themselves into anything for shock and laugh.

The movie opens with the prologue scene establishing the relationship between it two different Asian female characters: Audrey Sullivan (Ashley Park) and Lolo Chen (Sherry Cola). When young Lolo moved to a suburban neighborhood of Seattle, Washington along with her Chinese immigrant parents, she felt rather isolated because of their race, but, what do you know, there soon came young Audrey, who was incidentally adopted by her Caucasian foster parents a few years ago. Although their first encounter was rather awkward, Audrey and Lolo quickly befriended each other, and the following montage scene shows their developing friendship during next several years.

As your average Asian American overachiever not so different from when I was young and wild for better grades, Aubrey subsequently becomes a promising young lawyer, but Lolo has been relatively less successful as an aspiring artist who wants to pursue more her own artistic vision involved, uh, body positivity. As a matter of fact, she has been lived at Audrey’s residence for several years because she does not have to pay rent, and Audrey does not mind at all as her best female friend.

On one day, Aubrey is assigned to handle a very important business deal in China. Mainly because she cannot speak Mandarin well, Lolo comes to accompany her as her unofficial translator, and Lolo also invites her eccentric cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) to join them later. Aubrey is naturally not so pleased about that, but she is going to join her old college friend Kat (Stephanie Hsu) in Beijing, China anyway, so she does not object to that.

Once these four young ladies gather together, the movie embarks on throwing lots of raunchy comic moments which will often make you cringe while also generating some good laughs. At a fancy nightclub where she meets and then tries to convince a certain Chinese business to accept that deal, Aubrey comes to have a much wilder night than she has ever imagined, and we are served with a couple of amusingly embarrassing moments involved with her body’s rather sensitive response to alcohol.

Meanwhile, for making her friend look good in front of that Chinese businessman, Lolo happens to lie a bit about Aubrey’s biological mother, so Aubrey and her friends start a journey for meeting her biological mother. After all, there is enough information for locating her biological mother who seems to be living somewhere in a local city outside Bejing, and all they will have to do next is going to that city, which is incidentally where many of Lolo and Deadeye’s family members reside.

Of course, their following journey turns out to be much bumpier than they thought. There is a hysterical moment involved with a seemingly nice American girl they happen to encounter on a train, and then there comes a comically sexual sequence involved with a certain real-life American basketball player and several other players in his group, one of whom turns out to have a little past between him and Kat. As a promising actress who has tried to be discreet and exemplar just like Aubrey despite her wild college days, Kat surely becomes nervous to say the least, and that leads to one big hilarious moment to remember.

After it reaches to its highpoint where our young ladies do an impromptu K-POP performance for going to Seoul, South Korea for a reason I will not reveal here, the screenplay by co-producers Cherry Chevapravatdumrongb and Teresa Hsiao, which is based on the story written by them and director/co-producer Adele Lim, comes to lose some of its comic momentum as the mood predictably becomes a bit more serious than before. More conflict among Aubrey and her friends follows as expected, but the movie thankfully does not lose its sense of humor even at this point, and we keep cheering for all of its four main characters as before.

It surely helps that the movie is constantly buoyed by the good comic chemistry among its four main cast members. While Stephanie Hsu, who was recently Oscar-nominated for her superlative breakout turn in “Everything Everywhere All At Once” (2022), is the most prominent one in the bunch, Ashley Park and Sherry Cola steadily hold the center of the film as their contrasting characters pull and push each other throughout the story, non-binary actor Sabrina Wu has their own moments to shine with their straightforward deadpan appearance.

Like “Crazy Rich Asians”, (2018), “Joy Ride” brings some fresh air of racial diversity to its familiar genre territory, and it is also fairly enjoyable thanks to its unabashedly raunchy comic moments which tickled and amused me enough even while I winced a lot for understandable reasons during my viewing. Yes, it is rather refreshing to see Asian female characters boldly and actively going forward for their sexual desire, and I can assure you that the movie will not disappoint you at all in that aspect.

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Bad Axe (2022) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): An Asian Immigrant family in the time of COVID-19

Posted on September 3, 2023 by kaist455

Documentary film “Bad Axe” presents an intimate personal portrayal of one Asian immigrant family struggling to live and run their little business during the COVID-19 pandemic. While it is heartening to see how this family strenuously stick together for enduring that gloomy period, it is also often disturbing to observe occasional moments of racism and prejudice against them, and you will come to reflect more on how the American society has shown more of its deplorable aspects during last several years.

The story of the documentary is unfolded mainly via the camera of director/co-producer/cinematographer David Siev, who happened to come back to his little rural hometown, Bad Axe of Michigan, shortly before the whole country went into the lockdown period in early 2020. His camera closely follows his several family members including his parents, and it shows how things were quite hard and difficult for them during that time. Although the situation was relatively less dire for them and many others in their little town compared to many big cities in US, their small restaurant business was certainly struck hard by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and it became quite possible that they had to shut down the restaurant for an indefinite time.

Nevertheless, David’s parents, Chun and Rachel, did not give up at all, and neither did David’s two sisters Jaclyn and Raquel. David and his two sisters still remember when their parents struggled a lot for settling in the town in the late 1990s, and Jaclyn and Raquel were willing to help their parents’ restaurant business as much as possible. While Jaclyn handled those business matters, Raquel busily cooked in the kitchen, and it looked like they and their parents could still run the restaurant even as the pandemic continued to threaten the country and its people more and more.

To Chun, his and his family’s struggle with the pandemic was just another big obstacle to confront. He was a young Cambodian refugee who managed to survive the Killing Fields period in Cambodia along with his mother and several siblings, and he is certainly proud of realizing his own small American dream. Besides running a solid family restaurant of his own, he and his wife Rachel, who is incidentally a Mexican American, has had a steady and loving relationship between them, and they certainly appreciate their dear children’s efforts for maintaining their precious restaurant.

However, as the family kept struggling to make ends meet, the American society got more disturbed by not only the pandemic and the increasing racial tension associated with it. As President Donald J. Trump irresponsibly caused more racism against not only Asian citizens but also many other colored people in US, Chun and his family could not help but more disturbed at times, and his children naturally came to pay more attention to the Black Lives Matter movement.

When a Black Lives Matter protest was held in the middle of the town, David and his two sisters surely joined the protest, and that was where they came to see how ugly and deplorable some of their mostly conservative neighbors could be. Shortly after they and a bunch of other protesters began their march, they confronted several armed (and masked) white supremacists, and, not so surprisingly, the local police did not do anything about that.

The circumstance became more unnerving when Chun and his family found their life and business threatened in one way or another. When one of David’s sisters showed more of her political opinion on the Internet, some nasty people called to the restaurant, and we also see several rude white people willfully refusing to wear mask inside the restaurant. In addition, some of those white supremacists seemed ready to target the family, and Chun willingly shows his daughters how to handle firearms at one point later in the documentary.

In case of David, he came to discern that he could not be totally distant to what he had closely recorded. He initially began his documentary project as a love letter to his hometown, but, as his promotional trailer for fund-raising drew some vicious responses on the Internet, he started to consider shifting the focus of his documentary more to the immigrant experience of his family. Besides vividly capturing those good and bad times among his family members, he also places himself right in front of the camera, and he tries to be as candid as possible about his personal thoughts and feelings.

After the pandemic eventually passed its peak, things got a bit better for David and his family. While they still had to be careful about social distancing, their restaurant slowly got back in business, and they also received lots of support from many residents of Bad Axe. They were certainly relieved and delighted when that orange-faced phony failed to get re-elected in the 2020 US Presidential election, but I must confess that I observed this feel-good moment with some worry and skepticism because of how that detestable scumbag may actually return to the White House in 2025.

In conclusion, “Bad Axe” is compelling as a vivid and touching slice of Asian American immigrant life in the middle of American heartland, and Siev, who received the Audience award in addition to Special Jury Recognition when the documentary was shown at the SXSW Film Festival early in last year (It was also included in the shortlist for Best Documentary Oscar early in this year, by the way), handles his personal subject with lots of care and respect. In short, this is one of the better documentaries of last year, and it surely deserves your attention as a empathetic window to others different from you.

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It Ain’t Over (2022) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): Inside Yogi Berra

Posted on September 3, 2023 by kaist455

To be frank with you, I only vaguely heard a bit about Yogi Berra once before watching documentary film “It Ain’t Over”. Berra was a legendary baseball player mostly known for his rather humorous quotes, and the documentary shows that he was much more than that, and I found the documentary quite informative and engaging despite being a nerdy South Korean dude who does not have much interest in any sports, let alone baseball.

After the prologue part showing Berra somehow overlooked in the 2015 national poll for the greatest living baseball players in US, the documentary immediately goes back to his early years. He was born to a poor Italian immigrant family living in St. Louis, Missouri, and he already showed considerable potential as an athlete even when he was very young. In 1942, he eventually entered the Minor League as a new rookie to watch, but then he willingly joined the US Army as the country belatedly went into the World War II, and he actually participated in the Normandy Landings in 1944.

Shortly after the war was over, Berra went back to the Minor League as playing for the New York Yankees, and it did not take much time for him to rise to the Major League as he quickly became quite prominent as a skillful batter. Mainly due to his rather plain attitude and appearance, he also drew lots of attention for being a sort of oddball among his more prominent fellow team members including, yes, Joe DiMaggio, and the documentary shows us how much he was caricatured in public even during that time.

However, Berra did not give much damn about that as going his way as usual, and he gradually became someone who did a lot more than being an endearing mascot of his team. Under his new team manager who was quite strict and demanding to say the least, he trained himself a lot for playing as a catcher, and his team members came to depend more on him on the field before. Any good catcher was supposed to be constantly aware of lots of elements on the field besides those balls to catch, and Berra’s considerable experience as a catcher later helped him move onto the next step of his professional career.

Even as his popularity went up and up, Berra remained humble and casual as he was before. When the Brooklyn Dodgers, which could have Berra in 1942 if its team president handled the situation more honestly, had Jackie Robinson as the first African American Major League player, Berra did not hesitate to welcome Robinson even though they were going to play against each other as much as possible. As a matter of fact, they later had one unforgettable moment to remember on the field, and that was actually one of a few times when Berra happened to lose his usual laid-back attitude. He often insisted during the rest of his life that the umpire made a wrong judgment at that moment, though, as far as I can see, Robinson did arrive at the spot right before Berra caught the ball.

Around the early 1960s, Berra came to see that he was not young enough to play on the field, and he subsequently became the new manager of the New York Yankees in 1963. His first several years as a team manager had a fair share of ups and downs, and then he unfortunately got fired, but he quickly moved to the New York Mets. Although nobody expected that much from this, Berra surprised everyone as making the New York Mets have much more victories than expected, and that was the main reason why the New York Yankees eventually brought him back later.

Next several years was another career highlight for Berra, but this glorious period was unfortunately ended with a very bitter moment. In 1985, he was callously fired by the team owner, and that certainly hurt his feeling a lot. In fact, he swore that he would not be associated with the New York Yankees at any chance, and he stuck to his pledge until he came to have a moment of reconciliation with the team owner in public around 15 years later.

Meanwhile, Berra’s public image grew more as usual. He often appeared in a number of commercials, and his amiable appearance was certainly crucial in the success of these commercials. Furthermore, his jolly persona also inspired a certain classic TV animation series I often watched when I was a kid (My little musing: “So that was the reason why his name felt so familiar to me at first….”).

The documentary sprinkles several amusing quotes from Berra along its narrative, and I must say that, as many interviewees in the documentary in the film ranging from Derek Jeter to Billy Crystal agree, these quotes are not merely funny but actually quite meaningful in plain sight. One of the most famous sayings of his is “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over”, and this rather silly quote really tells much about his attitude about his life and career. After all, he surely went on and on for fully living his life until it was really over for him, and that will make you admire him more as a wise and decent human being.

Overall, “It Ain’t Over” is a loving and insightful tribute to Berra’s life and career, and director/writer Sean Mullin did a commendable job of juggling various archival records and interview clips. Berra was indeed one of the greatest figures in the American baseball history, and some of those plain but undeniably wise quotes of his may stay in your mind for a while after you watch this wonderful documentary.

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You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah (2023) ☆☆☆(3/4): A mildly pleasant product from the Sandler family

Posted on September 2, 2023 by kaist455

Probably because I am a South Korean nerd who was mostly occupied with getting good grades except when reading a book or watching a movie, many of American coming-of-age drama or comedy films feel like alien stories from very different worlds, and recent Netflix film “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah” is no exception. While this is another typical adolescent tales of many ups and downs, it comes with a specific cultural background to observe, and it is also quite surprising considering that it is actually another Netflix product produced by Adam Sandler.

Here in this film, Sandler often willingly steps aside for his several family members to shine. As the young Jewish heroine of the film, his daughter Sunny Sandler gives a spirited performance which may lead her to more interesting stuffs in the future, and her older sister Sadie Sandler is also effective as the heroine’s wise-cracking older sister. As Sandler steadily holds the ground along with Idina Menzel as the heroine’s parents, Sandler’s wife Jackie Sandler plays the mother of the heroine’s best female friend, and ever-reliable character actor Luis Guzmán plays her converted Latino husband.

Oh, I forget to tell that, as reflected by the very title of the movie, the story mainly revolves around the upcoming Bat Mitzvah ceremony of Stacy (Sunny Sandler) and her best female friend Lydia (Samantha Lorraine). As watching how many of their schoolmates having each own fancy Bat Mitzvah one by one, both Stacy and Lydia are more determined to have each own Bat Mitzvah of lifetime, and Stacy even does a presentation on her ambitious Bat Mitzvah plan in front of her parents, who naturally tell her that she should be more realistic about her Bat Mitzvah.

Anyway, everything mostly seems to be going fairly well for Stacy and Lydia. While Lydia gladly helps Stacy on her Bat Mitzvah speech, Stacy works on a video to be played at Lydia’s Bat Mitzvah party, and they are quite hopeful about their big bright future after their respective Bat Mitzvah ceremonies. After all, who cannot possibly be excited about officially entering adulthood?

However, of course, the situation becomes rather tricky between Stacy and Lydia because of a handsome boy who has been Stacy’s longtime crush. Once she happens to draw a bit of attention from him, Stacy naturally wants to attract him more, and that leads to when she attempts one risky act when many others including him is watching her. As advised by Lydia, she could just stop at any point, but she did that in the end anyway, and, despite fortunately not getting hurt at all, she accidentally gets herself humiliated in front of others for a different reason. Quite angry and frustrated about this, Stacy comes to clash more with Lydia, and their conflict goes further when Stacy later happens to witness something going on between Lydia and that boy.

Around that narrative point, you can easily see where the story is heading, but the screenplay by Alison Peck, which is based on the young adult novel of the same name by Fiona Rosenbloom, takes some time for more character development along the story. While often making the circumstance messier due to her several unwise choices including the one represented by the title of the movie, Stacy also tries to fix the resulting problems as much as possible, and she and the movie surely earn the little poignancy shown around the end of the story.

In addition, Peck’s screenplay pays considerable attention to a bunch of supporting figures surrounding Stacy. Although many of them are no more than broad caricatures, the screenplay fills them with engaging personalities, and they also become more likable than expected in each own way. For instance, a rabbi schoolteacher played by Sarah Sherman feels a bit too cartoonish at first, but she turns out to be more understanding and caring than expected, and Sherman somehow makes her wacky character rather endearing instead of totally distracting.

In case of the relationship development between Stacy and Lydia, its dynamic course over the narrative of the film is believable, and Sunny Sandler and Samantha Lorraine are effortless as their characters’ relationship sways in one direction or another. As both of their characters cope with their complicated matters of heart, Sandler and Lorraine convey well to us their characters’ gradual growth along the plot, and we come to care more about their relationship than before.

Around these two young promising actresses, Adam Sandler and several other adult notable adult cast members dutifully occupy their respective spots without overshadowing them at all. Sandler shows a bit softer side of his screen persona as a no-nonsense father who sometimes shows some tough love to his dear daughter, and it is also a little amusing to see he and Menzel in a marital relationship completely different from the one they played in the Safdie Brothers’ intense comedy thriller film “Uncut Gems” (2019).

On the whole, “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah” does not break any particular new ground in its genre territory, but it is probably the best thing coming from the partnership between Sandler and Netflix during last several years. Besides having shown more serious sides of his acting talent these days, Sandler also seems to show some maturation as a producer, and I sincerely hope that he will make bad comedy films less frequently than before.

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Violent Night (2022) ☆☆(2/4): An insipidly violent Christmas flick

Posted on September 2, 2023 by kaist455

“Violent Night”, which is currently available on Netflix in South Korea, wants to be a viciously and violently funny Christmas flick, and I do not mind that, but, boy, what an insipid piece of work it is. While its one-joke comic premise may be amusing to you for a while, this utterly joyless movie soon becomes quite stale and tedious amidst lots of merely mean violent moments, and my mind kept thinking of a number of better alternatives to be watched around the end of this year.

The story promise is very simple: Santa Claus as a killing machine against some bad guys out there. The bad guys in the film are a bunch of mean criminals who invade a big mansion in the middle of some isolated snowy area on Christmas Eve, and they soon hold its very rich owner and her family as hostages as a part of their vicious criminal plan. When Santa, played by David Harbour, later drops by the mansion for giving the present for a little sweet girl who is one of the hostages, he surely gets involved into the situation more than he wants, and he comes to demonstrate his old particular set of skills.

It would be more shocking and amusing if Santa were a seemingly mild and gentle figure, but the movie does not hide its bitter viciousness at all right from the opening scene showing Santa being as depressed and drunk as Billy Bob Thornton’s anti-hero character in “Bad Santa” (2003). He morosely complains a lot about how people have been quite disappointing to him these days, and that makes me wonder how he managed to keep working during last several centuries of the human history, which surely had a lot of much worse things to depress him.

Around the time when Santa flies to the aforementioned mansion despite quite drunk, we are introduced to a number of other characters who happen to have a Christmas family meeting there, and many of them are quite despicable to say the least. The owner of the mansion is a domineering matriarch who does not hesitate to use dirty words in front of her little granddaughter, but her family members do not say much mainly because of her immense wealth, and only her granddaughter is willing to enjoy Christmas sincerely in contrast to many others around her.

When this little girl is about to go to bed as expecting a nice present to receive in the next morning, those bad guys swiftly hold the mansion under control, and then there comes their boss. This dude, played by John Leguizamo, turns out to have been quite spiteful about Christmas, and, for his little twisted amusement, he even gives his underlings silly alias associated with Christmas (One of them is called “Gingerbread”, for example).

As watching the bad guys trying to break into the underground safe while holding several hostages, my mind was instantly reminded of, yes, “Die Hard” (1988). After he comes across one of the bad guys and then happens to kill that bad guy during the following fight, Santa becomes a reluctant hero to save the day just like Bruce Willis’ character in that classic action thriller film, and you may have a déjà vu when he has a private conversation scene with that little girl via walkie talkies in the middle of the story.

In case of that little girl, played by young Leah Brady, she cannot help but excited a bit as she gets a chance to do something not so far from, surprise, “Home Alone” (1990), and what she does next should not be imitated by many young kids out there. Although her little booby traps are not as elaborate as the ones devised by that little boy in “Home Alone”, they result in some violent and bloody moments which will definitely remind you that the movie is not exactly ideal for your Christmas family meeting.

All these and many other mean and violent moments could be acceptable if they were accompanied with enough wit, style, and substance, but the movie unfortunately does not have any of them. While many of its supposedly comic moments are flat and bland without much laugh for us, those violent action scenes in the film are curiously tepid despite occasionally making you cringe or wince for good reasons, and, above all, it is quite deficient in terms of story and character. As the story slouches toward its expecting ending without much narrative momentum, we become more distant to its characters who are no more than cardboard characters to be killed or threatened, and it is really disheartening to see its cast members struggling to sell their boring and uninteresting characters as much as possible.

In case of Harbour, he has some fun with his character’s gruff personality while being a sort of saving grace of the film, but it is still a shame that he is not allowed to do anything as funny and vicious as whatever Thornton did in “Bad Santa”. While the other main cast members including Leguizamo and Brady are thoroughly wasted, Beverly D’Angelo manages to leave some impression even though she often seems bored about whatever is going on around her.

“Violent Night” is directed by Tommy Wirkola, a Norwegian filmmaker who previous made “Dead Snow” (2009) and its 2014 sequel film. Both of these snowy and gory horror comedy films are a little too flawed in my inconsequential opinion, but they are relatively more enjoyable compared to the disappointing incompetence of “Violent Night”, and maybe you should watch them or several aforementioned films instead during the upcoming winter season.

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