Afire (2023) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): Four young people in hot summer days

Posted on September 17, 2023 by kaist455

Christian Petzold’s new film “Afire” surprises me for being more humorous and playful compared to some of his more serious films such as “Phoenix” (2014) or “Undine” (2020). Mainly revolving around four different young people who happen to get involved with each other in one way or another during hot summer days, the movie subtly but palpably illustrates the complex emotional undercurrents among them, and then it becomes more poignant than expected after it literally sets the finale on fire.

The movie opens with the arrival of two lads who come to a rural seaside area for spending several summer days at a holiday home in the middle of the local forest. Leon (Thomas Schubert), who is a young promising writer, simply wants to have a quiet time for working more on his second book before his publisher comes, but his friend Felix (Langston Uibel), who is an art school student currently preparing an important photography portfolio of his, is ready to have some fun while also searching for any suitable theme for his portfolio, and this difference between them is more evident when they come across a little unexpected problem shortly their arrival in the holiday house. Somebody is already occupying the holiday house due to a little mistake of Felix’s mother, and Leon is quite annoyed as he and Felix have no choice but to be stuck with this stranger there during next several days.

This stranger in question is a young woman named Nadja (Paula Beer). At first, she is just a distant stranger occupying the room right next to the one occupied by Leon and Felix, but it does not take much time for Leon to become curious about this young lady – especially as he seems to be going nowhere in improving the draft of the second book. He keeps saying he has to work, but he only finds himself procrastinating in one way or another, and there is even an amusing moment which may take you back to a certain similar scene in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” (1980).

In contrast, Felix actually becomes more inspired and productive as enjoying the summer days as much as possible unlike Leon. At one point, he happens to notice a young lifeguard on the nearby beach, and this leads him to a wonderful artistic idea for his portfolio. Incidentally, this lifeguard, Devid (Enno Trebs), has occasionally visited the holiday house for having sex with Nadja, so Najda willingly invites him to a dinner later, and then we observe how sexually fluid this handsome dude is. After holding everyone else’s attention with his little amusing fictional tale, he makes a little surprise move, and Najda is not bothered by that at all because, well, she and Devid’s relationship has been pretty casual with no string attached from the beginning.

Even though the others around him are simply enjoying themselves, Leon still cannot help but become sullen and petty due to his accumulating artistic frustration, and he remains quite self-absorbed even as the surrounding area is being threatened by a forest fire started from a nearby region. Although it looks like they and others in the area will be safe, the forest fire gradually becomes an ominous fact hovering over them – especially when they watch the forest fire approaching from the distance during one evening.

Once everything in the story is set for the next act, Petzold’s screenplay goes for the jugular. While getting to know more about Nadja, Leon finds himself more attracted to her, and he even lets her read what he has been trying to improve, but, of course, her following response is not exactly what he hopes for. As a matter of fact, she turns out to be much more sophisticated than he thought at first, and there is even a sublime moment when she recites a work of one famous German poet in front of others including Leon’s publisher, who, to more of Leon’s frustration, seems to be more impressed by her than Leon’s second book.

Around that narrative point, you may have some good idea on the eventual arrival point of Leon’s pathetic artistic struggle, but then the movie springs up more honesty and sincerity as abruptly taking an unexpected plot turn later in the story. I will not go into details on that here, but I can tell you instead that what follows next almost perfectly fits with what has been gradually developed along the plot, and the movie eventually comes to us as a humorous but thoughtful exploration on life and writing.

Petzold also draws stellar performances from his several main cast members. As providing some gravitas to his writer character’s inner conflict and frustration, Thomas Schubert ably handles a number of humorous scenes driven by Leon’s silly pettiness, and he and Paul Beer, who previously collaborated with Petzold in “Undine”, have a tentative chemistry between them during their several key scenes in the film. While Langston Uibel and Enno Trebs have each own moments to shine as the two other substantial characters in the story, Matthias Brandt steals the show as Leon’s no-nonsense publisher, and he is simply terrific when his character dryly but emphatically peruses Leon’s latest creation around the end of the story.

Overall, “Afire”, which won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize when it was shown at the Berlin International Film Festival early in this year (It was also recently selected as Germany’s submission to Best International Film Oscar, by the way), is alternatively funny and touching in its dexterous mix of comedy and drama, and Petzold surely has a breezy fun to share with us. In short, this is one of the more enjoyable arthouse films of this year, and you should check it out as soon as possible especially if you have admired many of Petzold’s works like I have.

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A Million Miles Away (2023) ☆☆1/2(2.5/4): A migrant farmworker who became a NASA astronaut

Posted on September 16, 2023 by kaist455

“A Million Miles Away”, which was released on Amazon Prime in this week, is a rather tame presentation of one inspiring real-life story which deserves better in my inconsequential opinion. While the story itself is fascinating enough to hold my attention for a while, the movie also often feels flat and bland in terms of storytelling and characterization, and that is a shame considering all the good efforts behind the screen.

The movie is about the dramatic life journey of José Hernández (Michael Peña), who was a child of poor Mexican immigrant family in the late 1960s. Around the time when his family settled in California instead of going back to Mexico, young Hernández came to aspire to become a NASA astronaut someday after watching the launch of Apollo 11 on TV, and he is all the more motivated as he graduates from a local college and then begins to work as an engineer at a government facility in the 1980s.

Of course, things are often hard and difficult for Hernández mainly because of his racial background. Right from his first day, he is ignored a lot by the supervisor and other engineers, and he is even mistaken for a janitor at one point. Nonetheless, he keeps going as usual while still reaching for his longtime goal, though his application letter for the NASA astronaut training program keeps getting rejected everytime.

Meanwhile, his life comes to have a little unexpected change via Adela (Rosa Salazar), a young Mexican American woman he happens to encounter at her current workplace. When Hernández shyly asks for a date, Adela accepts his request without much hesitation, though their first date turns out to be very awkward for him due to her parents and several other family members who are quite protective of her.

Around the time when Adela eventually becomes Mrs. Hernández, Hernández comes to draw some attention from his supervisor after showing his considerable skill and talent at last. He comes to receive some respect and recognition in addition to getting promotion, but he still wants to reach for the space as before, and that creates some tension in his relationship with his wife, who also has her own dream to pursue even while raising their kids in his frequent absence.

However, Adela also advises to her husband that he should try much harder for increasing the chance for realizing his lifelong dream, and what follows next is a typical montage sequence showing how Hernández does much more than merely keeping trying during next several years. Besides sending the application letter to NASA every year, he studies and trains himself a lot on many different things ranging from several foreign languages to aviation and scuba diving, and that makes him more determined and confident than before.

Hernández eventually succeeds in his 12th attempt, but, not so surprisingly, he soon comes to face a number of daunting obstacles as warned to him and many other selected trainees on the first day of their astronaut training program. Naturally, he comes to have doubts on whether he can really make it to the end, and he also conflicts with his wife at times as his mind is often busy with the ongoing training program.

Unfortunately, the screenplay by Bettina Gilois, Hernán Jiménez, and Alejandra Márquez Abella, which is based on Hernández’s memoir “Reaching for the Stars: The Inspiring Story of a Migrant Farmworker Turned Astronaut”, simply trudges from one small conflict after another without much dramatic effect. In case of a little human moment between Hernández and one colored female astronaut who was one of the ill-fated crew members who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, it generates some poignancy as the two characters have a sincere and honest conversation between them, but the movie just quickly passes through the following tragedy before moving onto when Hernández finally gets an opportunity to go to the space several years later.

Around the point where the movie expectedly reaches to its feel-good finale, we are touched to some degree as reflecting more on Hernández’s humble beginning, but we still do not get to know him much as a human being because the movie only focuses on his decency and determination without paying much attention to anything else. Michael Peña, who has shown considerable versatility since his small breakout supporting turn in Oscar-winning film “Crash” (2004), gives an earnest performance as diligently carrying the film as required, but his solid efforts do not wholly compensate for his blandly wholesome character, and you may also be distracted by the notable age difference between him and his character early in the story. On the opposite, Rosa Salazar manages to surpass her rather functional supporting role, and several other main cast members including Garret Dillahunt and Julio Cesar Cedillo also leave some impression besides filling their spots as demanded.

In conclusion, “A Million Miles Away”, directed by Alejandra Márquez Abella, is a mildly watchable biography drama film which could be more compelling considering the undeniably inspiring human figure at its center. It is surely well-intentioned to say the least, but it is evidently deficient in terms of substance and personality, and it is already fading away as my mind is occupied more with whatever I am going to watch next.

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Sitting in Bars with Cake (2023) ☆☆1/2(2.5/4): A bit too bitter under its sweet surface

Posted on September 16, 2023 by kaist455

“Sitting in Bars with Cake”, which is currently available on Amazon Prime, leaves a rather uneven taste on me. While it attempts a sincere mix of comedy and drama, its titular subject is often curiously put aside as the movie comes to pay more attention to a serious situation surrounding its two main characters, and you may be disappointed if you expect to see lots of cake and some romance to come along with them.

The movie, which is loosely based on the nonfiction book “Sitting in Bars with Cake: Lessons and Recipes from One Year of Trying to Bake My Way to a Boyfriend” by Audrey Schulman (She also did the adaptation, by the way), mainly revolves around the friendship between two young women living in LA: Jane (Yara Shahidi) and Corine (Odessa A’zion). While Corine works as an assistant under the owner of one prominent Hollywood agency company, Jane has worked in its mailroom for a while, and she has also been preparing to go to any nice law school in California as expected by her successful lawyer parents.

However, Jane usually finds herself being more interested in making cakes during her spare time, and she certainly makes a nice cake for Corine’s birthday party. After her cake happens to draw the attention of several guys at a bar where Corine’s birthday party is being held, Corine suggests a little nice idea for Jane. Considering that Jane has not had much luck in attracting any guy at bars, her cakes may help increasing her opportunity in romance, and Jane reluctantly agrees to her friend’s suggestion even though she is not so sure about this rather unconventional strategy.

First, she and Corine make a little plan on a number of selected bars in the city, and that is followed by a series of amusing moments as Jane is surprised to find their plan works better than expected. While there are some rude men who send the photographs of their genitals after their encounter with Jane via her cakes, Jane is delighted to see how her cakes attract a lot more men to her than before, and she and Corine also have lots of fun along with their several close friends as dropping by one different bar after another. Some of these places are quite colorful to say the least, and there is a little naughty moment involved with a bar decorated with some sexual elements.

Meanwhile, Corine is excited when she is promoted to become a new junior agent, but, alas, there comes the bad news on one day. It turns out that she has a certain kind of brain tumor which cannot be surgically removed, and this medical problem seriously affects her life as well as her career. While she immediately gets a treatment recommended by her doctor, there is not much hope in her case, and things only get worse as she is subsequently notified that her illness advances to the terminal stage.

As her best female friend who has known her for a long time since their childhood years in Phoenix, Arizona, Jane naturally stands by Corine as much as possible, and so do Corine’s parents, who immediately fly from Phoenix after hearing about their dear daughter’s illness. In contrast to Corine’s vivacious personality, Corine’s parents are dry and plain to our little amusement, and their considerable personality difference often functions as a little source of humor along the story.

Not so surprisingly, Shulman’s screenplay leans more to the clichés of many similar films involved with female bond and terminal illness, and that is where the movie becomes less engaging than before. While Corine’s terminal illness is surely a crucial part which prompts Jane to reflect more on what she really wants to do for her life, this part also inevitably eclipses the titular subject of the movie, and those lovely cakes of Jane consequently become less prominent in the end. In case of the subplot involved with a male intern who has attracted Jane’s attention, that feels redundant at best and artificial at worst, and the same thing can be said about a supporting character played by Bette Midler, though her appearance here in the film may take you back to “Beaches” (1988), a well-known melodrama film about two best female friends.

I still wish the movie delved more into how Jane makes her cakes, but I also appreciate the considerable chemistry between its two good lead actresses, who may move onto better things to come in the future. Yara Shahidi brings unadorned natural charm to her character, and she and her co-star Odessa A’zion are effortless in several key scenes between their characters. Even though Jane and Corine do not talk that much about their long past, we can instantly sense that as observing the casual intimacy between them, and that is the main reason why several sappy melodramatic moments later in the story work despite their conventional aspects. In case of several supporting characters surrounding them, Ron Livingston and Maia Mitchell have their own little moments at time, and Aaron Domínguez and Rish Shah acquit themselves well despite their thankless roles.

Overall, “Sitting in Bars with Cake”, directed by Trish Sie, is often entertaining mainly thanks to the likable performances from Shahidi and A’zion, but you may be frequently dissatisfied with its uneven storytelling like I was during my viewing. Yes, it could be more interesting in my humble opinion, but I will not stop you from watching this passable product if you just want to kill your spare time.

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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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