My Salinger Year (2020) ☆☆☆(3/4): Before she becomes a writer

Posted on December 13, 2021 by kaist455

While it is not exactly one of my No.1 favourite books, I understand well why J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” has been a beloved classic novel for many young people out there since it came out in 1951. After all, it is a very well-written book, and who cannot possibly identify with its lonely, disillusioned, and disaffected adolescent hero who is not so different from how you are or were in those wild and confusing adolescent years?

As many of you know, Salinger became a notorious recluse during his later years due to the unwanted popularity of “The Catcher in the Rye”, and he did not read or reply to any letter from the fans of the novel at all. As shown from Philippe Falardeau’s lightweight comedy film “My Salinger Year”, his literary agency simply received those heaps of fan letters on his behalf and then rejected all of them via its short reply, and it did that for many years before he died in 2010.

However, the focus of the movie is not on Salinger himself but on a young woman named Joanna Rakoff (Margaret Qualley), who later wrote the memoir of the same name on which the movie is loosely based. At the beginning of the story, Joanna is initially supposed to spend some time in New York City before going back to Berkeley, California where her boyfriend is waiting, but she decides to stay much longer in the city for pursuing her aspiration to become a writer, and that is how she comes to look for any suitable temporary job to support her financially during the following period.

Fortunately, it does not take much time for Joanna to find a position which is not only quite suitable but also may help her future career a lot. She happens to get hired as an assistant in one of the oldest literary agencies in the city, and she cannot help but feel excited when she looks at the photographs of its several very famous clients such as Dylan Thomas, Agatha Christie, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and, of course, Salinger.

Joanna works under Margaret (Sigourney Weaver), a rather eccentric but no-nonsense boss who has run the agency for many years. Although it is the late 1990s, Margaret dislikes using computers, so Joanna has to use old typewriters when she does one job after another as instructed, but she does not complain at all because the decidedly old-fashioned mood of Margaret’s agency brings extra charm to her ongoing NYC experience. Besides, she happens to get quite close to a young dude who is also an aspiring writer just like her, and she soon finds herself living with him while also letting herself gradually estranged from her boyfriend, who virtually becomes an ex-boyfriend around that point.

Meanwhile, Joanna becomes more interested in handling those heaps of fan letters sent to Salinger, which must be constantly monitored due to how that book happened to be associated with the tragic killing of John Lennon in 1980. While some of the fan letters are rather weird, most of them are sincere about how “The Catcher in the Rye” means so much to their writers, and Joanna comes to wonder whether these people deserve more than that short reply she frequently types.

However, Margaret is pretty strict about how to handle this and other matters involved with Salinger. Sometimes Salinger calls the agency, and Joanna is naturally excited even though she has never read any of his books, but she must stick to the rules, especially when Salinger suddenly becomes quite interested in re-publishing a certain old work of his.

While Salinger and this possible publication project of his keep hovering around the fringe of the story, Falardeau’s screenplay leisurely flows from one episode to another. I was often amused by several eccentric figures in Margaret’s agency, and I particularly enjoyed a brief scene where Joanna is unexpectedly invited to Margaret’s lunch meeting by a Margaret’s longtime partner, whose private relationship with her later turns out to be more complex than expected.

The movie sometimes feels rather aimless, but everything is mostly held well together by the undeniable charming presence and talent of Margaret Qualley. Since her small but notable supporting turn in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (2019), this wonderful actress, who is incidentally the daughter of Andie MacDowell, has steadily advanced during last several years, and her likable performance here in this film confirms here that we are going to see a lot more of this promising actress in the future.

Around Qualley, several other cast members of the film fill each own spot as well as they can, though most of their supporting roles are underdeveloped on the whole. While her character is more or less than a mild version of Meryl Streep’s character in “The Devil Wears Prada” (2006), Sigourney Weaver balances her seemingly frigid character well between comedy and drama, and she has a little poignant moment when Margaret comes to reveal a bit of her personal side to Joanna later in the story. In case of Brian F. O’Byrne, Yanic Truesdale, and Colm Feore, they are sadly under-utilized in comparison, but their colorful appearances do bring some extra personality to the film at least.

On the whole, “My Salinger Year” is a bit too light to leave a substantial impression on me, and it also tries a little too much when it attempts to present some of those Salinger fan letters more visually, but I was charmed enough by its cheerful mood coupled with some interesting things associated with literacy agency. I wish it did more correction and modification for some improvement in terms of story and characters, but I was not bored at all during my viewing, so I will not grumble for now.

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Spiritwalker (2020) ☆☆☆(3/4): A slick and efficient fantasy action flick

Posted on December 12, 2021 by kaist455

South Korean film “Spiritwalker” is a slick and efficient genre piece which handles its familiar genre elements much better than I thought when I came across its trailer in last month. Once it sets the rules around its utterly preposterous story promise, the movie briskly and entertainingly hops from one narrative point to another along with its confused hero, and you will gladly go along with that before it reaches to its last act where everything is conveniently explained for us as expected. That is a bit disappointing in my humble opinion, but the movie compensates for that with a number of gritty action scenes to excite us, and I felt fairly satisfied when I came out of the screening room along with other audiences a few hours ago.

At the beginning, the movie puts us right into a very baffling circumstance surrounding its hero. When he regains his consciousness right after a small car accident happened, he cannot remember who he is, but then he is baffled to find that he is in the body of someone else he does not know at all. After being taken to a nearby hospital later, he gathers a few bits of information about who this person is, but he only becomes more baffled when he subsequently goes to where this person is supposed to live.

And that is just the beginning of his very extraordinary circumstance. Every twelve hours, his consciousness is somehow transferred to another figure quite alien to him, and it surely takes some time for him to get accustomed to this weird situation before he eventually becomes determined to find out what is exactly happening to him right now – and where the hell his original body is at present.

Fortunately, it soon turns out that there is something common among those figures who happen to be occupied by our hero’s consciousness one after another along the story, and the movie accordingly provides us more clues on what is really going on around him. Our hero is actually an agent who has worked for some secret government agency, and he has recently been pursued by the agency for some hidden reason he still cannot remember much. It seems that one of his colleagues, who is also incidentally his lover, holds all the answers to his growing questions, but he must be careful because she is understandably quite watchful about whatever may happen to her. At one point, he cautiously approaches to her when no one is watching them, but, of course, she does not recognize him at all, and that accordingly leads to the first action scene in the film.

Meanwhile, the plot gets thickens with more figures to enter the picture. There are several agency officials quite willing to cover up whatever was caused by our hero, and there are a number of chilling moments of violence as their underlings do some nasty cover-up jobs as ordered by them. In addition, there is also a homeless guy who happened to encounter our hero during the opening scene, and the movie provides a few moments of humor as this dude later becomes an unlikely ally for our hero.

Except its outrageous story promise which surely belongs to the realm of fantasy, the movie is basically another typical spy action thriller flick about an amnesiac agent on the run, but the screenplay by director/writer Yoon Jae-geun, who previously made a feature debut with “Heartbeat” (2010), steadily engages us while accumulating more tension and intrigue around its story and characters. Around its middle point, you will easily guess what is really going on around its hero, but the movie keeps holding our attention as usual with some surprises for us, and, above all, it never overlooks what is being at stake for its increasingly desperate hero.

The movie also gives us a series of crackling physical action scenes as expected from its genre, and these well-made action scenes surely bring considerable intensity to the film. I must point out that our hero often looks as invincible as, say, Jason Bourne throughout the movie, but Yoon and his crew members make sure that these action scenes are presented with palpable physical impacts on the screen, and they thankfully do not resort to shaky camerawork and choppy editing here. When our hero goes into his full-throttle mode during its last act, the movie becomes less interesting with lots of bangs and crashes, but it still maintains its narrative momentum fairly well under Yoon’s competent direction, and it confidently goes all the way along with its hero before eventually arriving at the ending.

As the center of the film, Yoon Kye-sang diligently carries the film with some effective assistance from several other main cast members who respectively play a number of crucial supporting characters to be occupied by his character’s consciousness along the story. As the main opponent to our hero, Park Yong-woo constantly looks hostile and aggressive as demanded by his role, and Moon Jin-ah and Park Ji-hwan are also solid in their respective parts.

In conclusion, “Spiritwalker” is a nice genre product which does its job as well as intended, and I had a fairly good time on the whole. By the way, its copyright was already sold for the possible American remake version, and, thought I do know whether it will eventually come out, I sincerely hope that the American remake version will be as enjoyable as the original version at least.

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Chun Tae-il (2020) ☆☆☆(3/4): One plain lad who fought for other workers out there

Posted on December 12, 2021 by kaist455

South Korean animation film “Chun Tae-il” is a plain but sincere presentation of one young real-life laborer who came to bring more public attention to workers’ rights via his tragic early death. As a guy who does not know that much about him and his life, I have no idea on how much the story is actually close to his real life story, but I could not help but feel touched by several simple but undeniably powerful moments in the film during my viewing, and I subsequently came to reflect more on how his social cause is still quite relevant in the South Korean society even though more than 50 years have passed since his death.

At the beginning, the story shows us the early life period of Chun Tae-il (voiced by Jang Dong-yoon) in Daegu, South Korea around the early 1960s. We initially see Tae-il having a good time along with his younger siblings during one bright afternoon, but he and his family soon come to have a very hard time due to his father’s unfortunate business failure, and he goes to Seoul along with his father and younger siblings not long after his mother suddenly leaves them without any word.

Anyway, Tae-il works very hard during next several years for himself as well as his family, and then things slowly get a bit better for them. His mother returns after Tae-il accidentally comes across her on a street on one day, and Tae-il is certainly glad to see his parents and younger siblings living together as before, even though they are still quite poor as living in a shabby neighborhood full of wooden makeshift houses. In addition, he is recently employed in one of many small clothing factories in Seoul, and it looks like everything will go well for him and his family as long as he keeps working hard as usual besides following whatever is ordered by his new boss.

When he is later promoted to the position where he should supervise and control several other workers in the factory, Tae-il is willing to try his best as a mediator between the other workers and his boss, but he soon becomes quite conflicted as being more aware of how grueling and difficult their work environment is in many aspects. Their factory is virtually a stuffy sweatshop where workers’ welfare and health are thoroughly disregarded everyday, and Tae-il tries to help and encourage his fellow workers as much as possible, but then he is reminded again of how unfairly he and other workers have been treated by their employer. Although they are frequently demanded to work longer and harder, they get paid less and less just because their employer has some financial loss, and Tae-il soon comes to feel that he must do something for not only his colleagues but also many other laborers out there.

Of course, as a young dude who did not have much school education, Tae-il does not know what to do at first, but there comes one accidental moment of enlightenment. After coming to learn from his father that there are actually the laws associated with workers’ rights, he immediately starts to delve into these labor laws for learning more about how much workers’ rights are actually guaranteed by the government, and he subsequently becomes much more active about doing what is right for him and others according to his enlightened viewpoint.

However, not so surprisingly, his sincere efforts for workers’ rights only leads to more doubt and frustration. During that time, workers’ rights were the last thing to be considered by the South Korean government as relentlessly pushing millions of workers more and more for rapid economic advance, and those rich businessmen gladly went along with that as frequently exploiting their laborers. Shortly after he submits his petition to the Ministry of Labor, Tae-il is fired for causing too much trouble, and that is followed by a brief period during which he muses more on whether his cause is still worthwhile to follow.

In the end, Tae-il decides that he really should fight harder against the power that be, and the last act of the story focuses on how he and his several colleagues come to clash against not only their employers but also the South Korean government. At one point, they manage to get a minor victory for them and their fellow laborers, but that triumphant moment is soon crushed by their opponents who are willing to stop and crush them by any means necessary, and Tae-il becomes quite agonized over what he can possibly do more – especially when he and his colleagues may lose one last chance left them for now.

The story eventually culminates to what occurred to him on November 13th, 1970, and director Hong Jun-pyo thankfully presents this sad and horrible incident with enough restraint while never overlooking the human aspects of Tae-il and several other main characters. I must point out that they are rather broad and simple in my inconsequential opinion, but they are imbued with enough life and personality thanks to not only good animation but also the solid voice performances by a number of notable South Korean performers including Jang Dong-yoon, Yeom Hye-ran, Jin Seon-kyu, Park Chul-min, and Kwon Hae-hyo, and the story earnestly builds up its emotional momentum enough to earn our tears before its expected melodramatic finale.

In conclusion, “Chun Tae-il” is a humble but engaging animation film which handles its human subject with lots of care and respect, and it will probably make you have more interest on its real-life hero who surely deserves to be remembered more these days. To be frank with you, there are still lots of unjust labor exploitation here and there in the South Korean society even at this point, and I sincerely hope that the film will lead to more awareness of workers’ rights among young South Korean people.

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Listen (2020) ☆☆1/2(2.5/4): Sincere but heavy-handed

Posted on December 12, 2021 by kaist455

“Listen”, which received several minor awards including the Special Jury Prize of the Venice Horizons Award when it was shown at the Venice International Film Festival in last year, is a sincere but ultimately disappointing melodrama. Although it sincerely wants to draw out more attention to its social issues from us, the movie stumbles a lot more than once mainly due to its clumsy storytelling, and that is a shame considering the good efforts observed from its several main cast members.

At the beginning, the movie observes how things have been quite difficult for Bela (Lúcia Moniz) and Jota (Ruben Garcia), a Portuguese immigrant couple who have resided along with their three kids in a shabby residence located somewhere in London. Because Jota has still not received his delayed wage from his employer, there is not much money for buying food for the family, and Bela, who has also earned a bit while working as a housemaid, has no choice but to commit some shoplifting before beginning another hard day of hers.

In addition, all of Bela and Jota’s kids need some attention and care for each own reason. While their youngest kid is still a one-year-old baby, their oldest kid Diego (James Felner) has recently been quite ill, and their middle child Lu (Maisie Sly) has a congenital hearing disability. Although Lu also has a hearing aid, it does not work that well for some technical problem, and Bela becomes quite frustrated to learn later that she may buy the new hearing aid for Lu, which is certainly too expensive to buy for her at present.

And then something quite unexpected happens. When Bela comes to Lu’s special elementary school for taking Lu back to their home, Lu’s teacher notifies to Bela that there are some bruises on Lu’s back, and Bela are quite perplexed. She later asks Lu about the bruises, but Lu seems to have no idea on how the hell she got them, and Bela becomes panic because Lu’s teacher might already notify this case to a social services officer who is supposed to drop by Bela and her family’s house in the afternoon.

Her husband tries to calm her down and get things under control as much as possible around the time of the visit from the social services officer, but, of course, their world is turned upside down as soon as the social services officer knocks on the front door of their home. Accompanied with several police officers who would function as his enforcers, the social services officer flatly notifies to Bela that he is going to take away their kids for protection, and Bela and Jota are consequently separated from their dear kids.

What follows next is quite a nightmarish situation for not only Bela and Jota but also their kids. A few days later, Bela and Jota are finally allowed to see their kids again for a while, but they cannot freely interact with their kids just because of those unfair regulations, and that surely exasperates both Bela and Jota a lot. To make matters worse, their kids are bound to be sent away to foster parents regardless of whether they want or not, and it looks like there is nothing Bela and Jota can do for stopping this infuriating injustice from happening to them.

At least, there is someone willing to help them. That person is question is Ann Payne (Sophia Myles), and, as a former employee of the social services, she surely knows a lot about the system. While calmly reminding Bela and Jota of how the circumstance can be much worse if they are not very cautious, Payne does her best as providing Bela and Jota some helpful advices, and it seems possible that Bela and Jota will soon reunite with their kids even though they and their kids may not be allowed to live in England anymore.

It goes without saying that the movie apparently sides with Bela and her family, but the screenplay by director Ana Rocha de Sousa and her co-writers Paula Alvarez Vaccaro and Aaron Brookner often simplifies their desperate situation too much. While it willingly shows that Bela and Jota are not exactly model parents in case of their kids’ welfare, the screenplay does not show much interest in the opposing position of those social services officers, except frequently emphasizing how bad and lousy they are at their job. In addition, the movie often feels ham-fisted in its blatantly manipulative attempt to pull our heartstrings, and that distracting aspect is exemplified well by one certain sappy moment of big speech during the last act.

Anyway, Lúcia Moniz and several other main cast members in the film try their best in making their characters into believable human figures, though their efforts are frequently undermined by the movie itself. While never asking for pity or sympathy from us, Moniz is convincing as an exhausted but strong-willed woman who is simply trying to get back her kids, and she is complemented well by the relatively understated performance from Ruben Garcia. Sophia Myles acquits herself fairly well despite her bland thankless supporting role, and young performers Maisie Sly and James Felner are also solid in their small but substantial parts.

On the whole, “Listen” is rather dissatisfying due to its glaringly flawed screenplay, and I was all the more disappointed as reflecting more on how its story and characters could be more engaging than what I observed during its rather short running time (73 minutes). Yes, it surely has its heart in the right place, but it merely resorts to blatant melodrama without much nuance or complexity for its social issues, and I only came to leave the screening room without much impression in the end.

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The Prayer (2020) ☆☆☆(3/4): A little robot morality play

Posted on December 11, 2021 by kaist455

South Korean film “The Prayer”, which is actually the theatrical version of one episode of South Korean TV anthology drama series “SF8”, is a simple but thought-provoking SF morality play which examines one familiar but undeniably impossible moral dilemma via its robot heroine. Although it mostly stays within genre conventions, the movie is still engaging thanks to its good storytelling and solid acting, and it will make you reflect more on several social issues poignantly reflected by its story and characters.

During its first act, the movie, which is mainly set in one nursing home located in Seoul in 2046, gradually lets us get accustomed to its futuristic background and details. Thanks to considerable technological advance, all of the patients in the hospital and their human caregivers are constantly assisted by android nurses, but things are still hard for many of human caregivers nonetheless. Yes, those android nurses are as cool and unflappable as expected in addition to being always ready for doing their jobs, but they still do not provide much emotional support to human caregivers, most of whom have suffered a lot in many aspects while usually being stuck with those patients as their close family members.

In case of a young woman named Jeong-in (Lee Yoo-young), her circumstance has been pretty depressing to say the least. As her father wished before his death, she has tried to run his little printing company as long as possible, but the printing company is on the verge of being bankrupt at present, and she has also been quite exhausted for taking care of her comatose mother. While her mother has been comatose for no less than 10 years, there is virtually not any possible chance of her mother regaining her consciousness at all, and Jeong-in becomes quite more frustrated and conflicted as being more aware of how her life has been going down and down due to this increasingly daunting circumstance.

At least, Jeong-in gets some consolation from her mother’s android nurse Ho-joong, who incidentally looks identical to Jeong-in and is accordingly also played by the same actress. Whenever Jeong-in feels helpless and hopeless, Ho-joong is willing to comfort Jeong-in a bit even though her No.1 priority is taking care of Jeong-in’s mother, and Jeong-in appreciates that even though Ho-joong’s kindness is just one of her many programmed responses.

However, Jeong-in later finds herself being on the edge again. Quite devastated by one tragic incident associated with a patient staying next to her mother, she is not so sure about whether she can keep going as before, and Ho-joong instantly senses and analyzes on how fragile and unstable Jeong-in’s state of mind is. According to the final conclusion made by Ho-joong’s artificial intelligence, it is highly likely that Jeong-in will end up giving up her life, and Ho-joong correctly discerns that Jeong-in must be free from her mother for avoiding that grim possible outcome.

In the meantime, Ho-joon begins to learn a bit about religion and morality via Sister Sabina (Ye Soo-jung), an old nun who often drops by the nursing home as willing to provide some pep talk to those human caregivers in the nursing home. While eventually deciding that she must do something for both Jeong-in and her mother, Ho-joong also wants to be sure about whether she makes a right decision or not, and that is how she comes to call Sister Sabina at one night.

Their following conversation may not surprise you much as these two main characters pull and push each other on the matters of life and morality, but the movie gradually dials up the level of tension line by line, and director/writer Min Gyoo-dong, who previously made “Herstory” (2017), skillfully handles his main characters’ increasingly tense circumstance. While the technical aspects of the film are more or less than what you can expect from your average TV episode, Min and his crew members fill the screen with enough mood and details to intrigue and engage us, and we accordingly become more emotionally involved in the moral dilemma of the story.

Above all, the movie is anchored well by the commendable dual performance by Lee Yoo-young, a promising actress who has been more prominent since her notable supporting turn in “Fatal Intuition” (2015). While quite looking different from her recent comic turn in “Perhaps Love” (2021), Lee ably goes back and forth between her two very different roles throughout the movie, and that is the main reason why several key scenes between these two characters of hers work with substantial dramatic effect.

In case of a few other main cast members of the film, they effectively fill their respective spots around Lee. While Ye Soo-jung, who was simply unforgettable in “An Old Lady” (2019), brings some life and personality to her rather functional role, Yeom Hye-ran is believable in her similar dual performance, and Choi Byung-mo and Yoon Kyung-ho are also well-cast in their small supporting roles.

In conclusion, “The Prayer” is a fairly modest genre piece, but it did its job as much as expected with enough intrigue and intelligence during its short running time (79 minutes). To be frank with you, I and a friend of mine came to talk and discuss about its story and characters for a while after we watched it early in this morning, and that says a lot in my humble opinion.

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Drive My Car (2021) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): Chekhov, Muramaki, and Hamaguchi

Posted on December 10, 2021 by kaist455

Japanese film “Drive My Car”, which was recently selected as the Japanese entry to Best International Film Oscar, is a rather long but very absorbing experience you should give a chance right now. As calmly and slowly rolling its story and characters for nearly 3 hours, the movie gives us several plain but undeniably sublime human moments to haunt you for a while after it is over, and I assure you that you will gladly go along with its slow but ultimately rewarding emotional journey.

The movie opens with an oddly intimate moment between a stage actor named Yūsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima). Quite physically close to her husband on their bed, she begins a strange tale about one young girl’s strange circumstance with some handsome boy on whom she has had a crush for a while, and her story is developed step by step whenever she and her husband have a sex together.

Meanwhile, we come to know a bit more about this couple. While Oto has worked as a screenplay writer, Yūsuke is doing the multi-language production of Anton Chekhov’s play “Uncle Vanya”, and we observe how dedicated he is to Chekhov’s play. Whenever he drives his old foreign car, he plays a cassette tape containing the audio recording of the play which was specifically made by his wife, and, as Uncle Vanya, he has been quite accustomed to fill the blank spaces left for him in this audio recording.

And then two different unexpected things happen to Yūsuke. Not long after accidentally witnessing Oto cheating on him, he happens to have a minor car accident, and it subsequently turns out that one of his eyes has an incurable medical condition, and all he can do is slowing its eventual deterioration process for the rest of his life. As Oto shows more care and concern toward him because of that, Yūsuke seems more conflicted, and that naturally affects his stage performance, but then his wife suddenly dies when he returns to their home at last night. Although this is actually not his first experience of deep grief, he is quite devastated nonetheless, while still quite confused and conflicted over his mixed feelings toward his wife.

After this extended prologue part preceding its main title, the movie moves onto some time later. Yūsuke is requested to supervise a theater workshop to be held at Hiroshima, and we observe how he embarks on the project with a young South Korean guy who will function as his translator. Again, he is going to stage a multi-language production of “Uncle Vanya”, and we see various Japanese and foreign performers doing the following audition as he is trying to decide which one is right for the production.

One of the performers coming to the audition happens to be Kōji Takatsuki (Masaki Okada), a popular young actor who worked closely with Oto before her death. Because this dude is the one who was with her at that time, Yūsuke is not so pleased at all even though Kōji looks so eager to collaborate with him, but he keeps his attitude straight anyway, and then he casts Kōji as Uncle Vanya instead of himself.

Meanwhile, the movie also pays some attention to what is going on between Yūsuke and Misaki Watari (Tōko Miura), a young woman who was assigned to driving his car in advance. Although he was understandably reluctant at first, it does not take much time for Yūsuke to appreciate Misaki’s fairly good driving service, which helps a lot when he happens to have a little drinking time with Kōji at one point.

The subtle but considerable emotional tension between Yūsuke and Kōji surely draws our attention first, but the screenplay by director Ryusuke Hamaguchi and his co-writer Takamasa Oe, which is based on Haruki Muramaki’s short story of the same name, sticks to its leisurely tone as before while often developing its story and characters in unexpected directions. For example, Yūsuke’s South Korean translator turns out to be more than a very useful assistant for him, and there is a little warm and gentle scene where he invites Yūsuke and Misaki to his small cozy residence where he lives with someone quite dear to him.

While we enjoy this and several other small moments, the movie goes deeper into not only Yūsuke but also Misaki, who is gradually revealed to have her own fair share of emotional issues as she comes to interact more with Yūsuke along the story. After another unexpected moment in the story, they come to have a journey of their own, and I can only tell you that I really admire how patiently and effortlessly this part is developed into a quiet but utterly poignant moment of empathy and understanding.

As the center of the film, Hidetoshi Nishijima steadily holds the ground for several other main cast members surrounding him. While Tōko Miura is his equal acting match during a number of key moments between them, Masaki Okada and Reika Kirishima are also effective in their respective supporting parts, and South Korean performers Park Yoo-rim and Jin Daeyeon have each own small moment to shine as the other crucial parts of the story.

In conclusion, “Drive My Car”, which deservedly won the Best Screenplay Award besides two other awards at the Cannes Film Festival several months ago, is a superlative work which thoughtfully and sensitively reflects on life, art, and storytelling, and the result is much more satisfying than Hamaguchi’s previous film “Asako I & II” (2018), which I did not like much due to its glaringly contrived final act. In short, this is one of the most interesting films of this year, and I am already ready for another ride.

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The Velvet Underground (2021) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): Todd Haynes’ dazzlingly idiosyncratic music documentary

Posted on December 10, 2021 by kaist455

Todd Haynes’ documentary film “The Velvet Underground”, which was released on Apple+ two months ago, takes an idiosyncratic approach to its main subject, and the result is quite interesting to watch. Although I must confess that I only know a few songs by Lou Leed and his famous band, I observed Haynes’ visual collage of archival footage and interviews with growing fascination, and I was alternatively entertained and enlightened by what is so compellingly presented on the screen during its 2-hour running time.

At the beginning, we get to know a bit about the early life of Leed via Leed’s archival interview recording and several people who were close to him. During his childhood years, he was a rather moody kid who was unhappy with his suburban environment while also quite distant to his parents, and that was probably the reason why he came to pursue his passion toward music more after he grew up to be a teenager. Even before he entered his adulthood, he was already an active musician with several his own songs in his pocket, and, not so surprisingly, he eventually left for New York City for searching for something different in the early 1960s.

Several interviewees in the documentary point out how Leed and his music were unfortunately ahead of their time, but New York City in the early 1960s was actually a right place and time for nurturing his musical talent. As the American society was swept with lots of social/cultural changes during the 1960s, New York City attracted lots of various artists not afraid of doing something new and different, and many of them were associated with Andy Warhol, who can be regarded as one of the leading figures of that revolutionary cultural movement. Under Warhol’s fame and support, those numerous artists often gathered together while constantly trying for more artistic creativity and innovation, and that is how Leed came across John Cale, a Welsh musician who had also been reaching for something different just like Leed.

Cale and Leed clicked together well from the beginning because Cale was also a child who grew up under unhappy parents and then got interested in music later. After coming to New York City, Cale was impressed a lot by many avant-garde musicians in the city including John Cage and La Monte Young, and he came to pursue more of experimental music just like Cage and Young. Now those avant-garde music performances from that time may look merely amusing to you, but they did reach for new kinds of musical expression seriously, and the documentary did a splendid job on conveying the excitement of their artistic activities to us via its kaleidoscopic collage of various archival footage clips from that time.

After Leed and Cale formed the Velvet Underground along with Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker, they became a minor sensation in the city even though they did not draw much attention outside New York City probably because of their experimental style and content. After all, not many people wanted to hear their songs including the one which is literally about using heroine, and filmmaker John Waters gladly tells us how much unpopular the band was when it later did a tour concert around the country.

The band kept going on as slowly gaining more popularity mainly thanks to the rising anti-establishment sentiment among young people, but the harmony among Leed, Cale, and the other two band members turned out to be pretty short. Around the time when they released their second album, the conflicts among them were already growing to considerable level, and we get an apt visual presentation on how their different styles clashed with each other instead of generating any harmony in case of their second album.

In the end, Leed and Cale had a breakup to Morrison and Tucker’s dismay, and Leed filled the resulting empty spot with a young musician named Doug Yuel. Although things seemed to be going well for a while, the Velvet Underground became more, uh, conventional around that point, and both Morrison and Tucker were already quite disillusioned as losing all the fun from that experimental period they shared with Cale and Leed. Finally, Morrison decided to quit the band, and that was the end of the Velvet Underground.

Freely flowing from one point to another, the documentary vividly examines and illuminates how the Velvet Underground was shaped and developed during that interesting period, and Haynes and his crew members including cinematographer Edward Lachman, who was previously Oscar-nominated for Haynes’ great lesbian romance film “Carol” (2015), and editors Affonso Gonçalves and Adam Kurnitz deftly keep us engaged from the beginning to the end. Often juxtaposing old archival footage with its new interview clips, the documentary generates the emotional resonance between past and present, and we come to feel and learn more of how the Velvet Underground is one of the enduring cultural legacies from the 1960s while still influencing many musicians out there even at present.

In conclusion, “The Velvet Underground” is another superlative piece of work from Haynes, who has seldom disappointed me since he drew my attention for the first time with “Far from Heaven” (2002). Like his unorthodox Bob Dylan biopic “I’m Not There” (2007), the documentary initially requires some patience from you especially if you do not have much background knowledge, but this is a rich and rewarding experience on the whole, and I am willing to examine it again for more appreciation someday.

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Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): That forgotten summer of Harlem, 1969

Posted on December 9, 2021 by kaist455

You all probably know about the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, but most of you have probably never heard about the Harlem Cultural Festival, which was incidentally also held during the summer of 1969 just like Woodstock. Mainly based on around forty hours of archival footage shot during the concert, documentary film “Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)”, which won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award in the US Documentary Competition when it was shown at the Sundance Film Festival early in this year, takes us into that forgotten summer of Harlem in 1969, and the result is quite vivid, illuminating, and enlightening to say the least.

Alternating between the archival footage clips and the interviews from a number of various figures associated with the Harlem Cultural Festival, the documentary initially gives us the overview on the social/historical background of the festival. During the 1960s, many of African Americans became quite more active with their ongoing civil rights movement, and there consequently came a lot more changes in their social status in the American society despite numerous backlashes including the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

Meanwhile, soul and several other music genres mainly represented by African American musicians became much more prominent than before, and the Harlem Cultural Festival was one of their notable culmination points. The festival was promoted by an African American guy named Tony Lawrence, and this dude surely knew how to hold a big festival in the middle of Harlem. Via many connections of his with a bunch of different figures ranging from the Mayor of New York City to the agents of numerous African American musicians, he could have his seemingly unlikely concert held in Mount Morris Park of Harlem (It is now Marcus Garvey Park, by the way), and the festival, which was held from late June to late August of 1969, attracted thousands of audiences thanks to those many famous African American musicians who were willing to perform there.

Not so surprisingly, what they gave the audiences during that period was indeed something to behold. After all, the festival had Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, The 5th Dimension, The Staple Singers, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Blinky Williams, Sly and the Family Stone, the Chambers Brothers, and Nina Simone, and these and other musicians surely gave lots of exciting moments for the audiences to remember. As the festival freely flowed from one genre to another, everyone in the festival gladly went along with that, and that was particularly exemplified by the cheerful performance of The 5th Dimension, who showed the audiences that they were indeed African American musicians despite being criticized for sounding, uh, too ‘white’.

In case of Mahalia Jackson, she fully demonstrated exceptional singing ability in front of her audiences, and then there was an extraordinary moment when she later was about to sing the favorite hymn of Dr. King on the stage. Quite overwhelmed by her mournful feelings toward Dr. King’s recent tragic death, she let her fellow singer Mavis Staples sing the hymn instead of her, and Staples tells us how special that moment was for her besides being one of the highlights in her musician career.

And that was just one of many high points during the festival, and the documentary keeps delighting and exciting us. There is Stevie Wonder’s enthusiastically spellbinding performance, and then there comes the Sly and the Family Stone, and then there is also Gladys Knight & the Pips, who gave the audiences quite an exhilarating time before interacting a bit with them. Around the end of the documentary, we are served with the showstopper moment from Nina Simone, and this great African American singer surely did not disappoint her excited audiences as giving another stellar concert performance of hers. Considering how steadily the festival kept entertaining its many audiences, it is no surprise that many of them did not show much interest when the news on the successful Moon landing of Apollo 11 came in the middle of the festival.

However, what happened next after the festival was not so pleasant. Hal Tulchin, a television producer who supervised the recording of the festival, did try his best during and after the festival, but, due to the overwhelming popularity of the Woodstock, the festival failed to draw much intention, and his vast amount of footage had been left untouched for next 35 years until it is discovered by Joe Lauro, a film archivist of Historic Films Archive.

It subsequently took more than 15 years before this found footage was finally allowed to be used for the documentary, but what is presented in the documentary is fairly good in terms of visual and sound quality, and director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and his editor Joshua L. Pearson did a commendable job of giving us an ample and exuberant 2-hour musical experience. I enjoy how he lets those musical moments speak for themselves, and I also appreciate how he provides some extra information and insight via his interviewees for more understanding for us.

In conclusion, “Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” is an excellent documentary which deserves to be compared with “Woodstock” (1970), and it surely entertained and enlightened me enough during my viewing. To be frank with you, I would not mind watching more footage from the festival, and I will certainly be interested if there comes the extended version of this exceptional documentary. In short, this is one of the best documentaries of this year, and I urge you to check it out as soon as possible.

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Titane (2021) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): You’ll have to see it for yourself

Posted on December 8, 2021 by kaist455

Julia Ducournau’s new film “Titane”, which won the Palme d’Or when it had a premiere at the Cannes Film Festival several months ago and then was recently selected as the French entry for Best International Film Oscar, is wild, provocative, and deranged to say the least. Like her previous film “Raw” (2016), which is about a young woman who must deal with the sudden awakening of her very unpleasant hidden nature, the movie is so crazy, disturbing, outrageous, and shocking that you will wince or roll your eyes more than once during your viewing, but it will firmly grip you right to the end of its loony ride, and, like I did, you may come to admire how boldly and skillfully it goes all the way along with its dark and sensational materials.

The movie opens with the scene showing a young girl deliberately annoying her father again and again while he is driving his car. When her father finally comes to lose all of his patience, an accident unfortunately happens, and the young girl gets horribly injured on the right side of her head. After her following surgery which is depicted with graphic details to make you cringe, she looks like being on the way to recovery, but she is now with a permanent big scar on the right side of her head, and, as reflected by a brief scene between her and her parents, it seems that the accident did not damage her head only.

Several years later, Alexia (Agathe Rousselle) is a young woman now, and cinematographer Ruben Impens’ camera smoothly follows after her as she enters a motor show featuring many showgirls making erotic movements in front of fancy vehicles. She also works there as a showgirl, and she does not disappoint those male audiences at all when she does her work on one of the vehicles.

Not long after the show is over, we get to know Alexia’s dark side hidden by her boldly sensual appearance. When she has an after-show shower along with one of those showgirls, it looks like they are sexually attracted with each other, but then there comes an unexpected moment which will make you wince for a good reason. When she is later followed by some guy with no one around them, she seems to be disturbed by this total stranger, but then it turns out that she is quite ready for such a circumstance like that from the beginning.

Now I have to be more careful about describing the plot for avoiding any possible spoiler, but I can tell you a bit more about how the movie is willing to be more vicious, violent, and bizarre along with its increasingly disturbing heroine. At one point, we get a truly strange moment which is a sort of cross between “Christine” (1983), “Crash” (1996), and “Jumbo” (2020), and that is surely something which must be seen to be believed. In case of one sequence involved with that showgirl who was attracted to Alexia, it tickles us a bit at first, but then it shocks us a lot while never losing its morbid sense of humor, and you may find yourself wondering whether you should be horrified or amused by what is happening on the screen.

Later in the story, Alexia must run away as far as possible, and then there comes another unexpected narrative turn involved with a middle-aged firefighter named Vincent (Vincent Lindon). I will not go into details on why this dude lets Alexia into his residence and then has her work as an apprentice at his fire station, but I can tell you instead that Vincent is also a bit deranged in his own way. Like the hero of Oscar-nominated Belgian film “Bullhead” (2011), he is deeply insecure about his masculinity, and he frequently injects steroid on his buttock, but, to his frustration, his body has already reached to the limit due to its aging status.

As Alexia chooses to stay longer at Vincent’s residence, the movie gives us a number of darkly amusing moments which mainly come from how willing Vincent is to let Alexia stay around him. Regardless of whether he knows who Alexia really is, he gladly lets himself become more oblivious to Alexia’s deception than before because, well, he has never been happier than before. When a certain figure who was once in his life drops by his residence, this person soon comes to see through Alexia, but, after seeing how Vincent is less miserable for being with Alexia, this person lets Alexia go on with her ongoing fraud on Vincent.

In the meantime, there is something which is bound to be exposed from Alexia’s body sooner or later, and the movie has lots of naughty fun with her extraordinary medical status, which is clearly influenced by many body horror films of David Cronenberg. The finale will certainly catch you off guard for its sheer preposterousness, but you may admire how deftly and boldly Ducournau and her cast and crew members handle this climactic part for maximum dramatic effects, and Agathe Rousselle and Vincent Lindon are simply fearless as willingly hurling themselves into their characters’ crazy situation.

On the whole, “Titane”, which deservedly won the People’s Choice Award for Midnight Madness at the Toronto Film Festival, is definitely not something you can casually watch on Sunday afternoon, but it is still worthwhile to watch due to its bold style and crazy spirit, and I appreciate how everything in the movie is somehow held together under Ducournau’s confident direction. I think you will have to see it for yourself, and I assure you that you will never forget it regardless of whether you like it or not.

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The Rescue (2021) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): A vivid and gripping presentation of one risky rescue

Posted on December 7, 2021 by kaist455

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s new documentary film “The Rescue”, which was released on Disney+ in last week, is a vivid and gripping presentation of one risky rescue which drew lots of public attention around the world at that time. Mainly focusing on a bunch of experts and many others involved in this rescue operation, the documentary shows us not only their enormous efforts but also how things could have gone disastrously wrong at any point during that time, and you may come to brace for yourself more than once even though you know how this remarkable real-life story eventually ended.

At the beginning, the documentary provides the overview of what happened inside the Tham Luang Cave in northern Thailand on June 23th, 2018. Although this cave was supposed to be closed in July due to the upcoming monsoon season, the weather on that day was quite rainy to say the least, and 12 local adolescent soccer team members and their 25-year-old coach became trapped somewhere deep inside the cave once the cave got flooded with lots of rain water not long after they entered the cave.

The rescue team was quickly assembled from Day 1, but it soon became clear to everyone that the situation was pretty daunting in many aspects. There were a group of local navy soldiers with some diving experience, but none of them had ever tried cave diving, and the condition inside the flooded cave was not very good to say the least. As rain kept coming from the sky during next several days, the cave became more flooded day by day, and that made the rescue mission much riskier than before. In addition, the rescue team had no idea on where those trapped boys and their coach were exactly inside the cave, let alone whether they were really still alive.

In the end, Vern Unsworth, a British financial consultant who joined the rescue team because of his considerable cave diving experience, suggested that they should call for several cave diving experts, and that was how Rick Stanton and several other cave diving experts from England entered the picture. Although they are technically amateurs who often pursue their passion toward cave diving during their free time, these guys do know a lot about diving into underwater cave, and, once they dove into the cave, it did not take much time for them to gain the trust from the local rescue team members.

However, the situation turned out to be much more daunting than everyone expected. At a middle spot inside the cave where the boys and their coach were presumed to stay, they found four other people who were also trapped at the same time, and the subsequent transfer of these people along the underwater passage of the cave presented a big obstacle for the rescue team. Often very dark and murky, the underwater passage of the cave could be quite scary and dangerous for anyone inexperienced, and Stanton and his colleagues came to see how it would be much more challenging for them to rescue those trapped boys later.

Nonetheless, they and many other rescue team members did not stop all. Outside the cave, lots of soldiers and volunteers constructed a makeshift dam which would prevent rainwater from entering the cave, while others tried hard to drain the water from the cave. Although the cave remained to be flooded as before, Stanton and his colleagues were finally able to dive deeper inside the cave, and, to everyone’s surprise and joy, they eventually found all the boys and their coach mostly alive and well at a spot quite distant from the entry of the cave.

Of course, that was the easiest part of the rescue mission, and the rescue team subsequently had to devise any possible way to transfer the boys and their coach as safe as possible along the long and treacherous underwater passage of the cave. Although they fortunately did not have much rain during last several days, it goes without saying that the cave would be soon flooded more and more due to the eventual beginning of the monsoon season, and the circumstance became all the more urgent when the oxygen level at the spot where the boys and their coach were surviving became dangerously low. At one point, the oxygen level was no more than 15%, and that will alarm anyone who, like me, knows that is lower than the safety limit for our body.

Thanks to one of Stanton’s colleagues who is also a doctor, they eventually found a way to transfer all the boys and their coach to the entry of the cave, but that required extreme caution to say the least, and a part showing what they did during next several days is pretty gripping to watch. Yes, I still remember well the outcome of this rescue mission, but I was captivated by how the documentary skillfully juxtaposes interview and archival footage clips with a number of remarkably realistic reenactment scenes, and the final several minutes of the documentary surely felt uplifting to me.

Overall, “The Rescue” is another excellent documentary from Vasarhelyi and Chin, who previously won an Oscar for “Free Solo” (2018). Although it is a bit shame that the documentary could not focus on those trapped boys and their coach as Netflix already bought the rights to their harrowing experiences, Vasarhelyi and Chin and their crew members did as much as they could within their territory, and I hope the upcoming Netflix documentary film will be equally compelling besides complementing its counterpart.

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