Shadow of the Vampire (2000) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): Filmmaking with the Vampire

Posted on October 29, 2021 by kaist455

F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror” (1922) has been regarded as one of the greatest silent horror films for many good reasons, and one of them is the striking image of its titular character. Although the film itself was virtually the unauthorized film adaptation of that famous vampire novel by Bram Stoker, Murnau and his leading actor Max Schreck created one of the creepiest vampire characters in the movie history, and their result remains, shall we say, undead as residing somewhere deep beneath those countless vampire movies coming after this great film.

Inspired by the undeniably vivid and striking appearance of Schreck in “Nosferatu”, E. Elias Merhige’s 2000 film “Shadow of the Vampire” attempts to develop one darkly amusing premise: what if Murnau actually hired a real vampire as his leading actor at that time? This surely sounds pretty preposterous to say the least, but the movie handles this utterly unbelievable premise as seriously as possible for working as a deadpan one-joke horror comedy, and the overall result is further enhanced by another memorable vampire performance which deserves to be compared with Schreck’s in the 1922 movie.

At first, the movie observes the ongoing filmmaking process of Murnau, played by John Malkovich, and his cast and crew members in Berlin, 1921. While those financiers of his have been rather nervous about the production, Murnau is quite confident about completing the production according to his grand vision, and his cast and crew members dutifully follow his direction even though they are not so sure about what their movie is about, let alone how it is about. Once their job at the studio is done, they are going to shoot the rest of the film in a number of outdoor locations selected by Murnau in advance, but, to their confusion and bafflement, they are not informed much on what and how they are going to shoot the film in these locations.

Above all, they have not met its leading actor yet. All they know about Max Schreck so far is that he is very, very, very serious about playing his role as realistically as possible, and they become all the more curious about him as they later go to their first outdoor location, which happens to be located in Czechoslovakia. According to Murnau, Schreck, who is still not shown to them even at this point, has already been there for a while because of getting immersed more into the mood of the location, and it seems the location is indeed an ideal place for that. For example, the old inn in which Murnau and his cast and crew members except Schreck are going to stay has a shabby but authentic sense of history and superstition, and, besides using the inn for shooting several scenes of his film, Murnau is willing to hire several local people just for the extra authenticity from their mere presence.

When Schreck, played by Willem Dafoe, finally appears in front of everyone for shooting his first scene in the film, he does not disappoint Murnau and his cast and crew members at all. As a matter of fact, he looks so eerie and disturbing right from the beginning that nobody complains much about his rather eccentric conditions. He wants to shoot his scenes only during nighttime, and Murnau emphasizes to others that Schreck does not need any makeup because he always prepares himself in advance. Regardless of whether the camera is rolling or not, Schreck is always supposed to embody his character, and this professional commitment of his must be respected all the time.

The movie does not hide Schreck’s true identity and his unspeakable nature at all, and that is where its dark fun comes from. It soon turns out that Murnau made a heinous deal with Schreck for making him play the leading character of Murnau’s film, and Schreck is already quite excited for what he is going to get once his last scene is shot, though he still cannot help but driven by his insatiable thirst for blood. In fact, he has already been feeding on one of the key crew members, and this surely exasperates his director a lot (“Why him, you monster? Why not the… script girl?” – “Oh. The script girl. I’ll eat her later.”).

As Murnau and Shreck are constantly engaged in their morbid tug-of-war in front of and behind the camera, the screenplay by Steven Katz makes an interesting juxtaposition of vampirism and filmmaking besides becoming a deranged tale of artistic ambition and exploitation. While Schreck can be regarded as your typical troublesome star actor, Murnau comes to us as your average megalomaniac movie director willing to do anything in the name of art. And I am sure that there are millions of professionals in movie business field who will see a lot of themselves from what the other characters around Murnau and Schreck have to endure and suffer throughout the film. After all, the essence of filmmaking is sort of sucking the life and spirit of whatever is happening right in front of the camera and then immortalizing that on film, and even Schreck shrewdly recognizes this aspect when he has another argument with Murnau at one point. After watching the movie, you will probably think twice about how some famous filmmakers like David Fincher or Stanley Kubrick tend to shoot the same scene more than 100 times.

Because many real-life characters in the story except Murnau are quite unknown to many of us in comparison, the movie freely pushes its story premise while also sticking close to its original source of inspiration. Besides inserting a number of key shots from “Nosferatu”, the movie also recreates several other memorable moments of “Nosferatu” as Murnau and his cast and crew members keep making their film despite a series of unfortunate incidents. When Fritz Arno Wagner (Cary Elwes) arrives later in the story as the new cinematographer for Murnau, things get rolling more smoothly than before, and then there finally comes their leading actress Greta Schroeder (Catherine McCormack). Despite a little personal problem of hers, this young and beautiful actress is ready for her closeup, while having no idea on what her director is going to do to her during the shooting of her last scene.

As heading toward its inevitable finale a bit too hurriedly during its third act, the movie stumbles more than once, but it still holds our attention thanks to its palpably spooky atmosphere generated on the screen under Merhige’s skillful direction. He and his cinematographer Lou Bogue fills the screen a number of nice period details to be appreciated by the audiences familiar with “Nosferatu”, and the melancholic score by Dan Jones subtly suggests the darkness hovering around the characters in the film while occasionally accentuating several impressive moments in the film. One of such moments is a surprisingly poignant scene where Schreck unexpectedly gets what he has yearned for many centuries while he is playing a bit with a movie camera, and this indelible moment leaves a much more powerful impression than a similar one in Neil Jordan’s “Interview with the Vampire” (1994).

It goes without saying that the movie lives and dies with the unforgettable performance by Dafoe, who deservedly received an Oscar nomination for that. With his sharply gaunt appearance, Dafoe is born to play devilish figures to say the least, but he goes further here as fully immersing himself into his character, and he gives us a chillingly grand performance to be savored in many aspects. While deliberately exaggerated at times to our amusement, he never overlooks his character’s sheer depravity, but he also somehow earns our pity as ably conveying to us his character’s remaining humanity. When Schreck happens to discuss a bit with two other characters on Stoker’s novel, Dafoe and the movie delve quite deep into the misery and despair of being a vampire for centuries, and that will certainly remind you that being a bloodsucker forever is not as cool as shown in those Twilight flicks.

Although Dafoe virtually steals the show, the other main performers in the film are also wonderful in their respective roles. I must tell you that Murnau in real life was actually quite a nice and sensitive person, but Malkovich is often fun to watch while looking as smug and arrogant as demanded, and he and Dafoe complement well each other as carrying the film together. As Murnau‘s ever-suffering cast and crew members, Carry Elwes, Eddie Izzard, John Aden Gillet, and Udo Kier are enjoyable in their colorful supporting performance, and Catherine McCormack brings some jolliness to the film before her character belatedly comes to realize the terrifying fact behind shooting her last scene.

Although it could push its story promise further for more fun and intrigue for us in my humble opinion, “Shadow of the Vampire” is still a very compelling piece of work in addition to being one of better vampire films during recent years. It is a bit shame that Merhige mostly stepped away from filmmaking after his next feature film “Suspect Zero” (2004), but he gave us one excellent horror film to remember at least, and it will continue to be regarded as one of the highlights in Dafoe’s long and illustrious career.

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Copshop (2021) ☆☆☆(3/4): A fixer, a killer, and an officer

Posted on October 28, 2021 by kaist455

“Copshop” is an efficient action thriller flick which plays well with its familiar genre elements on the whole. Right from its opening part, we already have a pretty good idea on what we are going to get, but the movie deftly builds up tension and intrigue along its straightforward plot during its first half, and then we are served with a series of well-executed moments of brutal violence and action as expected during its second half.

At the beginning, we are introduced to a dude named Teddy Murretto (Frank Grillo), and he is running away by a vehicle apparently not belonging to him. When that vehicle happens to have some mechanical problem, he has no choice but to walk to a nearby desert town named Gun Creek, and then he unfortunately happens to be arrested by a young local female police officer named Valerie Young (Alexis Louder).

While Murretto is subsequently taken to the police station, it turns out that he is already being pursued by a guy named Bob Viddick (Gerard Butler), who soon lets himself deliberately arrested and then taken to the same police station while disguising himself as some pathetic drunk. Although he fails to be in the same cell along with Murretto, this wily dude, who is revealed to be hired to eliminate Murretto, has the other plan just in case, and the mood gradually becomes tense while he and Murretto talk with each other while there is no one around them except some real drunk who happens to be stuck with Viddick in the same cell and remains mostly unconscious.

Meanwhile, Young begins to gather that there is something suspicious about Murretto as she checks his criminal record, which has been somehow wiped clean for some unknown reason. In case of Viddick, she becomes very cautious about him when he later attempts to execute his plan B, and she naturally tries to find out what the hell is really going on between Viddick and Murretto, though we already come to discern that both of these two untrustworthy dudes are involved with a certain shocking incident repeatedly reported on TV.

And the tension between Viddick and Murretto is increased more and more along the story. Although they are separately locked in different cells, Viddick knows a certain weak spot of his opponent, and he toys with that a bit just for goading his opponent more. As sensing more that he must get out of the police station as soon as possible, Murretto tries to persuade Young to release him right now, but Young remains adamant as before, and then there eventually comes a point where the movie takes another plot turn.

The trailer of the movie reveals a bit too much of what will happen next after this narrative point, so I will not go more into details, but I guess I can tell you that the movie consequently enters that familiar genre territory occupied by other similar movies ranging from “Rio Bravo” (1959) to “Assault on Precinct 13” (1976). Soon finding herself cornered into a very desperate circumstance with no one to come to help her, Young comes to see that she must depend on either Murretto or Viddick, but she also cannot easily trust either of them, and the time keeps running out for her minute by minute.

In case of Viddik and Murretto, they also become quite desperate, so they respectively keep trying to persaude Young to trust either of them for a while at least. Murretto becomes a little more honest as revealing what exactly he is trying to escape, but Viddik emphasizes how unreliable Murretto is as a sleazy fixer, and Young must decide on whom she will have to release for the extra help she needs right now.

As the story eventually arrives at its climactic part, the movie expectedly throws lots of actions into the screen, and director/co-writer/co-producer Joe Carnahan, who is no stranger to action movies as shown from his several previous works including “Boss Level” (2020), and his crew members did a competent job of presenting a number of gritty action scenes with considerable visceral impact. Around the end of the story, the movie stumbles a little as losing some of its narrative momentum, but it soon recovers from that, and you will be amused a bit by the last shot which is morbidly cheerful in my humble opinion.

As the opposing main characters in the story, Gerard Butler and Frank Grillo, who also participated in the production of the film, have some fun as their characters play a sort of cat-and-mouse game during the first half of the movie. As two reliable veteran actors who have appeared in numerous action thriller films for years, they certainly do not disappoint us at all when they are required to do some action later in the story, and Alexis Louder, a promising newcomer who previously played a minor supporting character in “Harriet” (2019), holds her own place well between Butler and Grillo. As another crucial part of the story, Toby Huss is effective while casually going back between jolliness and ruthlessness as demanded, and he surely brings some twisted humor to his several key scenes in the film.

Overall, “Copshop” did not surprise me much as mostly playing according to its genre conventions, but it is still a fairly entertaining flick thanks to its good handling of suspense and action and the engaging performances from its main cast members. I was a bit disappointed because it does not reach to the level of “Assault on Precinct 13”, but, as far as I can see, it does its job as well as intended, but I will not grumble for now.

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Old Henry (2021) ☆☆☆(3/4): An old farmer with the past

Posted on October 26, 2021 by kaist455

“Old Henry” is a familiar but solid western thriller film which turns out to be more enjoyable and interesting than expected. We can clearly see through what it is going to do along with its seemingly plain ordinary hero, and it will surely remind you of many senior western films ranging from “The Shootist” (1976) to “The Unforgiven” (1992), but it gradually engages us more via its efficient handling of story and characters, and we come to care a lot about what may happen next along the story.

Tim Blake Nelson, who has always been one of the most dependable character actors working in Hollywood during last two decades since he drew our attention via his colorful supporting turn in the Coen brothers’ “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (2000), plays Henry McCarthy, a shabby widower farmer who has run a small farm in the middle of some remote area of Oklahoma in 1906. Since his dear wife died around 10 years ago, he has lived there alone with his young son Wyatt (Gavin Lewis), and their only neighbor is his brother-in-law, who has also run his own farm not so far from Henry’s. Although he and his son are not exactly friendly to each other, it is evident to us that Henry cares a lot about his son, and he even does not let Wyatt handle a gun even though Wyatt is now old enough for that in the standard of the American Old West.

Wyatt is understandably not so happy about his father’s insistence while also often bored with their isolated status, but something occurs to disrupt their daily life on one day. After spotting a riderless horse from the distance, he and his father promptly search for the rider in the surrounding area, and it does not take much time for them to find the rider, who has been unconscious on the ground due to his serious gunshot wound.

As looking around the spot for a while, Henry notices a bag full of money, and, while not telling anything to his son, he handles the situation as tactful as he can. First, he and his son take the injured stranger to their house, and then he comes back to the spot for not only retrieving that money bag but also erasing the traces as much as he can. Besides hiding that money bag in his secret place, he also has the injured stranger tied on a bed just in case, and Wyatt goes along with this without any question because Henry says it is just for the safety for the injured stranger.

However, Wyatt cannot help but become curious about who the injured stranger really is – and what his father does not tell him yet. After seeing his father hiding something in that secret place of his, he decides to delve more into the situation for himself, and he is certainly excited and intrigued by what he finds besides that money bag. Yes, it seems that there is the past which his father has hidden from him for years, and that eventually prompts him to do something not allowed by his father.

Meanwhile, the injured stranger turns out to be more suspicious and unreliable than he seemed at first, and that makes Henry and Wyatt’s circumstance trickier than before. When three other guys come Henry’s farm, Henry instinctively senses more trouble even while seemingly accepting what these three dudes tell him, and one of them already seems to sense something fishy about Henry.

Because what is shown in advance during the opening scene, it is not much of a spoiler to tell you that these three guys are the main villains of the story – and that our seemingly inconsequential hero turns out to be someone who may be more than a match to be handled by these three guys. At one point, we get a quiet but tense moment when he must evade these three guys in the middle of a wide space without getting noticed at all, and then we are reminded again of how much he has been underestimated by his son.

Slowly developing the dramatic tension outside and inside Henry’s house along the plot, the movie gives us several good moments to reveal more of its main characters’ life and personality. In case of the conversation scene between Henry and the injured stranger, it simply feels like an interrogation at first, but then it comes to suggest more of what these two characters have respectively kept to themselves for years, and you may not be so surprised by what is revealed around the end of the story.

The story expectedly culminates to the finale filled with lots of gunshots, but director/writer Potsy Ponciroli and his crew members including cinematographer John Matysiak and editor Jamie Kirkpatrick did a competent job of delivering this moment with enough gritty intensity. While Nelson steadily holds the center as before, Gavin Lewis, Scott Haze, Trace Adkins, and Stephen Dorff are also fine in their respective supporting parts, and Dorff, who has somehow not received enough recognition despite a number of stellar performances he gave after his breakout turn in “The Power of One” (1992), has a juicy fun with his talky but chilling villain character.

In conclusion, “Old Henry” does not surprise that much in terms of story and characters, but it attains its goals as much as it can, and Nelson demonstrates here in this film that he can be as tough and ruthless as, say, Bob Odenkirk in “Nobody” (2021). Seriously, will we ever see these two ever-reliable character actors fight with each other on the screen?

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Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021) ☆☆1/2(2.5/4): Cage in Sonoland

Posted on October 26, 2021 by kaist455

Sion Sono’s latest film “Prisoners of the Ghostland” looks like an ideal combination between two different figures who have respectively been known well for going wild and crazy in each own way. While Sono has surely impressed us with a number of loony and disturbing works such as “Cold Fish” (2010) and “Why Don’t You Play in Hell?” (2013), his leading actor Nicholas Cage has been quite bold and fearless regardless of whether his movies are good or bad, and I and others surely expected a lot from their collaboration.

However, sadly, “Prisoners of the Ghostland” turns out to be not as wild and explosive as we can hope from Sono and Cage. While they and the other cast and crew members around them are surely willing to go wild right from the start, the movie is often hampered by its uneven storytelling and weak characterization, and we are just mildly amused at times by its deliberately whimsical exaggeration of style and mood.

The movie is set in a bluntly anachronistic world located somewhere in Japan, and it promptly thrusts us into this crazy strange world where old and modern elements of the Japanese society are casually mixed along with some element from the Old American West. While there are a bunch of geishas and samurais on one hand, there are also a group of gunslingers on the other hand, and they are all ruled by a sleazy American dude who is simply called “The Governor” (Bill Moseley). When one of his “granddaughters” manages to escape at one night, the Governor is not so pleased at all, and he is already determined to get her back by any means necessary.

And he happens to have the right guy for that. That person, played by Cage, has been incarcerated for many years due to a bank robbery, which was gone horribly gone wrong for him and his accomplice as shown to us during the opening part of the film. When the Governor promises freedom to him in exchange of getting that woman back to the Governor, our nameless hero is not so eager to say the least, but, alas, he soon finds that he has no choice once the Governor has him wear a special suit which will probably take you back to the similar setting of John Carpenter’s “Escape from New York” (1981).

Even at that point, the movie does not hesitate to baffle and strike us, and we are accordingly served with small and big loony moments. While I like the striking color scheme of the bank robbery scene, I also enjoy several surrealistic moments including the sudden appearance of a rather catchy song, and Cage, who looks as straight as possible in front of all these and other crazy elements in the film, contributes extra silliness to the movie when his character decides to use a far plainer vehicle than a fancy sports car given to him for accomplishing the mission out there.

After our hero leaves for a wasteland area where that woman, who is named Bernice (Soifa Boutella), ran away, the movie becomes more decidedly unrealistic as building up another stranger world around our hero. As explained to us later in the story, there was a disastrous accident involved with the radioactive waste from some nuclear power plant, and its victims were turned into a sort of radioactive ghosts who have isolated that area from the outside world. While she succeeded in getting away from the Governor, Bernice is now trapped in this wasteland region along with many of its gloomy denizens, and the movie has some naughty fun with how these people are miserably coping with their hopeless status which may continue forever till their death. At one point, we see a bunch of them struggling to stop a big clock from working second by second, and that is certainly an amusing sight for us even though we cannot totally understand what is really the point of this Sisyphean work.

While continuing to do these and many other stuffs around here and there, the movie unfortunately comes to lose its narrative focus and momentum, and we become more aware of the contrived aspects of its story and characters. Although Cage tries his best, his character remains rather flat and bland in my humble opinion, and the movie does not even give him enough chances to go as wild and crazy as we can expect from him. Yes, I actually chuckled a bit as watching a little gory moment involved with his character’s certain body part, but the movie does not go further than that to my disappointment, and it merely comes to spin its wheels as monotonously mired in its excessive exercise in style.

In case of the other main cast members in the film, most of them are wasted in their cardboard roles. Sofia Boutella brings some spirit and personality to her superficial role, but the movie under-utilizes her to my disappointment, and the movie actually made me miss when she mercilessly wielded a pair of blades in “Kingsmen: the Secret Service” (2015). In case of Bill Moseley and Nick Cassavetes, they are as hammy as required by their caricature characters, and Tak Sakaguchi and Yuzuka Nakaya manage to leave some impression as two crucial Japanese characters in the story.

Although it is at least less boring than Sono’s previous film “The Forest of Love” (2019), “Prisoners of the Ghostland” is still a misfire which fails to be as entertaining as it could be, and my dissatisfaction with its overall result still lingers on me even at this point. The movie is as distinctive as Sono’s other works, but I would rather recommend you to watch “Why Don’t You Play in Hell?” instead, and I also want to point out that Cage was more entertainingly wild in “Mandy” (2018). Believe me, you will have a more satisfying time with either of these two better films.

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Cry Macho (2021) ☆☆1/2(2.5/4): A leisurely sentimental drama from Eastwood

Posted on October 26, 2021 by kaist455

Clint Eastwood’s latest film “Cry Macho” often feels like watching an old retired master reluctantly doing another encore despite not exactly being in his best condition. Although the overall result is not without flaws to be noticed here and there, the movie shows at least that Eastwood can still work in front of and behind the camera, and that may be a consolation for you if you have admired many of his notable works as much as I have.

The movie, which is based on the 1975 novel of the same name by late N. Richard Nash, starts with establishing the shabby current status of its aging hero played by Eastwood himself. Although he was once quite a famous rodeo star in Texas, Mike Milo had to retire due to a serious back injury, and he has subsequently worked in his old friend Howard Polk (Dwight Yoakam) for years, but then there comes a point where Howard is not going to tolerate Mike’s laid-back attitude anymore. When Howard bluntly notifies that he is fired, Mike simply accepts that news, and then he goes back to his little house, which is filled with many mementos from his glorious past.

One year later, Howard unexpectedly visits Mike, and he seems to put aside the recent grudge between them just for requesting Mike to do something for him. A long time ago, Howard married some woman in Mexico and then they happened to have a son, but Howard left them when he and his wife eventually had a divorce, and now he wants to have his son back. Because he cannot go to Mexico for some business trouble, Howard asks Mike to go to Mexico City and get his son back to Texas for him, and Mike cannot say no as Howard actually helped him a lot at a certain difficult point in his life.

On the surface, the job looks like a piece of cake as Mike goes across the Mexico-US border and then drives toward Mexico City. When he eventually meets Howard’s ex-wife, she has no problem with telling him where her son is at present, and he immediately goes to a slum neighborhood where her son usually hangs around with others for cockfighting. Fortunately, it does not take much time for Mike to locate Howard’s son, and, after having a brief talk with Mike, Rafo (Eduardo Minnett) quickly agrees to go to Texas along with Mike.

Not so surprisingly, Mike soon comes to realize that the situation is more complicated than expected. When she happens to be quite pissed about Mike for a rather prosperous reason (Please don’t ask me how she can be so interested in seducing Mike, who looks like her grandfather compared to her fairly youthful appearance), Rafo’s mother, who happens to be quite affluent besides having some dangerous associates around her, turns out to be a lot more spiteful and vicious, and it also later revealed that Howard did not tell everything about his complex family circumstance.

Now this looks like a standard setup for the mix between road movie and thriller flick, but that is certainly the last thing we can expect from Eastwood. He simply lets the story roll along its predictable route, and we accordingly get a series of sensitive moments between him and Eduardo Minett as their very different characters come to connect more with each other along the story. While often annoyed with Rafo’s brash aspects besides his precious rooster for cockfighting, Mike gradually comes to care more about Rafo, and Rafo comes to learn a few lessons from Mike as Mike tells and shows him a bit about being, yes, a man.

Meanwhile, the story later comes to revolve around a small rural town due to an unexpected trouble for Mike and Rafo, and the movie becomes more relaxed and reflective than before. Thanks to a kind local woman named Marta (Natalia Traven), Mike and Rafo come to get a temporary shelter where they can stay under her protection, and it does not take much time for Mike and her to develop mutual attraction between them despite their language barrier. In addition, Mike demonstrates his particular set of skills in front of Rafo and many residents of the town, and, considering their appreciation to Mike, it seems that he and Rafo may stay a bit longer in the town.

However, what is so tenderly developed during this part is unfortunately disrupted by the jarringly uneven finale, and even Eastwood’s tactful direction does not compensate for this glaring flaw and other notable weak elements in the film. For instance, the cinematography by Ben Davis is commendable on the whole, but I must tell you that, even to a foreigner like me, many locations in the movie look more like belonging to Texas rather Mexico, and I was not so surprised at all to learn later that they actually shot the movie in New Mexico. As the center of the film, Eastwood carries the movie as much as he can, but he seems more tired and detached even compared to his previous acting turn in “The Mule” (2018), and the other cast members including Dwight Yoakam and Natalia Traven are mostly stuck in their thankless supporting roles.

On the whole, “Cry Macho” is a bit too flawed to engage me, but I also admire how Eastwood, who had the 91th birthday several months ago, has kept going as usual even while apparently going through the last phase of his filmmaking career. He is still a master in my inconsequential opinion, and I can only hope that his long and respectable filmmaking career will not be ended with this rather disappointing minor work.

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Found (2021) ☆☆☆(3/4): Finding themselves

Posted on October 25, 2021 by kaist455

Netflix documentary film “Found”, which was released on Netflix on last Wednesday after having a limited theatrical released in US, presents a heartfelt story of three different Chinese American adoptees who came to search for their biological mothers. As observing the daily life of each of them and the development of their accidental friendship, the documentary gives us a series of warm and intimate moments among them and their respective foster families, and there are also some poignant moments when these three young ladies later become a bit more active about finding themselves in the country they do not remember much.

At the beginning, we are introduced to Chloe Lipitz, Lily Boka, and Sadie Mangelsdorf, and the documentary shows us how different their respective family backgrounds are. While Chloe has grown up under her Jewish parents in Arizona, Lily has been living with her foster mother and her extensive Catholic family in Oklahoma, and Sadie Mangelsdorf has resided with her divorced mother and two step siblings in Tennessee. We see Chloe going through a religious ritual for her adulthood in Israel, and then we watch Lily preparing for her upcoming college enrollment, and then we observe Sadie cheerfully working along with other employees at a local fast-food restaurant.

As Chinese American adoptees, these three young ladies all have the experience of being more aware of being and looking different from many others around them. When they were just adopted from China, they simply adapted themselves to their respective new and alien environments under the loving care of their foster parents. As they grew up older, they became more conscious of being abandoned shortly after their birth, and Chloe bitterly reminisces at one point about how the casual remark from one of her schoolmates, who was incidentally her best friend at that time, hurt her a lot.

They all know well why they were abandoned shortly after being born in China. As told to us in the beginning of the documentary, the Chinese government ruthlessly forced the one-child policy upon its citizens during around 40 years for suppressing its serious population increase, and around 150,000 babies were abandoned during that period as a consequence. Many of these abandoned babies were girls because many of Chinese people preferred to have a son instead of a girl, and, once they were found abandoned, they were usually sent to local orphanages, where many of them were later adopted by foreign foster parents just like Chole, Lily, and Sadie.

Although there was not much chance from the beginning, Chloe, Lily, and Sadie submitted their samples for DNA tests to an online service company which has helped many adoptees like them, and that was how they came to befriend each other. Their test results still did not lead them to anything substantial enough to locate their respective biological parents, but the test results indicated that they were actually distant cousins, and they were all thrilled and delighted to contact with each other.

While they continue to communicate with each other, they become all the more curious about finding their roots, but not all of them are eager to do more for that. Sadie and Lily are willing to go to China for knowing a bit more about their birthplaces, Chloe is rather reluctant for understandable reasons, but she still goes along with her two friends when they put some efforts together on their journey of finding themselves and their roots.

Their cases are handled by Liu Hao, a local research officer living in Beijing, China. Liu has been quite passionate about her work because she still remembers well how unwanted she was as a daughter during her childhood years, and it is touching to see how she deftly and sensitively handles her latest cases. She approaches to those potential biological parents with caution and respect, and she listens to these people with care and empathy while also mentioning that there is not much possibility of positive result in their DNA tests. Regardless of whether any of them is actually the biological parent of Chloe or Lilly or Sadie, these people all have their own sad story to share with, and we are reminded again of how heartless the one-child policy really was.

In the end, Chloe, Lilly, and Sadie eventually take a trip to China for getting to know more of their respective birthplaces, and the most poignant moments in the documentary come from when they reunite with several orphanage nannies who took care of them and many other little orphans during that time. These remarkable women did their best despite little support and resource available to them, and they are all certainly proud and happy to see Chloe, Lilly, and Sadie returning to them for showing some gratitude.

Overall. “Found”, which is incidentally the first feature documentary film by director/co-producer Amanda Lipitz, will touch you with its numerous intimate moments, and it will bring you some smile via a series of sweet photographs shown during its end credits. Although it does not give us a wider perspective on the one-child policy like Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang’s harrowing documentary “One Child Nation” (2019), the documentary still works as an engaging documentary nonetheless, and it will surely make a nice double feature show along with “One Child Nation”.

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In Front of Your Face (2021) ☆☆☆(3/4): One day of hers

Posted on October 24, 2021 by kaist455

Hong Sang-soo’s latest film “In Front of Your Face” is another interesting attempt in his long and steady career. While merely observing one day of its middle-aged heroine on the surface, the movie gradually gets rather melodramatic as she becomes more reflective about her current status, and then we are later served with a dramatic moment accompanied with, as many of you have already expected, several glasses of booze.

During the first act of the film, which is set in one of those satellite cities around Seoul, we are introduced to a middle-aged lady named Sang-ok (Lee Hye-young), who recently came back to South Korea after many years she spent in US. She is currently staying in a high-rise apartment belonging to her younger sister Jeong-ok (Jo Yoon-hee), and we see her and Jeong-ok later spending some time outside, but, despite their cordial conversation, we sense some emotional reservation from Sang-ok. When her younger sister suggests that Sang-ok should settle back in South Korea and then buy an apartment to live for the rest of her life, Sang-ok seems to be interested in that suggestion to some degree, but she does not agree to that suggestion nonetheless, and that leaves some awkwardness between her and Jeong-ok.

Sang-ok and Jeong-ok subsequently move around in Jeong-ok’s neighborhood. At one point, they drop by a little restaurant run by Sang-ok’s son, but he happens to be absent for a while, and they instead have a little talk with a young plucky female employee working there. In addition, they also have a little quite moment at a nearby public park, and Sang-ok becomes more reflective as serenely doing a sort of prayer inside her.

Because she happens to have an appointment for some private meeting in the afternoon, Sang-ok later goes to Seoul by a cab. When she is notified that the time and location of the meeting have been unexpectedly changed, she decides to go to some other spot in Seoul and then spend some time there before going to that meeting later. That spot in question turns out to be where she and her family once lived many years ago, and she cannot help but feel nostalgic even though this place has been changed a lot in many aspects. Now this place is turned into a little shop, but there are several things which seem to bring her back to her memories of past, and there is a little poignant moment when she happens to have a brief encounter with a little young girl. While probably seeing her younger self from that young girl, Sang-ok remains as reserved as before, but Lee Hye-young, a veteran actress who has been steadily active since she made her screen debut in 1981, subtly suggests the emotions behind her character’s phlegmatic façade.

During the last act of the movie, Sang-ok eventually attends the meeting as expected, and a filmmaker named Jae-won (Kwon Hae-hyo) is glad to meet her again after many years since they worked together once. Still remembering how wonderful she was as an actress, Jae-won soon becomes quite sentimental, and then he suggests that she should appear in his latest movie project. Although she has never acted since that old time between them, he assures her that she can be as good as she once was, and Sang-ok seems to be more interested in his offer while they talk more and more with each other.

As he frequently did in his previous films, Hong, who also handled the cinematography and editing of the film in addition to its music, continuously observes what is slowly emerging on the screen as the two characters of the movie interact more and more with each other in front of the camera. As the mood becomes a bit mellow thanks to not only a little impromptu music performance but also several shots of some Chinese liquor, Sang-ok and Jae-won are willing to be more honest to each other, and that is when Sang-ok comes to reveal a certain serious fact of hers. As Hong’s camera keeps watching her and Jae-won, we sense the growing awkwardness between them, and then we subsequently get an ironic comic moment when Sang-ok receives a voicemail in the very next morning.

While her character remains as detached as before even at that narrative point, Lee’s performance keeps holding our attention as before and she is also supported well by a few notable performers who come and go along the story. While Jo Yoon-hee complements Lee well with her relatively more cheerful performance, Kwon Hae-hyo, who have often collaborated with Hong in Hong’s several previous films such as “Hotel by the River” (2018), is effortless as he and Lee subtly push and pull each other during their key scene, and I also enjoyed the brief appearance of Kim Sae-byuk and Seo Yeong-hwa, who also appeared in some of Hong’s recent works including “The Woman Who Ran” (2020).

“In Front of Your Face” is Hong’s 26th feature film, and that reminds me again of how constantly productive he has been since his first feature film “The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well” (1996). Although I felt rather distant to his earlier films such as “Woman on the Beach” (2006), I came to appreciate his later films including “Hahaha” (2010) and “Oki’s Movie” (2010), and I also admire how he has recently tried something different via “The Woman Who Ran”, which exemplifies well his recent interesting shift toward female characters just like “In Front of Your Face” and “In Another Country” (2012).

Although I must say that it is relatively less humorous and amusing compared to his better works, “In Front of Your Face” is still another good work from Hong, and I think Hong has another fairly productive year because of this film and “Introduction” (2020). In short, I got as much as I expected, and I am ready to move onto whatever he will give us in the very next year.

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A Leave (2020) ☆☆☆(3/4): His day off from protest

Posted on October 23, 2021 by kaist455

I could not help but feel worried as observing the plain ordinary working-class here of South Korean independent film “A Leave”. While he may not be that smart, he is a good man who has simply struggled to do his best under a very gloomy circumstance with no bright possibility at all, and that is why I often braced myself during my viewing, as wondering about how things may get worse for him during his ‘day off’ period.

During the opening scene, the movie gradually establishes what its hero and several other colleagues of his have been going through during last five years. Since their unjust layoff, Jae-bok (Lee Bong-ha) and his fellow labor union members have been doing a sit-in in the middle of Seoul for five years, but the result has been pretty depressing to say the least. Their union recently lost the final lawsuit requesting for the invalidation of their layoff, and, to make matters worse, their protest does not draw much attention from others, no matter how much they try to continue to speak loud and clear in public.

As Jae-bok and his two close colleagues later talk more about what they should do now, it becomes more apparent to all of them that the circumstance has become much more hopeless than before, so Jae-bok promptly decides that he should take a little break, but he is not greeted much by his two daughters when he subsequently returns to his small residence. Both of his two daughters have been pretty sick of his longtime absence in their life, and Jae-bok cannot say any excuse because he knows too well that he has not provided any necessary support or comfort to them as having always been busy with doing the protest outside along with his colleagues.

However, there is still something Jae-bok can do for both of his two daughters. In case of Hyeon-hee (Kim Jung-yeon), she is about to go to a college after recently graduating from her high school, and she needs some extra cash right now for her upcoming enrollment. In case of her younger sister Hyeon-bin (Lee Seung-joo), it turns out later that she wants to have some fancy winter clothes, and Jae-bok is certainly willing to buy that for her – if he can find any temporary job which pays him enough for that as well as that necessary extra cash for Hyeon-hee.

Of course, it turns out to be quite difficult for Jae-bok to find any suitable job for his current situation. Although he surely has considerable skill and experience to say the least, his unemployed status during next five years naturally sticks out in his résumé, and there is a little painfully awkward moment when an employment agency guy asks him a bit more about what he has been doing during that period. He could tell the truth, but his status as a protesting labor union member is certainly not something to help him get a job.

Anyway, he eventually gets employed temporarily thanks to an old friend of his, who has been running a small carpentry shop belonging to some small minor company. Instead of lending him some money, his friend suggests that he should work at his carpentry shop for a week, and Jae-bok instantly accepts his friend’s offer once he is promised to get paid enough for that.

Jae-bok’s first day at his new workplace is rather awkward as he and his friend are technically an employee and an employer now, but it does not take much time for Jae-bok to get accustomed to this new situation of his. Although he initially makes some mistakes to the frustration of his friend and a younger employee assigned to supervise him, he soon gets better in handling those tools and materials around him, and it looks like everything will go well for him as well as his friend in the end.

However, Jae-bok is reminded again of how physical laborers like him are often disregarded and neglected by their employers. After working more with that aforementioned young employee, he comes to care more about this lad than before, and he has a little moment of solidarity with this lad when this lad happens to have a little unfortunate accident later. As coming to learn more of how his younger co-worker will struggle a lot more with his difficult financial status than before, Jae-bok decides to go a bit further for helping this lad, and that leads to a little strain between Jae-bok and his friend, who is not so pleased with what Jae-bok’s younger co-worker does after getting some legal advice from Jae-bok.

The mood becomes a bit tense later in the story as Jae-bok subsequently has to make a certain hard choice, but the screenplay by director/writer Lee Ran-hee wisely maintains its calm attitude while also bringing more depth to not only its hero but also several other characters around him. As the humble center of the film, Lee Bong-ha carries the story well with his restrained but effective lead performance, and he is supported well by the other main cast members, and Kim Jung-yeon and Lee Seung-joo have a very good scene with Lee when their characters come to reveal their complex feelings toward Lee’s character.

On the whole, “A Leave” looks rather plain and simple on the surface, but it will grow on you via the quiet emotional power beneath its surface, and the result is another interesting South Korean working-class drama of this year. Things are still daunting and uncertain for its hero even in the end, and he still cares a lot nonetheless, and I assure you that you will be touched as getting to know more of this simple but undeniably decent dude.

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The Harder They Fall (2021) ☆☆1/2(2.5/4): A black western gang war

Posted on October 21, 2021 by kaist455

As an experienced moviegoer, I have several valuable standards for deciding whether I am really entertained enough by a movie, and one of these standards is whether my mind gets distracted more than once even while my eyes keep noting and absorbing whatever is being shown on the screen. If my mind continues to go somewhere no matter how well-made and well-acted that movie is, it is quite clear to me that my heart is not there for that movie, and then I usually come to mull more on why I am not entertained enough by that movie – and why I accordingly cannot recommend that movie.

And such a thing happened to me while I was watching Netflix film “The Harder They Fall”, which is incidentally not the remake of the last film of Humphrey Bogart made in 1956. Mainly because of the impressive array of black performers assembled for the film, I actually had lots of expectation after watching its trailer a few months ago, but, sadly, the movie, which is released in South Korean theaters before becoming available on Netflix early in next month, somehow did not engage me enough despite a number of fairly enjoyable moments generated among its main cast members, and I will soon tell you about how the hell I got distracted a lot during my viewing.

After flatly reminding us that its story is loosely inspired by real-life black outlaws in the Wild West during the 19th century, the movie introduces us to Nat Love (Jonathan Majors), a young notorious black outlaw who has usually preyed on other outlaws along with his own black gangs. Love and his gangs recently attack upon a certain other black gang group, and they happily snatch that gang group’s latest spoil after killing most of that gang group members, but it seems that they made a big mistake in this time. That spoil in question was supposed to be delivered by an infamous gang group once led by a ruthless outlaw named Rufus Buck (Idris Elba), and Buck, who has been incarcerated in a prison for years, will definitely need that spoil once he is freed through some shady arrangement between the US government and his trusted gang members including Trudy Smith (Regina King) and Cherokee Bill (Lakeith Stanfield).

Unlike others around him, Love is not concerned that much mainly because he is quite willing to settle his old score with Buck. As shown from the opening scene, Buck mercilessly killed Love’s parents when Love was very young, and Buck also gave young Love something to stay with him for the rest of his life. Love was certainly satisfied when Buck got incarcerated later, but now Buck is about to roam freely as before, and Love is determined to take a vengeance upon his old enemy for himself.

Nevertheless, Love’s close associates are already willing to stand by him even before he embarks on his journey toward revenge. Besides a cocky gunslinger named Jim Beckwourth (RJ Cyler) and a taciturn sharpshooter named Bill Picket (Edi Gathegi), there is also Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz), a young but tough saloon owner who has been the object of Love’s affection for years. When this feisty lady decides to join the group, she is naturally accompanied by her right-hand lady Cuffee (Danielle Deadwyler), and Cuffee is certainly not someone to be underestimated just like her boss.

The last member to join the group is an old sheriff named Bass Reeves (Delroy Lindo). Although he initially seems to approach to Love just for warning to him a bit about Buck, Reeves soon turns out to be more reliable than expected, and he does not mind collaborating with Love and his gang members at all for catching Buck and his gang again.

As establishing its story and characters step by step during its first half, the movie humorously wields violence and brutality in a way not so different from the works of Quentin Tarantino and those countless following imitators. We are surely jolted by a series of viciously violent moments including the sequence showing how Buck’s gangs swoops on a train and then free their leader while leaving lots of dead bodies behind them, and we get often chilled and horrified by their callous attitude toward their victims who unfortunately happen to be on their way. Once he finally reveals himself on the screen, Idris Elba constantly exudes steely menace and ruthlessness, and Regina King and Lakeith Stanfield also did a good job of conveying to us their respective lethal characters’ cold-blooded sides.

However, the screenplay by director/co-producer Jeymes Samuel and his co-writer Boaz Samuel lets us down more than once around the point where Love and his gangs finally confront Buck and his dangerous associates during the second half of the film. What consequently happens between two conflicting groups is rather predictable in my inconsequential opinion, and the movie merely trudges from one expected narrative point to another while often being a bit too self-indulgent without much surprise, and I must confess that my mind became more distant and distracted as also occasionally thinking of how to make a fun of one of my old online friends.

Anyway, the eventual finale is well-executed with lots of bangs, and the main cast members are surely having lots of fun as gladly hurling themselves into actions unfolded on the screen. While Jonathan Majors is dependable as before, Zazie Beetz, RJ Cycler, Danielle Deadwyler, Deon Cole, and Delroy Lindo have each own moment, and I particularly enjoyed how Beetz holds her own spot in front of King as well as Majors did during his inevitable face-off scene with Elba.

On the whole, “The Harder They Fall” is not a boring film at all, and I appreciate its better moments including an amusing interlude scene which is literally white to say the least, but I am still hesitating to recommend it to you for becoming impatient and distracted a little too much during my viewing. Yes, the movie does have a lot of fun as rolling its wonderful cast members here and there, but I still wish I could feel more fun from that.

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The Last Duel (2021) ☆☆☆(3/4): He Said – His Opponent Said – and She Said

Posted on October 21, 2021 by kaist455

Ridley Scott’s latest film “The Last Duel” is a gritty period drama film equipped with some modern perspective to be appreciated. Often reminiscent of several notable films ranging from Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) to Scott’s debut feature film “The Duelists” (1977), the movie observes many grim, dirty, and violent aspects of its period background with detached amusement, and it is also interesting to observe how it gradually reveals its relevant gender issues as shifting from one viewpoint to another along the story.

After the opening scene set in Paris, 1386, the first part of the movie subsequently moves back to when a soldier named Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon) served for King Charles VI of France in the middle of the Hundred Years’ War around 20 years ago. Although he is rather reckless to say the least, de Carrouges has shown considerable bravery as battling against British soldiers along with his fellow French soldiers, and he comes to befriend a minor squire named Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) shortly after Le Gris happens to save de Carrouges’s life during their latest battle in Limoges.

As they fight together during next several battles, the friendship between de Carrouges and Le Gris becomes more solidified, but then there comes a change of luck which ultimately leads to lots of hostility between them. As beginning to work under Count Pierre d’Alençon (Ben Affleck), Le Gris comes to rise above many other local noble figures including de Carrouges, but de Carrouges begins to go down without much fortune for him. After losing his first wife and their son due to an unfortunate plague, he marries the only daughter of a rich but disreputable nobleman mainly for securing his family’s financial status, but, alas, he only finds himself denied of not only a considerable part of his bride’s but also his family castle just because Count d’Alençon does not like him that much, and he is certainly furious to learn that Le Gris is allowed to get both of them instead under Count d’Alençon’s order.

Anyway, as time goes by, those old bad feelings between de Carrouges and Le Gris seem to be decreased to some degree, but then something quite serious happens. When de Carrouges comes back from Paris on one day of early 1386, he notices his wife not looking that well, and she eventually reveals to him that she was raped by Le Gris while everyone else in their residence happened to be absent. Understandably infuriated, de Carrouges soon tries to do anything for getting the justice for his wife, but there are not many options from the beginning mainly due to Le Gris’s powerful protector, and that is how he comes to have a duel of fate with Le Gris as shown from the opening scene.

During its second part, the movie moves onto Le Gris’ viewpoint, and that is where the seemingly simple narrative of the first half begins to become more complex. From Le Gris’ viewpoint, de Carrouges is more pathetic compared to how he is depicted in the first half, and there is a rather amusing scene where he cannot help but explode with his petty anger toward Le Gris right in front of Le Gris and many other noblemen including Count d’Alençon, who naturally comes to dislike de Carrouges more than before.

As getting more favor from Count d’Alençon, Le Gris get himself involved with many different women unless he is not handling his lord’s financial matters, but then he comes to pay attention to de Carrouge’s wife. Just because she seems to be attracted to him during their first encounter, he becomes more obsessed with her as days go by, and that is how he comes to pay a sudden visit to de Carrouge’s residence when everyone else besides Marguerite happens to be conveniently absent.

What follows next is disturbing to say the least, but the movie later shows this moment again via the viewpoint of Marguerite, which becomes the center of the third part of the movie. What happens between her and Le Gris is pretty much same in both versions (Yes, he did rape her), but her version is more painful and harrowing to watch as the movie focuses more on her terror and humiliation during this horrendous moment.

This third part, which is written by Nicole Holofcener (The first two parts are written by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, by the way), also pays a lot of attention to how unhappy Marguerite has actually been in her married life. While she finds some happiness and satisfaction in handling their financial matters, her husband, who is much more callous and pathetic compared to how he is depicted in the two previous parts, shows no attention or affection to her at all, and he still regards her as nothing but a walking property even after she tearfully reveals to him how she was raped by Le Gris.

Despite its rather long running time (153 minutes), the movie, which is based on Eric Jager’s book “The Last Duel: A True Story of Trial by Combat in Medieval France”, fluidly flows from one narrative point to another under Scott’s competent direction. We surely get several brutal battle scenes as expected, and then we are ultimately served with the very violent finale as promised to us from the beginning, but Scott never overlooks the human dimensions of the story especially during the third part of the film, so we brace ourselves for what will eventually happen among its three main characters, though we only come to care more about one of them as a matter of fact.

It surely helps that the four main cast members are all engaging in each own way. While Matt Damon and Adam Driver dutifully antagonize with each other throughout the film, Jodie Comer, who shows her relatively more serious side compared to her recent lightweight turn in “Free Guy” (2021), is simply terrific in her deftly modulated performance, and I sincerely hope that we will see more of her considerable talent in the future. In case of Ben Affleck, he gives his most hilarious performance since his brash comic supporting turn in “Shakespeare in Love” (1998), and you can clearly sense that he is enjoying chewing his every second on the screen.

In conclusion, “The Last Duel” is a well-made genre piece which somehow balances itself well between dark brutality and thoughtful sensitivity. Although it is not one of his best films in my humble opinion, Scott, who will soon have his 84th birthday, reminds us again that he is still a master filmmaker who has steadily entertained us during last several decades, and that is enough for me for now.

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