Category Archives: Video

Saturday Matinee: The Suspect

Posted on by
Reply

An utterly ridiculous and over-the-top action movie from director Won Shin-yeon (Seven Days, A Bloody Aria), but at least it knows what it is…

By Andrew Heskins

Source: Eastern Kicks

The suspect in question is Dong-cheol (Gong Yoo, Silenced, Finding Mr. Destiny, Coffee Prince), a North Korean defector accused of murdering Chairman Park, a businessman with connections with Pyongyang for whom he worked as a chauffeur. He didn’t do it, of course; framed by high-ranking NIS bureaucrat Kim Seok-Ho (Cho Seong-Ha, Pluto, Helpless, The Yellow Sea, Spider Forest), who is in fact playing both sides for his own personal gain. In his dying breath, Park gives Dong-cheol a pair of glasses with instructions to ‘bury them’. But Dong-cheol had his own agenda for defecting to the South: to seek revenge on the murder of his family.

Holding a personal grudge against Dong-cheol, Colonel Min Se-hoon (Park Hee-soon, Behind the Camera, Hansel and Gretel, Seven Days, Three: ‘Memories’) is called back from training cadets to chase him down, as the authorities use surveillance across Seoul in what could easily be a nod to Tony Scott’s a Enemy Of a The State. There with old friend Captain Jo (Jo Jae-Yun, Miracle in Cell No.7, The Man From Nowhere, Romance Joe), they begin to cotton on to there being more going than a manhunt for a defector gone wild. Meanwhile, Dong-cheol discovers his daughter could still be alive. Turning to his only ally, reporter Choi Gyung-Hee (You Da-In, The Client, Re-encounter) – allegedly working on a documentary about former defectors, but actually working on something more significant, hidden away in a Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance DVD case – they begin to unravel the truth.

As is typical in such roles, Gong Yoo makes for a rather anodyne hero. Part Won Bin in The Man From Nowhere, part Yoon Kye-sang in Poongsan (who was originally cast in the role before he backed out), with maybe a smidgen of Ha Jung-woo in The Berlin File, there’s little character to get behind. Instead, it falls on Park Hee-soon to bring some flavour to the film. Established as a hard arse in his first scene in an utterly outrageous (and actually completely unnecessary) sequence where he is shown jumping out of a plane to save a cadet who’s parachute has malfunctioned. The on screen ribbing between Park and his more ambitious friend Jo Jae-Yun crackles believably.

But it’s the character of Kim Seok-Ho who gets the films best lines, with actor Cho Seong-Ha relishing every moment. ‘Go kill Dong-cheol. Have a duel like you proper commies do!’ he smirks in one scene. Later declaring, ‘Money trumps everything in this country.’ He’s proved wrong, naturally.

It all leads to an ending not unlike Ryoo Seung-wan‘s The Berlin File, with some fantastical salvation thrown in for the famine in North Korea (it’s better you don’t ask). There’s little question that this film tries to follow Ryoo’s model, but thankfully takes itself less seriously. Far less seriously, also circumnavigating the stabbing satire of the Kim Ki-duk scripted Poongsan, or any motivation beyond the desire to make a cracking action film. And largely it succeeds.

The action is well handled by director Won Shin-yeon (Seven Days, The Wig, A Bloody Aria), with chases through malls, shootouts, and close shot hand-to-hand combat. It might not be as inventive as, say, Ryoo might direct, but it’s well choreographed nonetheless, with lead Gong having specially learned Russian martial art Systema for the role. It’s in the car scenes that The Suspect displays the bigger budget of a Showbox production, with a crash tally that might do The Blues Brothers‘ John Landis proud. As well as head on impacts, there’s a lot of high speed driving in reverse down busy roads or even narrow, steep stairways. (Though I have to say from my visit to Korea, random reversing is hardly uncommon!)

Taken at face value, The Suspect is a surprisingly enjoyable once it gets in gear. (The first half hour seems sluggish, and the film is easily some 20 minutes too long.) A daft action film with sparkling dialogue in Lim Sang-Yoon’s (A Company Man) script; it knows exactly what it is. Perhaps you shouldn’t end up rooting for the bad guy quite as much, but it’s hardly the first action that is true of…

Watch The Suspect for free on Pluto TV here: https://pluto.tv/en/on-demand/movies/the-suspect-2014-1-1?utm_medium=textsearch&utm_source=google

Saturday Matinee: Pi

Posted on by
Reply

By Roger Ebert

Source: RogerEbert.com

The film “Pi” is a study in madness and its partner, genius. A tortured, driven man believes (1) that mathematics is the language of the universe, (2) nature can be expressed in numbers, and (3) there are patterns everywhere in nature. If he can find the patterns, if he can find the key to the chaos, then he can predict anything–the stock market, for example. If the man is right, the mystery of existence is unlocked. If he is wrong, the inside of his brain begins to resemble a jammed stock ticker.

The movie, written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, is a study in mental obsession. His hero, named Maximillian Cohen, lives barricaded behind a triple-locked door, in a room filled with high-powered, customized computer equipment. He wants nothing to do with anybody. He writes programs, tests them, looks for the pattern, gets a 216-digit bug, stomps on his chips in a rage, and then begins to wonder about that bug. Exactly 216 digits. There is a theory among some Jewish scholars, he learns, that the name of God has 216 letters.

The movie is shot in rough, high-contrast black and white. Max, played by Sean Gullette, is balding, restless, paranoid and brilliant. He has debilitating headaches and nosebleeds. Symptoms of high blood pressure–or of the mental torment he’s putting himself through. He’s suspicious of everyone. The friendly Indian woman next door puts food by his door. He avoids her. He trusts only his old teacher, Sol (Mark Margolis). They play Go, a game deeper than chess, and Sol tells him to stop with the key to the universe business, already. He warns that he’s spinning away from science and toward numerology.

Not everybody thinks so. His phone rings with the entreaties of Marcy (Pamela Hart), who works for a high-powered Wall Street analysis firm. They want to hire him as a consultant. They think he’s onto something. He has predicted some prices correctly. At the deli, he runs into a Hasidic Jew named Lenny (Ben Shenkman), who seems casual and friendly but has a hidden mission: His group believes the Torah may be a code sent from God and may contain God’s name.

Of course if one finds the mathematical key to everything, that would include God, stock prices, the weather, history, the future, baseball scores and the response to all moves in Go. That assumes there is a key. When you’re looking for something that doesn’t exist, it makes you crazier the closer you get to it.

The seductive thing about Aronofsky’s film is that it is halfway plausible in terms of modern physics and math. What was numerology a century ago now has now been simplified into a very, very vast problem. Chaos theory looks for patterns where common sense says there are none. A computer might be able to give you the answer to anything, if (1) it is powerful enough, and (2) it has all the data. Of course, you might need a computer the size of the universe and containing everything in it, but we’re talking theory here.

“Pi” is a thriller. I am not very thrilled these days by whether the bad guys will get shot or the chase scene will end one way instead of another. You have to make a movie like that pretty skillfully before I care. But I am thrilled when a man risks his mind in the pursuit of a dangerous obsession. Max is out on a limb. There are hungry people circling him. He may be on to something. They want it, too. For both the stock market people and the Hasidic cabal, Max’s formula represents all they believe in and everything they care about.

And then there is a level at which Max may simply be insane, or physically ill. There are people who work out complicated theories involving long, impenetrable columns of numbers. Newspapers get envelopes filled with their proofs every day. And other people who sit in their rooms, wrapping themselves in the webs of chess or numbers theory, addicted to their fixes. And game players, gamblers, horseplayers–people bewitched by the mirage of a system.

The beautiful thing about mathematics is that you can’t prove it except by its own terms. There’s no way to put some math in a test tube and see if it turns purple or heats up. It sits there smugly in its own perfect cocoon, letting people like Max find anything he wants in it–or to think that he has.

Saturday Matinee: 99 Homes

Posted on by
Reply

By Sheila O’Malley

Source: RogerEbert.com

Ramin Bahrani makes films about the American Dream as seen through the eyes of those on the margins of the increasingly unrealistic “mainstream” life: immigrants, children, transplants, or those too damaged to participate anymore (like the grizzled old dude played by Red West in “Goodbye Solo“). For the most part, these people still believe in the American Dream. They hope, strive, plan. But the system has failed them. The system is broken, and never more broken than in Bahrani’s latest film, “99 Homes,” starring Michael Shannon, Andrew Garfield and Laura Dern.

“Don’t get emotional about real estate,” warns real estate broker Rick Carver (Shannon) throughout “99 Homes,” as people are forcibly evicted after defaulting on bank payments. Carver’s may be practical advice, considering the economic crash and the housing crisis, but it is also heartless. Real estate to Rick Carver means money and opportunity; real estate to everyone else means “home,” and what is more emotional to human beings than the concept of “home”? 

The film opens with a brutal eviction sequence, filmed in one take. Blood spatters the bathroom walls as the resident commits suicide, all as the sheriff’s department swoops through the house, overseen by Rick Carver, a shark-eyed man in an ill-fitting blue suit, smoking a glowing-blue electric cigarette. The story shifts to Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield), a single dad living with his mother (Laura Dern) and his little boy Connor (Noah Lomax) in the family home. Mom works a hairdressing business out of the living room. Dennis works construction but jobs are hard to come by. Nobody’s building anymore. Bills pile up. They are in danger of losing their home. Dennis goes to court to fight for more time, he tries to get a lawyer to work pro bono.

One day, the reckoning arrives. The sheriff’s department shows up, led by Rick, to evict them. In a harrowing scene of mounting panic, Dennis and his mother protest as Rick drawls, both easily and with enormous aggression, “This isn’t your house anymore, son.” The fight that ensues is acted and filmed with almost unbearable immediacy (cinematographer Bobby Bukowski does superb work throughout). Given two minutes to vacate, the hyperventilating family pile up whatever possessions they can fit into the back of a pick-up truck, and head to a cheap motel, filled with people in the same situation. “We’ve been here two years now,” says a woman.

Dennis will do what it takes to get his home back, including accepting a job working construction for his nemesis Rick. It’s a deal with the devil, and all that that implies. Dennis gets sucked into Carver’s circle of easy cash, shady deals. Within almost no time, Dennis is on the other side of those evictions, standing in the doorway, waiting for the confused angry residents to vacate. The door-to-door sequences are masterful. These people don’t seem to be professional actors (although they may be), their reactions are so raw and real. The audience is placed in the uncomfortable position of voyeurs, eavesdroppers, on a human being’s lowest moment. 

“99 Homes” operates like a thriller (from its stunning opening one-take sequence), with elements of melodrama to heighten the stakes. (Some of the melodramatic elements don’t work as well as the rest, relying, as they do, on coincidence, racing against the clock, etc; the reality is horrifying enough.) Held together with Antony Partos and Matteo Zingales’ portentous original score, thrumming underneath almost every scene, “99 Homes” represents a shift for Bahrani. His other features have been small dramas, filmed accordingly: lots of hand-held camera work and a naturalistic approach. “99 Homes” has a strong look, a bold mood, with attention-getting shots like that opener, as well as a couple of aerial shots showing homes stretched out below. From that vantage point, homes look generic. To those on the ground, of course, it’s a very different story. 

Andrew Garfield, as a man who has “failed” in his duty as protector and provider, has an almost constant sense of panic throughout, catching his breath in his throat, his posture tight and alert. Tears threaten to overwhelm him, but Dennis does not have time for self-pity. Nobody does. His one goal is to get his house back, the crevasse of permanent instability opening beneath him and his family. Bahrani keeps that heat turned up in the machinations of the plot, as Carver seduces Dennis with offers of wealth (meaning, in Carver’s world, self-respect). “America doesn’t bail out losers,” Carver tells Nash. “America bails out winners.”

Michael Shannon is both ruthless and strangely tender in his seemingly irredeemable character. Carver explains his background to Dennis, his humble roots, his roofer father, his jobs in construction. Up until the crash, his job was putting people into homes. It’s not his fault that his job has now become throwing people out. Any hard economic time will create a man like Rick Carver, determined to make more money off the slump than the boom. It’s a very honest performance. 

Reminiscent of the films of Jafar Panahi (which also focus on those on the margins), Bahrani’s films are a critique of the very concept of “mainstream.” If there is to be a mainstream, then the boundaries must be more inclusive. Bahrani’s films represent an urgent demand that audiences pay attention to the world and the people around them. His films insist: Look. See. Bahrani accomplishes this not by making “message” films, but by focusing on individual characters, whether it be a Pakistani former singer who now pushes a food cart in Manhattan (“Man Push Cart,”) a little Latino boy working in an auto-body shop (“Chop Shop,”) or the optimistic Senegalese-American who drives a cab and dreams of being a flight attendant (“Goodbye Solo.”) Through these characters, Bahrani critiques American life, its economics, its class divides, its assumptions and social strata. Like Panahi, he is a humanist. The dignity of the individual is all. 

“99 Homes” is a ferocious excavation of the meaning of home, the desperation attached to real estate, the pride of ownership and the stability of belonging. The pace never lets up. Once a person slips below the mainstream, it is nearly impossible to gain a foothold again. These characters struggle like hell to survive.

Saturday Matinee: Prescription Thugs

Posted on by
Reply

By Zach Hollwedel

Source: Under the Radar

In 2008, Chris Bell’s Bigger, Stronger, Faster* plunged into the (un)surprisingly rampant reality of athletic doping. Never a fly-on-the-wall documentarian, Bell organically infuses himself into his films, rendering them particularly potent. In the case of his fascinating 2008 exposé, Bell turned his lens on American bodybuilders’ use of steroids, with a particular focus on his own brother, Mike. Mike “Mad Dog” Bell was an aspiring WWE wrestler who, while struggling to achieve the stardom he so fully desired, took to using performance and muscle enhancers.

Now, seven years later, Chris Bell returns with a natural follow-up. Prescription Thugs examines the fallout of another substance abuse problem all too common in, though far from exclusive to professional sports. Perpetually banged and bruised in the ring, Mike Bell took to prescription drugs as a means of curing—or at least numbing—his ailing body. He was by no means alone. Chris Bell and his co-directors, Josh Alexander and Greg Young, interview a number of athletes whose dependency upon over the counter medications got the better of them.

Immensely relatable and genuine as the face of the film, Bell sheds tremendous light on America’s dependence on prescription medication, an addiction which he indicates was largely born in the Reagan years. Given his brother’s history—and, it turns out, his own—Bell approaches the problem from an extremely personal angle, and the honesty pays off in spades. We feel for Bell and his friends and family, as they break down—or defend—their perilous reliance upon pill popping. One of the most extreme cases is Matt “Horshu” Wiese, who at the acme of his addiction, was taking upwards of 90 pills a day. Horshu admits that part of his regimen included two Viagra each morning, “just in case.” Through interviews with his burly subjects—and also with homemakers and students, who inadvertently and unintentionally got hooked—Bell reveals how easily one pill can lead to two, can lead to ten or more. The genesis of the addiction often comes in the form of the “just ask your doctor” Rx ads that inundate television these days. Big pharma colludes to sell medication for virtually any and every imaginable symptom (some of which they basically fabricate), and when side effects present previously unfelt problems, they develop a secondary drug for those. So on and so forth, until consumers are hooked to a habit Bell reveals to be little different from a legalized form of heroin in some cases.

With Prescription Thugs, Bell again proves a consistent, affable filmmaker well versed in investigative filmmaking with a penchant for the personal.

www.prescriptionthugs.com

Watch Prescription Thugs on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/582224