“Neptune Frost,” the dense Afrofuturist film from co-directors Saul Williams and AnisiaUzeyman, holds many resplendent identities at once: It’s a musical; it’s an intersex narrative; it’s a technological allegory espousing anticapitalist and anticolonialist views. It’s a collective dream coated in a blue lacquer dancing on the edge of something unrecognizable, something wholly transcendent. And it arrives with an exceptional display of bravura.
The film’s nimbleness, marked by a brazenness suggesting creators who allow their imaginations to be the moth that reaches for the stars, is apparent from the jump when the camera pans across the graveled gray and orange ridges of a mine. One of the miners, Tekno, beholds a chunk of coltan, the metal used to power our cellphones and other high-tech electronics, only to be summarily struck to death by the butt of a soldier’s gun. His grief-stricken brother Matalusa (Bertrand Ninteretse) cradles him as the other workers, accompanied by drums, with shovels hitting the ground for additional percussion, dance in mourning. This incident causes Matalusa to flee the mine, and a waking dream guides him to another dimension.
A similar, parallel vision, following the death of their aunt and a traumatic experience involving a pastor, pulls Neptune (Elvis “Bobo” Ngabo) away from their Rwandan village through the backroads of a country in upheaval. “I was born in my 23rd year,” explains Neptune in the film’s opening narration. And it’s not until Neptune transforms (this time played by Cheryl Isheja) that we figure out what exactly this ambiguous, yet potent line means.
Neptune is an intersex hacker exploring and disrupting binaries. They arrive in that other dimension, a village fed by a mysterious power source, to find Matalusa. There they discover a band of rebellious Black folks, such as Memory (Eliane Umuhire), Psychology (Trésor Niyongabo), and so forth who want to transform the world away from domineering colonialist powers, away from a totalitarian government known as the Authority, and out from one age into another. “Neptune Frost” demands your attention. Uzeyman’s luminous cinematography caresses black skin under blue and purple lights, allowing this talented group of actors to play to every corner of their innate beauty. The ingenious costumes by Cedric Mizero—a collection of wires, knobs, and hard drives—range from motherboard chic to a lightweight yet richly colored fabric that is elegant. The musical numbers, fusions of singer-songwriter Williams’ Afropunk style with atmospheric drones owing to Sun Ra, spring from the group so organically you immediately become fluent in their dynamic rhythms, moods, and tones.
While the artistry does dazzle, you never forget that “Neptune Frost” is a movie dedicated to the cause of liberation: a liberation of stolen resources and Black folks, and a freedom of the body. I found myself enraptured by the scenes of community building, of Africans bound together by a love for each other and a hope for the future moving toward revolutionary ends. The scenes of dance and happiness in this dimension, hidden away from white eyes (for the time being) is soul filling. In this ecstasy, in spite of an outside war-torn world, Neptune and Matalusa commit not just to the cause but to their shared spirit. Their bliss is idyllic, and therefore short lived. But it’s their willingness to challenge the Authority, through their romance and the acting of hacking, that serves as a battle cry against governments unwilling to serve their people.
While the logic guiding “Neptune Frost” is difficult to follow, this isn’t the kind of work you can sleepwalk through. It pushes the viewer. There are no wasted plot points, no unnecessary pieces of dialogue or needless landscapes. Every texture contains a million little stories. It is humbling to see two filmmakers so curious, and so creatively playful as to invite messiness and brilliance. In all its so muchness, “Neptune Frost” is a reminder of cinema’s infinite storytelling possibilities.
There’s a new film by Miguel Llansó that is sheer originality and brilliance: Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway.
If you’ve already seen Llansó’s 2015 film Crumbs, you’ve experienced the cinemastery of which he and the teams he assembles are capable. If you’ve not yet seen Crumbs, well, then, this review holds two surprises for you.
The brilliance of Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway comes from its capacity to combine a radically eclectic selection of cultural aesthetics and tropes with a distinct vision and a theoretical political acumen. It’s a kind of pastiche with depth and texture. It’s cinema from an alternate universe in which David Lynch is an avid reader of Michel Foucault, Fredric Jameson, and Naomi Klein, and where Ethiopia holds a powerful place in the social imaginary.
I think it’s justifiable to claim that Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway is practically unparalleled in recent cinema for its capacity to synthesize total zaniness with provocations to analyze geopolitical histories, the present, and future. And I say provocations because the film leverages its zaniness to lead spectators into critical avenues concerning espionage, biopolitics, gender dynamics, and technocultures of economics and repressions, all without providing particular answers or positions on these. Like the characters caught up in the increasingly bizarre tangles of worlds in the film, spectators are barraged with mysteries that compel us to work on them yet promise to keep developing and eluding total comprehension and resolution.
This is critical surrealism; hyper-pragmatic absurdism.
The story centers chiefly on CIA Agent D.T. Gagano (Daniel Tadesse)–his mission, which evolves and glitches as the film proceeds, and his relationships. Early in the film Gagano and his colleague, Agent Palmer Eldritch (Augustín Mateo), are tasked with entering a VR world to terminate a computer virus called “Soviet Union.” The virus has been attacking the ad system of a major platform called “Psychobook” with diabolical results such as Chevrolet advertising videos being replaced by videos of Stalin playing chess. When the agents and others are inside the VR world, their avatars are depicted as people with black masks over their heads and ridiculous two-dimensional paper masks with eye-holes in the pupils, and their movements are an unsettling stutter-stop motion as if they’re clunky clockwork bodies.
Agent Gagano’s mask is the face of Richard Pryor, in what I like to imagine is an allusion to David Lynch’s Lost Highway, and in many ways the aesthetic sensibility of the VR world is on a par with Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return—but with a Stalin avatar that battles with a hammer in one hand and a sickle in the other. Adjacent to his mission, Gagano navigates his romantic life with Malin, a woman nearly twice his size who dreams of opening a world-class kickboxing academy even as she supports Gagano’s dreams of opening a pizzeria. By the way, there’s something wonderful and intriguing about Gagano’s pizza obsession. What would in most movies be a comedy shtick is, in the hands of Llansó’s direction, an element of political economic and historical critique as well as a detail that reverberates throughout the story arc, as in the key intervention of three kung-fu masters named Spaghetti, Ravioli, and Balthazar.
As the story moves forward, synced with an amazing jazz soundtrack, by the way, Gagano’s consciousness is apparently transferred to a portable tv set, and the figure of Jesus, who is also Roy Mascarone (Guillermo Llansó), reframes the whole mission by claiming that a mysterious green gooey substance known as “The Substance” is the real enemy of all people. It’s here to colonize all people of Earth. Finally, while there’s so much more to try and capture, I feel like I need to mention the persistent presence of the fascist leader, Batfro (Solomon Tashe), who dons a Batman costume that’s a near match to the one Adam West donned in the 1960s Batman tv series. I add this detail here because there’s a crucial juxtaposition late in the film between Jesus’s claim about The Substance and the inclusion in the mise-en-scene of a 1974 Batman-cast Public Service Announcement concerning gender and labor that sparks lines of interpreting Batfro and the film’s critique(s) as a whole.
At this point in time when it’s easy, almost overwhelmingly so, to feel suffocated by the predominance of reboots, extended franchises and universes, and vigorous attempts at post-ideological sanitation of political implications (Yes, I’m thinking of Stranger Things 3 here and its stunning capacity to swerve away from doing anything with its ready-made architecture of a 1980s shopping mall with a secret Soviet Union base in its basement), Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway is a testament to the resistance and resilience of avant-garde cinema. To the future of political acumen connected to a bonkers sense of humor.
The film is a deeply weird, fun, and original contemporary addition to Chaplin’s City Lights and John Carpenter’s They Live. I can’t recommend strongly enough seeking out a screening near you or streaming it once it becomes available, and let Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway drive you beyond the current limits of your perspective on living on planet Earth today.
Every now and then, a new film surprises you with something that should always be true: movie-making is magic-making. Especially so when its tricks happen in-camera, with instruments as practical as lighting, costumes, sets, and ideas. Ryan Stevens Harris’ “Moon Garden” is one such escape from zeroes and ones overload and general cynicism about where movies may be going. It is a horror/fantasy that puts every bit of its imagination on the screen and constantly impresses with its DIY spectacle.
Written and directed by Harris, “Moon Garden” primarily takes place inside the mind of a little girl named Emma (Haven Lee Harris, Ryan’s daughter). The five-year-old is currently in a coma, having tumbled down some stairs one night after trying to get her parents (Augie Duke and Brionne Davis) to stop fighting. Emma wanders a shadowy, dirty, and mysterious realm as her body lies in a hospital, with her parents sitting beside her. Lights flash, and radio signals echo. The population is unpredictable: strange, freaky characters tear themselves up from the ground; others reflect the woman Emma may become.
Harris’ film holds your attention scene-by-scene, even in a few moments in which the pacing gives way to just admiring the craftsmanship or the emotions are muted by symbolism that doesn’t feel airtight. It’s the type of project that warrants a second viewing, partly to catch its connections but also to savor the textures you might have missed on your first visit.
“Moon Garden” is most emotionally incisive about a child processing what’s around her, namely the growing unhappiness between her parents. And as Emma travels through different parts of this world—like when she climbs a ladder through the clouds—Harris shows us the memory of her doing something similar with her father. It’s one of the happy thoughts, contrasted with another real-world flashback where Emma hides under some sheets with her mother, only for the claw-like hand of her upset father to tear it open. That memory inspires one of this horror story’s simple but effective sets, a tunnel made of bedsheets.
“Moon Garden” is a whole mix of creations, a lovingly scrawled sketchbook come to life by a compulsive creator. One of Harris’ greatest feats is the main villain known as Teeth, who taunts Emma, and ushers in the film’s more overt horror elements. Dressed in a long black coat and cap, it hovers above the air with spindly, long fingers. You can’t see its eyes, but you can constantly hear its chattering chompers, which becomes one of many unsettling atmospheric features from Harris (also the film’s sound designer). Sometimes Teeth places his namesake on the ground, and Harris’ camera, often placed low, studies it, and fears it. As in so many scenes of “Moon Garden,” Emma’s rapt curiosity becomes our own.
Harris’ apparent influences across these fields should help recommend this film alone: there’s a bit of Jan Svankmeijer, Steven Spielberg, Tarsem Singh, Guillermo del Toro, and David Lynch throughout, but not in a thrifting fashion. Just as the film does not over-simplify its dream passages, it also does not pander to film lovers who are primed to champion this gem. (Which was shot on expired 35mm film stock and vintage rehoused lenses!)
As Emma, Haven Lee Harris gives the kind of work a filmmaker would want from a child performer. She is incredibly reactive to this world, holding our attention while sharing the frame with far more intense, adult supporting characters or sets. She is a natural within the film’s changing environments, and in its many wordless passages, doesn’t strike a false note. It’s so rare to see a child actor’s performance that doesn’t take you out of the story in some way; that’s so invested.
“Moon Garden” is not just eloquent with its designs, but filled with plenty of in-camera magic tricks. With time-lapse savviness, fruit decays on the ground at warp speed; nimble, non-showy cuts make characters vanish with their clothes dropping to the ground. We meet another one of Harris’ striking characters, Phillip E. Walker’s Musician, through a sight that is wondrous but also simple: an organ being pieced together, by showing his destruction of it with a large mallet in reverse.
Ever connected to the emotions at play, Harris then builds that scene to a returning but always wrenching motif, Pete Ham and Tom Evans’ inimitable ballad, “Without You.” Emma’s mother sings the first verse and chorus softly into the girl’s ear in the hospital, causing it to play in Emma’s coma wonderland as a radio transmission with gentle accompaniment by Musician’s organ. Emma smiles softly, warmed by the sunlight-orange lighting that shares the frame with the heavy blues that matches her eyes. (Harris is also the movie’s colorist). “Moon Garden” is rife with such hard-worn and graceful touches, from a gifted filmmaker who is primed to share with us more of his dreams.
“Strawberry Mansion,” a film both written and directed by Albert Birney and Kentucker Audley that had its world premiere in 2021, delivers a rich, poignant, and gripping perspective on what it actually means to live in a world like we’ve constructed for ourselves in this age.
The movie is set in the near future, but everything seems designed in such a way to highlight a continuity with the present — and the past. Although here, the government imposes taxes on items the mind creates in dreams, the world doesn’t look like a dystopian hellscape. It pretty much just resembles the exact environment in which humanity can be found now — though I’ve yet to see a chicken shake offered for sale anywhere and might recoil if I did.
James Preble, a main character in “Strawberry Mansion” who was portrayed by Audley, dresses in a fashion evocative of past styles. Viewing dreams had by another main character, we often see that other figure — Arabella Isadora, played by Penny Fuller — as a substantially younger version of herself, captured instead by actress Grace Glowicki. (To accommodate the tax regime, dreams are recorded.)
Does Advertising Care About Us?
And then we get to “Buddy.” Linas Phillips’s Buddy, as he’s known, appears time and again in dreams had by Audley’s character, and this initially unexplained figure is often, quite simply, hawking wares. In a later scene in which Preble and the younger Isadora are trying to escape Buddy’s presence in a dream world, which follows a revelation that Buddy is essentially serving as an avatar for the in-dream advertising ambitions of major corporations, he starts multiplying, appearing again and again alongside himself in a scene that actually captures with startling precision what it’s like to live here.
Think about it. How many ads do you see on a daily basis? On the internet, where reliance on such an advertising presence has been made mandatory in some cases for financial survival, or on television, where it’s much the same, these ads persist. Head outside, and you might see a billboard (or five). While New York City has a lot to offer, one of the tourist traps is Times Square, and if you actually look around in that area of Manhattan, it’s ad after ad after ad.
While it would be ignorant to categorically dismiss advertising as immoral, it would also be ignorant to simply gloss over its effects and the possibility for nefarious manipulation. It’s a massive global industry. How does it actually affect us? Actual human desire, meaning the things that might emerge from nothing but individual ambition — is there a danger of that simply being squelched?
It was compelling when, later in the movie, Buddy simply watches as Preble is slowly smothered and faces potential death. The locus of interest for so many of these advertising ambitions is not making you a better person. It’s making money. While this feels straightforward, how many people don’t have quite the same level of media literacy and might be more easily duped by these efforts?
Finding a Place to Live
“Strawberry Mansion” doesn’t simply moralize. It’s also a touching story, as Preble and Isadora connect. In dream sequences early in the film, the audience sees the younger Isadora partly with the aid of low-angle shots that give her an almost-angelic air, which connects with how Preble himself will eventually see her (and be helped by her). (She’s also dressed in white.) The physicality with which Audley portrays Preble seems to gradually loosen up as he realizes the truth of the system in which he’s been working and the connection he has with the woman he’s met both in her older and younger versions.
In totality, “Strawberry Mansion” feels inspiring in a very direct sense. Whether it’s in the self-directed dream logic of key plot points or the explicit statements in dialogue about making your own personal choice (rather than what’s being pushed by “Buddy’s” handlers), you can find your own path. After searching for the younger Bella in a dream world, the reunited Preble then sets himself down a similarly epic, sweeping quest to reconnect with his own body and life in general before it’s too late. (There’s a time crunch.) “Strawberry Mansion” highlights the opportunity for a gentle embrace of life amid utter absurdity.
With Les Miserables signalling Ladj Ly’s rise to recognition in contemporary French cinema, one simply cannot watch the director’s debut film without bringing to mind its predecessor — a film that not only broadened its examination of racial tensions in France, but would come (and continue to) define the country’s prevalence with race relations to this day.
La Haine is the film in question, as Mathieu Kassovitz’s 1995 debut became a nationwide success. The dialectics of Ladj Ly’s Cesar win for Best Film reflect this, given that Kassovitz achieved the same feat 25 years prior. The result would not only cement his debut in film history, but further accentuate the undoubted declaration of La Haine as one of the most prolific French films of all time.
While clearly drawing inspiration from the likes of Ernest Dickerson and Spike Lee, La Haine remains difficult to categorize, but also inseparable from its influences. This is due to Kassovitz’s work being deeply ingrained with its own share of sociopolitical messages, whose prevalence with current events keeps it closely linked to any discourse related to the film.
Unlike films of a similar nature, specifically Do The Right Thing, La Haine does not attempt to intertwine the stories of humans who function as several moving parts of Parisian banlieue (suburbs) as a whole. Rather, it focuses on Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Said (Said Taghmaoui), and Hubert (Hubert Kounde), three adolescent boys and residents of said setting who go about their day. Because of its near abandonment of plot, the film initially presents itself as a reflective lamenting of grievance. The actuality of Abdel’s death opens and looms over the majority of the film, quickly becoming the driving force of its characters’ intentions.
The lines between cause and effect constantly blur from one vignette to the next, as the film’s plot slowly races to its unexpected finishing crescendo, or should I say derescendo, given that the film’s actual standstill does not even come in the form of its mostly mundane happenings. Despite this, these happenings still manage to show us more than several glimpses of life in the banlieues. In fact, the only difference between the film’s depiction of police reinforcement to the present day is a jarring increase in police hostility (first shown in Wesh Wesh, Qu’est-ce qui c’est passe?, then rehashed in Les Mis).
As a result, the film’s plot moves towards its ending with no checkpoints in between. Its brilliant performances are briefly forgotten once the banlieues’ cultural equilibrium (despite the actual absence of unity due to class circumstance and police presence) is shattered. With this in mind, the best way to describe the chronicling of these events is as follows: the build-up doesn’t matter as much as the result itself.
Another element that this film brilliantly uses in executing a correlation between plot and character development is tension. Its simplistic premise is cemented in both the value of time and the counterproductive reality of choosing violence. Time punctures all minor wounds caused by each subsequent event, putting each character at a risk of surviving a long and winding evening — but especially Vinz.
Time’s transformative effect on La Haine’s scenes instills the stagnance of progression, as well as giving urgency to Vinz’s constantly violent tendencies in the midst of composing events. It can be likened to Tupac’s Bishop from Ernest Dickerson’s Juice, given that their intentions appear to be inherently violent and remain impassioned within violence as an objective solution. This projects their idea of violence as an act of reclaiming power and restoring justice. However, as a result of time being an all-encompassing element of the film, it poses the potential for these tendencies to seep into reality at any given moment.
The film manages a passage of time with the simple use of timestamps and the sound of a ticking clock, indicating that time is like a ticking bomb that only continues to pass with each inconsequential event. Oftentimes, we believe that time has run out whenever characters face consequences in this film, but it only adds to the fact that time can do no more than elapse. Time seems to stop when Said is arrested, but it continues even when he is released. Time seems to stop when Vinz begins seeing visions of a cow, but it continues even when Said pulls him away. They further accentuate the meaninglessness of scenes, dismissing the possibility of characters working against the worst imaginable circumstance, and ultimately coming to the somber realization that all these three boys have been doing was waste time.
An undoubtedly significant theme of this film is centered on cultural identity, given that three of France’s most marginalized backgrounds (Black, Jewish, and Arab) are represented through its trio of individual characters. Because France’s white predominance does not vindicate those groups as authentic representations of national identity, this manages to cause the most friction amongst two separate parts of French society. This also includes visible minorities in positions of authority serving to practically betray the safety of their own culture.
Much like housing projects in major American cities like New York, the culture of les banlieues is also in alignment with what isn’t considered as pure French. As a part of showcasing insignificant events, there remains the background significance of the banlieues’ cultural mosaic; a true passport to surroundings that are more otherworldly and intersectional than the iconoclastic capital housing the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. This leaves a profound impact on the characters’ conversations and language, both of which only continue to return to a means of getting by. An emerging French identity is formed in front of us, and this fusion of cultures can be largely attested to its use of hip-hop music and its incorporation of hip-hop culture.
Hip-hop’s significance is especially given its due and proof on an international scale, and La Haine is this American genre’s earliest example. This is also proof of the benefit of arguing that a musical genre and culture made by and for minority communities is the most universal of its kind. To add onto this, the globalization of hip-hop would truly come to fruition by the late 90s, and France’s scene would eventually receive recognition through the likes of Assassin and Supreme NTM. No genre remains more fitting for Kassovitz’s debut, as these groups also share inherently sociopolitical themes within their music.
It comes as no surprise either that La Haine’s influence is inherently American despite still being ingrained in French culture. The likes of Brian de Palma, Gordon Parks, and Martin Scorsese also come to mind, given that New Hollywood cinema seems to stay more true to the middle-to-lower-class French experience than the works of Robert Bresson, Claude Sautet, and Francois Truffaut.
Perhaps the only exceptions to the rule would be the forerunners of the 80s cinema du look, whose stylistic influences also extended to American cinema. Then again, only a select few in les banlieues could truly relate to a Subway, or a Diva, or a Mauvais Sang. These filmic fantasies still remain largely out of reach to the experiences of those living on the fringes of the era’s sprawling city settings.
La Haine comfortably splits its plot in two, shifting from suburban homeliness to the uncanny city. This is also why the film’s second half reflects the indiscernible identity of Parisian life, which only seems to take on many faces (and phases) on screen. Here, Kassovitz shows Paris as bare and devoid of the ethnic intersectionalism of its suburban outskirts. There’s an increasing sense of discomfort once these characters step out of a melting pot and into a homogenous place of lifelessness. Paris’s identity is as conflicted as its hesitance to embrace its characters. One scene shows the trio loitering at an exhibit, only for its highbrow bourgeoisie to oust them from a gallery. Its reality only contradicts the seemingly welcoming feeling that defines Paris as a cityscape and hegemonic extension of movie magic.
Overall, La Haine does not merely grieve over the disturbing normalcy of police brutality, but stands as a grievance of French society’s oppression towards its increasingly minority population. Its end result is an eruption to the most gradual anticipation that dominates the film, and it proves that the most profound influence on our identities lies within our surroundings. Its loss of control does not happen through an individually caused circumstance, but the reaction of an external force towards its inhabitants that becomes the film’s penultimate decision, its ultimatum literally shrouded in the ambiguity that continues to paint a sombering portrait of an unchanged reality.
Its structure continues to pose the same questions to all of French society: Who controls our own lives if we do not? And even then, is this world truly ours to begin with?
I could ask the same question of every racially counterproductive society at the moment, but especially France’s, whose innovations in film do not necessarily account for the lack thereof in every other facet of society. Where their movies are more than four miles ahead, their definition of personal and political authority remains centuries back.
Hatred begets more hatred, as Hubert says in this film, and it is one’s hatred that begets the film’s destruction of temporary unity. The beginning reemerges, and all progress is forgotten. That how you fall doesn’t matter. It’s how you land. This is what makes La Haine a cinematic masterpiece.
You must save something if you can. Because people disappear without a trace. Completely and irretrievably. From the world, and then from our memory. — Ryszard Kapuscinski
Another Day of Life is an intense, chilling, and convincing anti-war animated documentary about the civil war in Angola at the time of its independence in 1975. With the exit of the Portuguese colonizers, two factions fought with each other to determine who would rule and control the country’s thriving businesses and resources, especially diamonds and oil.
The film is based upon a book by acclaimed Polish war correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932 – 2007) in which he described the situation he witnessed with the Portuguese term confusão, “a state of absolute disorientation.” His story is told through animated recreations of his experiences during the war and filmed interviews with those he met and worked with.
Despite the advice of fellow journalists, Kapuscinski decides to travel from the relatively safe capital of Angola to the southern front in order to interview Farrusco, a military leader of the MPLA, the Soviet- and Cuba-backed People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola. Other militias were supported by other African interests as well as the United States and South Africa. By the time the war ended in 2002, nearly one million people were displaced and 5,000 were dead.
The film brings us along on Kapuscinski’s travels through dangerous situations and his encounters with memorable people. Since his words (voiced by Kerry Shale) are used for the narration, we empathize with his perspectives — the horror that he and his companion Artur (Daniel Flynn) feel upon coming across a road clogged with corpses, his fascination with a charismatic female freedom fighter named Carlotta (Lillie Flynn), the desire of the people to be photographed so people would know “this is the face I had when I was alive.” At a key moment, the journalist has to decide whether to maintain his objectivity or reveal information that could change the outcome of the conflict.
IndieWire has published a review of Another Day of Life that includes excerpts from interviews with the two directors. We were very impressed with the insights and respect for the substantive themes of this story as explained by director Raul de la Fuente:
“I was fascinated by this surrealistic diary, the desperate chronicle of a reporter at the limit of his strengths, fighting for survival and finding the truth in a chaotic and fuzzy war. This film is a hallucinatory trip into the heart of darkness, a Cold War tale with a thrilling spy mood, magnetic topics, and characters: decolonization, freedom fighters, boy soldiers, epic battles, and, above all, the surreal and poetic approach by Kapuscinski.”
The concept of time travel is always an interesting one when it’s transferred to screen, and the Japanese film industry has flirted with it just as much as any other. From modern day military units transported to feudal Japan in the likes of G.I. Samurai, to the quirkiness of Summer Time Machine Blues, to of course the countless romantic spins on the genre. What all of them have in common is characters travelling back to the past, whether it be days or decades, and their need to adjust to a different time period or right a wrong. Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes also uses time travel as its key theme, however it does so in an arguably more minutiae way than any of its predecessors (and perhaps anything that’ll come after it), dealing with a café owner who realises the monitor in his room is capable of showing 2 minutes into the future.
Played by Kazunari Tosa (Prisoners of the Ghostland, Misono Universe), his character lives in the apartment directly upstairs from the café he runs, and this realisation comes about when he returns home one night and the monitor flickers on, his own face staring back at him from behind the screen. His 2 minutes into the future self is back in the café downstairs, and after explaining the strange phenomenon to his current self, his current self heads back downstairs – completing the loop and setting things in motion. Soon the café’s barista, played by Riko Fujitani (Beautiful Dreamer, Asahinagu), gets in on the action, who proceeds to call up 3 of the cafes regulars to also come around and check it out as well. Before you know it, the group find themselves interacting between their current and 2 minutes into the future selves with all of the inconsequence you’d imagine 120 seconds can bring.
The directorial debut of Junta Yamaguchi, the creative force behind the indie production is actually a theatre troupe called Europe Kikaku based out of Kyoto, of which Yamaguchi is a member, as are most of the other cast and crew. The fact that the majority of talent involved in Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes comes from a theatre background makes a lot of sense when you consider that 95% of the punchy 70-minute runtime plays out in a single location – the upstairs and downstairs in a low-rise building. The use of the confined environment enables the 2 minutes plot device to play out via a series of comedic interactions involving the cast talking to themselves through a monitor, a feat which Yamaguchi makes look easy, but had to have taken a substantial amount of precision timed planning behind the scenes.
The plot itself is inspired by scriptwriter Makoto Ueda’s (who also scripted the previously mentioned Summer Time Machine Blues) own self-directed and penned short from 2014, Howling, with the motivation being to stretch out the concept from the shorts 11-minute runtime to a feature length production. Admittedly, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes’ origins do show through on occasion. There can be no denying that the concept is a one-trick pony, and Yamaguchi spends a little too much time with the cafe’s regulars fooling around and being shouty in a slightly aggravating way. The focus initially seems to be on how many comedic vignettes can be pulled off with the concept, not all of which necessarily work, when it would be far more engaging if there was an actual plot to anchor the gimmick off.
As a result, because of the scenes inconsequential nature, topped off with the fact that we have to watch many of them play out twice (current and future), there are moments that feel like padding. Thankfully Yamaguchi has a plot up his sleeve, and once it kicks in it delivers the required narrative thrust just in time, ensuring that the concept alone isn’t left to carry the entire production on its shoulders. Sure it’s nothing we haven’t seen countless times before – a stash of cash with unknown origins and the yakuza who are looking for it – but paired up with the time travel concept it provides a reason for the audience to get behind the characters, as well as some of the biggest laughs.
Yamaguchi goes for the double whammy on the gimmick front, opting for the one-take approach for the 70-minute duration, although he confessed in an interview that it is in fact made up of several 10-minute takes which have then been blended together in post. The authenticity behind the one-take isn’t the important part here though (as opposed to its importance in productions like One Shot and Crazy Samurai Musashi, where the performers endurance is an integral part of enjoying the single take), rather the flow it gives to the time loop allows both the characters and the audience to experience the 2-minute time travel in real time.
As much as the previously mentioned productions are defined by the performers sustained physicality during the continuous takes, here the admiration goes to how skilfully everyone involved has executed a narrative which essentially involves them talking to themselves for extended periods. I had to frequently remind myself while watching Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes that the actors are actually not talking to themselves in real time (it was done with recordings), and the complexity behind creating such a unique character dynamic must have been vast. It’s a testament to the passion of the cast and crew that onscreen not once does it come across as questionable or contrived, and the fact that the complexity only increases as the plot progresses but the illusion never wavers is an outstanding feat.
As the owner of the café Kazunari Tosa makes for a likable protagonist. His realisation that he has a monitor that can see into the future is one of understated (almost disinterested) bewilderment, and his lack of enthusiasm to utilise its potential makes him a relatable character for the audience. The short runtime doesn’t give much room for character development, but his change from a passive observer (in his own café no less!) into a somewhat man of action is a convincing one, spurred on by the chance of a date with the café owner next door, played by Aki Asakura (the most recognisable name in the cast, having featured in the likes of Whistleblower and 2017’s live action Fullmetal Alchemist).
Despite this though, there should be no doubt that the real star of the show in Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is the filmmaking technique itself. Whereas just a few years ago saying a movie looked like it was shot on an iPhone would be considered an insult (see my review for 2018’s The Dark Soul), here the entire thing actually was shot on an iPhone, and it looks just fine. In Yamaguchi’s eagerness as a first time director he also took on the role of cinematographer (something which he openly states he likely won’t do again for his next production!), and his commitment to getting certain shots at certain angles can be seen in the behind-the-scenes footage as he scrambles on top of, over, and around tables and various other objects to maintain the integrity of his vision.
While Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes has had plenty of labels thrown at it already, from being a time travel movie for the Zoom generation, to One Cut of the Dead comparisons due to its micro budget and one-take approach, in the end both only tenuously relate to the end product that Yamaguchi has crafted. While far from perfect and at times a little too stretched for its own good, ultimately the way such a complex tale has been successfully pulled off from both a technical and story standpoint is difficult not to admire. The fact that some genuine laugh out loud moments are thrown in along the way make its shortcomings easy to overlook, and at just 70 minutes Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes self fulfils its title, not sticking around a minute longer than it needs to.
A weapons manufacturer tries to cover up its mistakes with a super soldier program while a morally sound executive does her best to uncover their evil plot and the scientist behind it all plots to maim and destroy it all. Let’s dig into 1994’s “Death Machine”, directed by Stephen Norrington!
AS I SEE IT
The directorial debut from Stephen Norrington, and reportedly the effort that landed him the director’s chair for Blade, Death Machine is a good movie with an arsenal of flaws.
Set in the future, which is now past, 2003, we follow the company Chaank that provides military weapons. Their failed Robocop-like super-soldier suit has malfunctioned and caused a slaughter of civilians. Now they’re back to the drawing board, so to speak, though the bottom line is always more important. In steps Scott Ridley who instructs the board they will just be pivoting.
The mad scientist behind the creation, Jack Dante, secretly creates a psycho-death bot named Warbeast. And once the fun starts, this metal death force shreds everyone in its path.
The story has interesting points, such as the evil corporation, the righteous humanist alliance, and the mad genius hellbent on domination. But the acting and script fall off a cliff a little more than halfway through the film. The sets are great, and the animation on the Warbeast is chaotic and amazing, which makes sense because the Director used to cut his teeth in creature effects on films like Aliens and Alien 3.
The homages are off the charts.
Some of the examples I picked up on were sound effects from Doom, Masters of the Universe toys that decorate Dante’s office, a Daffy Duck impression from Brad Dourif, a battle cry from Street Fighter, as well as the Warbeast resembling a Mouser from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The names of the characters as well are tributary. Some are identical: John Carpenter, Scott Ridley (Ridley Scott), Jack Dante (Joe Dante), Weyland, Yutani (Alien).
There was too much whimsy and cheeky humor inserted for the tone of the film and could have used some fine-tuning. But I feel it was just on the cusp of being a classic sci-fi/horror.
FAMOUS FACES
Brad Dourif (Dante): you know him, you love him, he’s everyone’s favorite good guy. He always brings the same quality of maniacal energy and really excels as the bad guy, but no role was as iconic and great as that of our friend Chuck in Child’s Play.
He has since become a Rob Zombie regular (31 and Three from Hell), but Richard Brake (Ridley) showed he has the propensity for villainy in what I felt was an underappreciated role. He really stood out, and it was a shame he was killed off so early as he seemed to have an insurmountable level of maddening bravado.
William Hootkins (John Carpenter) is probably most famous as Porkins (Red Six) in Star Wars. He also played Eckhart in Tim Burton’s Batman.
Rachel Weisz has a brief cameo in this her first feature, and would later go on to star in The Mummy series and marry James Bond.
OF GRATUITOUS NATURE
The inclusion of the heartbreaking and gut-wrenching story of Cale’s daughter getting her arm flayed in a garbage disposal does nothing for the greater good of the story. It affords Pouget an opportunity to display another emotion in her repertoire. At this point, however, the script already jumped the shark.
HEARTTHROB
Ely Pouget (Hayden Cale) is a great leading lady for this genre, and her skills are emphasized in the first half of the film. She’s got Ripley’s bad-ass woman card in my opinion, and she’s beautiful to boot. She seems to have hardly aged since 1994 in most recent photographs as well.
RIPE FOR A REMAKE
This is one of those odd, hardly heard of, 90’s films that deserved better. I know it’s been given numerous cuts and a so-called definitive cut, but it could really stand to use some sound editing and unbiased clipping. It’s not sacred ground, but I would rather it see a clean pass rather than a clean slate.
SPAWNS
No progeny to report.
WHERE TO WATCH
An uncut Blu-ray was released in Germany (the version I watched). If you don’t feel like paying up for it, you can stream on Amazon Prime, Roku, Vudu, or Plex.
After the Crash 