In terms of the former, writer/director Sebastian Harris does well to show how, when ending a turbulent relationship, closing it out is sometimes not enough – you also want satisfaction for all the pain that’s been caused.
As for the crime, the film’s antagonist,
James (Ben Higgins) is undeniably a combative spouse, uncaring and withholding
of affection. With his screen time at a minimum, though, it’s worth wondering
whether or not he is entirely deserving of his fate.
The film opens on his wife, Amy (Devora Wilde), seemingly in distress. Addressing the camera, she tells how her husband has been neglectful of her all through their marriage, and is being unfaithful – a revelation she plans on exposing while the couple are visiting family for Christmas.
Aside from the thought that the two look a bit young to be five years married, and somewhat stilted dialogue, Heavy Rain’s fourth wall breaks, while normally a contrivance, here work well.
Wilde’s delivery draws you into the story, and her soliloquies take the edge off the film while avoiding an expository feel and make for a more human and relatable story.
Another big plus for Heavy Rain is the work of cinematographer Jacob Dear. This film looks great, every shot is well designed and photographed perfectly. Not working quite so well is George Lisham’s Hans Zimmer-inspired score, which at times suffocates the film.
For a while it’s not clear where the film
is going, but eventually comes full-circle with a clever, well-constructed
ending. Again, it’s questionable whether it’s a deserved ending, but it’s
unexpected and works as part of the narrative.
While not without its faults or breaking any new ground, Heavy Rain is a well-made, well-structured film that keeps hold of your attention throughout.
The film adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ watershed graphic novel Watchmen was first mooted shortly after its publication in 1985.
Terry Gilliam was the first director to attempt it, before it became apparent the project was too technically ambitious and fell through, along with it some intriguing ideas. Paul Greengrass got closer almost twenty years later, with his version slated for release in 2006, but the studio backed out at the last minute.
With superheroes starting to become the next big box office draw, Warner Bros. then picked up the option and hired Zack Snyder, a self-confessed fan of the comic, to direct. Having been in limbo so long, the film finally started to materialise under Snyder and Warner Bros.’s stewardship, and $130 million later, they delivered what would be the first blockbuster of 2009.
“I am looking at the stars”
In retrospect, making Watchmen into an event film was strange decision – a story about a world on the brink of collapse, characters struggling with the truth about who they are, with references to sexuality, psychopathy, criminal underworlds and existentialism doesn’t really feel like the kind of thing audiences would naturally flock to.
The budget of the film, coupled with its rating (R in the US, 18 in the UK), ultimately meant that Warner Bros. had to make it the film everyone in its restrictive audience band had to see in order to make back money. The accompanying heavy marketing and slew of merchandise was a necessity.
As for the final product, Snyder’s film is technically impressive and confident in its presentation of a well-realised alternate reality, right from its opening title sequence.
This sequence sums up the best and worst of Watchmen – a film with undeniable visual flare and an eye for detail that can concisely tell a story, but at the same time is mostly skimming the surface, unsure of the context or the deeper meaning of what it’s portraying.
“We are all puppets”
You can not fault Watchmen for its ambition. It strives to create as definitive a film version of the original story as it can, but in trying to cram as much in from the graphic novel as possible, the film ultimately feels hurried. Everything moves along not because of natural progression, but because it needs to be kept at as reasonable running time as possible.
Gilliam and Greengrass both realised the source material had to be altered, being too dense to coherently be transferred to the big screen as it was. Snyder, however, was keen to make as close a reproduction of the comics as possible – to the point that panels were used as storyboards and artist Dave Gibbons served as consultant.
Borrowing heavily from the graphic novel leads to the most frustrating thing about Watchmen – that it thinks it means something more than it is, but clearly has little or no understanding of its own subtext. It’s like a school child that has handed in an essay taken from the internet as their own work, and then can’t further explain it when questioned.
“Roll on snare drum. Curtains.”
Watchmen wasn’t a flop, but it wasn’t the runaway success Warner Bros. were hoping for, either. Additionally, response was decidedly mixed – everyone seemed to have wildly differing opinions of the film, be they fans of the book or coming in cold. No one was entirely sure what to make of it. A subsequent DVD director’s cut was better praised for having “a coherent story” (which is like praising a plane for having wings).
However you feel about the original comics, without lucid plot progression and character development, Watchmen falls short as a film. Being in the tricky situation where it can’t fully divorce itself from the graphic novel, Snyder’s film just doesn’t feel able to stand on its own.
“Nothing Ever Ends”
Even so, studios still feel there is some promise to this property. Years after the film’s release, HBO began talks to make a spin-off series, which materialised in 2017, when a series was officially announced helmed by Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof (also a confessed devotee to the graphic novel).
There is clearly enough in Watchmen to keep exploring and expanding on, but it will take someone who is up to the task of grappling with its complexities. Maybe that will be Lindelof, but we won’t know until his version hits TV screens at some point in 2019. If not, the likelihood is someone else will try and the same mistakes will keep being made.
The Dragonfly Prince despaired. No sooner had he emerged from his chrysalis, transformed from an uncertain and confused youth into his new, assured, confident adult form, did he find out he was being used as a simple metaphor for maturity and self-discovery in writer/director James Bird’s feature film Honeyglue.
His tale was a recurring motif in the film’s misfit love story between Morgan (Adriana Mather) and Jordan (Zach Villa), who form a seemingly instant connection after a brief encounter at a nightclub. Their relationship forms the basis of a story penned by the androgynous Jordan, with the Dragonfly Prince serving as his analogue.
While the Dragonfly Prince understood why he was only being used as an analogy – one that would be better suited to a teenage notebook than that of a film of technical competency – he wished there was more to his presence than this. He wanted to straddle both lines – like Honeyglue does in its attempt to be unique by having Morgan’s love interest be non-binary, while at the same time saying that there’s nothing unusual about being pansexual or of indefinite gender.
Similarly to Honeyglue, the Dragonfly Prince tried to gain wider acceptance by addressing some universal problems and current social issues about identity, but never talking about them in any real depth. He also wanted to make people laugh, as does Honeyglue with its allusions to the works of Lynn Shelton and other mumblecore comedies, but attempts at being witty and quirky felt forced and fell flat, as the humour was decidedly vanilla.
Learning that his lifespan would only be three months long (something mentioned at the top of Honeyglue), the Dragonfly Prince realised his time was short, like Morgan in the film, who has an inoperable brain tumour. Despite that, he felt a distinct lack of real human emotion, such of which is absent from Honeyglue.
He thought there would be some conflict or tension, or that he or someone around him would learn something and grow, but in the end there was nothing of the sort – exactly like scenes in Honeyglue where Morgan’s conservative family show obvious discomfort when Jordan is around, but don’t build to anything.
He didn’t know what to do or even how to think and everyone around him started feeling more and more ill-defined, much like every character in Honeyglue. Just as the film does, he unnecessarily went looking for a change of scenery just to prolong his lifespan and in the hope of finding something new that could rejuvenate himself.
The Dragonfly Prince walked plenty of familiar avenues, like Honeyglue does, and after a while wasn’t sure at all where he was going, again like Honeyglue. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that, once again like Honeyglue, he either didn’t know where to go, or just didn’t have anywhere interesting to go.
That’s not to say there weren’t effective moments in his life, or in Honeyglue, but in the end, like the film, he just ended up running out the clock as he trudged on to an inevitable and underwhelming conclusion. After which, the Dragonfly Prince would fade into obscurity, and with him all of his clear promise – exactly like Honeyglue and those involved with it.
Both The Interview and Falsified are very different films, but both feature Ashley Tabatabai working in multiple capacities, both in front of the camera and behind the scenes.
Written by Tabatabai and directed by Stefan Fairlamb, The Interview is described as “a dark comedy about a down on his luck man who has a job interview with an opportunistic entrepreneur that takes him out of his comfort zone.
The entrepreneur, played by Tabatabai, is the cool and confident owner of an online content company, while Scott Michael Wagstaff plays the neurotic man down on his luck he meets in a cafe for a somewhat enigmatic interview.
Their meeting calls to mind the nervous comedy of Woody Allen and the sinister shallowness of David Cronenberg, but The Interview is not as funny or as purposefully creepy as the works of either filmmaker. That said, the film makes good use of minimal elements – four speaking parts, two mains and a stripped-down script.
Tabatabai does well to bring all of the film’s elements back together for a well-constructed ending. Yet given everything that came before, it feels like it’s going to go into deeper territory than it actually does. By the end, the film feels a bit gimmicky and somewhat lightweight and unsubstantial as a result.
Falsified is the more serious of the two films, where Tabatabai shares directing duties with Fairlamb and again writes and stars, this time as Javier, a young man aggressively pursued by the elderly Henry (Mitchell Mullen), who believes him to be his long-lost son.
Javier, it transpires, is one of Los Ninos Robados, or the Lost Children of Francoism – one of hundreds of thousands of children who, under the orders of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, were taken from parents who held oppositional views. The most fortunate of which were put into homes or forcibly adopted.
This feels like a personal story for both the filmmakers, who seem to be using the film as an effort to bring more attention to this unfortunate chapter in recent Spanish history – one that must be especially painful for those who fell victim to it and can’t move on until they have closure, like Henry in the film.
He presents Javier with all the facts and evidence that says he is his son, but it turns out he is not the first person to claim his parentage. This is the most intriguing part of the film, the fight between feelings and the truth – is he really the son or does Henry just want him to be?
Had it left it there, Falsified would have been a more interesting and though-provoking film. Portraying victims of a tragedy like this with missing parents and children they will never find is an intriguing, and unfortunately real, angle. However, that’s not what this film about. It does go on to wrap everything up (fairly predictably) with an ending that feels like a let down.
Still, there is a lot to admire about Falsified. It’s brilliantly photographed by Adam Lyons, which adds to the sobmre and mysterious tone of the film, and is complimented by Tabatabai’s script that, for better or worse, skimps on explanations and lets the visuals and character interactions tells the story. It’s just a shame it’s not brave enough to avoid a conventional structure.
Even for those who can’t get a ticket, the New York Asian Film Festival continues to be one of the best gateways into far-eastern cinema around.
Continuing to see success eighteen years after their first edition, the festival is now expanding from its annual two-week summer blowout to also stage a standalone selection held across two weekends this February.
The first-ever Winter Showcase centres around the premise of “Crazy Broke Asians” – more than just a pun, or a description of the running theme of what’s on show. This title highlights the fact that, without proper financial backing, quality films like these would not find their way to western audiences.
The Line-Up
Actor Han Ji-Min will be on hand at the screening of the opening night film, Miss Baek. Showing for the first time in the continent, the film follows the eponymous Miss Baek as she attempts to break away from her problem past while trying to help a young girl to avoid the same fate.
These themes are echoed in other festival fare, in particular Yang Ik-june’s Breathless, while others seemingly reverse them, such as Patrick Tam’s After This Our Exile. While dissimilar in its story, Eric Khoo’s Mee Pok Man also explores the concepts of unlikely alliances and people living on the fringes of society.
Moving from figurative fighting to literal fighting, 100 Yen Love sees Ando Sakura of Shoplifters as a slacker whose life is turned around when she takes up boxing. This selection is complimented by Crying Fist, starring Oldboy‘s Choi Min Sik as one of many strugglers who attempt to win a big cash prize at an amateur boxing competition.
The showcase picks up momentum, but remains true to its theme, with a pair of heist thrillers. First is the fast-paced and multi-layered Fly By Night, the debut film of Malaysian director Zahir Omar; then gangsters search for a driver who has gone missing with stolen money in the mixed medium animation – and one of the most interesting films on show, Have a Nice Day.
Of course, an Asian film festival would not be complete without a slate of action films, and the NYAFF Winter Showcase brings together highlights from yesteryear and today throughout the second weekend.
This well-curated collection are all prime examples of some of the things Asian cinema does really well – unconventional stories, characters from unusual walks of life, storytelling that can be bold, unflinching and daring, and, of course, plenty of masterful ass-kicking.
While Crazy Rich Asians continues its crusade to bring Asian cinema into the mainstream, those ready to make the effort can see here that what’s going in Asia’s underground is already far more interesting, unique and entertaining.
The good news for those unable to get to New York in time is that at a lot of these films are available to stream and on DVD. For those not too well versed in cinema from the continent, these are all worth seeking out, and could lead to more when you’re done. For already committed fans, it’s time to go crazy.
