Category: REVIEWS

Films about hand to hand combat are almost exclusively about boxing in western culture, at the very least the popular ones are, with Warrior and The Karate Kid being the only two that come to mind outside of its dominance. Between Rocky, Million Dollar Baby and now Creed, boxing has dominated the medium without complaint, and those just scratch the surface. The east offers far more variety, and when films from the region manage to break down barriers and make it out west, they can be incredibly refreshing. In 2004 China offered a great example of this with a film about Judo called “Throw Down”. 

Directed by Johnnie To, Throw Down tells the story of how the most unlikely of trios give one man a path to ultimate redemption. Yes, this is familiar territory, those aforementioned boxing films each follow similar themes, and each of them is probably better a film, but that doesn’t diminish the fun stylised twists To adds through his personal flair. We follow Sze-To Bo (Louis Koo) a former Judo champion turned alcoholic night club owner after an ambiguous loss in his past.

Joining him is Tony (Aaron Kwok), an up and coming fighter of incredible talent who is an admirer of Bo who now seeks to fight him and will wait as long as it takes to get a match with him at full strength. Rounding out the trio is Mona (Cherrie Ying), a Taiwanese singer looking to make it big in Hong Kong but failing after becoming associated with an ‘agent’ who tried to make her a prostitute. 

They make for an explosive group, one without much reason to like each other throughout. Bo only recruits them initially so he can run a scam on a gang leader in order to get some money. He needs the money to pay off a debt, but he can’t help gambling away everything he takes, abusing Mona in the process. From there the other two join him in a band in his nightclub. Mona joins because she has nowhere else to go, and Tony so he can eventually have a great fight with Bo. There’s not much substance here; in fact, Tony and Mona fail to display much in the way of substance at all. Thankfully the film manages to overcome this thanks to the sheer talent of its director. 

Throw Down is the perfect example of style over substance. This is thanks to the fact that everything To does in this film is done to the max. From the many bar brawls and chase scenes to Tony and Mona performing in the club, everything comes across with an engrossing flair. Ultimately the visual aesthetic of the film is its defining strength, and without it, the flaws would be too much for any movie to bare. The fights, in particular, are mesmeric, they aren’t complicated dances of death relying solely on choreography like other more famous examples of the genre display. Rather, the fights are inherently simple, yet are presented so dynamically they feel impactful. 

The second half is where Throw Down comes into its own. Bo’s path to redemption is both refreshing and familiar, making it a perfect cocktail. He serves as a timely reminder of how great the underdog story is even 16 years after release. The friendship of the three remains hollow for the most part, but it is wholesome, and the scene in which they team up to save a balloon trapped in a tree is cheesy but beautiful. 

Throw Down doesn’t offer much in the ways of a substantial narrative, but it does offer an abundance of hard-hitting stylised violence, which keeps the film as exciting as ever 16 years later.

Lisa (Nina Hoss) is an author unable to write anything since her twin brother Sven, (Lad Eidinger) was diagnosed with cancer. She dreams of living the high life in Berlin, at least that’s what she seems to suggest, but she cannot, as while she suffers her writer’s block, she is also living in Switzerland where her husband works for a prestigious school. This is the simple premise of the best film I have seen so far in 2020. It’s called “My Little Sister” (Schwesterlein), Véronique Reymond and Stéphanie Chuat directed it, and it’s utterly devastating. 

The film is about loss, or impending loss to be specific. Throughout Lisa lies on the precipice of losing so much and it hurts her deeply, but she always looks after her brother, desperate not to lose him most of all. Confronting would sum the film up best, not in the violent and graphic sense, more in the way everything is so real; it is a relatable film, and incredibly evocative as a result. You see, as her brother deteriorates, so does her marriage, and for all her courage and love, Lisa cannot fully grasp either. 

Sven is an actor who, prior to his illness, was preparing to take to the stage as Hamlet, something he has done many times before.  He is at home performing, and he desires nothing more than to keep bringing characters to life, but he is unable to when his director cancels the show. His arc involves this idea of loss as well. Loss of his work, his love, who is mentioned throughout, and his life.

Yet, unlike his sister, Sven hasn’t the strength to fight for anything and only seeks to perform as his final vice. Together their two lives form a tragic tale, one of dependency on the other and otherworldly commitment. Theirs is a very pure depiction of the sibling relationship, and thus the most heartbreaking aspect of the film as there’s the constant sensation one will soon be without the other. 

The emotional clout of this film comes in many facets, but none are more significant or more impressive than the work of Hoss and Eidinger. As Lisa, Hoss is a vision of grief which rarely appears on-screen. She isn’t broken with sadness, nor is she guilty of repression; she’s just trying to fix everything she can and struggling to stay afloat in the process. As the cracks begin to show and her monumental efforts start to falter with both her husband, who wants to stay in Switzerland, and Sven who is only getting sicker, Hoss well and truly brings the waterworks and develops Lisa into the most empathetic of protagonists. After all, we’ve all lived through something we’d give anything to change. 

Eidinger is just as good. Sven’s sick, but the fight isn’t inside him, it’s inside Lisa. As such Sven doesn’t wage any grand battle against cancer in what could be his final days, he doesn’t lie in a hospital bed and monologue about his fear of death, he does what’s real. He feels things, pain, sadness, love, compassion, happiness. He lives through his emotions and accepts the fact that’s all he can do. Edinger captures this in crushing fashion, and when the pair of them combine on-screen, be sure to have tissues on hand.

The directing duo of Reymond and Chuat work wonders in the composition of this film. I often criticize films with multiple dramatic elements which all culminate at the same moment. To the filmmakers of all those films I say, watch this movie. The broken marriage, a dying brother, an emotionally distant mother, the impact of the broken marriage on the children, and so much more are what Lisa has to deal with and yet it all works. Subtlety is key, as we explore one issue another plants its seeds for later, and when things begin to come to a boiling point, they flow through them satisfyingly like toppling dominos. This ultimately sees everything fit perfectly into a 99-minute runtime, and that’s brilliant. 

With stirring performances and poignant direction, My Little Sister will break your heart in the way only a great film can.

By Alif Majeed.

There is a thing that my friend keeps saying whenever he eats something that he doesn’t like. Generally, if you have something that you don’t like, you might say it’s good or bad, depending on whether you liked it. With him, I immediately know he didn’t like it when he eats the food and goes, “interesting.” It has become his go-to word for things he doesn’t enjoy. After watching Joan of Arc, i couldn’t help but wonder what he would think of it.

Joan of Arc, directed by Bruno Dumont, could have been an exciting experiment, and it had incredible potential to be so much more than that. Based on one of the most iconic figures in France who inspired people from all mediums. The most famous example of them among cineastes maybe Carl Dreyer’s Passion of Joan Of Arc and Luc Besson’s The Messenger. 

Joan of Arc is the latest movie to come out of that vast space. It is also a sequel (or rather, a quasi continuation) to Bruno Dumont’s 2017 film, Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc. Even as he is an extremely divisive filmmaker, the best thing about the first movie is that it entirely lives up to his reputation for better or worse. Things like its use of the spare barren location, the long shots that linger on the actors forever, and the music by Igorrr, which somehow works even if it has no business to all came together to make it a unique take on the early days of Joan of Arc. 

Here, the movie depicts Joan continuing her siege to her incarceration and trial to her final demise. Sadly, though it still looks like the movie will be unique while expanding on the themes of the first movie and continuing the story from its prequel, it doesn’t manage to stick the landing well. The unevenness in tone and the fact that after a point, the songs kind of gets overbearing hampers Jeannette to some extent. But the truth is it could have used more of that over here. Maybe the director was not trying to repeat what he did, but you seriously miss the prequel’s madness in Joan of Arc. 

Both movie also owes a considerable debt to the theatre to a large extent. If Jeannette partly feels like a musical theatre, Joan feels like a version of the kitchen sink dramas. Though not that best version of either of them.

There are several bizarre scenes in the movie where you think it would go somewhere but ends up grating your nerves. Like the scene where Joan finally rides a horse to what looks like a battle, but somewhere down the line, you kind of zone out as the scene keeps cutting from drum beats to Joan to overheads shots of the horses playing a game of revolving chairs. It continues with the tradition of the first movie of staging several necessary scenes and conversations with actors across barren sparse landscapes. 

As far as the performance of Lise Leplat Prudhomme as the titular character is concerned, she is excellent in a role you could say she continued from the first movie if you ignore the second half. Having played the younger version of Joan while giving over the reins to Jeanne Voisin in the latter part of the film, she already had herself as he point of reference. Considering she was a significant part of the reason why the first movie worked or why you could buy into the musical version of the film, it is hardly a surprise. It might also seem strange only if you had seen the first movie and get too caught up in that detail. 

As she had herself as he point of reference, she managed to give a performance that belies her age with great maturity and skill, which was also evident from the prequel. Take the scene where she is on trial with the religious Clergymen and Burgundians determine to hang her. It is a scene that stretches on despite being the centerpiece of the movie, but she manages to flirt the fine line between a kid throwing a tantrum and someone who is defiant even while staring at her doomed fate. 

Ultimately I would not know what my friend would say if he ever watched it as is not the kind I can get him to watch. But from what I know of him, he would probably find it “interesting”. Or if I prob further, he might say it is an interesting failure. That is how I would sum up Joan of Arc. It might be an interesting failure. But a failure nevertheless.

A failing stockbroker sells his wife off for sex to help pay his debts. After both the wife and husband meet an untimely demise, their young daughter, Mariko (Miki Hashimoto) forgoes her own aspirations to become a sex worker and exact revenge on the businessmen who ruined her father and her life.

From a sensual, establishing scene that plays out like a Maurice Binder credits sequence to a 60’s Bond film, Blue Film Woman hints at something that it never truly reaches. This is a revenge flick tinged with a cautionary tale, but it never accomplishes either to any degree of satisfaction. The first half of the narrative sees Mariko spiralling down a pit of misery that begins as her father becomes indebted to an opportunist loan-shark.

Soon after, there’s a fatal car accident, a suicide, sexual assault involving a mentally handicapped man, it’s all rather grubby and unpleasant. As with many Pinku flicks of the era, the camerawork is leery, lecherous and provocative. It promotes the idea of an oppressive patriarchal system in which a woman cannot end up on top. In which money is the dominating force. In which the house always wins.

On the cusp of the sexualised revenge movies of the 1970’s, Blue Film Woman misses the chance of having an empowered female character win out. Even at her peak, Mariko claims a hollow victory. How she has used her body to exact her revenge but in doing so, has perhaps lost part of herself. This is far cry from the Female Prisoner Scorpion franchise that would come a few years later, in which Mieko Kaji pushes back against an oppressive system and wipes the floor with those in power. If anything, Blue Film Woman is a tragedy.

Visually, this is a movie that uses groovy trickery of the era. From coloured lamps to projected images on naked torsos, there’s a haze of youthful debauchery about the club scenes that are so, “of the time”, but rooted in reality. The score flits between noir’ish rhythms to sitars, which again evoke the summer of love and all things hip. It’s this exotic, mystic quality that director Kan Mukai attempts to imbue his film with. It’s modestly manufactured but it gets the job done.

Of the four Pinku movies I’ve caught recently; Blue Film Woman isn’t the worst, but it definitely feels like a missed opportunity. But then again, I’m pretty sure the filmmakers weren’t really going for the whole, female empowerment gig.

Blue Film Woman is available via Third Window Films.

Charismatic everyman Joseph Gordon-Levitt thrived as a notable name in blockbuster epics (Inception) and indie favorites (500 Days of Summer), but his waning presence in Hollywood has left his career in a curious state. In the German thriller 7500, Gordon-Levitt’s first starring vehicle since 2016, the actor’s versatile abilities carry an effective, yet uneven boilerplate thriller set in the sky. 

7500 follows Tobias Ellis (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a proficient pilot who has happily settled down with his flight attendant fiancée Gokce (Aylin Tezel). His daily routine is forever changed when a group of terrorists board the plane, including a weary young man Vedat (Omid Memar) who begins to have doubts about his actions.  

Considering its subject matter, writer/director Patrick Vollrath effort could have easily drifted into trashy, exploitative territory. Thankfully, his debut feature places a keen eye towards realism, eschewing genre standards in an embrace of authentic moments. Utilizing quiet ambiance and a mixture of cinematic styles (jumps between tight-knit shots to coldly captured camera footage), Vollrath holds his audience’s attention throughout, never glorifying the horrifying realities shown on screen. 

7500 delivers a commendably empathetic effort in capturing both sides of the fence. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s performance affectively carries the narrative, capturing the blur of mental states during this spiraling situation while properly dialing his emotive cadence. The pain and guilt Tobias feels during the initial incident is portrayed throughout, with violent outburst morphing into a solemn acceptance of the losses that has occured. 

Going toe to toe with Levitt is Omid Memar, delivering a breakout performance as a terrorist faced with his agonizing actions. Vollrath’s script thankfully offers some dimension to Vedat’s journey, displaying him as a byproduct of a systematic effort rather than a callous killer. It all builds to a tense third act standoff between Tobias and Vedat, with the characters connecting over their respective pains while operating in a frantic frenzy to survive.   

7500 takes off without a hitch, but there are limitations to its approach. Vollrath’ commendably grounds the narrative in its close-quarters setting, but that choice comes with its fair share of dry spells during the film’s dramatically insipid frames (it’s a shame that aside from Tobias and Vedat, the characters are flat and one-dimensional). The script also fails to escape cliché-laden genre beats, landing at its inevitable conclusion without much inventiveness. 

Even with its limitations, 7500 soars as a tense, workmanlike thriller, elevated by its delicate balance between thrills and realistic moments.