By: Henry J. Fromage –
My randomized picks this week have yielded a bounty of foreign films again- my wife is just going to love this!
368. Man on the Edge
When you see a Korean comedy clocking in over two hours, you know you’re going to be taken on a tonal ride (the last 30 minutes are guaranteed to be brutally earnest and dramatic, like the worst Hollywood comedy impulses dialed up to 11), and this film is no exception. The story of a gangster who finds out that his destiny to become a powerful shaman is coming due is bugnuts enough to be a lot of fun despite the slick slices of cheese it serves up. It’s just nutty in an endearing way when it isn’t either overly dramatic or a tad too gay panicky for the current day and age (Korea’s trying to get with the times). Three Beers.
369. Choose Me
I frankly have no idea where the recommendation for this 1984 romance film about a (homeless?) ladies man played by Keith Carradine and the three ladies he woos- one a radio host called Dr. Love, one her frequent caller, and one who he meets at a bar where the caller works and who has a dangerous estranged French husband. It’s all very skuzzy, right down to the Luther Vandross soundtrack, and none of it goes anywhere, but, well, if the Vandross is a plus for you and you like Carradine, have at it. Four Beers.
370. Dark Horse
This under the radar Todd Solondz dramedy from 2011 plays like a brutally funny and effective takedown of entitled American manchildren until it becomes something… else. Solondz builds a world of sadly mundane unrequired desires and fantasy worlds with shifting perspectives. This didn’t get the recognition his earlier requiems for the dark tragedies of “normal people” like Happiness or Storytelling, but it ranks up there with them in my book. Three Beers.
371. Tina
This HBO documentary is focused on letting Tina Turner tell her own story, from the early Ike and Tina Turner days where she established her rock star bona fides and did legendary things like teach Mick Jagger to dance to her years too late hard-earned emancipation from Ike to her later career rise to superstardom as just, Tina. Throughout it all the amazingly resilient Tina shines through, and if this does end up being her pop culture swan song, I can’t imagine a better one. Three Beers.
372. Concrete Cowboy
Idris Elba, Caleb McLaughlin, Method Man, and a supporting cast of non-professionals living the life are tremendous as members of a little known and disappearing subculture- Black East Coast cowboys, who still own and stable horses in the city like their forefathers did when it was the principal method of commercial transportation. McLaughlin has a choice between the old-fashioned and rough-edged ideals of his father or joining his old friend Smush (Jharrel Jerome, great as always) in a dangerous side hustle on the corners. The story ultimately follows familiar rhythms, but it’s a proud journey worth taking. Two Beers.
373. Move the Grave
This Korean indie tells the story of four sisters and a ne’er-do-well brother who have to put aside their differences to go to the island their father was buried and, well, the title says it all- move his grave. I thought this was going to be some kind of genre film from that title, but it’s instead a talk-heavy family drama with good performances and direction- the kind of thing that would play Sundance in the States. Three Beers.
374. Fukuoka
This Korean indie from Chinese-Korean director Zhang Lu plays like Hong Sang-Soo lite, focused as it is on two middle-aged Korean men getting drunk with two attractive girls, one Korean and one Japanese, as they wander around Fukuoka. If you’re the kind of film fan who swoons every time Hong drops another version of his same flick each year, then you may well dig it. Otherwise… Four Beers.
375. 365 Days
This made a lot of folks’ day back in the early weeks and months of the pandemic, and while a Polish knockoff of the 50 Shades franchise didn’t immediately speak to me, I had no idea what I was missing. There is so much deeply wrong with this film, starting with the fact the premise is about a Sicilian gangster who kidnaps a Polish woman and tells her he’ll keep her for 365 days or when she falls in love with him, whichever comes first. It just devolves from there, full of slick yet chintzy production values, an impressively godawful soundtrack of Nickelback knock-offs and bad club music, and directorial and storytelling choices that’ll surprise you in that “who the fuck would think of this?” sort of way. Must watch. Six Pack.
376. Fried Barry
It’s not often that you see something well and truly unique, and I’m immediately going do this South African sci-fi/horror/comedy film a disservice by comparing it to other films. And here goes- this film is for all the world a cross between Under the Skin and The Greasy Strangler. Gary Green is just like nothing you’ve ever seen as a Cape Town burnout who gets abducted and replaced by an alien in the middle of the night. This wide-eyed intergalactic innocent proceeds to go on an epic bender trying out everything this new world has to offer, and (literally) injecting a healthy amount of its own weirdness along the way. A Toast.
377. Alibi
This Pre-Code gangster film has a couple of things going for it- that at times surprisingly modern outlook that the Hayes Code did away with for decades, and an interestingly Weimar-era design aesthetic like something out of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari at times. The rest is pretty boilerplate ‘daughter of the chief of police marries a gangster who has an undercover cop in his crew’ sort of stuff, with some hearty doses of overacting to boot. Three Beers.
378. Welcome to Dongmakgol
This is a hard to characterize film, a magical realist Korean War tale about an American crash-landed pilot and two South Korean and three North Korean soldiers who end up in a town high up in the hills that time appears to have forgotten. The way these characters interact and how the town affects each one in its own way is all really well done, and there are some inspired sequences that reminded me of Beasts of the Southern Wild of all things. What many Koreans apparently remember most is Kang Hye-jung’s easily mimicked performance as the “crazy girl” Yeo-il, which… hasn’t aged so well. Three Beers.
379. Rose Plays Julie
Ann Skelly gets a showcase in this story of a young veterinary student who tracks down her mother (Orla Brady, also great) after she finds out she was adopted, only to discover the circumstances of her birth were far more traumatic than your typical adoption story. When Aiden Gillen makes an appearance you know shit’s about to get real, and to the directors’ credit, they both keep things dramatically focused and deliver on the thriller vibes they’ve been cultivating for the whole film. Two Beers.
380. Knuckledust
This Hulu release is the kind of flashy, gory horror film where it’s clear a young director is putting everything they have out there on the screen, perhaps to excess. James Kermack does exactly that, and while it may feel like his convoluted story gets away from him here and there, or a particular piece of dialogue maybe could’ve used another pass, the overall product is just a damn fun time in that outrageous character-driven style of Smokin’ Aces or Brokeback Saints. Depending on whether your ears perked up or were filled with an ominous buzz may help you gauge your interest. For the record, I really dug it. Three Beers.
381. That Thing You Do!
Tom Hanks’ directorial debut is perhaps most recommendable for that honestly outrageously catchy earworm of a tune and that impossibly young cast including the likes of Steve Zahn, Liv Tyler, Charlize Theron, and Hanks himself among other less but still familiar faces. Otherwise it’s a pretty boilerplate rise and fall of a rock band type of story, but it’s a fetching one. Three Beers.
382. Say Your Prayers
This short and sharp film takes a bit of time finding its story in the tale of two brothers raised by an evil priest to murder the Christopher Hitchens-esque atheist author who turns out to be just as bad and just as invested in the perpetuation of their age-old conflict. The suddenly everywhere Henry Melling is great as the heart and what passes for a conscience of the film, but it’s not until the final act that what director Harry Michell has been up to becomes clear- and it ends with a brutal yet inevitable kick to the stomach. The well-deployed men’s choir throughout the film is a nice touch, too. Two Beers.
383. Twin Flower
This Italian indie film plays like a lot its ilk these days- mixing together verite-style handheld camerawork, runaway kids, immigrants, and transvestite prostitutes. It’s a bit miserablist, I suppose I’m saying, but the acting is quite good, the camerawork sun-kissed, and you invest in the plight of the twin flowers of the title. Three Beers.
384. 9 to 5
It’s easy to point at the pulled punches and silliness of some scenes now, but Lilly Tomlin, Jane Fonda, and Dolly Parton’s comedic ode to fighting sexism in the workplace still punches plenty hard today, especially in all of the subtle details around the edges of the more overt sexism it may be easier to laugh off as a thing of the past. It’s impossible not to get swept up in the film, and kudos to Dabney Coleman’s willingness to be about as foul a boss as any women could have. Two Beers.
385. Killer of Sheep
I’ve been meaning to see this Charles Burnett classic for quite some time, and today was the day. On one hand, it’s somewhat simple and formless- a series of loosely connected vignettes about Black life in 1977 Watts, told from a unjudgmental, sometimes documentary, and often child’s-eye perspective. It’s these qualities that have drawn comparisons to the great Italian Neorealists of a generation prior- Rossellini and De Sica, and how utterly unique it was for such a film to arise at this time and from this place is not to be discounted, either. An Important Film that still feels full of life and truth today. Two Beers.
386. Several Friends
I went ahead and sprung for the Criterion Channel recently, and doing so gained me access to a bevy of Charles Burnett shorts as well. This was his first, and one tonally and stylistically akin to the above feature debut he would shoot 8 years later. It’s a fly on the wall almost documentary short about a group of friends largely shooting the shit as a typical Los Angeles day passes. Three Beers.
387. The Horse
This 1973 short is different than Burnett’s other work of this era- first, it’s in color, and secondly it at first appears to have no Black characters at all, as a group of white ranch hands wait around on a porch for… something. The perspective shifts to a horse, and then a young black boy petting it, also waiting. What they’re all waiting for soon becomes apparent, as does the intended juxtaposition of the callousness of adults and the empathy of the young boy. Tightly but beautifully told. Two Beers.
388. When it Rains
Jonathan Rosenbaum called this one of the greatest shorts of all time, and while my shorts experience isn’t near my feature film knowledge, I don’t feel like I’m one to argue with him on this, either- the once again slice of life approach serves the story of a musician who rounds the neighborhood to collect money for a woman short her rent on New Year’s Day well. Just a joy to follow along with. Two Beers.
389. Quiet as Kept
This is the shortest short of the collection- just five minutes- but it covers a lot of territory, from the state of Black cinema vs. the past to the effects of Katrina, all in a conversation between a black father, mother, and son (played by an actual family of actors) out in the driveway of their house. Despite being the most contemporary – from 2007 – it feels very much apiece with Burnett’s other work. Three Beers.
390. The Final Insult
This falls somewhat neatly between a short and a feature, running an hour, and was released in 1997, which puts it in an interesting conversation with his earlier work. It’s never more clear than here that Burnett is not just one of the preeminent chroniclers of the Black experience in America, but also the changing faces of Los Angeles. Here he intercuts the fictional story of a bank worker who lives out of his car with a documentary about being homeless in LA, showing both new skills and his career-long facility with realism, plus a bit more personality and anger than he’d yet shown in the other films in this collection. Two Beers.
391. The Courier
For much of this based on a true story tale of a British businessman recruited to serve as a conduit between a high-profile Russian spy and the West, we’re treated to a handsomely staged, well-acted, pretty boilerplate 1960s-set spy thriller. Where it really begins to shine, though, is in the development and then especially the denouement of the very personal relationship that forms between Benedict Cumberbatch’s Greville Wynne and Merab Ninidze’s Oleg Penkovskiy, whose heroic actions may have done more to help keep the Cuban Missile Crisis from exploding into nuclear war than any other person. Two Beers.
