By: Henry J. Fromage –
A much less than ideal week both professionally and personally plus a weekend trip means this is my shortest week all year.
731. The Suicide Squad
An unexpected highlight of the week. I’d come to expect slick four quadrant entertainment with a healthy dash of strangeness from James Gunn as of late, but I fully did not expect a gleeful hard-R descent back into Troma territory, this time on a budget ten times the aggregated budget of every movie Troma ever made, I’d wager. But that’s what I got, and it was glorious- a just nigh of shockingly violent ode to some of the weirdest B-villains in comic book history and good old fashioned characterwork wrapped up in the slick trappings of the modern superhero blockbuster. Bravo, James. Two Beers.
732. Fighter
The New York Asian Film Festival, or NYAFF, is going on right now over at filmlinc.org, and as always it presents an opportunity to view Korean films who’ve yet to hit these shores, some of which may never. This is likely one of the latter, an indie boxing drama without the scratch or technical wherewithal to film actual boxing, but a prime asset in Lim Seong-mi, who plays a North Korean refugee who finds a new home at a small female boxing gym. The drama works far better than the sports action, and enough to make this worth a recommendation. Three Beers.
733. Midnight
On the other hand, NYAFF is simply another stepping stone towards a healthy international run for this devilishly constructed thriller from writer/director Kwon Oh-seung. Wi Ha-joon plays a particularly dangerous, disarmingly handsome serial killer who runs into his match with a young deaf/mute woman played by Jin Ki-joo. Kwon knows how to ratchet up the tension to unbearable levels, even if he tends to do so via scream at the screen-level character decisions a bit too often, and doesn’t let up the pace until the very end. Two Beers.
734. Kokutai
This short film on MUBI seeks to draw a parallel between the particular culture and aesthetics of sporting events and the jingoistic, possibly even militaristic connotations they often carry. That the subject here is a Japanese high school baseball tournament probably doesn’t matter- just sub in any college football halftime show or Man U match and it all still works. British-Japanese filmmaker Ryushi Lindsay crafts an especially eerie atmosphere with his use of slow motion, a keen eye for black and white cinematography, and an atonal orchestral soundtrack. Two Beers.
735. The Forever Purge
Another year, another Purge movie… yes, “The Forever Purge” sounds about right. It certainly helps longtime series scion James DeMonaco (who only writes this time, with experienced TV director Everardo Valerio Gout stepping behind the camera) that there’s no shortage of contemporary politics to… satirize, I guess? The joint twists on the formula of daytime Purging and Americans seeking to flee to the clearly superior safety of Mexico worked enough to keep my interest, even if it all devolves into the same horror-masked sprees of violence and clumsy commentary that it always does. Four Beers.
736. Lorelei
Sabrina Doyle delivers a down to earth drama and showcase for Pablo Schreiber and Jenna Malone in this story of a man released from prison after 15 years who reunites with his high school girlfriend, now a single mother of three. Not everything works story-wise, but the setting and character-building certainly do, with Schreiber’s complicated yet growing relationship with Malone’s children a particular worthwhile journey to take. Three Beers.
737. Whirlybird
This documentary tells the story of Bob (now Zoey) Tur and Marika Gerrard, a husband and wife team who revolutionized the news business when they bought and learned to fly a helicopter in a bid to beat their competitors to Los Angeles news stories right as cable news would turn the news game into a 24 hour affair. This story is a fascinating one, and they were present at basically every massive LA news story you’d think of in the 80s and 90s, but it competes for space with the story of their troubled relationship and Bob’s eventual awakening from abusive husband into Zoey, a much more grounded person, although possibly one who transformed too late. Three Beers.
