Heart Breaks Open
[Screened at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, 2011]
The press materials or the LAAPFF 2011 lead with this image:
I won’t bullshit you; this didn’t inspire enthusiasm.
Which is too bad. There were a lot of films recommended for me to review during the film festival, and this wasn’t among them. Had I not watched the trailer some time back, I wouldn’t have bothered. Even though the brief segments included in that promo didn’t say much more than the synopsis, or offer any solid impression of the acting, the pervasive atmosphere of understatement was different enough for me to remember it when cycling through the screeners.
I can understand the need of the filmmakers to court the film’s core LGBT audience, doing so further confined it to a niche. I also can’t fault them for going with imagery that, though startling, is marginal in the scheme of it, since the lion’s share of frames convey nothing but a lo-fi realism. Beyond the blinding camp of the promo materials, there’s a film with a unique voice, and a potential for broader appeal. Maybe I’m selling audiences short, but I doubt it (I really, really… really — really — doubt it). Or maybe I’m merely criticizing appeals to one niche (the LGBT audience) to tout an even more marginal one: discerning film-goers, scouring the cinematic wasteland for good indie films. In any case, more people could benefit from seeing this movie than probably actually will.
I was born into the era of AIDS (and Reagan: 1981) — in fact, the child of an unnamed celebrity was born the same day, in the same hospital as I was; he ultimately died thanks to the novel mystery sickness delivered in a tainted blood transfusion. The full 180º swing from the “rebellious,” self-important promiscuity of the so-called counterculture hovered, along with gang wars and crack cocaine, over my childhood; a palpable, if nebulous and largely personally irrelevant, sense of dread. Family friends were lost. Every decade in America has its boogiemen — dreadful, yet never fully realized — be they “inscrutable” cultures, bombs, or diseases.
Topics like these translate easily into crypto-Victorian fables, like the vastly overrated Requiem for a Dream; an overbearing morality play on substance abuse. Such a pastiche of clichés might flatter the status quo for its middling tedium, and drape a fresh smirk across its polar certitudes, but what does that illuminate? Move with open eyes in any direction, and realize the world is an impossibly complicated place; one that will crush the thoughtful beneath its burden once they realize their imperfect, ad hoc roles in it. An inattentive storyteller doesn’t even pause at copying already 30th generation copies of themes that were specious to begin with; the ideas are familiar in so many movies, but are they as often credible? Fuck no. But they give reality a dramatic, video game symmetry. It’s satisfying enough to many — especially with the rising escapism of the decade — but if we watch too much of that shit we end up wondering why life itself refuses to play by the rules.
What sets this film apart is its steely resolve to face the anticlimactic mundanity of life’s tragedies. At the apex of its despair, a scene doesn’t fade mercifully out; it persists as if propounding the reality that life goes on, as shitty as it may be (and may become still). Time, the objects around you, and the vast majority of the people, answer only with indifference. Even if everyone, and everything, wanted to care, there is just too much soul-gnawing misfortune in the world to keep track of. That recognition reigns in the kind of hysterical, cathartic, falsely-final dramatic outpouring that might absolve one of truly examining an event and its implications.
Our protagonist, Jesus, doesn’t get a nice, clean dip to black when he gets the news. Instead, he has all the awkward, monotone consolations; the skirted liability assessments — even the goddamn telephones won’t stop ringing out of respect for the claustrophobic misery of his diagnosis.
The film’s credibility lies in its attention to detail, and its deft navigation of complicated topics no surface understanding of — or at least concept of — could advise. Jesus is given a month’s regimen of pills; a bubble-packed ribbon wound tightly, yet edging toward the heft of a Progresso can, that could easily unravel to a length approximating the pharmacist’s explanation of the damn things (preemptive antibiotics, anybody?). And, in another skillful evasion of the after school special, they touch upon the potential for their abuse — the pain killers in particular.
One of the best darkly comic scenes was the Coens-esque confrontation between Jesus and his ex, in which his struggle to make peace with his decisions is confounded by said ex’s insistence on diffusing/deflecting Jesus’s contrition from their own relationship to that of a broader community, entertaining the question whether being part of any minority inherently (or justly) harbors such baggage.
It’s not a perfect film. Though the acting is natural, characters unique, and subject interesting, the plot is nudged along by an irksome, melodramatic philosophizing. However, the actor’s dry, emotionless delivery, and that the narration is more often absent than not, keeps it from being too much of a distraction.
I have to admit to cracking up that Jesus’s ex-boyfriend was a female to male transgendered person. If that’s not an “O. Henry” story…
Bangkok Knockout
[Screened at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, 2011]
I didn’t go into this movie for a plot. If anyone did, I’m shocked and bewildered by their naivete. The unfortunate fact is they tried for one anyway, and though it’s as flimsy and superfluous as the proverbial pizza delivery scene, it whiles away its (and our) time for far longer than it needs to. The audience got antsy waiting for people to start bounding off walls and kicking each other in the face.
What there was of a plot read like the intro to a Double Dragon game, complete with the damsel in distress; she fights, too, but her vulnerability stems from simply not being as effective at it, as she inevitably gets kicked in the face — though never visibly injured to preserve necessary hotness and thus motivation to see her rescued. Would the audience care as much if she were all purple and inflamed? I don’t know. There’s a second damsel, a backup one, that is about as differentiable from her counterpart as the male fighters are from each other.
Without giving too much away, and spoiling the plot for anyone (as I usually do), I’ll say that I enjoyed the overt racism of this film. Partly because it’s fun to see a bigoted perspective different from that held by American hicks, and partly because this country is so stifled by political correctness you almost forget just how backward much of it really is. It’s no enough to see backwoods hicks portrayed by Hollywood (a kind of prejudice in itself); you have to see through their eyes; their clouded, inbred eyes. This Thai-born production is unashamed in offering a panel of stereotypes, through that country’s perspective, of course. The villain is a generic white guy, complete with vague mid-southern drawl; there’s a sell-out, whitewashed Thai dude; a presumably Russian guy, judging from the approximate eastern European accent; a mute black guy; and a Japanese chick that, far from being exotic, is just a rambling nitwit, who insists on speaking in some of the most unintelligible English imaginable.
The motley model UN also provides many of the bizarre and inessential dead ends that I suppose constitute character development and suspense. I have no idea what they were going for — to build upon their effete depravity and menace? Unimportant; just endure it, and laugh at these lulls.
There are a ton of false rescues, and people bounding off things and kicking each other in the face. It’s entertaining — I won’t qualify that.
Living in Seduced Circumstances
[Award winner, the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, 2011]
As many have felt obliged to preface it like so, I’ll say this is filmmaker Ian Gamazon’s third feature, and that he’s best known for his earlier festival darling, Cavite. His debut film can be filed away with Better Luck Tomorrow, The Debut, and especially The Flip Side, as a movie that furthered “the cause” during the dark (or should I say extremely white) ages of film, with regard to ethnic representation. These films made a point, though as the context which cultivated their pioneering defiance fades from memory, it’s easier to unfairly dismiss them as running the gamut from bad to average. Like Flip Side, Cavite was a bluntly pedantic work; a narrative vehicle for a lesson in the impoverished despair of Filipino slums. Though it’s not a favorite, it was innovative in its bare-bones production and obscure content.
Now that the inroads Asian American filmmakers and actors have made into the mainstream have gotten a bit less rugged, artists like Gamazon are freed from distilling ethnic studies courses into awkwardly expository plots. It also lets us chuck our political awareness for a while, and evaluate some of these folks more objectively within the craft. Seduced Circumstances gives a quick nod to some tragic events in Vietnamese history, and it’s somewhat subtle about it, but the main draw of the movie, if there is one, is torture porn.
Director Gamazon frets in his statement about the film his decision not to include a second act. Frankly, the presence of any divisions, tonal shifts, or character arcs at all didn’t occur to me while viewing this film. The briefest explanation I can offer: imagine the last act of Oldboy protracted across an hour and a half. Seriously.
It could’ve — it should’ve — been a 12 minute short. Only rather we’re given scenes of a pregnant woman antagonizing her captive, who she’s tied down to a wheelchair. Over the course of eight months, she pokes, prods, burns, stabs, chops, slices, and most of all harangues wheelchair dude with monotonous taunts and menacing non sequiturs. The scenes repeat with minute variations, but never advancing any discernible plot. The big reveal only comes through a long motion graphics hallucination wherein the wheelchair guy lays out the sole piece of exposition provided to backdrop any of this repetitious, gory inanity.
If the point of this movie was to communicate his feelings of captivity and torment to an audience, mission accomplished; that was my experience exactly.
Looks wise, imagine it being shot by a camera mounted on a labrador, and fed through an aggressive procession of effects filters.
The LuLu Sessions
[screened at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, 2011]
In her 2011 doc, filmmaker Casper Wong chronicles her complicated relationship with prominent cancer researcher, Dr. Louise Nutter. The two had kept a deliberately long-distance friendship, hoping not burning each other out. This changes when poetic irony intervenes, and Louise is stricken by cancer, the disease she worked tirelessly to combat.
A film like this is begging to be done wrong. Tragic themes, like death and estrangement, are so well-worn into the doc landscape it takes a surprising amount of will to make them interesting — or even distinguishable from one another. It’s difficult to say in what measures the film owes its strength to an intuitive first time filmmaker, a dedication to candidly documenting these two lives, or the personality of the eponymous subject, but I’m going to lean toward crediting the third the most.
Louise Nutter seemed like a person that would irritate me in real life. However, her overflowing extroversion and over the top exuberance consistently deliver the perfect counterpoint to a topic that threatens to drag any story into numbing sentimentality. She alone may be responsible for making this movie interesting. Her expertise and unique relationship with the malady in her professional life denied her the uncertainty of a layman, and so what would be a shocking barrage of unanticipated horrors to most became a sparring match with a familiar opponent.
RABBIT HOLE
[This review is first in our series on AFI's Film Festival, and one of two reviews of this film that will be posted. Watch for a follow-up by guest reviewer, Melanie Taylor.]
You see the Bimmer pull into the driveway of a couple that owns a spacious home, in a homogenous little neighborhood, and you realize what you’re in for. They’re about to point a microscope at the petty dramas of an angsty yuppie family. There’s a certain quaintness in illuminating the safe, self-important martyrdom of the bourgeois upper middle classes. Consider “Ice Storm,” “American Beauty,” “Donnie Darko,” “The Savages,” etc. It all seems so anachronistic now given our economy’s rapid death spiral — AKA the American Drain?
Adding to its frustrating triteness is a story that plays like a collage of previous — not always better — film moments. There’s the addiction to support groups, recalling “Fight Club” — Chuck Palahniuk being the one author most Gen Y’ers have read since their mandatory introduction to Salinger in high school. There’s the strange relationship between the victim, Becca (Nicole Kidman), and the (however unintentional) perpetrator, which comes uncomfortably close in theme and execution to overlong Belgian crime film, “Revanche” (maybe the play version of “Rabbit Hole” came first, but I don’t really care enough to find out).
Then there are basic clichés, like: yuppie protagonist, Howie (Aaron Eckhart), playing racquetball, then having a serious talk in the locker room; middle-aged yuppies giddy at their middle-aged flirtation with weed, giggling that it reminds their middle-aged selves of their delinquency in high school. As in “Sideways,” Sandra Oh plays the (pseudo?)mistress. The Canadian-born Korean actress is just good enough to play a vulnerable, needy woman on the side — a position that shames all parties — while Kidman’s Becca is the one with whom to build a life.
Which brings me to the only other actor belonging to an ethnic minority. They cast Giancarlo Esposito as a musician, which in WASPy screenplay shorthand means a bum without a steady paycheck. He’s part of an unwed couple, the other half of which happens to be the heroine’s now pregnant sister. There’s a certain subconscious pigeonholing to making the father in this contra-mainstream and perhaps — by the film’s own suggestion — trashy family unit, an actor with some melanin. It subtly hints at the writer or director’s insular, simplistic view of things outside his bubble. As usual, art imitates art.
There were a few redeeming factors. It was funny watching Nicole Kidman skulk around like a sex offender, naively thinking a baseball cap provided sufficient camouflage. It reminded me of Jackie Chan early in the horrible “Karate Kid” remake. It was refreshing to hear a primary character complain about all the “god shit” in the support groups, while not later receiving some ironic comeuppance. Kidman and Eckhart gave emotionally charged performances, convincingly portraying a (WASPy) couple straining to preserve their beigeist marriage.
Some of the cast and crew were apparently there for the Q&A, but something has to be preternaturally interesting for me to tolerate that maddening bullshit. I stepped on some toes. Literally — in my rush to get out before the lights came on.
by guest reviewer Melanie Taylor, The Feminist Guide to Hollywood
Am I the only one who’s noticed? Leonardo DiCaprio plays the same character in every movie. He’s the leading man of our day, but he can’t seem to play anything beyond the same Jack Dawson character he was in Titanic. That was truly his heyday. He was the Robert Pattinson of the ‘90s. Only Robert Pattinson is probably less concerned with exclusively dating Victoria’s Secret models, therefore making him exceedingly cooler.
My point is that Inception sucked, and the leading man’s tired acting didn’t help. Inception was written by Christopher Nolan, and stars Leonardo Dicaprio, Ellen Page, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It doesn’t really matter who plays who in Inception, because all the characters sounded exactly the same.
The movie starts with a passed out Cobb (DiCaprio) washing up on the shore. He’s brought to an intimidating boss man (an almost comically over-acting Ken Watanabe), and asked for information he can’t deliver. Bullets start flying, and Cobb’s partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is shot. Suddenly, Cobb and Arthur wake up in another world — the real world. It is then we realize it was just a dream. But it’s a dream that’s as real as real life, with wounds that hurt; except that when you “die” in the dream, you just wake up. This is Cobb’s job. Accompanied by Arthur, he goes into people’s dreams and steals their secrets.
The real story starts when Cobb is hired for the complex job of entering a dream inside a dream inside a dream to implant ideas into a target’s mind. The agreement and completion of the job will give Cobb a chance to see his children again. He debates with himself throughout the film over whether or not their existence is real. Enter Ariadne (Ellen Page), a young architecture student, needed to manipulate the dream world, and create a complex “maze” dreamscape to help them evade discovery.
We are given a complex, intertwining, special effects-dazzling show of a mind-created reality outside of anything that exists in real life, and Ariadne is taught all about the experience and possibilities of entering people’s dreams. As he is explaining everything to her, he is explaining everything to the audience, and the film becomes more of a medium for exposition about the concepts than a fluid, cohesive story with heart. There is a certain sterility to the film that leaves you lacking a connection to the characters. Cobb’s motive for taking this great dream-inside-a-dream risk is supposed to spring from the guilt he feels over his family, but throughout the exhaustively long action scenes it just plays out like a video game.
As their plan unfolds, Ariadne learns more about Cobb’s secret dream world, where he regularly visits a dream-version of his deceased wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard). She soon discovers that the violence hidden in Cobb’s mind manifests itself through Mal, with whom she has a savage encounter. As the crew enters the dream inside a dream, they discover the threat of violence has become much more real, and Ariadne becomes a liaison between Cobb’s dream world and his reality in an attempt to save them all from his mind.
The film keeps the viewer teetering between dream and reality, and it works in that respect. Cobb’s job is being an Investigator of the Future kind, and this is the gimmick that is used to keep the film’s flame lit. It’s an original concept, and one that resonates with a world entrenched in a high-tech gadgets and ideas, and stands out in an industry drowning in remakes, biographies, and sequels. However, the new and uncharted territories explored here seem to showcase action and special effects, rather than a new way to tell a meaningful story with any kind of primal emotion.
The internal conflict of Cobb seems almost an afterthought, as if it were fitted and crammed around the dream theories and special effects. The personal journey of the leading man felt completely secondary to the “coolness” of the special effects and the Carl Jung-like theories of dreams within dreams. We’re supposed to care that Cobb misses his children, can’t let go of the memory of his dead wife, and continues to visit her in his dreams, but I really just found myself checking my phone the whole time, and occasionally raising an amused eyebrow over a sporadic special effect.
When the emotion of a story is only there to satisfy an obligatory character arc meant to give purpose to glamorous action scenes, it loses its authenticity because it’s forced. If the screenwriter doesn’t care, then why should we? He was more interested in writing “cool scenes” with giant mirrors that fold landscapes, and bending walls while people walk upside down. Please, save that for a special effects short film class, Christopher Nolan. You can’t put special effects over the actual story and characters, or you end up with a Michael Bay film — and nobody wants that.
I don’t remember whether this has ever made it into an episode, but Patrick often talks about the uncertainty of film as a medium, especially as a lucrative one. He likens deliberately pursuing the Hollywood dream to running to the top of a burning building. In the face of video games, and the convenience of Bit Torrent, the competition for eyeballs — and people willing to pony up to expose their beautiful minds to film craft — has become a fierce one in ways few could have imagined decades ago when games were in their infancy, and file sharing was nonexistent. You can’t fault them for their apathy. I like to say movies are a lot like people: there are too many, and most are really boring.
In spite of the tenuous state of the film profession, the proliferation of film festivals goes uninterrupted, especially in this, the epicenter of so much self-absorbed schlock. Not only have they branched out toward ever more questionable specialties, they’ve begun to overlap, the purpose of one indistinguishable from another, each claiming to be the first and only to serve a certain niche.
The irony is how hard it is to actually find an extensive list of said festivals. I tried Without A Box, of course, but either it ain’t there, or I’m too addled to figure it out. It took me twenty pages of Google to gather a fair representation of the LA County festival scene. Incidentally, The Filipino American festival, was on the last page I looked at.
Since I’ve looked at following festivals beyond our original adventure with the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, I’ve really come to appreciate how they’ve made it so easy to,
More often than not, this information takes diligence to locate on most sites. Once I suss it out, I often realize the site hasn’t been updated in a year or two. I then e-mail the contacts listed to ask whether the festival is on for this year. Here’s a sample exchange:
from MD Caigoy <mdcaigoy@***.com>
to info@***.com
date Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 1:26 PM
subject Downtown Film Festival This Year?
Hi. Will there be a festival this year? The site says 2009.
Thanks,
-MC
from Greg Ptacek <info@***.com>
to MD Caigoy <mdcaigoy@***.com>
date Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 8:06 PM
subject Re: Downtown Film Festival This Year?
ditto….
The Los Angeles Film Festival sent a concise mass e-mail. That they put DENIED in caps to emphasize their rejection seemed over the top, but they were polite.
A creepy French guy from The LA Shorts Fest sent this:
from laurent boye <laurentboye@***.com>
to patrickepino@***.com, mdcaigoy@***.com
date Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 3:21 PM
subject LA Shorts Fest
thank you for your request,
I have to decline.
Feel free to purchase a ticket.
Thank you
Feel free to blow me.
This is if they bother to respond at all, which most don’t. I tend to rationalize it that they’re intimidated by the word sucks, and have so little confidence in their programming choices that honest, apolitical criticism is out of the question. Yeah, that’s it.
Our tenacity has gotten us into the Big Bear Film Festival. I didn’t know there was one, but may the flying spaghetti monster smile upon them for their generosity toward this unknown variable. We’ve also recently gotten into DocuWeek.
Another uneasy step toward legitimacy.
“Do I really look like a guy with a plan?”
– Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight
I was de-friended.
I warned Patrick when he asked me to try reviewing movies for a web series that I fucking hate being on camera. I reiterated this several times prior, and several more times after, a catastrophic review of Up In The Air — that will, with any luck, never see the light of day. Everything about it was horrible. Silently, I resolved not to subject myself to such torture again.
The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival was coming up, and as in the three years prior, I’d be working as a design associate preceding the kickoff, and then lolling about uselessly during the eight day festival. For some reason, I got the bug up my ass to follow the movies this year, taking selected works and doing those reviews I’d resolved never again to do.
The vague idea was to bring attention, positive or negative, to some of the films; to try to stir up a bit of controversy with anyone who bothered to watch and, among those folks, the ones that gave a shit. From some of the feedback we’d gotten during the film festival, it was apparent that word had gotten around, at least marginally. People I hadn’t specifically pestered with it had actually heard of it already, seen a review, or knew it by some degree of reputation. It was exciting. The reservations some of the staff had expressed about the reviews seemed to subside as, in them, we’ve tried to remain detailed and constructive in our critiques.
I was de-friended. On Facebook.
Constructive and qualified as the opinions may be, I’ve never held my views in check. I don’t indulge my slavering sardonic instincts, but I do say what I really think. My impression of niche film genres is that a lot of movies get a free pass because nobody wants to say something against The Cause. We’ve all been there, but it’s time to move on. Having to don the kid gloves for every politically “important” movie means we’ve buried our heads as filmgoers. It also means we have no confidence in our community’s ability to tell an interesting story that can work on its own merits.
The honesty I’m talking about isn’t when some cracker LA Weekly reviewer misses the point — and all the nuanced decisions a filmmaker made to provide a social context — and just says, “Meh, I’ve seen this all before.” Yeah, except that all the Asians lived in Chinatown, and played terrified shopkeepers, murder victims, and the white protagonist’s insecure girlfriend. Those reviewers don’t get it, and they never will. They’re guilty liberals, and like all such people, are convinced they have the credibility to judge ethnic cinema. They don’t. To a large extent, I don’t. But I try to recognize the filmmaker’s intent, and weigh that against their execution. I can try to detect both, and talk about their respective merits in relation to each other.
There was never a plan. Not from me, anyway. But, after the fact, I can say, “I meant to do that.” Our stats show that visits are in the tens… of tens. I’m working on it, but I don’t have any real delusions about reach at the moment. Just plugging away, a dog chasing cars.
But, yes. I was de-friended on Facebook after one of my reviews. We’ve all taken criticism before, and we deal with it. All I can say is I hope you forgive me and, in the meantime, grow a pair.
A documentary directed and produced by Thet Sambath and Rob Lemkin about the former’s journey to find and interview the killers of the Khmer Rouge, including Nuon Chea, second in command to Pol Pot. Subtly powerful. Patrick gives it 0 crickets.
Official Film Site
Enemies of the People Trailer
From Their Website:
The Khmer Rouge ran what is regarded [...]
A non-franchise, non-comic book Hollywood blockbuster. Action, drama, sci-fi. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Ellen Page, and Cillian Murphy. Patrick’s rating: 7 crickets.
Official Film Site
Inception Trailer
THE ÜBER-LONG SYNOPSIS FROM WIKIPEDIA (W/ SPOILERS):
Dominic Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) washes up on a beach and is brought before an elderly man by guards. [...]
A Hollywood reboot blockbuster of a classic awkward 80s blockbuster. Action, drama. Starring Jackie Chan and Will Smith’s son. Patrick gave it 5,000 crickets.
Official Film Site.
The Karate Kid Trailer
AN EGREGIOUSLY LONG SYNOPSIS FROM WIKIPEDIA:
12-year-old Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) and his mother (Taraji P. Henson) arrive in Beijing from Detroit to start a new life. Dre [...]
A Hollywood action, adventure, fantasy blockbuster. Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Patrick gave it a rating of 10,000 crickets for context and 250 crickets for execution. Mike rated it a “perfect execution of averageness”.
Official Film Page
The Last Airbender Trailer
FROM FANDANGO.COM:
Suspense auteur M. Night Shyamalan takes a break from crafting original screenplays to tell [...]
A documentary set in China, produced primarily in Canada. Directed by Lixin Fan. One of our favorite films of the year. Patrick gave it 0 crickets.
Official Film Page
Last Train Home Trailer
FROM THEIR WEBSITE:
Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos, as all at once, a tidal wave of humanity attempts to return home by train. [...]
A drama set in the Philippines. Written and directed by Raymond Red. Starring Raul Arellano, John Arcilla, and Ronnie Laza.
Film’s info page on director’s website.
Manila Skies Trailer
FROM THE DIRECTOR’S WEBSITE:
Inspired by a true event, Himpapawid (Manila Skies) tackles the astounding story of a lone deranged hijacker who is pushed to the edge as he struggles [...]