Subway Cinema News

The terrific Fantastic Fest genre film festival, hosted by the Alamo Drafthouse, wrapped up last week in Austin, Texas. Here’s a short wrap-up of all the films I was able to catch while there. Only a few Asian-related ones (several of the others had already been screened by Subway this summer, like TOKYO GORE POLICE), but overall a great lineup, and a fun festival overall.

TOKYO! - two out of three ain’t bad. This high-profile anthology film features mostly Japanese casts in mixed-genre stories about Tokyo life. Unfortunately, the one that tries to concern itself the most with the city (the middle episode “Merde,” from French director Leos Carax) is the worst, and difficult to sit through. But the opening episode from Michel Gondry (”Interior Design”) more than makes up for it, telling a heartbreaking but beautiful story about a young girl (Steven Seagal’s daughter Ayako Fujitani) who comes to the city but finds herself feeling unbearably alone. Seguing into magical realism toward the end, and featuring a cast composed of big-name Japanese stars, it’s worth seeing the movie for this segment alone. What a treat, then, that Bong Joon-ho’s final segment (”Shaking Tokyo”) is also pretty damn good, about a middle-aged hikikomori (shut-in) who needs an act of nature to get him to change his life. Think of it as two excellent short films with an extra-long intermission.

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE WEIRD - the long-awaited “kimchee western” from A BITTERSWEET LIFE and TALE OF TWO SISTERS director Kim Ji-woon, which was featured heavily in the ACTION BOYS documentary we screened at NYAFF this summer. And as expected, the stuntmen are the true stars of the movie, no surprise for a film that reputedly used every single stuntman working in Korea at the time. It certainly shows onscreen, with some of the most jaw-dropping action sequences I’ve seen in recent years. But it’s also clear that this is what inspired Kim to make the movie, as it pretty much plays out as a series of great setpieces strung together by a threadbare plot that’s little more than a remake of THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (and other Italian westerns, with a bit of THE ROAD WARRIOR thrown in for good measure). Song Kang-ho (THE HOST), playing “the Weird,” does his best to liven things up, and his performance manages to rescue several scenes that threaten to overstep the boundary between homage and rip-off, and overall the movie is marvelously entertaining, but just a bit disappointing for something that took so long to make and cost more than any other South Korean film in history.

GACHI BOY - another disappointment. This big-budget Japanese comedy felt more like a TV show than a feature film, despite its promising premise of a MEMENTO-like memory-loss victim who takes up amateur wrestling as a way of restarting his life following an accident. But with slow pacing, jokes that don’t quite work, and an overlong running time (also a problem with GBW, above), it quickly grated on my nerves.

Pink Eiga retrospective - this was a program I presented with Jasper Sharp, whose BEHIND THE PINK CURTAIN encyclopedia of Japanese sex cinema was launched at the festival. We screened four pink films, each from a separate decade, and I think it all went pretty well. For more details, see here.

SEVENTH MOON - not really an Asian film per se, but an American production directed by one half of the BLAIR WITCH PROJECT team, shot and set in rural China. But why?, I kept asking myself. One of the worst films I watched, this is a by-the-numbers story about a young married couple out of their comfort zone and trying to survive the night while being stalked by strange, supernatural creatures. The Chinese setting serves no purpose other than to make it more difficult for them to understand what’s going on, something that could have been achieved by setting the film in any number of other locations. Muddily shot on digital video and taking place almost entirely in the dark, this one was a trial from start to finish.

And now for the non-Asian selections…

ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO - Kevin Smith’s new comedy, which was also the opening night film. This one is about two Platonic friends (omnipresent Seth Rogan and Elizabeth Banks) who decide to shoot a sex film as a way out of their no-money situation. Intermittently funny, it’s never as filthy or transgressive as I think the filmmaker considers it to be, and in the end it’s just forgettable. For KS fans only.

ASTROPIA - another light-hearted comedy with a sexual element, but this time from Iceland. Iceland?! Yes, indeed, and the filmmakers are calling this the first commercial film ever made in that country, at least in recent years. It’s certainly a far cry from arthouse fare like COLD FEVER or 101 REYKJAVIK, shot on a miniscule budget and about a mainstream young woman who starts working in a role-playing game shop in order to make ends meet. One of the main geeks who frequent the store takes a liking to her, a humorous criminal subplot is introduced, and you can tell where things go from there. Innovative in its combination of fantasy and reality, and really hooked into the subculture it represents (what other film features in-jokes from Warhammer 2K?), it’s light fun and goes down easy.

CARGO 200 -the feel-bad movie of the festival! From successful Russian filmmaker Alexei Balabanov (BROTHER), this one tanked in its home country but ought to find an appreciative audience abroad among adventurous viewers, like Balabanov’s amazing 1998 period psychosexual drama about the birth of cinema, OF FREAKS AND MEN. Like that previous film, this one’s an ensemble tale but set in the period just before the birth of glasnost and Mikhail Gorbachev. The events depicted in the film are best discovered when you watch it, but they concern a young woman who’s abducted by a government official, an atheist university professor who begins to doubt his worldview, a rural couple implicated in a shocking crime, and the horrible, slimy hypocrisy of people in general, right at the dawn of what most Russians consider their emergence from the dark ages. Any surprise that audiences stayed away from this one at home? By the way, the title refers to the code name used by the government to refer to soldiers’ corpses being returned home from the war in Afghanistan. Yeah, fun stuff here. The small DVD label Disinformation picked this one up for the US market, one of the first nonfiction features they’ve acquired.

EX-DRUMMER - another feel-bad flick, this time from Belgium. Based on an ambitious novel, it follows an elitist writer who decides to go slumming one day and mess around with the lives of a trio of misfit losers who’ve formed a punk band. While it doesn’t quite descend to the depths of soul-crushing horror depicted in CARGO 200, it comes mighty close, depicting mass murder, anal rape played for laughs, infanticide, drug use, sexual terror, gay bashing, and hardcore sex. But it leavens its nihilism with a great soundtrack and stylish cinematography. A breathtaking debut from first-time feature filmmaker Koen Mortier, and amazingly still undistributed in the US.

REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA - SAW sequel director Darren Lynn Bousman’s dream project (co-conceived with composer and writer Terrance Dzunich) languishes in the same distribution hell that blew the release of MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN and THE BURROWERS (see below): stuck in-between studio heads at Lionsgate. But it may affect this film least of the three, as it’s a cult hit waiting to happen, a dark and bloody musical camp-fest starring Anthony Head from BUFFY, opera diva Sarah Brightman, Paul Sorvino, DEVIL’S REJECTS star (and TEXAS CHAINSAW 2 Chop-Top!) Bill Moseley, Nivek Ogre from Skinny Puppy and yes, Paris Hilton, whose face actually falls off at one point in the film. Set in a future society where people are addicted to both cosmetic surgery and an illegal painkiller created from corpse-fluid, it’s MOULIN ROUGE for the horror and Goth set, and a hell of a lot of fun. It’s definitely a love-it-or-hate-it proposition, and you’ll know in the first two minutes which side of the fence you fall on. I was a bit skeptical at the opening, but the songs get better as the movie goes on and by the midway point, I was hooked and can’t wait to see it again.

LEFT BANK - glossy Belgian thriller about a young woman who moves in with a new boyfriend across the river in the newly-gentrified “left bank”. An apartment building built on land with a mysterious and spooky history, paranoia about the people around her and wounds that won’t heal point to trouble on the horizon. Pretty by-the-numbers and not very scary, it’s predictable up until the final scene, which veers so far off into left field that it alienated most of the audience in the screening where I saw it. Despite this, it doesn’t add up to very much.

SAUNA - Fantastic Fest loves to pull in entries from all over the globe, and this Finnish horror tale is no exception. Gorgeously shot and set in the 16th century (!), it follows two brothers who are on a joint Swedish-Russian expedition to determine the new borders between their countries. One brother is a veteran of the recently-ended wars with double-digit deaths on his conscience; the other is a scholar with a sensitive disposition. Out in the northern wilds, they come across a village that shouldn’t be there, located in the depths of an unmapped swamp and inhabited by the cleanest peasants any of them have ever seen. The cleanliness comes from a sauna the village is guarding, not only as a place for baths and restoration but also for bathing the dead. And of course, something lurks in the sauna that nobody quite understands, but it’s malevolent and hungry. While this sounds like it could come off very silly, it’s actually incredibly moody and effective. Things turn bloody toward the end, but for the most part the film is a well-acted, slow-burning study of both the characters and the current of the times, between peace and war. It’s a heady film at times - nothing is really explained in the end - and covers BIG topics like God, faith, religion, death, war, guilt and brotherhood. But it’s a unique film in both its setting and ambitions, and will hopefully find a US distributor and audience patient enough to discover its secrets. It’s a big step up for the director, too, whose previous film was the oddball Finnish martial arts hybrid JADE WARRIOR.

JCVD - Grady pretty much summed this one up in his previous post, and I loved it, too. You will believe a fallen star action hero can actually turn in a great performance, and make you cry.

THE BURROWERS - the new film from SOFT FOR DIGGING and S&MAN director J.T. Petty, being billed as a horror western with monsters that owe a debt to TREMORS. Unfortunately, going into the movie with expectations like that will lead to disappointment, as J.T. has created a unique genre hybrid that doesn’t really satisfy the requirements of either the western or the horror film, but holds some charms of its own. Slowly-paced, but with a good payoff climactic encounter with the monsters, the charms of the movie really rest on the shoulders of its characters, led by one of my favorite character actors, Clancy Brown. Just seeing him all duded up, on the back of a horse, cradling a firearm, makes the film worth seeing.

Nacho Vigalondo short films - the charismatic director of last year’s TIME CRIMES (due this fall from Magnet Releasing) returned this year with a package of short films, including his Oscar-nominated “7:35 in the Morning”. I can’t think of many other new filmmakers out there with the kind of comic sensitibilities Nacho has, plus he’s pretty adept at lo-fi sci-fi, as well. Hopefully these shorts will find their way into the TIME CRIMES DVD package, as they’re all worth a watch. Check out the Fantastic Fest link for the titles and scour YouTube, if you’re interested - some of them have been posted there.

ESTOMAGO - a light but funny Brazilian film about a guy from the country who comes into the city and begins working as a chef, as well as romancing a local hooker. Lots of food porn here, and a bit of a twist ending (that’s easy to see coming), it’s forgettable but entertaining.

NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD - one of the best films of the fest, a feature documentary on the heyday of Australian exploitation filmmaking, covering low-budget horror, giant animal movies, road rage films (like MAD MAX), sexploitation comedies, and more. Featuring interviews with just about everybody in the Aussie film industry (but where’s the Toecutter, Hugh Keays-Byrne?) and tons and tons of clips, it makes you want to run right out and find all the films it talks about. Which I’m doing right now.

And in connection with the NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD premiere, Fantastic Fest also had a mini-retrospective of some of the films covered in the documentary, including ROAD WARRIOR (presented outdoors in a parking lot), RAZORBACK and two I caught: the giant (pro-) crocodile movie DARK AGE and the action extravaganza THE MAN FROM HONG KONG, starring Jimmy Wang Yu, George Lazenby, and featuring cameos from Sammo Hung, plus Yuen Kwai, Yuen Biao and Lam Ching-ying in blink-or-miss-them cameos during a fight scene or two. It’s a super-entertaining film, and surprisingly the first narrative feature from its director, the prolific Brian Trenchard-Smith, who was on hand to discuss the film and the industry which produced it.

There were a couple of other retro titles presented at FF, as well: a newly-restored version of the fourth APES film, CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, which has been restored to its original pre-release, R-rated version, and is a stunner. FF also broke their budget in re-creating the “Percepto” seat buzzers William Castle originally created for screenings of his Vincent Price classic THE TINGLER. Fun, but the buzzers didn’t quite work.

Finally, three of the more anticipated titles of the fest.

ACOLYTES - Aussie director John Hewitt was in attendance at the fest, and seems like a really great guy. I wasn’t as thrilled by this KIDS meets a serial killer thriller, about a trio of youths in the suburbs who discover the identity of a serial killer in their midst, and then try to blackmail him into murdering a pesky bully for them. Things get bloody, and more than a little cliched, by the time it wraps up 90 minutes later. Stylishly directed, the script is the weak point here, never really pulling together the disparate elements of the story. In fact, I thought the Larry Clark-style youth relationships were handled a lot better than the thriller elements.

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN - the lead characters get even younger in this moody and wonderful Swedish horror film that hasn’t yet gotten a negative review that I’ve seen. A young boy in a wintery suburb meets the girl next door, who happens to be a vampire. I thought the film had a major Stephen King feel to it, in a good way, based on how it uses an ensemble cast to tell the story of a small town beset by supernatural events but rooted in the characters and everyday lives of its inhabitants. And like a lot of early King works, it doesn’t skimp on the horror elements, with multiple bloody deaths and much vampire lore incorporated into the plot. But towering above all that are the performances of the two young leads, who create not only believable characters but also an authentic-feeling relationship between them.

MARTYRS - again, I agree with Grady. This is one sick puppy of a movie, but oh so good. I think I switched allegiances three times in the film, initially appreciating it, then growing sick of it, and then realizing I loved it toward the end. It’s going to play with your emotions, possibly make you sick - or angry, and might even upset you so much that you wind up hating it, but it’ll definitely provoke some kind of strong reaction in everybody who sees it, which is more than you can say for most films these days. It’s a slasher movie where the victim is your soul.      —MW

It’s a bit far afield of New York City, but Austin’s Fantastic Fest thunders like a herd of longhorns into the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in two weeks, and we’d feel like sad little cowpokes if we didn’t give our friends down there a shout-out. Besides, there are more than a few connections between FF and NYAFF.

For starters, they’re going to be screening the splatterific TOKYO GORE POLICE, which we hosted the North American premiere of back in June. Madman director Yoshihiro Nishimura is due in Austin for the screening, and based on his bad behavior at Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival in July, it sounds like a can’t-miss screening. Bring a raincoat.

Fantastic Fest is also going to be screening a bunch of highly-recommended new Asian films that we really wanted to show, but for various reasons weren’t able to book. FF, since it takes place in the highly-enviable spot immediately after the behemoth Toronto Film Festival, had better access to these tentpole titles, and as a result will be presenting the US premieres of many of them, like the acclaimed (and extremely violent) Korean serial killer thriller THE CHASER (picked up not long ago by IFC for US release); the Thai RAIN MAN-with-martial-arts-and-a-girl action-fest CHOCOLATE; Japanese heartwarming pro wresting comedy GACHI BOY (aka WRESTLING WITH A MEMORY); A BITTERSWEET LIFE director Kim Ji-woon’s all-star, big-budget, Italian western / martial arts homage THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE WEIRD (also picked up by IFC for US release); and the anthology film TOKYO!, 1/3 of which is truly Asian and directed by THE HOST’s Bong Joon-ho.

But those aren’t the only Asian titles in their lineup. They’ll also be screening a couple of films NYAFF programmers liked, but decided not to show, like the is-it-the-third-part-of-a-trilogy-or-only-a-sequel? gore flick ART OF THE DEVIL 3 and the well-made, but overly familiar Thai boxing-versus-friendship epic MUAY THAI CHAIYA.

We’re also very excited to see that the Alamo guys aren’t averse to throwing some challenging titles into their lineup, like a movie we screened back in 2005 and continue to shower our love on, Go Shibata’s handicapped serial killer art film LATE BLOOMER, a movie that took years to find distribution in Japan and deserves all the adventurous viewers it can find. And they’re going retro with a rare 35mm screening of the Australia / Hong Kong co-production THE MAN FROM HONG KONG, which features beautiful scenery, awesome action (including Sammo Hung in a fight scene atop Ayers Rock), a killer theme song, Jimmy Wang Yu, and George Lazenby sporting a killer moustache and flared pants.

Last but not least, FF is presenting a four-film retrospective of Japanese pink films, in conjunction with the launch of the new FAB Press book BEHIND THE PINK CURTAIN: THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF JAPANESE SEX CINEMA, by Midnight Eye founder and Raindance programmer Jasper Sharp. All four films are difficult to see, with two of them being given their international premieres via newly-struck, English-subtitled 35mm prints. But since one of the Subway members also helped to organize this retro, we’ll point you to his blog for the full details.

Good luck, defenders of the Alamo, and enjoy the BBQ!   - mw

Most of us Subway Cinema-ites have other endeavors that keep us busy during the nine months of the year we’re not working steadily on the NY Asian Film Festival (and sometimes they also keep us busy during festival time, too). While some other members have day jobs, a couple of us are freelancers or otherwise semi- or non-employed and have our fingers in a number of different projects involving film or video.

One of the things I’ve been involved with for the past year or more is a retrospective film series called NO BORDERS, NO LIMITS: 1960s NIKKATSU ACTION CINEMA. It’s basically a touring program of originally eight (now six) films produced in the 1960s by Japanese studio Nikkatsu. From the mid 1950s to the early 1970s, Nikkatsu produced a steady stream of hundreds of “action” films, heavily inspired by Western genre filmmaking that was popular at the time. Many of these took the form of gangster movies, westerns, melodramas, films noir, and the like, and seem to have been equally inspired by American moviemakers and the French New Wave as well as other European auteurs. Many of the films were extremely popular at the time, although virtually none of them were ever seen outside Japan until 2005, when a large series of them was programmed for the Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy. American journalist Mark Schilling, who’s lived in Japan for many years, was the original programmer, and he has recently written a book on the genre—the only comprehensive writing on the subject in English—which was debuted at the first screenings we held, at Austin’s Fantastic Fest in September 2007.

Since then, the series has traveled in various forms to fourteen different venues throughout the U.S. and Canada, and I’ve been traveling with it for the most part, projecting the English subtitles onto the subtitle-less prints via a digital slideshow; this is the only way these films can be seen in English, since none of them are available on video anywhere in the world except Japan, and even there only a handful have come out on DVD. It’s been a great experience, and several U.S. home video companies have learned about the genre through this series and purchased various titles for release on DVD here. But as of early August, the final set of screenings will have happened, the prints will be shipped back to Japan, and I’ll have to find some other underpaying pursuit to occupy my time with.

As I write this, I’m en route to Seattle, where four films from the series will be presented at the NW Film Forum, from July 25-28. After that, I travel to Vancouver to present six films from the series at the legendary Pacific Cinematheque, from July 31 - August 4. Both of these cities have substantial Japanese populations and are well-known for their Asian film scenes, so I’m hoping for good audiences at both venues. If you happen to live in either of these cities, try to stop by and see some of the films. They’ve all been real discoveries for the audiences exposed to them up until now, with many people calling them some of the best classic genre films they’ve ever seen coming out of Japan. Imagine spending your entire life not knowing about or having seen any movies from American Independent Pictures in the 1950s and 60s, then suddenly running into the works of Roger Corman and others by accident. That’s something akin to the experience of discovering Nikkatsu Action, and it’s made die-hard fans out of many of the audience members who’ve attended the screenings. I hope you’ll be able to see these films at some point in the future, either on the big screen or in some of the forthcoming DVD releases. For an Asian cinema fan, they’re a missing link between the works of Akira Kurosawa and Takashi Miike, and a treasure unto themselves. —MW

(Read a review of the films in the series from Fantastic Fest)

(Read the Boston Globe’s coverage of the series)

(Read the New York Sun’s coverage of the series)

Wonderful Town at Anthology Film Archives through July 24th

Currently, the Thai film industry is mired in a depressingly bleak state in which only low brow comedy, action, teenage romance and horror can compete in the local commercial market place. The industry is nearly devoid of thoughtful films for adults or for more adventurous movie goers. Only a few years back it seemed that Thai films were on the verge of a renaissance, but the lack of box office success of many of these “New Wave” films forced the big three movie production companies to become risk averse and grab on to proven genres. Some serious new Thai filmmakers have adapted to this reality by making smart artistic films within those genre walls - Banjong Pisanthanakul and Pakpoom Wongpoom with the two horror films SHUTTER and ALONE and Chukiat Sakveerakul with the psycho drama 13 BELOVED and the controversial teenage romance between two boys, LOVE OF SIAM. Pen-ek Ratanaruang is one of the few directors who have been able to disdainfully turn their backs on the local box office because of his international standing due to films like PLOY, INVISIBLE WAVES and LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE. On the other hand, Wisit Sasanatieng, the director of the magnificently surreal Thai cowboy musical TEARS OF THE BLACK TIGER has been forced into genre servitude with his lackluster horror film, THE UNSEEABLE.

Barely noticeable within Thailand is a small independent film movement that primarily has had director Apichatpong Weerasethakul at its forefront. Films of his such as BLISSFULLY YOURS, TROPICAL MALADY and SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY have gained an art house following internationally, but little if any recognition or theatrical play at home.  Now this new independent artistic vision has broken on to the international film scene with WONDERFUL TOWN. Produced partly by grants from the Pusan and the Rotterdam Film festivals as well as other foreign investors, this debut from Aditya Assarat has been picked up in the United States by Kino and has scored itself a one-week run at the Anthology Film Archives. It has garnered awards in a number of festivals and has received terrific reviews from The New York Times, The New York Post and Time Out NY. Deservedly so.

As the film opens, waves roll gently upon the shore but the irony of this and what it symbolizes only becomes apparent as the film progresses. Things are not always what they first appear. A few years earlier the nearby town was hit by the 2004 tsunami and claimed thousands of lives. The water has long receded but not the emotional damage it left behind. Melancholy lingers everywhere and as the camera evocatively captures this gloomy mood in the dark lush landscapes, the broken down moss covered buildings, the missing people and the rain heavy clouds, a certain haunted menace begins to creep into the narrative. Ton arrives from Bangkok to work as an architect on a construction site and he stays at a small plain hotel run by Na, a young woman with very little happening in her life. Ton asks her if there is a room available, not realizing the absurdity of his question -  all the rooms are available and no other guests are ever witnessed – this seems to be a dying town. The two strike up a friendship of lonely souls that inevitably drifts into something more, but it plays out constantly against an ominous backdrop of threatening weather, gossiping neighbors and, eventually, bad intentions.  The story moves at a lethargic, almost hypnotic pace, but it feels perfectly in rhythm with the stillness, the silence and the isolation that surrounds these two characters. It creates an uneasy, expectant feeling that stays with you as you walk out of the theater into the bright sunshine.  - BN

7 and 9 p.m. at the Anthology Film Archives until Thursday, 7/24
92 minutes

You’ll get a full Subway Cinema News with much more nutritious info early next week, but for now here’s a glance at the slew of flicks hitting NYC theaters and video store shelves next week.

In Theaters
Three amazing movies are coming to NYC screens next week, all of which have some NYAFF connection.

First up, there’s LATE BLOOMER, which starts a run at the Pioneer Two Boots Theater in the East Village. Imagine TAXI DRIVER meets SILENCE OF THE LAMBS in a flick about a dude with cerebral palsy. We screened it way back in 2005 and I don’t really have words for how astonishing this picture is. Director Go Shibata bet everything on this film, and even tossed out a year’s worth of footage he shot because he felt that his relationship with Sumida (the lead actor, who is handicapped) was too colored by his own personal prejudices to be useful. This is one of the most vile, heartbreaking, eye-opening, breath-taking films about handicapped people you’ll ever see and it’s a great movie with a soundtrack from electronic group, World’s End Girlfriend, that’s sounds like ear sugar. (read our write up) (And here’s the trailer)

Then there’s this year’s NYAFF crowd-pleaser TOKYO GORE POLICE which has way more gore and way more substance than you can possibly imagine. It’s also starting a run at the Pioneer Two Boots next week because it couldn’t get into any other theater which is too bad - this is a movie that deserves to be seen in public where you can’t hide the sick joy it puts into your heart. (Here’s our write up and a link to the trailer which will slap your brain like jelly)

Finally, SWORD OF THE STRANGER starts a run at ImaginAsian. Not sure why Bandai turned us down when we offered this animated action flick a slot in the festival this year, but maybe they know secrets that we don’t. None of us in the festival are big anime fans, but this flick (produced by BONES who also did the animation on FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST) is a gritty, well-choreographed swordplay movie that not only keeps its feet on the ground, but it keeps them ankle-deep in blood-soaked mud. (Here’s the trailer)

On DVD
It’s a thin week for Asian DVDs coming out next Tuesday, but keep your eyes peeled for the following:

HIGH AND LOW (Akira Kurosawa’s kidnapping film gets a two-disc special edition from Criterion - full details)

(Taiwan’s HELP ME EROS is not a fun sex film, in fact it’s a somber, painful, grueling sex film directed by and starring Lee Kang-sheng, the Taiwanese actor who has appeared in pretty much all of arthouse favorite, Tsai Ming-liang’s, films) (More info on the disc) (read Variety’s review)

One of Johnnie To’s best recent movies, MAD DETECTIVE, got a screening at the New York Asian Film Festival and was then slated to move on to a theatrical run at the IFC Center as part of their First Take series. Then uncertainty reigned as it was announced for a full run, then for two midnight shows only. Now, however, it looks like IFC is giving it a full run and tickets are currently available. From 7/18 to 7/19, MAD DETECTIVE will have three screenings per day at 12:50pm, 8:25pm and Midnight. From 7/20 to 7/22 during 7/20-7/22 it will be screening twice a day at 12:50pm and 8:25pm. It’ll also be screening simultaneously on their Video-on-Demand service.

(Read more about the movie and see the trailer)

(UPDATE: here’s the official screening schedule now up at IFC website)

(Buy tickets)

MOMA is having daily screenings of MUKHSIN until June 2nd. This film, directed by Malaysian female director Yasmin Ahmad, has been a huge favorite on the film festival circuit garnering numerous awards. MUKHSIN is the final part of a trilogy sometimes referred to as the “Orked Trilogy” as it depicts the life of a young girl/woman in Malaysia over a period of years. Don’t let the fact that you haven’t seen the first two films in the trilogy put you off though because MUKHSIN is a prequel to the first two films as it goes back to Orked’s life as a child growing up in the countryside and her first crush on a neighborhood boy named Mukhsin.

The Malaysian film industry is slowly reviving after decades in the doldrums, but it is very much fractured along the same lines as its distinctive multi-cultural society in which there is always tension simmering between the majority Malays and the two largest minority groups, the Chinese and the Indians. Malaysian films reflect this division. The Chinese Malays tend to make very minimalist static films using almost all Chinese actors with the dialogue in Cantonese and Hokkien, while the native Malays go overboard with low brow populist comedies and action films utilizing the Malay language. The Indians simply import their films from the homeland. Audiences in Malaysia generally fall out in the same way – Malays go to their own films while the Chinese go to Chinese films (though generally ones from Hong Kong or China since their local Chinese productions rarely get a theatrical release and instead survive on the film festival circuit, international sales and VCDs.)

Yasmin Ahmad is the first director to truly break through these cultural walls with films that appeal to all sections of Malaysian society. Her films are touching dramas interspersed with comedy and romance that try to gently examine what it means today to be Malaysian. The underlying message in her films is an optimistic call to embrace differences, to thrive in a society that offers so much diversity. In the first film in the trilogy, SEPET, a young Chinese man is reading a poem to his mother from an Indian author, Rabindranath Tagore, and she responds “Strange. A different culture, a different language. And yet we can feel what was in his heart”. In the second film, GUBRA, Yasmin’s multi-cultural message is even more pointed when two characters exchange this back and forth “Can you imagine if there was only one language here. Or only one kind of food. Or maybe one race. It would be total crap.” In a country very much separated by its ethnic and religious differences, Yasmin puts forth a vision of collective embrace. Her multi-cultural vision isn’t only a local one, but global as well as the three films are full of references from Jean Genet to Annie Hall and the soundtrack contains music from Sam Hui to Beethoven to Nina Simone to Bollywood’s classic Kabhie Kabhie. The languages in her films often jump in mid-sentence from Malay to Cantonese to English and Yasmin (who speaks all three languages) clearly relishes doing so.

In SEPET (2005) Orked (played by the effervescent Sharifah Amani in the first two films and who is the niece of director Bade Haji Azmi, whose film, GANGSTER, the NYAFF showed in 2006) is a middle class girl on the verge of university and adulthood. Her teenage crush on Hong Kong actor Takeshi Kaneshiro leads her to cross paths with Jason, a Chinese teenager who sells VCDs and who gives her a copy of Kaneshiro’s CHUNGKING EXPRESS as a gift. It is very much love at first sight, but as in all love stories things do not go according to plan. But in truth it is not so much the romance that makes this such a memorable, joyous film but instead the world that Yasmin invites the viewer into – one of smart dialogue, cultural distinctions, religious observance, realistic locales and Orked’s home life with her loving funny parents and their boisterous maid. GUBRA (2006) begins a few years after SEPET and Orked is now married to a somewhat older Malay man who has a wandering eye. Though still having moments of humor, there is a melancholic mood that overlays the film – one of innocence lost and sad memories stored. Contrasted against Orked’s crumbling marriage is the blissful one of her parents, the caustic one of Jason’s (from SEPET) parents and the pious loving one of an Islamic cleric. The film is a bit too unfocused at times as it brings in characters more to make cultural and moralistic points than to further the story, but it is all part of a humanistic canvass that Yasmin is painting of her country.

MUKHSIN (2007) goes back in time to 1993 when Orked (now Sharifah Aryana) was 10 years old and living in a small village with her parents trying to fend off the debt collectors. This is the story of her first crush. Orked is a no nonsense little tom boy who prefers playing rough and tumble with the boys to being with the girls. Her mom (Sharifah Aleya – real life sister of Aryana) and dad (Irwan Iskandar) are extremely indulgent of their little girl and the family along with their maid (Adibah Noor) are as close knit and lovable as a nest of chirpy chipmunks. During a school holiday, the 12-year old Mukhsin (Mohd Syafie Naswip) comes to the village to stay with his old housekeeper after his parents have split up. After Orked passes his test of toughness, Mukhsin allows her to join the boy’s games and the two become fast friends over the lazy warm days and cicada filled nights that follow. Scenes slowly melt into one another with poetic flashes of home life, friendship and faith – dancing, riding a bike, reciting the Koran and flying a kite are lovely moments of harmony and beauty. Very little of any dramatic purpose takes place in the film – it is just a nostalgic look back at innocence when somehow the world seemed so much simpler and kinder.

Interwoven into all three films, but most evident in MUKHSIN is a very positive humane portrayal of Islam and its values. At a time when conservative Muslims in Malaysia are advocating a return to Sharia law, Yasmin appears to be quietly crying out for a return to their liberal tradition of tolerance in which a girl and her mother can dance together in the rain, women can attend a soccer game (something which a recent Iranian film pointed out can not happen there) and a boy and girl can fly a kite together. In a world gone crazy over the past seven years, this film is a welcome respite from all the anger and hatemongering that too many indulge in. It will actually give you some hope for the future.

Unfortunately, none of these three films have been picked up a U.S. distributor and so you can only buy the DVDs on the Internet – but be warned – they are Region 3 coded and will not play on a typical U.S. manufactured DVD player. You need to have an All-Region one. The only other film that Yasmin had directed before the trilogy was a TV production called RABUN in 2003 and that is not available.

(MUKHSIN screening info at MOMA)

Tomorrow night - Thursday, May 22 - will be a historic occasion in olde Manhattan. It’s a one-night-only engagement of MACHINE GIRL at the ImaginAsian Theater (239 E59th Street, btwn 2nd & 3rd Avenues).

What is this MACHINE GIRL, you ask? It is the touching tale of a young schoolgirl whose arm is amputated by yakuza ninjas. The very same yakuza ninjas who then kill her family. Fortunately, a buddy builds her a machine gun to replace her missing limb and giant, high pressure blood fountains arc across the screen as she takes her revenge.

Here, try the trailer.

Totally stupid? Yes. But totally entertaining, too. And don’t forget, you get $1 off your ticket to MACHINE GIRL at the ImaginAsian if you print out our Subway Cinema Newsletter and flash it at the box office. Or you can buy an advance ticket here.

The producers of MACHINE GIRL then put MG’s gore effects supervisor in the director’s seat and he turned out TOKYO GORE POLICE, sporting the year’s most unhinged promo trailer which you can flip out to, here.

This year, the big buzz at Cannes is that its golden boy director, Wong Kar-wai, will be premiering a remixed, rescored and re-edited version of his 1994 martial arts masterpiece, Ashes of Time. Exactly twenty years ago, in a Hong Kong movie theater, Andy Lau kissed Maggie Cheung and Wong Kar-wai took the first step down the road that leads to where we find ourselves now. It wasn’t an auspicious start. The kiss took place in a Hong Kong version of Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets called As Tears Go By, a low budget movie that was Wong’s directorial debut. Previously he was a lowly freelance screenwriter, author of films like Haunted Cop Shop 2: Electric Boogaloo. Andy Lau took the Harvey Keitel part - it was only one of the hardworking pop star’s ten screen performances that year. Jacky Cheung had been discovered four years previously in an amateur singing contest and his career had been all flops ever since. His first album had done well but his other albums had bombed and the babyfaced young actor was hitting the bottle hard. He was cast in the Robert DeNiro role, a big step up from taking the second banana role in both Haunted Cop Shop flicks. Maggie Cheung, a beauty pageant winner then best known as a bit of fluff who played Jackie Chan’s onscreen girlfriends, was cast as Andy’s love interest.

Maggie plays a good girl from the outlying islands, Andy plays a street thug, and they’re both too emotionally constipated to admit their growing attraction. Then, about halfway through the movie, he goes to catch the ferry back to Hong Kong and she has a change of heart and races back to the pier only to find his ship has sailed. She turns to go, but out of nowhere he races up, grabs her arm, and pulls her into a phone booth. As Sandy Lam’s Cantonese cover of Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” swells on the soundtrack they practically tear each others’ clothes off. They kiss hungrily, the music swells and the phone booth’s fluorescent lights burn brighter and brighter until the entire screen sears white. It was the world’s first Wong Kar-wai moment.

There would be many more to come in the six movies he made over the next ten years, from 1988 until Hong Kong’s handover in 1997. In Chungking Express Faye Wong sang a cover of the Cranberries’ “Dreams” as a lovelorn cop sipped coffee in slow motion while the world hurled itself around him in fast forward (this moment has been altered on the Miramax DVD available in the US and the scene plays in silence). In Days of Being Wild Tony Leung slicks back his hair and dresses for a long night of breaking hearts to a Xavier Cugat cha cha beat. Frank Zappa’s satirical “I Have Been in You” is transformed into the world’s saddest break-up song as a slaughterhouse is hosed down in Happy Together. And Fallen Angels ends with two previously unconnected characters sharing a motorcycle ride home after an all-night session of brawling and instant noodles. As the Flying Picket’s cover of “Only You” swells on the soundtrack the bike emerges from the Cross Harbor Tunnel, a puff of cigarette smoke rises up to meet the Hong Kong skyline and the two tortured souls enjoy one blissful moment at 65 mph.

These perfect pop moments were precious because they were so fragile. Wong’s movies reminded us that pop songs let us escape the world for a place where emotions are stronger, colors are brighter and everyone can say exactly how they feel, for three minutes at a time.

Don’t miss the last three days of As Tears Go By playing at Cinema Village until Thursday, May 15.

(Showtimes here)