Entertainment Maven

TAD Summer Screenings 2012 – Juan of the Dead Review (Kirk Haviland)

juanofdead620 — Photo Credit: http://www.juanofthedeadmovie.com

Starring – Alexis Diaz de Villegas, Jorge Molina, Andrea Duro, Andros Perugorria, Jazz Vila and Eliecer Ramirez

Written and Directed by Alejandro Brugués

Back on September 2011, during an afternoon TIFF screening of all things, is when I was first introduced to Juan de los Muertos (Juan of the Dead). Juan is the first genre film to ever come out of Cuba and was developed with the support of the Cuban government. As you may have guessed by the title, Juan is most definitely a zombie comedy, and it’s one of the funniest that I’ve ever seen.

Juan (Diaz de Villegas) is a hustler living in Havana who is deliriously happy to simply play out his days exerting as little effort as he can as long as he’s stocked up on food and rum. His make-shift raft is where we are first introduced to Juan and his partner in crime, Lazaro (Molina), while they are fishing and end up reeling in something a little different. Choosing not to mention this, the two make their way to Juan’s place, or should I say rooftop, where they observe the world around them through a telescope. Both men reflect on their poor parenting situations, as Lazaro’s son, California (Perugorria), has become as big a hustler as him and Juan’s daughter Camilla (Duro) wants nothing to do with him as she has recently returned to Cuba, but only on her way to Miami. Juan organizes a meeting of local hustlers: Lazaro, California, transvestite China (Vila) and his/her muscle, Primo (a hulking Ramirez), in order to discuss “business” during a town hall meeting of regular citizens who coincidentally are reporting things stolen that are the fault of Juan’s associates. The meeting is promptly crashed by a now zombified council member, deemed “American Dissident” by the Cuban media, and the zombie onslaught plays out in full force. Juan retreats to his trusted rooftop after saving Camilla and along with Lazaro, California, China, and Ramirez decide to profit from the catastrophe by starting Juan de los Muertos, where they will kill your beloved ones – for a fee. Juan’s motley crew takes to the streets, Juan with a paddle, Lazaro’s machetes, California’s baseball bat, China’s slingshot, and Primo’s fists, to start making money. The thrills, chills and abundance of laughs continue all the way through the end credits.

Is there a lot of familiar territory here? Yes there is, but are there most definitely a lot of new takes on tried and true formulas along with biting social commentary mixed with innovative laughs. Juan of the Dead is one of the funniest and best zombie movies ever, there is said it. The cast all deliver here, from Diaz de Villegas’ ultimate anti-hero Juan and his bumbling sidekick, the hilarious Molina, to Perugorria and Duro as the kids with a budding love story, much to Juan’s dismay. The demented pair of Vila and Ramirez, as China and Primo, with China’s inappropriate comments and Primo’s hilarious aversion to blood, also add much flavour to the group. The Cuban capital of Havana becomes a supporting character as there is such a sense of environment and Cuban culture on display here, being able to film on and around major landmarks and tourist attractions really helps drive this point home. Director Brugues keeps the film paced precisely and the film is funny all the way to the end, unlike some of its predecessors it does not peter out halfway through.

Juan of the Dead holds up tremendously well on the second viewing and I know why TAD head honcho Adam Lopez fought so hard to bring it to his Summer Spotlight night. Juan just missed out on my ‘best of 2011’ list by a hair and it was a difficult decision. Juan of the dead is a very strong recommend.

TAD’s summer screenings run for a second night on Wednesday July 11^th with the Sci-Fi/Comedy/Horror mash up Detention at 7pm and the Sundance midnight programme runaway smash hit horror anthology V/H/S. Tickets and info at the links.

Till Next Time

Movie Junkie TO

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TKFF – Mother Review (Kirk Haviland)

Toronto Korean Film Festival 2012

Mother

Starring – Kim Hae-ja, Won Bin, Jin Goo and Yoon Je-moon

Written by Park Eun-kyo and Bong Joon-ho

Directed by Bong Joon-ho

One of Korea’s new masters of cinema is the incomparable Bong Joon-ho. Starting with his breakthrough in 2003 Memories of Murder, a film I have yet to see but many consider to still be his best, then the international smash The Host in 2006, Joon-ho has shown range and courage as a filmmaker who is clearly not shy of breaking new ground with each film. 2009’s Cannes and TIFF critical smash hit Mother is no different, and the TKFF offers a unique chance to see Mother back on the big screen as part of its inaugural lineup.

Mother begins with a frazzled woman, the mother of the title (Hae-ja), as she walks towards the camera across a wheat field. Upon arriving at the camera she breaks into dance as the music fades into the scene and she tries to hold back tears, how she got there we have no idea, and the title card emerges. We flash back to her working cutting flowers as her grown up yet child-like mentally challenged son Do-Joon (Bin) is playing with a dog and is promptly hit by a passing car. As Mother frantically streaks across the street to attend to the uninjured Do-joon it’s instantly obvious that Mother constantly oversees her son’s actions to the point of overbearing based on his reaction. Do-joon and his friend Jin-tae (Goo), a lowlife in his mother’s eyes, track the car to a golf course where they confront the driver and his friends and they promptly get thrown in jail. Apparently this is a normal occurrence as Do-joon’s mother has a full routine worked out with the police upon arrival. After his release Do-joon waits in a bar for Jin-tae’s arrival which never comes. Stumbling drunk home with the golf balls he picked up on the golf course earlier, Do-joon comes across Moon Ah-jung, a local school girl walking home, and after attempting to proposition her leaves for home alone. But the following morning the schoolgirl ends up dead and with the golf balls sprayed all over the place there is only one suspect, Do-joon. Mother then desperately pulls out all the stops to prove that her son was framed as she must unravel the mystery and stop at nothing to set her son free.

Mother is a terrifically satisfying murder mystery with standout performances from its two leads. Kim Hae-ja is brilliant as the mother. Her angst, grief and determination are breathtaking. Her performance is the stuff that goes into legend, with film historians bound to be bringing it up for decades to come. With this to contend with, and playing a mentally challenged son that could easily devolve into camp and ridicule, Won Bin manages to embody Do-joon with enough likeability to make the character someone you want to stick with, even if he was the one who perpetrated this heinous crime. The rest of the cast are solid and Joon-ho’s direction is brilliant, keeping the audience guessing all along until the final revelation and the book-ended finish.

Mother is truly one of the greatest Korean films of the last decade, it’s a strong recommend and I urge you to seek it out. It plays Friday June 29^th at the Innis Town Hall on the U of T campus for its TKFF presentation.

The Toronto Korean Film Festival continues until July 1st with screenings of the aforementioned Mother, Failan and a near perfect cinematic closing night with Sympathy for Lady Vengeance and one of my favorite films of ALL-TIME in Oldboy. Check out the rest of the schedule, tickets still available.

Till Next Time,

Movie Junkie TO

Follow me on twitter @moviejunkieto

Contact me at moviejunkieto@gmail.com

TKFF 2012 – Invasion of Alien Bikini Review (Kirk Haviland)

Toronto Korean Film Festival 2012

Invasion of Alien Bikini

Starring Ha Eun-jung and Hong Young-geun.

Directed by O Yeong-du

TKFF’s Sci-fi night starts with the first true Korean Independent film of the festival, Invasion of Alien Bikini. Shot for only 15,000 dollars and using minimal locations, cast, and crew, Bikini is, at a brisk 75 minutes, a smaller, more intimate film rather than a sprawling Sci-fi epic.

Young-gun (Young-geun) is the self-proclaimed ‘City Protector’, a wannabe super hero, ala ‘Kick-Ass’, that goes around fighting crime after dark using his passable Muay Thai skills to protect the innocent and a obviously fake mustache to protect his identity. One night Young-gun overhears the cries of a young lady being chased by three men. After interceding on her behalf and beating up these men, and after they desperately attempt to tell him that she is not as she appears, Young-gun takes the young lady home to recover. After discovering her name is Ha-Monica, or Harmonica (Eun-jung), Young-Gun and Monica start to get to know each other. But Young-Gun eventually discovers Monica is the Alien of the title and she desperately needs one thing – sperm. Monica must be impregnated that evening so she can reproduce, but this could destroy our planet. And of course there is the strict vow of chastity that Young-gun has sworn to and is determined to protect.

Invasion of Alien Bikini is a small film that keeps its action primarily to a handful of locations and the bulk of it occurs in the small apartment of Young-gun. The stunningly beautiful Ha Eun-jung makes it easy to see why she has been chosen for the role of temptress. She also radiates in the role, switching between vulnerable and aggressor at the drop of the hat. Hong Young-geun’s Young-gun is there to carry the bulk of the comedic elements of the film. His bumbling hero, who gets beat up as much as the punishment he doles out, is there to be endearing and sympathetic, but unfortunately does not achieve this 100% of the time. The production team deserves kudos, as the film looks much more invested than the budget constraints should allow. Director O Yeong-du’s direction feels uneven at parts, as the film feels like a fleshed out short film with filler as opposed to a streamlined feature film.

Rapidly paced in parts mixed with long drawn out sequences later, Invasion of the Alien Bikini comes off as uneven for the most part, but ultimately more of it works than does not. I give Invasion of Alien Bikini a mild recommend.

The Toronto Korean Film Festival continues until July 1st with screenings of the amazing Mother, Failan, and a near perfect cinematic closing night of Sympathy for Lady Vengeance and one of my favorite films of ALL-TIME in Oldboy. Tickets are still available.

Till Next Time,

Movie Junkie TO

Follow me on twitter @moviejunkieto

Contact me at moviejunkieto@gmail.com

The Passing of a Chick Flick Auteur – Nora Ephron (Nadia Sandhu)

Nora Ephron hated the term “chick flick” per Pete Hammond at Deadline (click here for that great memorium) but I don’t think she would mind the way that the much maligned, and ultimately unfair label, has been reclaimed here at chickflicking.

Ephron was a prolific writer but she will long be remembered for reviving and reinventing the rom com genre for a new generation. Her screenplay for 1989′s “When Harry Met Sally” came on the heels of a testosterone soaked decade at the box office and addressed a complex modern dilemma that everyone could relate to: can a man and woman ever really be just friends?

On the heels of that success, Ephron went on to write and direct “Sleepless in Seattle” (1993) and “You’ve Got Mail” (1998) and “Julie and Julia” (2009) amongst numerous other rom coms listed on her imdb page that will no doubt ring a bell with film fans everywhere. The secret to her success was crafting smart, funny, and morally confused heroines who dealt with real life issues in idealized rom com settings. Everyone knew when they were watching a Nora Ephron film, and her work has become the gold standard against which other rom coms are compared.

Ephron received three Academy Award Nominations for Best Original Screenplay – for her first screenplay “Silkwood,” “When Harry Met Sally,” and “Sleepless in Seattle”.

In addition to being one of Hollywood’s most successful female filmmakers, Ephron was also a journalist, an essayist, a novelist, and a playwright. Nora was 71 years of age.

NY Times Obituary

ChickFlicking – Weekend Box Office: A Tale of Two Chick Flicks (Nadia Sandhu)

This was supposed to be a positive review of Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, but a funny thing happened on the way to posting. The first box office projections started coming in and I found myself enthralled by the widely diverging fates for Friend and Pixar’s Brave, the two big chick flick contenders this weekend.

The source of my fascination is a question that keeps popping into my head with each successive tent pole’s release – simply put, and pardon my language in advance, ‘WTF is going on at the marketing departments in Hollywood?’ It could be just me, but the campaigns this summer are looking increasingly slap dash and a little clueless even. This looks to be the case right across the board with films as divergent as Rock of Ages, Prometheus, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, Spider Man, and so on.

Both films this weekend had counter-intuitive marketing campaigns, and while things turned out great for Brave at $66.7 million domestic, the results were really dire for Friend which barely grossed $3.8 million for a tenth place finish. Both campaigns decided it was best to hide the fact that ultimately, these were flicks for chicks. The primary quadrants were definitely female here and I can’t help but wonder what suddenly gave Hollywood the idea that women of legal drinking age don’t go to see films, but there you have it.

Disney was very nervous about the first Pixar fairytale and the first Pixar film to feature a female lead. Disney of course has cause to worry – their past is littered with failed female princess vehicles like Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid…(yes, sarcasm is absolutely necessary here). They went the warrior princess route with their campaign and the gamble paid off. They got us into cinemas to see for ourselves, and the result was both heartwarming and action packed enough to make up for the shock of the film we received versus what we were expecting.

For Friend, it was the weight of expectation that doomed it. Audiences were set up for a comedy – and while this film does deal with the impending apocalypse with some levity (the asteroid is innocuously named Matilda after all), ultimately this is a film about relationships, regret, and the meaning of life. This is most definitely a bittersweet relationship drama, and one that I actually found to be quite touching. There is just no way that a sentimental romance like this can live up to the expectations of a screwball comedy-road movie as set up by marketing, and the damning word of mouth bears this out. If you set the dinner for steak, you better produce a steak!

For what it’s worth, a completely unscientific exit poll of my film going companions post-Friend did reveal a definite fault line forming along gender lines. Does this mean men were never going to see it, or could this have been the date movie of the weekend with a different approach? We’ll never know for sure, and that is too bad.

It will be interesting to see the figures for Brave’s second week, now that the proverbial cat is out of the bag and the boys know what the movie is about. I’m betting it won’t matter and expect to see a standard drop here, nothing disastrous.

Brave is sitting at 75% on Rotten Tomatoes, significantly lower than the average for a Pixar property ( which generally hover closer to 90%) and some are blaming the mother-daughter theme for the perceived shortfall. Again, I can’t stress enough that if you set up a warrior princess story in the trailer, you can’t substitute will o’ the wisps, witches and bears and expect people not to be jarred.

In the meantime, I am simply breathless with anticipation for the results of the next bizarre tent pole campaign (I’m looking at you Magic Mike). Will it be a success? I honestly can’t say, but the buzz is building nicely and I do think I owe it the Eye Candy treatment at the very least.

Now excuse me while I go ponder on the fact that I used Magic Mike and tent pole in the same sentence.

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