Donnie Yen’s Sakra: a wuxia epic

A passion project from one of cinema’s greatest martial artists, Sakra is a wuxia of epic proportions. Adapted from Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, the film unfolds on a tremendous scale, with towering sets, scores of extras, and phenomenal action set pieces.

Donnie Yen stars at Qiao Feng, as orphan who develops exceptional powers in the Song dynasty, a period marked by wars among several tribes. A leader of the Beggars’ Gang, Qiao is exiled after being accused of murdering his parents, teacher, and others.

To clear his name, Qiao teams up with Azhu (Chen Yuqi), unaware that she is the daughter of another martial arts hero, Duan Zhengchun (Cheung Siu Fai). When Azhu is wounded, Qiao brings her to the heroes’ gathering manor, a fortress filled with his sworn enemies, to save her life. The ensuing battle leaves both Qiao and Azhu gravely wounded.

Rescued by a mysterious hero, Qiao will be betrayed by friend and foe alike as he searches for the answers to his tangled past. Along the way he will reach a new appreciation of his true heritage.

Keeping track of the sprawling narrative, with its competing tribes and crossed family lines, is close to impossible, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the source novel. The large cast is similarly confusing, with many characters appearing and disappearing at little notice. Wong Kwan-Hing as the widowed Mrs. Ma makes a strong impression. Chen Yuqi and Cya Liu (who plays Azhu’s sister Azi) are both excellent.

The real reason to watch Sakra is Donnie Yen, whose moves here are extraordinary. The opening scene, where he battles a villainous monk in a classic restaurant confrontation, sets a high standard. Stretching throughout rooms and floors, it unleashes wire work, undercranking, vfx, and even diopters in a blur of action that’s amazing.

If there is a fault to Yen’s character, his Qiao is too perfect. He can overhear everything, runs over rooftops, survives falls and stabbings. Nothing can stop him, not even a spear in the back. For story purposes his powers are necessary; in a movie they seem too convenient at times.

This isn’t the first feature Yen’s directed, but it’s the best by far. Serious wuxia films are hard to find, at least those that aren’t satires or reworkings or combined with steampunk. In fact, you’d have to go back to Peter Chan’s Wuxia (also starring Yen) to find one as committed as Sakra.

Which isn’t to say Yen doesn’t bring a modern sensibility to the production. The cinematography and production design are both first-rate, with appropriately moody lighting and breathtaking locations and sets. Action directors are Kenji Tanigaki and Yan Hua, while Donnie Yen’s Action Team takes care of the stunts.

Sakra sometimes grinds to a halt while characters spit exposition at each other. At times the film looks too dark and gloomy. Whole stretches could be dropped without damaging the story. But even with its drawbacks, Sakra is a stunning achievement. If you have any interest in wuxia, it is a must-see. And for John Wick Chapter Four fans, it is icing on the cake.

Producers: Donnie Yen, Wong Jing

Director: Donnie Yen

Executive Director: Kam Ka Wai

Screenwriters: Sheng Lingzhi,Zhu Wei , He Ben, Chen Li, Shen Lejing, Xu Yifan

Stars: Donnie Yen, Chen Yuqi, Cya Liu

Special Star: Wai Ying Hung

Special Appearance: Wu Yue

Stars: Cheung Siu Fai, Wong Kwan Hing, Du Yuming

Special Guest Appearance: Lui Leung Wai, Tsui Siu Ming

Action Directed: Kenji Tanigaki, Yan Hua

Stunt Team: Donnie Yen’s Action Team

Photos courtesy Well Go Entertainment USA. Available in select theaters and on demand. https://wellgousa.com/films/sakra

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The Tank review: haunting on the Oregon coast

A haunted house thriller set on the coast of Oregon, The Tank raises expectations it never quite delivers. Carefully written and shot, the movie features great production values and a strong performance by New Zealand-born Luciane Buchanan. It’s also slow, obvious, and almost completely devoid of genuine thrills.

Buchanan plays Jules, a wife, mother, and pet-shop owner who travels with husband Ben (Matt Whelan) and daughter Reia (Zara Nausbaum) to investigate a mysterious inheritance. Turns out Ben’s mother was institutionalized before she could let him know about a house and several oceanfront acres that his father purchased long ago.

The dank, boarded-up house is isolated from roads and overgrown with weeds. Despite the lack of electricity and running water, Ben decides to fix up the property with the hopes of selling it. To do so requires ignoring a plethora of clues to run away as fast as possible.

Locked doors leading to rickety basement stairs; bedroom windows nailed shut; a manilla envelope of newspaper clippings about earthquakes and unexplained deaths; sheds filled with rusty cans of bomb mixings; and most of all a concrete water tank whose lid keeps popping open — the omens pile up as Jules and Ben pretend nothing is wrong.

Writer, producer and director Scott Walker throws in overexposed, blue-tinted 1940s flashbacks that spell out in greater detail the dangers facing Jules and her family. Plus Jules starts reading diary entries that describe in guarded detail what actually happened those decades earlier.

I’m circling around The Tank the same way Walker’s script does. Everything is drawn out far too long: the stairway descents, the midnight forest walks, following the track of wet footprints across a hallway. It’s almost an hour into the movie before we get a good glance at what’s happening in the tank.

Until then Walker does a pretty good job evoking a sense of Oregon woods and beaches. The swaying pines, crashing surf, endless vistas of green are beautiful, but also help convey the family’s isolation and peril. You can imagine many different causes and reasons for the mysteries afflicting Jules and her family, that is until the monsters arrive.

Wētā Workshop co-founder, CEO and creative director Richard Taylor takes credit as creative lead on The Tank, but the film’s effects are surprisingly derivative and disappointing. Alien-like creatures attack from the water tank,  so slow and lumbering it takes seriously bad choices to get caught by them. Fire and bleach seem to be strong deterrents, so the only way Walker can build suspense is to have the characters run out of same and return to a creature-infested spot to get more.

On the positive side, The Tank does what it sets out to do, so if you’re looking for a haunted house with monsters this will fit the bill. Just don’t expect much more. The surprise will be an extremely appealing turn by Luciane Buchanan.

Directed by: Scott Walker
Written by: Scott Walker
Produced by: Scott Walker
Creature Effects by: Wētā Workshop – Richard Taylor
Cast: Luciane Buchanan, Matt Whelan, Zara Nausbaum, Regina Hegemann, Jack Barry, Holly Shervey 

Well Go USA opens The Tank in select theaters on April 21 and digitally on April 25. https://wellgousa.com/films/tank

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Ride On: a new Jackie Chan film

Thirty years ago Jackie Chan was the biggest movie star in the world. Films like Police Story, Project A, and Supercop were international blockbusters. They changed the face of action films everywhere.

Now pushing 69 (I only know because we were born days apart), Chan is no longer the daredevil hero of his youth. Stunt doubles, wires, and special effects figure heavily into his current work, which you detect during the traditional closing credits outtakes of Ride On.

Chan’s recent films like Railroad Tigers and Kung Fu Yoga were essentially “greatest hits” vehicles that repackaged situations and stunts from earlier movies. Chan admitted his age, letting younger performers carry most of the dramatic and physical weight. They were uneasy hybrids at best, especially since Chan insisted on a brightly lit, antiseptic production design.

Which leads to Ride On, a highly sentimental tale of an aging stuntman and his best friend, a horse named Red Hare. Chan is back in Miracles territory, milking his soap opera encounters with estranged daughter Bao (Liu Haocun), former costars, the billionaire who wants his horse, the hapless crooks he owes money.

Every now and then some action erupts, mostly comical. A fight in a street market. A fight on a restaurant balcony. (How many of these has he done over the years?) A fight on the balcony of the stable where he lives. Ride On unfolds in a soft, easygoing, artificial world that never tries to approach reality.

The plot has Jackie (as stuntman Luo) train Red Hare to perform in movies. Because he’s so driven, he could injure the horse and sever new ties with Bao. “Real stunt men never say no,” he tells Bao (in English no less), even though that life’s led him to penury and eight months in a coma.

Approached by an old-time friend to appear in a prestigious production, Luo insists on doing stunts the old-fashioned way, in person and without help. “Do it for real,” as he says, a false argument as Chan has been using tech for years. When it time to shoot, Luo changes his mind, saving his life and that of Red Hare.

One of the hallmarks of a Chan film was his closing action scene, usually a chase with tremendous and frightening stunts. Here Luo won’t do action, and then cries for 20 minutes while the plot works out behind him.

I don’t want to harp on one of cinema’s great figures, or bring up his increasingly problematic politics, or ask him to endanger himself. What I would like is a film with some bite, a story that actually addresses something concrete, and a style that realizes that filmmaking has changed since 1992.

There’s a moment when Bao and Luo watch clips from Chan’s old movies. In a blurry background we see bits from Police Story and First Strike and Rumble in the Bronx, those unbelievable, death-defying stunts that place him with Keaton and Canutt and cinema’s other great action stars. Chan watches with tears in his eyes, earned from decades of devotion to his craft. If only the rest of Ride On reached that level.

Written and directed by Larry Yang. Released theatrically by Well Go USA April 7. Soon to be streaming. Photos of Chan, Liu Haocun and Red Hare courtesy Well Go USA.

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Kill Boksoon: Jeon Do-yeon showcase treads familiar territory

Jeon Do-yeon. Photo © No Ju-han | Netflix. From Berlinale Special 2023

Style trumps substance in Kill Boksoon, a thriller set in a John Wick universe of corporate killers. Jeon Do-yeon stars as Boksoon, at home a single mom struggling to connect with her teen daughter Gae-yon. On the job she’s a world-class assassin competing with rivals for top billing with MK Enterprises.

An opening scene set on a rainswept city street pits Boksoon, dressed in a manga-fantasy pink outfit, against a triad swordsman. It’s a cunning sequence with good stunts and a smattering of humor, and it sets the tone for the rest of the film: satire mixed with blood, death as a joke.

Director Byun Sung-hyun raises good points about a pitiless social system that grinds up workers while offering them the illusion of security. Corporate killers meet in a dingy bar for fast food and beer; their overlords plot cutting their pay or pitting them against each other in lavish office headquarters. Each side worries about ratings for their “shows,” or killings.

Byun also zeroes in on teen issues, notably bullying, gender awareness, and the inability of teachers to do anything but spout platitudes. Boksoon’s family life seems to be taking place in a different movie, one with small goals and real emotions. My favorite shot in the film (Byun told me it was his too) finds Boksoon sitting on the left of a couch; her daughter Gil Jae-young (played by Kim Si-A) faces the other way. As the camera pushes in, they remain set in their poses, with no way of connecting.

Byun cleverly lets Boksoon imagine different outcomes to situations, like when she finds cigarettes in her daughter’s things. Should she be a “good” mom and ground her? Boksoon’s plays out a scenario that’s just as bad and ineffective as if she were a “bad” mom. In fact, none of Boksoon’s visions end well.

Meanwhile the action increases in violence and intimacy. Bystanders are killed, friends are killed, even lovers as Boksoon sustains her standing as the corporation’s top gun. The stunts get wilder and more complicated, but they fail to build the narrative drive and logic of a Plan 47 film. We’re left judging Kill Boksoon against Atomic Blonde, Gunpowder Milkshake, Kate, Ava and all the other attempts to depict women killers.

Other cast members perform well, with Esom a real standout as Cha Min-hee, a heartless MK leader. Jeon remains a delight throughout the film, whether executing stunts or coping with her daughter or dissing her encounter with ladies who lunch. She deserves better than an action vehicle made up of stolen parts.

Kill Boksoon screened in the Special section of this year’s Berlinale and streams on Netflix. My interview with Jeon and Byun: https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/k-pop/k-movies/article/3215057/netflixs-kill-boksoon-star-jeon-do-yeon-huge-pressure-carrying-action-thriller-which-she-plays

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Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything: sexual politics behind a falling Iron Curtain


Marlene Burow in Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything, in Competition at the 2023 Berlinale.
© Pandora Film / Row Pictures

The fall of the Iron Curtain is the backdrop for romance in Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything / Irgendwann werden wir uns alles Erzaehlen. Set in a rural village near the border between East and West Germany, the movie tackles politics, class, and family dynamcs, all cloaked in exceptional period detail and shot with a golden glow by cinematographer Armin Dierolf.

Harvesting grain, swimming in rivers, bopping to music on back roads: Someday is an exercise in nostalgia for the 1990s, told from a 1950s perspective (which East Germany at the fall resembled). Working from a screenplay with Daniela Krien, who wrote the source novel, Emily Atef lays out themes and symbols like chess pieces. East Germany represents honest labor, tight-knit families, open relationships. The West? DVD players, expensive cameras, clothes, restaurants, cars that don’t flip over in a strong wind.

Mostly Someday focuses on sex, the hot and heavy illicit kind that was a fixture of late-night cable back in the 1980s. L’amour fou with a Teutonic bent. Parents Siegfried (Florian Panzer) and Marianne (Silke Bodenbender) have accepted 19-year-old Maria (Marlene Burow) into their family. Enticed by her skimpy sundresses, son Johannes (Cedric Eich) welcomes Maria into bed.

But Maria is drawn to the msyterious, moody Henner (Felix Kramer), a farmer twice her age who harbors secrets.

Repulsed but attracted, Maria flirts with Henner until he forces himself on her. Shocked, Maria runs home, only to realize that Johannes can no longer compete.

Does that mean the stronger, earthier East satisfies more than the effete, consumerist West? If only Someday were that interesting. Atef doesn’t show much interest in any of the story’s elements apart from couplings. Frankly, the sexual politics here seem dated, to put it kindly. Old guy does it to teen until she likes it is more porn than politics.

Perhaps familiar with the novel, viewers at a press screening in Berlin’s Palast theater seemed more attuned to the movie’s take on a turning point in German history. Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything / Irgendwann werden wir uns alles Erzaehlen screened in competition at this year’s Berlinale.

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OKO Film Festival at the 2022 Camerimage

Tetiana Stanieva and Elena Rubashevska at the 2022 EnergaCAMERIMAGE opening night. Photo: Witek Szydłowski.

Opening night ceremonies in the Jordanki Hall at EnergaCAMERIMAGE in Toruń, Poland, are generally upbeat, but those in November, 2022, took a somber turn due to the war in Ukraine. In his introductory remarks, festival director Marek Zydowicz said, “Since February 24th, we stand with Ukraine.” Several other speakers brought up solidarity with the Ukrainian cause.

After listing the nominees up for competition, the hosts introduced two speakers from Ukraine, Tetiana Stanieva and Elena Rubashevska.

Stanieva began by screening a short documentary from Ukraine. It showed wartime conditions in Kyiv and other cities, with sobering visual evidence of atrocities.

What really struck viewers watching the film was a list of Ukrainian filmmakers who have joined the military. Writers, directors, cinematographers, grips, composers — a score of artists were seen first on the job and then in military uniform. Some have been injured or died since the war began. As the film put it, they risked their lives to bring back “svitlo,” or “light.”

“Since February 24, we do not live,” Stanieva said. “Mankind has rarely seen this kind of injustice.”

Stanieva told the audience that a cinematography festival in Kyiv had to be cancelled. Her own festival, the third OKO International Ethnographic Film Festival, moved from Bessarabia, Ukraine, to Torun. Stanieva is the festival director; Rubashevska, the program coordinator.

“We have a dream to invite you all to next year’s festival,” Stanieva said. “If I don’t see you again, I leave you one wish: to help Ukraine in every way possible.”

2022 EnergaCAMERIMAGE opening night. Photo: Pawel Skraba.

Rubashevska fled with no money or documents from the Donbas region to Poland. Three days later she received an invitation to Camerimage, which sponsored the OKO festival. Camerimage provided venues and helped with guests and participants.”Our hope is to promote peace, tolerance, and mutual respect towards each other,” Rubashevska said, before inviting attendees to come celebrate OKO screenings.

The OKO schedule included eight feature documentaries and sixteen documentary shorts, as well as a four-film tribute to Ukrainian cinema.

“I don’t know if Camerimage understands what they did for us,” Stanieva said in an interview at OKO’s awards ceremonies. “Their support gave us wings, gave us hope. We are. We exist. For us, this is so inspiring. I still don’t believe it happened.”

“Let me add some practical details,” Rubashevska said. “We are a very ambitious but young festival. Being here at Camerimage, we could observe how they handled logistics, how they administrate duties, how they connect with guests. That was so valuable for us.

“Also, this was our first full-scale edition where we could invite directors from all over the world, literally all the continents. Being able to meet them was indescribably great.”

OKO’s features included Yonaguni, which followed three Japanese teenagers on the verge of leaving their island home forever; A Portrait on the Search for Happiness, a German film about South Africans who dig for diamonds; and The Chinese Will Come, a Serbian film about the treatment of Chinese migrant workers struggling in a foreign country.

The winning film, I Am Chance, came from Belgium and was directed by Wajnberg Marc-Henri. It followed teenaged girls in the Congo struggling to survive on the streets of Kinshasa.

OKO screening at the Muzeum Etnoraficzne. Photo: Ewelina Kamińska.

Stanieva admitted that some audience members couldn’t make it all the way through I Am Chance. “The film was so shocking and provocative, but I think in a good way because it challenges our beliefs. It made us confront something we prefer to turn a blind eye to. When the director showed the film in Kinshasa, people there said they had never noticed all the beggars in the streets.”

The director of I Am Chance has created a fund to help the subjects of the film, while also giving them some money each month out of his own pocket. In fact, he donated OKO’s prize winnings to them.

“That happened with a number of films on our program,” Rubashevska said. “Most of the directors who attended told us they have engaged in social projects, formed media platforms, initiated educational programs. Because we learn from each other, this festival is a great place to start future collaboration.”

“All of our films shine a light on some problem,” Stanieva said. “Ethnography is about people. Elena and I agreed from the beginning that we would focus on positive films that can influence people and hopefully make a difference. The purpose of these films, and I believe all art, is to let us reflect, to provide a kind of therapy, to form some reaction.”

Ukrainians are facing a tough, bitter future without enough fuel or food. The one question everyone asked: what is the best way to help Ukraine?

“I think other countries can help by educating, and by promoting Ukrainian culture,” Stanieva said. “Because once the war is over, we will need to reaffirm our backgrounds. That’s why we created OKO Travels.”

The OKO Travels program brings Ukrainian films from the festival to countries like Finland and Bulgaria.

“Invite OKO Travels to your country,” Stanieva said. “We’re open to visit. We just need tickets and we will do the rest, for free if necessary. Just give us a platform where we can talk. Let us prove our motto, ‘Your culture is your weapon.'”

More information about the OKO festival is available here: https://www.okofilmfest.com.ua/

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Hidden Blade: Wartime intrigue in Shanghai

Shanghai in World War II was a viper’s nest of competing interests. Occupying Japanese forces had to deal with Chinese fighters who were themselves splitting under two leaders, Communist and Nationalist. French and British nationals along with Shanghai natives were restricted to an international concession where rights were stripped away daily. With allegiances shifting daily, no one could be trusted.

Complicated and obscure, Hidden Blade conveys the suspense and danger of the time through a handful of key figures. Foremost is He (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), a “director” collaborating with the Japanese after surviving a brutal onslaught on Guangzhou. His two underlings — Ye (Wang YiBo) and Wang (Eric Wang) — carry out his dirty work.

The three answer to Watanabe (Hiroyuki Mori), a swaggering, heavy-drinking Japanese officer who thinks he knows the war better than he does. Sitting in on their meetings is Tang (Chengpeng Dong), who believes, perhaps foolishly, that he can negotiate with the Japanese.

Director Chang Er, whose last film was the excellent The Wasted Times, sends these characters on a convoluted journey of betrayals, double-crosses, and twists that mirror the progress of the war at large. Instead of following a straight chronology, he stages and restages scenes, breaking the narrative in order to flesh out the characters, adding new colors to their behavior.

Take the opening scene, in which He interrogates Liang (Huang Lei), a Communist functionary. He is all smiles and efficiency, much like Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds, teasing and manipulating Liang into a mortal mistake. When the scene reappears much later, viewers have found out enough about He to be able to more accurately question his motives.

Never miss any opportunity to see Leung Chiu-wai perform. He is in command here, often better, more nuanced, more subtle, than the material deserves. It’s another in a long line of his deeply worked out roles. The big acting surprise in Hidden Blade Wang YiBo, a singer, dancer, and former member of the boyband Uniq. This is his first major movie role, and he’s a soulful knockout, able to convey the sorrow and loss of an agent unable to explain his actions.

Hidden Blade is needlessly complex, especially for those unfamiliar with Shanghai politics during the war. Chang Er does little to help viewers, alluding to nicknames, neighborhoods, and offscreen events that will be obscure to viewers in the US. A third act shift to action is unfortunate, reducing the movie to a routine spy adventure.

Still, Hidden Blade has a lot to offer viewers. It’s especially gratifying to see a mainland Chinese film that refuses to resort to propaganda.

https://youtu.be/yzZ_oHR5wRE

Opening in selected theaters February 17 from Well Go USA.

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The Eight Mountains: how friendships change

Based on a 2016 novel by Paolo Cognetti, The Eight Mountains is memorable more for what it shows than what it means. The novel, vivid descriptions of living and climbing in the mountains near the Aosta Valley alternating with observations about engineering, construction, love, and family, had similar issues. Like the movie, carefully assembled and less than the sum of its parts.

Cognetti is a talented writer, and his novel consistently engrossing. The same is true of the movie, despite problems with pacing. Written and directed by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, The Eight Mountains pares down some characters, smooths out the novel’s timeline, and makes extremely good use of its Italian landscapes.

The plot follows two young boys: Pietro, from a middle-class Turin family, and Bruno, living with relatives in a dying mountain village. They are friends but also rivals for the attention of Pietro’s parents Giovanni (Filippo Timi) and Francesca (Elena Lietti). On the cusp of their teen years, Pietro makes a decision that will change Bruno’s life forever.

Years later, Pietro (Luca Marinelli) has abandoned his parents to work as a chef and aspiring writer. Bruno (Alessandro Borghi) remains a mountain man, working construction, reviving his uncle’s cheese-making alpeggio, marrying Pietro’s castoff girlfriend Lara (Elisabetta Mazzullo). The two friend reunite when Pietro’s father dies, leaving him a tumbledown shack on a remote mountain that the two rehabilitate.

Bruno runs into financial problems, Pietro finds a girlfriend in Nepal, the two fight and reconcile. That’s it until the ending, telegraphed by Pietro’s account of Buddhist “sky burials” in the Himalayas.

For me, an amateur hiker, the best part of The Eight Mountains was the cinematography by Ruben Impens, SBC. Few recent drama capture the struggle and exhilaration of mountain climbing as well as this one does. A sequence where Giovanni helps the two young boys up a glacier is terrifying and beautiful at the same time. Summits are breathtaking, as are Impens’ golden-hour landscapes. You can understand the mountains’ pull as well as their danger, and why characters can sit and stare at their surroundings for hours.

Less convincing are the interactions between Bruno and Pietro. Given that Pietro is a writer who records what he sees, it makes sense that he withholds his emotions. Bruno is equally stubborn, to the point where we suspect his intellect. But at nearly 150 minutes, there’s a lot of dead air between two non-communicative men.

The script especially shortchanges Giovanni’s character. In the book he is smart, loving, give great advice, and tries to do right by both boys. In the movie he is a grump who smokes too much. As a result, Pietro’s eventual understanding of his father’s true nature lacks the emotional punch it should have had.

Among other films, van Groeningen directed The Broken Circle Breakdown, a pretentious cancer drama set in the world of Flemish bluegrass music; and the truly miserable Beautiful Boy, a real-life suicide melodrama starring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet. They give you a glimpse of where The Eight Mountains is heading: gloom, despair, death in beautiful surroundings.

Screened as part of the “Spotlight” section at Sundance, and inexplicably winner of the Jury Prize at 2022’s Cannes Film Festival.

Credits:     Directors: Felix van Groeningen, Charlotte Vandermeersch. Screenwriters: Felix van Groeningen, Charlotte Vandermeersch. Based on the book by Paolo Cognetti.Director of photography: Ruben Impens, SBC. Producers: Mario Gianani, Lorenzo Gangarossa. Starring Luca Marinelli, Alessandro Borghi, Filippo Timi, Elena Lietti.

Photo courtesy of Sundance Institute

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The Wandering Earth II: sci-fi prequel from Frant Gwo

Just in time for the Lunar New Year, Well Go USA opens a prequel to the 2019 blockbuster hit, The Wandering Earth II (or EartII, as the poster has it) expands on the original, building a thoroughly convincing sci-fi future on an enormous, imaginative scale. The epic scope and frequently extraordinary visuals almost make up for a weirdly prosaic plot that mimics just about any outer-space movie.

Based on a short story by Liu Cixin, the 2019 movie found the planet Earth being used as a sort of rocket ship to escape our expanding and exploding sun. 10,000 engines propel Earth towards the Alpha Centauri system, using Jupiter as a gravitational slingshot. Since the planet no longer rotates, its surface is frozen, with survivors living in underground cities.

The prequel starts several decades before the 10,000 engines are installed. Experiments with “digital life” vie with UEG (United Earth Government) rocket tests. Terrorists attack launch sites as Tu Hengyu (Andy Lau) learns that the plug is being pulled on his digital life program.

Tu is trying to resurrect his young daughter Yaya, killed in a car crash. So far he can interact digitally with her for two minutes, the limits of the 550A computer. Disobeying his boss Zhao Ma (Ning Li), he continues work on vastly more powerful 550C computer. Before the movie ends he’ll be taking over a 550W unit—the same one that becomes the evil MOSS system.

Meanwhile, Liu Peiqiang (Wu Jing) takes astronaut training, where he meets Han Duoduo (Wang Zhi), a beautiful and extremely competent officer. Liu is bringing her roses when they are trapped by terrorists aboard an earth elevator rocket. In a masterfully staged sequence, they survive the explosion of both the elevator and their compartment.

Wandering Earth II flows along the decades until the first movie begins, with director Frant Gwo staging showpiece after showpiece with remarkable confidence. Solar storms damage a research center on the moon, a tsunami floods New York City’s UN headquarters, a flotilla of rockets floats through space, riots disrupt food lines, robots go berserk.

The filmmaking style is fluid, involving, with visual effects on a level with Hollywood efforts. Take three shots after a bomb detonates inside a capsule: close-up of Liu, one of Duoduo, then a shot of her visored helmet floating between them, with perfect reflections tied to effects out the capsule window. The only real problem is Gwo’s use of anti-aging software. In his shots as a youngster, Wu Jing looks a bit unrealistic, his face digitally scrubbed. The wonderful Ng Man Tat also looks unconvincing in what appears to be a shot repurposed from the original film. (Ng died in 2021; the movie is dedicated to him.)

The movie intersects with other sci-fi titles; whether it’s borrowing or influencing is not always clear. That space elevator looks a lot like the one in Foundation; the digital life issues mirror those in Jung_E. Like 2001, every computer, every surveillance camera, every network is a potential danger.

On the downside, the plot works up one too many do-or-die crises, ending in a laughable sequence in which Tu operates a computer keyboard underwater. One more strange choice is how the film uses titles to tell you what will happen. “Roche limit reached in 3 days,” a wife “who will die in 84 days,” “Lunar crisis in seven days.” It’s almost as if the filmmakers didn’t trust the plot, and tried to jolt viewers into paying attention.

None of this really matters in the end. The Wandering Earth II is so well made that it’s easy to overlook its flaws. Gigantic and intimate at the same time, it’s an extremely effective sci-fi blockbuster, with superstar performances from Wu Jing and Andy Lau.

Directed by: Frant Gwo. Cast: Wu Jing, Li Xuejian, Ning Li, Andy Lau. Director of Photography: Michael Liu. Editing Director: Ka-Fai Cheung. Edited by:Ye Ruchang, Yan Tingting. Co-edited by: Ye Xiang. Original music by: Roc Chen.

Photos courtesy Well Go USA

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Little Richard: I Am Everything review

In Little Richard: I Am Everything, Richard Penniman says, “I’m the emancipator, the architect. I’m the one that started it all.” But director Lisa Cortés has a more ambitious agenda. For her, Little Richard is rock’s ultimate victim.

A self-professed gay black performer from Macon, Georgia, Penniman forged a career in medicine shows, on the chitlin’ circuit, and in nightclubs, occasionally performing in drag. He borrowed liberally from artists like Billy Wright and Esquerita, fashioning himself as a pompadoured singer and pianist sporting flamboyant costumes. His musical influences included Louis Prima, Ike Turner, Sister Rosette Tharpe, and New Orleans shouters and belters.

Penniman combined blues, gospel and pop in ways similar to Fats Domino, Huey Smith, and any number of other performers—only outsized. He would clamber atop pianos, strip, push his audiences into frenzies.

Unfortunately, Penniman lived in a highly segregated society where homosexuality was outlawed. Even so, after signing with Specialty Records, he had a string of indelible hits. Like many performers of the time, he was not fully compensated for his work. White artists like Elvis Presley and, notoriously, Pat Boone covered his songs; later, he was a huge influence on The Beatles (who opened for him during a tour of England) and The Rolling Stones.

Unfortunately for this documentary, most of Penniman’s visual record comes after his prime. He appeared in a few movies, notably The Girl Can’t Help It. In those he routinely lip-synched to recorded tracks.

By the mid-sixties, he was considered an oldies act. This was true for most of his contemporaries like Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins. Elvis become a movie star, Jerry Lee Lewis switched to country music, and the rock industry on the whole was littered with has-beens. Like Berry, who never regained his early commercial success, Penniman spent fruitless years trying to re-establish himself, alternately abandoning his past and embracing it again.

It’s a sad story that is almost a template for rock careers. Very few performers can sustain careers for decades. Everyone falls out of favor at some point, and not everyone can claw back.

Cortés positions Penniman as a victim of society incapable of accepting him as a star. She buttresses her film with a string of historians, ethnomusicologists, and activists who use words like “non-normative.” The documentary tries to demystify Little Richard by dragging him into academia, by pigeonholing his sexuality, by shrinking his achievements and explaining away his magic.

Worst of all, people talk over his music. Not one song is heard in its entirety until the closing credits.

Penniman still bursts through the documentary’s portrait of him, smashing the frames confining him with exuberant verbal riffs and explosive songs. (And let’s note: European television handled rock music much better than the US.) Perhaps Little Richard: I Am Everything will convince viewers to seek out Penniman’s music rather than dwell on his problems.

Little Richard: I Am Everything is an official selection of the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Photos courtesy of Sundance Institute.

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