Haiti's history meets teen romance in Bertrand Bonello's nitwit flick, ZOMBI CHILD

I've been a fan of the films of Bertrand Bonello (shown below) for years now -- Nocturama and Saint Laurent are my favorites -- so it gives me no pleasure to report that his latest, ZOMBI CHILD, is an embarrassing, unadulterated piece of crap. Unless M. Bonello is simply having us on? If so, he's managed to con most of our critical establishment, no great achievement considering the current state of movie criticism. It is not that his film has no real scares, suspense or thrills, as do most films with the word zombie (or, as here, zombi) in the title. Nor that instead of those usual attributes, a filmmaker has skewed his work toward intelligence and politics, economics, and history. Robin Campillo managed all that just about perfectly in his zombie movie, They Came Back (Les Revenants).

Here, the history of Haiti, colonization, teenage infatuation, zombie love and other subjects bounce off each other repeatedly without ever making much of a connection -- intellectually or emotionally. It takes over an hour before that connection finally arrives. And once it does, the movie just grows stupider.

TrustMovies is sorry, but it is simply not enough to toss in everything you think you know about these subjects and then expect this to somehow coalesce. You've got to make your tale resonate in an edifying manner so that your characters seem at least a tad important, maybe even believable. Bonello utterely fails at this. Plus, he's unusually sloppy (our Haitian zombie forgets to move slowly, once he's washing himself in the river).

The movie, despite its intellectual pretensions, does not even qualify as subtle or smart, for it is simply exposition piled upon more exposition, until it arrives dead on its feet -- in a way that puts to shame its own zombies.

Toggling back and forth between Haiti in the 1960s -- as one of those zombies is created to join others in the sugar-cane work force -- and an elite girls' school in present-day France, where the entitled white students form cliques and discuss boys, music and sorority nonsense, deciding whether or not to allow a new black student to join, Zombi Child moves along at the pace of the old-fashioned undead. To and fro we go, from Haiti to France, with things occasionally broken up by a nightmare or a flesh-eating fantasy. Come on, Bonello, we know you can do better than this.

Even the film's minimal special effects are cheesy -- black eyeballs yet?! -- while the finale offers up the most embarrassing use of Rodgers & Hammerstein's You'll Never Walk Alone to ever hit the screen. It makes even the ending of the movie Priest seem unduly reticent.

I am tempted to call this film a piece of intentional camp. But, no, I know in my heart that the camp here in unintentional. More's the pity.

From Film Movement and running 103 very long minutes, Zombi Child hits DVD and digital today, Tuesday, May 19 -- for purchase and, I would guess, rental. Your move.

In theaters: Swati Bhise's would-be history lesson, THE WARRIOR QUEEN OF JHANSI

A more appropriate title might have been, The Warrior Queen of Nonsense, for this new British film from novice director Swati Bishe, THE WARRIOR QUEEN OF JHANSI is so like amateur-night-at-the-movies in so many ways that your eyes may glaze over long before the end credits roll. Full of exposition, and then more exposition, then even more exposition, the film does give us some history regarding British control of India, the notorious East India Company, and a supposedly very-upset-about-this-whole-awful-thing Queen Victoria, who keeps directing her underlings to do the right thing (of course they never do). But since the resulting movie looks so silly, paltry and mostly unbelievable throughout, we end up imagining that the history here may be as faulty as the manner in which it has been told. Unfair? Maybe, but there you go.

Because the movie also stars, in the role of the would-be warrior queen, Ms Bishe's (the director/co-writer is pictured at right) own daughter, Devika Bishe (shown below, who co-wrote this movie), the film has all the markings of a vanity production.

The younger Bishe is a nice-looking young woman but nowhere near a good enough actress to embody this warrior queen. She is also not helped by "action" scenes that border on dreadful and a "warrior-women-in-training" scene that is even worse.

Literally all of the film's best scenes involve very good Brit thespians who give their all to the less-than-sterling expository dialog with which they are "blessed." These include the likes of Jodhi May as the Queen, Derek Jacobi as Lord Palmerston, Rupert Everett as Sir Hugh Rose, Nathaniel Parker as the mustache-twirling villain Sir Robert Hamilton, and Ben Lamb as the Brit good guy Major Robert Ellis. These pros will keep you awake, at least.

My biggest question after viewing this film: Why is it even getting a theatrical release? And from Roadside Attractions, yet -- the company that only recently gave us that better bit of Oscar bait, Judy? Perhaps it is smarter not to speculate.

In any case, The Warrior Queen of Jhansi -- in English and running 102 minutes -- opens tomorrow, Friday, November 15, here in South Florida in the Miami area at the AMC Aventura 24 and Sunset Place 24, and at the Regal Sawgrass 23 in Sunrise.

To learn if and where the movie is playing near you, click here and follow through.

Raúl de la Fuente and Damian Nenow's ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE offers some hot animation inspired by the cold war

Just the other day TrustMovies was wondering how many of us are all that familiar with British history, let alone with that of our own USA. And now here we are getting a good chunk of the history of the African country of Angola, which was, until winning its independence from Portugal in 1975, one of the many "colonized" African countries. That independence led to a decades-long struggle between the ruling party, the MPLA (supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba) and an insurgent group (UNITA) supported by the United States and South Africa. Yes, that ever-famous/infamous Cold War was full-swing in Angola, just as it was in so many other places around the globe.

The new combination-animated/live-action movie, ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE, is based upon the eponymously titled book by Ryszard Kapuściński, a noted Polish journalist/ photographer/poet/author.

If the story of a hugely difficult independence, mass killings and yet another nasty product of that seemingly endless (and maybe starting up all over again) cold war would seem to be an odd choice for animation, think again.

The film's directors (and co-writers), Raúl de la Fuente and Damian Nenow (pictured at left, with de la Fuente on the right), do full justice to Kapuściński's penchant for poetry and reportage.

The animation (above and below) is by turns beautiful, poetic, impressionistic and horrific -- as befits the story here told. Further, the animation and story are very well complemented by the use of live-action documentary footage in which a few of the true-life characters we meet are shown to us now, some forty years on, in old age.

The back and forth between animation and live-action is never jarring however; instead, it flows as easily as do the assorted moods, images and characters woven through the story. We meet everyone from our protagonist's fellow reporters and a gorgeous female rebel-in-chief (below)

to the famous hero-of-the-revolution, Farrusco (below), who oddly proves the film's most surprising and poignant creation, and some of the students Kapuściński teaches back home in Poland,

one of whom (below) poses a question to his instructor that lingers for good reason. The film is full of ideas, as well as visual appeal.

Given all we now know about our own country's involvement in the overthrow of numerous democratically elected foreign governments, as well as its happily propping up just about any bloody dictatorship, so long as that dictator says he's anti-Communist, what we see here will seem pretty much par for the course. (Except, of course, for the people of the foreign country in question.)

While the use of live-action in tandem with animation proves consistently compelling, Another Day of Life reaches its zenith at the end, as the credits roll and we learn more about Kapuściński, his life and work. The film is, deservedly, a paean meant to honor this man. It thoroughly does.

GKIDS will release the movie -- a Poland/Spain/Germany/Belgium/ Hungary/France co-production running 85 minutes, in English, Portuguese, Polish and Spanish (with English subtitles as needed) -- this Friday, September 13, in New York City (at the IFC Center) and Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Glendale).

Labor and reward: Tamer El Said's IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE CITY and Lucrecia Martel's ZAMA

Two very demanding movies are currently opening in our cultural capitals: Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel's new work, ZAMA, which hit New York City a couple of weeks ago and opens in Los Angeles this week, and Egyptian filmmaker Tamer El Said's debut feature, IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE CITY, which opens in NYC this Friday and then hits L.A. on May 11.

Audiences for art films -- foreign, independent and documentaries in particular -- generally expect demands that are simply not present in

almost any mainstream movie. These two films, however, go far beyond the usual demands.

For starters, it might be a good idea for viewers expecting to see these films to brush up on their history: of Spain and its colonization of South America in the late 1700s (for Zama) and of Egypt and the middle east during the couple of years preceding what is now called Arab Spring and the ongoing Egyptian Crisis (for Last Days...).

Both films simply begin in media res and expect you to quickly center your self and catch up. Lots of movies do this, it's true -- but few give you as little orientation as here. And then there is the problem of each movie's protagonist -- the titular Diego de Zama (played by that fine Spanish actor Daniel Giménez Cacho, above) and Khalid, played by Scotland-born actor Khalid Abdalla, below -- men so oddly passive that the word "off-putting" does not begin to describe their character.

In the Last Days of the City looks like a documentary, but it's fiction, though its characters tend to all have names the same as their actors' given name. Our "hero," Khalid, is a filmmaker slowly working on a movie, and most of his friends seem to be filmmakers, too. We meet them early on, during a movie Q&A. "This is a panel of cinema," one of them notes, "but so far we are only talking politics." As these film-making friends josh and spar, their various homelands, current  residences and political views all surface, and we can't help but wonder, How safe are any of these people?

News flashes from TV referring to Marbarek dot the movie, as do the various women in Khalid's life: his ailing mother, maybe an aunt, and an ex-girlfriend -- with whom he is as passive as with all else. He is currently looking for a new apartment, yet we never get a clue from where his income arrives. Is he independently wealthy? "Watching is not living," our hero is told at one point, and when he notices below his apartment building a man attacking a woman and then films this, you'll want to jam his camera between his teeth.

Who is this guy?:  Does he represent a passive Egyptian populace? No wonder his girlfriend (Laila Samy, above) bails on him. He is a handsome devil, however, and you may notice that, though he never seems to shave, the degree of stubble on his face remain exactly the same throughout the entire movie. Among the other visual delights is maybe the sexiest set of mannequins ever captured on film. First we see them nude, then behind windows covered with newspaper to obscure their naughty parts, and then finally completely hidden via burkas. 

Initially the movie is visually riveting -- so interestingly composed and edited that I was hooked. Along the way, we get some family, some history, some tradition, some religion, some politics, and even an ancient calligrapher.  Slowly, though, In the Last Days of the City (which times out at just over two hours) loses all power and finally most of its interest. When, toward the end, Khalid's very annoyed editor says to him, "I'm fed up. I feel I'm wasting my time!" you may second those sentiments completely. It's one thing to demand a lot of your viewers; it's quite another to finally give them so little in return.

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Ms Martel's Zama, while also demanding, at least pays off some dividends, though not, TrustMovies thinks, as many as have been found in her earlier films. Visually, the movie is often stunning, filled as it is with gorgeous, if often strange landscapes and vistas (there's one shot of soldiers asleep on an either sleeping or dead horse, the likes of which I've never seen). Sometimes phantasmagorical, more often simply strange but real, Martel's movie gives us an inside view of colonialism in which our "hero" -- a medium-level functionary of Spanish power in South America (Paraguay, I think) -- is both a purveyor of colonialism and its victim.

Directed and adapted by Martel (from the novel by Antonio Di Benedetto), the movie is rich in metaphor and symbolism, never more so than in its handling of a near-mythic character named Vicuña Porto, a rebel leader whom we keep hearing is dead or beheaded or "Here are his ears" but instead keeps re-surfacing, alive after all. When we finally meet him, via the very energetic and interesting performance by Matheus Nachtergaele, we begin to understand what all the fuss is about. Even if, as ever, our poor "hero" Zama has no clue.

A coward and a passive weakling, this guy is such a loser. Everyone uses him, and always to Zama's disadvantage -- from the "royal" lady for whom he lusts and pines, to the governor of the province, to the very natives whom he supposedly lords it over. This fellow is the proverbial schmuck. Even if his most appalling line of dialog -- "This noble family has suffered enough" -- will make you want to upchuck, still, what happens to the poor guy is awful indeed. By the finale of this near-two-hour movie, you'll have experienced wonderful visuals, reacted to some awful carnage, and perhaps had your brain and pre-conceptions jogged a little. It was enough for me, but despite the film's subject and wonderfully strange time and location, I would not place this among Martel's best work.

Zama, from Strand Releasing, opens in Los Angeles  this Friday, April 27, at Laemmle's Royal and Playhouse 7. Click here then scroll down to click on Screenings to view all upcoming playdates, cities and theaters.

In the Last Days of the City, from Big World Pictures, opens this Friday, April 27, in New York City at the Museum of Modern Art and on May 4 in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Monica Film Center, and then elsewhere, too. Click here then scroll down to see all upcoming playdates, cities and theaters. The filmmaker, Tamer El Said, will appears in Los Angeles and New York at certain screenings. Consult the individual theaters for date and time.

Modern-day Corsica comes to life (and death) in Thierry de Peretti's dark A VIOLENT LIFE

A VIOLENT LIFE, the new film from actor-turned-director Thierry de Peretti (shown below, who also directed and co-wrote Apaches), is, as was M. de Peretti's previous movie, all about the Mediterranean island of Corsica (located just above Sardinia and pretty much midway between Italy and France) -- a very short history of which is given us via the film's opening title cards.

This history tells us that the island was purchased by France (but not from whom: the Republic of Genoa) in 1768.

While France still owns and "rules" the island today, as a territorial collectivity, Corsica supposedly enjoys greater autonomy than some other French-controlled regions. This remains colonialism nonetheless, and so the island has been plagued or (depending on one's viewpoint) enriched ever since by it own nationalist movements which rise to the surface every so often, encouraged, as the title cards also inform us, by Corsica's young people -- mostly, as we shall see, by its young male population. With a single exception, these young men are heavy-duty macho numbskulls who then grow, as adults, into even more violent and stupid versions of their younger selves.

That "exception" would be the film's hero and main character, a young man named Stéphane (Jean Michelangeli, above), who seems initially intelligent and thoughtful but also clearly in thrall to many of his friends and relatives, younger and older. The movie is filled with conversations, philosophical and political, and while this is interesting enough, it soon begins to seem that for all these Corsicans' efforts toward would-be independence, no one knows what the fuck he (or anybody else involved) is actually doing or achieving.

Part of the problem with the movie is that it will very difficult for most audiences, even as it is for the characters themselves, to know what is going on and why. For whatever reason, the main character seems to be OK with this. (Perhaps he is so used to this being the case that nothing any longer surprises him.)

We watch and listen as the film moves back and forth in time and characters kill and/or are murdered, bombs are planted (some go off, others -- intentionally -- do not), and nothing at all is achieved. One might be forgiven for thinking that perhaps French rule isn't so terrible after all. (And this, from someone who professes to hate colonialism!)

Along the way  subjects are raised that are always worth thinking about -- "moral limits," for instance. And the film's cast of (for TrustMovies, at least) unknown newcomers is, to a man and woman, talented and believable. Toward the end, there a wonderful scene between what my spouse called "The Real Housewives of Corsica," in which the women finally get their chance to spout ideas and beliefs. The result is eye-opening, funny, and almost as disturbing (but not quite) as what we've seen and heard from the men.

Early on, when one character notes, "They'll come down heavy on us!" you may ask yourself, Who the fuck are they? By the end, you are still asking this question because the groups and sub-groups involved in all this seem beyond understanding -- at least in any manner useful to the "cause."

As sad and depressing as A Violent Life is, I'm still glad I saw it -- if only to be able to try to understand (and then fail at it) just a bit more about the Corsican "situation." The movie ends with our hero finally talking to a journalist, insisting that his real name be used, and then accepting the inevitable, whatever might occur. Of course, he and we know very well what this will likely be.

From Distrib Films US and being released to DVD via Icarus Films Home Video, the movie -- in French (and maybe some Corsican dialect) with English subtitles and running 107 minutes, hits the street this coming Tuesday, April 24 -- for purchase or rental.

BFLF nominee, Ciro Guerra's EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT is some kind of masterpiece

Little wonder this new film, EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT -- from Colombia and one of the five nominees for the recent Best Foreign Language Film Oscar-- made the Academy's cut. It's one of those movies you will have seen nothing quite like: A two-hour-plus trip down (or is it up?) the Amazon, with a native guide the likes of which you also will not have encountered, in which the voyage is split into two tours of duty, with two different white explorers but the same Shaman guide. This is because these trips take place maybe 40 or 50 years apart.

As directed and co-written (with Jacques Toulemonde Vidal) by Ciro Guerra , shown at and shot in the kind of black-and-white cinematography (by David Gallego) that will pin your eyes to the enormous beauty on screen and hold them there for the film's full 125-minute running time, this movie moves back and forth between time periods with ease and skill, combining a documentary-like look and feel with so much exotic beauty and the kind of simple, effective storytelling that we don't really get so much of anymore.

Beginning with words from the diary of a German explorer of the Amazon (the film is based on the travel diaries of Theodore Koch Grunberg, 1872-1924, and Richard Evans Schultes, 1915-2001), the film begins as a character named Theodore, near death, is brought by his guide, Manduca (played by Yauenkü Migue), to a native shaman, Karamakate, who is then begged to save the explorer's life.

Karamakate, played as the younger man by the impressively built and quietly charismatic actor, Nilbio Torres, above, is slowly persuaded to help bring Theodore (Jan Bijvoet, below, center) back to life and then further help him to find the famous healing plant called Yakruma.

Their search takes them, along with Manduca, up the famous river with various stops along the way -- one of which brings our crew into New World religion via a Capuchin monk who is converting and then "educating" the pagan natives. During all this we learn more surprises about our threesome, as they try educating these youngsters -- that monk, too -- along the real path of righteousness.

Back in more modern times, we view with increasing alarm that same monastery, and the man who now runs the place, as our other "hero," Evan (Brione Davis, above) and the older version of Karamakate are taken prisoner there and witness -- in fact, contribute to -- some awful goings-on. It is interesting that religion accounts for the most violent parts of the film.

Friendship, exploration and culture clash provide much of the movie's theme, yet its real message -- and yes, it sho 'nuff has one -- is utterly vital to us today. As the film has moved along, we've heard and seen snippets of Colonialism, rubber plantations, torture, and more, and we're told, via the two Karamakates, of a kind of contract with nature, land and water that must not be broken.

Then, in one brief exchange, one native tells the other, "If we cannot get the whites to learn, it will be the end of everything." Well, they haven't learned, and the end is now in sight. Embrace of the Serpent does not hammer home its lesson, though. The finale, in fact, presents on of the most beautiful views of a leopard ever seen on film, as our more modern travelers finally reach their destination, symbolically and geographically.

Evan gets a dose of the drug he's been wanting, has his "trip" (some color is at last shown us, though it was not really necessary), and the lesson has been taught. What will happen after, we can only hope. The movie, a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, may be the most beautiful obituary ever filmed.

Embrace of the Serpent, released via Oscilloscope Laboratories, after opening in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere across the country, will play here in Southern Florida beginning this Friday, March 11, in Miami at the O Cinema, the Miami Beach Cinematheque and the Bill Cosford Cinema (it will also play the Tower Theater in Miami come March 14); and in Hollywood at the Cinema Paradiso. On March 18 it will hit Lake Worth at the Lake Worth Playhouse and Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters. No matter where you live across the country, the movie is likely to show up there. Click here then click SCREENINGS on the bar atop the page to see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities/theaters listed.