Chinese noir about trust, truth and reward money: Diao Yinan's THE WILD GOOSE LAKE

Beginning with a look at the youthful criminal underworld of China (as it learns how to steal motorcycles), against a backdrop of the country's venal and stupid over-development of the housing market (one scene even takes place against a mural of a would-be new community gone bust), THE WILD GOOSE LAKE proves a consistently fascinating trip along the underbelly of the nation that has given us, among other things, Chairman Mao and the Corona Virus. As you might imagine, it ain't a pretty sight. It'll easily hold your attention, however.

The writer/director here is Diao Yinan (shown at right), who co-wrote the sweet, funny, moving Shower some 21 years ago. You could hardly ask for a more different movie -- in tone, genre, attitude and maturity -- than this new one, which you might call all about theft, drugs and rock-'n-roll (without much of the rock-'n-roll, though there is an oddball group dance number midway along).

One character here makes reference to "the Olympic Games of Theft," and while the theft is not up to that level, it certainly is an interesting example because, for quite awhile, we're not even certain what is being stolen let alone how and why. When we find out, the answer is pretty damned dark -- as befits a good neo-noir, which The Wild Goose Lake certainly is.

The film's style is to pile on flashback after flashback, sometimes within each other. Yet thanks to the filmmaker's smart sense of how to track time, place and event, he allows his audience to keep up surprisingly easily. Its main characters are the mid-level criminal, Zhou, played by Hu Ge, who is, as his name might suggest, a huge attraction in China. He's gorgeous, sexy, charismatic and not especially versatile, given that he offers up a variety of one and one-half expressions during the entire film. Never mind: he gets the job done.

After a surprise beheading of a young associate, Zhou (accidentally, he says) kills a cop and spends the remainder of the film being hunted down, even as he tries to re-bond with his woman Shujun (the delicate Wan Qian, above), while staying out of the clutches of the new girl in town (Gwei Lun-mei, below), the motives of whom remain ever just-out-of-reach.

Add to this a passel of lesser (or maybe greater) criminals also intent on getting the prize (which only slowly reveals itself) that Zhou holds, including some cops only marginally less corrupt than our criminals, led by a Captain (Liao Fan, below) who may be a tad less venal than the rest of his crew.

The movie boasts one big action scene toward the beginning (below), and not really another until the climax, at which point the most ruthless perpetrator is finally revealed. However, that final action scene is so dense, bloody and brutal that it should knock you into submission, as well as knock your socks off. (It boasts the most original dual use of an umbrella that I can recall, and this is not merely as a weapon.)

By the denouement, The Wild Goose Lake finally offers its first glimmer of hope amidst near-total negativity. Up to then its portrait of low-end Chinese society is utterly damning. Trust is mentioned more than once in the movie, yet few we see deserve it. Ah, China -- the other equally hypocritical superpower, as Communism tries to go Capitalist! Good luck with that.

From Film Movement, running 111 minutes, and in Chinese with English subtitles, the movie opens tomorrow, Friday, March 6, in New York City at Film Forum, followed by a Los Angeles run at several Laemmle theaters and at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown, beginning March 13. Here in Boca Raton, it will not open until April 17 at our Living Room Theaters. To view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, click here and scroll down.  

Gillian Robespierre's sophomore effort, LANDLINE, hits South Florida theaters

Well, its credentials as a piece of American Independent Cinema are certainly flawless: actors the likes of John Turturro, Edie Falco and Jay Duplass, along with newer members such as Abby Quinn and Jenny Slate, the latter of whom director/co-writer Gillian Robespierre collaborated with a few years back on the funny, original and much better indie movie, Obvious Child. Their newest collaboration, LANDLINE, though it boasts a number of lovely moments and scenes, doesn't fare nearly as well overall.

Set in 1995, the movie opens on Labor Day, with some awfully laborious (and, yes, funny) sex taking place on screen. Ms Robespierre, shown at left, together with her co-writers Elizabeth Holm and Tom Bean, have fashioned a movie about family set back some 22 years, at a time when technology, computers, the internet (but not yet cell phones) were beginning to control our lives. This will initially make the movie a nice nostalgia trip for some of us. (Benihana, the restaurant most seen in the film, was also perhaps a bit more newsworthy then.)

The themes here, in addition to the perennially popular one of "family," are those of intimacy, fidelity, trust and betrayal -- and how important these actually are (or maybe aren't) to a successful, long-term relationship. All good -- if nothing we haven't encountered at the movies many times before.

When the family's younger daughter (Quinn, above right) discovers -- a little too easily, it seemed to me -- what looks like an affair their dad (Turturro, at right, two photos above) is having with another woman, she eventually apprises older sibling (Slate, above, left) of the goings-on.

They keep mom (Falco, above, center) out of it while they (sort of) investigate matters, even as the older daughter, though engaged to a nice fellow named Ben (Duplass, in bathtub below), nonetheless falls into an her own affair with an old friend she has recently encountered at a party (Finn Wittrock, at left in photo at bottom).

That's about it -- except that the chickens, as they say, do come home to roost. (Oh, there's a little drug-dealing here, too.) The problem is that nothing we see or hear is all that incisive, interesting, funny or moving. (It's certainly not original, either.) Performances are as good as can be, given the material, and the movie is never unwatchable. But we keep waiting for it to take off. Instead it stays firmly grounded until it finally rolls into its predetermined destination.

From Amazon Studios and running a little too long even at 97 minutes, Landline, after hitting the major cultural centers a week or so back, opens here in South Florida tomorrow, Friday, July 28, in the Miami areas at AMC's Aventura 24 and Sunset Place 24, Regal's South Beach 18 and the O Cinema Wynwood. The following Friday, August 4, it expands to Fort Lauderdale, the Palm Beach and Boca Raton areas at The Classic Gateway Theatre, Regal's Royal Palm Beach 18 and Shadowood 16, the Living Room Theater, and the Cinemark Palace 20. Wherever you live across the country, just click here to find a theater near you.

VOD debut: Present-day politics fuel Nicolas Pariser's political thriller, THE GREAT GAME

Filled with fairly interesting political scheming, lots of philosophizing (of course: It's French!) but damned few thrills, the new would-be political thriller, THE GREAT GAME (Le grand jeu) certainly boasts a first-class cast doing its best with second-rate material. Writer/director Nicolas Pariser (shown below) appears to be trying for something slow-burning and even elegant but instead comes up with merely slow and occasionally sloppy. "What's going on here and who is really pulling the strings?" are the most-asked questions as the story unfurls.

Eventually, however, you are more likely to decide, "What the hell: I don't care." Oh, there are some surprises along the way, and one would-be lulu at the very end. But so what? When the outcome is clearly predicated on the by-now rather tiresome (if true) idea that we can never really know what side people are on nor their motive for being there and consequently we must trust no one, our response is likely to be simply a shrug. Couple this to a filmic style that mistakes turtle-like pacing for sophistication, and you have the recipe for a great big yawn.

That fine, if wasted, cast includes leading man Melville Poupard (above) slipping ever more sexily and casually into middle age, and that grand old man of French cinema, André Dussollier (below, right), who once again proves expert at making us imagine we're onto something major when, in fact, his role turns out to be more minor than we'd have liked.

In the distaff side, we have two fine actresses: Sophie Cattani (of I'm Glad My Mother Is Alive), as the Poupard character's still-friendly ex, who brings wonderful immediacy and specificity to her role, and Clémence Poésy (below), as the new love interest that wife introduces to her ex.

The political philosophizing may be pertinent but it's not particularly succulent nor original -- action vs inaction, the past vs the present -- while the filmmaker fudges so many details in his attempt to make things mysterious that there is very few specifics onto which we can lay hold. Motive, in particular, has little place or weight.

All this makes the movie pretty disappointing, but at least it offers a relatively short running time (99 minutes). From Distrib Films US, The Great Game hits all major VOD platforms in the United States -- including iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Comcast, Charter, and Vudu -- this coming Tuesday, February 14. I would not, however, call it much of a choice for Valentine's Day.

This year's WTF doc arrives: Maíra Bühler & Matias Mariani's I TOUCHED ALL YOUR STUFF

Or is this film actually a cleverly put-together narrative posing as a documentary? TrustMovies went into I TOUCHED ALL YOUR STUFF having paid little attention to the press release (these sometimes give away the store) and so imagined that it was indeed a new doc. But after watching the 90-odd (increasingly odd) minutes, if you told me almost any crazy thing about this movie, I'd have to consider it as at least a possibility. It's that bizarre.

There is probably an entirely other movie to be made about how the two filmmakers -- Maíra Bühler and Matias Mariani, shown above -- came into contact with their prime subject and managed to put this wayward and way-weird movie together (I think they'd call it "The Making of I Touched All Your Stuff"). But what we have here seems to be a "true" shaggy dog story all about immense injustice (to whom and because of what actually changes during the course of the storytelling), a naive dweeb, a mystery woman, Pinocchio, and the hippopotami of Colombian drug lord, Juan Carlos Ortiz Escobar. And that's just for starters.

As the movie progresses (if that's quite the right word) via talking-head interviews, especially with our "hero," one Christopher Kirk (shown at top and above), who appears to be... in prison, along with re-creations, computer files, travel footage and especially Mr. Kirk's constant narration, it takes at least a half hour for us to figure out that we're maybe seeing the all-time dumbest sucker-in-love (above) coupled to the most over-the-top femme fatale (below) in movie history. What a combo! But wait.

The movie moves along via chapter headings that seem alternately funny and weird (not unlike the movie itself). For a time we imagine we're getting a dose of culture clash of a very unsettling order. Then suddenly we're in Lapeer, Michigan (below), visiting the all-American family of our strange hero. All told, we bounce around from Columbia to Brazil to Washington State, California, Michigan and back again.

Among the things we learn from this educational movie is that when the lover muses about his beloved, "Maybe there's a one per cent chance that this could work," he is in big trouble. We also learn not to trust anyone whose password is "mentir" (that's Spanish for "to lie"). Or maybe the lesson here is not to trust anyone at all. Talk about your unreliable narrators!

The documentary that I Touched All Your Stuff most reminded me of is that early be-careful-of-the-Internet demonstration, Catflish, which was more "of its specific time." Love and trust stories are generally timeless, though this one does make use of our current fascination with technology and hacking.

In any case, the doc/narrative/whatever proves non-stop fun that should leave you in the relatively healthy state of questioning just about everything you see and/or hear. From Cinema Slate and running 92 minutes, the movie opens at the following theaters on the dates shown below:

August 28, 2015 – New York City (Cinema Village) 

August 28, 2015 – Los Angeles, CA (Arena Cinema) 

September 4, 2015 – Columbus, OH (Gateway Film Center) 

September 4, 2015 – Chicago, IL (Facets Cinemateque) 

with more playdates, we're told, coming soon. 

Click here for further information,

James Franco and Jonah Hill shine in Rupert Goold's deceptive and disturbing TRUE STORY

James Franco and Jonah Hill are hardly neophytes where the question of celebrity, notoriety and identity are concerned. Both these actors (along with several others) handled these subjects with fine comic flair in This Is The End (Mr. Franco explores this slate in almost every movie he acts in or directs), and now they're back at it in a deadly serious, deeply disturbing film called TRUE STORY -- based on, yes, exactly that. As written and directed by relative newcomer Rupert Goold, the result is one of the most quiet and creepily effective tales of murder, identity, sanity, celebrity and justice that you will have seen. What is most disturbing here is that the filmmaker and his cast, together with the story itself, offer us no easy out regarding what happened and why. We know, but what we know only makes everything all the more obscure and somehow frightening.

Mr. Goold, shown at right, comes from the British stage and television, where he directed and adapted (for the latter's Hollow Crown series) Shakespeare's Richard II, in which Ben Whishaw gave perhaps the definitive performance so far of that shallow, sad, confused and finally radiant monarch. From there, Goold seems to have gone directly to this filmed project, on which his work is exemplary.

As is that of Misters Franco and Hill. These two actors jive so well together that it seems their ability to play comedy is equalled, even bettered, by their skill at realistic, moment-to-moment drama in which we hang on every subtle expres-sion, every murmured word.

The story is that of yet another journalist, in this case a fellow named Michael Finkel (played by Hill, below), who was caught falsifying one of his stories written for The New York Times and then summarily fired from the newspaper. Around the same time, Christian Longo (Franco, shown at left), a fellow on the run and suspected of killing his wife and children, used Finkel's name as an alias and for a short time posed as the journalist.

How these two meet, agree to work with/use each other, and eventually become, well, "close," makes up the meat of the movie, and a stranger, more disturbing meal you're not likely to have digested. This is one hell of an unsettling tale.

Much of the reason for the film's ability to disconcert us is that, as it moves quietly along, so much of the facts -- about the cases of both men -- remain in question. Finkel's guilt can somewhat be attributed to his trying so hard to cover an important story, while in Longo's case -- his guilt, as well as what really happened -- seems very possibly to be up for grabs.

Can we believe what we see and hear? Is identity as slippery as it appears here? In the instance of Mr. Franco and his supremely subtle and unnerving performance, this is all important.

Mr. Goold does a superb job of keeping us off balance and even rooting, at times, for both men. And the actors themselves do a masterful job, particularly Mr. Franco, of making us question what initially passes for an open-and-shut case. The more we learn, the odder things become. Franco uses his easy ability to charm, while remaining inscrutable, to keep us ever off-balance

This is mostly a "men" movie: The women's roles -- though acted by excellent performers like Felicity Jones (above) as Finkel's wife and Gretchen Mol as his boss at The New York Times -- are but cursory. It's that relationship between the two men, and theirs to the world outside, that counts for all.

True Story also brings to the fore ideas about character, the meaning of insanity, and the question of if and how a man -- who has lead a fairly standard and relatively decent life up until the "event" -- can simply go full-throttle crazy. Was the seed of insanity always present? Is it in each of us? If so, what might it take to call it into being?

The ironies present here are huge and plenty, but the movie never stops to underscore them. They simply keep popping out from the events and characters. By the finale -- and right through into the end credits that explain what followed -- you will question everything from journalism to friendship, truth and what it means to be criminally insane. In fact, the most ironic thing about True Story is probably its title.

From Fox Searchlight and running 100 riveting minutes, the movie opens this Friday in New York City (in half a dozen theaters), and probably elsewhere, too. As I post this, however, the Fox Searchlight web site for the film is not particularly helpful in indicating where else across the country it will be playing.

Here's an odd one, just making its DVDebut: PLATO'S REALITY MACHINE via Myles Sorensen

New filmmakers get points for simply trying something new, even if things don't pan out quite as well as they might have preferred. Or maybe, I should say, as some of us viewers might have preferred. First-time full-length filmmaker Myles Sorensen has his movie opening theatrically this week, and it's an interesting mix of animation (in the form of a video game), live-action narrative and occasional "interviews" with the characters we're watching. The film is titled PLATO'S REALITY MACHINE and although it doesn't quite work overall, it is certainly watchable and sometimes, thanks to the actors on view, even more than that.

What is actually going on in the movie is initially up for grabs, as we're thrust into some futuristic animation (shown below) in which our hero is given a task to perform, along with the order, Don't Trust Anyone. Mr. Sorensen (pictured at left), who wrote and directed the film, offers up a good rendition of a video game (via his animator James Martin), in which our hero joins up with a young woman he has just freed from prison in order to get the bad guys.

Later we see one of his half-dozen actors, the cute and talented Doug Roland, below, whom we just saw recently in Wet Behind the Ears, actually playing that video game. Those "interviews," in which the characters tell us something about themselves and their lives, alternate with scenes of hook-ups (or would-be hook-ups) in which our six lead characters (this is definitely an ensemble piece) attempt to form some sort of connection with the opposite sex.

This is not easy, given the kind of characters we have here. The men all seem to follow that initial Trust no one dictum, while the women are of the needy variety whose method is either to immediately embrace and capture her man via feminine wiles that include good sex and better cooking, or keep him forever off-balance and confused. Neither works very well.

So what we have here in a movie about male/female relationships and trust -- put together in a weird but not impossible-to-master puzzle. That the men have "trust" issues -- inspired no doubt by that video game, which like so many video games, has its share of misogyny -- is no surprise.

The manner in which the scenes alternate is interesting for awhile, but this would have been more so were the characters and situations better imagined and written. The acting is fine, but there is not enough ammunition given the actors for them -- or the movie -- to really score.

Also, that video game is simply abandoned around halfway along. It returns for a moment or two at the film's conclusion, as if to remind us that it was there earlier. The good cast also includes Carolina Bartczak, Trieste Kelly Dunn (above and below) and Heather Shisler in the leading female roles, and Ed Renninger (above, right) and Nathan Spiteri (below, right), along with the aforementioned Mr. Roland.

Plato's Reality Machine, running a relatively fast 79 minutes, opens this Friday exclusively in Los Angeles at the little Arena Cinema in Hollywood. It hit nationwide VOD last week, so you can probably catch it in your own territory. And if you want to stream it instantly, just click here.

A fantasy documentary? Matthew Bauckman and Jaret Belliveau's KUNG FU ELLIOT qualifies

Some documentaries seem utterly fueled by the necessity to be born, to take shape, to... appear! Some of the best docs that TrustMovies has seen this year -- Code Black and The Internet's Own Boy, as well as the about-to-open 20,000 Days on Earth and Art and Craft certainly qualify for that description. They -- and their subjects -- are either so strange, important, vital or necessary that it would seem they simply must see the light of day. And so they have. On the other hand comes along a "maybe" documentary such as KUNG-FU ELLIOT, with a subject (that guy of the title) so unbelievable, if kind of creepy and phony that, you wonder, after a time, if you are not seeing another faux/mock piece of work like Exit Through the Gift Shop -- but without even half the smarts and appeal that Banksy brought to that little film.

As directed and "written" by a couple of Canadians -- Matthew Bauckman (at right) and Jaret Belliveau (below) -- who've worked on a number of other films, Kung Fu Elliot is one of those how-dumb-can-people-come? documentaries that beggars belief almost from the first scene, as we meet a fellow named Elliot "White Lightning" Scott who is supposedly a champion Canadian martial artist. While his martial arts moves couldn't fool even my grandkids into believing he's anything like "the real thing," our two documentarians appear to believe the guy or

at least take his word on faith. After a short while, the viewer can't help but wonder why. Is this a case of making fun of one's subject for the entertainment of the arthouse/doc film masses (not all that numerous in any case)? Or are our two Canuck moviemakers actually dumb enough that they believe Elliot? (I am told my the movie's publicist that they are definitely not.) Either way, an intelligent viewer is going to be given almost immediate pause. Yes, Elliot is kind of fun in his fairly stupid, can-anyone-be-this-dumb? manner, but we've already seen this semi-cynical stuff a number of times previously, and it doesn't take long before our laughter rings a little hollow.

Sure, Elliot, above, has a kind of reverse charisma with his so-so body, semi-attractive face and minimal understanding of martial arts. But the deeper we and the moviemakers get into the guy's "plan" -- to make a DIY martial arts thriller called Blood Fight that will set him on a course to become Canada's first movie action hero -- the less possible it all seems. While one can draw some cheap humor from this by laughing at folk not smart enough to realize their weakness, one can also begin to feel "used."

Meeting his girlfriend Linda (above), a lady who has a sour puss for the entire length of the movie (it only grows more sour, for good reason, as the months pass), and his seemingly duped co-actors, one of whom is shown below, only adds to the questionable "fun."

When, at last, the movie turns darker, wise heads will be murmuring, "Finally!", as we move into the home stretch. Once the film has arrived at its conclusion, with the expected update on what happened to the various folk we've just seen, a number of ideas will be jostling for space and importance inside your head, self-delusion chief among these.

Except there may be no self-delusion here at all. Elliot has known all along of what he's is and is not capable. Note the scene when we see him clad in just a pair of tight underwear, as he adjusts his cock and preens a bit. Later he notes that he's got the equipment to do porn films but maybe just not the interest.

There may indeed be some surprises here, but not, I think, for the seasoned film-goer. What has remained on the filmmakers' cutting-room floor may be even more interesting that what we have already seen, and it is difficult to believe that Messieurs Bauckman and Belliveau were not unaware of what kind of fellow they had in tow from pretty early on in the game. While it is eventually clear that we cannot trust our Elliot, I unfortunately have some doubt about trusting these filmmakers, too.

Kung Fu Elliot, a kind of fantasy documentary that runs 88 minutes, has been playing the festival circuit for the past year or so, and will soon play at the soon-to-begin Fantastic Fest, so take note, those of you in the Austin, Texas, area. Next comes the Raindance fest in London. To see where else this film will play (or has played), simply click here and scroll down.