Blu-ray/DVDebut -- John Carney's music-themed BEGIN AGAIN: Lightning can indeed strike twice!

When Once hit theaters and then home video back in 2007, it seemed a revelation: a low-keyed movie about music and a relationship that never pushed or manipulated but blossomed then grew into a stunning tale that climaxes with as moving and perfect a finale in all movie history. Yes, I know: that's quite a statement, but WTF, it's true! The film's writer/director, John Carney, made a couple of small films since then that never saw release over here. But now comes BEGIN AGAIN, a much bigger-budget movie that hit theaters this past summer via The Weinstein Company and comes to Blu-ray and DVD this week (with an early digital download window that began last week). And what do you know? Lightning has most definitely struck again.

Mr. Carney, shown at left, is not simply conversant with the music business. He seems to understand well how it works, how new music is produced, and the difference between mega-produced mainstream-attracting music and the kind that appeals to a niche crowd. He also, I suspect, know that there is sometimes a way in which to enlarge that niche to the point that it almost looks a little mainstream. For the purposes of movie-making, he also understands how to create characters we like and root for and make them seem real throughout, whatever else happens along the way.

If Begin Again is a bit brighter, happier and star-filled than Once, it is also every bit as interesting, delightful and enchanting. Though sometimes threatening to go off into la-la-land feel-goodness, it keeps its footing and by the end more than earns our good feelings. The movie pairs a seemingly washed-up and alcoholic music producer (the wonderful Mark Ruffalo, below) and a novice singer/songwriter (Keira Knightley, above, at her loveliest and most persuasive, with a good singing voice, too) and lets them slowly find their way toward what they both want and need.

These two actors, along with the characters they play, hold the movie together beautifully. We care about them and their problems, and Carney has the sense and talent to guide his characters through water just deep enough to douse but not drown them. And Knightley and Ruffalo parse every situation and then perform the necessary moments with grace and intelligence. They keep us tightly with them all the way.

Music-wise, Carney has his duo come up with some wonderfully creative ideas that are not necessarily bound to work. But in our current climate of anything-goes-but-most-of-it-won't, these ideas and the way in which they are given life, are simply good enough (sometime a lot more than that) to make it all seem possible. In supporting roles, Mos Def/Yaslin Bey (above, left) as Ruffalo's business partner and Cee Lo Green (below), left) as a popular musician whose career Ruffalo has helped create, provide good negative/positive ballast to various situations.

Adam Levine (below, right) makes his movie debut here, and he's not bad at all as Knightley's shallow boyfriend on  the cusp of becoming a huge music star.

Ditto James Corden (below, right), who is even better as our babe's best friend by way of Blighty.

In the family area, both Catherine Keener and Haley Steinfeld (below, left) shine as, respectively, Ruffalo's ex-wife and daughter. One of the nice surprises Carney has in store along the way involves the marital history of this particular husband and wife

It's hard to explain just how slowly and well the filmmaker and his cast manage to capture our hearts and minds. But they do, they do. And then there's that music -- which I expect you'll want to hear again, as soon as possible after you've finished watching the movie.

I do have two caveats. One has to do with the scene in which Ruffalo hears Knightley play solo guitar and sing but imagines an entire orchestra joining in. We don't need the goofy look of instruments magically starting up like something out of Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Just the aural sounds would have been enough. Ditto the end credits, during which stupidly feel-good, tie-up-all-the-loose-ends visuals appear to make sure we know everything ends perfectly. (Seems to me that this last one has all the markings of Harvey Weinstein's interference.)

The strong and joyous expression on Ms Knightley's face at the finale is all any intelligent audience needs to feel fine and take away from this wonderful movie. But someone was intent on reaching the dumb audience, too, I guess, thus trying to turn a smart and larger-than-usual niche movie into a possible mainstream bull-dozer. Dumb, indeed.

Begin Again -- via Anchor Bay Entertainment and running 104 minutes.-- makes its Blu-ray/DVDebut tomorrow, October 28. If you missed it in theaters, don't let it get by you now.

With MOEBIUS and its family that practices penectomy, Kim Ki-duk goes uber-transgressive

Penectomy? That's the official term for penis removal. (And, yes, I had to search Google to find out if there was even a word for this.) Now: What filmmaker can you quickly think of who might deal in a subject like this? That's right: South Korea's bad-boy movie-maker, Kim Ki-duk. If you guessed Japan's Sion Sono, who has a new film opening next week, you get at least partial credit. Both filmmakers are transgressive, but it seems to me that in Sono's work, the transgression always fills a deeper perspective, while Kim more often uses the transgressive for its own sake, which can sometimes makes his movies seem to exist only as a means to further push that envelope.

So it is with MOEBIUS, the latest Kim endeavor (the filmmaker is shown at right), in which a straying husband makes his wife so frustrated, jealous and angry that she tries to cut off her hubby's dick  He, of course, is having none of this and so knocks her flat. She then wanders into the room of their teen-age son (who of course just happens to be masturbating, having recently seen his father copulating with his mistress in the family car). Mom's anger rises all over again, and -- whack! -- sonny boy is missing something vital, while bleeding like the proverbial stuck pig.

Yes. I know. This WTF moment is just one of many more to come in a WTF film in which Mr. Kim goes over the top and simply stays there until we're laughing ourselves silly (or gagging on some of the grotesqueries). Still, one has to admire Kim's style. He grabs you and doesn't let go, and in this particular movie, he adds something new. (For him at least. I remember a similar stunt being pulled off in The Thief, a 1952 film I saw and was impressed with as an eleven-year-old kid.)

I am not going to tell you what this special addition -- or actually, a subtraction -- is, because after around 20 minutes, it suddenly hit me what was going on here, and I mentioned it aloud to my spouse, who had not yet noticed its absence. This is due absolutely to Kim's abilities as a filmmaker. So assured is this guy that he can hold you for the entire 89 minutes and not have you object to the missing thing at all.

His cast is also very game, and he gets indelible performances from each of them. As the randy dad, Jo Jae-hyeon (above) proves the picture of infidelity morphing into guilt, while Seo Young-ju as the son (two photos below, and at bottom left), offers plenteous evidence that nuttiness is probably genetic as much as learned. And, as the crazed wife, Lee Eun-woo (below) is, well, memorably bonkers and such a grand rendition of the mother-from-hell that even Joan Crawford might be impressed.

After the initial snipping and bleeding, there comes more. Much more. And then dad's girlfriend gets involved with the family son, and we -- and the male family members -- learn all about new ways to achieve orgasm sans penis but with pain. When mom at last returns to the fold, we're ready for just about anything. And that's what we get.

However, all this does not make Moebius a very good movie. It may be impressive in what it accomplishes transgression-wise, but it is finally a rather empty exercise in hugely deviant behavior that does not edify in any way. (Sion's films somehow manage to do this, but it would take a better critic than I to explain exactly why. With Sion, the transgression is part of a bigger picture; for Kim it's the be-all-and-end-all.)

Kim exults in the deviancy and splatter, the horror and pain, and while he manages to take us places we've never been (with people we're not very likely to meet or know), in the end he just goes a bit more over the top. If that's all you want, look no further. (His most recent narrative film prior to this one, Pieta, while transgressive and shocking, had a lot more to offer.)

Moebius, from RAM Releasing, enjoyed a very brief theatrical run in three cities back in August. It becomes available on DVD this Tuesday, October 28, and if history be any guide, it will probably be streaming via Netflix, soon or eventually.

Icarus Films' ON STRIKE! offer class struggle via shorts by Chris Marker & The Medvedkin Group

Boy, do we need it now. Watching ON STRIKE! -- the new release from Icarus Films composed of two short films (and one audio critique) about the class struggle and consciousness-raising in 1960s France -- we can see how little has changed since then, other than film stock and fashion. Today, we might get sharper images via video but we're not likely to get a more incisive look into working conditions and the tools and tricks management uses to keep its workers in place.


BE SEEING YOU (À bientôt, j'espère) comprises 39 minutes by filmmakers Mario Marret and the fabled Chris Marker that lets us view a few workers and a union organizer as a strike fires up, and we see how young French workers of the day get their political and economic education. "I used to see Communists only as those who didn't attend Mass," notes one fellow. Which, at least, is better than the way we here in the USA have historically seen them.

In an early interview, the filmmaker concentrates on the young husband of the family, and we see the wife hang back, smiling but not speaking. Finally, though, she does speak, and we learn of working life in a textile factory, with its mind-deadening repetition. Which, of course, does pay the rent. As we learn upfront, "the result of a strike is not simply a 3-4% pay raise but the education of young workers discovering the true identity of their struggle." The title -- sweet and ironic -- of this lovely piece comes clear at the end.

In the middle of the two shorts is inserted a most interesting, smart and provocative 13-minute "critique" by filmmakers (and, I am assuming, some of the workers, too) of the film we've just seen. Not everyone is happy with it (though I certainly was). "Why don't workers see themselves truly in the movie?" someone asks. "Because Chris is a romantic. He's looking at them with romanticism." Or maybe not, as others proclaim in this audio recording of discussions that led to the formation of The Medvedkin Group. Utterly French in the manner in which it insists on philosophy being a major part of one's life, this little recording is a fine link between these two documentaries.

The 40-minute CLASS OF STRUGGLE (Classe de lutte) is said to be the outcome of the above discussion group which led to the formation of The Medvedkin Group and to this, one of their films. (Among the 40-50 names of the members that roll out during the credits are Juliet Berto, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker and Joris Ivens.) This film follows the same young woman whom we met in the earlier film (Suzanne Zedet), who now insists on being more politically active. Her husband is clearly not thrilled.

Covering the watchmaking industry in Besançon, Capitalists vs workers, and -- most interestingly -- the idea that culture (books, poetry, even movies, though that last is not actually mentioned by name) is as important as political speeches, Class of Struggle must have raised a few hackles in its day. The documentary ends with the words à suivre (to be continued). Indeed. How little has really changed here, except that we (the USA and Europe) have gone in the opposite direction -- lowering instead of raising consciousness, impeding and destroying our unions at every oppportunity.

The DVD of On Strike! -- from Icarus Films Home Video and running a total of 76 minutes, in black-and-white and with English subtitles and a screen ratio of 4:3 -- became available in early October for sale. And, I would hope, rental or streaming. There should be some way in which we poor hoi polloi can see the wonderful Icarus catalog without having to purchase it outright.

Regarding the latter, Icarus tells me that Class of Struggle is on iTunes now, and will be Amazon VOD soon (the exact date is still in question). The other film in this collection isn’t streaming anywhere yet. More broadly, Icrarus assures me that it does try to put its films on Amazon VOD, iTunes & google play on the same date as the DVD release, technical issues permitting, though there are sometimes exceptions to that rule.

Thanks, Icarus -- that's a boon to us foreign film/political movie/anti-Capitalist viewers!

Blu-ray/DVDebut: James Franco & Kate Hudson in Henrik Ruben Genz's thriller, GOOD PEOPLE

You might imagine that the combination of housing, home construction, the economic downturn, fertility, morality, robbery and murder would make for a fairly heady stew. Add to this an internation-al cast of Brits, Americans, Scandinavians and France's Omar Sy (of The Intouchables), all helmed by Danish director Henrik Ruben Genz (of Terribly Happy), with a screenplay adapted from Marcus Sakey's novel by Kelly Masterson (the Snowpiercer scribe), and you might think, "Wow." Or at least "semi-wow." Maybe this is just too much of a good thing, as GOOD PEOPLE (yes, this is a very ironic title) comes off as both a little too predictable and a lot unbelievable, though it does provide some genuine excitement and dumb fun along the way.

The filmmaker, shown at right, is adept at his action scenes, which begin and end the film, and he draws OK performances from his starry international cast. But Masterson's screenplay piles far too many charac-ters and events into too little time, and thus the plotting feels rushed and too pre-ordained for belief. That said, the movie begins with a knockout scene of drugs-for-money robbery and betrayal, which should have you glued to the screen and waiting for more. But then the actual plot and main characters -- played by James Franco and Kate Hudson -- kick into action and the movie begins immediately to stall.

This is less due to the OK work of the two stars (shown above, in fear, and below, with money) and their co-stars than to a screenplay that gives them so many problems that seem so insoluble that we want to run for cover. But of course we know that, if movie history be our guide, things will all come out for the best.

Money might solve our main couple's woes, but not that of the police inspector on the case (Tom Wilkinson) who suffers from guilt regarding the death of his daughter due to the same drug lord who is now on Franco/Hudson's case.

Toss in Anna Friel who plays a single mom with little baby in tow (guess who is going to be used as kidnap bait?), some scenes of torture-to-obtain-information (one of these is shown above), and the very cinematic M. Sy (below) and you've got a lot on your plate. If there were only some way to make it all coalesce believably.

The prolonged (but I must admit quite exciting) finale puts that home construction theme to interesting use, and adds to the violence on display (Mr. Franco gets beaten to a pulp in the course of things -- this happens so frequently on film to the poor guy that I am guessing it must now be an ironclad clause in the contract he signs for each new movie).

And that's about it. After a very brief theatrical foray, Good People -- from Millennium Entertainment and running 91 minutes -- makes its Blu-ray and DVD debut this coming Tuesday, October 28, for sale and rental.

The Andrews' (Lau and Loo) ode to Chinatown gangs, REVENGE OF THE GREEN DRAGONS

Crazily piling into 94 minutes what ought to have been a multi-chapter saga for maybe cable television (or at the very least a two-and-one-half-to-three hour epic movie, REVENGE OF THE GREEN DRAGONS tells the story of two inseparable Chinese immigrant friends, who, in young boyhood -- via the kidnapping of one, followed by the forced recruitment of the other -- grow up to become gang members of the notorious Green Dragons of New York City's Chinatown back in the down-and-dirty (and bloody) 1980s.

Full of action, nasty deeds and enough subsidiary characters to choke one of those Chinese celebratory dragons, the movie certainly does not drag, but by telescoping so many events and introducing so many characters only to have most of them disappear quickly enough to immediately forget, the movie -- co-directed by Andrew Lau (left) and Andrew Loo (right), shown flanking the film's most famous executive producer, Martin Scorsese  and co-written by Loo and Michael Di Jiacomo -- becomes little more than a serviceable action thriller with a slightly exotic Chinatown millieu.

The screenplay is also just serviceable with little memoranble in it save the revved-up action and gore, nastiness and betrayal, and some particularly weary cyncism. If any or all of this had been better fleshed out (and there is nothing to suggest that the writers and directors would not have been up to this task), we might have had a memorable story, well told.

As it is, we have some interesting characters -- the two boys, together with their young men selves (Justin Chon and Kevin Wu, the latter shown at right, two photos above); the young and classy criminal kingpin (Harry Shum Jr.,.just above); and his number one woman-in-charge (a really frightening and excellent Eugenia Yuan, below) -- who hold the screen for this short time and then disappear into the miasma of all the other movies of this particular genre.

As I say, there's plenty of action here, much of it murderous and ugly; the noise-level alone should preclude your dozing off. But by the finale, when the ultimate cynicism unfolds, I suspect you'll be a bit annoyed at the whole been-there/done-that sensibility at work. Which might have been avoided by telling this story in something closer to its full detail. (Yes, that's Ray Liotta -- center, below -- as a casually racist but relatively effective NYC detective.)

From A24 and running a sleek 94 minutes, Revenge of the Green Dragons opens today in New York City at the Village East Cinema and in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Noho 7.
  

Swedish Oscar Bait, 2014: Ruben Östlund's crystalline and unsettling FORCE MAJEURE

One of the most interesting films of this past year and, in its way, one of the most daring explorations of "manhood" and its discontents, FORCE MAJEURE, the new Swedish film from Ruben Östlund (as well as that country's submission for this year's Best Foreign Language Film), is a brilliantly conceived look at the male imperative as seen from inside and out, subjectively, objectively, and just about every which way.

And yet, blissfully for the inveterate moviegoer, Östlund's film (the moviemaker is shown at right) is never didactic; it shows rather than tells, and neither is it judgmental. It allows us to really watch and consider and be pushed and pulled back and forth as we identify with husband, wife, friends and children, even hotel employees -- as we try to come to terms with what has happened and what this means. Is what happened a "deal-breaker," or is the behavior that follows the event what matters more? Can anything -- after this kind of moment occurs -- count at all?

The central event takes place early on, and if you've seen the not-very-good film by Julia Loktev, The Loneliest Planet, you'll know what that events entails. Loktev's movie failed because of its refusal to explore, not just the event itself, but even simple characterization of those involved in it. Force Majeure explores it all, even as it entertains us spectacularly well by being intelligent, specific, encompassing and even quite a bit of fun.

I'd rather not give away details here; you deserve to discover and ponder them for yourself. Suffice it to say that the film's husband (a sterling job from Johannes Kuhnke, above, left) while on a family vacation at a resort in the French Alps, does something pivotal about which he must come to terms if he is to save his marriage and most probably himself.

How he does this -- with the help (and sometime hindrance) of wife, friends, kids -- is the meat of Force Majeure, and it makes a tasty, nourishing meal. Writer/director Östlund has a way with both words and pictures, keeping us spellbound and off-kilter from his first scene (above) -- in which a photographer at the resort in which the family is staying takes photo after photo of our crew -- to the final moments in which we see characters simply walking. But, oh, what energy is felt here!

The character of the wife slowly comes to the fore as the movie unfurls, and Lisa Loven Kongsli (above, left) does a crack job of deciphering her, while allowing us to gradually understand the woman. Male and female "roles" are explored here about as well as I've seen done in decades of film-going.

Subsidiary roles are performed beautifully, too, especially dad's best friend, played by Kristofer Hivju (above) and his a-bit-too-young girlfriend (Fanni Metelius). In a relatively (considering the events here) easy-going, believable manner, our current and rather long-standing ideas about manhood are held up to view and possibly challenged. But the filmmaker doesn't unduly push us in any direction, which is one of the beauties of this movie.

The conclusion(s) audiences will themselves arrive at may differ, but I doubt there will be be much disagreement regarding the strengths of Force Majeure -- which is one, major, satisfying movie. From Magnolia Pictures and running 118 minutes, it opens today, Friday, October 24, in New York City at the Angelika Film Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinema. The following Friday, October 31, it hits another dozen cities (in L.A., it plays at several Laemmle theaters), and will continue its nationwide opening in cities across the country in the weeks and months to come. Click here to all currently scheduled playdates.

With sad,sweet,funny swan song LIFE OF RILEY we wave good-bye to a French new-waver

Watching Alain Resnais' newest -- and final -- film, LIFE OF RILEY can't help but be a sad experience for those of us who loved the guy's work, even if, for me at least, it took some decades to fully appreciate that work. Memory is one of this fabled French filmmaker's major themes, and I don't think that memory -- for young people, anyway -- has quite the major place in one's life that it occupies in later years. Resnais was also an experimental filmmaker right up until the end. Yet his experiments were always coupled to narrative in a way that, with some extra work, of course, one could begin to fathom meaning, while appreciating the style.

The filmmaker, shown at right, died earlier this year, and it is difficult to watch Life of Riley (Aimer, boire et chanter is the original French title) -- based, as several of his films have been, on the the work of British playwright Alan Ayckbourn -- without imagining that Resnais knew quite well during the filming how little time he had left. I suspect his widow, Sabine Azéma, (pictured below, right), who is also one of the stars of the movie, would know for certain. The rest of us will just have to watch and wonder and enjoy. That last action, for Resnais fans, at least, will not be difficult, for he has given the movie a wonderfully "fake" look that combines gorgeous shots of the countryside and expensive estates with very obvious stage sets, and then occasionally places his actors in close-up against hand-drawn backgrounds that bring to mind comic book art.

Even if you've seen the rest of Resnais' work, you won't have experienced anything quite like this. The story itself is a hoot and a half about death and dying. The title character George Riley has been told by his doctor and friend (Hippolyte Girardot, below, left) that he has little time left to live.

Not only the doctor's wife (Ms Azema) but her best friend (the standout performer, Caroline Sihol, at left, two photos above and just below; with Michel Vuillermoz) are both former flames of Riley and of course are bereft by this news.

As is Riley's most recent love (Sandrine Kiberlain, below, left) who has recently split from George into the arms of a nearby French farmer (André Dussollier, below, right). The women are beside themselves, each desperately needing to see herself as George's one true love, while their men are at sea due to their women's sudden surge of independence and possible infidelity. Oh, and did I mention that some of these characters are simultaneously rehearsing a play which is due to be performed very soon.

Now, this is utter artifice -- on one level as silly as can be -- and I suspect that the original.Ayckbourn play was much funnier that what we see here. Yet out of it, Resnais manages to show up humanity's lack and hypocrisy in a way that is more sad than funny. And the film's final scene, in which we at last see a character other than our ever-present sextet, is most unusual. In it, the daughter of one of the couples, played by Alba Gaïa Kraghede Bellugi, makes an appearance and somehow takes the movie into a deeper, darker contemplation of death's inevitability and finality.

If Life of Riley is nowhere near as interesting or layered a film as Resnai' most recent endeavors, Wild Grass and You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet, it is still a film to be seen and savored -- for its performances, style and the fact that, having to work on what seems to have been less and less of a budget, the filmmaker nonetheless found a way to make his film so affordably and stylishly.

M. Resnais' final work -- from Kino Lorber and running 108 minutes -- opens in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema tomorrow, Friday, October 24. Elsewhere? Shocking as this may seem, no Los Angeles showing is yet scheduled. But the film will play at the Cinema St. Louis as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival on November 20 and 22, and then on December 5, it will play at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (unless, of course, Scott Walker wins his race for Governor once again and closes the school down).