Long Day’s Journey Into Night

The more that things change, the more that they decay.

(2018) Mystery (Kino-Lorber) Wei Tang, Jue Huang, Sylvia Chang, Hong-Chi Lee, Yongzhong Chen, Feiyang Luo, Meihuaizi Zeng, Chun-hao Tuan, Yanmin Bi, Lixun Xie, Xi Qi, Ming Dow, Zezhi Long, Jian Jun Ding, Kailong Jiang, Kai Liang, Chuanren Lin, Xizhen Liu, Tongfu Long, Zhonglan Luo, Zhengfu Meng, Hongyue Pan. Directed by Gan Bi

 

Funny thing about dreams; they’re often more real to us than what we perceive as reality. Dreams reveal our true selves – the good, the bad and the ugly. Dreams can be beautiful, but dreams reveal the lives we wish we had led.

Luo Hongwu (Huang) is returning to the Southwestern China town of Kaili which he had lived in much earlier days of his life. He has returned there after the death of his father, the ne’er-do-well gambler nicknamed Wildcat (Lee). Luo finds a photo of a woman (Tang) hidden in a broken clock and vaguely remembers a relationship with someone who looked like her – and her name might have been Wan Qiwen. He goes in search of the woman.

Along the way he interacts with a rogue’s gallery of oddball characters from a crusty hairdresser (Chang), a precocious 12-year-old boy who lives in an abandoned mine, and assorted pimps, thieves, hookers, thugs and cops. Luo finds himself in a movie theater and sits back to watch the movie in 3D, putting on his 3D glasses. That’s when dreams become reality, and vice versa.

If you think I’m being deliberately vague about the plot, you’re not wrong. The thing is that this is something of a stream-of-consciousness film which has a kind of dream logic to it in which the laws of physics might just be suggestions. Director Gan Bi hit the critical radar in 2015 with his debut feature Kaili Blues which contained a single 40-minute tracking shot. He outdoes himself here with one that lasts close to an hour – in 3D yet – that takes up the entire second half of the film. It is a magnificent technical achievement but in the immortal words of Ian Malcolm (as spoken by the equally immortal Jeff Goldblum) he was so busy figuring out if he could he didn’t stop to think whether he should.

Bi is a visual wizard and the shots are so thoughtfully framed, so beautifully lit and the production design so exquisite that you realize that he’s heavily influenced by the great Chinese director Kar-Wei Wong. It’s a beautiful movie to watch and if you’re tempted to avoid reading the subtitles altogether and just let yourself float among the images, I wouldn’t blame you. In fact, I think that’s a good way to approach this movie because the dialogue is absolutely superfluous.

Movies in many respects are dreams given form and I don’t know about you but some of my dreams would make shitty movies. This is a long (nearly two and a half hours), slowly paced and often confusing film that, like a dog trying to settle down in its bed for a nap often turns round and round on itself before settling down, only to get up again and do the same thing all over again. In that respect this isn’t a movie for everybody except the most esoteric and avant garde of filmgoers. Mainstream audiences aren’t going to like this very much.

There is a very Noir tone to the film which is welcome; it is set in a city where the rainfall is constant, like Seattle on steroids. As a result, there is a sense of decay and entropy to the surroundings where water is wont to break through walls and create nifty little waterfalls. Most of the characters smoke like chimneys and not just because everyone in China seems to be a chain-smoker but because smoke and water go together as motifs. Incidentally, despite the title there is no connection here that I could see with the classic Eugene O’Neill play.

This should be approached as fine art; very subject to interpretation. The story isn’t the important thing which is something that will have most mainstream moviegoers headed for the exits. What matters here is the tone, the vision, the feeling and the thoughts provoked, but don’t say we didn’t war you about the whole art thing.

For readers in Miami the movie is currently playing this week at the Cinematheque before taking up residence at the AMC Sunset Place. Keep an eye for the visual cues as to when to put on your 3D glasses; there’s a brief graphic informing the audience to put on their glasses when you see the main character put on his.

REASONS TO SEE: The shot composition is outstanding. There is a definite Noir feel to the film.
REASONS TO AVOID: It’s a bit of a slog, figuratively and literally.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a good deal of sensuality and a crazy amount of smoking.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Chinese moviegoers felt misled by the marketing campaign which billed the film as a Noir mystery and less as an art house experience leading to a good deal of Internet backlash.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/30/19: Rotten Tomatoes: 93% positive reviews: Metacritic: 88/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Into the Void
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Postal (2019)

My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009)

Candy is dandy.

(2009) Horror (Lionsgate) Jensen Ackles, Jaime King, Kerr Smith, Betsey Rue, Edi Gathegi, Tom Atkins, Kevin Tighe, Megan Boone, Karen Baum, Joy de la Paz, Marc Macaulay, Todd Farmer, Jeff Hochendoner, Bingo O’Malley, Liam Rhodes, Michael Roberts McKee, Andrew Larson, Jarrod DiGiorgi, Richard John Walters, Selene Luna, Annie Kitral, Brandi Engel. Directed by Patrick Lussier

The thing about doing remakes of other movies is that the screenwriter has to walk a very fine line. The movie has to follow the story of the original enough so that it is recognizable, yet it has to have its own character and flavor, differing enough to offer viewers familiar with the original a surprise. Otherwise, why bother?

This remake of a 1981 cult favorite during the golden age of slasher movies begins with a cave-in caused by Tom Hanniger (Ackles), the young son of the mine owner. Not on purpose mind you – just inexperience. Five miners are buried beneath the rubble but by the time they dig them out, only one has survived – Harry Warden (Walters) who owes his survival to killing off the other four so that they don’t take up his air. Even so, it takes so long to dig down that Harry is in a coma for a year. When he wakes up, he walks out of the hospital, dons his mining clothes and proceeds to kill 22 people with his pickaxe before being shot dead by then-Sheriff Burke (Atkins).

Flash forward a couple of decades. The town of Harmony is preparing for a Valentine’s Day dance, the first one since Harry Warden had his little tantrum. Tom Hanniger, who had left down not long after the murders, has returned to sell off the family mine. He isn’t greeted particularly warmly except by his high school sweetheart Sarah (King) who is now married to his friend Axel Palmer (Smith) who happens to be the current sheriff. Axel is probably the least happy guy to see Tom particularly since there’s some evidence that Sarah is still sweet on him. Of course, the fact that he’s been cheating with Megan (Boone), Sarah’s employee, for years doesn’t seem to bother him any.

What does bother him is that the murders have started up again by a guy in an old fashioned miners suit complete with gas mask, a fact that doesn’t seem to dissuade the horny teenagers in town to head over to the closed mine post-dance for a little nookie. Some things never change.

There are plenty of red herrings here as to who the identity of the killer is although the filmmakers are certainly pushing a supernatural angle. What’s worrisome is that the filmmakers cheat a little bit – major bits of business take place offscreen and things that are shown onscreen turn out to be lies. I get it that the filmmakers want to make the identity of the killer a surprise when the reveal comes but for one thing any halfway experienced horror film fan will be able to figure it out pretty quickly and for another thing when you do find out who it is you’re going to feel a little cheated, something you don’t want your audience to feel.

Another thing you don’t want your audience to feel is bored. During the first 15 minutes, the carnage moves at a breakneck pace but afterwards slows into a hodgepodge of flashback and exposition with the terror scenes spaced out in ten to fifteen minute intervals. Once you establish a pace, it’s a bad idea to slow it down. Better to build towards it gradually than gradually come down from a peak. You don’t want your audience feeling that they’ve seen the best of the movie less than half an hour in.

There are some great 3D effects here (the for-purchase DVD comes with glasses, although of course you need a 3D television set to play them), some of the best in fact of the modern 3D era. Eyeballs and jawbones fly at the audience and pickaxes come through the screen so jarringly that you will jump out of your seat.

There is a great sequence at the local no-tell motel in which town skank Irene (Rue) fresh from a rendezvous with her trucker boyfriend is chased out of her motel room stark naked after said boyfriend is skewered. She tries to get help which only succeeds in getting another trucker punctured but let’s just say that the sequence moves into overdrive from that point.

Lussier, who has a long history as both an editor (for the Scream series) as well as a director (for such films as Dracula 2000 and Drive Angry), has some punch in terms of technique but he is betrayed by clunk dialogue and some incongruous situations, not to mention the aforementioned cheats. It definitely is a throwback to the slasher films of yore given the amount of gore and nudity, so there is that bit of nostalgia involved. Unfortunately, too many flaws sabotage what could have been a truly excellent remake that might well have exceeded the original otherwise.

WHY RENT THIS: The first portion of the movie is a great roller coaster ride. Great use of 3D.
WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Bogs down in flashback and exposition during the second half.  Cheats when it comes to keeping the identity of the killer a surprise.
FAMILY VALUES: Brutal violence and gore, graphic nudity and explicit sexuality, foul language, gruesome images…this is horror movies the way they used to make ’em.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The first two characters to die in the movie are named Jason and Michael in direct reference to the Halloween and Friday the 13th characters. Like the characters, they don’t have any lines and both men die in ways that recall the trademarks of the characters they are referencing.
NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: There’s a gag reel and a featurette on the practical make-up effects.
BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $100.7M on a $15M production budget.
SITES TO SEE: Netflix (DVD only), Amazon (purchase only), Vudu (rent/buy),  iTunes (rent/buy), Flixster (purchase only), Target Ticket (not available)
COMPARISON SHOPPING: I Know What You Did Last Summer
FINAL RATING: 5.5/10
NEXT: Six Days of Darkness continues!