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Forbidden Photo of a Man Above Suspicion
Ran Mi Lowo (Help Me)
by Daniel Baldwin
The synopsis for writer/director Akorede Alli’s Ran Mi Lowo describes a film about a young lady, Yemisi (Omowunmi Dada), in high school within Nigeria who is tasked with solving a mystery. That mystery? Exactly who is sexually assaulting her fellow female students, including her best friend, and threatening their lives if they expose who he is to anyone. Nearly all of the victims quit school shortly after their assault, with some committing suicide…or were they murdered?
Yemisi believes that the perpetrator has a connection to the school, but the administrator won’t take her concerns seriously. But who is doing it? Is it the lecherous gatekeeper who constantly hits on the female students as they arrive every morning? Is it one of the male teachers? And if it is one of the teachers, would anyone even believe Yemisi (or the victims) without hard evidence? After all, they’re respectable members of the community and how often do people actually believe women in these circumstances? If they won’t believe them, then what is Yemisi to do?
If you’re thinking that this Nigerian film is a hard-hitting drama…you’re wrong! As deathly serious as all of the above sounds, Ran Mi Lowo couldn’t be further from awards season-style brutal dramatic fare. In fact, its closest cinematic cousin is that of the ‘70s Italian thriller, aka the giallo!
Many of the classic gialli hallmarks are on display here. There’s the protagonist with a connection to the arts, as Yemisi wants to be an investigative journalist. She’s surrounded by an overly-horny cast of characters. There are occasional swirling camera movements and POV shots. We’re also presented with weird dolls, strange subplots with no direct connection to the main story, and even the director’s own hands being those that commit onscreen murder. Speaking of the the festishistic fiend, once revealed they even give an appropriately-twitchy psychotic performance and lay out a traumatic backstory befitting the subgenre.
This is not to say that Akorede Alli entirely nails the subgenre. The writing falls flat at times and while gialli fans can appreciate superfluous subplots and (intentional or not) wonky subtitles, those aren’t exactly the best things to copy from the decades-old subgenre. Still, it’s a surprising and intriguing debut from Alli. One worth seeing for those who appreciate wilder foreign genre fare.
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Kindness Has No Borders
A Handful of Water
by Daniel Baldwin
Jakob Zapf’s quiet drama A Handful of Water revolves around grieving widower Konrad Hausnick (Jurgen Prochnow) living out his days going through his usual routine in a very cold and robotic manner, with the only light in his life coming not from his adult daughter and her new family, but instead from his fish-filled basement aquarium. He is a man who has found himself unable to move beyond his sorrow, nor to find room in his heart for the joy of others. Enter Thurba Al-Sherbini (Milena Pribak).
Thurba is a 12-year-old Yemeni refugee who is on the run . She set off into the world on her own when German police come knocking at her home, forcing her to leave her mother and two siblings behind. Per German law, the family cannot be deported back to Bulgaria unless all members are accounted for. If you’re guessing that Thurba manages to take up residence in Konrad’s home, you’re right on the Deutsche Mark!
A young person managing to bring a bereaved aging man out of his shell is a tale as old as time. Sometimes it comes in the form of fantastical animation like Up!, a violent comic book blockbuster like Logan, or a soaring sports drama like Creed. And sometimes it arrives in a much smaller package, as it does here. This is a tried and true formula because it’s one that often sings and that holds true for this film as well.
Those of you who are primarily used to seeing Prochnow vamp it up in a villainous manner across decades of genre cinema are in for a treat here, as this is a very different side of the man. Jurgen has rarely been better than he is as Konrad, and his performance is matched pound for pound by newcomer Pribak. They are the heart and soul of the film. It doesn’t matter if you can guess where things will go at almost every turn, as the flavors they add to the journey make it worthwhile.
A Handful of Water might not contain very many surprises, but it also avoids the pitfalls of many dramas of this type. It’s never too on the nose with its message and it’s never too saccharine for its own good either. Zapf, Prochnow, and Pribak get the recipe right from moment one and the end result is a fine little drama.
How to Train Your Latin Dragon
The Fist of the Condor
by Daniel Baldwin
Since 2006, the Chilean powerhouse team of writer/director Ernesto Diaz Espinoza and martial arts superstar Marko Zaror has been delivering some of the best independent action cinema in the world. From raucous martial arts mayhem (Kiltro) to street-level superhero satire (Mirageman) to Eurospy parody (Mandrill), their wild body of work together has been a diabolical fondue of influences ranging from kung fu movies to spaghetti westerns to blaxploitation cinema and beyond. What makes them all the more impressive is that of the four previous films they’ve made together, no two are alike in terms of style and tone. Other than a good time, you never know what you’re going to get from an Espinoza and Zaror pairing.
The Fist of the Condor sees this duo reuniting for the first time in almost a decade. Their last outing, the rogue assassin tale Redeemer, had been their weakest effort to date, but I’m happy to report that they’ve bounced back here and then some. A deep-flowing love of classic kung fu cinema has always run throughout their collaborations, but it’s never flowed as deeply or as lovingly as it does here.
This is a martial arts adventure just as concerned with evoking the philosophy of both the genre and the real-life practices behind it as it is in showcasing expertly-choreographed fights. There is a poeticism behind the fisticuffs on display here that calls to mind the Hong Kong classics of yore, leaving us with a masterful modern piece of meditative martial arts cinema that would make the Shaw Brothers smile.
Espinoza has always had a way with striking imagery that is a delicious mix of exquisite location photography and beautiful artifice that holds decades of movie knowledge behind it. Condor is no different, as it births some of the best sequences his wonderful mind has conjured to date. All backed by another excellent ‘70s-infused score by longtime collaborator Rocco, of course!
Those whose only experience with Marko “The Latin Dragon” Zaror are his villainous turns in Hollywood films such as John Wick: Chapter 4 and Machete Kills might be surprised to see the monk-like heroism of his primary role here. Fear not, however, as he also plays his own evil twin! His heroic (but not innocent) protagonist Guerrero is his best role since Kiltro and one we’ll be lucky to see continue, since this is meant to be the first in a trilogy. The next two cannot get here soon enough.
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Born on the Fluff of July
Unicorn Wars
by Daniel Baldwin
Blood. Steel. Pain. Cuddles.
That’s the motto constantly being pummeled into the minds of the teddy bear soldiers by their theocratic, fascistic leaders. Their enemy? The unicorns, a seemingly peaceful race that resides within a natural wooded paradise called the Magic Forest. The bears want what the unicorns have and they aim to take it with deadly brute force. Emphasis on brute.
Albert Vazquez’s animated Spanish-language war satire is, simply put, a sight to behold. Vazquez takes all of the hallmarks and horrors of Vietnam War cinema and wraps them in a lusciously cartoonish new skin, rendering incredibly grisly terrors all the more potent. Too often, societies send their children off to fight their wars and what is more child-like than a teddy bear? Instead of putting guns in the hands of human teens, Vazquez arms impressionable teddies with bows, arrows, knives, and grenades, sending them off to destroy the natural world around them for its resources.
If it sounds like a scathing indictment of human behavior for the entirety of our history, that’s because that is exactly what it is. Man’s inhumanity to man is on full display here in numerous ways, both in a war between two vastly different cultures and in how the bears treat one another. Nearly all the film’s main characters are a vicious miserable lot, despite their Care Bear-ish looks. Every punch, stab, shot, bludgeoning, and impalement packs a wallop as it lays the horror of war bare for all to see. Pun intended.
If Unicorn Wars has any major failings, it’s that its crude sexual humor sometimes undercuts the deathly serious satirical message. The unicorns are also underdeveloped. The film cannot decide whether to showcase their side of all this or just leave them as an enigmatic (and largely peaceful) race. As a result, an early subplot involving a few unicorns peters out by the midpoint of the film and never really resolves in any meaningful way.
Vazquez is aiming for something as potent as Watership Down and The Plague Dogs here. While his reach ultimately exceeds his grasp, he still manages to conjure up a very striking and occasionally moving piece of adult animation – right down to an absolutely haunting final sequence. That Unicorn Wars is only his second feature makes it all the more impressive. Keep your eyes on this filmmaker, folks.
Lock, Stock, and a Barrel of Laughs
Three Day Millionaire
by Daniel Baldwin
What would you do if, after being handed a big paycheck, you found out that it might be your last? That your bosses had conspired to do away with your job? If you’re a character in the latest film from Jack Spring (Destination Dewsbury), you’d find yourself in a British heist comedy!
Three Day Millionaire follows a gaggle of “Trawler-men” from the port town of Grimsby, England as they come ashore to have themselves a good time with their latest hefty batch of wages, only to find themselves in a bit of a pickle. Their world is about to move on without them, leaving them with only hope and desperate measures. It’s a tale as old as time: the smalltown little guy versus the unflinching, uncaring machine that is corporate “progress” and greed.
Director/producer Spring takes this premise and fashions a dark comedy around it, imbuing the all-too-familiar plight of the working man with all the British crime comedy tropes that we have come to love throughout the decades. As well as a few that maybe should have been allowed to die off. The resulting concoction presents itself as a smaller, more regional riff on the works of Guy Ritchie, Danny Boyle, and Edgar Wright.
The good news is that this is filled with a lot of personality, which can go a very long way in films of this type. The bad news is that sometimes it goes a bit too far into pastiche, particularly when it comes to the freeze-framed “character bio” introductions.
Three Day Millionaire never truly finds an identity purely its own, instead leaning on the aforementioned auteurs to get its tale across. Its Ritchie-ness is thick, but also shallower than Guy. Its party-hard Boyle-isms are never as biting as Danny’s. It’s Wright-ings never fully measure up to the wittiness of Edgar. Despite all of this, as well as some pacing issues, it still manages to be a laugh-filled good time.
If you’re in the mood for a quainter British black comedy caper picture, it’ll get the job done. Not every film needs to rewrite the rule book, as sometimes you just want something that will deliver what’s on the box. Jack Spring’s Three Day Millionaire does just that.
You Know Their Name
The Other Fellow
by Daniel Baldwin
In 1953, while writing Casino Royale, Ian Fleming decided to name his hero after an ornithologist who had written a book on Caribbean birds that he enjoyed. That name was Bond. James Bond. You know his name and you know his number, but what about all of the other folks out there who share the same name?
Our names are a part of our identity. Some of us like our names; others don’t. So too it goes for the other souls around the globe who are named James Bond. Matthew Bauer’s documentary The Other Fellow is their story. From an annoyed lawyer to a self-made raconteur to someone fleeing a real-life villain to another accused of murder, these people carry both the pleasure and the pain of being compared to the world’s most famous spy every time they introduce themselves.
Much like the Bond films, this documentary is a globe-trotting affair filled with beauty, grief, suspense, and yes, even product placement. In most hands, this could have been a cheap piece of cinematic fluff meant to grift some money off of Bond fans, but the filmmakers have managed to craft something far more meaningful here. Whether or not you sympathize with the varying trials and tribulations of its different subjects, The Other Fellow is a compelling and human look into identity – be it chosen or not – and how it affects a person as they go through life.
Why would someone intentionally change their name to James Bond? Well, as it turns out, there can be some very good reasons for that. Similarly, there are scenarios in which carrying that name could ruin your entire life because of the baggage it carries. Being Bond comes with a cost, be it a grand one or just the occasional annoying one in the form of bad jokes from strangers. For better or worse, such is the way of things when one shares a name with a celebrity (be they real or fictional), which is something yours truly knows a tiny bit about.
The Other Fellow is an intriguing and insightful look at how our names can shape our personality, our growth, our day-to-day lives, and ultimately our future. It’s an 80-minute dive into identity that, much like its subjects, just happens to evoke a certain 00 agent. It might not leave you shaken and stirred, but it’s worth a look.
