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Claire's Camera
InMovie Reviews

Claire’s Camera (Review)

April 25, 2018By

Claire’s Camera

aka La Caméra de Claire
Claire's Camera
2017
Written and directed by Hong Sang-soo
Claire's Camera
Hong Sang-soo continues to be an unstoppable movie-making machine, and with Claire’s Camera he continues his streak of producing high quality, entertaining films quickly and distinctively. I immediately pounced when I saw this was screening in this year’s SFIFF, but luckily had I missed it, 4-Star started screening it soon after. Which means I’ll have to make it up to 4-Star by seeing a different film there, no big deal as I don’t mind heading over there at all.

Like On the Beach at Night Alone, Claire’s Camera deals with the results of an affair involving a director, braiding the ropes of reality and fiction of his real life affair with Kim Min-hee into more artistic output. While On the Beach at Night Alone dealt more with the feminine side of a scandal and had a cathartic scene of confrontation, Claire’s Camera is more directly abstract, crystallizing the differences of before and after incidents. Some might argue that Hong is mining the same themes far too often, but he’s handling it in unique ways each time and so many other relationship films deal with similar themes, so hold all criticisms until things start actually getting stale.

Jeon Manhee (Kim Min-hee) is a buyer for films, in France along with the production company she works at, as one of their clients, Director So Wansoo (Jung Jin-young) is screening a film. She meets her boss at a cafe, where the boss Nam Yanghye (Chang Mi-hee) forces her to quit, explaining she no longer has trust in her to do the right thing. This gives Manhee time to wander around France, as she decides to spend a few days in town before heading back to South Korea. Later we learn that the director had an affair with her, and that Nam Yanghye is basically in a relationship with him, explaining the motivations.
Claire's Camera

Revenge
InMovie Reviews

Revenge (Review)

April 24, 2018By

Revenge

Revenge
2017
Written and directed by Coralie Fargeat
Revenge
Let’s get one thing straight from the get go, Revenge is a rape and revenge movie patterned after the old school exploitation flicks. But it’s also a major deconstruction of the genre, twisting tropes and incorporating aspects from super hero movies (and some of their tropes as well!) Most importantly, it is a fun as heck movie despite the subject matter and was a great choice for a SFIFF viewing pick!

Revenge is a startlingly beautiful film, with cinematography for days, vivid colors, neon that burns through with a beautiful but neutral enough Moroccan desert environment to make things aesthetic but not distracting. It’s full of shots that will be popping up on tumblr as gifs when there is a proper release. It is loaded with plenty of imagery for subtext including an apple with a bite taken out of it (often looked back on as the apple slowly decays) as well as rebirth imagery including a phoenix image the features prominently in a memorable scene during a peyote-induced fever dream. It’s well paced, the only sequences that seem to go on too long are purposefully designed that way for suspense or to foster a general sense of uneasiness. Beyond that, things fly by to keep the action steady. Even with all that Revenge is trying to say, it keeps the story on track so you don’t feel bogged down. Exactly the kind of movie that will lead to new discoveries on rewatches, as you were too busy having fun the first time through to notice some of the smaller details. There’s even a great argument for keeping wires on your earbuds!
Revenge

Searching
InMovie Reviews

Searching (Review)

April 23, 2018By

Searching

Searching
2018
Written by Aneesh Chaganty and Sev Ohanian
Directed by Aneesh Chaganty
Searching
It’s San Francisco International Film Festival time again, and TarsTarkas.NET is back with more SFIFF reviews thanks to our powerful influence to buy tickets! First up is what was my favorite of the films I saw this year, a film that is visualized entirely using computer screens and surveillance videos. Searching utilizes its visual gimmick very well in telling the story of a father looking for his missing daughter. We go down a deep dive of building a story around a family that has a large digital footprint, learn about their hopes and loses (including the mother dying of cancer), and come to modern day with father David Kim (John Cho) and daughter Margot (Michelle La), both still a mess after the death of their wife/mother, Pamela (Sara Sohn).

Margot is in high school and off at a study group, which she tells her father via facetime will go on all night. He gently reminds her again that she forgot to take out the trash before calling it a night. He misses a few calls from her overnight, and awakens in the morning to be annoyed that she still hasn’t taken out the trash and thinks she left early for school. During work he starts getting worried that she isn’t responding to his texts, thinking she is mad at him, but soon realizes she left her school laptop at home and never arrived at school. Thus begins a frantic search to find out where she went, what happened to her, and what has been going on in her life while both of them have been too saddened by Pamela’s death to stay connected. Detective Rosemary Vick (Debra Messing) becomes David’s point of contact with the police, and the two start trying to construct a timeline of where Margot was and what she likes to do, with David realizing with increasing horror he doesn’t know anything about Margot’s life any more.

Goldbuster
InMovie Reviews

Goldbuster (Review)

March 30, 2018By

Goldbuster

aka 妖鈴鈴 aka Yao Ling Ling
Goldbuster
2017
Written by Cha Muchun, Wong Yee-Hing, Zhou Yunhai
Directed by Sandra Ng Kwun-Yu
Goldbuster
Despite the movie being called Goldbuster, no ghosts are defeated by beating them with a gold bar. Sorry to disappoint. The directorial debut of comedian Sandra Ng tries to invoke the spirit of Hong Kong comedies past, and nearly succeeds with some good sequences and plot (and genre!) twists. It doesn’t quite come all the way together into a satisfying result, but there are enough bits of goodness floating around in the soup to give you some nice slurps.

The complete transformation of China in the past 20 years where cities are constantly churning out new high rises and modern developments haven’t been without a cost. There are plenty of scandals with land deals, holdout tenants, holdout owners, nail houses that are just build around and stripped of all amenities. Goldbuster jumps right into this with the last few tenants in an apartment building scheduled to be demolished refuse to leave.

The tenants include a widowed doctor who wishes that the ghost of his dead wife would appear so he could apologize for misdiagnosing her, and his young son who hasn’t spoken since she died. There is also a camgirl and failed actress who constantly wears bright outfits that stand out from the dull tones all around her. There are a pair of former Triads who have been hiding out from people trying to kill them for so long they’ve grown old and forgotten (and one believes he is some sort of deep cover cop), and there is a husband and wife who mismanaged their personal businesses and have nothing left. They’ve formed sort of a family by having nowhere else to go.
Goldbuster

Mistress Hunter
InMovie Reviews

Mistress Hunter (Review)

March 27, 2018By

Mistress Hunter

Mistress Hunter
2018
Written by Bryan Dick
Directed by Penelope Buitenhuis
Mistress Hunter
If you ever wondered what we would get if Pulp Fiction‘s Winston Wolfe was lending his skills to the Lifetime Movies-verse, then Mistress Hunter is for you! It might also be seen as Taken by way of Lifetime movies, as the Mistress Hunter has a special set of skills, namely getting revenge on cheating husbands, in that she helps gather evidence for a divorce and breaks up the cheating couple in the process. She also has a secret office, uses a fake name, and communicates with the wronged wife via randomly encountering her on the street while dressed in different costumes. That’s just the premise for the normal story before all the inevitable betrayals, twists, and murders happen! This is the kind of bonkers Lifetime stuff I love, it’s the standard betrayed by a man story on steroids with a great hook that it doesn’t lean so heavily on that the story is compromised.

Jackie (Lauralee Bell) is your typical housewife in the fancy burbs with a young daughter and a bankster husband, Karl (Martin Copping), who has an eye that has wandered all over a side chick named Beth (Chloe Brooks). Jackie gets suspicious due to Karl being very bad at covering his tracks (the ol’ “Busy at work” but not actually at work thing!) and becomes a wreck. Her friend Valerie (Lauren Plaxco) recommends to her a woman she heard of called the Mistress Hunter, who handles these situations. And then the film gets sensational!
Mistress Hunter

On the Beach at Night Alone movie Korean
InMovie Reviews

On the Beach at Night Alone (Review)

February 12, 2018By

On the Beach at Night Alone

aka 밤의 해변에서 혼자 aka Bamui Haebyeoneseo Honja
On the Beach at Night Alone movie Korean
2017
Written and directed by Hong Sang-soo
On the Beach at Night Alone movie Korean
Hong Sang-soo has gone into overdrive, releasing three films in 2017. While you’d worry that this might lead to a reduction in quality, On the Beach at Night Alone shows that this is not the case. There is still plenty amazing in these smaller productions even as they threaten to be released at a pace where it will be hard to keep up! Luckily, good ol’ 4Star Theater still shows these, so I hoofed it over (aka drove) for a late night screening.

The hallmarks of Hong Sang-soo are all over the place. The long takes with dialogue driven scenes and minimal set up at locations. The film is divided into two parts, a shorter Part 1 takes place in Germany, while the longer Part 2 is back in Korea upon Young-hee’s return. There is also something weird going on, a mysterious guy who no one can see but seems to be around. Of course he represents something. It’s no mystery why his films drive the art house critics wild. Hong Sang-soo has become so prolific recently that I’ve begun to slip catching up with his work. That’s entirely my fault, but real world business conspiring with Hong Sang-soo pumping out a ton of neat films becomes yet another thing that I need to catch up on once I’m done studying

The entire film is built on Kim Min-hee being as awesome as possible. It’s great to see her again, and to be honest I was more interested in watching her again after The Handmaiden than caring that Hong Sang-soo was directing. Sure, I knew the rumors that they had an affair (later confirmed, and basically the basis for part of the story here), but weird things like can often lead to even better performances. And they do, Kim Min-hee owns this movie’s bones, Young-hee becoming one of the most complete and complex female characters of the year. Despite the airs of one who is contemplative of her situation and recovering from a scandal that forced her to seek a vacation away from it all, she is her own person and busts the expected attitude of a star upside its head. She is confrontational, openly admitting that she is destructive, describing herself as a a bomb. She knows she is going to cause scenes, because her life is let so full that she just can’t help it. It is who she is, she just marches in and causes a scene no matter where she ends up. Even her attempts to be good and find herself just end in herself being there all along and doing what it pleases.
On the Beach at Night Alone movie Korean

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