this week in film and television

JAPAN CUTS: WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL?

Sexy Michiko (Fumi Nikaido) shows her dangerous side in Sion Sono’s outrageously fun WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL?

WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL? (JIGOKU DE NAZE WARUI) (Sion Sono, 2013)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Thursday, July 10, 8:30
Festival runs July 10-20
212-715-1258
www.subwaycinema.com
www.japansociety.org

It might take a while for the two seemingly disparate narratives to come together in Sion Sono’s totally awesome Why Don’t You Play in Hell?, but when they do, watch out, because it all leads to one gloriously insane finale. As teenagers, the nerdy Fuck Bombers — director Hirata (Hiroki Hasegawa), camera operators Miki (Yuki Ishii) and Tanigawa (Haruki Mika), and future action star and Bruce Lee wannabe Sasaki (Tak Sakaguchi) — are determined to make a movie. Ten years later, they are still waiting to make their masterpiece. Meanwhile, Shizue (Tomochika), the wife of yakuza boss Taizo Muto (Jun Kunimura) and ambitious stage mother of toothpaste-commercial darling Michiko (Nanoka Hara), has been in prison for ten years for brutally killing three men while defending her home against an assassination attempt by the Ikegami yakuza clan, which only Ikegami (Shinichi Tsutsumi) himself survived. Ten years later, Shizue is scheduled to get out of prison in ten days, and Muto is scrambling to keep his promise to his wife that Michiko (now played by Fumi Nikaido) would be the star of a movie by the time Shizue was released. However, Michiko, who has become a bitter, dangerous young woman, is on the run, taking with her geeky innocent bystander Koji (Gen Hoshino) as her inept pretend boyfriend. When the plot lines intersect, the fun really begins, with blood and body parts battling it out for the biggest laughs.

Why Don’t You Play in Hell? is a riotous send-up of yakuza crime thrillers and a loving and downright silly homage to DIY filmmaking. Digging back into his past to adapt a screenplay he wrote back in the 1990s, Sono (Love Exposure, Cold Fish) lets it all fly, holding nothing back in this sweetly violent, reality-bending, severely twisted romantic comedy that actually has quite a big heart. And at the center of it all is Nikaido (Sono’s Himizu), splendidly portraying a sexy, black-clad ingénue/femme fatale who is capable of just about anything. Winner of the Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award, Why Don’t You Play in Hell? is screening July 10 at Japan Society’s Japan Cuts: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema, in conjunction with the fourteenth annual New York Asian Film Festival. Nikaido, who is receiving the NYAFF’s Screen International Rising Star Award, will be on hand to introduce the film and participate in a Q&A; the screening will be followed by the “Let’s Play in Hell” opening-night party with live music by New York-based Japanese punk band Gelatine.

JAPAN CUTS — THE MOLE SONG: UNDERCOVER AGENT REIJI

Reiji Kikukawa (Toma Ikuta) goes undercover in Takashi Miike’s way-over-the-top yakuza flick THE MOLE SONG

THE MOLE SONG: UNDERCOVER AGENT REIJI (MOGURA NO UTA SENNYU SOUSAKAN REIJI) (Takashi Miike, 2013)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Thursday, July 10, 6:00
Festival runs July 10-20
212-715-1258
www.subwaycinema.com
www.japansociety.org

Multigenre master and cult legend Takashi Miike kicks off the annual Japan Cuts: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema with the U.S. premiere of his wild and wacky yakuza comedy-thriller, The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji. Adapted from Noboru Takahashi’s popular manga series Mogura no Uta, the film stars Toma Ikuta (Hanazakari no Kimitachi e) as Reiji Kikukawa, a goofy but dedicated virgin cop (think a Japanese Dudley Do-Right) who is fired by Chief Sakami (Mitsuru Fukikoshi) so he can go undercover with the dangerous Sukiya-kai gang and ultimately capture its leader, Shuho Todoroki (Koichi Iwaki). Dressed in flashy clothes and sporting a ridiculous cockatoo-like mop of red hair, Reiji is soon taken under the wing of drug-hating made man and butterfly enthusiast Masaya Hiura (Shinichi Tsutsumi), aka “Crazy Papillon”; doing fierce battle with the short, bald, diamond-toothed, cat-loving Itsei Nekozawa (Takashi Okamura) from the rival Hachinosu-kai clan; cozying up to blonde MDMA dealer Shun Tsukihara (Takayuki Yamada); and being hunted down by tattoo-covered motorcycle-riding assassin Kenta Kurokawa (Yusuke Kamiji). All the while, Reiji keeps bumping into fellow cop and potential love interest Junna Wakagi (Riisa Naka), usually at the most inopportune of moments.

Written by Kankuro Kudo — who wrote Miike’s Zebraman films and wrote and directed another Japan Cuts selection, Maruyama, the Middle Schooler — The Mole Song has fun going way over the top, from Yuji Hayashida’s splendid production design to Nobuyasu Kita’s stellar cinematography to the actors themselves, who must have had quite a hard time trying to keep a straight face so much of the time. Miike, who references such previous cult classics of his as Ichi the Killer and Audition, does veer off course as he tries to figure out how to end the film, as the laughs start coming fewer and farther between, and the relationship between Reiji and Junna turns into more of an afterthought, but The Mole Song is still a blast, filled with zany surprises and unpredictable plot twists. A copresentation with the fourteenth annual New York Asian Film Festival, The Mole is screening July 10 at 6:00 at Japan Society.

NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL: SOUL

A father (Jimmy Wang) and son (Joseph Chang Hsiao-Chuan) are trapped in a dark mystery that won’t let up in Chung Mong-Hong’s SOUL

SOUL (SHĪ HÚN) (Chung Mong-hong, 2013)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Walter Reade Theater
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Wednesday, July 9, 1:00
Festival continues through July 10
212-875-5600
www.filmlinc.com
www.subwaycinema.com

Taiwanese writer-director Chung Mong-Hong’s third feature film, following 2008’s Parking and 2010’s The Fourth Portrait, is an intense, meditatively paced thriller about family and identity. In Soul, wuxia legend Jimmy Wang (aka Jimmy Wong Yu) stars as Wang, a simple, understated old man living in a reclusive house in the mountains. After his chef son, Ah-Chuan (Joseph Chang Hsiao-Chuan), suddenly collapses in the city and is brought back to his childhood home, strange things start occurring, as Ah-Chuan seems different and dead bodies begin to pile up. It turns out that Ah-Chuan’s soul has temporarily left his body, replaced by another, not-quite-so-gentle being, leading to yet more trouble, especially because Wang’s goofy policeman nephew, Little Wu (Vincent Liang), continues to hang around, sensing that something suspicious might be going on. The Taiwanese entry for Best Foreign Language Film for the 2014 Oscars, Soul is a gripping, surreal tale that unfolds with a cool calm that can explode at any moment, and then does. Shaw Brothers veteran Wang, who wrote, directed, and starred in such martial arts classics as The Chinese Boxer and Master of the Flying Guillotine, is sensational as Uncle Wang, playing the role with an assured, self-possessed composure despite the hell the old man finds himself in.

Jimmy Wang gives a carefully measured performance in NYAFF psychological thriller

Chang (Eternal Summer, Au Revoir Taipei) is a strong counterpart to Wang, combining inner strength with just the right amount of mystery and danger. As in his previous films, which also include the 2011 short Reverberation and the 2006 documentary Doctor, Chung also serves as cinematographer, using the pseudonym Nagao Nakashima, and the gorgeous photography is like a character unto itself, bathing the film in lush earth tones that add yet another level to the lovely perplexity of it all. Soul is having its New York premiere at the 2014 New York Asian Film Festival, its second screening taking place at the Walter Reade Theater on July 9 at 1:00; Wang was initially due to attend the festival as a special guest but had to cancel due to unforeseen circumstances. The thirteenth annual NYAFF continues through July 10 with some five dozen films, including Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s My Man, Lee Joon-ik’s Hope, Kim Byeong-woo’s The Terror Live, and Kang Woo-suk’s Public Enemy, before leading into the eleven-day Japan Cuts series at Japan Society.

LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 2014

Houston Grand Opera sails into the Park Avenue Armory with THE PASSENGER as part of Lincoln Center Festival (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Lincoln Center and other locations
July 7 – August 16, $45-$175
212-721-6500
www.lincolncenterfestival.org

Although there are only five companies presenting at this year’s Lincoln Center Festival, there is plenty to see at this annual summer event that makes creative use of the otherwise vacated spaces usually inhabited by the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, and previously, the New York City Opera, in addition to other locations. The festival kicks off with the welcome return of Japanese Kabuki theater company Heisei Nakamura-za for the first time since the 2012 death of star actor Nakamura Kanzaburō XVIII, but the centuries-old family legacy continues with his two sons, Nakamura Kankuro VI and Nakamura Shichinosuke II, leading a rare revival of the nineteenth-century samurai ghost story Kaidan Chibusa no Enoki (The Ghost Tale of the Wet Nurse Tree) at the Rose Theater July 7-12 ($45-$175). To heighten the atmosphere, Josie Robertson Plaza will be home to a Japanese Artisan Village through July 13, selling such items as nihon ningyo (hand-painted dolls), tenugui (cotton towels), and kanzashi (traditional hair ornaments). Award-winning Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker looks back at her past with four of her earliest pieces, 1982’s Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich, 1983’s Rosas danst Rosas, 1984’s Elena’s Aria, and 1987’s Bartók/Mikrokosmos, running July 8-16 at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater ($35-$75). Now in her mid-fifties, De Keersmaeker will dance in two of the shows; she will also participate in a talk-back following the July 8 performance, a book presentation with Bojana Cvejić and moderator André Lepecki on July 12 (free and open to the public), and a discussion with Anna Kisselgoff on July 15 in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse (free with advance tickets).

Isabelle Huppert and Cate Blanchett team up in Lincoln Center Festival presentation of THE MAIDS (photo © Lisa Tomasetti)

The Houston Grand Opera sails into the Park Avenue Armory July 10-13 ($45-$250) with director David Pountney’s English-language adaptation of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s The Passenger, the story of a former Nazi concentration camp overseer trying to escape her past; the impressive two-floor set consists of an ocean liner above and a prison camp below. Each performance will be preceded by a chamber concert by the ARC Ensemble playing works by Weinberg; in addition, there will be a special screening of Andrej Munk’s 1963 cinematic adaptation of Zofia Posmysz’s source novel on July 8 at 6:00 in the SHK Penthouse (free with advance tickets), followed by a discussion with Holocaust survivors and others. For the first time ever, the Bolshoi’s ballet, opera, orchestra, and chorus will appear together in New York City, beginning with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride July 12-13 at Avery Fisher Hall ($35-$100) and continuing with Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake July 15-20 ($35-$125), Ludwig Minkus’s Don Quixote July 22-23 (with new choreography by Alexei Fadeyechev), and Aram Khachaturyan’s Spartacus July 25-27, all at the David H. Koch Theater. The festival concludes in a big way with the Sydney Theatre Company’s adaptation of Jean Genet’s The Maids, directed by Benedict Andrews and starring Cate Blanchett, Isabelle Huppert, and Elizabeth Debicki, playing August 6-16 at New York City Center ($35-$120, partial view seats still available).

TIME REGAINED — CINEMA’S PRESENT PERFECT: THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU

Ian Fiscuteanu brings to life the slow death of a unique character in Cristi Puiu’s very dark comedy

THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU (Cristi Puiu, 2005)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Wednesday, July 9, 8:45
Series runs July 4-10
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

Poor Mr. Lazarescu. He lives in a shoddy hovel of an apartment in Bucharest, where he drinks too much and gets out too little. He moves around very slowly and has trouble saying what’s on his mind, even to his three cats. His family is sick and tired of telling him to lay off the booze, so they ignore his complaints. Suffering from headaches and stomach pain, he phones for an ambulance several times, but it arrives only after a neighbor calls as well. Mr. Lazarescu then spends the rest of this very long night fading away as he is taken to hospital after hospital by the ambulance nurse, who gets involved in a seemingly endless battle with doctors to try to save him. Ian Fiscuteanu is sensationally realistic as Mr. Lazarescu; you’ll quickly forget that he’s not really a drunk, disgusting, dying old man. Luminita Gheorghiu is excellent as Mioara, the nurse who gets caught up in Mr. Lazarescu’s case. Winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard Award, cowriter-director Cristi Puiu’s very dark comedy is simply captivating; despite a slow start, it’ll pull you in with its well-choreographed scenes, documentary style, and careful camera movement. (Also look for the subtle and very specific naming of characters.) Using Éric Rohmer’s “Six Moral Tales” as inspiration, Puiu has said that The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is the first of his own “Six Stories from the Bucharest Suburbs,” this one dealing with “the love of humanity,” followed by 2010’s Aurora.

Judy Garland and Robert Walker are running out of time in Vincente Minnellis THE CLOCK

Judy Garland and Robert Walker star as lovers running out of time in Vincente Minnelli’s THE CLOCK

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is screening July 9 at 8:45 as part of the IFC Center series “Time Regained: Cinema’s Present Perfect,” consisting of more than two dozen films that deal with time, being held in conjunction with the upcoming release of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. The festival runs through July 10 and also includes all of François Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel films, Linklater’s Before trilogy with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, Agnès Varda’s real-time Cleo from 5 to 7, Harold Ramis’s Groundhog Day, Gaspar Noé’s controversial, backward-told Irréversible, Robert Wise’s boxing drama The Set-Up, Vincente Minnelli’s romance The Clock, Akira Kurosawa’s multiple-view Rashomon, and Alfred Hitchcock’s seemingly unedited Rope. Interestingly, IFC is not showing Raoul Ruiz’s Time Regained, based on Marcel Proust’s final volume of In Search of Lost Time and the namesake of the series.

PREMATURE

Katie Findlay and John Karna play best friends in predictable coming-of-age teen sex comedy PREMATURE

PREMATURE (Dan Beers, 2014)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Saturday, July 5, 12:00 am, Monday, July 7, 10:50 am, and Tuesday, July 8, 10:50 am
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

With Premature, cowriter and director Dan Beers set out to make a romantic teen sex comedy he described as “American Pie meets Groundhog Day.” Along the way, he and cowriter Mat Harawitz added ample elements of Risky Business and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Unfortunately, the final result has little of the charm and humor of those much smarter hits; instead, Premature is a silly retread saved only by a tender finale and a strong supporting performance by Katie Findlay (The Killing). John Karna channels Topher Grace as Rob Crabbe, an average high school kid who keeps getting a chance to relive one day over and over again, trying to lose his virginity with the superhot Angela Yearwood (Carlson Young). Each morning, his mother (Kate Kneeland) walks into his room and can’t help but notice he had a wet dream. Then his father (Steve Coutler) gives him a pep talk about his upcoming Georgetown interview. Rob hangs out with his best friends, the sweet and innocent Gabrielle (Findlay) and the raunchy and oversexed Stanley (Craig Roberts), is taunted by supernerd Arthur (Adam Riegler), and listens to Georgetown interviewer Jack Roth (Alan Tudyk) break down as they discuss Rob’s future. Each day ends with Rob shooting too early yet again, giving him the opportunity to try, try again, but while Rob might learn a bit more about life every day, Beers is stuck in tired repetition in this mostly limp, lowest-common-denominator coming-of-age comedy that attempts to give new meaning to that very phrase itself.

A HARD DAY’S NIGHT

Fiftieth anniversary restoration of A HARD DAY’S NIGHT is playing July 4-17 at Film Forum

A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (Richard Lester, 1964)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens July 4, 12:45, 3:00, 5:10, 7:30, 9:45
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
www.thebeatles.com

The Beatles are invading America again with the fiftieth anniversary restoration of their debut film, the deliriously funny anarchic comedy A Hard Day’s Night. Initially released on July 6, 1964, in the UK, AHDN turned out to be much more than just a promotional piece advertising the Fab Four and their music. Instead, it quickly became a huge critical and popular success, a highly influential work that presaged Monty Python and MTV while also honoring the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, and the French New Wave. Directed by Richard Lester, who had previously made the eleven-minute The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film with Peter Sellers and would go on to make A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Petulia, and The Three Musketeers, the madcap romp opens with the first chord of the title track as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr are running down a narrow street, being chased by rabid fans, but they’re coming toward the camera, welcoming viewers into their crazy world. (George’s fall was unscripted but left in the scene.) As the song blasts over the soundtrack, Lester introduces the major characters: the four moptops, who are clearly having a ball, led by John’s infectious smile, in addition to Paul’s “very clean” grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell, who played a dirty old man in the British series Steptoe and Son, the inspiration for Sanford and Son) and the band’s much-put-upon manager, Norm (Norman Rossington). Lester and cinematographer Gilbert Taylor (Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Repulsion, Star Wars) also establish the pace and look of the film, a frantic black-and-white frolic shot in a cinema-vérité style that is like a mockumentary taking off from where François Truffaut’s 400 Blows ends.

The boys eventually make it onto a train, which is taking them back to their hometown of Liverpool, where they are scheduled to appear on a television show helmed by a hapless director (Victor Spinetti, who would star in Help as well) who essentially represents all those people who are dubious about the Beatles and the sea change going on in the music industry. Norm and road manager Shake (John Junkin) have the virtually impossible task of ensuring that John, Paul, George, and Ringo make it to the show on time, but there is no containing the energetic enthusiasm and contagious curiosity the quartet has for experiencing everything their success has to offer — while also sticking their tongues out at class structure, societal trends, and the culture of celebrity itself. Lester and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Alun Owen develop each individual Beatle’s unique character through press interviews, solo sojourns (the underappreciated Ringo goes off on a kind of vision quest; George is mistaken by a fashion fop for a model), and an endless stream of spoken and visual one-liners. (John sniffs a Coke bottle; a reporter asks George, “What do you call your hairstyle?” to which the Quiet One replies, “Arthur.”) Oh, the music is rather good too, featuring such songs as “I Should Have Known Better,” “All My Loving,” “If I Fell,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “I’m Happy Just to Dance with You,” “This Boy,” and “She Loves You.” The working name for the film was Beatlemania, but it was eventually changed to A Hard Day’s Night, based on a Ringo malapropism, forcing John and Paul to quickly write the title track. No mere exploitation flick, A Hard Day’s Night is one of the funniest, most influential films ever made, capturing a critical moment in pop-culture history and unleashing four extraordinary gentlemen on an unsuspecting world. The fiftieth-anniversary restoration, courtesy of Janus Films, is screening July 4-17 at Film Forum; don’t you dare miss this glorious eighty-five-minute explosion of sheer, unadulterated joy.