Lurid sex in a bathroom pretty much sums up Lee Sang-woo’s lame erotic thriller, FIRE IN HELL
FIRE IN HELL (FLOWER IN HELL) (JI-OK-HWA) (Lee Sang-woo, 2012)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, September 30, 5:30
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
Lee Sang-woo, the Ogre of Korean Independent Cinema behind such cutting-edge, controversial low-budget films as Mother Is a Whore and Father Is a Dog, is back with the lame, lurid Fire in Hell. After being caught having a sexual tryst in a temple, a Korean monk winds up in a Filipino mansion, where a Christian minister attempts to rehabilitate a small group of violent criminals. The sex-obsessed monk, Ji-wol (Won Tae-hee), is soon in the midst of a torrid affair with Yeon-hwa (Cha Seung-min), the beautiful young woman who runs things at the mansion. Ji-wol says very little, but slowly, as the events that brought him to the Philippines reveal themselves in ever-more-graphic details, violence threatens to overwhelm everyone. Having trained on the sets of Kim Ki-duk’s Time and Breath, Lee certainly gained a knowledge of shock value, but his storytelling leaves a lot to be desired. Fire in Hell is an incomprehensible misogynistic mess, a manipulative piece of trash as the writer, director, editor, actor, and agent provocateur tacks on more and more ridiculous scenes, leading to a whirlwind, tragedy-filled ending that couldn’t come soon enough. Fire in Hell purports to be about basic human desires and faith, but instead it’s an absurd erotic thriller without the thrills, not even worthy of being shown on late-night cable, although it was, remarkably, selected for the Jeonju and Moscow International Film Festivals. Fire in Hell is screening on September 30 at 5:30, concluding MoMA’s third annual “Yeonghwa: Korean Film Today” series, a collaboration with the Korea Society.
Born into a working-class family in Manchester in 1935, knighted architect Sir Norman Foster has spent the last forty years building some of the most impressive structures in the world. Titled after a question asked of him by Buckminster Fuller, How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? examines the life and career of the intriguing character behind such innovative constructions as the London Stansted Airport terminal, the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, the Sage Gateshead, the renovated Wembley Stadium, the Great Court at the British Museum, Millennium Bridge, Hong Kong International Airport at Check Lap Kok, and the futuristic Masdar City in Abu Dhabi. Written and narrated by architecture critic Deyan Sudjic, the director of London’s Design Museum, in a steady but worshipful tone, the film features interviews with artists Anish Kapoor, Richard Serra, Anthony Caro, and Cai Guo-Qiang, journalist Paul Goldberger, musician Bono, and numerous people from Foster + Partners, which employs thousands of men and women around the world. Directors Norberto López Amado and Carlos Carcas also speak at length with Foster himself, who waxes prophetic about artistic creation, environmental responsibility, and integrating his work with nature. The film examines Foster’s drawing method, the importance of building models even in the digital age, and his dedication to improving humanity’s existence on the planet in addition to delving into his personal life, from the tragic loss of his first wife to his obsession with flight and cross-country skiing. Director of photography Valentín Álvarez lovingly moves his camera in and around such remarkable Foster creations as the Hearst Tower in New York, the Reichstag restoration in Berlin, the Millau Viaduct in France, the Swiss Re Tower in London, HSBC headquarters in Hong Kong, and Beijing Airport, shooting them as if they were majestic cathedrals, accompanied by Joan Valent’s evocative score performed by the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra. Amado and Carcas steer clear of any controversy, which has accompanied numerous Foster projects, instead concentrating on his many successes and the mind of the man behind the myth, which is itself a remarkable creation. How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? which flows like one of Foster’s buildings: elegant, organic, unique, and endlessly fascinating, will be screening September 30, October 7, and October 14 as part of Symphony Space’s ongoing Thalia Docs series.
Coraline Jones (voiced by Dakota Fanning) is an adventurous eleven-year-old in search of some fun and excitement in her new creaky home in Oregon. She finds just what she thinks she was looking for when a rodent introduces her to a hidden passageway that leads to an alternate universe, where replicas of her parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) are more interested in her and give her whatever she wants. However, this button-eyed Other Mother and Other Father have other plans for her and her real family as well. Written and directed by Henry Selick, Coraline lacks the frantic, nonstop energy of his breakthrough film, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, but it is still a fun, creepy trip down the Narnia-esque rabbit hole. Combining his trademark stop-motion animation (James and the Giant Peach) with breathtaking stereoscopic 3-D that adds remarkable depth to the images, Selick does a marvelous job bringing to life the popular children’s novel by Newbery Medal-winning author Neil Gaiman (Sandman), who wrote the book for his young daughters. (Full disclosure: In another part of our life, we work for the company that publishes Gaiman’s children’s books, including Coraline.) The supporting cast of characters includes former music-hall divas Miss Spink and Miss Forcible (the Absolutely Fabulous British comedy team of Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French), the wise Cat (Keith David), mouse circus leader Mr. Bobinsky (Ian McShane), and local boy Wybie Lovat (Robert Bailey Jr.), who was created specifically for the movie. Be sure to stick around for one last cool 3-D effect at the end of the credits. Coraline is screening on September 28 and 29 at 1:00 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s “Film After Film” series, a collection of works selected by J. Hoberman focusing on how digital technology is changing the way movies are both made and viewed.
The Rubin Museum’s Cabaret Cinema series “Happiness Is . . .” continues with one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most multilayered, complex tales, the 1951 psychological double-murder thriller Strangers on a Train. Shortly after introducing himself to amateur tennis star Guy Haines (Farley Granger) on a train, mama’s boy Bruno Anthony (an appropriately creepy Robert Walker) concocts a supposedly foolproof plan in which Bruno will kill Guy’s unfaithful wife, Miriam (Laura Elliott), so Guy can marry his socialite girlfriend, Anne Morton (Ruth Roman), one of the daughters of a U.S. senator (Leo G. Carroll). In return, Guy will kill Bruno’s father (Jonathan Hale). Bruno believes he has devised the perfect crisscross murder, with neither man having a clear motive and nothing for the cops to find to link them together. While Bruno is serious, Guy thinks he’s just a loon (Walker had in fact been recently released from a psychiatric clinic after suffering a nervous breakdown and died at the age of thirty-two before the film even opened), but after the psychopathic Bruno actually does kill Miriam — photographed in an unforgettable way by cinematographer Robert Burks, shown in a pair of broken eyeglasses — he starts shadowing Guy, insisting he keep his part of the bargain and kill Mr. Anthony, something Guy never intended on doing. Soon the cops are involved, along with a broken alibi, a key, and a critical cigarette lighter, leading to a spectacular conclusion on a merry-go-round. Loosely based on Patricia Highsmith’s debut novel and featuring an early screenplay written by Raymond Chandler (whose name was kept in the credits for marquee value despite Hitchcock’s famous — and literal — trashing of his contribution), Strangers on a Train is a powerful, tense mystery built around the idea of the double; from the opening scene of two pairs of shoes — immediately equating, and differentiating between, the two protagonists, as if they were two parts of the same person — to Hitchcock’s appearance carrying a double bass, to Anne’s younger sister, Babs (Patricia Hitchcock, Alfred’s daughter), wearing the same glasses as Miriam, to Bruno’s declaration, upon ordering two double scotches and relating them to tennis, “The only kind of doubles I play,” the film is filled with mirroring or directly opposing elements. As with Hitchcock’s Rope, which also starred Granger, Strangers on a Train also has a clear homosexual subtext; in real life Walker was straight while Granger was bisexual. Shot in a dark black-and-white that adds to the chilling effects, Strangers on a Train is one of Hitchcock’s best, a fully realized, frightening film that ends in a big way. The Rubin Museum screening on September 29 will be introduced by chef and musician Molly Neuman. “All in all,” Granger wrote in his 2007 autobiography, Include Me Out: My Life from Goldwyn to Broadway, “working on Strangers on a Train was my happiest filmmaking experience,” giving it extra reason to be included in this series that looks at different kinds of happiness in the movies.