Andy Lau stars as Di Renjie in Tsui Hark’s DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME
DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME (DI RENJIE) (Tsui Hark, 2010)
Friday, April 22, AMC Loews Village 7, 3:00
Thursday, April 28, Clearview Cinemas Chelsea, 9:30
www.tribecafilm.com
During the early Tang Dynasty in the late seventh century, Wu Zetian (Carina Lau sporting some great hairdos) is about to become the first empress of China. In preparation for her ascendance to the throne, architect Shatuo (Tony Leung Ka Fai) is leading the construction of a two-hundred-foot Buddha statue with her face, a massive structure that is like its own city inside. But when people start spontaneously combusting after a pair of amulets in the statue are moved, Wu calls in Detective Dee (Andy Lau sporting some great facial hair), who has been in prison for eight years for previously opposing her, to find out who is behind the horrific deaths. Dee is teamed up with Wu’s right-hand woman, Shangguan Jing’er (Li Bingbing), and albino warrior Donglai Pei (Deng Chao) to get to the bottom of the killings, which many believe is a curse not being perpetrated by humans. As the unlikely threesome gets closer to the answers, they become enmeshed in a series of battles featuring unusual weapons and unexpected twists and turns, not knowing whom they can trust, their lives in constant danger. Nominated for the Golden Lion at the 2010 Venice Film Festival and winner of six Hong Kong Film Awards (including Tsui Hark for Best Director, Carina Lau for Best Actress, and Phil Jones for Best Visual Effects), Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame is a fun and exciting old-fashioned wuxia tale, with exciting if repetitive action scenes directed by Sammo Hung and sumptuous production design by James Chiu. The inner workings of the enormous statue is a thing of beauty that has to be seen to be believed. A mix of actual and invented characters — there really was a Judge Dee (Di Renjie), who was turned into a detective hero in a series of novels by Dutch author Robert van Gulik — the film is a thrilling historical mystery epic that could have used a little more back story but is still a return to form for Hark.
Toshirō Mifune is a lone samurai on the road following the end of the Tokugawa dynasty in Akira Kurosawa’s unforgettable masterpiece. Mifune comes to a town with two warring factions and plays each one off the other as a hired hand. Neo’s battles with myriad Agent Smiths are nothing compared to Yojimbo’s magnificent swordfights against growing bands of warriors that include one man with a gun. Try watching this film and not think of several Clint Eastwood Westerns (particularly Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, since this is a direct remake of that 1964 Italian flick) as well as High Noon. Yojimbo will be screening at 11:00 am on April 22, 23, and 24 as part of the IFC Center’s Weekend Classics — Kurosawa series, which continues next week with the Kurosawa-Mifune follow-up Sanjuro.
For the third time in about a month, this rarely screened cult classic is being shown in the city, so you have no excuse to miss it yet again. Inspired by Rene Daumal’s Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain also involves symbolically non-Euclidean adventures in mountain climbing, funneled through Carlos Castaneda, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and magic mushrooms and LSD galore. What passes for narrative follows a Jesus look-alike thief (Horacio Salinas) and an alchemist with a thing for female nudity (Jodorowsky) on the path to enlightenment; along the way they encounter the mysterious Tarot, stigmata, stoning, eyeballs, frogs, flies, cold-blooded murder, naked young boys, chakra points, life-size plaster casts, Nazi dancers, sex, violence, blood, gambling, turning human waste into gold, death and rebirth, and the search for the secret of immortality via representatives of the planets, each with their own extremely bizarre story to tell. Jodorowsky, who is credited with having invented the midnight movie with the acid Western El Topo (1970), literally shatters religious iconography in a kaleidoscopic whirlwind of jaw-droppingly gorgeous and often inexplicable imagery composed from a surreal color palette, set to a score by free jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and Archies keyboardist Ron Frangipane. (Frangipane also worked with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who produced this film with their business manager, Allen Klein.) The Holy Mountain — which brings a whole new insight to Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle — is filled with psychedelic mysticism centered around the human search for transcendence in a wilderness of the sacred and profane. Jodorowsky’s work can move you deeply, but don’t expect it to make much sense. Sit back and let in pour in and over you — you’ll feel it. You may hate it, but you’ll feel it. Although you’ll definitely hate the very end.
There’s something not quite right about the Smiths, and first-time writer-director Philip Gelatt isn’t about to share their deep, dark secret until he’s good and ready in the psychological horror-thriller The Bleeding House. Mother Marilyn (Betsy Aidem), father Matt (Richard Bekins), eighteen-year-old son Quentin (Charlie Hewson), and sixteen-year-old daughter Gloria (Alexandra Chando), who only responds when called Blackbird, are living a cloistered life in a lonely house in the Texas woods, exiled by the community ever since a neighbor’s place mysteriously burned down, with the family inside. When a very odd southern gentleman named Nick (Patrick Breen) shows up at their doorstep one evening, asking to stay for the night because his car broke down, Marilyn at first refuses to allow a stranger into their midst but soon changes her mind, deciding that it might be good karma for the Smiths to help out a person in need, and boy do they need some good karma. But when they ask Nick, who is all dressed in white and speaks in an affected voice, what he does for a living and he says he cuts up people, well, things do not necessarily appear like they’re about to go the Smiths’ way. Gelatt provides plenty of twists on the slasher genre in The Bleeding House, eschewing sudden shocks, chase scenes, loud music, and ear-piercing screams in favor of a relaxed, calm pace, a subtle score by Hildur Guðnadóttir, and more intellectual thrills and chills reminiscent of the Showtime series Dexter. It doesn’t get much more creepy than the way Nick addresses Blackbird, saying her name in a way that is both menacing and mothering as he comes to learn that she is at the heart of the family’s secret. Making its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, The Bleeding House is bloody good fun. (Gelatt will be at the Apple Store on Prince St. on April 25 at 6:00 for a free Meet the Filmmakers program.)
French director Julien Leclercq re-creates an infamous 1994 hijacking in the action thriller The Assault. On Christmas Eve, four members of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (the GIA) boarded Air France Flight 8969 at Algiers’ Houari Boumedienne Airport and took the crew and 227 passengers hostage, demanding the release of two imprisoned Islamic Salvation Front leaders. Leclercq (Chrysalis) and screenwriter Simon Moutaïrou tells the story like a police procedural as the heavily armed terrorists begin killing passengers when their plan goes awry and they do not immediately get what they want. Meanwhile, the French Interior Ministry and the National Gendarmes Intervention Group (GIGN) are debating their response, including a possible all-out raid on the plane. Leclercq focuses on SWAT team member Thierry Prugnaud (Vincent Elbaz), whose wife (Marie Guillard) prays for his safe return; Yahia Abdallah (Aymen Saidi), a cold-blooded terrorist fiercely dedicated to his cause; and Carole (Melanie Bernier), a ministry worker who risks her career by taking charge. Although technically adept, The Assault lacks emotional resonance. The depiction of the relationship between Thierry and his wife and daughter feels forced, more of a soapy aside than an integral part of the film. There is little subtlety in evidence and plenty of clichés, with the hijackers representing pure evil, the GIGN officers primarily faceless, machinelike automatons, and the politicians overly concerned about themselves and how this will look to the world. The events, which were broadcast live in France, are quite remarkable, but Leclercq ends up draining them of much of their power, resulting in a surprisingly cold tale.