Aimee has trouble showing her true feelings in So Yong Kim drama IN BETWEEN DAYS
IN BETWEEN DAYS (So Yong Kim, 2006)
Wednesday, December 9, 6:50, 9:30
www.soandbrad.com/inbetweendays
THE EXPLODING GIRL (Bradley Rust Gray, 2009)
Thursday, December 10, 6:50, 9:30
www.soandbrad.com/theexplodinggirl
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
December 8-17
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
In 1985, the Cure released a song called “Inbetween Days” that included the line “And I know I was wrong / when I said it was true / that it couldn’t be me and be her / inbetween without you.” On the flip side of the single, “The Exploding Boy,” Robert Smith sang, “I knew if I turned / I’d turn away from you / and I couldn’t look back.” In 2006, South Korean native So Yong Kim made IN BETWEEN DAYS, the tender story of Aimee (Jiseon Kim), a young Korean immigrant on the cusp of her burgeoning sexuality who spends most of her time with her best friend, Tran (Taegu Andy Kang), who is ready for more as well. But as Tran starts hanging out with more Americanized Korean girls, Aimee seems unwilling and unready to share her true feelings, complicating their relationship. IN BETWEEN DAYS is a gentle, touching coming-of-age film that So Yong Kim made with her husband, Bradley Rust Gray, who served as producer, cowriter, 16mm cinematographer, camera assistant, and editing supervisor. Three years later, Gray made what he calls the flip side to IN BETWEEN DAYS, the gentle, touching coming-of-age drama THE EXPLODING GIRL, with Kim serving as one of the film’s producers and editing it with her husband. In THE EXPLODING GIRL, Zoe Kazan stars as Ivy, a young woman who comes home from college break ready to spend time with her best friend, Al (Mark Rendall). While Ivy attempts to see her new boyfriend, Greg, her relationship with Al threatens to unravel as she is unwilling to face her real feelings. Both films are beautifully paced slices of life shot in a cinema verité style that adds to their believability and charm.
Ivy has trouble showing her true feelings in Bradley Rust Gray drama THE EXPLODING GIRL
True companion pieces, IN BETWEEN DAYS and THE EXPLODING GIRL were made by married collaborators Bradley Rust Gray and So Yong Kim, who live in Prospect Heights with their young daughter. The couple’s work is being celebrated by Brooklyn’s BAMcinématek in a mini-festival that includes two films each by Gray (2003’s SALT and 2009’s THE EXPLODING GIRL) and Kim (2006’s IN BETWEEN DAYS and 2008’s TREELESS MOUNTAIN), along with three very cool films they cite as major influences: ROSETTA (Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne, 1999), REBELS OF THE NEON GOD (Tsai Ming-liang, 1992), and HAPPY TOGETHER (Wong Kar-wai, 1997). Gray will participate in Q&As following the 6:50 screenings of SALT on December 8 and THE EXPLODING GIRL on December 10, while Kim will do the same after the 6:50 showings of IN BETWEEN DAYS on December 9 and TREELESS MOUNTAIN on December 11. Don’t miss this terrific opportunity to meet two of indie cinema’s – and Brooklyn’s – best.
So Yong Kim drama is part of Next Director festival at BAM
TREELESS MOUNTAIN (So Yong Kim, 2008)
Friday, December 11, 4:30, 6:50, 9:40
www.soandbrad.com/treelessmountain
When their mother (Soo Ah Lee) goes off to track down their father, who has appeared to abandon the family, six-year-old Jin (Hee Yeon Kim) and five-year-old Bin (Song Hee Kim) are sent to live with Big Aunt (Mi Hyang Kim), who likes to drink, sleep late, and not pay much attention to the two young girls. Jin and Bin are often forced to fend for themselves, wandering the streets in search of something to eat and something to do, since neither their mother nor Big Aunt has arranged for them to go to school. They become friends with the boy next door, whose mother is kind to them, but otherwise they are lost in this new environment. Their mother told them she would return when they fill a pink plastic piggybank, so they collect coins however they can, including selling barbecued grasshopper on a stick to local children. But the girls soon learn at far too young an age that they can’t always rely on grown-ups. Inspired by events in her own life, South Korean-born writer-director So Yong Kim follows up her critically acclaimed IN BETWEEN DAYS with the moving TREELESS MOUNTAIN, a beautifully rendered story of childhood and responsibility, starring two first-time actresses, Hee Yeon, who was discovered in her school cafeteria in Seoul City, and Song Hee, who was found at an orphanage on the outskirts of Seoul. Although the girls met only a week before shooting, they give marvelously bittersweet performances as very close sisters battling through a heartbreaking situation that is not necessarily their mother’s and aunt’s fault but more emblematic of changes in modern society. Reminiscent of Hirozu Kore-eda’s NOBODY KNOWS, which also deals with children struggling to survive without proper adult supervision, TREELESS MOUNTAIN, which was shot with a skeleton crew of just twelve people (including Kim’s husband, Bradley Rust Gray, who is one of the film’s producers and edited it with her) , is a small gem.
Basically, Quentin Tarantino is a genre filmmaker in love with the movies. He has tackled such cinematic subjects as the heist (RESERVOIR DOGS), blaxploitation (JACKIE BROWN), Hong Kong kung fu / Japanese samurais / revenge thrillers (KILL BILL), grindhouse (DEATH PROOF), and gangsters / boxing / hit men / war / kidnapping (PULP FICTION). Inspired by a little-seen low-budget 1978 Italian film alternately known as HELL’S HEROES, DEADLY MISSION, QUEL MALEDETTO TRENO BLINDATO (THAT BLOODY ARMORED TRAIN), and THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS — itself inspired by Robert Aldrich’s 1967 classic THE DIRTY DOZEN — Tarantino has unleashed INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, a purposely misspelled two-and-a-half-hour love letter to WWII movies that worships the genre even as it subverts it . Brad Pitt stars as Lt. Aldo Raine (anyone remember Aldo Ray?), the leader of the Basterds — seven men, including the baseball-bat wielding Bear Jew (HOSTEL director Eli Roth), who are making their way through France killing and scalping Nazis. Meanwhile, Standartenführer Hans “the Jew Hunter” Landa (an Oscar-worthy Christoph Waltz) is sniffing out the enemy everywhere — and on a mission to capture the Basterds. Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), who escaped from Landa several years before, is now running a cinema that specializes in German films; there she meets Schütze Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), a Nazi hero who is starring in a film about his exploits (anyone remember Audie Murphy?) and falls hard for Shosanna, who has changed her name to the rather elegant Emmanuelle Mimieux (anyone remember Yvette Mimieux?). After Zoller convinces Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) to hold the premiere of the film, NATION’S PRIDE, at Shosanna’s theater, everyone converges for a finale that will blow your mind. As is his style, Tarantino features a slew of minor characters with their own stories to tell, plenty of scenes that go on way too long, Mexican stand-offs, inside jokes and references that few will get, and lots of close-up violence while turning cliché and convention upside down and inside out. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is as much about making — and watching — war movies as it is a movie in and of itself, and a damn fine one at that. Tarantino doesn’t play by the rules, so you never know what will happen next. Look for well-disguised on-screen cameos by original BASTARDS director Enzo G. Castellari and star Bo Svenson, Mike Myers, and Rod Taylor (anyone remember Rod Taylor?), listen for voice-over cameos by Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Keitel, and please don’t ever yell “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater.
The Fast Runner Trilogy concludes with Marie-Hélène Cousineau and Madeline Piujuq Ivalu’s BEFORE TOMORROW, following Zacharias Kunuk’s ATANARJUAT THE FAST RUNNER (2001) and Kunuk and Norman Cohn’s THE JOURNALS OF KNUD RASMUSSEN (2006). The series, produced by Arnait Video Productions (Women’s Video Workshop of Igloolik), examines the history of the Inuit culture and people in Canada. In BEFORE TOMORROW, Piujuq Ivalu stars as Ningiuq, a community elder who shares a close bond with her twelve-year-old grandson, Maniq (played by her real-life grandson, Paul-Dylan Ivalu). After Kukik (Tumasie Sivuarapik) tells stories about his first contact with white people – including how the strangers traded sewing needles for sex – the group separates into two factions, with one responsible for drying that season’s catch. Maniq chooses to go with his grandmother to help her with the drying, but when they return, what they find sets them off on a harrowing journey, a nightmare that Ningiuq prays will end soon. Based on the Danish novel FØR MORGENDAGEN by Jørn Riel, BEFORE TOMORROW, set in 1840, is gorgeously photographed by Cohn and Félix Lajeunesse, filled with breathtaking vistas, but the simple narrative is too often obvious and heavy-handed (including the sappy music by Kate and Anna McGarrigle), although the film’s slow, meditative pace is welcoming and involving. A film festival favorite around the world, BEFORE TOMORROW will screen at Film Forum for two weeks, then will be available as a pay-what-you-can Video on Demand download beginning February 1; THE FAST RUNNER can be downloaded now, with THE JOURNALS OF KNUD RASMUSSEN scheduled for January 1.
Based on embedded journalist Mark Boal’s experiences in Iraq, THE HURT LOCKER follows a three-member Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit as they are called in to defuse a series of dangerous situations involving various kinds of bombs, including IEDs and other life-threatening explosive devices. Team leader Will James (Jeremy Renner) is an expert bomb defuser and maverick who doesn’t follow protocol and likes to live on the edge. Spc. Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) is a greenhorn who just wants to survive the last forty days of their rotation. And Sgt. J. T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) likes to go by the book and take no unnecessary chances, which puts him in constant conflict with the unpredictable James. Recalling the second half of Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam drama FULL METAL JACKET (1987), THE HURT LOCKER unfolds in a series of harrowing set pieces in which the EOD unit is called in to either safely detonate or defuse explosive devices while under the eyes of local Iraqis, any of whom could potentially be the bomber or a sniper. Director Kathryn Bigelow (BLUE STEEL, POINT BREAK) masterfully builds suspense scene after scene, beginning with the edge-of-your-seat opener through to the gripping conclusion. The experiences of the EOD unit serve as a microcosm for modern warfare in general and the U.S. involvement in the Middle East specifically, placing viewers in the midst of a tense, bitter, psychologically and emotionally draining battle that can never be won. The outstanding cast also features Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, and Evangeline Lilly in small roles; many of the Iraqis were played by actual war refugees. Shot in Jordan not far from the Iraq border, THE HURT LOCKER is a remarkable story, one of the best war films of the decade.