Honour, the 2014 British thriller and directorial debut of Shan Khan, tells the story of Anglo-Pakistani woman Mona (played by Aiysha Hart), who becomes the target of a family honor killing after backing out of an arranged marriage. When Mona threatens to flee abroad with her lover, her hyper-traditional family decides to take matters into their own hands. But when their murderous plot fails and Mona escapes, the family is forced to hire a white supremacist bounty hunter (played by Paddy Considine), to track Mona down.

It is important to contextualize this film in the UK, and understand its place amongst a rising number of honor killings, much publicized over the past five years. While the issue receives less coverage in the U.S., it is a subject that receives a tremendous amount of press in Britain, making Honour a very contemporary, “hot topic” film. Unfortunately, while honor killings are a serious global issue, the lack of extensive media coverage (and sensationalism) in the US can make the film’s moral urgency a bit hard to comprehend.

What is a much-discussed social issue in one country isn’t necessarily so in another; this lack of consciousness amongst the American public takes away from the initial emotional shock the film might enjoy over its audience. No matter how abhorrent honor killings might be to our sensibilities, for many Americans, the subject is still viewed as something that only happens “abroad.” We don’t hear enough about it in the press to generate the visceral reaction the film attempts to conjure in its scandalous delivery.

What remains then of the movie is an overly dramatic and complicated plot line, lacking in both originality and quality. Honour’s convoluted story, with its plethora of half-developed characters and sub-plots, only barely ties together in the film’s conclusion. It has the added idiosyncrasy of endlessly using flashbacks to push the narrative forward. The quality of dialogue ranges from “semi-convincing” to outright “contrived,” and the film’s weakest exchanges all seem to occur during its most poignant moments.

The performances throughout the film were all passable, with Mr. Considine and the elder brother (Faraz Ayub) offering the film’s best (though by no means exceptional) acting. To be fair, the material was hardly inspirational, let alone well written. Yet what is most abhorrent is Honour’s spectacularly indelicate treatment of a loaded subject, bringing the reality of honor killings down to the level of B-movie thrillers. The film does little to bring attention to these murders as a social issue, and only seems to contribute further to the media frenzy that surrounds the subject.

One could maybe forgive Honour if the movie was well executed, but it lacks even that attribute. Perhaps the film’s only saving grace is its fast pace, and that story moves quickly enough you aren’t left completely bored watching the film. Its aggressive pacing helps pass the time quickly, though it does little to mitigate the rest of the movie’s failings.

No one likes a comedy that isn’t funny. There is some unspoken law, an unwritten edict, that it is better to make a terrible drama than it is to make a terrible comedy. In the former, you can appreciate the sentiment, commend them for their intent, and pardon some pretty heinous (though not all) acts of bad filmmaking. However, when you’re stuck for 90+ minutes watching one bad joke after another, we all suddenly become far less tolerant. For whatever reason, you don’t get brownie points for not being funny, no matter how hard you try.

But perhaps that is the fatal flaw in Dom Hemingway, Richard Shepard‘s latest indie comedy–it was trying too hard. Allegedly, the movie is a raunchy comedy about a convicted (and socially demented) safecracker, recently released from a twelve year prison stint as he seeks to receive compensation for keeping his mouth shut. Yet from the opening scene, where Jude Law recites an impromptu Song of Solomon to the glory of his penis, the film reveals itself only as a visual record of failing humor–the jokes are offensive, crude, and often blindingly stupid.

One is almost tempted to blame Law for this extended thespian ego-trip, seeming to relish his own personal two dimensional madman. That would be the case, if it weren’t for his self-conscious performance throughout. With every clever insult, every fist fight, and every act of screaming defiance against the world at large, the character seems less and less plausible. Law seems to lose momentum as the film continues, or at least the gaps in his performance become increasingly obvious. The bottom line is that Dom’s character doesn’t suit Law from the beginning, (who otherwise is a pretty good actor), and the role may have been better if played by another actor.

This brings us to the film’s second major problem: its melodramatic, bipolar plot line. The blame can’t be laid entirely on Law when the writing is so poor and the story so contrived. The whole thing is about a no-good scoundrel who sees the error of his ways and reforms, yet his sincerity is never convincing, either before or after the transformation. While some of the jokes were quite funny, and some of the dialogue good (particularly when Dom confronts a former employer), the movie is more concerned with convincing us of Dom’s insanity than developing anything else in the plot, to the point that it all became incredibly awkward.

Dom Hemingway suffers from multiple personality disorder, shifting back and forth between crude, thoughtless comedy and a sentimental morality play (a la John Bunyan). In one scene Dom is on the verge of attacking his former employer, ten minutes later he’s strutting naked through an apple orchard, to express how upset he was over his earlier actions. One scene he’s smashing goons in the face in the midst of a daring escape, the next he’s rolling on the ground in front of his wife’s grave as he indulges in an emotional breakdown. There was little tonal continuity, and the back-and-forth between debauchery and sentimentality was forced and artificial.

Much about the film feels like a crude parody of real life. One of the few enjoyable scenes is when Dom walks out of prison, streamers and toilet paper flying out of the windows behind him (think Zero de Conduit). The costuming is also one of the few positives of the film. Dom’s beautiful suit and crazy pointed elf boots leave a definite impression. Unfortunately, these odd stylistic perks don’t save Dom Hemingway from failure. It’s crude, affected, and worst of all, not funny.

Breathe In, Drake Doremus’s second indie romance since Like Crazy (2011), follows the story of disaffected high school music teacher and part-time concert cellist Keith Reynolds (Guy Pearce) and his family. Keith finds himself increasingly attracted to the talented foreign exchange student, Sophie (Felicity Jones), who will be spending a semester with his family. This reserved, soft-spoken narrative delves into love, fidelity and family dynamics, striving for the difficult-to-achieve balancing act that is “understated drama.” Unfortunately, it falls short of the mark.

To its credit, the film has a lot of things going for it–-a great score, beautiful shots, good performances from our two stars (particularly Mr. Pearce), and a wonderful sense of pacing and rhythm. Using its quietness in a fluent manner, the film keeps the narrative moving, never falling into the lethargy that can threaten such a restrained film. Mr. Doremus had allowed his actors in Like Crazy to improvise their own lines, following only a loosely outlined plot–-at places Breathe In uses the same technique, and its dialogue feels honest and straight-forward.

Thus the film’s great failing isn’t the performances or the execution, but the story itself. Without giving away too much, Breathe In follows the straightforward trope of a middle-aged man seduced by a younger woman, attracted to the open possibilities and “freedom” presented by such a relationship. Keith Reynolds is a man dissatisfied with his suburban life, resenting both his family and the world surrounding him when he thinks of the artistic life he gave up to settle down (apparently just as his musical career was beginning to pick up). You have quite a bit of sympathy for this man, dealing with an unsupportive wife, a lackluster daughter, and the desire for a much more creatively fulfilling life.

The attraction Keith feels towards Sophie, with her youth, positivity, and obvious talent, is a bit of a no-brainer. We watch the gradual buildup between the characters, setting the stage for what could have been an interesting and dynamic climax–the conflict between social/familial obligation and the escapist urge for “something more.”  But despite this phenomenal setup, the film putters through its crux with a half-hearted yelp. Rather than addressing the deep emotional underpinnings developed throughout, the film seems to blow through its final scenes with such brevity that we’re left scratching our heads, trying to figure out what happened.

It’s a shame that such solid acting and production value couldn’t save the film from its poor and stifled conclusion. Perhaps Doremus became so enamored with his own understated aesthetic, he couldn’t let the film run its course, and never allowed his well-developed characters more room for expression? Whatever the cause, Breathe In leaves us in suspense without ever releasing its pent-up energy–we’re still stuck holding our breath, long after the credits roll.

Breathe In trailer

For No Good Reason (2012), released by Sony Pictures Classics, is a unique documentary on the life and work of Gonzo artist Ralph Steadman. Framed as an extended interview conducted by Johnny Depp, the film features an impressive roster of appearances beyond its two headliners, including Terry Gilliam, Hal Willner, and Richard E. Grant (not to mention some interesting footage of Hunter S. Thompson and William S. Burroughs). The film moves back and forth between Steadman’s personal history, the writers and artists who influenced and collaborated with him, along with his style and technique. As a person with only a passing knowledge of Gonzo journalism, I found the film more interesting for it’s portrayal of life from the sixties into the eighties, discussing the political and social revolutions (and subsequent disillusion) of an entire generation. From Civil Rights and women’s empowerment into the decadence of the following decades, Steadman’s work documents an important time in American and western history. The film does a decent job linking Steadman with the other great writers and artists of the era– as Terry Gilliam said during an interview concerning their generation, they are part of a generation that fought hard for change, and despite their failures plan on fighting till the very end. The film was certainly educational, and for those interested in the radical experiments of the sixties and seventies, may very well be inspirational as well. Indeed, thinking of Steadman’s embrace of the grotesque in his art, highlighting the humor, irony, and horror of daily life, makes for a very powerful lesson. Yet despite it’s self-conscious striving for some deeper understanding of art, beauty, society, etc., in many ways we learn little about Ralph Steadman. The film offers only a passing view of Steadman as a person, something more akin to a guided Disney tour than a thorough investigation of his life. Johnny Depp’s deep involvement with the project, from it’s dramatic stylization, to the grating “Tim-Burtonesque” soundtrack, is undeniable, and ultimately for the worse. The obvious hero worship and romanticization of Steadman and Hunter S. Thompson’s drinking/drug life, paired with the film’s ridiculously high production value, all makes for a stylized and manicured take on the lives of these artists.

While the film nails home the importance of Steadman’s work (which indeed it should), the contradictions, hypocrisies and inconsistencies of his life ultimately remain hidden from us. For No Good Reason also features an insistent undercurrent that asserts Steadman’s equality with (if not preeminence over) Hunter S. Thompson in crafting Gonzo journalism. In between the copious discussions of their rowdy collaborations, the film slips in a claim that Steadman was the “braver” and more forward thinking artist in the creative duo. Yet in its insistence, the documentary becomes too eager to make its point, nearly manic to assert Steadman’s value as a creator. There is a brief moment in the film where we watch a recorded conversation between Steadman and Thompson, where the artist states that his illustrations were at least partially responsible for the success of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Expecting Thompson to acknowledge his contribution, Steadman only received derisive laughter in reply– apparently, little recognition was offered.

This aspect of Mr. Steadman’s life and work, those deep-seated insecurities the film unwittingly brings to the surface, are neither broached nor alluded to. What Mr. Steadman thinks or feels about Thompson’s work, or the fact that his long-time collaborator is better known and receives greater acknowledgement, is never addressed. The questions are all soft-balled, the answers charming, and we all go home happy– this wouldn’t be a problem though, except for the documentary having explicitly stated it would try to create a multisided view of Mr. Steadman’s life.

The less savory side of Mr. Steadman (from his apparent capitalist drive in selling signed prints of his work, to his jealousy over his former partner,) was largely varnished over. What darkness remains is either written off as “acting out of necessity” or portrayed in some manner of victimization. Ultimately, For No Good Reason appears as another example of what’s become Mr. Depp’s “signature” style– dark, affected, and elaborately quirky. Yet putting these mannerisms aside, the film does afford viewers an interesting perspective on an important era in our history, the decent look at the life and work of an important artist, and a really great home-movie of William S. Burroughs, emptying a .38 caliber handgun into Shakespeare’s neck. For those interested in Gonzo, the Beatniks, or the freewheeling, august beauty of Latter-Day Hippiedom, this film is worth it.

Every once in a while, we all see one of those special films – something that pushes the boundaries, defies expectations, breaks down the walls and makes us reconsider what is possible in the world of film making. Eugino Mira’s Grand Piano, starring Elijah Wood, is just such a film – it is a movie that challenges you, radically expanding one’s notion of how you can blow several million dollars at a single go– several big-name actors, technical-virtuosic production value, and the most improbable plot line you could ever think of.

The film takes the notion of piano recital jitters to the utmost extreme – musical prodigy Tom Selznick (played by Wood) returns to the stage after a long hiatus, hoping to reclaim the spotlight after an embarrassing bout of stage fright five years before. With the support of his wife, successful actress Emma Selznick (Kerry Bishé), things seem to be looking up for Selznick.

That is, until the performance – Selznick suddenly discovers an ominous note left on his sheet music, warning him if he plays one wrong note he will die. Thus we are launched into a psychological thriller so intensely implausible it’s hard to know what to make of the whole thing. Was the film meant to be funny? Indeed, it’s campiness and ironic touches of humor (from the wife’s crazy best friend and her tagalong husband, to the obnoxious comments that Wood receives from well-wishers throughout the film) could lead one to think it was all made in jest.

If Hitchcock made the film (who Mira is certainly drawing from), perhaps we could take it more seriously, but as it stands Grand Piano seems caught between its serious delivery and the sheer corniness of everything else. Thus we are left with this bizarre, campy film that appears unaware of it’s own silliness. Toss in a few odd Citizen Kane references, John Cusack’s random appearance as the film’s villain, and the distracting height difference between Wood and his leading lady, and you leave the theatre not sure whether to laugh or simply wish you had seen something else. Let’s face it – the movie is essentially about a piano player who hopes his audience won’t shoot him.

To the film’s credit, the production value was astoundingly high, and technically excellent – it featured beautiful cuts, musical scoring, lighting and all the rest. The actors did the best they could, adding to the film’s crisp and well-executed feel. Indeed, the fluidity of the whole thing (along with its subtle hints of humor) is what saves Grand Piano. It’s fast-paced, gripping style is engaging despite the plot’s overwhelming implausibility – the movie’s ridiculous, but it looks so good viewers it’s hard not to want to believe what’s onscreen.

As a brief aside, the film is surprisingly insightful in its portrayal of stage fright – not just the anxiety, but the obnoxiousness of compliments, words of encouragement and annoying well-wishers. But best of all is the ultimate, ridiculous realization, (and insult to every perfectionist out there), that for all your fear, the audience probably won’t notice if you screw up (though they might try to kill you for it if they do).

My Brother the Devil, director Sally El Hosaini’s first feature length film, takes us deep into the heart of London’s housing projects. We follow the story of two brothers, Rashid and Mo (played by James Floyd and Fady Elsayed, respectively) in an Egyptian immigrant family. Rashid, the elder, is a drug dealer with local gang DMG; he enjoys the fast-paced lifestyle, the drinking and parties, but still manages to contribute some of his earnings to his parents’ household. His idolizing younger brother Mo, hoping to gain Rashid’s respect and approval, wants to join the gang and follow in his brother’s footsteps (much to the elder’s chagrin). Yet while Rashid is hesitant to allow Mo to participate, it seems that he himself has no plans of ending his gang affiliations anytime soon.

Things seem to be going along just fine–until one of Rashid’s friends is unexpectedly killed in a gang fight. Suddenly Rashid is faced with the responsibility of carrying out a retaliatory killing. Despite his genuine rage and indignation, at the last minute he backs out of the job. Rashid withdraws and starts a process of reflection, while Mo only gets more and more involved in the gang — but now without the mitigating effect of his elder brother.

It’s at this point the story really gets going — tackling subjects as diverse as race, religion, and queer identity while pushing along a dramatic, powerful narrative, My Brother builds beautifully to its conclusion. Without giving away any details, the film is both contemporary and relevant in its subject matter, offering much more than a cautionary tale against the dangers of urban gangs (a la Boyz in the Hood). The story has a narrative stopping power as good as any classic drama. That, along with solid performances by both Floyd and Elsayed, makes for a pretty potent package.

On the downside, the film’s plot development verges on excessively complicated, and leaves you distractedly guessing which direction the film is going in. While initially this might make the movie fresh and exciting, when you finally realize what’s going on, the narrative comes across as more muddled than multilayered, and could have used some serious simplification. The film surely bends the cautionary gangbanger film genre — yet its lack of crispness, along with a disappointing reliance on some predictable clichés (not least of all when Rashid offers to sacrifice himself so that his younger brother can leave the gang, unbeknownst to Mo himself), takes away some of its ‘oomph.’ Regardless, My Brother the Devil remains a great film, and well worth seeking out.

My Brother the Devil trailer

Rose McGowan’s debut short film, Dawn, is a surprisingly original and well-executed revision of a 1950’s teenage romance gone terribly awry. The film opens with our quiet protagonist Dawn sitting in the back seat of a car, getting hassled and badgered by her combative mother and disengaged father. Pulling into a gas station, amidst a brief pause in her mother’s nagging, Dawn turns in time to see a young gas station attendant smiling kindly at her. Charming with his classically American good looks and manner (a sort of cross between Joaquin Phoenix and John Wayne), the film begins with the apparent moral purity of Andy Griffith at Sunday School. Yet when the fated lovers finally meet face to face, the story suddenly takes a much darker turn.

The film is shot in a sort of High Southern Gothic-style, and draws heavily from Flannery O’Connor’s short story A Good Man Is Hard to Find, about a family’s encounter with a well-mannered serial killer in Georgia. Indeed, in a post-screening Q&A session with the director, McGowan stated her original intention was to make a film adaptation of O’Connor’s original text, before the rights were pulled out from underneath her at the last instant. But the upshot of this was perhaps for the better–the film that was produced boasts a strong literary basis yet an original plot line. Dawn makes an interesting parallel to Blue Jasmine, another recent film that makes an adaptation of an older text (in the latter’s case, A Streetcar Named Desire). The works are distinct in-and-of themselves, yet anyone familiar with the earlier texts will make the connections and benefit from an enriched experience of the piece.

Besides these literary aspirations though, McGowan’s film goes well beyond thematic adaptation–her portrait of Dawn as a naïve girl, caught between her own sense of danger and unease and the submissive, “easy going” gender-role that ultimately destroys her, makes for a wickedly dark lesson. This subtext, paired with clever references to the Hollywood culture present at the time, makes for a much more nuanced narrative than one might expect from so a short thriller, ostensibly about teenage love. The film is bitingly ironic, yet still manages to pull it off with tact and ease.

This was a real gem of a short film. Dawn‘s salient literary and cultural references, paired with the film’s high production value, gorgeous shots, its slow-burner buildup and gripping conclusion, bring something to the table for everyone, and portends an excellent directorial career for Ms. McGowan. Something else interesting to know is that McGowan’s first feature length film, a satire about murderous reality show competitors in Miami, is apparently in the pipeline. There’s something I’d keep my eyes open for if I were you.

As a four-hour German epic depicting the lives of five friends before, during and after the Second World War, Generation War must be appreciated as an ambitious enterprise. Compared by critics to Band of Brothers, the film covers a tremendous amount of ground, discussing both military and civilian life during the war from German perspective.

Each of the five friends has a distinct background and personality, with each following a different life track (granting the viewer a broad spectrum of German life during the war: there is the sensitive artist turned unwilling (but ultimately battle-hardened) soldier; the ideologically-driven army nurse whose time in the field ultimately transforms her perspective on Nazism; the aspiring starlet who mingles with German officers in an attempt to jumpstart her career; the Berlin-born Jew trying to flee the country; and finally, the golden-boy Nazi officer who is becoming increasingly disillusioned with the war. Each character offers us a different perspective, and as we watch their journeys variously intersect, part, and rejoin, we begin to gain a multisided and complex vision of war-time Germany.

The film’s wartime action is well executed, it deals with the various horrors of war, and really goes into the psychological changes that each of it’s five main character’s undergoes through the course of the movie. Generation War is notable for it’s rendering of the German perspective, as so often in American cinema we simply demonize the whole of Germany during this period.

Yet there was something profoundly Disney-fied about the whole experience– despite the film’s potential to get into the details of how something like the Third Reich was possible, ultimately it shies away from such touchy questions. Modern American society has an endless fascination with Nazis. In our cultural canon they have come to symbolize everything evil and wrong in the world, up there with Osama Bin Laden and Attila. We want to know why something like Hitler and the Holocaust happened–how was it possible that a whole country went along with something so profoundly offensive to our understanding of modernity and civilization?

The characters we follow throughout the film, however, never answer these questions, nor do they really seem to be a product of the times. Except for one woman’s naive obsession with the Party (for which she is punished with rape and ultimately repents), none of them ever embrace the values of Fascism and anti-Semitism present at the time. They are correct and proper in their views, with no overt bigotry or negative characteristics that would hinder our love of them. There is no perspective on why Nazi values were important on a national or cultural level, let alone what our protagonists thought about those values. It’s as if the Third Reich was a fantastical background set for the very contemporary, progressive, clear-thinking individuals that make up the cast. The war is treated like some great fantasy– something that our sensible main characters are way to savvy to ever think of really believing in. Yet this leaves the big question unanswered: how did it happen?

The film exhibits an apologetic, ahistorical blindness to the headspace of the time that braver films and novels (The Tin Drum comes to mind) at least address. It’s as if nobody bought into all that Hitler nonsense, and that it was a few bad apples that caused such a silly mess. In this sense Generation War was extremely disappointing; it passed up on the opportunity to address significant moral questions in favor of much simpler answers, as so many other films concerning the Second World War have done. In length and breadth Generation War may be considered a modern German epic—yet it remains disappointingly shallow in terms of depth.

Coverage from the South Asian International Film Festival

Good Morning, Karachi

Good Morning, Karachi, directed by Sabiha Sumar and staring actress and model Amna Ilyas, is a tale of a young woman named Rafina who is forced to confront traditional values in a rapidly modernizing society. Raised in a working-class neighborhood in Pakistan, Rafina dreams of independence and becoming a professional fashion model–-even as her family and fiancé pressure her to settle down into a more traditional role. Set against a backdrop of religious fanaticism, political strife and economic hardship, Rafina’s character is used to analyze the contradictory pulls facing young women in a religiously conservative and largely traditional society.

Good Morning, Karachi offers us an optimistic middle path between orthodox culture and contemporary sensibilities, both heeding the past while not selling out. While the film is perhaps a bit cliché in its embrace of love and acceptance as the ultimate answer to conflicting social demands, gender inequality and broader geopolitical issues, Good Morning, Karachi still does take on some very serious topics, and offers a perspective on Pakistani culture and society from a much more localized viewpoint that one doesn’t often get– for example, I found it interesting to consider fashion modeling as a form of female empowerment in a culture where women are often not brought into the limelight. Good Morning, Karachi is light without being too “fluffy,” is charged by basic social truths, and remains charming in its sincerity and conviction.

Anima State

Anima State is a film loaded with cultural and political references to director Hammad Khan’s native Pakistan, striving for importance and poignancy, attempts to speak out for a disenchanted generation– and falls disappointingly short.  The film is broken into two sections– in the first, we following a nameless man wearing a bandage around his head as he arbitrarily begins killing people on the street. In the second section, the bandage comes off, the gun literally transforms into a camera, and our shooter turns out to be an unassuming filmmaker who manages to get chased and/or beaten by soldiers, then a techie street gang, then his own imagination as he becomes delusional and believes helicopters and cars that pass him are hot on his tail.

There are a number of flags here that indicates this film is intended for a Pakistani audience. There are multiple historical and cultural references that completely go over the heads of most Westerners, and the killer’s murdering of who seem to be representatives from each segment of Pakistani society (police/military state, the tech-savvy youth, the poor, sex workers, the nation’s closeted gay community, etc.) largely loses its impact on a non-familiar audience.

While the film’s shocking imagery and powerful nihilist message concerning modern Pakistan might be interesting as a cultural artifact, the power of its gravitas ends there. Its lack of subtly, humor, and originality isn’t very becoming, and Khan’s politicized style, is far from enjoyable to watch. Though laudable on some level, the film will have a hard time finding an audience.

Ankhon Dekhi

Ankhon Dekhi, directed by veteran actor and filmmaker Rajat Kapoor, is a humorous and clever story set in contemporary India. Our protagonist is Bauji, an average middle-aged man who, after discovering the bad reputation of his daughter’s boyfriend is undeserved and false, decides to believe only what he experiences first hand. Bauji’s humorous insistence on sticking to his morals brushes up against his family and working life, and must somehow manage his newfound search for a sort of self-wrought spiritualism with the demands of everyday life. Despite it’s slightly meandering narrative and a some culturally untranslatable moments (such as the uncle beating his son for failing maths), the film provides and intimate and everyday perspective on Indian family life and values, is very humorous, and features a beautiful wedding scene near its conclusion. Delightful to watch, Ankhon Dekhi is a must-see at this year’s festival.

Coming up this week is HBO’s tenth annual South Asian International Film Festival, featuring a diverse blend of some of the finest contemporary filmmakers South Asia has to offer. With several world premieres, exclusive interviews, (and what look like some interesting after-parties), this is an NYC event one does not want to miss!

With the festival’s mix of feature lengths and short films, running December 3^rd through the 8^th at the SVA Theatre and NYIT Auditorium, it might be hard to navigate the many options available to the curious viewer. Here’s a basic rundown of the SAIFF Must-Sees you should check out.

Monsoon Shootout

First on the list is certainly Monsoon Shootout, screened on the festival’s opening night. A fast-paced Hindi noir (with the occasional Tarantino-esque flourish), the film has been shown at both Cannes and Fantastic Fest to positive reception from both audiences and critics alike. It follows the story of rookie cop Adi, out on his first assignment in rain-drenched Mumbai. When Adi has to make a split-second decision whether to shoot or not when pursuing a suspect, we watch as the effects of his snap judgment affect people around him. It should be noted that director Amit Kumar will be in attendance for the screening!

Anima State and Khoon LTD

The second day of the festival features the world premiere of the thriller Anima State. Set against the background of a sectarian and divided Pakistan, a bandaged stranger embarks on a killing-spree in a major urban center. There’s no question the film is decidedly dark twisted in its slant, and seems pretty intriguing– the distorted image of the film’s veiled murderer alone is enough to attract fans of the genre! Also, Khoon LTD will also be screening on the same night. Khoon LTD is a short film about two vampires making their home in Mumbai. Low-budget horror at its vibrant best, it looks pretty interesting.

Tasher Desh

The third night offer’s Tasher Desh, a surrealist fairy-tale based upon the play by Rabindrath Tagore. Yet aside from basic themes, the film’s grand psychedelic vision seems radically different from Tagore’s relatively direct style. Dynamic and provocative, Tasher Desh is shaping up to be a powerful visual experience you certainly won’t want to miss.

Good Morning, Karachi

The festival’s featured film, Sabiha Sumar’s Good Morning, Karachi, will be shown on the fourth night, and is one of the real gems of the set. Featuring model Amna Ilyas as a young Pakistani woman living in the city of Karachi, what unfolds is a coming of age tale set against the growing conflict between tradition and modernity, religious extremism and changing identities in a rapidly shifting culture. Direct, earnest, and ultimately optimistic, it offers perspective on social pressures facing a young woman in a society struggling to redefine it’s values. As an added plus, the director will be present for the screening– don’t miss out!

Qissa

The last recommendation goes to Anup Singh’s Qissa, a genre-bending drama concerning gender, the Indian Partition of 1947, and a father’s obsession with having a son. The film features a handful of wins in Toronto, Mumbai and Abu Dhabi, and rounds out the best offerings of this year’s South Asian International Film Festival.

Visit www.saiff.org for festival details.

Aleksandr Sokurov’s 2011 film Faust, screening now at New York City’s Film Forum, is essentially a story of striving and corruption. Drawing from Goethe’s famous play (which is based on an even older legend), the film begins with our 19th century Dr. Faust (Johannes Zeiler)  dissecting a cadaver in search of the soul, but alas to no avail.  By now, it’s a cultural myth we all know– Faust is a man driven to despair as he faces old age and money problems, questioning the true nature of God, good and evil.

Deep in his depression, Dr. Faust meets local moneylender Mauricius (Anton Adassinsky), who offers the aging Faust an opportunity to spend the night with beautiful Margarete (Isolda Dychauk,) in exchange for his soul. Without giving away the details, Sokurov largely stays true to Goethe’s original tale (with only one significant alteration at the film’s conclusion). We see the basic three-part formula of Faust, his ill-fated lover and the devil, as we watch a man of unchecked hubris succumb to the temptations of power.

The film is visually stunning, utilizing a faded color palette and blurred tones that only intensify Faust’s compulsive pathos. The film’s is staunchly absurdist– the bizarre characters, their obsessive passions, the various grotesque scenes that weave together in a sort of visceral menagerie of the strange (such as Mauricius’s deformed body with his genitals on his backside). There is a seeming distance between the actions on screen and the dialogue/narration we hear overhead, reminiscent of the older practice of recording images without sound and dubbing the dialogue and soundtrack later on– it brings yet another level to the already mystical unreality of the whole experience.

To be sure, Sokurov’s project is ambitious– the fourth and final film in his series concerning powerful, corrupted men of the 20^th century (Hitler, Lenin, and Hirohito), Faust certainly continues this exploration of the darker side of human nature. The movie sports a large budget of 8 million euro, and shoots on site in the Czech Republic, Germany and Iceland with a whole cast of extras; it’s hard not to be impressed with the grandness of the director’s vision.

Yet the film suffers from serious aesthetic hang-ups– the lingering shots of faces, hands and objects is far more indulgent than necessary, and often slows the film’s pace to a tedious crawl. This is not helped by the fact that Sokurov allows the film to be driven more by its evocative atmosphere than by its plot, characters, or imagery; the vaporous visual effects quickly become claustrophobic as you want the story to move along quicker. Despite Sokurov’s many painterly shots, the impressive production value and beautiful soundtrack, the film’s stylistic decadence comes dangerously close to outweigh it’s meaningful content.

Indeed, it’s hard to say what Sokurov’s rendition of an old story brings to the table besides an aesthetic sensibility. There have been many retellings of the Faust legend in film, with F.W. Murnau’s 1926 silent version coming to mind immediately. It makes for a good comparison– while Murnau’s movie certainly had a very strong aesthetic, his use of style and technique function in a holistic manner within the narrative. His technical and stylistic tricks are used to contribute to the telling of the story, rather than exist for their own sakes or contribute to some abstract sense of “atmosphere.”

Artistic esotericism is a dangerous thing to play with, and Sokurov’s Faust suffers heavily for it­– especially considering the conservative (and somewhat dull) reading the director makes of the original legend. Stylistic pretension doesn’t equate a good movie, and unfortunately there’s not enough entertainment value here to keep one more than mildly interested.

Faust trailer

Cut to Black, Dan Eberle’s fourth feature length film, charts the well-travelled waters of a 1940’s film noir style with (despite a few divergences,) surprising freshness. Staring Eberle himself as the hard-boiled, hard-drinking ex-detective Bill Ivers, the story follows our protagonist as he’s hired by his former employer, John Lord, to track down a stalker bothering his estranged daughter Jessica (Jillaine Gill). As the job progresses, Ivers becomes increasingly involved in lives of Jessica and her boyfriend, till he suddenly finds himself in standing between them and a local loan shark.

It is hard to ignore some of the traditional (i.e. old fashioned) noir tropes at work here–a gold-hearted stripper in trouble with the wrong people, crooked cops, hitmen with girly names, a hardboiled narration fit for Humphrey Bogart, and our main character’s mysterious illness that has him coughing up blood for most of the movie. There’s also a number of other issues with the story, including the film’s numerous (and complicated) subplots, its habit of introducing new and arbitrary characters, and a bizarre sequence with a bombshell moneylender covered in pustules, more reminiscent of Fellini than film noir.

Yet despite this needlessly convoluted plotline and its other quirks, there’s plenty at work here to keep you watching. The entire cast performs solidly as a whole, with Ivers’ raspy voice and dependably bleak emotional state setting the film’s tone and pace. Eberle’s excellent performance and his positioning of Ivers at the story’s center keeps the flow steady as we watch our aging ex-cop navigate the turmoil of New York’s underbelly. The dialogue itself is generally straight-forward and unpretentious, keeping with the every-day tone of the story (though at times it suffers from the occasional bout of melodrama).

Aiding the actors is the beautiful cinematography of James Parsons. Shot in high-contrast black-and-white footage, the film is gorgeous to look at, and brings simultaneous elements of gritty realism and fantasy into the film. Steering clear of cliché, the imagery harkens back to the film’s hard-boiled origins, while at the same time lending it a degree of abstraction and artfulness one usually doesn’t expect out of the genre.

While the film may be anachronistic, Cut to Black embraces its influences in a comfortable and unpretentious manner, and accomplishes what it set out to do. Likely to please fans of the genre, as a whole it’s a film that’s enjoyable to watch.

Cut To Black trailer

Lucile Desamory’s Abracadabra as a film seems to evade simple classification. To call it art house meets surrealist mystery thriller might overstate the latter, but it comes close. Try to imagine blending Robert Bresson’s austere dialogue and visually compelling camera work, a silent horror film’s visually driven, slow-burn tension, and a dash of the avant-garde. Another film that comes to mind is Victor Erice’s 1973 Spirit of the Beehive– haunting, beautiful, and ratcheting up the tension until the film’s final scene.

In terms of plot, the film is both circular and abstract– the narrative loops at least twice around before finding its way back to center, bringing us to the movie’s conclusion and climax. It starts off with our main character, a reporter by the name of Damien, who wins a game of Scrabble one night and is thus visited by a ghost. He ends up following it outside, down the street and towards the front of a large building. Visiting the buidling again the next morning, Damien meets it’s three female residents who seem to belong to something between a Christian commune and secret society, yet seem set on ignoring his presence. Getting permission to stay, Damien is drawn into the mysteries of the house, but soon finds himself fighting to escape. Bizarre? Yes. Cohesive? Sort of. Pretty to look at? You bet.

I can only speculate it’s the Brussels-based director’s background in visual art that helps her construct the images in her first feature film. Her usage of light and shadow is noteworthy, as they function to draw the viewer in and (at times) push the action forward– in the strange expansive building the film is predominantly set in, one is compelled into further rooms by light emanating from keyholes, drawn toward characters surrounded by halos of light in an otherwise unlit space. Shadows in corners move and shift, and one grows acutely aware (and afraid) of what lies just beyond the edge of the light. Indeed, I had a moment where I found myself consciously thankful for the invention of color photography– the film’s images were truly stunning, in particular the final scene featuring a “set” designed by artist Lucy McKenzie.

The film’s ambient sound track by Nicholas Bussman only heightens the tension, bringing a general sense of unease and discomfort to the piece. The film’s characters maintain an apparent detachment from the story progressing around them, a reminder of Bresson’s preference for that austere acting style using non-professional players. At the same time, all this detachment and ambience can lead the viewer to lose interest, and I don’t quite see what the occasional slow motion scenes really add to the film. Additionally, Abracadabra’s brief ‘interlude’ mid-way along, adapting a scene from Saki’s 1911 short story The Open Window, seemed somewhat incongruous with the rest of the film.

All this being said, while Abracadabra isn’t ground breaking, nor does it conform to the conventions of European art-house cinema, and challenge traditional notions of the ‘horror’ genre. There’s still a lot going for it, and the film remains a pleasure to watch.