I Carry You With Me (Te Llevo Conmigo)

It may come as a surprise to many U.S. viewers of the new film titled I Carry You With Me (Te Llevo Conmigo), but Mexico has a longer history of LGBT rights than the U.S. does, according to research by Caroline Beer and Victor Cruz Aceves. 

Despite the U.S. having a more powerful LGBT rights movement, a less religious population, and a center-left political party ruling the country for the majority of the past few decades, it is Mexico that decriminalized sodomy one hundred years before the U.S. did. Mexico also unanimously passed an anti-discrimination law in 2003, yet there still is no such law on U.S. books (though the U.S. Supreme Court did outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation last year). The Mexican Constitution prohibits discrimination based on sexual preferences; the U.S. Constitution does not. Part of this (again, according to Beer and Acevez) is due to secularism playing a bigger role in national politics in Mexico, despite the higher popularity of religion (especially the Catholic Church). 

That being said, the story of I Carry You With Me primarily takes place in 1994, a very different time than 2021 or even 2003. Many queer Mexicans had rights, but things could still be difficult. 1994 was before Patria Jiménez became the first openly gay member of the Mexican parliament in 1997, and it was more than a decade before Mexico City legalized same-sex civil unions. Despite how things have generally been better for a longer period of time for queer people in Mexico than in the U.S., this is also not to suggest that Iván and Gerardo's stories (the two main narratives we witness in this film) are not without trials. Some anecdotal accounts offer powerful reminders of real-life homophobia, like a blog from teenager Paulina Aldaba, who wrote about being told that homosexuality was how "Satan separated people from God," or how "homophobic slurs became a staple of everyone's vocabulary." 

I Carry You With Me is one of two Mexican dramas that have made its way to the United States this year dealing with border crossings (the other being the significantly darker and more depressing Identifying Features). It starts in modern-day New York City. Iván (played here in as a middle-aged man by Gerardo Zabaleta) carries a lifetime of memories, achievements, and heartache. There has simultaneously been for him an enormous amount of guilt and alienation as a gay man who crossed over from Mexico into the United States, leaving behind his son to live with a mother who was repulsed by Iván's sexual orientation. Iván dreams of his younger self. Most of the film's scenes show younger Iván in Mexico, struggling to make money as a dishwasher while he's a qualified and talented chef, but also hiding his orientation in order to keep seeing his young son. 

In these scenes (in which the character is played by Armando Espitia), he meets a teacher named Gerardo (Christian Vázquez), and there is immediate attraction. The two start flirting (telling stories like how Iván spent his younger years in the 80s masturbating to posters of Tom Cruise) and dating. Gerardo is more comfortable in his skin, while Iván is a "complicated boyfriend." How could Gerardo not be less closeted? His mother has been quite supportive of him, despite the undeniable cruelty of his brutal father, who left him alone in the remote part of their village at night as punishment for "acting like a girl." In this scene, the young actor Nery Arredondo provides a scene-stealing moment as a scared Gerardo non-verbally begging for mercy from his father. This is one aspect of their stories that are similar; when Iván was a boy (played by Yael Tadeo), he was discovered by his father in a dress and with makeup on, and his father, too, was disgusted, though he didn't resort to measures as extreme as Gerardo's did.

For the scenes in which Iván and Gerardo become intimately involved, there is a romantic and subtle yet dreamlike quality to the filmmaking. (Compare this to scenes in Identifying Features, which very much are nightmarish.) But for much of the film, the scenes delve into the tragic aspects of queer stories; this may make the film come across as a bit old-fashioned to many post-Call Me By Your Name audience members, as I Carry You With Me contains many expected tragic elements of queer storytelling: acts of random violence, cultural conservatism, closetedness, toxic masculinity, and familial rejection. I wouldn't blame some people for not wanting to watch the film due to the depressing nature of it. 

I Carry You With Me juxtaposes this tragedy with tales of border crossings and other experiences of undocumented workers, adding on top of that moments of betrayal, desperate measures to survive, loneliness, lies, and questions about how authentic the American Dream actually is (and who gets a shot at it). Like Moonlight before it, I Carry You With Me contains the stories of two gay men in love told through three different periods of their lives. By the end of the film, one will clearly recognize the major elements of the film's success in terms of storytelling: the direction of Heidi Ewing (the documentarian who makes her narrative feature film debut here), the superb screenplay by Ewing and Alan Page Arriaga, and especially the acting. There is not a single flawed performance in this movie, especially those of Espitia and Vázquez.   

The somber tone and heart-rendering moments may understandably not be for everyone, but for a chance to witness such exceptional acting, as well as a reminder of just how much progress has been made in such a relatively short amount of time, this film is one many should seek out. 

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Drunk Bus

In the beginning of Drunk Bus, a film "inspired by real shit," the audience is notified that the story takes place in 2006 (winter, based on the omnipresent snow and winter coats), which was noteworthy for me because I would have been a university freshman or sophomore in the winter of 2006. I also routinely took the campus buses, which were free for students. The driver of the bus in this film is named Michael, a young man played by Charlie Tahan, sporting a winter beanie lots of university students wore then (and now, I assume). Michael, one can tell immediately, hates his job. How could he not? University students are constantly drunk on his bus, after all. 

I had a variety of jobs as a student at Kent State University. Some of them I loved (writing movie reviews for the Daily Kent Stater), some of them I liked (being a waiter or a Resident Assistant), and some of them I hated (being a telemarketer for the university). I never drove a bus, but Michael says out loud that other than nude modeling (another job I didn't do), it's the highest-paying job on campus (a fact confirmed by co-director Brandon LaGanke, another KSU alumnus). 

While I wasn't a bus driver like Michael is, I was thrilled to see the film take place in Kent (though the college is called Kent Institute of Technology), bringing about a rush of memories immediately spinning in my head. As Michael's bus pulled up to a curmudgeonly man with a long white beard, I wondered to myself if this character (whom Michael pleads with to get on the bus) was based on local Kent legend Fuck You Bob. Indeed, it was. He's even called that in the film. For the record, the "hippie-looking" Fuck You Bob was a local artist named Robert Wood, who died in 2012. He was "flippant," to put it mildly, even being told by police in 1992 that he could not enter KSU's campus anymore. Now the world of indie-loving cinephiles can know that such a man truly existed.

However, my initial delight and all the wonderful nostalgia soon evaporated. Nobody likes obnoxious drunk students, but no one does (or should) like movies that glamorize them in the name of empathy. But obnoxiousness is only one edge of this sword. The other in Drunk Bus is a smorgasbord of toilet humor; the movie is completely saturated in it. When the bathroom humor does't work, then we get a lot of screaming and yelling in attempted shots for laughs, whether it's from drunk students being drunk students or someone having an orgasm. It's not funny, either. And when that doesn't work, then we get morbid humor, which is only a step above toilet humor if there were some kind of Bloom-inspired hierarchy of producing comedy. It's frustrating that a film so painfully unfunny has received such acclaimed, and yet it has. As of this writing, it is number twenty-six on Rotten Tomatoes' list of the one-hundred best films of 2021. Yet it's undoubtedly one of the least funny films I've seen in a long, long time. 

Most of the reasons why the film doesn't work as a comedy (beyond its fetish for toilet humor) is that so many of its characters are not interesting or redeemable in the slightest. University-level students aren't always the most likable people in the world, but few of them are as unpleasant as the majority of these characters. Within twenty minutes of Drunk Bus, I found myself caring less and less about any of them or any situation they found themselves in. Halfway through the film, I just wanted the whole thing to be over. It's a particular pity that Will Forte, who plays the sophomoric middle-aged boss who peaked a little too early and now manages Michael and the other bus drivers, tormenting them with flatulence, is spending a lot of his career making overrated garbage like this and the overrated Netflix series Sweet Tooth. 

One character and actor who at least is compelling enough is Pineapple Tangaroa, playing a fictional version of himself. (Tangaroa, a bald Samoan man with tattoos all over his face, was a university friend of LaGanke's.) In the film, Pineapple is hired by the bus company to be security to assist Michael with the unruly drunkards each night. Pineapple's intimidating presence and almost mystic wisdom immediately have effects, with Michael being guided along the way as he learns to stand up to jerks and maybe even lose his virginity. Michael is under a lot of pressure, though, and soon there are fissures in their friendship. They even get into a shouting match, and terrible words are exchanged between them. That's basically the stakes in the film: characters lie to each other, characters hurt each other, and it goes round and round, just like Michael on his constant bus loops. It may work for some, but it didn't for me. 

A big problem I have with Drunk Bus is its hubris. If you were to sit down LaGanke, co-director John Carlucci, and screenwriter Chris Molinaro, and then accuse their Drunk Bus of simply being a movie of the likes of Road Trip, the 2000 road trip sex comedy starring Breckin Meyer and Tom Green, or National Lampoon's Van Wilder, the 2002 college comedy with Ryan Reynolds, they might be offended. Those films, which LaGanke, Carlucci, and Molinaro surely saw when they were younger, clearly influenced Drunk Bus, whether they want to admit it or not. But Drunk Bus isn't Road Trip or Van Wilder, we would be told. It's about...I don't know. Life or youth or friendship or something artsy that the three would clumsily spit out. It wouldn't be a convincing argument. Drunk Bus thinks it's like The Perks of Being a Wall Flower, a coming-of-age tale of young people, but it's definitely more of a Road Trip, a dumb comedy. This one just happens to take place in a bus on the same route, night after night, with copious amounts of sound, fury, and weak attempts at humor all being flushed down a toilet. 

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Charade

 "All I want for Christmas is to make another movie with Audrey Hepburn." So said Cary Grant, Hollywood's amiable king of charisma. Alas, he never got his wish, but one can certainly imagine that a second pairing would have been just as rewarding as the first. The two stars were paired as the leads in Charade, the 1963 film directed by Stanley Donen, that remains possibly the finest film in the public domain. (It ended up there due to a copyright notice error.) Often described as "the best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never directed," Charade is one of the most alluring films in cinematic history. Much of it is due to the wonderful pairing of these two. It would be unfair to say they carry the film. Many others involved deserve acclaim for how Charade turned out. But their pairing remains one of Hollywood's most brilliant castings.

Hepburn plays Reggie Lambert, an interpreter working in Paris taking a skiing trip in the Alps. Her vacation doesn't seem to be bringing her much comfort, though, as her upcoming divorce to her husband, Charles, weighs on her mind, providing her a presumably equal sense of liberation and anxiety. While on vacation, she meets a man identifying himself as Peter Joshua, played by the incomparable Grant. He may be quite older than she (something that made Grant uncomfortable during the filming), but she appears quite smitten with him. (Needless to say, as much as romance works, the way Peter sometimes lectures Reggie comes across as very condescending.) Perhaps the two will meet again after Reggie's divorce goes through, but soon the problems commence.

Things aren't quite what they seem regarding Charles. To start, he's thrown off a train (in his pajamas, a reoccurring theme that is pointed out to us). The police detective (Jacques Marin) points out to her that Charles went by a variety of aliases and possessed a variety of passports from a variety of countries, which comes as a shock to Reggie.

At Charles' wake, attendance is low. Aside from Reggie, her friend Sylvie (Dominique Minot), and the detective, a trio of antagonists storm in one by one. Gideon (Ned Glass) takes a good look at Charlie, then promptly sneezes. Tex (James Coburn) enters next; he seems to be an equally suspicious figure, and Reggie doesn't recognize either of them. The third "mourner" is Herman (George Kennedy), a towering figure with a claw hand who bulldozes his way into the church, takes a quick look at Charlie, then violently thrusts a needle into his flesh to determine if he truly is dead. (He is.) Herman leaves immediately. Reggie has no idea what's going on. "Don't ask me," she tells Sylvie. "I'm only the widow."

At the wake, she receives a note from a CIA official named Hamilton Bartholomew, played by Walter Matthau, summoning her to the U.S. Embassy in Paris. There, looking like Dan Aykroyd imitating Walt Disney, he chews on his sandwich rather ostentatiously as he tells her that her husband was involved with the three men at the wake in an OSS operation to deliver $250,000 to the French Resistance during the war; the money never reached the Resistance. Charles was likely killed by someone after the money, and that same person may be after Reggie, believing that she now possesses it. But who is the culprit? Herman? Tex? Gideon? All three? Someone else? In this cat-and mouse thriller/comedy/romance/mystery, Reggie may have three or more murderers after her and this money she supposedly has. Making matters worse for her is the fact that there is increasing evidence that Peter may not be who he says he is. The film is a fantasy, but perhaps the most fantastical element is Reggie constantly believing Peter after every edit to his story.

From her first moments, Hepburn demonstrates her mastery at delivering dialogue, particularly the one-liners aplenty provided by writers Peter Stone and Marc Behm, such as when she asks why Jean-Louis (Sylvie's son) can't do "something constructive like start an avalanche or something." This is a remarkably witty film, and if you like escapism from the way real people talk in the real world, Charade might be just the fit for you.

It's not just the rich screenplay that helps Charade succeed so well. Charles Lang's camera is an active one, whether it's from the perspective of the dead Charles in the morgue or frantically following Reggie as she finds her apartment shockingly empty. The fight on the roof between Grant and Kennedy is effectively shot, and is assisted by Henry Mancini's score, which also adds to the delight of Charade. Incidentally, Mancini's famous score remains the only aspect of Charade that is not in the public domain.

The acting in Charade is, for the most part, top-notch. Hepburn and Grant hit all the right notes, as does Matthau, a performance dripping with bureaucratic aridity. Despite Glass' sneezing in a gratuitous manner that comes across as very unfunny, Kennedy going full boogeyman, and Coburn really reaching for all those Southernisms, they all do a fine job as a trio of menacing villains. Even the boy playing Jean-Louis (Thomas Chelimsky) is fine, or as fine as a French-speaking child actor in a 1960s English-language film could be. Hepburn, it must be said, gives the best performance. But it is Grant who has the funniest bits. In a scene that bathes itself in 60s quirkiness and perhaps even sexual liberation, the two participate in a game at a club involving passing fruit to other people without using their hands. Grant relishes every moment, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes everyone else (characters and audience). These days, just about any character showering in his clothes to flirt with someone would be seen as peculiar at best and desperate and misguided at worst. With Grant, it's effortlessly charming.

I really adored this film the first time I saw it in high school. I've seen it at least two other times since. I cannot say it never gets old. It does, but only because the constant twists and turns are no longer novel. But other elements never diminish. The charm of the two leads is a constant joy. It's a pity they didn't have a cinematic reunion, one as fun as Charade.

This review was originally published on July 19, 2020 at the Public Domain Film Review.

 

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My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To

In My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To, directed by Jonathan Cuartas, two siblings (Patrick Fugit as Dwight and Ingrid Sophie Schram as Jessie) struggle to make ends meet while caring for their ill brother, Thomas (Owen Campbell). Jessie works as a waitress in town, while Dwight doesn't seem to have a job other than to try and fetch the only ailment that helps the sickly Thomas: human blood. Given that Thomas needs to drink blood, it should be quite clear what actually is going on, and I don't think that's a spoiler because we see Dwight and Jessie collecting blood (in a manner you can probably guess) before giving it to their brother, who drinks it in bed. Oh, and he can't go outside during the day. 

These acts of murder and bleeding have become ordinary to the siblings, especially Jessie, who seems the least fazed (at least on the surface). Despite occasionally showing signs of cracking, her steely resolve allows her to sing along to songs on TV even though she stays up late into the night to take care of Thomas before going into work again the next day. Dwight, however, is a wreck, losing more and more of his humanity with each kill. Things start to get complicated for the three: Jessie might target someone Dwight cares about in order to feed Thomas, Dwight soon starts to feel that he cannot keep doing these horrendous acts, and Thomas just wants a friend. One of the interesting things about Cuartas's screenplay is that Thomas' "illness" is never named. Dwight and Jessie only talk about how he's not getting any better. The audience, though, obviously knows what's really going on, yet in the film's mythology and universe, it seems that no one has ever heard of vampires, similar to how the word "zombie" is never used in The Walking Dead. To Dwight and Jessie, there are no vampires, just a sick brother, and they don't know how else to help him. The things we do for family. 

A typical rule of thumb in viewing movies is that if nothing happens in the first twenty minutes or so, nothing will happen for the rest of it. With this one, things certainly happen, but they happen at such a slow pace that some audience members, even horror fans (who often are among the most loyal to their beloved genre) may be turned off. While it is slow moving, this unhurriedness is punctuated with moments of intense violence. Because of this, the strongest element of this film is its tension. It's worth mentioning, though, that while it is a violent horror flick, it employs violence in the classical sense; that is, you don't see much of it. However, even if you can't see it, you can hear it, and you most certainly can imagine it, so there's a strong chance the hand will go up to cover the images on the screen.

While I liked the My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To, the biggest problem I had with it is that the whole thing doesn't feel very original. It reminded me too much of the Swedish film Let the Right One In, which had a Hollywood remake a few years later. There's also the 1997 novel Thirsty about a teenage vampire, as well as the film Only Lovers Left Alive about modern-day vampires contemplating their existence. But one interesting bit of novelty with the movie is its decision to focus on poor and working-poor characters (protagonists and victims). Typically, the horror movies that come to mind center on middle-class folks and above (think the suburban teenagers in Halloween and Scream or the rich families in The Exorcist and Hereditary), but this film's setting and characters almost make it feel like it's hinting at being allegorical. 

At any rate, Fugit, Schram, and Campbell all do a fantastic job in these sympathetic portrayals of three family members trying to survive, especially Thomas, who just wants to be a normal boy. In fact, I thought it probably would have been more interesting if the filmmakers had cast a younger actor in the role (perhaps someone around Jacob Tremblay's age or younger), which would have made his mannerisms and the way the three of them act around each other much more believable. Campbell was about twenty-four years old during film, and his age seems to make the situations awkward at times.   

If you can tolerate the deliberate pace of the film, My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To is a recommendable film. It's scary and unsettling, sure, but not gratuitously so. So if you prefer your horror films to have lots of gore, rest assured that there is plenty of blood in this movie. 

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Riders of Justice

"The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means."
-Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven 

"Denmark is a pretty good place to live but it is by no stretch of the imagination the utopia many in politics and the media in the U.S. claim to be." That's how British author and journalist Michael Booth put it in an interview with The Washington Post a few years ago to promote his book The Almost Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavia Utopia. The gist of the book, from what I could gather in the interview, is that yes, Denmark and other Scandinavian countries do well and offer a lot that other countries could learn from, but they're not perfect. There is petty theft, for example, and there also is violence.

In fact, nine thousand Danes filed a criminal complaint with the police last year. In a country of almost six million people, that comes out to about 0.0018 percent. But it still happens. We see it in the opening moments of Riders of Justice, the Danish film directed by Anders Thomas Jensen, when an uncle wants to buy a bike for his niece. The problem is that it's red, and she wants a blue one. Perhaps she will one day get it, her uncle assures her, and then the seller places a call for the order. The order, however, is not a legitimate one. Two common thieves break off the chains of a blue bicycle, and now they have it to sell to the uncle.

This action leads to a tragic chain of events. The blue bike belonged to a teenage girl named Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), and now she can't get to school. The family car won't start, so her mother (Anne Birgitte Lind) decides to take her via train. They're already having a bad day because on top of those two inconveniences, they've learned that Mathilde's father, Marcus (Mads Mikkelsen), will continue to be deployed in Afghanistan for another three months.

Also having a bad day are Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and Lennart (Lars Brygmann), two probability scientists who are fired from their jobs when the algorithm they've come up with proves useless to the company they work for. Having packed up his things, Otto gets on the same train as Mathilde and her mother. Being the gentleman he is, he stands up and gives his seat to Mathilde's mother, but there's a terrible accident that kills eleven people, including the mother who sat down in his seat only a few moments earlier. Naturally, Mathilde is in a state of shock and falls into a depression, and Marcus returns home. Angry at what has happened, he doesn't know how to connect with his daughter and console her. He even punches her boyfriend (Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt). 

Otto likely also goes through shock and grief (especially as he realizes that it should have been him to die), but his mind knows this could not have been a mere accident. One of the victims of the crash was an informant who was to testify in the trial against the violent leader of the notorious Riders of Justice gang, Kurt (Roland Møller). With the witness now dead, Kurt will likely be acquitted. But Otto and Lennart, once the police aren't interested in helping, take a chance and confront Marcus with their slightly far-fetched theory. So consumed with anger, Marcus makes a likely candidate to join them in their ragtag quest for justice. Now, instead of just petty theft, there will be blood, and lots of it.

Riders of Justice, the fifth film Mikkelsen and Jensen have collaborated on, is a film that changes tones with remarkable ease while effortlessly blending a variety of genres—from action to drama to comedy—while keeping one's attention and investment throughout. There is emotional weight here, especially regarding the father-daughter dynamics, yet there are also lots of laughs, particularly from Brygmann and frequent-Jensen collaborator Nicolas Bro as Emmenthaler, the third part of the mad geniuses who work out together that something is amiss with the train crash and that something must be done. Yet the drama and comedy are really buoyed by the universal desire for revenge. Marcus has been pricked, he bleeds, and he desperately wants revenge.  

In addition to the perfect acting from the film's cast, much acclaim should be given to Jensen for his smart script. You may struggle to keep up with all the mathematical jargon, and it may be especially challenging if you're reading the subtitles, but it's worth the effort. Just about every other moment in this flick is unpredictable, making the whole thing seem like a smarter version of Taken. Indeed, it might be the smartest action movie you've seen in a while. 

While some of the gratuitous violence grows stale as the film reaches its denouement, most of the rest of the film is a blast, and a thought-provoking one at that. I kept thinking about consequentialism while watching it, the idea that a moral act is one that produces something good. The choices our protagonists make against the Riders of Justice may challenge this. Do the ends justify the means? What happens if mistakes are made? What happens if the ones you love get hurt along the way? These are all worthy questions, but even if they're not your cup of tea, there's still a lot of shoot-outs and laughter along the way to keep you entertained.   

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The Paper Tigers

"Don't you people know how to park?" This racist attack towards an Asian-American man named Danny, played in The Paper Tigers by Alain Uy, represents a painfully common act of racism against Asians and Asian-Americans, especially since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Audience members, when seeing something like that in a film, might be primed to anticipate Danny fighting back (especially since he used to be a very talented martial artist) or at least say something aggressive back. This is, after all, a movie about kung fu. 

Danny doesn't fight back. He has his kid (played by Joziah Lagonoy) with him. Not fighting back is a teachable moment for his son. It's better to walk away than fight, he tells him. But Danny's messaging is inconsistent. Later in the film, he'll tell his son Ed that he should fight to defend his friends. His ex-wife disagrees. It's difficult to put much stock into anything Danny tells Ed because in addition to his inconsistency, he's often not there for him. He's late picking him up, and he has to cancel trips to amusement parks due to emergency deadlines, all the while Ed's mother inevitably comes across looking like the mean parent. 

The failed-father dynamic in The Paper Tigers isn't particularly interesting, but it's not like the film, written and directed by Tran Quoc Bao, is trying very hard to make it work. Instead, the film puts most of its efforts into two elements: comedy and action. The Paper Tigers is a martial arts comedy; its martial arts scenes are the film's finest moments, but its comedy is flat. Nothing is funny in this movie, not the jokes about "breakfast pasta," not the flatulence, not the funeral selfies, not even the awkward white guy in the movie. The white guy (a very muscular Matthew Page as Carter) is a former high school rival of the Three Tigers (more on them in a moment), constantly losing to them and feeling bitter about it as an adult yet emboldened, for he clearly kept in shape over the years and now is a kung fu teacher, while the others (or at least two-thirds of them) got a little flabbier. 

Carter, though, takes things a little too seriously, learning to speak Chinese while passionately delivering honorable kung fu beliefs (which are dismissed as fortune cookie sayings by Danny). Carter blurts out his trust of the "old ways" and says other things that certainly come across as appropriation, and yet the film can't even get that right. The character of Carter should be low-hanging fruit for the film, but even though middle-aged white guys can say some pretty cringe-worthy things, none of them (we should hope) would never go so far as to say something like "we Chinese have a saying." 

The Paper Tigers centers on three middle-aged men who excelled at martial arts under the tutelage of Sifu Cheung (Roger Yuan) when they were teenagers but who've grown apart in their older years. Aside from Danny, Hing (Ron Yuan, Roger Yuan's real-life brother) has suffered from a leg injury and has gained weight, while Jim (Mykel Shannon Jenkins) has continued to keep his body in pristine order as a boxing coach but has forgotten kung fu. The three of them, formerly known as the Three Tigers, reunite when their sifu has mysteriously died from a heart attack. Suspecting foul play, they try to discover the true cause of his death and who might have had a hand in it. 

Some of the actors (like Page and Ron Yuan) certainly try to make this bizarre humor work (to no avail), but most of this silliness isn't their fault, but that of Bao's script. The script sometimes tries to instill some weight and emotion (like Danny's problems being a reliable father and his past issues living up to Sifu Cheung's expectations), often with some kind of "but the truth is" sappy speech, but it doesn't succeed, instead trying too hard to go for laughs. True, kids might laugh at it, but they'll likely be the only ones chuckling at these antics. 

If there is anything to be praised in the film, however, it's the unpredictable fight choreography of Ken Quitugua, who also appears as Zhen Fan, the film's villain. Adding to the delight of watching this masterful choreography is Daniel L.K. Caldwell's score; the two fit perfectly together. Music and fighting, though, can't save a movie like this, making this a very disappointing film. Unfortunately, it might pain you to try and remember whether or not you saw The Paper Tigers one week after viewing it. 

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The 39 Steps

The films Alfred Hitchcock directed can probably be split up into five (more or less) distinct stages: The first is his films that only the most die-hard Hitchcock enthusiasts and film historians are aware of. The period is from 1923 (with the first film he directed, the silent short Always Tell Your Wife) until 1934; it includes all of the silent films he directed and Blackmail, the first talkie film he directed. 

Later stages of Hitchcock's illustrious career include a third stage (his longest, the time when he reigned as a king in Hollywood, starting with the Best Picture-winning gothic drama Rebecca in 1940 until some of his best films, such as Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho) and the final stage: the last thirteen years of his career that include some memorable films (like Marnie) and some that few have seen (like the critically reviled Torn Curtain).  

The 39 Steps from 1935 exists in a second stage of Hitchcock's filmography. It's during this period that amateur film historians (including me) start to recognize some of the titles he's been associated with: The Man Who Knew Too Much from 1934 (which he remade in 1956), Sabotage from 1936, and The Lady Vanishes from 1937. While I'm not an authority on Hitchcock by any stretch of the imagination, it seems that during this period, he really started to establish himself as a master of the cinema, and many elements he would be forever known for (trains, blonds, a wronged man, and that sort of thing) start to become common fixtures in his thrillers. 

In the film, Richard Hannay (played by Robert Donat, whose sophisticated demeanor and elocution make him seem like the lovechild of David Tomlinson and Colin Firth) is an Englishman who's returned from Canada. Hannay goes to a music hall for some fun, and the main attraction of the night is a man dubbed Mr. Memory (Wylie Watson), whose cool trick is that he can call out the answer to any question any audience member has, regardless of how trivial it is. The audience is enjoying it all until shots are fired, causing obvious panic.

Hannay discovers that the person who fired the shots is a woman named Annabelle Smith (Lucie Mannheim, the Jewish actor who fled Germany and started participating in anti-Hitler propaganda broadcasts). Flirting with Smith, the two go back to his place where they start to have a late-night snack, and at this point she explains to him that she was the one who fired the shots in order to help her escape from spies who were pursuing her belonging to an organization called the 39 Steps. This may sound preposterous to a guy like Hannay, but he will soon discover how such a story isn't always easy for the listener to accept, and he soon finds himself (like many characters in Hitchcock movies) in way over his head. Why? Soon the agents who are after Smith start to go after Hannay. He escapes on a train to Scotland, heading there because there is a small town circled on Smith's map. However, Hannay finds himself framed for murder, so he must avoid both the law and these foreign agents chasing after him. 

Why is the sinister organization named the 39 Steps? We're never told, but it doesn't matter. The twist—in which Hannay and the audience learn exactly what they are and exactly what they want (and exactly how they plan on getting it)—these days must seem a bit hard to buy, but it's clever nevertheless. The film's pacing sometimes feels dated, but for the most part it breezily moves about its eighty-six minutes in ways that are totally agreeable, even to modern-day audiences. The actors all look like they must have been having a good time as well, particularly Donat, Madeleine Carroll (who plays a woman caught up in Hannay's mess), and Godfrey Tearle, who despite only appearing in a few scenes as the film's main antagonist, seems to have relished every moment of it.  

The film is a thriller, but it's a humorous one, as well. The banter between Donat and Carroll's characters, despite being a bit creepy at times, is mostly spot-on and charming. Donat's ability to convincingly portray Hannay as a man who can so confidently and quickly speak out of his rear end effortlessly despite all these problems he steps in shows just how much of a natural he was. A few years after The 39 Steps was released, Donat won Best Actor for Goodbye, Mr. Chips, beating Mickey Rooney for Babes in Arms, James Stewart for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Clark Gable for Gone With the Wind, and Laurence Olivier for Wuthering Heights.  

Critics praised The 39 Steps when it was released. Proving a box office hit and a critical success, The 39 Steps certainly has maintained enthusiasts over the years, like Orson Welles, who called the film a masterpiece, and Robert Townsend, who once said that "contemporary escapist entertainment begins with The 39 Steps." That's not hyperbole. The cleverness has remained, as have the effectiveness of smaller things (like the way tension can be sustained with each ring of the phone), even if nearly a hundred years have passed. 

Those who love Hitchcock-directed films surely should seek this one out if they haven't already. You'll get a Hitchcock cameo (towards the beginning) and other neat tricks that seem quite ahead of its time, like a woman's scream being replaced by a train whistle as it races by. Whether it's on a train or in a kitchen, Hitchcock knew how to do suspense, even back in the mid-30s when he directed The 39 Steps, his twenty-first film. True, at times it seems quite similar to later films (especially North by Northwest), but that shouldn't count too much against it. In essence, The 39 Steps is just as suspenseful and unpredictable as many of the later films he directed. 

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Some Kind of Heaven

If I am about thirty-four and a half years old, that means that I have roughly been on this Earth for 413 months. Of those 413 months, twelve of them have been spent visiting and even at times living in The Villages. The Villages is the largest retirement community in the country, with well over a hundred thousand retirees living in this retirement fairyland in the middle of Florida. A person in his thirties certainly stands out, especially if he's driving a golf cart. But drive one I did during periods of house sitting, visiting, and even staying for several months in between contracts. As a U.S. citizen living abroad, I still use my parents' address in The Villages as my permanent residence, and I often catch myself whispering to whoever needs my address (the bank teller or the pharmacist, for example) that "I really don't live here."

You also might have heard of The Villages. Perhaps you've heard the dirty rumor that The Villages has the highest STD rate in the country, which was basically debunked a few years ago by villages-news.com but might forever be in the public's imagination thanks to a 2009 article in the New York Post that included gossip about a couple getting caught having sex in their golf cart, rumors of a black market for Viagra, and cops talking about breaking up men jousting with their canes to fight over women. You most certainly heard of The Villages if you were following last year's presidential election, thanks to constant media coverage of the community's supposed disappointment in Donald Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, with articles from Business Insider, New York magazine, the Associated Press, NBC, USA Today, and many others. (At any rate, Trump won Florida 51 to 48, winning almost seventy percent—practically identical to his 2016 result—of Sumpter County, where most of The Villages is.) Or maybe you just have an older relative who escaped the cold of northern states and has found their own slice of heaven in Florida. With all this awareness of The Villages, it was inevitable that some kind of film would be made about it. It's very fortunate for moviegoers that the unavoidable film was in capable hands. 

With all that you have likely heard of this unique part of the country, there is almost nothing I can tell you about The Villages that you won't learn in the new documentary titled Some Kind of Heaven. Directed by Lance Oppenheim (a Floridian making his directorial debut here) and produced by Darren Aronofsky, this film will show you all the good, bad, and ugly of a community self-described as "Florida's friendliest hometown." "You come here to live," one resident says. "You don't come here to pass away." Within the first sequences of the documentary, you'll see how The Villages offers something for everyone—synchronized swimming, rowing, pickleball, and golf courses aplenty are just some of the activities available for residents. There's even a club for people named Elaine. The documentary, however, is not as concerned with the almost idiosyncratic vibe there but instead four residents: a married couple named Anne and Reggie, a widow named Barbara, and a bachelor named Dennis. 

Barbara is the most normal of the four. She's from Boston, a place she desperately wants to return to. Her husband passed away, and she's working full time at a job she doesn't particularly like. She tells the interviewer that her time in The Villages "hasn't been the fantasyland" she hoped it would be, right before she bursts into face-saving laughter as her dog starts humping the cat. Audience members will certainly feel for a person like Barbara and others who have not found the happiness they thought they would find there, like Dennis, who lives in a van and illegally parks for the night on Villages property. He fully states that his intention is to find a wealthy woman whom he can move in with. Much of Anne's story focuses on her crumbling marriage to Reggie, a very peculiar individual struggling with addiction to THC. Some of these characters' paths take some unexpected turns, especially when the law gets involved.   

During the times I housesat for my parents in The Villages, I usually would go outside only for things like going to see a movie or getting groceries. I avoided everything else at all cost, and other than doctor appointments, there was little else I found in common with the permanent residents (or semi-permanent ones coined "snow birds," those who retreat to northern states during the miserably hot and humid summers). I've seen enough of The Villages—with its humidity, omnipresent golf courses, and deep-red conservatism—to know that it's not for me, and it never will be (even forty years from now). Knowing The Villages so well might have impacted how I responded to Some Kind of Heaven, and I'm not sure if it helped or hurt my enjoyment of the film. The target audience therefore is people who have never been there or even heard of it. Actual Villagers will probably be wondering why they've bothered to watch a movie that shows them their daily experiences, although the film's occasional melancholy likely preaches to the choir that is those who have moved there and haven't found the paradise they were hoping for.

Other residents of The Villages—the people who've truly fallen in love with this wonderland in a country they don't recognize anymore—might be insulted. True, some of the film's perspective is predictably smug, with an attitude that shouts "look at all these old geezers running around here!" Yet much of Some Kind of Heaven is equal parts inquisitive and informative, as many great documentaries are. And viewers will likely find themselves rooting for the four Villagers we follow (especially Barbara), even when they do foolish things. Much acclaim should be given to Oppenheim for channeling a style that embraces surrealism while being humanist at the same time. There isn't much of a thesis in this documentary, but it really shines when focusing on the four characters. Perhaps it was easy for Oppenheim to get these folks to spill the beans so easily; older people, after all, are more trusting than younger people. Hopefully their children and grandchildren won't be too upset at him. 

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Slalom

I admit to having no idea what the word "slalom" meant before a simple online search took me to a basic definition: to zigzag between obstacles. It is a fitting title for the debut feature film of writer and director Charlène Favier, a drama about a 15-year-old ski prodigy and her strict, predatory instructor. The girl, named Lyz and played by Noée Abita, has a variety of expected obstacles: navigating obnoxious boys and jealous friends on top of schoolwork that bores her, separated parents, and the enormous pressures of her competitive sport. Her wolfish coach, played by Jérémie Renier, makes things considerably worse.

Not long after the Me Too movement started in the United States, toppling about 200 men in various different fields, it found its way to France with #BalanceTonPorc (OutYourPig). However, in France, few men were held accountable initially. What made things worse was the infamous letter signed by 100 women calling the movement "puritanism." "To these women and the many who agreed with them," Monique El-Faizy wrote earlier this year, "#MeToo was a puritanical overreaction and an affront to French values and the country's cherished culture of seduction." 

Things started to change last year with the publication of Vanessa Springora's memoir titled Consent, which detailed her relationship that started when she was fourteen with writer Gabriel Matzneff (who for a long time has openly written about his child rape activities but never faced prosecution). Then, Camille Kouchner published La Familia Grande, in which she accused her stepfather, the political scientist Olivier Duhamel, of sexually abusing her brother when he was fourteen. Adèle Haenel walked out of the César Awards after Roman Polanski won Best Director. More allegations came, and #BalanceTonPorc spawned #MeTooIncest and #MeTooGay to more broadly tackle the problem. France was catching up and changing.   

As France and the world continue to challenge sexual abuse and the protection of the abusers, films like Slalom are vital. Several U.S. films have been themed around Me Too (like The Assistant and Athlete A, both from last year), but to my knowledge Slalom is the first OutYourPig movie from France. Given what we know about Matzneff, Duhamel, and others, it is fitting that the protagonist in this drama is underage, and even though Abita was in her early twenties during filming, she convincingly looks and can act like a teenager. (It's the same reason why Léa Mysius cast her in Ava as a teenager.) The coach character Renier plays (named Fred) is overly cruel to Lyz in front of the others on the team, but at least some of them feel there is a method to his madness. "He crushes, you listen," one of the other teenage girls tells her, "and you get better." There is a cycle to Fred's behavior—he's harsh, then soft, then "cool," then loving.

Lyz undoubtedly is passionate about skiing, so she doesn't let his authoritarian methods hinder her ambition, instead excelling at skiing and becoming Fred's favorite. But in addition to the favoritism, there is lots of inappropriate touching from Fred. Lyz possibly has a crush on him, and her lack of a father figure and largely absent mother probably make her especially vulnerable to Fred's attention and seduction, but even when his touching becomes explicitly sexual, she tells Fred of her love for him. He might have fallen in love with her, too, if he didn't soon realize the suspicions of those around him, including his wife (played by Marie Denarnaud). 

Favier and Marie Talon's script is a potent one, and it's important to remember that decades ago, the angle of the (likely male) filmmakers would have been to make this story as an innocent coming-of-age tale of innocent yet deep romance. Yet here, Favier and Talon are on the side of Me Too, not Catherine Devenue (one of the co-signers of the anti-#MeToo letter). In addition to the sharp script and the phenomenal acting (especially from the film's two leads), cinematographer Yann Maritaud's camera actively pursues the skiers as they race downhill in a way that is thrilling.       

At times, Slalom is predictably not an easy film to watch, especially when Lyz and Fred are alone together. That's the point, though. Nothing about the Me Too movement has been easy. It has required a great deal of bravery from victims, and it has required that society change its behavior and hold perpetrators accountable. This has not always happened, as we have seen. In addition to the initial pushback in France, there are signs that things may be heading in the wrong direction, especially this past week, which saw the release of Bill Cosby after only three years behind bars after being found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault; sixty women have accused Cosby of rape and other sexual misconduct. This fight to change society is far from over, and many more movies like Slalom are needed.

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Bigge: I Got a Story to Tell (And a List of the Greatest Notorious B.I.G. Songs)

Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell is a new documentary on Netflix about Christopher Wallace (better known to all as Biggie, Biggie Smalls, and the Notorious B.I.G.) that in roughly ninety minutes will tell us "what rap planet this guy came from." That's fundamentally sort of the problem with the film. It's a fine documentary (or at least fine enough), especially for music fans and in particular rap and Biggie fans. But it's a documentary that wants to tell you everything. Biggie's music won world-wide acclaim; simply letting us hear more of it would have better accomplished the film's objective, and yet we hear surprisingly little of it.

Most of what we get instead are talking heads. Many of these are necessary, though, like when jazz musician Donald Harrison talks to us about how he recognized Wallace's talent for music early on. Faith Evans (Wallace's widow and collaborator) and Sean Combs also provide essential narratives of what the actual Christopher Wallace was like, not simply as an artist but as a person.

But the most compelling scenes feature Biggie's mother, Voletta Wallace. An immigrant from Jamaica and a fan more of country and western music than gangsta rap, she has been protective of her son's legacy since his death, and her voice can be heard on several Biggie tracks and the final album he appeared in: The King and I, by Evans. Voletta's candor is almost slightly ironic because any criticism that has ever been issued towards Christopher Wallace (aside, I suppose, criticism of his lyrics) has been from his mother. Yet her discussion of her son further humanizes him in a way much of the rest of this documentary fails to do so. They are candid moments that help enlighten viewers on the narrative behind some of his lyrics.

Voletta's immigrant identity clearly had an impact on her son's music. One of his best songs ("Respect" from the album Ready to Die) takes heavy inspiration from Jamaican music. Being the child of an immigrant, we are told, also helped Biggie be established as an "outsider," and one wonders if this added to his natural shyness. However, one will likely be disappointed if they wanted more of a character study of Christopher Wallace, though the documentary certainly is a film for musicologists with its discussion of the musical inspiration for Wallace and his impact on the music world. 

But that can only take a film so far, and the essential problem with Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell is that most audience members (including critics) get bored easily by biographical films, as they can be quite dull and fall heavy on the telling side instead of showing us something new. Biographical documentaries are not much better. The usual elements are all there: a rags-to-riches story of a musical genius who also had a lot of tragedy and drugs in his life. Essentially, you've seen this before.

What fans of Biggie already knew—that his rap was a different kind of rap, that his music was loved around the world, that his collaborations with Puffy made them comparable to other brilliant artistic pairings (like Coppola and Pacino or De Niro and Scorsese, we're told)—they will be reminded of in this documentary. But if fans were hoping for something more, they are likely to be disappointed. It often simply feels like talking heads reminding us that he was a genius. Simply listening to his songs is a much more potent lesson than most of what is found here.

The Greatest Notorious B.I.G. Songs:

50. Real Love Remix
49. The Reason

48. Legacy

47. One More Chance

46. Just a Memory 

45. Memory

44. Suicidal Thoughts

43. Tryna Get By

42. Don't Test Me

41. Miss U

40. Tonight

39. Split Your Game

38. Hold Ya Head

37. 1970 Somethin'

36. Ultimate Rush

35. Hustler's Story

34. Beef

33. I'm With Whateva

32. Rap Phenomenon 

31. Another

30. Hope You Sleep

29. Come On

28. Going Back to Cali

27. Warning

26. Sky's the Limit

25. Somebody's Gotta Die

24. Ten Crack Commandments

23. Biggie

22. I Gotta Story to Tell

21. Unbelievable 

20. Dead Wrong

19. Who Shot Ya

18. Ready to Die

17. Would You Die For Me

16. Let Me Get Down

15. Notorious B.I.G.

14. Everyday Struggle

13. Notorious Things

12. What's Beef?

11. Gimme the Loot

10. I Love the Dough

9. Juicy

8. Things Have Changed

7. Living in Pain

6. Kick in the Door

5. My Downfall

4. Mo Money Mo Problems

3. Big Poppa

2. Respect

1. Hypnotize 

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