by Aaron Davidson

(an FMC original)

The best part of Harmony Korine’s new film, Trash Humpers, was Harmony Korine’s introduction. It was the first west coast showing, at the Nuart Theater in western Los Angeles. An article in the Weekly piqued the interest of anyone still interested in Harmony Korine, enough people to sell the show out. My roommate read the article in line for tacos, and an hour later I caught a Facebook post from a friend getting rid of two tickets for reasons involving a bus station. I moved to LA a few weeks before, and this seemed like as good an option as any for a warm Friday in a new city.

The lights came up after the previews, and Korine shuffled down aisle to replace the Matthew Barney humanoids ghosted on my retinas. Korine thanked everyone for coming then explained that we weren’t really about to watch a movie, but “something else.” He said the Trash Humpers project manifested from taking photos of his wife and friends wearing “silly” masks and committing misdemeanor vandalism and other pranks around Nashville, including defecating in driveways and fornicating with trashcans.

Korine transitioned to an anecdote about a neighbor he doesn’t trust, the man that “invented the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure.” This guy, apparently, has trash bins full of VHS tapes in his backyard. One bin, according to Korine, had every hour CNN aired in 1988. Korine wanted to make something that might be found in such a bin, or (and I’m paraphrasing), “lodged far up in the guts of a Jonas brother.” The crowd ate this up.

Korine explained he couldn’t stay for the film, because he had “important people to meet.” (This was misheard by some, who thought he said “porn people to meet.” The idea of a Korine-helmed porn remains intriguing.) He offered to do a Q&A anyway. It didn’t matter that we hadn’t seen the film, Korine said, because for those who’d seen the trailer, the movie was “more of the same shit.” Big laughs. (more…)

Peter Travers | Rolling Stone

Having just won the Academy Award as the year’s best foreign-language film, The Secret in Their Eyes has a decent shot at wearing down resistance to subtitled films. Don’t be put off. This spellbinder from Argentina will sneak up and floor you. It’s that good.

Ricardo Darin is brilliant as Benjamin, a criminal-court investigator who is tormented by the unsolved rape and murder of a young bride in 1974, and by the military junta that devastated his country around the same time. We watch as Benjamin and Sandoval (the superb Guillermo Francella), his alcoholic partner, work with the victim’s husband, Ricardo (Pablo Rago), to identify the killer. Photos, especially those revealing the eyes of the killer, play a major role in the discovery. In a thunderously exciting chase scene through a Buenos Aires stadium during a heated soccer match, Benjamin and Sandoval hunt their prey, only to find him given shelter by the corrupt government of the new Argentina. (Read More)

Derek Elley | Variety

East meets West meets East again, with palate-tingling results, in “The Good the Bad the Weird,” a kimchi Western that draws shamelessly on its spaghetti forebears but remains utterly, bracingly Korean. More than two years in production, and at a reported $17 million the most expensive South Korean movie to date, fifth feature by genre-bending helmer Kim Jee-woon (“The Quiet Family,” “A Bittersweet Life”), centered on a trio of treasure-seekers in 1930s Japanese-occupied Manchuria, looks headed for through-the-roof local biz, hunky returns throughout Asia and piquant specialized B.O. in the West, in the right hands.

[...]

Though the movie raises the bar yet again for South Korean tech expertise and ambition, as well as launching the K-oater subgenre, it’s not the first “oriental Western” (as it bills itself on closing credits). Last year, Takashi Miike’s “Sukiyaki Western Django” pioneered a fusion-style J-Western, and Chinese fifth-generation director He Ping already had two cracks at a C-Western with “Swordsman in Double-Flag Town” (1991) and “Sun Valley” (1996). And the original spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s were partly inspired by Japanese samurai movies, anyway.

In the first of many references to Sergio Leone’s “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” central trio is introduced one at a time, though without onscreen captions to ID them. First up is “the Bad,” black-suited, spiky-haired bandit leader Chang-yi (Lee Byeong-heon, “A Bittersweet Life”), who’s hired by a pro-Japanese Korean businessman (Song Yeong-chang) to retrieve a valuable treasure map from a train. (Read More)

Bob Mondello | NPR

Walking through a Stockholm square at the outset of the arrestingly violent Swedish thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) can’t escape his own image: His face, accompanied by the headline “Guilty,” stares back from newsstands, from billboard-sized video screens, and — though Blomqvist doesn’t realize it — from the viewfinder of a camera held by a fierce-looking, leather-clad punk named Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace).

Blomkvist’s crime was investigating an industrialist powerful enough to make a libel suit stick. He is unaware that Lisbeth, who has been brutalized enough to instinctively side with the powerless, has taken an interest in him. By hacking his computer, she has discovered that while awaiting the start of his jail term, he has been investigating what even Swedes would consider a cold case: the disappearance some four decades earlier of another industrialist’s niece.

Blomkvist’s old-school, shoe-leather approach to solving the disappearance isn’t getting him anywhere, but once he and the tattoo girl get together and establish a few boundaries (no hacking your allies, f’rinstance), Lisbeth’s not inconsiderable skills — including a photographic memory and a mean way with handcuffs — help move the case forward.

Though Stieg Larsson’s novels are rife with sexual violence and considerable gore, they’re also mystery thrillers in the Agatha Christie sense — in this case, the specific genre homages include an isolated estate and skulking suspects with loads of motives and alibis. (Read More)

Kenneth Turan LA Times

Genre is powerful, especially in the hands of as gifted a filmmaker as France’s Jacques Audiard. His new film, the masterful “A Prophet,” is an answered prayer for those who believe that revitalizing classic forms with contemporary attitudes makes for the most compelling kind of cinema.

Part prison film, part crime story, part intense personal drama, this all-consuming narrative with the power and drive of a Formula One racer has been something of a phenomenon since it took the grand jury prize at Cannes last year. A “Sight & Sound” poll of 60 critics worldwide named it the best film of 2009, it’s one of the five foreign-language film Oscar nominees, it took Britain’s prestigious BAFTA award in that category and, with 13 nominations overall, it’s a prohibitive favorite to win the Cesar, France’s Oscar, for best picture. (Read More)

A.O. Scott of The New York Times has an interesting review of “Ajami,” Israel’s submission to the Oscars for Best Foreign Film. “Ajami” is opening in the States now to a limited release, so check your local times and listings.

Written and directed by Scandar Copti, an Israeli Arab (who also plays an important supporting role), and Yaron Shani, who is Jewish, the film is acutely insightful about the social divisions within Israel, but it examines them without scolding or sentimentality.

There is no finger-pointing here, and no group hugging either. Instead there is a sharp sense of just how deep and wide the schisms are, not just between Jews and Arabs but also between Christians and Muslims, rich and poor, farmers and city dwellers, men and women, young and old and so on. (read more)