Inner journey: Amin Joseph in the excellent urban drama ‘To Live and Die and Live’.
TO LIVE AND DIE AND LIVE **** (104 minutes)
An accomplished urban opus about addiction, despair and debt, To Live and Die and Live presents an excellent, deftly directed drama about a man adrift who tries finding his bearings upon returning home for his stepfather’s funeral.
A film director of some note, Muhammad (Amin Joseph) reconnects with his community only to find fractured relationships and pressing debts at every turn.
Attempts at coping involve indulging in drink, drugs and casual sex, though his dalliance with Asia (Skye P. Marshall), the party animal he picks up and becomes addicted to, merely illuminates the emotional and spiritual fissures he is trying to heal.
Closely and clearly attuned to the power of naturalistic performance and complementary cinematography, writer/director Qasim Basir (who also shot the piece) presents a compelling portrait of a man caught in the turmoil of quiet desperation.
Adopting the slow-build mode, Basir’s measured, unforced direction invites us to colour in the grey areas of Muhammad’s faltering life.
It’s a life that, despite carefully managed appearances, is seeking renewed motivation and purpose, even when his faith in family is thrown into doubt.
Filmed with an emphasis on drifting, intimate camera moves and close-ups, the story studiously avoids the sensation or confrontation such a troubled character might otherwise invite. Resisting such temptations tightens the internal tensions dogging Muhammad.
Joseph brings the required intensity to character and Basir has an affinity for scenes involving ensemble acting, but it’s the outstanding, unassuming performance by Marshall that grounds the main character.
Unintentional as it might be, the tale vaguely resembles the biblical parable of The Prodigal Son in so much as Muhammad is returning home with a bagful of sins and hoping, however vainly, for some form of redemption.
Whether he achieves it is just one of the qualities that make this splendidly directed downbeat drama so captivating.
For info about the film’s release, including VOD please go here.
ONE NIGHT IN TOKYO ***1/2 (94 minutes)
Existing snugly between My Dinner With Andre and Before Sunrise comes One Night in Tokyo, a captivating romantic two-hander blessed with an ingenious conversational device and a winning performance from its female lead.
Fresh off the plane from the States, Sam (Reza Emamiyeh) arrives in Tokyo, exhausted but excited over the prospect of spending a week with girlfriend Becca (Cailee Oliver).
Bummer, then, for him to discover that her romantic interests have drifted somewhat, a despairing letdown signalled by her “forgetting” to pick him up at the airport.
Cancelling his carefully planned week, Sam books a seat on the first flight out the next morning.
To help kill the intervening hours a colleague obligingly sets him up with a dinner where he meets Ayaka (Tokiko Kitagawa).
Discovering, with some shock, that she’s been tripped up by the same emotional pothole the pair spend the night together, walking around discussing relationships, loyalty and cowardice, a topic Ayaka enjoys shoving into Sam’s bearded face.
It’s a tough gig keeping a dialogue exchange between two people as they wander through a nocturnal cityscape, yet writer/director Joshua Woodcock fills the revealing, increasingly intimate interlocution with humour and insight, aided no end by the terrific, bristly turn from Kitagawa.
Spicing the whole enterprise is the near-brilliant conceit at the heart of the film wherein neither party speaks nor understands the other’s language. So how on Earth can they speak to each other for hours?
The manner in which Woodcock deals with this is simply superlative, showing the magic a filmmaker can conjure when they credit their audience with intelligence and intuition about how cinema works.
To be honest, it was a bit of a surprise to learn that One Night in Tokyo is a directorial debut. Given how the film’s premise gives him very little to cut away to, his narrative instincts are assured and on point.
For more info on the film and where to see it, please go here. (US only)
FUTURE DATE *** (82 minutes)
A feel-good dystopian rom com with a visually pleasing fluro glow, Future Date has a great deal of fun projecting present-day online dating culture, and its associated anxieties, into a near-future scenario that feels alarmingly plausible, yet in a decidedly cute way.
With a toxic environment confining everyone to tiny cubicle homes – essentially human storage boxes – searching for a romantic companion and hooking up has become an entirely virtual experience.
Lovelorn nerd Ry (director Stanley Wong) gets lucky when a competition couples him with Ria (Shuang Hu), an Australian girl climbing the corporate Jacob’s ladder who is adamantly less interested in love than in playing the compatibility game so as to win a big spacious house.
What a delight this witty, well-crafted sci-fi squib of a film this quickly shapes up to be, neatly compressing a host of romcom chestnuts into a form that plays like a top-tier episode of Black Mirror.
Most gratifying is the chalk-and-cheese chemistry between Wong and Hu, breezily playing off each other’s awkwardness as they literally go through the numbers of how a relationship is supposed to work.
Destined to be forever lauded for his memorable, if minor, part as “The Quant” in The Big Short, Wong does a good comic turn as the clumsy geek in need of a better half, played with a consummate blend of sweet and snark by Hu (Five Blind Dates; The Family Law; Ronny Chieng: International Student).
Openly defying the low budget the film was made on, the piece looks sleek and polished, with a neat array of convincing visual effects that add some panache to the film’s modest, consistent charm.
The film is available on Tubi (free with ads) Amazon, Google Play and YouTube Movies. (US only)
NUKED *** (86 minutes)
A nifty, nuclear-themed lark, Nuked sees hugely successful podcaster Gill (Anna Camp, in a wonderfully energetic turn) and her lowly teacher partner Jack (Justin Bartha) invite a clutch of close friends to their lavish country house for an intimate anniversary celebration.
With cannabis blended into the specially prepared menu by the guest chef and all mobile phones collected and locked away to ensure a text-free time, inter-personal tensions begin to bubble amidst all the coarse joking and good-natured dirty talk.
Then the trigger kicks in when a reluctant guest (fab British actress Judy Punch) sneaks a look at her phone to check in with the babysitter, only to learn that a nuclear missile is on its way to wipe out the American west coast and disrupt the party.
So it’s down to the nicely appointed basement of this swank house – podcasting really pays well in this movie – for extended substance-driven bouts of sniping and over-sharing about love, marriage, babies and commitment.
The zappy comic energy of the film’s sharp opening gambit does dissipate somewhat once the hyper cast are just sitting and yapping.
Thankfully, writer/director Deena Kashper (co-writing with Danny Kashper) moves things along briskly, getting the gang out of the cellar and into various bits of adult-oriented mischief as armageddon looms.
Fun stuff, with some well-aimed, if familiar barbs about our collective addiction to our cherished devices.
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