Ghostbox Cowboy (2018)

The dream for me is to read about a film on Letterbox that I’d never heard of before, and then immediately discover it’s been available to stream on Tubi this whole time. Ghostbox Cowboy (2018) is an example of that dream, which in a few reviews compared it to New Rose Hotel and Demonlover, the milieu of tech-thrillers in the time of globalisation. Airports, hotels, conference rooms. Corporate espionage and street level subterfuge. While Ghostbox Cowboy is more satire than thriller, it does invoke an atmosphere of dread towards the industrialized landscape.

David Zellner plays Jimmy Van Horn, a midwestern dude who arrives in China through some connections and invents himself as a cowboy entrepreneur. Completely out of his element in regards to business knowledge and even knowing Chinese language, his pitch of a “ghostbox,” a device that allows people to communicate with spirits is supported by other American business contacts, mainly middle-aged white guys who are excited by the prospect of young Chinese investors with lots of money. The film is a rise-and-fall narrative for the clueless cowboy, who finds himself feted and celebrated before becoming dumped on the street and scrambling to understand the way he’s been taken advantage of.

Shot guerilla style within China on digital cameras and phones through separate trips, director-writer John Maringouin has a background in documentary, and uses that for his first fictional narrative, responding to locations and personalities. The editing and performances really key into a strong sense of tone, never going over the top, always feeling authentic even as it devolves into strangeness and a sense of the surreal. The only other known actor is Robert Longstreet who is hilarious as Jimmy’s buddy, Bob, a garrulous gifter who is an unforgettable sight with his blonde wig and his dentures to appear younger than he is. Another white tech operator known as The Specialist (who is credited as playing himself, and was apparently a source of inspiration to Maringouin) is also amazing, and his reveries that are inserted as voice-over monologues are filled with disdain for other humans.

A funny movie (there’s a sequence involving a segue that had me laughing hard) and yet pulls off its switch into a weird capitalist dystopia, with the cowboy walking alone in an empty prefab city out in the desert, looking for a man named “Johnny Mai Thai.” The more I think about, the more I appreciate what it pulled off.

Recommended.

Death Spa (1989)

NEWBODY HEALTH SPA

⚡️ ⚡️ ⚡️ ⚡️

D EA TH SPA

Death Spa (1989) – a perfect title! Completely indicates the type of horror movie it is, and if you hadn’t guessed, it’s a cash-in on the aerobics and gym craze of the 1980s. As if some producer threw a dart at a poster of Perfect stuck on a wall, and thought, why not make that into an Elm Street thing? Then you have the amazing VHS cover art, fiery agony of a gym-bro tortured by a weights machine in the background while a swimsuit babe with a demon face takes up the foreground.

The wonderful thing is that Death Spa is as good as its title and VHS cover art. Ideal 1980s horror schlock forgotten in the video store aisles and now revived as a “what the fuck?” cult classic.

Do you want to know the plot of Death Spa? Well, let’s say it involves a successful gym and health joint, where everything is run by a central computer, and unfortunately, the system is haunted by the dead wife of the hunky owner (William Bumiller). As people experience strange accidents and injuries, even death, there’s even a Death Spa version of the Jaws mayor as a lawyer says no to the computer system being shut down, nothing can ruin the upcoming members Masquerade ball at the gym! Featuring some familiar faces in spandex or gym shorts including Brenda Bakke (Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight), Chelsea Field (The Last Boy Scout) and Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead). Teasing out the dead wife’s ghost haunting the system and causing all the destruction is great, particularly when she finally appears in the third act as a strong screen presence in actor Shari Shattuck, delightful demonic and enjoyably campy as a villain.

All of this is heightened by the amazing set dressing and vibrant lighting choices, which often cast the sets in strong colours (the pinks! The blues! The reds!). Within its remastered version, Death Spa has a high sense of style, obviously very Eighties, and also rolls out gnarly kills with gloopy, old-school, practical special effects. I had an absolute ball.

Available to stream on Tubi (US). Recommended.

On The Beach At Night Alone (2017)

A beach is always a contemplative site in cinema, and South Korean director Hong Sang-soo seems to return to it as a space for his characters. On The Beach At Night Alone (2017) features two beaches – one in Hamburg, the other in South Korea – and neither takes place in the pitch-black of night where the sea and sky are indivisible. Rather, they both border on evening, and each beach is cold and grey, framing the solitary figure Young-hee (Kim Min-hee) within a lonely atmosphere. If the viewer wasn’t familiar with Sang-soo’s whole thing as a director, nor the real life events it seems to be processing and reflecting, would they still find it compelling? I think so – Min-hee is an engaging presence, and it’s cinematic enough to see her stand in a coat, smoking on a cigarette, and for the camera to observe her character’s contemplation.

Divided into two parts, we begin in Hamburg where Young-hee, an actor, is visiting and spending time with a friend, Jee-young (Seo Young-hwa); they walk and talk, look for something to eat, visit a bookstore. Young-hee has left South Korea after a public scandal due to an affair she has entered into with a married film director. Waiting for him to visit, and thinking of how she wants to live her life in the wake of it, the movie also introduces surreal elements, one scene in particular that surprises and is left hanging in the viewer’s mind: “What did that mean?” and “Will it come back again?” This allows an element of tension and mystery to permeate the everyday reality of Young-hee’s character. We then catch up with her returning to Korea, a small town where she bumps into old friends and acquaintances, sits and drinks, and eventually her reserved poise turns to anger and frustration.

While the title I believe is based off a Walt Whitman poem, the film carries through with its promise of loneliness and introspection. Of course, everything has another layer of meaning if aware that Sang-soo was married when he and Kim Min-hee began a relationship during the making of the film, Right Then, Wrong Now; she has since been a regular star and featured player, and collaborative element in his following movies. Reading interviews with Sang-soo, it’s interesting to hear how he makes his films, waking up early to write a scene that will eventually be shot later that day with his crew, the sense of opening improvisation when he begins a project, leading to a further shape with each new scene, shot basically in order of how it appears:

“I know that reality is something I can never reach out and grab. We are all living under the influence of being human beings, so it is a good thing that it is unattainable. Even though I feel totally lost, even though I feel pain, it’s not real, in a way.”

While scenes recurred from previous Sang-soo movies I’d seen, like The Woman Who Ran and Introduction, I do think this is one of his strongest, buoyed by Min-hee’s great central performance, and its thorny fictionalised take on what would be common knowledge to Korean audiences and cineastes. Available to stream on SBS On Demand. Recommended.

Round About Midnight (1999)

Hiroyuki Sanada is a recognisable Japanese actor from Hollywood productions like The Last Samurai and John Wick 4, always giving a sense of dignity and substance to even mainstream action cinema clearly beneath his talents (Bullet Train, Mortal Kombat remake). In previous decades, there were leading roles in Japanese cinemas throughout the 1980s onwards. Round About Midnight (1999; Mayonaka made) was a discovery to me through a list of Asian movies available to watch on YouTube.

One of four movies directed by artist and illustrator Makoto Wada, the camera in Round About Midnight takes in the urban nightlife, floating from a shady deal in a multi-level car park to a late night jazz bar. The windows open to allow the camera through, which settles in to bask in Sanada as Koji, a jazz trumpet player, leading his own quintet into a version of ‘Round Midnight’ to a seated audience. When Koji takes a cigarette break before his next set at midnight, he inadvertently stumbles across two suits – played by Ittoku Kishibe (13 Assassins) and Jun Kunimura (The Wailing) – threatening the life of Hong Kong immigrant Linda (Michelle Reis from Wong Kar-wai’s Fallen Angels). As bullets fly and switch-blades are flicked, Linda and Koji run off into the night, caught in a criminal operation that has murdered a night-club accountant. The only hope for Koji and Linda to save their necks and clear their names is to find the accountant’s evidence that would expose these crooks. All throughout the night, Koji holds onto his prized trumpet, hoping that he can return to his midnight gig (a jazz legend from the US is rumoured to be in attendance). But he’s also continually torn to help Linda amidst their growing connection from strangers to kindred spirits.

Round About Midnight is a noir romance and a charming caper, which feels indebted to a sensibility from older eras of the genres. Noboru Shinoda’s cinematography captures the red glare of neon signs, amber hues of street lights and the greenish tint of wet roads. Sanada and Reis have great chemistry, and are watchable leads. Supporting characters and bit parts all have an amusing flourish or detail – using the one night structure, the film creates its own nocturnal universe, brimming with charm and bittersweet notes. Similar to One From The Heart, Round About Midnight feels like a filmmaker creating their own late night jazz city dreamscape that the audience is invited to sit in and soak up. Looser though, offering momentum and slapstick as the couple darts through streets and rooftops. Even taking a time out for a heart-to-heart and an impromptu music duet in the back of a delivery truck. And of course, there’s a great soundtrack of jazz.

This is the first film I’ve seen by Wada and he just nails the noirish tone with a comic energy, never overplayed or overheated. Am keen to see his previous film with Sanada, Kaito Ruby, which looks even more comedic. Available to watch on YouTube. Recommended.

Petrol (2023)

Petrol (2023) is a new Australian film from director Alena Lodkina. I had only caught up recently with her first, Strange Colours, which screened at Revelation Film Festival and is a father-daughter drama set in the Lightning Ridge opal mining bushlands of New South Wales, which I found to be authentic and artful, patiently compelling. Petrol is set within urban Naarm/Melbourne and is both similar in style and tone to her previous film to a degree, a clear sense of control and taste in evidence, but also completely different in effect.

The film focuses on Eva played by Nathalie Morris (from the TV show Bump) who is a film student living at home with her Russian immigrant family – a background shared by the director Alena, though this is not an autobiography at all. While recording sound out on a coastal hillside for one of her final year film projects, Eva secretly observes a performance on the shore by a small group of people, filming characters dressed up as vampires reciting arch prose. The star performer is artist Mia (Hannah Lynch). Though they never speak, there is something about Mia that captivates Eva. Later while walking through the city at night, Eva spies Mia along, deciding to crash. They meet in the party conversation over wine and eventually become friends, to the point where Mia who is living in an apartment, apparently paid for by a wealthy benefactor, offers Eva a room to stay in.

This is the starting point of the film, but the great thing about how it unfolds was that I was never sure where it was heading. There are everyday moments of Eva getting along at film school or spending time with her mother or grandmother. And then there will be a surreal or odd moment, sometimes revealed to be a dream, other times possibly drug-induced. Mia talks of a sister who died when she was young, and there is possibly the presence of a ghost. Petrol’s style often flirts with becoming a horror movie, or a thriller, but then will also disarm you with something humorous and charming. Petrol is a singular, unique film working in the arthouse tradition that uses mystery and dream logic to communicate a familiar feeling. Of being young and defining your identity, falling in love with people because of what they represent rather than who they are, and trying to fit in when people are elusive and indeterminate.

The performances are really good, particularly Nathalie Morris who is the central character and whose experience guides the perspective of the film. Morris projects empathy through her introverted, thoughtful and uncertain manner. At points, I was reminded of playful, surrealist auteurs from the 1970s like Jacques Rivette or Apichatpong Weerasethakul – even Jean Rollin with characters wandering a cold looking beach wearing coats and cloaks. With its use of dream logic and subconscious imagery, it’s also hard not to compare to David Lynch. But there’s a different tone and impact here – this is not a crime movie or a horror, but uses the cinematic language here to convey something about existentialism, identity and relationships. Great cinematography by Michael Latham, particularly of how it makes the inner-city Naarm look at certain points and its contrast with the countryside landscape, and the score is by musicians Mikey Young and Raven Mahon.

Petrol is out in cinemas now and it’s definitely a strange, surreal experience. Not for everyone, but I’m very keen that there should be more Australian films like this. Recommended.