LAAPFF 2015: HOW TO WIN CHECKERS (EVERY TIME) By: Faiz No comments

Oat (Ingkarat Damrongsakkul) and Ek (Thira Chutikul) in How to Win Checkers (Every Time).

Oat's meal ticket

By Miranda Inganni

Oat (Ingkarat Damrongsakkul), an 11-year-old living in poverty, idolizes his older brother, Ek (Thira Chutikul), in the coming-of-age morality tale, How to Win at Checkers (Every Time), from director Josh Kim.

Having lost both parents, Oat and Ek have an especially close relationship, which is threatened when Ek must participate in the Thai military conscription lottery. Ek’s boyfriend, Jai (Arthur Navarat), must also take his chances with the lottery. But as Oat will eventually discover, having a wealthy family gives Jai the unfair advantage of bribing his way out of having to serve his country. Wanting to secure his brother’s safety and keep him at the modest home they share with their Aunt (Vatanya Thamdee) where Ek is the primary breadwinner, Oat turns to crime.

After Oat finally outsmarts his big bro at a game of checkers, Ek decides it time to take Oat out. Heading to Café Lovely, where Ek works as an escort, Oat is finally exposed to Ek’s seedier side, including prostitution and a nasty drug habit. Oat learns quickly that this is not the path he wants to take and begins taking whatever measures are necessary to ensure that he will not follow in his brother’s footsteps.

Based on short stories by Rattawut Lapcharoeensap and set in the outskirts of Bangkok, the moral of How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) seems to be that one should do whatever it takes to win, even if it means someone else has to lose.

The sweet relationship between Oat and his brother -- and that between Ek and Jai -- lends the film a familiarity and sweetness in this otherwise grim and gritty feature.

LAAPFF 2015: THE CHINESE MAYOR By: Faiz No comments

A scene from The Chinese Mayor.

A different cultural revolution

By Miranda Inganni

Geng Yanbo, the newly-elected mayor of Datong, China wants to transform the city into a tourist-attracting cultural center. Datong, the most polluted city in China, thanks to its coal mining history, has a massive ancient city wall that Geng envisions containing museums and meeting spaces. The problem is that at least 30 percent of the residents of Datong, many of them poor and their housing illegal, live around that city wall. These residents must be relocated and their dwellings demolished in order for Geng’s reconstruction of the city to take place.

Despite the fact that demolition and construction are very slow and behind schedule, the government wants the residents out. But there is no place for many of them to go. People who cannot afford to move are told that they can apply for low-rent housing, but they know the reality is that there is a long waiting period. Some residents protest by simply not leaving their abodes or by blocking the heavy machinery. A few residents who refuse to move face forcible demolition and threaten suicide.

We follow Geng, in Zhou Hao’s The Chinese Mayor, as he inspects the progress of destruction and construction throughout the city, as he attends meetings in his official capacity, and as he is scolded by his wife who thinks he is working himself to death. He appears tough when he deals with contractors who have put in sub-par paving, taken other shortcuts or are not performing their jobs to his satisfaction. But when the affected residents appeal directly to Geng, he is sympathetic and tries to right the wrongs -- helping folks find housing, ensuring the children of rural residents who gave up their farmland for development have access to the city schools, and even trying to move a woman from her 6^th floor apartment to one on the ground floor as she can no longer walk up the stairs (what the hell happened to the elevator anyway?).

Geng wants to leave the reinvented and revitalized Datong as his legacy. Will he be able to oversee all of the construction through to completion before his mayoral term is up? Is he simply a megalomaniac bankrupting a city for his own status? Director Zhou does a masterful job of not getting in the way of the story. Clearly the residents are the one’s suffering in this scenario, but Geng is not without sympathetic sensibilities. He believes so strongly in “cultural industry” that even if he cannot bring his vision to fruition in Datong, the viewer gets the sense that that will not stop him. He will give this city, or any other, his masterful cultural makeover. Even if it kills him.

The Chinese Mayor screens at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival April 26, 4 p.m., CGV Cinemas. For more information: Mayor.

 

LAAPFF 2015: OPENING NIGHT WITH EVERYTHING BEFORE US By: Faiz No comments

Ben (Aaron Yoo) and Sara (Brittany Ishibashi) in Everything Before Us.

When love is just a number

By John Esther

The 31st edition of the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (LAAPFF) kicked off last night with Everything Before Us.

The first feature film by Wong Fu Productions, co-directed and co-written by Wesley Chan and Philip Wang, along with co-writer Chris Dinh, Everything Before Us is set in a quasi-future California (USA?) where everyone has an Emotional Intelligence score.

In short, Emotional Intelligence scores are based one's ability to maintain a monogamous relationship. These scores not only affect who is available for romance, they can also effect one's ability to get into college, get into a nightclub, receive a loan or land a job.

It is an interesting premise -- which would make for a dystopian future where status, power, reproductive rights and liberties could be based on one's EI score -- but in Everything Before Us the EI score is used in the form of comedy and romance.

Ben (Aaron Yoo) is still suffering from the end of his relationship with Sara (Brittany Ishibashi). Thanks to his role in their breakup, Ben's score is too low to get the job he wants (and deserves). So, after years apart, he reaches out to Sara to help rectify the situation.

Thanks to Sara's cooperation, Ben lands the new job, which also results in a new girlfriend, Anna (Joanna Sotomura). However, there is tension in the air as Ben and Sara still pine for one another.

Meanwhie, Seth (Brandon Soo Hoo) and Haley (Victoria Park) are young Los Angelinos madly in love with one another.  When Haley gets accepted to college in San Francisco, their love is put to the test. Determined to beat the formidable odds of young lovers sticking together "forever," the two agree to register as a couple with the Department of Emotional Intelligence (deliciously portrayed like the DMV) and maintain a long distance relationship.

Despite the rude behavior of some of the film's filmmakers whipping out their phones during the screening to text and go online (dimming the phone light does not cut it), Everything Before Us proved to be a highly enjoyable, smart, very funny, well written story about young people in love. While the narratives of the leads takes a more serious tone, albeit not too serious, there is plenty of comic relief provided by the supporting characters like Anna, along with Ben's friend, Henry (Chris Reidell), Henry's wife, Sandy (Katie Savoy), Haley's dweeby colleague, Taylor (Edward Gelbinovich), and Randall (Randall Park), the DEI representative.

Moreover and more importantly, is here you have an entertaining film where Asian Americans take front and center in the mise-en-scène. Although Asian Americans only make up five percent of the U.S. population they are nearly invisible when it comes to film and television. And, with few exceptions -- John Cho, Lucy Liu, Fresh Off the Boat and the short-lived All American Girl immediately come to mind, when Asian Americans are seen in American film and television, they are often relegated to supporting roles.

This underscores the importance of LAAPFF and good films like Everything Before Us.


LAAPFF runs through April 30 in Downtown LA, Koreatown and West Hollywood. For more information: LAAPFF.



 

LAAPFF 2012: YES, WE'RE OPEN By: Faiz No comments

A scene from Yes, We're Open.

Closed for good

By Miranda Inganni

Monogamy is overrated. At least according to self-proclaimed “modern” couple Sylvia (Lynn Chen) and her boyfriend, Luke (Parry Shen), in director Richard Wong’s new film Yes, We’re Open.

Mistaking pseudo rebellion for radical social awareness, when not professing their love for each other, Sylvia and Luke contemplate the potential realities of what polygamy would actually mean to them in terms of being modern. (For the record, only hipsters of the silliest sort would be this obsessed with portraying the modern lifestyle.)

Their presumed coolness is put to the test when they meet Elena (Sheetal Sheth) and her partner, Ronald (Kerry McCrohan), at a mutual friends’ dinner party.

This encounter leads to another meeting between the two couples, setting of a sexual experiment preoccupation for Luke and Sylvia as both individuals and as a couple. Do they fuck the couple (maybe a threesome)? Each is granting the other permission to do so, but do they mean it, and what happens if they go through with it?

Considering the film's subject matter, Wong has an opportunity to push some contemporary buttons, but holds way back. For starters, for all the sex that Yes, We’re Open seems to champion, there is barely any flesh. It is not that there has to be nudity, but the film is shot (by Seng Chen) in an extremely modest, practically prudish way. Moreover, Wong and screenwriter HP Mendoza’s narrative is strictly linear and downright bourgeois. There is nothing radical about the film’s storytelling.

Shot in San Francisco, a place sexually permissive by U.S. standards, Yes, We’re Open wants to be a flirty, fun film. And Chen and Shen do admirable jobs personifying a couple contemplating temptation, but the film doesn’t go far enough. In fact, it takes a rather conservative turn by film’s end. The institution of marriage they so bravely mock in the beginning of the film is embraced happily ever after before the final credits roll.

Sylvia and Luke (and the filmmakers) like to talk a good line or two, but they certainly don’t like crossing it.


The Los Angeles Pacific Asian Film Festival screens Yes, We're Open, tonight, 9 p.m., DGA 1; and May 19, 9:30 p.m., Art Theater of Long Beach. For more information: LAAPFF.

LAAPFF 2012: THE CRUMBLES By: Faiz No comments

Elisa (Teresa Michelle Lee) in The Crumbles.

A piece of rock

By Miranda Inganni

In Akira Boch’s feature film debut, The Crumbles, the preternaturally mature and serious Darla (Katie Hipol) desperately wants her dream to succeed -- having a band that can achieve world dominance. Darla’s dreams seem like they will forever be just dreams until her friend, Elisa (Teresa Michelle Lee) suddenly appears, needing a place to stay. When none of their other friends will help out, Elisa becomes Darla’s indefinite couch-crasher yet an ideal bandmate. While Elisa has the (questionable) talent and drive to “make it big,” she also has an ego to match. The gals hatch their plan, and their fledgling band, and try to make it out of Echo Park, CA.

While Darla is perhaps overly responsible, Elisa is the exact opposite: flighty, a bit manic and fairly selfish. While she is caring and compassionate in rescuing a stray dog, it is up to Darla to pay and care for her (both the pooch and the pal). Elisa wants to party, drink, make music and have sexy times (we assume in order to forget her recent heartache). Darla is all business: work and music.

Darla is real and Hipol seems quite natural and credible in her role. Lee’s Elisa is totally without any redeeming qualities. She’s the kind of woman you think would be fun to hang out with for an hour, only to realize she won’t shut the fuck up and, oh yes, you’re paying the bill. While both young actresses have their qualities, Lee goes for an over-the-top performance where Hipol’s subtlety is more credible.

An all-too-familiar story of trying to make it, without ever really going anywhere, The Crumblesis sweet, local and refreshing -- especially due to the fact that there is no sex or violence.


The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival screening of The Crumbles is tonight, 9:45 p.m., DGA 1. For more information: LAAPFF.