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It was wise of directors Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman to hire mostly unknown actors for their mockumentary about a summer camp for “theater brats” in the Adirondacks. Except for Amy Sedaris, who plays the founder of the camp but is only in the movie briefly, and Ayo Edebiri, who probably wasn’t famous yet for The Bear when she did this, the performers don’t carry with them any extraneous identifications for the audience, and thus their playacting of people who are smitten with the performance bug seems more natural than it would be otherwise, even if the broad comedy indicates that they are very much acting. Reportedly, much of the movie was improvised, and while the hit-and-miss nature of such a gambit results in a lot of uneven humor, it also keeps the viewer off balance. Maybe these people really are into Broadway that ridiculously.

The framing situation is that the camp, called AdirondACTS, is on the verge of bankruptcy, and when its CEO, Joan Rubinsky (Sedaris) suffers a seizure due to an errant strobe light, she is hospitalized and her business school-educated son, Troy (Jimmy Tatro), takes over, charged with learning the whole theater camp culture from scratch. Being a rational businessman, he lays off some of the instructors to balance the books and puts in their place one clearly unqualified instructor (Edebiri) who is quickly overwhelmed. This framework of desperation allows Gordon and Lieberman to study a rainbow of student types as they maneuver for choice parts in the big musical that the camp will present for their summer project. There are would-be divas and drama queens and macho pretenders and singers who can’t tell when they’re off-key, but for the most part the enthusiasm you would expect from theater brats—adolescents who already knew what Sondheim was about when they were in elementary school—is tempered with a sweetness that keeps any extreme snark at bay. On top of this cohort you have the camp’s staff—professionals who could not actually make it big in New York, and while the associated resentments linger just below the surface, they aren’t portrayed as being anything less than capable in their chosen field. 

There are so many examples of cliches that none of the characters except maybe Troy has a chance to develop into anything beyond their cliche. Tension is injected into the story when the owners of a neighboring camp for rich kids decides it wants to buy AdirondACTS for an expansion scheme, so the production—an original musical based on Joan’s life—has to be better than ever in order to fight off this threat from the evils of commerce, which Troy realizes he represents to many of his new employees. And if the ending is predictable, it makes up for the gentility of its early humor with a sufficiently squirm-inducing performance of the play-within-the-movie, which feels more realistic than most of what preceded it. You don’t need to be a theater brat to appreciate Theater Camp, but if you are one (or were one in the past) you’re likely to see yourself in someone up there on the stage. 

Opens Oct. 6 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Chanter Hibiya (050-6868-5001), Shinjuku Cinema Qualite (03-3352-5645), Shibuya Cine Quinto (03-3477-5905).

Theater Camp home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 20th Century Studios

Fake spoiler alert: At the beginning of this documentary, a title card informs us that the narration is taken from actual recordings of Alfred Hitchcock, but at the end of the movie we learn it was a comedian (Alistair McGowan) impersonating the great director all along. Though other critics have said this imposture is director Mark Cousins’ best joke—it’s clear from the first lines that Hitchcock is supposed to be speaking from the afterlife, since he derides his viewers’ dependence on 5G technology—funnier is the way Cousins attributes to Hitchcock cinematic theories about his work that are obviously Cousins’ own, a conceit that may offend purists, but Cousins pulls it off through sheer arrogance, not to mention an intimate understanding of the master’s ouevre and a wicked wit. 

Divided into six sections based on themes that run through all of Hitchcock’s films, the movie has no chronological logic despite some early references to Hitchcock’s beginnings as a filmmaker, but the almost stream-of-consciousness way Cousins develops his thesis has a lulling, personal quality that conveys genuine character. Only someone who really knew him could tell whether the opinions presented are close to Hitchcock’s own thinking, but even if it’s a construct, it’s an extremely effective one for putting across Cousins’ ideas, which are so granular as to be borderline neurotic. He can get away with it because he knows the material so well. Each comment and hypothesis—presented as self-reflection by Hitchcock himself—is illustrated with a perfect scene from his films. More incisively, the comments play up the notion that Hitchcock was supremely self-aware, even if Cousins’ voice-from-the-grave device makes it all sound like hindsight. Hitchcock talks about his desire to “escape from tradition” and his strong aversion toward “photographing people talking,” thus naturally opening up a discussion about his technique, which he boastfully points out was “unconventional” for its time. He also addresses the accusation that he was too controlling as a director, but in a dismissive way, averring that such criticism is a “21st century projection.” Most essentially, he dives deep into those devices that he undeniably made his own, especially “time and fear,” which, of course, are the ingredients of suspense. 

The sheer volume of examples supplied by Cousins attests to Hitchcock’s dogged work ethic—9 movies made during World War II alone—and even stone fans will likely discover things they never thought or even knew about. Personally, I found the silent-era and early British films, few of which I’ve seen, more artfully conceived than his later, more famous work. At one point, Cousins/Hitchcock says that the purpose of film is “fulfillment”—for Hitchcock, fulfillment of his imagination; for the audience, fulfillment of their “desires.” Cousins’ movie takes this mission to heart, because, like a great Hitchcock movie, it’s not just enlightening. It’s fun to watch. 

Now playing in Tokyo at Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho (03-6268-0015), Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670), Yebisu Garden Cinema (0570-783-715).

My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock home page in Japanese

photo (c) Hitchcock Ltd. 2022

Relying on an almost postmodern meathead premise, Cocaine Bear is mainly notable for how doggedly it tries to pass off patently ridiculous plot points as having enough credibility to survive 90 minutes of complicated exposition. We have cocaine, and we have a bear, the combination of which leads to the kind of bloody carnage that’s meant to tickle the funny bone as opposed to stimulating fright responses. The premise itself is reportedly based on a true story from 1985 about a bag of cocaine dropped from a plane into a Georgia forest that was eaten by what is believed to have been a bear. No one knows what happened to the bear, but rumors were inevitable (most likely it died from toxic shock), and now someone has decided to extrapolate on those rumors to their most ludicrous ends. In a nutshell, our ursine protagonist—a female, which itself becomes a vital plot point—goes ballistic and just has to have more, meaning: instant junkie. Anything between her and more blow gets mowed down with savage efficiency.

So the whole point is to provide human fodder for the bear, and screenwriter Jimmy Warden and director Elizabeth Banks do a respectable job of devising subplots that can be intertwined to that end. After introducing the bear by means of an unlucky couple hiking through the woods, we see, in flashback, the obviously stoned drug courier dumping the coke-filled duffel bags from the door of his small plane and inadvertently knocking himself unconscious. Then we’re presented with the most entertaining of the various subplots: two adolescents (Brooklyn Prince, Christian Convery) who skip school to visit some waterfalls in the woods where the cocaine has landed. On their journey, they happen upon one of the bags and make some pretty good jokes about either selling it or snorting it. Meanwhile, the girl’s single mother (Keri Russell) starts to get worried when she finds out her daughter’s playing hookie and goes looking for her. There’s also a park ranger (Margo Martindale) accompanying a wildlife expert (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) she has the hots for as the latter does some research. Of course, there’s the drug honcho (Ray Liotta, in his last movie appearance) who owns the product sending his dimwitted son (Alden Ehrenreich) and the son’s more sensible friend (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) to retrieve the drugs. Finally, there’s the inevitable police officer (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) who has been tasked with finding out about the plane crash. 

All these vectors eventually come together but not before crossing paths with the bear, who deserves to be called the protagonist even if she’s the creation of motion capture technology. There is a measure of desperation to the bear’s behavior that really does convey inebriated rage. The gore and severed limbs are served up al dente without a lot of sympathy—you actually end up rooting for the bear not because the humans are evil, but because they’re dumb—and on balance the gross stuff doesn’t make an impression either way, probably because Banks doesn’t provide much in the way of suspense. It works better as a comedy than as a horror movie, but one-joke features are really difficult to pull off. 

Opens Sept. 29 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Shibuya Cine Quinto (03-3477-5905), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Cocaine Bear home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2022 Universal Studios

As do many new directors nowadays, Carlota Pereda expands on a previously made short subject for her feature debut. That short was also titled Piggy, and was about a teen living in a provincial Spanish town who is relentlessly teased and bullied by her peers because of her weight. The short focuses on an isolated incident. The girl goes to the public swimming pool during an hour when few people are using it. The only person there is a male stranger (Richard Holmes), who mostly ignores her. However, while she’s in the pool, some classmates sneak in and steal her clothes, forcing her to walk home only in her swimsuit. While escaping some male tormentors she comes across a white van on a side road. Her classmates are locked inside, screaming, the man from the pool at the wheel. He looks at her and gives her her clothes before driving away.

The feature makes a thriller out of this premise—the man in the van turns out to be a serial killer, but only our protagonist, Sara (Laura Galán), knows about this once bodies start turning up and the girls in the van are reported missing. There’s a kind of secret sharer quality to Sara’s behavior that’s a mixture of curiosity and gratitude, which only intensifies when other people in town suspect she knows something about the killings and disappearances but won’t say anything. As it turns out, Sara’s home life is no more tolerable than her so-called social life. Though her equally overweight father dotes on her to a certain extent, her mother is critical to a fault, thus providing a more accessible target for Sara’s incipient rage at the hand life has dealt her. Pereda teases the slasher possibilities of the story by making the family business a butcher shop (Sara always seems to have a bit of blood on her) and hinting that Sara is skilled with a hunting rifle. She also plays up the sexual angle by showing Sara indulging in porn, which seems more a reaction to loneliness than horniness. In the end, she can’t articulate her attraction to the deadly stranger because she’s so caught up in her own resentments, and as a result more people may die.

The local distributor is promoting Piggy as a kind of transgressive horror film, and I went into it thinking that Sara would turn out to be some kind of avenging psychopath, but it’s not that at all. On the other hand, it isn’t the off-beat psychological drama that Pereda obviously intended, and while I appreciated the occasional comic relief (Sara’s attempts to steal her father’s cell phone while he’s drinking beer and watching TV is pretty hilarious), the juxtaposition of the various set pieces is handled clumsily, and as a result the violent payoff, while clever, doesn’t provide much satisfaction. It’s an impressive first feature without being a very suspenseful thriller.

In Spanish. Now playing in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551), Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670). 

Piggy home page in Japanese

photo (c) Morena Films-Backup Studio-Francesca

Chinese director Qiao Sixue has said that her debut feature is semi-autobiographical. Qiao studied film in France and intended to remain in Europe, but eventually returned to her childhood home in Inner Mongolia in order to make a movie about her mother, with whom she had always had a fraught relationship. In the movie, her avatar is Alus (Yider), a club musician who has achieved a level of success in Beijing by combining electronics with native Mongolian instruments he mastered as a child. In the big city he has essentially thrown off the trappings of his rural upbringing and remade himself as a vanguard artist, but then he hears from his brother that their mother, Naranzug (Badema), has descended into a state of dementia and has practically “destroyed” his urban household. Given that the brother has a family and Alus does not, Alus feels guilty and goes to his house to address his mother’s fervent desire to return to her real home, though it takes some time for him to determine exactly where this home is.

The film takes the form of a road movie, with the Mongolian steppe providing a dramatic background for Alus’s slow and painstaking reconsideration of his relationship with Naranzug, whose cognitive impairment becomes more acute along the way. The title refers obliquely to the colorful rope that Alus uses to connect him to Naranzug, who mostly doesn’t recognize him as her son, so as to prevent her from stumbling off into the vast, empty plains, but along the way it becomes a metaphor for the ties that bind him to his homeland as he discovers not only what it is about the place that made his mother the person she is, but also how much it has informed his own character. As Naranzug almost reverts to a feral state—at one point delivering a lost lamb back to the corral from which it wandered—Alus has to resort to a more primal form of care, playing his music in order to lure his mother back into his control. 

All the while, the idea of where Naranzug’s “home” is keeps shifting, and as the pair move further into the wilderness it becomes clear that home is more of an idea than a place. It’s the people they encounter, the smells and sounds that connect her with something she can still somehow recall; though in the end it’s a landmark she identifies from her childhood. Though the mysticism invoked by Qiao’s camerawork and sound design, not to mention the romance that Alus encounters along the way, occasionally trespasses into the realm of corn, Alus’s newly generated link to a culture he thought he knew but really didn’t is made palpable. When he joins in a grasslands festival by playing his own music, it doesn’t feel anachronistic or odd. His artistic sensibility has always been rooted in this place, and his mother reacts with pure joy, despite her affliction. The connection is complete, thus allowing them to let go of each other forever. 

In Mongolian and Mandarin. Now playing in Tokyo at Shinjuku K’s Cinema (03-3352-2471).

The Cord of Life home page in Japanese

Like the Spider-verse reboot, this new animated take on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise completely reimagines the vibe for a more discerning target audience, namely young people who have a stake in the culture that the source material ostensibly addresses. By bringing in people who have proven ability to appeal to actual teenagers, from soundtrack composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to co-screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the producers allow the characters’ adolescent freak flag to fly freely, with the result being a much more entertaining movie than any of the previous ones, which mostly tried to be something for everyone. Rightly, they also went back to the beginning, and the origin story is funnier for the kind of animation used, which looks like stop-motion but seems to be a synthesis of different styles. 

One thing’s for sure, the frantic pace likely matches the brain function of teens who play video games and surf the net at breakneck speeds. If I hadn’t seen the previous Turtle movies I might not have fully appreciated how adept director Jeff Rowe is at telling a story with such economy and precision. We get the weird scientist, Baxter Stockman (Giancarlo Esposito), losing a vial of his mutation agent down a New York City drain, where it gets into the sewage system and creates a whole menagerie of mutants. Our heroes are babies rescued from the sludge by the kung-fu practicing rat, Splinter (Jackie Chan), who has been traumatized by his ventures to the surface world and raises his four boys (voiced by non-famous actors) to shun that world. They do have to occasionally go up top to filch supplies, including their beloved pizza, and so Splinter teaches them Asian martial arts for self-defense purposes. As adolescent boys do, they long for connection to their own cohort and secretly aspire to going to school, things they know about because they spend so much time on the internet, but of course their “father” would forbid it. After they meet April (Ayo Edebiri), a nerdish girl with journalistic pretensions, they can’t get the idea of integrating out of their minds, and together the five take on Superfly (Ice Cube), a mutant fly that plans to use some kind of farout machine to turn all the inhabitants of NYC into mutants.

What’s particularly attractive about the production is how seamlessly it integrates the furious action elements into a typical goofy teen self-expression story. Rogen and Goldberg bring the same spirit of irreverent abandon to the presentation that they did to such classics as Superbad, and the humorous back-and-forth, not only among the Turtles but among the nominal villains, in imbued with a crackling, throwaway wit that never flags. Even the scatology and gross-out stuff (April tends to throw up without much warning) is done with a light touch. Let’s hope there’s more of this to come. 

Opens Sept. 22 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Shinjuku PIccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Shibuya (050-6868-5002), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem home page in Japanese

photo (c) Paramount Pictures