If there was ever a film that definitively proves film is a universal art form that defies the roughly 6,500 languages in our world, it is this 38^th directing effort from Chun-Ku Lu: This Life, I am a flower pot.

Unknown in the United States, outside of the most discriminating martial arts connoisseur, director Chun-Ku Lu is a respected, major star in China and the Pacific Rim territories with 80-odd combined credits as a writer, actor, and director. He’s best known to U.S audiences for his work during the martial arts heyday of ‘70s cinema for The Black Dragon’s Revenge, along with the popular ‘80s video rentals Bastard Swordsman (1983) and its sequel: Return of the Bastard Swordsman (1984).

After a 20-year retirement from the business in the late ‘90s, Chun-Ku Lu returns with this touching, beautifully-shot drama about a single mother and her portly, young son who leave Taiwan to live in the U.S. The title of this Mandarin language short out of Taiwan is pronounced Zhè bèizi, wǒ shì huā pén, which is also understood as: This world is a small bonsai.

Even without subtitles, this voiceover-related story is easy to digest by understanding the universal symbolism of the art of bonsai: a minimalist approach practiced in Zen Buddhism where one strives for peace, harmony, and balance; a maintaining and ordering of thoughts, so as to remove clutter from one’s life; an art that teaches man—like trees—must fight against the elements of nature (and his unbalanced fellow man).

The voiceover is provided—it seems—by Jimmy, who tells the story of how he and his mother left Taiwan for a better life in the United States. Of course, in their new land, they are “Guizi”: a xenophobic slang in their language to describe a foreigner. Jimmy quickly becomes the target of bullies; his mother is also a “ghost man”: one who lives an invisible existence, in her case, as a janitor, to provide for Jimmy; she can provide him only the simplest of birthdays (in Buddhism the candle represents the aware, enlightened mind). The receipt of a small wooden box—with three gold symbols—for his birthday from a relative in Taiwan becomes the catalyst for the next phase of young Jimmy’s life.

The Canadian cinematographer behind this stunner is Jimmy Wu. Relatively new to the film world, Wu made his debut three years ago with the 2017 Canadian-Chinese language short, The Molecule. He’s since shot seven shorts, served as an Assistant Camera and 2^nd Assistant Camera on eight more, produced two, and has also composed music for the 2017 surrealistic, animated comedy, Love Ninja. You can view Wu’s superb reel featuring scenes from those projects on his You Tube page.

The bright lights of Hollywood aren’t far behind for Wu: we’ll be seeing more from him very soon. You can watch his and Chun-Ku Lu’s This Life, I am a flower pot in its entirety on You Tube (also embedded below).

Disclaimer: This movie wasn’t sent to us by its production company or PR department. We discovered the movie all on our own—courtesy of its Chun-Ku Lu connection—and genuinely enjoyed the movie.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

In the late ‘90s, Robert Altman (M.A.S.H, Nashville, Quintet) transitioned into television with an innovative approach to the anthology-narrative format: Gun, which aired on the ABC-TV network. Each unrelated episode—with new plots and characters for each story—followed a .45 semi-automatic pistol on its travels from person to person.

In Wicca Book, writer-director Vahagn Karapetyan’s seventh short film, we have an intelligent amalgamation of the Altman concept plopped into the Sam Raimi universe—unfolding as a Hieronymus Bosch, medieval triptych: a garden of Greek horror centered on an ancient grimoire (convincing-beautifully crafted by artist Maria Alvanou) that passes from owner to owner. However, while there’s a Raimi connection via an ancient text (that Raimi pinched wholesale from 1970’s Equinox; sans the Dave Allen and Jim Danforth creatures), make no mistake: There’s no Bruce Campbell hammy buffoonery: a Rob Zombie-styled, Dario Argento homage snared in Karapetyan’s fisheye lens.

Film, at its core, is a visual medium. It’s an art form based in “showing” and not “telling”; for film is 90% visual and 10% dialog (and the stage is the reverse). Images tell the story though props, an actor’s body language and, most importantly: that your actors are not skilled in the craft of acting—but “being.” This is an art at which Karapetyan and his actors excel: there’s no dialog across his film’s 22-minute run time. While, at first glance, Wicca Book may be a bit longer than a short film should be, in this case, there’s not one superfluous frame on screen: every minute is artistically warranted. It’s masterfully edited.

In addition to a film’s dialog-barren image, music can also induce emotion in those frames. And all of the film disciplines are at their finest in Wicca Book as Karapetyan formulated a solid, celluloid-symbiotic relationship between cinematography Nick Kaltsas, Foley artist Enes Achmet Kechargia, and musician Christoforos Koutsodimos. He proves you do not need any title card preambles or voiceover prologues—or any dialog—to bring on the fear and dread.

And the terror unfolds in the triptych’s first panel: A frantic knock and doorbell ring at the apartment door of a young architectural student (Christos Diamantoudis) reveals the ancient text stuffed in a plastic garbage bag with a note saying, “It’s yours.” And as he turns the pages, it seems the book was written especially for him. And, it seems, the cries of children rise from its pages. He tries to destroy it; the pages won’t tear or burn. Then something presses at the front door; it wants in . . . . And he becomes one of book’s ink-scratched pages.

In the longer, second panel: The now unbound demon comes to the dreams of Mia, a young archeological student (Kika Zachariadou), and inspires her to discover the book while spelunking. Upon opening the book, her name appears in blood on her bathroom mirror and, the book instructs her to “give it away.” Then we learn the truth: Mia was the frantic knock and doorbell ring opening the film; she passed the book onto the architectural student. But it was a trick: By giving the book away, not only will she sacrifice the receiver: she’ll transform into a witch. So, to save them both, she breaks into his apartment, steals the book, and tries to return the book from where it came. As she runs from the apartment, she runs into her neighbor: the book’s instructed third sacrifice is complete. Mia will become a witch, after all.

The Bosch garden rots in the third panel of this supernatural triptych, as Mia returns to the cave (with an inspired POV shovel-in-the-dirt shot) for a final knife-wielding showdown with The Devil. . . .

Wicca Book is a horror film of old, not of the modern film world that wobbles on the crutches of shock-scares and motion-captured, CGI-grafted gore. This is a film that reminds of Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck’s feature film debut, 1973’s Messiah of Evil (a movie so good, we reviewed it three times: HERE, HERE, and HERE), L.Q Jones’s Brotherhood of Satan, and Burt I. Gordon’s Necromancy. Wicca Book is a classic, shot-in-camera ‘70s-styled suspense-horror flick, like those Dan Curtis ‘70s U.S TV movies of old (shameless plug: check out our Exploring: Dan Curtis featurette). (Also, please note that there’s neither reference of nor an appearance of Hieronymus Bosch’s medieval triptych in the film: that is my personal interpretation of the film’s narrative structure.)

While attending Aristotle University, Karapetyan, an Armenian director and writer based in Greece, wrote a thesis paper: “How a Traditional Myth Becomes a Horror Film,” so he knows his material. While I haven’t seen Karapetyan’s six previous horror shorts, based on what I’ve seen with Wicca Book, I wait in anticipation for his first international English language feature film, Go Dark, currently in its pre-production stages. I also believe all of the parts are there for Wicca Book to be expanded into a feature film as well.

Referring to my comment regarding the runtime: 30-minute programs are actually 17 to 22-minutes in length. Once you add commercials, you have a half-hour program; so again, the length works in that regard and Wicca Book could become a television series. Another goal is to turn Wicca Book into a web-series, using elements of time travel to explore the book’s birth in 16th century New England and how the book came to be in the cave explored by Mia. The concept—in any form—is exciting and worth following its development.

It may take some time, but Vahagn Karapetyan is on his way to becoming a voice in Euro-horror. And all good things take time. Wicca Book is currently under the wing of Film Freeway, so let’s hope it comes to a U.S film festival sometime soon near you. It’s worth the price of admission. You can learn more about the film at Darkstream Entertainment on Facebook and Vahagn Films on Facebook.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Disclaimer: This movie was sent to us by its PR company and, as you know, that has no bearing on our review.

What a happy, accidental discovery—considering B&S About Movies is in the midst of its “James Bond Month” extravaganza.

Filmed in the popular cinematic location of Verona, Italy, one of the locations for the 2008 James Bond entry, Quantum of Solace, Nightfire is a timely story about the plight of the Ukrainian people and the United States’ involvement in that country’s conflict.

At the Sokov Military Base, located 32 miles from the Ukrainian border of the country of Belarus, the mission of CIA operatives Carter (Lorenzo Pisoni; guest star on U.S TV’s The Good Wife, Law & Order: SVU, and Elementary) and Ross (Greg Hadley; new to the scene and very good here) to retrieve two military chips containing top-secret content goes awry when they compromise their mission objective to rescue Olivetti, an international political prisoner. And Carter comes to discover it’s never about the freedom of a country and its citizens: it’s always about greed. And no one is who they say they are.

The marquee name here is the-you-watch-anything-he’s-in Dylan Baker, as Olivetti. Dating back to his support role in Steve Martin’s Planes, Trains & Automobiles, you’ve come to know Baker as he delivered the goods countless times on U.S television series, such as Law & Order: TOS and the Chicago P.D./Fire franchise, along with his starring roles on Blindspot, The Good Wife, and Homeland—and his role as Dr. Curt Conners in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man franchise. The cast is rounded out by Bradley Stryker (guest roles on TV’s Arrow, Cold Case, and CSI:NY) and Becky Ann Baker (star of HBO’s Girls, as well as The Blacklist and Hunters).

Nightfire is the fifth student-short production by French-born writer-director Brando Benetton and, considering this is a college thesis project shot on a low budget in 14 days—the quality is of an astounding, major studio quality. That quality comes courtesy of the production’s use of Red Epic Dragon cameras and the implementation of non-CGI practical effects. The car chases and real explosions are masterfully executed by the Corridori Brothers—you know their work; nothing too exciting: just films like the The Italian Job, Mission: Impossible III, and Spectre (the team also worked on maestro Dario Argento’s Do You Like Hitchock? and Giallo). Considering the 45-minute runtime, the spy action-thriller adventures of Lorenzo Pisoni’s Agent Carter can easily be picked up by a major U.S television or grittier cable network and expanded into an hour-long drama. If not, there’s definitely a feature film in its experimental, truncated frames.

Benetton is currently working as a Second Assistant Director on a very intriguing feature film—his first feature—currently in post-production. Voodoo MacBeth concerns the young and arrogant Orson Welles staging the first all-black production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in 1936 Harlem.

You can learn more about Nightfire and the career of Brando Benetton courtesy of a three-minute behind the scenes vignette on the Vimeo page of Great Dane Productions. You can watch Nightfire as an Amazon Prime and Hulu stream beginning May 1. It has since become available on the free-with-ads steam service, Tubi. Benetton has since worked as a first assistant director on the indie drama Voodoo Macbeth and thriller, The Summond (both 2021).

Disclaimer: This movie was sent to us by its PR company and, as you know, that has no bearing on our review.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.