NETWORK PRESENTS: SILVER DREAM RACER. (1980) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

Eden Review

Rating:15
Release Date (UK):
19th July 2013
Director:
Megan Griffiths
Cast:
jamie chueng, Matt O'Leary, Scott Mechlowicz,Beau Bridges, Grace Arends
South Korean, Cheong Kim was 19 years old when she met a man claiming to be in the United States military. Believing she had struck up a romance with the dashing stranger, she agreed to elope with him to Florida. En route she was handcuffed, had her identification destroyed and was held in captivity. Kim escaped, but with no means of identification and with no assistance, she grudgingly became an escort. Shortly after, she was raped and sold into slavery in Las Vegas, spending an horrific 2 years being transported to and from various warehouses with 40 or 50 other girls, many of whom were under 16 years of age.

Kim's captors tortured her by burying her in bathfuls of ice; they beat and even shot other girls who fell ill or didn't live up to their standards. Eventually Kim managed to escape by gaining the trust of her captors by convincing them she wanted to learn how to become a trafficker. She gained their trust, escaped and, after a decade, shared her story, going on to become a legal advocate promoting civil rights.

Megan Griffiths brings the story to the screen with an American Indie sensibility that eschews sensationalism or on-screen horror in favour of a more sombre, responsive aesthetic.

Intially you fear lack of visual punch seems to be a misstep; the absence of carnage seems to give the misery short shrift. It's Jamie Chung's heartbreaking, downtrodden performance which wrestles the film away from obscurity and offsets the lack of visual clout, delivering something which lingers and disquiets.

★★★☆☆

Chris Banks

Watch the Trailer For Jamie Cheung's Sex Slavery Drama Eden

Directed by Megan Griffiths (The Off Hours, producer of My Sister's Sister) EDEN is based on the chilling yet inspirational true story of human-trafficking survivor Chong Kim and stars an award-winning performance from the beautiful Jamie Chung (The Hangover II & III), rising star Matt O'Leary (Disney's The Lone Ranger) and the legendary Beau Bridges (The Descendants).

The year is 1994. Korean-American teenager, Hyun Jae (Jamie Chung;The Hangover Part II &; III, Sucker Punch, The Man with the Iron Fists), goes to a bar in New Mexico where a handsome young man buys her drinks and offers her a ride home. But she never reaches home and is instead abducted and forced into prostitution by a domestic human and drug trafficking ring located outside the
bright lights of Las Vegas, Nevada.
​
Hyun Jae is initiated into her new life by Bob Gault (Beau Bridges; The Descendants, Stargate SG-1), the corrupt Federal Marshall who runs the organisation and troubled Vaughan (Matt O’Leary;Spy Kids, Fat Kid Rules the World, Disney’s The Lone Ranger).Through a haze of morphine, Hyun Jae (soon renamed Eden, by her captors) learns what her future holds: sex with strangers and life in a 10x10 storage unit. Throughout the two years she is held, Eden reluctantly ensures her own survival by carving out power and influence within the very organization that has imprisoned her.

Eden will arrive in UK cinemas on 19th July put aside any reservations of Jamie Chung's previous film, Eden proves she does posses some acting chops just some critics wish she would show a little more often.

The Landlord DVD Review

The Landlord is a film set in a divided America. On one side stands a group of rich, prejudiced WASPs. On the other side, African-Americans, militant and poor, are engaged in a struggle for their cultural soul. But the story told does not concern their battle. Instead The Landlord tells the story of Elgar Enders (Beau Bridges), the very definition of bumbling Caucasian idiocy, who manages to stumble right into the middle of this cultural conflict.

Elgar Enders is a rich young man, not the self-made kind of rich, but the inherited kind of rich. Hailing from a palatial manor situated amidst extensive parkland, Elgar was not just born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but also has a golden fork up his nose and a platinum knife up his arse. His story begins with him buying an apartment block in Park Slope, a horrifically poor neighbourhood, with the aim of turning it into a luxury home. His plans however are somewhat derailed by a number of black tenants resolutely living in his building.

Coming as he does from the very heights of US society, Elgar would be an easy character to demonise. However he actually turns out to be fairly sweet, if exasperating, very much a 30-year old child. His initial expectation, that the tenants of his new property will just be able to leave and find new places to live, is not evidence of callousness but of naiveté. This innocent nature similarly prompts him to actually execute his landlord duties, despite his general incompetence. As the film progresses, we find him rejecting the prejudiced WASP culture he was born into and forming genuinely close relationships with apartment granddame Marge (Pearl Bailey) and dancer Lanie (Marki Bey). He also makes mistakes, most particularly with the sexually powerful, but married, Fanny (Diana Sands). But as being an idiot is as far as Elgar’s faults run, he proves to be an eminently likeable main character.

Or well, the audience should find him likeable. Elgar is actually treated fairly badly by most of his tenants, mocked by Fanny’s husband Copee (Lou Gossett) and loathed by the silent Professor Duboise (Melvin Stewart). This however doesn’t make them the baddies, but rather underscores how complicated racial politics were then (and maybe still are). Elgar is a good person, no doubt, but he is also a perfect representative of all the evils of his class: rich, white, and possessing a clumsy social arrogance that presumes he can belong in a space the militant black culture has claimed as their own. So you might feel bad for him, but it’s also easy to understand why people might dislike him on sight, especially when we are properly introduced to Elgar’s family.

Still, don’t let all this talk of nuanced racial politics put you off the film. Director/editor Hal Ashby has a sharp, satirical approach to his material and spreads the mockery liberally. There is a fantastic sequence midway through The Landlord where Elgar’s mother Joyce (Lee Grant), a woman filled to the brim with rich, fruity snobbery, gets blattered with the jovial Marge. Indeed, I remember squeaking with joy throughout Joyce’s drunken slurring (Grant proves very able at acting drunk). This proves to be just one moment of slightly wacky humour amongst many in The Landlord, and though the film is not without its notes of tragedy, it does not forget the importance of showing a good time.

So that is The Landlord: a farcical meander through the minefield of 1970s racial politics. But despite its unconventional path, it nonetheless manages to not be blown to bits. It doesn’t fall into the trap of The Help, by having a white person provide agency for the civil rights movement. Indeed, our white hero is kept out of that fight altogether. He and Lanie and Marge remain in neutral middle ground, though they are not there as a result of making some statement. It simply seems to be the place where such nice and largely inoffensive individuals belong.

Adam Brodie

Rating:15
DVD Re-release date: 1st October 2012(UK)
Directed By: Hal Ashby
Cast:  Beau Bridges, Lee Grant , Diana Sands
Buy:The Landlord [DVD]