Reviews From the Couch

Roll Credits

2009-08-23T12:59:00.004-04:00

Effective immediately, Reviews From the Couch will be closing up shop and moving to greener pastures on the internets. Now I'm not going to get too sentimental but we had a good run here. Some lessons were learned and some fun was had over the past 200 posts. I regret nothing! Well, that isn't exactly true. To paraphrase William Burroughs, not a day goes by without regret. But what I honestly did learn from RFC is that there's a reason I haven't come across another website with a Siskel & Ebert type set-up -- it ain't easy to pull off -- especially when Siskel and/or Ebert are busy most days attempting to earn a living, etc. And maybe even more than that there's the difficulty of creating a website with some semblance of a point-of-view or a distinct voice when you have two different voices and two different points-of-views (even though those points-of-view are the point). So the original mission statement has long since gone by the wayside and for that and other reasons, RFC hasn't quite been at peak performance lately and she's being put out to pasture.

I've found new land in the wild of the internets @ www.trashartandmovies.com and I invite you to join me over there. The site it up now and I'll be getting it in order and organized in the weeks leading up to the Toronto Film Festival. You can expect some words on Inglorious Basterds up there in the next couple days.

Thanks to everyone who checked out or little corner of the net and enjoy the archives -- there's some good stuff in there.

See What I've Been Listening To

2009-08-10T17:10:00.014-04:00

[I always wanted to do one of these so let's see how it goes] [Update: so the links to stream songs didn't end up working at all -- except for me -- my apologies. So I added some more videos.] Some thoughts on what's been getting heavy re-play at RFC HQ...

As it hovers around the 90 degree mark today, it's not a bad time to reconsider the songs that hit my ears on cooler days. I guess we'll start at the beginning (of the iTunes library). One of my favorite albums from early this year belongs to one of the New Pornographers that isn't Neko Case, A.C. Newman. There isn't a bad song on Get Guilty though the front end is a bit stronger. It may not have an endless repeater like his 2004 tune "Drink to Me Babe", but this album features an a-bomb lead-off track in "There are Maybe Ten or Twelve..."

Then there's the album's catchy-as-hell, propulsive single:

Moving down the alphabet, and over to a different part of the pop universe, there's the more recent The Antlers album Hospice. I feel like these guys do for me what the Animal Collective doesn't, which is make highly listenable, atmospheric, slightly creepy pop songs. While I actually preferred 2007's In the Attic of the Universe, there's a rewarding mystery to these songs and in many ways Hospice is a more cohesive rock opera than Thownsend's ever written. They might not rise you out of any funks but they'll carry you along. Try out the friendly Bear when you get a chance -- in the meantime here's the pretty damn cool video for the song "Two".

Art Brut album is always good for great hooks and laughs and I have to mention a record that sings about the wonders of finding out about The Replacements. Featured line, "I can't believe I've only just discovered The Replacements / Some of them are nearly the same age as my parents" But the real gold in Art Brut vs. Satan has to be the epic Mysterious Bruises ("I can't remember anything I've done / I fought the floor and the floor won). It's hard not to get swept up into Art Brut's world of drinks, comic books and slap dash songs made for no cash.

It's also not hard to figure out why David Lynch digs Au Revoir Simone ("The Last One" from the new album Still Night, Still Night).

Okay, Bill Callahan... I was a big fan of his Smog albums and even enjoyed the (smog) days a little bit. But his last two albums under his given name have been something unexpected and special. His new album Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle is in the race for best of this year and Eid Ma Clack Shaw, Too Many Birds and Faith/Void are some of the best songs of the year. On any given day I might say that he's never topped Smog's Doctor Came at Dawn, but he's really making some of the best music around right now -- and I don't think I would have said that back in the 90's. His music was sparse and confrontational back in the day, and now it's sparse and beautiful without ever losing the dark voice he's always had.

Callahan's former label-mate Will Oldham also continues to shine though he hasn't gone back to his given name and doesn't look like he'll be dropping Bonnie "Prince" Billy anytime soon. But I wouldn't place any bets that there isn't some sort of name change or another around the corner. His last album of duets was a pretty collection, but his most recent album, Beware, has the most immediate impact, and feels like it has more staying power, than any of his work since Ease on Down the Road.

There's an old Palace song of Oldham's that's called "You Will Miss Me When I Burn". It features the line "When you have no one / No one can hurt you" and there's a great song on Beware that echoes that old tune in a sad yet playful way. It's called I Don't Belong to Anyone.

I'd never have imagined I'd say that an album by Jason Schwartzman would rank near the top of my list for most listened to, and enjoyed, album -- but here we are with Coconut Records' Davy. A Beatlesesque collection of super-catchy material that's obviously personal for Schwartzman yet never gets bogged down in pretentiousness. I'll use that dreaded word again, fun.

Another contender for album of the year is The Comet Gain's Broken Record Prayer. The album is practically a cross section of the past 30 years of music on one CD, in one lo-fi blast. By having the album opener, "Jack Nance Hair", begin with the female of the band speak-singing before launching into an addictive pop song -- it's like a hat tip to the sprawling, equally ambitious end-of-the-80s Sonic Youth epic, Daydream Nation. But the Velvet Underground tinged "Jack Nance Hair" is hardly representative of Broken Record Prayer. Before even half the album is over it's hopped from 2 minute CBGBs flavored punk rockers ("If I Had a Soul") to 5+ minute Feelies inspired jams ("Brothers Off the Block"). It's a helluva record.

While Sonic Youth came out with The Eternal this year, and it's got some good tunes (I'm a fan of "The Antennae" in particular), it's their old pals Dinosaur Jr. that continue to release rocket-powered face melters -- keeping one of the most unexpectedly successful reunions going strong. Like Portishead did a couple years ago -- it amazes me that a band can get back together after such a long break and not only pick right up where they left off but improve upon it. Dino J's second life it practically unheard of.

Dirty Projectors is one of the bands that pulled a fast one on me this year. I didn't much care for 2005's The Getty Address which lacked just about anything resembling a melody or a toe-tapping tune. But then Bitte Orca comes along and I couldn't get away from the fawning responses so with some skeptisicm I checked it out and then I found I couldn't stop listening to the thing. That's partly due to the great beats the album has and therefore being my go-to album to listen to while doing my bad back exercises. Llama!

If you like your rock n' roll recorded in a barn while a storm knocks on the door and the musicians are working on a case of beer and keeping the first take, then you will enjoy Woodstock, New York's Felice Brothers. They've released some great music prior to 2009, especially Tonight at the Arizona, but their recent is called Yonder is the Clock and it's got some new classics on it. I turn your attention to "Cooperstown". (But since there's no good video for anything off their new album... here's a highlight from Arizona.)

But let's get back to the face melting. Future of the Left is the band that rose from the ashes of Mclusky -- the only band that I would pay to see a good tribute version of. Mclusky made three of the best manic, hole-in-the-wall rock records of the decade and Future of the Left's second album, Travels With Myself and Another, improves upon the first post-Mclusky album and touches greatness at times. Angry, questioning, funny and above all, rocking. Who can't like an album with a song called "You Need Satan More Than He Needs You"?

Jarvis Cocker's been around a lot longer than you'd think by looking at the guy. The Dick Clark gene seemingly having kicked in about 20 years ago, Jarvis has been on the scene making quality mod rockers that keep the croon alive since the late 70s with Pulp. Recently, he's gone solo and grown a salt and pepper beard that allows him to show his age a little bit, but he's also stepped up his game. On Further Complications, he's gotten some assistance form Steve Albini and he's created a stellar album that from front to back is my favorite thing he's ever done. The hilarious song "I Never Said I Was Deep" features my favorite chorus of the year: "I never said I saw deep / But I am profoundly shallow / My lack of knowledge is vast / And my horizons are narrow"

When I saw Mastodon live a couple years ago in the middle of a bright, hot, sunshiny day in the middle of a Chicago park, it was euphoric. For the rest of my life I'll carry that amazing collision of sun, dirt, pot smoke and metal with me and I'll probably always look forward to their next mind fuck of a record. This year's Crack the Skye is a bit more prog-y than their others, but it's no less filled with jaw dropping moments that make me smile. And I absolutely admire the storytelling that goes into these albums -- this one being about an astronaut that does some inadvertent time-traveling and... well, see for yourself.

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson is going to be my one cheat for this list. Technically his self titled album came out over a year ago, but it's remained my favorite stumbled-upon album of the year. He's very much in the singer-songwriter mode but used dynamics and slow-builds to great effect. Love his voice, love his lyrics and it doesn't get much better than this tune, the first of the album and a perfect gateway to the rest of the fantastic album.

Two albums going by oddly similar names, Dark Was the Night & Dark Night of the Soul will finish out this behemoth of a post. Dark Was the Night performs some rehab on a format that usually gets nothing but leftovers and cast-offs. Three years in the making, the brothers Dessner from the great band The National called in some favors and ended up with a sort of state of the union of the indie rock scene -- Yo La Tengo, My Morning Jacket, Sufjan Stevens, Arcade Fire, Grizzly Bear... There are 2 CDs of songs far better than you'd think you would find on a Red Hot compilation.

Dark Night of the Soul is another beast altogether. A bizzaro colaboraiton between Sparklehorse, Danger Mouse and David Lynch, there was a distinct possibility this project would result in a mess, but in fact it is a perfectly crafted and executed album that feels complete and fully realized. I'm not sure if the Dark Night of the Soul is the future or the first and last of its kind. Actually, it isn't even really the first since EMI blocked the music from even being properly released. The limited edition book featuring a gorgeous collection of Lynch's inspired by the music photographs came with a blank CD, to be used as you see fit. Before EMI pulled the plug on the music, you could find it streaming on different websites and in the usual places you might yet to be officially released music. To me, this is like letting the fans finish the project and it just adds to it its beauty -- and it really is a beautiful project to absorb and it'll be a tough one to top this year.

Humpday

2009-08-09T17:23:00.000-04:00

Dir. Lynn Shelton

Lynn Shelton's follow-up to my pick for 2008's best, My Effortless Brilliance, never quite matches that film's heights but that may be due to a lack of trying. Humpday is a funny movie, funnier than Brilliance, so I can't knock it too much if the stakes never feel quite as high. This is partly due to the film having a familiar set-up: the reuniting of two old friends who have gone down different paths and the emotional turmoil that results.

Mark Duplass plays Ben, a guy who's begun to settle into domestic bliss with his fiancée Anna (Alycia Delmore) and a picket fence. When Joshua Leonard's Andrew comes knocking, he quickly stirs up some dormant feelings and Ben can't help but try to reclaim some of those artistic ideals from his college days. Unfortunately they settle on creating an art project for Humpfest, an arty, homebrew porn festival wherein the average Jane and Joe reclaim pornography by submitting their own intimate, personal portraits. During an under-the-influence night at a bohemian party (co-hosted by Lynn Shelton herself as a bi-sexual frisky new friend of Andrew's), both men decide that the highest form of artistic achievement in pornography would be to feature two straight life-long friends going at it. Amidst the swirling hookah smoke, Ben even books a room for next Sunday.

The majority of the movie is Ben and Andrew, in the few days leading up to Sunday night, coming to terms with the idea and rationalizing why neither one wants to back down. We find out that if Andrew were to back out of this "art project" it would be the latest in a long line of abandoned or unfinished projects. And Ben needs to prove to himself, if not everyone else, that he's more than just a working-stiff with his best years behind him. It could be considered a detriment that the film tips its hand early and often. To a certain extent the movie spells it out rather than allow the audience to figure out the details behind Ben and Andrew's one-upsmanship. But I appreciate that the characters are self-aware -- it makes sense to me that these guys would analyze their situation to death. Maybe it does put too fine a point on it but it feels natural to me, and that is Shelton's cinematic gift.

While two old friends talking about their lack of resolve or losing their individuality doesn't carry the weight of two old friends trying to bury the hatchet, Humpday does find a lot of honesty and no small amount of terrific, cringe-worthy comedic moments in this situation. This film will hit close to home for anyone who's ever lost sight of their artistic side in favor of some security in life, or likes to consider themselves an artist simply because they live the lifestyle. Even if that's not you, chances are you've got some familiarity with these guys. And Duplass and Leonard's work here makes you feel like you've hung out with these guys many times before.

But what of Anna? In an odd bit of irony, Lynn Shelton has proved to be a master of exploring the male ego but has yet to present us with a female character as thoroughly three dimensional. Anna's given a couple nice moments in the film when she tries to get to know Andrew over half a bottle of Scotch and when she reveals a secret of her own to a helpless Ben. But it all feels a little obligatory, like Anna is a character that's only there for story needs and not part of the organic surroundings. Delmore does fine with what she's given, but it would be nice to see what Shelton could do with a strong female character in one of her stories.

In a related note - Shelton's superior My Effortless Brilliance can be viewed through Amazon.com's Video On Demand for $3.99. It's fantastic that Humpday has been able to get the distribution that Brilliance never did, and it deserves it, but it's still a shame that Brilliance remains largely hidden.

The Room

2009-08-01T17:56:00.000-04:00

Dir. Tommy Wisseau

What is The Room? A quick look at IMDb tells you it is a drama, a romance, a comedy, "a film with the passion of Tennessee Williams" and "an American black comedy about love, passion, betrayal and lies". After seeing the film for the first time last weekend, I'm still working out whether it is really none of those things, or indeed all of those things at once in every second of its 99 minutes. Honestly, there is no doubt that The Room is a bad movie. It's poorly shot, badly acted and confusingly edited. Everything about the movie, down to the costuming, is so distracting that if you tried your hardest to focus on what the hell is going on in the movie, as I mistakenly attempted, you will only encounter despair. But worst of all, the film wants to be important -- it strives for Tennessee Williams like a drunkard finding the key hole to the front door at 4am. It isn't the kind of bad you find in Wolverine or Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. This is obviously a very personal film for Tommy Wisseau and the level of heart and soul behind the film balanced against the brazenly incompetent filmmaking put The Room squarely in the ranks of the best/worst of Ed Wood rather than the works of Dr. Uwe Boll.

Released the summer of 2003 in Los Angeles, The Room almost came and went without notice like any number of other micro-released films that play the obligatory one or two theaters in a city before hitting DVD and cable. But thanks in large part to a notorious billboard of the droopy-eyed Wisseau photo and some good old-fashioned word of mouth, by 2007 it was a full-blown midnight movie phenomenon of Rocky Horror Picture Show proportions. It quickly became all about audience participation, plastic spoons and reveling in the The Room's many, hrm, mysteries?

Back in high school I'd make it to the Rocky Horror Picture Show as often as I could. In San Bernardino, California, that wasn't very easy for a 15 year old without a car. Getting to Montclair took no small amount of effort and coordination, but it was always worth it. I don't think the stars will ever align to bring about a movie more suited to audience participation than the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's got catchy song and dance, eye popping production design, sci-fi elements, Susan Sarandon in her underwear, a story that appeals to all sexual orientations, Meatloaf... On its own it's not exactly a well made movie but it has some genuinely entertaining qualities and the audience participation raises it to heights the filmmakers could never have anticipated but certainly appreciate. The Room is the flip side to this and in some ways this makes it less enjoyable than a bad genre movie like RHPS or Troll 2. The story is the definition of mundane, all the actors are people you'd rather not see in their underwear thankyouverymuch, even the songs in The Room are unbearable and, when it's in focus, the photography is flat and unappealing. To an extent it is the same problem I have with those certain episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 that are so piss poor and boring that it's a chore to make it to the next zinger.

So what is the story of The Room? Well, why the movie is called "The Room" is certainly one of the more obvious and unanswered questions of the film. It's a fairly typical love triangle involving Tom- er Johnny, his girlfriend Lisa (Juliette Danielle) and his best friend Mark (Sestero! Greg Sestero actually, but I think a wise career move for the man would be to go the one name route a la Fabio. I can easily picture those seven letters in all-caps above the title of the next made-for-SyFy movie). What little life there is to this set-up comes from Wisseau's bizarre, perverse world-view. Especially regarding Lisa The Succubus. Usually the irresistible object of desire has some sort of charm or redeeming, attractive qualities. The only reason we're given for Johnny's intense devotion to Lisa is that she'll jump into the sack with him when he buys her a dress because otherwise she's hateful and self-centered to the core.

But Johnny, if there's a fault to the man it's that he's too caring, too thoughtful, trusting and wise. That Johnny is such a nice guy he's even paying for a neighborhood kid's tuition. That the neighborhood kid, Denny, seems to be a little touched in the head is besides the point. (And "besides the point" could be the film's motto.) Even the store proprietors adore Johnny. As does Lisa's mother, who tries to talk sense into her -- but she's got the cancer, so... So what, right? That seems to be the movie's interest in that little detail. Anyway, Lisa simply finds Johnny-the-do-gooder too dull for her lustful ways. Sestero, on the other had, now there's a real man. Yawn.

So is it even noteworthy that every single moment of the film is a train wreck? By mounting an HD camera directly next to a 35mm camera, Wisseau ensured that not one second of the film would be well framed. Using a revolving door policy for the hiring and firing of his crew during the filming process also helped give the look of the film some nice inconsistencies. One of the more genuinely strange aspects of the movie is the amount of characters that appear with no explanation to give advice or act concerned and in turn disappear back into the ethers. It all begs the question, is utter incompetency something to celebrate? While Wisseau certainly has passion for this project -- is his message of how cruel women can be really worth the attention, even if it is placed on a pedestal to be mocked?

There's no denying there's a fun time to be had with The Room on a Saturday night with an eager audience when the plastic spoons are flying high through the air. There is an excitement to be part of this community as they work on extracting the most fun from the film. If you go to the Rocky Horror Picture Show this weekend you'll be hearing the best ad-libs and routines distilled the past 30 years. If you go to The Room this weekend some of the excitement is being part of the process. Right now, there's some filtering to be done to pick up on the best zingers since every moment is an opportunity and you have a theater full of people waiting to let one loose. 20 years from now, the other script, the audience script for The Room, is sure to be amazing and there's a lot of fun to even just observe this process if not take part in it.

I can't imagine myself regularly watching The Room, even under ideal circumstances. The movie is just so damn bad that there's a visceral reaction within me to stay away from it. But I had a great time and recommend that everyone should experience this phenomenon at least once. Rumor is that there will be another midnight screening at the Coolidge at some point this month. Keep your eye out. I really can't imagine there being an alternative movie-going experience out there that would be more fun.

The Guatemalan Handshake

2009-07-28T23:55:00.001-04:00

Dir. Todd Rohal

While it never achieves lift-off to become the spirited absurdist tale that shines beneath some murky filmic waters, The Guatemalan Handshake has an agreeable odd-ball charm, an admirable gonzo spirit and effective stylization. Most remarkable are the gobsmackingly gorgeous shots and sequences that raise the film to heights that unfortunately the rest of it can't quite match. It isn't nearly as bad as some of the comparisons to Napoleon Dynamite might lead you (or me, at any rate) to believe but it lacks the authenticity of early David Gordon Green, as George Washington would be a more apt comparison, or the unique world building of Guy Maddin.

Unfortunately the film doesn't quite star Will Oldham, though he does provide the central character. He plays the put-upon Donald, who in the opening sequence finds some shoes, a dead dog and wanders off to no-one-knows-where, only to appear again in a few flashbacks. He's the boyfriend of pregnant Sadie and the son of the eccentric Mr. Turnupseed and the loose plot revolves around how his disappearance affects the lives of the people in his backwoods town. (There is some business involving Sadie competing in a smash-up derby -- a sub-culture worthy of a different film all its own.) But calling any character here eccentric is pointless since every one of them, except perhaps for the narrator, Turkeylegs, is in one way or another a bit of a space cadet. And not always in any sort of charming way either. The character named Stool, for example, is one of the more unpleasant creations I've come along in some time. In that way he is a bit like a character out of a Jared Hess film -- with his ironic mustache and self-absorbed nastiness. How Sadie ends up falling for Stool after Donald's disappearance defies human nature. But then Sadie isn't the most pleasant of characters either and the film doesn't seem too interested in representing any sort of commonplace reality.

I'm not one who needs likable characters to enjoy a film but I do need them to be more than just a collection of walking affectations and goofy hang-ups. This really is the ongoing crutch of the indie film, and one that doesn't seem to be going away. But for all Wes Anderson's incessant desires to deal only with over-affected characters, he always manages to give them a soul. In the case of Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely (another auteur Rohal style could draw comparisons to, at his best) the lack of a honest personality can work when it is part of the point. This is certainly something that Rohal could improve upon. But then The Guatemalan Handshake doesn't have any intentions on being a character study or anything of the like. It works best at being a series of vignettes loosely tied together by some recurring characters. The scenes that hit their mark are funny and/or poignant and are impeccably shot. There are a few of these scenes -- Mr. Turnupseed losing his temper on his shed's Master lock, Stool loosing his shit when his bus breaks down, an extended Maddin-like black & white flashback to the heroics of daredevil Spank Williams, a simple moment of Turkeyleg in a picturesque field -- and they all work more or less without any context; or, in other words, despite the unmemorable characters. The scenes that fall flat tend to feel slow or repetitive and that feeling creeps up too often.

Todd Rohal is certainly one to keep an eye on. For a first feature he's made a film with a distinct voice and an uncommonly sharp eye. If too much of the film failed to connect with me, it didn't fail to make an impression. Its unpredictable spirit is ambitious, endearingly ramshackle and handmade. If only those qualities could be sustained for an entire film and be applied to the people in Rohal's world as well, I could recommend the film a bit more.

Excellent Trailer:

Acculturation

2009-07-25T19:22:00.002-04:00

Presented without comment, my movie options for the coming weekend.

Monsters vs. Aliens (PG, 90 min.)
12:40pm | 2:40pm | 4:40pm

Angels & Demons (PG-13, 140 min.)
1:00pm | 4:00pm | 7:00pm | 9:40pm

Imagine That (PG, 107 min.)
12:30pm | 3:00pm | 5:05pm | 7:25pm | 9:30pm

Year One (PG-13, 97 min.)
12:50pm | 2:50pm | 4:50pm | 7:20pm | 9:15pm

Land of the Lost (2009) (PG-13, 93 min.)
7:10pm | 9:25pm

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (PG, 105 min.)
12:45pm | 2:45pm | 4:45pm | 7:15pm | 9:20pm

My Life in Ruins (PG-13, 98 min.)
12:55pm | 2:55pm | 4:55pm | 7:05pm | 9:35pm

The Landlord (1970)

2009-07-15T21:43:00.002-04:00

Dir. Hal Ashby

Hal Ashby's film school involved working as an editor for Norman Jewison, which garnered him an Academy Award for In the Heat of the Night and performing some game-changing work on The Thomas Crown Affair. Taking the advice of Jewison, Ashby stepped up to the role of director for the racial satire The Landlord and made a debut film that is alternately hilarious, moving and still manages to showcase some avant garde editing and some of the more experimental work of master cinematographer Gordon Willis.

Adapted for the screen by a central figure in 1970s black cinema, Bill Gunn (Ganja & Hess), the film stars Beau Bridges, looking all of about 16 years old, as the son of a wealthy, WASPy family who has decided to rebel a bit by purchasing a Park Slope, New York tenement building. After a disarming faux documentary introduction and jump-cut juxtaposing of Park Slope with Bridges' country club upbringing, the film settles down a bit and gets into a more standard story-telling mode. There are highly stylized flourishes throughout but at its heart is a straightforward story of growing-up and finding love and independence. It's like the new-wave, east-coast version of The Graduate.

There's a lot of fun to be had watching Bridges' Elgar Winthrop Julius Enders have his idealistic illusions towards his new job as a Park Slope landlord dashed as he meets his tenants one by one. His awkward introductions to the women of the apartment make for comedic gold. But what makes the scenes, and the entire movie, rise above even some of the best fish-out-of-water scenarios is how genuine the characters are drawn. It's easy to say that the film is free of stereotypes -- it's the contradictions and conflicted nature of the characters that make them shine. I defy you not to fall in love with Francine, the tenant played by Diana Sands (whose own life story is quite tragic), upon first sight. Her and the other characters, like Elgar and his mother (played by Lee Grant in a well deserved Oscar nominated performance), grow, evolve and reveal nuance as the film progresses.

It's this vibrant life that Ashby gives each character that raises the film far beyond an intellectual racial satire and into a film with a heart that's just as big as its brain. Like his contemporary Robert Altman, Ashby is able to turn on a dime from expressionistic montages to intense, intimate moments. It can be as exhausting as it is awe-inspiring but it works wonders in The Landlord. Ashby threads the needle throughout the film and somehow manages to tie together heartbreak, biting satire and huge laughs. For a first film, balancing all this is rather amazing.

After the tenants and his family are through their initial threats to kill him or disown him, Elgar settles into his apartment and stumbles into a relationship with a half African-half Irish dancer at a local nightclub. Their romance, like the film itself, starts out somewhat improbable before turning quite honest and touching. Marki Bey gives a strong performance as Lanie, the quintessential young, intelligent, independent, urban woman of the late 60s/early 70s. At first your not sure what Lanie sees in naive Elgar; but he is growing up, considerably so as their relationship blossoms, and as Lanie starts to fall for him, so do we.

But as naturally as boy meets girl, boy must of course lose girl before boy can really get girl. You see, one drunken night in Francine's apartment is all it took for Elgar to give himself over to her in a way that I think any hetero-minded male would jump at the chance to do. It's one of the best scenes in the film, spectacularly shot in long takes and lit by Willis in a dreamy red hue. And it's made even better by the lack of the regret-filled morning-after that usually follows these scenes. Instead, the morning after is just a continuation of Francine's tenderness and it's a refreshingly sweet moment. The regret comes a bit later, as Elgar and Lanie are settling in and Francine comes a-knocking with news that she's pregnant. This leads up to a hilarious visual joke as Elgar's mother's stands frozen and we cut away to her mind's eye as she pictures herself standing in the lawn singing to eight black children.

Even with an unexpected love-child being thrown into the picture, the film resists falling into any melodramatic traps or heading down any familiar, comfortable paths. The tone of the ending is a little typical of the rebellious movies of the time, such as the aforementioned The Graduate, but it still can't be considered predictable. The Landlord is constantly turning left when you think it's going to turn right and surprising you with its depth when you think it's going to be all style -- right up to the final scene. It's thoroughly unclassifiable and yet nowhere near the film that the cover for the VHS release was trying to sell.

There's enough bold experimentation (that works), hilariously memorable lines ("He just called us niggers" and just about everything else that comes out of the mouth of Lee Grant) and uniquely enjoyable characters to make the film a certified classic. There hardly a wasted moment or line of dialog in the film and even though it is distinctly of its time (this is indeed your daddy's Park Slope) its message and themes are still meaningful today and resonate more than most of the films that attempt to speak about race these days.

RFC and TIFF 2009

2009-07-15T08:24:00.004-04:00

Accommodations are being made and tickets have been purchased for my first visit to Toronto and the Toronto International Film Festival. To say the least, I'm jazzed. As I'll be attempting to enjoy my time in Toronto, and hoping to see much of the city during my visit, I opted to go the route of 3x10 ticket packs to be split between myself and my girlfriend, who will probably end up seeing more of the city than myself. These ticket packages allow for a bit more flexibility than the single 30 pack I was toying with. At any rate, I plan on attending somewhere in the ball park of 20 films during the 10 day festival. Seems quite doable while causing minimal burnout. We put ourselves in for the advanced ticket program so there's a good chance I'll see some of the big name draws. But for the most part, since I have no obligation other than to enjoy myself, I'm not going to be threatening my mental health by trying to finagle myself into a Soderbergh film. I'll probably be attending the film that's playing at the right time and the right place -- but whatever I end up seeing, I'll be trying to get word back to RFC HQ in a timely manner. There seems to be a fair amount of wi-fi friendly locations around the theaters and screening rooms (as well as in my apartment), so this shouldn't be too much of a hassle.

A full list of the films to be shown is still a ways away from being complete but some of the major pieces are beginning to come into focus. Yesterday, there was a press conference to announce the Opening Night film and the Galas and Special Presentation films -- just over 20 films that are receiving some spotlight treatment by the festival. Included are Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! (which debuted a pretty terrific trailer just a couple weeks ago), Ricky Gervais' brainchild The Invention of Lying and Tim Blake Nelson's double-the-Edward-Norton-fun feature Leaves of Grass -- and those are just some of the noteworthy American films. Also announced were the inclusion of new films by Jane Campion, Bong Joon-ho, Bruno Dumont, Johnnie To and Nicolas Winding Refn. A couple of official press releases follow:

Press Releases

7/14/2009| 2009 Festival To Open With World Premiere Of Jon Amiel's Creation

Toronto - The 34th Toronto International Film Festival® opens September 10 with the world premiere Gala Presentation of Creation, directed by Jon Amiel (The Core, Entrapment, The Man Who Knew Too Little). Produced by Jeremy Thomas, the film tells the life story of Charles Darwin starring Paul Bettany (The Da Vinci Code, Wimbledon, A Beautiful Mind) as Darwin and Jennifer Connelly (He's Just Not That Into You, The Day the Earth Stood Still, A Beautiful Mind) as his wife, Emma.

"The tension between faith and reason is prominent in contemporary culture and this intimate look at Darwin puts a human face on a man whose theory remains controversial to this day," says Piers Handling, Director and CEO of TIFF. "We are pleased to open the Festival with such an impassioned look at Charles Darwin, especially on the year marking the 200th anniversary of his birth."

"We are honoured to open the Festival with Jon Amiel's latest feature," says Cameron Bailey, Co-Director of the Toronto International Film Festival. "By telling a story on many levels, weaving scenes from past and present, this depiction of Darwin promises to deeply move audiences by drawing them into the conflicted mind of a man who presented a concept that changed the world."

Part ghost story, part psychological thriller, part heart-wrenching love story Creation is the story of Charles Darwin. His great, still controversial, book The Origin of Species depicts nature as a battleground. In Creation the battleground is a man's heart. Torn between his love for his deeply religious wife and his own growing belief in a world where God has no place, Darwin finds himself caught in a struggle between faith and reason, love and truth.

The Darwin we meet in Creation is a young, vibrant father, husband and friend whose mental and physical health gradually buckles under the weight of guilt and grief for a lost child. Ultimately it is the ghost of Annie, his adored 10-year-old daughter, who leads him out of darkness and helps him reconnect with his wife and family. Only then is he able to write the book that changed the world.

Written by John Collee and based on the Randal Keynes biography of Darwin titled Annie's Box, Creation was co-developed by Recorded Picture Company with BBC Films and the UK Film Council.

Ticket packages for the Festival are now available for purchase by cash, debit or Visa†. Purchase online at tiff.net/thefestival, by phone at 416-968-FILM or 1-877-968-FILM (Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., closed weekends and holidays) or in person at the Festival Box Office at Nathan Phillips Square (Box Office hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week), located at 100 Queen Street West, in the white tent, west of the square. The 34th Toronto International Film Festival runs September 10 to 19, 2009.

Press Releases

7/14/2009| TIFF Announces Galas And Special Presentations

Toronto - The Toronto International Film Festival is pleased to announce the addition of three Gala Presentations and nineteen Special Presentations to the programming lineup for this year's Festival, running September 10 to 19. Included are works from critically acclaimed filmmakers Jane Campion, Lu Chuan, Raoul Peck, Steven Soderbergh and Johnnie To featuring on-screen performances by Mariah Carey, Abbie Cornish, Matt Damon, Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall, Colin Farrell, Ricky Gervais, Eva Green, Johnny Hallyday, Lenny Kravitz, Sergi López, Mo'Nique, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Clive Owen, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sissy Spacek and Ben Whishaw.

Ticket packages for the Festival are now available for purchase by cash, debit or Visa†. Purchase online at tiff.net/thefestival, by phone at 416-968-FILM or 1-877-968-FILM (Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., closed weekends and holidays) or in person at the Festival Box Office at Nathan Phillips Square (Box Office hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week), located at 100 Queen Street West, in the white tent, west side of the square.

Galas

Get Low Aaron Schneider, USA
World Premiere
Inspired by the true story of Felix "Bush" Breazeale, this stately frontier drama stars Robert Duvall as a backwoods eccentric who stages his own funeralwhile still alive. Ten thousand people arrive to hear him speak and to learn why this local legend exiled himself 40 years ago to the foothills of Eastern Tennessee. Set in the early 1930s, Get Low is a story of mystery and discovery that speaks of timeless things. Can we know who we are? Should we judge anyone? Is there redemption for those of us lost in the dark catacombs of our past? Also starring Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek and Lucas Black.

The Invention of Lying Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson, USA
World Premiere
From Ricky Gervais, the award-winning creator and star of the original BBC series The Office and HBO's Extras, comes the new romantic comedyThe Invention of Lying, which takes place in an alternate reality where lyingeven the concept of a liedoes not even exist. Everyonefrom politicians to advertisers to the man and woman on the streetspeaks the truth and nothing but the truth with no thought of the consequences. But when a down-on-his-luck loser named Mark suddenly develops the ability to lie, he finds that dishonesty has its rewards. In a world where every word is assumed to be the absolute truth, Mark easily lies his way to fame and fortune. But lies have a way of spreading, and he begins to realize that things are getting out of control when some of his tallest tales are being taken as, well, gospel. With the entire world now hanging on his every word, there is only one thing Mark has not been able to lie his way into: the heart of the woman he loves.

Max Manus Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, Norway/Denmark/Germany
North American Premiere
The film is based on the true story of Norway's most colourful resistance fighter Max Manus, and follows him from the outbreak of World War II until the summer of peace in 1945. After fighting against the Russians during the Winter War in Finland, Max returns to a German-occupied Norway. He joins the active resistance movement, and becomes one of the most important members of the so-called "Oslo Gang", famous for their spectacular raids against German ships in Oslo harbour.

Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire Lee Daniels, USA
Canadian Premiere
Lee Daniels's Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire is a vibrant, honest and resoundingly hopeful film about the human capacity to grow and overcome. Set in 1987 Harlem, it is the story of Claireece "Precious" Jones, an illiterate African-American teenager who is pregnant for the second time by her absent father and abused by a poisonously angry mother. Despite her experiences, Precious has a latent understanding that other possibilities exist for her, and jumps at the chance to enroll in an alternative school. There she encounters Ms. Rain, a teacher who will start her on a journey from pain and powerlessness to self-respect and determination. The film stars Mo'Nique, Paula Patton, Mariah Carey, Sherri Shepherd, Lenny Kravitz and introduces Gabourey Sidibe.

Special Presentations

The Boys Are Back Scott Hicks, Australia/United Kingdom
World Premiere
Based on the memoir by Simon Carr, Scott Hicks (Shine) directs The Boys Are Back, inspired by the poignant, comic and uplifting true story of a man who must suddenly raise his two sons alone. After the untimely passing of his second wife, the ill-prepared Joe (Clive Owen), who is dealing with his own loss, is confronted with the daily challenges of parenthood while coping with his young son Artie's expressions of grief. They are soon joined by Harry, Joe's teenage son from his first marriage, who brings his own personal "baggage" into the mix. Also starring Laura Fraser and Emma Booth.

Bright Star Jane Campion, United Kingdom/Australia
North American Premiere
A drama based on the secret love affair between 23-year-old English poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and the girl next door, Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), an outspoken student of fashion. Intensely and helplessly absorbed in each other, they rode a wave of romantic obsession that deepened as their troubles mounted. Only Keats's illness and untimely death proved insurmountable.

City of Life and Death Lu Chuan, China
International Premiere
From acclaimed director Lu Chuan comes a devastating and controversial epic film based on the most atrocious holocaust in Chinese history, the Nanjing Massacre. The story unfolds as the Japanese take over the city in 1937 and everyone is struggling to survive in a city where death is easier than life. Starring Liu Ye and Gao Yuanyuan.

Cracks Jordan Scott, Ireland
World Premiere
In an austere and remote girls' boarding school, the most elite clique of girls are the illustrious members of the school's diving team. As they compete for the attention of their glamorous teacher (Eva Green), the arrival of a beautiful Spanish girl disrupts the delicate social balance. In an attempt to put differences aside, a secret midnight party takes place that will change their lives forever.

Hadewijch Bruno Dumont, France
World Premiere
Hadewijch is a religious novice whose ecstatic, blind faith leads to her expulsion from a convent. Returning to her former life, Hadewijch reverts to being Céline, a Parisienne and daughter of a diplomat. However, her passion for God, rage and encounters with Khaled and Nassir soon lead her down a dangerous path.

The Informant! Steven Soderbergh, USA
North American Premiere
Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a rising star at agri-industry giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), suddenly turns whistleblower. Exposing his company's multinational price-fixing conspiracy to the FBI, Whitacre imagines himself as a kind of de facto secret agent. Unfortunately for the FBI, their lead witness hasn't been quite forthcoming about helping himself to the corporate coffers. Whitacre's ever-changing account frustrates the agents and threatens the case against ADM as it becomes almost impossible to decipher what is real and what is the product of Whitacre's rambling imagination. Based on the true story of the highest-ranking corporate whistleblower in U.S. history.

Leaves of Grass Tim Blake Nelson, USA
World Premiere
Bill Kincaid, an Ivy League classics professor, returns to rural Oklahoma to bury his dangerously brilliant identical twin brother who had remained in their native state to grow hydroponic pot. Leaves of Grass is a fast-paced comic film that contrasts two distinct approaches to life. Featuring Edward Norton in the role of each twin.

London River Rachid Bouchareb, United Kingdom/France/Algeria
North American Premiere
This intimate drama tells the story of two people, a Muslim man and a Christian woman, who are immediately affected by the July 2005 London bombings. Both of them are drawn to the British capital when their children go missing on the day of the attacks. Putting aside their cultural differences, they will give each other the strength to continue the search for their children and maintain their faith.

Mao's Last Dancer Bruce Beresford, Australia/USA/China
World Premiere
Adapted from his internationally best-selling memoir, the film tells the true story of Li Cunxin, a Chinese-trained ballet dancer. Plucked from his childhood village, subjected to years of vigorous training and threatened during the Cultural Revolution, Cunxin decides to leave China at great risk to himself and those he loves, for an uncertain future.

Moloch Tropical Raoul Peck, Haiti/France
World Premiere
A democratically elected "President" and his closest collaborators are getting ready for a state celebration. But in the morning of the event, he wakes up to find the country inflamed and the streets in turmoil. Despite the situation, the President does not want to face reality and refuses to resign. Overwhelmed, he plunges into a deep mental confusion as the events unfold. Set in a castle in the clouds, Moloch Tropical is a Shakespearian, behind-the-scenes depiction of the end of power.

Mother Bong Joon-ho, South Korea
North American Premiere
A unique noir thriller that digs into the secrecy surrounding a terrible murder and the mystery of a mother's primal love for her son. The films of director Bong Joon-ho regularly, and brilliantly, break with convention, thanks to an imagination that is not confined to the accepted parameters of humour, suspense or horror - Mother is no exception.

Ondine Neil Jordan, Ireland/USA
World Premiere
A lyrical, modern fairy tale that tells the story of Syracuse (Colin Farrell), an Irish fisherman whose life is transformed when he catches a beautiful and mysterious woman (Alicja Bachleda) in his nets. His daughter Annie (Alison Barry) comes to believe that the woman is a magical creature, while Syracuse falls helplessly in love. However, like all fairy tales, enchantment and darkness go hand in hand.

Partir Catherine Corsini, France
International Premiere
Suzanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a well-to-do married woman and mother in the south of France. Her idle bourgeois lifestyle gets her down and she decides to go back to work as a physiotherapist. Her husband agrees to fix-up a consulting room for her in their backyard. When Suzanne and the man (Sergi López) hired to do the building meet, the mutual attraction is sudden and violent. Suzanne decides to give up everything and live this all-engulfing passion to the fullest.

Scheherazade Tell Me a Story Yousry Nasrallah, Egypt
North American Premiere
Hebba is the host of a successful political talk show in present-day Cairo. Karim, her husband, is deputy editor-in-chief of a governmentowned newspaper. When Party big shots imply his wife is meddling with opposition politics, Karim convinces her to start a series of talk shows around issues involving women. Hebba knows, of course, that women's issues are political. But she could not imagine to what extent, and the tension eventually leads to the break-up of her marriage.

Solitary Man Brian Koppelman and David Levien, USA
World Premiere
Ben Kalmen (Michael Douglas) is feeling his age, but you wouldn't know it from the company he keeps. A former mogul with a chain of car dealerships, until legal troubles knocked him out of business, Ben now keeps a grip on the world through his relationships with women - many women. The cast also includes Susan Sarandon, Danny DeVito, Mary Louise Parker and Jenna Fischer.

Valhalla Rising Nicolas Winding Refn, Denmark/United Kingdom
World Premiere
It is 1000 AD. For years, One Eye, a mute warrior of supernatural strength, has been held prisoner by the Norse chieftain Barde. Aided by Are, a boy slave, One Eye slays his captor and together he and Are escape, beginning a journey into the heart of darkness. On their flight, One Eye and Are board a Viking vessel, but the ship is soon engulfed by an endless fog that clears only as the crew sights an unknown land. As the new world reveals its secrets and the Vikings confront their terrible and bloody fate, One Eye discovers his true self.

Vengeance Johnnie To, Hong Kong/France
North American Premiere
A father comes to Hong Kong to avenge his daughter, whose family was murdered. Officially, he's a French chef. Twenty years ago, he was a killer. Vengeance is a moody, noir-ish tour-de-force, starring French pop icon Johnny Hallyday.

The Vintner's Luck Niki Caro, New Zealand/France
World Premiere
Set in early 19th century France The Vintner's Luck tells the compelling tale of Sobran Jodeau, an ambitious young peasant winemaker and the three loves of his lifehis beautiful and passionate wife Celeste, the proudly intellectual baroness Aurora de Valday and Xas, an angel who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Sobran. A fantastical creature with wings that smell of snow, Xas turns out to be an unconventional mentor. Under his guidance Sobran is forced to fathom the nature of love and belief and in the process, grapples with the sensual, the sacred and the profaneall in pursuit of the perfect vintage.

The Special Presentations programme is made possible through the generous sponsorship of American Movie Classics Company LLC.

About Bell Lightbox
Currently under construction, Bell Lightbox, a breathtaking five-storey complex located in downtown Toronto will provide a permanent home for film lovers celebrating cinema from around the world and will propel TIFF forward as an international leader in film culture. Designed by innovative architecture firm KPMB, Bell Lightbox's fluid design encourages exploration, movement and play. The campaign to build Bell Lightbox is generously supported by founding sponsor Bell, the Government of Canada and the Province of Ontario, The King and John Festival Corporation - consisting of the Reitman family and The Daniels Corporation., RBC as Major Sponsor and Official Bank, Visa†, Copyright Collective of Canada, NBC Universal Canada, The Allan Slaight Family, The Brian Linehan Charitable Foundation and CIBC. The Board of Directors, staff and many generous individuals and corporations have also contributed to the campaign. For more information on the Bell Lightbox campaign, visitbelllightbox.ca.

-30-

For further information, contact the Communications Department at 416-934-3200 or by email at proffice@tiff.net

Agnès Varda

2009-07-10T11:10:00.012-04:00

Varda was once described in a newspaper account as an ancestor to the French New Wave, a comment she thought was unflattering to her age. Yes, her La pointe-courte may have come out several years before Monsieurs Godard and Truffaut picked up their first cameras (and even their first pens), but the three were born only four years apart. Worse than disparaging her age was the insinuation that Varda was one of those dreaded things in artistic circles - the forerunner. While meant to be complimentary, the appellation of forerunner usually ends up conferring upon the recipient a few nice pats on the back: "Way to go with the inspiration, but we're going to go watch someone else's film now."

After spending a week with the Criterion Collection set 4 by Agnes, it became clear that if her work could be described as an ancestor to the New Wave, then the children never did surpass the accomplishments of the mother. Yes, I'll say it: Varda is my favorite auteur of the New Wave.

Of course there are a hundred qualifications to make, the most important is that I have never sat and watched four Godard or Truffaut movies in a week, and I've also only seen a handful of films combined by Resnais and the rest. (I also saw that Melville is sometimes included in the bunch, which just seems bizarre). My experience with these directors has been spread out over 15 years, starting with a failed effort to get my friends to watch The 400 Blows in high school, falling asleep during Jules et Jim in a college film class, and drinking far too much of something at Sean's house while barely tolerating Alphaville. Pierrot le Fou and Shoot the Piano Player could make an excellent tag-team start at challenging the Varda box set, but circumstances what they are, she's the best.

Ironically enough, the herald of the new filmaking style La Pointe-Courte (1954) was the weakest of the four films. Set in a small fishing village, it is the dual story of a failing love and a failing town, only one of which looks like it will survive. While the drifting and affectless conversations of the two lovers are what most seem to anticipate the big developments in French cinema, it's the shots of the town that are most revealing today. Though only fifty years ago, it seemed like another world, with the economy of the town looking quite like what it might have been 150 years ago - a few fishing crafts, a few small houses, and a rebellious and fearful relation to authority.

Varda's strengths as a director are immediately obvious - an alive camera and the ability to fill the screen with motion and arresting visuals. One scene of the two lovers walking is interrupted by a small train emerging from nowhere and moving at an impossibly slow speed. Another simply shows a man setting up his boat, with other workers cutting in front of the camera. In almost every shot, Varda makes sure the camera is doing something, or capturing something of interest. Watching La Pointe-Courte, one isn't surprised to learn that she was a photographer before deciding to become a filmaker.

In one interview in the collection, Varda claims to have seen only a handful of movies in her life before deciding she wanted to be a director, an astonishing fact when considered against how professional and structured her films are. While La Pointe-Courte, sticks to an inflexible division between the two stories, Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962) presents a real-time classic, following a small-time chanteuse through the streets of Paris for the exact running time of the movie (which is only an hour and a half - the last 30 minutes are saved for Cleo and her man).

Starring the stunning, even by the standards of 60s French film stars, Corinne Marchand, Cleo examines the rigours of celebrity life on a day when Cleo is about to learn from her doctor if she has cancer. Instead of the stereotypical descent story, however, Cleo instead gets gradually better throughout the day, moving out of her inward shell and embracing people around her - it is, without any sentimentality, a wonderfully uplifting film. As Varda described the progression, she said she wanted the perspective of the camera to trace Cleo's perspective, beginning with close shots of the actress herself, and then moving to other people. The only way to avoid what Satre called "the gaze," Varda seems to be arguing, is to care about the people before they can start caring about you.

From the mostly cheery to the downright bizarre, and from classic Parisian B&W to the bright and shiny of country colors, the move from Cleo to Le bonheur (1965) is startling. Thrity-three years before Solondz took on that most elusive of all emotions, Varda delivered an odd and at times shocking film about the good life in the suburbs. Staring the real-life Drouot family as a seemingly content nuclear tribe, Le Bonheur introduces an obvious wrinkle (an affair) and a not-so obvious devastating one. Stories of families torn apart are nothing new, but the nonchalance of the husband Francois seems simultaneously to be the most natural and horrifying thing you could imagine. Your intellect says no, but almost everything else makes his courtship of a young postal worker seem like a romance for the ages.

For someone who started in classic black and white, Varda knew how to use color for effect, saturating scenes with two or three colors that shift throughout the film. Not as obvious as something like Hero, but enough matching sweaters and buildings to make each shot a study in composition. Add to this the creepy/beautiful Mozart that plays throughout the film, the story and filmaking make for a mindsplitting experience.

As good as the first three films were, I was unprepared for Sans toit ni loi (1984), or Vagabond. This is what a story of alienation and loneliness should look like. I'm tempted to compare it to recent films like Into the Wild and Wendy and Lucy, but even the latter film - fine in its own way - looks like a sentimental bit of Oscar-bait after 100 minutes of Varda's story of Mona Bergeron. Offering only a few glimpses of redemption, Vagabond is merciless in following the drifting Mona from town to town. The character she meets - mostly real people that Varda had scouted - range from friendly to terrifying, but they are all fully rounded characters rather than ciphers for the protagonist's experience. It makes sense given the casting choices, but Varda somehow seems to have captured something very real about life in the streets.

Amazingly, this isn't done Dardennes-style (though Mona gives Rosseta a nice run as tragic heroine) but through long dolly shots and a carefully choreographed set of images and music, which are felt but not obvious unless you hear the director's commentary. The story is of course about freedom vs. loneliness, and reminded me of a great Guy Clark line that seems akin to what Varda is after:

Well,

there ain't no money in poetry

And that's what sets

the poet free

And I have all the freedom

I can stand

It's no spoiler to tell you that Mona's journey does not end well, but there are a series of images near the end of the film so shocking and haunting - and one that is simply the strangest thing I've ever seen - that Mona seems like the kind of character you wont ever get out of your head.

*A thanks to the guy who left a copy of the Times Sunday Arts section in the library, where A.O. Scott's feature got me to see Varda's films.

Stalker Guilt Syndrome

2009-06-22T18:35:00.004-04:00

I find it surprising that Marc Maron hasn't gotten more roles over the years. He was great in this little film that I first saw on the HBO Comedy channel some 8 years ago. The channel would fill time between movies or comedy specials with short films of various quality, Starker Guilt Syndrome was one of the best. I loved this short so much I managed to tape it on one of my beloved long-gone 8hr VHS mix tapes. Even though the first time I'd watched this I wasn't the every-day public transit commuter I am now, I had already run into the Stalker Guilt Syndrom scenario more than a couple times. It's an awkward situation that I'm sure 90% of the people who've lived in an urban environment have experienced at one time or another. I'm happy to see it preserved on the web...

Stalker Guilt Syndrome

Atom.com: Funny Videos | Cinematic Comedy | Romantic Comedies

Rolling Thunder (1977)

2009-06-16T20:34:00.009-04:00

Dir. John Flynn

I'd never be one to advocate for the remake of a movie that holds up perfectly fine some 30 years later, but if timeliness were ever to be taken into consideration for such things, one might look to 1977's Rolling Thunder as a prime candidate for a relevant reinterpretation. In the film, two soldiers return home to Texas after years of being POWs in Hanoi. When one loses his wife and child, and one of his hands, to a group of thugs, he enlists some friends' help in tracking them down and exacting bloody revenge. Sounds like the stuff of a typical 70s-80s b-movie and maybe a vehicle for a Norris, Stallone or Bronson under the watchful eye of a Golan or a Globus. There were some highly entertaining movies made under those conditions, don't get me wrong, but Rolling Thunder comes to us with a different pedigree -- it's a Lawrence Gordon production (yep, the same Gordon behind the Watchmen rights fiasco) of a John Flynn film written by Paul Schrader and Heywood Gould, and starring William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones. I couldn't tell you much about Flynn, but even though it was released a year after Taxi Driver, and there are many differences, it feels like Paul Schrader, with the help of Gould, was taking an initial run through at that film here -- it's definietly a variation on a story and theme and one that feels perfectly suited to today's society where PTSD is far too commonplace. "We tell a soldier or veteran of war "welcome home" because the battle never leaves us..."

Rather than following our vet through a clausterphobic New York City, we're following Major Charles Rane (William Devane) around San Antonio as he tries to adjust to civilian life. We know things aren't going to be easy from the very first scene: As they are getting off the airplane, fellow POW Sergeant Johnny Vohden (Tommy Lee Jones) mentions that the aviator sunglasses will make it easier to look people in the face. While Devane is being celebrated around town and given a new cherry red Cadillac convertible and a box of over 2,500 silver dollars (one for every day he was imprisoned), he's discovering that his wife has begun a new relationship with a local police officer, one that she isn't too eager to put an end to now that he's back home. There's an interesting serenity to Devane's performance, especially in the first act s he absorbs all this. It would be easy to play the part with a clenched jaw and a certain desperation, but Devane plays the scenes with a Zen-like calm that makes them even more tense, especially when the violence erupts.

Devane's homecoming gifts catch the attention of some local thugs who suddenly show up at his house looking for those silver dollars. It's a particularlly tough scene to take in as we just got through watching Devane explain that the way to beat your torturer is to "learn to love the rope", and you can tell that once the punches start flying, Devane is back in his element and maybe even happy to be having these senses reawoken. That is, of course, until he loses his hand after this captor proves to be less patient with him than his previous ones. Worse than loosing his hand for refusal to give the location of the silver dollars is having his wife and child walk in on this and seeing them quickly taken away in a cold-blooded fashion.

These thugs, of course, unwisely leave him for dead on the kitchen floor and we're soon in revenge movie gear with Devane learning how to use his new hook-hand while laid-up in the hospital (sign of 1977: this involves him picking up loose Marlboros and putting them back in the pack). His visitors are Cliff, the cop his wife began seeing who is more than a little disapointed Devane can't (or won't) tell him anything about who these killers were; Jones who basically tells him to look him up when he's ready to go after these bastards; and Linda, his frequently bra-less "groupie" who wore a bracelett in his honor while we was away and was the one to present him with his car and money. Linda is very much in the manic-pixie-dream-girl mold, albeit a dark, 70s alcoholic version, but Schrader and Gould give her a proper backstory, explaining why she would be throwing herself at Devane, even if her character does get somewhat discarded in the end. But even before we find out her character's history, Linda is given a warm charm by Linda Haynes who unfortunately called it quits after only ten years as an actress. She's wonderful in the movie, practically the only beam of feminine sunshine in an otherwise permanently overcast, testosterone driven film. Her work here makes me want to revisit The Drowning Pool, Brubaker and Coffy again to see if she was always this good.

After Devane gets out of the hospital we're quickly stocking up on guns, sharpening our hook hand and hitting the road to Mexico with Linda. Things don't go so smooth once she realizes that she's more or less being used by Devane to help him greese informant's wheels with her looks rather than to help him sip margarita's on a beach. They have some good make-up sex and bond while taking target practice -- this is where we learn that Linda was a military brat and daddy's little girl. Linda practically steals the movie from the "macho son of a bitch" Devane during these scenes, giving us a dose of heart and soul before the Peckinpah-esque bloodletting that soon follows. It's great stuff. Actually, there's more than a little bit of Alfredo Garcia flavor in their two day trip bouncing through Mexican border towns in a Cadillac.

Once Devane finds the men he's after, holed up in a whore house in Juarez, he puts his uniform back on and picks up Jones who is far too eager to dive into his closet, suit up and arm himself to the teeth. At the brothel, Jone's interrupts a practitioner mid service when he pulls out his shotgun, "What the hell are you doing?" she asks. "I'm going to kill a bunch a people," he dryly says and enthusistically proceeds to do. Jones may look 30 years younger in the film, but his voice is beautifully the same.

The ass-kicker of an ending might make you forget the thoughtfulness that preceeded it and the fact that it's more about finding purpose in life than it is about finding revenge. When Jones pays Devane a visit in the hospital he confesses that he signed up for another 10 years with the Air Force and somehow it isn't all that confusing as to why. Devane's explination about "learning to love the rope" is just as much about learning to love the routine and embracing the discipline involved in enduring daily tourture. If there's one thing that the Hanoi Hilton and the military offer it's a tight routine schedule. Upon returning, Devane jumps into a punishing workout schedule, sleeping on a cot in the tool shed and sitting in the corner in the dark because of the comforts it provides because without it he's simply drifting along, rudderless. Finding his family's killers becomes a mission not unlike Operation Rolling Thunder, the name of the Air Force bombing campaign that landed them in captivity. It gives them a reason for being because family dinners and having people doting on you isn't a way of life.

Crafting genre films as a way to sugar coat your message isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's nothing pleasant about Rolling Thunder, it doesn't pull any punches or bury the lead but it's far more watchable than any number of films that have come out recently about returning home from war. And for all it's revenge movie trappings, it feels far more realistic than most -- but that's largely due to William Devane's understated performance. I'd suggest that if you want to draw attention to an important and relatively unspoken of issue like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, you might want to make a movie that people might want to see. I'm not saying you should dumb your movie down or even give your story a happy ending, but give them a cinematic story not a heavy-handed one.

Breaking Bad

2009-06-08T17:33:00.010-04:00

I think it is now safe to say that, after the rather stunning conclusion to its second season, Breaking Bad is one of the best television shows being made these days and on the short list for best ever. The only serious competition currently out there for the top spot, a show that equally blazes new trails in proving what can be done in one weekly hour of television, would be Mad Men (and Wipeout, of course). But it wasn't always that way. The first season, while good TV, was more predictable in its characterizations and no where near as heartbreaking for me to watch as this past season that just wrapped up last Sunday. In case you've been unaware of this brilliant show (it is on AMC after all), it's a one hour drama about a high school chemistry teacher (Walter White – played with heretofore unknown gravitas by Bryan Cranston) who's diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and decides to make and sell crystal meth in order to pay for his hospital bills and ensure his wife and son will be financially secure after he's gone. I'll be picking at the final episode of this season here so if you've yet to watch it, you may wish to return some other time.

It's rare for a television show to be at the top of its game in its first season. Shows like Mad Men, Deadwood and The Wire managed to hit their stride after only a few episodes, just enough to establish their cast of characters, but should be considered the exceptions since we're talking about the best shows ever to be made for TV. More often then not a show will take a look at its first year, what worked and what didn't, and refine and improve. There's usually a grace period involved where the writers synchronize with the actors and their particular strengths -- it's rare that a show like Deadwood comes along where every character comes out the gate feeling well worn, lived in and fully realized. The second season of Breaking Bad is a perfect example of taking a character to the next level. Jesse was fun enough in the season one, but he and the actor Aaron Paul were a revelation in the second season -- practically stealing the show from Walt and Cranston.

Jesse started off as a fairly typical teenage tweeker character; inept comic relief for the most part and Walt's guide into the world of meth. But something happened this season and he became the soul of Breaking Bad. The show found a sweet spot and it resonated all season long as we watched Jesse realizing his limitations at the same time Walt discovers his limitless ambition. At the end of last season Walt stepped up and became something of a badass, but it turns out to be a slippery slope for him and it isn't long before Badass Walt becomes Ruthless Walt. People start dying but Walt keeps pushing until Jesse reaches his breaking point -- finding solace in heroin and his enabling would-be girlfriend, Jane. But Walt's tunnel vision can't see that his actions have consequences until they explode in the sky above him and come falling to his feet.

Ultimately it comes down to a choice Walt makes at the end of the penultimate episode. He finds Jesse and Jane once again passed out after shooting heroin and as he's trying to shake Jesse awake he accidentally bumps his girlfriend onto her back causing her to begin choking. He can either put her back on her side or allow her to choke to death. Now you're not exactly sure about Walt's motivations for being there in the first place. Has he really begun to look at Jesse as a second son or does he just want someone he can boss around with o questions asked? Does he want a confidant or a servant? Does he let Jane die for Jesse's own good or does he let her die to get rid of his competition for Jesse’s allegiance?

How you view the murder of Jesse's girlfriend will have a lot to do with how you respond to the big season finale. It turns out Jane's father is an air traffic control operator and on his first day back to work, after weeks off to grieve, during which time Walt recuperates from a successful surgery, he ends up causing two planes to collide in mid air. Just so happens that air is right above Walt's house. Now, leading up to this point we've been shown little flash-forward glimpses of body bags and rubble scattered around Walt's house and a burnt teddy bear floating in his pool. Many episodes have started off this way. (If it wasn't for these little flash-forwards I doubt there'd be any animosity towards the season ending at all.) They're effective little teasers and it made it easy to assume Walt’s house had exploded or some such disaster had befallen the White household. Therefore, it makes it easy to look at the final moments of the episode as the writers thumbing their noses and having a good laugh at pulling a fast one over on us. But another look at the disastrous event is that it is in fact a logical conclusion to this season. Walt’s been killing people all season. None directly, but every one of the deaths this season has been the end result of Walt’s actions. He hasn’t had to directly deal with the mess these deaths have caused, only Jesse’s reaction to it all. He’s been a wall that’s collected all the bad karma and upon Jane’s death, the wall has collapsed. The collision of two planes over Walt’s house is that karma raining down on Walt. A season’s worth of death and destruction has caught up with Walt, it accumulated like a brewing storm, and it has broken open. A year's worth of questionable, fuzzy morality, of selfish, myopic choices has been answered and it has been unavoidably dropped at the feet of Walt - he can't tell Jesse to deal with this problem and that makes it a perfect ending for this season.

Oh, and the addition of Bob Odenkirk as semi-regular Saul Goodman: Lawyer to the Criminals --pure brilliance.

The Reflecting Skin

2009-05-28T17:58:00.002-04:00

Dir. Philip Ridley

Viewed: From the Couch

About ten years ago I was able to spend some time living down the street from one of the better video stores I've ever come across. Having worked at a couple of video stores in the early and mid 90s, I always appreciate a good one and felt at home spending spare time browsing the aisles looking for treasure. So it was at Northampton's Pleasant Street Video that I stumbled across this peculiar film, The Reflective Skin. It was the cover that did it for me -- an odd looking boy with a harpoon across his lap and the jaws of some large fish mounted ominously behind him -- very gothic and creepy looking. And the title is one that promises you the film is going to be anything but dumb. In the early and mid 90s I was absorbing films at a rate that I doubt I will ever match, so I didn't take much for me to bring a movie home with me. Ah yes, the 90s, when independent film had yet to succumb to a sissy-pants formula and your evening's entertainment could be determined by a good video cover. Those were indeed the days.

Until today, that cover and name were the only things I remembered about the film aside from a gruesome suicide that ended with a burning gas station and some images of a boy running through across a large open field with a big blue sky overhead. I remember lying on my bed and putting the film on, but earlier that evening a guy stopped by the house and sold me some mushrooms for that following afternoon's planned trip to the mall to watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Well, a good portion of those magical mushrooms were consumed that night and The Reflective Skin was used as a means to chill out, as the kids like to say. That would be the last I'd thought about the film until a few weeks ago when I was turned on to the excellent blog that the folks behind the upcoming Where the Wild Things Are are running. They made reference to the film Paperhouse -- another film I hadn't thought about since 10 years ago. But this one I do remember as I used to have a copy of it on one of those 8 hour vcr tapes along with three or four other films. Paperhouse also features young kids, a fire and shots of rolling hills and big skies -- but it wasn't the film I had watched that night up in the attic bedroom. No... That was some movie with a different creepy kid on the cover... Something Skin? Thanks should go to, IMDb, for cracking another mystery and helping this old man's fuzzy memories become a whole lot clearer.

As it turns out, The Reflecting Skin doesn't lie in complete obscurity, only next to it. The writer/director Philip Ridley also wrote The Krays, a memorable, well received, violent British gangster film that I also had on one of those 8 hour tapes when I was in high school -- meaning it got a fair amount of play on cable back in the day. Both films came out in 1990 and that seemed to be the year for Philip Ridley. Since then he's only written two other films, one of which he directed. But from the sound of his bio he may have been keeping busy writing novels and plays. The film also features the a young Viggo Mortensen in his first starring role, so I'm sure his fan club holds the film in high regard.

The real star is 9 year old Seth Dove, played by newcomer Jeremy Cooper. The film opens up on Seth and his two buddies playing a prank on their neighbor, a creepy (everyone in this film is creepy, by the way) widow whom Seth becomes convinced is a vampire, by filling a big toad with air by sticking a straw up its rear end and shooting it with a slingshot, causing the neighbor lady to get a face full of frog guts. Yeah, that old gag. The seems to take place in the 50's when young scamps with slingshots cause mischief and give their neighbors headaches. But Dennis the Menace this is not. And Seth's parents are no Ozzie and Harriet. They run a gas station out in the middle of nowhere, a job his mother seems to detest as she is first seen in the middle of a fit over being unable to escape the smell of gasoline. Seth remarks early on that all he has to do is look at his mom and she'll break down crying. His father isn't much better off, he's a meek shell of a man, but at least he's kind to Seth and doesn't force water down his throat until he pisses himself like his mom does.

There are a fair amount of odd juxtapositions going on in The Reflecting Skin. You're never told here exactly in the US the film is taking place but by the amount of dusty, flat terrain and the amber waves of grain you get the impression that we're not far away from the badlands (the movie was filmed in Alberta, Canada). Yet water plays a major theme in the film. Seth's father is always going on about the importance of water (lest he "turn into dust"), his brother is in the military stationed on an island in the Pacific, the creepy widow's house (her name is Dolphin Blue, naturally) is where we find that harpoon and those jaws, the first murder victim is found floating in water -- and in the film's most bizarre scene a couple of chirping ladies walk by Seth carrying a dead seagull. All of the four elements play an important role in the film but the mysteries are all tied in some way or another to water.

When Seth discovers one of his friends floating in his family's pool of drinking water, the sheriff's deputy immediately starts pointing a finger at Seth's father. It turns out there was an incident with a young boy some years ago and the threat of this secret getting out is too much for him to bear. Seth watched as his father takes his own life in a gruesome and destructive manner involving a gas pump and a stubborn book of matches. But the murders don't stop after his death and when Seth's brother Cameron (Viggo Mortensen) comes home things don't get any better for his family. Soon Seth's other friend shows up dead by the side of the road and because the one-eyed, one handed sheriff was so sure it was Seth's father, the only solution the townspeople can accept is that he's somehow still alive.

Any hopes for Cameron being the clear-headed salvation for the family are immediately dashed as he tosses the American flag that greets him into the dirt and quickly pushes Seth aside in an effort to keep miserable company with Dolphin Blue. Viggo is particularly heart-breaking in his portrayal of the cold, unsympathetic brother. Cameron is just as lonely as everyone else in the town and, as the story goes, finding personal relief is more important than the problems of some stupid 9 year old. Even if that 9 year old might know who's killing the kids in town. Cameron's obliviousness reaches great absurdity when he gets annoyed with Seth's insistence and asks him, "Why aren't you off playing with your friends?" To which Seth responds quite matter-of-factly, "All my friends are dead." Just another day at the little house on the prairie.

The film could easily be looked at as a disturbing rebuttal to the warm fuzzies of The Little House on the Prairie. Surely that show was given exposure overseas in the 1980s and The Reflecting Skin could very well be the British response. It's always interesting to see Americana from a contemporary European point of view, but the Dove family may as well live on Mars. It's in this bizarro world that the film works - if it were shooting for Eugene O'Neil the film would be laughable. Instead, it goes for the kind of dark and violent America you see in David Lynch's work (Roth reprotedly described his movie as "Blue Velvet with children") and even (gulp) Tideland. In fact, the power of a child's innocence as a coping mechanism is as much at the heart of The Reflecting Skin as it is Gilliam's far more off-putting and unfocused Tideland. There's a particularly cutting moment following the suicide of Seth's father. The gas station is ablaze and we're looking down upon Seth in the glow of the fire and a smile starts to form on his face as he becomes enchanted by the glowing embers flying through the night like lightning bugs. And in an effort to make the movie seem somewhat accessible (it is, I swear!) I won't get into the fetus Seth adopts like a precious handed down toy doll.

The Reflecting Skin isn't a movie with broad appeal. I'm sure certain people will decide they'd rather see something else at about the five minute mark when the lady gets sprayed with frog guts. But the film is not overly bleak or insistent with it's dark subject matter, it's actually quite poetic. A lot of this is due to having the always remarkable Dick Pope behind the camera. If there's anyone who knows how to make dark material approachable it's the guy who's shot two decade's worth of Mike Leigh films. But I don't think Pope has ever shot a movie quite like this one. It's a rare opportunity to see him work outside of the U.K. and he makes the fields, skies and frosty breath of Alberta, Canada a wonder to behold. Equal parts attractively dreamy and foreboding, The Reflecting Skin is a lost treasure of early 90's cinematic weirdness. If you give it a chance it's a strangely affecting film, far more personal that you would expect and one that sticks with you.

Great trailer below, but beware there are some big spoilers in there.

And someone's gone and put all of Viggo's scenes on youtube...

Samedi the Deafness, by Jesse Ball

2009-05-26T11:26:00.015-04:00

Jesse Ball's Samedi the Deafness begins with a man's agonizing death and ends with the possible conflagration of the country. In between, there are some low moments.

The novel's reluctant hero, James Sim, discovers the dying man and through a series of either bizarre coincidences or contrived deceptions finds himself at a country house that serves as the base of a revolutionary plot to overthrow the government. Or, maybe it is just a mental hospital. Or both. There are many many more plot twists along the way, including several serial liars, a few mistaken identities, one seriously dysfunctional family, and what seems like a dozen people named Grieve (including the most important Grieve, whom James falls in love with, but who is not to be confused with her twin Lara, and who is actually called Lily Violet, but whom James meets as Leonora Loft).

In trying to figure out just what is happening at the compound (which was a mental hospital at some point, and so contains endless floors, rooms and hiding places) our protagonist is of little help and even more confused than the reader. It is a nice irony, since James is a professional mnemonist, and can therefore commit to instant memory everything he sees and reads (a sort of learned eidetic, or photographic, memory). His occupation raises just one of many interesting questions posed by Samedi: What good is a perfect memory if you have no way to tell if what you learn is true or false? Can you learn a lie?

As James navigates his absurdist universe, it is difficult to tell how much of his predicament is personal, and how much is circumstantial. Aside from a few flashback to our hero's childhood, when he escaped to the woods with his imaginary friend (a pet owl named Ansilon), his biography and personality are mysteries. Kafka gets mentioned twice in the book's blurbs (along with Lewis Carroll, David Lynch, Hitchcock, Ian Flemming, Graham Greene, and Gogol!), and it's not too difficult to see Ball's James as another K., caught up in a mysterious world of arbitrary decisions, empty of logic and reason. More Castle than Trial, Samedi drops a cipher of a character into a very strange world, and leaves both its central character and the reader to figure it out.

Figuring out the mystery - for those who like that sort of thing, this is not your book - is made more difficult by a rigid style that relies heavily on contradiction, interruption, and non sequitors. James seems easily distracted, and his attention drifts maddeningly while important information is being revealed. Even the writing itself is fractured, with an extra line of space between each paragraph, compound sentences split into two paragraphs, and several odd figures (they look like clothespins) marking out each new section.

The idea behind all this would seem to be that we are very very confused people in general, and that without a lot of cheating - ignoring stuff we don't like, lying to ourselves - this is what the world would look like. Or maybe this is what the world has become when so many people lie to themselves and others, and we just don't know it because we are such good liars. The compound at the center of the novel, independent of its possible use as a radical headquarters, was after all founded on the idea that lying could be eliminated through a set of strict rules, like forcing people to wait 15 seconds before speaking, or relying on notes. The thought was that the demands of communication placed unbearable pressures on people, causing them to constantly make up their responses. Through conditioning, they could learn the simple act of thinking before speaking.

There is a notable lack of modern communication in Samedi, and I don't think it's a coincidence that the entirety of the communication in the novel is either personal or in the form of notes. There are many random encounters in hallways, and the written communication is staggering - not just the manifesto that's been written by the compound's founder, but also the complex series of notes that James receives, either slipped under the door or placed in his pillowcase. Indeed, there are notes that summarize other notes, texts hidden in plain sight, and reference to a probability theorist (invented, of course) from the fourteenth century who wrote his masterpiece in the margins of Bibles and which went unnoticed for nearly seven hundred years.

To say that older forms of communications allows us better access to truth would be a vast imposition of my own thoughts onto Samedi, but it would be interesting to consider the message. The people who practice this form of "thinking before speaking," after all, may be behind a series of suicides and a plot to unleash a major attack on the American population. Though the group certainly has their sinister aspects, by the end of the novel James seems more interested in the girl than in foiling the devious plot. Maybe it's because he believes the conspiracy is a fait accompli, but it's also possible that after exhausting the powers of reason and logic to try to save the country, he decided it was better to cut through all the bullshit and follow his heart.

The Limits of Control

2009-05-20T17:34:00.005-04:00

Dir. Jim Jarmusch

Viewed: From the Balcony

I think it's reasonable to call Jim Jarmusch's latest film a test of the viewer's patience. It may sound odd to say that I don't really mean this as an insult or to cast a negative light on the film. In fact, I found Jarmusch's quiet, deliberate, repetitive pace nearly transcendent. Nearly. And it wasn't the inactivity or lack of a real script that causes the film to miss the mark for me. I honestly feel that the tipping point is Christopher Doyle’s cinematography, his skewed eye in this case, being at odds with Jarmusch's pinpoint contemplative story -- what there is of a story anyway. In the end, you're left with a film that's much more interesting as a subject of post-film debate than it is to actually watch.

We follow long time Jarmusch collaborator Isaach De Bankolé as he goes through the day to day routine of his job. It just so happens that he's an assassin of sorts. This entails flying to Spain and picking up tiny messages in matchboxes from one person to the next until he finds his target. But more than that, it entails a daily regimen of tai chi, espresso, abstinence and singular doses of fine art. I'm sure there's a back story to De Bankolé character, and I'd be fine with that story remaining a mystery, if only we were allowed catch a glimmer of character behind his shiny suits and stoic expressions. It's quite perverse in a way (most of the film is in one way or another), how Jarmusch designed this exercise in minimalism around one of the most expressive actors in the business. The film is set-up in a similar way to Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes. Each morning De Bankolé wakes up, exercises, goes to the museum, get's some coffee and meets someone with a new matchbox containing an encrypted message. The film could be described as four one-sided conversations over coffee tied together by trips to the museum and tai chi. Even more perverse is that the "conversations" (De Bankolé rarely says more than one word to the people he meets) are all variations on a theme -- everyone's saying the same thing, just using different words.

What dialog there is revolves around the cellular (or Molecules, as one character goes by in the credits) memory of the instrument, the role of bohemians in the art world and the reflection meaning more than the source -- but what it all adds up to is fuzzy and untenable. I enjoyed the idea of Bankolé being as much an instrument as the classic acoustic guitar that changes hands throughout the film. There is a sense that his routines, his shiny suits and his deflective demeanor are all in place to prevent his surroundings from influencing him. And of course, the film makes an attempt to show us that, try as he might, he is affected by his job and his surroundings and the people he meets. De Bankolé has such a fascinating face that it's a pleasure to watch even when it's doing nothing -- or softening as it tends to do as the film progresses. The more obvious signs that his environment is creeping into him is watching his suits soften from shiny blue to earth tones. But aside form a few interesting ideas spouted form eccentric characters, what is it -- is it the flamenco interlude that finally cracked his wall? Is it the ominously coincidental paintings that he returns to -- do they reflect upon his life in a way that causes him to open up? Do all these things come across in the film as less than meaningful, therefore making his adventure rather boring? Yes and no.

What really both helps and hinders the film is Christopher Doyle's cinematography and the music of Japanese drone maestros, Boris. Doyle has been working magic with his cameras for years, perhaps hitting his apex early on with his work for Wong Kar Wai - especially In the Mood For Love. He's amazing with colors and movement (two of the last words I would use to associate with Jim Jarmusch) and can make just about any setting look like art. He does some great stuff with the tiny, graffiti tagged sidewalks of Spain and manages to take the discussion of cellular memory to the level of the buildings and apartments we come across. Unfortunately, and this may be the reason even die hard Jarmusch fan’s may be left cold by The Limits of Control, the film feels more like an uneasy collaboration between Jarmusch and Doyle than it does a Jarmusch film – I’m just not convinced that the two were operating on the same wavelength. (Actually, after watching the documentary In the Mood For Doyle, I doubt anyone else on the planet is really on the same wavelength as Doyle.) The films of Jim Jarmusch have never been briskly paced, they’ve all taken their own sweet time to sprawl out, but usually the photography is stubbornly inert, forcing the moments and extremely limited when it comes to inserts and similar edits, always preferring the long, fixed take. Something about handheld cameras and a Jim Jarmusch story just doesn’t sit will with me and there’s a fair amount of Christopher Doyle calling attention to himself in this film when we’d normally just be relaxing in the moment with Jarmusch’s characters.

The handling of music in the film, on the other hand, remains one of Jarmusch’s strongest talents. If it weren’t for the perfectly timed intrusions of Boris’ growling guitars and overall menace, the film could very well slip by a viewer like a whisper in the wind. What drama the film is able to summon up from its matchbox sized, encrypted story is due in large part to the rumble created by Boris. If The Limits of Control achieves only one cinematic footnote it most likely will end up being the realization of Boris’ potential as epic soundtrack music.

A movie this perverse in its minutiae can’t go down as a complete failure (more fiasco, really). It’s been a few days since I’ve watched the film and it’s still a lot of fun to think about – which is strange since it really wasn’t all that fun to watch. The movie has some great photography, even if the style doesn’t quite suit the film, great music and if it wasn’t for the fact that Jim Jarmusch only makes two or three movies a decade the film would probably be an agreeably thought provoking film. Instead it’s a frustratingly thought provoking film.

The Girlfriend Experience

2009-05-17T14:03:00.006-04:00

Dir. Steven Soderbergh

Viewed: From the Balcony

[A very special 'thank you' is order to Prof. Kelikian and the Film and Visual Media Studies Program of Brandeis for this screening.]

Director Steven Soderbergh hasn't just made a film starring adult film actress Sasha Grey, he's gone and based a movie around Sasha Grey. But there's very little sex and only a brief glimpse of nudity in the film. What there's a lot of is conversations about relaionships and money and where the two shall meet. Sasha Grey dosen't play a porn star in The Girlfriend Experience, she plays a high-end call girl, the kind that offers the title experience: conversation over diner, a movie, even hanging around for a morning-after breakfast. The film likes to linger in these moments and spend the rest of the time lingering on the question, can a girl who gives the best girlfriend experience around actually have a functional relationship?

Sasha Grey does a better-than-you'd-think/not-as-great-as-you'd-hope job with her role and you have to wonder if there'd be a better performance if she weren't basically playing herself. There's a kind of disconnected cool to her throughout most of the film and in an odd way it works and jibes with the film's voyeur feel. The camera sits back at a distance in many scenes and lets the talking speak for itself, so to speak. The rest of whatever magic there may be is done in the editing room. The timeline is spliced up, leaving you spending the majority of the running time wondering where the pieces fall into place. If you were hoping that the film might give you something else besides figuring out chronology, it's slim pickins. There's a lot of rumbling about the economic crisis, and Grey works some angles to try and improve her own career by getting a better webpage. One of the best scenes in the film involves a business meeting between Grey and film critic Glenn Kenny, who plays a popular online escort critic willing to give Grey a favorable review if she does him a favor or two. The scene is mostly one long take and Kenny is wonderfully sleezy and makes the encounter a memorably uncomfortable one.

It's a funny highlight in a film that is otherwise interesting primarily for its experimental efforts that approach a skewed Dogme 95 sensibility. But like most cinematic exeriments, some of it works and some of it falls flat -- unfortunately the stuff that falls flat here comes off as indulgent and boring. At its best it's a unique day-in-the-life look at a woman trying to find meaning in a life that's filled with artifice. At its worst it's a luke warm hodgepodge clumsily trying to seem relevant and meaningful. A killer final scene has you leaving the film on a high note and you wish more scenes would do such a great job at showing us the marriage of sex and money and its imperial value in modern society. Or something like that.

Party Down

2009-05-11T17:35:00.004-04:00

The world of catering and the world of D-list Hollywood are two things I have no familiarity with but when these two worlds are brought together in Party Down, it feels all too painfully authentic. Would-be actors, a writer with 4 half finished novels (and some sci-fi screenplays he'd like to tell you about) and a struggling stand-up comedienne are among those forced to serve the upper-class of Los Angeles under the watch of Ron Donald and his Party Down catering company. Ken Marino (of The State and his underrated 2006 film Diggers) plays Ron, a reformed partier who is now endearingly serious about his job, and makes him an instant addition to the list of great bosses of television. Ron just wants to get good marks on the feedback card at the end of the night and tries his best to keep his employees from getting in the way of this happening, even if sometimes, like in the episode "California College Conservatives Union Caucus" when he's found rubbing dirt and setting fire to a US flag (he had his reasons) by the young Republicans awaiting Gov. Schwarzenegger's arrival, he's the cause of the calamity.

Party Down has a perfect set up. Each episode takes place at a new function, ranging from a sweet 16 to a porn awards after party. I can't imagine why the idea hasn't been used before. It's one that provides the opportunity for an endless string of guest stars without it feeling forced. So far we've had the hilarity brought by a horny pot smoking Ed Begley Jr., a creepy Steven Webber with an eye scar and a foul mouthed JK Simmons. Also, It's being a show on Starz means that it's a shortened season of 10 episodes, which means it's filler free. In short, it's a perfect formula.

Marino shares the spotlight with Adam Scott, who's ostensibly the star of the show. He's shows up to Party Down in the first episode having swallowed his pride after a failed attempt at being an actor (though he did spout a successful catch phrase in a beer commercial which looks to forever haunt him). Scott is kind of a "that guy" he's shown up in countless TV shows and had small parts in a number of popular films but in Party Down he charms you in a casual way that his other roles have not allowed for. He's immediately drawn to a co-worker played by the lovely Lizzy Caplan, the struggling stand-up when she's not slinging deurves, and their relationship is very much in the Pam-Jim mold. There's a lot of enjoyment to be had from watching them tiptoe around all the landmines found in the early going and testing the waters of a relationship. There's a moment in the 3rd or 4th episode when Caplan is trying to figure out what to do with her career and Scott asks her if she wants his advice and without a moments pause she says, No. It's a funny moment, she says it with a bit of a wink but it's also sincere and kinda heartbreaking, as is most of what Scott goes through in the series.

Like most great shows, it's the supporting cast that sets it apart from the rest and raises the show to excellence. Here we have Martin Starr, Jane Lynch and Ryan Hansen. If you don't know who Martin Starr and Jane Lynch are, then it's possible you may be comedy adverse and should just move on. Starr plays the writer, a fan of "hard sci-fi" and the worst kind of geek, the bitter kind. And as such, he's unwanted in just about every situation and the one who hates his job the most.

Lynch, on the other hand, seemingly loves the job. She's the one team player in the bunch, the one that finds fun in mingling with the upper crust, even if it is in a white shirt with a pink bow tie and a tray of finger food. She's the one member of Party Down at peace with having her shot at Hollywood behind her and happy to pass on any advice she can to her co-workers -- to the point where it can be overbearing.

Ryan Hansen is more of an unknown quantity unless, like me, you were a fan of Veronica Mars. Hansen proves good on his work as Dick Casablancas and turns out to still be terrifically funny and also capable of playing the nice guy instead of the smarmy creep. In fact, a lot of Party Down's pedigree comes from Veronica Mars. Hansen, Marino and Scott all had roles on the show in one form or another and one of the co-creator/writers is Rob Thomas, Veronica's creator and show-runner. Paul Rudd, a Veronica guest star on it's last season, also has a behind the scenes hand in the show. All of this is a way of me saying, yes Party Down is great, but if you missed out on Veronica Mars, you really missed out on one of the top 10 TV shows of the decade so do yourself a favor, pick up some DVDs and do something about that.

Party Down is on Fridays on Starz. You, like me, may not have Starz -- but you can watch it on Netflix Watch Instantly if you have a computer (which you do) or a Roku (which I do and love give me money Netflix). There's two more episodes to go, so now's is an ideal time to do what I did last weekend and get yourself caught up.

The Missing Person

2009-05-07T15:27:00.005-04:00

Dir: Noah Buschel
Viewed From: The Balcony

What to do with the detective story? The literary rediscovery of American and European pulp fictions had to do with figuring out how authors and directors could smuggle sex, drugs and violence into the the culture, but that aspect seems pretty tame in the twenty-first century. It's news now when a movie (like say Wendy and Lucy) doesn't include the big three, and anyone watching more than twenty minutes of network advertising will be bombarded with enough vice to ensure a few weeks at the Sunday confessional. Conversely, pulp has become passe, with decidedly non-subversive writers like Michael Chabon, David Eggers, and Nick Hornby beating the genre into submission.

So, what's a good crime story to do? The answer, as I found out in watching The Missing Person, is to (mostly) remove the seedier aspects and focus on the existential dilemma. Sure our protagonist John Rosow (Michael Shannon) is an alcoholic living on the margins of society, and sure he knows when to flash the cash to an informant, and sure the guy's suit is rumpled, but aside from the necessary conventions, director Noah Buschel eschews the rest of the package. There is booze (and Shannon makes a great drunk), but nothing extraordinary; there is some awkward sex (a very game Margaret Colin), but it's overshadowed by a sweet dose of true love; and while there is violence, it's almost comical.

In place of pulp, Buschel gives us real characters, with full and intricate backgrounds. Not only do we of course learn more about Rosow as he pursues what seems like his first case in decades, but we also come to learn about the man he is tracking down, a possible pedophile named Harold Fulmer (Frank Wood). In a sense, the movie is pursuing both characters - the more they try to flee from their pasts the more the audience learns. And aside from a sadly underutilized Amy Ryan,* the remaining characters are also given some depth, none more so than ingeniously named (if you're a baseball fan) Hero Furillo (John Ventimiglia).

*The only explanations for why Ryan is even in the movie must be her status as producer and the desire to add another name on the poster. It's a role a director's daughter could have played. Very disappointed.

The "chase" itself plays out very slowly, and Buschel seems well versed in the classic Hollywood films from the 70s - especially The Conversation (see above image)- from his lazy jazz score to the opening title sequence to the the way he is content to let the camera linger over scenes. There are a few lapses where the direction seems unintentionally aimless (like an odd scene where Rosow meets a few FBI agents), but for the most part it works. It's very serious stuff depicted in a very serious way, yet it has a great playfulness with the topic and is, at times, hilarious. If anything, he seems most indebted to early, pre-critical darling, Eastwood.

To step outside film, however, The Missing Person plays most like a combination between early Paul Auster and Don Delillo's Falling Man. The genius of Auster was to merge (or maybe, completely subsume) the crime novel into the existential novel, and use the missing person story to question just what the heck it is that we are doing in our time on the planet. Without giving away too much, Fulmer's "escape" would look very strange to most people, given the life he was able to lead. Why did he give it up? If that life wasn't good enough, what is? In comparison to Rosow, whose descent into isolation is given sufficient psychological determination, Fulmer's move forces us to ask the bigger questions. We can look at Rosow (or the countless number of private dicks who came before him) as outsiders or loners, but when the Fulmers of the world start going AWOL, we might be in trouble.

This all may seem like a lot for a 30-year old writer/director, and it's possible that charismatic actors like Shannon and Wood (the latter of whom it's impossible not to stare at) added more depth to the story, but I have a feeling that Buschel is - for all his embrace of the possibility of an alternate existence - the real thing.

World's Greatest Dad [IFFBoston Closing Night]

2009-05-06T18:25:00.010-04:00

Dir. Bobcat Goldthwait

Whenever I stumble upon a good dark comedy, I'm cheered up for a number of reasons. I'm always happy to be reassured that there are people out there with a sick sense of humor not afraid to alienate some people in the pursuit of a laugh. And if we're just talking about the good ones, there's usually some meaty reason behind the darkness - a satirical message that elevates the film into the kind of material worthy of discussion and dissection. This leads to a tip of the hat to the investors and talent out there that are willing to make a picture with even less of a chance to make back their money than usual. Let me know if you can point your finger at a dark comedy that became a box office sensation, because even when Heathers came out in 1989 it was largely ignored until it came out on home video. I point to Heathers not only because in the last 20 or so years (holy crap!) I can't think of a better example of a well done, nasty dark comedy that has been so widely embraced by a generation but also because World's Greatest Dad bears more than a passing resemblance to it. But hey, it has been 20 years (what the-?!) now and after letting World's Greatest Dad play around in my head for a while now, I have nothing but appreciation for Bobcat Goldthwait and his own pitch black look at assholes turning into angels and life after a death in the high school world.

What shouldn't come as too much of a surprise is that when called upon, and given the right material, Robin Williams can be oddly affecting. Like all great clowns there's a vulnerability too him that, when called up to the surface, can quickly disarm even the most jaded of audience members. He's made a career of being the spazzy hairball prone to talking in a funny voice but when you see him in boring films like The Night Listener or Insomnia, you can sense that he's primed to enter into a Bill Murray phase if he could just grab the right material or make better judgement calls. He comes damn close to getting that perfect role in World's Greatest Dad. He stars as a failed writer and single father who teaches a high school poetry class and wonders if he should take one last shot at writing glory. On top of his lack of success with getting published, his son is a crass degenerate, his girlfriend doesn't want to go public with their relationship and no one even wants to take his class - and those that do don't take it the least bit seriously. He almost looses it early on during a lunch break when a popular teacher and romantic rival announces that he got published in The New Yorker. Then, just as Williams is about to take the next step in his relationship with his skittish girlfriend, his son pulls a Michael Hutchence. In an effort to save himself and his son from embarrassment, he alters the scene to make it look a suicide - going so far as to write a devastating suicide note which, when leaked to the public, transforms his despicable son into a brooding hero. Yeah, it's that kind of comedy.

Robin Williams deserves a fair amount of credit for making this dark path a fun one to travel -- he's our rock, however unstable that rock may be -- but what sets the movie apart is Bobcat Goldthwait. He doesn't have much in the way of visual flair but his sensibility is singular. In creating a story about a floundering writer who comes to peace with life through his son's accidental death, Goldthwait has made one hell of a funny movie but even more surprising is how honest and personal it feels. Things turn even darker, and funny, as Williams begins to compose an entire imaginary journal of his dead son's emo musings that becomes a big hit at the high school and lands him on an Oprah-type show. Suddenly it's not just the high school that thinks his ignorant, piggish son was actually an intelligent, soulful person; and once publishers start talking about allowing him to publish his own work if he allows them to publish the fake journal, it becomes a countdown to how long he can keep the lie going before he unravels. There's a running joke of his dead son's picture haunting him at every turn (see pic). It's a ridiculous photograph of the kid and its absurdity gives the joke an amazing longevity. Each time you see it you think, that has to be the last time I'll laugh at that picture - but it is always perfectly timed and it makes you feel like his son is in on the joke, laughing along and even getting a kick out of his father's dilemma from beyond the grave.

Williams does great work with the exasperated, soul crushing scenes (especially during the talk show segment) where he's holding on by the thinnest of threads while the world refuses to cut him a break. It's in other scenes where he tends to come off as a little uncomfortable with the roll. This could have to do with me simply having slight problems buying Williams in the doting, shy father role or his character simply being given little opportunity in the story to feel comfortable, but from the sound of how the production went, I have a feeling Williams could use stronger direction than Goldthwait was willing or able to give. From what he said during the Q&A after the film, Goldthwait and Williams had a collaborative experience on the film - sometimes working their way through a scene by letting Williams try different things to figure out what works for him and the story and how it should play. The film carries that uncertainty with it -- it takes a bit of time for it to find a comfortable tone, but once the very bad mistake happens it never looks back and escalates to some of the funniest scenes in recent memory. The climactic scene with teachers and students (and one jaw dropper of a cameo) gathered together to witness the inevitable unraveling is a better, more satisfying pay-off than you could hope for.

There aren't many unique and meaningful comedic voices in cinema today but, however odd it may sound, Bobcat Goldthwait is one of those voices. His movies are personal, they have a vision and although they are dark, they never stray into being mean spirited. In a way, he's just as approachable as Judd Apatow. While Robin Williams has lost much of his audience draw over the years, I think Goldthwait is one bankable star away from breaking big. When that day comes I'll be a happy man because that means we'll be one step closer to Shakes the Clown 2 -- that film needs a decent budget.

IFFBoston 2009 Awards

2009-05-01T17:54:00.006-04:00

We're still decompressing from 2009's Independent Film Festival of Boston, which wrapped up on a high note this past Tuesday with Bobcat Goldwaith's World's Greatest Dad (review to follow shortly). We have a couple better-late-than-never posts in the works to wrap things up, but in the meantime let's take a look at the awards. I had to smile at the mention of Lollipop Man and Shooting Beauty winning the Best Marketing award. The folks behind those films were really out in force during the festival -- I couldn't avoid the guys in the crossing guard outfits and ended up with more than one handout and free ticket offer for Shooting Beauty.

Congrats to all. Much like last year I managed to catch very little of what ended up going home with a prize. Children of Invention, Beeswax (really need to see the last 15 minutes of that one) and Still Walking (that's one purty website) made off with the narrative feature awards with Crude, Unmistaken Child and Shooting Beauty for the documentaries. But here at RFC, I'm declaring BEST WORST MOVIE my winner for tops of IFFBoston '09. Hilarious, touching, filled with unforgettable characters, Best Worst Movie has it all. In honor of this, follow the link to enjoy this brand new trailer. Read on for the rest of the festival award results:

The 2009 Independent Film Festival of Boston (IFFBoston) came to a close on Tuesday night after enjoying record attendance of over 25,000 people. Roughly 100 guest filmmakers and celebrities were in attendance at the festival including directors Rian Johnson, Doug Pray, Ondi Timoner, Robert Siegel, Cory McAbee, Bobcat Goldthwait, Armando Iannucci and actors Brian Cox, Kevin Corrigan, Hal Holbrook, Dixie Carter, Chris Cooper, as well as other luminaries such as Bobby Farrelly and Red Sox pitching legend Luis Tiant.

Films were shown in Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, and Somerville over a total of 8 screens.

The jury and audience award prizes have been announced and are as follows:
Narrative Feature:

Grand Jury Prize Winner: CHILDREN OF INVENTION directed by Tze Chun

Special Jury Prize Winner: BEESWAX directed by Andrew Bujalski

Audience Award Winner: STILL WALKING directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda

Documentary Feature:

Grand Jury Prize Winner: CRUDE directed by Joe Berlinger

Special Jury Prize Winner: UNMISTAKEN CHILD directed by Nati Baratz

Audience Award Winner: SHOOTING BEAUTY directed by George Kachadorian

Honorable Mention: THE WAY WE GET BY directed by Aron Gaudet

Short Film:

Grand Jury Prize Winner: INSTEAD OF ABRACADABRA directed by Patrik Eklund

Special Jury Prize Winner: I AM SO PROUD OF YOU directed by Don Hertzfeldt

Audience Award Winner: SHORT TERM 12 directed by Destin Daniel Cretton

The Narrative Feature Jury was comprised of actor Tom Noonan, the Starz Denver Film Festivals’ Britta Erickson, and Variety/Indiewire film critic Michael Jones. The Documentary Feature Jury was comprised of Seth Gordon (The King of Kong), Susannah Ludwig (Stolen), and Josh Koury (We Are Wizards). The Short Film Jury was comprised of James Strouse (Grace Is Gone), Tom Quinn (The New Year Parade), and actress Alison Folland (To Die For, All Over Me).

Prizes included a year’s worth of free travel courtesy of JetBlue Airways (presented to Tze Chun, Children of Invention), 5 days free rental of the Red Camera (presented to Joe Berlinger, Crude) courtesy of FilmStar Rentals, and $3000 worth of color correction courtesy of National Boston (presented to Aron Gaudet, The Way We Get By).

A Best Marketing Award was also presented for the third year in a row at the festival. The 2009 award was a tie between Michael Axelgaard for the short film LOLLIPOP MAN and George Kachadorian for the documentary SHOOTING BEAUTY. Michael Axelgaard was presented with a set of Rock Band 2 courtesy of Harmonix, while George Kachadorian was presented with an iPod Nano courtesy of Tech Superpowers.

More information on the festival will be available shortly on the festival website at http://www.iffboston.org .

Blood Sweat & Cheers - That Evening Sun - The Escapist [IFFBoston Day - 5]

2009-04-29T16:53:00.013-04:00

Blood, Sweat & Cheers (Dir. Al Ward)

I wasn't expecting much from the cheerleading documentary Blood, Sweat & Cheers, but I was hoping for more than the glorified home movie that we got. I'm not sure what camera was used to shoot this, but I believe I might have one gathering dust in my closet. And the grainy lo-def video wouldn't even be a problem if there was any sort of ambition going on. I understand why it was shown at IFFBoston - I grew up next door to Burlington (the Massachusetts town where the bulk of the film takes place), it's about a half hour drive from Boston and who doesn't like to hear about hometown heroes? But the film is entirely too in the pocket of it's subject, the Burlington Pop Warner Junior Midget cheerleading team. It's not a boring subject, the team is one of the most decorated in the country and there's an innate drama involved with this sort of competition - similar to the pressure placed on the young girls of the gymnastics circuit. If the film had any sort of perspective or anything interesting to say besides, hey check out these talented girls, it could have risen above the feature length recruitment film that it is.

That Evening Sun (Dir. Scott Teams)

There's no question that at this point in his career, Hal Holbrook is a national treasure -- a living legend that still has a few surprises up his sleeve. Unfortunately, in That Evening Sun we're watching him go through the paces of a fairly routine grumpy old man story with Holbrook trying to hold on to his farm house. Let's put it this way, watching a still ripped Clint Eastwood scaring some punks of his lawn with a shotgun carries a higher level of entertainment than Holbrook annoying a punk with his mangy dog and walking stick.

That's not to say he doesn't have couple rousing I'm-80-I-can-do-what-I-want scenes, but they're nothing out of the ordinary. The best moments are when we're simply able to hang out with Holbrook and his old bud Barry Corbin as they reminisce and conspire. Corbin has aged more than you might think since his days as a retired astronaut on Northern Exposure but wrinkles and grey hairs suit him like the frayed pair of overalls he sports in each scene he's in. I would gladly sit through two hours hanging out with these two guys as they talk about trucks, dogs, lawns and big butted old girlfriends. But towards the end of That Evening Sun, the longer it went on, the less interested I was in the Reader's Digest story about a man and his house. The performances and direction are all sufficient if not great, if only the story had a little more bite to it.

The Escapist (Dir. Rupert Wyatt)

The story goes that writer/director Rupert Wyatt got in a bit of a row with Brian Cox one night which caused Wyatt to hole up and create The Escapist - a movie to let Brian Cox shine. And for the most part this is a successful project - Brian Cox does indeed shine and it's the kind of film that really allows its actors to loose themselves in their creations. Cox plays a long time convict looking to make a break for it. He uses the respect and knowledge he's gained with his age and time spent navigating the politics of their prison society. To accomplish his escape he enlists two fellow convicts - Liam Cunningham and a completely unrecognizable Joseph Feinnes (hard to believe that the thuggish fighter seen here is the same guy from Shakespeare in Love). But as it turns out it is indeed tough to keep a secret in prison and before long more people are being enlisted to keep the plan afloat.

As seems to be the trend these days, any heist, break-out or plot hatching film can't be told in a straight forward manner and so The Escapist has its timeline sliced and diced with moments of the break-out mixed in with the events and scheming leading up to the event. I'm not positive that this technique helps the film -- in the end it makes more sense but by the time that reason comes along you may be more than a little disappointed. One of the unique joys of the break-out film, as with the heist film, is the build up and release. In The Escapist you're plunged right into the break-out from the beginning and then you're in starts and fits throughout the rest. These cut-aways to the action can help pull you out of the odd dull moment but the story should be strong enough that the scheming and plotting draws you in and can hold its own until the fireworks start. I love watching the claustrophobic intricacies of prison life on film - was a big fan of Oz - and the scenes taking place before the break-out are great in The Escapist. I would have liked to see scenes of the wheels turning in Brian Cox's head and watching his jump through hoops to keep his plan from falling off the rails them stand on their own and allow the suspense to brew.

In the final moments of the film, featuring a great tete a tete between Cox and a superbly creepy Damian Lewis, the flash forward/flash back technique gets a light shed on it but in this case it's not a good thing. The question mark that had been hanging over the film since the first scene gets the one answer you were really hoping wasn't going to be the case. It isn't a deal breaker, it's just unfortunate and turns the movie on its head. Sometimes that can be a good thing, but when you liked the movie just fine the way it was it feels like a slight betrayal. But as a testament to the great performances and direction, it still turns out to be one of the best films of the fest.

Best Worst Movie - Grace [IFFBoston - Day 4]

2009-04-28T15:08:00.006-04:00

Saturday morning was beautiful in Boston. The sun was out and by the time I dragged myself out of bed it was already in the 70s. Perfect time to jump into a dark theater, right? Well, I have to apologize for skipping out on Crude, the new documentary by one of the directors behind the Paradise Lost films (and that Metallica doc) – a couple of my top documentaries of all time. Instead I took in the Red Sox/Yankees game on TV and fortified myself for a Saturday night double feature at the Brattle.

Best Worst Movie (Dir. Michael Stephenson)
In 1990 a movie called Troll 2 was released. It didn’t actually feature any trolls and had nothing to do with the 1986 movie Troll. It starred child actor Michael Stephenson and George Hardy, who played Michael’s father. 18 years later Michael Stephenson has crafted a genuinely hilarious and loving ode to the people behind the making of what many consider to be the worst movie of all time – hence the title of his documentary: Best Worst Movie. Luckily for Stephenson, George Hardy (see pic) is more than willing to go the distance with Stephenson – in 1990 and today, Hardy is a dentist in a small southern town who wants nothing more than to be an entertainer. The man is a bundle of energy (which may have something to do with the homemade power shakes he whips up every morning) and is the first person we meet as the story of Troll 2 unfolds and we eventually spend some time with everyone from the actors who played the troll—er, goblins, to the delusional writer and director.

Part of the reason Troll 2 is such a mess is due to the fact that you had a lot of first time or untrained actors in a film written and directed by ESL Italians looking to make an allegory about American families centered on killer vegetarian goblins. It was a project that was set up to fail from the beginning. But something happened over the past few years. Worn VHS tapes started getting passed around and soon people were quoting the movie at parties and screenings (even at the Brattle!) around the world are selling out. The movie does a fantastic job at examining what makes one bad movie infinitely more watchable and enjoyable than another and what causes a seemingly normal person to go and get a Troll 2 tattoo on his arm. In fact, it’s easily the best look at fame in the age of YouTube I’ve seen.

Best Worst Movie is the cherry on the fest for me – one of those films that I probably wouldn’t have tracked down if not for IFFBoston. It’s the funniest movie I’ve seen and filled with absolute jaw-dropping moments that capture real life equivalents of the UK The Office and Christopher Guest mockumentaries at their best/worst. Not many films can capture humor and heartbreak at the same time and Best Worst Movie is chock full of painfully funny scenes like Hardy trying to set a up a Troll 2 screening for his hometown and realizing that it isn’t going to get quite the reception that he got in NYC. So far, this is my pick for best of the fest. It’s a tough act to follow, but if there’s a film up to the task it’s Grace.

Grace (Dir. Paul Solet)

Grace doesn’t take long to get under your skin. Through the music, or lack thereof, the muted colors, the creeping camera and unsettling subject matter, it’s a hard film to shake. There’s an eeriness from the get go as we watch what will probably go down as the least erotic love scene to feature Jordan Ladd ever captured on film. Ladd plays Madeline and we can tell from her distant expression that the sex is purely for reproductive purposes – well, it isn’t for pleasure anyway. And it worked because soon afterward we see they’re picking out a midwife – and a very mysterious one at that.

I can’t imagine how overwrought I would be during the majority of time between finding out your pregnant until the thing can walk, talk and pour a bowl of cereal. Until then there’s a DMZ full of landmines of possible problems and life altering scenarios that could arise. Grace manages to capture a few of these worst-case scenarios and expertly feed of the built-in human emotions that go along with this subject matter. [Beware. A few spoilers to follow.] It isn’t long before Madeline’s husband is dead and she’s given the news that the child died in the womb. Through the help of the mysterious midwife, Madeline sees her pregnancy through and gives birth to the seemingly dead baby – until a moment later when the child, Grace, lets out a cry. Of course, this isn’t really so much a miracle as it is a curse. Grace seems to have an unhealthy appetite for blood and as it turns out may in fact still be dead since she’s smellier than your average baby and is attracting a lot of flies. It’s disturbing to watch in large part because if you ask yourself what the alternative is to what Madeline does in the film and there aren’t many appealing options. All of this leads to a downward spiral for Madeline that’s reminiscent of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion. Madeline shuts herself off from the outside world (except for some dark “vegan horror” television shows) and allows Grace to feed off her to the point of anemia and it all culminates in a dizzying confrontation between Madeline and her mother-in-law.

In good form, Grace doesn’t go about trying to answer all your questions – a tactic that I enjoyed quite a bit in the Deagol Brother’s Make-Out With Violence as well. Is Grace a zombie baby? A vampire baby? Was the mysterious midwife more like Ruth Gordon in Rosemary’s Baby than we were lead to believe? There’s also an implication made that the baby may have been led to crave blood due to Madeline’s (unnatural?) vegan tendencies. This was particularly amusing following the doc on Troll 2, but it’s a nice question mark to hang over the film anyway. In this regard, and in every other aspect of the film, more effort is put into Grace to make it a film that actually raises questions – and raises the bar on horror films (at least ones that want to actually be frightening) and this makes it a very easy film for fans to rally behind.

Beeswax - Big Fan - Pontypool [IFFBoston – Day 3]

2009-04-27T20:29:00.012-04:00

Friday night featured the most ambitious, least sensible plan of the festival: Catch a 7pm film, Andrew Bujalski’s Beeswax, at the Brattle in Harvard Square and shoot over to the Somerville for the 9:15 screening of Robert Siegel’s Big Fan. When you’re planning out your film festival schedule a week or two in advance it’s easy to do so with rose colored glasses and see a 25 minute window as more than enough time to travel two T stops. But as you stand in line for your first movie it hits you, you’re on film festival time now – which is only slightly more reliable than a bus schedule on a Sunday night.

FRIDAY

Beeswax (Dir. Andrew Bujalski)

So needless to say, I didn’t catch the ending to Bujalski’s latest, a sweet and often very funny film about two rather adorable sisters in Austin, one of whom co-owns a small boutique shop and happens to be paraplegic. The film falls squarely in Bujalski’s modus operandi (lingering scenes, dialog that tends to trail off) but still manages to feel refreshing for a few reasons. Jeannie (Tilly Hatcher) is the sister with the store and the wheelchair and it’s apparent from the early going that the fact she’s a paraplegic is only going to be a small detail. The big detail is that she has to navigate through some tricky legal and relationship terrain to successfully hold on to her store as her business partner is looking to get out of their contract. On paper it sounds like some boring movie crafted by the Small Business Association, and maybe if the person trying to hold onto their dream wasn’t paraplegic it might not resonate as much, but this seemingly mundane plot actually does make for an interesting story. What’s even more remarkable is the amount of humor that’s in Beeswax. Bujalski’s always had humor in his films, often of the awkward variety – one of my favorite kinds – but I don’t recall his films causing me to laugh out loud quite as much as I did in the first 90% of this one. A lot of these laughs came from the surprising performance of another director with a film at the fest this year, Alex Karpovsky. He plays a soon to be lawyer who’s had a romantic history with both sisters and find himself drawn back into their lives. His reply to news of one of the sister’s old classmate and boyfriend’s suicide, “Maybe if you were a better girlfriend he would have lived longer,” has so far gotten the loudest sustained laugh from any audience thus far at the fest. I’m looking forward to catching up with the last 15 or so minutes of Beeswax the next chance I get.

Big Fan (Dir. Robert Siegel)

Saying that Big Fan will probably go down as the biggest disappointment of the festival doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a horrible movie, it’s more a reminder to me that I should try harder to keep my expectations is check. I’ll continue to defend The Wrestler long after the buzz on that film drifts off into the ethers, but I won’t be surprised if Big Fan’s reception causes some re-evaluation of Siegel’s first script. With Big Fan being Siegel’s first directorial effort, there’s no doubt going to be many people wondering what this material would have turned into in the hands of someone like Darren Aronofsky (I still get eager to launch into rants about how good and under appreciated I think his directing is on that one). But ultimately you have to look at Big Fan and take it on its own merits and while there are a handful of funny to great scenes, it’s another film that seems stretched too thin to properly work as a feature. There’s something tonally off as well. Like I said, I love awkward comedy, not knowing whether to laugh or cringe, and there’s a fair amount of that sort of thing going on in Big Fan, but it’s all played broadly and with little consideration for anything resembling subtlety.

Patton Oswalt plays Paul (From Long Island), a New York Giants super-fan and garage toll booth employee who spends his days coming up with monologues to deliver over the phone to a late night sports radio show. For a couple minutes a night he can shine (at least in the eyes of his one friend who listens, dutifully enraptured) while the rest of his days he’s regularly beaten down by his cartoonish family and taunted by Philadelphia Eagles fans. Eventually, and unfortunately, he stumbles upon an opportunity to meet his favorite player on the Giants and it nearly kills him. There’s an interesting avenue that gets left more or less unexplored, about how and why his character is matter-of-factly happy about his existence living with his depressed/depressing mother and working his degrading job. He tells his mother as much, but it still feels like the only reason he doesn’t want a better job and a chance to leave home is because it’s his brother that’s making the offer. I can understand why someone would stay at a job that requires little effort, but it felt like there was a window here to seriously explore the man-child phenomena that continues to pop up in movies that was left closed. I think there’s a larger reason to why there’s a generation of people out there who refuse to grow up and I’d be happy if for once it wasn’t just played for laughs.

The film tries to juggle the absurdity of Paul’s situation, devoted so much to a team that he doesn’t want to let almost getting killed by one of the team’s players derail the season, with the sadness that a life this narrow looks like. In the end it doesn’t hit either tone very squarely and it gets bogged down with repetitive scenes that felt like they were there to pad the movie out to feature length. It’s too bad because the story is a good one to serve as a character study, only it doesn’t study the characters much at all.

Pontypool (Dir. Bruce McDonald)

Closing out Friday night was a midnight showing of Bruce McDonald’s latest experiment, Pontypool - a weird hybrid of Talk Radio, War of the Worlds and Night of the Living Dead. A grizzled talk radio host (think Don Imus if he was cool) played by Stephen McHattie, who still seems to be one DNA strand and an intense moment away from morphing into Lance Henriksen, is at the mic on a night when the townspeople all seem to be turning into a pack of rabid animals. Zombie plague? In keeping with tradition, the zed word is never spoken, and the real reason is even more ridiculous than the dead coming back to life.

McHattie nails the role -- his voice is a thing of pure beauty, oozing testosterone, and even serves as a driving force in the movie. He really holds the movie together when its hinges start rattling in the second half and the explanations start to get in the way of things. And the movie does hold together. As McHattie, the producer and their tiny basement radio station start to come under siege and the weird emergency messages start popping up and they try to get a hold on what exactly is going on, the movie grabs you, smacks you around and leaves you in a stupor before you can get to distracted by some of the more goofy elements. It's a good, solid, suspenseful horror film - effective close-ups, editing and use of their one room location. Even with the bizarro story elements (stuff that I'm sure reads better in Tony Burgess' original book) it's the best kind of midnight movie - fast paced, funny with some inventive scares and gore. Pontypool is the kind of movie that can keep midnight movies alive. . I already have a soft spot for McDonald – sometimes when I think about the words “independent film”, Highway 61 will be the first film to pop into my head – so I was a little predisposed at the idea of him taking on a horror movie but McDonald exceeded my expectations. Well done.

Bronson [IFFBoston Day 2]

2009-04-24T07:59:00.003-04:00

Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn

There were some technical difficulties starting off the Thursday night screening of Nicolas Winding Refn's (see also the Pusher trilogy) newest ode to violence, Bronson. But a few minutes into it, after an elementary school Charlie Bronson (or Michael Peterson, as he was known at the time) throws a small desk onto his cowering teacher, the glitches were fixed and the film was underway. Like the film Chopper before it, Bronson is a true life tale of a legendary convict who rose to prominence in the penal system. And like Eric Bana in Chopper, Tom Hardy rises to the occasion and delivers a performance of career prison inmate Charlie Bronson that's more reminiscent of a pit bull than a human being. But Hardy's face and body language (Hardy completely embodies the figurative brick shithouse in this film) is so expressive, he somehow does make you feel sympathy for this demented brute -- whose only answer to life's questions is a good lubed-up fist fight.

Nicolas Winding Refn has given the film a great, unique look as well. Shot on Super 16, there's a stark, grainy quality that is often framed in an appealingly kitty whompus (as my photography teacher put it) way. When Hardy's head is tucked away on the bottom left corner of the screen and he's contemplating what the hell just happened while the rest of the frame is cold, hard, grey concrete, it makes for interesting viewing. There's a smart, dirty quality to Bronson that reminded me of Alex Cox's early films.

But even great acting and photography can't save a film that suffers as badly form storytelling problems as this one. Badly paced, with a virtually non-existent character arc for its main subject, the film goes nowhere and has questionable purpose besides reminding us about the issue of prison reform. Charlie Bronson's story is without question ultimately a tragic one. And the film successfully makes an entertaining anti-hero out of him. But to what end? It's hard not to feel like the film spent 90 minutes spinning its wheels.

Without a doubt the movie would benefit from excising the numerous scenes where Bronson is on a stage in clown makeup addressing an theater audience or speaking directly to the camera giving narration. These scenes drastically slow down the film and prevent any sort of rhythm from falling into place. There are numerous other more imaginative, effective and interesting ways to get at the id of Charlie than by having pop up every five minutes to ham it up. It's a distracting technique and putting him in clown make-up just seems like a lazy way to make a point.

There's a lot of talent on display in Bronson. While some bad choices were made in terms of story, there are more than a few moments when everything falls into place and sparks are flying. (For better or worse I doubt I'll ever be able to get the scene of Charlie screaming at the prison guard he's taken hostage to grease up his backside before the other guards come crashing in.) Unfortunately these moments just don't add up.

Interview: The Deagol Brothers [Make-Out With Violence @ IFFBoston Friday]

2009-04-23T17:03:00.004-04:00

The Deagol Brothers are hitting the IFFBoston scene on Friday at 10pm at the historic Somerville Theatre (buy a ticket here why don't you?) with their lovingly told summer romance film that just happens to have zombie in it, Make-Out With Violence. They've had a pretty busy schedule as of late (they just won Best Feature and Best Soundtrack at the Nashville Film Festival) but were able to find some time to answer a few questions...

RFC: Make-Out With Violence is your first feature, is it a story you've been brewing for a while? Can you give some background on how the film came about? I read that it took over two years and I'm wondering how much of the two to three years was spent filming and how much was pre/post production?

DB: We all went to high school together and have always been interested in making films, music, painting and art in general. We started to conceive of the film in the early 2000s. We wanted to make a film about our shared experiences in high school and we thought that making a high school movie also made sense from the stand point of working on a small budget with our high school and college aged friends as our talent. It was not originally conceived of as a horror film but we saw the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and wanted to try the horror genre. We are not huge horror fans but we liked the idea of exploring the genre from a very sincere John Hughes angle. The idea of the teenage boy consumed by unrequited love also made sense to us in the context of a girl who is very physically present but may not be who or what you think she is. Not surprisingly many of the original incarnations of the script played out like "American Pie"-esque teen sex-comedies blended with Cronengberg like body horror. They were both crude and graphic. We slowly worked our way back to the John Hughes realm of teenage love and held on to the supernatural elements that we felt enriched the story without commandeering it. After working on the script in different parts of the country. We all moved back to Nashville to begin filming. We left jobs, colleges, and girlfriends for what we thought would be a year long production...

We started shooting in the summer of 2005. We shot again in the summer of 2006 with our final shoot taking place that winter. It was a total of about 8 weeks of filming but we kept running out of money or running up against production issues (like losing a lead actress, and then getting her back). The film was being edited throughout that period but it wasn't until spring of 2006 that we had our first picture lock. We then spent the next 2 years in post-production. Mostly we were working on sound design, ADR and the pop-soundtrack that drives the film, but we did make a number of edits to tighten the film up before we premiered the final version in Sept. 2008.

With Make-Out With Violence and your 2004 short film Robot Movie, it looks like you're creating a solid group of dedicated actors. Is it your vision to continue to work with these actors and keep the team together down the line? Are there aspirations for the Deagol Brothers to dip into the Hollywood pool or do you plan on continuing to use Tennessee as your muse?

If we get the opportunity to grow out of Nashville, we will probably go with it. That being said we are currently working on a new screenplay that we hope is flexible. It's our goal to write it in such a way that we could film it on a tight budget locally or expand it into something larger with the right funding. The story could have elements conducive to the TN region, but the locations we use are wrapped up in the characters we explore. At the moment, we don't have any plans to leave Nashville. As for the actors and actresses, we'd love to keep them around for as long as they're willing to work with us and we have parts that make sense for them.

When I first heard of Make-Out With Violence there were some comparisons to Wes Anderson and Sophia Coppola's early work and sure enough the film does recall The Virgin Suicides and I was also reminded a bit of Twin Peaks and River's Edge as the film deals with the emotional fallout and what happens between a group of friends when one of them dies. Was there specific films or filmmakers you were looking to for inspiration on the overall style of the film?

Interestingly we were deliberately trying to stay away from any sort of Lynchian, Wes Anderson or River's Edge influence. Our main source of influence were John Hughes, Terrence Malick and Tarkovsky's Solaris. We also turned to the music of Brian Eno at a very early stage of writing the screenplay. It helped set the tone for the film and aided in keeping 4 writers on the same page. As that music began to permeate the soundtrack and score it became a guiding force in the overall style of the film.

There are some spectacular shots as well, I really enjoyed how well you used the Tenessee locations. I noticed that you used the Panisonic VariCam - an HD camera with variable frame rates and shutter speed - and have three cinematographers credited, was there some experimentation going on to get some of these shots done?

Technically we had 4 DPs. We actually did all of our pre-production, and the majority of our test shooting, with a DP who left the production 4 weeks before shooting was scheduled to commence. We struggled to find a replacement and by the time we found one we were left with little to no time to prepare. We had a number of more complicated techniques and plans that were abandoned when our first DP left. Our second DP left after our first shoot so from there our gaffer took over as a transition to our third DP. It was not so much experimentation as it was the plight of making a low budget film that lead to us to having 4 DPs. Since we had 3 DPs for the actual production and we shot over the course of 2 summers and a winter our biggest concern was to maintain continuity. We tried to do that with a simple visual style that we thought was conducive to HD as a medium.

As a directing duo, does one brother handle the actors and one set up the shots a la the Coen Bros and the Hughes Bros or do you have a particular Deagol Bros way of delegating?

Not really. Due to the amount of scenes in the film, having two directors worked out to our advantage when we needed to shoot two places at once. We often found ourselves splitting up so that one of us could produce or location scout while the other directed. We try to get on the same page early on so we feel comfortable regardless of who ends up doing what. Once again we found ourselves at the mercy of working on a low budget production and out of necessity we discovered a working method.

For a first feature I was impressed with how well you were able to handle the tone of the film -- one of the toughest jobs a director has. While the movie does feature a zombie, I don't think anyone's going to confuse it with a traditional horror film - it's more of a delicate creepiness that is sustained throughout the movie and the music plays a big part in sustaining that tone. There's some great songs in the film that help with this. Can you give some background on how the soundtrack was built and how Jordan Lehning, who's credited with the score and the songs, fits into the Deagol Bros team?

We have been friends with Jordan since before High school and he worked on a number of short films with us throughout college. We approached Jordan about doing the score for this picture from the very beginning. Jordan acted in the film (he plays Rody) and worked with us throughout the entire process to create the sound of the film. We started by making mix tapes of music we thought would make sense in the film to try and get Jordan on the same page with us. Then he and his brother Eric (who co-wrote the script with us and also plays Patrick in the film) got together before we had even started the screenplay and recorded 3 songs in Boston where Jordan was living at the time. We immediately liked what they had done and started asking them to record more and more songs during the writing process. Jordan and Eric continued to record songs during production as well. It was a very organic process where the music and the film continually informed one another. Once post-production began we would edit to his songs or cut with temp track which he would use as reference to re-score or write music to match the scenes we had cut. Jordan performed almost all of the music in the film (with his brother taking the helm for many of the vocals) and is extremely gifted as a musician. We on the other hand have only a rudimentary knowledge of music based on listening to a lot of it but we eventually developed a working method that allowed us to communicate effectively. On a side note, Jordan just won the award for best soundtrack in a feature film at the Nashville Film Festival.

I happen to like that some of the big questions aren't answered in the film - such as how Wendy ended up a zombie - and the ending is left pretty wide open as well. Did you have answers to these questions in your mind while you were making the film, and is there a possible sequel being kicked around?

No, we're not interested in doing a sequel or answering any of those unresolved questions. In earlier versions of the script Wendy's story was much more explicit and as we began rewrites we became less and less interested in exploring that aspect of the story. We wanted to focus on the characters. We began to think of Wendy more as a memory/ghost and the cloudiness that is associated with something of that nature seemed appropriate. We felt a certain amount of obfuscation was more interesting because it opened up a larger emotional space for the characters. We were more interested in trying to achieve an emotional resolution rather than in achieving a resolution in the plot. We hoped the audience too would have more space to fill in the gaps and therefor have more of an active role in what they take away from the film.

The Brothers Bloom - IFFBoston 2009 Opening Night

2009-04-23T08:04:00.006-04:00

Dir. Rian Johnson

Viewed: From the Balcony

It feels like it has been pouring rain off and on in the Boston area for days now. Last night, as the line of faithful film fans snaked around the block awaiting the call from the IFFBoston staff, it was downright punishing at times. But as it turns out, it was well worth the soggy feet and the hour plus wait as the opening night feature, Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom, was like a pure uncut dose of cinema.

The first seven minutes of the film, which I believe you can watch online somewhere or another, introduces us to Bloom and Stephen (the titular brothers played by Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo, respectively) as nomadic grifter pre-teens shaking down kids at the park. Narration during this part is provided by Ricky Jay, giving the film some immediate street cred and cementing the film's foundation as a con-artist fable. The Brothers Bloom is a colorful and even whimsical film, but that eye-popping production design and fanciful tone are as much a part of the story as Bloom's constipated soul and Stephen's god complex.

The con-artist is a character perfectly suited for film. Setting up the long-con -- roping in your mark, selling them on the scheme, keeping them on board until the final pay-off -- is part and parcel with the work filmmakers perform to create a world for the viewer to get lost in. In The Brothers Bloom, Stephen is essentially the director of Bloom's world, filling it with colorful characters, exotic locations and a manic pixie dream girl that will fall for him at the end of each job. But such an existence has worn Bloom down, and when we first see him as an adult, he's already grown weary and unable to celebrate their latest successful swindle. Bloom yearns for an unscripted life.

Stephen takes Bloom's ennui as a challenge to create the perfect con, one where everyone involved gets what they want. He sets up a long-con wherein Bloom will end up with his unscripted life and the mark (a rich, lonely, recluse played by the amazing Rachel Weisz) will get companionship and adventure. This focus on character sets the films apart and makes it much more a comedic The Grifters than another Confidence. There is some sort of con involving money and a book and smuggling antiques -- but the film is far more interested in the emotional stakes of Bloom and Penelope, everything else is busy work. It's fun busy work, but MacGuffin stuff nonetheless. The most fun comes from trying to figure out the theoretical mark, Penelope. Rachel Weisz prevents her from simply becoming a goofy flibbertigibbet and early on Bloom (and the audience) is left wondering if she is actually one of Stephen's creations or not. Stephen warns Bloom not to fall in love with her, but is it reverse psychology? It's hopeless anyway because this is Rachel Weisz we're talking about.

As well, you should resist all temptations not to fall in love with Rinko Kikuchi who plays Bang Bang, the secret weapon of The Brothers Bloom (both the movie and their team). She may be the oddest ball in a movie full of them. She barely speaks at all and her motivations remain a mystery besides the fact that we know she likes to blow things up, but she is a wonder to behold in the film and steals just about every moment she is on screen. And I'd like to briefly mention how nice it is to see Robbie Coltrane in a film that doesn't involve a boy wizard. He's not in the film for very long but he lovingly works his scenes for all they're worth.

Compared to Rian Johnson's first film Brick, The Brother's Bloom is a huge evolutionary step, cinematically speaking. If I remember correctly, most of Brick's unique stylization was in the dialog -- it's a story that could have made for an equally good novelization. The Brothers Bloom, on the other hand, uses every aspect of cinema to tell it's story in such a energetic way that I was completely swept up by it from the first frame. What really impressed me though was that the film was able to keep that energy alive for damn near all of its running time. It's rare that a film this alive is able to sustain that momentum. Amelie comes to mind, but I might suggest that this movie is even more entertaining than that one. Rian Johnson took questions after the film received a well deserved extended applause and spoke a bit about the challenge of keeping that momentum going -- especially in a film that has a couple of false endings. My only complaint is that there are a couple speed bumps in the back half of the film but by that time in the story it's only a minor hiccup. Oh, and there is one funny but disconcerting montage early on (when we get to witness the many talents of Penelope - chainsaw juggling!) that probably could have been treated in a less strictly-for-laughs manner. So it's not 100% perfect, but it's near the top of an already impressive year of films.

Interview: Paul Solet [Grace @ IFFBoston After Dark Sat.]

2009-04-21T20:06:00.006-04:00

Paul Solet's Grace comes to IFFBoston this year with a full head of steam after a somewhat infamous showing at Sundance (two guys actually passed out during a screening). It's a film has everyone who cares about genre cinema screaming bloody murder that someone actually went and made a horror movie with purpose -- one that is in fact frightening. Grace centers on a woman (Jordan Ladd) who gives birth to a stillborn child that miraculously comes back to life. But the baby soon shows signs of being not quite right and, well that bottle full of blood on the poster isn't just an image drawn up by a promotional team. What's a new mom to do? It's playing the midnight showing on Saturday and you can buy a ticket here. And not only that, Paul Solet is a former Cantabrigian who graduated from Emerson and is more than a little eager to blow some minds on his home turf. He was gracious enough to answer a few questions for Reviews From the Couch and his enthusiasm is infectious even through email...

RFC: Grace is your first feature, but you've had a lot of success with short films including a version of Grace in 2006. I'm sure there are some of benefits to working on a story in a short format before making it a feature, but could you describe some of what your were able to learn from the short films and from working on Grace as a short film before diving into a feature?

PS: I think part of the art of filmmaking is working within the confines presented by budget and schedule, so shooting no budget shorts is a wonderful way to learn to stretch a dollar and a day. I've done shorts on all kinds of formats on all kinds of budgets, and each one has contributed to the next. The primary goal behind the GRACE short film was to demonstrate to potential financiers the capacity to handle a feature, so we approached the shoot essentially as a mini-feature. We cast real actors in Brian Austin Green and Liza Weil and shot on 35mm with a real crew, so the experience of shooting the short version of GRACE was literally a perfect test run for the feature. Working with actors always brings things to light for me that I may not have discovered alone in a room banging my head against a legal pad. As the writer and director, you're not always able to put the sort of sustained, exclusive focus on one character that a thinking actor will, so Liza taught me a great deal about Madeline Matheson just through watching her process that I was then able to incorporate into my work with Jordan Ladd on the feature. I learn so much on each project, and I know that won't ever stop as long as I keep my eyes open and stay teachable.

Horror movies are something I hold dear to my heart -- some of my earliest and best film memories are watching John Carpenter movies with my dad and being far too freaked out by even the goofy ones like Critters and Killer Klowns. Were you lucky enough to be brought up with a healthy dose of films that kids maybe shouldn't be watching? And what have been some of your more memorable, nurturing horror film experiences?

My parents did their best to shield me from what they felt was inappropriate, but I always found a way to watch everything I wanted to see - whether by going over to a friend's house with less present parents or watching with a stoned babysitter, I managed to devour everything in the horror, cult and sci-fi sections pretty young. When my parents realized I really had a passion for this stuff, and that I actually wanted to DO this myself, they became unflinchingly supportive. I definitely remember being terrified by certain films as a kid, but I think if I didn't have the films to be terrified of, I may have just filled that space with something else. Watching ALIENS, I have to say, scared the hell out of me. Utterly terrified (thanks cousin Paul....). I also remember Jack Sholder's ALONE IN THE DARK shaking me up. And of course, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. But I had nightmares about C-3PO with an afro, so who knows what really did the damage.

Grace has gotten some comparisons to David Cronenberg's early, body-horror films -- which more than anything else gets me pretty excited for Saturday's screening. The TV show Fringe is also getting into some body-horror territory, albeit form a more sci-fi angle, and I think people are still discovering Takashi Miike and some of the Asian horror cinema that isn't about pale creepy ghost kids. American audiences have finally seemed to get tired of those J-horror remakes and the self-aware horror films of the 90s seem pretty ancient these days. One of the more divisive sub-genres to come around recently was the (poorly named) "torture porn" that could be viewed as a reflection of the George W. cultural climate, and this too seems to have come and gone as far as trends go. More than most, genre movies, and horror in particular, have a tendency to share trends and in some ways reflect the fears society is facing at the time, do you see new trend coming down the road and are there any filmmakers out there now that you're keeping an eye on?

There are a lot of young filmmakers that I'm totally excited about. Fabrice Du Welz who did CALVAIRE, Jaume Belaguero who did REC and THE NAMELESS, Pascal Laugier who did MARTYRS, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury who did INSIDE - all of these guys are doing really powerful work. As far as societal trends being reflected in horror, I'm sure there's truth to that. There's always an appetite for horror. The usual discussion explores how horror is a cathartic experience. I'm sure there's truth to that as well. What excites me, though, isn't the academic analysis, it's the merger of story and horror we're starting to see more of. We're getting more films that are less reliant on shock to distract you from their lack of substance. When you've got writers like Adam Alleca working on films like LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, things are changing. These are seriously talented individuals that grew up in love with genre films. It's not just a paycheck. My hope is that we're really moving into a period where horror films don't have to be vehicles for someone's exploitation checklist - breasts:check, blood:check, jump scare:check... - a period where the potential of the genre as a playground for exponential exploration of otherwise mundane subjects is the only exploitation we're seeing. Don't get me wrong, I love a gut punch, but if each incident of violence, each scare, is earned and informed by story, these things become so much more powerful.

What is it, do you think, that continues to make horror films such a great way for filmmakers to launch their careers? Making a good horror film, making it effective, isn't easy -- there are numerous pitfalls. Do you think this makes it the perfect genre to learn the ropes?

Horror is definitely a director's medium. It's so much fun visually, and there's so much room for innovation and style, but you're absolutely right, it's a tough genre to do right. The only thing harder is comedy, but there are parallels - in comedy, if they don't laugh, you failed; in horror, if you don't disturb them, you failed. From a business standpoint, horror has historically been as safe a bet as a financier can find for lower budget films because they're guaranteed a certain audience, no matter what kind of piece of shit they make. That's why there will always be a glut of bad horror films made by people that are looking to get as far away from anything remotely genre related as quickly as possible. It's different when a filmmaker loves the genre they're working in, and appreciates the potential it holds.

From the sound of your IMDb bio you seem to have a plan of attack in place for upping the ante of genre films, which sounds great to me because even though there remains a strong fan base for genre films, I'm happy if I can find more than a couple of great American horror movies per year these days. Do you plan on sticking with horror for a while or are you looking to mix it up? Do you already have some future projects in mind?

I do have projects coming down the pipe, yes, horror and otherwise. I'm not dogmatic about working within genre conventions. What's exciting to me is story. Like I said, I think the genre is a playground that enables unparalleled potential for exploring any subject because your only limitations are your own imagination and your responsibility as a storyteller to create a consistent universe, so I'll never hesitate to work in horror. At the same time, if a non-genre story moves me, I'm all over it. I just want to make good movies.

Thanks again for taking the time for this. Grace is really one of the top films I'm looking forward to this week. It's a great feeling to be excited about a horror film -- it doesn't happen enough.

Man, I'm so happy to hear that. I'm a fan first, always, and that is EXACTLY how I feel!

Trimpin: The Sound Of Invention [IFFBoston]

2009-04-20T17:22:00.014-04:00

Dir. Peter Esmonde

Viewed: From the Balcony

Somewhere in Seattle, Washington a German immigrant who goes by the name of Trimpin (yes, just Trimpin) is building something. It may or may not involve a musical instrument but it probably involves some gears, an electrode or two and something found in a junk yard, all put together in an effort to create a sound, music you've never heard before, but Trimpin must hear. Trimpin, the film, follows this eccentric man, whom many of the interview subjects don't hesitate to call both a musical and technological genius, through his day-to-day life as inspiration strikes and slide projectors get turned into automated percussion instruments.

One of the inherent elements of a documentary is the drive to find inspiration in the lives of its subjects and Trimpin is no different and fairly successful at that. And unlike say Derrida, Zizek!, or How to Draw a Bunny, the film doesn't get too bogged down in its subject's philosophy and instead gives you just enough to be drawn in and even slightly enamored of of Trimpin. His childlike curiosity, energy and mind-boggling creativity make for some fun and even fascinating moments. Machinery built to tune a piano while it's being played by electronically programed fingers and a perpetual motion non-music music device can be tough things to wrap your head around but when you see the joy Trimpin gets out of making them and the happiness and wonder it brings to the people who witness them in action, it's easy to simply let these objects d'art (and d'music) confound and amaze in equal measure.

What really holds the movie together is a ongoing narrative where Trimpin and the Kronos Quartet craft a multimedia concert to be performed with toy instruments and sensor activated violins. We get to eavesdrop on the pieces of the creative process from beginning to end and Trimpin's unshakable faith and grinning optimism that it will all come together when other composers would be breaking woodwinds over people's heads is indeed inspiring. As the date of the concert approaches, I was surprised to find myself a bit eager and nervous at the outcome. It is easy to root for this crazy old man-child and I really didn't want to see him fail even when he would no doubt spin a failure into a success. And even if the actual climactic concert is one of those you-kinda-had-to-be-there performances, it was still a pleasure to see all the pieces fall into place.

At 79 minutes the film breezes by and does what every documentary should do -- make you want to fire up Google and find out more on the subject (and as it turns out there's some pretty wild installations and accomplishments that the movie doesn't touch on). So as an introduction to a formidable underground art character, Trimpin: The Sound of Invention is an entertaining primer.

You can check it out at the Independent Film Festival of Boston this Thursday (April 23) @ 10:15pm or Sunday (April 26) @ 8pm -- both shows are at the historic Somerville Theater. Buy a ticket here.

http://www.trimpinmovie.com/

Interview: Brendan Toller [I Need That Record! @ the IFFBoston]

2009-04-12T13:47:00.025-04:00

Brendan Toller's first film, I Need That Record! is a heartfelt and often humorous documentary that follows the tumultuous relationship the music industry has had with the independent record store over the years. The documentary will make its east coast premier at the Independent Film Festival of Boston at 7pm on Saturday, April 25th at the historic Somerville Theater (buy a ticket here).

RFC: Can you give a little background on yourself and how this film came about? Some of the film's best moments follow the closing and after-life of your hometown record store. Was this the event that triggered you wanting to make a film about, as the title goes, the death and possible survival of record stores?

BT: I'm from Portland, CT a small town that like most of them-
has absolutely nothing to do. A few minutes away in Middletown, CT
there were a few record stores Record Express being the flagship one
that I grew up with. At least half of my collection comes from there.
Great people and a lot of great discovery- Clash London Calling, Neil
Young Tonight's the Night, Uncle Tupelo, Pixies, the Damned... They were a
chain of about 10 or so in new England and around 2003 Record Express
in Middletown was the last one hanging on. In the summer of 2006 it
closed, and while it didn't come as a shock to me I was heartbroken.
It's a tanning salon now. I can't even look on that side of the street
really. It's too painful. There's really a huge void in CT for a good
record store in that part of the state. Upon Record Express closing I
decided to pick up a camera and start making a movie about what in the
hell had happened in the past 10 years to have this happen. It's
something that I felt was always misrepresented in the press. They
were all quick to blame downloading and I knew that was a bullshit
answer...

How long did it take you to complete the film? Was there an extensive research phase in compiling the statistics after getting all the footage?

The idea hatched in 2006. The first person who agreed to do an
interview was Ian MacKaye. I had asked him after an Evens show. I
could barely speak I was so nervous, and looking at his reaction he
seemed nervous! But months later we set something up and there I was
at the Dischord house. Then in summer of 2007 I went cross country
with my two friends Jeff and Andrew to shoot interviews and record
store footage. Its amazing what different character and feel each
record store has based on taste and regionality. Then there was the 3
month period of research. I had been doing it loosely since the summer
of 2007 but I really hunkered down and read every book and article I
could concerning the changes of the music industry and the plight of
record stores. I mean everyday from 9am to 2am- reading. Then I
transcribed all 40 hours of interviews. I'm surprised my wrist didn't
fall off. I put the research and interviews together on paper. It's a
funny process- some things sound great on paper and then when you're
in the voice over booth actually saying it you think- 'what the hell
was I thinking!' Same with the interviews on paper it may look great
and when you watch it you think no way.

Probably the most common question you get asked is how you were able to get a hold of all the interview subjects in the film. Did you encounter any problems and were there any interviews you were unable to score?

The best advice I got in doing a project like this was- if you have an
important issue you'll be surprised who you might get to participate.
I want to make it clear that I have really no connections. I just made
a list of who I'd like to see in the film and wrote them via myspace,
their websites, and sometimes through their publicists. I'm still
amazed at how many people on the list are in the film. Sure I would've
liked to get Iggy Pop who used to work in a record store and I'm told
met the Asheton bros there, and I was disappointed Robert Pollard
didn't want to contribute (although he loved the film which is awesome
to hear from one of my heroes)- but in the end it all worked out. Some
interviews were just luck. Mike Watt was in town for 6 hours to do a
poetry reading and then was flying out to Japan or something. I got
him for a full hour! And of course there were problems like my car
breaking down and just barely making it to MIT to interview Noam
Chomsky... But overall it was an incredible experience.

In addition to writing and directing you also did the editing. You definitely managed to give the film a comfortable flow and I'm wondering how much footage did you end up shooting and have to deal with at the end? In the future, are you planning on keeping it the same DIY approach or was this due to your budget?

A lot of people will tell you that to do the writing, editing, and
directing is complete insanity and it is. I certainly would like more
help on the next project I do but I enjoyed involving myself with
every aspect. In the end I had something like 80 hours of footage.
This was my thesis project at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. When I
was in the the thesis concentrator's class I introduced myself and the
film telling everyone that I had 80 hours of footage down to 20 and
everyone burst out laughing. People had doubts, I had some doubts but
I think I have a great film that just needs to find a damn distributor
to get into stores. In the future I'd like to keep the same DIY
approach. I'd love some money for future projects. "I Need That
Record!" was probably made for under $5,000. I certainly don't need
the millions that Hollywood is dishing out for terrible shlock. It
amazes me the amount of waste.

The biggest pitfall that documentaries like this can fall into is wearing down the viewer with a long string of talking heads -- Robert Greenwald's films often get bogged down by this -- and you do a good job in keeping away from that style. I've read that Michael Moore is an influence and there's definitely a lot of humor in I Need That Record! (and the great footage of George Bush using an iPod that you use is very reminiscent of Moore's work) but are there any other films or filmmakers that you look to for inspiration as far as style or aesthetic?

Julien Temple is a filmmaker that I really look up to. His use of
archival footage, interview approach, and his track record with music
docs is simply astounding (check out "Filth and the Fury" and "Joe
Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten"). I think he's one of the most
underrated filmmakers working today. I can only hope to make a film as
beautiful as one of Jem Cohen's someday. He has an incredible eye and
great sense for structure. I love John Waters DIY approach- a band of
Baltimore weirdos set to make films of their own in the 70s when it
was near impossible to make a feature film of your own. I also love
the amount of risk Werner Herzog takes with each film he does. He's
always trying something new which can't be said of most directors or
people his age. I asked him a question when he was at Amherst College
a few years ago- "How do you form such intense relationships with your
subjects?" He took it as "Why are you so intense?" In his deep german
voice he belted " I AM AN INTENSE PERSON. MAYBE I AM TOO INTENSE FOR
SOME. BUT I CANNOT AND WILL NOT DENY THAT INTENSITY IN MY FILMS."

How did the cut-out animation come about? Is there any story behind the recurring hungry dinosaur?

My friend Matt Newman, animator extraordinaire, and drummer of the
rock band the Bunnies did all the cutout animations. It was a fun and
funny process. I would go and ask him to create something loosely
based on what was being said in the voice over. He has a great sense
of humor and a great collagic eye for images. We had talked about the
dinosaur as a symbol for a monstrous dying breed. It represents the
old school of thought in the music industry, the major labels,
corporate culture- destroying everything in its path...

There's certainly no lack of interesting, opinionated folk hanging out at record stores, and that applies to both sides of the counter, and you were able to catch some good moments with these guys. I imagine you were probably able to get some good tips from Ian MacKaye, Thurston Moore and the others but did you have a list already in mind of stores you wanted to visit? Was it an extended road trip going to these locations?

We planned a 3 week roadtrip out based on stores we found out about
online- a lot of indie coalition stores, and tips from friends. While
on the road we were tipped off on some great stores from owners,
shoppers, and people we stayed with. The one mistake we all made was
not saving up enough money for all the records we flipped through! I
don't want to name any favorites because they were pretty much all
great except for a few with $40 Beach Boys records (eye roll). I'd
like to put out a comprehensive list of all the existing record
stores, at least in the U.S., to come with the DVD of "I Need That
Record!"

The majority of I Need That Record! deals with the downfall record stores have experienced, but there is an overall sense of hopefulness at the end of the film that hints at the possible survival. With the second annual Record Store Day coming up on the 18th, reports of sales of vinyl up 89% from 2007 to 2008 and stores like Amoeba still going strong -- there certainly is hope to be had. But was there anything specific that you got from this experience that gave you a sense that a turnaround is ahead for independent record stores? What do you think is in store for the future of the music industry?

I think there is still a huge need for physical locations where
music/arts minds can come together. Not to sound cliche but there are
more people making music, art, and films than ever before. I think
every community could and should have a space that nurtures those
endeavors. If indie record stores want to survive they need to build
their business model around the idea of supporting a community. This
is something the chains will never get. Do in-stores, have contests,
listening parties- make it interesting. Maybe start a record store
cafe, a record stores laundromat- why in the hell has no one come up
with a record bar?! Garage bands, artists, writers etc. are in every
town and they need a place to show their stuff and get started. People
want to go places, see people, hang out- computers haven't chained us
to our chairs just yet. As for the music industry- its always been a
battle between the majors and the indies. Indie labels like Chess,
Stax, SST, Matador, In the Red dictate the tastes of tomorrow because
people are more concerned about music than money. Until the indies can
establish the network, access, advertising, and distribution that the
majors have we're still going to have money grubbing suits with
cave-man-like thinking. A lot of the old ways have eroded in the past
10 years. People sell albums totally differently now. Nothing goes
platinum. The majors have been slow to get all this stuff- the
lumbering dinosaur while the indies are quick and nimble (maybe a
lizard?)... It will be interesting to see where it goes.

Lastly, my colleague Padraic is a big Drive By Truckers fan and he was a little sad that there was only a small, but brilliant, moment with Patterson Hood. I'm wondering if it was a brief interview, because it looks like you might have caught him on tour, or if there's a bevy of gold from Patterson and the others on the cutting room floor?

We had plenty of time- my sister and I went out to dinner with
Patterson- he's one of the nicest guys you'll meet. Unfortunately I
interviewed him a month before I was scheduled to have a rough cut. He
had a lot of great things to say but they were already being said by
other people in different ways. There were a lot of tough decisions
made- shooting the puppy as they say. Each interview was about an
hour so I have an incredible amount of awesome stories, insights, etc.
that will end up in the extras or a second disc to come with the
release which will hopefully be this Fall. Who doesn't want to see
Danny Fields talking about how he broke up the Beatles, Glenn Branca
pontificating on Madonna and Britney Spears, or advice from Watt?

Schedule and Tickets Now Available for IFFBoston '09

2009-04-08T08:42:00.008-04:00

If you take a look over at the IFF Boston website this morning, specifically here, you'll notice that they've partnered with B-Side and have made available tickets and the full schedule for this years Independent Film Festival of Boston. B-Side can be a useful little program, it allows you to create your own schedule or calendar for the festival, to keep track of where you're supposed be and when and whatnot, as well as letting you rate the films once you've seen them. It's kind of like a Microsoft Outlook for film festivals. It also helps shine a light on the fact that it will be next to impossible for me to see everything I want to see -- sadly, Multiplicity is indeed a work of fiction.

I've already touched on the excitement here at RFC-HQ over Big Fan, Brothers Bloom, Beeswax, Summer Hours, Pontypool and World's Greatest Dad but we'll be ramping up to the festival with some spotlights on a few films that don't have the kind of hype that the big names behind those films provide and hopefully even a word or two from the people behind the films.

22 year old Brendan Toller has crafted an ode to the independent record store called I Need That Record! and it's filled with interviews ranging from Noam Chomsky to Thurston Moore.

Nashville filmmakers the Deagol Brothers are showing their 2 year labor of love, coming-of-age zombie drama that happens to have my favorite title of the fest, Make-Out With Violence.

And there's a rouge horror move (not to be confused with the ok horror movie Rouge) out there that according to some positive word of mouth may actually be (gasp!) really goddamn scary! That would be Paul Solet's Grace which is occupying the Sat night midnight spot on the festival's program.

We'll be getting to know these and hopefully a couple of other not-to-be-overlooked films a little better in the days leading up to the Independent Film Festival of Boston. Stay bookmarked.

El Cant des Ocells (Birdsong)

2009-04-04T17:00:00.002-04:00

Dir: Albert Serra

Viewed: From the Balcony (Harvard Film Archive)

Birdsong is only director Albert Serra's second film, but it seems that the comparisons to masters like Bela Tarr found on the HFA website were not exaggerating - the guy is good. Why? I'm not so sure yet. The aesthetics of Serra are not entirely original, and combine some of the best attributes seen in recent work by Tarr, Van Sant, and even the old Dogma 95 program. It's more, however, much more, than simply trying out old styles - Serra is doing something pretty amazing, and I'll see if I can at least describe it, if not explain it.

Shot in B&W, with all natural lighting and sound, and filmed without professional actors, Serra sets out to tell the story of the Three Magi's journey to see the infant Christ. It may seem hard to believe given all the iconography of the 3K, but their appearance in the Bible is all of 5 lines, found in just one of the Gospels. Matthew 2:7-11. This slight story may have been the inspiration for a little thing called Christmas, but it doesn't leave much room for a story.

The source material is especially surprising given that Serra's first feature - Knight's Honor- was based on Don Quixote, one of the richest literary texts in the Western canon. Both films, however, share a sparse landscape, little dialogue, and lots of time for the audience to think "what the heck is going on here?"

The answer on one level is: very little. The kings - two fat guys and one old guy - walk around the desert for a while, argue about which direction to travel and how best to sleep, stop in to warn Mary and Joseph about the Romans, and wander back home. That's it.

One might think such a narrative sketch could be allegorical, but for what? One useful thing that did come from the Q&A session afterwards was that Serra explained that he wanted his film to be free of references that would seem familiar - that there could be no possible way for audiences to "identify"with any of the characters. The reason, I assume, is to let the images say something new rather than make you think of something you've already encountered, and on this level the movie is an unqualified success; it's nearly impossible to do anything other than stare.

The two best moments of the film, in fact, seem much closer to contemporary video and film art than feature narrative films. In the first, we get an extended shot of the Magi wandering over a sun-bleached desert, beginning next to the camera but traveling a few hundred yards until the turn into a few small specs in the distance, only to realize they are lost and return to near the same spot. It must be 10 minutes, and all we get is the gradual diminution and movement of three figures, and it's riveting.

The other shot occurs when the Magi prostrate themselves on the ground after arriving at Mary and Joseph's house, and we hear the first (and last) music of the movie; a jarring industrial score, which seems both completely inappropriate and magical. It's a transformative moment, where you forget your watching a movie and enter into another world.

Oh, and I guess there is also the underwater shot of the Three Kings paddling across a river, the long debate on whether to climb a mountain or not, and the Godot-like conversations that meander from nowhere to nowhere.

In fact Beckett is the most obvious comparison, but even Godot's dialogue was about something relative to the story and, in the end, we get Estragon's fairly obvious monologue explaining the point of the story. But in Serra, the dialogue not only has nothing to with us, or with things we would identify with; it doesn't even have anything to do with what the characters themselves are doing. Aside from a few lines about travel plans and sleeping arrangements, most of the dialogue in the film could be said by anyone and, indeed, the conversations among the Kings could often be swapped with the conversations of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza from Knight's Honor without disrupting the feel of the movie. Especially given that most of the spoken language is in Spanish (there's also a bit of ad-lib Hebrew), you could easily take the words of the characters to be no more informative that the chirping of the birds, the cracking of twigs, or the ever-present wind.

In place of information, you just get images, and unforgettable ones at that. I'm not sure this is commercially viable, but it would be nice to see more films like this in the context of the theater instead of it's usual home in contemporary art museums. Ninety minutes or so of sustained attention is what is really required for this kind of stuff, and if you have the patience, there's no more rewarding visual experience out there.

The Weekly Alternative - Vanishing Point

2009-04-03T15:53:00.009-04:00

[There be spoilers, beware.] Something about Fast & Furious smells like Never Say Never Again. The original stars get dragged into a soulless retread of a movie they've already made before. Back up the money truck and put a glossy coat on a franchise in desperate need of a roughening up. So instead, why not take a look at a movie that just got a shiny new coat of its own, has so much soul there's a character called Super Soul and manages to kick all kinds of high octane ass.

Without even looking, I'm positive you can find all manner of lengthy dissertations on Vanishing Point on the web. It's a movie that is open to so many different interpretations I'm wouldn't be surprised if there's a Kowalski based religion somewhere out there looking for tax breaks. Vanishing Point is one of the great, bleak kick to the nuts of the 1960s love-in. Like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Badlands it shows us a society where flower power has failed and effectively presents us with its bloody carcass. It's like Easy Rider's more focused, economical, less pretentious, more entertining sibling. Rather than two hippies on motorcycles, we follow ex-cop Kowalski (the coolest Jew in cinema, played by Barry Newman) as he attempts to deliver a car from Colorado to San Francisco in under 15 hours.

Like Raul Duke in another fond farewell to the American Dream, Kowalski stocks up on some good speed and hits the road at full throttle and it isn't long before the police are on his tail. As he out runs the cops in his badass Dodge Challenger, it catches the attention of a radio DJ, the aforementioned Super Soul (pre-Blazing Saddles Cleavon Little), who instantly turns Kowalski into a folk hero. But Kowalski is no hero, he's just a troubled ex-cop who's resorted to delivering cars for money. The parts of the movie that aren't focused on Kowalski's attempts to shake the cops are peeks into how he got into this solitary existence. Vanishing Point is often accurately described as "the existential car chase movie". While on his trip west, Kowalski runs into other loners along the way but he never makes any real connections, even with the people who try to help him out. What starts out as a simple act of defiance quickly turn into watching a man play out his own demise on his own terms, more or less. The flashbacks take on the feeling of Kowalski's life flashing before his eyes during his last moments rather than a simple backstory device.

I don't think there will ever be a better time to experience or re-examine this burried treasure from 1971 than now, with the recent Blu-ray release. There's nothing quite like bathing yourself in the sounds of a growling Challenger engine getting a real workout. There are extras going into loving detail about the Dodge beast and the great soundtrack the film has to go along with the standard deleted scenes and director commentary -- which in this case is an actually revealing and informative one (I believe this commentary track was on the 2004 DVD release though). It's rare that movies so steeped in and speaking to the time in which it was made hold up as well as Vanishing Point does. I don't think there's a better movie to watch if you're looking to capture the feeling of the begining of the 70's -- or if you're just looking to see one of the greatest cars ever do it's thing. Whichever.

BUFF - Anywhere, USA

2009-04-01T17:28:00.007-04:00

Dir. Chusy Haney-Jardin

Viewed: From the Balcony

The Closing Night film for this year's Boston Underground Film Festival was a fairly straight-forward choice as far as BUFF line-ups go, but the film managed to win the directors choice for Best Feature this year (it also won a special jury prize at this year's Sundance). Anywhere, USA falls into what might as well be a sub-genre all its own -- the three loosely inter-connected tales film. But unlike Magnolia or Pulp Fiction or any Alejandro Inarritu film, the tales in Anywhere, USA are even less connected than most. Though the three stories supposedly take place in the same town (the name of which gets bleeped out whenever a character says it), the settings don't look the same or even play much of a part in tying the film together. Basically what we're given is three short films, the first of which is quite funny, followed by a more somber and less revelatory entry which leads to a long one joke finale. While the film is quite well made and the performances far better than expected, the movie does suffer from an unevenness and lack of a solid ending or overarching vision.

There's a somewhat mysterious narration that bridges the film's chapters and starts us off. We're told we'll be exploring three attributes: Penance, Loss and Ignorance -- the three chapters of the film. The beginning of the film has a great, dreamy quality. The soothing narration rolls over us as we're shown languid images of empty rooms, a bowling ball rolling down a miniature race track, a grasshopper on a perch. It's great because you have no idea what to expect and this continues during Penance, where we follow the relationship of Gene and Tammy, a defiantly redneck couple introduced by Gene stepping into the shower and Tammy whacking him over the back with a tennis racket. Penance. The story of Tammy and Gene is told in a clever manner as the subject of an afternoon gossip session between two local ladies spending the day tanning and sipping bottles of Kegger beer. Tammy and Gene were in love, Gene cheated, Tammy kicked him out, Gene began spying on Tammy and through the help of his friend Little Ricky ends up convinced that Tammy's new internet habit has opened the door for the Taliban to infiltrate their beloved All-American town. It's absurd stuff that has everything from the photography to the music working to create something uniquely funny and popping with a great energy. Gene, Tammy, Little Ricky and the two gossips are vivid, alive, fun characters to spend an entire movie with and so it's a bit of a shame to have to leave them 1/3rd of the movie in.

Penance is a hard act to follow and as we move into Loss it soon becomes clear that the tone is now far more serious and what was unique in the telling of the first story has now given way to more standard, idiosyncratic indie movie familiarities. Loss is still filled with rich detail and good performances -- amazing really, when you consider all but one actor in the film is making their feature debut. That one is the daughter of the film maker, Perla Haney-Jardin, who gives a very strong performance that does in fact recall Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon (a movie which is even referenced here). It's kind of the curse of the second portion of the film, while the performances are quality, the characters have a familiarity that isn't exactly comforting. Perla Haney-Jardin plays the toughened, wiser-than-her-age kid who loses the last bit of her innocence when she discovers, the hard way, that there is no tooth fairy. With her thrift store clothes and her equally charming, bohemian guardian (in this case her uncle) there's nothing about her story that comes close to the inventiveness of the first portion.

And pretty much all is lost in the final third of the film, Ignorance. It has its fun dealing with an upper cruster who decides during diner with the wife and teenage son, much to their horror, to find a black friend. Yeah, it does sound a bit like that Seinfeld episode and it isn't any funnier. It goes on much too long and mostly repeats the same joke over and over again. Oblivious, rich white man desires black friend, wife shakes her head and takes another drink, son feels shame. Even more so than with the second story, with the Ignorance chapter, there's none of the discovery and excitement that permeated the first part. There's laughs to be had as there always are watching a determined idiot, but they're followed by a glance at your watch and a sigh.

Chusy is a film maker to keep an eye on though. It's immediately apparent that his own eye is quite good -- for a small budget first feature Anywhere, USA looks like a million bucks. And whether it be a case of great casting or expert directing, he has a way of making first-time actors look like seasoned professionals. At just about 2 hours there's half a movie worth watching here that will surprise you and have you believing that Chusy is the next big deal in a Wes Anderson kind of way. I don't have any doubt that he can create unique worlds and characters that are full of that same kind of loving attention to detail that you'd rush to spend time in, there just needs to be a stronger focus on fleshing out a singular vision for each film rather than the less satisfying little-bit-of-everything approach Anywhere, USA goes for. But it is hard to be negative towards a first feature that is as strong as this one is to show what Chusy is capable of. The road out of Anywhere, USA is certainly full of promise.

BUFF - Hausu (House)

2009-03-27T08:27:00.004-04:00

[Oh, and while I'm at it we should go ahead and make this the The Weekly Alternative to The Haunting In Connecticut.]

Dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi

Viewed: From the Balcony

On the final night of the Boston Underground Film Film Festival, Padraic and I were able to catch up with two of the films that really stood out from this year's line-up. The first was an obscure oddity from Japan circa 1977 called Hausu (or House). And no it is certainly not the inspiration for the awesome 1986 William Katt movie. Honestly I'm at a loss for any comparisons that could give someone even an inkling of what Hausu is like. And not only visually, but tonally as well. The movie jumps from melodrama to slapstick, from seemingly heartfelt moments and scares to goofy sight gags in the blink of an eye. Words cannot do this film justice. Simply put, go see it at your first opportunity -- ideally with a game audience like we had at the BUFF. Word is there will be a midnight showing at the Coolidge Corner Theatre (note that 3 of the best movies I've seen recently - Time Crimes, Let the Right One In and Chocolate are scheduled for a midnight showing in the next couple months) sometime soon. I may see you there as this one is definitely worth repeat viewings.

Ostensibly the film is a haunted house story. A group of Japanese schoolgirls (complete with Sailor Moon outfits) are super excited for summer break and decide to visit Auntie's creepy old mansion on the hill out in the middle of nowhere. Soon after they arrive girls start disappearing and blood starts flowing. Straight forward enough, right? Writer/director/producer/special effects director Nobuhiko Obayashi seems to have less interest in simply telling a haunted house story than in testing the limits of what cinematic elements you can squeeze into a haunted house story. There's animation, collage, color, black & white, hand drawn special effects, bizarre music cues and sound effects and scenes where the film speed is experimented with. But rather than all this becoming exhausting (like much of the experimentation in Mock Up On Mu), it's fascinating and wildly entertaining. While much of the time you're shaking your head in disbelief you're also excited about the unlimited possibilities of what could come next.

For all the imagination and fun the film provides, it does come at the cost of coherence. In this case, it's a small price to pay but you are left asking many questions. The story behind the haunted house involves Auntie, who may or may not be a ghost, and her white cat Blanche, who may or may not be the evil mastermind behind the killings. Seriously. There's a backstory to Auntie that gets told in an amazingly creative sepia toned flashback that takes place when one of the girls is showing an old photo of Auntie to her friends. The photo comes alive and plays like a silent movie, with all of the girls providing commentary on the film. It involves Auntie's husband going off to war and dying in combat but Auntie never giving up hope that he'd return. I believe this has something to do with why her eating a couple of her niece's friends, but I can't be too sure -- and don't ask me to explain the ending either.

But again, a handful of loose threads does not take away from the sights and sounds of seeing a girl get eaten by a piano.

Or does it deter from the insane but untimely demise of Kung Fu. Oh wait, did I forget to mention that all of the girls go by descriptive names -- the one that's good at Kung Fu is called Kung Fu, the girl with musical talent is called Melody, the girl likes to clean is called, um, Sweet, etc. Yeah, that's one of the mildly odd things going on here.

Obviously there's some level of kitsch involved since this is a film from 1977 and the special effects we know today were still a theory, but as your watching the Watermelon guy get turned into a cartoon skeleton, it's obvious that you're laughing along with the movie rather than at it. Even at its goofiest though, there's going to be a shot or a sequence around the corner that will impress even the most hardened film fan. It's amazing to see images and themes pop up in Hausu that are still being recycled over 30 years later. The long wet black hair creeping out of the water and onto the shoulder of Gorgeous (yes, that's her name) is a prime example of imagery that still pops up in nearly every J-horror film of recent memory.

This is one that I urge anyone looking to throw on a movie to impress some friends, and even that one who thinks they've seen every gonzo movie out there, to track down. Hausu is guaranteed to astound all.

BUFF - Mock Up On Mu

2009-03-25T20:49:00.003-04:00

Dir. Craig Baldwin

Viewed: From the Balcony

Sorry for neglecting you this year Boston Underground Film Festival. After the fun we had last year, I feel like a total schmo for getting caught off guard this past Thursday when the festivities kicked-off. But I'm trying my best to make up for it by catching up with what I can during this week's re-runs. First up was Mock Up On Mu -- a bizarro mash-up of old sci-fi and B-movie clips with newly shot scenes, put through a blender and resulting in something about L. Ron Hubbard, Lockheed Martin and a mad scientist type plan for colonizing and mining the moon for energy... I think.

We start out being introduced to our main players: L. Ron Hubberd, Lockheed Martin, Jack Parsons, Marjorie Cameron and Alistar Crowley-- all characters plucked from history and thrown into this complex and convoluted plot that has L. Ron Hubbard running a huge compound on the moon, sending an agent down to Earth to infiltrate Lockheed and Parsons, something about some crazy reflective surface capturing energy from the moon... I think. The weird thing, not that there's just one by any means, is that the film is 99% exposition. And at 110 minutes it wears you down to a beaten pulp by the end. With all the insane jump cuts that frequently reach subliminal level and the constant barrage of absurd details being delivered at a rapid rate by the actors (all of which is purposely out of synch with what's on the screen, even in the new footage) it's completely overwhelming to the point of fatigue.

But as far as experiments go, Mock Up On Mu isn't a complete failure. There are times when it all comes together, if only for a brief moment here and there. When the images come together to achieve a transcendental converging point and the perfect music is playing and it's like your slipping through one of L. Ron's wormholes. But in many of the other moments writer/director Craig Bladwin is simply throwing the kitchen sink at us. It is amazing and funny how so many of the old movies from the 50's through 60's can be interchangable (not that that's changed at all) and you repurpose scenes from an old Robert Mitchum movie, a spaghetti western and a cheapie sci-fi flick for the same means. It's funny for a little while anyway. As is one character speaking only in movie titles for long stretches and how the movie incorporates the real history from these character's lives and makes it part of their back story and how they came to be involved in L. Ron's moon conquering plot. One of the great ah-ha moments of the film comes from Baldwin using the commentary track on an old hippy movie to have Dennis Hopper point out the real Marjorie Cameron during her character's flashback -- it's meta-fantastic and it's these kinds of inspired moments that make the film interesting. If only the film could sustain these moments then I'd be more eager to recommend it.

There's Movies in the Air (The Independent Film Festival of Boston Announces 2009's Line-Up)

2009-03-25T08:12:00.010-04:00

It's movie season in Boston. When the thaw begins and the long-johns are peeled off, our two most treasured film festivals warm the hearts of our fair city's film geeks. The Boston Underground Film Festival (BUFF) is underway as I write this and look here for some coverage tonight and tomorrow. But this morning RFC received the announcement for the Independent Film Festival of Boston's (IFFBoston) 2009 line-up and it is indeed an impressive one.

The IFFBoston has been growing exponentially for years now and looking at this year's line-up has given me the biggest smile since I've been following the fest. Most notably we have Robert Siegel’s debut as writer and director, Big Fan starring Patton Oswalt and Kevin Corrigan (who is everywhere these days). Siegel's writing debut, The Wrestler divided Padraic and myself a bit but I think we're both eager to take a look at Big Fan -- a downward spiral movie about an obsessed sports fan. I'm a huge Patton Oswalt nerd but was quite surprised with his role on last week's Dollhouse. The guy's growing some serious acting chops. So yeah, Big Fan is at the top of my list.

Also up there is the long awaited follow up to Brick, Rian Johnson's The Brother's Bloom. Another highly-stylized movie -- this one about grifter brothers attempting a long con and it stars Mark Ruffalo, Adrien Brody, and RFC darling Rachel Weisz. It's the fest's opening night movie and it has seen a lot of attention and probably undergone too much scrutiny already on the festival circuit. Reactions have been all over the place, which only gets me more excited to check it out.

Other notables narrative features include new films from the always reliably nuts Olivier Assayas (Summer Hours) and RFC favorites Andrew Bujalski (Beeswax) and Bruce McDonald (Pontypool). Also, two films that come to IFFBoston with some attention are Nicolas Winding Refn's bloody Bronson and Bobcat Goldwaith's World's Greatest Dad starring an against-type Robin Williams in what looks like another great dark comedy from Goldwaith (who will be in attendance -- so hopefully I'll get my chance to ask him if my dream for Shake's the Clown 2 will ever come to fruition).

Taking a look at the documentaries we have a new feature from one of the heroes behind the Paradise Lost series, Joe Berlinger (Crude) and the attention grabbing For The Love Of Movies: The Story Of American Film Criticism from Gerald Perry. And, as is usually the case, the shorts are a bit of a mystery but one of them is from the painfully funny Don Hertzfeldt (I Am So Pround of You) so I'll do my best to track it down.

But don't take my word for it, here's the press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL OF BOSTON ANNOUNCES 2009 PROGRAM LINE-UP
Festival expands to the ICA and adds new presenting sponsor; “THE BROTHERS BLOOM” directed by Rian Johnson to open seventh annual festival;

BOSTON (March 22, 2009)—The Independent Film Festival of Boston (IFFBoston) today announced the films that will be featured at the 2009 Independent Film Festival of Boston. The seventh annual festival will be held April 22-April 28, 2009. In the continuing expansion of the festival, the Institute of Contemporary Art – Boston has been added as a screening venue. A new Presenting Sponsor, The Liberty Hotel, has joined the festival and the official hotel of the Independent Film Festival of Boston. The liberty Hotel joins returning presenting sponsors Ford and JetBlue Airways. B-Side, a leading technology partner for film festivals, has also joined as a Premier Sponsor for the Independent Film Festival of Boston in 2009. B-Side will manage all ticketing pages of the festival website and provide interactive features for audience members. The festival, complete with film screenings, filmmaker Q&A sessions, panel discussions, visiting filmmakers, parties and events will showcase the works of filmmakers who seek to create films that are life changing, thought provoking and expose aspects of life in new and revealing manners.

“THE BROTHERS BLOOM” directed by Rian Johnson and starring Mark Ruffalo, Adrien Brody, and Rachel Weisz will open the festival on Wednesday, April 22nd at the Somerville Theatre in Davis Square. Rian Johnson and selected cast will be in attendance for the Opening Night screening.

Some highlights of the 2009 festival include Ondi Timoner’s (“Dig!”) Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning documentary WE LIVE IN PUBLIC, Guillermo Arriaga’s ( writer of “Babel”, “21 Grams”) directorial debut THE BURNING PLAIN starring Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger, 500 DAYS OF SUMMER starring Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, LA MISSION starring Benjamin Bratt, IN THE LOOP starring James Gandolfini, Hirokazu Koreeda’s STILL WALKING, Robert Siegel’s (writer of “The Wrestler”) BIG FAN starring Patton Oswalt and Kevin Corrigan, Olivier Assayas’ SUMMER HOURS starring Juliette Binoche, and WORLD’S GREATEST DAD directed by Bobcat Goldthwait.

Numerous films with strong Boston ties will make their New England premieres at the festival this April including Jonathan Hock’s THE LOST SON OF HAVANA, Bestor Cram’s JOHNNY CASH AT FOLSOM PRISON, Aron Gaudet’s THE WAY WE GET BY, Laura Longsworth’s LUCKEY, Gerald Peary’s FOR THE LOVE OF MOVIES: THE STORY OF AMERICAN FILM CRITICISM, Amy Grill’s SPEAKING IN CODE, Andrew Bujalski’s BEESWAX, Alex Karpovsky’s TRUST US, THIS IS ALL MADE UP, Ian McFarland’s CHIP ON MY SHOULDER, George Kachadorian’s SHOOTING BEAUTY, Al Ward’s BLOOD, SWEAT & CHEERS, and Tze Chun’s CHILDREN OF INVENTION.

Special guests attending the festival include Chris Cooper, Bobcat Goldthwait, Bobby and Peter Farrelly, Kevin Corrigan, Luis Tiant, and many more to be announced in the coming weeks.

INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL OF BOSTON 2009 OFFICIAL SELECTIONS:

Narrative Features
500 DAYS OF SUMMER, directed by Marc Webb
THE ANSWER MAN, directed by John Hindman
BEESWAX, directed by Andrew Bujalski
BIG FAN, directed by Robert Seigel
BIRDWATCHERS, directed by Marco Bechis
BREAKING UPWARDS, directed by Daryl Wein
BRONSON, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
THE BROTHERS BLOOM, directed by Rian Johnson
THE BURNING PLAIN, directed by Guillermo Arriaga
CHILDREN OF INVENTION, directed by Tze Chun
THE ESCAPIST, directed by Rupert Wyatt
FROM INSIDE, directed by John Bergin
GRACE, directed by Paul Solet
HELEN, directed by Joe Lawlor & Christine Malloy
THE HIGHER FORCE, directed by Olaf De Fleur
IN THE LOOP, directed by Armando Iannucci
MAKE-OUT WITH VIOLENCE, directed by The Deagol Brothers
THE MISSING PERSON, directed by Noah Buschel
LA MISSION, directed by Peter Bratt
PONTYPOOL, directed by Bruce McDonald
STILL WALKING, directed by Hirokazu Koreeda
STINGRAY SAM, directed by Cory McAbee
SUMMER HOURS, directed by Olivier Assayas
THAT EVENING SUN, directed by Scott Teems
THE VICIOUS KIND, directed by Lee Toland Kreiger
THE WORLD’S GREATEST DAD, directed by Bobcat Goldthwait
Documentary Features
ART & COPY, directed by Doug Pray
AUTOMORPHISIS, directed by Harrod Blank
BEST WORST MOVIE, directed by Michael Stephenson
BLOOD, SWEAT & CHEERS, directed by Al Ward
CHIP ON MY SHOULDER, directed by Ian McFarland
CRUDE, directed by Joe Berlinger
FOOD, INC., directed by Robert Kenner
FOR THE LOVE OF MOVIES, directed by Gerald Peary
HERB AND DOROTHY, directed by Megumi Sasaki
I NEED THAT RECORD!, directed by Brendan Toller
INVISIBLE GIRLFRIEND, directed by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin
JOHNNY CASH AT FOLSOM PRISON, directed by Bestor Cram
KIMJONGILIA, directed by NC Heikin
THE LOST SON OF HAVANA, directed by Jonathan Hock
LUCKEY, directed by Laura Longsworth
MINE, directed by Geralyn Pezanoski
MONSTERS FROM THE ID, directed by David Gargani
NOLLYWOOD BABYLON, directed by Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal
OF ALL THE THINGS, directed by Jody Lambert
PROM NIGHT IN MISSISSIPPI, directed by Paul Saltzman
SHOOTING BEAUTY, directed by George Kachadorian
SHOUTING FIRE: STORIES FROM THE EDGE OF FREE SPEECH, directed by Liz Garbus
SPEAKING IN CODE, directed by Amy Grill
THE SWEET LADY WITH THE NASTY VOICE, directed by Joanne Fish and Vincent Kralyevich
TRIMPIN: THE SOUND OF INVENTION, directed by Peter Esmonde
TRINIDAD, directed by PJ Raval
TRUST US, THIS IS ALL MADE UP, directed by Alex Karpovksy
UNMISTAKEN CHILD, directed by Nati Baratz
UPSTREAM BATTLE, directed by Ben Kampas
THE WAY WE GET BY, directed by Aron Gaudet
WE LIVE IN PUBLIC, directed by Ondi Timoner
WILLIAM KUNSTLER: DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE, directed by Sarah and Emily Kunstler
WINNEBAGO MAN, directed by Ben Steinbauer
Short Films
THE ARCHIVE, directed by Sean Dunne
BEAN, directed by Giovanna Federico
THE BLINDNESS IN THE WOODS, directed by Martin Jalfen and Javier Lourenco
BOOB, directed by William Murnion and Jon Milott
FUNNY GUY, directed by Frank Rinaldi
GAINING GROUND, directed by Marc Brummund
HA’ AGAM (THE LAKE), directed by Boaz Lavie
THE HORRIBLY SLOW MURDERER WITH THE EXTREMELY INEFFICIENT WEAPON, directed by Richard Gale
I AM SO PROUD OF YOU, directed by Don Hertzfeldt
I KNEW IT WAS YOU, directed by Richard Shepard
THE INCIDENT AT TOWER 37, directed by Chris Perry
INSTEAD OF ABRACADABRA, directed by Patrik Eklund
JULIE, JULIE, directed by Liam Creighton
KANISZA HILL, directed by Evelyn Lee
KNIFE POINT, directed by Carlo Mirabella=Davis
I LIVE IN THE WOODS, directed by Max Winston
LOLLIPOP MAN, directed by Michael Axelgaard
MELANCHOLY BABY, directed by Sean Hood
NEXT FLOOR, directed by Denis Villeneuve
NO WIND, NO WAVES, directed by Julian Higgins
O.W. HOUTS AND SONS, INC., directed by Aaron Matthews and Richard Sherman
PRINCESS MARGARET BLVD., directed by Kazik Radwanski
SHIKZIEN, directed by Jeremey Clapin
SHOCKWAVES, directed by Serge Ou
SHORT TERM 12, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton
THE SLEUTH INCIDENT, directed by Jason Kupfer
SMALL COLLECTION, directed by Jeremiah Crowell
THE SNAKE MOUNTAIN COLADA, directed by Calvin Reeder
TENDER AS HELLFIRE, directed by Jason Stone
THEO, directed by Georgi Banks-Davies
UNDONE, directed by Hayley Morris
WESTERN SPAGHETTI, directed by PES
WHAT IS SHE TO YOU?, directed by Aiden Burgess

The Independent Film Festival of Boston will reach a diverse audience by incorporating a number of venues in the greater Boston community including:
· Somerville Theatre in Davis Square
· Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square
· Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline
· Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston

All festival venues are easily accessible by MBTA public transportation and are all located near area parking.

Passes will be available online at http://www.iffboston.org/ on March 22, 2009.
Individual tickets will be available online at http://www.iffboston.org/ on April 1st, 2009.

If you plan to attend the festival and would like press credentials, please register for them at http://www.iffboston.org/global/press.php by April 13th.

About the Independent Film Festival of BostonThe Independent Film Society of Boston, a 501(c)3 non-profit, produces the annual Independent Film Festival of Boston. Our mission is to showcase emerging filmmakers, musicians and visual artists and provide attendees direct access in interactive environments to these artists. Additional information about the Independent Film Festival of Boston is available at http://www.iffboston.org/ or email info@iffboston.org.

The Weekly Alternative - The Mothman Prophecies

2009-03-20T08:00:00.000-04:00

This weekend Nicolas Cage is once again doing what he doesn't do best -- save the world. I'm sure I'm not the only one who wishes Cage would put his superhero, action star dreams to sleep, permanently. Remember Adaptation? Man, that was a good one -- played to his strengths. So I'm tempted to recommend some forgotten Cage movie like Vampire's Kiss or Bringing Out the Dead. But I'll stick to the themes of Cage's newest would-be blockbuster, Knowing, and recommend a movie dealing with paranormal warnings that is surely far more creepy than Knowing and based on a true story to boot.

The Mothman is a rich subject, probably worthy of an even better movie than The Mothman Prophecies, Mark Pellington's 2002 movie featuring Richard Gere and Laura Linney. An adaptation of the book written on the strange events that occured around a couple around a town in West Virginia over the days leading up to the tragic collapse of a suspension bridge in 1967. The film has it's problems but they're mostly kept to the front end of the picture as it uses some less than inspired techinques to get the story moving. Richard Gere's wife dies after a car crash and he finds that she's been making some drawings of a mothman type character. A couple years later he's trying to drive to Richmond but instead he find himself mysteriously deposited in Point Pleasant, West Virginia -- the real town that experienced the mothman sitings and the bridge colapse. The film then takes palce in the days leading up to that bridge collapse and Gere and the town sherrif, played by Laura Linney, work as our Skully and Mulder as we start meeting with the other people who've had run-ins with the Mothman and tryt to crack the mystery.

While the film is clumsy getting itself going in the early on, once we're in Point Pleasant and we're actually dealing with the real events that occured prior to the bridge collapse, the movie becomes a subtle (for this kind of film) and eerie look at the possibility of actual harbingers of doom manifesting themselves. Gere and Linney certainly add some credibility to this story and one of the reasons why this movie has stuck with me is how well and respectfully it treats this material. This isn't turned into an excuse to wow audiences with some whiz-bang special effects. It keeps its focus on the story and the characters and to its benefit keeps everything in the realm of possibility -- at least in a Fortean sense.

For fans of all things Fortean, this film can be looked at with some frustration as a bit of a wasted opertunity. There have been very few films made that deal with high profile paranormal events in any kind of satisfying way for those of us who enjoy pondering the posibilities of such things. Some of the more fascinating aspects of the Mothman story get bogged down in the Richard Gere character's back story and the end result can lead to more head scratching than to any sense of discovery. But it does get the fundamentals right. You come away with the great sense of dread that permeates every frame and if you do leave scratching your head, wondering what the Mothman is all about, like I did, and start researching the subject, is a testament to its effectiveness. Asside from some of the storytelling mess, Mark Pellington does a great job with the material. The elemental creepiness of the Mothman and the conspiracy at large in this film is handled with a realness that could easily have been turned into something like, oh I don't know, some sort of Nicolas Cage vehicle. So if you're in the mood for some real Knowing, I would recommend taking a look at how it might have went down 40 years ago in West Virginia and watch The Mothman Prophecies. But if you just want to see 'spolsions and more futile attempts at keeping a hairline under control, well then you could probably do worse than Knowing. Hell, it looks a whole lot better than that Bangok Dangerous mess.

The Great St. Patrick's Day Evacuation Day Movie Marathon

2009-03-17T09:14:00.009-04:00

Every good holiday deserves a good movie marathon here at RFC HQ. The last one, the President's Day Marathon/Twitter experiment, wasn't really a smashing success in any way, shape or form besides providing a bit of a headache despite (or due to?) the efforts of Herzog and Fassbinder. So we'll try to do things a little difefrently today.

Videodrome

So we're starting with an RFC favorite, rather than an unknown quantity, and it's a film I haven't seen in many years: David Cronenberg's Videodrome. I love how the first sound of the movie is the sound of doom, it gets you excited. I think it might be time for electric organs, a la Cronenberg and Carpenter, to make a comeback. And I love how every name in the film is pure gold: Max Renn, Barry Convex, Prof. Brian O'Blivion, Spectacular Optical, Cathode Ray Mission, TeleRANGER (if they still made TVs like the TeleRANGER I probably never would have upgraded to HDTV here at HQ). But what I find interesting is how, despite numerous attempts, no one has been able to replicate Videodrome's effectiveness in the digital age. The idea that what we as a society create might lead to a quick, unplanned and horrific step in the evolution of man, or a mutation of some kind, is an attractive story. In the realm of science fiction it's frighteningly plausable. One reason why is made perfectly clear when your watching Videodrome -- shitty, badly lit, grainy analog video and organic, oozing, practical special effects are always scarier than the 0's and 1's of the digital age. But there might be a contender, which I'll get to next.

Kairo (Pulse)

Hrm. Not quite what I was expecting after having seen the far less ambiguous remake of this film a few months ago. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, if there's anything an American remake of a foreign film will do its strip away ambiguity, but aside from a few details there's very little connecting this 2001 Japanese film with its 2006 retarded American cousin.

In Kairo people all over Tokyo are disappearing and it all seems to connect back to them internet. I can't say for sure whether it's one website or the whole internet that has been taken over, but people are seeing what appears to be static shots of ghosts and/or despondent people who will eventually kill themselves. The movie is very fuzzy with the details, which the American version is more than happy to try and clarify in absurd ways, but this fuzziness adds to the creepiness and mystery. We're trying to figure out this mystery along with a handful of people and no one will end up cracking it. The similarity to Videodrome is less on the nose than I thought it might be, but it is there nonetheless in the way that simply watching something can be like contracting a contagious disease. In Kairo no one is grwoing a brain tumor that will cause hallucinations and eventually "new flesh", but instead they become suicidal with depression and a realization that there is no escaping lonliness.

I'm particularly fond of the film's idea that the internet would be the host to this lonliness disease. Over time I've become a firm believer that the internet is a less than ideal means to clearly communicate or meaningfully connect with anyone despite the ever growing amount of emotocons at our disposal. So the idea that someone can look into the soul of the internet and basically see a black hole of disparaging lonliness is pretty great.

At it's heart though, Kairo is a ghost story -- only instead of a house being haunted it's the entire world. The only thing coming close to an explaination of what's going on comes half-way through the movie when a theory about the ghost world being filled to capacity and overflowing into our world is given. And when these spirits cross over they're ghosts in the machines just as they are in the library or apartment. It's another parallel to Videodrome that human's will experience another life after death within the new thechnology that we've created.

Kairo's effectiveness is due in large part to the crappy, grainy video it's shot on. That's not to say that the cinematography is bad, quite the opposite actually -- Kyoshi Kurosawa's framing and minimalism is expert stuff. It's effective in the same way David Lynch's use of low-tech video cameras in Inland Empire made that movie all the more eerie. While the digitally rendered ghosts in the film aren't quite as disturbing as the mutations in Videodrome, they are well done and the films use of shadows and blackness is simply great but it's the fixed camera that really gets under the skin. There's nothing quite as effective in a scary movie as wanting to blink or turn away but knowing the camera is going to stay right where it is until the inevitable ghost appears.

But my favorite element of Kairo is its Lovecraftian element. H. P. Lovecraft's stories often focused on the psychological snap that occurs when you see the incomprehensible. Kairo does a great job at conveying this idea and I can't even come up with another movie that attempts it. The ultimate fragility of the human mind when it comes across the paranormal is usually not even taken into consideration in a horror movie, so it's nice to see it front and center here.

Ok, let's move on, shall we? My first thought this morning was to string together a line-up of related films and from here I would maybe move on to another ghost story or Japanese film, but now I think I'll make this marathon two double headers instead. It looks like the Sam Fuller movies I have on the Roku are going to expire at the end of the month so it would be a shame if I didn't get to at least a couple of them...

The Steel Helmet

While the epic The Big Red One will always be writer/director Sam Fuller's perfect war movie, The Steel Helmet may be his ballsiest movie. To its credit you don't even have to know its history or have been around when it came out to realize how many chances the film takes. The film follows a hard-ass Sargent as he helps some wayward soldiers hold down an abandoned temple during the Korean war. The most obviously controversial scene happens when a captured North Korean tries to provoke a black soldier and a Japanese-American soldier. He asks the black soldier why he would fight along-side people that don't even allow him to eat in the same restaurants or sit with them on a bus. Then he asks the Japanese-American why he's fighting for a country that was calling him a dirt Jap and had his family locked up in camps during the last war. Both questions are given intelligent, patriotic answers but there's no doubt that a Warner Bros movie would never have dreamed of asking such a question in the first place. This is what makes Sam Fuller so great. Then you come to find out that The Steel Helmet was made in 10 days for $100,000 and only six months into the Korean war and ended up getting him the attention of the FBI. Pretty amazing.

The small budget takes some minor tolls on the movie. Some of the acting isn't the best and there's a couple out of focus shots that I'm sure would've been fixed if time and money weren't so much of an issue. But the movie still feels like a powder keg over 50 years later. At his best Fuller could write like David Mamet and even give his scenes the same kind of charged electricity. So without further ado let's move on to another one of his 50's classics that's been lovingly tended to by the folks behind the Criterion Collection...

Pickup on South Street

Wow. Fuller's Pickup on South Street is just about as perfect as these movies get. A tidy little con-artist thriller. Richard Widmark stars as a subway pickpocket who accidentally steals a few frames of film from a lady who was on her way to do a drop-off. The film is, of course, the classic Macguffin -- something to do with a patent and the commies. So now the cops and the commies are doing what they can to get the film back from Widmark's sly con-man.

If nothing else, Pickup features Thema Ritter giving one of the all time great supporting performaces in Moe Williams, an informant who's dream is to save enough money to afford a nice spot in a respectable graveyard. Ritter is a revelation -- funny with whipcrack timing and (spoiler!) gives one of the most suprisingly moving death scenes I've seen in a long while. Picture this line being perfectly delivered: "Mister, I'm so tired, you'd be doing me a favor by blowing my head off." Camera pans to the record playing on her bed stand -- bang.

My only problem with the film is how quickly the female lead, Candy, falls for Richard Widmark. Widmark is naturally his charming, suave self but Candy falls for the guy minutes after he wakes her up by pouring beer on her face? I take it that she isn't exactly a prude and that she may have fallen for him when he first picked her purse on the subway, but their romance always seemed a little forced in the movie despite their on-screen chemistry.

Well, that's all folks. Time to sign off here and call it a day. This was certainly one of the best line-up of films I've watched over the course of a single day. I hope the Patriot's Day Marathon can keep the streak alive. Until then...

Lars and the Real Girl

2009-03-16T17:20:00.005-04:00

Dir. Craig Gillespie

Viewed: From the Couch

One of these days the film universes' planets will align and Ryan Gosling will appear in an all-around great movie -- one that is equal to Goslings' skills as an actor. Even in the worst of his films (take your pick) he shines as bright as the best of him. Just like any number of good actors out there that make questionable choices in the roles they pick. Except by this time in their careers they've usually landed in one or two movies that don't just exist for their benefit -- that actually step up to meet them. But so far, with a couple really close calls, Gosling has yet to be in a film that doesn't have serious problems, the kind that prevent me from ever recommending one of his films. In Lars in the Real Girl, it's pretty much 50% of the film. And yet, it's one of his better movies.

Ryan Gosling plays Lars Lindstrom, a recluse at 28 who literally has to be tackled and dragged to dinner with his oblivious brother and sympathetic step-sister. Lars' journey from out of his anti-social cocoon is the center of the movie and the hook is that it happens through his delusional relationship with a mail order, anatomically correct, plastic girlfriend named Bianca. That this is the element of the movie that works, that Lars' climactic kiss with Bianca is extremely moving, is all due to Ryan Gosling. Honsetly, I'm pretty close to recommending the movie just so you can watch how he gets his character to that scene and makes every moment he has with Bianca defiantly powerful. He manages to bring sympathy and realness to Lars despite the rest of the movie trying to drag us into Northern Exposure territory. Not that there's anything wrong with that series, it's simply that Gosling's intensity is like oil and water with the rest of the movie's cute quirkiness.

For one reason or another I was reminded of Be Kind Rewind during Lars. Both films feature the reassuring premise of a community coming together to save a piece of itself. In Michel Gondry's film we're existing in a fantastical world where you can happily suspend your disbelief and enjoy the rose-colored view of the world. In Lars, the color is next to completely drained from the film and we're watching a disturbed man play out a fantasy that may or may not end up in a complete mental breakdown. All the while, along the sidelines, we're being shown how much everyone else in town is more than willing to play along with Lars' fantasy because they care for him so much. Why? I guess because he faithfully goes to church? That must be it because for every other minute he's kind of an ass.

Every moment the movie simply focuses on Lars and his metaphorical relationship with Bianca, it works. The rest of the movie consists of scene after scene of cutesy townfolk taking Bianca to the salon, to the mall, etc. That the townspeople are so recpetive to Lars and willing to play along is something that helps Lars tear down his wall -- but it isn't something that has to go so far into comic relief and the absurd. The story would have been even more powerful without the lingering idea that Bianca got a position on the town's school board. The scene where Lars and Bianca are accepted at a co-worker's party would have been enough to drive this point home.

It might seem like I'm nitpicking here, but this is the type of movie that has to pull off a tightrope walk to work. If you want to make a touching, humorous movie about a mentally unstable man working out his problems with the help of a delusional relationship with a plastic sex doll, it's going to be a delicate balancing act. While Ryan Gosling nails the uneasy intensity of Lars' journey and transformation from beginning to end, the rest of the cast of characters seem intent on making the journey as goofy as possible. While this disconnect may be in the script, I think you can chalk it up to first time director Craig Gillespie. Making sure everyone is in sync with each other is one of the first responsibilities of a director along with creating an even tone and making sure the lighting, the visual design and everything else matches that tone. In all these regards I think the movie fails. But hey, getting a great Gosling performance seems to come with a price and with Lars and the Real Girl you have better option to see him work than sitting through The United States of Leland.

The Weekly Alternative - Wassup Rockers

2009-03-13T17:25:00.011-04:00

I know we've all been waiting for me to start a new recurring column destined to never recur. (The comic one isn't all my fault -- still waiting to get the scanner back up and running.) So stop your clamoring and drink in The Weekly Alternative. Wherein I take a look at the new releases, size up the less than appealing, manufactured time and money waster that's being crammed down your gullet and offer an alternative -- something similar, in the same genre, that you may have missed the first time around and actually worth your time and money.

This week some company has spent far too much money trying to sell me on Miss March. A pathetic looking entry into the Animal House, American Pie milieu that features at least one guy from that show on IFC I can't stand. (My brother, who usually has good taste, likes the show The Whitest Kids U'Know, so maybe it isn't as bad as the two episodes I forced myself to sit through lead me to believe.) The horrible commercials/trailers for this Miss March movie make me cringe and fill me with despair the way only a badly conceived comedy centered on horny idiots can. So what's the alternative?

If there's one autuer of movies featuring guys thinking with their dicks -- or rather, acting naturally, it's Larry Clark. He's the maestro behind Kids, Bully, Ken Park and this week's alternative Wassup Rockers. (He's also the subject of a very cool documentary Great American Rebel which is available on You Tube in its entirety. Quality isn't the best but we're talking about a movie that isn't on DVD being taken from VHS to You Tube so...) When it comes to capturing our youth at their worst, there isn't a better man to have on the job than Larry Clark. With Wassup Rockers he's teamed himself with a group of inner-city LA latino outcasts. They skateboard, play in a punk rock garage (or living room as the case may be) band and wear tight jeans which the local black girls love to tease them about. Like the heroes of any teenage sex comedy, our guys are just looking to hang out, drink some beers and maybe get lucky. They don't care much for school and being the outcasts they are they're constantly being harrassed by the more popular kids which makes their group tighter and more important to their day-to-day survival in South Central LA.

There are a number of things that make Wassup Rockers great fun to watch. One is that it never gets into the negativity of where they are and how fucked up their situation is. While there is that look into the dark side of our character's lives, as there is in any Larry Clark film, the tone is one of celebration and love of life even in the face of the worst that's out there. The kids in this close knit group have no delusions. They're happy if they make it through a school year alive and if one of them doesn't they know that's simply the way things are and their departed friend would want them to continue to find those sweet skate spots and pay their respects by writing a kick-ass rocker rather than go into mourning.

In his previous movies, Lary Clark has had some great scripts from some great screenwriters to work with but this time he takes sole credit for the screenplay and it comes with some benefits and some problems. While the movie may lack some focus, Clark gives his cast the ability to simply be themselves. The film has the feel that Clark simply set the framework and sat back and followed his non-actors as they went about their business. A couple of the kids are a bit stiff and less natural than the others but for the most part they're a wonder to behold and a joy to hang out with.

While Miss March promises hilarious shenanigans following a couple buddies on a road trip to the Playboy Mansion -- why not instead follow a group of buddies from the ghetto to the swimming pools of Beverly Hills as they charm their way into parties and your girlfriend's pants, find a sweet skate spot and rampant racism and live life to the fullest. Wassup Rockers is funny, revealing and full of truth and love for its stars. And for an hour and a half, Larry Clark does make stars out of his punk loving latino friends from South Central and you'll find it's really easy to fall in love with these guys just like Clark did and like the rich white women in the film do.

Watchmen

2009-03-11T21:25:00.007-04:00

Dir. Zack Snyder

Viewed: From the Balcony

I wasn't planning on adding to the internet din of bloggers and message board enthusiasts who have been doing quite fine on their own going in circles ad nauseam about the merits or lack thereof regarding Zack Snyder's Watchmen adaptation. So forgive the lack of a plot description (which can fill a blog all its own) and the normal gettin' to know ya formalities and let's get straight to the reach around. For starters I believe there hasn't been enough focus and perspective on what made Watchmen great in the first place and how this should keep everyone's expectations for the movie in check. Yes, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons told us a great, darkly ambiguous story and we should expect that story to come across in the film more or less thematically intact. But what made that story the legend it is today is that it was told over a series of comic books in a way that had never before been achieved in that medium. There's been a slew of comic books and even a couple of good Batman movies that get into similar territory but none can touch level of craftsmanship and depth of detail that went into those books. It isn't the story so much as how it was told that made Watchmen the book the masterpiece it is. So, do you really expect the Watchmen movie to reinvent film making? Can you honestly expect to be as amazed all over again in a completely different medium? It's next to impossible and especially so when you're dealing with a film that's hoping to recoup millions of dollars from the movie going public. What you can hope is that the movie opens people's eyes to what a movie about a group of costumed crime fighters can accomplish. And in that regard, and in brazen, joyful disregard of coherence and accessibilty, I think it succeeds, mostly.

I've gone on before about why a lot of people are foolish when it comes to criticizing an adaptation for leaving out this precious thing or that, but it feels like it can't be said enough. A question I ask people at my day job is, What do you expect to happen? Going into any movie you can immediately put some things into place. (Bear with me for a moment.) There's all kinds of possibilities here but if you're seeing a movie at your local multi-screen theater chances are you're watching a movie that has some level of general accessibility. Most chain theaters still won't show a movie that hasn't been screened for the MPAA or given an NC-17 rating. And most likely the movie you're watching required investors that were given some hope that this film would attract a certain kind of audience that would allow them to at least make their money back. Now an adaptation is generally seen as a good idea, a good investment because usually you're making an adaptation of something that has proven to have admirers, fans, an audience that might be interested in seeing a film version of whatever it is. Part of the reason Watchmen the book has so many fans is because it is unlike anything else (see above paragraph). This raises problems right off the bat. It's dark, bleak and pretty much all around nasty in its disposition. It's a seriously dense story with numerous indispensable characters and complex relationships. The glowing blue guy and flying owl shaped vehicle and the destruction of a major city, amoung many other things, are going to add up to a hefty price tag. So, again, what do you expect to happen? Do you expect the movie to represent the experimental storytelling that you loved about the comic? Do you expect the payoff to be as rewarding? No. You know why? It's a Zack Snyder movie and not the meticulous twelve issues of comic books that still stands today as unsurpassed in its achievements. But you know what -- that dark, bleak, dense story with numerous important characters and complex relationships -- it's all there in this movie and that's an accomplishment in and of itself. I have to give the filmmakers credit for giving us a movie that still tries to comment on the major themes of the book, even if they don't fully connect on all of them due to the constraints inherent in the project and yes, the numerous missteps they made along the way.

It certainly has its problems, some of which honestly would be there in any unless you got the greenlight on a twelve hour, perfectly cast and directed HBO miniseries. And some of the questionable choices are almost excusable because their sheer audacity makes them entertaining. For the most part the song choice in Watchmen is set exclusively to the most iconic songs of the past 30-40 years. Maybe not the wizest of choices in general but early on there is a simply amazing montage/credits sequence that establishes the world our "heroes" inhabit set to the tune of Bob Dylan's "Times They Are A'Changing". That this works at all is amazing but it actually soars and sets a high water mark that the film never quite reaches again. Other songs like "Sounds of Silence" and "99 Luftballoons" are used far less successfully but keep with the film's wrongheadedness in terms of picking songs that are so on the nose it's embarrassing. A song choice should help coax the mood, not slap you across the face. Did the movie really just crib "The Ride of the Valkyries" for its Vietnam war sequence? Seriously? But we really go off the deep end with the marriage of Dan and Laurie making sweet sweet love (complete with Archie ejaculation) while we listen to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". Yeah. This scene gets to the point of the most confounding thing about the movie -- in some cases it's faithful to a fault (we really didn't need to see Archie shooting its flaming load across the night's sky even though it is in the book) and in others it makes seemingly arbitrary, pointless changes (why not use the Billie Holiday song the book uses to spark the love scene rather than Cohen's awkwardness?). These are annoying and distracting problems, some of which may only exist for the comic fans but I'm sure will leave many non-fanboys scratching their head, or in the case of this scene, laughing.

The more obvious problems come from the casting of Malin Ackerman as Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II and Matthew Goode as Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias. Going back to the inherent problems you'll face in adapting Watchmen, you can't really excise any of the major characters and you can't drop the ball with any of them either. And the ball is dropped whenever we're dealing with Silk Spectre II and Ozymandias who are both crucial characters and come off as one-note and paper-thin. The problem with Goode as Veidt leads to a problem the movie has with the main plot and story of Watchmen as well. At its core we're dealing with a mystery -- complete with pulpy narration and lots of your basic hard-nosed detective work -- and if anyone watching this movie gets caught up in the mystery behind what's going on up on the screen, I'd be honestly amazed. I would imagine most newbies to be spending most of their time just trying to keep up and get a grasp on what the hell this whole thing is supposed to be about. Again, this is an inherent problem with this adaptation, even at 3 hours long, so I can't lay all the blame on the filmmakers here. But they don't cut themselves any favors by presenting a version of the movie (I understand that we can expect an extra hour in the Director's Cut) that's muddled in its storytelling abilities at best. The book is an immersive thing that gradually unfolds a complex mythology. The movie, at close to three hours, is whisking you to an ending that will either resonate or fall flat and I can accept both answers from any given viewer but I can't call it a complete failure or get lost in nitpicking the variations between the book and movie because it does have its pleasures.

What Zack Snyder lacks in storytelling agility, he makes up for with a sometimes awe inspiring eye. While nothing quite hits you like the opening titles montage, there's sequences in the film that are downright beautiful. Particularly anything involving Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan, our glowing blue god-like entity. In a hurricane that at times seems pointless he's the subtle, nuanced calm at the center of the storm. This movie could have been a masterpiece if we were just to focus our story on the arc of Dr. Manhattan. I was transfixed every minute we spent with him and my deep respect for Billy Crudup's skills only grew with his performance. I would say the same for Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach but he was pretty much an unknown quantity for me going in. That these two characters, and to a lesser extent even Nite Owl II and The Comedian, are so perfectly realized, I can't say the movie is unwatchable or without merit. Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan are the heart and soul of the story, respectively, and they nailed them both perfectly in the movie. There's an undeniable thrill in seeing these characters up there being true to themselves and the story. You can flip to almost any page in the book and find a panel that ended up on the screen. As in the Archie fire spooge, that's not necessarily a good thing, but imagine the geek furor that would be raining down on this movie if it went the other way into some sort of re-imagining or actually did attempt some sort of experimental deconstruction of the story. For all its faults I can applaud it for capturing what it does capture with obvious admiration and a great eye for detail.

For the most part, when Warner Brothers took Paul Greengrass off the project and replaced him with Zach Snyder, the die was cast. The world of Watchmen wasn't going to strive for any realism, instead the grimy surroundings were going to have a glossy sheen. Warners obviously choose him for these reasons and his trademark slo-mo moments to make the violence more comic booky and theoretically attractive to all those fans of things that go boom and crunch. But to his credit, Snyder kept the story in 1985 and kept it more or less as it was told twenty years ago and not the modern day 9/11 influenced tale that Greengrass was going to shoot. I wouldn't say this is the best Watchmen movie we could have gotten -- simply changing the music cues and re-casting some characters could have made it a whole lot better, but I admire the few compromises that Snyder allowed for. Under his watch, Warner Bros released a complicated, hard R rated movie that is probably destined to loose money because they didn't fuck with it and make it PG-13 and come in at under two hours so that it could play more times a day and appeal to a wider audience. I don't want to come across as "It should never have been made as a movie in the first place, but since they were going to make it eventually, it could have been a lot worse, so thumbs up!" but I don't think it's impossible to balance taking the film on its own merits and in terms of the source material.

I have a soft spot for this kind of movie too. And no, I'm not talking about superhero or comic book based movies, but movies that shoot for the moon but rattle and break apart before they get there. Like last year's Southland Tales, Watchmen's ambition outshines clumsy storytelling, uneven performances and incoherent plot. In both these cases the movies are so gloriously bizarre that I can't wait to see the extra hour the directors had to cut just to get the thing inside a movie theater. The audiences for these kinds of head trips are so small that I find happiness in the fact that they get released at all. Don't kid yourself, Watchmen is one weirdo movie -- there's next to nothing about it besides a few brief scenes of stylized violence that's designed to be easily consumed by the average movie goer. Despite their best efforts, this is not a story the majority of people will want to pay money to sit through 3 hours to see. But a few months from now I'll watch the film again with the extra hour because I think it will improve the film, at least form a storytelling perspective. And so I can't really recommend the film, all I can say is that overall I had a good time watching the Watchmen.

Dead Man's Shoes

2009-03-02T17:25:00.001-05:00

Dir. Shane Meadows

Viewed: From the Couch

UK director Shane Meadows is building a powerful line-up of unflinching views into the worst (and occasionally best) of contemporary, white, lower-to-middle class life in England. Right in the middle of this lies Dead Man's Shoes, a gut wrenching revenge film that leaves you devastated but nevertheless takes you on a heartfelt and often darkly funny ride. The movie is filled with conflicting emotions, the kind that are at the heart of most revenge movies. These stories always center around a person who just can't buy into Jesus Christ or Martin Luther King Jr.'s philosophy of forgiveness and turning the other cheek. The first thing we're told in Dead Man's Shoes is that Richard cannot allow these people to pray for forgiveness and be allowed into heaven after what they've done. Grainy footage teases out bits of the crimes that have been committed against Richard's mentally handicapped brother by a circle of friends who comprise the town's dope smoking/dealing losers. These flashbacks are strategically placed throughout the movie and are constantly changing our perspective on Richard's crusade. For 90 minutes you are reexamining your own morals and asking yourself at what point can you justify what Richard, our supposed hero, is doing.

A large part of what makes these questions imperative is that we're given such a charismatic bunch of fuck-ups to follow. Richard, our avenging angel, is kind of creepy -- an army vet who is more than a little unstable and as tightly wound as they come. But thankfully Paddy Considine plays him with a soulfulness and gives Richard a gentle madness that saves the character from being another Travis Bickle knock-off (the green jacket that Richard wears throughout may as well be a hand-me-down from Mr. Bickle). Mr. Considine has some god-given gifts to add to Richard, too. Rather than the hard edges of a Clint Eastwood, Considine's features are practically boyish. It just adds to the skewed perspective the movie plays in which continues with our bad guys -- most of whom come off as more lovable loser than murderous bastard. They do deal drugs to the locals but the only violence they seem capable of would be in a bar fight after too many beers and bong hits. It's a perfect way to flip the audience's expectations on its head. In all revenge films you're waiting for the hero to take out the scumbags that done him wrong, but here Meadows makes these guys almost likable -- putting everyone and the movie in this moral grey zone. So when Richard starts killing them one by one you're left slack-jawed rather than cheering, waiting for the next flashback to find out a little bit more what exactly happened to his brother that day. And sure enough each one does get a little bit worse.

I do have a small problem with these flashbacks. While there are eight people credited with Super 8 footage on the film, I believe the honest to goodness Super 8 footage is found solely during a great opening credits sequence set to a killer Smog tune (part of a killer overall soundtrack featuring choice Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, M. Ward and Calexico cuts). The flashbacks strewn throughout the film appear to be digitally manipulated to look black and white, grainy and worn and the effect is less than inspired. There's always some sort of technique used to separate the flashback footage in a movie -- sometimes it's simply black and white, sometimes it's over saturated color or different film stock or whathaveyou, most times, even here, it's distracting and unnecessary. The rest of the film your typical sunless England shots that provide that "gritty" and "real" look that seems rather effortless from this part of the world nowadays. But Meadows does provide this feel in an honest way through his meticulous eye for detail in the shitty apartments and bars, tiny suburban houses and middle of nowhere farm houses in the same way directors like Alexander Payne and Andrew Bujalski have used their surroundings and perfectly placed empty bottles to give their films that authentic and well worn feeling.

Primarily though Dead Man's Shoes is a showcase for Paddy Considine and his trail of dead. There is a well edited sequence half-way through when three of the marked men are holed up in a house, already fittingly paranoid before they're unwittingly drugged by Considine and experience a hilarious downward spiral in their tiny living room before they meet their pitiful demise. It's a scene that encompasses the entire feel of the movie in ten or so minutes. We're laughing as they huddle in the bathroom together (one taking a shit, one taking a bath), no one wanting to even sit in an adjacent room by themselves for fear Considine will pop out of the shadows and kill them. We laugh as they begin to stumble into a drug stupor but we laugh through empathy and in the back of our minds, as awful as they were that one day to Richard's brother we know these guys -- we know how easy it can be to slip into mob mentality with only a half dozen close friends and a head full of illicit substances -- we saw the look in their eyes as each one found out that it was Andrew's brother that out for revenge -- they all knew that they did something wrong. And when Richard does show up, cutting through the fog of their drug addled heads, he is the darkness, he is the grim reaper and not Charles Bronson, and no one is laughing, cheering or smiling when he does what he has to do.

Despite the title, the posters and some of the raves from more bloodthirsty sources, Dead Man's Shoes isn't a gory movie or even all that violent. A lot of the death's take place off screen but the movie has an uncomfortable but kinda thrilling intensity due in large part to Considine and the other character's paranoia. There's no lingering on tortured faces, but like Funny Games this one could also fall into the anti-horror genre in that there's no fun kills or anti-hero to root for. Except unlike Funny Games the movie isn't an experiment, self-aware or clinical in the least and there is a lesson to be learned from all the killing. There is a soul in Considine's Richard and each time he cuts a man down it takes a toll. In Dead Man's Shoes we see the cost of a human life taken to those around them and to those who take it. No one comes out clean but no one seems capable of doing anything but what they do and because they know they'll never change - death can also come with a certain measure of acceptance when you meet it face to face. It becomes a darkly beautiful thing.

The Couchies - Best Supporting Actress

2009-02-25T18:18:00.005-05:00

Last Year's Winner - Margo Martindale

Nominees

Rachel Weisz - My Blueberry Nights

Weisz has a way of standing out in bad movies, and, whoo, was this one bad (click the movie above for the details). The only thing even remotely good about Wong Kar Wai's patently false account of love in America was Weisz's boozy and smokin' hot Sue Lynn, who not only drove David Straithairn to the bottle, but also provided the only thing close to real emotion. Even though her character is an archetype as silly and unrealistic as Straithairn's boozer, Weisz brings such power to the role that I wish, god I wish, that Norah Jones had taken out to the road with Sue Lynn rather than Natalie Portman's insufferable Leslie.

Nanou Garcia- Pour De Vrai

I made an internal pledge not to include actors and performances from all the short films I saw last summer, but Garcia really was one of the acting standouts from the Court Metrange Festival, and her appearance in every second of Blandine Lenoir's 22 minute, one-shot, mini-epic, contained more range than most performance this year. She dotes on her kids, rocks out to a garage band, all the while repeating seemingly meaningless phrases. Like so may of the shorts that week, it was breathtaking.

Erika Bók - Satantango

Bok might have had more screen time than all the other acting nominees combined, but her freaky-ass Estike was only really a catalyst for the rest of the town. Despite being partly repulsed and even bored by some of her scenes, I'm still freaked out every time I see her portrait staring out from the front of the Satantango box. It is simply an indelible performance of pure cruelty and alienation, and something that I'm not sure I ever want to see again.

And the winner is...

Jennifer Jason Leigh - Margot at the Wedding

A clean sweep in the female acting categories for Noah Baumbach's tale of one really messed up family. Despite the bitterness, I could have watched Kidman and Leigh trade barbs all day, dropping in sly, and not so sly, hints about the various failures they've each lived through. Kidman gets the meatier part, but Leigh gets more out of the hippy-dippy sister act than was probably in the script. Looking not a day older than her Ridgemont days, Leigh is able to bring some depth and realism to the part, making her tete-a-tetes with Kidman a contest of equals, despite the latter's own formidable skills.

Next up...Best Director

A Small Comment (While finishing up the Couchies)

2009-02-25T18:06:00.004-05:00

The selection of Sean Penn over Mickey Rourke for Best Actor on Sunday was an embarrassment. I don't expect the Oscars to reward true merit in Best Screenplay or Best Director, but when it comes to mainstream acting, they should at least be able to recognize the difference between mimicry and true talent.

Now I like Sean Penn as much as the next guy (well, maybe not if the 'next guy' is RFC's Sean), but flaming it up and playing the role of martyr was not nearly the performance of Rourke, who actually had to create a character out of a script and (maybe) his own experience. I'm glad I didn't watch the show Sunday, because the only thing I would have liked to see (well, aside from a Herzog win) was Rourke's acceptance speech. I'm not sure why the Penn pick wasn't more controversial, but the folks in LA did a fine job of conspiring to rob the outsider and reward a guy who, for all his rebel posing, is about as much a company man as there is in that town.

The Couchies - Best Actress

2009-02-19T15:05:00.009-05:00

Last Year's Winner - Kate Dollenmeyer

Nominees

Hanna Schygulla - Il Futuro e Donna

The only Thespian repeat from the 2007 Couchies, Schygulla once again has to settle for a nomination. What an extraordinary talent. I've yet to see any of her collaborations with Fassbinder, but the two movies I saw her in this year - Il Futuro and The Edge of Heaven - demonstrated a formidable range. In the former, she is beautiful, outgoing, and (sort of) expecting her first child; in the latter, she is conservative, cautious, and in danger of losing her daughter. It's an amazing set of performances and, fortunately for her 2009 Couchie chances, I'm making it a mission to work my way through Rainer Werner's oeuvre this year.

Samantha Eggar - The Brood

Technically, only Sean reviewed this one, but since I saw it and commented on the Cronenberg lecture that preceded it, it's fair game. As the expression of Cronenberg's hatred of his ex-wife, Eggar is all wrath and vindictiveness. Not only is she a woman, but she is pregnant too! Look out. Though the movie as a whole suffers from the director's myopia and structuring its narrative around stereotypes of women from the sixteenth century, Eggar is pretty damn scary.

Cate Blanchett - I'm Not There

For someone who liked this movie, I wasn't as high as others on Blanchett. Sure, she was playing a guy, but Dylan circa 1965 ain't exactly a real stretch into machoville. Dylan had the peacock strut and an almost divaish feel as inhabited by Blanchett, and one I'm not sure was justified. She definitely looked like Dyaln, but that probably had to do more with weird 60s fashion and Dylan's frail body than anything Blanchett did. So wait, why is she even listed? I can't remember, but we have to move on.

And the winner is...

Nicole Kidman - Margot at the Wedding

This one should not be a surprise, at least for anyone who read our review of this film last March. Kidman's Margot is a force of nature, a writer armed with as much sarcasm as any ofNicolson's many misanthropes. At a crucial moment in her sister's life, Margot is torn between her general disapproval of her family and her need to exploit the same family for her art. The result is many many painfully funny and heartbreaking moments, as only Baumbach seems capable of grasping. Margot often seems on the verge of alienating her sister and, more importantly, her son, but Kidman never lets her become a monster.

Next Up...Best Supporting Actress