J.B. Spins

Ti West’s Innkeepers

2012-02-01T03:30:00.000-08:00

Two soon to be laid-off hotel employees have watched far too much Syfy Channel “reality” programming. On the Yankee Pedlar Inn’s final weekend of operation, they are determined to do some serious ghost chasing. Of course, that means they are asking for trouble in Ti West’s The Innkeepers (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Having worked many late shifts, Claire and Luke have seen some mildly spooky stuff. About to be unemployed, they consider the Yankee Pedlar their ticket to some sort of tabloid payday. He has even set up their website, featuring the tragic history of the hotel and videos of mysteriously closing doors and the like. Still, they need something more conclusive and this is obviously the time to get it. They have only one or two guests left, including Leanne Rease-Jones, a former sitcom star in town for a motivational speaking gig. She also happens to be a medium.

Evidently, West and the crew of House of the Devil (his previous retro 1980’s horror outing) stayed at the Yankee Pedlar in Torrington, Connecticut, experiencing enough weirdness during the shoot to inspire their return trip. One hesitates to compare it to a classic like The Shining, but viewers can just feel something is similarly off between its walls. Without question, Innkeepers has a very strong sense of place, which directly contributes to the mood of foreboding.

To its credit, the real life Yankee Pedlar has been quite sporting about it all, allowing West to film entirely on location there, subsequently hosting the premiere party, and even disclosing it all up front on their website. Perhaps they are hoping for some of the Stanley Hotel’s Shining business.

Horror movies almost always implode down the stretch, so the real measure of their merit is the quality of the set-up. Indeed, West sets the scene quite effectively, creating an eerie backstory and vividly establishing the hotel’s ominous idiosyncrasies. However, it is the bantering, bickering chemistry of the two leads that really make the film hum. Whereas House of the Devil was a throwback to the no-frills Satanic B-movies of the eighties, Innkeepers is more akin to the hip, smart-alecky horror movies of the mid 1990’s, like Wes Craven’s Scream.

Sara Paxton and Pat Healy are genuinely funny zinging each other, and, by genre standards, they are quite convincing when dealing with the business end of the haunting. While clearly much has transpired since Top Gun, Kelly McGillis steps into the Zelda Rubinstein role credibly enough. However, it all seems to end rather suddenly and a bit prematurely (though that might also be spun as a positive sign).

While it was not necessarily the case with Devil, West clearly remembered horror movies are supposed to be fun throughout the production of Innkeepers. Clever and atmospheric, it is one of the better scary movies of the season, easily recommended for genre fans when it opens this Friday (2/3) in New York at the Village East.

The Forgotten Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock

2012-01-31T08:30:00.000-08:00

Daisy Bates was an instrumental leader in the victorious Little Rock school desegregation campaign, but she is hardly mentioned in histories of the civil rights movement. Could it be the civil rights establishment was uncomfortable sharing the spotlight with a woman? That is not something documentarian Sharon La Cruise implies. She more or less says it outright in Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock (trailer here), which premieres on PBS’s Independent Lens this Thursday.

As the wife of a respected African American newspaper publisher, Bates was prominent in the community, but she became an activist and leader in her own right. She does not seem to have been the type to suffer fools gladly. Though aesthetically attractive to us in this day and age, her assertiveness led to serious difficulties in the 1950’s. More than anyone, she was responsible for recruiting and supporting the so-called “Little Rock Nine,” who desegregated Central High, despite constant intimidation from the rabble encouraged by white Democrat Governor Orval Faubus. Clearly, she was the right person to assume the leadership mantle, but it appears from interviews with some of the Nine, she did not exactly wait to be asked.

Bates is a fascinating figure, with plenty of virtues and flaws to take into balanced consideration. Unfortunately, La Cruise sometimes injects herself into the story to explain what a revelation it all was to her, which needlessly wastes time in a broadcast cut clocking-in just under sixty minutes.

To her credit though, she does not lob cheap shots at Eisenhower. Instead, the film recognizes it is not an easy course of action to deploy American troops on their home soil, but when enough got to be enough, Ike did exactly that. La Cruise describes it as a victory for Bates within the civil rights community, which seems fair enough. After all, she somehow held things together up to that point.

Overall, First Lady is a brisk and informative chapter of overlooked Twentieth Century history, particularly well attuned to the difficult choices faces by its principle players. Recommended for its straightforwardness, it airs on Independent Lens this Thursday (2/2), as part of its special February programming.

Perfect Sense: Love in the Time of the Apocalypse

2012-01-31T03:00:00.000-08:00

So this is how the world ends—with a collective whimper, which turns out to be nearly as good as a bang. A global epidemic slowly strips everyone of their sensory abilities. This development is rather bad for the restaurant business, but on the upside, a self-involved chef may have finally found the love of his life in David Mackenzie’s Perfect Sense (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York at the IFC Center.

As is always the case with pandemics, it starts with only a handful of people who have lost their sense of smell. It is not contagious in any discernable way, but cases spread like wild fire nonetheless. There is no reason to panic though. When smelling is gone, Michael and his colleagues simply crank up the spices. Meanwhile, he and Susan, the epidemiologist living across from his Glasgow restaurant, just might be bantering their way into each other’s hearts. Even when the sense of taste mysteriously vanishes, people still eat out to enjoy the sight and textures of a good meal. Eventually though, the time will come to panic.

Michael and Susan are rather unappealing characters, yet somehow Ewan McGregor and Eva Green still develop some effective romantic chemistry together. Perhaps the idea they are mutually taking themselves off the market is reassuring in some way. Green in particular hits some oddly brusque notes, often sounding like she is trying to channel Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not, calling everyone “sailor” for reasons she duly explains at length.

However, Sense has some wonderful supporting turns from seasoned vets, including McGregor’s uncle Denis Lawson (who played Wedge in the real Star Wars movies, so show some respect), as Michael’s restaurant owner-mentor. Stephane Dillane’s always intriguing screen presence also brings out unexpected nuance in Susan’s cerebral boss, Samuel.

Throughout Sense, Mackenzie walks a tightrope, but mostly keeps his balance. While the story might seem to roughly parallel recent epidemic movies, the tone is more fable like, with a fairly steamy romance layered on top. Despite the apocalypse it appears to be hurtling towards, Kim Fupz Aakeson’s screenplay constantly depicts humanity’s persistent adaptability, emphasizing the best of our nature rather than our worst.

Indeed, Sense is pretty good social science fiction, but it is clearly spooked by the metaphysical implications of its premise (especially since each stage is preceded by a burst of profoundly felt emotion—not exactly the typical handiwork of bacteria). Yet, the only references to a higher power come from religious fanatics seen on news broadcasts claiming the outbreak is a manifestation of God’s wrath (a contention the film frankly provides nothing to dispute).

To his immense credit, Mackenzie never tries to tack on an unconvincing environmental message, avoiding didacticism and maintaining a palpable air of mystery. That Sense is not really a downer at all is somewhat remarkable, all things considered. Recommended for viewers who like their genre elements on the softer, lighter side, Sense opens this Friday (2/3) in New York at the IFC Center.

Sundance ’12: Grabbers

2012-01-30T07:00:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, that Guinness before you is the last best line of defense against the alien invasion. Fortunately, the villagers of Erin Island are up to the demands of survival in Jon Wright’s Grabbers, which screened during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Garda Lisa Nolan is a workaholic who spends her vacation temping for the sergeant on the tight little island. Busy drowning a broken heart, local Garda Ciarán O’Shea is not impressed, at least not by her ambition. Fortunately, nothing ever happens there, at least until the aliens invade. At first, the only one to see the blood-sucking mollusks who lives to talk about it is the town drunk (and he’s not O’Shea). After a bit of investigation, it turns out the aliens do not have a taste for .2 alcohol levels. With a storm fast approaching, there is only one thing to do. Lock everyone in the pub and get them hammered.

Frankly, Grabbers is a surprisingly mild midnight selection at Sundance (particularly considering this is the year they launched V/H/S). Gentler even than Tremors, it is quite similar in tone to R.W. Goodwin’s unapologetically nostalgic Alien Trespass. Considering the central role played by public inebriation, midnight audiences were probably expecting liberal helpings of gross-out humor that never materialized. Indeed, Grabbers is more about soft chuckles than big belly laughs.

Granted, this is not the sort of film one looks to for rigorous logic, but it makes no sense the high-functioning alcoholic would be the only one to stay sober, beyond providing O’Shea with an opportunity for redemption. Still, Richard Coyle is reasonably charismatic as the formerly degenerate Garda. In contrast, Ruth Bradley does not leave much of a mark as Nolan, but David Pearse scores some of the film’s funniest moments as Brian Maher, the short-tempered barkeep.

Wright keeps things moving along well enough and the monster effects are realized quite well (arguably better than they should be in an old school creature feature). The results are all very pleasant, but never quite live up to the promise of its clever premise. Nice, but not crazy, Grabbers should nonetheless find an appreciative genre audience following its midnight screenings at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

The Pruitt-Igoe Reality

2012-01-30T05:00:00.000-08:00

Brutalism is a style of architecture distinguished by its huge blocky shapes, typically utilizing concrete or roughened stone. In the mid Twentieth Century, it was commonly employed for government structures, most definitely including housing projects. The Pruitt-Igoe public housing development would be a perfect example, had it not been imploded by the St. Louis Housing Authority in 1972. Chad Freidrichs seeks to rehabilitate the project’s image, and by extension that of government social engineering efforts in general, with the documentary The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (trailer here), which is now playing in New York at the IFC Center.

It opened in 1954 with high hopes. For a time, hard working former residents of St. Louis’s slums enjoyed clean modern living conditions there. Over time, maintenance deteriorated, rents went up, crime precipitously increased, and tenants steadily moved out, culminating in the spectacular televised destruction of the buildings.

Freidrichs and his commentators argue what happened was not the fault of the Pruitt-Igoe complex per se, but of wider macro factors. However, the case they make rather supports the opposite conclusion. First we hear the Pruitt-Igoe was the victim of a fatal misconception, because the city planners were projecting stable population growth when St. Louis population actually contracted substantially over the life of the complex. While true enough, it clearly calls into question the wisdom of activist government planning in general, particularly that which gave rise to Pruitt-Igoe. We also learn many of the city’s housing programs were used to maintain a de-facto segregation, which again demonstrates the frequently perverse unintended consequences of government regulations and spending.

Perhaps most damning is the revelation Pruitt-Igoe management actively banned men from the buildings, often forcing away would-be male heads of large households for the sake of an affordable apartment for their families. Yet, Myth resists fully exploring the implications of this policy, lest it be accused of revisiting the Dan Quayle-Murphy Brown controversy.

The over-riding point of the film is that the Pruitt-Igoe project was a victim of wider urban pathologies, such as unemployment. Yet, it steadfastly ignores questions like which party controlled the mayor’s office since 1949 or what barriers to blue collar employment might have been posed by closed shop unionization.

Perhaps most disappointingly, Freidrichs seems completely disinterested in Pruitt-Igoe from an architectural point of view. The fact the imploded buildings were designed by Minoru Yamasaki, the architect of the World Trade Center, is an eerie historical footnote he skips over. However, the very nature of Brutalist architecture deserves some analysis in a film like this. In his own documentary, How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster (also distributed by First Run Features), Norman Foster unequivocally criticizes concrete as a medium of construction, describing it as an ugly magnet for graffiti. The Pruitt-Igoe experience seems to bear out his aesthetic convictions.

Freidrichs makes a convincing case the Pruitt-Igoe houses were profoundly misconceived and mismanaged. Just how exactly their status as a poster child for government failure supposedly constitutes a “myth” will baffle viewers, based on the very evidence presented in his film. Ultimately, Pruitt-Igoe Myth has to be considered a failure as well, considering it largely proves the opposite of its thesis. An odd polemical misfire, it is now playing in New York at the IFC Center.

Sundance ’12: Bestiaire

2012-01-30T03:00:00.000-08:00

Zoos, farms, and taxidermy shops are good places for gawking at animals. French Canadian filmmaker Denis Côté essentially invites viewers to do precisely that. Supposedly, the clever part is that the animals will gawk back. However, they do not seem particularly interested in holding up their end throughout his non-narrative documentary Bestiaire (trailer here), which screened as a New Frontier selection of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Côté’s title is derived from the medieval bestiaries, which evoke images of lavish illustrations on gilt-edged illuminated pages. He takes rather the opposite approach, de-emphasizing the exoticism of the animals, focusing instead on the drabness of their surroundings. Unlike recent animal documentaries, such as the Jouberts’ Last Lions, Nick Stringer’s Turtle: the Incredible Journey, and even Nicholas Philibert’s Nenette (a film much closer akin to Bestiaire in terms of tone), Côté discourages attempts to impose individual personalities on the animals by framing them from off-kilter perspectives and completely eschewing mood setting soundtrack music.

A considerable portion of Bestiaire was shot at Quebec’s Parc Safari, whose animal handlers are likely to stoke the zeal of anti-zoo protestors with their dispassionate professionalism. Indeed, Bestiaire could almost be considered an expose for people who really need films to be about something. Regardless, less adventurous viewers will be decidedly uncomfortable during the sort-of observational doc.

If you want to learn something about the process of taxidermy, Bestiaire eventually delivers the goods. On the other hand, if you want to get to know some of the beasts, Côté will deliberately undercut any such attempts. There is no question the filmmaker accomplishes exactly what he set out to do. Yet, it remains wholly fair to ask “so what?” Probably more interesting as a concept than as a viewing experience, Bestiaire was definitely for the New Frontier track die-hards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Slamdance ’12: The First Season

2012-01-29T07:00:00.000-08:00

There are far easier ways to go broke than opening a dairy farm from near scratch. However, if they work like dogs, Paul and Phyllis Van Amburgh might eventually break even. The ups and downs of their agricultural start-up are documented in Rudd Simmons’ The First Season, which screened during the recently wrapped 2012 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

The Van Amburghs’ new old farm looks like it could have been painted by Andrew Wyeth, but as viewers watch the expensive refurbishing process, it is hard not to think there must be a reason the previous owners stopped farming there. Though hardly expecting to make a fortune, the Van Amburghs are still a bit surprised at how much it will all cost and how slim their margins will be.

Season will teach the audience quite a bit about modern dairy farming practices. One might come to suspect this is an industry that requires economies of scale as a result. Nonetheless, viewers have to root for the neophyte farmers as they grind away. They are hardly city-slickers bumbling about on their pretend farm. Instead, they appear to understand the process quite well and appear to be physically and temperamentally suited to such a life.

Indeed, the Van Amburghs should appeal to a wide spectrum of viewers. Their new venture partly reflects their desire to go back to nature, and a preference for reasonably pure, locally grown crops. However, they are also deeply family oriented and have relentless work ethics. If they were not already, they are now fiscal conservatives as well, at least in practice.

Clearly, Simmons (whose producer credits include Boardwalk Empire and Dead Man Walking) had constant access to the Van Amburghs. Yet, despite the mounting bills and taxes, the Van Amburghs never come across as whiny or resentful, which certainly helps maintain viewer sympathy. He also vividly captures a sense of the stark loneliness of their upstate New York farm and the surrounding environment.

Viewers who want to see a film about herd animals will find the Van Amburghs’ cows far more engaging the beasts in Denis Côté’s Bestiary, which screened at the other Park City festival. For idealists, the Van Amburghs are also rather refreshingly no-nonsense people. While their film will probably dissuade others from following in their footsteps, audiences will certainly wish them the best. Considerably more involving than one might expect, First Season is well worth catching as it makes the festival rounds, having started strong at the 2012 Slamdance Film Festival, right on scenic Main Street.

Sundance ’12: The Return (short)

2012-01-28T06:45:00.000-08:00

He is like a Kosovar Sommersby, except he is completely legitimate. That does not make the long held prisoner of war’s homecoming any easier though in Blerta Zeqiri’s The Return (trailer here), the winner of the Jury Prize for Short Film International Fiction at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

The man has been missing for four years, one of the many who disappeared during the dirty war. Suddenly released by his Serbian captors, he reunites with his wife and still relatively young son. It is awkward, even before she recounts her harrowing wartime experiences on the homefront.

Frankly, Return is more compelling before it delves into its truly heavy revelations. As the wife and mother, Adriana Matoshi vividly portrays the inappropriate emotional responses born of nervousness and confusion. There is something very honest and raw about her early scenes with Lulzim Bucolli’s shell-shocked ex-POW, as they tentatively reacquaint themselves.

Dedicated “to the missing and the victims of war crimes,” Return is not necessarily an optimistic film, but it is a forgiving one, granting allowances for the couple’s unfortunate responses and thoughtless remarks. It perhaps implies a degree of hope, but justice clearly remains unfulfilled.

Sensitively shot by Sevdije Kastrati, Return has a soft warm glow. Zeqiri also smartly avoids overt manipulation, despite the intimacy of her focus. Respectfully recommended, it screens again tomorrow (1/29) in Park City as part of a program of award winning short films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Wiseman’s Crazy Horse

2012-01-28T03:30:00.000-08:00

Renowned documentarian Frederick Wiseman once again turns his lens on a dance institution, but the Crazy Horse is more about covers and drink minimums than season tickets. The inner workings of the Parisian nightclub considered home to the world’s most artistically refined nude dancing is quietly observed in Wiseman’s Crazy Horse (trailer here), now playing in New York at Film Forum.

Choreographer Philippe Decouflé has grand plans for a new revue, but management will not close down long enough for a suitable development period. This will be the central conflict of Wiseman’s time in residence at the storied cabaret. An iconic institution for over sixty years, Crazy Horse (a.k.a. Le Crazy) management claims they cater to a significant female clientele. Perhaps, but this certainly is not the Paris Opera Ballet featured in La Danse, nor the American Ballet Theater Wiseman studied in Ballet. It is light-years away from the Idaho state legislators seen in his C-SPAN-like State Legislature.

There is no getting around the eroticism of the club’s shows. However, their production values are undeniably impressive. Particularly striking are the often suggestive lighting effects that put the old disco ball to shame. Decouflé and artistic director Ali Mahdavi have crafted some very stylish numbers and the dancers are of an elite caliber. Competitively selected from open try-outs, they are certainly attractive, but they clearly have dancers’ physiques rather than, you know, strippers.’

Wiseman and his longtime cinematographer John Davey vividly capture the colors and spectacle of le Crazy’s stage-shows. There is also an unusual amount of music for a Wiseman film, recorded during the course of the dancers’ performances, which is mostly rather up-tempo and poppy. Indeed, this might be one of his most upbeat and zesty films, perhaps ever. At a brisk one hundred and thirty-four minutes, it is almost like a short subject for the filmmaker.

Crazy Horse is pretty steamy. However, considering the attention lavished on the steps, costumes, and lighting of its celebrated dancers, le Crazy’s shows would still probably be distinctive, even if they were more fully clothed. Indeed, that is the real measure of their artistic merit. Without question, Wiseman’s film will instill in audiences a healthy appreciation for the Parisian hot spot. Recommended for mature adults, Crazy Horse screens at Film Forum through Tuesday, February 7th.

Sundance ’12: V/H/S

2012-01-27T06:00:00.000-08:00

Pretty soon, VHS tapes will be nothing more than odd curios. A group of lowlife thugs is out to steal one that is particularly collectible. Supposedly, they will know it when they see it. If that sounds ominous, it should, because they are about to stumble across some deeply disturbing found videos in the anthology horror film V/H/S, which has generated monster viral buzz at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Adam Wingard’s framing device characters are an ugly lot, who enjoy videotaping their violent crimes. Upon breaking into their target home, they find the owner long dead amid a pile of sketchy looking VHS tapes. Each one they screen tells a twisted tale.

David Bruckner’s opening Amateur Night follows a trio of unenlightened young men as they set out the bed drunk women and record their conquests through the geeky one’s spy camera. They somehow bring two women back to their hotel room, but one promptly passes out and the other is a bit twitchy. While we have a good idea where this is headed from the outset, Hannah Fierman’s penetrating eyes are spooky as all get out. As the mystery woman, she is simultaneously alluring and unnerving.

It is road trip time in Ti (House of the Devil) West’s Second Honeymoon, duly documented by the vacationing couple on their camcorder. Unfortunately, they are having trouble shaking this strange vagrant woman. While it might be the most traditional in its approach, West’s contribution arguably boasts the film’s single freakiest scene.

However, the best chapter is easily Glenn McQuaid’s Tuesday the 17th, which gives the horny teens in the woods subgenre a wicked twist. Whatever it is out there stalking them, it has a distorting power over the camera, greatly affecting our perceptions of events, which makes what goes down quite nerve-racking. Within the horror genre, it is light-years away from McQuaid’s strangely underappreciated I Sell the Dead.

Perhaps the weakest link is Joe “Mumblecore” Swanberg’s The Strange Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger, which purports to be the recorded Skype chats between a woman with a haunted apartment and her long distance boyfriend—on a moldy old VHS tape. Really? Digital to analog, how did that work exactly? Maybe similar objections could be raised regarding Amateur Night’s spy glasses, but it is not so glaringly anachronistic. Still, there is definitely some weird stuff happening in the corner of the screen.

It is back to old fashioned camcorders for the youtube tag-team Radio Silence’s 10/31/98, a story of carousing youth looking for a Halloween party and finding a house full of evil instead. The quartet clearly understands how to milk tension out of empty hallways and unsettling knick-knacks, before letting loose complete chaos.

Regardless of the hype surrounding audience members passing out and getting nauseous during a screening at Sundance, this is a legitimately scary movie, exponentially more frightening than the Blair Witch Project. Frankly, shaky cams work better for horror than any other genre. It is always what we don’t see that scares us, so those what-the-hack-was-that moments are quite effective (whereas they are simply annoying in action films). However, the reliance on the hand-held found footage motif levels out the filmmakers’ differences of style, providing the film with a largely consistent look, aside from Swanberg’s internet ringer.

This is easily the scariest film in years. It can be bloody and it depicts some casual cruelty in the introduction that is not a lot of fun to watch, but once Bruckner’s story builds up some steam, V/H/S really buries its hooks into viewers. Recommended for bold genre fans not suffering from altitude sickness, it screens again this Saturday (1/28) during this year’s Sundance in Park City.

Happy New Year: All’s Well, Ends Well 2012

2012-01-27T03:00:00.000-08:00

It’s Donnie Yen as you’ve never seen him before: singing power ballads. His character might be stuck in the 1980’s, but he can still find love in Chan Hing-ka and Amy Chin’s All’s Well, Ends Well 2012 (trailer here), the sixth film of the popular HK rom-com series, which opens today in New York.

A frustrated divorcee creates a Craig’s List to make men useful. The payment for miscellaneous services rendered is supposed to be a simple hug, but things get much more complicated for these couples. Julie Sun, an edgy photographer, hires construction foreman Kin Holland to serve as her nude model, while Hugo, the shaggy romance novelist, agrees to explain love to Charmine, a beautiful but blind dancer. Chelsia, a former teen idol, hires would-be hair band rocker Carl Tam to pretend to be her husband at a difficult reunion dinner. Meanwhile, Richard the hardball divorce attorney acts as a surrogate father for Cecilia, an orphaned heiress, as she evaluates prospective suitors.

Naturally, Holland falls for Sun hard, but her not so much. Hugo falls for Charmine too, but he is painfully stupid when it comes to dealing with her blindness. Of course, once she gets the cornea transplant, he totally freaks. Tam just wants to rock and rebuild Chelsia’s confidence, while the attorney finally acts like the father to Cecilia that his estranged daughter has never allowed him to be.

With a title like “All’s Well, Ends Well,” audiences should have a pretty good idea where it is all headed. A thematic series, several cast-members have already found love in previous installments. As an anthology film (whose characters only overlap in the final scene), Well 2012 is not surprisingly somewhat uneven. The best arc features co-producer and Well regular Raymond Wong appealingly co-conspiring with Yang Mi’s poor little rich girl. At the other end of spectrum, it is a little cringy to see veterans like Donnie Yen and Sandra Ng belting out their cheesy songs as Tam and Chelsia

The other two couples fall somewhere in the middle, freely mixing broad comedy with romantic angst. In fact, Ip Man fans who can handle Yen’s over-the-hill rocker should rather enjoy seeing Lynn Xiong (billed as Lynn Hung when playing Ip’s wife) elevating the novelist and dancer story with her exquisitely fragile turn.

Evidently, the Well series is constantly reconfiguring its romance to comedy ratio. 2012 probably leans too far towards the latter, whereas a bit more of the former would travel better for American audiences. Still, it is a hard film to not have some affection for. The cast is quite attractive, most definitely including Yang Mi, Lynn Xiong, Kelly Chen as Sun, and Magic to Win’s Karena Ng, briefly appearing as Richard’s angry daughter. For the ladies, Louis Koo’s Holland is shirtless, a lot (you tell me how impressive that is).

Timed as a Lunar New Year release, Well 2012 is determinedly cheerful, right down to the compulsively happy closing pop song. For fans of the series, it delivers the cute. For hipsters, it shows the sporting nature of its famous cast. For those who like their cinema sugary sweet, it opens today (1/27) in New York at the AMC Empire and in San Francisco at the AMC Metreon, courtesy of China Lion Entertainment.

Sundance ’12: Wrong

2012-01-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

It is the story of a man and his dog, but do not expect Lassie from provocateur Quentin Dupieux, a.k.a. Mr. Oizo. He cast off all logic-based constraints and was creatively liberated for it, to judge by the distinctively strange results in Wrong (trailer here), which screens at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Dolph Springer’s dog Paul has mysteriously vanished. His neighbor is less than sympathetic, because he is too busy going mad. He is not the only one. Eventually, it seems Paul was kidnapped by Master Chang, a tripped out New Age guru, for reasons that defy conventional reason, but make perfect sense in this world. Springer’s gardener, a pizzeria girl, and a detective also careen in and out of the film, in ways that cannot be explained in a lucid thumbnail description.

In his somewhat notorious Rubber (the killer tire movie), Dupieux came up with an eccentric premise and a clever twist, but seemed too hemmed in by the circumstances he created. In contrast, throughout Wrong he allows anything to happen, whether it makes objective sense or not. The resulting absurdity is quite entertaining to behold.

Jack Plotnick is a heck of a good sport. For Wrong to work, he has to play it all relatively straight, while everyone else acts insane. In fact, he brings an earnest sincerity to Springer that is rather endearing. Prison Break’s William Fichtner clearly enjoys hamming up Master Chang’s wacked out Zen, while Alexis Dziena plays Emma from the pizza shop appropriately over-the-top, like a sweetly innocent version of Fatal Attraction’s Alex Forrest.

Wrong is stylistically surreal and subversive, but rather gentle in tone, which is why it works so well. Unlike David Lynch’s Lost Highway, it never leaves viewers bereft of faith or hope. Indeed, Springer is sort of an everyman model of stick-to-itiveness that is actually sort of refreshing.

Rife with postmodern gamesmanship and goofy sight gags, Wrong is definitely aimed at a hipster audience, but it goes down way easier than one might expect. It is a funny, good natured film, recommended for the somewhat adventurous. It screens again during Sundance today (1/26) and tomorrow (1/27) in Park City.

Modernist from Manchester: How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster?

2012-01-26T07:00:00.000-08:00

As a child in World War II era Britain, Norman Foster was often terrified by German bombers. As a world renowned architect, he designed the reconstructed Reichstag for the reunified Germany. The significance is not lost on the self-made architect, whose career and work are surveyed in Norberto López Amado & Carlos Carcas’s How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster (trailer here), now playing in New York at the IFC Center.

A man comfortable with his success, Norman Foster is an appealing figure in many respects. The son of working class parents, the young Foster literally lived on the wrong side of Manchester’s tracks. A RAF veteran, his first architectural job was as part of a firm’s general office support staff. Recognizing his talent, a partner gave him a shot with something more design-oriented. It worked out well.

An enthusiast for America and American architecture, Foster would study at Yale before opening his own firms. Once out on his own, he would design some incredibly striking buildings, bridges, and airports, including the Reichstag, the HSBC Building in Hong Kong, the American Air Museum in Cambridgeshire, the London Millennial Bridge, the Great Court of the British Museum, the Millau Viaduct in southern France, and the Hearst Tower, his only building here in New York. Each is spectacularly shot in Weigh from dramatic vantage points that really make them come alive for viewers.

Perhaps most surprisingly, Foster was a longtime friend of Buckminster Fuller and readily admits the controversial geodesic designer’s influence on his work. In fact, the film’s title comes from a question Fuller once asked Foster. Yet, one can see the Fuller effect in the geometric shapes and materials Foster favors.

As thoughtful and well-spoken as Foster certainly is, his buildings are the real stars of the film. Arguably, a bit much is made of his passion for aviation and the late lecture on sustainability gets a tad repetitive. Still, there are some highly relevant lessons to be learned from Foster’s experiences. According to one partner, the firm won the Beijing International Airport competition a year and a half after losing a London airport assignment, but their terminal was operational seven years before the London project they lost out on. Perhaps this implies something about comparative competitiveness?

Thanks to the loving attention of the co-directors and cinematographer Valentin Álvarez, Foster’s building look truly dazzling throughout the film. Weigh also sounds quite appealing, featuring softly swelling light classical themes composed by Joan Valent and some occasional jazz selections arranged by bassist Toni Cuenca and performed by his combo. An attractive showcase for Foster’s work, Weigh is definitely recommended beyond the armchair architects and design students who will automatically seek it out. It is now showing at the IFC Center in the West Village.

Midnight at the Grand Guignol: The Theatre Bizarre

2012-01-26T05:00:00.000-08:00

Marionettes are creepy, especially when they look like Udo Kier. Fittingly though, that fairly well sums up Pegg Poett, the master of ceremonies for The Theatre Bizarre (trailer here), a horror anthology film screening midnights this Friday and Saturday in New York.

Once the reluctant audience member settles into her seat in the spooky old theater, Poett starts the show with Richard Stanley’s Mother of Toads. Effectively combining Lovecraftian themes with the eerie backdrop of the French Pyrenees, it is easily one of the film’s best looking chapters, with special credit due to the design team. It is hard not to dig a film with a “toad wrangler” credited and the appearance of Lucio Fulci regular Catriona MacColl as Mère Antoinette is a major bonus for genre fans.

Buddy Giovinazzo’s I Love You is arguably the best of show. Set within a Berlin apartment, his tale of passion and madness has a distinctive European sensibility. Giovinazzo deftly builds the tension out of the claustrophobic setting and gets a terrific lead performance from Andre M. Hennicke, a well established German actor known for supporting turns in Jerichow and A Dangerous Method.

Though gore legend Tom Savini’s Wet Dream looks rather muddy, it has its clever moments and certainly delivers what his fans expect. In contrast, Douglas Buck’s excellent The Accident is a horse of a completely different color. Sensitively portraying a young girl’s first exposure to death, it is somewhat out of place in Bizarre, but a good short film is a good short film, regardless where you find it. Indeed, Lena Kleine and Melodie Simmard are both quite natural and engaging, as the mother and daughter, respectively

While it is at times very disturbing, Karim Hussain’s Vision Stains might be the most original and ambitious constituent film in Bizarre. Addressing themes of memory, consciousness, and perception, it depicts an extremely anti-social woman who steals the image-memories of dying homeless women by injecting their optic fluid into her eyes. (Yes, we see this process up close and personal.)

Unfortunately, Bizarre ends on a low note. David Gregory’s cannibalism tale Sweets is both unpleasant and predictable. Still, Bizarre’s ratio of good to bad is about four and a half to one, which is an impressive batting average for anthology films.

Bizarre covers a lot of bases, but I Love You, The Accident, and Vision Stains should all appeal to serious film patrons, while also delivering some jolts along the way. Recommended surprisingly highly for horror movie fans, it screens this Friday (1/27) and Saturday (1/28) nights in New York at the Landmark Sunshine and Troma fans take note: Wet Dreams co-star Debbie Rochon is scheduled to attend the first screening.

Sundance ’12: Wuthering Heights

2012-01-26T03:00:00.000-08:00

Remember Sir Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon in William Wyler’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s romantic classic? If you do, you had best forget them now. Andrea Arnold radically reconceptualizes the familiar story in her mud and thatch version of Wuthering Heights (trailer here), which screens at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

The basic elements are still here. Heathclliff is a sullen young waif adopted by Earshaw, a stern but charitable farmer of property. The lad forges a deep bond with his sort-of sister Catherine, but earns the enmity of Earshaw’s son Linton, for usurping his father’s affections. When the devout farmer dies, Linton inherits the farm, stripping Heathcliff of his family standing. Now a lowly servant, Heathcliff nurses his resentments, which will lead to tragedy.

However, Arnold’s take on Brontë strips away the high costume drama romanticism, tacking an earthy, naturalistic course. Her casting of Afro-Caribbean actors as Heathcliff has garnered much attention, but that is really the least unconventional aspect of her approach. This is a highly impressionistic and ruminative film that revels in closely observed nature studies (masterfully lensed by Robbie Ryan) and relies on ambient noise rather than complimentary music and even dialogue. Set amid a harsh, unsentimentalized environment, Earnshaw’s home, Wuthering Heights, is simply a working farm, with all the muck and mire one should expect. Even Thrushcross Grange is cut down to size, nowhere near as imposing as Highclere Castle (a.k.a. Downton Abbey).

That is not to say it is not effective. As young Heathcliff and Catherine, Solomon Glave and Shannon Beer forcefully portray their characters’ animalism and instinctive defiance. Glave is a particularly electric screen presence, who largely carries the quiet film on his shoulders. By contrast, James Howson is far less dynamic as the older Heathcliff, lacking the charismatic malevolence the role demands. Frankly, he hardly looks much older than Glave.

Indeed, Arnold’s Heights is at its best during Heathcliff and Catherine’s formative years. Like most adaptations, the late chapters concerning their grown children are omitted. Since the film proceeds without a narrator, Mr. Lockwood also gets the boat. However, Heathcliff’s relationship with Isabella is shoehorned in rather awkwardly, perhaps to placate the faithful.

Heights’ Spartan brutality is truly haunting. However, it is doomed to collect decidedly negative online feedback. People who go to Brontë films, do not want to see something new and different. They want the “Oh, Heathcliff” scene on the moors. This is not that kind of film. It viscerally expresses a host of tactile sensations, de-emphasizing melodramatic plot turns. Despite a comparatively weaker third act, it is a bold work that really stays with you after viewing, but due to its nature, it is only recommended for adventurous, fully informed audiences. It screens again during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival tomorrow (1/27) in Park City and this Saturday (1/28) in Salt Lake.

Sundance ’12: Ai Weiwei—Never Sorry

2012-01-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

Ai Weiwei’s distinctive “Bird’s Nest” design for the Beijing National Stadium was one of the defining images of the 2008 Olympics, but Ai sought to redefine the Beijing games, forcefully decrying the tremendous suffering they caused for China’s vulnerable underclass. Choosing the struggle for Chinese human rights over a life of privilege, Ai is arguably the world’s most important activist-artist, whom Alison Klayman profiles in the fascinating and infuriating Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (trailer here), which screens at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival well underway in Park City.

Considering the recurring middle finger motif in Ai’s work, it s hardly surprising he is not a favorite of the regime. Yet, there is more to Ai than mere symbolic defiance. Klayman trenchantly traces the roots of Ai’s nonconformist spirit to the suffering his family experienced during the Cultural Revolution. While Ai made some noise when he repudiated the Olympics, few could hear it within China. However, his mastery of social media, specifically Twitter, would change all that. Indeed, Ai and the legions of everyday Chinese citizens he inspired through Tweets ought to put everyone following vacuous celebrities like Ashton Kutcher to shame.

Most westerners should know Ai was recently held incommunicado for a long stretch by the police, but the projects that earned the artist the Communist government’s wrath may come as a revelation. Most notable were his efforts to document each name of the thousands of school children who died during the Sichuan earthquake as a result of flimsy “tofu” school construction. In any transparent society, this information would be in the public record, but it China all such efforts were explicitly forbidden.

There are scores of lessons to be found in Sorry, including the importance of recording such tragedies for history, rather than letting the innocent victims of Sichuan fall through the Communist memory hole. At times, Ai’s public criticisms of the regime are shockingly bold. Clearly, his guts are made of steel-reinforced concrete. Although Klayman largely focuses on his activism, she still conveys a vivid sense of Ai’s personality. Partly this comes out through some shrewdly edited interview segments. Yet more fundamentally, Ai just seems to be a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person.

Indeed, Klayman wisely focuses squarely on her subject. As a documentarian, she is rather blessed Ai recorded so many of his protests and the subsequent government crackdowns for his social network followers. The word “controversial” should not really apply here. What Ai says has happened, most definitely including a notorious police assault, really did go down. He has the scars and the video to prove it. Aside from some helpful context provided by talking heads and an innocuous score, Sorry is essentially Ai’s show—and appropriately so.

We want to call a film like Sorry “inspiring.” It is a term that undeniably applies to Ai. Unfortunately, though he might be out of immediate physical danger, Ai’s relative freedoms within contemporary China remain harshly curtailed, so viewers are likely to feel several conflicting emotions when the film ends. Anger would be a good one to go with.

This documentary is important, because the international spotlight must shine with far more intensity on his situation if circumstances are ever going to change. Given the Chinese CP’s nasty habit of harassing their critics, Klayman also earns a fair amount of credit for having the guts to tackle this project in the first place. Hopefully, she will have to produce a happy postscript for Sorry sometime in the future, but surely she would not begrudge the extra work.

As it is, the efforts invested in Sorry are considerable. One of two standout documentaries at this year’s Sundance (along with The Other Dream Team, review to come), the earnestly recommended Sorry screens again this Thursday (1/26) and Saturday (1/28) in Park City, Friday (1/2/7) in Sundance Resort, and today (1/25) in Salt Lake.

Sundance ’12: The Other Dream Team

2012-01-25T05:00:00.001-08:00

In the late 1930’s, Lithuania twice won the European basketball championship. In 1940, it was invaded and subjugated by the Soviet Union. Yet, the tiny Baltic country’s proud sporting tradition helped sustain it during those painful decades, culminating in the newly free Lithuania’s Olympic victory over the Russian-Unified team in 1992. The incredible history of the Lithuania’s break from the Soviet Union and the game that announced their independence to the world is told in Marius Markevicius’s stirring documentary The Other Dream Team (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

America’s 1988 Olympic loss to the Soviets was the impetus for the creation of the so-called “Dream Team” of NBA all-stars, including Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing. However, four of the Soviet team’s starters were actually Lithuania. In fact, warriors like Arvydas Sabonis and Šarunas Marčiulionis had dramatically mixed emotions about their 1988 gold. They were proud of their accomplishments, but it was not the anthem they wanted to hear on the medal stand.

Four years later, much had changed. Sabonis and his colleagues were finally allowed to play in the NBA as a reward for their Olympic glory. At great risk, Lithuania had asserted its independence and held out against invading Soviet forces. The freshly sovereign country could field one of the best basketball teams in the world but had insufficient resources to send them to Barcelona. However, help would come from an unexpected source: the Grateful Dead.

Dream gives roughly equal time to sports and history, but each part is equally uplifting and informative. Indeed, people often forget it was Nobel Peace Laureate Mikhail Gorbachev who sent the tanks into Vilnius. In fact, independence leader Vytautas Landsbergis is just as much a protagonist as Sabonis and his teammates.

Just about all the starters from the 1992 team are heard from in great length throughout Team and each has their share of telling anecdotes. As is so often the case with survivors’ reminiscences of the Communist era, they are often simultaneously funny and sad. Yet, simply considered as a sports doc, Dream is one of the best in years. Even basketball fans who think they know the players well will learn something new here.

This is a great story, smartly constructed with rich details and full historical context. The many Grateful Dead tunes included in the soundtrack are also a nice bonus. For those looking for a movie that celebrates the spirit of freedom, Dream will get you choked-up, in a good way. Legitimately inspiring and hugely entertaining, it is one of two truly standout documentaries at Sundance this year (along with Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry). Enthusiastically recommended, it screens again today (1/25) and Saturday (1/28) in Park City, as well as this Friday (1/27) in Salt Lake.

Sundance ’12: Lay the Favorite

2012-01-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

It is easier to get a job in Vegas messengering about large sums of gambling money than a gig as a cocktail waitress. Fortunately, Beth Raymer has a knack with numbers, leading to a checkered career in the betting business. Raymer’s memoir becomes the stuff of light-hearted dramedy in Stephen Frears’ Lay the Favorite (clip here), which screens during this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

“Lay the Favorite” is one of those old school gambler’s expressions Raymer’s new boss Dink Heimowitz uses. Dink Inc is not a bookmaker, it is a betting establishment. Every day Dink and his employees work the phones, placing legal bets around town. As long as he wins fifty-five percent of the time, it’s all good. With Raymer’s arrival, Dink comes out of a losing slump, leading him to conclude the ditz-savant is his good luck charm. This does not sit well with Tulip, Dink’s Bravo reality show worthy wife.

Dink once did time for bookmaking, so now he keep things strictly legit. The emotionally needy Tulip also keeps him on a tight leash, which means the openly flirtatious Raymer has to go. However, Dink becomes increasingly concerned when Raymer gets involved with an outright bookie, so sleazy he has to be played by Vince Vaughn.

In a way, Favorite seems an odd fit for Sundance. It is a very commercial but rather pleasant film that ought to be better suited for a studio release than an art house run. It offers some interesting Damon Runyon-esque peaks into the world of legal and illicit sports betting, but this is definitely a women’s film. Breezy with a periodic outburst of angst, it is probably a lot like what One for the Money should have been (but most likely isn’t).

However, it is supporting characters and slightly sleazy milieu that really make Favorite work. Vaughn does his usual shtick well enough, but Bruce Willis really stands out, perfectly suited for Dink. Like his character, he seems to comfortably fit somewhere in between a romantic lead and a father figure. Nearly unrecognizable, Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Tulip to hilt, with relish. So does Rebecca Hall, but her Raymer often comes across too Erin Brockovichy, which is never good, in any context. At least, she isn’t shy.

Favorite is hardly what we would expect from Frears either, but the Dangerous Liaisons helmer has a nice touch with the material, never letting Raymer’s melodrama overwhelm the upbeat vibe. It is not a big important film, but Favorite is an entertaining diversion, featuring some of Willis’s best work in a while. Recommended in that modest spirit, but not an ultra-high priority at Sundance, it screens again this Saturday (1/28) and Sunday (1/29) in Park City.

Slamdance ’12: Ed Wood’s Final Curtain

2012-01-24T05:00:00.000-08:00

In recent years, major international filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Agnieszka Holland have branched out into dramatic television in-between their feature work. Cult-film legend Ed Wood had a similar idea decades ago, but alas, for the cross-dressing director, it was not to be. Unseen for fifty-five years, Wood’s long lost spec pilot Final Curtain premiered last night at the 2012 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

Conceived as the first installment of an anthology series called Portraits of Terror, Curtain starts with an appropriately hyperbolic introduction telling viewers the characters to follow are “Creatures to be pitied. Creatures to be despised . . .” We’ve been so warned. There will be no Criswell narration here. However, the protagonist’s wonderfully overwrought voiceovers are handled by Dudley Manlove, another Wood stalwart, recognizable as the snippy alien in Plan Nine From Outer Space.

Curtain chronicles an actor’s fateful night in a dark theater long after the last performance of his play. Naturally, he played a vampire, but for some reason the stage sets resemble a prairie cabin. Of course, for Ed Wood continuity errors, this is small beans. Throughout the run, something supernatural has been calling, calling to him. At last, he faces it or perhaps we are witnessing his descent into madness.

Wood claimed Bela Lugosi died reading his Curtain treatment, which is pretty heavy, considering the general quality of the scripts that came his way. Adding yet another layer of meta-weirdness, Curtain briefly features Jenny Stevens as “The Vampire,” about whom nothing is known aside from her appearance in a previous Ed Wood film, leading some to suspect she was the director’s drag persona.

This might sound incredible, but the darkened backstage setting is actually kind of spooky. Somehow Wood and his crew gained access to a real working theater, so at least the soundboards and orchestra seats are not cardboard cut-outs, listing from side-to-side. The twenty-two minute running time also keeps Wood’s story somewhat focused, not that the actor’s decisions make much sense.

Curtain is pretty much exactly what you think it is. Knowing that it exists and has been preserved for posterity alone justified a trip to Park City. The restoration’s executive producers, Jason Insalaco and Jonathan Harris, are clearly motivated by an abiding love for the Wood canon. In Fact, Insalaco’s uncle was Paul Marco, a long time Ed Wood co-conspirator, known to the faithful for his recurring character, Kelton the cop. A really strange piece of Hollywood history, Curtain should have a long life of midnight screenings in its future. Indeed, its premiere was a real event at the 2012 Slamdance Film Festival.

Sundance ’12: Red Lights

2012-01-24T03:00:00.000-08:00

Sigourney Weaver has gone from ghost-busting to ghost debunking. However, she may have met her match in Simon Silver, a notorious television psychic from the 1970’s, who comes out of retirement for nefarious purposes in Rodrigo Cortés’ Red Lights (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Dr. Margaret Matheson (a Richard Matheson hat tip perhaps?) is the chair of the department of skepticism. Her rival Dr. Paul Shackleton is the chair of the department of believing any spooky thing that might bring in funding. She and her colleague Dr. Tom Buckley expose psychic frauds, while Shackleton plays with his flash cards. Simon Silver was the one that got away. Supposedly vindicated by a flawed laboratory study Matheson refused to sign off on, Silver’s triumph has always been a blot on her reputation.

With the Uri Geller inspired villain back in the public eye, Buckley is spoiling for a fight, but Matheson is gun shy. Even if he does not have psychic powers, Silver is a master of finding his critics’ weak spots and exploiting them. Yet, with all the stuff suddenly going bump in the night, we are led to wonder whether or not the psychic really does command dark forces after all.

The first half of Red is a rather nifty little paranormal investigation procedural, but once Weaver’s Matheson is out of the equation, the film completely craters. Logic is treated with contempt and the indie breakout sensation Elizabeth Olsen is stuck standing around with nothing to do, besides sleep with her T.A. To make matters worse, Buckley’s closing monologue and subsequent voiceover narration invite open mockery. They are so over-the-top, they make the newly rediscovered Ed Wood film sound sharp and focused by comparison.

Weaver brings a reliably smart and mature presence to the film as Matheson and she develops a likable and realistic chemistry with Cillian Murphy’s Buckley. Frankly, the female mentor-male protégé relationship is not often seen in films and it is quite nicely turned here. Unfortunately, all the woo-woo effects get awfully sour very quickly. It is also another depressing reminder of the fall of Robert De Niro, once again playing an icily impassive villain in a dark suit.

Red really can be divided into two distinct parts. One is pretty engaging. The other is ridiculous and utterly clichéd. Sadly, the latter is the somewhat longer concluding piece, which essentially sinks the entire film. Recommended for a severe return trip to the editing bay, Red is ultimately a disappointment at this year’s Sundance, where it screens this Wednesday (1/25) and Saturday (1/25) in Park City and tomorrow (1/24) in Ogden.

Sundance ’12: The Raid

2012-01-23T04:00:00.000-08:00

Law enforcement is a noble calling. One rookie SWAT cop will be doing a heck of a lot of enforcing. Unfortunately, he is assigned to a decidedly dodgy mission in Gareth Huw Evans’ spectacularly awesome The Raid (trailer here), which screens as part of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Tama the kingpin rules the Indonesia underworld from atop his high-rise fortress. He rents apartments and immunity from police harassment to any cutthroat willing to pay rent. However, Rama’s squad is supposed to change all that. They are to systematically secure the building and capture Tama. Of course, it turns out Tama has the drop on them. Since no reinforcements will be coming for their off-the-books operation, Rama and a handful of survivors will have to fight their way out in the same manner they came in—floor by machete-wielding floor. Or in other words: Hell, yes.

The Raid is the sort of film that could turn the prim and proper into martial arts fanboys. Evans maintains an absolute breakneck pace and stages some massive action sequences. Yet, the film is at its absolute best during its many scenes of extended close quarters combat, choreographed by its breakout lead Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian, who co-stars as Tama’s self-explanatory henchman, Mad Dog.

Indeed, The Raid should catapult Uwais to the ranks of international superstardom. As Rama, he does something stilted indie films, didactic imports, and vapid reality shows have failed to do: provide a sympathetic Muslim protagonist with broad cross-cultural appeal. By the same token Ruhian’s Mad Dog is a most satisfyingly ferocious villain.

Many action film trailers just dice up some of their best scenes and spit them out at viewers machine gun style. In contrast, The Raid’s trailer is perfectly representative of the film’s hyper-charged energy (if anything, it is toned down a notch). Evans also shrewdly capitalizes on Tama’s seedy and imposing building, further boosting the tension through the claustrophobic setting. Frankly, the film is somewhat reminiscent of early John Woo, simultaneously gritty and operatic.

The Raid is the real deal. Packed with carnage, it is an old school martial arts shootout, with genuine art-house credibility. Highly recommended, it has been a major crowd pleaser at this year’s Sundance, where it screens again this Thursday (1/26) in Park City and Saturday (1/27) in Salt Lake.

Sundance ’12: The Pact

2012-01-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

Annie and her sister handle stress badly. The former just runs away, while the latter self-medicates. They are both attractive though, so midnight movie patrons will likely forgive them their shortcomings in Nicholas McCarthy’s The Pact, which screens late nights during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

The two sisters had a horrible childhood, but we never really learn why. It was so bad though, Annie has never forgiven her mother for it. As a result, the ex-junkie sister is stuck being the responsible one when their mother passes away. Then one night (in a Grudge-like opening scene) something bad happens to her in their old house. Reluctantly, Annie finally comes to investigate her sister’s disappearance, suspecting she has simply relapsed once again. However, after spending her own harrowing night in the family casa, Annie comes to understand there is something seriously sinister afoot there.

For some seemingly out-of-character reason, biker Annie goes to the coppers to report her house is haunted. Of course, all this really gets her is an opportunity to indignantly protest her sanity. At least, Creek the good cop is willing to swing by to take a few photos or something.

To be fair, the horror movie mechanics of The Pact are pretty good, including the first (and probably last) genuinely creepy internet search. McCarthy also blends the elements of the supernatural and psycho killer sub-genres fairly effectively. Still, there is an over-reliance on unrealistically dumb flat foots and cheap scares built around sudden loud noises. The clear implication that the outward Christian piety of Annie’s family masked something profoundly hypocritical is also a tiresome cliché. Just once it would be cool to see a horror movie in which the psychopath was a loud mouth atheist jerk.

Again, it must be conceded Caity Lotz and Agnes Bruckner have the right assets to play the haunted sisters. They truly look like twins and already have considerable scream queen cred with the fanbase. Evidently Starship Troopers’ Casper Van Dien is now taking the parts Michael Biehn passes on, but he is not terrible as the jaded but decent Creek.

You will see better horror movies than The Pact and you will see worse. Fanboys will certainly want to see more of Lotz and Bruckner. Overall it is a serviceable, but only occasionally inspired chiller, probably best seen with a large and slightly buzzed audience at this year’s Sundance. It screens again this Tuesday (1/24) and Thursday (1/26) in Park City and Saturday (1/28) in Salt Lake.

Slamdance ’12: Faith Love + Whiskey

2012-01-22T05:00:00.000-08:00

Sofia, Bulgaria looks like a great city for night life, but not so hot for finding a job. That is why Neli is supposed to marry her rich American fiancée. However, her lingering feelings for her reckless Bulgarian ex threaten to derail the plan in Kristina Nikolova’s Faith Love + Whiskey (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 Slamdance Film Festival in snowy Park City.

Neli’s grandmother might be losing her eyesight, but she still has that twinkle in her eye. She is delighted her granddaughter will be marrying the wealthy and attentive Scott. As far as she is concerned, there is no future for her in Bulgaria. Frankly, Scott might be a bit too nice. Stifled by it all, Neli precipitously returns to Bulgaria and launches into a bender of booze and passion with her former lover, the slightly Rutger Hauer looking Val. It is uncertain just how long they can maintain this flight from responsibility, but those dead soldiers sure do pile up fast on the balcony of their motel room.

Whiskey is a relatively simple story that takes a major New Wave-art-house turn in the third act, but it vividly evokes a sense of the Eastern European after hours vibe. It will make viewers (particularly festive Park City patrons) want to visit Sofia. Indeed, quite a bit of the Bulgarian club music heard throughout the film is surprisingly catchy and distinctive.

It would be perilously easy to lose patience with a character like Neli, but the Macedonian Ana Stojanovska projects a sense of emotional confusion more than mere self-indulgence, which is honestly quite human and relatable. Poor John Keabler does not have much to work with as the terminally nice Scott, but Ljuba Alexieva is quite charming and appealingly grounded as her silver-haired grandmother. As for Valeri Yordanov’s Val, even though he is a bit stiff on-screen, at least he is definitely a credible barroom brawler.

Although it was clearly shot on a shoe-string budget, Whiskey is quite an interesting looking movie. Alexander Stanishev’s grungy, gauzy cinematography seems perfectly suited to Bulgaria. Nikolova also capitalizes on her cinematic locales, while maintaining an intimate focus on her characters.

Whiskey is a cerebral and sensual film, which is actually a rather cool combination. It should definitely resonate deeply with former expats. Recommended for serious festivalers, it screens again this coming Wednesday (1/25) during the 2012 Slamdance Film Festival.

Sundance ’12: The Ambassador

2012-01-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

Ambassadors are generally addressed as “your Excellency,” which is nice. They can also carry briefcases loaded with diamonds through customs, no questions asked. That is even cooler. It is definitely what mad Mads Brügger had in mind when he set out to buy a diplomatic post. His resulting misadventures are documented in The Ambassador (trailer here), Brügger’s latest gutsy cinematic provocation screening at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

If you have seen Brügger’s Red Chapel (and I really hope you have), you will be familiar with his fearless brand of documentary filmmaking. The plan this time is to buy an ambassadorship representing Liberia in the Central African Republic (CAR) through a “diplomatic broker.” Once credentialed, Brügger will establish a match factory as a cover for his illegal diamond smuggling operation. The shocking thing is he pretty much goes about doing exactly that, but there are complications.

For the record, these are very definitely blood diamonds he is talking about. There just aren’t any other kind in the CAR. That means the politically connected mine owner Brügger starts negotiating with is a pretty scary character. Indeed, there are real stakes for Brügger in this masquerade, including life and limb.

Frankly, Ambassador would be hilarious if it was a feature narrative, but as a documentary, it is rather staggering. The wholesale government corruption Brügger captures on film is widespread and pervasive. While some blame for the country’s lawlessness and desperate poverty is laid at the feet of their former colonial power, the good old French, there is truly no excuse for such dire conditions to exist in a country so richly blessed with mineral resources. Clearly, something is rotten in the failed state of CAR, and Liberia is hardly any better.

Looking like a character from a Graham Greene novel, Brügger plays his part to the hilt. Unlike Red Chapel, where the director was in a constant on-screen dialogue with the viewers and his co-conspirators in his attempt to punk the North Korean regime, Brügger largely stays in character throughout Ambassador. His neck is also on the line when things get dodgy.

Had a conventional Michael Moore-inspired doc-grinder tackled this subject, they simply would have ambushed the receptionist at Liberia’s UN mission and claimed a great moral victim when the low level employee could not discuss their countries diplomatic personnel in the CAR chapter and verse. Brügger puts them to shame. (This specifically includes the Yes Men.) Until they start challenging the kind of people who can make them disappear, on their home turf, they are not worthy of carrying Brügger’s cigarette holder. Another have-to-see-it-to-believe-it film from the muckraking provocateur, The Ambassador is very highly recommended when it screens at this year’s Sundance in Park City on Tuesday (1/24), Thursday (1/26), and Friday (1/27), as well as next Saturday (1/28) in Salt Lake.

Sundance ’12: Wish You Were Here

2012-01-21T03:00:00.001-08:00

Southeast Asia really is not the wisest place to go on a drug and booze-fueled bender, particularly if you are parents and even more so if you are pregnant. Nonetheless, the Flannerys decides you only live once in Kieran Darcy-Smith’s cautionary tale, Wish You Were Here (trailer here), which screens as part of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Dave and Alice Flannery have two kids, with a third on the way. Despite her advancing pregnancy they cannot say no when her sister Steph McKinney’s new boyfriend offers to treat them all to a vacation in Cambodia. A sketchy import-exporter, the fast-talking Jeremy King claims he can deduct it all. Evidently, Australia must have quite an indulgent tax code. At first, the quartet has a blast, as the audience can plainly see from the long opening montage. However, only three of them came back. Somewhere along the way, they lost King.

Actually, quite a bit went down in Cambodia that threatens to break their family ties. Since they all assume King’s disappearance involved his stash of XTC, they have trouble deciding just what they should tell the Australian authorities. Needless to say, there are probably lingering dangers from that fateful night they should also worry about.

At times, the Flannerys can just be hair-pullingly dumb. An iota of communication would have spared them so much grief. Still, the slow reveal of King’s fate is rather effective (though the resolution of the mystery is somewhat underwhelming). The Cambodian locales are also quite cinematically exotic and seedy. Yet throughout Wish, it is impossible to shake the notion the Flannerys got off easy. Haven’t they seen Midnight Express? Drug use in a less than transparent country is usually a distinctly bad idea.

Poised to succeed Russell Crowe as Hollywood’s favorite square-jawed Australian, Joel Edgerton definitely has the right intense screen presence and everyman quality for Dave Flannery. Granted, it is a stressful set of circumstances, but Felicity Price’s Alice Flannery often comes across as somewhat overwrought and irrational. In contrast, even though he draws the short straw, Anthony Starr is rather memorably dynamic as the ill-fated King.

Wish is a serviceable thriller-slash-family drama, but it holds no real surprises in store for viewers. It probably will not do much for Cambodian tourism either, even though the beaches look inviting. Not a special priority, Wish screens tonight (1/21) in Odgen and this coming Wednesday (1/25) and Friday (1/27) in Park City, as this year’s Sundance swings into high gear.

Sundance ’12: Where Do We Go Now?

2012-01-21T03:00:00.000-08:00

Isolated and picturesque, the Lebanese village of Taybeh offered the perfect locations for the country’s official submission for this year’s best foreign language Academy Award. The church and mosque built side by side will be particularly significant in Nadine Labaki’s stylized musical, Where Do We Go Now? (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Accessible only by an impossibly torturous bridge, the Christian and Muslim inhabitants live in peace, or at least the women do. The men are uneasy in their truce as news of fresh violence in the outside world vaguely drifts in. Tired of their perpetual mourning, Amale, the Christian widow who operates the town café, organizes the women like a Lebanese Lysistrata. They sabotage the television and radios, while doing their best to distract the restive men. When all else fails, they bring in a troupe of Ukrainian strippers, in a bit of a departure from the film’s classical Greek forerunner.

In a bit of a twist, the women’s few real male allies include the village’s priest and imam, whom the film presents as friendly colleagues rather than hateful zealots. Of course, Labaki and co-writers Jihad Hojeily, and Rodney Al Haddad strenuously avoid taking sides. Indeed, the whole crux of the film is the interchangeability of the two faiths.

The occasional musical number certainly helps liven-up the proceedings. Some are rather somber, like the funeral procession taking a slight Fosse-esque detour. However, Amale’s fantasy dance with Rabih, her Muslim handyman, is pretty hot stuff. As Amale, Labaki is also rather alluring, but her smart and sophisticated presence seems at odds with the rest of the largely matronly townswomen. Indeed, she seems distinctly out of place in this town full of stock characters.

Still, the choreography is striking and Christophe Offenstein’s cinematography is often quite arresting, soaking up all the scarred beauty of the weathered village and the rugged surrounding landscape. Though well meaning, Where remains a minor film that ultimately lacks the gravitas it presumes to have by virtue of its subject matter. Pleasant for those who enjoy an unconventional movie musical, but hardly a priority at Sundance, it screens today (1/21), Wednesday (1/25), and the following Saturday (1/28) in Park City, as well as this Sunday (1/22) in Salt Lake.

Sundance ’12: The Conquerors (short)

2012-01-20T09:00:00.000-08:00

They are sort of like the Swiss Family Robinson, except more archetypal. They also must learn to share their bizarre new world with fantastical insectoid creatures in Tibor Banoczki & Sarolta Szabo’s unusually ambitious, genre-defying animated short film The Conquerors (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Sundance Film Festival in Park City.

Amidst a roiling sea, a man and a woman become castaways on a forbidding island. Since she is pregnant, their situation is particularly dire. Yet, after some initial days of hunger, the man learns how to tame the smaller beetle-like creatures and hunt the larger ones. The woman safely delivers her baby and several more follow. Eventually, their family becomes a small community. For the most part, they live in harmony with their macabre environment, but danger is ever present. Then outsiders arrive and everything changes.

Rendered in a distinctive photorealism style of animation, Conquerors has a striking look truly unique unto itself. Its evocative black-and-white images suggest the influence of both German expressionism and 1930’s adventure serials in equal measure, while the strange world owes more to the surrealists. Yet, in terms of tone, its closest comparison might be René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet, for their bold use of Biblical motifs and brutally naturalistic representation of the rule of the jungle.

Conquerors screens as part of the short program in Sundance’s New Frontiers track, which is sort of a catch-all for work that is experimental or tech-driven. While its animation might be cutting edge, it is still perfectly accessible from a narrative standpoint. In fact, Banoczki and Szabo tell quite an epic tale in an economic twelve minutes.

So richly detailed and loaded with allegorical significance, Conquerors is definitely the sort of film that rewards multiple viewings. Visually, it is absolutely absorbing, even when depicting unsettling events. A co-production of the National Film Board of Canada, it would be a highlight of most any short film program. Highly recommended, it screens during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontiers shorts block this coming Monday (1/23), Wednesday (1/25), and next Saturday (1/28) in Park City and this coming Tuesday (1/24) in Salt Lake.

Slamdance ’12: Buffalo Girls

2012-01-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

There are no participation medals in boxing. One fighter wins and the other loses. Audiences will be acutely aware of this fact while watching Todd Kellstein’s documentary Buffalo Girls (trailer here), an up-close and personal glimpse into the lives of two eight year-old girls who fight to support their families. Be forewarned, it is a real heart-wrencher, which screens during the 2012 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

Technically, the child Muay Thai boxing circuit operates underground, but nobody seems too concerned about being caught. Young Stam Sor Con Lek is widely known as a champion in her age and weight division. Pet Chor Chanachai is the leading contender. Both sweet-tempered young girls are their families’ primary breadwinners. In hope of a better life, they train like professionals and give it all in the ring, without the benefit of head-gear.

Although both girls insist they want to fight, one has to wonder. Granted, there are not a lot of options in rural Thailand (where peasants are derogatorily called “buffalo” for their stoic fortitude, hence the title) and a successful child fighter can make thousands of Baht in a match. However, that is an awful lot of stress for an eight year-old to carry, not to mention the physical toll.

Largely filmed observational-style with only the occasional on-camera question asked through interpreters, Kellstein follows the girls through three bouts, culminating with the title fight for all the marbles. Unlike nearly every other boxing film ever produced, it is impossible to pick a side to root for. Stam and Pet are equally bright and engaging. (Their parents are a different matter though. Some viewers might want to see them go a few rounds with the Klitschko brothers to see how they like it.) Clearly, the young girls ought to be in school studying for a productive future rather than the ring, but in Thailand that is much easier said than done.

Gaining intimate access to the two girls’ home and training programs, Kellstein gives viewers a visceral sense of their daily living conditions and prospects. It is impossible not to care deeply about them after the first two or three minutes. Hopefully, if Buffalo Girls gains traction, there are mechanisms already in place for Stam and Pet to benefit, because they unquestionably deserve it. Recommended for those who can handle raw reality, Buffalo Girls screens this Sunday (1/22) and the following Tuesday (1/24) as part of this year’s Slamdance Festival in Park City.

Slamdance also has a full slate of narrative features, including Kristina Nikolova’s sensual and cerebral Faith, Love + Whiskey, which vividly captures a sense of the displacement experienced by a Bulgarian expat on her return home from America. Its depiction of Bulgarian nightlife (with its surprisingly catchy club music) ought to well suit Park City audiences when it screens tonight (1/20) and Wednesday (1/25). Slamdance will also screen Final Curtain, a never before seen television pilot, written, produced, and directed by the now legendary Ed Wood that cries out to be seen with an appreciative and slightly ruckus audience this coming Monday night (1/23).

Sundance ’12: Searching for Sugar Man

2012-01-20T05:00:00.000-08:00

Sixto Rodriguez, a.k.a. Rodriguez, a.k.a. Jesus Rodriguez was considered the Bob Dylan of inner city soul. His voice even had a vaguely similar nasal quality, but was much richer and sonorous. Despite positive reviews for two albums, Rodriguez quietly slipped into obscurity in America. Yet, unbeknownst to him, his music would be embraced by a generation of anti-Apartheid Afrikaners. Two South African music lovers’ dogged investigation into Rodriguez’s fate is documented in Malik Bendjelloul’s Searching for Sugar Man, which screens during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Due to his musical tastes and mispronunciations of his name, Cape Town record store owner Stephen Segerman has been nick-named “Sugar Man” since his army days. As any anti-apartheid white South African coming of age in the 1970’s knew, “Sugar Man” was one of Rodriguez’s greatest “hits.”

Though he never sold in America, it seems the visiting daughter of naturalized South African Americans brought a copy of his debut album Cold Fact with her and it just caught on, or so the legend goes. First bootleg copies circulated, but eventually legitimate South African labels started licensing it from future Motown honcho Clarence Avant’s Sussex Records. The money part of the story remains hazy (Bendjelloul lets Avant off rather easy in their on-camera interview), but none of it ever made its way to Rodriguez.

With no biographical information on his record sleeves, Rodriguez became a man of mystery to his hundreds of thousands of South African fans. Wild legends sprang up regarding his spectacular demise. However, the truth is worth staying for.

Sugar is a really well put together documentary. Camilla Skagerstrom’s cinematography vividly conveys the spirit of Rodriguez’s native Detroit and the Cape Town of his number one fan, as do the seamlessly integrated animated passages. Nonetheless, it is Rodriguez’s songs that truly give the film such a distinctive character. Extremely soulful and lushly orchestrated (nobody can fault Sussex for their production quality), they speak for themselves.

While the collector’s label Light in the Attic has reissued Rodriguez’s catalog, he remains far from a household name in America. Still, Bendjelloul’s documentary could possibly deliver scores of new fans. Wisely, he includes extensive selections from Rodriguez’s body of work, which are well served by the film’s excellent sound quality. Despite the singer’s politically charged lyrics, Bendjelloul also shrewdly avoids ideological partisanship. As a result, Sugar is a very accessible and satisfying film. Highly recommended (especially for Soul listeners), it screens in Park City today (1/20), Wednesday (1/25), and Friday (1/27), as well as this Sunday (1/22) in Ogden.

NYJFF ’12: Incessant Visions

2012-01-20T03:00:00.000-08:00

One of Jewish German architect Erich Mendelsohn’s final projects in Berlin served as an SS prison during the National Socialist era. Wisely, he did not stay long enough to get a look at their renovations. Often dubbed an “expressionist” pioneer but frequently associated with the Bauhaus movement, his architecture would be very influential in pre-war Europe and post-war Israel. Duki Dror’s Incessant Visions: Letters from an Architect (trailer here), a documentary survey of the architect’s life and work, based on Mendelsohn’s collected correspondence and his wife’s memoir, screens during the 2012 New York Film Festival.

Like many Jewish Germans, the Polish-born Mendelsohn proudly served his country in WWI, frequently sending letters and drawings home to his wife Louise. A man resolutely of the left, Mendelsohn maintained his ideological leanings even when his wife’s affair with Communist poet Ernst Toller nearly scuttled their marriage. After the reception of his Einstein Tower observatory, Mendelsohn became one of the most successful and stylistically identifiable architects in Germany. He would be closely identified with the department stores he designed for Schocken, only one of which survives today.

Recognizing the prevailing winds, the Mendelsohns left Germany while that option was still open to them. Leaving everything behind, Mendelsohn never attained the same level of prominence in exile, but still produced a striking body of work, particularly in the once and future Israel.

A friendly admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright, Mendelsohn’s work could be considered a link between the American’s distinctive modernism and the more austere International Style of Mies van der Rohe. Featuring dramatically curved prows, set-back terraces, and circular interior staircases, his work looks sleekly modern, but comfortably livable.

Dror captures the personality of the buildings quite well, often finding a hospitable host to provide a tour for viewers. It helps that Mendelsohn’s architecture is considerably more photogenic than that of his International colleagues. Incessant sufficiently covers biographical matters as well, but never obsesses over the couple’s infidelities and politics. As a result, the documentary moves along quite briskly, keeping its focus where it should be.

Indeed, Incessant is a rather smartly executed documentary. Saving the introduction of its talking heads for the final credit is a nice little touch, like a curtain call (after all, it is clear enough who they are from the context of their comments). Combining a fairly interesting story with some striking structures, lovingly shot, Incessant is a very solid architectural documentary. It screens this coming Tuesday (1/24) and Wednesday (1/25) at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the 2012 NYJFF.

Sundance ’12: About the Pink Sky

2012-01-19T06:45:00.000-08:00

Izumi Kawashima is like the Japanese live action version of MTV’s Daria, except way more mordant. Indeed, she is down-right caustic at times, but in a sort of charming way. She will still has plenty of coming of age moments in store for her in Keiichi Kobayashi’s appealingly subversive About the Pink Sky (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in Park City.

A chance discovery of a wallet loaded with 300,000 Yen precipitates a series of ethical crises for Kawashima. Contemptuous of the lazy local patrolman, the compulsive newspaper reader researches the owner, Koki Sato, learning he is the son of a corrupt (in her judgment) politician. Considering it “dirty money,” she lends 200,000 to a middle-aged fishing acquaintance about to lose his business, who mysteriously disappears (for real) shortly thereafter.

Making the mistake of treating her friends, mean girl Hasumi (or Haruko depending on her mood) Ono and the hard-working Kaoru Mayuzumi, Kawashima finds herself potentially deeply in debt when they insist on returning the wallet to Sato. Not coincidentally, the assertive Ono is quite taken Sato’s picture. It turns out, Kawashima can handle him pretty easily, but his inconsistent stories confuse the innocent cynic.

Using largely neophyte actors, Kobayashi hits the jackpot with his talented and wildly charismatic young cast. Utterly credible and completely unaffected, they all look and sound like teenagers observed surreptitiously in real life, but can deliver deadpan zingers like seasoned pros. Quiet but electric, Ai Ikeda truly commands the screen as Kawashima, conveying both her keen intelligence and age-appropriate immaturity. We can tell she is smart, but not quite as smart as she thinks, which plays out in intriguing ways throughout the film.

Likewise, Ena Koshino is completely convincing as the bossy but fragile Ono, while Reiko Fujiwara is rather endearing as Mayuzumi, the weakest drawn character of the trio. However, Sky is more than mere teen angst. Visually arresting, its black-and-white cinematography is inspired by traditional Japanese ink painting. Yet, Kawashima and her friends would be interesting regardless of Kobayashi’s stylistic choices. Though it occasionally suggests comparisons to Lynch and Jarmusch, his film is never macabre or in any way unpleasant. Indeed, Sky is gentle in its eccentricity.

Don’t call Sky quirky. It is much more than that now dreaded indie cliché. Often very funny but also quite heartfelt, Sky is a wonderfully fresh and sharply written film with an unforgettable debut lead performance. A clear highlight at Sundance this year, it is enthusiastically recommended when it screens tomorrow (1/20), Saturday (1/21), Thursday (1/26), and Friday (1/27) in Park City, as well as this Sunday (1/22) in Salt Lake.

Sundance ’12: Madrid, 1987

2012-01-19T05:00:00.001-08:00

It is a timeless question: which has the upper hand, age and guile or youth and vitality? It usually depends on how you score. One such Spanish generational tête-à-tête takes on a whiff of the zeitgeist, coming after the various coups and political circuses of the immediate post-Franco era. One curmudgeonly columnist has seen it all and has definitely ideas about scoring during his encounter with an admiring journalism student in David Trueba’s Madrid, 1987 (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in Park City.

Miguel is so smugly self-satisfied, he can hardly stand himself. To Ángela, he is a legend. A Spanish Mencken who skewered generals and politicians for years in his daily column, it was something of a coup to land an interview with him. The old soldier has outlived his battles though. Feeling like a relic, the columnist hopes to regain some youth by seducing the student. He is not exactly the smoothest of old foxes, but he gets an assist from fate when the two are inadvertently locked naked in the bathroom until Miguel’s artist friend returns to his flat. It is certainly awkward, but eventually they begin to talk about nearly everything, but particularly Spain, art, sex, and the passage of time.

Those who think of Madrid as a nude My Dinner with Andre might be right to an extent. Yet, Trueba never lets his characters or viewers get too comfortable with the situation. Never completely hot or cold to the older man, Ángela’s emotional responses crest and fall with his near monologues. He can be charming, but he can also be insensitive. He certainly is pleased with the sound of his own voice though, so he might not be one’s first choice to be locked in a bathroom with.

Yet, for those who enjoy a talky movie, Madrid is quite sharply written and delivered. Trueba really digs into some meaty themes. Granted, some topics will have far more resonance for Spanish audiences, but there are plenty of universals any viewer can relate to.

Trueba’s two leads definitely deserve credit for their fearlessness, essentially appearing nude for the bulk of the film with only a handful of strategically placed towels for cover, while chewing on some heavy lines. Guys will surely notice María Valverde is quite healthy, but José Sacristán’s splotchy body is not likely to do much for the ladies. Still, he has a rare flair for pointed dialogue. In fact, it is rather fascinating to watch them play off each other.

Deftly helmed by Trueba (brother of Fernando Trueba, whose outstanding Chico & Rita opens in New York February 10th), the more-or-less two-hander never feels stagey, despite the necessarily claustrophobic setting. Ultimately, this dichotomy of a New Spain without experience or baggage vs. an Old Spain that jealously nurses its bitterness will appeal to a self-selecting audience. It is smartly realized by its two principals, so they will be satisfied with the results. Recommended at this year’s Sundance Film Festival for those appreciate Spanish cinema or dialogue-driven films, Madrid, 1987 screens in Park City tomorrow (1/20), Saturday (1/21), Sunday (1/22), next Friday (1/27), and Saturday (1/28), as well as Tuesday (1/24) in Salt Lake.

Sundance ’12: The Debutante Hunters (short doc)

2012-01-19T05:00:00.000-08:00

They are no Scarlett O’Haras. As long as these Southern ladies have ammunition, they will never go hungry. Challenging Southern Belle stereotypes, Maria White follows five South Carolinian women as their pursue their game in the short documentary Debutante Hunters, which screens ahead of We’re Not Broke during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Lest there be any confusion, they do not hunt debutantes. They are debutantes who hunt, quite well in fact. The term “debutante” might be overstating the matter for some of the hunters, but regardless whether they are in the social register, they shoot straight and can acquit themselves with grace in the wild. Indeed, most learned to track and shoot from their fathers, or in the case of Sara Frampton, from her mother Susan.

Unlike many current reality shows, Debutante never plays into cultural stereotypes. Although never asked directly, it seems a pretty safe assumption these hunters are firm advocates of gun owners’ rights to some extent. However, they are all very family-oriented and deeply attuned to the environment. In fact, Susan Frampton is rather eloquent comparing hunters and gardeners as fellow conservators. Never wasteful, the women also always cook what they kill, often feeding their families for weeks with delicious looking venison burgers.

At just a whisker over twelve minutes, the respectful Debutante delivers a fair amount of hunting action along with a measure of psychological insight into its subjects, but it seems to cry out for a longer treatment. Frankly, this would make a perfect series for the History Channel, perhaps following Top Shot. It boasts a telegenic, well-spoken cast shooting guns. There is a certain undeniable appeal to that. They could even do cooking segments. Highly recommended (though the same does not necessarily apply to the film it is paired with), Debutante screens this coming Sunday (1/22), Tuesday (1/24), Thursday (1/26), Friday (1/27), and Saturday (1/28) in Park City and Wednesday (1/25) in Salt Lake as part of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

BBC America’s Road Trip: Louisiana

2012-01-19T03:00:00.000-08:00

Chef Jamie Oliver, the vocal champion of organic ingredients, gets so hammered his last night in New Orleans, he binges on junk food on the way to Cajun country. He is certainly not the first and he will not be the last. At least Oliver came to play during the Louisiana episode of Jamie’s American Road Trip (promo here), which airs this coming Tuesday on BBC America.

Sort of a punkier British alternative to Anthony Bourdain, Oliver set out to understand America through our regional cuisine. Obviously, it would have been a crime to skip New Orleans. Oliver could not ask for a better guide than Kermit Ruffins, the Louis Armstrong-influenced trumpeter and vocalist, whose band is not called the Barbeque Swingers for nothing. Well known for grilling outside his gigs, the Treme co-star takes a quickly sobered Oliver on a tour of the still deserted Lower Ninth Ward. It is a timely reminder work remains to be done. Yet disappointingly, Road Trip never features any of Ruffins’ music. Come on, help an artist sell some CDs.

Thoroughly hung-over, Oliver trenchantly observes on his way up to David Allemond’s hurricane ravaged restaurant, McGee’s Landing, the surrounding Bayou region was ravaged far worse by Gustav than New Orleans was hit by Katrina, but scrupulously avoids the loaded implications. Before cooking for Allemond’s symbolic reopening, Oliver hunts gators with grandmother and former State Representative Sydney Mae Durand, a Democrat appointed by Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal to the State Pharmacy Board, who sadly recently passed away. Much to the consternation of PETA, but to the credit of Oliver, he kills them and grills them.

Naturally, all the Creole and Cajun food looks delicious, most definitely including the alligator. It is also entertaining to watch gumbo legend Leah Chase lay down the law with hipster Oliver. Frankly though, fifty-some minutes is simply not sufficient to do New Orleans justice, let alone the entire Pelican State. Still, it is pleasant enough as far as armchair culinary tourism goes when it airs on BBC America this coming Tuesday (1/24). To support the Jazz Foundation of America in its continuing efforts to aid musicians whose homes and livelihoods were badly damaged by Katrina and subsequent hurricanes, viewers can also check out their website here.

(Photos: Freemantle)

Submitted by the ROK: The Front Line

2012-01-18T07:00:00.000-08:00

When a South Korean officer is killed with one of his troops’ weapons, someone has to investigate. It is also a convenient way to move a trouble-making lieutenant out of the way. Indeed, war is brutal, messy, and soul-deadening in Jang Hun’s The Front Line (trailer here), Korea’s official best foreign language Oscar submission, which opens this Friday in New York.

A vocal critic of the drawn-out peace negotiating process, Kang Eun-pyo is assigned to investigate irregularities reported within the “Alligator Company” dug-in around the pedestrian looking but strategically prized Aero.K hill. In addition to the suspicious death of a despised commander, several letters from North Korean soldiers have been posted to family members in the south by someone in the company. A mole is suspected.

However, when Kang arrives, he discovers the situation is murkier than that. There has been a form of communication flowing between the two sides, but it is born of survivors’ fellowship rather than espionage. Still, he maintains suspicions regarding Kim Su-hyeok, a comrade from the early days of the war long presumed to be a POW, but evidently serving as the Company’s lieutenant.

Over the course of the film, Alligator Company will take, lose, and regain the fateful hill over and over again. It would get somewhat repetitive if not for the intense warfighting scenes, rendered by Jang in a take-no-prisoners style. Line’s sense of place is so strong, audiences will feel they know every inch of that crummy nub of a hill.

Do not get too attached to any characters in Line. Jang will call up their numbers at the most arbitrary of times, as befits the nature of war. Nonetheless, there are many strongly delineated characters. In fact, the self-medicating Captain Shin Il-yeong and the darkly brooding Lt. Kim, memorably played by Lee Je-hoon and Ko Soo respectively, clearly bear the spiritual scars of war. As the film’s only substantial female character, Kim Ok-bin also hints at a host of inner conflicts as the soon-to-be not so mysterious woman often seen foraging near the battlefield.

Like Jang’s previous film Secret Reunion (which screens February 15th in New York as part of the Korean Cultural Service's regular cinema showcase), Line not very subtly advocates for reunification, arguing divisions are merely an arbitrary matter of hills and parallels. Of course, it ignores the grim reality of the DPRK, in which famine is commonplace and the gulags are so extensive, they are the only features of the country that can be seen from space. While the soldiers could easily lose sight of it in the carnage surrounding Aero.K, there were indeed real stakes and consequences to the war. Whether it was also prosecuted competently, is an entirely fair and separate question.

Regardless, Jang masterly stages some of the most realistic, decidedly unheroic battle scenes viewers will see at the theater this year. It is a powerful, draining statement, recommended for connoisseurs of war movies, including the anti-war variety. Line opens this Friday (1/20) in New York at the AMC Empire and in the Bay Area at the AMC Cupertino.

NYJFF ’12: Lea and Darija

2012-01-18T05:00:00.000-08:00

Lea Deutsch’s very name is a cruel historical irony. She was also known as the “Croatian Shirley Temple.” It could have been a hard title to live down later in her life, but Deutsch never had the chance. Branko Ivanda dramatizes the story of the ill-fated Jewish superstar and her German friendly rival in Lea and Darija (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Deutsch ruled benignly over the Children’s Realm, her father’s youth theater ensemble. A huge star in Zagreb, Pathé even filmed her for their Parisian newsreels. The only performer who could keep up with her was Darija Gasteiger, a young German expat with a ferocious stage mom. Despite the friction between their mothers, the girls become fast friends. Together, they triumph on stage as Hansel and Gretel. Shortly thereafter, Croatia follows the lead of its German ally, enacting a series of anti-Jewish laws. At this point, the Deutschs’ fortunes suffer a dramatic reversal, while Gasteiger’s star continues to rise.

Although Croatia did not exactly cover herself with glory during WWII, it seems like everyone in Zagreb wanted to save young Deutsch. Yet, for reasons the film cannot explain due to gaps in the historical record, every effort failed. At one point, a rendezvous was arranged with the partisans to take Deutsch and her mother to relative safety, but their contact never showed. They also had a slightly creepy but potentially life-saving marriage proposal from a young fascist soldier acting as their protector, which they do not outright reject, but for unknown reasons, it never comes to fruition. One thing is known for certain: Deutsch would perish in the bloody madness unleashed by the National Socialists.

L&D has far more singing and dancing than the typical Holocaust drama. As Deutsch and Gasteiger respectively, Klara Naka and Tamy Zajec are dynamic and polished performers. They also look awfully young, which is grimly historically accurate. Given the circumstances, Naka logically has the meatier role, painfully watching her sheltered world implode. She is certainly engaging, coming across a bit immature in a believably human way. Zajec in contrast, largely just dances, but she does it quite well. Yet, it is Sebastian Cavazza who really gives the film its soul as Deutsch’s reserved but deeply humane father, Stjepan.

As a conscious strategy on Ivanda’s part, L&D never shows the actual horrors of the camps. Instead, he uses symbolic interlude represent Deutsch’s final moments. It might be expressive, but it has the effect of whitewashing the reality of what happened. To be fair though, the film is never ambivalent or in any way problematic in the way it depicts the anti-Semitism of the NDH puppet regime.

L&D is not the exactly most absorbing Holocaust drama ever, but it is perfectly respectable, well produced and intentioned period production. It also offers a relatively rare (for American audiences) examination of the wartime experience of a minor ally of the Axis Powers. Indeed, the “Ž” worn by Jewish Croatians rather the notorious star is somewhat jarring, but no less ominous. A fascinating and tragic story, L&D is a solid selection for this year’s NYJFF. It screens this Sunday (1/22) and Monday (1/23) at the Walter Reade Theater.

NYJFF ’12: A Bottle in the Gaza Sea

2012-01-18T03:00:00.000-08:00

A teenaged French-Israeli girl learns you have to have a partner in peace. A young “Palestinian” man burns out on hate. They might make some small hopeful gestures, but there will be no choruses of “Kumbaya” in Thierry Binisti’s better-than-you-expect A Bottle in the Gaza Sea (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Tal Levine has trouble comprehending the hatred that led to a recent terrorist bombing killing a bride and her father on her wedding day. She asks her brother Eytan serving his military service in the Gaza to send a message in a bottle asking how anyone could be so hell-bent on carnage. Naim and his bitter unemployed cousins find her note, resulting in several sexually violent emails. Yet, for some reason, Tal and Naim bug each other enough to continue trading insults. Yes, eventually, they discover they are not so different after all.

Still, Naim has trouble letting go of all his deeply ingrained grievances. Simultaneously, Levine tries to live a normal high school life, but has trouble acclimating to the constant presence of terrorist attacks. Of course, the mere act of emailing with an Israeli is dangerous for Naim, whose suspicious time spent at the internet café gets him interrogated and beaten by the local Hamas militia (right, let’s put them in charge a full-fledged state post-haste).

Adapted by Binisti and Valérie Zenatti from her young adult novel, Bottle bends over backwards to show no favoritism to Israel or the so-called “Palestinians.” Both societies we are assured are held captive by the more extreme and recalcitrant elements within them. Nevertheless, it is obvious if the “Palestinians” were to unilaterally foreswear violence, the bloodshed would be over, yet every time Israel calls a unilateral cease-fire, the terror continues unabated.

Despite its dogged moral equivalence, Bottle does not have its head completely in the clouds. Levine and Naim’s relationship is significant to them, but will not bring imminent peace. Indeed, it explicitly suggests the best thing for him is to get out of Gaza.

Frankly, Mahmoud Shalabi’s Naim looks somewhat more than just three years older than Agathe Bonitzer’s Levine, but they are more or less evenly matched in terms of maturity. Bonitzer has a keen cerebral screen presence that helps sell her idealism. Shalabi is also rather intense and even dynamic as the moody Naim, convincingly charting what is a significant arc of character development, given the toxicity of his environment.

Bottle is a small film with pretensions of greater meaning, but what it does well, depicting young people learning to think for themselves under trying circumstances, it does very well indeed. Recommended not as a teaching tool, but for two nice lead turns, Bottle screens this Sunday (1/22) and Monday (1/23) at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the 2012 NYJFF.

Dante Lam’s Viral Factor

2012-01-17T07:00:00.000-08:00

Sure, it is more than 24 hours, but two weeks is not a lot of time for international counter-terrorism agent Jon Wan. That is about how much time he has left before the bullet lodged in his brain finishes the job. During those final days he will have to recover a killer mutant virus and reconcile some tricky family business in Dante Lam’s The Viral Factor (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York and San Francisco.

The spectacular opening action sequence shows exactly how Wan became a dead man walking. He is part of an ambushed convoy escorting a mercenary germ warfare scientist looking to cut a deal. It was not the rpg’s that got him, but a traitor in his ranks. Unfortunately, the doctor of death and his new smallpox strain were lost to their attackers. Tragically, Wan has several more personal scores to settle with Sean the turncoat (and exposition mouthpiece). However, a brief visit to his ailing mother sends Wan on a detour to Malaysia. It seems he has long lost father and brother there, scratching out a meager living through dubious means.

In fact, Wan Yang is a notorious thug for hire, sub-contracted by Sean’s crooked cops to kidnap Dr. Rachel Kan, a specialist working for the Asian CDC. When the gangster brother is also betrayed by the gang, the two Wans team up to recover the virus, rescue assorted friends and loved ones, and do their best to patch up a fraternal relationship interrupted by their parents’ quarrels decades ago.

Somewhat like last year’s Legend of the Fist, Viral feels a bit unbalanced, because its most ambitious action sequence comes right up front. Of course, that also means viewers do not have to wait for it. Wisely shunning shaky cams, Lam’s action scenes have a refreshing precision and clarity, despite the frequent explosions and whizzing projectiles, so viewers can appreciate the mayhem. Jay (The Green Hornet and True Legend) Chou and Nicolas (Shaolin and Bodyguards and Assassins) Tse have all kinds of action cred, but also handle the familial drama well enough, as Jon and Yang, respectively.

While marinated in testosterone and lacking a conventional romantic subplot, Viral also features two strong female characters. Though she appears all too briefly, Bai Bing shows considerable screen presence and action chops as Wan’s former fiancé and fellow agent, Ice. In a somewhat more traditional damsel-in-distress role, Lin Peng at least brings a sense of intelligence and resiliency to Dr. Kan. Young Crystal Lee is also quite poised and endearing as Yang’s responsible daughter, Champ.

Though a big budgeted production, Viral is appealingly old school, with a slick, glossy look reminiscent of Tony Scott’s glory days of high concept action pictures, via the lens of cinematographer Kenny Tse. Lam blows stuff up really nicely and both Chou and Tse certainly know how to handle a fight scene. Add in the cinematically exotic locales of Jordan and Kuala Lumpur and the attractive support of Bai and Lin and you have a solidly entertaining action film. Definitely recommended for genre fans, Viral opens this Friday (1/20) in New York at the AMC Empire and Village 7 as well as in San Francisco at the AMC Metreon and Cupertino, courtesy of China Lion Entertainment.

Global Lens ’12: Pegasus

2012-01-17T03:00:00.001-08:00

Most girls love horses, but not Zineb’s patient. The young pregnant teen is deathly afraid of the “Lord of the Horse.” Her case will disturb the hospital psychiatrist on several levels throughout Mohamed Mouftakir’s Pegasus (trailer here), which screens as part of the 2012 Global Lens showcase now underway at MoMA.

Thoroughly burned out, Zineb does not want to take on such a demanding patient, but she has no choice in the matter. When not binge-drinking or sparring with her strict but smitten boss, Zineb slowly wins the girl’s trust. Her fate appears to be intertwined with the story told in flashbacks, in which the only child of a Bedouin chief contends with thorny gender roles and an initiation ritual involving a fierce black thoroughbred. It is a childhood lived in the shadow of the Lord of the Horse, a mythical figure used to inspire and cow in equal measure.

Sort of like a sinister cousin to Carroll Ballard’s The Black Stallion, Pegasus presents some of the most ominous equine imagery seen on film in quite a while. Though billed as a psychological thriller, its revelations will probably not shock anyone who has seen a fair sampling of M. Night Shyamalan, David Lynch, and Stephen King movies. However, this is more about the roots of the emotional fracture than the big twist at the end. In fact, Pegasus forthrightly depicts the misogyny faced by young Bedouin women, deliberately kept illiterate and subservient by their traditional Islamic society.

Mouftakir creates an eerie vibe, tapping into something rotten at the core of the characters’ collective psyche. He freely blurs the nature of ostensive reality, but some social actualities are inescapable. Cinematographer Xavier Castro also nicely captures the mysterious atmosphere of the exotic Bedouin environment and the coldly ominous clinic. Frankly, Pegasus looks exactly like what one might expect of a Moroccan film.

It also relies on a strong ensemble of varying ages, convincingly playing characters whose relationships to each other are often kept obscure. Saadia Ladib is quite compelling as the haunted Zineb, while Abdelatif Chaouqui develops some intriguing ambiguities as her severe boss. However, the accomplished Moroccan actor Driss Roukh really delivers a punch to the solar-plexus as the abusive Bedouin chief.

Despite sharing a visual kinship with dark fantasies, Pegasus is a tragedy more than a genre picture. Yet, it is quite unsettling and rather chilling at times. Definitely for discriminating cineastes, it is a powerful cinematic statement, highly recommended when it screens this Saturday (1/21) and next Thursday (1/26) as part of this year’s Global Lens, now underway in New York at the Museum of Modern Art.

NYJFF ’12: Daas

2012-01-16T06:00:00.000-08:00

“Daas” was a term used to signify a utopian ideal in the teachings of Jakob Frank, a self-proclaimed Judaic messiah who built a fiercely loyal following during the eighteenth century. The vagueness of its meaning is surely intentional. While obviously a charlatan, Frank had protectors highly placed in the court of the Austrian Emperor, who perniciously complicate the investigation of a crusading imperial attorney in screenwriter-director Adrian Panek’s Daas (trailer here), which has its American premiere at the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Frankists were expected to convert to Catholicism (but not observe its tenets), participate in sexualized rituals, and seek healing through faith rather than medicine. Jakob Goliński used to be part of the flock, but the death of his daughter, despite all his fervent prayers, profoundly disillusioned him. However, his wife stayed with Frank. Not kindly disposed to apostates, the Frankists set out to ruin Goliński. Spurned by his former royal patron, the Frankist defector sends an appeal to the Imperial court, where it eventually comes to the attention of junior clerk (think prosecuting inspector) Henryk Klein.

Though ambitious, the clerk is rigidly principled. Nor has his wife’s recent incapacitating stroke dulled his commitment to justice. However, it certainly exacerbates his feeling of isolation when Frankists within the court conspire against his investigation.

The well produced Daas might be aesthetically conventional, but thematically it is a decidedly idiosyncratic costume drama. The narrative center of the film is preoccupied with the Frankist conspiracy, presented as a secret history in the Dan Brown tradition. Yet, it ultimately subverts its own subversion. Oddly, Panek seems decidedly uninterested in the mysticism and false prophesies that would seem to lie at the film’s core. Viewers who really want to understand Frankist doctrine, especially in the context of the widespread anti-Semitism faced by Continental Jewry in the 1700’s, will find it all rather obscure.

As the tortured (literally and figuratively) Goliński, Andrzej Chyra (so memorable in the Solidarity-era drama All That I Love) is a forcefully compelling everyman. Mariusz Bonaszewski is steely enough as Klein (though his fainting is less than convincing), but Olgierd Łukaszewicz’s Frank lacks an appropriately malevolent presence. He also vaguely resembles Chyra, like an older relation, which might confuse international audiences who will not necessarily recognize the two actors.

Throughout Daas, Panek tries to have his enlightenment and eat his mysticism too, deliberately muddying the waters of ostensive reality with several ambiguous scenes. Still, he packs in an eccentric hodge-podge of fascinating historical detail. There are insights to be found, including the noteworthy use of the American New World as a recurring motif. Panek makes it clear the Old World power structure was definitely on edge and it was largely our fault.

An ambitious oddity, the strangely dispassionate film has its moments, but what they add up to, viewers must tabulate for themselves. Considering nearly every Jewish character is a convert to the Frankist cult, it is more than a bit of a ringer at this year’s NYJFF. The flawed but undeniably intelligent Daas screens this Saturday (1/21) and the following Thursday (1/26) at the Walter Reade Theater.

Feature Anime: Fullmetal Alchemist—The Sacred Star of Milos

2012-01-16T03:00:00.001-08:00

Lead into gold is small potatoes. Alchemists young and old practice a far more Faustian version of their craft in Kazuya Murata’s Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos (trailer here), the second full length feature set in the popular anime universe, which opens this Friday in New York.

For the uninitiated: A risky rite intended to resurrect their late mother cost alchemist Edward Elric an arm and leg. It cost his brother Alphonse his entire body. With Al’s soul imprinted on a Doctor Doom like suit of armor and Edward spruced up with some Skywalker prosthetics, the two lads became more judicious in their alchemy. Appointed official State Alchemists of Amestris, the Elrics have a license to snoop. For fans this is all ancient history.

Sacred’s story kicks off with a mysterious prison break. Previously unbeknownst to the authorities, the fugitive is an alchemist, who quietly served over four years of five year sentence, but then suddenly up and left. The Elrics track him to Table City, a fortress-like metropolis currently under Amestris control within the militaristic Creta state. Table City is surrounding by a deep canyon, known as “The Valley,” where Creta banished the people of Milos, the original city occupants during their brief possession of the city. While they no longer control Table City, they still oppress the descendants of Milos. That includes Julia Crichton, a young alchemist involved in the resistance, whose long lost brother evidently just broke out of an Amestris jail.

Set between the cracks of the anime series, Sacred’s world resembles a steampunk Flash Gordon. Indeed, the architecture of Table City and the network of canyons and elevated train tracks surrounding it are cool looking, particularly by series anime standards. The winged Black Bat freedom fighters are also reminiscent of Prince Vultan’s Hawkmen, giving it further retro appeal for first time viewers.

Depicting a fight for freedom and the destructive lure of absolute power, Sacred addresses some worthy themes. It also gives the prodigal brother trope a bit of a twist. Of course, since it is anime, the responsibility of saving Milos naturally falls to three thirteen year-olds, more or less. However, the often immature and rather loud fan-favorite protagonist Edward Elric must be an acquired taste.

Aside from a fairly standard standoff featuring alchemists hurling the usual energy bolts at each other, Sacred is a satisfying, largely self-contained anime feature. For fans, it reveals another hidden corner of a richly detailed world. For newcomers, it is a lot like 1930’s space serials, with steam engines. A respectable anime fix for genre fans, Sacred opens this Friday (1/20) in New York at the Cinema Village.

NYJFF ’12: My Australia

2012-01-15T03:00:00.000-08:00

While not the worst of times, the 1960’s were a difficult period for Polish Jewry. Conditions would eventually reach intolerable levels during the Communist Party’s anti-Semitic purges in 1968. For one mother, more than her livelihood is at stake in 1960 Łódź. Concern for her sons’ moral compasses necessitates a dramatic move in Ami Drozd’s My Australia (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

It is important to note that the Poland of today is not reflective of the Communist Party’s values. Poles are represented more than any other nationality among the names of the righteous. Post-Communism, the Polish government and leading cultural institutions have taken an active role preserving the nation’s Jewish heritage. Danny Gold and Matthew Asner’s excellent documentary 100 Voices, which also screens during the 2012 NYJFF, addresses this phenomenon directly. Unfortunately, Halina does not live in such times.

A Holocaust survivor, she has chosen to raise her two sons, teenaged Andrzej and the bratty Tadek, as Catholics unaware of their family history. She comes to rue this decision when they fall in with a gang a violent anti-Semites. Talking their way out of prison, she decides to avail herself of the only advantage Jewish Poles had under Communism. It was the only Soviet bloc country that allowed free immigration to Israel. For expediency’s sake, Tadek is told they are going to Australia, a place the young boy considers a utopia with kangaroos (hence the counterintuitive title of the Israeli-Polish co-production).

Obviously, Andrzej and Tadek are in for a rude awakening, which the younger boy handles particularly churlishly. Indeed, the former thugs soon come to understand what it is like to be cultural outsiders and religious minorities. The boys’ secret otherness manifests itself in numerous ways, but Australia focuses on the circumcision issue. Frankly, the film’s preoccupation with the young boy’s junk borders on the outright icky.

Essentially presented from Tadek’s POV, Drozd maintains Halina’s secrets, without making the young boy a clueless blockhead. Nor does the writer-director overplay the shoe’s-on-the-other-foot moral of his tale. However, his two featured principled are not particularly engaging screen presences. At least he earns points for honesty, showing all their acting out and petty resentments. A quality period production, Australia also nicely captures the look and spirit of the golden age of the kibbutz movement, in all its coed communal bathing glory.

For those who missed it during its spotty theatrical go-round, 100 Voices is highly recommended when it screens twice this Thursday (1/19). Though well intentioned and largely free of sentimentality, Australia never delivers a big payoff and has a few too many unnecessary tighty-whitie scenes. Basically recommended for nostalgic former kibbutzniks, it also screens this Thursday (1/19) as well as this Saturday (1/21) at the Walter Reade Theater, but only standby tickets are available, so good luck.

Bresson at Film Forum: Four Nights of a Dreamer

2012-01-14T06:00:00.000-08:00

Robert Bresson arguably remains the greatest Roman Catholic auteur to forthrightly explore the themes of his faith on film. Never one to tell a simplistic morality tale, he also had a strong affinity for Russian literature. While characteristically Spartan in his approach, Bresson adapts Dostoevsky’s short story “White Nights” with a warm, colorful lyricism that makes angst strangely appealing. An artful, underappreciated minor masterwork amid his all too small filmography, Four Nights of a Dreamer screens this coming Thursday as part of the Bresson retrospective now underway in New York at Film Forum.

Jacques would appear to be representative of late 1960’s and early 1970’s French youth. Viewers are first introduced to the painter hitchhiking to the countryside for a day of frolicking in meadows, returning in the evening to soak up the ambiance of Left Bank nightlife. There he spies Marthe, a respectable young woman of modest means, on the brink of taking a suicidal plunge. Predisposed to romantic fixation, Jacques immediately falls in love. Over the following three nights, Marthe will confide her heartaches to Jacques, while he courts her with all due devotion.

A film largely heretofore experienced from copies of dubious quality and legality, Film Forum will screen a brand new, completely legit 35m print of Dreamer. It is indeed a welcome development, considering the richness of the film’s visuals. Bresson’s striking use of color motifs and cinematographer Pierre Lhomme’s luminous scenes of Paris by night are exquisitely seductive. Indeed, Bresson masterfully establishes the mood and setting through evocative ambient noise and a wide variety of diegetic music played by street performers. In a dark theater, it vividly transports viewers to nocturnal Paris, teeming with young people who have not yet run amuck.

Jacques and Marthe are truly two peas in a pod. They are both unusually earnest young people who feel their emotions deeply, though they are perhaps subject to abrupt change. Of course, were it not for Bresson’s dreamy vibe, they might be somewhat difficult to endure. Both Guillaume des Fôrets and Isabelle Weingarten emphasize their characters’ self-absorbed romanticism. Still, the former displays admirable conviction when delivering Jacques’ long obsessive monologues.

Dreamer recreates the fleeting feeling of late night in-the-moment chance encounters with subtle but potent immediacy. While that might sound like a small feat, it is actually quite powerful. Highly recommended, it screens this coming Thursday (1/19) in New York during Film Forum’s ongoing Bresson tribute.

NYJFF ’12: My Father Evgeni

2012-01-13T05:00:00.000-08:00

Evidently, during the Stalinist era the term “Cosmopolitan” served as a euphemism for Jewish. It might sound relatively benign, but its usage was far from polite. It was an ugly fact of Soviet life Ukrainian documentarian Andrei Zagdansky’s parents were all too aware of. The letters of his state filmmaker father provide a window into the history of his family and his country in My Father Evgeni (teaser here), which screens during this year’s New York Jewish Film Festival.

Born two years after the Russian Revolution, Evgeni Zagdansky would outlive Communism as the official state ideology, only to bemoan Russia remaining under the rule of “criminal mediocrities.” The great Zagdansky family secret was his mother’s Jewish heritage, a dangerous inheritance during the time of Stalin’s Doctors’ Plot anti-Semitic show trials. It would be even worse for the Zagdansky family, considering his father’s bourgeoisie roots. Scandalously, Zagdansky’s grandfather Peter made women’s shoes in a modest storefront before the new regime confiscated his property and exiled him to the provinces.

Somehow during the war, Evgeni Zagdansky cleared his record to the extent he could work with the state system. For eighteen years, Zagdansky père served as editor-in-chief of the Kiev Popular Science Film Studio, where he earned his spurs producing propaganda pictures about the triumph of scientific materialism over superstitious notions of God.

Clearly, filmmaking is a generation-bridging bond for Evgeni and Andrei Zagdansky. Drawing on home movies and film archives, the junior Zagdansky captures the sweep of Russian and Ukrainian history as well as documenting the ebb and flow of his family’s standing. Particularly valuable are the topics of furtive family conversations in each successive era. Oftentimes, these are well known figures and events, such as the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and celebrated dissidents like Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn. However, he also includes important figures now largely faded from short-term Western memories, like dissident Ukrainian poet Vasil Stus and oppressed Armenian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov in the honor role of discussion subjects.

Father is a bit slow and unfocused out of the blocks, but once Zagdansky gets into the rhythm of it, the film is a parade of striking images. War, famine, and propaganda campaigns all factor prominently, but sometimes the little details are the most telling, like the frequently changing street names, ever reflecting the political tenor of the times. For film programmers, it would be a fitting companion film to either Mikhail Zheleznikov’s short For Home Viewing or Sergei Loznitsa’s Revue. Recommended for Cold War students and scholars, it screens this coming Tuesday (1/17) at the Francesca Beale Theater and Wednesday (1/18) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of the 2012 NYJFF.

The American (Western) Experience: Custer’s Last Stand

2012-01-13T03:00:00.001-08:00

His name is pseudonymous with military failure, but for over a century he has been portrayed in glowingly heroic terms. Yes, good publicity is a gift that keeps on giving. George Armstrong Custer was always good copy and he was not what you would call shy. He had a multitude of shortcomings as a military leader though, all of which are analyzed at length in writer-director Stephen Ives’ Custer’s Last Stand (promo here), the second of two recent western-themed editions of The American Experience, premiering on PBS this coming Tuesday.

In fairness, Ives gives Custer his just due for his Civil War heroics. A terrible student from humble origins, Custer essentially talked his way into a West Point appointment. His only asset was his willingness to risk life and limb. What came to be recognized as “Custer’s luck” held out until that fateful day in the Black Hills.

Frankly, it is nearly impossible to be a Custer partisan with the benefit of historical hindsight. Many will be appalled by his record as a zealous “Indian fighter,” whereas others will be disgusted with the hash Custer made of his command. In fact, Ives’ Stand is strongest when explaining the bad karma working against Custer in the Little Big Horn debacle.

While depicting Custer as a Horatio Algerish social climber undone by deep character flaws, Captain Frederick Benteen emerges as the most intriguing figure of the story. A former commander of a “Buffalo Soldier” regiment with little taste for war, Benteen’s sentiments would appear to more accurately reflect those of the modern American military. He bitterly resented Custer for abandoning a fellow officer during a controversial engagement at the Washita River. As a result, he was not exactly fired up to save Custer’s bacon.

While just exactly what happened to Custer and the majority of the men of the 7th Cavalry remains somewhat obscure (for lack of survivors), Ives explains the details of the side battles involving Benteen and his whiskey-addled comrade Major Marcus Reno quite lucidly and compellingly. Of course, the bottom line is pretty simple. Sitting Bull had a whole lot more men with him than Custer figured and they were pretty ticked off.

For all its tsktsking of Custer’s arrogance and recklessness, Stand puts him in understandable context. Following the Civil War, the standing army drastically contracted, with wartime officers brusquely reduced in rank. It is understandable why a self-promoter like Custer would conclude valor was the better part of prudence.

Stand also heavily relies on talking head historians, who are sufficiently authoritative on the subject, by and large. However, a late soundbite claiming Custer’s misadventure in the Black Hills is emblematic of America’s continuing eagerness to leap into ill-conceived wars is a bit of a partisan eye-roller, cheapening nearly two hours of solid history preceding it. Mostly informative and straightforwardly executed, overall it is another respectable tour of the Old West from The American Experience, airing this coming Tuesday (1/17) on most PBS outlets.

The Little Prince: Lula, Son of Brazil

2012-01-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

As a boy, Luiz Inácio da Silva’s family was so poor, they could not afford to pay attention. Eventually though, the noble young tyke would grow up to become President of Brazil, whose tenure was marked by a major financial scandal and a transparent attempt to compromise his country’s press freedoms. Evidently, those chapters will have to wait for a later film. Instead, viewers are presented a leftist Horatio Alger story in Fábio Barreto’s Lula, Son of Brazil (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

At seven years old, The Little Prince resolutely shields his sainted mother Dona Lindu from his abusive father, shaming the old drunk into submission. From there, the film gets even less subtle. The Little Prince works hard for his family, but at Dona Lindu’s assistance, he maintains his studies, graduating from a technical school as a certified machinist. Being popular and honest as the day is long, he is tapped by the union as an up-and-comer, but tragedy suddenly strikes, sending him into a tailspin. However, it is ultimately just another obstacle for the Little Prince to triumph over.

At least Felipe Falanga is a plucky kid, showing terrific poise as the seven year-old Prince. Conversely, Rui Ricardo Diaz is so boringly perfect and unflaggingly earnest as the all grown-up Prince, viewers will be hoping for a respite from his proletarian rectitude when the military junta finally throws him in jail. At least, Cleo Pires is rather charming as the Prince’s first Princess. Just don’t get too attached to her—the Prince’s martyr credentials have to be renewed periodically.

On one level, Son is a wildly sentimental but nonetheless uplifting paean to a mother’s sacrifice on behalf of her children, or at least her favorite. However, the film also engages in some major whitewashing and memory-holing in an attempt to burnish the Prince’s legacy. Out with his famous Che Guevara t-shirts and in with the conciliatory rhetoric. “We are not the enemies of the factories,” he tells an assembly, because “they pay our salaries.” To be fair though, the scene of striking workers whipped into an ideological frenzy and killing factory managers is a bracing shot of class warfare, even if it is included to position da Silva as an ostensive moderate.

Lovingly produced, Son boasts some fine period details and extras by the thousands. Yet aside from da Silva’s degenerate prodigal father, there film has no antagonistic or even morally ambiguous characters of any note. The Little Prince’s lack of any meaningful flaws or Achilles heel also severely undercuts the drama. The result is like watching one of the slickly produced candidate biographies playing during conventions, with some admittedly accomplished supporting turns.

Clocking in at one hundred twenty-eight minutes, Son is just too long and too breathlessly reverent. Though not recommended, it certainly does not provoke any serious spleen either when it opens this Friday (1/13) in New York at the Quad and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.

NYJFF ’12: Iraq ‘n’ Roll

2012-01-12T03:00:00.000-08:00

Due the her neighbors’ violent hostility, we rarely think of Israel as a Middle Eastern country, but in many respects, its aesthetic tastes are very much in line with the wider region. The debate whether Sephardic Jews or Lebanese Arabs invented Hummus is a case in point. For decades, Israel was home to Saleh and Daud al-Kuwaiti, two greatly esteemed Jewish-Iraqi musicians. Decades after their deaths, the latter’s rock musician grandson revisits their music. His genre and generation spanning project is documented in Gili Gaon’s Iraq ‘n’ Roll (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Nationally recognized, the al-Kuwaitis often played command performances for the Iraqi king, a fact that suggests they were probably right to immigrate to Israel before the 1958 coup. Though they had regular gigs in Israel, including on the Voice of Israel’s Arabic language radio station, their concert hall days were essentially over. Indeed, the film makes much of this comparative scuffling, but is it really so scandalous that the general Israeli populace was not fully versed on the Iraqi music scene? Arguably, it might be easier for musical reputations to travel in this age of interconnected worldwide media, but globalization is still a bad thing, right?

Dudu Tassa readily admits he simply did not get his grandfather and great uncle’s music for years and when he did, he was intimidated by its rich complexity. Finally dialing up his confidence, Tassa reaches out to some of the duo’s old associates and well as a few of his own colleagues to create a fusion of traditional Iraqi music and grungy rock.

The resulting sessions and concerts are in fact quite agreeable. Favoring the old world sound of his forefathers, Tassa largely adds the electric as an additional layer into the aural mélange. It is quite evocative, if not absolutely transcendent. In contrast, Roll falls rather flat attempting to portray Israel as a less then welcoming society. Frankly, Israel is the truest nation of immigrants, whose new arrivals have always struggled as a result the unwarranted isolation and existential threats the country has endured. Indeed, many also started new lives in Israel with absolutely nothing, but achieved better or worse results than the al-Kuwaitis.

Clearly, Roll is best when it sticks to music. Although less artfully produced, it has a similarly nostalgic appeal as Mahmoud Kaabour’s far more charming and scrupulously apolitical Grandma, a Thousand Times. Pleasant sounding, but hardly essential viewing, Roll screens during the 2012 NYJFF as part of a double bill with Lost Love Diaries this coming Monday (1/16) and Wednesday (1/18) at the Walter Reade Theater.

Geeks Get the Creeps: The Fades

2012-01-11T07:30:00.000-08:00

Paul Roberts and Mac Armstrong are obsessive Stars Wars fans. They claim to hate Twilight, but are far too familiar with the franchise mythology for that to hold water. It is just as well though. They can use some uncanny insight when Roberts starts seeing ghosts. All is not right with the afterlife in Jack Thorne’s The Fades (promo here), which debuts for U.S. audiences this Saturday on BBC America.

Roberts and Armstrong are geeks with father issues. The former’s has absconded, while the latter is a less than nurturing workaholic copper. Girls scare them, but Roberts still has a monster crush on his popular sister’s best friend Jay (she’s a girl with a boyish name and bob). For a while, Roberts has been plagued by apocalyptic dreams, but recently he has started seeing apparitions.

After a rather nasty encounter with a so-called “Fade,” the wildly anti-social Neil Valentine explains the nature of the secret battle underway. The Fades are indeed spirits, terrestrially bound because of the inadvertent closure of their cosmic ascension points. Mortals like Valentine and Roberts who can see them are known as “Angelics.” Some of the brethren have special psychic abilities and Roberts might just be the most powerful of them all. That will be a curse, rather than a blessing. Some rogue Fades have developed an ability to touch the living, in a really bad way. It turns out, they have plans and they know about Roberts.

At times, Fades risks overdoing its geek chic. The comedic weekly recap provided by Armstrong’s character at the top of each episode, complete with “nanu nanu” sign off, is a particular case in point. Yet, considering how dark the series gets, the desire for some comic relief is understandable.

As a paranormal thriller, Fades is pretty scary for television, creating a creepily convincing supernatural ecosystem. Writer-creator Thorne nicely preys on viewers’ fears of unseen forces, while mostly respecting the show’s internal logic. Although there is quite a bit of teen angst, it is definitely not for youngsters, featuring some flesh-eating and the occasional spot of NYPD Blue style nudity.

While a bit sullen, Iain de Caestecker makes a passable enough rooting interest as Roberts. In contrast, Daniel Kaluuya’s Armstrong is too shticky for adult tastes. However, Sophie Wu (geek famous for Kick-Ass) brings a bright and engaging presence as Jay. Yet, it is Johnny Harris who really steals the spotlight as the Byronic Valentine. It is the sort of twitchy character and brooding performance genre fans eat up with a big spoon.

Frustratingly, sometimes the wrong characters do not survive Fades’ first season. Still, given the nature of the show, viewers cannot rule out seeing them again. Tightly helmed by Farren Blackburn and Tom Shankland (at three episodes apiece), it is a polished production that should pull in fans of dark fantasy. Pretty good stuff overall, The Fades premieres this week (1/14) on BBC America’s “Supernatural Saturday.”

(Photo: © BBC / Des Willie)

First Look ’12: The City Below

2012-01-11T05:00:00.001-08:00

It is almost like a modern-contemporary version of Metropolis. The financial titans rule the Frankfurt financial world high atop their glass and steel towers, while everyone else scurries about like ants on the sidewalk. However, very real dangers accompany their power games in Christoph Hochhäusler’s The City Below (trailer here), which screens during the Museum of the Moving Image’s inaugural First Look film series that has leapfrogged other festivals to kick-off 2012 for cineastes in earnest.

Roland Cordes is about to become the banker of the year and broker a blockbuster merger for his firm, because he is one of Tom Wolfe’s Masters of the Universe, who always gets what he wants. Then he meets Svenja Steve, the wife of a junior colleague. Finally, someone is willing to say “no” to Cordes, or at least “probably not.” While she refuses to immediately fall into bed with the banker, she does not exactly discourage his attention. In fact, she seems to enjoy sparring with the older man, at least on days when she is in the right frame of mind.

Meanwhile, the stakes are rising at Cordes’ Lobau Bank. The board is keeping the assassination of the head of their Indonesian office hush-hush. However, it leaves an opening for Cordes to move the ambitious Olli Steve up and out of the picture, despite the presence of more qualified candidates. Shrewdly he keeps his fingerprints off the decision, but there are still signs he might be losing his Midas touch.

Below is not a film for uninformed Occupy-This simpletons. Essentially, it is a cerebral character study with overtones of a Paul Erdman financial thriller that takes a slightly weird turn into Lars von Trier territory at the eleventh hour. The net effect is quite distinctive, if hard to categorize.

Part Shakespearean tragic hero and part moustache twisting financial villain (sans the facial hair), Robert Hunger-Bühler creates one of the most fascinating and confounding characters to ever stride through a cinematic boardroom. It is an open question whether there is a soul buried deep within him, but there is certainly a multiplicity of layers to peel back in search of it. Nicolette Krebitz matches him note for note as the seemingly fickle, but more complicated than we initial realize Svenja Steve. Watching their verbal fencing is a pleasure.

Cinematographer Bernhard Keller’s austere color palate and use of glassy, reflective surfaces creates a cold, eerie vibe that nicely enhances Hochhäusler’s sense of mounting dread. While hinting at much, he refrains from answering many questions. Indeed, this film is chocked full of odd little bafflements, yet everything seems to follow according to some strange logic. Smart and ambiguous in an intriguing (rather than smugly self-satisfied) way, Below is one of the highlights of the first First Look, screening once-and-only-once this Sunday (1/15) at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens.

The Divide: Nothing Fun about the End of the World

2012-01-11T03:00:00.001-08:00

If the apocalypse actually comes, you might regret giving away your canned goods. However, Xavier Gens’ gruesome end-of-the-world neo-grindhouse pseudo-sci-fi thriller could use all the good karma it can get. To that end, distributor Anchor Bay Films and Feeding America Food Banks are holding a can drive in conjunction with its opening weekend release. While there might be good deeds going on in the lobby, there will be nothing but cruelty and inhumanity on-screen when Gens’ The Divide (trailer here) opens in New York this Friday with a set of midnight showings.

Before you can say “Sarah Connor,” the world goes up in a mushroom-shaped flash. Unfortunately, a diverse cross-section of a Manhattan apartment building is able to push their way into their Super’s bomb-shelter. Old Mickey is supposed to be a surly crank, but events seem to be vindicating his world view. Yet, despite having the foresight to stock up on Chef Boyardee and electric generators, he kept the place’s early Hostel décor.

Despite his myriad of faults, misanthropic Mickey will not be the most pressing problem for the churlish band of survivors. Indeed, freaky frat boys Bobby and Josh quickly depose their reluctant host as top bananas of the bunker. Of course, protagonist Eva’s fiancé is not capable of standing up to them. Being French, Sam instinctively practices appeasement.

Divide is thoroughly unpleasant and completely illogical. Granted, the end of the world is liable to bring out the worst in people, but reducing them to cross-dressing rapists goes beyond gratuitous. Likewise, the nefarious doings of the Hazmat team above makes no sense whatsoever, functioning merely as an episode to thin the bomb-shelter’s ranks.

It is truly depressing to see Rosanna Arquette so horrifically abused as Marilyn, a grieving mother rendered an animalistic sex object by Bobby and Josh. Toto’s song “Rosanna” was named after her, for goodness sake. In the lead, Lauren German is adequate, but unremarkable, while Law & Order: Criminal Intent’s Courtney B. Vance looks like he cannot wait for his comparatively cerebral neighbor character to die. Frankly, amid all the squalid madness, only Michael Biehn maintains a sense of dignity and humor as the cranky survivalist super. By now, he certainly knows how to get his screen-time’s worth in a B-movie.

To give him due credit, Gens certainly makes viewers feel claustrophobic, but not in a good way. Lurid, heavy-handed, and brutal, The Divide is simply not a good time at the movies. By all means, bring a can of food when it screens midnights this weekend (11/13-11/15) at the Landmark Sunshine in New York, but watch a different film.

NYJFF ’12: Remembrance

2012-01-10T07:00:00.000-08:00

The unfettered flow of information is a powerful thing. During the final days of WWII, Tomasz Limanowski smuggled shocking photographic evidence out of a concentration camp. Thirty-some years later, his former lover is shocked to discover he is still alive, thanks to a BBC interview. Based on historical events, their incredible story of love and survival is told in Anna Justice’s Remembrance (trailer here), which screens at the upcoming 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Limanowski is not Jewish, but the resistance fighter is quite resourceful, which makes him a natural scrounger in the camp. He is thought to stand the best chance of breaking out and rendezvousing with the Polish Homeland Army with his comrades negatives. However, his decision to bring Hannah Silberstein with him complicates their plans. She is Jewish, speaks German, and is very sick. In fact, unbeknownst to Limanowski, she is pregnant.

Somehow, Limanowski and Silberstein manage to escape (in markedly well shot and edited sequence), but with her health failing, they are forced to take refuge at his former estate. Of course, it has been confiscated by the National Socialists, but his mother Stefania now lives in a servant’s cottage and Limanowski’s resistance colleague Janusz still tends to the stables. Unfortunately, his mother’s anti-Semitism comes as a rude surprise her son. It will also be the cause of much future grief when the couple must separate.

Decades later, both lovers assume the other is dead. Silberstein is now Hannah Levine, married to a perfectly nice research doctor in Brooklyn. When she happens to see Limanowski’s British interview on her dry cleaner’s television, it all comes flooding back, inconveniently during an important dinner party.

In a way, Remembrance shares a kinship with Sophie’s Choice, but it is a more forgiving, life affirming film. Levine nee Silberstein suffers acute survivor’s guilt that viewers can well understand and easily pardon. Indeed, her complicated but loving relationship with her husband is just as important to the film’s dramatic structure.

The inherent decency of its three principles (this obviously does not include mother Limanowski) is what makes Remembrance such a touching film. It vividly portrays the personal consequences of two successive totalitarian ideologies that conspire to keep the star-crossed lovers apart. In addition to the horrors of the concentration camp, Justice also forthrightly depicts the terror of the post-war Communist regime. Years later, its attempts to excise the Homeland Army from the history books fittingly dovetails with the film’s themes of memory and documentation.

As young Limanowski, Mateusz Damiecki is viscerally intense and totally credibly as the scholarly looking action hero. Alice Dwyer is also quite compelling depicting the young Silberstein’s drive to survive. Yet, there is something unusually honest and real about Dagmar Manzel and David Rasche’s scenes together as Hannah and Daniel Levine. (Though the Sledgehammer! star still apparently works round the clock in television, to Rasche’s credit, he has appeared in a handful of interesting international films recently, Remembrance being the most notable.)

Pam Katz’s literate screenplay (co-written with the perfectly named Justice) features one of the most moving letters ever heard on film via disembodied narration. Never ginning up phony drama, the sensitively rendered Remembrance consistently rings true. It is one of the best Holocaust themed features in recent years, considerably superior to Sarah’s Key, Protektor, and Berlin ’36. Highly recommended, it screens this coming Monday (1/16) and Tuesday (1/17) at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Global Lens ’12: Craft

2012-01-10T03:00:00.001-08:00

Bianca Ventura can play Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page, and Carmen Miranda, so she obviously has considerably greater range than Michelle Williams. In truth, she is a gifted actress, but lives hand-to-mouth on what she makes performing singing telegrams and the like. Yet, she keeps hoping and working in Gustavo Pizzi’s Craft (trailer here), one of ten films selected for the Global Film Initiative’s 2012 Global Lens showcase, launching this week at MoMA.

Auditioning for a serious play, Ventura knocks it out of the park with an improv about her day gig. She lands the part, but her tryout tape takes on a life of its own. In the short run, this means little to Ventura. She still has to sing “Happy Birthday Mr. So-and-So” to rich old codgers. In fact, her prospective good fortune leads to plenty of immediate complications and heartaches.

Pizzi co-wrote Craft with his wife Karine Teles as her star vehicle and it certainly succeeds as that. She can sing, she can dance, and she can act, just like her character. She also looks and feels like a real person, rather than a Hollywood Barbie Doll. This is her problem and she knows it. Yet, Teles never allows her alter-ego to wallow in self-pity, constantly containing her emotions to the breaking point. That is what grown-ups do and Craft is definitely a film for and about people who have experienced the bitterness of life.

Unfortunately, there is really nobody else up to her level. Her celebrity dress-alike colleagues are all predictably catty or perky, while her boss is reliably exploitative. Her landlord is a cold, condescending shrew and her theater director boyfriend is nauseatingly whiny. Yes, Teles commands the screen because she is very good, but she does not have a lot of competition from these stock characters.

An actor’s life is a humiliating one. Anybody who has tried to make a go of it will relate to Ventura’s story. Of course, it will probably not be the occasion for pleasant nostalgia. As soon as the story elements are established, viewers will probably suspect exactly where it is headed.

Still, Pizzi integrates several colorful but narrative-driven musical numbers into the mix. The song by co-composers Lucas Vasconcellos and Leticia Novaes heard over the opening credits is also quite a lovely little fix for Brazilian music fans. Ultimately, Craft lives up to its title, but it never delivers any surprises. A small but mostly worthy selection for this year’s Global Lens, it screens this Friday (1/13) and Monday (1/16) at MoMA.

Gamer in Space: Richard Garriot

2012-01-09T07:00:00.000-08:00

Richard Garriot is an entrepreneur with geek chic and hipster cred. A pioneering MMO role-playing game developer, he also had the spare thirty million dollars to buy a ticket into space. He was not just a customer though. The entire phenomenon was largely his idea. Mike Woolf documents Garriot’s long-awaited Heinleinian voyage in Man on a Mission: Richard Garriot’s Road to the Stars (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

As a teenager, Garriot created the Akalabeth game on his Apple IIE, just for fun. He sold 30,000 copies. It gave him seed money at an early age and laid the foundation for his bestselling Ultima franchise. The son of Skylab 3 astronaut Owen Garriot, the gaming entrepreneur always wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. However, his near-sightedness was an automatic disqualification. Not easily dissuaded, Garriot always thought long-term, frequently investing in ventures pursuing private space travel.

One of those start-ups was Space Adventures, which eventually forged an alliance with the Russian space program to send up so-called space tourists. Garriot was first in line, until the dot-com bubble caused a temporary hiccup in his finances. Economically back on track, Garriot begin his year-long training regimen, with Woolf’s cameras in tow.

This is hardly one of those quiet observational documentaries. Clearly an evangelist for space travel, particularly as a private sector concern, Garriot freely discusses every aspect of the mission on camera. He wants audiences to share his enthusiasm, which is a rather appealing change.

Viewers also get an appreciation of the Russian/Soviet space program, which Garriot extols at length for all their firsts. Still, he readily admits that moon thing was a biggie for the Americans. We also see the reverence and camaraderie with which Garriot observes all the Cosmonaut pre-flight rituals. (However, we don’t see them partake in the traditional viewing Vladimir Motyl’s White Sun of the Desert, a surprisingly fun yarn for a Soviet propaganda picture.)

While Garriot’s overgrown fanboy persona could get annoying, if for instance you were trapped in a confined space with him for over a week, his idealism is kind of cool in an eighty-three minute film. His advocacy of private enterprise is also decidedly rare in so-called documentaries. Frankly, he deserves a lot of credit, putting his money and highly valuable time where his mouth is. There was also an obvious element of physical risk, especially since the Soyuz rockets had been acting a bit “glitchy” during the missions preceding his own. Offering optimism for the future, Mission is informative and entertaining. Recommended for general audiences well beyond snobby doc-watchers, it opens this Friday (1/13) at the Cinema Village.

First Look ‘12: That Summer

2012-01-09T03:00:00.000-08:00

If someone is said to have an artistic temperament, it usually means they are not just creative, but emotionally tempestuous. The term certainly applies to Frédéric and his wife Angèle. They will dazzle and disturb Frédéric’s hanger-on friend and his lover with the sort of emotional games that have become the hallmark of under-sung auteur Philippe Garrel’s work. Presumably his final collaboration with both his son Louis and late father Maurice (1923-2011), Philippe Garrel’s That Summer (trailer here) screens this weekend during the inaugural First Look at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens.

Frédéric is a wealthy and talented French painter, who never sells his work. Angèle is a major Italian movie star, garnering the best reviews of her career. They are everything the penniless and untalented Paul is not. Yet, for some reason the artistic couple befriends the dubious actor and his girlfriend Elisabeth, inviting them into their home in Rome. The needy Elisabeth has attempted suicide in the past, but she will be a model of stability compared to their hosts.

Initially, Frédéric and Angèle seem like a perfectly compatible and loving couple, but over the course of the summer, their mutual contempt degenerates into a repeating cycle of infidelity and petty cruelty. For the most part, Paul and Elisabeth are spectators rather than participants in the proceedings—an audience for the imploding marriage as performance art.

As is often the case with Philippe Garrel’s films, Summer is often uncomfortably intimate. However, it is never as squalid, lurid, or coyly obtuse as some of his previous films, including even (or especially) his arguably best known, I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar. The dolce vita environment of Rome certainly helps.

Garrel’s son Louis also does some of his best work as Frédéric. More Byronic than petulant for a refreshing change, he is strangely engaging throughout. Unleashing her inner diva, Monica Bellucci radiates sexuality, while reveling in the melodrama of it all. Unfortunately, Jérôme Robart and Céline Sallette are rather dull as the sponging guests. Perhaps that is required of him to serve as the narrator. However, Elisabeth’s established psychological issues are never really conveyed or followed-up on in a substantive way.

Appearing briefly as Frédéric’s long deceased grandfather, a frail looking Maurice Garrel adds a redemptive coda, bringing meaning to the film. Indeed, it is always interesting to see the son and grandfather interact in the middle Garrel’s films, starting with 1989’s Emergency Kisses, in which all three starred.

Nouvelle Vague veteran cinematographer Willy Kurant’s gives it all a pleasing look, basking in the vivid blues and greens of the couples’ photogenic abode, while John Cale’s piano soundtrack always sounds politely refined. Frankly, Summer might be a good entry point into Garrel’s filmography. Though hardly action driven, it moves along at a reasonable clip for such decidedly arthouse fare. (Bellucci also has an early nude scene, so for some viewers it pays off quickly). Considerably better the response at Toronto would suggest, That Summer is complex and intriguing film, definitely recommended to discriminating viewers when it screens this Friday (1/13) during First Look at the Museum of the Moving Image.

NYJFF ’12: Follow Me—The Yoni Netanyahu Story

2012-01-08T03:00:00.000-08:00

Jonathan “Yoni” Netanyahu is revered to extent probably second only to Hannah Senesh amongst Israel’s fallen heroes. However, Netanyahu’s ultimate sacrifice came leading one of the most successful military operations in the history of the state of Israel. The life of the commander of the Raid on Entebbe is celebrated in Jonathan Gruber & Ari Daniel Pinchot’s Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story (trailer here), which has its upcoming world premiere during the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Jewish Museum.

Yoni Netanyahu was born to lead. An ardent Israeli patriot, he had the look of a man of action. Netanyahu was the oldest of three brothers, indeed including Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, the Israeli current Israeli Prime Minister, whom Obama and Sarkozy consider so gauche for being, you know, so Israeli. The family was always quite close, frequently writing back and forth while the eldest brother of destiny studied in America.

Thanks to a wealth of surviving letters, Netanyahu’s voice come through loud and clear in Follow. In fact, the film is most successful conveying a sense of what it was like to come of age and start a new life as a young man at a time when Israel was under constant threat of attack from her belligerent neighbors. Strangely, though the film steadily builds towards the moment of truth in Uganda, the actual boots-on-the-ground military operation is handled rather perfunctorily. (Perhaps the filmmakers assumed most interested audiences would already be well versed in the details of the operation, dramatized several times in the 1970’s including Menahem Golan’s Operation Thunderbolt and Irvin Kershner’s Raid on Entebbe).

In addition to brother Benjamin, two former Prime Ministers, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak, also sat for on-camera interviews, which speaks volumes about Netanyahu’s significance to his countrymen. Yet, without question, some of the most insightful and moving remembrances come from his comrades-in-arms.

Unless viewers truly have hatred in their hearts, there are episodes in Follow that will definitely choke them up. Years later, Netanyahu’s family and loved ones still clearly feel his loss acutely. Some moments are quite beautiful, including Benjamin Netanyahu’s memories of his brother’s desert wedding, which he explains perfectly represented him as a rugged son of Israel. Others of course, are deeply tragic. Altogether, they add up to an eventful but all too short life.

While Follow is very informative, it is really defined by its appropriately elegiac tenor. It is a film that documents the humanity and dedication of the IDF soldiers and officers (particularly but not exclusively Netanyahu) that American students (arguably more than their Israeli counterparts) truly ought to see. It premieres this Thursday (1/12) with a subsequent screening on Monday (1/23) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Surrealism in Iran: Iran Darroudi

2012-01-07T05:00:00.000-08:00

The first published book of Iran Darroudi’s paintings carried introductions written by André Malraux and Jean Cocteau. Even Salvador Dalí championed her work. Despite her resulting fame in her native Iran, Darroudi has indeed found the West much more hospitable after the Islamic Revolution. The elegant surrealist painter is profiled in her fellow countryman Bahman Maghsoudlou’s documentary Iran Darroudi: Painter of Ethereal Moments, now available on DVD from Pathfinder Entertainment.

Darroudi’s family was always quite cosmopolitan, but it was their misfortune to be in the wrong place during times of global upheaval. Her grandmother’s Caucasian mercantile family fled Russia shortly after the 1917 Revolution. Profoundly misreading the geopolitical climate, her father moved the family to Germany in 1937 to pursue commercial endeavors. Though never directly threatened by the National Socialists, the severity of the war eventually forced them back to Iran. The wartime atmosphere of fear made a lasting impression on Darroudi, who explicitly identifies it as a major influence on her work.

As an artist, Darroudi’s kinship with Dalí is readily apparent. Her style is often described as surrealism informed by the Persian artistic tradition. There is an undeniably distinctive look to her dreamscapes. However, uncharitable viewers and critics might liken them to Yes album covers. Yet, regardless of aesthetic judgments, she is a significant figure for the manner in which she has led her life and pursued her art as an Iranian woman.

Although Maghsoudlou treads gingerly on political topics, Darroudi forthrightly bemoans the legal status of women in Iran. A striking beauty in her youth, she clearly never felt compelled to hide beneath veils or headscarves (which would have been a shame). She also explains the ice-bound images her work immediately following the revolution as an expression of the need to preserve her country’s culture from the ascendant barbarism. Frankly, Ethereal would have been somewhat stronger had it included more such contextual commentary.

While some art snobs might well find Darroudi a bit kitschy (unmoved by the advocacy of Malraux, the existential Gaullist), the Daumier-like grotesquery of Ardeshir Mohasses should appeal to their sensibilities. Maghsoudlou’s 1972 short documentary about the Iranian caricaturist is also included as a bonus feature on the Pathfinder DVD. While Mohasses’ style might be more visceral, the director’s earlier effort is considerably less artful, featuring unusually long soundbites from art critics that do not really add much to viewers’ appreciation of his work. Still, we cannot help but be intrigued by the fierce but unprepossessing looking critic of the prior regime. Like Darroudi, he also found exile the wisest course of action in the wake of the Revolution, dying in New York a little over three years ago.

Granted, Ethereal and Ardeshir Mohasses & His Caricatures are not perfectly executed, but they introduce viewers to two artists too distinctive in style, with too much integrity, for the current Islamist regime. Interesting stuff for Iran watchers, Ethereal is now on-sale at all major online DVD retailers.

The American (Western) Experience: Billy the Kid

2012-01-06T05:00:00.000-08:00

The man who became infamous as Billy the Kid was most likely born right here in New York City. It all starts to make sense now, doesn’t it? New York’s proud native son is profiled in the first of two new western-themed editions of The American Experience (promo here), which premieres on PBS this coming Tuesday.

William Henry McCarty, a.k.a. William H. Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid, never really had a father. There was a step-father, but he disappeared shortly after the death of McCarty’s mother. The greatest father-figure of his life was John Tunstall, the English cattleman who employed the Kid when he was already a fugitive. When the rival Murphy-Dolan outfit murdered Tunstall, McCarty and his former colleagues formed the Regulators to dispense some classic frontier justice. The resulting Lincoln County War made the Kid’s reputation.

One hundred forty years after the Kid’s death, everybody wants to be his friend. Amongst the talking heads, only Bill Richardson, the scandal-tarred former New Mexico governor, tactfully reminds viewers McCarty was a “cop killer.” Everyone else sees in McCarty what they want to: a Robin Hood, an ally of marginalized Hispanics, or a simply a young man in need of a sense of belonging. Yet, as an alternative to a stone cold outlaw, McCarty would arguably best be described as a vigilante out to punish a gang of murderers, at least until Governor Lew Ben-Hur Wallace walked away from a deal for McCarty’s testimony.

Regardless, Experience conveys a good sense of the era in general and the specific circumstances that made territorial New Mexico so conducive to the fugitive lifestyle. Employing faceless POV re-enactments, it sometimes resembles an Old West true crime program, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Competently helmed by John Maggio, it also features some fairly big name talent, including Robert Altman-regular Michael Murphy as the voice-over narrator and Pulitzer Prize winning author N. Scott Momaday as one its on-camera experts. Frankly, this is the sort of informative but not too taxing programming the History Channel was built on before it went all-in on reality shows. Indeed, history buffs should definitely enjoy Billy the Kid when it airs Tuesday (1/10) on PBS’s American Experience.

The Title Says it All: Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same

2012-01-06T03:15:00.000-08:00

They might look a little like the Coneheads, but these aliens banished to Earth are somewhat different. Rather than suburbia, they make their way to Chelsea, where a shy stationary store clerk falls hard and fast for one of the socially awkward visitors in Madeleine Olnek’s Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same (trailer here), which opens today in Brooklyn.

Zoinx and her fellow displaced aliens loved too much, generating excess emotional discharges that were destroying their planet’s ozone layer. Or something like that. Maybe it is all just a ploy to get rid of the overly needy exiles. Regardless, the powers that be laid down the law, not allowing them to return from Earth until their hearts are thoroughly broken. However, Zoinx finds the wrong Earthling for the job in Jane, a mousy stationary store clerk. Romance quickly blossoms between the two, all under the watchful eyes of two X-Files-style government agents.

Codependent had to be one of the gentlest midnight movies on the festival circuit last year. Never indulging in gore or gross-out humor, it really has a romantic heart. However, it is not particularly clever or ambitious either. A bit more edge would have helped drive the story. Instead, the spoof of old school alien invasion movies more or less ambles along, nicely and politely.

Frankly, Nat Bouman’s black-and-white cinematography looks more polished than the films that inspired it. The film’s deliberately cheesy effects also hit their marks well enough. Yet, while not conical per se, the strong similarities between the Codependent aliens and those from Saturday Night Live, both in terms of look and mannerisms, prompts unfortunate comparisons.

Still, Codependent’s ensemble gamely embraces the film’s eccentricity, particularly Dennis Davis as an insecure Man in Black. Lisa Haas even brings a credible measure of earnestness to the proceedings, as the lovelorn Jane.

Despite the obvious LGBT themes, Codependent is not aimed solely at that audience, but has wider (or maybe narrower) geeky retro-B cult appeal. Pleasant if not essential, it opens today (1/6) in Brooklyn at the ReRun Gastropub.

Mean Old Dennis Quaid: Beneath the Darkness

2012-01-05T03:30:00.000-08:00

When a director’s biography boldly trumpets his appearance in a film skewered by Mystery Science Theater 3000, it is probably best to be on guard. This is definitely true of the latest film from Martin Guigui, the proud co-star of Time Chasers. Although he has evidently done some fine documentary work profiling jazz musicians, his foray into the psychological horror-thriller genre is largely ‘bot worthy. There is indeed cause for headshaking in Guigui’s Beneath the Darkness (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Obviously Vaughn Ely is a little off. He has his names reversed. The former high school football star is now a respected funeral home director, which is a convenient job if you want to keep a dead body preserved in the attic, hypothetically speaking. Oh, whatever. Drawn by his freakiness, the brooding Travis’s whitebread friends want to break into Ely’s house for a look-see. When he predictably busts them, the unstable undertaker offs one of his friends right before his eyes.

Naturally the dumb coppers believe the twitchy Ely instead of the sensitive slacker with a history of seeing ghosts. However, Travis and Abby, the cheerleader he has been carrying a torch for, will get themselves some Hardy Boys-style justice. They just need to prowl around in the dark long enough until they find something incriminating.

According to the press materials, seeing Beneath come to fruition fulfilled a lifelong dream of the late screenwriter Bruce Wilkinson. Well, God bless him. You’ll see better films and you’ll see worse, but thanks to the drive of Wilkinson, you will probably never see Dennis Quaid act so bitchy again.

Man, does he ever ham it up as Ely, but that is wholly appropriate in a film like this. Unfortunately, everyone around him is rather dull, particularly the pedestrian Tony Oller as the sullen Travis. Friday Night Lights alumnus Aimee Teegarden’s Abby hardly makes any impression either. (Disappointingly, she spells her name with two e’s, so presumably she is not related to musicians Jack and Charlie Teagarden, which would have at least been something interesting to say about her.) Even the journeyman character actor Brent Cullen, who greatly elevated the clichéd Puncture, just gives viewers the standard Barney Fife, dubbed Sgt. Nickerson here.

Beneath was shot on location in Smithville, Texas, as were Terrence Malick’s Palme d’Or winning Tree of Life and Sandra Bullock’s rom-com, Hope Floats. You just never know what you’re going to get when you film there. To its credit, there is no real gore in Beneath, but there are not any chills either. Aside from Quaid’s over the top turn, it is pretty forgettable stuff, safely skippable when it opens tomorrow (1/6) in New York at the AMC Village 7.

Return to Downton Abbey

2012-01-04T07:00:00.000-08:00

The British upper-class always understood the importance of doing one’s part, maintaining appearances, and keeping a stiff upper lip. With the outbreak of World War I, the aristocratic Crawleys will respond as best they can. However, the war will profoundly affect both the family and their large staff of servants in the eagerly anticipated second season of Julian Fellowes’ Downton Abbey (promo here), which premieres on Masterpiece Classic this coming Sunday.

After highly rated first season of Downton, millions of Americans are now familiar with the intricacies of Edwardian estate law. The Crawleys' ancestral manor is entailed, meaning it can only be transferred to a male heir. Lord Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham has three daughters, still. After the tragic death of the heir apparent, Matthew Crawley, the middle class black sheep of the family, became the next in line. Though initially quite frosty towards each other, a cold war courtship developed between Cousin Matthew and the eldest daughter, Lady Mary, that almost but not quite bore fruit. As the second season opens, Mr. Crawley has a complicating surprise for Downton Abbey: Lavinia Swire, his new fiancé.

Both Lady Mary and her father do their best to welcome Swire into the family, but the Earl’s mother, Lady Violet, the Dowager Countess is not impressed. She rarely is. However, the war presents more pressing issues when Mr. Crawley accepts a commission taking him to the front. The war comes to Downton directly when Lord Grantham and his American wife Lady Cora reluctantly allow their stately home to serve as a rehabilitation hospital for wounded officers. In their own way, the three Crawley sisters find ways to be of service. Even the Dowager Countess puts her talents for scheming to noble uses, but tragedy will strike the household, sparing neither the high nor low born.

A surprise hit on both sides of the Atlantic, Downton was recognized by Guinness World Records as the best reviewed show ever (I’m still waiting for my plaque, by the way). Everything that worked the first time around is here again. Jim Carter is still one of television’s most engaging presences as Carson the butler, a model of rectitude, but with a good heart beneath his proper façade. Rob James Collier is still memorably oily as Thomas the conniving ex-footman. Most importantly, the Emmy winning Dame Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess is still a tart tongued force to be reckoned with. Though used sparingly in the first episode, she comes on strong as the series progresses.

Fellowes compellingly captures a sense of the British home front and his ear for dialogue is as sharp as ever. However, he occasionally indulges in some more unlikely melodrama in the second season (such as an amnesia subplot) that almost seems to be a tribute to those big chewy Victorian novels. After all, if Dickens and Trollope were alive today, they would probably be writing television serials, just like Downton. As it happens, episode six completes something of a story-arc, resolving several issues, but leaving some characters in a bit of a cliff-hanger the old serialists would appreciate. (Originally produced as Christmas special edition, PBS recommends separate review attention for episode seven.)

Naturally, every character has their particular storyline continuing from the first season, yet the not-yet-perhaps-never romance between Mr. Crawley and Lady Mary remains of central importance. Do we really care whether his reverse snobbery and her pride can ever be reconciled? Frankly, yes. Deeply so, in fact. Indeed, for all of Lady Violet’s delightful zingers (“those simple-minded idiots on the Liberal front bench” is an especially tasty one this time around), the surprising depth of their evolving relationship is the truest testament to Fellowes’ superior writing.

Classy, elegant, and wickedly droll, Downton Abbey is still exceptional television. Once again, the most likely best of the year comes early when the second season airs over the next seven consecutive Sundays (1/8-2/19) on PBS’s Masterpiece Classic.

First Look ’12: It May Be That Beauty Has Strengthened Our Resolve

2012-01-04T03:00:00.000-08:00

Masao Adachi is a filmmaker with blood on his hands. An active collaborator with the Japanese Red Army terrorists, he was imprisoned by both the Lebanese and Japanese. Now at liberty and looking considerably older than his sixty-two years, Adachi is making films again. Hopefully, it will keep him out of trouble. Aesthetically radical French filmmaker Philippe Grandrieux more or less profiles Adachi in his experimental documentary, It May Be That Beauty Has Strengthened Our Resolve: Masao Adachi, which screens during the inaugural First Look at the Museum of the Moving Image.

From the very first frame, Beauty invites a rigorous deconstructing. In footage stylized to resemble home movies, Adachi plays with his young daughter in a park, while his stream of consciousness narration takes stock of his life. Although poetic at times, his command of his faculties sounds spotty. Reluctant to address his revolutionary past directly, he hints at feelings of guilt, doubt, and confusion.

This is a marked contrast to the Adachi Grandrieux interviews directly. He remains a matter of fact Marxist extremist, who defiantly recognizes no distinction between art and politics. Yet, Grandrieux (surely unintentionally) undercuts his authority by slowly blurring his camera’s focus in one sequence and compulsively panning the light fixtures above Adachi in other. The only pure talking head shot is reserved for Kôji Wakamatsu (director of the even more unintentionally revealing United Red Army), his comrade in filmmaking and in arms, who praises Adachi as an “outlaw.”

To all but the most radicalized, Grandrieux’s choice of illustrative film clips from Adachi’s oeuvre will also be distancing. Rather than scenes from Wakamatsu’s riveting but relatively mainstream Caterpillar, which Adachi wrote, we see episodes of locking-and-loading, didactic propaganda voiceovers, and an apparently fatal sexual assault. At one point, Adachi bemoans the inability of 1960’s revolutionary movements to reach the common people. This is why.

Indeed, many of Grandrieux’s striking images undercut the revolutionary program. Adachi’s sweet-tempered little girl is a timely reminder there are things more important than the scientistic dialectics Adachi venerates. The images of him wandering through downtown Tokyo (a capital of capitalism) lit up brighter than Times Square at night amid throngs of energetic young people is also probably not intended to look so appealing. Indeed, Adachi resembles a ghost surrounded by life in full bloom.

Clearly, Grandrieux recognizes strong visuals when he captures them. Fascinating in its use of avant-garde techniques, whether Beauty succeeds or not depends on what you expect from it. It is never a conventional biographical survey, nor does Adachi ever really take stock of his past actions and their implications. However, it is will be a treasure trove for critics and scholars seeking material to interpret according to their preconceptions. It screens once and only once this Sunday (1/8) as part of First Look at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens.

Tran Anh Hung’s Norwegian Wood

2012-01-03T06:00:00.000-08:00

It is the 1960’s, but Toru Watanabe hardly notices. Better suited to the brooding Romantic era, he is too preoccupied with his ardor and the death that haunts the object of his affections to throw bombs at the police. Lushly adapted from the celebrated Haruki Murakami novel, French Vietnamese filmmaker Tran Anh Hung’s Japanese language Norwegian Wood (trailer here) opens this Friday in New York.

Watanabe’s deep abiding feelings for his best friend Kizuki’s beautiful and sensitive girlfriend will be a constant throughout his formative years. Frankly, Naoki is a bit too sensitive. When Kizuki inexplicably commits suicide, they both take it hard. As they try to support each other in their grief, Watanabe falls profoundly in love with her. Unfortunately, her bereavement gives way to acute depression.

Even though the fragile Naoki cloisters herself in a remote mountain sanitarium, Watanabe remains devotionally faithful to her. He largely sleep-walks through his day-to-day life, only seeing Naoki during brief but intense visits. Then he inadvertently catches the eye of Midori Kobayashi. She is bright, vivacious, and outgoing—all of which Watanabe is ill-equipped to deal with.

While Murakami’s love story is often described in terms of its passion, it is just as much about longing. Tran vividly captures the pattern of tension and release that defines Watanabe’s existence. His screen version also stays faithful to the author’s ambivalence to 1960’s radicalism, privileging the personal over the political. Still, Norwegian capitalizes on the splashy look of the era, featuring Yen Khe Luguern’s mod costumes and distinctive period decors.

Despite her beauty and standing as Japan’s only living Academy Award nominee (for Babel), Rinko Kikuchi had to hard sell Tran to be cast as the fractured Naoko. Yet, she is exquisitely devastating, defining the film with her poignant presence. A big step up for Kenichi Matsuyama in terms of prestige, the Death Note franchise star is also quite convincing, if a bit chilly, as Watanabe. Appealingly saucy, Kiko Mizuhara’s Kobayashi always brings a refreshing dose of energy to the film, while Reika Kirshima provides an engaging grounded center as Naoko’s fellow patient friend, Reiko Ishida. Yet, perhaps the film’s purest emotional turn comes from Eriko Hatsune in a near-cameo as the tragic lover of Watanabe’s elitist former friend.

An unusually refined production, Tran and cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bin’s arresting use of light and rich, warm hues of color is a pleasure to luxuriate in. Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood’s chamberish string score lacks a distinctive melodic identity, but it nicely suits the film’s spirit (Kirshima’s rendition of the titular Beatles song is also respectably presentable). Forthrightly addressing emotional fervor and loss, Norwegian is a genuinely beautiful film. Highly recommended, it opens this Friday (1/6) in New York at the IFC Center.

The Symphonic Gershwin with Hancock, Dudamel, and the L.A. Phil

2012-01-03T03:00:00.000-08:00

In the 1920’s Paul Whiteman was the biggest so-called “jazz” bandleader in the country. Today, he is largely ignored. He had many hot soloists, but his sound was more sweet than swinging. His name pretty much said it all. However, the sort-of concerto he commissioned from George Gershwin would become arguably the most recognizable American classical composition of all time. Appropriately, the jazz inspired Rhapsody in Blue is the centerpiece of a L.A. Philharmonic concert of Gershwin’s music featuring NEA Jazz Master Herbie Hancock, which airs on PBS’s Great Performances this Friday (preview here).

The evening starts with An American in Paris as a feature for the Philharmonic under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel. It is fitting companion piece to the Blue, including some nice solos for muted and hatted trumpet as well as some vaguely jazzish passages. With its diverse movements and crowd-pleasing car horn effects, it is definitely a money’s-worth selection.

The second selection of the televised concert is Hancock’s solo piano rendition of “Someone to Watch Over Me.” Perhaps inspired by the setting, he gives it a rather rhapsodic introduction, before settling into a more contemplative mood. Indeed, he approaches the melody quite obliquely, which is something of a surprise given the venue. After all, “Watch” is one of those songs nearly everyone with any musical literacy sings along with in their head.

The main event though, is undeniably Rhapsody in Blue performed with a traditional arrangement, but allowing Hancock considerably greater interpretive space. Yet, all the magic moments are still there, including the ever beautiful clarinet introduction, perhaps the instrument’s finest classical moment (though not necessarily in jazz, thanks to Woody Herman, Sidney Bechet, and Benny Goodman, among others).

According to Hancock, this is his premiere appearance with a symphony performing any sort of classical-jazz symphonic hybrid. Once known as the “kid” Blue Note Records signed, the seventy-one year old pianist looks at least twenty years younger. He clearly has not lost a step either, attacking Blue with a much wider dynamic range than typical, while even throwing in a legit improvisation here and there.

It is always worth hearing a new version of Rhapsody in Blue, particularly from musicians of the L.A. Philharmonic’s caliber. As an acknowledged master and the L.A. Phil’s current Creative Chair for Jazz, Hancock also provides some tasty moments, even if jazz piano with orchestra is not as natural a fit for him as for a Dave Brubeck or John Lewis. Classy entertainment (if not absolutely epochal), the L.A. Philharmonic’s Gershwin program is a nice way for Great Performances to start the year. It premieres this Friday (1/6) on most PBS outlets.

The Hunter: Rage in Iran

2012-01-02T05:00:00.000-08:00

To unwind, Ali Alavi spends his weekends in the forest, relying solely on his hunting rifle to provide sustenance. He is not the sort of man to be toyed with. Indeed, when the repressive Iranian state pushes him to his breaking point, he pushes back in the Iranian-born French-based Rafi Pitts’ quietly incendiary The Hunter (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday in New York at the IFC Center.

Alavi is an ex-con, convicted of an unnamed and therefore dubious crime. Forced to work as a late shift security guard, only his reputation as an expert hunter and marksmen affords him a measure of respect from his coworkers. One fateful day, he returns from his hunting trip to find his wife and daughter missing. Over the following weeks, Alavi endures a Kafkaesque nightmare, as the police and various bureaucrats callously keep him waiting hours on end for little or no information.

According to the official story, his wife was killed in the crossfire between the police and the so-called “rebels,” as the government refers to the democratic Green movement protestors. It is clear to everyone with eyes the despised police are responsible, but refuse to acknowledge culpability. Only the distant hope of finding his daughter keeps the slow-burning Alavi in check. Once her fate is determined, he commits a shocking act of violence Pitts dares viewers to condone.

At this point, Hunter becomes something like a fugitive thriller with more than a touch of the absurd, as two bickering corrupt cops apprehend Alavi in the woods he knows so well, only to get thoroughly lost. It is actually a masterful third act that never goes where you quite expect it to, while remaining true to the grim realities of contemporary Iranian society.

Clearly, Alavi’s hunting is a conscious strategy to maintain his masculine self-worth in an emasculating environment. It also makes him dangerous. With his close cropped hair, wiry build, steely gaze, and 1970’s sports sedan, Pitts, serving as his lead actor, somewhat resembles an Iranian Steve McQueen (the star of 1980’s The Hunter). He is one bad cat, viscerally intense and totally credible in the action-oriented scenes.

Frankly, there is much we can assume about Alavi from what Pitts implies. The greenness of his car and the décor of his home may or may not be coincidental. Yet, unlike many people we observe on the street, he never seems very optimistic about the 2009 election. Perhaps he has seen this all before and suspects what is coming.

Neither a pure thriller nor strictly a naturalistic social protest film, The Hunter could be considered the Iranian version of the Falling Down (the high-water mark of Joel Schumacher’s career). If not an outright call for violent resistance, it explicitly suggests the pent-up rage of average Iranians is deep and widespread. It ought to chill the Islamist mullahs to their cores. A genuinely powerful and challenging film, The Hunter marks an excellent start to the New Year. Highly recommended, it opens this Wednesday (1/4) in New York at the IFC Center.

Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

2012-01-02T03:00:00.000-08:00

If Beckett and Mamet collaborated on a Turkish police procedural, it might have been similar in tone to Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest festival favorite. Yet, the lush pastoral imagery is a distinct hallmark of the Turkish auteur’s style. Do not expect to be spoon fed a conventional action-driven narrative. Ceylan makes viewers work for it in his obliquely focused Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday in New York at Film Forum.

As the film opens, Kenan is trying to show Police Chief Naci and three carloads of officers where he buried the body of his former friend Yasar. Unfortunately he was drunk at the time and cannot remember the exact location. This will take a while—all night in fact. While they blunder across the deserted Anatolian steppe, Chief Naci, Dr. Cemal, and Prosecutor Nusret, banter about this and that, which might later prove to be more revealing than viewers first realize.

Eventually, Kenan finally finds the body, at which point Ceylan throws his first curve ball, taking the film on a detour into absurdist black comedy. The film almost plays like a spoof of long slow pretentious art films, though one has to have a lot of long slow pretentious art films under their belt to really appreciate it as such.

Finally, the keystone kops get the body back to the station, where Ceylan shifts gears once again. We start to pick up clues the nature of the crime is not precisely what we were led to believe. We also learn (with as much certainty as Ceylan ever allows) about one character’s very painful private life.

Throughout Anatolia, truth is decidedly slippery. Ceylan provides clues to raise suspicions, but never enough to form rock-solid conclusions. It is hard to say what over two and a half hours of this elusiveness adds up to, but at least the audience has had a lovely driving tour of the Turkish countryside.

Mostly shot in long takes, framing the characters as tiny figures set against the verdant landscape, Anatolia is a film that really has to be broken down into manageable parts. The three leads who emerge from the ensemble all excellent, each looking appropriately haggard and weathered. Yilmaz Erdoğan seems to be the standard issue tough cop, yet he hints at something unexpectedly compassionate in Naci. Conversely, Muhammet Uzuner’s Cemal seems like a reassuringly earnest provincial doctor, but he performs the film’s only true interrogation, so riveting viewers do not realize it is happening until it is already over. However, it is Taner Birsel who really takes his character to unexpected places, exposing the torment beneath the prosecutor’s bluff and polish.

All three actors have some really fine moments in Anatolia, but you have to drive a bit of a ways to get to each one. Yet, compared to the three hour forced march of Cristi Puiu’s Aurora, Anatolia is a walk in the park that offers the additional added attraction of actually getting somewhere in the end. It is a hard film to fully wrap one’s head around, but it stays with you (particularly Birsel’s final scene), which certainly proves it works on some level. Indeed, it is the sort of film probably worth revisiting with the benefit of hindsight. Often arresting to look at (through cinematographer Gökhan Tiryaki’s artful lens) and occasionally wickedly droll, is recommended for highest of high-end cineastes when it opens this Wednesday (1/4) at Film Forum.

First Look ’12: Almayer’s Folly

2012-01-01T04:00:00.000-08:00

Festival season now starts a little earlier. An adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s first novel will be the opening night film of the inaugural edition of the first film fest of the year sure to make critics and scholars sit up and take note. Of course, it is hardly Chantal Akerman’s first film, but it is something of a departure for the Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1800 Bruxelles auteur. Fittingly, Akerman’s foray into tropical malaise, Almayer’s Folly, kicks off the first annual First Look series at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria.

There is something elusive about Conrad that doggedly resists the transfer to the big screen. Yet, his work has been a siren call to filmmakers, resulting in flawed masterworks like Apocalypse Now and Lord Jim. Such is the case with Akerman’s Folly, except less so.

As per Conrad, Kaspar Almayer is an unhappy man. He married the mixed race daughter of his adventurer mentor, Captain Lingard, in hopes of a prospective inheritance. Instead, Lingard has frittered away his fortune and sanity in search of a rumored treasure. Trapped in a loveless and impoverished marriage, Almayer’s only solace is his daughter Nina, but her resentment of westerners’ arrogant and abusive ways very definitely extends to her father.

Frankly, learning of a new Conrad film adaptation is sort of like hearing an out of shape friend has entered a marathon. You admire their ambition and hope they pull it off, but remain skeptical. If nothing else, Akerman completely nails the atmosphere of exotic alienation. Watching Folly will make viewers feel like a corpulent western expatriate sweating profusely in a cream-colored suit. However, a little of that humid torpor goes a long way.

Clearly, Folly was conceived as a mood piece, but the narrative slack is awfully conspicuous. At times, the cast seem more like props for Akerman to pose than actors interpreting characters. Still, Aurora Marion palpably radiates bitterness and contempt as Nina and Stanislas Merhar has some quietly forceful moments as Almayer.

Set in Malaysia but filmed in Cambodia, Folly is indeed something of a mixed bag. Yet, it is undeniably intriguing to watch a filmmaker of Akerman’s stature take on the enigmatic Conrad. While it can certainly drag in-the-moment, it is a fascinating film to look back on as a whole. Of note to serious cineastes, Folly is an impressively high profile launch for the first ever First Look. It screens once and only once (second looks are up to somebody else) this Friday (1/6), with Akerman in attendance at the Museum of the Moving Image’s historic Paramount Studio home.

Top 10 Theatrical Releases of 2011

2011-12-31T05:00:00.000-08:00

It was another tough year at the box office, with the film industry feeling the pain of a not quite dead but extremely sleepy economy and the karmic payback for their over-reliance on 3-D premium tickets. However, discerning viewers could have found some comparative values at theaters this year, considering half of 2011’s ten best films clocked in at well over three and a half hours. The this year’s list of the ten best films to have arguable theatrical distribution (as opposed to festival screenings) follows in alpha order, rather than descending running times.

It has become almost a cliché to heap honors on Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist, but it truly is a charming film, refreshingly free of cynicism and quite inventive in the ways it both maintains and breaks its novelty format.

About twenty years after the fact, Edward Yang’s nearly four hour masterpiece A Brighter Summer Day finally got a legit New York theatrical run courtesy of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. In his hands, the juvenile delinquents of 1960’s Taiwan became the stuff of epic tragedy.

Though it landed on PBS less than a month after it opened in New York, Amanda Pope & Tchavdar Georgiev’s Desert of Forbidden Art had more revelations per frame than any other nonfiction film in 2011. Not only is it a fascinating hitherto unknown chapter of Cold War history, the work of the Soviet era modern artists saved by Igor Savitsky is absolutely stunning, clearly ranking alongside their western contemporaries.

Wickedly slick and brutally honest, Lee Tamahori’s The Devil’s Double took serious guts to make. However, his visceral dramatization of Uday Hussein reign of perverse terror will be recognized in the future as the definitive cinematic depiction of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

Postmodern by postmodern standards, Mariano Llinás’ Extraordinary Stories turned film noir conventions on their head over the course of four and a half twisty-turny hours. Audacious in its narrative gamesmanship, its subplots have subplots, yet it is completely engaging every step of the way.

Second only to the Czech Rebelove among musicals that forthrightly address the era of Communist oppression, Valery Todorovsky’s Hipsters was sexy and stylish like its title characters. It is also a deeply humane film that even pays homage to Charlie Parker. New Yorkers are still waiting for this distinctive crowd pleaser, which has already opened in Los Angeles.

It is impossible to hang any pat label on Sion Sono’s four-hour Love Exposure, but once you have seen it, you know you saw a film. Chocked full of sexualized religious imagery, this tale of a panty-peeking amateur pornographer’s battle against a doomsday cult is a major work from a master auteur.

Only too brief at 272 minutes, the late Raúl Ruiz’s Mysteries of Lisbon is an exquisitely rich period production and utterly absorbing storytelling. While its swashbuckling romance is wonderfully old fashioned, it is also mischievously sly in its telling.

Striking to look at, Sherwood Hu’s The Prince of the Himalayas presents Shakespeare’s Hamlet on its greatest stage ever: the Tibetan mountain range. Hu also fearlessly rewrites the Danish play in ways that are shockingly effective. Now screening in New York at the Rubin Museum of Art, it is the Shakespearean film of the year, featuring one of the most beautiful and haunting Ophelias ever.

190 minutes of madness, Kôji Wakamatsu’s United Red Army gave audiences an inside look into Japan’s notorious Marxist terrorist group as they turned on each other in an orgy of violent “self-criticism” and torture. Probably more damning and outright terrifying than their former comrade Wakamatsu realizes, it should be requiring viewing to understand the nature and tactics of the extreme left.

The platoon of self-proclaimed Oscar contenders slipping in and out of theaters in December to meet eligibility requirements always complicates best-of lists. Michelle Yeoh gives an Academy worthy performance in Luc Besson’s The Lady, which is currently embargoed for reviews, except year-end consideration. Also worthy for year-end shout-outs, Liam Cunningham and Mark Strong are two of the year’s best villains, wonderfully erudite and sarcastic in John Michael McDonagh’s The Guard. Finally, Jonathan English’s Ironclad deserves credit for the best use of a severed arm as a bludgeon. Happy New Year.

The Worst Film of 2011: The Ledge

2011-12-31T03:00:00.000-08:00

The Sundance press corps is not exactly a hotbed of Evangelical Christianity, so when they unanimously diss and dismiss a self-proclaimed atheist “thriller” as a steaming pile of rubbish, it is worth noting. This was the case with Matthew Chapman’s deservedly panned The Ledge, which is indeed the worst film of 2011, but not for the reasons he might assume.

In a way, it is sort of a gift to dub a film like this the worst, because it probably plays to his persecution complex. However, if this dissuades only one person from enduring his lame potboiler, it is worth it. Sadly, there were several other candidates in 2011. In fact, this piece should carry a huge asterisk, since I have not been subjected to the precociousness of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I’m also at a loss to explain why Peep World was produced or why anyone would think Sarah Silverman is funny. The staggeringly ill-conceived Waiting for Forever was a particularly close contender, but it so earnestly wants to be loved, it is hard to empty another critical clip into it. There is no such problem with the Ledgeroo.

The Ledge begins with a dude on a ledge and the sooner he jumps, the better. This is Gavin Nichols, an aggressively atheist hotel manager, who decided to "seduce" one of his maids (evidently, because he lacks the sense of moral responsibility that comes with a belief in a higher power) as a way to get back at her Evangelical husband and by extension all Christians. This constitutes workplace sexual harassment. No matter what Chapman might think, there is nothing cute or romantic about it. It is illegal and no woman who finds herself in Shana’s place has to take it.

Of course, in the godless world of The Ledge, his victim, Shana, falls in love with her sexual predator, while her faithful husband is presented as the creep. In violation of all Christian principles, he takes Shana hostage, issuing Nichols a grim ultimatum: kill thyself by the appointed hour or Shana’s death will be on your head. At this point, dumb copper Hollis Lucetti wanders onto the ledge, so we can watch Nichols’ stilted story in flashbacks.

Though Chapman’s story and dialogue are howlingly bad, his cast does not do him any favors either. Terrence Howard’s flat-footed Lucetti basically makes surliness boring. As Nichols, Charlie Hunnam looks like a surfer and sounds like a used car salesman, while Liv Tyler basically sleepwalks through each of Shana’s scenes, as if she were zonked out on Thorazine.

Considering the thinness of the characterizations, the hamminess of Hunnam’s lead performance, and the clumsy plot contrivances, one has to wonder if it was all produced by Max Bialystock, but the poorly executed The Ledge is just a mirthless mess. Frankly, this is an unusually mean-spirited and hypocritical film, exhibiting the same judgmental intolerance it makes such an exaggerated show of condemning. Petty and genuinely misogynistic, The Ledge is the worst film of 2011. Happy New Year.

Santa Stinks en Français

2011-12-30T03:00:00.000-08:00

What’s a merry Christmas without a little collateral damage? Fortunately, the French are there to remind us how aggressively crummy the holidays are. If you spent December 25th alone, Jean-Marie Poiré’s Le père Noël est une ordure will make you grateful. Demurely translated as Santa Stinks (trailer here), this French yuletide favorite is now playing a special holiday engagement at MoMA.

Pierre and Thérèse are WASPY volunteers at a suicide hotline working Christmas Eve for their well-to-do busy-body supervisor, Madame Musquin, who will spend most of the night stuck in the elevator. She will be the lucky one. A flamboyant transvestite caller, their mega-pregnant client Josette, and her nebbish but psychotic husband Félix will reduce their evening to anarchy, periodically interrupted by visits from their immigrant neighbor Preskovic, bearing ever more unlikely dishes of his scatological native cuisine.

If the basic premise of Ordure sounds familiar that is because Nora Ehpron neutered it with her American remake Mixed Nuts. In truth, a film like this could never be made here today. The professionally aggrieved, most definitely including GLAAD and CAIR, would have a seizure. Truly, there is something to offend everyone: gay jokes, foreigner jokes, sex jokes, animal husbandry, and language that would make rappers blush, even in subtitles. Basically, it is everything you could every ask Santa for wrapped up under the tree and since it is screening at MoMA, you can even get your film snob on while you watch.

Based on a stage play mounted by the Le Splendid company Ordure is wickedly funny, but not exactly an acting workshop. Frankly, Splendid trouper Thierry Lhermitte mugs something awful as Pierre, but you can’t say he isn’t working for his laughs. Yet, he is downright subtle compared to Christian Clavier’s cross-dressing Katia. Perhaps Anémone gives the driest, most understated turn as Thérèse, but it is only by comparison to her colleagues’ unrestrained lunacy.

Ordure is so shamelessly unrepentant, it comes as a breath of fresh air. Surly and dirty-minded, it has the attitude of a mid 1970’s Mel Brooks movie with an inflamed skin rash. As a longstanding Christmas tradition, it gives one a new appreciation for the French. It also makes you want to keep them at a distance. Highly recommended, but absolutely not for children or the easily offended, it screens through Monday (1/2) at the Museum of Modern Art. Happy Holidays.

The Man in the Hood: El Sicario, Room 164

2011-12-29T03:00:00.000-08:00

Don’t ask who that masked man is. You don’t want to know. In 2009, a sicario (a professional killer working for the Mexican drug cartels) gave an in-depth interview to Charles Bowden for a revealing Harper’s article. Despite the cartel’s $250,000 bounty, he subsequently consented to a lengthy on-camera interview with Bowden’s filmmaker colleague Gianfranco Rosi, who shaped his pseudo-confession into the documentary El Sicario, Room 164 (trailer here), now playing in New York at Film Forum.

Rosi and Bowden are deliberately sketchy about the details, but the film was shot in a border town hotel room (number 164), where the masked sicario once held and tortured someone who owed money to his cartel. Eventually, he turned the battered man over to another team of sicarios. While he does not know his victim’s ultimately fate, he knowledgeably assumes a grisly end. Though this disturbing information seems to lend considerable significance to the location, it quickly becomes apparent the sicario has done such crimes innumerable times before in similar motels and so-called “safe houses” on either side of the border.

The sicario might very well be embellishing a host of individual details, but the broad strokes he sketches out ring chillingly true. Like a talented young baseball player, the sicario was recruited by his cartel at a young age. After serving a drug-running apprenticeship, the cartel greased his way into the police academy. Yes, the killer is also a copper. He estimates about a quarter of the graduates of all Mexico’s law enforcement academies are cartel plants. Not surprisingly, the free access to squad cars greatly simplifies the kidnapping process.

164 is all kinds of scary. Frankly, it makes it pretty clear narco-terrorist warlords have taken over the country. This is not happening in remote Afghanistan, but along our southern border. It is also evident the current administration is not capable of thinking sufficiently strategically over the long term to combat them in any meaningful way. Sending them a bunch of free guns as part of Operation Fast & Furious just is not going to do it.

Rosi focuses nearly exclusively on the hooded sicario as he uses a sketch pad to delineate the structure and methods of the cartels with icy precision. For occasional bumper shots, he shows scenes of the sicario’s scarred and sordid Juárez, sort of like Ozu transitions from Hell. Essentially, we are in that motel room (or one very much like it) listening to the anonymous assassin. It might not sound especially cinematic, but it is riveting.

If just half of what the sicario says is true, then the drug war is over in Mexico. The cartels won. It is tempting to get hung up on the particulars of his story, most notably his conversion story which rivals that of Saul on the road to Damascus. Then again, there must be some reason he is talking about the inner workings of his former business to director-cinematographer Rosi and co-producer Bowden, in defiance of the quarter million dollar price on his head. Indeed, it might be the most brutal talking head film ever produced, with the off-camera violence palpably lingering in the air. Recommended for viewers who can handle a talky dose of reality, 164 is now playing in New York at Film Forum.

The Servant: Chun Hyang’s Story Turned Inside Out

2011-12-28T03:00:00.000-08:00

During the Joseon era, seduction was a form of blood sport. Chun Hyang was one of the star players. Though the low-born daughter of gisaeng singer is celebrated for her chastity in legend and song, Kim Dae-woo paints a rather different portrait in The Servant (trailer here), now available on DVD from Pathfinder Entertainment.

Chun Hyang’s mother Wol-Mae knew what she wanted for her daughter and the noble scholar Lee Mong-ryong fit the bill well enough. While duly setting her sites on the big fish, Chun Hyang also turns the head of his servant Jeon Bang-ja, a future outlaw, who tells the tale to his prospective biographer in a series of flashbacks. Despite his commonness, Bang-ja (as he is traditionally referred to) also catches Chun Hyang’s eye thanks to the tricks of seduction he learns from Lee’s dissolute old house guest.

Before long, the servant appears to have out maneuvered his master, seducing Chun Hyang first and more satisfactorily, if you will. However, the stratagems in this game are decidedly long term, as Bang-ja learns when his former master returns as a newly appointed government inspector. Like most cowards, Lee is petty and dangerous by virtue of his power.

While Servant has the outward veneer of a prestige costume drama, it often inhabits some sexually provocative territory somewhere between tease and softcore, much like Kim’s previous film Forbidden Quest, except more so. One assumes its take on Chun Hyang’s famous story resonated with Korean audiences in much the same manner Shakespeare in Love spoke to the English-speaking market, but with more naughty bits. Yet, the surprisingly complicated intrigues and cutting comedy of manners should still appeal to viewers previously unfamiliar with the legend.

Jo Yeo-jeong fearlessly takes on the iconic role, vividly portraying her hitherto unknown Machiavellian instincts and seductiveness. She has a real screen presence, yet Ryu Hyeon-gyeong is quite possibly hotter as Hyang Dan-yi, Chun Hyang’s maid who carries a torch for Bang-ja. (Arguably, Kim Seong-ryeong is as well, playing the gisaeng stage mother with delightful relish, but she is one of the few cast members to stay fully clothed.)

As far as the men are concerned, Ryu Seung-beom is appropriately hissable and cold-blooded as the serpentine Lee. Yet Kim Ju-hyeok is a bit of weak spot for the film, never really delivering the animal magnetism required of Bang-ja.

Servant really is a lushly produced period drama. Indeed, Jeong Gyeong-heu’s costumes look great while the cast wears them. Those who know a bit about the epic folktale will also appreciate the clever ways director Kim’s screenplay invokes and subverts it. It is definitely for adults, but it is one of the smarter lusty films you will see. Freely recommended for fully informed and mature viewers, The Servant is now available on DVD.

Honored and Preserved: These Amazing Shadows

2011-12-27T05:00:00.000-08:00

It took a special talent to rile up the great Jimmy Stewart, but the not so great Ted Turner had it. However, the hue and cry he raised against the Mouth from the South’s colorization program ultimately put the Library of Congress in the film preservation business, as the custodians of the National Film Registry. Filmmakers and scholars discuss many of the officially recognized films cafeteria style in Paul Mariano and Kurt Norton’s These Amazing Shadows (trailer here), which airs this Thursday on PBS’s Independent Lens.

Responding to the concerns of Stewart and his colleagues, Congress sprang into action, passing a bill none of them had read. Eventually, the Library of Congress’s legal staff determined they had been charged with selecting twenty-five culturally and artistically significant films each year to be preserved for generations to come. Though the list is largely determined by a panel of experts, public input is also solicited. It is a retrospective honor, reserved for films at least ten years old, with practical consequences for posterity.

Naturally, there are many clips of widely acknowledged classics, such as The Godfather and It’s a Wonderful Life. However, Mariano and Norton seem more interested in the oddities on the list, like Gus Visser and His Singing Duck, an early experiment with soundie technology from 1925 and films whose inclusion are clearly noted to criticize the notions of American exceptionalism, such as Dave Tatsuno’s Topaz, a collection of amateur films documenting life in a Japanese internment camp.

Perhaps Star Wars fans will be most frustrated by Shadows because it raises but never addresses what will be an obvious question for them. Not surprisingly A New Hope, a.k.a. Star Wars, was selected for the Registry, but given Lucas’s persistent habit of making alterations both large and small, one wonders which version has been preserved? The broadcast version of Shadows never explores this issue.

There are tons of talking heads in the documentary, but none really has anything stop-the-presses insightful to say. Mostly, we simply get bromides about how nice it is to see movies in theaters because it is part of a communal experience. Whereas, just why Peter Coyote is selected as an expert on the Zapruder Film frankly remains a bit baffling.

For an honor like the National Film Registry, what is not on the list is just as controversial as what has been selected, but the broadcast cut never tackles the subject of arguable omissions. Of course, since films do not have any window of eligibility, it is never too late to rectify an oversight, which is why the absence of such discussion is so glaring. Though this year’s list will be announced imminently, I am happy to suggest for next year: Vincente Minnelli’s Cabin in the Sky, King Vidor’s The Fountainhead, and Frank Borzage’s The Mortal Storm.

Essentially, Shadows is like a lite beer version of a Chuck Workman film, replacing his visual wit and verve, with some flat commentary. It is a passable time killer for movie lovers, but hardly appointment television when it airs this Thursday (12/29) on Independent Lens.