Its premise — two twentysomething gals, feeling the economic crunch of the times, partner on a phone-sex-line venture — sounds like a hopelessly broad, gender-flipped cash-grab at some of the raunchy comedy dollars that seem so easy to pry out of teen moviegoers’ wallets, but For a Good Time, Call… transcends the more pat aspects of its story, connecting by sheer force of personality while also indulging in a few unexpected changes in direction. Powered by a fizzy, buzzy energy and slick, funny repartee that channels some of the best female buddy pairings out there, director Jamie Travis’ debut film, co-written by star Lauren Miller, is a genuine treat for gals and guys alike, exploiting for laughs the differences and similarities in male-female sexual attraction and gratification.
A world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, For a Good Time, Call… grounds itself in a classic odd-couple pairing. Lauren Powell (Miller, above right) is smarting from a break-up with her long-time boyfriend Charlie (James Wolk), and needs a place to stay while she waits for her résumé to open up a proper white-collar job. Spunky Katie Steele (Ari Graynor) finds herself in need of a roommate for the Gramercy Park-adjacent apartment she’s inherited from her grandmother. Mutual friend Jesse (Justin Long) re-introduces the pair, who have a prickly past dating back to one unfortunate night in college. Swallowing pride, they shack up and try to tolerate one another.
When the more conservative Lauren learns that Katie is working as a phone sex operator in order to make ends meet, though, she figures her business smarts could earn them both a lot more money. While keeping things from her parents, Lauren grows the business with Katie over the course of a summer. As Katie grapples with feelings for one of her regular callers, Shawn (Mark Webber), and Lauren finally learns of a job opening in her desired field, things get complicated.
Almost all that’s right about For a Good Time, Call… stems from its screenplay, co-written by Miller and her college roommate, Katie Anne Naylon, so it’s hard to hold onto much animosity about the things that it fumbles. Certain story bits (a co-worker introduced and then discarded after being revealed as an impostor) don’t really work, and the script doesn’t fully and convincingly delve into some of the plausible reasons behind or consequences of an amusing character twist it introduces. Still, there’s a somewhat beguiling blend of the prim and lewd here (“Basically, whatever it is, I just tell ’em I’ll lick it,” says Katie of her phone sex technique), and the comedy overall speaks in a forthright manner, in a way few films do, to how so much of our sexual education is absorbed through anecdotes and conversations with friends. No matter that the two leads here are a decade removed from the bloom of adolescence — they each have their own sexual hang-ups and issues, and through their weird and unlikely partnership-turned-friendship, they’re both fumbling toward something approaching self-actualization.
Miller, Seth Rogen’s offscreen significant other, has a natural, girl-next-door beauty, as well as a buoyant charisma that draws almost equally from demure naïveté and a place with more slyness and depth. There’s a nougat center of playful naughtiness under that nice exterior (something to which almost every guy can connect), and the mischievous chemistry Miller shares with Graynor — a gifted comedienne who’s made her mark in supporting roles in movies like Celeste and Jesse Forever, The Sitter, Date Night and Youth in Revolt — is an intoxicating thing. Accept this Call, it’s well worth it. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for some soundboard shenanigans, meanwhile, click here. (Focus, R, 89 minutes)
Monthly Archives: August 2012
Marjane Satrapi Talks Chicken with Plums, Not Liking Kids, More
Iranian-born French novelist and multi-hyphenate Marjane Satrapi made a well-received transition to filmmaking in 2007 with the animated international hit Persepolis, adapted for the screen from several of her own autobiographical works. The live-action Chicken with Plums marks her second collaboration with animator Vincent Paronnaud, her co-director on both projects. The film, set in Tehran in the late 1950s, centers on a renowned musician (Mathieu Almaric) who, having lost his taste for life, decides to confine himself to his bedroom and wait for death; deep and wild reveries ensue. I recently had the chance to speak one-on-one and in person with the effusive, Paris-based, colorfully dressed Satrapi, about her movies, working with actors for the first time, not liking children, and how she feels about the apocalypse as well as Robert Rodriguez’s Machete. The lively conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the chat.
Compliance
A superbly acted and psychologically complex drama based on true events, writer-director Craig Zobel’s Compliance examines what can be accomplished with one piece of information and the suggestion of power. Unfolding with a screw-tightening simplicity at once disarming and deeply unnerving, Zobel’s film tells a simple story but one with a tentacled, fragile connection to everything from e-phishing scams and modern identity fraud to more monstrous abuses and scandals of the sort that have impacted Penn State University and the Catholic Church.
Compliance unfolds at a suburban Ohio ChickWich, a fast-food chain restaurant managed by the stressed-out Sandra (Ann Dowd). In the middle of a busy day shift, Sandra receives a phone call from a police officer (Pat Healy) telling her that an employee, Becky (Dreama Walker, above), has been fingered by a customer as having stolen money from her purse. Convinced she’s only doing what’s right, Sandra questions Becky, who denies any such theft. Sandra then follows (and tasks others with doing the same) a series of increasingly invasive step-by-step instructions from the voice on the other end of the line, who seeks her cooperation by way of explaining that he can’t yet spare officers to come to the scene.
Compliance is basically a coiled, cinematic mousetrap version of the famous Milgram Experiment, a series of social psychology tests in which obedience to authority figures was measured by having subjects perform acts otherwise out of step with what would be considered their personal consciences. Its roots lie in a case in Kentucky in April 2004, which later exposed more than 70 similar calls throughout the country over a period of nearly 10 years. What, then, to make of this warped but sizably-scaled attempt at manipulation and sexual abuse by proxy?
With the assistance of the ominous cello-and-glockenspiel rumble of Heather McIntosh’s score, Zobel (Great World of Sound) crafts a movie as taut and gripping as it is spare and streamlined. There are but a couple locations used here, which helps feed a sense of claustrophobia and queasy dread that mounts as the film unwinds, and circumstances become more dire for Becky. The characterizations are all crisp, and performances here are superb. Dowd channels the doubt and confusion of a person who strives to please, and avoid confrontation at all costs. Walker, meanwhile, charts a chilling and sympathetic course from bewilderment to sad resignation, most gut-punchingly registered in a telling line of explanation late in the movie: “I just knew what was going to happen.”
Detractors can harp on small details as somehow either indicative of filmmaking faults or “dumb,” unrealistic and/or overly impressionable characters, but Compliance digs down into the marrow in examining the degree to which people crave authority. Its story is wrapped up in sex, abuse, gender association and even generational power dynamics, it’s true, but the brash manipulation on which it focuses is present in everything from advertising to politics, where the “wrong-but-strong” management style of former president George W. Bush was viewed in many quarters as an asset. Compliance strips bare the fallacy of equivalent free will, and exposes the preference if not outright comfort many have for someone else making decisions and telling them what to do. It gets under one’s skin in a manner few films do, but sticks in one’s head the same way all great ones do. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Magnolia, R, 90 minutes)
The Good Doctor
A solidly constructed little character study of dark romantic bloom commingled with slipping-knot mental instability, The Good Doctor finds star-producer Orlando Bloom once again attempting to strike out and proactively define a screen personality separate and apart from the blockbuster pin-up status conferred upon him by the Pirates of the Caribbean and The Lord of the Rings movies. The scale and stakes are much smaller than in something like The Talented Mr. Ripley (and the behavioral urges somewhat different as well), but director Lance Daly (Kisses) capably pull strings in a manner that elicits tension and elucidates the impulses of obsession.
Bloom stars as Dr. Martin Blake, an ambitious but insecure young doctor in the early days of his residency. Already nervous about making a good impression on his supervisor and would-be mentor, Dr. Waylans (an excellent Rob Morrow), and concerned with the impact of a minor slip-up on his chances at an end-of-year fellowship, Martin lives each day with an electrical storm of anxiety and quiet contempt for others raging in his head. He looks down his nose at Jimmy (Michael Peña), an admittedly less-than-professional orderly, and takes disproportionate offense at the slights of Theresa (Taraji P. Henson), a nurse whom he feels doesn’t show him the proper deference and respect.
When a teenage patient, Diane (Riley Keough), is admitted with a relatively minor kidney infection, Martin gains self-esteem from aiding in her recovery, and strikes up a friendship with her. Martin’s interest soon becomes warped, however, and when Diane’s condition improves he begins tampering with her treatment in order to bring her back into his life. When Jimmy later discovers evidence of this, it further compromises Martin’s professional future.
The Good Doctor effectively threads the needle between intimate character study and psychological thriller. Working from a script by John Enbom, Daly delivers a spare portrait of howling neediness that unfolds in a world without a lot of extra flourishes in setting or scope. There’s a compact focus to the movie (even the specific city in which it unfolds is meaningless, apart from a coastal connection) that puts an audience right alongside Martin, and believably in his head, while still allowing for slight modulations in tone. It’s a different animal from something like Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave, but similar in that it is both at home with and achieves intrigue, dark comedy and a slowly escalating tension and uncertainty about how things will play out.
The precision of Daly and cinematographer Yaron Orbach’s wide frames abet the actors, allowing for a rich and subtle interplay of action and reaction. Morrow is superb, Keough is radiant and enchanting, and Peña is amusing as a smarmy, weaselly clock-puncher looking to capitalize on his bit of informational leverage. Bloom’s performance is very occasionally a bit self-conscious (he seems an actor always aware of the camera’s position) but also restrained. He succeeds in tapping into Martin’s vulnerability and self-delusion in equal measure — no small task.
The fairly late introduction of an investigating detective (J.K. Simmons), while meant to ratchet up the stakes, feels a bit like a rushed gambit to bring closure and finality to the narrative. Still, The Good Doctor doesn’t opt for a pat conclusion or render a moral judgment writ large. Its open-endedness is an enchanting conversation-starter — and bound to conjure up speculation about the out-of-office lives of your own care providers during your next doctor’s appointment. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Magnolia, PG-13, 90 minutes)
The Possession Cast Talks Exorcisms, More
From The Devil Inside, The Rite and The Haunting of Molly Hartley to The Exorcism of Emily Rose and the enormously successful Paranormal Activity films, to name but a handful, movies dealing with devilish and otherworldly control of human vessels are a staple of the horror genre. The Possession, though, strikes a certain balance between the familiar and the original. The movie’s actors and Danish-born director Ole Bornedal gathered at a Beverly Hills hotel this week, to talk about real-life exorcisms, on-set spookiness, the importance of finding the right cast, and some of their lead filmmaker’s quirks. The chat is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.
The Ambassador
A wild, darkly comic slice of nonfiction branded “performative journalism” by its creator, The Ambassador sets out to expose the corrupt business of selling diplomatic titles to exploit the lucrative natural resources of war-torn third world countries. In the vein of the Yes Men or the work of Sacha Baron Cohen, Danish journalist and provocateur Mads Brügger contracts a cultural ambassadorship through a private European broker, then heads to the notoriously corrupt and dangerous Central African Republic to wheel and deal with government officials and black market diamond peddlers.
The results are shocking and unnerving all rolled together. If the Congo is the heart of darkness, then the Central African Republic — a magnet for white men with vague job descriptions and hidden agendas — is its appendix, Brügger asserts, and there seems to be little reason to disagree. Upon arriving, he starts taking (and taping) meetings with all manner of other diplomats and local officials, and quickly becomes privy to the all sorts of back-channel intrigue.
It’s not merely theoretical cloak-and-dagger fun and games, however. As Brügger sets up a phony front company and delivers various “envelopes of happiness” to grease the wheels of a local miner who promises to provide him with a steady supply of diamonds, the lack of formal paperwork from Liberia (his ostensible host country) endangers his cover. When a governmental head of security with whom he spoke ends up dead, the grim and risky reality of the chess board upon which he’s playing is cast into further relief.
Financed by Lars Von Trier‘s production company Zentropa, The Ambassador is a ballsy, attention-grabbing idea, certainly, and engaging and a lot of fun for anyone with an interest in matters geopolitical. Brügger, with his minor affectations (he smokes and wears riding boots to a meeting with local Pygmies) is an amusing guide, and he doesn’t overplay his hand. Still, as it wears on, The Ambassador doesn’t drag so much as just lose its head of steam. As the more overtly funny bits of his set-up and entry fade away, and Brügger gets deeper in the weeds, the movie feels like it could benefit from a fresh pair or two of eyes in the editing room. Even as shady contracts are signed, the specifics of his plan and end-game remain a bit hazy, and the film’s conclusion and coda are a comedown from its early high-wire heights. Still, this is fairly outrageous activist cinema — undeniably something bold and different. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For the movie’s trailer, meanwhile, click here. (Drafthouse, unrated, 93 minutes)
Little White Lies
Finally arriving in American theaters almost two years after its Toronto Film Festival premiere, generational ensemble dramedy Little White Lies, from French filmmaker Guillaume Canet, proves itself a bloated, melodramatic and ultimately emotionally impenetrable affair. Centering around a collection of close-knit Parisian friends whose bonds are tested over the course of a summer holiday when one of their group is involved in a horrible automobile accident, the movie feels a bit like a French-flavored all-star tribute to Lawrence Kasdan, given the roster of notable performers. But its insights are meager, its whimsy too fleeting, and moments both large and small ring false — undone by Canet’s indulgence of overplayed emotion. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (MPI Media Group, R, 154 mintes)
Of Two Minds
An enormously empathetic documentary that highlights the diversity and range of experience within the diagnosis of bipolar disorder, Of Two Minds roots down into the stigma attached to mental illness, in a very human, relatable manner. Co-directors Doug Blush and Lisa Klein put an authentic human face on the disease, elucidating its physical and mental tolls without coming across as overly didactic or reductive. This is a movie swollen with natural feeling, and one in which any viewer of uplifting nonfiction can find welcome catharsis.
More than an estimated five million Americans are living with bipolar disorder, and with it the manic highs and crushing, enervated lows that it brings. While depression and mental health in general still have their own weight of shame attached to them, the boom in psychiatry and relationship counseling has made those topics more conversationally acceptable. Bipolar disorder, on the other hand, because of the unpredictability it often manifests, seems to have a deeper and more stuffed social closet.
Of Two Minds includes some interviews with doctors, but mostly chronicles the disease through those who live with it — including a 67-year-old architect and artist, Carlton Davis, whose illness plunged him into crack use, a cross-dressing alter ego and “trying to get AIDS,” as he puts it. Most symptomology isn’t quite that radical, but thoughts of self-harm and suicide are common at the lowest points. One sufferer, an author who’s written books about her struggle, describes it as “like having a constant flu in your mind.”
The film’s most luminous, emotionally connective strand, though, follows 37-year-old Los Angeles-based make-up artist Cheri Keating, who wasn’t properly diagnosed until she was 31. She enters into a relationship with a new boyfriend, Petey Peterson, only to have him eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder as well. In touchstone fashion, Of Two Minds charts the ups and downs of their off-and-on relationship. “I don’t even go for happy anymore,” says Petey at one point. “I just don’t wanna feel like this.” They’re words that sting, but also hold a connection and moving mini-epiphany for anyone tethered to the pain of a continued interpersonal struggle, whether their own or that of a family member or loved one. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more on the film, meanwhile, click here. (Mad Pix Pictures, unrated, 89 minutes)
The Apparition
A thinly sketched paranormal thriller starring Ashley Greene and Sebastian Stan, The Apparition arrives in theaters stripped almost bare of anything that might provide some color, complication or personality. Even aiming for spookiness more than horror, writer-director Todd Lincoln’s feature debut is a desultory misfire. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Warner Bros., PG-13, 82 minutes)
Downtown Express
An old-fashioned, squarely sentimental immigrants’ tale that marries a familiar story of generational rebellion to the New York hipster fusion music scene, director David Grubin’s Downtown Express is a wide-eyed if not particularly adroit charmer. If its awkward cycling through various stodgy subplots and general lack of a more starkly defined contrast and stakes mark it as somewhat lazy and functional on a narrative level, its relative freshness of setting — as well as the fact that its music, from Grammy nominee Philippe Quint and Nellie McKay, absolutely sings — makes the movie a marginal recommendation for those with an interest in musically-focused cinema. It doesn’t reach the heights of Once or even the more experimental, exuberant Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, but arthouse boomer fans in particular will respond positively to the movie’s heart and soul. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, which opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Town Center 5, click here. (International Film Circuit, unrated, 90 minutes)
The Callers
Hey, ever wonder about rural Pennsylvania auctioneering? Well then the new-to-DVD documentary The Callers is the film for you!
In telling the story of a handful of small-business owner auctioneers — mostly specializing in farm, furniture, antique and estate sales — director Susan Sfarra gives her subjects wide berth, and there’s certainly an amiable charm to her movie. For anyone ever momentarily bewitched by the sing-song bid calls of a barker at a state fair or something of that nature, The Callers is kind of interesting… for about 15 or 20 minutes. Unfortunately, this is a feature-length nonfiction film, and Sfarra doesn’t quite have a firm enough handle on various throughlines to fully earn and pay off in earnest her 89-minute running time.
The film’s home video back cover copy purports to dig down into “our complex relationship with stuff — with consuming, collecting and hoarding,” but other than a few brief interstitial interview inclusions with regular attendees, The Callers is mostly just a genial snapshot of sellers. There are some amusing and engaging tidbits sprinkled throughout (one guy talks about being hooked by the occupation young, and tape-recording auctioneers like music fans used to do from FM radio stations; a couple talk about buyer tells), and a three-generation-deep collection of auctioneers puts an articulate face on the curious little business. But there’s only so much footage of sales that one can get into. While seeing the price for a giant throw-rug driven up to $5,600 is kind of intriguing on a surface level, absent a deeper examination of how rural auctioneering both fulfills a sincere need and probably drives some addictions, Sfarra’s movie is an incomplete nonfiction document.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with a nice, deep-set spindle, The Callers comes to DVD divided into 10 chapters, under a static main menu screen. Bonus features consist of five bonus clips, a single-screen text bio of director Sfarra, a DVD-ROM element with two practice drills to hone your own auctioneer’s patter, and some additional information about distributor First Run Features. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)
True Wolf
Stories of human connection to the animal kingdom in the modern world are surely not the worst nonfiction film endeavors, but the rather bewildering True Wolf takes what by rights should be the fascinating tale of a Montana couple who raised a wild wolf alongside their dog and turns it into a sincere but hopelessly jumbled mess. Poorly edited, structured and thought through, director Rob Whitehair’s movie is a torturous bore, even at a mere 76 minutes.
True Wolf centers on Bruce Weide and Pat Tucker, a married couple who decide to hang onto wolf pup Koani after a wrapped-up film project leaves him in their custody. Learning by trial and error as much as anything else, they get a dog to provide some quasi-lupine companionship, and pretty much devote their entire lives to raising Koani in a manner that at least accomodates his baser instincts. This means two-hour-plus walks twice a day (tethered by bungee-cord-type tubing), dumpster-diving for some of the more than 1,200 pounds of raw meat their wolf eats every year, and a special “wolf door” that allows free access between outside and a caged-in portion of the inside of their house. For money, they also use Koani as an “ambassador wolf,” taking him around to elementary schools as a teaching tool about wildlife.
Whitehair’s film is ostensibly a didactic tale of the grey area between man and beast, fellow social predators, but it’s also an examination over the debate of the reintroduction of wolf populations into the wild, though one has to mostly suss out that latter part on their own, after a half hour or more of viewing. The film is sketchy about the specifics of how Bruce and Pat came into possession of Koani, and it intercuts footage from lots of different sit-down interviews, so is frequently repetitive. It touches on socialization versus domestication (a crucial difference), but not quite with as much detail as one would ultimately like.
Most inexplicable and impenetrable, however, is a buffet of protest footage — of exactly what, where and when, one is never fully certain — wherein someone actually waves a sign that reads, “Wolf is the Saddam Hussein of the animal world — we don’t want Saddam Hussein!” There’s also an old guy with his arm in a sling who quotes from the Book of Revelation, and a woman who prattles on about Satan wanting to have livestock threatened (presumably by way of reintroduced wolves). Many of these bits are entirely absent any context or set-up (some even seem certain to be re-creations), so it’s hard to grasp what the hell is going on or even what the point is, to be honest.
Weide and Tucker are polite, interesting and well-spoken subjects, but this vehicle is a frustratingly shapeless vessel for their story. Fans of Werner Herzog’s meditative Grizzly Man, as well as other films that examine the difficulties of taking as pets animals meant to be wild, and even wildlife lovers in general may be tempted to take a flyer on this curio. Stick with Teen Wolf instead. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, meanwhile, click here. (Shadow Distribution, unrated, 76 minutes)
Jake Schreier Talks Robot & Frank
A favorite at this January’s Sundance Film Festival, where it shared the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, Robot & Frank represents Jake Schreier’s feature directorial debut. Set in the near future, the story centers on an increasingly memory-impaired septuagenarian living in upstate New York, Frank (Frank Langella), whose worried son (James Marsden) buys a walking, talking robotic caretaker to help tend to his needs and improve his mental and physical health. Frank is gruff and dismissive of the robot at first, but, somewhat unexpectedly, finds old impulses from his career as a cat burglar awakened. Shenanigans of a sort ensue. I had a chance recently to speak to Schreier one-on-one, about his movie, Langella, his Waverly Films collective, draining Peter Sarsgaard’s voice of emotion, and how technology is changing humankind. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.
Ashley Greene Talks The Apparition, Twilight’s Conclusion
The enormous success of the Twilight franchise has made celebrities of not only Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner — the actors at the center of its love triangle — but also its many standout supporting players, including Ashley Greene. As the series winds down, however, the actors are looking to stretch, and strike out more on their own. Greene’s latest film, The Apparition, represents a new stab at leading lady status in a big studio movie, coming on the heels of an engaging turn in last year’s tender period piece teen ensemble, Skateland. In it, she plays a young woman who discovers that she and her boyfriend (Sebastian Stan) are being haunted by a presence conjured years ago, during a university parapsychology experiment gone wrong. I recently had a chance to sit down and talk to the pleasant Greene, both in a small roundtable setting and also one-on-one, about The Apparition, what first drew her to Los Angeles, the conclusion of the Twilight series, and what else is on tap for her. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the full read.
Todd Lincoln Talks The Apparition, Inspiration of Salma Hayek
For his directorial debut, The Apparition, a paranormal thriller starring Ashley Greene and Sebastian Stan, director Todd Lincoln worked to explore the genre in a more classical style than a lot of found-footage films of recent note. I recently had a chance to talk to Lincoln one-on-one, about his movie, future projects, and the unlikely path of inspiration inclusive of Stan Brakhage and Salma Hayek that led to his career in filmmaking. The conversation is excerpted below:
Brent Simon: I know you went to film school at USC, but take me back further, because there’s usually a moment of transition where, for every film fan who devours movies as a kid, a switch is flipped between avocation and something they realize they can do for a living.
Todd Lincoln: Right, right. I was much more serious about playing with toys as a kid, and I would stage elaborate battles with G.I. Joe and Transformers and Star Wars-type stuff, and would come up with early forms of scripts. And I would get all these sound effects CDs and edit together all these jungle sounds and explosions and machine gun fire. So I started with that, and would play movie soundtracks as the score to some of these toy battles. But I wasn’t videotaping anything. I didn’t have my own video camera for some reason, so I’d borrow some friend’s, or have a friend come over with an early-era Hi-8 camera. We started to shoot some of our toy battles and even start to mess with the stop-motion function on the camera. That was for fun, and then in high school I started making deals with teachers to get out of writing big papers and essays on Shakespeare… I’d say, “What if I make a video?” I wasn’t getting that great of grades, so I started making these videos with inanimate objects and my dog and I played this back for the class and would get this great reaction from the students and teacher. I went from getting Cs or Ds on papers to getting As, so now it was in my brain, like, “I get a great reaction and people are talking to me now and my grades are going up.” My school in Tulsa was pretty progressive, and the video teacher was this very avant garde guy. He had his own studio in town and was a video artist. He showed what were new works at the time, by this teenage girl Sadie Benning who shot short videos on a Fisher Price Pixelvision camera, and while I’d grown up loving Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Terminator-type stuff I was being shown videos by William Wegman or Stan Brakhage — all this experimental stuff — and I felt like, “Wow, this counts? You can do that and call yourself a filmmaker? That’s awesome — maybe I can be a filmmaker. I can do that.” It made it seem possible. … And then the summer between my junior and senior year I went to this summer production workshop at USC, and traveled out to L.A., where you’d shoot one Super 8 a week for five weeks and then you’d shoot a 16mm film at the end. So you’d write, produce, and then edit on Moviolas. I worked on a bunch of independent documentaries and features. And then right after high school and before USC I worked on From Dusk ‘Til Dawn.
BS: Did you have any special moments with Salma Hayek and/or her boa constrictor?
TL: I was on set when that was happening, and I was like 17 or 18.
BS: And you said, “This is the greatest profession ever…”
TL: Oh, man. She, oh… yeah. I was also working visual effects department at the time time, and… well, I have to be careful. (laughs) But seeing Salma Hayek, when you’re a teenager, in states of undress is a huge thing. And there was some after-party where Quentin Tarantino was celebrating with mariachi music and Salma Hayek came up to me and pulled me onto the dance floor and asked me to dance. It just changed my DNA. (laughs) And the important thing about that film was that I worked in every single department and wore many hats and (saw) that’s how they really came at it — this close-knit circus family, with an independent spirit. So I worked in the office, on set, in visual effects, the art department, creature effects, craft services, wardrobe — everything. So that helps later on, because as a director when you’re asking somebody for something you know what it means to ask for that. Sometimes it actually hurts you, because I’m probably too nice of a guy and I know what it feels like to do all of those things, and I’m like, “Oh gosh, I hate to ask this.” But at least you know what some production assistant has to go do at three a.m. or whatever.
BS: Part of doing a film like The Apparition is deciding what you’re going to show, and what you’re going to leave to the viewers’ imagination. Digitally, you can manipulate a lot more things. But was shooting on 35mm integral to how you wanted to tell the story?
TL: Oh yeah. Right from the initial words the first time I pitched it [I said] this is 35mm, 2.35 aspect ratio, and we want to shoot on these vintage anamorphic lenses to give it a bit of grain or texture, and life to it. So that was the plan from the start, and (cinematographer) Daniel Pearl, who shot the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the remake, (felt the same); that guy is as hardcore about 35mm as I am, and we were really fighting the good fight, because sadly, 35mm is no longer a given — you actually get a look when you bring it up sometimes, and that’s such a tragedy.
BS: Have you worked in digital before, on commercials or shorts?
TL: I’m mainly exclusively film. I’ve shot only one or two things on digital, and I always prefer film. I think certain people have made digital look great, but I think I can tell the difference and whether audiences know it consciously or not they feel it too. They may not be able to describe it, but it’s a feeling.
BS: You had a ghost consultant on this film, but you also did a lot of reading, about documented experiences (of paranormal investigation) from the 1970s and ’80s. Through the process of osmosis, how much of that (research) made its way into the film as you were shaping the narrative?
TL: A good bit. And yeah, in fact it wasn’t just me who did the research. After we cast the movie I had all the actors talk and meet with our paranormal consultant, and we had all these files and images he would email us about how his lab was set up, and different findings and equipment, and of course terms and jargon. The actors would read through all that stuff, and they really got into it. I was just trying to keep things as grounded and real and authentic and honest as possible — for the movie, and horror fans and the paranormal community, so that they can be
like, “They got it right it!” In fact, there are a bunch of paranormal sites that are excited, and [have written], “They said the word Tolpa!” or “They’re using the right EEG headset!”
BS: This is your debut but you already have a couple interesting upcoming projects. Are you really going to be able to keep the title Twittering From the Circus of the Dead?
TL: (laughs) That’s the title of Joe Hill’s short story, and Mandalay Pictures is where that film is [set up], and they love the title. I loved the short story, and I’m a huge Joe Hill fan. It’s hard to describe, but it’s about a teenage girl on a road trip with her family, and they end up pulling off to a Route 66-type circus that’s going on and sit down and watch the show. Strange stuff starts happening, and the location and imagery and set pieces [evoke this] carnival sideshow scary stuff, but the first half is a road trip Polaroid portrait — part Sophia Coppola, part Terrence Malick, part Larry Clark, part Gus Van Sant, where no horror is happening. The first 30 minutes are like Psycho or something, and then it’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Carnival of Souls, ending on more of an Eyes Wide Shut third act. It shifts through these different gears, but it’s also very consistent and congruent in terms of style. It’s been a challenge to craft things in the right way, but I’ve closely collaborated with Joe Hill and got his blessing on things.
BS: You also have “The Nye Incident.”
TL: Yes, that’s with Whitley Strieber, and is based on real incidents of alien abductions and mutilations that are happening in this town. That’s really a grounded, terrifying new take on alien stuff — doing it as if everyone else got it wrong in all movies and TV shows, because they actually have gotten it wrong. It’s so much more strange and terrifying than anything else out there. I feel like we haven’t really had an alien film that’s knocked it out of the park in a relatable, iconic way in a while. We have go-to exorcism (movies), and vampires and zombies and werewolves, but you don’t really have that film you reach for that makes you feel like this is really going on out there. That’s the goal with that. It’s been ruined by pop culture — alien stuff is on every skateboard deck and sticker and notebook now, and doesn’t really seem scary. But this movie is going to be fucking scary.
BS: Which one is definitely next — do you know yet?
TL: “The Nye Incident” seems likely to be the next on deck. That script is solid and locked in and ready to go. I’m meeting with actors now and we’re getting the financiers ready and in order. I’m also writing some other original stuff, and I’m going to go knock out this new experimental short film to kind of balance out all this big commercial machine stuff, because (with) my favorite filmmakers it doesn’t matter where they are in their careers, they flex all their different muscles and keep it real (by) knocking out a short film or whatever.
Side by Side
Cinema has always been marked by the push and pull between art, commerce and technology, but perhaps never more so than with the advent of digital filmmaking, which stands poised to sweep aside more than a century of celluloid technique and history. Directed by Chris Kenneally and anchored by interviewer-producer Keanu Reeves, the superlative new documentary Side by Side seeks to explore this revolution through the eyes of some of Hollywood’s biggest and most respected filmmakers. A wide-ranging and thoroughly engaging treatise that benefits from a broad spectrum of interviewees and perspectives, this is “inside-the-Beltway” cinema, yes, but it’s also a film about film that matters — one that ably sums up an art form, where we’ve been and where we’re going.
At this moment in time, digital filmmaking and the world of photochemical 35mm exist in tandem, with master cinematographers and directors having a choice between mediums and sometimes switching back and forth between the pair. But the switch-over to much more inexpensive digital filmmaking technology and the subsequent quiet revolution in digital projection — there were only four digital theaters in 1999, for the premiere of The Phantom Menace, 150 three years later, and we’re now hovering around 50 percent nationally — means that 35mm is on its way to becoming a cinematic programming curio.
There are a couple fantastic anecdotes scattered throughout (David Fincher recalls Robert Downey, Jr. leaving mason jars of urine scattered around the set of Zodiac as form of protest over the continuous shooting and lack of mentally refreshing downtime), but Side by Side is mostly a history of digital filmmaking’s transition from black sheep stepchild to mainstream industry embrace. Using the work and opinions of dozens of filmmakers, Kenneally’s movie details films of various groundbreaking types, like Dogma 95 movement debut The Celebration, Sin City, and Danny Boyle‘s 28 Days Later and Slumdog Millionaire, the latter of which was the first film shot almost entirely digitally to win an Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Several directors, meanwhile, posit that celluloid instills a certain level of focus and respect for the filmmaking process, “because you hear money whirring through camera,” as one puts it.
Kenneally has superb instincts about where and how to indulge sidebar historical lessons, but he also goes to significant lengths to chat with many cinematographers and let them voice opinion on how digital filmmaking is impacting the work, relationships and influence. For some, it seems to have eroded their power, since the work of directors of photography can be evaluated more immediately, instead of waiting on dailies. Digital intermediate colorists also have an increased sway over the final look of a movie.
Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, of all people, bemoans the digital revolution and the fact that it opens up new frontiers for would-be storytellers as signifying the loss of a tastemaker, and gatekeeper. Still, with all major manufacturers having stopped developing new photochemical film cameras, the future of cinema over the next generation-plus seems clear. Side by Side provides an amazing snapshot of this transition, at around the halfway point. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information about the movie and its VOD options, meanwhile, click here. (Tribeca Film, unrated, 99 minutes)
Heist: Who Stole the American Dream?
An unflinching, diamond-sharp salvo about the roots of the American economic crisis and its impact on particularly the middle class and working poor, Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? offers up a fusillade of facts that convincingly paint the United States as an oligarchy with fairly corruptible political leadership. Co-directors Frances Causey and Donald Goldmacher largely eschew traditional partisan truncheons and dig past more familiar villains and boogeymen to shine a light on the damaging impact of three-plus decades of rampant deregulation, job outsourcing and tax policies aimed almost solely at further empowering large business owners and the individually wealthy. The finished product is almost impossible not to raise ire and heart rates.
Narrated by Thom Hartmann, the well-researched Heist slots in comfortably alongside documentaries like Charles Ferguson‘s Inside Job. However, it also takes a long view of our current economic situation, revealing the roots of planning that led to the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which limited affiliations between commercial banks and securities firms, and other consumer financial system protections. Given particular scrutiny is an important memorandum penned by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell — the deciding vote in 1978’s First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, a forerunner for the Citizens United case in which corporations were granted new rights to spend money in order to influence political processes — in which he extolled the free market system and deemed that the end of business regulation would somehow benefit all.
Specifically, Powell (and later his acolytes) advocated business control of raw political power, and mechanisms of punishment for those who opposed their policies and ideas. In foreseeing saw how corporate money could talk louder than organized labor and consumer protection groups — and advancing that cause — the Powell Memorandum provided a veritable blueprint for the creation of ideological marketing organizations masquerading as think tanks, and laid groundwork for news organizations as bloviating big business opinion peddlers. Through these mouthpieces, massive rollbacks on capital gains and dividend taxes were achieved, along with the stripping back of other important measures of federal oversight. In this environment, rapaciousness and excess were then allowed to run amok.
Heist is a cinematic gut punch, to be sure, but not one entirely devoid of hope. It sounds an alarm, and makes a compelling case for greater political involvement and education by those with less means than the moneyed elite of this country. Whether that call is answered en masse may say a lot about the future trajectory of the United States of America. For more information on the film, which opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle NoHo 7, click here. For my full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Connect the Dots Productions, unrated, 76 minutes)
Until They Are Home
Narrated in stentorian tones by Kelsey Grammer, documentary Until They Are Home shines a light on the extraordinary dedication of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, a military subset that works to locate and identify the bodies of American service members spanning various conflicts — and specifically their search for the missing remains of U.S. Marines killed in the Battle of Tarawa in November 1943 during World War II. Earnest and well-meaning but a bit sludgy and unfocused, this flag-wrapped documentary offering should find a home on PBS or elsewhere as part of future Memorial Day small screen programming.
The attack on the Japanese stronghold of Tarawa — an island parcel of land one-third the size of New York City’s Central Park, and the first major amphibious assault of the Pacific Theater — was designed to wrest control of an important 4,000-foot airfield landing strip that could then be used as a forward base for future operations. Combined, six thousand U.S. Marines and well dug-in Japanese soldiers lost their lives in the heated, three-day battle. American service members felled on the beach were hurriedly buried in mass trench graves. Decades later, the aforementioned Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command travels to the now-developed Tarawa to try to find human remains and bring closure to American families.
Part of the unresolved tension in Until They Are Home seems to result from its uncertainty of focus, in whether to tell the story of the assault of Tarawa more broadly, as funneled through the specific memories of a small band of Marines, or indeed just the charter mission of the JPAC team in general. Steven Barber, who takes the main directing credit, ping-pongs back and forth between different narrative angles, and picks a weird point of entry for his story to boot, resulting in a choppy narrative that struggles to hold viewers’ interest in a manner that it shouldn’t necessarily have to. Until They Are Home tells a solemn story, but just not very well. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, which opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Playhouse 7, meanwhile, click here. (Vanilla Fire Productions, unrated, 66 minutes)
Speak
Set against the backdrop of what’s been coined the Olympics of oratory, nonfiction film Speak takes viewers on an intimate and emotional journey, through the paralyzing grip of the fear of public speaking, and into the Toastmasters International Speech Contest finals, which serves as a reminder that in order to connect on a human level one’s tale need not necessarily be sensational, but merely sincere.
Speak recalls movies like Spellbound, Make Believe: The Battle To Become the World’s Best Teen Magician and ventriloquist documentary Dumbstruck, all of which centered around specific subcultural contests, and tracked contestants through their preparations for the big event. For fans of those films, the enormously sympathetic figures in Speak will create a strong emotional pull. Its half dozen main subjects include an out-of-work father of six with an amputated foot; an architect turned actor with an incurable heart disease; a university professor who pulled herself up out of poverty; a single mom living with lupus; and a retiree who reconnected with his high school crush after more than five decades.
There are a couple other interviewees as well — Hardball host Chris Matthews (an ex-Toastmaster member himself), disgraced college TV sportscaster Brian “Boom Goes the Dynamite!” Collins, and Caite Upton, the Miss South Carolina Teen USA pageant participant whose rambling, nonsensical response to a geographical education question achieved an unfortunate national infamy — but these chats are mostly front-loaded, and not particularly well integrated into the movie. Other attempts to explain the Toastmasters organization and its charter come across as at once perfunctory and a bit shaggy and half-considered.
Most of Speak, though, is an uplifting portrait of friendly competition, and it’s when the film identifies this narrative track and embraces as its core mission the illumination of positive thinking and dream pursuit that it really takes off. Co-directors Paul Galichia and Brian Weidling eschew directorial flashiness, and instead double down on the basic human connection of their subjects, almost all of whom have experienced some considerable health problem or other emotional setback.
The competition parameters at this national convention — seven-minute speeches, sans notes, differing from the material that has passed the speakers through various area and regional feeding rounds — are kind of loosely defined, but in the end it doesn’t much matter. Author and would-be professional motivational speaker Rich Hopkins, the aforementioned family man amputee, is an especially relatable figure. In his humble obstinance, one glimpses the heartening strength of American character. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more about the movie, which opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Playhouse 7, meanwhile, click here. (Tumbleweed Entertainment, unrated, 89 minutes)
ParaNorman
The notion of a kiddie horror film may seem or sound like a weird mix, but any moviegoer of appreciable devotion can surely recall a film from their early adolescence that got under their skin a bit in a good way, providing a cathartic jolt. Mostly funny but also plenty scary for the elementary school set, the new 3-D animated adventure ParaNorman, from the makers of Coraline, fits that bill.
A kind of inventive and visually engaging melange of the aforementioned flick, Monster House and A Nightmare Before Christmas, ParaNorman unfolds in the town of Blithe Hollow, whose locals profit from tourism mining the town’s history as the site of a famous witch hunt 300 years earlier. For 11-year-old Norman Babcock (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee), though, ghost lore and other spookiness isn’t just part of some dusty old history book — he still sees his deceased grandmother (voiced by Elaine Stritch), as well as all other manner of dead people.
This flusters his father Perry (voiced by Jeff Garlin) to no end, but when Norman’s black sheep uncle (voiced by John Goodman) unloads on him the responsibility of halting a centuries-old witch’s curse from coming true, the requisite race-against-time unfolds, with a pack of risen zombies unleashed upon the town. Caught up in the mix alongside Norman are amiable and impressionable classmate Neil (voiced by Tucker Albrizzi); thick-headed bully Alvin (voiced by Christopher Mintz-Plasse); his perpetually exasperated older sister, Courtney (voiced by Anna Kendrick); and Mitch (voiced by Casey Affleck), the school quarterback on whom she nurses a none-too-secret crush.
The film’s exacting stop-motion animation has a fabulous and inviting tactile quality, a bit like The Fantastic Mr. Fox. One wants to reach out and touch the characters, and tumble headlong into their world. Director Sam Fell oversees a funky style, too, with great imagination to the movie’s framing. And with his bacon strip eyebrows, Bart Simpson-esque spiky hair and melancholic, crushed-confidence vocal timbre, Norman cuts a sympathetic figure.
The plot bogs down a bit as the movie shifts gears into its second and third acts — the audience is on the outside looking in on the specifics of Norman’s quest, much like the character himself. A bit more clarity and early revelation here wouldn’t have hurt. And the supporting players — cheerleader, himbo jock, bully and chubby geek — are more functional than deeply sketched, and deployed in a manner that doesn’t really add much, in either assistance or obstacle, to Norman’s journey. But Chris Butler’s script knows how to push the right buttons of squirmy gross-out and slapstick comedy, and features plenty of winning set-ups and jokes.
In its own small way, ParaNorman is also a product of its time, and a salvo against sociocultural nastiness. While it focuses on a misunderstood kid, and again preaches a familiar strain of diversity appreciation and inclusiveness, its parallel moral — indeed, even stated outright by Norman’s mother at one point — is that when people get scared, they’re apt to do terrible and stupid things. It’s not too much of a leap to assign that description to our current political climate. (Focus/Laika, PG, 100 minutes)
David Duchovny Talks Goats, Marijuana Legalization
David Duchovny is an erudite guy. Although formal collegiate education is often lacking in big screen stars, he possesses both an undergraduate degree from Princeton and a Master of Arts in English literature from Yale. So his casting in director Christopher Neil‘s new coming-of-age indie film Goats, as a bearded and not particularly motivated gardener named Goatman, may not seem like the most obvious fit. Duchovny, though, breathes dimensionality and life into his character, even if he spends most of the movie actually inhaling. I recently had the chance to speak to Duchovny one-on-one, about the movie, Craigslist, goat bleating, his thoughts on marijuana legalization and what he would still do to Seann Willliam Scott in a heartbeat. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the full, fun read.
Death by China
An alarmist nonfiction film in the mode of the Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth or debt-busting docs I Want Your Money and I.O.U.S.A., director Peter Navarro’s Death by China targets what it deems the most urgent problem facing America today — our country’s increasingly destructive economic trade relationship with a rapidly rising China. There’s an impassioned level of energy here, and certainly the weight and force of much educated opinion. But like a teenager whose emotionality trumps their ability to rationally and cogently articulate an argument, Death by China is a bit too manic, scattershot and overheated to impart its case with surgical precision. It feels, by God, but it also overwhelms.
When China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 — after having their entrance lobbied for by both President Bill Clinton and prominent members of the Republican-controlled Congress as well, like former Speakers of the House Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay — it was viewed by many as it was forthrightly sold: as a level-playing-field market opening for American businesses to what amounts to basically one-fifth of the world’s population. Of course, that sunny scenario required China to play by fair rules, instead of working to subvert American companies through currency manipulation, intellectual piracy and a tsunami of cheaply produced products courtesy of human rights abuses and forced labor prison camps. In retrospect, the United States’ more-carrot-than-stick approach seems incredibly naïve and wrongheaded.
Narrated by Martin Sheen, and based on Navarro and Greg Autry’s book of the same name, Death by China makes, by its conclusion, a fairly convincing case that a good portion of America’s 50,000 shuttered and disappeared companies over the past decade-plus (many in the manufacturing sector) and much of its three trillion dollar debt to China can be blamed on a willful and crooked gaming of the system by China’s communist government, who has taken economic advantage of illegal subsidies and the world’s most degraded environment to achieve cost advantages that outstrip baseline profitability in various industries. Of course, the notion that China would play hardball to achieve its own economic objectives shouldn’t be wildly surprising.
But Navarro’s hammy, feverish directorial flourishes, of which there are many (export subsidies are represented by animated bombs ripping apart an American map) do much to undercut the intellectual balance of his film’s case, as does his jumpy editing. The parade of interviewees — including AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, Forbes columnist Gordon Chang, and various Congressmen and other government officials — lends credence and credibility to Death by China‘s anxious claims. But the movie skips around and alights on some crazy divergences (wait… China engages in government-sanctioned organ harvesting?) instead of also more fully rooting down into American sociopolitical complicity in the creation and sustenance of a culture that extols profit over middle-class jobs. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, meanwhile, visit its official website. (Area 23A, unrated, 79 minutes)
NOTE: Death by China opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Playhouse 7 in Pasadena, where director Peter Navarro will appear for Q&As on both Friday and Saturday evenings.
Ain’t No Party Like a Bathtub Party!
Screening in theaters attached to the September 14 release of Finding Nemo 3D will be the short film Partysaurus Rex, the third installment of the “Toy Story Toons” series, directed by Mark Walsh. Click here for a little preview.
2 Days in New York
Nobody can push buttons of exasperation and pull levers of hair-trigger emotional reaction quite like family — those folks who know all of the faces of the past you’ve tried to shake and shed. That truth is borne out in Julie Delpy‘s witty, winning new comedy of relationships and culture-clash, 2 Days in New York. A nominal follow-up to 2007’s 2 Days in Paris, in which Delpy played the same character with a different love interest, this rather delightful romp eschews complicated plotting to instead luxuriate in and connect via a fresh, fun, wound-up energy all its own.
French-born photographer and artist Marion (Delpy) lives comfortably with her radio talk show host boyfriend Mingus (Chris Rock) and their two children from previous relationships. But on the eve of a big show — the centerpiece of which is a conceptual piece in which she’s offering up her soul for sale, for $10,000 — Marion gets plenty of extra stress when her family arrives for a visit. This includes her over-sexed sister Rose (Alexia Landau); her sister’s outrageous, weed-obsessed boyfriend Manu (Alex Nahon), also one of Marion’s exes; and her merrily bizarre and gregarious father (Albert Delpy), who thinks showers “deplete the immune system.” Falling back into old patterns, Marion starts spinning out of control, and this new glimpse of craziness puts Mingus further on edge.
Delpy collaborated on the script with Landeau and Nahon — each of whom also reprise their characters from Paris — and it’s clear that their offscreen rapport informs much of the rapid-fire bickering and gussied-up misunderstanding that fuels the movie’s comedy. Yet Delpy’s worldview and tone — neurotic, but knowing — also echo a female Woody Allen by way of Lina Wertmüller, funky and funny without tipping over into tedium or speechifying. Much of this balancing act owes to her directorial style, which is light and playful throughout, incorporating photo montages and a bouncy score of her own composition.
The pairing of Rock and Delpy is also a true delight. It gives Rock a chance to stretch a bit and do something different while also playing to his verbal strengths. Mostly, though, 2 Days in New York simply provides a showcase for the unexpected mash-up of Rock and Delpy’s respective styles and rhythms. It’s the same premise, basically, behind Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell’s casting in Bewitched, except that Delpy’s loose-limbed, lived-in movie is actually funny. A couple days with this brood will put a smile on one’s face. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For a one-on-one Q&A chat with Delpy, meanwhile, click here. (Magnolia, R, 91 minutes)
Director Christopher Neil Talks Goats, Famous Film Family
Goats is Christopher Neil’s first film as a director, but he has both an unusually deep connection to the material and an amazingly sturdy foundation of cinematic experience from which to draw. An adaptation of Mark Jude Poirier’s rangy novel of the same name, the film tracks the coming-of-age of Ellis (Graham Phillips), a 15-year-old Tucson native who leaves behind his New Age hippie mom (Vera Farmiga) and his best friend — an affable stoner and their live-in gardener, named Goatman (David Duchovny) — to attend an East Coast prep school where his estranged father (Ty Burrell) once matriculated. I recently had a chance to speak to Neil one-on-one, about the movie, marijuana and his connection to the Coppola clan. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the full read.