Actress, author, stand-up comedian and Emmy-winning writer and performer — Sarah Silverman is such a jack-of-all-trades comedienne that it’s hard to believe she hasn’t yet laid claim to a huge animated movie character, given the highly recognizable sing-song sardonicism of her voice. That all changes with this weekend’s arrival of Wreck-It Ralph, a fresh and funny romp that stands poised to introduce a new collection of soon-to-be-beloved characters to family film audiences and animation fans alike. For the full feature interview, over at ShockYa, click here.
Monthly Archives: October 2012
The Revisionaries
A remarkably humane and well-rounded look at a perhaps unlikely yet nonetheless incredibly divisive political hot-button issue, director Scott Thurman’s The Revisionaries delves into the Texas School Board of Education’s attempts to vacuum out through legislation various language and historical examples objectionable to movement conservatives from the nation’s textbooks. Pointed without being nasty or unfair, this fascinating movie is a gripping, must-see work for nonfiction film aficionados, politicos and current events intellectuals alike — an engrossing social document of our turbulent times and often at-odds relationship with not only science but, more broadly, experts-in-field.
It seems utterly ridiculous, but in Austin, Texas, 15 people actually sit ready to exert undue influence over what is taught to the next generation of American schoolchildren. Once every decade, the state’s Board of Education (BOE) rewrites the teaching and textbook standards for its nearly five million students. And when it comes to textbooks (because of the state’s purchasing power, and 110 percent upfront payment), what happens in Texas affects the nation as a whole, since textbook manufacturers are often hesitant to act against their “recommendations.”
Various right-wing organizations have cannily sought to advance their agenda through this process, making for an unusual frontline in the country’s ongoing, so-called culture war. After briefly serving on his local school board, Don McLeroy (above), a dentist and avowed young-Earth creationist, was elected to the BOE, and later appointed chairman. During his time on the board, McLeroy — who once declared, “Education is too important not to be politicized” — has overseen the adoption of new science and history curriculum standards, aided by Liberty University law professor Cynthia Dunbar and others.
The Revisionaries charts this bureaucratic trench warfare, wherein language regarding evolution and intelligent design is argued about back and forth, and subjected to various amendments. Kathy Miller, of the liberal-minded Texas Freedom Network, and Ron Wetherington, an anthropology professor from Southern Methodist University, are among those who weigh in on behalf of what is widely accepted as settled science during these board meeting debates, where politicking and barely concealed contentiousness are ever-present, bubbling just around the edges. Later, as the debate shifts to language about topics like slavery, suffrage, the Civil Rights Movement and important minority historical figures, McLeroy fights for his chairmanship and then his very re-election to the BOE.
Through all of this, director Thurman gives equal time to these heartily clashing viewpoints. Rather than remaining satisfied with leaning on two-dimensional archetypes, he gives all of the aforementioned subjects a chance to explain both their personal views and their opinions of the BOE’s mission. The movie also follows McLeroy around at his dental practice and church, showing a private side of him that sometimes contrasts his rhetoric (in both directions) in interesting ways. The result, rather remarkably, deflates the fanned flames of partisan discord, while still highlighting the legitimate stakes involved in some of the curious erasures the more right-wing members of the BOE seek. The Revisionaries takes a state issue that has national implications, but doesn’t hog-tie it to national frenzy and political party talking points.
It helps, of course, that Thurman’s subjects are for the most part impassioned but not rhetorical bomb-throwers of the first order. Wetherington is a calm but shrewd academic who doesn’t stoop to automatically demonizing his foes; after all, he can parry with facts and scientific method, so when he decries the “flammable mixture of ignorance and arrogance” involved in the GOP’s rabblerousing pushback against so-called elites, it has less unfocused rage and more the surgically precise, knuckle-rapping exasperation of your favorite Socratic teacher. McLeroy, too, for his part, comes across less as a conniving anti-intellectual and more genuinely befuddled by the contempt for his efforts — a decent family man trying to split perhaps unsplittable hairs when it comes to pruning “liberal” viewpoints and claiming that he is not actually advocating for his personal beliefs. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, click here to visit its website. (Kino Lorber, unrated, 83 minutes)
Brooklyn Castle
An Audience Award winner at this year’s SXSW Film Festival, documentary Brooklyn Castle is, in the mold of fellow nonfiction flicks of emotional uplift like Spellbound, Jig and Make Believe: The Battle to Become the World’s Best Teen Magician, a movie about kids reaching for dreams, and discovering the causal relationship between hard work and self-betterment. In this case it’s not spelling, dancing or sleight of hand that’s under the sub-cultural microscope, but instead chess, by way of an influential and successful after-school program at a New York City public school.
A Brooklyn pilot school where more than two-thirds of the students live below the federal poverty level, I.S. 318 has the highest ranked junior high chess team in the country and a record of excellence which they have sustained for decades, piling up 30 national championships. Overseen by teacher/coach Elizabeth Spiegel and assistant principal and program coordinator John Galvin, the club serves as an important academic extracurricular activity, helping keep its approximately 85 members busy after school, and focused on lateral thinking and problem-solving.
Director Katie Dellamaggiore’s film takes a very conventional chronological tack, charting the team through the lens of a handful of members as they prepare for national competitions and simultaneously deal with looming, drastic budget cuts that threaten the continued existence of the program. Most of the kids here are articulate beyond their years, but Dellamaggiore also locates their latent vulnerability, which makes for an affecting experience that pulls the viewer along, and helps Brooklyn Castle more or less triumph over some of its more programmatic aspects.
Chess is a proxy, of course, a stand-in for perhaps some of the soundest and most important advice not frequently taught in middle and high school — that answers in life are not always immediately clear, that a deeper analysis is required. While math, history and other disciplines necessarily rest on less subjective facts, chess has both style and rhythms to go along with its rules.
It’s for this reason, Spiegel opines, “the fact that it’s not the direction society (at large) is going,” that maybe chess is more valuable as an educational tool than merely a diversionary game or hobby. In pursuing a deeper interest in and focus upon chess, students learn to think in ways both methodical and abstract, and also stand to reap the future dividends of expectations and pressure. It’s easy to fall prey to cynicism, but in its spotlighting of kids, teachers and parents working hard and together in the face of tough circumstances, Brooklyn Castle provides a snapshot of indomitable American can-do attitude, and gives one hope. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Producers Distribution Agency, unrated, 101 minutes)
Wreck-It Ralph
A nostalgic affection for vintage gaming and an openhearted, family-friendly story of self-acceptance and friendship are skillfully interwoven in the colorful Wreck-It Ralph, a very fun and engaging adventure about a lonely bad guy who wants to be a hero. Powered by a standout concept delivered upon in a winning manner — that, in similar fashion to the Toy Story franchise, videogame characters exist in worlds awakened when humans aren’t looking — the film, with fun vocal turns from Sarah Silverman and John C. Reilly, serves as the most natural and effortlessly readymade animated feature for future franchise exploration since Shrek. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Walt Disney, PG, 107 minutes)
Glenn Hubbard, Mitt Romney and Why Transparency Matters
Author and filmmaker Charles Ferguson, the director of No End in Sight and Inside Job, makes a compelling case, via the Huffington Post, that the refusal of Glenn Hubbard, Mitt Romney’s chief economic advisor and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under George W. Bush, to disclose critical information about his income, conflicts of interest and paid advocacy activities — just like Romney’s refusal to release years of tax returns he previously made available to John McCain’s campaign during 2008 — is something that matters, deeply. Again, for the full read, click here.
America Stripped: Naked Las Vegas
David Palmer’s America Stripped: Naked Las Vegas follows photographer Greg Friedler as he undertakes a most unusual mission — trying to corral subjects of every shape and socioeconomic stature to pose for his fourth city-specific book of nudes. In doing so, the documentary assays the differences between nudity and nakedness, and also takes the elevated temperature of a highly transient town of fabricated bliss.
Friedler’s previous Naked books focused on New York, Los Angeles and London, with simple side-by-side black-and-white photos of subjects from all walks of life, both clothed and undressed. His plans for Las Vegas include color, perhaps unsurprisingly, but otherwise remain the same. Doing local press to help publicize his work, Friedler slowly but surely rounds up a fairly eclectic group of sitters (well, standers), including his one white whale — an Elvis impersonator. Along with the expected roster of escorts and adult industry-types (a dominatrix, a fetish companion with fangs and a woman with natural 48E breasts who wants to get them enlarged to 54GG), there’s a college professor who lost her boyfriend in the Iraq War, several musicians and casino workers, a seemingly buttoned-up lawyer whose suit covers dozens of tattoos, a homeless man, pre- and post-op transsexuals, and even a 6’7″ accountant who stops by to pose on a whim.
Palmer’s movie chronicles the photo shoots and some of Friedler’s ruminations on the process (a lack of female pubic hair seems to cut across barriers of class and occupation), while also then spinning off asides on some of the more colorful subjects. It may sound tawdry or like “art” of the most convenient, winking sort, but Friedler’s skill with portraiture and genuine interest in the human condition come through (one participant smartly describes his work as “a book with no words that you can read”), and the film is legitimately engaging on an intellectual level.
Still, one wants more. Friedler’s parents, Cecille and Jerry, are glimpsed briefly in one little soundbite clip, but — some of its prurient delights notwithstanding — America Stripped would have benefited from a more committed exploration of its protagonist’s thought processes and frustrations. His sense of sincerity is readily apparent, but the specifics of some of Friedler’s feelings remain muted, even as he confesses to a rising tide of anxiety and depression just from staying in Las Vegas for the duration of his shoot. An even hungrier film would have tried to strip away a bit more, and reveal more starkly its main character. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. America Stripped is also available on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu and VOD. For more information, click here to visit its website. (Gravitas Ventures, unrated, 77 minutes)
Pusher
An English-language remake of Drive director Nicholas Winding Refn’s gritty 1996 Danish film of the same name, itself the first of a pulpy trilogy, crime drama Pusher has a neon-lit nervy energy — at once slick and grungy — and the sort of unabashed, screw-tightening rhythms that genre enthusiasts will embrace. As directed by Luis Prieto, it’s the tale of a drug pusher pushed too far — a man, caught up in a closing net of owed debt, resorting to desperate means that even he finds distasteful. It’s well acted and for the most part engaging, but also unfolds upon laid narrative track, without much originality.
Frank (Richard Coyle) is a low-level British narcotics dealer who pals around with the motor-mouthed Tony (Bronson Webb, channeling Rhys Ifans by way of Sam Rockwell). Frank’s exotic dancer girlfriend Flo (Agyness Deyn, who sort of recalls a young Kelly Preston) sells for him too, but Frank, perhaps naively, also has other schemes in the works. When he advances a kilo of cocaine from his Serbian supplier, Milo (Zlatko Buric, reprising his role from the Danish trilogy) to pull off a lucrative side deal, things unfortunately don’t go according to plan. Milo’s rising impatience finally makes him a mortal enemy, and Frank finds himself having to try to scrape together money from disparate sources in order to hold Milo’s burly enforcer (Mem Ferda) at bay.
Pusher more or less tracks with Refn’s original movie, but also variously recalls Guy Ritchie’s crime capers (though not as labyrinthine and outlandish), Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly (though not as steeped in sociopolitical statement) and many, many other similar works. The movie is stylishly photographed, and Pietro definitely finds a way to connect the action with his protagonist’s mental state, eventually even incorporating a few flash inserts to convey Frank’s increasing panic.
Both wearied and panicked, Coyle’s performance is shot through with anxiety. He’s the film’s anchor — the rabbit who finds each new potential avenue of escape sealed off. But Pusher also feels familiar, and doesn’t so much build in tension as it does check off a series of second act boxes en route toward Frank’s attempted flight. There’s a soul here, but one wishes the film had pushed some of its characters even further, to explore more deeply its chaotic fringes. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Radius/Vertigo Films, R, 86 minutes)
Silent Hill: Revelation
A cheap, clunky sequel to 2006’s videogame adaptation Silent Hill, this programmatic follow-up goes through all the genre motions with the passion, commitment and attention to detail of a teenager cycling through a laundry list of mandated chores prior to an evening out. A frenzied and narratively muddled cash-grab that disimproves upon its predecessor in every imaginable way, this uninspired effort may represent the theatrical release death knell for the franchise.
Absent the presences of originating writer Roger Avary and director Christophe Gans, Revelation feels an infinitely more clubby and insular affair than its predecessor, desultory and dependent on a rabid and uncritical emotional investment rooted in the source material. Australian-born Adelaide Clemens is the movie’s sole bright spot. She’s a good match for Radha Mitchell, the star of the first film who only cameos here, even though Clemens plays her adopted daughter. With her short blonde hair and sympathetic visage, she resembles a cross between Michelle Williams and Carey Mulligan, exuding an ever-present vulnerability that stands head and shoulders above this claptrap. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Open Road, R, 94 minutes)
Desperate Housewives: The Complete Eighth and Final Season
The saga of Wisteria Lane comes to a conclusion with the DVD release of the eighth and final season of Desperate Housewives. An unabashedly tawdry domestic drama that breathed new life into the nighttime soap genre, creator Marc Cherry’s series used its central murder-mystery conceit as a pivot-point to explore all sorts of other suburban shenanigans over the years.
For friends Susan (Teri Hatcher), Lynette (Felicity Huffman), Bree (Marcia Cross) and Gaby (Eva Longoria), in the fictional town of Fairview, life is… well, complicated. United by their involvement in the death of Gaby’s loathsome stepfather (Alejandro Perez) from the previous season’s finale, the women find the airtight nature of their secret questionable and under siege when Bree receives an anonymous message intoning, “I know what you did.” Recriminations, panic and confessions ensue, naturally. As Renee (Vanessa Williams) tries to spark up some romance with hot new Aussie neighbor Ben (Charles Mesure) and Lynette and husband Tom (Doug Savant) try to navigate the rough waters of their separation, meanwhile, Susan jumps headfirst into a “relationship” with a volatile art professor (Miguel Ferrer) determined to coax out her wild side.
The show’s eighth season frequently reveals its age, honestly. The introduction of and focus on supporting characters other the main remaining quartet of friends often feels more geared toward guest star ratings-goosing than smoothly integrated storylines. The pair of episodes that brought the series to a close, “Give Me the Blame” and “Finishing the Hat,” wrap things up in a decent enough manner (there’s a nice wink to secrecy‘s pervasiveness in the last scene) considering some of the more far-flung and problematic plot arcs of the season. Sure, it leans on stereotypical dramatic devices (a birth! a wedding!), but the show has always at its core been a subversion of domestic expectation, and a peek over picket fences. Perhaps most unsatisfyingly, though, the episodes undercut the audience’s collective imagination by sketching out the futures of its characters a bit too specifically.
Spread out over five digitally mastered discs, and housed in a case with snap-in trays, Desperate Housewives: The Complete Eighth and Final Season comes to DVD in a nice set in turn stored in a complementary cardboard slipcover. The series’ trademark investment in primary colors — sometimes subliminal, sometimes not — comes through clear in a solid transfer, and the Dolby digital audio track is straightforward and robust, for a series that doesn’t have a lot of complicated aural design.
In terms of bonus features, the big inclusion here is a hearty behind-the-scenes featurette that casts a look back at series. Buoyed by sit-down chats with all the principals, this is a solid and well-produced piece of nostalgic reminiscence for fans. Aforementioned creator Cherry sits for an audio commentary track on the series’ finale, and talks about juggling disparate impulses in bringing his baby into the harbor. Along with a collection of previews, there is also a collection of deleted scenes and bloopers — the latter of which serves to remind viewers that the polished, finger-snapping tone of the show and some of its dialogue does not always come easy, or on first takes. Only demerits? What could have been, in the form of more audio commentaries or a look at fan goodbye parties and the like. To purchase the set via Amazon, click here. And if brick-and-mortar stores are still your thing, then by all means rock on with your bad self. C+ (Show) B (Disc)
Yogawoman
Narrated by Annette Bening, Yogawoman is a rangy but lethargically paced documentary about the gender-specific practice of yoga, and a serviceable and well-meaning project that could have benefited from a stronger editorial vision.
Yoga is presently practiced by an estimated 20 million people in the United States, 85 percent of whom are women. But the ancient practice, born in India thousands of years ago, was actually designed specifically for men, and initially brought west by a lineage of male teachers. Directors Kate McIntyre Clere and Saraswati Clere shine a light on some of the world’s leading experts and teachers who have helped blaze a dynamic new trail for women, replacing yoga’s more rigid style with a more distinctly feminine practice that honors flow, strength, community, and even activism and the cyclical nature of women’s lives.
This is clearly a sermon to the choir — there’s little effort or care paid to an in-point for general audiences, even though Indra Devi, doyenne of yoga from the 1930s, is nominally touched upon. Yogawoman clearly has a lot to say, but it lacks the ability to cogently group and order its thoughts. Borderline inane narration (“Desperate to keep up with increasing pressures of the modern world, women are looking to find peace and balance in their lives”) does the material no particular good, undercutting the naturally sympathetic and erudite cadence of Bening, an avowed yoga practitioner.
Some of Yogawoman is quite interesting (in particular a seemingly successful “Art of Yoga” rehabilitative program for prisoners in a juvenile women’s system in San Mateo, California), and it makes a strong and easy connection between yoga and a more settled mind. The numerous physical health benefits of yoga are also addressed, though in ping-pong fashion. With a stronger narrative spine and a little more sense of gender-gap curiosity — about how and why this supposed “men’s practice” made the leap that it did — Yogawoman could itself bridge the gap between faithful yoga adherents and a general audience. As is, it does not achieve that. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Yogawoman opens this week in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Monica 4-Plex, NoHo 7 and Playhouse 7. For additional information on other theatrical engagements and the movie in general, click here to visit its website. (Shadow Distribution, unrated, 83 minutes)
Lunch
Lunch, from director Donna Kanter, is a documentary whose simple logline pretty much serves as an accurate barometer of one’s potential enjoyment. Over almost 40 years, a group of comedy writers and directors — including Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Arthur Hiller and many more — have gathered every other Wednesday for food and fraternal fellowship. The membership roster and the meeting places have occasionally changed, but the friendships forged and senses of humor indulged and displayed have remained steady. This nonfiction snapshot gives an overview of their time together, and in the process illuminates Hollywood spanning several eras. For the viewer for whom that sounds even remotely interesting, this is up your alley; others might want to skip it. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Lunch opens in Los Angeles this week at the Laemmle NoHo 7. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (Kanter Company, unrated, 78 minutes)
Citadel
Winner of the Midnighter Audience Award at this year’s SXSW Film Festival, Irish writer-director Ciarán Foy’s psychological horror movie Citadel centers on a stricken agoraphobe who’s struggling to raise his newborn daughter alone and protect her from a roving band of vicious thugs who look like Jawas and seem to be stalking them. Occasional bursts of effective atmospheric dread punctuate what is otherwise a thinly imagined genre exercise that would work far better as a short film. Aneurin Barnard’s lead performance is one of full investment, and a certain feverish intensity. But he’s too frequently grasping at straws, because Foy’s script for Citadel gives him nothing of convincing substance to hold onto. In stronger hands it could be read as a class parable; as is, it’s a muddled, pointless mess. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Gravitas Ventures/Cinedigm/Flatiron Film Company, R, 84 minutes)
We Are Legion: The Story of Hacktivists
You may think you know about Anonymous, the decentralized online collective who have merrily pranked and disrupted high-level corporate and governmental websites, and gone to war with Scientology to boot. You don’t, proves Brian Knappenberger’s wildly new engaging documentary, We Are Legion: The Story of Hacktivists.
Over the past couple years, Anonymous has been associated with raids or denial-of-service attacks on hundreds of targets, from Mastercard, Visa, PayPal and Sony to the Motion Picture Association of America and cyber-security/intelligence firms like HBGary Federal. We Are Legion not only details their exploits, but also delves inside the roots and culture of the group, exploring early hacktivist collectives like Cult of the Dead Cow and Electronic Disturbance Theater before charting Anonymous’ birth and fitful “maturation” from an offshoot message board on the website 4Chan.
The film’s technical package is fairly unexceptional, save for two notable elements. Composer John Dragonetti’s contributions provide We Are Legion with some extra oomph, and Skype-recorded video chats with various masked Anonymous members help give a rounded authenticity to the project. While tech authors like Richard Thieme and Steven Levy, amongst other talking heads, provide wonderful mainstream context and recap, it is these chats (and other more professionally recorded interviews with outed Anonymous members) that give Knappenberger’s movie a real personality, and a charged sense of self-narration from an organic, evolving entity.
Anonymous started out pulling goofy stunts en masse — think videogame-crashing, Rick-rolling, LOLcats, and other popular Internet memes. Then, in 2006 and ’07, they turned their sites on Hal Turner, a white supremacist with a self-syndicated radio show. Internet-based pranks were paired with other means of disruption of his hateful messages, and a kind of greater activist consciousness was born. Some of its other battles — including its tangles with Scientology, over their serial harassment of ex-church members and any journalist who deigns to write something critical about them — are epically hilarious, and their narrative recap here is fun and entertaining on a level completely devoid of any other sociopolitical context.
Still, while Anonymous’ support of WikiLeaks and its embattled founder, Julian Assange, got big press when the group targeted online financial companies who disabled their contribution buttons on the site, a lot of folks in the world at large don’t realize the group’s connection and indeed critical importance in not only fomenting the Arab Spring, but providing crucial support to besieged democracy activists in Tunisia and Egypt — validating SSL keys and certificates to help circumvent governmental shutdowns of the Internet, and sending out tips on how to make homemade gas masks and protective body armor. The pat soundbite gained some traction even in the mainstream media — that these governmental overthrows were made possible by Facebook, Twitter and social media — but We Are Legion shows that it’s no cliché.
For this reason and others, the governmental crackdown on some of these hacktivists should give freedom-of-speech-and-assembly town criers plenty of pause. There are sometimes laws broken, but a lot of what Anonymous does and supports could easily be described as civil disobedience — witness their early embrace of the Occupy Wall Street movement. After all, we live more and more of our lives online these days, so do we not have a right and space to also protest online? For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, including its trailer, click here to visit its website. (Luminant Media, unrated, 93 minutes)
Nobody Walks
An artful, perceptive look at human desire’s ability to arrive in sudden, rolling fashion, like a tidal swell, Nobody Walks is a delicate but somewhat mesmeric arthouse bauble from director Ry Russo-Young and co-writer Lena Dunham, who’s shot to popularity with HBO’s Girls. The winner of a special jury prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the movie is a fragile but rewarding slice of “Silver Lake cinema,” which is to say a fairly invigorating breath of fresh air for cineastes and something a bit too precious by half for audiences steeped in more melodramatic reward.
Decamping from New York, 23-year-old visual artist Martine (Olivia Thirlby) holes up in a guest house of the aforementioned trendy hilly community of Los Angeles. As a favor to his wife, Julie (Rosemarie DeWitt), sound editor Peter (John Krasinski) agrees to help Martine, the friend of a family friend, and the two set about concocting Lynchian soundscapes for her art installation film. Martine’s arrival brings changes, though. Julie and Peter have a blended family, and while 16-year-old daughter Kolt (India Ennenga, quite good), from Julie’s first husband Leroy (Dylan McDermott), is nursing a crush on David (Rhys Wakefield), Peter’s older assistant, David is also busy bedding Martine. As Peter’s own feelings for Martine surge, meanwhile, Julie, a pyschologist, deals with the possibly misplaced affections of a patient, Billy (Justin Kirk).
Russo-Young and Dunham have a nice rapport, and their sensibilities fit hand-in-glove. The latter’s skill with pin-prick dialogue (evident in Billy’s sessions with Julie) gives the movie some pleasant pop, but Martine’s backstory arrives by way of oblique hints rather than strenuously telegraphed motivations. This results in a movie that kind of leads from its back foot. While a story strand involving Kolt’s study of Italian with a tutor is less successful, and evidence of the piece’s ornamental expressionism, Nobody Walks (the “in L.A.” is understood) is predominantly a film of acutely observed moments of human longing and failing.
In swatches of story, tone and mood, Nobody Walks fitfully recalls other SoCal works like How to Cheat, Garden Party, Laurel Canyon and even Greenberg, and director of photography Christopher Blauvelt crafts a soft visual template that, with stirring original music by Fall on Your Sword, hints at melancholic fumbling and reinvention. Russo-Young (the rather striking You Won’t Miss Me, a 2009 collaboration with Stella Schnabel) again proves herself a stellar chronicler of the damages young people often self-inflict despite better judgments.
If its ending is a bit too pat — Russo-Young pulls an early ripcord in shrugging fashion, opting for conventional-leaning wrap-up when ambiguity would have seemingly served the story more truly — it’s to its considerable credit that Nobody Walks doesn’t unfold in a world where women are merely subject to the whims of sexual advance, but instead have their own conflicted feelings and desires. Reflected uncertainty doesn’t always make for the most comforting cinematic landscape, but here it’s a lovingly expressed inconvenient truth. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its theatrical engagements, Nobody Walks is also available on VOD. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (Magnolia, R, 83 minutes)
Francine Hits L.A., Melissa Leo Does Q&A
Minimalist character study Francine opens tomorrow, October 24, in Los Angeles at the Laemmle NoHo 7, and star Melissa Leo will appear for a special Q&A after Wednesday evening’s screening. For my earlier review, click here.
A Whisper to a Roar
A sort of voting rights companion piece to Steve York’s A Force More Powerful, which was a rangy nonfiction film about non-violent resistance movements around the world and spanning time, Ben Moses’ A Whisper to a Roar is a powerful documentary that ties together the heroic and ongoing efforts of democracy activists in five countries, and reaffirms the human spirit’s innate desire for freedom.
“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong,” Voltaire once wrote, and A Whisper to a Roar offers up ample evidence of this axiom, in the form of lethal pushback by dictators, autocrats and other corrupted power systems when faced with challenges to their authority. A striking segment focusing on the Ukraine opens with the story of kidnapped journalist Georgiy Gongadze, and then charts the rise of the country’s “Orange Revolution” of 2004, and the poisoning of reformist presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez’s distastefully violent rhetoric and overreach in closing radio and TV stations that offer dissent to his policies is examined. Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s slandering and incarceration is detailed, as are the brutal policies of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. And in perhaps the strongest narrative strand — or at least the one freshest and with the most direct implications for the United States — Egypt’s crackdown on democracy protesters and imprisonment of opposition leader Ayman Nour is cast into stark relief.
Shot over the course of three years, A Whisper to a Roar deftly intercuts back and forth between all of these narratives, which unfold at different times over the past 15 years. In doing so, it shows their commonality in “breaking down the barrier of apathy,” as one interviewee puts it. Social media and/or liberalized press have helped open new channels of communication amongst disaffected constituencies, and emboldened calls for democratic participation. The poor and otherwise marginalized see, by way of both other international examples and the skittish actions of their own authoritarian governments, the precarious and assailable nature of systemic corruption and oppression, through sustained public pressure.
The production package is fairly straightforward, but the range of interviewees runs the gamut from frontline demonstrators and participants to more intellectual members of the international commentariat, which give the movie a rooted sense of scope. Smartly, too, director Moses doesn’t tip the hands of his narrative in advance by fully identifying the occupations and standings of his subjects, leaving room for some suspense for those who don’t follow or recall international news. Emotionally engaging and impactful, A Whisper to a Roar is a well put together look at the yearning and universal nature of values we too frequently ascribe as uniquely American. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. A Whisper to a Roar opened this week in Los Angeles at the Laemmle NoHo 7. For more information, visit the movie’s website. (Appleseed Entertainment, unrated, 94 minutes)
Chained (Blu-ray)
Undone by one twist too many, Jennifer Lynch’s Chained nonetheless covers some transgressive and interesting terrain, telling the story of a boy imprisoned for a decade by a madman, and made to participate in his crimes (think Dexter by of Nell… sort of). In its chilliest, most unnerving moments, the film asks viewers to consider the nature/nurture breakdown of sociopathy, and how monsters are remade generation after generation.
The story centers on a nine-year-old, Tim (Evan Bird), who, while coming home from the movies with his mother (Julia Ormand), is kidnapped by a psychopathic cab driver and serial killer, Bob (a beefy Vincent D’Onofrio). After murdering his mother, Bob begins to shape Tim into his unwilling pupil, rechristening him Rabbit following a couple abortive escape attempts. He chains him to a bed in his secluded home, and breaks him down mentally. Years later, with Bob having groomed him for homicidal culling, the understandably wrought Tim/Rabbit (Eamon Farren) stands poised on the precipice of his own plunge into further darkness.
With Surveillance, Lynch crafted a work of spare desperation, where unchained menace seemed to blow in the wind. In Chained, she roots herself much more to character, and digs down deeper into warped psychological motivational systems, to satisfying effect. While no stranger to unsettling imagery and tonal manipulation (she’s the daughter of director David Lynch), Lynch here somewhat surprisingly takes a fairly straightforward tack with the story; this is delivered as a sordid father-son tale, which makes the grim violence mean something. The performances are great, too. D’Onofrio is dialed in and scary as Bob, but also realistically trigged; Farren, meanwhile, captures the shattered innocence and flickering malevolent potential of Rabbit.
The film’s great disappointment, then, is when — after some moments of truth that find Rabbit getting his first taste of blood, and then experiencing a night of freedom hunting for more victims with Bob — Chained pivots and attempts to grab surprise via a somewhat bizarre yet almost conventional “twist.” Lynch takes sole screenplay credit, though her script is actually based on another, previous script (more on that below). It’s not entirely clear where this idea came from from, but it doesn’t work — either on an emotional/cathartic level or as a very convincing ancillary argument about the disease and rot of generational violence.
Housed in a Blu-ray case, the movie’s Blu-ray/DVD combo pack release includes a 1080p 2.40:1 widescreen transfer, with a Dolby TrueHD 7.1 audio track on the former format, which also houses the bonus features. Under a motion menu screen with a dozen chapter-stop options, Chained features the movie’s trailer, a one-and-a-half-minute alternate murder sequence which allegedly garnered the film a NC-17 in its initial editorial pass with the MPAA, and the big other extra, an audio commentary track with Lynch and D’Onofrio.
While there are an awful lot of gaps in this conversation, D’Onofrio helps steer Lynch toward engagement, talking about the 15-day shoot, (for D’Onofrio, concurrent with his work on Fire with Fire, a straight-to-video flick with Bruce Willis and Rosario Dawson), his method acting and interest in playing a killer that didn’t function merely as a plot device in part of a bigger story. He also flashes some deadpan humor, joking when he appears on screen in boxers and a grungy T-shirt that, “One of the reasons I did this movie was so I could keep the wardrobe.” Apart from talking some about child abuse, Lynch chats less about the thematic broad strokes of the material than one might expect; she does, however, mention the only other person she says she thought of for the role of Bob (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and sketches out the more “torture-porn-oriented” script, by Damian O’Donnell, that producers Lee Nelson and David Buelow, originally brought to her, seeking her opinion and input. All in all, it’s a slightly above average commentary track, though when Lynch talks about wanting a director’s cut you wish she went into a bit more detail about exactly what sort of additions/changes she’d most want to make. To purchase the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) C+ (Disc)
Sexy Baby
With the proliferation of online pornography, the advent of “sexting” and the ever-present synaptic connection of social media, sexual maturation and in particular notions of womanhood are changing for adolescents and twentysomethings. Sexy Baby, an inquisitive and engaging new documentary from Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus, attempts to sift through this mass media assault and shifting mores, to determine the toll this seeming increase in titillation is taking on America. In addition to its iTunes and VOD availability, Sexy Baby opens this week in Los Angeles at the Laemmle NoHo 7. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, visit its website and/or Facebook page. (Area 23A, unrated, 83 minutes)
3,2,1… Frankie Go Boom
Provided one submits to its base level of intentional ridiculousness, there’s some wacky charm to be found in the low-budget, somewhat awkwardly titled 3,2,1… Frankie Go Boom, a comedy of fraternal bickering that hinges on scrambled efforts to squash a leaked sex tape. A bawdy conceit worthy of Judd Apatow gets a madcap spin by way of Get Shorty in writer-director Jordan Roberts’ self-financed affair, a choppy collection of character-based sketch ideas that’s elevated by a talented, game cast.
The Los Angeles-set film aims to wring laughs chiefly from putting its title character (Charlie Hunnam, of Sons of Anarchy) through the wringer. When his older brother Bruce (Chris O’Dowd, of Bridesmaids) graduates from rehab, their parents (Nora Dunn and Sam Anderson) guilt Frankie into coming home and seeing him for the first time in years. Frankie still stings from shame attached to years-ago Internet infamy, when would-be filmmaker Bruce posted a humiliating wedding video online. History repeats itself after Frankie hooks up with the recently jilted Lassie (the delightful Lizzy Caplan), but initially fails to achieve an erection. Bruce’s “artistic” ambitions get the most of him, and his surreptitiously recorded sex tape falls into the wrong hands. Escalating insanity ensues, as Frankie and Bruce turn to the latter’s prison pal Phil, now transsexual Phyllis (Ron Perlman), for assistance in removing the video from the Internet.
Roberts’ movie feels a bit less like a cogently plotted narrative and more like the product of an over-caffeinated bender following the injected enthusiasm of a gung-ho, DIY screenwriting class. It’s all about energy, and forward momentum; even the dialogue isn’t so much concerned with the traditional patter of set-ups and jokes as it is winding up its colorful characters and having them play off one another, their agitation stoking fires of shocked amusement. But Roberts’ cast tackles the material with gusto, and squeezes out from it a lot of fun. Perlman and Caplan are particularly lively and memorable, and Whitney Cummings and Chris Noth — the former as Bruce’s editor/jock-warmer, and the latter as Lassie’s deranged dad — also have some delicious scenes.
Most big screen comedies exist on either a laid track of genteel hamminess or cynical misanthropy, which Frankie Go Boom eschews. Everyone in this movie is a bit unhinged and damaged — even its putative protagonist, who can’t establish proper boundaries that would enable him to move on with his life. It’s not at all a naturalistic or even moralizing film, wherein capital-L lessons are learned, but in its own way Roberts’ movie makes the point that family relationships are often so uncomfortable and potentially toxic because they afford us the opportunity — and almost oblige us — to slip back into old roles and exhausted power dynamics, where bad habits and choices exist. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Variance Films, unrated, 88 minutes)
The Flat
An earnest and deeply personal exhumation of proverbial skeletons in the family closet, director Arnon Goldfinger’s The Flat is nonetheless deadly dull — a movie that churns up yards of speculation in delving into the intertwined history of a married Jewish couple and their strange, rekindled, post-World War II friendship with some German counterparts, but with increasingly diminishing returns.
When Goldfinger’s 98-year-old grandmother passes away, he and his family descend upon the Tel Aviv apartment she and her husband shared for decades, since immigrating from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Sifting through a dense collection of letters and bric-a-brac, Goldfinger begins to uncover clues that point to a much more complicated family history than he could have guessed. His grandparents, it seems, were friends with Leopold von Mildenstein, a man with connections to the SS prior to the war, and possibly even Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda machine later on. Seeking to understand how deep Mildenstein’s Nazi connections really ran — and how much of his history his grandparents and Mildenstein’s own family knew — Goldfinger delves into old letters and press archives, tracking down friends and colleagues of the aforementioned parties.
Documentaries as personal histories are of course widespread. Plenty of movies, from Stevie and The Devil and Daniel Johnston to Capturing the Friedmans and even the recent Photographic Memory, have delved into painful and shocking pasts, or addressed at least tangentially the manner in which time and distance tend to cleave from one’s memory the more unpleasant aspects of some particular recollection. The Flat, though, feels curated by the most dispassionate theme park ride operator of all time. It’s devoid of catharsis, or indeed any real feeling at all; it’s perhaps aptly titled, in that regard. Though narrated by Goldfinger, it lacks much in the way of emotional response to any of its investigation.
Ergo, vague and scattered notions or even scraps of evidence remain crucially unconnected, contextually. There is an objectivity here, and a kind of scrupulous demonstrative remove that invites very intellectualized analysis of human denial (late in the film, there’s a too-brief interview with a psychologist that touches on this topic), but it robs the film of any sense of cresting momentum or investment. The Flat is damned by its own incuriosity. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (Sundance Selects, unrated, 97 minutes)
Photographic Memory
In David Lynch‘s trippy, 1997 neo-noir psychological thriller Lost Highway, Bill Pullman’s Fred Madison explains his aversion to video cameras thusly: “I like to remember things my own way.” When pressed for a further explanation, he offers, “How I remembered them — not necessarily the way they happened.” For documentary director Ross McElwee — whose films have almost always been reflexively autobiographical, delving into his familial relationships and ancestral connections — it’s almost the opposite. His memories have, for years, been filtered through first his photographs and writings, and then his ever-present camera lens, to the point that even he begins to question how real, or accurate, some of his memories actually are.
The vehicle for this reflection is the beguiling, homespun Photographic Memory, triggered by some early-onset empty nest syndrome and domestic struggles. Attempting to make peace with the surliness, technological addiction and emotional waywardness of his 20-year-old son, McElwee decides to retrace some of his own footsteps from when he was around the same age, and spent a year abroad in France. The result is a delicate, mesmeric rumination on family, memory, the necessary growing pains of young adulthood, and the sloping banks of generational chasm that will always exist.
We first glimpse Adrian McElwee as a youngster, cavorting about with his younger sister. McElwee frequently filmed his kids growing up, and they used to love it. Now, despite his interest in becoming a filmmaker and/or graphic artist, Adrian is tired of his father’s looming lens; he’d rather hang out with friends, blow off school, smoke a bit of pot and film himself doing extreme ski tricks. Narrating his frustration, McElwee tries to channel and focus his son’s energies, while also dolefully noting certain behavioral similarities to his own adolescent wanderings.
McElwee deftly intercuts this story — of all the poking, prodding, hoping and cajoling attached to his son — with his own journey back in time, and a set of conflicted emotions that arise. Traveling back to St. Quay-Portrieux in Brittany, France, for the first time in almost four decades, the filmmaker tries to track down his first employer, a photographer named Maurice, as well as Maud, a woman with whom he had a brief but memorable romantic liaison.
On the surface Photographic Memory may sound simple, or irretrievably blinkered and personal, but McElwee has a self-awareness, sharp sense of observation and droll wit to boot that easily locates the universality of the material. McElwee’s film is honest about the sort of parenting mistakes born of trying to protect his son from himself, as well as wry articulations about the deep but tested roots of unconditional love (“Teenagers often don’t realize how protected they are from strangulation by the memories of smaller versions of themselves”).
If all that sounds a little too ethereal, Photographic Memory is also just a great little travelogue mystery, with the filmmaker subject’s twangy, Carolina-infused French, in his efforts to find Maurice and Maud, matching the uniquely accented sheer entertainment value of Werner Herzog’s nonfiction self-narration. So does McElwee locate these people from his past? Or are his memories of their time together, and reasons for parting, at all reliable? And what lessons might he learn from all of this travel in dealing with his son? McElwee makes movies to assay the human condition and try to sort things out for himself. This is another good one, full of both answers and questions, feelings and wonder. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (First Run, unrated, 87 minutes)
Grave Encounters 2
Using Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz’s found-footage horror flick Grave Encounters as a self-referential leaping-off point, Grave Encounters 2 gathers up a head of loose-limbed steam and bundles it up in a rather impressive technical package, but ultimately fumbles it away on a story that buckles under the weight of layered self-consciousness. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Tribeca Film, unrated, 98 minutes)
Happy Birthday, Jean-Claude Van Damme
It’s a happy birthday to Jean-Claude Van Damme, who turns 52 today, but hopefully isn’t coerced into celebrating by doing 52 scissor-kick splits.
Lizzy Caplan on Acting Drunk and 3,2,1… Frankie Go Boom
From Mean Girls to Cloverfield, Lizzy Caplan delivered a string of sharp big screen performances over the last 10 years that rendered her recognizable and appreciated, if not quite an immediately known name and commodity to the average filmgoer. Equally well received episodic work on True Blood, Party Down and New Girl helped change that, by degrees. Now, just on the heels of the raucous Bachelorette, Caplan seems on the verge of shedding the label of “critics’ darling” and achieving a wider fame. In her new film, 3,2,1… Frankie Go Boom, she plays Lassie, a wound-up gal who becomes the unwitting partner of the equally unwitting title character (Charlie Hunnam) in a sex tape that goes viral, courtesy of Frankie’s manipulative, boundary-free brother (Chris O’Dowd). I recently had a chance to talk to Caplan one-on-one over an afternoon summer ale, about Frankie, auditioning, acting drunk, VOD, and her next film as well. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.
Janeane From Des Moines
A quirky sociopolitical mockumentary experiment that plops down its title character as a sort of straightfaced, deep cultural embed amidst all the jockeying leading up to this election cycle’s Iowa Republican Presidential Caucus, Janeane From Des Moines is a movie of both hits and misses, but one that certainly never gets boring. If it could benefit from a more focused sense of purpose, director Grace Lee’s film also pulls off some undeniable coups, placing its fictional true believer in close proximity to all of the leading GOP contenders and by extension providing a snapshot of the reductive nature of national campaigning.
The movie centers around Janeane Wilson (Jane Edith Wilson, above left), a conservative housewife who works as a home health aide and keeps busy with gardening, her church’s Bible study group, and partisan political canvassing. With her college-age daughter showing few signs of returning home for the holidays, and her trucker husband (Michael Oosterom) becoming more and more distant in the wake of losing his job, Janeane throws herself into the Tea Party movement, convinced that gay marriage (“I don’t understand when it came to be that gay people own all the rainbows”), “Obamacare” and Planned Parenthood are destroying the country she loves. Traversing Iowa, she attends all sorts of rallies, speeches and events for Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and eventual GOP nominee Mitt Romney, asking them questions about their stances on issues and trying to figure out who best represents her values.
The film’s cinéma vérité material sometimes awkwardly abuts staged drama, and the personal tragedies Lee and Wilson (a co-writer) heap on Janeane feel over-stacked by maybe just one misfortune. There is certainly some dryly comedic gold found in the mining of these seams (fretting over dwindling money, Janeane attends a seminar of financial advisor Dave Ramsey, who preaches learning how to handle money “in a way that honors Christ”), but a twist involving Janeane’s husband lacks the necessary depth of a more nuanced set-up.
Borat this is not, in other words — at times to its detriment, since Wilson displays a real comfort with low-key improvisational interacting with real people. Lee’s insistence on a fuzzy emotional throughline also undercuts the film’s satirical punching power against some of the uninformed hypocrisy that helps animate in this case partisan cultural conservatives. Ergo, Janeane From Des Moines connects fitfully — as a sort of curated glimpse behind the utterly bizarre photo-op stagings of candidate appearances at ice cream parlors and the like.
The twin jewels of Janeane are its capturing of candidates unawares and Wilson’s finely calibrated performance, which is in its own strange way complementary to Meryl Streep’s turn in Hope Springs. They exist in markedly different stories, obviously, but both performances are similarly predicated upon an accumulated weight of heartache, frustration and regret finally reaching its tipping point. That happens most electrically when Janeane tearfully reconnects with Romney on the eve of the Iowa Caucus (an encounter that received national news coverage), but the film’s true, remarkable pièce de résistance is a coffeeshop sit-down with Bachmann and Iowa Congressman Steve King in which the former spins a personal question about getting kicked off health care rolls into a digressive monologue concluding with a pointed statement about what gas prices were when President Obama took office. It’s proof that retail presidential politics can be every bit as full of thick-headed, off-topic speechifying as air-game national message massage. Until there is sustained push-back against this, we get what we deserve, I suppose. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more on the film, meanwhile, and its iTunes/VOD availability, click here to visit its website. (Wilsilu Pictures, unrated, 78 minutes)