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Shared Darkness

A Communal Life in Film, Examined

Monthly Archives: May 2014

The Grand Seduction




It’s easy to grasp the appeal of a movie like The Grand Seduction from the point-of-view of Taylor Kitsch, and/or his agent. After a well received stint on the popular television version of Friday Night Lights, Kitsch was Hollywood-minted as the Next Big Thing, and cast in a string of high-profile studio projects. Then he watched as his two big screen leading man introductions, John Carter and Battleship, were each delivered stillborn within a couple months of one another. Critically derided, they were two of 2012’s biggest domestic box office flops — a fact that surely made it easier to hand the role of Gambit, a character Kitsch portrayed in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, to Channing Tatum for a stand-alone spin-off movie that will be produced later this year.

So The Grand Seduction sort of represents Kitsch’s Kwai-Chang-Caine/wandering-the-Earth phase, if you will — it was the first film he shot in the wake of the fallout of those aforementioned bombs, prior to reteaming with Peter Berg for Lone Survivor. And it’s an odd, twee, character-based slice of rah-rah community dramedy and uplift in which he doesn’t quite fit. But there’s a passably engaging subtextual layer of intrigue to help pass the time if one mentally squints and endeavors to put themselves in Kitsch’s headspace while he was filming two summers ago — playing a character banished to occupational purgatory against his will. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (eOne Entertainment, PG-13, 112 minutes)

Elle Fanning Talks Maleficent, More


Elle Fanning has been acting in movies for so long, it’s hard to believe she’s still only 16 years old. And then one meets her in person — with her open eyes and open heart, frequent giggles and huge grins littering any conversation — and she seems even younger, of completely guileless expression. In the new family fantasy adventure Maleficent, which puts a spin on the old Sleeping Beauty story, Fanning co-stars as Aurora, the naive 15-year-old princess who knows nothing of the curse put on her by the titular enchantress (Angelina Jolie). I recently had a chance to take part in the film’s Los Angeles press day; a conversation with Fanning is excerpted over at ShockYa, if you’re interested.

Cheap Thrills

A tense, knotty (in more ways than one) valentine of leaching amorality that evokes memories of the infamous Milgram Experiment, the darkly comedic psychological horror film Cheap Thrills is a satisfyingly warped walk on the wild side. Playing puppet master to wonderful effect, director E.L. Katz oversees a superb, smartly constrained technical package and a rich quartet of gripping performances, resulting in a violent, emotionally charged romp with surprising undertones of social commentary.



Cheap Thrills unfolds in Los Angeles, where would-be writer Craig Daniels (Pat Healy) is feeling the pinch of his occupational failings, what with a 15-month-old son and the eviction notice that greets him on his door as he heads out to work at an oil change establishment. Later in the day, he’s fired — the result of some unfortunate downsizing. Unable to immediately face his wife, Audrey (Amanda Fuller), Craig heads out for a drink at a dive bar, where he runs into an old friend from high school, Vince (Ethan Embry).

In short order, Craig and Vince meet a pair of generous partiers, Colin (David Koechner) and his young wife Violet (Sara Paxton). At first they seem only a bit quirky, but when they all repair to Colin’s well-appointed Hollywood Hills home, it’s not long before an underlying unscrupulousness is revealed. A series of friendly bets quickly become decidedly less so. Soon Craig and Vince are shitting in Colin’s neighbor’s house and then much, much worse — all for cash that Colin doles out without a care. A grim race to the bottom of the ethical barrel ensues.

In a movie like Saw, the villainous Jigsaw had a rationalized motivation — and indeed, what might be described as an overarching worldview. That’s somewhat lacking here in what motivates Colin and Violet (at least in more explicitly underlined fashion), but the script for Cheap Thrills, by Trent Haaga and David Chirchirillo, deftly taps into latent fraternal competitiveness and socioeconomic class conflict between friends. As it unspools, it also assays moral rot, and the fissure points in the America that exists for the “rest of us” majority when one-percenters see fit to make entertainment out of our financial desperation. The allegory connects with a bracing thump, even if it’s not the main thing.

On a more immediate level, Cheap Thrills works because of its superlative cast, all of whom deliver wonderful performances. While still lined with larger-than-life notes, Koechner gets to showcase a darker nature than his supporting roles in movies like the Anchorman films and A Good Old-Fashioned Orgy have afforded. Paxton, meanwhile, imbues her blithe vixen with an unsettling detachment that registers outside of the movie. It’s Healy, though, who’s the film’s anchor. Clean-scrubbed and bespectacled, but with healthy pinches of anxiety and exasperation, he has the perfect countenance for Cheap Thrills — a surrogate for Everyman America, struggling through a dark game that may or may not be totally rigged, but either way is surely damaging to the soul.

Housed in a regular plastic clear Amaray case, Cheap Thrills come to DVD via Drafthouse Films, presented in a 2.35:1 widescreen transfer that preserves the aspect ratio of its original theatrical exhibition, along with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track. Its slipcase provides reversible illustrated cover art (above), along with a 16-page black-and-white booklet full of photos, credits, publicity stories (some real, some phony) and other material. There’s also a DRM-free digital download copy of the movie.

Against a static menu screen, eight chapter stops allow viewers the opportunity to dive into segments of the movie for repeat viewing. Bonus features, meanwhile, include a feature-length audio commentary track with Katz and Healy, plus a collection of trailers for Klown, Wake in Fright, A Band Called Death, Wrong and several other Drafthouse titles. The biggest and best extras, though, are a pair of video supplements. First up is a six-and-a-half-minute clip from the film’s Fantastic Fest debut, where audience members take part in a series of dares with the cast prior to the movie’s premiere. This leads to Embry dipping his penis in a cocktail later sipped by a guy, another guy dipping his testicles in sriracha sauce, a woman eating a popsicle covered in crickets, Healy removing his pants, and a third gentleman getting the film’s title tattooed on his ass.

There’s also a comprehensive, 40-minute making-of documentary, Vital Heat, directed by T.J. Nordaker, that serves as a nice look at shoestring-budget independent filmmaking. Chronicling the movie’s 14-day Los Angeles shoot in September 2012, this short film includes on-set chats with the producers and principal players, and the fact that it unfolds more or less in chronological order means viewers get to experience the highs and lows (losing power during a heat-induced rolling blackout) in parallel fashion, right alongside the creative participants. Naturally rich in anecdotes, amusing asides (one interviewee characterizes the smell of a cramped studio apartment serving as the shooting location for Craig and Audrey’s domicile as “ripe men and stale Cheese-Its”) and budget-effects revelations (three rotisserie chickens get dressed as meat of another variety), this short also scores points for its honesty about razor’s-edge dissonance and frustration that are bound to be a part of any such cramped and chaotic artistic endeavor. Katz (who bears a striking physical resemblance a young Stanley Kubrick) is a candid interview subject, opening up about his first stab at directing, but other parties are just as open and forthcoming too. Things culminate with more footage from the movie’s bow at Fantestic Fest a full year later, putting a triumphant cap on the entire white-knuckle creative ride. To purchase the Cheap Thrills DVD via Drafthouse, click here; to purchase via Half, click here. Or if Amazon is totally your thing, meanwhile, click here. B (Movie) A- (Disc)

Director Joel Hopkins Talks The Love Punch


For his third film, writer-director Joel Hopkins (Last Chance Harvey) re-teamed with Emma Thompson, casting her opposite Pierce Brosnan as one half of a divorced couple who reunite after the financial future of their retirement years is thrown into uncertainty by an unscrupulous businessman. A screwball-tinged heist flick that not so much feeds “eat the rich” feelings which might be surging in the zeitgeist at the moment as offer up a divergent, flight-of-fancy caper for the middle-aged, The Love Punch plays out like a reimagining of The Parent Trap by way of Ocean’s Eleven, and minus the kids. Last week, I had a chance to speak one-on-one with Hopkins about his working relationship with Thompson as well as the legendary actress he has in mind for his next film. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.

Oasis Definitely Maybe: The Documentary


In their 14-year recording career, Oasis sold more than 70 million albums worldwide and helped spawn the “BritPop” movement of the 1990s. They also became almost as famous for the frequent intense squabbling and literal fisticuffs between brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher, the primary songwriter and lead singer of the band, respectively. As part of a series of re-mastered reissues of the group’s first three albums, and specifically to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their debut, Definitely Maybe, an hour-long documentary on its creation is now seeing wider release.

Oasis Definitely Maybe: The Documentary charts the crafting of the group’s smash hit freshman effort, in exhaustive if not quite comprehensive detail, if that makes sense. More to the point, director Dick Carruthers struggles with crafting a strong throughline; he seems to avoid the tough questions, and has trouble blending in extant material smoothly. Even though there was considerable tumult before, during and after the recording of the album (drummer Tony McCarroll would get the axe prior to the recording of the group’s follow-up), the film addresses these issues in scattered fashion. Credit is due for raising them at all, but the fact that the Gallaghers — who, notably, are interviewed separately — are largely unwilling to address them directly leaves one feeling that this is still a somewhat incomplete creative portrait, no matter the new slang for drugged-out intoxication (“cabbaged beyond all fucking belief”) it imparts. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (INGrooves Music Group, unrated, 58 minutes)

Director Fred Schepisi Talks Words and Pictures




Australian-born director Fred Schepisi has a varied filmography, spanning Roxanne, Six Degrees of Separation and Fierce Creatures, among other credits, but one of the steadiest through-lines in his work is a keen grasp of human imperfection. It’s interwoven into his latest effort as well, Words and Pictures, which stars Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche as New England prep school teachers — he’s a rakish if blocked writer and functional alcoholic, she’s a prickly abstract painter stricken with rheumatoid arthritis — at odds over which mode of expression can convey greater meaning. I recently had a chance to speak to Schepisi one-on-one, about his movie, the educational inspiration he found in a monastery, and the keys to directing on-screen drunkenness. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.

16 Acres


A vital and in many ways even cathartic documentary overview of the decade-plus rebuilding of the World Trade Center site in New York City following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, director Richard Hankin’s 16 Acres throws a light on the sort of sharp-elbowed but slow-footed bureaucratic maneuvering that comes with city planning, most especially of a site this fraught with emotional baggage. At once fascinating and maddening, it’s a clear-eyed, fair-minded and exhaustively sourced look at the sort of story that national news organizations often have a hard time distilling and tracking through time.

Aside from the often under-reported staggering engineering challenges related to the river-adjacent tract of land, a major complicating factor in the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site has to do with the massive number of parties involved. Real estate developers, insurance companies, architects, local residents, families of first responders and other 9/11 victims, and of course politicians all lay claim to the area in various fashion, and have often had mutually exclusive feelings about what sort of rebuilding is appropriate. Just as a matter of sheer dramatic surface engagement, then, 16 Acres delivers an engrossing tale.

A few of the highlights: developer Larry Silverstein, the owner of the site who was left still paying $10 million a month in rent after the attacks, filed a lawsuit over whether the felling of the WTC Towers was one incident or two separate events, for the purpose of recouping as much insurance money as possible. After initial plans for a new WTC site were scrapped, an international open competition was held. Then, after two finalists were named, New York Governor George Pataki unilaterally reversed the decision of the commission charged with studying and choosing the winning design, even after word leaked in the press of the supposed winner.

Architect Daniel Libeskind was picked for his visionary master plan, but had no experience at all with skyscraper design. Silverstein, then, brought in yet another architect, David Childs. Naturally, their visions clashed — as did the feelings of some families of victims with Michael Arad’s widely praised design for a reflecting pool-type memorial. And lest one think good, old-fashioned snafus couldn’t be part of the mix, the final, meticulously arrived at building design then had to be scuttled due to security concerns somehow lost in transit between the Port Authority and the New York Police Department. “At some point the anger just gives way to depression,” says one interviewee, and you totally feel where he’s coming from.

The victory of Hankin’s film is its scope and open airing of all these contrasting opinions. Both Pataki and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg submit to interviews, as well as Silverstein, the aforementioned architects and many other less well known figures, including reporters who covered the story for the New York Times and other publications. The result doesn’t demonize anyone unfairly. It’s a story about ego and hubris, yes, but also the better angels of our nature. Maybe Winston Churchill was really on to something when he said, famously, that after every option has been exhausted, Americans can be counted on to do the right thing.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with simple yet evocative cover art that portrays the site’s hybrid design, 16 Acres comes to DVD via First Run Features, with a 5.1 Dolby digital audio track that more than adequately handles the fairly straightforward aural demands of the title, plus optional English subtitles. A film of this sort, although in substantive ways it’s more than merely a snapshot in time, still cries out for forward-leaning updating, and the bonus features herein lack a complete, comprehensive view of the now-completed One World Trade Center. Still, there is time-lapse footage of the construction, plus photo galleries that spotlight drawings and other artist renderings. There are also two short films, one of which shows the antenna tower being installed, and Hankin and his colleagues also produced an enhanced, interactive e-book companion that’s available on iTunes, featuring extra videos, animation and more. To purchase the DVD via First Run, click here; to purchase via Half, click here; to purchase via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) B- (Disc)

Words and Pictures


If it takes well into a person’s twenties before fully absorbing the reality that one’s parents are actual people, with their own hopes and dreams, fears and pressure points, that comprehension, oddly enough, typically comes earlier in regards to teachers, when the veneer of stentorian authority is punctured — either by an instructor’s casual jocularity, some flaming screw-up or their serial challenge to previously unchallenged ideas and mores. Words and Pictures, scripted by Gerald Di Pego and directed by Fred Schepisi with an aplomb that belies its hyper-charged emotionality, centers on two such characters.

And in doing so, it offers a fairly rich, playful vehicle for Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche to parry and thrust, and maybe even fall in love. Fans of smart adult romantic comedies (this is easily the sort of picture one could imagine Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal starring in together about 20 or 25 years ago) with a pinch of screwball mojo will find reward in Words and Pictures, which reminds viewers that life doesn’t end at 40 years of age, or even 50. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (Roadside Attractions, PG-13, 116 minutes)

The Love Punch


With only a few very notable exceptions, Pierce Brosnan has spent his career playing guys in suits — both figuratively and literally. Sometimes he’s an asshole or glad-hander in a cheap suit, though most of the time he’s a rich, unflappable character who could easily jump in and substitute for the real-life Brosnan in one of his luxury wristwear photo shoots. His latest film, writer-director Joel Hopkins‘ adult caper flick The Love Punch, in which the actor stars opposite Emma Thompson and contrives to stick it to the (French)man by stealing a $10 million diamond, dresses him the same, which is to say nattily, but makes use of this persona in contrasting, effective fashion.

It’s not at all the first time Brosnan has dabbled in romantic comedy, but it is amongst his broadest, most loose-limbed efforts, which helps elevate The Love Punch from trifle to an at times oddly endearing, diversionary romp that will take viewers’ affections exactly as far as their openhearted affinity for its leads carries them. After all, retirees still need a genre yarn every now and then, right? For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (Ketchup Entertainment, PG-13, 94 minutes)

The Angriest Man in Brooklyn




Robin Williams was initially the frontrunner for the starring role in director Phil Alden Robinson’s Field of Dreams, so perhaps, 25 years later, The Angriest Man in Brooklyn represents some sort of karmic closure for that collaboration that never was. It certainly doesn’t connect on any other level. A flaky, contrived and wearying dramedy in which a dying man (Williams) frantically tries to right the fractured relationships in his life while an equally frazzled doctor (Mila Kunis) tries to track him down in order to clarify the reading of his diagnosis, this clamorous offering — a remake of the 1997 Israeli film The 92 Minutes of Mr. Baum — fails to elicit much in the way of either laughs or sympathy. The Angriest Man in Brooklyn could be shot through with frustration and rage and still possess the sort of subtlety that would lend it a real-world rootedness. But screenwriter Daniel Taplitz’s adaptation is thinly imagined, and lacking enough of the sort of quiet moments that would lend these characters much-needed dimensionality. Robinson, meanwhile, seems only too happy to let his actors lean on histrionics. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Lionsgate, R, 84 minutes)

Forev


In co-directors Molly Green and James Leffler’s Forev, an indie ode to the decidedly poor decision-making skills of twentysomethings, Los Angeleno Sophie Potts (Noël Wells, of Saturday Night Live) impulsively accepts the marriage proposal of her apartment neighbor, dweeby tech support jockey Pete Avery (Matt Mider), and the pair then promptly head off on a six-hour drive to Phoenix to pick up Pete’s sister Jess (Amanda Bauer) from college. Musing and drinking ensues, and when Jess, fresh off a break-up, indulges in a one-night stand during a car-breakdown stay-over, things get weird for all.



If Forev, a world premiere at last year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, sounds like pretty much the most stereotypical slice of precious, shoegazing wire-frame indie storytelling, well, it is. The movie’s story credits Mider and Wells with “additional screenplay material,” owing to their improvisational talents. And it’s certainly true that the pair (especially Wells) stumble upon a few winningly awkward reactions in their odd, fumbling courtship. But there’s nothing particularly deep or compelling about these characterizations, and co-writers Green and Leffler seem like they can hardly be bothered to sketch out the film’s few inciting incidents (it takes a good 10 minutes before it’s definitively established that Pete’s car is actually broken down).

Forev basically substitutes very familiar road trip narrative meandering and a couple music video montages for rigorous plotting or insights. There’s no grounded reality with respect to how guys act in situations with both their girlfriends and female siblings (“My girls!” exclaims Pete, when Sophie and Jess each emerge in bathing suits), and Green and Leffler seem allergic to making Jess too pushy or judgmental about her brother’s relationship, which abets a pungent odor of phoniness that envelopes an already flimsy conceit.

Most crucially, Forev doesn’t go for “the full Napoleon Dynamite,” which is to say that — even though it throws in a few weirdo supporting characters — it avoids diving headlong into the creation of its own canted universe. Forev is ostensibly supposed to unfold in the real world, and yet as the movie progresses it doesn’t attach itself in any substantive manner to a deeper exploration of Sophie and Pete’s second thoughts and regret over their rash embrace of one another. There’s nothing to really get one’s dander up over Forev, and attach a lot of poisonous animosity of opinion to, but the film just doesn’t work, and its shortcomings track with the sort of material that takes its cues from trying too hard to ape other movies. The players here may have talent, but Forev almost willfully obscures it. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, which is available on all major cable VOD providers, as well as iTunes, DVD and Blu-ray, click here to visit its website. (Gravitas Ventures/Mance Media, R, 88 minutes)

The Gun, the Cake and the Butterfly


Indulgence and inanity collide in the bewildering vanity project The Gun, the Cake and the Butterfly, a punch-drunk mixture of Tarnation, The Room and some lost, axed-in-run-through Saturday Night Live sketch of skewered, oblivious privilege. A kaleidoscopic memoir from director Amanda Eliasch — a socialite and part-time photographer who exists seemingly only to be seen — this navel-gazing non-starter offers zero of interest to anyone not immediately connected to its maker (and even that audience might be a stretch). For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (Butterfly Movies, R, 78 minutes)

Don Peyote


He’s won a Tony Award on stage, for 2005’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, but Dan Fogler‘s film career has been defined chiefly by crass and/or live-wire best friend roles, in movies like Good Luck Chuck and Take Me Home Tonight. A wild-eyed, barrel-chested bundle of energy loosely in the mold of a Chris Farley, he’s the guy (along with Josh Gad, whom he lost out to on a starring role in the forthcoming HBO biopic of Sam Kinison) who gets the offers that six to eight years ago were going to Jack Black and Zach Galifianakis.

Naturally, though, as with many a true creative type, Fogler has chafed a bit at this limited vision of his talents. He’s delved into some indie productions over the past several years, to sometimes very engaging effect, as with Kevin and Michael Goetz’s Scenic Route, penned by Kyle Killen. He also apparently watched a bunch of the History Channel’s old Mayan prophecy programming and surveyed the viral mania rampant in the culture at large to inform his second effort behind the camera, and as whacked-out a passion project as one is likely to see this calendar year, Don Peyote. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (XLRator Media, R, 98 minutes)

Devil’s Knot




The trial, convictions and subsequent quasi-voiding of the guilty verdicts of West Memphis, Arkansas teenagers Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley in the 1993 killings of three other, younger adolescents have already served as the basis for four high-profile documentaries, so director Atom Egoyan’s Devil’s Knot arrives somewhat anticlimactically for those who have been gripped by the lurid true crime tale over the past two decades — a queasy, repackaged hits collection of judicial incompetence and malfeasance heaped on top of human tragedy. For those wholly unfamiliar with the case, meanwhile, it’s no less of a mixed bag. If the narrative muddle is somewhat understandable, given the many unanswered questions surrounding the terribly sad events, neither does its lack of a clear mandate gel into something heady and artistic, like a vivisection of crime’s impact on community. Instead, Egoyan’s film embraces posed and expeditious dramatic signifiers, rather than plunging more daringly into the mouth of madness. For the full, orignal review, from Paste, click here. (RLJ/Image Entertainment, R, 114 minutes)

Dan Fogler Talks Don Peyote


Dan Fogler is best known to big screen audiences for his work in a string of comedies like School for Scoundrels, Good Luck Chuck, Balls of Fury, Fanboys and Take Me Home Tonight, most often as the voluble best friend or a disrupter of normalcy. Of course, he’s also won a Tony Award for his performance as William Barfee in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and last year he helped anchor the indie film Scenic Route, a spare, streamlined psychological thriller that doubled as a study in masculine relationship drift.

Now, with the psychedelic comedy Don Peyote, Fogler has added another feather to his cap. A rollicking, ramshackle slice of insanity with a deep roster of recognizable faces (Anne Hathaway, Topher Grace, Jay Baruchel, Annabella Sciorra, Wallace Shawn and Josh Duhamel are among those who pop up in cameos and supporting roles), the 2012-set film stars Fogler as Warren Allman, a New York City graphic novelist and stoner who, with his wedding looming, becomes fixated on various Doomsday theories and embarks upon a careening documentary project to inventory his obsessions. I recently had a chance to speak to Fogler one-on-one, about his film’s inspiration, his wife’s reaction to it and more. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.

Noël Wells Talks Forev, Profanity, Saturday Night Live




Noël Wells is wrapping up her first season as a featured player on Saturday Night Live, but she won’t have long to exhale. Presently in talks for some supporting roles in a couple movies, this summer she’ll also be busy writing and enjoying rekindling relationships put largely on hold for the last nine whirlwind months. Wider distribution of an indie effort shot in 2012, meanwhile, will give viewers a taste of Wells’ long-form talents. In co-directors Molly Green and James Leffler’s Forev, a shoe-gazing comedy that inventories twentysomething folly, Sophie (Wells) acquiesces in shrugging fashion to the joking marriage proposal of Los Angeles apartment-mate Pete (Matt Mider), and then sets out with him on a road trip to Phoenix to go pick up his sister (Amanda Bauer) from college.

In advance of Saturday Night Live‘s season finale this coming weekend, I had a chance to chat one-on-one with Wells, about her movie, her favorite profanity, umlaut absolutism, the impression she thinks everyone should be doing, and more. The conversation is excerpted over at Paste, so click here for the read, and to gain full contextualization for the quote, “Nobody likes butt-fucking, I guess.”

Losing LeBron


Arriving in the middle of the NBA playoffs, just as its subject tries to put the finishing touches on a championship three-peat, documentary Losing LeBron chronicles the gut-punch impact of native son LeBron James’ decision to depart the Cleveland Cavaliers via free agency in 2010. Clocking in at just under 60 minutes, this cinematic apéritif is a moderately engaging if also somewhat incomplete emotional survey of a city’s psychological health.

Provocatively but not without correlation, the film links how coming to expect the worst in sports trickles down to a baseline expectation of failure in relationships and work. But it does so in half-measures. Losing LeBron begs a bit more hard-edged social inquiry than this meandering soft-focus offering, which primes the pump of sports narrative obsessives, but leaves discerning viewers wanting a bit more. For the full review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, which is available on iTunes, Amazon, Google/YouTube, PlayStation, Vudu and Xbox on May 20, click here to visit its eponymous Facebook page. (Cinedigm/Devolver Digital/Coasting Films, unrated, 59 minutes)

Sunken City

One of the true delights of the Julien Dubuque International Film Festival, where it recently picked up a prize for Best Use of Music, Sunken City is an almost perfectly modulated low-budget indie with a keen sense of place. Fans of The Big Lebowski will appreciate and find reward in this loose-limbed crime comedy, which locates its sweet spot in stoner humor and dry send-up of noir conventions, as well as a strong lead performance.

Sunken City unfolds in the Los Angeles port neighborhood of San Pedro, where Detective Nick Terry (Hamilton von Watts) has the sort of dyed-in-the-wool love for his hometown (“I’d have to have brain damage to leave San Pedro!”) that manifests in umbrage for those who would dare not pronounce the city’s name with a long e. A wake-and-bake loafer cop who collects urine from his dog in order to pass his drug test, Terry is on community service detail, pressing the flesh at local schools and retirement homes. He doesn’t much mind, though. It gives him more time to spend with his Jamaican-born friend and informant Spice (Cyrus Farmer), a cook at a dockside chowder house.

Then a girl washes up dead, and Terry’s captain (Spencer Garrett) tasks him with leading up the investigation. Terry is initially motivated to solve the case just so he can get back to his kush life as quickly as possible as by any higher calling. He’s also keen to spend more time with Donna (Monique Gabriela Curnen), the shop owner from whom he buys piñatas for his dog to chew on during his days away from home. But several of the case’s clues point to having something to do with a spiked blend of marijuana, which is of course one of Terry’s specialties.

Director Ryan McLaughlin, working from a story concocted with von Watts and screenwriter Todd Samovitz, uses a laconic voiceover to wonderful effect. It’s ladled on just right, giving Sunken City enough of a sense of commentary and self-awareness to qualify as winking while never tipping over into aimless spoof. It helps, certainly, that there’s such a comfortable, wooly vibe to the film, all the way to its core; the plot feels sort of like an episode of Hunter or some other old cop show crossed with a modern noir, and a few trace elements of touchstones like Twin Peaks (the dead girl) and the aforementioned Coen brothers’ film thrown in for good measure.

There’s a wry, Bob Odenkirk vibe to von Watts, and he truly gives the movie an anchoring presence; ten minutes with his character, and you’re hooked. Sunken City gets a little lost in the weeds in some of its third act plotting, when it tries to simultaneously pay off and wrap up things in sprawling, left-and-right fashion, misreading the more fundamental, character-rooted nature of its appeal. Still, this is a winning indie effort with strong across-the-board contributions from all of its major players. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, which is now available on pay-per-view and digital download, click here to visit its website. (Sunken City LLC, unrated, 105 minutes)

Fed Up

A socially agitative work that throws a light on a systematic American political failure, and the placement of private profit and special interests ahead of public health, Fed Up tackles the childhood obesity plague in a manner that roils the stomach and heart in equal measure. Narrated by Katie Couric, director Stephanie Soechtig’s documentary lays waste to the cruel, dismissive assessment that corpulence is simply a reflection of a lack of personal willpower, arguing that lethargy, eating to excess and other behaviors associated with being overweight are often the result of overwhelmed biochemistry, and not the root cause of obesity.

One leaping-off reference point for Fed Up is the revelatory nonfiction offering Food, Inc., which did a solid $4.4 million in theaters in 2009, while also spawning a companion book of the same name. But the more apt comparisons may be the Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth and 2004’s Super Size Me — films that got in the mainstream zeitgeist and seemed to alter perceptions on a fundamental level. Fed Up feels like it has the same potential, in that it elicits concern and personal reflection in similar portions. Soechtig’s film has the macro, analytical surveyor’s eye of the former film. It also has a pinch of the anecdotal pop (if not outrageousness) of the latter; its truths are self-evident and easy to grasp for a layperson, in other words.

Its makers are smart enough, too, to know what criticisms are coming their way. Fed Up sizes up the pushback-playbook of anti-regulation free-marketers (with its attendant howls of “nanny state” overreach), and shrewdly assays the lack of scientific mooring in their arguments. The association the film ultimately draws, comparing food industry causality deniers to Big Tobacco CEOs paraded before Congress, lying through their teeth, isn’t necessarily kind. But neither does it seem inappropriate. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (TWC/Radius, unrated, 98 minutes)

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