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)
Matt Mider Talks Forev, Awkward Commercial Auditions
I recently had a chance to speak to Matt Mider, about the indie film Forev, honing his improvisational skills, his favorite mock-curse word and making out with 60-year-olds in commercial auditions. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the chat.
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)
Charlize Theron Inks to Star In, Produce American Express
Indie production American Express, which one presumes will either have to change its title or secure a most unusual sponsorship, has secured an attachment commitment from Charlize Theron, per the Wrap. Plot details for the film, to be helmed by The Square director Nash Edgerton, are still under wraps, but the filmmakers will be seeking funding at the forthcoming Cannes Film Festival.
As High As the Sky
A low-fi indie drama of sisterly reconnection that feels a bit like a cinematic cousin of early Miranda July, vacuumed free of any irony and collagist sensibilities, writer-director Nikki Braendlin’s As High As the Sky deserves credit for maximizing its resources and evoking a certain mood of hedged-in, wallflower protectionism — of tapping into the feeling of someone who’s withdrawn from life. In the end, though, it can’t overcome a general lack of gradation and the unconvincingly established deadpan affect of one of its central characters. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, which is presently available on DVD and will be available on Hulu, Amazon Instant and Cinema Libre on Demand beginning on June 6, click here to visit its website. (Aunt Kiki Productions, unrated, 93 minutes)
Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return
Hitching its wagon in hopeful fashion to any residual goodwill and interest from last spring’s $490-plus million surprise hit Oz the Great and Powerful, animated family musical Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return spins off a story that loosely picks up after the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz. Waves of indifference emanate from this meagerly imagined yarn, adapted from a non-canonical book by Roger Stanton Baum, the great-grandson of originating author L. Frank Baum. Wasting a voice cast populated with recognizable names, this attempt to cash in on nostalgia for its source material evokes more bewilderment and boredom than excitement or wistful reminiscence. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Clarius Entertainment, PG, 92 minutes)
The Driftless Area Adds Frank Langella on Eve of Shooting
Filming will commence on director Zachary Sluser’s The Driftless Area next week in Vancouver, and per Screen Daily, Frank Langella has joined Anton Yelchin and Zooey Deschanel in the movie, about a young romance threatened by a crook and his bag of loot. (Presumably Langella plays the former, and not the actual bag of loot.) John Hawkes, Alia Shawkat and Ciaran Hinds round out the key cast of the indie production, packaged by Unified Pictures and Bron Studios.
Redwood Highway
In last fall’s Nebraska, it was Bruce Dern who set out on foot, against the wishes of his son; in the Oregon-set Redwood Highway, it’s Shirley Knight who does the same, delivering an estimable turn in what amounts to a marginal showcase for fans of the twice Oscar-nominated actress. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, which opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Town Center 5, click here to visit its website. (Monterey Media, PG-13, 90 minutes)
Joe Berlinger’s Facing the Wind Bags Nice Cast
Noted documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger, whose Paradise Lost movies delved into the West Memphis Three case and were integral in eventually helping to overturn those verdicts, is set to tackle his first scripted true crime tale in the form of Facing the Wind. And, per the Wrap, Alessandro Nivola, Evan Rachel Wood, Vera Farmiga, Rita Wilson and Jennifer Beals have all signed on for the film, penned by Richard Stratton. Shooting will commence later this year in and around New York City; Fabrication Films will begin shopping the project to international buyers at the Cannes Film Festival later this month.
Belle
A classily mounted period piece that oscillates between interestingly plotted societal drama and somewhat stuffy and predictable Jane Austen-style handwringing, director Amma Asante’s Belle leans heavily on the unique intrigue that results from a protagonist caught up between different worlds — black and white, rich and disfavored. Never quite content to cast its lot with a grittier and more ambitious tone, this polished and engaging but emotionally gauzy and at times downright frustrating film slugs its way through a lot of dutifully passionate speechifying en route to a conclusion of scrupulously manufactured uplift. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (Fox Searchlight, PG, 105 minutes)
In Regards to Matthew Modine’s Full Metal Jacket Diary App
I recently had a conversation, for Paste Magazine, with tech writer Nicholas Quah about Matthew Modine’s Full Metal Jacket Diary app, adapted from his photo-illustrated memoir of the same name, and the future of so-called “appumentaries” as they pertain to film. It was a pretty interesting chat, I think; to check it out, click here.
Farmland
An amiable documentary that takes a stab at bridging the divide between food growers and American consumers, Farmland alights upon myriad issues relating to modern agriculture, providing a freshmen-level survey class deeply connected to entrepreneurial endeavor, and the dignity and work ethic of the farmers and families it spotlights. If director James Moll’s film fails to achieve much in the way of cohesive big-picture lift, it’s still steeped in feeling, and intriguing enough to easily win over urban arthouse viewers wanting to see and know a little bit more about how food makes its way to their plates.
Farmland never seems disingenuous, but neither does Moll — an Academy Award winner for 1998’s The Last Days — seem to exercise a great deal of editorial discipline in crafting deep narrative through-lines. Some of the facts seem fancifully sourced, and without verification or pushback; one interviewee claims that consumers get 90 percent of their food from family farms, which contradicts both common sense as well as movies like Food, Inc., and would have to be dependent on a fairly generous definition of the word “family.” At its core, Farmland lacks a thesis statement. Discussions of hot button issues like the organic certification process and GMOs enter the proceedings late, more than 35 minutes in, and seem clipped and perfunctory.
What gives Farmland its punch and connection is the forthrightness and decency of its subjects, the candor with which they share their lives and the even-handedness with which they weigh questions integral to the future of farming in the United States. Meanwhile, Harris Done’s cinematography communicates volumes in its simple beauty, and a closing sequence set to a cover version of “This Land Is Your Land” by Everclear and Liz Phair will spark a swollen-hearted feeling of idealistic connection to the dedication and livelihoods of these hale, hearty, ever-optimistic folks. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For the movie’s trailer and more information regarding its theatrical exhibition, click here to visit its website. (Allentown Productions, unrated, 77 minutes)
Decoding Annie Parker
Decoding Annie Parker boasts a deep roster of recognizable faces, including Rashida Jones, Alice Eve, Helen Hunt and Aaron Paul, in addition to star Samantha Morton. This speaks to the enormous potential of its material, which is rooted in the true story of a three-time cancer survivor and the scientific discovery of the hereditary breast cancer gene. In the hands of a first-time feature director with no overarching idea of how to wrangle disparate narrative strands into the shape of anything consequential, however, this well-meaning but hopelessly disjointed period drama comes to resemble nothing so much as a Lifetime movie run amok and off the tracks, unfolding in maddening fits and starts under a series of problematic wigs and skullcaps. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (E One Entertainment/Ozymandias Productions, R, 99 minutes)
Lewis Black: Old Yeller
The bug-eyed social rantings of two-time Grammy Award-winning stand-up comedian Lewis Black get a healthy workout in Lewis Black: Old Yeller – Live at the Borgata, his ninth comedy special, recorded last year in Atlantic City. Apoplectically cycling through irritants great and small, the 65-year-old multi-hyphenate provides an amusing, highly personalized look at the state of modern American life, and its shared intersections with both technology and government.
Black’s sardonic personality — for anyone familiar with him through his “Back in Black” segments on The Daily Show, or anywhere else, to be honest — is the engine that drives a lot of his comedy, which is of the observational variety. After honoring his in-the-audience parents at the top of Old Yeller (some of the artwork of his father, who took up painting after retirement, makes up the backdrop for his show), Black dives headlong into disappointment. He shares that despite the disapproving glances and statements of married people, the greatest disappointment in his life is not his singledom and lack of children, but the 21st century as a whole. Using that as a leaping-off point, he assails his peer group as “the greatest generation at hanging out,” and doing nothing.
Old Yeller leans heavily on the twin pillars of personal agitation and neuroses, but it largely works. When Black is tackling bigger, societal issues through smaller, more relatable comedy (as he does linking Social Security solvency and the mysteries of long division), he’s on fire. Digressions into national health care and the environment (“Earth Day was created when I was in school, and we were doing a lot of drugs”) don’t connect as robustly, but when Black trains his rage on Facebook in an extended rant, there’s a luminousness to his prose and performance, with a couple well-placed epithets used to punctuate his anger.
Running just under one hour, Old Yeller evinces the feeling of a couple missed opportunities; when Black says that, after 25 years of professional travel, he knows some states shouldn’t actually be states, you wish he’d quick-riffed on the best (read: worst) absurdity he’d encountered. Still, when Black circles back late in the show to politics, and how when he was growing up drinking (often to excess) helped Congress actually achieve both equanimity and actual legislative accomplishment, there’s plenty of warped yet keen insight on display. There’s also a hard edge to a lot of this concluding material, and the fact that a viewer can feel a bit of unease gathering in the audience only deepens one’s appreciation for the harsh, borderline profane truth-slinging in which Black trades. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its premiere on EPIX, Lewis Black: Old Yeller – Live at the Borgata also hits DVD on May 6, in a slightly longer version, with attendant chapter stops and the like. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here; to purchase via Half, click here. (Image Entertainment/EPIX, unrated, 57 minutes)
George Clooney Pretty Much Checkmates Steve Wynn
Following their verbal dust-up at a recent dinner where George Clooney took exception to some remarks about President Obama by Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn, the latter called Clooney a “money-coddled” actor “living in a bubble” in an interview. Clooney, though, pretty much dropped n-u-t-s in counter-reply, saying among other things in his written response, “I did not attend a private boys’ school, I worked in tobacco fields and in stock rooms and construction sites. I’ve been broke more of my life than I have been successful, and I understand the meaning of being an employee and how difficult it is to make ends meet. Steve is one of the richest men in the world and he should be congratulated for it, but he needs to take off his red, sparkly dinner jacket and roll up his sleeves every once in a while and understand what most of the country is actually dealing with… or at least start with the fact that you can’t make up stories when eight people who are not on your payroll are sitting around you as witnesses.”
And this, folks, is one of the reasons that I dig George Clooney. It’s a high-and-tight fastball, this reply, but it’s more pointed and intelligent than driven by cheap, flaming rhetoric. He throws down the gauntlet, calls Wynn out, and twists the knife, but also does so in a way that deflates and all but eliminates Wynn’s slappy putdown. And just as a side note — a billionaire calling someone money-coddled? Why is it one-percenters have all the worst rejoinders?
Life Is Funny, You Know?
As the Julien Film Festival winds down, I’ve stolen away for a quick lunch in ultra-rural Council Hill, Illinois, and among other oddities and delights I wound up talking to a guy who’d seen (via streamed Netflix) last year’s German-Austrian arthouse film The Wall, which isn’t something you necessarily expect in a township with under 200 people.
Walking With the Enemy
War is a terrible thing, full of horrors big and small. And yet in the swirling darkness, amidst all the depravity and moral compromise, slivers of light often emerge, offering compelling case studies in human character and resilience. That truism is again borne out in Walking With the Enemy, an unfussy but robust World War II drama inspired by the factual story of a small-town Hungarian rabbi’s son who used wile, guile and occasionally brute force to disrupt Nazi occupation and save countless Jewish friends and family. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (Liberty Studios, PG-13, 126 minutes)
The Other Woman
The tension between a bittersweet character comedy of discovered infidelity and the more commercial-minded, studio-dictated instincts of raucous, empowerment-stamped sisterhood is ever-present in The Other Woman. Connecting slightly more often than not, this film works best as a showcase for the talents of Leslie Mann, who can wring rueful laughter of identification out of humiliation and angst unlike few actresses working today. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (20th Century Fox, PG-13, 109 minutes)
Last Passenger
Ahh, what might have been for Dougray Scott. In the late 1990s, he was originally cast as adamantium-clawed X-Men mauler Wolverine, but then forced to drop out of the film when overruns and delays dragged out the production schedule of Mission: Impossible II. Stripped of that franchise touchstone, he’s never quite reached the same buzzy occupational heights. Now, while Hugh Jackman has gone on to all sorts of riches and rewards, the Scottish-born Scott is left to anchor British-produced rip-offs of Speed, as with Last Passenger, a runaway-train action thriller that coasts along serviceably for a bit before entering Boredom Station. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Last Passenger opens in the Los Angeles area at the Regal Long Beach Stadium Theatre. (Cohen Media Group/Pinewood Films, R, 97 minutes)
Live, From the Julien Film Festival…
I’m in Iowa tonight, and among the films playing at the Julien Film Festival this weekend are the tender, poetic My Sister’s Quinceañera and Dear Mr. Watterson, a documentary look at the creator of the beloved Calvin & Hobbes comic stip. Having already met some delightful filmmakers and reconnected with other folks, I’ll be shortly plotting out a screening schedule, and diving into all things Field of Dreams as well.
Small Time
Small Time is an appropriate title for writer-director Joel Surnow’s period piece dramedy, the type of movie whose meandering, loose-limbed structure and comparative lack of stakes inform a savvy viewer of the fact that it’s “inspired by true events” even without benefit of the opening credits title card. A father-son bonding story squashed awkwardly up against a lightly humorous workplace tale, this amiable passion project commits no great offenses, but lacks the necessary tension and elicited emotional investment to pull in and sustain an audience much outside of the core fan base of the talent involved. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (Anchor Bay/Asylum Entertainment, R, 95 minutes)