Daily Archives: June 24, 2009

In the Sign of the Virgin

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Writer-director Finn Karlsson’s 1973 film In the Sign of the Virgin, also micro-released Stateside in some cities under the title Danish Pastries, is a top-shelf sex comedy — fun, flirty and unabashedly horny. Balancing a completely boilerplate swapped-aphrodisiac storyline and stereotypical settings with vividly sketched characters, lighthearted montages and solid production design, the movie — part of a whole series of astrologically-themed, period piece T&A romps just now seeing a release to DVD — makes a convincing case that there is a market for goofball couples erotica.

Unfolding, of course, at a private boarding school for delinquent girls, In the Sign of the Virgin introduces an astrological imperative right from the get-go: the school’s board of directors has discovered that on the eve of “Nulpolitterorden,” the planet Venus is aligning with Earth in a manner that will spark all sorts of carnal behavior. Naturally, they want to keep things in check, and they’ve come up with a powder that, when added to water, curbs all erotic desires. Professor Armand (Ole Soltoft, a sort of Danish cross between Lee Evans and Mark Ruffalo) is dispatched to administer the curative substance to all the girls, but before he can complete his assignment he bumps into Professor Bomwitz (Bent Warburg), who just so happens to have invented an aphrodisiac powder. After they accidentally exchange briefcases containing the powders, randy mayhem ensues; Bomwitz gives the girls their powdered water and empties the rest into the town reservoir, unleashing all sorts of sexual hijinks. The frumpy headmistress (Mette Von Kohl) tries to control her girls by locking them in the basement, but in the end everyone ends up at the local brothel, run by Madame Gine (Lone Helmer) and Rufo (Benny Hansen).

I haven’t heard the term used before, maybe I’m the first, but I would dub this film and those like it “middle-core” sex flicks; there is graphic material (insertion, a small amount of intercourse, even one ejaculation), but it isn’t hammered home (if you’ll pardon the expression) like modern pornography, and at no point does the explicit nature of this material compromise the movie’s buoyant tone. Karlsson has plenty of nubile young women (including Anne Bie Warburg, below center, as the requisite corrupted innocent) to put on display, but he also actually makes a movie that hangs together properly, and has a sense of genuine playfulness.

It helps, certainly, that both Soltoft and Bent Warburg are skilled comedic performers, but everything about Karlsson’s treatment of the material lends the otherwise incredibly silly story credence. The music here is also of note, and worth mentioning; before wah-wah effects ruled the 1980s or aggressive percussive beats took over American porn, jazzy, horn-inflected rhythms ruled softcore flicks, and it’s that sense of goofy musical experimentation — balanced by looped hi-hats and keyboards — that drives In the Sign of the Virgin‘s music and helps anchor the film. Only a slightly-too-nasty girls-on-girl assault colors darkly what is otherwise a pleasant, lightly erotic flick that male and female cinephiles alike could enjoy.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with a screen-captured cover (top photo) that features strategically placed hearts, In the Sign of the Virgin comes to DVD on a region-free disc in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a native language Dolby digital soundtrack, English subtitles, and an animated top menu screen (above) with additionally animated chapter selections. The video transfer is remarkably free from grain, other debris, or any edge enhancement, but there are of course some issues with color consistency. The only bonus feature, alas, is a two-and-a-half-minute slide show of stills from the movie — some of which are behind-the-scenes material, but most of which are not. Director Karlsson passed away in 2003, alas, but surely there must be other players that, if the effort were made, would be available and interested in talking for some sort of retrospective overview. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Surveillance

Film Reviews

It’s been a decade since Jennifer Lynch, daughter of noted filmmaker David Lynch, made her directorial debut with the wildly divisive Boxing Helena, and her return behind the camera, the thriller Surveillance, has on the surface the trappings of something much more traditional and straightforward. Naturally, though, because it’s filtered through the younger Lynch’s canted, nurture-influenced prism of warped “normality” and co-existing extremes, there’s a ghoulish, off-kilter quality to the proceedings. A sort of dread-heavy, wholly engaging partial misfire — the film feels awkwardly stitched together, and it ultimately bites off more than it can chew — Surveillance still tackles a provocative premise: that truly nasty violence can be birthed from wildly different sources, even marginal places of flattened affect, proper order and limited means.

The story centers around FBI agents Elizabeth Anderson (Julia Ormond) and Sam Hallaway (Bill Pullman), who are dispatched to a ghostly highway town to investigate a string of grisly unsolved homicides. The chief witness is a nine-year-old girl, Stephanie (Ryan Simpkins), who saw her family murdered in the open daylight by a pair of masked marauders. Other participants in the trauma include tweaker Bobbi (Pell James, above left) and her equally spun-out boyfriend (newcomer Mac Miller), Ryan’s older brother and parents (Cheri Oteri and Hugh Dillon), and two sociopathic cops (French Stewart and co-writer Kent Harper) who twistedly assert their authority over random passersby by shooting out their tires and engaging in self-satisfied games of psychological manipulation. As Elizabeth and Sam partition the survivors and query each one with the assistance of closed-circuit video units, the bulk of the rest of the film unfolds in this flashback structure, studded with lies and whitewashes absolving participants of culpability.

Four-plus minutes into Surveillance, we’ve glimpsed a coffee percolator in close-up, as well as inter-departmental law enforcement friction the sort of which marked Twin Peaks and its film prequel. A bit later antlers are glimpsed on a wall, and we also see a fetishistic depiction and almost orgiastic enjoyment of cigarettes. In other words, there’s plenty of markers to link back to some of Lynch’s father’s favorite visual touchstones. There are some definite flashes of dark humor, too. Still, this isn’t merely Lynch Lite — there’s a transgressive foreboding largely unchecked and unbalanced by virginal positivity — and anyone investing too much energy into a direct, biologically correlative reading will eventually come to a wheels-spinning resting place.

Lynch’s film is most evocative of her father’s work in the broadest sense; there’s inherent risk and verve in the project, despite a narrative premise that on the surface seems simple, and possessing of a certain doom-glam cachet. Lynch does a good job juggling the movie’s puzzlebox qualities, and its third act features a boffo twist, the extra-narrative implications of which are a pleasure to swirl around in your mind. Yet Surveillance doesn’t quite fully add up, or completely align, both because it feels slightly off in its editing and construction, and because some of its characters remain ciphers. It’s in this sense that the film is a misfire, albeit one you wouldn’t trade for more conventionally telegraphed American indie product.

Its hiccups and unravelling are more sins of excited commission than laziness, and don’t mitigate the weird pleasures of Surveillance‘s cross-cast performances, with experienced comedic performers Oteri and Stewart going dark places and Ormond playing more cool and kinky than perhaps we’ve ever seen from her before. The film looks fantastic, too. Working on the Saskatchewan plains of Canada with cinematographer Peter Wunstorf (the second unit director of photography on Brokeback Mountain), Lynch crafts a work of spare desperation, where unchained menace blows in with the wind. In the end, just pondering that fact may be more chilling than the laboriously crafted backstories of a new crop of backward-looking horror slashers. (Magnet, R, 97 minutes)

In the Loop

Film Reviews, Politics

War may indeed be hell, but on screen the polarity of its heightened stakes can make occasional fodder for some wicked comedy, which is certainly the case with the very funny In the Loop, a feverishly pitched political satire in which low- to mid-level British diplomats and their American counterparts all try to advance their own contrasting agendas during the lead-up to a preemptive war in the Middle East. It’s rare, the movie that consistently delivers this much towel-snapping pleasure in its dialogue, and it’s rarer still that it comes attached to something that wants to make you think. For that reason, In the Loop is the perfect indie antidote to so much droning, effects-laden summer fare.

Iraq is never explicitly mentioned, and so In the Loop vaguely unfolds in a nebulous, alt-universe present day, though clearly its narrative is a farcical stand-in for the prelude to that invasion. Against this backdrop, the movie throws together nearly a dozen clashing personalities, almost all arguably jockeying for some degree of personal glory and/or taking delight in the stumbles of a rival while also happening to execute their official duties.

While their respective heads of state (never glimpsed) seem set on a path to war, dovish American Lt. General George Miller (James Gandolfini) doesn’t think invasion is the answer, and neither does the British Secretary of State for International Development, Simon Foster (Tom Hollander). After Foster accidentally seems to rule out military action in an innocuous TV interview, he suddenly has some new friends in Washington, D.C., including Assistant Secretary for Diplomacy Karen Clarke (Mimi Kennedy) and her aide, Liza Weld (Anna Chlumsky).

Meanwhile, as Foster and his harried new political advisor, Toby Wright (Chris Addison, above right), try to repair his image, a pros-and-cons-of-war memo penned by Liza, an old college friend of Toby’s, leaks out and is misconstrued by various parties. All of this frustrates to no end the Prime Minister’s chief communications spin-doctor and pit bull, Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi, above left), who’s helping push a war resolution vote at the United Nations.

Co-written and directed by Armando Iannucci, In the Loop is delightfully acerbic, and well acted across the board. There’s an effervescence and manic, wheels-spinning charm to all the turmoil and dressings-down that is reminiscent of Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, and the entire thing is cut together with the energy and verve of a top-shelf action movie. Over an hour into the film, there’s a jarring moment of silence for an establishing shot, and it’s here that one most fully realizes just how crammed with whip smart, overlapping banter almost every other nook and cranny is.

Overall, the narrative focus skews toward the British side; its humor (or perhaps that should be spelled humour) leans a bit more heavily on across-the-pond notions of bureaucratic gear-grinding, as evidenced by Foster’s continuing inability to speak in bland, safe aphorisms (never really a problem for American politicians), and an arguably extraneous story strand involving Steve Coogan as an English constituent angry about a collapsing wall near his mother’s property. Hubris, workplace rage, and CYA-protectionism is universal, though, and accordingly In the Loop translates smashingly well. (IFC Films, R, 106 minutes)

Step Up 3 Commences Filming, Funky Popping-and-Locking

Casting About, Ephemera

Per press release, the third film in the Step Up franchise has begun its scheduled 10 weeks of dance-infused principal photography, in Manhattan and Brooklyn. I don’t know about its digital 3-D presentation — though I guess that’s the next logical step for this type of film, and a lot of youth-skewing genre pictures in general — but after returning director Jon Chu’s work on Step Up 2 the Streets, I can legitimately endorse another installment in pop-and-lock, coming-of-age theatrics. Adam Sevani and Alyson Stoner both reprise their roles from the second and first films, respectively, and are joined by newcomers Rick Malambri, Sharni Vinson, Keith Stallworth, Kendra Andrews, Stephen Boss and Joe Slaughter.

LAFF: Spike Jonze Premieres New Short Film with Kanye West

Screenings

In breaking news pegged to the Los Angeles Film Festival, Spike Jonze’s new short film, We Were Once a Fairytale, starring Kanye West, will screen before tonight’s 8:30 p.m. screening of Jonathan Caouette’s All Tomorrow’s Parties at the Ford Amphitheatre. Special guests are expected, and self-packed picnics are welcome for the event. Also, just on a festival-related note, Examiner.com’s Marvin Miranda takes a swing at four flicks: Harmony & Me, Zero Bridge, Dear Lemon Lima, and For Those Who Remain.

The International

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

The Bourne Identity was released in the summer of 2002, and owing to both the changes in the real world post-September 11 as well as the commercial success of that film and its subsequent sequels, since then every spy thriller worth its salt has had to ground itself in greyer times. Even the James Bond franchise — notoriously stingy about embracing change — brought in Daniel Craig after Die Another Day, and OK’ed a grittier franchise reboot that returned to the secret agent’s roots.

It’s in this murkier, tough reality that The International unfolds, directed by German-born Tom Tykwer, who in 1999 set film school imaginations afire with the adrenalized import Run, Lola, Run. A moderately tough sell because of its ambition, complexity and the fact that almost all of its action is contained in a single mid-film burst, The International is a globe-trotting law-and-action hybrid that melds investigatory procedural maneuvering with some covert head-crowning.

Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) is a disgraced Scotland Yard detective turned Interpol agent working from afar with Manhattan district attorney Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) on a case involving one of the world’s most powerful banks, and the impending sale of missile guidance system technology. It looks like there’s a compelling claim to be tried in court, until both Louis’ partner and a potential witness separately turn up dead. Louis and Eleanor have their suspicions, but can’t prove anything. Spurned for direct information at their imposing Luxembourg headquarters — a perfect metaphorical stand-in for the evil machinations of this huge corporate machine — Louis starts working a separate evidentiary strand, a mysterious assassin (Brian O’Byrne) believed to be used by the International Bank of Business & Credit, with the hope of eventually using him to bring down the head of the company (Ulrich Thomsen).

With its skittery keyboard score and cabal of moneyed string-pullers, The International is a mega-corporate take-down thriller, a modern-day The Parallax View by way of Syriana and Michael Clayton. It completely skulks, in other words. Yet if the film, as conceived, is at its core a rendered judgment on the nature of man — with Louis having to grapple with the essential question of whether he should abandon his own ideals, and playing within the system, for the greater good of society — it takes a step back in its finale, afraid to let its protagonist fully, individually come to grips with the weight of his decisions.

In this sense, as penned by debut screenwriter Eric Singer, The International is a perfectly good and engrossing adult-level film that doesn’t really take a full, hearty swing at greatness. It toes the line, but in the end blinks. Overall, the dialogue is fairly unexceptional, but the performances here are engaging, and Tykwer’s staging is smart and crisp. There’s a fun “New York City moment” that fuels one close escape, when Eleanor and Louis honk their way out of a traffic jam, and Tykwer turns an incidental clandestine meeting into a fantastically over-the-top shootout at the Guggenheim’s main rotunda, amidst a massive video installation. The moment is more than just a bit silly; upon reflection, it’s bat-shit crazy, plain and simple. It’s also the brawny set piece that pays for the rest of the chess match. So I didn’t mind, and you might not either.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The International comes to DVD presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen, with English and French language audio tracks, the former in 5.1 Dolby digital and the latter in Dolby surround. Optional English, French and Spanish subtitles are also available. Bonus features consist of a single, 11-minute extended scene that delves more deeply into Louis’ paranoia, a feature-length audio commentary track with Tykwer and Singer, an engaging 31-minute making-of featurette, and a trio of smaller, six-minute looks at the Guggenheim and other spots from the movie’s location production. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) A- (Disc)