In what’s been deemed a cost-cutting measure, three-decade veteran Todd McCarthy has been axed by Variety, the latest in a series of critic cappings that recall not so much an industry struggling to find its way in the era of New Media, but a mob movie montage of calculated extinguishings. The reaction from the critical community has been fairly harsh, if somewhat predictable, with Kim Voynar and others lashing out at the myopia of Variety‘s decision, not entirely without reason.
Still, can anyone legitimately claim this a surprise? It’s shocking merely in the way that the culmination of a grand, unsettling event is shocking — like a breakaway dunk in a big basketball upset. It’s an undisputed fact that arts journalism is a devalued brand, and criticism especially so. So Variety played the short money game, because previous cutbacks haven’t worked, and other bold strokes (executive bloodletting, a divestment of office space, and salary rollback) apparently weren’t on the table.
The harsh, bleed-like-me reality, though, is that McCarthy’s salary package was likely worth more than what nine out of 10 film critics make. And for those of a younger generation, film criticism seems to be trending toward a state of perpetual scramble, in which free agent-writers term-contract their services and trade on reputation and demi-celebrity, however dubious a distinction that is. It sucks, because it involves massive amounts of work that isn’t about the work. And yet someone sketch me a plausible macro-alternative.
Whether it was the general lack of suspense and sense of preordained coronation in the air — with really only Sandra Bullock’s Best Actress victory being the only category of the four main acting awards still a bit up in the air — or just my own bloated seasonal malaise, I couldn’t really get that amped leading up to the Academy Awards this year, and neither could I be counted on (obviously) to tap out exhaustive analysis after the fact. I’m not an awards blogger; it’s just not in my bones.
In addition to that crazy bitch producer going all Kanye West on the short film documentary winner (they have beef, don’t you know: history here), I thought the telecast was its usual mix of orchestrated, well-oiled tedium and enjoyable, sometimes emotionally piercing acceptance speeches (which are always the highlights of Oscar evenings). One thing I do love, though. It is a mortal lock, the morning after every single Academy Awards ceremony, that there will be competing qualitative-judgment narratives, with some camp proclaiming them the most boring/awful ceremony ever, and others calling them the best ceremony of all time.
Following Iran’s disputed presidential election this past summer, Neda Soltani was shot and killed on the streets of Tehran — an awful incident captured on a 90-second cell phone camera video that ripped across the blogosphere over the next 24 hours. In an instant, she became the face of a powerful protest movement that threatened President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the hard-line theocratic government’s hold on power. While the revolution unfolded on Twitter and the Internet, and a fuller portrait of the young woman came into focus relatively quickly, in Polaroid-like fashion, it’s still worth revisiting her story — especially for those not plugged into the sort of exhaustive coverage that Andrew Sullivan and other writers labored to provide in real time.
In affecting fashion, this short-form title, part of PBS’ Frontline investigative series, explores the death of Soltani, and in doing so also delves into a number of broader, unanswered questions in the aftermath of the greatest upheaval in Iran since the 1979 revolution. While giving ample voice to one of Soltani’s best friends, Delbar Tavakoli, as well as former prime minister Mohsen Sazegara — no fan of Ahmadinejad — A Death in Tehran isn’t merely subjective, some exercise in liberal grief mop-up. A columnist for an Iranian paper that supports the current government provides editorial balance to Christian Science Monitor‘s Scott Peterson and others, who talk about an interesting rumor that sprouted up just before June’s voting — about two million pens with disappearing ink being imported, to help vanish the votes for challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi.
By far the most engrossing material, however, concentrates more directly on Soltani; there’s a phone interview with her Turkish boyfriend, prior to his arrest on trumped-up charges of somehow having had something to do with her shooting, and a sit-down chat with the doctor (who has since fled the country) who tried to save her life. The picture that emerges is of a simple young woman, hardly radicalized, who merely wanted better things for her country — more transparency, and openness to the rest of the world. While 11 protester deaths were ultimately confirmed by the Iranian government (hospital records indicate at least three times that amount, with dozens of others missing, and said to have been “disappeared”), the saddest specter looms in the movie’s final moments, when Soltani’s art instructor — in whose arms she expired — is forced to recant on state television her shooting at the hands of rogue security forces. An evenhanded contradiction of Iran’s official narrative, this title provides evidence to the contrary. It’s a shame those responsible do not have to answer for their crimes.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, A Death in Tehran, originally broadcast on television in November of last year, comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with a simple English stereo audio track that more than adequately handles the meager aural demands of the title. There are unfortunately no related supplemental bonus features, though a 15-minute Frontline segment from Uganda, highlighting the challenges facing the world’s largest population of mountain gorillas, rounds out the hour-long title. It’s a weird fit with the Iranian material, no doubt, but certainly not uninteresting. To purchase A Death in Tehran or any other PBS Frontline title, call (800) PLAY-PBS or click here; to instead purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. A- (Movie) C- (Disc)
A decidedly NSFW trailer for Gorman Bechard’s micro-budget indie horror flick One Night Stand, which likely won’t be confused with Mike Figgis’ film. Good concept, but will it have enough psychological heft to make it truly unnerving? I had deeply held problems with Hard Candy, but at least it also had the benefit of some strong, committed performances, in particular Ellen Page’s turn.
It’s a happy birthday to Eva Mendes, who turns 36 today, much to the delight of Latina Mole Enthusiasts subscribers. Mendes is at her core innately va-voomish, but has also shown flashes of something deeper in movies like Trust the Man and We Own the Night, and even some goofball charm in stuff like Hitch and Stuck on You. (Let’s not talk about Ghost Rider, meanwhile). One senses there could be something meatier and truly substantive out there for her, if she wanted to work for it, though.
Oh, and it’s Aasif Mandvi‘s birthday, too. He turns 44, but looks considerably less interesting in a bikini bottom, so there you have it.
Part murder mystery, part domestic melodrama, part dark comedy, Mother is also a wholly original treat that confirms writer-director Bong Joon-ho’s touch with multiple tonalities, as well as his status as South Korea’s preeminent modern auteur.
Simple peasant Hye-ja (Kim Hye-ja, above) is the profoundly devoted single mother of 27-year-old Do-joon (Won Bin), a naïve, memory-impaired man-child whose affability helps mask the fact that something isn’t quite right with him. Walking home drunk and alone one evening, Do-joon encounters a schoolgirl who he follows for a bit before she disappears into a dark alley. The next morning, she’s found dead in an abandoned building. Do-joon is eventually arrested for her murder, and an apathetic police force doesn’t seem much interested in investigating Hye-ja’s insistent refusals that her beloved son could ever possibly be guilty. Embarking on an obsessive quest to prove her son’s innocence, Hye-ja at first focuses her efforts on his scummy friend Jin-tae (Jin Goo), but slowly learns more and more about the victim, which expands her suspect pool.
Like the works of David Lynch or Alexander Payne, Bong’s films unfold in mannered worlds where comedy and drama are hopelessly commingled. Owing to the combination of both this and its innate foreignness, Mother is unnerving — you don’t really know what it wants or expects from you as an audience member. Despite the general dramatic success of its homicidal mystery story strand, Kim’s bravura performance is the glue that holds everything together; with her plaintive eyes, she makes you deeply feel both her character’s mania and sadness, which is crucial to Mother‘s artful navigation of those treacherous pivots in tone. The film’s hold slackens a bit, understandably and almost necessarily, after a great third act shock, but one doesn’t greatly begrudge Bong the privilege of closing things out with an eerie, melancholic denouement. (Magnolia, R, 129 minutes)
Fifteen years ago, Val Kilmer was Batman, and costarred in Michael Mann’s Heat, one of the decade’s top crime dramas. This is worth pointing out because of the nature of work that Kilmer is now doing, which seems to consist solely of supporting roles and bit parts in films for somewhat wonked-out directors (Oliver Stone, Tony Scott, Werner Herzog), and lead roles in fairly undemanding dramas and thrillers — movies that as often as not seem to be cobbled together as some sort of tax shelter for Eastern European businessmen. (I didn’t see his turn as Moses in The Ten Commandments: The Musical, alas.) Decidedly of the latter category, Double Identity has an utterly anonymous title that can’t hold a candle to the strange name of its director (that would be Dennis Dimster-Denk). It also, somewhat unsurprisingly, has a rather silly plot and haphazard execution.
Kilmer stars as Dr. Nicholas Pinter, a physician working for Doctors Beyond Borders who is mistakenly identified as a secret agent by the Russian mafia. After a brush with death and a violent pursuit by a couple of ham-headed thugs, Nicholas is rescued by the British Secret Service and the mysterious and beautiful Katrine (Izabella Miko). The requisite “deadly web of murder of lies” ensues, don’tcha know.
Working from a screenplay co-written by Dimster-Denk and Zvia Dimbort (never thought I’d type that combination), Double Identity (original title… Fake Identity!) unfolds as a sort of wearyingly unselfconscious cross between your standard late-’80s-era straight-to-video actioner (goateed henchmen unloading clips from automatic weapons, while occasionally making accidental eye contact with camera) and a bloated version of NBC’s Chuck. Dimster-Denk doesn’t seem to have much experience filming and cutting together action, and his editing choices only underline the somewhat threadbare production value. Kilmer, meanwhile, floats through this thing pretty much on autopilot; if one was expecting a fascinatingly bewildered and panicky iteration of Gay Perry or, I don’t know, Doc Holliday, this isn’t it. He isn’t particularly believable as either a doctor or someone coming to terms with the crazy new circumstances into which he is thrust.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Double Identity comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Apart from a gallery of preview trailers for other First Look home video releases, there are unfortunately no supplemental extras — not even a small clutch of EPK-style on-set interviews, or a chat with Dimster-Denk about how the hell he got that name. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D+ (Movie) D- (Disc)
Melissa George had but a small role in Mulholland Dr., but David Lynch’s lauded film shares a certain tangentially related, woozy mind-fuck quality with Triangle, a doom-loop genre nightmare which finds a woman fighting for both her sanity and life aboard a mysterious ocean liner.
George stars as Jess, a waitress and the single mother of an autistic little boy. When Jess accepts a sailing invitation on the boat of a friendly customer, Greg (Michael Dorman), along with a group of his friends, she can’t quite shake the feeling that something is wrong. Her suspicions are realized when the yacht encounters a sudden, raging storm near the Bermuda Triangle, and the entire group — which includes Sally (Rachel Carpani) and her husband Downey (Henry Nixon), their tag-alonggal pal Heather (Emma Lung), and Victor (Liam Hemsworth) — is forced to board a passing ocean liner, the Aeolus, in an effort to secure safety.
At first glance the new ship appears deserted, but Jess is convinced she’s been on board before, even though no one believes her. They soon realize they’re not alone, however, as a masked figure starts hunting them down, one by one. Jess survives and comes face to face with this apparent killer, only to confront a grander mystery that puts her back near the midpoint of her very unpleasant day. Will she be able save others on the ship, or even herself?
The movie’s Bermuda Triangle angle is fortunately just a throwaway bit of packaging — a sop to marketers. There’s not a lot of investment in the mythology of the area, in other words. Instead, Triangle is essentially a robust genre exercise studded with identity-crisis issues. I really give away very little when I say that the film toys with perceptions of reality, presenting events that may be manifestly “true” alongside things that may exist inside the mind of one or more characters. For a thriller, it’s a conceit which reaches a bit of a natural point of diminishing (or at least deflating) return when it dips back into the well in its second and third acts, replaying portions of its action from a different perspective. George’s involvement and performance, though, help mitigate this slack; she’s engaging, and eminently watchable.
The execution here, though, is what mainly gives this movie a kick in the pants. Writer-director Christopher Smith (Severance) showcases superb editorial instincts, and Triangle is engagingly photographed to boot. Lesser versions of this story would have dawdled on gore, or amped up the bickering and character histrionics, in naked attempts to inject drama, but Smith seems to have a smart sense of how to feed the action beast while also allowing for a few slower moments of confusion and dread to play out. This keeps one involved in the story, leaning forward a bit in their seat. Triangle stumbles a bit in the end; its ending doesn’t completely come together, and while that’s no grand sin considering what Smith is reaching for, the movie seems to be both willfully ambiguous while also reaching back for a knockout haymaker that exceeds its grasp. Still, there’s moderate, to-scale enjoyment to be had here, especially by thriller fans who enjoy a good puzzler more than affected shock.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcase with a lenticular cover that differs from the main case’s photo art, Triangle comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, divided into a dozen chapters, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Apart from a gallery of preview trailers, there is no supplemental bonus material, save a six-minute featurette which choppily cuts together interview material from writer-director Smith — who recounts the genesis of the project, sparked in on-the-fly fashion from spotting an ocean liner while at Cannes pitching another project — producer Jason Newmark, George, and the rest of the cast. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) C (Disc)
Movies detailing the lives of corrupt, disinterested and/or tempted New York police officers could and probably should constitute their own subgenre Netflix listing, and that’s where Brooklyn’s Finest slots. Those inclined to like this sort of thing — less discriminating fans of Training Day, We Own the Night and Pride and Glory — will find enough about it to like; others will likely shrug.
Unfolding over the course of one chaotic week, the movie centers around three conflicted Big Apple cops whose discrete stories eventually come together in a massive drug sting operation. There’s burned-out veteran Eddie Dugan (Richard Gere), one week away from retirement; narcotics officer and family man Sal Procida (Ethan Hawke), struggling to make ends meet for his seven (!) children and mold-allergic wife (Lili Taylor); and Clarence “Tango” Butler (Don Cheadle), who’s been undercover so long his loyalties might have started to shift from his fellow officers to old friend Caz (Wesley Snipes), a drug dealer just out of prison. With pressures bearing down on them, each man is forced to make some tough decisions that have lasting consequences, both anticipated and unforeseen.
It’s not a grade-A slur to say that Brooklyn’s Finest feels entirely constructed from prefabricated parts, or like the comeback single from an aging, reconstituted band. There’s Fuqua and Hawke, reuniting from Training Day; Snipes, playing a character who could be a cousin of New Jack City‘s Nino Brown, and Cheadle working undercover, as in Traitor. Fuqua shoots the film with much style, naturally, but the plotting here is all strictly by the book — except for Gere’s story strand, actually, which flirts with intrigue in detailing his complicated relationship with a hooker (Tawny Cypress). Unfortunately, audiences can’t dictate which story of the triptych with which to stick, so when the finale ducks headlong into clashing egos and agendas, and a grim standoff involving kidnapped sex trade junkies, they’re all held hostage, along for the ride. (Overture, R, 125 minutes)
In 1974, some of the most celebrated American R&B acts of the day came together with a collection of the most renowned musical groups in Africa for a three-day outdoor concert held in Kinshasa, Zaire. A longtime dream of South African bandleader Hugh Masekela and concert promoter and record producer Stewart Levine, the finally festival became a reality when they convinced boxing promoter Don King to try to combine the event with “The Rumble in the Jungle,” the epic boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, previously chronicled in the 1997 Academy Award-winning documentary When We Were Kings. It would eventually be cleaved from the fight itself, but the show, dubbed “Zaire ’74,” brought together musical luminaries such as James Brown, B.B. King, Bill Withers and Celia Cruz, among a host of others. At the peak of their talents and the height of their careers, these artists were inspired by a return to their African roots, as well as the enthusiasm of the Zairian audience, to give some of the best performances of their lives.
A mess of captured material from this event is what forms Soul Power, an aurally engaging but sort of intellectually halfhearted concert
documentary that presupposes its audience agrees with the innate genius
and watchability of its unvarnished footage. Soul Power is a gift
to boomer-generation R&B fans, as well as a celebratory snapshot of
an era in which artists and entertainers were if not radical agents of
social change then at least more frequently and decidedly part of the
outside world around them — a world experiencing and grappling with
genuine upheavals in social justice and gender equality. But director Jeffrey Levy-Hinte never imposes some sort of overarching
voiceover narration or interwoven present-day reminiscences from either
participating artists or concertgoers, so Soul Power
never achieves significant standalone form. The
fitful, fleeting nature of its emotional connection serves as a reminder
that the choice of compelling subject matter alone does not necessarily
make for a good nonfiction film offering.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Soul Power comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional French subtitles. Supplemental features include an audio commentary track with Levy-Hinte and aforementioned producer Stewart Levine, as well as a clutch of deleted scenes. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)
It’s a happy birthday to Jessica Biel, who turns 28 today, and perhaps celebrates by squeezing into the same bra-and-panty set that she rocked a couple years back in the trailers for the execrable I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry. Or maybe she waxes nostalgic about at one time wanting to be Whitney Houston. Then again, maybe she just takes her animals to a dog park, eats some edmame, does some tae bo and cracks walnuts between her ass cheeks, I don’t know…
If ever confirmation was needed that the American legal system, as it pertains to non-criminal matters, is basically just a gamed system for moneyed interests to eventually win out, it arrives definitively in the form of The Art of the Steal, Don Argott’s absorbing documentary investigation into the decades-long tug-of-war over the late Albert Barnes’ $30 billion dollar art collection.
A self-made industrialist millionaire who rose from modest beginnings and amassed an array of post-impressionistic and early modern paintings at a time when such works were looked down upon by critics and art world movers and shakers, Barnes (above) so loved art that he created a suburban educational institution in Merion, Pennsylvania, based around his unparalleled, aesthetically presented collection of masterworks by the likes of Van Gogh, Picasso, Cézanne and Matisse. And he so hated the art establishment and Philadelphia’s ruling journalistic elites, the Annenberg family, that he built into his will that the collection never be moved to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
In a further poke to the eye of WASP-y privilege, Barnes even established a trust that eventually ceded control of the collection to Lincoln University, a small African-American college to which he had no ties. For decades his wishes endured, until a powerful cabal of political power players and wily charitable organizations took the matter to court, with an eye on the potential tourism boom that relocation to a new museum in Philadelphia would provide.
Tilted toward a loyal group of Barnes’ former students and colleagues, The Art of the Steal is a bit subjective, certainly, but always engrossing. Argott deftly highlights the fact that in America there very tangibly exists an industry of air-quote culture, which requires new product to fill its pipelines and thus cannot abide unexploited value. The film also reveals the truth that mainstream Hollywood movies almost always hide from us: it frequently isn’t just one villain screwing someone over, it takes a village. For more information on the movie, click here. (IFC Films, unrated, 101 minutes)
As long as there are strip-mall dojos and martial arts fans who wish to see their kick-fantasy shenanigans acted out on celluloid, there will be movies like Ninja, in which a loose revenge-and-defense plot serves as a framework upon which to hang the opportunity for much balletic, foot-to-jaw action.
Naturally, the plot draws upon a certain mythology arc involving ancient samurai. The deadly weapons of the last remaining Koga ninjas, said to hold legendary powers for both good and evil (depending on the souls of the possessors, of course), are entrusted to American ninjutsu student Casey (Scott Adkins), studying in Japan. Tasked by his master to return to New York and protect at all costs the Yoroi Bitsu, an armored chest containing all the weapons, Casey crosses paths with Namiko (Mika Hijii, above left), but soon finds himself the target of skilled Yakuza assassins, including the bitter, power-hungry Masaruka (Tsuyoshi Ihara, above right), who has a past with Namiko’s father. Mayhem ensues, with a couple police officers trailing the carnage, and trying to put together all the investigatory puzzle pieces.
Adkins has an extensive list of action flick credits, including X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Bourne Ultimatum, so his physical skill set isn’t really in question. Unfortunately, he’s no great thespian, though in his defense director Isaac Florentine, working from a script by writers Michael Hurst and Boaz Davidson, shoots the action in an over-edited manner that lends credence to the worst arguments regarding martial arts movies — that they’re basically just lazy stunt reels in which discrete attacks are fended off with overly choreographed neck punches, and swords caught and held up under the armpits of flailing marauders. In the case of Ninja, check and check. It’s ultra-low-budget, yes (which explains the ascetic sets), but the characterizations and dialogue are sub-par, and it’s all rendered artlessly, without any realistic vim and vigor.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Ninja comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 widescreen, divided into 12 chapters, with a motion-animated main menu. Audio comes by way of English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and stereo 2.0 mixes, and optional English and Spanish subtitles are also included. Apart from a small trailer gallery featuring previews for Lost City Raiders and four other titles, however, there are no supplemental special features. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) D (Disc)
What are dreams and why do we have them? No, I’m not talking about adolescent moist ones, or adult, force-conjured reveries involving threesomes with Scarlett Johansson and Kate Beckinsale. I’m talking about the trippy, looped-logic things with melting clocks, set in a country to which you have never traveled, and involving your boss, your mom, a for-some-reason extremely important game of flag football, and that kid from fourth grade that you had all but forgotten about. What gives there?
OK, needless to say there isn’t some neat, pat answer. (Part of it is that you’re probably weird, and another part may be your roommate’s propensity for spiking the guacamole dip with mescaline.) Still, this hour-long Nova title focuses on a group of leading dream researchers as they embark on a variety of
neurological and psychological experiments to investigate the hidden world of
sleep and dreams. It’s interesting, heady stuff, delving deep into the thoughts and brains of a variety
of dreamers. The range of compressed information and sleep-related phenomena here is impressive, from
human narcoleptics and sleepwalking cats to those who can’t seem to dream at all. (Short answer: we all do, whether or not we tend to remember them.) The phenomenon of recurring
nightmares also get some inquiry and investigation (my most notable one of these as a kid involved killer Eskimos trying to disembowel me, which informs my aversion to this day to Inuit door-to-door knives salesmen), as does the subconscious mind’s ability to camouflage but still play out traumas that we try to bury. Fascinating stuff, all the way around.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, What Are Dreams? comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with a simple English language stereo track, and no bonus features. To order a copy, phone (800) PLAY-PBS or click here; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. B+ (Movie) D (Disc)
