Standing unabashedly on the shoulders of giants, director Angela Ismailos pays homage to her favorite filmmakers in the documentary Great Directors. The worthy subjects? David Lynch, Richard Linklater, Stephen Frears, Bernardo Bertolucci, Todd Haynes (below, middle), Agnes Varda, John Sayles, Ken Loach, Liliana Cavani and Catherine Breillat.
Intercutting among these filmmakers in a fairly freely associative way, Ismailos (above right) explores each director’s artistic evolution, and, variously, the roles of politics, history, opportunity and peers on their work. The reflections are often revelatory, if in glancing fashion. Sayles discusses his writing-for-hire mindset and Haynes assays the “culturized, homogenized” version of screen gayness spawned by the ’90s New Queer cinema, while Linklater ruminates on the flipside benefits to the imagination that a (relative) lack of privilege breeds. While Ismailos lets a couple big opportunities for follow-up go unexplored (Lynch’s interesting assertion, in one of his few self-analytical moments, that Eraserhead is his “most spiritual work”), her film is still an inviting illumination on the struggles of being an artist, and attempting to achieve a singular vision in a creative medium that is also, and perhaps foremost, an industry. (Paladin, unrated, 86 minutes)
A pleasant enough dramedy about shaking free of teenage obligations and working to secure one’s own future, or at least a better sense of that path, director John Stockwell’s Middle of Nowhere is the filmic equivalent of a solid mid-tempo rock track — free of many of the preordained grooves of more discretely defined comedic or dramatic young adult genre pieces, and yet destined, for all its buoyant low-grade, character-fed quirkiness, to never really land a lasting emotional blow.
The story centers on a rebellious, 17-year-old screw-up from a wealthy family, Dorian Spitz (Anton Yelchin), who finally exhausts the patience of his adoptive parents. They ship him off for the summer break to live with his strict, disciplinarian uncle, who promptly bans Dorian from driving, advising that “walking builds blisters, and blisters build character.” Henceforth, Dorian lands a job at a local water park and, ever in need of transportation, strikes up a
friendship with the slightly older Grace (Eva Amurri), who’s spent the last half dozen years looking after her
younger sister Taylor (Willa Holland) following their father’s suicide. Grace’s mother Rhonda (Amurri’s real-life mom, Susan Sarandon) is a self-centered force of nature who sees
herself as a martyr for the sacrifices she’s made to keep her family
together.
In reality, though, she’s a steady stream of roadblocks for Grace, too busy trying to impress her dreams of a modeling career on Taylor to tend to Grace’s educational future. In fact, by taking out credit cards in her daughter’s name and neglecting to make payments, Rhonda has seemingly doomed Grace’s chances of going to college, unless the latter
raises a cool $12,000 in three months to cover tuition. Enter Dorian, ever the schemer. Hatching a plot to sell pot, he strikes a business deal with the practical-minded Grace, who sets aside her objections but soon finds her arrangement with Dorian complicated by burgeoning feelings for rich boy Ben (Justin Chatwin).
At its core, Middle of Nowhere is about realizing that familial bonds don’t always translate smoothly into functional relationships, adult or otherwise, and finding a way to manage those relationships while also surrounding oneself with (nominally) more positive influences who support your goals. The problem is that while it’s anchored by likable young performers, there’s not quite enough of a dark streak here to give the material some weight, and a honest sense of lurking disaster. While it’s understandable that she would want to escape the destructive clutches and impulses of her mother, Grace’s ambition are fairly lightly sketched, and Amurri consistently plays to the sunnier instincts of her character, even in emotional moments.
Michelle Morgan’s script deserves points for realistically showcasing how quickly the swirl of teenage feeling can inform decision-making (and allowing Stockwell to further indulge his under-recognized appreciation of the female backside), but, without getting too far into the specifics, the movie’s ending fundamentally ignores the most basic libidinal impulses of adolescence, and how male judgment and kindness come online, as it were, typically much later than their female counterparts.
Middle of Nowhere comes to Blu-ray presented in 1.85:1 widescreen 1080p high-definition, with a DTS-HD master audio 5.1 sound mix, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. In the bonus material, Stockwell (Blue Crush, Into the Blue) jokes about being unable to escape from water, as location scouting turned up a water park on the edge of Baton Rouge that ended up being a much more visually engaging place of employment for Grace and Dorian than what was originally written, a grocery store. The cast and crew interviews, including with producer David Lancaster, are engaging, but there’s unfortunately an awful lot of yawning plot recap in the 25-minute making-of featurette that accompanies the disc. Six minutes of deleted scenes find Dorian sketching out some of his uncle’s spartan rules in conversation with Grace, and also extend laundry room dance sequence in which Dorian impulsively plants a kiss on Grace. The film’s trailer rounds out materials. To purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, click here; to purchase the regular DVD, meanwhile, click here. B- (Movie) B- (Disc)
When I first grabbed a copy of Worse Than War out of the stacks for review, I assumed, just based on the title, that it was a Black Eyed Peas concert DVD, or perhaps a sequel to Inbred Redneck Vampires. Whoops, my bad. It’s actually a sobering look at the history and causes of ethnic cleansing (the gut-punch subtitle is “Genocide, Eliminationalism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity”), which touches on religion, skin color and our all-too-human tendency to only care about those who (most outwardly) look like us, but also spends a bit of time digging deeper into the human psyche, and examining the parts of us that seem driven to try to eradicate others from the face of the Earth.
Running just under two hours, director Mike DeWitt’s adaptation of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s book of the same name manages to be at once a personal exploration of the horrors of genocide, while also a more academically-inflected disquisition on the nature of ethnic cleansing and large-scale mass murder. Documenting Goldhagen’s travels, teachings, discussions and opinions, Worse Than War offers insights into genocide’s dimensions, causes and patterns — and the ongoing role it plays in politics and human affairs. What makes the movie — what truly gives it its emotional punch — is its broad scope, and range of interviewees. Goldhagen speaks with victims, perpetrators, witnesses, politicians, diplomats, historians, humanitarian aid workers and journalists, all with the purpose of understanding and explaining the critical features of genocide, and how it might be prevented and stopped.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Worse Than War comes to DVD presented in 16×9 widescreen, with an English language stereo track. Its sole bonus feature, apart from a menu screen touting PBS’ web site, is an extended interview chat with author Goldhagen on the making of the film, and what first sparked him to pen his book. To purchase the DVD, phone (800) PLAY-PBS, or simply click here. Or, if Amazon is totally your thing, click here to purchase. B+ (Movie) C+ (Disc)
Over at the Bullz-Eye Blog, in an interesting and ruminative glimpse over the shoulder, Will Harris et al take a crack at 25 final films from no-longer-living legends, complete with trailers/clips. It’s an interesting lens through which to filter actors and actresses, and to a certain extent how they choose to cap their careers — whether they’re protective or mindful of “legacy” issues, or just like to work until they’re almost ready to keel over into a pine box kept at set’s edge… the “Jay Leno model,” it would seem. At any rate, a quick, fun read — though a tipster rightly points out that a funnier if perhaps slightly less tasteful article would have concentrated solely on the roster of well-known actors whose final films were, shall we say, significantly “lesser” than their work at the height of their careers (think Anthony Perkins, Rock Hudson, Kirk Douglas, Donald Pleasence, etcetera).
