Its perfectly anonymous, sex-and-violence-tinged title is enough to mistake it for a Shannon Tweed thriller circa the early to mid-1990s, but writer-director Sean Weathers’ Lust for Vengeance is a whole different type of terrible, thank you very much.
Despite its claimed running time of 85 minutes, Lust for Vengeance actually runs 10 merciful minutes shorter than that. Also, despite a descriptive cover blurb touting it as some sort of inventive twist on the Italian giallo formula, the film is in reality nothing more than a loosely connected series of sex-soaked stalking set pieces. (For a much better genre homage, check out Belgian co-directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s Amer, a woozy and unsettling fever dream.) True, giallo touchstones like straight-razor slashings and a motorcycle-helmet-clad killer do come into play, but there’s no artful tension here.
Long takes do little to mask the terrible acting, and awkward lines of dialogue are lifted from Chris Rock stand-up specials (“Men are basically as faithful as their options”) and delivered in stillborn, witless fashion as intellectually insightful. The cinematography, while inclusive of a couple interesting (in theory more than practice) overlays, achieves distinction mainly through the use of a variety pack of primary color camera and light-set filters, while also somehow managing to be shot through a used coffee filter. In short, this is a bad, bad film, despite its seeming inclusion of real sex and (perhaps) real drugs.
Housed in a regular white plastic Amaray case with a nice, deep-set spindle, Lust for Vengeance comes to DVD in what is billed as a “10th anniversary explicit edition,” tricked out with a surprisingly nice complement of supplemental material. Though divided into an unnecessarily dense 34 chapters, the film comes with outtakes and deleted scenes, as well as trivia, a host of trailers for some of Weathers’ other movies (Hookers in Revolt and House of the Damned) and abandoned projects, the first part of a podcast interview, and more. For more information on Weathers and his films, click here. To purchase the movie via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. F (Movie) B- (Disc)
Humans are inherently social creatures, and the manner in which we each form a perception of our place in the world around us — and how our ego takes shape and form from our id — certainly relates as much to our interactions as any ingrained or telegraphed sense of social acceptance and duty. Capturing the fickle progress of that individual transformation, however, is a difficult task. A tender and perspicacious look at the toddling steps of adolescent character and personality, writer-director Celine’s Sciamma’s French import Tomboy assays the gender confusion and willful but not malicious deceit of a 10-year-old girl. Against a backdrop of overly programmed “issue dramas,” this movie is notable for its strong foundation in character and wholesale investment in psychology, rather than salacious plotting. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Rocket Releasing, unrated, 82 minutes)
The directorial debut of Joshua Leonard, The Lie is an uncommonly assured and engaging portrait of post-millennial and particularly male uncertainty, and how the snowballing effects of impulsive dishonesty will eventually run you down from behind like a jackrabbit. Buoyed by strong performances, this meagerly budgeted but intelligently scaled and smartly told indie film deftly takes the pulse of anxious, arrested times.
Married Los Angelenos Lonnie (Leonard) and Clover Leonard (Jess Weixler, above right) were once upon a time go-it-their-own-way idealists. Now, faced with raising a two-year-old daughter, they’ve come to also face some of the material realities of adulthood, and aren’t sure they like what they see. As Clover wraps up her final year of graduate school, she receives an appealing job offer from a pharmaceutical company — the sort of place she wouldn’t have ever considered working years earlier.
Lonnie, on the other hand, is barely scraping by at a commercial editing job, where he’s reached his maximum capacity for pretending to care, thanks in large part to a screaming boss (Gerry Bednob, of The 40-Year-Old Virgin) who rides him like a rented pack-animal. Not much helping matters is Lonnie and Clover’s friend, Tank (Mark Webber), who lives in a van down by the beach and provides an ever-present reflection of all the carefree, guileless nonchalance of their younger years. Lonnie doesn’t lust for other women, but he is put off by the offhand, public manner in which Clover reveals her job offer. A bit emasculated, and a bit jumbled and confused, he starts skipping work and then retreats back into occupational fantasies of music, where he pens a not-very-thinly-veiled screed against workaday responsibility called “Soulcrusher.”
Lonnie also tells a lie. Pressed by his boss, he impetuously says that his daughter has died. This gets Lonnie off the hook for a few days and gives him space to breathe, and recoup his energy and focus. Naturally, though, it is a respite of invisible constraints and limited duration. When sympathetic co-workers start bringing over casseroles, and then even take up a financial collection, it seems only a matter of time before Clover finds out about Lonnie’s galling dishonesty.
Throughout, The Lie captures in convincing fashion the deeply held ambivalence of a generation that grew up in peacetime but then saw the world change momentously with the events of September 11, two wars and a near-worldwide financial collapse. A less manifestly bleak adaptation of a T.C. Boyle short story, The Lie is not explicitly about any of those events, but it is about feeling out of place and under-equipped to handle the challenges of modern-day adult life, which is very tied to those occurrences.
Notably, Leonard’s film also bears a passing thematic and tonal resemblance to Sam Mendes’ Away We Go. Whereas the young parents-to-be in that film hit the road and grappled with feelings about not being ready to be caregivers and not having the answers or knowledge that they felt they would and should have as adults, the characters in The Lie are already parents, and rooted in one place. They are, however, no less shot through with uncertainty. Leonard, too, has an intuitive understanding of his (and his cast’s) ability to convey nuanced specificity, and doesn’t dive headlong into cheap drama. The Lie could take the same concept and go places that are bigger, and have more outlandish or starkly defined stakes. Instead, it keeps things intimate, and ergo feels unerringly honest about its characters’ motivations, as well as their reactions.
Its endgame is somewhat preordained, but still handled with a sensitivity that makes it feel special. There’s also a unique combination of enervated fretfulness and sanguine hopefulness in The Lie, giving voice to the contradictory impulses inside each of us. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information, click here. (Screen Media, R, 82 minutes)
For my latest Blu-ray/DVD column, over at ShockYa, I assay how Samuel L. Jackson’s narration weighs down the otherwise engaging nature documentary African Cats, plus take a gander at tween fairy tale Monte Carlo, and give thanks for a documentary hosted by Last Comic Standing winner Iliza Shlesinger, as well as a clutch of horror films, including one featuring a talking killer turkey. Its title? Thankskilling, naturally. For the full, fun read, over at ShockYa, click here.
The folks over at Coatwolf Productions have posted an old-as-new trailer for the superlative Bellflower, which may seem an odd thing to do for a movie making its DVD debut this week. As director Evan Glodell explains, though, it’s also kind of an appropriate time to finally loose this version, the narration of which was written before the entire screenplay was even finished, upon the world. Also, for those rich and interested, you can purchase your own custom-made Medusa from the collective creative team for a pretty penny. Huzzah!
As the push for Oscar short film short-list consideration has progressed throughout the fall, one movie stirring up some attention is multi-hyphenate Warren Pereira’s Salt and Silicone, a purported dark comedy offering up split perspectives of the same event — a public conversation about breast implants.
Vex (Pereira) is conflicted about the fact that his girlfriend Keira (Katie O’Grady) is scheduled to get breast augmentation. Out for a drive, they spot an acquaintance who has had the procedure, Jamie (Rachel Myers, above right), and stop to get her perspective. They head into a furniture store, where Vex fumblingly asks about her enhancement and the store’s worker, Jerome (Ethan Atkinson), insinuates his way into the conversation. Two more episodes offer up different takes on this chat.
Pereira’s film, even in its reticent first incarnation, has a certain cocksure verve throughout. But there is no substance to it, nothing really said about either how men regard women with boob jobs, or how women in turn feel about both their decisions in that regard and the reaction(s) of men to their decisions. Its depth is pantomimed, and imaginary — all bristling energy, as if the tonal differentiation in and of itself somehow makes for profound commentary. The dialogue is trite, which in turn certainly doesn’t help the performances.
On a technical level, the film is largely fine — it’s attractively shot (by Jeff Streich), with a few effectively subtle variations in style to draw attention to its changes in personality — but composer Daniel Reynolds’ music doesn’t match the moments, throughout. Faced with the choice of salt or silicone, viewers might instead be looking for a third box to check — neither of the above. For more information, click here. (W Films, unrated, 25 minutes)
A murder mystery, forensic investigation and political drama rolled into one, Incendiary: The Willingham Case shines a spotlight on the circumstances surrounding Cameron Todd Willingham, a Texas man convicted in the arson deaths of his three young children. Enjoying particular currency given the alleged manipulation of a post-mortem state forensics commission stacked by current Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, this documentary, flatly told but engaging throughout, will appeal to both newsmagazine junkies and those impassioned by the death penalty debate. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more information on the film, click here. (Truly Indie, unrated, 104 minutes)
The drums of war, whatever the specific conflicts, almost always create an opportunity for much in the way of collateral damage. Director Martyn Burke’s Under Fire: Journalists in Combat takes the psychological temperature of those who would devote their lives to taking the sort of extraordinary risks that modern day war reportage entails. It’s an involving documentary look at a razor’s-edge occupation, as well as the coping mechanisms of the human brain under stress. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here.
More hormonal catnip arrives in the form of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1, the fourth film in the mega-successful, teen-friendly, modern day vampire love story franchise, and a workmanlike effort that sets the table for series wrap-up next year. An emotionally fraught, dramatically leaden tale, the movie again proves the experiential sweet spot of the franchise — that of surging adolescent feeling trumping rational thought, and in this case lucid plotting.
Scribe Melissa Rosenberg, a veteran of the entire series, does a decent job of distilling some of the main conflicts from the 750-page novel that serves as the source material for the final two films. But dialogue howlers and largely soapy, melodramatic performances abound, and director Bill Condon’s staging is inert. Somewhat dispiritingly, but not surprisingly, the movie leans inordinately upon composer Carter Burwell’s goosing music cues, but also a litany of modern rock songs. Breaking Dawn isn’t the first teen movie to try to move some soundtrack CDs, but the sales success of previous iterations does seem to have informed in circuitous fashion some of the creative choices herein, where songs are used as spackle for incomplete scenes. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Summit, PG-13, 117 minutes)
I was doing some e-cleaning recently, and stumbled across an old interview I did with Robert Hall, the co-writer and director of horror flick (in case the title didn’t tip the fact) Chromeskull: Laid to Rest 2. Well… sort of. The main reason I never got around to posting the thing was because Hall was apparently completing some sort of decathlon whilst chatting with me, and so the sound quality was shitty to the point of near-indecipherable. Oh, and we also got cut off five times in the span of 15-plus minutes. My over-under on such shenanigans is typically four, but since I’d already transcribed a portion of it, here are a couple questions and answers, I guess, courtesy of my compulsion for pointless over-extension and completion:
Brent Simon: With a lot of the most memorable horror villains, there’s a visually iconographic element to them — be it Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees or Pinhead from Hellraiser. Chromeskull certainly has that; he’s visually arresting. What was the inspiration?
Robert Hall: I wanted him to represent technology without being super-gadgety or super Saw-like. I designed it in a heavy metal-influenced kind of way, which is ironic because [the character] wouldn’t be listening to heavy metal, he’d be listening to pretentious jazz or something. I knew that he would be set against this backdrop of decay. I thought that would be a nice juxtaposition. It’s been a long process. I spent a really long time designing the look of Chromeskull, and it changed so much from the first film to the second.
BS: On the DVD you give away some of the secrets [of certain shots], which blend practical and prosthetic effects with digital work. Does that combination immediately come to mind in writing some of these kill sequences, or do you say, “Here’s an idea, and I’ll worry about we achieve it later”?
RH: That’s usually how I work — I try to think of something that would be difficult first. I sort of work backwards, trying to think of something outrageous and incredible.
BS: You also talk about writing parts with specific actors in mind.
RH: Yeah, Brian [Austin Green] and I were friends, and had talked before. He came to the premiere of the first movie, kind of jokingly said if I ever did a sequel he’d be game for it, and I then thought some about how I could use him. It became obvious to me that he could be the impetus or catalyst that would bring the whole thing together and make the whole thing gel and work. In a lot of ways he’s the man behind the scenes who’s just no more than a simple clean-up guy who gets a taste of the work Chromeskull does and then thinks that he can [get involved]. His… [past work] didn’t matter to me. Even myself, I’m pigeon-holed all the time.
To purchase the Chromeskull: Laid to Rest 2 DVD via Amazon, click here.
Coming more than a decade since the last franchise entry, Scream 4 again mixes murder, mystery and self-awareness, to adequate if not exceptional effect. A meta horror entry which re-teams writer Kevin Williamson and director Wes Craven, the film introduces a fresh crop of victims and suspects, blending them together with old characters and past grudges, and succeeds on its own carefully prescribed terms as a piece of diversionary puzzlebox entertainment, but doesn’t pack the wallop of the best moments of its forebears.
Years after the traumatic events of her past, tangled up in a web of multiple murders, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) has finally achieved a measure of peace, and turned her terrible experiences into the basis for a self-help book. When she returns to her tiny hometown of Woodsboro on the last stop in her book tour, she reconnects with Sheriff Dewey Riley (David Arquette) and tabloid-reporter-turned-novelist Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), who are now married.
Unfortunately, Sidney’s arrival also elicits the return of a costume-clad, knife-wielding Ghostface, who again heralds his acts of violence by first terrorising her, and others, over the phone. Soon Sidney’s cousin Jill (Emma Roberts, above) finds herself in the killer’s crosshairs, along with her boyfriend Trevor (Nico Tortorella), her best friend Kirby (Hayden Panettiere), and two A/V club geeks, Robbie (Erik Knudsen) and Charlie (Rory Culkin), who use webcams to live-stream their entire high school experience.
For all of the original film’s referential genre bits, from Psycho to Halloween, Scream 4 doesn’t really strongly attempt to echo or comment upon the plot turns of any recent horror franchises, like Saw or Paranormal Activity, instead investing more generically in advances in technology and social media over the last decade.
It’s undeniable that Scream 4, despite some grim and bloody set pieces and squirm-inducing stalking from Ghostface, doesn’t really work or hold together, in the conventional sense, as a scary movie. Audiences need not have seen the earlier films recently, but must have some sort of trace memory and rooting investment in the shared plight of the older characters. Apart from a multi-layered genre deconstruction that opens the film, Scream 4 is thematically most similar to the original 1996 movie, in much the same way that Rocky and 2006’s Rocky Balboa could be viewed as satisfying bookends, divorced from the rest of the series.
While a hallmark of Scream franchise has been its nimbleness and narrative cleverness, there here seems a missed opportunity to delve deeper into notions of celebrity victimhood, and the strange complicity of the town of Woodsboro, for which the apparently annual marking of the murders remains a bizarre sort of cottage industry. The reasoning and motivations behind this most recent set of murders come tumbling awkwardly forth in the last act, but since they are deployed chiefly in the service of twists, their exploration thus comes across as a bit disappointingly shallow.
Working again with cinematographer Peter Deming, series helmer Craven frames much the violence in widescreen, which runs counter to the gory close-ups of a certain subset of horror films. Given both the perfunctory nature of large chunks of dialogue and the large degree to which Scream 4 is a type of cinematic exercise in pulled levers, there is not much opportunity for performers to shine, though Roberts and Brie make the most notable impacts amongst the newcomers.
Housed in a regular Blu-ray case, the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack of Scream 4 comes to the format of advanced choice in a beautiful 1080p AVC encoded high definition transfer with deep, consistent blacks, and no edge enhancement or digital scrubbing. Audio arrives by way of a 5.1 DTS-HD master audio track with a nice mixture of levels across the board, and optional subtitles. The supplemental package on this release, unfortunately, doesn’t rise to the level of the audio-visual presentation. Craven, Panettiere and Roberts sit together for a feature-length audio commentary track, and Campbell phones in (literally) for about 45 minutes, but perhaps owing to Craven’s naturally droll, laid back personality and the relative youth of the aforementioned pair, this isn’t exactly a dynamic listen by any stretch of the imagination.
The release’s other elements are OK, but hardly superlative. A making-of featurette only clocks in at 10 minutes, which seems like (and is) an inadequate amount of time to get into a franchise this intricate, and attempts to rekindle interest in it. Of the more than 25 minutes of deleted and extended material (which is heavy on the latter classification, really), the only things that really stand out are an alternate opening and ending. Trailers, a brief gag reel, and a promotional piece for a Scream videogame round things out, while, nicely a digital copy of the movie is also included. The multi-format options are the big selling point here, but Scream 4 honestly still doesn’t rise past the level of rental, even for hardcore fans of the series. Nevertheless, to purchase the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) C- (Disc)
A moralizing musical that feels the lesser of its Oscar-winning animated predecessor in every imaginable way, Happy Feet 2 dances as fast as it can but can’t kick up any level of engagement beyond only occasional raucous diversion. Director George Miller again blends motion-capture-assisted penguin dance choreography with exuberant contemporary songs, but the stabs at ecstatic celebration feel laboriously pantomimed rather than revived, so weighed down by bromides and frantic, look-at-me antics is the film. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Warner Bros., PG, 99 minutes)
What if Death Race were cross-pollinated with a Mountain Dew commercial and 30 Minutes Or Less, and then vacuumed free of any of the inherent comedy? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Freerunner, a parkour-themed direct-to-video actioner from director Lawrence Silverstein.
When young free-runner Ryan (Sean Faris) tries to break free from mobster Reese (Tamer Hassen), he ends up with an exploding collar locked around his neck, and — along with his girlfriend Chelsea (Rebecca Da Costa) — has to make it across town in a hour, all for the amusement of the slimy Mr. Frank (Danny Dyer), and a betting organization who enables high-stakes gamblers to place bids on who will live and who will die. Yawning action hijinks ensue. World champion free-runner Ryan Doyle, still-alive Seymour Cassel and model/speaker-of-words Casey Durkin all also appear, but the latter is not nearly in the state of undress for which one might hope.
The idea here is of course nothing particularly new or special, but nothing about the execution “upscales” this slice of slapstick genre junk. The characters are cardboard-thin, the dialogue terrible, and the acting not much better, especially in the secondary and supporting roles. Also, part of the appeal of parkour — and the reason both Luc Besson has had fun with it and it’s been folded into big, mainstream Hollywood productions — is that it’s inherently low-fi, and a kind of antidote to big, overblown, overly slick special effects. By this movie’s logic, though, a 40-foot jump from a bridge onto a moving boat is no big deal, and doesn’t even require a flex of the knees upon landing. By perverting the realities of parkour and its basic premise so much, Freerunner fumbles away any chance at even being a stupid little guilty pleasure. It’s just bad, period.
Housed in a regular Blu-ray case, Freerunner comes to the format presented in 1080p high-definition, in a 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio, with a DTS-HD master audio 5.1 audio track and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. If the movie itself is lacking then at least the special bonus features are quantitatively ample, including a behind-the-scenes featurette, outtakes and bloopers, a separate featurette on parkour and free-running, a look at the movie’s fights and stunt work, trailers, and more. No free pair of athletic shoes, though. To purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) B (Disc)
If one could entirely banish certain ideas for scenes from the minds of all screenwriters, then surely on the top 10 list for such cinematic excommunication would be press conference confessionals, which at some point must have seemed really bold and original but by now almost without fail come across as lazy and pat — an entirely synthetic way to give an audience the feeling of a character-awakening conclusion without any of the heavy lifting that accompanies honest reflection. Such is the dispiriting end point for Father of Invention, a weird and fitfully fresh comedy with a name-heavy cast that almost methodically fumbles away a viewer’s engagement, leaving them instead with thoughts of what could have been.
Robert Axle (Kevin Spacey) is an ego-driven infomercial guru who made his fortune fabricating mash-up inventions that maximized “the atomic and molecular potential” of purchasers (think a pepper spray-camera hybrid, so that one could snap photos of their attacker). A class action lawsuit related to one of his products landed him in jail, though, and when he gets out eight years later his wife Lorraine (Virginia Madsen) is remarried to Jerry (Craig Robinson). Robert lands a retail job working at a wholesale discount store under the high-strung Troy Coangelo (Johnny Knoxville), and soon after his semi-estranged daughter Claire (Camilla Belle), now 22, grants him a place to live. Almost immediately, though, Robert butts heads with one of Claire’s roommates, lesbian gym teacher Phoebe (Heather Graham). Robert’s big dream is get back into business, however, so he starts hitting the pavement and trying to come up with partners and financial backers for a new idea. Will a return to some of his old habits, however, land him back in trouble?
Spacey sly and slightly oily charismatic touch is custom-built for a guy like Axle — half heart, and half ambitious huckster — and he anchors Father of Invention with aplomb. The other performances, though, don’t always feel like they’re from the same movie, even though some decent joke-writing gives the actors piecemeal opportunities to shine. Director Trent Cooper cycles through lots of set-ups (somewhat refreshingly, the movie isn’t afraid to haul in a new character or setting for a joke), but after a while the narrative just seems manic and unfocused.
There are so many elements to serve — from father/daughter reconciliation and Jerry and Lorraine’s pending bankruptcy to an eventual thawing and flirtation between Robert and Phoebe and even the parental divorce of Claire’s other roommate — that Father of Invention takes on the quality of a high school term paper thrown together at the last minute, all unconnected facts and half-baked assertions. Does the movie desire to be a wacky ensemble comedy? Does it want to be a comedic-leaning tale of familial redemption? Or is it more expressly about Robert’s professional journey? The filmmakers can’t decide, ultimately, so a viewer mostly stops caring.
Father of Invention comes to Blu-ray presented in a 2.40:1 non-anamorphic widescreen presentation in 1080p, with a Dolby TrueHD audio track that more than adequately handles the fairly straightforward and meager aural requirements of the title. Apart from the requisite chapter stops, its sole supplemental feature is a brief making-of featurette that doesn’t dig much deeper than a thumbnail’s scratch into the making of the movie. Nevertheless, to purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) C- (Disc)
An in-competition entry in the recent and ongoing AFI Fest’s “Breakthrough” section, which spotlights movies located solely through the festival’s cold submission process, director Brett Eichenberger’s Light of Mine is a reflective, strikingly photographed little relationship drama about a man grappling with impending blindness, and the notion of how to forge a path for a future he won’t be able to see. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For the movie’s trailer, meanwhile, click here. (Resonance, unrated, 78 minutes)
Steven Soderbergh is an interesting throwback to directors of yore, in that he is far less precious with his career than many of his contemporaries, and seems to regard the medium of film as inherently a place to explore, and play around. This means not only that he’s rather astonishingly prolific, but also engages in willful genre experiments (the Ocean’s trilogy, certainly, as well as something like Solaris, and even Contagion), plus low-fi adventures like Full Frontal, Bubble and The Girlfriend Experience. Rather than own one genre or mood, Soderbergh lets them intermittently possess him, all while putting his own stamp of personality on narrative material.
His latest film, Haywire, is more of the mindset of the former, but also exhibits some of the seat-of-the-pants inclinations of some of the latter, aforementioned DIY productions. Built around MMA fighter Gina Carano, it’s an action movie, at once lithe and bruising, but also a sort of character piece chess game, in which the personalities of the participants and the stylishness of its telling matter more than its junky, familiar, high-calorie revenge plot. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Relativity, R, 93 minutes)
I got an email from a friend that pointed out first we had President Obama’s half-eaten pancakes and eggs up put for Internet auction. Then we had Shia LaBeouf‘s tracked-up and sweat-grungy bikini briefs from a studio’s wardrobe department, followed by Scarlett Johansson‘s used Kleenex from The Tonight Show. And now bids will be taken on Michael Jackson’s queen-size, hospital-adjustable death bed from his Bel-Air compound. Asked what this says about civilization, I have but one reply: clearly I should start selling “bottled air” from junkets and other interview opportunities.
If the Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs spotlights some fascinating occupations that many of us wouldn’t necessarily rush to embrace as our own, then Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey tells the tale of a job every bit as quirky and atypical, and seemingly a lot more fun, and better smelling. More specifically, it tells the life story of Kevin Clash, an African-American kid who grew up in the 1970s in Baltimore, and eventually would find fortune, if not fame, as the voice of Elmo, a breakout Sesame Street character that became a full-fledged zeitgeist phenomenon, spreading from the preschool and adolescent set into the broader culture at large.
Narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, the film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, where it was awarded with a special jury prize. Mixing archival footage, sit-down interviews and other material from the present day, filmmaker Constance Marks delivers a tapestral, feel-good tale of outside-of-the-box self-actualization, replete with loads of rare, behind-the-scenes glimpses at Sesame Street, Captain Kangaroo and other pieces of Jim Henson’s legacy. For those who ever had dreams outside the mainstream, Being Elmo tickles those fanciful reminiscences, in a heartening way.
Sensitive and candid, Clash is an engaging subject, if also sometimes unable to fully articulate the experiential depths of his teenage obsession with puppets, and how it made him feel. Chronicling the scissored destruction of his father’s coat is one thing, and certainly amusing. But movies like Make Believe, about teenage magicians, and even the Scottish dance documentary Jig, in every other respect a much lesser film than Being Elmo, each spent at least a bit of time reflecting inward and addressing the subjects’ feelings about their interests and finely honed talents. Marks’ film does not.
What else Being Elmo misses are a few small but telling things. Viewers see Clash in Paris, instructing puppeteers on hand movements and other techniques for an upcoming live stage show. And there’s nice material on the Henson workshop where Elmo, Bert, Ernie and other characters are constructed from drawers full of elements, and reams of felt, fur and the like. But the movie doesn’t really address how, if at all, puppeteers see and refine their own work. And neither does it really address the scripting process, which seems strange. While Clash — who took over the physical puppet of Elmo from a colleague who determined he’d hit a creative dead end — talks about the creation of the character, and the breakthrough of building it around the defining characteristic of Elmo’s love of hugs, and bodily contact, Marks’ movie makes it almost seem like huge portions of Sesame Street are improvised, which surely can’t be the case.
These quibbles aside, Being Elmo still has a certain warmth, and emotional resonance. The reason for the character’s popularity seems clear — Elmo expresses unconditional love, and support. In many ways, he’s a little, red, furry manifestation of the support that Clash’s parents provided him, when he had this crazy dream so outside the boundaries of their socioeconomically depressed, lower-middle-class experience. For some little kids, that feeling is, sadly, virtually unknown in their home lives. For every child, though, that embrace — both literal and figurative — is important. Elmo is a giver, and Clash’s story one bound to put a soft smile on your face. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Submarine Deluxe, unrated, 78 minutes)
David Lynch‘s debut solo album, a collection of “modern blues” entitled Crazy Clown Time, goes on sale today. Hit up iTunes to sample some of the delicious weirdness.
The logline of director Lars von Trier’s latest film could actually be described in a manner to lure in genre fans (“At the home of a millionaire scientist, as a rogue planet hurtles toward Earth, do the premonitions of a fragile young woman hold the key to survival for the gathered inhabitants?”), but Melancholia unfolds at a pace, and with a mannered coyness, to match the emotional remove of its lead character, rendering its impact diminished.
The day of her wedding to Michael (Alexander Skarsgaard) should be one of the happiest of her life for Justine (Kirsten Dunst, in a strong performance), an advertising junior executive. She’s in a deep funk, however. Against a backdrop of dinner reception bickering between her hostile mother (Charlotte Rampling) and kindly but detached father (John Hurt), Justine begins to withdrawal further and further into a shell, confounding Michael and her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), whose put-upon husband John (Kiefer Sutherland) is picking up the tab for the event. After much drama, the evening ends with Justine and Michael a couple no more.
The second chapter of the film opens with Justine severely depressed, and unable to even get out of bed. Claire tends her every physical need, but news of a new planet that is supposed to pass perilously close to Earth in its orbit makes her anxious. As that improbability seemingly gets ready to become a reality, Justine eventually achieves a sort of zen calm, in contrast with her sister’s increasing hysteria.
Billed by the famously provocative filmmaker as “a psychological disaster movie,”Melancholia is gorgeous in many respects (cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro’s tones and handheld camerawork are evocative), but also swollen and portentous. “Artful hooey” might be the best critical shorthand, even though there are flashes of dark humor embedded throughout. A sort of tragicomic opera, Melancholia isn’t a film that for one instant one holds tremendous regret over watching, and yet it doesn’t connect in a lastingly emotional way, because for every moving or interesting thing that occurs, there’s another frustrating moment, or missed opportunity to dig into the marrow of characters’ relationships.
As with von Trier’s last film, the wildly divisive Antichrist, Melancholia makes use of a stunningly artful opening credit sequence (in this case presaging later events) and a partitioned narrative. The problem is that, while its title and story have both literal and metaphorical heft, von Trier seems to shy away from a more subjective point-of-view that would give his film emotional punching power. Melancholia is in theory about how depressives can react more calmly in stressful situations, already expecting the worst to happen. Dunst gives a captivating performance, her best in years, but the audience is still left on the outside of her character, looking for a way in. (Magnolia/Zentropa, R, 130 minutes)
It’s a busy time for Odette Annable (formerly Yustman), who’s jumped onto the eighth season of House as a series regular, while also juggling impending duty on another returning series, Breaking In. I recently had a chance to speak to Annable one-on-one, about the aforementioned hit Fox series; her new film The Double, with Topher Grace; memories from both Kindergarten Cop and Cloverfield; and more. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.
In blonde home video news, on November 29, a 17-disc set containing all six seasons of the E! reality showThe Girls Next Door, centering on Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and gal pals Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson, arrives on DVD. (Newcomers Kristina Shannon, Karissa Shannon and Crystal Harris are also featured in the last season.) Extra features include audio commentaries with the girls on every episode, loads of deleted and extended scenes, and the pilot for short-lived spin-off series The Bunny House. I’m imagining this makes a great holiday gift for mothers. To purchase via Amazon, click here.
As basketball has spread across the world, so too has the view of it as a unique opportunity, and a tool for upward social mobility. While sports — and in particular boxing, baseball and soccer — have long offered a potential path out of the proverbial ghetto for socioeconomically disadvantaged kids, hoops entered this phase of its public trajectory only fairly recently. As a global phenomenon, the National Basketball Association now attracts interest from Europe, Asia and beyond. Anne Buford’s engaging documentary Elevate takes a look at the professional aspirations of a handful of West African kids.
At the center of the movie is Amadou Gallo Fall, a former scout for the Dallas Mavericks and a current member of management who founded the private SEEDS Academy (Sports for Education and Economic Development in Senegal) to help house, train and school 25 youngsters per year from his native country, preparing them for possible scholarships and enrollment at American prep schools, where the goal is to attract collegiate grant-in-aids and then, possibly, move on to careers in the NBA. With his steady gaze and no-nonsense but uplifting rhetoric about them representing their country, and opening doors for not only themselves but their families but others, Fall comes across as a genuine, progressive-minded benefactor.
Mostly, though, Elevate focuses on the kids — raw, athletic seven-footers like Assane and Aziz (NCAA amateurism concerns frown upon the use of their full names, even though most are already now matriculating, including at Division I schools like the University of Virginia and the University of Washington) who in most cases have only been playing organized basketball for two or maybe three years. Some find a home at private prep schools in Connecticut and Illinois, while others find dreams waylaid or delayed by visa problems and other concerns.
Implicit in the movie is the fact that this outreach is as much a business consideration as it is an act of moral benevolence, or some starry-eyed mission about cultural connection via athletics. NBA teams (particularly in smaller markets) are under tremendous pressure to field competitive and winning squads with less resources at their disposal, and part of that means locating, signing and developing talent that doesn’t necessarily come with all of the outsized senses of entitlement too often found on the Stateside AAU circuit. The feeding ground for this professional demand — competitive basketball universities and, below them, private prep schools — also have a vested interest in attracting talent that is hungry, and willing to work.
Buford would do better to underscore these points a little more. It’s borderline awkward and unsettling when a headmaster talks to a Senegalese kid about it being “a bottom-line world,” and starts pushing Princeton, like it’s his alma mater or something. This offers a glimpse of the ulterior motives bubbling just underneath the surface with so many of the coaches and handlers close to these kids, alongside completely sincere feelings of connection. Then again, there’s plenty of natural human intrigue to the coming-of-age stories on display in Elevate, so it perhaps makes sense not to delve too deep into the points-of-view of those charged Stateside with molding the character and basketball skills of these young men.
It’s just that at times Elevate, which is a perfectly appealing postcard of a most unique coming-of-age scenario, seems a little frustratingly incurious. When one high school coach quits mid-season, after an eight-game losing streak, to take a job at Nike… well, it feels a bit opportunistic, and distasteful. And the movie gives one of his players a chance to ruminate on his feelings about the matter. What about other potential feelings of exploitation, though? Maybe that’s not something these kids can quite rise to the level of seeing yet; they’re still teenagers in most cases, after all. Buford, on the hand, doesn’t have the same excuse. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, visit ElevateTheMovie.com, or the film’s Facebook page. (ESPN Films/Isotope Films/Sharp 7 Entertainment, unrated, 82 minutes)
