Provided one submits to its base level of intentional ridiculousness, there’s some wacky charm to be found in the low-budget, somewhat awkwardly titled 3,2,1… Frankie Go Boom, a comedy of fraternal bickering that hinges on scrambled efforts to squash a leaked sex tape. A bawdy conceit worthy of Judd Apatow gets a madcap spin by way of Get Shorty in writer-director Jordan Roberts’ self-financed affair, a choppy collection of character-based sketch ideas that’s elevated by a talented, game cast.



The Los Angeles-set film aims to wring laughs chiefly from putting its title character (Charlie Hunnam, of Sons of Anarchy) through the wringer. When his older brother Bruce (Chris O’Dowd, of Bridesmaids) graduates from rehab, their parents (Nora Dunn and Sam Anderson) guilt Frankie into coming home and seeing him for the first time in years. Frankie still stings from shame attached to years-ago Internet infamy, when would-be filmmaker Bruce posted a humiliating wedding video online. History repeats itself after Frankie hooks up with the recently jilted Lassie (the delightful Lizzy Caplan), but initially fails to achieve an erection. Bruce’s “artistic” ambitions get the most of him, and his surreptitiously recorded sex tape falls into the wrong hands. Escalating insanity ensues, as Frankie and Bruce turn to the latter’s prison pal Phil, now transsexual Phyllis (Ron Perlman), for assistance in removing the video from the Internet.

Roberts’ movie feels a bit less like a cogently plotted narrative and more like the product of an over-caffeinated bender following the injected enthusiasm of a gung-ho, DIY screenwriting class. It’s all about energy, and forward momentum; even the dialogue isn’t so much concerned with the traditional patter of set-ups and jokes as it is winding up its colorful characters and having them play off one another, their agitation stoking fires of shocked amusement. But Roberts’ cast tackles the material with gusto, and squeezes out from it a lot of fun. Perlman and Caplan are particularly lively and memorable, and Whitney Cummings and Chris Noth — the former as Bruce’s editor/jock-warmer, and the latter as Lassie’s deranged dad — also have some delicious scenes.

Most big screen comedies exist on either a laid track of genteel hamminess or cynical misanthropy, which Frankie Go Boom eschews. Everyone in this movie is a bit unhinged and damaged — even its putative protagonist, who can’t establish proper boundaries that would enable him to move on with his life. It’s not at all a naturalistic or even moralizing film, wherein capital-L lessons are learned, but in its own way Roberts’ movie makes the point that family relationships are often so uncomfortable and potentially toxic because they afford us the opportunity — and almost oblige us — to slip back into old roles and exhausted power dynamics, where bad habits and choices exist. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Variance Films, unrated, 88 minutes)

An earnest and deeply personal exhumation of proverbial skeletons in the family closet, director Arnon Goldfinger’s The Flat is nonetheless deadly dull — a movie that churns up yards of speculation in delving into the intertwined history of a married Jewish couple and their strange, rekindled, post-World War II friendship with some German counterparts, but with increasingly diminishing returns.

When Goldfinger’s 98-year-old grandmother passes away, he and his family descend upon the Tel Aviv apartment she and her husband shared for decades, since immigrating from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Sifting through a dense collection of letters and bric-a-brac, Goldfinger begins to uncover clues that point to a much more complicated family history than he could have guessed. His grandparents, it seems, were friends with Leopold von Mildenstein, a man with connections to the SS prior to the war, and possibly even Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda machine later on. Seeking to understand how deep Mildenstein’s Nazi connections really ran — and how much of his history his grandparents and Mildenstein’s own family knew — Goldfinger delves into old letters and press archives, tracking down friends and colleagues of the aforementioned parties.

Documentaries as personal histories are of course widespread. Plenty of movies, from Stevie and The Devil and Daniel Johnston to Capturing the Friedmans and even the recent Photographic Memory, have delved into painful and shocking pasts, or addressed at least tangentially the manner in which time and distance tend to cleave from one’s memory the more unpleasant aspects of some particular recollection. The Flat, though, feels curated by the most dispassionate theme park ride operator of all time. It’s devoid of catharsis, or indeed any real feeling at all; it’s perhaps aptly titled, in that regard. Though narrated by Goldfinger, it lacks much in the way of emotional response to any of its investigation.

Ergo, vague and scattered notions or even scraps of evidence remain crucially unconnected, contextually. There is an objectivity here, and a kind of scrupulous demonstrative remove that invites very intellectualized analysis of human denial (late in the film, there’s a too-brief interview with a psychologist that touches on this topic), but it robs the film of any sense of cresting momentum or investment. The Flat is damned by its own incuriosity. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (Sundance Selects, unrated, 97 minutes)

In David Lynch‘s trippy, 1997 neo-noir psychological thriller Lost Highway, Bill Pullman’s Fred Madison explains his aversion to video cameras thusly: “I like to remember things my own way.” When pressed for a further explanation, he offers, “How I remembered them — not necessarily the way they happened.” For documentary director Ross McElwee — whose films have almost always been reflexively autobiographical, delving into his familial relationships and ancestral connections — it’s almost the opposite. His memories have, for years, been filtered through first his photographs and writings, and then his ever-present camera lens, to the point that even he begins to question how real, or accurate, some of his memories actually are.

The vehicle for this reflection is the beguiling, homespun Photographic Memory, triggered by some early-onset empty nest syndrome and domestic struggles. Attempting to make peace with the surliness, technological addiction and emotional waywardness of his 20-year-old son, McElwee decides to retrace some of his own footsteps from when he was around the same age, and spent a year abroad in France. The result is a delicate, mesmeric rumination on family, memory, the necessary growing pains of young adulthood, and the sloping banks of generational chasm that will always exist.

We first glimpse Adrian McElwee as a youngster, cavorting about with his younger sister. McElwee frequently filmed his kids growing up, and they used to love it. Now, despite his interest in becoming a filmmaker and/or graphic artist, Adrian is tired of his father’s looming lens; he’d rather hang out with friends, blow off school, smoke a bit of pot and film himself doing extreme ski tricks. Narrating his frustration, McElwee tries to channel and focus his son’s energies, while also dolefully noting certain behavioral similarities to his own adolescent wanderings.

McElwee deftly intercuts this story — of all the poking, prodding, hoping and cajoling attached to his son — with his own journey back in time, and a set of conflicted emotions that arise. Traveling back to St. Quay-Portrieux in Brittany, France, for the first time in almost four decades, the filmmaker tries to track down his first employer, a photographer named Maurice, as well as Maud, a woman with whom he had a brief but memorable romantic liaison.

On the surface Photographic Memory may sound simple, or irretrievably blinkered and personal, but McElwee has a self-awareness, sharp sense of observation and droll wit to boot that easily locates the universality of the material. McElwee’s film is honest about the sort of parenting mistakes born of trying to protect his son from himself, as well as wry articulations about the deep but tested roots of unconditional love (“Teenagers often don’t realize how protected they are from strangulation by the memories of smaller versions of themselves”).

If all that sounds a little too ethereal, Photographic Memory is also just a great little travelogue mystery, with the filmmaker subject’s twangy, Carolina-infused French, in his efforts to find Maurice and Maud, matching the uniquely accented sheer entertainment value of Werner Herzog’s nonfiction self-narration. So does McElwee locate these people from his past? Or are his memories of their time together, and reasons for parting, at all reliable? And what lessons might he learn from all of this travel in dealing with his son? McElwee makes movies to assay the human condition and try to sort things out for himself. This is another good one, full of both answers and questions, feelings and wonder. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (First Run, unrated, 87 minutes)

Using Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz’s found-footage horror flick Grave Encounters as a self-referential leaping-off point, Grave Encounters 2 gathers up a head of loose-limbed steam and bundles it up in a rather impressive technical package, but ultimately fumbles it away on a story that buckles under the weight of layered self-consciousness. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Tribeca Film, unrated, 98 minutes)