Somewhere deep inside The Last Exorcism Part II may lurk an intriguing idea for a character-based horror movie follow-up, but it never manages to quite tease it out. Ditching both the mock-doc framework of the original 2010 possession film (which was inventive but undone by some thunderously stupid editorial choices in the third act), as well as its flashes of dark humor, this technically efficient but wholly pointless follow-up fails to expand on its mooring mythology in as compelling a fashion as in something like the Saw and Paranormal Activity franchises. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (CBS Films, PG-13, 88 minutes)
Daily Archives: March 2, 2013
Koch
For better and worse, and particularly for those on the younger side of the boomer generation, New York City’s mayors have often stood astride national politics, even before the events of September 11, 2001. No one typifies that more than the recently deceased Ed Koch, who was a unique political brand — at once easygoing and tough — whose blunt, blustery appeal can be traced forward in time to a figure like current New Jersey governor Chris Christie.
A divisive three-term Democratic mayor whose tenure spanned the 1970s and ’80s and whose post-political career would include gadfly commentary and a two-year stint as the judge on The People’s Court, Koch was to plenty a hero, and yet to others an opportunistic race-baiter. He was never boring, however, nor anyone but himself, qualities which are on abundant and inimitable display in the entertaining, thought-provoking and in some ways even elegiac portrait of Neil Barsky’s new documentary, Koch.
A self-described “liberal with sanity,” the Jewish Koch was a quick-on-his-feet populist — he garnered over 75 percent of the vote in his successful re-election bids, and was the first candidate to score Democratic and Republican party endorsements in the same election — who rounded into form after an unlikely and unruly 1977 primary to unseat incumbent Abe Beame. An ex-Congressman, his fierce advocacy for the city of New York and his ability to spin, spar (can one imagine today a politician telling a voter point-blank to shut up?) and frame informed conviction as truth and right would find welcome reception with voters and media alike. “As a politician you have got to get the public to follow you,” says Koch in one of the film’s interview segments, “and you can only do that by being bigger than life — it’s theatrics.”
That instinct drove various reforms — none bigger than his ambitious, multi-billion-dollar public housing program — but would also eventually make Koch the strong and very personal enemy of all sorts of groups who felt marginalized by both his decisions and decision-making processes. Koch’s closure of the Harlem-adjacent Sydenham Hospital, one of 17 municipal city hospitals, would strain and stain relations with African-Americans for years (along with other issues), and his aggressive leveraging of condemnations of 42nd Street properties — which would eventually pave the way for the commercial boom of Times Square — would have to beat back 47 separate lawsuits to stand. Koch’s third term would bring what some viewed as comeuppance — unprecedented scandal via a string of bid-rigging, phony contracts and bribes attached to various borough presidents and city commissioners.
The gift of Koch, then, is that it embraces the clutter and volume of opinion about the man, without stooping to its nastiest extremes. Having the subject as a driving force of the film certainly helps; Koch is just a great interview, whether addressing the Sydenham controversy, the many rumors and smears about his sexuality (he never married, and was rumored to be a closeted homosexual, which rendered fraught his relationship with the gay community during the AIDS crisis) or any other manner of topic. Barsky takes the measure of the man, and if his portrait is undeniably rather favorable, it also honestly addresses outside criticisms of Koch’s governance, and mostly forthrightly puts this dissent to him.
In its third act, the movie lags a bit, focusing in dawdling fashion on legacy burnishing. Still, an attractive technical package, inclusive of classy, evocative cinematography by Tom Hurwitz and smartly chosen and juxtaposed archival news clips, boosts this engaging nonfiction snapshot’s profile and appeal. Koch is a reminder that our best politicians aren’t timid creatures, but neither are we likely going to agree with them on every issue, so it’s important to remember that they shouldn’t be punished to the extreme for that fact. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Zeitgeist, unrated, 95 minutes)
A Place at the Table
It seems incongruous during a rampant obesity epidemic in the United States, the notion of around 49 million Americans suffering from “food insecurity” — not knowing where either their next meal will come from, or the money for it. But the smart and poignantly argued new documentary A Place at the Table, in assaying governmental farm subsidy policies and other social welfare assistance, casts hunger and obesity as neighbors, not distant and exclusive conditions separated by a yawning chasm. Engorged with feeling, this nonfiction tale leads with its heart, and successfully makes a persuasive case for social investments that offset future “up-stream” societal costs across a wide range of arenas.
Against a backdrop which has seen a 40 percent rise in the cost of fruits and vegetables over the past three decades, versus a 40 percent decrease in the price of processed foods, A Place at the Table puts in its crosshairs agricultural policies (including $250 billion in USDA subsidies since 1995) that underwrite the massive production of in particular corn, wheat, rice, soy and sugar — the basic ingredients in many high-fat, high-sodium processed foods — but not other staple crops, or whole grains. It does this mostly by polite cajoling, though, rather than heated hectoring.
The film’s rhythms sometimes tip toward the sedate, and while co-directors Lori Silverbush and Kristi Jacobson succeed in finding articulate and compelling interview subjects, they sometimes have trouble picking effective editorial pivot points and sharpening the spear tip of their arguments, making full sense of their case subjects’ situations. Still, with original music by T Bone Burnett and the Civil Wars, A Place at the Table aims to be a movie with more emotional punching power, which isn’t to say that it’s shoddily researched, just sensitive (perhaps a little too much so) to charges of wonky factorial overkill.
Not unlike Food, Inc., though, it shines a light on just the dispiriting degree to which so many — and especially so many children — are prisoners of a system in which the vast majority of the scope of their diet lies outside of reasonably expected mechanisms of their own control. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For the more about the movie, click here to visit its website. (Magnolia/Participant Media, unrated, 86 minutes)