A much buzzed-about premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Hannah Fidell’s feature debut as a writer and director, A Teacher, details the slipping-knot sanity of a young Texas high school instructor, Diana (Lindsay Burdge), as an illicit affair with one of her students, Eric (Will Brittain), runs its course, from white-hot and secret to its inevitable messy conclusion. I recently had a chance to talk to Fidell and her two stars in person, about the movie’s themes and production, inappropriate crushes, and the film’s as-yet-unrealized viral PR opportunity. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.
Monthly Archives: September 2013
American Made Movie
A nonfiction film about the slow bleed of American manufacturing jobs over the past five to six decades, American Made Movie is engaging enough for armchair politicos, but generally more successful as a diagnostic statement of basic socioeconomic condition than a groundbreaking work in and of itself.
Directed by Nathaniel Thomas McGill and Vincent Vittorio, American Made Movie includes interviews with the owners, CEOs and workers from companies both small and large, as well as the heads of a number of manufacturing think tank and lobbyist groups that push their agenda to lawmakers at both the county, state and federal levels. In this respect, it certainly gathers some good/outrageous anecdotes — including the story of Merrie Buchsbaum, a jewelry maker who started her own business, developed a homemade line of stars-and-stripes earrings and necklaces called Americana, landed a lucrative contract at the Smithsonian Museum, and then saw her idea undercut by a Chinese manufacturer of plastic trinkets.
American Made Movie has a lot of these types of authentic, sympathetic voices — hardworking folks who, as someone notes, can compete against anyone in the world, but not foreign governments, which have enormously subsidized and underwritten the catch-up in manufacturing in many countries. The movie also throws a patriotic light on companies like New Balance — the last athletic shoe manufacturer to still make their sneakers in the United States.
Unfortunately, American Made Movie feels disjointed in sketching out correlative relationships, from past to the present and into the future. It touches on the #OccupyWallStreet protests of 2011, but seems uncertain of how to fold that event — along with a tripling in the national income gap over the past three decades-plus — into a narrative that breaks down along free trade versus protectionist lines.
To its credit, American Made Movie doesn’t merely sound the gong of xenophobic alarm. It possesses an even, rational tone throughout. But neither does it feel like builds to a point of particular climax or catharsis. The film is saddled with a sing-songy, frequently dopey voiceover narration, and the solutions McGill and Vittorio ascribe to the predicament range from simplistic to politically dubious. American Made Movie is mostly an audio-visual book report of plot synopsis; it leaves one wanting for just a little more — a little more clarity, a little more fire, a little more investigation, and a little more righteousness. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more general information, visit the movie’s eponymous website or Facebook page. (Variance Films/Life is My Movie Entertainment, G, 85 minutes)
Rob Huebel on Hell Baby, Improvisation, Pilot Season Despair
Whether it’s from his work on Human Giant and Children’s Hospital, guest-starring roles on small screen sitcoms like The Office, or bit roles in movies like Little Fockers, The Descendants and The Other Guys, you’ve seen Rob Huebel. You may not yet associate him with one breakout role (unless it’s as an annoying cell phone user), but that changing seems only to be a matter of when, not if.
In Huebel’s latest film, multi-hyphenate Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant‘s loose-limbed horror comedy Hell Baby, he plays a police officer who, along with Paul Scheer, gets a strange feeling about a married-and-pregnant couple (Rob Corddry and Leslie Bibb) who move into a New Orleans house with a most unsavory history. I recently had a chance to talk to Huebel about the movie, improvisation, national commercial campaigns and the special hope and despair of pilot season. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.
Best Kept Secret
An open-hearted, engaging documentary that follows the lives of a group of young autistic kids for the 18 months leading up to them placing out of a special needs school at age 21, Best Kept Secret is a movie that flirts with heartbreak and despair while also showcasing — in the form of both struggling yet involved parents as well as its strong, crusading teacher protagonist — the better angels of human nature. In telling a more compact, focused story than recent, similarly themed nonfiction feature The United States of Autism, the film packs an undeniable emotional punch, throwing a spotlight on characters one won’t soon forget. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more information on the film, which opens today in New York City at the IFC Center and in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Playhouse 7, click here to visit its website. (Argot Pictures, unrated, 85 minutes)
Amber Stevens Boards 22 Jump Street
According to the Wrap, Greek star Amber Stevens is joining Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum and Ice Cube for the sequel to last year’s 21 Jump Street, a spring box office hit to the tune of just over $200 million worldwide for distributor Sony. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller will direct.
Director Jill Soloway Talks Afternoon Delight
In Afternoon Delight, when a well-off, thirtysomething Los Angeles mother, Rachel (Kathryn Hahn), visits a strip club to try to spice up her marriage and ends up getting a private dance from McKenna (Juno Temple), an unlikely friendship is born, setting in motion waves of colorful and unexpected change. I recently had a chance to talk to writer-director Jill Soloway (The United States of Tara) about her feature film debut, the state of indie film, and notions of “the divided feminine.” The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.
Estella Warren Talks The Stranger Within, Mocks My Cooking
In her latest film, a sexy mystery of slipped-knot, unraveling sanity entitled The Stranger Within, the lovely Estella Warren plays an acclaimed actress, Emily Moore, who repairs to a remote Mediterranean island with her psychiatrist husband Robert (William Baldwin) following a traumatic incident. When a mysterious young woman (Sarah Butler) who claims to have just survived a terrible hiking accident with her boyfriend shows up, however, it makes Emily wonder if she might be a threat to her marriage, and indeed her life. I recently had a chance to speak to Warren about the film, social media, amazing pool tricks (though not the kind you’re likely thinking of), her self-admitted “foodie” status, and more. How did she repay me? By mocking my cooking, of course. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.
I Declare War
If war is hell, then adolescence is too, in its own differentiated, downscale way. I Declare War, a brilliant, terrifically imaginative comedy of commingled nostalgia and allegory, gets this, on a gut level. Co-directed by Jason Lapeyre and Robert Wilson, the film unfolds as a surreal, seriocomic riff on Lord of the Flies, exposing the hidden seams of psychological depth present in war-as-playtime, wherein kids (mostly boys) first start trying on some of the absolutes and certitude of adulthood.
Unfolding entirely in a sprawling woods, I Declare War tells the story of an especially spirited game of Capture the Flag, wherein a bunch of 12-year-olds act out fantasy aggressions that bleed over into the rivalries and burgeoning crushes of unglimpsed “normal” lives. This is their playtime, but it’s deadly serious. With the help of his best friend Paul (Siam Yu), P.K. (Gage Munroe, above) has never lost a war. His side is matched up against Quinn (Aiden Gouveia), who’s similarly invested in strategy, but when Quinn is overthrown by his impulsive, angry lieutenant, Skinner (Michael Friend), it upsets the normal rhythms of war.
Since there’s nothing explicitly against it in the rules (which dictate things like remaining motionless and counting to 10 after being shot), Skinner keeps Paul hostage rather than “killing” him (via a paint-filled grenade, which sends the deceased home), figuring P.K. will have to mount a rescue operation that can be easily defeated. Skinner’s leadership — loud, but lacking in any specifics, forget nuance — makes things difficult for Jessica (Mackenzie Munro), as well as Frost (Alex Cardillo) and Trevor (Dyson Fyke), who sort of serve as the film’s Abbott and Costello.
One of the things that’s most immediately arresting about I Declare War is the forcefulness and glee with which it blurs lines of entertainment and quasi-uncomfortable exploitation. “This is war, man — not fucking hopscotch!” exclaims P.K. Most importantly, though, the sticks the kids use for guns manifest as real weapons, and so firefights unfold with all the decibel-appropriate, shoot-’em-up intensity of a straightforward action flick. (Blood-letting is still kept mostly representative, but the movie does touch on torture and bullying in a forthright manner that evidences a clear erosion of innocence).
A good comparative leaping-off point for I Declare War is perhaps something like Garth Jennings’ Son of Rambow, which has an inventive hook, is likewise caught up in adolescent preoccupations with brawny combat, and displays a somewhat similar exploding sugar-rush imagination. I Declare War, though, is much darker, albeit in a way that realistically digs into both the wild creativity and warped value system of youth. (Whether that ethical compass is under-developed or in the process of being corrupted by adult fallibilities is left somewhat open for debate.)
Working from a script by Lapeyre, the film mixes play-acted violence with a few bursts of the real thing, but is threaded throughout with hearty ribbons of humor both dark (would-you-rather questioning, and foul offered bets involving dog crap) and light (“No, I’m not quitting, I’ll be back later — I just want some juice,” says one participant, opting for a break). It all rings true, and the characters are extraordinarily well sketched — believable as kids, but also touching on well-worn war film archetypes, for comedic effect.
Ray Dumas’ evocative cinematography highlights a remarkable technical package, and a uniformly excellent adolescent cast speaks to the exacting nature of the superb direction. (Friend especially, in all his awkward bluster, captures — whether by skill or managed happy-accident — the essence of that kid with whom everyone else in the neighborhood hates to play.) Original, engaging and thought-provoking, I Declare War eschews sentimentality or (potentially far worse) wink-wink satire to deliver a series of rather remarkably hard-hitting adult truths, wrapped up in the guise of a film about kids. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its theatrical engagements, I Declare War is also currently available across VOD platforms; for more general information, click here to visit the movie’s website. (Drafthouse Films/Samaritan Entertainment, unrated, 94 minutes)
Mara
A Swedish-Danish psychological thriller starring model Angelica Jansson, Mara takes tired American horror tropes and sends them across the Atlantic Ocean in telling the tale of a woman who inexplicably returns to the site of her childhood trauma.
Set in, yes, a secluded house in the middle of the woods, Mara centers around Jenny (acting neophyte Jansson), who as a child witnessed a murder in her home that left her understandably scarred. In trying to gain closure and “process things,” Jenny decides to return to the scene of the crime as an adult, and spend a weekend relaxing with a couple friends. When an intruder turns up in the house, however, things take a turn for the bloody.
Cinematographer/co-director Fredrik Hedberg shoots a moody frame, even though Mara‘s HD video look is cramped, and the production design a bit cheap rather than spare or austere. And Hedberg and his fellow filmmakers (editor Jacob Kondrup and casting director Ake Gustafsson) certainly figure out how to incorporate plenty of nudity, which will satisfy tongue-lolling genre hounds. The problem is that the story here is yawningly thin and the acting immature and not fully formed at best, which immediately and effectively undercuts any sense of chilly, orchestrated atmosphere.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Mara comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with a Swedish language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and (obviously) English subtitles. Its main motion menu screen includes a separate sub-menu with a dozen chapter stops, and in addition to the movie’s trailer there is also a small cross-section of extras. A four-minute casting featurette kicks things off, and there’s also a separate three-minute, subtitled interview with Jansson regarding her experiences on the movie. (She says she won’t be “running around chasing down [more] roles,” but would be happy to act again if another offer came her way; otherwise, she notes that her degree in environmental science could come in handy as she gets older.)
The main supplemental featurette is a feature-length making-of documentary chronicling the movie’s seven-day shoot in the south of Sweden. Coming in at 74 minutes, barely shorter than the film itself, there are interviews plus lots of haphazardly assembled on-set footage here (hence more nudity), plus a look at a September 2012 test screening of Mara for cast and crew. The main throughline, though, centers on a series of power outages that seriocomically plague the set. D+ (Movie) B- (Disc)