A wilderness-survival tale loosely in the vein of Jacob Aaron Estes’ Independent Spirit Award-minted Mean Creek, Surviving Crooked Lake illustrates the downside of body wrangling that Weekend at Bernie’s never showed. An earnestly pitched tale that played the Slamdance Festival a couple years back, the movie features some decently grounded if not star-making adolescent performances, as well as a pleasantly hazy visual scheme that uses its natural surroundings as a more compelling backdrop than many like-minded great-outdoors dramas, which trade in a prodding and peculiarly modern fear of the unknown. Eventually, however, hackneyed story choices overwhelm the film, which devolves into a lather-rinse-and-repeat cycle of arguments, river-rowing and wandering about.
Co-written and directed, in unusual collaborative fashion, by Sascha Drews, Ezra Krybus and Matthew Miller, Surviving Crooked Lake centers around a quartet of 14-year-old teenage girls who take a canoe trip as part of their summer camp experience. Reticent Steph (Stephannie Richardson) is the focal point, and occasional narrator herein, while Morgan (Morgan McCunn) is most in bloom. Also along for the ride are Alysha (Alysha Aubin) and Candice (Candice Mausner). Steph is sill traumatized by her dad’s recent death, and afraid of the water, so her older brother Jonah (Guy Yarkoni), a camp counselor, convinces her to go along by volunteering as the group’s chaperone and promising to look out for her. He does, until an unfortunate accident befalls him — after an abortive make-out session with Morgan — leaving the girls to make some tough decisions about what to do with his body as they try to navigate their way back to civilization.
There are grace notes of the same sorts of themes — grief, loneliness and misplaced attraction — plumbed in something like 12 & Holding, another snapshot of cusp-of-pubescence turmoil, but the nitty-gritty of dramatic conflict and the acting here are not up to snuff, quite simply. The girls are good at reacting, and conveying the easy rapport of adolescent friendship. But once things get “heavy,” as it were, their difficulties in believably emoting ramp up and poke through.
There’s also a major problem with suspension of disbelief; it defies credulity that, absent some clever write-around to explain matters, Jonah alone would be granted custody of the four girls, or that they would take two canoes, leaving three girls alone in one vessel and he and one of the girls in the other. Some clear, easy explanations in the set-up could have helped circumvent these problems, along with questions about maps and other matters that later come into play. As is, the movie basically just plays out a string, consisting of arguments over whether or not to dump/bury Jonah’s body, battles with nature (rapids, a lingering wolf), and then more arguments over maps and direction, since apparently none of the girls can remember that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
The film’s cinematography (co-credited to Drews and Krybus in press notes, though IMDb lists only the latter in this regard) is a big plus, all things considered, though there’s an impulsivity to the hand-held camerawork which sometimes works well and serves the story, and other times submarines its effectiveness. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not that Surviving Crooked Lake is all that bad, it’s just that there’s no memorable or original driving tension to the story. It merely happens, and then is done. (Neoclassics, unrated, 89 minutes)
I couldn’t sleep a couple nights ago, so I dug up a screener from the gi-normous “pleasure pile” instead of something more pressing, and fired up Late Night Shopping, an entirely enjoyable British import of chatty twentysomething angst from 2001. Good call, it was; product fit mood nicely.
Directed by Saul Metzstein, from a script by Jack Lothian, the film self-identifies on its cover box as “in the tradition of Slackers [sic] and Swingers,” which is a bit misleading. It’s loose-limbed, character-focused and dialogue-driven, sure, but also much more conventionally structured than the former film, from Richard Linklater. Its story centers around a quartet of loose, vagabond acquaintances drawn together by their night-shift occupations and sardonic dispositions. Phone bank operator Lenny (Enzo Cilenti) is haunted by a past spent penning steamy letters for a Penthouse Forum-type magazine, which has rendered him unable to connect to women, including the gal in his office on whom he has his eye. Consummate ladies man Vincent (James Lance) is on the prowl for anything with a vagina, and operates on a strict, three-encounters-only policy of rationed coitus. The gal of the bunch, acerbic Jody (Kate Ashfield), hates her techo-manufacturing job most of all. Hospital orderly Sean (Luke de Woolfson), meanwhile, is uncertain whether a fight with his live-in girlfriend, Madeline (Heike Makatsch), has dissolved their relationship for good; since their schedules don’t align, he’s been examining the soap and sheets in an attempt to see if she’s still around.
Late Night Shopping grades out quite high on dialogue and character relatability, so the utter contrivance of a third act seaside escape/road trip — which pulls the movie out of its interesting, pop-gloomy twilight world — is only moderately irksome, all things considered. It’s meant to give the movie a rear-end slap of downhill momentum, this injected aspect of romantic “questing,” but in reality its shopworn conventionality bleeds the movie of a good bit of its rough-around-the-edges charm. Still, of special note is Lance’s performance — he gives good lothario, making Vincent both scummy and funny, thoughtful and thoughtless all at once.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Late Night Shopping comes presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with an English language stereo audio track. In addition to liner notes by British film critic Jason Solomons and a feature-length audio commentary track with writer Lothian and director Metzstein, there’s the movie’s theatrical trailer, a single deleted scene and a couple of featurettes in which Lance and Cilenti showcase two respective bits of sleight-of-hand that their characters employ. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B (Disc)
Starring opposite George Clooney in Up in the Air was, at least at first, a nerve-wracking experience for Anna Kendrick. “Yes, let’s just say I was terrified,” she laughs. “Who wouldn’t be? I mean, come on, it’s George Clooney, and he’s one of the biggest stars in the world.” You’d never know that she suffered from a touch of nerves. On screen, the actress gives a remarkable performance as a self assured young career woman, Natalie Keener, who has to learn the ropes from an older, more experienced colleague, Ryan Bingham (Clooney).
Kendrick was recruited for Up in the Air by director Jason Reitman who was fresh off his Oscar-nominated triumph Juno, the bittersweet comedy about a pregnant teenager played by Ellen Page. In fact, says Reitman, Page and Kendrick have a similar approach. “I’d seen Anna in Rocket Science and was just blown away by her,” says the director. “I just think she has such a unique voice, similar to Ellen Page — just a voice of her own amongst a generation — and I needed somebody who can be witty and fast, and really sharp and go toe to toe with George Clooney, giving him shit the entire film. And there was no one that came close to Anna.”
In Up in the Air, as in Thank You For Smoking, Reitman delivers another acutely observed tale about a shark-ish businessman who spends most of his life in a self-created bubble of isolation — this time moving from one city to the next doing the undeniably unpleasant job of firing people. Bingham lives out of an impeccably packed suitcase, stays in stylish hotels, and clocks more frequent flier miles than a pilot. His life is as neatly packed as his luggage until the outside world — in the shape of two very different women — begin to make him think that he might just be ready to make a real connection.
Up in the Air filmed at four different airports in the United States, and the cast and crew were constantly on the move during production. “I don’t have a fear of flying,” says Kendrick. “But I don’t really care for air travel, probably for the same reasons that Natalie doesn’t. It’s that thing of being at the mercy of other people.”
Originally from Portland, Maine, Kendrick is now based in Los Angeles and is rapidly gaining a reputation as one of the brightest new female stars to emerge in recent years. She started acting professionally as a child and she became the second youngest Tony Award nominee ever when she was nominated as Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance as Dinah in the Broadway revival of High Society. “I danced when I was a little kid,” she says. “And sang all of the time, too, and I was just one of those kids that wanted to perform and wanted to be on stage. And when you’re six you just want to jump around and then when I was about 10 I still really wanted to do it, to sing and dance and I was lucky enough to have parents who treated me with an incredible amount of respect for a 10-year-old girl. They really listened to me — even when that 10-year-old was telling them that she really wanted to be on Broadway. They supported me and let me take a real run at it and I’ll be forever grateful to them.”
Her first feature film role came along when she was 16. Camp, fittingly enough, was a musical comedy about a group of youngsters at a performing arts camp. It provided the perfect cross over from theatre to film for Kendrick. Both the film and Kendrick went on to win huge acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival. “We shot the film at the camp, we were all sort of living there, and occasionally we would go in and shoot a scene. Actually, I think a lot of us thought that it would never see the light of day,” she laughs. “We were just a bunch of little hoodlums singing and dancing. It was so much fun.” A redacted question-and-answer chat follows:
Q: Is it fair to assume that the character you play is a long way from your own personality?
AK: (laughs). Oh yes! But that was the fun part about it. Natalie does so many things that I would like to do, and she is unapologetically who she is in a way that I wish I was. Sometimes there are things that you wish you would say or do and you think about it. And it was easy to transfer that into someone else. Personally, I generally avoid confrontation so it was a release to play Natalie because she’s not going to back away. And getting to yell at George Clooney was pretty cathartic.
Q: Have you met people like Natalie?
AK: I think we all have. She’s a little rigid and a little annoying and she has a strength that she’s not afraid of. But there’s also a weakness there — and actually you probably see her at her weakest in this film, it’s probably the most vulnerable time of her life. I imagined that she was the sort of person who prides herself on the idea that she’s overcome a lot of challenges in her life and I think that in reality this is the first time she’s ever been challenged.
AK: George is a really smart guy and a really sensitive guy and I’m sure he looked at me and knew that I was pretty terrified. I think you’d have to be insane not to be a little intimidated by him. And he’s aware of the effect that he can have on people but he does everything to make you feel at ease. He sort of encouraged a really playful relationship — a relationship where I could kind of give him crap and he could make fun of me and I’d give it right back to him. So that when it came to do time to do it on screen it seemed perfectly natural. Really, and I know everyone says this, George couldn’t be nicer. The thing is George makes it OK for you to relax and he makes so much effort to put everyone at ease. And it gets pretty easy after that. I really loved working with him.
Q: But you were terrified at first?
AK: Yes, let’s just say I was terrified. Who wouldn’t be? I mean, come on, it’s George and he’s one of the biggest stars in the world.
Q: Is Jason the kind of director who gives you a lot of time to prepare for a scene?
AK: Well we didn’t have any rehearsals at all, which was interesting, and certainly made certain things challenging, but at the same time, kept a lot of things really fresh. And he’s certainly very willing to talk about anything with you — he’s incredibly available. But he knows exactly what it is that he wants and just sort of tells you to give it to him that way, and you can try it your way, but you know that he knows what he’s doing and what he is going to want in the end. And so even if it doesn’t make perfect sense to you yet, you know that this is a guy that you should trust.
Q: Did you talk to Jason about the themes the film explores?
AK: Oh yes, I think it’s about isolation in the modern world. And it’s about these people who think that they have their life philosophy all figured out and it’s what it does to them when they realize that they haven’t. I just loved the script. Jason writes so beautifully and he’s so funny and yet it’s really quite poignant too, because you meet these people at a time when things are starting to unravel for them.
Q: You started acting at a very young age. But you don’t come from a family of actors, do you?
AK: No, my Mom was an accountant and my Dad was a teacher.
Q: Did you see a lot of Broadway shows yourself as a kid?
AK: You know, honestly, it wasn’t as though I went to New York and saw a Broadway show and thought that’s what I wanted to do. It was more of an idea — just the idea of being on stage in front of real theater fans.
Q: Did you get nervous appearing on stage as a child?
AK: No, it was just huge fun — I think it probably gets harder as you get older (laughs). When I was 17, I did A Little Night Music at New York City Opera, and opening night I became incredibly aware of how many people fit in that room, and I really sort of psyched myself out. But then you do it and it’s fine and you forget that anybody is even watching you. But yeah, I had a little panic attack moment, when I thought about how many people would be looking at me — and 17 is an age where you are not sure if you want people to be looking at you or not.
Q: And you made your first film at what, 16? What was that like?
AK: I turned 17 when we were filming Camp. You know, it was one of those things, it never really felt like we could possibly be making a real film, because it was just a bunch of kids who’d never been in a film before (laughs).
Q: Did making a film feel different from being on stage?
AK: Yeah, it did. But you know it was a unique and special first film and none of us had been in a film before, so that was rare. And we all came from a theatre background so we all had the same kind of experience. It was like “What just happened? Did we just film something?” (laughs). Because there was no audience reaction, of course. On stage, something happens and there’s the energy of the audience and you can feel it — it’s very real.
Q: So film is a different discipline that you had to learn.
AK: Yes. And each of us sort of realized when they turn the camera on and they say action, nothing actually happens (laughs). And you have to make it happen. But it was this incredible thing where you felt like that couldn’t have possibly been it, that couldn’t have possibly been a performance. Because I know what a performance feels like, and that was just me talking and them pointing a camera at me. So that was a very strange hurdle to get over. But you know, it’s a different way of doing the same thing. You have to learn that too and I really enjoy the difference.
Q: So do you still miss that reaction you get from being on stage?
AK: Yeah. I mean it’s such a cliché, but there really isn’t anything like it, and it’s one of the weirder parts of the transition — not having the immediate validation. I think we were a bunch of very needy little actors (laughs) on Camp. Our poor director probably had to tell us how great we were, even more than most directors have to tell their actors.
Q: Well, you were young.
AK: We were young, and we just didn’t really understand how do you know it was good, no one applauded, so how do you know?
Q: But how does it feel now a few years on, when you do a film like this, which, again, calls for a very finely tuned performance?
AK: Yeah, I think it’s a tricky thing, there’s this expression about actors, that they get paid to wait, and I feel like you get paid to multitask, you know? You can be really good at your job, but then you have to remember to turn your face so you’re in your light and drop your shoulder, because George is in the background or something. And you’re going to cut him off and the whole shot is not going to work if you can’t do all of these things. And just slowly but surely, experience is the only thing that’s going to help that. Hopefully I’m getting better at it.
Q: Will you continue to do stage and film?
AK: Well, I haven’t done stage in a while. I think the last thing I did on stage was probably A Little Night Music, and I want to do it again. It just gets scarier, the more time you spend away from it. But also I love film, I love the medium and I’m having fun doing it, so I’ll figure it out.
Q: What do you like to do when you’re not working, what kind of things interest you?
AK: I watch a lot of films and I bake — just desserts and stuff. I make a flourless Hazelnut chocolate torte that’s great. I usually take that if I’m going round to friends for dinner. My life is always sort of a mess and it’s spilling out everywhere (laughs), so I like to go to other people’s houses.
Q: Do you enjoy living in Los Angeles?
AK: Yeah, it takes about a year to kind of get used to it, and it’s a kind of lonely city at first. And when I first arrived I didn’t know anybody. But one morning you wake up and it’s home. There are certainly people who seem like they are straight out of Beverly Hills 90210 (laughs). But I don’t know those people. And I’ve got some great friends there now and it’s good.
Yes, it’s another hot-chick-with-schlubby-and-or-otherwise-outclassed-guy comedy, but She’s Out of My League nearly scrapes the bottom of this already familiar barrel in its quest for laughs. There’s an interesting and most likely quietly devastating movie to be made from the basic idea at this film’s core — that of an average, working-class guy who’s so convinced of his general unworthiness that he subconsciously sabotages the golden romantic opportunity that falls into his lap — but this overly broad exercise in set-piece histrionics surely isn’t it.
Despite a couple loyal friends with whom he works, Pittsburgh airport security drone Kirk (Jay Baruchel) leads a pretty numbing existence. He’s habitually tortured by his older brother Dylan (Kyle Bornheimer) and has an ex-girlfriend, Marnie (Lindsay Sloane), who’s so thick with his parents that she and her new himbo boyfriend Ron (Hayes MacArthur) constantly hang out with his family. Things change when Molly (Alice Eve), a super-hot event planner, drifts into his life, courtesy of a forgotten iPhone. Soon they’re dating, even if Kirk can neither quite explain things to his friends nor seal the deal, physically.
With his Barney Fife physicality and ably communicated set of self-negating tics, Baruchel, a bit player in Tropic Thunder and several Judd Apatow projects, is the right sort of peg on which to hang this film’s conceit. And Eve (striking in Wayne Kramer’s Crossing Over) is a rather delightful presence. But the script, by Sex Drive writers Sean Anders and John Morris, feels like nothing but a slapdash first draft; it has a few outrageous moments (all available in the film’s red-band trailer) but hits most of its capital-B beats in nervous, clamorous and cursory fashion, like a scene with a girl impressing a guy by knowing something about sports. Feature debut director Jim Field Smith’s absolutely leaden touch further sullies matters. T.J. Miller (aka Cloverfield‘s Hud) and Krysten Ritter (aka Breaking Bad‘s Jane) each eventually leave a fairly winning stamp on supporting roles, but it’s too little, too late. The script’s the thing, and She’s Out of My League is a halfheartedly executed idea that’s far less engaging than the sum of its parts. (Paramount, R, 104 minutes)
Much was made in the summer of 2000 over The Perfect Storm‘s unexpectedly robust $41 million-plus opening weekend, in which it rode a wave of popular appeal over the grand reveal of that massive, swelling wave effects shot, and trounced Roland Emmerich and Mel Gibson’s The Patriot by a considerable margin. (Emmerich in turn dove headlong into masturbatory FX destruction, perhaps never to return again to anything not involving the destruction of humankind, or at the very least a half dozen national landmarks.) But how significant can a film truly be, in terms of lasting appeal, if it’s misspelled in a studio Blu-ray/home video sell-thru email, as above? No simple typo, either. That means the graphic design intern flubbed it, and no one else caught it. Quiet volumes.
Greenberg director Noah Baumbach and critic Armond White do not like each other… partly because the latter suggested in a review that Baumbach’s mom should’ve had an abortion? Sweet Christ I’m glad I’m not involved in shenanigans like this. Writing with vitriolic flair (when deserved) is one thing, but ad hominem attacks of that sort make clear that the critic’s chief interest is really himself, which shouldn’t be the case. The closest I’ve come to being the subject of a filmmaker vendetta, to my knowledge, is Troy Duffy, who threatened me over the phone and helped orchestrate a campaign of minor harassment on occasion of the original release of The Boondock Saints.
The DVD cover, with a fanged, bulbous-nosed ghoul (evoking either memories of Stephen King’s It or perhaps former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, depending on how you passed your time in the 1980s) superimposed over a rickety mansion, doesn’t necessarily do wonders for one’s expectations regarding low-budget horror flick House of Fears. And the inferred shortcomings come to fruition, don’t you know, unfolding almost in lockstep with a familiar trapped-kids-being-tormented-by-their-fears plot that sadly does not feature the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
After a brief framing preamble, House of Fears unfolds in present day Salem,
Oregon, where a group of friends ditch a party and head over to a
haunted house the night before it opens for the Halloween season,
sneaking in for a fun night of scaring their dates. There’s Hailey (Sandra McCoy) and the guy she’s crushing on, Carter (Corey Sevier), as well as the former’s tag-along stepsister, Samantha (Corri English). And there’s Candice (Alice Greczyn, the randy Amish babe from Sex Drive), who invites along her ex-boyfriend Devon (Michael Pagan), much to the consternation of Zane (Eliot Benjamin), the group’s inside hook-up to the venue.
The set-up of the house involves passing through various levels of “fear.” Soon upon entering, however, the sextet find themselves trapped, with no way to exit. Their planned evening of fun devolves into a nightmare, as they lose their guide Zane and begin to disappear and die in a variety of freakish ways. With every avenue of escape blocked, and it becoming increasingly difficult to discern what’s real and what’s perhaps fake, the dwindling survivors must try to trust one another and negotiate a path out.
There’s a little bit of pop to some of the dialogue early on (“My insurance doesn’t cover hormones,” Hailey’s protective dad spits when he catches her trying to sneak out), but it’s almost immediately too great of a hurdle and suspension of disbelief for McCoy (now 30, though younger when it was shot) and many of her costars to pass as teenagers, and the party-hearty set-up and kids-acclimating-themselves-to-the-house material that precedes the not-terribly-gory bloodletting is all nondescript filler. Working from a script by Steven Lee and John Lyde, director Ryan Little (who also shot the movie himself) leans heavily on overly familiar gimmicks (in-camera flash cuts, close-ups to mask a lack of set dressing) that rob the film of tension. And, as mentioned, House of Fears isn’t a buckets-of-blood-type movie. Hardcore horror aficionados won’t spark to the gore, of which there is very little; there aren’t enough genuine thrills, meanwhile, for the sort of teen audiences who are less wedded to the genre, and just like to be emotionally goosed by movies like I Know What You Did Last Summer and The Grudge. The movie essentially plays like an average Scooby-Doo episode if made by a guy who’d seen some early, low-rent Tobe Hooper flicks.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, House of Fears comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with a motion-animated menu screen, and an English language 2.0 stereo audio track. Divided into 14 chapters, its air-quote special features consist only of a photo gallery montage which intercuts between film stills and behind-the-scenes pictures, as well as the movie’s preview trailer. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D+ (Movie) D+ (Disc)
I dig the blogosphere, broadly speaking (viva variety), but one thing that’s wearying is how the utterly mindless pursuit of traffic ends up reinforcing this herd mentality, wherein a single new photo or trailer or happening MUST BE POSTED, even if there’s no particularly pronounced tie-in/connection with said host site, or even any attendant commentary beyond the most titillating, rib-nudging headline. (See above.) So that means there’s like 15 or 20 movie, music and entertainment-adjacent sites today with Zooey Deschanel’s She & Him hipster porn, a new music video involving hula hoops and dainty skips. (You’re welcome, L.A. Weekly — I picked your link at random.) The overload is such that you sometimes just get the feeling the Internet is the same 5,000 people reading the same 500 sites, circle-jerking to the same rotating menu of 50 topics. When is someone going to deliver a 700-word treatise on the hatwear in Johnny Depp’s filmography?
In what’s been deemed a cost-cutting measure, three-decade veteran Todd McCarthy has been axed by Variety, the latest in a series of critic cappings that recall not so much an industry struggling to find its way in the era of New Media, but a mob movie montage of calculated extinguishings. The reaction from the critical community has been fairly harsh, if somewhat predictable, with Kim Voynar and others lashing out at the myopia of Variety‘s decision, not entirely without reason.
Still, can anyone legitimately claim this a surprise? It’s shocking merely in the way that the culmination of a grand, unsettling event is shocking — like a breakaway dunk in a big basketball upset. It’s an undisputed fact that arts journalism is a devalued brand, and criticism especially so. So Variety played the short money game, because previous cutbacks haven’t worked, and other bold strokes (executive bloodletting, a divestment of office space, and salary rollback) apparently weren’t on the table.
The harsh, bleed-like-me reality, though, is that McCarthy’s salary package was likely worth more than what nine out of 10 film critics make. And for those of a younger generation, film criticism seems to be trending toward a state of perpetual scramble, in which free agent-writers term-contract their services and trade on reputation and demi-celebrity, however dubious a distinction that is. It sucks, because it involves massive amounts of work that isn’t about the work. And yet someone sketch me a plausible macro-alternative.
Whether it was the general lack of suspense and sense of preordained coronation in the air — with really only Sandra Bullock’s Best Actress victory being the only category of the four main acting awards still a bit up in the air — or just my own bloated seasonal malaise, I couldn’t really get that amped leading up to the Academy Awards this year, and neither could I be counted on (obviously) to tap out exhaustive analysis after the fact. I’m not an awards blogger; it’s just not in my bones.
In addition to that crazy bitch producer going all Kanye West on the short film documentary winner (they have beef, don’t you know: history here), I thought the telecast was its usual mix of orchestrated, well-oiled tedium and enjoyable, sometimes emotionally piercing acceptance speeches (which are always the highlights of Oscar evenings). One thing I do love, though. It is a mortal lock, the morning after every single Academy Awards ceremony, that there will be competing qualitative-judgment narratives, with some camp proclaiming them the most boring/awful ceremony ever, and others calling them the best ceremony of all time.
Following Iran’s disputed presidential election this past summer, Neda Soltani was shot and killed on the streets of Tehran — an awful incident captured on a 90-second cell phone camera video that ripped across the blogosphere over the next 24 hours. In an instant, she became the face of a powerful protest movement that threatened President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the hard-line theocratic government’s hold on power. While the revolution unfolded on Twitter and the Internet, and a fuller portrait of the young woman came into focus relatively quickly, in Polaroid-like fashion, it’s still worth revisiting her story — especially for those not plugged into the sort of exhaustive coverage that Andrew Sullivan and other writers labored to provide in real time.
In affecting fashion, this short-form title, part of PBS’ Frontline investigative series, explores the death of Soltani, and in doing so also delves into a number of broader, unanswered questions in the aftermath of the greatest upheaval in Iran since the 1979 revolution. While giving ample voice to one of Soltani’s best friends, Delbar Tavakoli, as well as former prime minister Mohsen Sazegara — no fan of Ahmadinejad — A Death in Tehran isn’t merely subjective, some exercise in liberal grief mop-up. A columnist for an Iranian paper that supports the current government provides editorial balance to Christian Science Monitor‘s Scott Peterson and others, who talk about an interesting rumor that sprouted up just before June’s voting — about two million pens with disappearing ink being imported, to help vanish the votes for challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi.
By far the most engrossing material, however, concentrates more directly on Soltani; there’s a phone interview with her Turkish boyfriend, prior to his arrest on trumped-up charges of somehow having had something to do with her shooting, and a sit-down chat with the doctor (who has since fled the country) who tried to save her life. The picture that emerges is of a simple young woman, hardly radicalized, who merely wanted better things for her country — more transparency, and openness to the rest of the world. While 11 protester deaths were ultimately confirmed by the Iranian government (hospital records indicate at least three times that amount, with dozens of others missing, and said to have been “disappeared”), the saddest specter looms in the movie’s final moments, when Soltani’s art instructor — in whose arms she expired — is forced to recant on state television her shooting at the hands of rogue security forces. An evenhanded contradiction of Iran’s official narrative, this title provides evidence to the contrary. It’s a shame those responsible do not have to answer for their crimes.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, A Death in Tehran, originally broadcast on television in November of last year, comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with a simple English stereo audio track that more than adequately handles the meager aural demands of the title. There are unfortunately no related supplemental bonus features, though a 15-minute Frontline segment from Uganda, highlighting the challenges facing the world’s largest population of mountain gorillas, rounds out the hour-long title. It’s a weird fit with the Iranian material, no doubt, but certainly not uninteresting. To purchase A Death in Tehran or any other PBS Frontline title, call (800) PLAY-PBS or click here; to instead purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. A- (Movie) C- (Disc)
A decidedly NSFW trailer for Gorman Bechard’s micro-budget indie horror flick One Night Stand, which likely won’t be confused with Mike Figgis’ film. Good concept, but will it have enough psychological heft to make it truly unnerving? I had deeply held problems with Hard Candy, but at least it also had the benefit of some strong, committed performances, in particular Ellen Page’s turn.
It’s a happy birthday to Eva Mendes, who turns 36 today, much to the delight of Latina Mole Enthusiasts subscribers. Mendes is at her core innately va-voomish, but has also shown flashes of something deeper in movies like Trust the Man and We Own the Night, and even some goofball charm in stuff like Hitch and Stuck on You. (Let’s not talk about Ghost Rider, meanwhile). One senses there could be something meatier and truly substantive out there for her, if she wanted to work for it, though.
Oh, and it’s Aasif Mandvi‘s birthday, too. He turns 44, but looks considerably less interesting in a bikini bottom, so there you have it.
Part murder mystery, part domestic melodrama, part dark comedy, Mother is also a wholly original treat that confirms writer-director Bong Joon-ho’s touch with multiple tonalities, as well as his status as South Korea’s preeminent modern auteur.
Simple peasant Hye-ja (Kim Hye-ja, above) is the profoundly devoted single mother of 27-year-old Do-joon (Won Bin), a naïve, memory-impaired man-child whose affability helps mask the fact that something isn’t quite right with him. Walking home drunk and alone one evening, Do-joon encounters a schoolgirl who he follows for a bit before she disappears into a dark alley. The next morning, she’s found dead in an abandoned building. Do-joon is eventually arrested for her murder, and an apathetic police force doesn’t seem much interested in investigating Hye-ja’s insistent refusals that her beloved son could ever possibly be guilty. Embarking on an obsessive quest to prove her son’s innocence, Hye-ja at first focuses her efforts on his scummy friend Jin-tae (Jin Goo), but slowly learns more and more about the victim, which expands her suspect pool.
Like the works of David Lynch or Alexander Payne, Bong’s films unfold in mannered worlds where comedy and drama are hopelessly commingled. Owing to the combination of both this and its innate foreignness, Mother is unnerving — you don’t really know what it wants or expects from you as an audience member. Despite the general dramatic success of its homicidal mystery story strand, Kim’s bravura performance is the glue that holds everything together; with her plaintive eyes, she makes you deeply feel both her character’s mania and sadness, which is crucial to Mother‘s artful navigation of those treacherous pivots in tone. The film’s hold slackens a bit, understandably and almost necessarily, after a great third act shock, but one doesn’t greatly begrudge Bong the privilege of closing things out with an eerie, melancholic denouement. (Magnolia, R, 129 minutes)
Fifteen years ago, Val Kilmer was Batman, and costarred in Michael Mann’s Heat, one of the decade’s top crime dramas. This is worth pointing out because of the nature of work that Kilmer is now doing, which seems to consist solely of supporting roles and bit parts in films for somewhat wonked-out directors (Oliver Stone, Tony Scott, Werner Herzog), and lead roles in fairly undemanding dramas and thrillers — movies that as often as not seem to be cobbled together as some sort of tax shelter for Eastern European businessmen. (I didn’t see his turn as Moses in The Ten Commandments: The Musical, alas.) Decidedly of the latter category, Double Identity has an utterly anonymous title that can’t hold a candle to the strange name of its director (that would be Dennis Dimster-Denk). It also, somewhat unsurprisingly, has a rather silly plot and haphazard execution.
Kilmer stars as Dr. Nicholas Pinter, a physician working for Doctors Beyond Borders who is mistakenly identified as a secret agent by the Russian mafia. After a brush with death and a violent pursuit by a couple of ham-headed thugs, Nicholas is rescued by the British Secret Service and the mysterious and beautiful Katrine (Izabella Miko). The requisite “deadly web of murder of lies” ensues, don’tcha know.
Working from a screenplay co-written by Dimster-Denk and Zvia Dimbort (never thought I’d type that combination), Double Identity (original title… Fake Identity!) unfolds as a sort of wearyingly unselfconscious cross between your standard late-’80s-era straight-to-video actioner (goateed henchmen unloading clips from automatic weapons, while occasionally making accidental eye contact with camera) and a bloated version of NBC’s Chuck. Dimster-Denk doesn’t seem to have much experience filming and cutting together action, and his editing choices only underline the somewhat threadbare production value. Kilmer, meanwhile, floats through this thing pretty much on autopilot; if one was expecting a fascinatingly bewildered and panicky iteration of Gay Perry or, I don’t know, Doc Holliday, this isn’t it. He isn’t particularly believable as either a doctor or someone coming to terms with the crazy new circumstances into which he is thrust.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Double Identity comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Apart from a gallery of preview trailers for other First Look home video releases, there are unfortunately no supplemental extras — not even a small clutch of EPK-style on-set interviews, or a chat with Dimster-Denk about how the hell he got that name. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D+ (Movie) D- (Disc)
Melissa George had but a small role in Mulholland Dr., but David Lynch’s lauded film shares a certain tangentially related, woozy mind-fuck quality with Triangle, a doom-loop genre nightmare which finds a woman fighting for both her sanity and life aboard a mysterious ocean liner.
George stars as Jess, a waitress and the single mother of an autistic little boy. When Jess accepts a sailing invitation on the boat of a friendly customer, Greg (Michael Dorman), along with a group of his friends, she can’t quite shake the feeling that something is wrong. Her suspicions are realized when the yacht encounters a sudden, raging storm near the Bermuda Triangle, and the entire group — which includes Sally (Rachel Carpani) and her husband Downey (Henry Nixon), their tag-alonggal pal Heather (Emma Lung), and Victor (Liam Hemsworth) — is forced to board a passing ocean liner, the Aeolus, in an effort to secure safety.
At first glance the new ship appears deserted, but Jess is convinced she’s been on board before, even though no one believes her. They soon realize they’re not alone, however, as a masked figure starts hunting them down, one by one. Jess survives and comes face to face with this apparent killer, only to confront a grander mystery that puts her back near the midpoint of her very unpleasant day. Will she be able save others on the ship, or even herself?
The movie’s Bermuda Triangle angle is fortunately just a throwaway bit of packaging — a sop to marketers. There’s not a lot of investment in the mythology of the area, in other words. Instead, Triangle is essentially a robust genre exercise studded with identity-crisis issues. I really give away very little when I say that the film toys with perceptions of reality, presenting events that may be manifestly “true” alongside things that may exist inside the mind of one or more characters. For a thriller, it’s a conceit which reaches a bit of a natural point of diminishing (or at least deflating) return when it dips back into the well in its second and third acts, replaying portions of its action from a different perspective. George’s involvement and performance, though, help mitigate this slack; she’s engaging, and eminently watchable.
The execution here, though, is what mainly gives this movie a kick in the pants. Writer-director Christopher Smith (Severance) showcases superb editorial instincts, and Triangle is engagingly photographed to boot. Lesser versions of this story would have dawdled on gore, or amped up the bickering and character histrionics, in naked attempts to inject drama, but Smith seems to have a smart sense of how to feed the action beast while also allowing for a few slower moments of confusion and dread to play out. This keeps one involved in the story, leaning forward a bit in their seat. Triangle stumbles a bit in the end; its ending doesn’t completely come together, and while that’s no grand sin considering what Smith is reaching for, the movie seems to be both willfully ambiguous while also reaching back for a knockout haymaker that exceeds its grasp. Still, there’s moderate, to-scale enjoyment to be had here, especially by thriller fans who enjoy a good puzzler more than affected shock.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcase with a lenticular cover that differs from the main case’s photo art, Triangle comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, divided into a dozen chapters, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Apart from a gallery of preview trailers, there is no supplemental bonus material, save a six-minute featurette which choppily cuts together interview material from writer-director Smith — who recounts the genesis of the project, sparked in on-the-fly fashion from spotting an ocean liner while at Cannes pitching another project — producer Jason Newmark, George, and the rest of the cast. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) C (Disc)
Movies detailing the lives of corrupt, disinterested and/or tempted New York police officers could and probably should constitute their own subgenre Netflix listing, and that’s where Brooklyn’s Finest slots. Those inclined to like this sort of thing — less discriminating fans of Training Day, We Own the Night and Pride and Glory — will find enough about it to like; others will likely shrug.
Unfolding over the course of one chaotic week, the movie centers around three conflicted Big Apple cops whose discrete stories eventually come together in a massive drug sting operation. There’s burned-out veteran Eddie Dugan (Richard Gere), one week away from retirement; narcotics officer and family man Sal Procida (Ethan Hawke), struggling to make ends meet for his seven (!) children and mold-allergic wife (Lili Taylor); and Clarence “Tango” Butler (Don Cheadle), who’s been undercover so long his loyalties might have started to shift from his fellow officers to old friend Caz (Wesley Snipes), a drug dealer just out of prison. With pressures bearing down on them, each man is forced to make some tough decisions that have lasting consequences, both anticipated and unforeseen.
It’s not a grade-A slur to say that Brooklyn’s Finest feels entirely constructed from prefabricated parts, or like the comeback single from an aging, reconstituted band. There’s Fuqua and Hawke, reuniting from Training Day; Snipes, playing a character who could be a cousin of New Jack City‘s Nino Brown, and Cheadle working undercover, as in Traitor. Fuqua shoots the film with much style, naturally, but the plotting here is all strictly by the book — except for Gere’s story strand, actually, which flirts with intrigue in detailing his complicated relationship with a hooker (Tawny Cypress). Unfortunately, audiences can’t dictate which story of the triptych with which to stick, so when the finale ducks headlong into clashing egos and agendas, and a grim standoff involving kidnapped sex trade junkies, they’re all held hostage, along for the ride. (Overture, R, 125 minutes)
In 1974, some of the most celebrated American R&B acts of the day came together with a collection of the most renowned musical groups in Africa for a three-day outdoor concert held in Kinshasa, Zaire. A longtime dream of South African bandleader Hugh Masekela and concert promoter and record producer Stewart Levine, the finally festival became a reality when they convinced boxing promoter Don King to try to combine the event with “The Rumble in the Jungle,” the epic boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, previously chronicled in the 1997 Academy Award-winning documentary When We Were Kings. It would eventually be cleaved from the fight itself, but the show, dubbed “Zaire ’74,” brought together musical luminaries such as James Brown, B.B. King, Bill Withers and Celia Cruz, among a host of others. At the peak of their talents and the height of their careers, these artists were inspired by a return to their African roots, as well as the enthusiasm of the Zairian audience, to give some of the best performances of their lives.
A mess of captured material from this event is what forms Soul Power, an aurally engaging but sort of intellectually halfhearted concert
documentary that presupposes its audience agrees with the innate genius
and watchability of its unvarnished footage. Soul Power is a gift
to boomer-generation R&B fans, as well as a celebratory snapshot of
an era in which artists and entertainers were if not radical agents of
social change then at least more frequently and decidedly part of the
outside world around them — a world experiencing and grappling with
genuine upheavals in social justice and gender equality. But director Jeffrey Levy-Hinte never imposes some sort of overarching
voiceover narration or interwoven present-day reminiscences from either
participating artists or concertgoers, so Soul Power
never achieves significant standalone form. The
fitful, fleeting nature of its emotional connection serves as a reminder
that the choice of compelling subject matter alone does not necessarily
make for a good nonfiction film offering.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Soul Power comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional French subtitles. Supplemental features include an audio commentary track with Levy-Hinte and aforementioned producer Stewart Levine, as well as a clutch of deleted scenes. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)
It’s a happy birthday to Jessica Biel, who turns 28 today, and perhaps celebrates by squeezing into the same bra-and-panty set that she rocked a couple years back in the trailers for the execrable I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry. Or maybe she waxes nostalgic about at one time wanting to be Whitney Houston. Then again, maybe she just takes her animals to a dog park, eats some edmame, does some tae bo and cracks walnuts between her ass cheeks, I don’t know…
If ever confirmation was needed that the American legal system, as it pertains to non-criminal matters, is basically just a gamed system for moneyed interests to eventually win out, it arrives definitively in the form of The Art of the Steal, Don Argott’s absorbing documentary investigation into the decades-long tug-of-war over the late Albert Barnes’ $30 billion dollar art collection.
A self-made industrialist millionaire who rose from modest beginnings and amassed an array of post-impressionistic and early modern paintings at a time when such works were looked down upon by critics and art world movers and shakers, Barnes (above) so loved art that he created a suburban educational institution in Merion, Pennsylvania, based around his unparalleled, aesthetically presented collection of masterworks by the likes of Van Gogh, Picasso, Cézanne and Matisse. And he so hated the art establishment and Philadelphia’s ruling journalistic elites, the Annenberg family, that he built into his will that the collection never be moved to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
In a further poke to the eye of WASP-y privilege, Barnes even established a trust that eventually ceded control of the collection to Lincoln University, a small African-American college to which he had no ties. For decades his wishes endured, until a powerful cabal of political power players and wily charitable organizations took the matter to court, with an eye on the potential tourism boom that relocation to a new museum in Philadelphia would provide.
Tilted toward a loyal group of Barnes’ former students and colleagues, The Art of the Steal is a bit subjective, certainly, but always engrossing. Argott deftly highlights the fact that in America there very tangibly exists an industry of air-quote culture, which requires new product to fill its pipelines and thus cannot abide unexploited value. The film also reveals the truth that mainstream Hollywood movies almost always hide from us: it frequently isn’t just one villain screwing someone over, it takes a village. For more information on the movie, click here. (IFC Films, unrated, 101 minutes)
As long as there are strip-mall dojos and martial arts fans who wish to see their kick-fantasy shenanigans acted out on celluloid, there will be movies like Ninja, in which a loose revenge-and-defense plot serves as a framework upon which to hang the opportunity for much balletic, foot-to-jaw action.
Naturally, the plot draws upon a certain mythology arc involving ancient samurai. The deadly weapons of the last remaining Koga ninjas, said to hold legendary powers for both good and evil (depending on the souls of the possessors, of course), are entrusted to American ninjutsu student Casey (Scott Adkins), studying in Japan. Tasked by his master to return to New York and protect at all costs the Yoroi Bitsu, an armored chest containing all the weapons, Casey crosses paths with Namiko (Mika Hijii, above left), but soon finds himself the target of skilled Yakuza assassins, including the bitter, power-hungry Masaruka (Tsuyoshi Ihara, above right), who has a past with Namiko’s father. Mayhem ensues, with a couple police officers trailing the carnage, and trying to put together all the investigatory puzzle pieces.
Adkins has an extensive list of action flick credits, including X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Bourne Ultimatum, so his physical skill set isn’t really in question. Unfortunately, he’s no great thespian, though in his defense director Isaac Florentine, working from a script by writers Michael Hurst and Boaz Davidson, shoots the action in an over-edited manner that lends credence to the worst arguments regarding martial arts movies — that they’re basically just lazy stunt reels in which discrete attacks are fended off with overly choreographed neck punches, and swords caught and held up under the armpits of flailing marauders. In the case of Ninja, check and check. It’s ultra-low-budget, yes (which explains the ascetic sets), but the characterizations and dialogue are sub-par, and it’s all rendered artlessly, without any realistic vim and vigor.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Ninja comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 widescreen, divided into 12 chapters, with a motion-animated main menu. Audio comes by way of English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and stereo 2.0 mixes, and optional English and Spanish subtitles are also included. Apart from a small trailer gallery featuring previews for Lost City Raiders and four other titles, however, there are no supplemental special features. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) D (Disc)
What are dreams and why do we have them? No, I’m not talking about adolescent moist ones, or adult, force-conjured reveries involving threesomes with Scarlett Johansson and Kate Beckinsale. I’m talking about the trippy, looped-logic things with melting clocks, set in a country to which you have never traveled, and involving your boss, your mom, a for-some-reason extremely important game of flag football, and that kid from fourth grade that you had all but forgotten about. What gives there?
OK, needless to say there isn’t some neat, pat answer. (Part of it is that you’re probably weird, and another part may be your roommate’s propensity for spiking the guacamole dip with mescaline.) Still, this hour-long Nova title focuses on a group of leading dream researchers as they embark on a variety of
neurological and psychological experiments to investigate the hidden world of
sleep and dreams. It’s interesting, heady stuff, delving deep into the thoughts and brains of a variety
of dreamers. The range of compressed information and sleep-related phenomena here is impressive, from
human narcoleptics and sleepwalking cats to those who can’t seem to dream at all. (Short answer: we all do, whether or not we tend to remember them.) The phenomenon of recurring
nightmares also get some inquiry and investigation (my most notable one of these as a kid involved killer Eskimos trying to disembowel me, which informs my aversion to this day to Inuit door-to-door knives salesmen), as does the subconscious mind’s ability to camouflage but still play out traumas that we try to bury. Fascinating stuff, all the way around.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, What Are Dreams? comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with a simple English language stereo track, and no bonus features. To order a copy, phone (800) PLAY-PBS or click here; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. B+ (Movie) D (Disc)
