An unflinching and unadorned look at Thailand’s underground world of children’s boxers — of which there are over 30,000, including many young females — Buffalo Girls is a nonfiction film tailormade for the scrunchy-faced, hand-wringing concern of the NPR set, a surprising and sad glimpse into a heretofore unknown subculture that will have any sensible first-worlder saying, “Hey… at least I don’t have it that bad.”
The movie unfolds mostly in Rayong changwat — a low-lying coastal province in the south central area of the country, nestled against the Gulf of Thailand — and its title is a nod to the local derogatory term for the poor farmers that dot the region. It takes as its two subjects two eight-year-olds (yes, you read that right), Stam and Pet, who have taken up Muay Thai prizefighting to help provide for their families. As mentioned, this isn’t some exotic curiosity, but rather an entire industry. While there is a pinch of pot-of-gold-at-the-end-of-the-rainbow self-betterment incentive involved, for many families this is viewed as something of an economic necessity.
So Stam (above) and Pet — the former a cheery little warrior who wears make-up in the ring, the latter a sometimes reticent survivor of a crippling childhood illness who sports a partially shaved head as part of her mother’s prayer deal for her health — train like any other athletes, lifting little weights and honing their roundhouse kicks. Eventually, they square off for the 44-pound championship title, with a cash prize that could forever change the lives of one family.
Director Todd Kellstein takes a largely hands-off approach to his subject matter, not unlike fellow documentarians Frederick Wiseman or Yung Chang, though with admittedly more of an emphasis on interview footage than either of those filmmakers. There is significant thematic overlap with the recent Girl Model, which focuses in large part on a pubescent Eastern European who gives modeling in Japan a crack in an effort to help her family, and also didn’t offer up easy, empty advocacy.
But Kellstein’s fly-on-the-wall tack, while fair, also eventually comes off as indifferent, or at least an intellectual dodge. There is a difference, after all, between passing judgment on a subject and subjecting it to honest questioning. When a bookie, Walee Niyom, talks about in-fight baht kickbacks or pledges that various bettors make to fighters, in an attempt to encourage greater effort, the film doesn’t fully dig into this. Nor is its explanation of the country’s kiddie-level fight scene infrastructure solid, in any particular way, shape or form.
Stam and Pet are engaging kids, and their situations make them sympathetic subjects. But Kellstein confuses an implicit and sidelong inquiry into the exploitative underbelly of this unusual subculture with a complete lack of mooring context. The result feels frustratingly aimless, even as one wonders about the futures of these and other little girls. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more information on the film, meanwhile, click here to visit its website. Buffalo Girls opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle NoHo 7. (Union Entertainment Group, unrated, 64 minutes)
Category Archives: Film Reviews
Zero Dark Thirty
A tunnel-visioned procedural that charts the decade-long pursuit and killing of Osama bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty reteams The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow and her screenwriting partner Mark Boal, to involving effect. A naturalistic film far more darkly gripping than rousing, this is adult filmmaking at something often approaching its finest, even if it does unfold at something of an academic remove — a dirge wrapped in grey morality and served up with a pulse-quickening side dish of siege pay-off.
The film unfolds in the nebulous miasma of post-September 11 uncertainty, when the fear of another homeland terrorist attack gripped the heart of nearly every citizen, and certainly every government official tasked with preventing the same. The search for bin Laden — as also chronicled in Peter Bergen’s Manhunt, an excellent read for anyone interested further in the same subject matter — drags on for years, as chiefly funneled through the perspectives and actions of a group of CIA operatives, including Dan (Jason Clarke) and Maya (Jessica Chastain, above). The former is a hard-charging agent who works interrogations at black sites. He has no qualms about harsh, “enhanced” methods of information extraction, but eventually comes to recognize that the politics are changing. “You don’t want to be the last one holding the dog collar when the Congressional committees come,” he advises.
Maya, on the other hand, has a thin layer of inner conflict regarding means that encases a steely resolve. After bin Laden slips a noose in the mountains of Tora Bora, while other analysts believe he may still be seeking refuge in remote tribal areas, Maya (an amalgamation of a couple real-life characters) pursues a long-shot lead related to a trusted al Qaeda courier, convinced it might hold the key to bin Laden’s whereabouts. When the information finally leads to a break, the film, in its third act, pivots to a telling of the preparation for the Navy Seal Team raid on the terrorist leader’s three-story compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The movie’s most obvious thematic benchmarks are United 93 and Black Hawk Down, whose respective solemnity and gritty, jostling military subjectivity are both evoked in fitful flashes. Mostly, though, the recent film that Zero Dark Thirty chiefly recalls is David Fincher’s Zodiac, an exhaustively methodical overview of the years-long hunt for the same-named serial killer who stalked the San Francisco Bay area during the late 1960s and early ’70s. Like that movie, Bigelow and Boal’s film celebrates, in its own square-jawed way, flinty and obdurate resolve. It is a movie about work — and, yes, the difficult decisions and emotional tolls that the dogged pursuit of a singular goal can bring about, but the work itself first and foremost.
A superlative technical package helps communicate this most directly. Handheld camerawork and naturalistic lighting give Zero Dark Thirty a stripped-down, streamlined feeling that’s worlds apart from the brawny, testosteronized action theater of Michael Bay and other directors concenred with macho posturing. This film is anti-pop. Its characterizations are spare, highlighting the narrative and not the individuals involved — so much so that the few scenes of personal, to-scale catharsis feel at times extraordinarily heightened, jarringly out of place, or a unique combination of both. “Enjoy” isn’t the right word to use for an experience like this, but Zero Dark Thirty is an involving cinematic act of bearing witness. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Sony/Columbia/Annapurna Pictures, R, 157 minutes)
Ben Lee: Catch My Disease
A rangy documentary look at the Australian-born singer-songwriter of its title, Ben Lee: Catch My Disease charts much along the same lines as Kerthy Fix and Gail O’Hara’s Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields, another generally appreciated if not always appreciable glimpse behind the creative curtain of a curious and prodigious musical talent. The same qualities that help give director Amiel Courtin-Wilson’s film its strongest pull — a solid sense of scope, plus the happy involvement of its quirky subject and other interesting interviewees, like ex-flame Claire Danes and good friends Winona Ryder and Michelle Williams — also contribute to a polite distance and overall play-nice feeling that make the movie of reward really only for those who are already fans of Lee. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Be advised, too, that Catch My Disease is available on iTunes and all other major digital platforms. (GoDigital, unrated, 86 minutes)
Dead Dad
A fitful but engaging tale of familial drift and erratic reconnection, director Ken J. Adachi’s debut film, Dead Dad, exhibits a mature grasp beyond its years of the manner in which swallowed adolescent resentments pervert adult relationships. Shot over the course of a month and produced entirely from the funds of a successful Kickstarter campaign, Dead Dad is robustly emblematic of a certain slice of what I’ve coined “Silver Lake cinema,” ambling Los Angeles-set dramedies that — with a nod toward mumblecore and an indebted fist bump for Miranda July — are chiefly known for their aversion to programmatic dramatic pivot points and indulgence in mood.
When their dad passes away, Alex (Lucas K. Peterson) and Jane (Jenni Melear) head back to Los Angeles, where their sibling Russ (Kyle Arrington) has remained, living with his girlfriend Hailey (Allyn Rachel). Their father was a grumpy bastard and only intermittently attentive parent, and the letter he leaves his kids doesn’t do much to bring everyone together peaceably. Russ resents the fact that his brother and sister went off and lived their lives, in essence leaving him to care for their dad. After an awkward funeral, the three try to sort through conflicted feelings, and figure out what to do with his ashes.
For Adachi, working from a script co-written with Arrington, this means multiple alcoholic toasts involving inappropriate honesty, sensitively scored montages where characters do things like ride those quarter-fed kiddie rides outside of grocery stores, and the 1st birthday party of a hipster couple. If it sounds precious and twee, it at times is, but never insufferably so.
This is in large part because of the movie’s artful telling — Eric Bader’s sun-kissed cinematography is warm, and enveloping — but also its solid cast. Peterson, as the more sardonic and removed brother, ably captures the demeanor of a guy who has built up soft but high interpersonal walls. The sympathetic, appealing Melear, meanwhile, is a ringer for a young Dana Plato. Together, the cast has a wonderful and altogether believable sibling rapport, drawing viewers in.
Its realizations and revelations are small and its ending is a bit too pat, to be sure, but Dead Dad is a delicate little arthouse bauble that augurs good things for the young talent involved. Part tantalizing road trip, part garden party sketch, part cyclical snapshot of passive-aggressive recrimination, it’s a look at the ups and downs that come with being part of a family. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, meanwhile, click here. (Dead Dad LLC/Hansen Films, unrated, 86 minutes)
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2
The hugely successful serial adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s teen-friendly vampires-and-werewolves soap opera winds its way to a conclusion with The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, probably the best entry of a middling series. There is a certain ceiling for melodrama this programmatically plotted, but after a rather sluggish opening half, director Bill Condon delivers a rousing finale that will work fans into a tizzy. More satisfying than objectively good, the movie serves as a fitting capstone on a five-year, $2.5 billion-and-counting film franchise whose robust embrace not only helped launch the careers of young stars like Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner and Ashley Greene, but also solidified young adult and tween-lit as among the ripest properties for cinematic exploitation. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Summit, PG-13, 115 minutes)
A Royal Affair
The official Danish Best Foreign Language Film Oscar entry, A Royal Affair charts the story of a passionate and forbidden love triangle that has consequences for an entire nation. Gorgeously photographed if familiarly constructed, the film is more or less catnip for urban foreign film aficionados and the NPR set, breathing life into period piece lust and intrigue, and in the process destabilizing stuffy notions of what monarchial drama entails. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Magnolia, R, 138 minutes)
Man at War
A hopelessly myopic look at videogamers obsessed with a very specific computer flight simulator, documentary Man at War locks its sights on a motley international community of IL-2 Sturmovik aficionados, who engage in historically accurate aerial battles in an effort to relive World War II and in some cases try to even rewrite its history. Lacking any sort of compelling entrance point into this insular world, or even much in the way of an examination of its subjects’ individual and collective tetherings to the world around them, this movies fumbles away any potentially interesting sub-cultural curiosity or cachet it might on the surface possess. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (HBO Central Europe, unrated, 70 minutes)
The Loneliest Planet
On one of the deeper album cuts from their 2004 release How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, U2’s Bono sang, on “A Man and a Woman,” of the “mysterious distance” between the sexes, and how one can often find themselves — for better and worse — lost in that chasm of the ineffable and perhaps unknowable. A cinematic travelogue and unusual three-hander about a pair of young, engaged lovers (Gael Garcia Bernal and Hani Furstenberg) who undertake a guided backpack tour through the Caucasus Mountains in formerly Soviet Georgia, writer-director Julia Loktev’s artfully restrained The Loneliest Planet provides a hazy yet engaging expedition through that gap.
There’s a hint of Gus Van Sant’s Gerry here, with the movie’s wide shots and lulling rhythms. And yet The Loneliest Planet, the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2011 AFI Film Festival, comes across as ambiguous without being phony or overly coy. It could do with an editorial haircut, but in its refusal to say much directly, or put a bow on its conflict(s), Loktev and her film invite viewers to ponder what they know about their lovers and loved ones and what if anything those gaps in their knowledge necessarily mean about character and compatibility. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Sundance Selects, R, 113 minutes)
The House I Live In
A searing, stirring and deeply humanistic documentary look at the collateral damage and terrible consequences of the United States’ decades-long “war on drugs,” Eugene Jarecki‘s The House I Live In is an emotionally shattering work, but also one that has a hefty, legitimate intellectual punching power. Suffused with a righteous anger that the filmmaker methodically turns up to a full boil, this Grand Jury Prize winner from this year’s Sundance Film Festival is a compelling portrait of failed social policy.
While the drug war is for many synonymous with the Reagan administration, it was actually formally launched under Richard Nixon. Since 1971, it’s cost more than $1 trillion and racked up 45 million arrests. The result? Of the 2.3 million people imprisoned in the United States, more than 500,000 are for nonviolent drug crimes. In the meantime, the rate of drug use has remained relatively constant, and in some arenas actually gone up.
Jarecki (Why We Fight) uses his own seemingly unlikely personal connection to the drug war as an in point. Jarecki grew up with Nannie Jeter, an African-American maid and caregiver of his parents who was like a second mother to him, and he played with Nannie’s kids and their cousins. Experiencing the loss of her son and others around him through this prism, Jarecki tries to square U.S. governmental policy with the facts of its disproportionate impact on the African-American community.
The House I Live In also has an array of powerfully informed and articulate interview subjects who have decades of research and experience in the field. This roster includes, probably most notably, author David Simon (creator of HBO’s The Wire, above) who spent years as a journalist covering Baltimore’s crime beat. He highlights in unnerving fashion the financial incentivization of the system as presently constituted; paid both in overtime for the number of arrests (due to extra processing time and paperwork), and, departmentally, in civil forfeiture, police departments operate on statistics, essentially. With prison beds to be filled and budgets in some cases needing to be supplemented, basic human nature frequently dictates targeting the lowest-hanging fruit.
The film really hits a groove, though, when it delves into mandatory minimum sentencing, and the legally mandated disparity in prison terms for crack and powder cocaine, which for decades stood at 100:1. (After intense pressure, this was finally, during President Obama‘s tenure, trimmed… to a 18:1 ratio.) This and much other evidence point to a systematic war based on race and class, something further driven home by a historical overview of the criminalization of other drugs which were linked to different immigrant populations and ethnic minorities spanning time — from the opium dens of Chinese-Americans in the late 1800s and early 1900s to the popularity of marijuana with Mexican farmhands in the 1930s.
Those hard of heart will not want to cede the point above, but The House I Live In is no empty, reflexive work of pure liberal feeling — a charge often levied at the work of Michael Moore, say. It is filtered through a personal lens but rigorously researched, and compelling for its scope and the inclusivity of opinion of those (like judges, prison guards and inmates) themselves caught up in this maddening cycle with seemingly little bottom-line benefit. Jarecki’s film is a call for a reasoned, humane approach to a problem we have mis-prosecuted. It’s one of the year’s best documentaries, but also a work that needs the heft of citizen supporters behind it, because it might be able to actually help make a difference. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Abramorama, unrated, 108 minutes)
The Revisionaries
A remarkably humane and well-rounded look at a perhaps unlikely yet nonetheless incredibly divisive political hot-button issue, director Scott Thurman’s The Revisionaries delves into the Texas School Board of Education’s attempts to vacuum out through legislation various language and historical examples objectionable to movement conservatives from the nation’s textbooks. Pointed without being nasty or unfair, this fascinating movie is a gripping, must-see work for nonfiction film aficionados, politicos and current events intellectuals alike — an engrossing social document of our turbulent times and often at-odds relationship with not only science but, more broadly, experts-in-field.
It seems utterly ridiculous, but in Austin, Texas, 15 people actually sit ready to exert undue influence over what is taught to the next generation of American schoolchildren. Once every decade, the state’s Board of Education (BOE) rewrites the teaching and textbook standards for its nearly five million students. And when it comes to textbooks (because of the state’s purchasing power, and 110 percent upfront payment), what happens in Texas affects the nation as a whole, since textbook manufacturers are often hesitant to act against their “recommendations.”
Various right-wing organizations have cannily sought to advance their agenda through this process, making for an unusual frontline in the country’s ongoing, so-called culture war. After briefly serving on his local school board, Don McLeroy (above), a dentist and avowed young-Earth creationist, was elected to the BOE, and later appointed chairman. During his time on the board, McLeroy — who once declared, “Education is too important not to be politicized” — has overseen the adoption of new science and history curriculum standards, aided by Liberty University law professor Cynthia Dunbar and others.
The Revisionaries charts this bureaucratic trench warfare, wherein language regarding evolution and intelligent design is argued about back and forth, and subjected to various amendments. Kathy Miller, of the liberal-minded Texas Freedom Network, and Ron Wetherington, an anthropology professor from Southern Methodist University, are among those who weigh in on behalf of what is widely accepted as settled science during these board meeting debates, where politicking and barely concealed contentiousness are ever-present, bubbling just around the edges. Later, as the debate shifts to language about topics like slavery, suffrage, the Civil Rights Movement and important minority historical figures, McLeroy fights for his chairmanship and then his very re-election to the BOE.
Through all of this, director Thurman gives equal time to these heartily clashing viewpoints. Rather than remaining satisfied with leaning on two-dimensional archetypes, he gives all of the aforementioned subjects a chance to explain both their personal views and their opinions of the BOE’s mission. The movie also follows McLeroy around at his dental practice and church, showing a private side of him that sometimes contrasts his rhetoric (in both directions) in interesting ways. The result, rather remarkably, deflates the fanned flames of partisan discord, while still highlighting the legitimate stakes involved in some of the curious erasures the more right-wing members of the BOE seek. The Revisionaries takes a state issue that has national implications, but doesn’t hog-tie it to national frenzy and political party talking points.
It helps, of course, that Thurman’s subjects are for the most part impassioned but not rhetorical bomb-throwers of the first order. Wetherington is a calm but shrewd academic who doesn’t stoop to automatically demonizing his foes; after all, he can parry with facts and scientific method, so when he decries the “flammable mixture of ignorance and arrogance” involved in the GOP’s rabblerousing pushback against so-called elites, it has less unfocused rage and more the surgically precise, knuckle-rapping exasperation of your favorite Socratic teacher. McLeroy, too, for his part, comes across less as a conniving anti-intellectual and more genuinely befuddled by the contempt for his efforts — a decent family man trying to split perhaps unsplittable hairs when it comes to pruning “liberal” viewpoints and claiming that he is not actually advocating for his personal beliefs. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, click here to visit its website. (Kino Lorber, unrated, 83 minutes)
Brooklyn Castle
An Audience Award winner at this year’s SXSW Film Festival, documentary Brooklyn Castle is, in the mold of fellow nonfiction flicks of emotional uplift like Spellbound, Jig and Make Believe: The Battle to Become the World’s Best Teen Magician, a movie about kids reaching for dreams, and discovering the causal relationship between hard work and self-betterment. In this case it’s not spelling, dancing or sleight of hand that’s under the sub-cultural microscope, but instead chess, by way of an influential and successful after-school program at a New York City public school.
A Brooklyn pilot school where more than two-thirds of the students live below the federal poverty level, I.S. 318 has the highest ranked junior high chess team in the country and a record of excellence which they have sustained for decades, piling up 30 national championships. Overseen by teacher/coach Elizabeth Spiegel and assistant principal and program coordinator John Galvin, the club serves as an important academic extracurricular activity, helping keep its approximately 85 members busy after school, and focused on lateral thinking and problem-solving.
Director Katie Dellamaggiore’s film takes a very conventional chronological tack, charting the team through the lens of a handful of members as they prepare for national competitions and simultaneously deal with looming, drastic budget cuts that threaten the continued existence of the program. Most of the kids here are articulate beyond their years, but Dellamaggiore also locates their latent vulnerability, which makes for an affecting experience that pulls the viewer along, and helps Brooklyn Castle more or less triumph over some of its more programmatic aspects.
Chess is a proxy, of course, a stand-in for perhaps some of the soundest and most important advice not frequently taught in middle and high school — that answers in life are not always immediately clear, that a deeper analysis is required. While math, history and other disciplines necessarily rest on less subjective facts, chess has both style and rhythms to go along with its rules.
It’s for this reason, Spiegel opines, “the fact that it’s not the direction society (at large) is going,” that maybe chess is more valuable as an educational tool than merely a diversionary game or hobby. In pursuing a deeper interest in and focus upon chess, students learn to think in ways both methodical and abstract, and also stand to reap the future dividends of expectations and pressure. It’s easy to fall prey to cynicism, but in its spotlighting of kids, teachers and parents working hard and together in the face of tough circumstances, Brooklyn Castle provides a snapshot of indomitable American can-do attitude, and gives one hope. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Producers Distribution Agency, unrated, 101 minutes)
Wreck-It Ralph
A nostalgic affection for vintage gaming and an openhearted, family-friendly story of self-acceptance and friendship are skillfully interwoven in the colorful Wreck-It Ralph, a very fun and engaging adventure about a lonely bad guy who wants to be a hero. Powered by a standout concept delivered upon in a winning manner — that, in similar fashion to the Toy Story franchise, videogame characters exist in worlds awakened when humans aren’t looking — the film, with fun vocal turns from Sarah Silverman and John C. Reilly, serves as the most natural and effortlessly readymade animated feature for future franchise exploration since Shrek. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Walt Disney, PG, 107 minutes)
America Stripped: Naked Las Vegas
David Palmer’s America Stripped: Naked Las Vegas follows photographer Greg Friedler as he undertakes a most unusual mission — trying to corral subjects of every shape and socioeconomic stature to pose for his fourth city-specific book of nudes. In doing so, the documentary assays the differences between nudity and nakedness, and also takes the elevated temperature of a highly transient town of fabricated bliss.
Friedler’s previous Naked books focused on New York, Los Angeles and London, with simple side-by-side black-and-white photos of subjects from all walks of life, both clothed and undressed. His plans for Las Vegas include color, perhaps unsurprisingly, but otherwise remain the same. Doing local press to help publicize his work, Friedler slowly but surely rounds up a fairly eclectic group of sitters (well, standers), including his one white whale — an Elvis impersonator. Along with the expected roster of escorts and adult industry-types (a dominatrix, a fetish companion with fangs and a woman with natural 48E breasts who wants to get them enlarged to 54GG), there’s a college professor who lost her boyfriend in the Iraq War, several musicians and casino workers, a seemingly buttoned-up lawyer whose suit covers dozens of tattoos, a homeless man, pre- and post-op transsexuals, and even a 6’7″ accountant who stops by to pose on a whim.
Palmer’s movie chronicles the photo shoots and some of Friedler’s ruminations on the process (a lack of female pubic hair seems to cut across barriers of class and occupation), while also then spinning off asides on some of the more colorful subjects. It may sound tawdry or like “art” of the most convenient, winking sort, but Friedler’s skill with portraiture and genuine interest in the human condition come through (one participant smartly describes his work as “a book with no words that you can read”), and the film is legitimately engaging on an intellectual level.
Still, one wants more. Friedler’s parents, Cecille and Jerry, are glimpsed briefly in one little soundbite clip, but — some of its prurient delights notwithstanding — America Stripped would have benefited from a more committed exploration of its protagonist’s thought processes and frustrations. His sense of sincerity is readily apparent, but the specifics of some of Friedler’s feelings remain muted, even as he confesses to a rising tide of anxiety and depression just from staying in Las Vegas for the duration of his shoot. An even hungrier film would have tried to strip away a bit more, and reveal more starkly its main character. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. America Stripped is also available on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu and VOD. For more information, click here to visit its website. (Gravitas Ventures, unrated, 77 minutes)
Pusher
An English-language remake of Drive director Nicholas Winding Refn’s gritty 1996 Danish film of the same name, itself the first of a pulpy trilogy, crime drama Pusher has a neon-lit nervy energy — at once slick and grungy — and the sort of unabashed, screw-tightening rhythms that genre enthusiasts will embrace. As directed by Luis Prieto, it’s the tale of a drug pusher pushed too far — a man, caught up in a closing net of owed debt, resorting to desperate means that even he finds distasteful. It’s well acted and for the most part engaging, but also unfolds upon laid narrative track, without much originality.
Frank (Richard Coyle) is a low-level British narcotics dealer who pals around with the motor-mouthed Tony (Bronson Webb, channeling Rhys Ifans by way of Sam Rockwell). Frank’s exotic dancer girlfriend Flo (Agyness Deyn, who sort of recalls a young Kelly Preston) sells for him too, but Frank, perhaps naively, also has other schemes in the works. When he advances a kilo of cocaine from his Serbian supplier, Milo (Zlatko Buric, reprising his role from the Danish trilogy) to pull off a lucrative side deal, things unfortunately don’t go according to plan. Milo’s rising impatience finally makes him a mortal enemy, and Frank finds himself having to try to scrape together money from disparate sources in order to hold Milo’s burly enforcer (Mem Ferda) at bay.
Pusher more or less tracks with Refn’s original movie, but also variously recalls Guy Ritchie’s crime capers (though not as labyrinthine and outlandish), Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly (though not as steeped in sociopolitical statement) and many, many other similar works. The movie is stylishly photographed, and Pietro definitely finds a way to connect the action with his protagonist’s mental state, eventually even incorporating a few flash inserts to convey Frank’s increasing panic.
Both wearied and panicked, Coyle’s performance is shot through with anxiety. He’s the film’s anchor — the rabbit who finds each new potential avenue of escape sealed off. But Pusher also feels familiar, and doesn’t so much build in tension as it does check off a series of second act boxes en route toward Frank’s attempted flight. There’s a soul here, but one wishes the film had pushed some of its characters even further, to explore more deeply its chaotic fringes. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Radius/Vertigo Films, R, 86 minutes)
Silent Hill: Revelation
A cheap, clunky sequel to 2006’s videogame adaptation Silent Hill, this programmatic follow-up goes through all the genre motions with the passion, commitment and attention to detail of a teenager cycling through a laundry list of mandated chores prior to an evening out. A frenzied and narratively muddled cash-grab that disimproves upon its predecessor in every imaginable way, this uninspired effort may represent the theatrical release death knell for the franchise.
Absent the presences of originating writer Roger Avary and director Christophe Gans, Revelation feels an infinitely more clubby and insular affair than its predecessor, desultory and dependent on a rabid and uncritical emotional investment rooted in the source material. Australian-born Adelaide Clemens is the movie’s sole bright spot. She’s a good match for Radha Mitchell, the star of the first film who only cameos here, even though Clemens plays her adopted daughter. With her short blonde hair and sympathetic visage, she resembles a cross between Michelle Williams and Carey Mulligan, exuding an ever-present vulnerability that stands head and shoulders above this claptrap. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Open Road, R, 94 minutes)
Yogawoman
Narrated by Annette Bening, Yogawoman is a rangy but lethargically paced documentary about the gender-specific practice of yoga, and a serviceable and well-meaning project that could have benefited from a stronger editorial vision.
Yoga is presently practiced by an estimated 20 million people in the United States, 85 percent of whom are women. But the ancient practice, born in India thousands of years ago, was actually designed specifically for men, and initially brought west by a lineage of male teachers. Directors Kate McIntyre Clere and Saraswati Clere shine a light on some of the world’s leading experts and teachers who have helped blaze a dynamic new trail for women, replacing yoga’s more rigid style with a more distinctly feminine practice that honors flow, strength, community, and even activism and the cyclical nature of women’s lives.
This is clearly a sermon to the choir — there’s little effort or care paid to an in-point for general audiences, even though Indra Devi, doyenne of yoga from the 1930s, is nominally touched upon. Yogawoman clearly has a lot to say, but it lacks the ability to cogently group and order its thoughts. Borderline inane narration (“Desperate to keep up with increasing pressures of the modern world, women are looking to find peace and balance in their lives”) does the material no particular good, undercutting the naturally sympathetic and erudite cadence of Bening, an avowed yoga practitioner.
Some of Yogawoman is quite interesting (in particular a seemingly successful “Art of Yoga” rehabilitative program for prisoners in a juvenile women’s system in San Mateo, California), and it makes a strong and easy connection between yoga and a more settled mind. The numerous physical health benefits of yoga are also addressed, though in ping-pong fashion. With a stronger narrative spine and a little more sense of gender-gap curiosity — about how and why this supposed “men’s practice” made the leap that it did — Yogawoman could itself bridge the gap between faithful yoga adherents and a general audience. As is, it does not achieve that. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Yogawoman opens this week in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Monica 4-Plex, NoHo 7 and Playhouse 7. For additional information on other theatrical engagements and the movie in general, click here to visit its website. (Shadow Distribution, unrated, 83 minutes)
Lunch
Lunch, from director Donna Kanter, is a documentary whose simple logline pretty much serves as an accurate barometer of one’s potential enjoyment. Over almost 40 years, a group of comedy writers and directors — including Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Arthur Hiller and many more — have gathered every other Wednesday for food and fraternal fellowship. The membership roster and the meeting places have occasionally changed, but the friendships forged and senses of humor indulged and displayed have remained steady. This nonfiction snapshot gives an overview of their time together, and in the process illuminates Hollywood spanning several eras. For the viewer for whom that sounds even remotely interesting, this is up your alley; others might want to skip it. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Lunch opens in Los Angeles this week at the Laemmle NoHo 7. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (Kanter Company, unrated, 78 minutes)
Citadel
Winner of the Midnighter Audience Award at this year’s SXSW Film Festival, Irish writer-director Ciarán Foy’s psychological horror movie Citadel centers on a stricken agoraphobe who’s struggling to raise his newborn daughter alone and protect her from a roving band of vicious thugs who look like Jawas and seem to be stalking them. Occasional bursts of effective atmospheric dread punctuate what is otherwise a thinly imagined genre exercise that would work far better as a short film. Aneurin Barnard’s lead performance is one of full investment, and a certain feverish intensity. But he’s too frequently grasping at straws, because Foy’s script for Citadel gives him nothing of convincing substance to hold onto. In stronger hands it could be read as a class parable; as is, it’s a muddled, pointless mess. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Gravitas Ventures/Cinedigm/Flatiron Film Company, R, 84 minutes)
We Are Legion: The Story of Hacktivists
You may think you know about Anonymous, the decentralized online collective who have merrily pranked and disrupted high-level corporate and governmental websites, and gone to war with Scientology to boot. You don’t, proves Brian Knappenberger’s wildly new engaging documentary, We Are Legion: The Story of Hacktivists.
Over the past couple years, Anonymous has been associated with raids or denial-of-service attacks on hundreds of targets, from Mastercard, Visa, PayPal and Sony to the Motion Picture Association of America and cyber-security/intelligence firms like HBGary Federal. We Are Legion not only details their exploits, but also delves inside the roots and culture of the group, exploring early hacktivist collectives like Cult of the Dead Cow and Electronic Disturbance Theater before charting Anonymous’ birth and fitful “maturation” from an offshoot message board on the website 4Chan.
The film’s technical package is fairly unexceptional, save for two notable elements. Composer John Dragonetti’s contributions provide We Are Legion with some extra oomph, and Skype-recorded video chats with various masked Anonymous members help give a rounded authenticity to the project. While tech authors like Richard Thieme and Steven Levy, amongst other talking heads, provide wonderful mainstream context and recap, it is these chats (and other more professionally recorded interviews with outed Anonymous members) that give Knappenberger’s movie a real personality, and a charged sense of self-narration from an organic, evolving entity.
Anonymous started out pulling goofy stunts en masse — think videogame-crashing, Rick-rolling, LOLcats, and other popular Internet memes. Then, in 2006 and ’07, they turned their sites on Hal Turner, a white supremacist with a self-syndicated radio show. Internet-based pranks were paired with other means of disruption of his hateful messages, and a kind of greater activist consciousness was born. Some of its other battles — including its tangles with Scientology, over their serial harassment of ex-church members and any journalist who deigns to write something critical about them — are epically hilarious, and their narrative recap here is fun and entertaining on a level completely devoid of any other sociopolitical context.
Still, while Anonymous’ support of WikiLeaks and its embattled founder, Julian Assange, got big press when the group targeted online financial companies who disabled their contribution buttons on the site, a lot of folks in the world at large don’t realize the group’s connection and indeed critical importance in not only fomenting the Arab Spring, but providing crucial support to besieged democracy activists in Tunisia and Egypt — validating SSL keys and certificates to help circumvent governmental shutdowns of the Internet, and sending out tips on how to make homemade gas masks and protective body armor. The pat soundbite gained some traction even in the mainstream media — that these governmental overthrows were made possible by Facebook, Twitter and social media — but We Are Legion shows that it’s no cliché.
For this reason and others, the governmental crackdown on some of these hacktivists should give freedom-of-speech-and-assembly town criers plenty of pause. There are sometimes laws broken, but a lot of what Anonymous does and supports could easily be described as civil disobedience — witness their early embrace of the Occupy Wall Street movement. After all, we live more and more of our lives online these days, so do we not have a right and space to also protest online? For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, including its trailer, click here to visit its website. (Luminant Media, unrated, 93 minutes)
Nobody Walks
An artful, perceptive look at human desire’s ability to arrive in sudden, rolling fashion, like a tidal swell, Nobody Walks is a delicate but somewhat mesmeric arthouse bauble from director Ry Russo-Young and co-writer Lena Dunham, who’s shot to popularity with HBO’s Girls. The winner of a special jury prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the movie is a fragile but rewarding slice of “Silver Lake cinema,” which is to say a fairly invigorating breath of fresh air for cineastes and something a bit too precious by half for audiences steeped in more melodramatic reward.
Decamping from New York, 23-year-old visual artist Martine (Olivia Thirlby) holes up in a guest house of the aforementioned trendy hilly community of Los Angeles. As a favor to his wife, Julie (Rosemarie DeWitt), sound editor Peter (John Krasinski) agrees to help Martine, the friend of a family friend, and the two set about concocting Lynchian soundscapes for her art installation film. Martine’s arrival brings changes, though. Julie and Peter have a blended family, and while 16-year-old daughter Kolt (India Ennenga, quite good), from Julie’s first husband Leroy (Dylan McDermott), is nursing a crush on David (Rhys Wakefield), Peter’s older assistant, David is also busy bedding Martine. As Peter’s own feelings for Martine surge, meanwhile, Julie, a pyschologist, deals with the possibly misplaced affections of a patient, Billy (Justin Kirk).
Russo-Young and Dunham have a nice rapport, and their sensibilities fit hand-in-glove. The latter’s skill with pin-prick dialogue (evident in Billy’s sessions with Julie) gives the movie some pleasant pop, but Martine’s backstory arrives by way of oblique hints rather than strenuously telegraphed motivations. This results in a movie that kind of leads from its back foot. While a story strand involving Kolt’s study of Italian with a tutor is less successful, and evidence of the piece’s ornamental expressionism, Nobody Walks (the “in L.A.” is understood) is predominantly a film of acutely observed moments of human longing and failing.
In swatches of story, tone and mood, Nobody Walks fitfully recalls other SoCal works like How to Cheat, Garden Party, Laurel Canyon and even Greenberg, and director of photography Christopher Blauvelt crafts a soft visual template that, with stirring original music by Fall on Your Sword, hints at melancholic fumbling and reinvention. Russo-Young (the rather striking You Won’t Miss Me, a 2009 collaboration with Stella Schnabel) again proves herself a stellar chronicler of the damages young people often self-inflict despite better judgments.
If its ending is a bit too pat — Russo-Young pulls an early ripcord in shrugging fashion, opting for conventional-leaning wrap-up when ambiguity would have seemingly served the story more truly — it’s to its considerable credit that Nobody Walks doesn’t unfold in a world where women are merely subject to the whims of sexual advance, but instead have their own conflicted feelings and desires. Reflected uncertainty doesn’t always make for the most comforting cinematic landscape, but here it’s a lovingly expressed inconvenient truth. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its theatrical engagements, Nobody Walks is also available on VOD. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (Magnolia, R, 83 minutes)
A Whisper to a Roar
A sort of voting rights companion piece to Steve York’s A Force More Powerful, which was a rangy nonfiction film about non-violent resistance movements around the world and spanning time, Ben Moses’ A Whisper to a Roar is a powerful documentary that ties together the heroic and ongoing efforts of democracy activists in five countries, and reaffirms the human spirit’s innate desire for freedom.
“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong,” Voltaire once wrote, and A Whisper to a Roar offers up ample evidence of this axiom, in the form of lethal pushback by dictators, autocrats and other corrupted power systems when faced with challenges to their authority. A striking segment focusing on the Ukraine opens with the story of kidnapped journalist Georgiy Gongadze, and then charts the rise of the country’s “Orange Revolution” of 2004, and the poisoning of reformist presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez’s distastefully violent rhetoric and overreach in closing radio and TV stations that offer dissent to his policies is examined. Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s slandering and incarceration is detailed, as are the brutal policies of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. And in perhaps the strongest narrative strand — or at least the one freshest and with the most direct implications for the United States — Egypt’s crackdown on democracy protesters and imprisonment of opposition leader Ayman Nour is cast into stark relief.
Shot over the course of three years, A Whisper to a Roar deftly intercuts back and forth between all of these narratives, which unfold at different times over the past 15 years. In doing so, it shows their commonality in “breaking down the barrier of apathy,” as one interviewee puts it. Social media and/or liberalized press have helped open new channels of communication amongst disaffected constituencies, and emboldened calls for democratic participation. The poor and otherwise marginalized see, by way of both other international examples and the skittish actions of their own authoritarian governments, the precarious and assailable nature of systemic corruption and oppression, through sustained public pressure.
The production package is fairly straightforward, but the range of interviewees runs the gamut from frontline demonstrators and participants to more intellectual members of the international commentariat, which give the movie a rooted sense of scope. Smartly, too, director Moses doesn’t tip the hands of his narrative in advance by fully identifying the occupations and standings of his subjects, leaving room for some suspense for those who don’t follow or recall international news. Emotionally engaging and impactful, A Whisper to a Roar is a well put together look at the yearning and universal nature of values we too frequently ascribe as uniquely American. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. A Whisper to a Roar opened this week in Los Angeles at the Laemmle NoHo 7. For more information, visit the movie’s website. (Appleseed Entertainment, unrated, 94 minutes)
Sexy Baby
With the proliferation of online pornography, the advent of “sexting” and the ever-present synaptic connection of social media, sexual maturation and in particular notions of womanhood are changing for adolescents and twentysomethings. Sexy Baby, an inquisitive and engaging new documentary from Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus, attempts to sift through this mass media assault and shifting mores, to determine the toll this seeming increase in titillation is taking on America. In addition to its iTunes and VOD availability, Sexy Baby opens this week in Los Angeles at the Laemmle NoHo 7. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, visit its website and/or Facebook page. (Area 23A, unrated, 83 minutes)
3,2,1… Frankie Go Boom
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)
The Flat
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)
Photographic Memory
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)