Littlerock

Film Reviews

A nicely photographed and initially intriguing character study of a road trip gone awry, and a sibling pair of foreign travelers waylaid in a land foreign to them, Littlerock quickly fumbles away any sense of delicate engagement, and ends up a collection of posed and meandering down-tempo moments in search of an inciting incident or clarifying signifier. Pleased with itself more than it ought to be, the movie seems to believe or feel that dawdling for dawdling’s sake is in the end its own kind of precious artistic statement, a fact only underscored by a heavy-handed political statement finale.

Written and directed by Mike Ott, Littlerock is one of those indie films where the actors (non-professionals or neophytes, one assumes) all play characters with the same first names. Whether this was because the film is “real,” and rooted in actual experiences and their personalities or just so no one got confused on set, one can’t be certain. Regardless, the story centers on brother and sister Atsuko and Rintaro (Atsuko Okatsuka, above, and Rintaro Sawamoto), Japanese tourists whom we glean through a small handful of narrated postcards written back home, have a rocky relationship with their father. The pair gets stuck in the title town, a sleepy ex-urb of Los Angeles, when their car breaks down. Later that night, the duo happen upon a party at a nearby hotel, and make friends with Cory (Cory Zacharia), a kind of feckless loafer with loosely defined ambitions to be an actor or model.

Rintaro speaks a little English, and Atsuko none at all. The next day they “site-see” with Cory, meet some more people, and then head to another party. Despite the language barrier, Atsuko bonds more with the locals than her brother, and when he presses her to continue north as part of their agreed upon itinerary, she balks and stays behind. Staying with Cory (who lives with his father), Atsuko further tethers herself to her new surroundings, striking up a quasi-relationship with another boy, and taking a job at the Mexican restaurant where Cory works when he feels particularly gripped by the urge. Will Rintaro ever return? And what is bonding Atsuko to this place? Ah, these are the mysteries of Littlerock, where twentysomething kids ride bikes for fun when they’re not enjoying some beer and a smoke.

Somewhat (very loosely) like the recent Bellflower or the Polish brothers’ 2001 dramedy Jackpot, Littlerock aims to be a portrait of arrested place and curious ambition. It means to be a sort of dusty, Southern California thematic companion to Richard Linklater’s SubUrbia, in which characters drink, smoke pot and passive-aggressively hassle one another while figuring out what to do with their lives. (Instead of parking lots, though, we get empty, rundown state parks and dingy apartments and RVs.) The problem is that there is no substantive and sustained outside force acting upon Cory, or Atsuko and Rintaro. Everyone is drifting, like a tattered leaf caught in a lazy breeze. Even when Cory is hassled over money he mysteriously owes an acquaintance, the stakes ($200) and pressure (a verbal berating, a poured-out beer) never amount to much of anything.

The performances, too, fail to engage. Okatsuka has a certain watchable mysteriousness, but that chiefly owes to the fact that she doesn’t speak any English. Zacharia, meanwhile, cycles through a thoroughly unconvincing catalogue of babytalk-inflected mannerisms in his dealings with Atsuko, whom his character is supposed to have a crush on. He comes across as an open-mouthed trout; it’s an annoying turn that only becomes more irritating when the script requires him to repeatedly fail to pick up on any nonverbal indicators. (At one point late in the film, he even gets cross and says, out loud, that it’s like Atsuko can’t understand him. Ummm… yeah.)

Most damningly, though, despite the ambivalence of its characters, Littlerock has no headstrong, purposeful sense of its own identity. Ott constructs a cutesy, willfully modest and submissive cultural mash-up, and proclaims it profound, or art, merely by virtue of its construction. For more information, click here to visit the movie’s web site. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Variance, unrated, 83 minutes)

Technical Difficulties / Please Stand By

Irritations

I don’t have a picture of a monkey in the control room, but it seems as if a simple monthly switch-over into September capsized/dumped a punch of recently updated SD posts, from the past week-plus. We’ll aim to resolve issue, and/or get those re-posted as soon as possible. And then… revenge!

ShockYa DVD Column, September 1

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Over at ShockYa, in my latest DVD/Blu-ray column, I take a look at the unintended bonus of Mel Gibson‘s casting in the darkly comedic The Beaver; a killer-car flick that rather unabashedly rips off Predator; a surprisingly decent straight-to-video buddy-cop flick with Jason Statham and Paddy Considine; Disney’s tween-targeted Prom; a documentary about the mysterious death of Andy Kaufman; and more. Again, it’s over at ShockYa, so click here for the full, fun read.

Semper Fi: Always Faithful

Film Reviews, Politics

If one conducted a day-long survey of random persons from any given major metropolitan street, and asked them to name the biggest polluter in the country, it’s doubtful that the Department of Defense’s name would come up at all, and if it did then almost certainly one wouldn’t need a second hand to keep track of that tally. And yet that’s the central assertion of Semper Fi: Always Faithful, a damning new documentary about drinking water contaminants at a military training base spanning a period of 30 years. At once emotionally powerful and a little more under-sketched than one might like it to be, the film is a frustrating yet nonetheless engaging and heartrending entry in the all-too-swollen canon of social-justice nonfiction films.

A presentation at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, where it won an editing award and was runner-up in the Audience Award balloting, co-directors Rachel Libert and Tony Hardmon’s movie tells the story of toxic cleaning chemicals that were improperly disposed of at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base, beginning in 1957 and stretching well into the 1980s. The result was that nearly one million Marines and their families were exposed to high levels of carcinogens through drinking water drawn from wells on the base, and when the Marine Corps eventually closed the toxic wells they compounded their sins by never making the contamination public. Using technology to connect, a group of committed ex-Marines — many of whom have lost children, and some of whom are now sick themselves — work together and try to bring about long-delayed justice.

Semper Fi undeniably has emotional punching power, largely courtesy of one of its chief subjects, Jerry Ensminger, a former Master Sergeant and drill instructor for nearly 25 years. When he recollects his dying daughter — who had for weeks resisted any pain medication — asking for a morphine shot to be shared with him, because she knew her dad was in pain too, it is absolutely devastating. If there are failings, it’s that Libert and Hardmon do not construct a particularly strong narrative backbone beyond the chronological one attached to the quest fronted by Ensminger, or, frankly, attempt to expand their story beyond the limits of an emotional cudgel.

Neither do they make a deeply persuasive case for the potential reasons (or, indeed, the existence) of widespread military environmental abuses, or broad misconduct and cover-up. Simply tossing up title cards that indicate there are “130 contaminated military sites” in the United States, and pointing out that one in 10 Americans lives within 10 miles of a military base does not do justice to the gravity of Semper Fi‘s central story. While it’s understandable that the narrative is partially impacted by the fact that the story is still ongoing and unfolding (a bill mandating that the DOD notify all those who stayed at Camp Lejeune during the impacted timeframe is awaiting a final Congressional vote, and has been since February 2010), Libert and Hardmon don’t dig quite deep enough.

They’re content to stay with the activists, and while their journeys are all engaging on a human level, the film’s basic failure to aggressively seek out the contrasting point-of-view means that a viewer leaves uncertain as to whether this is all part of a sinister, coordinated cover-up, mere bureaucratic incompetence unrelated to government, or actually part of a larger military-culture “code of silence” in which the notion of honest, greater-good whistle-blowing, or standing up to and reporting problems up the chain of command, is not merely frowned upon but beaten into submission. Semper Fi tells one hell of a story, but unfortunately it’s just not the complete one. For more information on the film and its subjects, click here. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, meanwhile, click here. (Wider Film Projects/Chicken and Egg Pictures, unrated, 76 minutes)

Vera Farmiga Talks Higher Ground, Directing Debut

Interviews

Vera Farmiga is a wonderfully talented actress, but with her self-effacing laugh, easy disposition and comfortable slouch, she has a lot of work to do before she perfects the character of a swaggering director. She swears life behind the camera wasn’t a burning professional goal of hers, but Farmiga spent several years work-shopping a screenplay based on Carolyn Briggs’ The Dark World with Briggs and fellow writer Tim Metcalfe. The result is her wonderfully subtle directorial debut, Higher Ground, and it’s as full-bodied, honest and moving a portrait of a young, fundamentally religious family, and all the struggles they experience, as has ever been put to screen — perhaps no small coincidence given that Farmiga cites another labor of love, Robert Duvall’s The Apostle, as a case study for her work. At a recent press day at a Beverly Hills hotel, I had the opportunity to take part in a roundtable interview session with the Oscar-nominated multi-hyphenate, who also stars opposite Joshua Leonard in the movie. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.

Joshua Leonard Talks Higher Ground, Christian Sex Tapes

Interviews

Few actors get to star in a monster commercial smash that is also a zeitgeist hit, but that was Joshua Leonard’s experience with The Blair Witch Project, which turned a meager $60,000 production budget into almost $250 million in worldwide theatrical receipts, and owned the summer of 1999 (and beyond, in the form of countless spoofs, homages and far less inspired rip-offs) like no other indie movie of its time. Leonard continued to act over the years, and achieved a second peak of artistic acclaim two years back in Lynn Shelton’s Humpday, in which he and a fellow heterosexual friend (Mark Duplass) find themselves locked in a pact/dare to make a gay porn flick together, as an entry for an avant-garde art festival.

Leonard’s latest film is Vera Farmiga‘s directorial debut, Higher Ground. In it, Leonard plays Ethan Miller, a would-be rock star turned family man who comes to relate to his wife Corinne (Farmiga) chiefly through the orthodoxy of their church’s teachings. I recently had a chance to talk to Leonard one-on-one about religion, sex tapes for Christians, the film’s relaxed rhythms, and his own directorial debut, The Lie, which debuted alongside Higher Ground at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and sees releases via Screen Media later this fall, in November. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.

Jerry Stiller Talks Sex Advice, Swinging With the Finkels

Interviews

At 84 years old, Jerry Stiller is still going strong. Married for more than 56 years to fellow performer Anne Meara, he’s entered the twilight of a long and varied show business career with a uniquely entertaining sort of feisty grace. In his latest movie, the London-set comedy Swinging With the Finkels, he plays grandfather to Mandy Moore, whose marriage with architect Martin Freeman is suffering from a sort of sexual drift. I had the pleasure of talking with the elder Stiller recently, about swinging, longevity in relationships in general, the entertainment industry, and the possibility of dispensing any sexual advice to his son, Ben. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the enjoyable read.

Special Treatment

Film Reviews

French actress Isabelle Huppert, nominated for a record 13 Cesar Awards, has made a career out of playing nervy characters with all manner of sexual foibles or secrets. In Special Treatment, she’s a high-class prostitute with dormant issues fueling a desire for a career change. The eighth feature offering from cult filmmaker Jeanne Labrune, this generally well sketched and set-up drama cashes in its early intrigue, though, abandoning darker overtones for rather wan interpersonal revelations. Those seeking kinky erotic drama of the sort found in early David Cronenberg will be sorely disappointed.

The story centers on Alice Bergerac (Huppert, above right), a well-to-do fortysomething who serves up high-end sexual fantasies for her clientele, from schoolgirl submissiveness to S&M dominance. Neurotic psychologist Xavier Demestre (Bouli Lanners), meanwhile, is stuck in a marriage in which he and wife Helene (Valerie Dreville) can no longer conceal their distaste for one another, lobbing open attacks in front of mixed company at a party. When a friend recommends Alice to Xavier, he gives her a call, just on the heels of Alice suffering a nasty incident with another client. They meet, and she explains that she only offers bundled packages of a minimum of 10 sessions, and so they embark on a professional relationship in which Alice gamely tries to coax out of Xavier his preferences, and get to the root of his unhappiness. In doing so, each party learns a little something.

Special Treatment is at its best when it’s mapping out and concentrating on the parallels between psychoanalysis and prostitution — the discreet locations, the exchange of money, the promise of anonymity, the establishment of rules, and specific time limits. Never mind that its inciting incident for Alice’s occupational second-guessing feels relatively tame, and for a moment seems a part of her extended role play. Once it settles into a more standardized groove of interpersonal blossoming, maturation and desired occupational flight — no matter how elliptically sketched, in achingly European fashion — the movie is considerably less interesting, because its big-picture plot movements and character decisions all feel staked out and predetermined. Alice will feel increasing frustration with Xavier’s inability to articulate his sexual wants, and Xavier will recognize her latent unhappiness and eventually start taking steps to try to help Alice ease out of prostitution.

Director Jeanne Labrune, working from a script co-written with Richard Debuisne, also does a fairly risible job of explaining the holes or conflict in Xavier and Helene’s marriage. If it were merely or only a matter of sexual incompatibility or stasis, the film could still exist fine as is, but the sheer glee with which Helene attacks Xavier in certain scenes raises all sorts of questions that go largely unanswered. As it moves toward its painfully French finale (it gives away nothing to say that the movie ends with a character staring off into the distance in reflection), awkward symbolism — in the form of an antique angel sculpture — is also visited upon the story, a sighing reality which seems remote in the quite solid opening act.

Through it all, Huppert has a sly technique, and an endlessly fascinating face. Ergo, Special Treatment never slips in holding one’s attention when she is on the screen. Unfortunately, the film’s intrigue unravels with each passing minute. There’s great promise in this premise — of a dissection of the value of arguably substitutive experiences, and how long they can or even should last — but this Treatment falls short, and delivers no special and lastingly memorable catharsis or insights. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (First Run, R, 96 minutes)

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark

Film Reviews

Another unimaginatively plotted horror film which unfolds in a cursed house and pairs a young girl who thinks she sees monsters with parents who don’t believe her, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark arrives courtesy of co-writer/producer Guillermo Del Toro’s own childhood imaginations, and a 1973 teleplay that cast a chilly spell over him. Precious little of that menacing mood survives this technically proficient but rather yawning exercise in genre literalism, however — a disappointment considering the high-end creepiness and dark fantasia on display in some of Del Toro’s own films, like Cronos and Pan’s Labyrinth. The general feeling that materializes is that something much more interesting could have been done with the concept. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. Mind the paywall, though. (FilmDistrict, R, 99 minutes)

Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy

Film Reviews

A hit in its native Hong Kong, Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy is getting a boutique release across the rest of the world, including major metropolitan areas of the United States. And why not, really? Screening in both 3-D and 2-D, the slickly produced film is a lurid, wild and weird attempt to reboot the 1990s’ Sex and Zen softcore franchise, in which outlandish sex and borderline gnarly-cartoonish violence were commingled. The end product lives up to its title, that’s for certain. A demented, Faustian-infused Flash Gordon episode crossed with a Chinese costume dramedy and some sort of discarded “Masters of Horror” script, Sex and Zen is a memorable viewing experience, in however many dimensions one watches it.

The story centers around a Ming Dynasty scholar, Yangsheng (Hiro Hayama, above left), who marries Yuxiang (the beautiful Leni Lan, above right), but finds himself lacking as a lover and unable to please her. Obsessed with the smallness of his penis and seeking carnal knowledge, he visits the conniving Prince Ning (Tony Ho), who has a Tower of Rarity (you know, with a blood-sweating horse and stuff like that) and a Pavilion of Ultimate Bliss. Yangsheng eventually wins admittance to the latter, and Prince Ning sets him up with “sex healer” Ruihu (Vonnie Lui). Then he has an operation to replace his penis with that of a donkey. Yep… seriously. During this time Yuxiang takes a lover, but still misses her husband, so she sets out to retrieve him. Additional insanity ensues.

The film starts with and maintains as a sort of touchstone a generally goofy tone. When Yangsheng and Yuxiang honeymoon, he pronounces her breasts “so cool,” and when she worries about the pain associated with her first time having intercourse, he proclaims, “It will hurt, but it will be extremely awesome!” In its final third especially, as Prince Ning turns jealous and villainous, the movie’s wild violence spikes, though not enough to completely derail its carnival atmosphere, which comes across like an Oriental take on Werner Hedman’s Danish In the Sign of… 1970s sex comedies crossed with the aforementioned influences with maybe a little bit of Circle of Iron thrown in for good measure.

Sex and Zen is kind of bizarrely captivating, and not necessarily because of all the nudity and sex (though that certainly helps). It’s watchable chiefly because one never quite gets a firm grasp on where it’s headed. Part of this is no doubt a reflection of cultural differences, and part of it is undoubtedly just because it’s some disorienting combination of silly, poorly scripted and outright insane. So when Ruihu pops up and turns out to have another set of sexual running gear, and then starts flinging around and smashing massive wooden wheels with her firehose-length phallus, well… one just sort of shrugs and goes with it.

In the end, one can’t really recommend Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy, at least not with a straight face. It starts to get into male and female sexual insecurities that cut across cultures and eras, but it’s too slapdash to emotionally connect, and while portions of it are certainly arousing, it doesn’t have, ahem, a lasting erotic charge. The degree to which one might feel truly cheated by a viewing, though, is dependent only on one’s company, level of alcoholic imbibement, and post-screening coital success level. For the full, original read, from ShockYa, click here. (China Lion/China 3-D Digital Entertainment, R, 113 minutes)

Swinging With the Finkels

Film Reviews

The idea of sexual swinging, or committed couples swapping partners, opens up all sorts of rich avenues for exploration of feeling, but the London-set comedy Swinging With the Finkels does so little of substance or sincerity with the subject that one starts to yearn for the comparative honesty of a lonely hearts drama with a forlorn guy swigging a beer and staring at a computer screen. In fact, the movie evinces no particular reason for existing other than to seemingly provide its pleasant but half-heartedly invested cast with paychecks, and perhaps serve as the answer for the trivia question of in which film Mandy Moore mock-masturbates with a cucumber.

Ellie (Moore) and Alvin (Martin Freeman) are a young, married white-collar couple seemingly suffering from a bit of the seven-year itch. Friends Peter (Jonathan Silverman) and Janet (Melissa George) are little help, the journey into parenthood having thrown something of a speed bump into their relationship. Seemingly because one attempt at “spicing it up” in the bedroom went awry (she wore sexy lingerie and lit mood candles, and he donned a fireman’s costume… ha!), Ellie and Alvin make the (entirely il)logical jump to swinging, eventually settling on a seemingly normal couple (Angus Deayton and Daisy Beaumont). After the Saturday night deed is done, things proceed but, magically, don’t get immediately better for Ellie and Alvin. What’s a committed but sexually frustrated couple to do?

Swinging With the Finkels is supposedly rated R, but it’s quite possibly the tamest R in recent memory, especially for a film dealing with matters sexual. Director Jonathan Newman’s movie is definitely the “fem” version of a swingers’ tale, with relationship mechanics valued much more over any possible prurient interests. Problematically, though, it also exists chiefly as a collection of nipped sitcom contrivances, from Ellie’s theatrically gay coworker (who gives her the initial idea of partner-swapping) and a montage of “zany” bad fits who respond to Ellie and Alvin’s sex ad to a forced-uncomfortable sequence in which an old person (in this case Ellie’s grandfather, played by Jerry Stiller) dispenses sex advice. Wow, how novel.

The script digs into none of these scenes with great aplomb, and it additionally requires Ellie and Alvin’s friends to nonsensically implode their marriage by having Peter tell Janet about a one-off affair, merely so there is some minor element of introduced contrast to Ellie and Alvin’s plight. Two grossly overwritten office pals of Alvin also serve this function, and an extremely flat shooting style and hammy music cues additionally do the material no favors. The Finkels manages to make both stanch, devoted monogamy and quiet singlehood look attractive — no small (or purposeful) accomplishment for a movie about swinging and its churned-up feelings. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Freestyle, 86 minutes, R)

ShockYa DVD Column, August 25

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Over at ShockYa, in my latest Blu-ray and DVD column, I take a look at, among other things, Rio, a pair of John Belushi Blu-ray releases, a movie that Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson may or may not receive residual checks for, and documentaries about both hemp and the ugly history of South African apartheid as channeled through the eyes of a professor searching for personal healing. Again, it’s over at ShockYa, so click here for the full, fun read.

Craig Gillespie Talks Vampires, and Zombies Too

Interviews

Director Craig Gillespie has had an interesting career. After making his debut with the indie film Lars and the Real Girl, episodic television work ensued, followed by a contretemps over the studio comedy Mr. Woodcock, starring Seann William Scott, Susan Sarandon and Billy Bob Thornton that saw him removed from the project. His latest film is the adaptation/reboot of 1985’s horror-comedy Fright Night, starring Anton Yelchin as a Las Vegas high school kid who finds out his new neighbor (Colin Farrell) is actually a vampire. I recently had the chance to talk to Gillespie one-on-one about what attracted him to Fright Night, what he thought about shooting the movie in 3-D, and his next film, the genre mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Again, it’s all over at ShockYa, so click here for the full, fun read.

Jason Momoa Talks Conan the Barbarian

Interviews

Jason Momoa has the biceps, vocal timbre and alpha-male attitude to seemingly carve out a successful career as an action movie hero. But before his commercial audition with the public in Conan the Barbarian, his leading man debut, there comes something even more potentially nervousness-inducing — the requisite pre-release juggernaut of press commitments. Momoa recently made his debut on The Tonight Show, chatting cars with host Jay Leno (he favors an old Cadillac) and suffering the characteristic new-guest embarrassment of having an old clip from early in his career (in this case, from Baywatch) pulled out and showcased. Amidst a packed itinerary that necessitated some rescheduling, he recently graced me with some one-on-one time, to chat about Conan, his family, how he now feels without dreadlocks, and the project he hopes to (someday) make his directorial debut. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the fun read.

Sexy Pirates

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

So, is Sexy Pirates related to the billion-dollar Disney franchise… like, a spin-off with a bunch of lesbian swashbucklers? No, alas. Or is it related to the adult film spoofs of same franchise? Nope, not that either. Instead, Sexy Pirates actually predates all of those efforts; it’s the American title of a softcore effort from Joe D’Amato, in which a bit of nudity, sex and catfights are commingled with a bunch of costumed sword-play.

The story centers on Sir Francis Hamilton (Menyhert Rene Balog-Dutambe), an ambassador of King Charles II, who has to go to Jamaica to sign a peace treaty with the loathed French government. On the way, his ship is attacked by a bunch of savage pirates, and his wife (former Penthouse Pet and Hungarian hardcore starlet Anita Rinaldi) is asked to pay a huge ransom for his safe return. Gathering up a huge crew of her own, however, she sets sail for revenge.

D’Amato is… what’s the most polite word for hack, again? Prolific, that’s right. The director of over 200 movies, from regular narrative to hardcore costume genre dramas and everything in between, D’Amato is a shooter, meaning he’s not precious or particular about much of anything. That fact certainly shows here. Yet if the acting and story are of dubious quality, the settings and staging are at least legit. The chief problem is that Sexy Pirates, in which women occasionally traipse around in the spirit of “nudie cuties” of yesteryear, has neither the action and spirit to satisfy a mainstream audience, nor the content to sate more prurient interests. It’s a tweener — fairly impressively lensed by Piero Montanari, but nowhere near rousing enough to elicit hearty bellows of, “Yo, ho ho!”

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Sexy Pirates comes to DVD presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with an Italian language mono Dolby digital 2.0 audio track, on a region-free disc. The optional English subtitles are rife with spelling and grammatical errors. Apart from the obligatory chapter stops, there are no supplemental bonus features. Nevertheless, to order the DVD, click here. D+ (Movie) D+ (Disc)

Rose McGowan Talks Conan the Barbarian

Interviews

As part of a busy press day schedule (but nowhere close to her personal record, which would be the 96 five-minute one-on-one interviews she did for Grindhouse in a single day, after roundtable interviews), I recently had a chance to chat one-on-one with a dazzlingly made-up Rose McGowan, about portraying strong women, upcoming projects, a personality that hasn’t changed much since childhood, and why her crazily wardrobed and malevolent Conan the Barbarian character is, in her words, “much cooler” than Freddy Krueger. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the fun, quick read.

Marcus Nispel Talks Conan the Barbarian, Star Wars Bed Sheets

Interviews

If one constructed in their mind a picture of German-born director Marcus Nispel based solely on his filmography — which includes grisly reboots of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th franchises, plus the R-rated Pathfinder — it could not possibly be more different from the reality of the man, who abhors shoes, probably owns no black clothes at all, and in person favors pastel cargo pants and billowing, open-necked cotton painter’s shirts. Looking more like a Venice Beach artist than a brooding purveyor of brutal horror and head-hacking action, Nispel has a gregarious personality seemingly at odds with his knack for wringing catharsis out of grim places. With his latest big screen effort, a new version of Conan the Barbarian, Nispel again makes sure that genre fans get their money’s worth out of his movie’s R rating. I recently had a chance to chat one-on-one with the talkative filmmaker, about his childhood Star Wars bed sheets, his experience and difficulties with reimagining popular big screen properties, and why he would likely never direct a sequel to any of his works. It’s over at ShockYa, so click here for the full read.

Zachary Quinto To Produce Horror Film

Casting About

Zachary Quinto‘s production company, Before the Door Pictures, will partner with Sunchaser Entertainment and German producer Christian Arnold-Beutel to produce the elevated horror feature The Banshee Chapter. Interactive and transmedia director Blair Erickson wrote the screenplay and will make his feature directorial debut on the project.

The film, set to begin principal photography shortly in New Mexico, centers on a young female journalist who follows the trail of a missing friend who had been experimenting with mind-altering chemicals developed in secret government drug tests. A fast-paced blend of fact and fiction, The Banshee Chapter is based on real documents, actual test subject testimony and uncovered secrets about programs run by the CIA. “We’re excited to branch out in our storytelling,” said Quinto in a press release. “We’ve produced a movie about the financial crash and an innovative, grounded romantic comedy. The Banshee Chapter is an opportunity for us to tackle another film with its roots in reality, but through the lens of horror.”

The first film of which Quinto speaks, J.C. Chandor’s directorial debut Margin Call, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and is an unaffectedly smart, tightly wound little human drama that engagingly tells a big story through a small, focused lens. It releases to theaters in late October. For an older interview with Quinto, meanwhile, click here.

Talihina Sky: The Story of Kings of Leon

Film Reviews

An unusually intimate peek behind the curtain of the Followill fraternity, Talihina Sky: The Story of Kings of Leon arrives at particularly bizarre time, coming as it does on the heels of the successful, Grammy Award-winning band’s cancellation of the entirety of its remaining U.S. fall tour dates after a disastrous show in Dallas in which lead singer Caleb Followill (below, second from right) suddenly left the stage. After premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year, the documentary bows on Showtime this evening, with repeat presentations scheduled over the next several weeks.

The sons of Betty Ann and Ivan Followill, a homemaker and traveling Pentecostal revivalist preacher, Caleb, Nathan and Jared joined forces with their cousin Matthew to peddle their own brand of Southern garage/roots rock, riding a couple well received albums to overseas touring success before truly punching through Stateside with 2008’s multi-platinum Only By the Night. Co-directed by Stephen C. Mitchell and Casey McGrath, the former of whom was a Nashville A&R rep who initially signed Nathan and Caleb to a record contract, Talihina Sky unfolds somewhere between fan document and tantalizing expose. Mitchell’s decade-plus-long relationship with the group gives him access to personal home videos, interviews and behind-the-scenes rehearsal and recording studio footage, not all of it flattering. And he and McGrath also make the decision to frame their film around the Followills’ return to one of their annual family reunions in rural Oklahoma, where various cousins, uncles, second cousins and uncles who might be second cousins provide — in their sometimes drunken ramblings — provide in cumulative a telling portrait of familial roots that implicitly if sympathetically offers up a psychological explanation of some of the Followill boys’ behavior and (latent) problems.

Still, even though Ivan and Betty Ann submit to interviews, and there’s a proper accounting of the circumstances that led in particular Nathan and Caleb from Jesus-praising hymnals to peddling “the devil’s music,” Talihina Sky unfolds at a bit of a remove, probably in large part because the band members are all producers on the project, and therefore reluctant to sign off on anything that lastingly portrays either them or their loved ones in too negative of a light. Caleb talks rather movingly about the shame of being poor as a child, and how that is definitely a motivating factor in his young adult life. And Ivan speculates about the impact that the divorce of he and his wife had on his kids. But every time Talihina Sky seems close to offering up penetrating insights — in regards to Ivan’s alcoholism, say, or any of the other Followills’ bouts with booze and marijuana — it pulls back, and throws in some old public access performance footage, or clips of a spirited game of horseshoes at the aforementioned reunion.

There’s a lot between the lines, in other words. In the sparse and seemingly free-association interview segments, Mitchell and McGrath obviously don’t press the Followills for a lot answers. So when Caleb ruminates about an A&R rep stopping by the recording studio and giving his opinion recording singles choices, and evocatively compares it to a smut film, there’s no clarifying follow-up. Similarly, some gripping tour bus footage in which one of the band members rips into Caleb for his drunken selfishness appears out of nowhere, and lacks any contextual placement.

Talihina Sky: The Story of Kings of Leon is a picture of a group of twentysomething guys in motion, and development. It lacks definition, and clarity. Still, that’s hardly a mortal sin, given the not-yet-cast maturity of its subjects. Both the sheer amount and quality of achingly personal footage here is easily worthy of a viewing by even casual fans of the group, or just those for whom modern music and the accompanying tour lifestyle holds interest. Just don’t expect firm answers about some of the problems that plague these guys. That speculation is left up to each individual viewer. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Phreak Creative, unrated, 86 minutes)

Fright Night

Film Reviews

A pumped-up remake of the same-named 1984 vampire horror-comedy, director Craig Gillespie’s Fright Night (not to be confused with Fight Night) represents a well oiled machine of goosed senses that has no clearly defined motivating purposes, even within the genre confines of its own story. Fun and engaging performances from especially Colin Farrell, David Tennant and Anton Yelchin carry the film a great distance, but it eventually bogs down courtesy of loosely defined stakes and poorly incentivized action. Overall, the story feels beholden to a series of character choices and
actions that make no particular sense. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Touchstone/DreamWorks, R, 105 minutes)

Battle For Brooklyn

Film Reviews, Politics

When people talk about a movie being depressing, whether in a context either admiring or dismissive, they’re almost always talking about and assessing the dramatic heft of a down-tempo narrative film — how a writer, director and actors worked in concert to shine a light on various human frailties, turmoils and difficulties, and in doing so impacted a viewer’s mood in a manner that lingered with them long after the theater lights came up. Real life, however, is even more full of disease and death, moral injustice and underdogs being smacked down by the powers that be.

That may not always be what one wishes to see in a movie, but it can sometimes be bracing, in a good way, to be confronted by the ugliness of reality on its own terms, in broad daylight. And that’s the kind of beautiful, heart-rending melancholy on display in Battle For Brooklyn, a surprisingly touching documentary from husband-and-wife filmmakers Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley that details the struggle of a small group of Brooklynites as they try to prevent New York State from seizing 22 acres of land to hand off to a commercial real estate developer with grand designs on building a new arena for the NBA’s New Jersey Nets.

The film focuses on Daniel Goldstein (above), a graphic designer turned reluctant but square-jawed activist whose apartment sits almost at what would be center court of said shimmering new arena, part of a polarizing Atlantic Yards project to overhaul the neighborhood of Prospect Heights and also erect a dozen-plus skyscrapers. When the plans were announced in 2004, it was a shock to those whose lives might be most impacted, since they had never heard of it, or been consulted. Developer Bruce Ratner owned a parcel of Brooklyn land easily big enough to house plans for the stadium, but basically wanted to keep that so he could build (and then of course make lots of money leasing) other commercial buildings. So Ratner’s plan called for the displacement of 800-plus residents, ranging in socioeconomic status from the very poor to the much better-off, part of a group of new townhome apartments. Forcing them to move would involve invoking the power of “eminent domain,” which is used when government is building something expressly for the good and benefit of the public — mostly with highways, and sometimes schools.

A very substantial public gift to a private developer, though, didn’t sit well with Goldstein and others, so they fought back. Pitted against them was an entourage of lawyers and public relations emissaries, as well as the entire local government, fans of the basketball team, and other residents excited by the lure of potential construction and/or concession jobs. Spanning years of this fight, Galinsky and Hawley’s film is an engrossing and sometimes even chilling portrait of the way underclasses can and will always be pitted and played off against one another, for veritable scraps off a table. Goldstein is an involving subject, and some of the case’s dark developments — including the revelation of air-quote community groups funded by Ratner to give the appearance of public embrace of the project — are worthy of a regular narrative thriller.

Battle For Brooklyn is in some ways reminiscent of Don Argott’s 2010 documentary The Art of the Steal, about a decades-long tug-of-war over the late Albert Barnes’ $30 billion art collection, and efforts to bring it to Philadelphia, which ran counter to his expressly indicated wishes. Movies like each of these both deftly illustrate the ravenous impulses of capitalism, which abhors unexploited value, and confirm the fact that the American legal system, as it pertains to non-criminal matters, is basically just a gamed system for moneyed and mighty interests to eventually win out. A powerful movie about an important and little-reflected-upon topic, Battle For Brooklyn is a telling snapshot of (offscreen) political maneuvering, and the tossed-around wrecking-ball weight of corporate might as it relates to individual rights. (Rumur Productions, unrated, 93 minutes)

Cafe

Film Reviews

If one has on their “bucket list” seeing a live-action, achingly precious ensemble drama in which a butterfly recites some of the lyrics to “I Want Candy,” then they should definitely see Cafe. Then, and only then. Actually… you know what? They may want to hold up and wait a bit longer, rolling the dice to see if some other enterprising would-be auteur works that left-field tidbit into their armchair-philosophizing cinematic treatise on paying it forward or embracing life or some such malarkey. A sincere and wildly self-serious film that seems to chiefly exist due to some pact/dare to do a hiatus-schedule movie together that erstwhile lovers Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jamie Kennedy forged on the set of The Ghost Whisperer, this Cafe should have its beverage license revoked, no matter the lack of alcohol.

The story unfolds entirely in a West Philadelphia coffee shop (insert The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air joke here), where Claire (Hewitt) works, an in-debt druggie (Garrett Lee Hendricks) falls under the dark sway of a dope-slinging former pal (Kennedy), and a nameless writer (Richard Short) observes a couple (Michaela McManus and Derek Cecil) enjoy some post-movie banter despite the fact that one of them is married. Other characters kind of drift in and out, and the film’s big putative shock/twist occurs when a girl (Madeline Carroll) pops up on the laptop of a dweeby guy (Hubbel Palmer) and tells him he’s an avatar, and that his entire world/life (and that of those around him) doesn’t exist. He resists her revelation, but engages in a series of tests and conversations, and eventually comes to believe her. But should the audience?

Writer-director Marc Erlbaum — who one has to assume is a recent film school graduate who wrote plenty of tortured poetry in high school — is clearly aiming for some grand metaphorical statement with Cafe, but his reach far exceeds his grasp. Nothing about the computer girl’s revelation (whether real or phony) particularly deepens or colors any of the action we see unfold (even after she directs her chubby confidant to tell Claire the same things she told him), and the movie’s insights consist of yawning bromides like, “There is no more brilliant light than that which follows darkness.” Wow, deep. The film’s ending, meanwhile, opts for both cheap melodrama and an additional twist, which hints at yet an additional layer of hokey artifice.

Stooping to the level of the material, Erlbaum’s cast does Cafe no great favors, apart from the young and talented Carroll, who radiates an unfussy trustworthiness and benevolence a cut or two above the cheap, college-level Philosophy 101 nonsense she’s pitching. Hewitt is lovely and flirty, which casts a bit of sunshine on a couple brief moments (not even entire scenes), but as her friend-zone-trapped coffee shop coworker Todd, Daniel Eric Gold telegraphs and overdials the bumbling nervousness, almost to the point that you want to reach into the screen and punch him. The single, cuts-both-ways bemusement of Cafe comes by way of Kennedy. Cast against type as a thug, he seems to be using the movie as some sort of low-fi acting exercise, so for a while it’s actually cool and kind of interesting to see him underplay things in several scenes. The problem is that he also mumbles all of his dialogue, apparently doing his impression on Fenster from The Usual Suspects, and that gets old rather quickly — kind of like all of Cafe‘s stale offerings, actually. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Maya Entertainment, PG-13, 101 minutes)

Joshua Oppenheimer Talks Conan the Barbarian, Voltron

Interviews

Since his inception almost eight decades ago, the character of Conan the Barbarian has inspired countless different stories spanning across all manner of media, so it’s not really a surprise that the new Lionsgate big screen re-boot of the Conan film series would involve more than one writer. While Sean Hood polished up the production draft and worked with director Marcus Nispel, Joshua Oppenheimer, along with his writing partner Thomas Dean Donnelly, crafted the original framework of the story, and retains screenplay credit. Recently, I had a chance to speak to the screenwriter one-on-one, about the enduring appeal of the character of Conan, the absolute necessity of thick skin when working as a Hollywood screenwriter, and the state of one of his next big projects, the script for the movie adaptation of Voltron. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the full, fun read.

Imogen Poots Talks Fright Night, More

Interviews

You can often chart the rise of a young actor or actress by the on-screen company they keep, in which case British-born Imogen Poots is doing more than fine. Having come off a film with Catherine Keener, Christopher Walken and Philip Seymour Hoffman, she now stars alongside Colin Farrell and Anton Yelchin in Fright Night, playing the latter’s sweet girlfriend, and an unwitting object of temptation for the former. In films like the striking and austere schoolhouse drama Cracks (the directorial debut of Jordan Scott, daughter of Ridley Scott), meanwhile, and last year’s Solitary Man, in which she hooked up with Michael Douglas, Poots is showing a range that obviously endears her to casting directors and filmmakers alike.

With Fright Night, though, the 22-year-old actress has a potentially huge commercial hit-in-waiting, which makes it an exciting but nerve-racking time. I recently had a chance to chat one-on-one with Poots — an avowed music fan, of Leonard Cohen, The Smiths and doo-wop tunes, among other genres — about crafting (and keeping) an American accent, the proper pronunciation of her name, what academic disciplines she hopes to one day study, and how she’ll be delving even further into music in her next project. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the full read.

Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Above-the-line stars get most of the credit and glory for Hollywood successes, but dozens if not hundreds of other specially gifted artisans labor on most big-budget productions, often going their entire careers without so much as an acknowledged tip of the proverbial cap from the moviegoing public at large. Craig McCall’s fascinating documentary Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff, then, attempts to right this wrong, shining a light on its namesake subject, who in March, 2001 — more than five decades after winning his first Academy Award, for his stunning work on Black Narcissus — became the first cinematographer ever presented with an honorary Oscar, for his exceptional contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences.

After getting his start as first a “clapper boy” and then a camera assistant for a string of quick-shoot quota pictures, many of the British-born Cardiff’s gifts were rooted in his extraordinary touch with Technicolor, honed through work with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger on the groundbreaking A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus and then The Red Shoes. While he lacked a formal education and wasn’t the most technically proficient, Cardiff’s lifelong love of painting, and more specifically his astonishing, virtually peerless ability to communicate mood through lighting, quickly won him a legion of filmmaker fans. From Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston to Henry Hathaway, Laurence Olivier, Alan Parker and many more, Cardiff worked with highly skilled directors spanning seven decades, and even helmed more than dozen feature films himself.

Actors whom he beautifully lit (including Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston, Lauren Bacall and Kim Hunter) sit to sing Cardiff’s praises, and many more with whom Cardiff worked (including Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and Audrey Hepburn) are glimpsed in photographs and on-set home video footage from his private collection. The most edifying interviewees, however, prove to be Cardiff’s fellow behind-the-camera craftsman, including peers and colleagues like Freddie Francis and Richard Fleischer. None other than Martin Scorsese also pops up, crediting Cardiff’s subjective work on The Red Shoes as a major inspiration for the boxing scenes in his Raging Bull.

Cameraman director McCall has an obvious affection for his subject (several times he’s glimpsed on screen alongside Cardiff, always smiling adoringly), and his passion for the most part is infectious. In letting Cardiff (who was still mentally sharp as a tack until his death at 94 years of age in 2009) basically narrate his own story, McCall is the beneficiary of a wide variety of amazing and delightful anecdotes, ranging from Marlene Dietrich’s intimate knowledge of lighting and Ava Gardner’s insecurities to how the crew of The African Queen was gripped with dysentery, and why Humphrey Bogart and the aforementioned Huston were the only ones immune.

If there’s a strike against the picture, it’s that it unfolds in a very linear and somewhat unimaginative fashion. Cameraman lacks a real spine, and doesn’t delve at all into Cardiff’s (doubtlessly fascinating) personal life. More about what shaped him in his young, formative years (there’s one scene that touches on this, but it seems the tip of an iceberg), as well as how Cardiff coped for so long with the itinerant lifestyle of a cinematographer and director, would have given McCall’s movie a much-needed extra dimensionality. Regardless, as is, Cameraman is a captivating look back at a transitory time — before basically all movies were made in color — when camerawork was slightly more welded to the emotion of the material, and used unabashedly to heighten the effect of genre elements. That Cardiff’s unique role in this era, and spanning into the periods that both preceded and followed it, finally receives its own recognition is indeed a special thing.

Separated into a dozen chapters and presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, Cameraman comes to DVD with a nice complement of supplemental material. An interview with director McCall from June 2010 by Ian Christie runs14 minutes, and tells of the filmmaker’s first meeting with his subject-to-be (they bonded over a Bolex camera), as well as other anecdotes. There is also a clutch of photo galleries, including many of Cardiff’s portraits of the actresses with whom he worked, and 10 minutes of Cardiff watching some of his behind-the-scenes movies from the set of The African Queen and the like — the latter at least a generation before lightweight cameras made such off-the-cuff cinematic capturing all the rage. Eleven minutes of extra interview material featuring filmmakers like Alan Parker and Christopher Challis discussing the important nature of the cinematographer-director relationship are also included, and a five-minute segment on three-strip Technicolor highlights the stringent measures the company’s color-control department in safeguarding their technology and rare cameras. A collection of trailers for Cameraman and a quartet of other Strand releases rounds out the release. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B (Disc)