Jay's Movie Blog

Two festivals, some previews, and needing to write about Indiana Jones has got me way behind. But, it's summer, which means I can actually slow down movie watching a little, since the studios start sort of staying out of each other's way. In the meantime, let's see how the stuff I've watched over the past three months holds up:

The Band's Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 26 February 2008 at Landmark Kendall Square #2 (first-run)

This one's a fun, pleasant little movie that throws together a few likable characters and watches what happens. An Egyptian police band scheduled to play at a cultural center in Israel winds up in a small town with a name similar to where they're supposed to be going and hangs around while waiting for the next bus - which is a day away. There is some expected hostility, but also some new friendships.

It's a small story, with a simple message of realizing that one probably has more in common with one's neighbors than previously suspected, but that's why it works. Eran Kolirin doesn't add excess melodrama or twisty backstory. The joy of the film is in the very randomness of its events, and how there's not a simple, obvious lesson to be taken from them.

Syndromes and a Century (Sang Sattawat)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 26 February 2008 at the Brattle Theatre (Special Engagement)

It's hard to believe that this sweet little film got censored by Thai authorities but some of the really nasty horror films that get shot there apparently have no trouble. It was probably at least partially targeted for being peculiar; like a lot of Thai art films, Syndromes seems to emphasize mood over actual storytelling, and is often so abstract that I could see censors wondering if the filmmaker was trying to get something past them.

The central conceit is an interesting one - filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul has taken the story of how his parents met and told it from both perspectives - but where his mother's half is set in the past, his father's is set in the present. It's a fascinating demonstration of how times have changed but people have remained more or less the same. I was charmed by the characters - both the leads and the supporting cast - and the photography is as beautiful as I'm coming to expect from Thailand.

Romulus, My Father

* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 March 2008 at the Brattle Theatre (Eye-Opener)

Man, that poor kid.

Over the course of Romulus, My Father, pretty much every bad thing that could happen to Raimond Gaita's family does. His mother (Franka Potente) is mentally ill in a time when such afflictions didn't earn much sympathy; his father is a German immigrant in over his head, getting injured in car accidents, the farm is failing... Truth be told, the sheer weight of what happens is often too much; you have to remind yourself that this is based on a true story, and that the boy survives and attains some measure of wisdom for his experiences; it's not just an exercise in unrelenting, tragic misery.

It's at least got some very nice acting; Eric Bana is wonderful as the title character, larger than life and projecting more warmth than would seem humanly possible, just as a young boy would see his father in the outback. Potente is good, too; she seduces us into thinking that maybe this return and reconciliation will be different, just as she does her boy. And little Kodi Smit-McPhee is excellent as young Raimond, growing up and growing wary.

The movie is a relentless downer, but it is also beautiful and feels true in a way that doesn't just mean accurate.

One review at HBS.

The Bank Job

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 8 March 2008 at AMC Boston Common #8 (first-run)

Ah, right. That's why I like Jason Statham, and heist movies in general. Statham is a guy who keeps busy, but often with crud, and heist movies can be very formulaic, but this one is a corker. It's zippy and fast-paced, with a bunch of colorful crooks executing a meticulously laid out plan, and a couple other factions making things difficult. Things twist and turn as deviously as you could want, and when things make the jump from laid-back to deadly serious, the stakes go up, but it doesn't stop being fun.

I'm looking forward to seeing this one on Blu-ray disc; it was shot digitally and unlike a lot of other movies shot that way, it doesn't really try to look like film. The slick look even looked good in digital projection, and though it's pointedly set in the early 1970s, it still feels very current.

One review at HBS.

Paranoid Park

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 9 March 2008 at the Brattle Theatre (Eye Opener)

Here's the thing about me and Gus Van Sant: Most of the movies of his that I've seen, I've liked: to Die For, Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester, even Gerry. But there are a lot of others where I've seen the preview or the capsule description and just said no, not a chance, I'm not touching that. In my mind, they're all like his brutal segment of Paris, je t'aime, grimy and airy with nothing happening.

Paranoid Park is kind of like that (and I probably wouldn't have seen it if it hadn't been part of the Eye Opener series), but it's not as bad as all that. There is a good mystery plot to it, and I like Gabe Nevins and Lauren McKinney in it. Christopher Doyle shoots, so it looks significantly less muddy than it might have otherwise. But it can also be maddening as the timeline loops back on itself, showing us the same thing three times in some cases without necessarily adding anything new to it. It's a short movie that still seems bloated.

Overall, I'm glad I saw it, but certainly wouldn't have sought it out, and I don't figure on seeing it again.

One review at HBS.

Flash Gordon

* * (out of four)
Seen 12 March 2008 at the Brattle Theatre (The 80s Rock!)

So, now when I see "FLASH! Ah-ahhhh! He'll save every one of us!" thrown in whenever someone in a fannish setting mentions Flash Gordon, I'll know of what they speak. That's nice, I suppose. It's not cool to be ignorant.

But, geez, this is not a good movie. The Buster Crabbe serials weren't good, either, but they're more enjoyable, because they're bad in an honest effort. For all its manic energy, it's so busy giggling at how tacky it is that it completely misses the gee-whiz fun of the character thrown into a crazy situation. It's not joyless, not at all, but I have a hard time understanding why so many people seem to love a movie so intent at looking down on itself.

Four reviews at HBS.

Doomsday

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 March 2008 at AMC Boston Common #14 (first-run)

Huh, I could have sword I did a full review for this at the time. Ah, I did a post on the Sci-Fi Marathon message board that no-one responded to. As I'm lazy, I will just repost it here:

I have to admit, I was initially a bit disappointed with Doomsday; I was expecting big things from Neil Marshall with his follow-up to Dog Soldiers and (especially) The Descent. It takes a bit of time to get going, and it seems a little standard-issue: Tough chick leads a team into the middle of a wasteland because it may hold the key to the plague threatening them back in civilization.

The thing is: Neil Marshall doesn't do things halfway. When the movie gets to Edinburgh, it goes into full-on Mad Max mode. You don't just get punks with open shirts, funky hairdos, and crazy tattoos - you get cannibal punks with etc., etc. And they're at war with people living in a castle and dressing like they're in a renaissance fair. There are chases involving trains and horses. And everything ends with an absolutely crazy over-the-top car chase. There's blood, decapitations, and other mayhem galore, Malcolm MacDowell chewing scenery, Adrian Lester being cooler than I thought he was capable of, and then more blood and mayhem. Bob Hoskins is awesome in his smallish role. Dr. Bashir from Deep Space Nine is the Prime Minister. If you don't mind the hard R, it's a real blast.

It's also Marshall's first relatively big-budget film, and he zips the camera all over the place, spends some money on special effects to give us Scotland burning and empty, and some nasty gore. It's a very different style from The Descent (much more like Dog Soldiers), but one that winds up working well for this movie.

Five reviews at HBS.

Underworld

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 15 March 2008 at Somerville Theatre #1 (Alloy Orchestra)

Ah, I do love the Alloy Orchestra - there's nothing like seeing a spiffily restored silent print with live accompaniment, even if it's moodier than the percussive scores they do for the likes of Buster Keaton. It also may be indicative of Paramount starting to pay more attention to its film library - their home video department has been content to cycle through the same catalog titles (and in ten years of DVD, still no The African Queen!), but now they're starting to license the deep catalog stuff to other distributors, and one can only hope that this attention to their silents - the AO is supposedly working on another von Sternberg silent for next year (The Last Command, I think) - indicates that something will be done with it.

The movie itself is pretty darn good. These silents are sometimes like proto-movies; you couldn't film the same script (even updated to work as a talkie) today because it would seem sort of generic. But as one of the first gangster films, it's new territory, and works pretty well with that in mind.

Sea Monsters 3-D

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 16 March 2008 at the New England Aquarium Simons IMAX Theater (first-run)

Sometimes they seem to be making movies just for me: Cool science, nifty special effects, and 3-D? Give me. Ancient aquatic dinosaurs that make quick work of great white sharks are just a bunch of fun.

What's especially impressive is the way writer Mose Richards and director Sean MacLeod Philips build narratives to go along with their flashy images, both in the present day and in prehistoric times. Sea Monsters is anything but dry, even though it's chock full of fun information.

(And it's apparently available on Blu-ray. No 3-D that way, but pretty...)

Dolphins and Whales 3-D: Tribes of the Ocean

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 16 March 2008 at the New England Aquarium Simons IMAX Theater (first-run)

In contrast, this IMAX doc that I saw as part of a double feature with Sea Monsters is kind of a chore. It's the kind of documentary about the natural world that isn't content to show us how interesting or amazing something is, but seems to feel the need to say that these whales or dolphins are better than human beings. Which isn't hard, because, you know, we're evil for how these other noble creatures are suffering thanks to our careless regard for our environment. That's a valid and important part of the situation being documented, of course, but it often feels artificial, like the filmmakers are straining to make that point even when it's not especially interesting.

The reason it's not interesting is because, unlike Sea Monsters, these guys don't make a particularly engrossing movie. It feels like they've got an outline, and rather than building a narrative, they just run down the list of sea creatures they have footage of, listing habitat, social characteristics, and how endangered they are. Even when the material itself is interesting, the presentation is dull.

In Bruges

* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 March 2008 at AMC Boston Common #19 (first-run)

It's good to see Colin Farrell choosing better movies. He's a talented guy who all too often chose boring projects in Hollywood, but getting back to his roots seems to agree with him. He's exactly what this movie needs, a brusque and crude hitman on a forced vacation in a pretty city that he has no use for. He's funny and grouchy and surprisingly disarming when it's revealed that he does, in fact, have a heart.

Brendan Gleeson is nearly as good as his partner, but the surprise is Ralph Fiennes, who has played so many upper-class roles that it's jarring to see him as a snarling, vicious gangster. His Harry has a strict moral code of his own, making him a bully with principles. The three of them connecting in the third act shifts In Bruges from a drama with dark comedy to something a bit more action-oriented, but it works because the action winds up being the collision of what three very flawed people think is the most right thing to do.

Three reviews at HBS.

Live-in Maid (Cama Adentro)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 March 2008 in Jay's Living Room (DVD rental)

How lazy am I? I just sent this back to the Chlotrudis screener archive last week. That's not so bad as the Blockbuster Online rentals of the same vintage which I have actually been paying to have sit on my coffee table, though.

It's a nice little movie with good performances from its two lead actresses: Norma Aleandro as an upper-class woman falling on hard times as a result of Argentina's recent economic crisis and Norma Argentina as the live-in maid she can no longer afford to pay. It's an intriguing relationship that often shows up in the background of other films, a life-long intertwining of lives that is not that of family or friends, but is too close to simply be employer and employee.

One review at HBS.

Yo-Yo Girl Cop (Sukeban Deka: Kôdo nêmu = Asamiya Saki)

* * (out of four)
Seen 18 March 2008 in Jay's Living Room (I Actually Bought This)

As much as this isn't really a good movie, I do admire the spirit of absolute insanity that goes into making this sort of thing. The very premise is absurd - a top secret police agency that trains juvenile delinquents as supercops and sends them undercover with a custom yo-yo as a weapon. Then there's the opening salvo, where Saki (pop star Aya Matsuura) is established as a badass, her recruiter (Riki Takeuchi) is shown to be part of a shadowy agency, and the bad guys are shown to be really bad. It's nutty, but it's full-speed-ahead nutty, the sort that gets the audience caught up in its exaggerated story.

And then, Saki gets to her new school, and it sputters. It's just high school, and she befriends a girl who is getting bullied, and there's a guy who has a crush on her. There's a ticking clock that keeps any comedy about this tough girl being unimpressed with the kids' commonplace problems from happening and a convoluted plot, so by the time the movie gets back to the crazy, with leather-clad teenage hotties fighting with tricked-out razor-sharp yo-yos, well, the wave has broken and it's not quite as much fun as it was an hour and a half ago..

One review at HBS.

Chop Shop

* * * (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2008 at the Brattle Theatre (Eye Opener)

This starts at the Brattle on Friday and is well worth a look if you like this kind of almost-documentary. It feels extremely authentic; most of the people in the audience will be hard-pressed to figure out which of the people on-screen are actors and which are just people in the area that filmmaker Ramin Bahrani thought would make good characters. It's set in a very specific neighborhood, the iron triangle near Shea Stadium.

Alejandro Polanco's Ale is entrancing; the kid is intense, having to grow up fast but still only obtaining wisdom at the normal rate. There's tragedy in how hard he's gotten already, although the movie is less a lament than a demonstration of how misfortune can become learning experiences.

Married Life

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 March 2008 at Landmark Kendall Square #9 (first run)

I wanted more from this movie. It's got a cast full of great people - Chris Cooper, Rachel McAdams, Patricia Clarkson, and Pierce Brosnan. Every colorful, hyper-detailed frame is a thing of beauty. And yet, despite all the loving attention filmmaker Ira sachs pays to period detail, I couldn't quite get into its 1940s frame of mind, where divorce is such a humiliating prospect that a man could convince himself that murder is a more palatable alternative and women seem to exist mainly as an adjunct to their men.

Beyond that, it's still kind of a mixed bag. Cooper and Clarkson are fantastic, especially Cooper, who becomes quietly monstrous as the film goes on. Still, this is a movie that states its premise fairly early and then plays it out in methodical fashion, without much in the way of surprise or any particularly interesting observations. It's glossy, but not a whole lot more.

Youth Without Youth

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 31 March 2008 at the Brattle Theatre (Recent Raves)

Francis Ford Coppola's first film in years is a strange one. It's clearly the work of an aging artist with death on his mind: It stars Tim Roth as Dominic, an old man miraculously made younger; it also features themes of reincarnation and death and old age coming prematurely, death accelerated for a kind person while refusing to touch someone perhaps less worthy. It's about the hungry desire for more life even when still being around will perpetually brand one as an outsider.

It's a strange but beautiful film to watch; the images are exquisite and though the movie constantly moves into new and more bizarre realms of the fantastic, it never gets caught up in the strangeness for its own sake - the mysteries are a reason to examine Dominic and how he reacts to a strange world.

Two reviews at HBS.

Snow Angels

* * * (out of four)
Seen 1 April 2008 at Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (first run)

I liked this one quite a bit, although the Chlotrudis folks I saw it with didn't seem that impressed. There were some comments about this being a fairly conventional film for screenwriter/director David Gordon Green, and it is rather less abstract and more commercial than the one film of his I'd previously seen (All the Real Girls). That shouldn't be taken as a knock on it, though - it just shows that Green can tell a story just as well as he can create a mood.

One review at HBS.

Body of War

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 6 April 2008 at the Brattle Theatre (Eye Opener)

You know, I think I'm going to avoid seeing any more Iraq war documentaries until after it's all over or the film promises something really new to say. It's not that they're bad movies, it's that they seem so pointless right now. None of them are going to convince their audience to change their opinions because nobody who is pro-war is going to actually pay for a ticket to the likes of Body of War, and vice versa (though I don't know what a pro-war example would be). It is, in its way, as much a regurgitation of talking points as the Congressional speeches it takes to task.

You could see it in the post-film discussion for this one at the Brattle - the audience there is generally liberal (as a registered Libertarian, I may be the most politically right-of-center person there), and people generally tended to pick out and comment upon the bits that confirmed their pre-existing beliefs. It got crazy in some points - one audience member went on for some time about how it just confirmed his belief that the military is just institutionalized child abuse, and claimed that what we saw of subject Tomas Young's family suggested his mother was in an abusive marriage because she wasn't the dittohead Republican her husband was and it's just impossible for them to actually get along!

The movie itself is decent enough, although it has its flaws. It's probably at its strongest when it focuses on Tomas, showing his rehabilitation. The nuts and bolts of how a young man has to cope with the type of paralysis he has is more affecting than all the facts directors Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro can muster. They do a very good job of presenting Young as flawed, rather than just a misguided young man turned noble activist, and the editing of the segments that show Senator Robert Byrd as the voice of opposition to a well-planned attack is effective despite not being at all subtle. It's a shame that the bit in the end where the two meet is so staged and self-congratulatory; the movie is pretty good before giving in to that impulse toward smugness.

The Ruins

* * * (out of four)
Seen 6 April 2008 at Regal Fenway #8 (first-run)

A pretty darn good horror movie as such things go. It is what Roger Ebert calls a Dead Teenager movie, but a taut and suspenseful one. Scott B. Smith's screenplay (adapted from his own novel) contrives to put its characters in a tight spot early and then do everything it possibly can to make the situation even more difficult. There is something paranormal afoot, but there's a certain logic to everything; once the fantastic premise is in place, everything follows in a fairly logical progression.

The Ruins feels a lot nastier than many horror movies because, especially in the early going, it is content to wound - rather than taking characters out to show it means business, Smith and director Carter Smith (presumably no relation) will instead hit them with a nasty injury. This results in more tension, as the characters' options are limited by the injured parties' mobility and those folks aren't necessarily making the best decisions.

And yet, sadly, this didn't do that great while any number of weaker horror movies stick around.

Six reviews at HBS.

Darling! The Pieter-Dirk Uys Story

* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 April 2008 at the Brattle Theatre (Sunday Eye Opener)

Pieter-Dirk Uys was in Cambridge when the Brattle played this as the Sunday Eye Opener, doing his one-man show at the A.R.T. He introduced the film, though he wasn't around to take questions afterward. He did mention that the film's director, Julian Shaw, was very young - the Australian saw one of Uys's performances as a teenager and said he would make a movie about the South African satirist. Uys brushed it off, until the kid showed up in South Africa a year later to document Uys's AIDS education/entertainment programs.

That's an interesting project in itself; AIDS is an epidemic in Africa, and Uys will tell you that the behavior of his nation's government is criminal. Feeling that the only way to make any dent is to speak directly to children and teenagers, he travels to city and village schools using the best tool at his disposal - a quick and sharp wit - to get through. It's not the first time he's taken on such targets; we see archive footage of how he skewered the government during the apartheid era.

Uys is a compelling subject; he's devastatingly funny and a fine mimic, but he's also deadly serious: He is not the sort of impressionist who laughs about how idiots in government give him steady work; there is genuine hatred in his voice for the people he mocks. The film gives the impression that he is famous in his native land, but he is able to live fairly anonymously in his hometown of Darling because he is most known for a drag performance where he's buried under makeup.

Shaw is probably able to get more honest responses from the teenagers he interviews as he is that age himself, and he's either a natural talent with the camera or he is working with some very good producers and editors. Either way, this is a fairly solidly put-together movie; it'll be interesting to see what Shaw comes up with if he keeps at it.

Smart People

* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 April 2008 at Regal Fenway #9 (first run)

So, how much of its success does this film owe Juno? This isn't really Ellen Page's movie; it mostly focuses on Jeff Daniels's character and how the others relate to him. He's a bit of a refugee from a Noah Baumbach film, arrogant despite his greatest successes being firmly in the rear-view mirror. It's kept from being The Squid and the Whale, though, by a lot of characters being played somewhat more broadly - Page's straight-laced daughter, Thomas Haden Church's laid-back (adopted) brother. There's also evidence of an actual heart, since he's mourning a long-dead wife rather than in an acrimonious divorce.

So it's a process of watching the Grinch's heart grow a couple sizes. That's a bit uneven; there's a lot of "try a little, fail spectacularly" until the script has Sarah Jessica Parker's character pull out the ultimate ultimatum, so to speak. In the meantime, Church carries a lot of the movie on his shoulders; he's got great comic timing and is able to comment on how screwed-up the family is without being smugly superior. He and Page play well off each other, in particular.

Two reviews at HBS.

Contempt (Le Mépris)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 April 2008 at the Brattle Theatre (Special Engagement)

We've all got embarrassing lists of great movies (or entries in some other medium) that we haven't seen, as in "how can you discuss film with even a modicum of intelligence unless you've seen this?" I can now cross Contempt off mine and say I enjoyed the experience.

I must admit, though, that I don't really care for the gotcha ending. The whole movie had been about Brigite Bardot's Camille and Michel Piccoli's Paul falling out of love, treating each other badly as a result of Paul trying to curry favor with an American movie producer. And then, the end... It just doesn't seem to follow for me. Maybe if I see it again, it'll seem more tied in, but right now, it just seems discordant for the sake of being discordant.

My Blueberry Nights

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 19 April 2008 at AMC Boston Common #7 (first-run)

Wong Kar-wai makes beautiful movies, and My Blueberry Nights is no exception just because he made it in America, in the English language. It's really a wonderful little film, I think, with a more charming than usual performance from Jude Law and a very nice supporting turn from David Strathairn.

One of my favorite things about the film, though, is Norah Jones in the starring role. I'm ignorant enough about music that she's got no baggage for me, and I think a lot of the criticism coming her way is knee-jerk based on other musicians who haven't impressed on film. To a certain extent, I think performance is performance, and it's worth noting that in China, performers have a much easier time moving between media. I do like Jones in this movie specifically, though; as great as the more seasoned folks are, many of them, especially Strathairn and Rachel Weisz, are clearly acting, while the lack of expected punctuation gives Jones a real everywoman quality.

Apropos of nothing: We don't get many food movies made with American cuisine at the center of it, but both My Blueberry Nights and Waitress (and the beautifully-shot TV show Pushing Daisies, now that I think of it) focus a lot of loving attention on pies. I love pie - I went up to Maine for a Memorial Day cookout at my brothers in part on the promise of homemade pie - but I'd never really thought of them as the most beautiful food in America, although there may be something to it.

Tow reviews at HBS.

The Life Before Her Eyes

* * * (out of four)
Seen 1 May 2008 at Landmark Kendall Square #6 (first-run)

(A little spoilery, so quit here if you're considering watching this cold)

Is it late enough in this film's life cycle for me to say this without being a hypocrite? See, my experience with this movie was affected by knowing that something was going on, although I only knew that something was going on because of a blog entry I read debating director Vadim Perelman's decision to let it be known that something was going on before the movie came out. I wonder if not knowing that would have made me less attentive during the movie, so I would have missed certain clues. Would that make it seem like a better movie, because the things that stood out would have seemed more clever than obvious? Or a worse one because it seemed to take a lot of character development and minimized it in the service of a twist?

Who can tell? I did wind up liking the movie - it's hard for me not to like a movie that stars Uma Thurman, and she's pretty darn good here. The writing is fairly elegant, and I liked Evan Rachel Wood as the younger version of Thurman's character, the Bad Girl Who Really Isn't That Bad.

Aaaand, I've worked my way through my wad of ticket stubs all the way to the arbitrary cutoff of Iron Man. I also want to give the Nikkatsu Action films a separate post, even though I may not be able to give them as much individual attention as I might have liked.

One review at HBS.

Labels: action, Argentina, Australia, Brattle, comedy, drama, independent, Israel, Japan, sci-fi, Thailand, UK, USA

(0) comments

I love documentaries like The Linguists, and really think that the IFFB should program more of them. One of my first experiences with this festival was a crushing disappointment - I thought that The Future of Food was going to be an exciting look at cool science only to get a screed about how Monsanto has abused the hell out of U.S. patent law. I don't regret learning that, although the presentation rubbed me the wrong way - not just within the movie, but how during the introduction the host said the Cambridge liberals should love it. What, I thought, of the Cambridge biotech professionals? Where's the love for them?

(Yeah, I'm likely never letting that experience go. Sorry, IFFB folks.)

I was lucky to get to two this of these science-oriented documentaries this year, and I tend to think the local festivals could do well programming more of them. There are a ton of biotech and other professionals and academics in science fields in the area who might go for them, along with a goodly number of nerds like me who eat this stuff up. It's probably a tough field to mine, of course - the line between a documentary that gives an interesting overview of a field without using some sort of political issue as a jumping-off point and something that cineastes might dismiss as a mere "educational/technical film" is probably blurry.

Not that there's anything wrong with education films - I suspect a good one is just not considered as worthy an accomplishment as an issue-oriented or personality-centered documentary, much as a good romantic comedy or melodrama isn't as respected as a character-driven drama.

The Linguists

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 26 April 2008 at the Brattle Theater (Independent Film Festival of Boston)

The situation laid out at the start of The Linguists sounds familiar from tales of the Amazon rain forest being despoiled; the difference is that instead of unknown animal species being lost, it is ways to communicate. There are approximately 7,000 languages spoken in the world, but that number is shrinking steadily; it's estimated one is lost roughly every two weeks. This sort of attrition may be less of a direct threat to human survival than the loss of biodiversity, but it still diminishes us.

Among those trying to preserve humanity's linguistic diversity are David Harrison and Gregory Anderson of the Living Tongues Institute. They travel the world recording and documenting dying languages, sharing their findings with the local speakers and archiving it for posterity. During the film, we see them seek out Chulym speakers in Siberia, Sora speakers in India, Kallawaya speakers in Bolivia, and others. We see how they do their jobs and learn both why linguistic diversity is a good thing and what the threats to it are.

It's fascinating material, and the filmmakers do a good job of presenting it. The locales where these dying languages can be found tend to be remote, so it's often an adventure getting there and then not necessarily safe once they do arrive. The film's three directors manage to show just enough of the interview process to give us the excitement of newly-acquired knowledge without making it tedious for the large chunk of the audience that is not passionate about comparative linguistics. There's humor tinged with tragedy in how David and Greg handle the fact that most of the speakers of endangered languages are elderly and often nearly deaf, and certain situations are just perfect story set-ups: Kallawaya is a somewhat secret language mostly used by local shamans that many linguists claimed didn't exist as a fully functional language; their driver in Siberia reveals himself to be fluent in Chulym after a frustrating day of dealing with deaf old ladies.

David and Greg are also enjoyable screen presences; though they did not generally work as a team before the movie, they have a quick rapport and bounce ideas off each other well. They are quick to acknowledge the other's strengths, razzing each other and the interns as the opportunity arises. What's more, they always come across as genuinely excited about their work without ever giving off the vibe of being stuffy or out-of-touch academics - heck, when one comments that he can't understand how a linguist could devote his career to the study of French syntax when there are languages going extinct, we get the impression that they don't have much tolerance for the type, either.

The Linguists is short; its seventy minutes will ultimately wind up a good fit for an hour-and-a-half slot on some cable channel. The folks who stumble upon it there are in for a treat; it does an unusually good job of making a seemingly minor and theoretical discipline more urgent and exciting than you'd expect.

Also on EFC.

Labels: Brattle, documentary, IFFB, independent, Independent Film Festival of Boston, science, USA

(0) comments

One last gasp before starting the IFFB stuff (and then a likely massive catch-up post).

It saddens me a little that HBS/EFC had no reviews for CJ7, even though I didn't love the film; I can't be the only guy there who thinks a new Stephen Chow film is a big deal, can I? Of course, I suspect it didn't get far out of the big cities anyway (it's already long gone from Boston), so maybe not as many people had the opportunity to review it, or did it for some other paying gig.

At least The Forbidden Kingdom opened well, because it's a fun action-adventure that I'd happily use to introduce folks to Jackie Chan and Jet Li if I knew someone age-appropriate. I did feel like a bit of a dummy when I read some of the other reviews, of course - was I the only person who didn't immediately twig to some of the casting (he said, trying to avoid spoilers, even though every other review he's seen lays it right out without worrying about it)?

Horton Hears a Who!

* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 March 2008 at Regal Fenway #10 (first-run)

So, it turns out adapting Dr. Seuss well is possible, although like any adaptation, you wind up with something much different in feel from the source material. The story's still there, but part of the appeal of Seuss is stopping to examine some crazy detail he put in, or getting caught up in the cadence of his rhymes. You can't quite do that with movies; they run at a set pace that doesn't allow the audience to explore until home video, and the running time of a feature means that more words have to be put in, until the rhymes are nearly swallowed.

Judged on what it is, though, Horton Hears a Who! is a fun movie. Blue Sky captures the look of the storybooks without being quite so enslaved by it as the live action films have been. Jim Carrey and Steve Carrell both give lively vocal performances, and the story touches on the idea of faith and how we handle things we cannot explain without being too heavy-handed about it. That's pretty impressive.

Cheung Gong 7 hou (CJ7)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 March 2008 at Landmark Kendall Square #8 (first-run)

CJ7 was a mammoth hit in Chinese theaters, but didn't produce much of a blip in the U.S. There's just no place for it; parents don't bring their kids to movies with subtitles and the ever-shrinking audience for foreign films would rebel if it was shown dubbed. They won't make it a sleeper hit because they don't see kids' movies. So it slips through the cracks, which is unfortunate - so many kids' movies are terrible that it doesn't make sense to dismiss a good one just because people are speaking Chinese.

Dicky (Xu Jiao) is the poorest boy at his private school; the film opens with him trying to sew his sneakers back together. As so often happens, he's not just picked on by the other kids but treated like crap by most of his teachers. His construction-worker father Ti (Stephen Chow) spends every dime they have on the school, so they live in a hovel near the dump. One night, while searching that dump for a pair of sneakers for Dicky, Ti stumbles across something that came from a crashed alien spaceship. He doesn't realize it, but the toy he gives Dicky is an impossibly cute alien with strange powers ("CJ7", since the rich kid boasts of having a "CJ1" robotic dog).

Chow writes and directs as well as acting, and like his other recent films (Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle), he's using a lot of digital effects. They don't look look completely real, but they're not supposed to. Chow has always been a performer who has tended toward broad physical comedy, so it's not surprising that not only is CJ7 full of rounded surfaces and hyper-cute design, but Chow engages in a lot of Loony Tunes-style slapstick with it. CJ7 is highly malleable, pulls tools out of nowhere, and when he gets kind of beat up, cartoony springs poke through the surface. The story's got large chunks of E.T. in it, but a lot of the stuff with the creature/robot is closer to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.

Even when CJ7 is not on screen, the vibe is something of a live-action cartoon. One bizarre scene toward the beginning has Dicky and Ti competing over who can squash more cockroaches in their kitchen (between this, Ratatouille, and Enchanted, I'm wondering where the meme about vermin being family movie fodder came from). There are students at Dicky's school who shake the ground when they lumber into the scene, and his math teacher Mr. Cao (Lee Shing-Cheung) is a thoroughly hissy snob, who stops just short of pulling out a pair of tongs when circumstances force him to handle something that Dicky has touched. On the opposite side of the fence is the almost impossibly beautiful and friendly Miss Yuen (Kitty Zhang Yugi), who brings the requisite innocent sex appeal to the film.

Then there's Xu Jiao, who delivers some pricelessly funny reaction shots. She's not subtle, and in a lot of movies she'd be dismissed as a child actor trying to skate by on being cute. It works here, I think, though someone would need to have just slightly less tolerant of kids mugging for the camera for it not to. And, yes, those pronouns are right; Stephen Chow's son is played by a girl. This isn't unprecedented (it happens in animation all the time), and the audience will likely hardly notice it; it's just an odd choice.

Chow himself takes a back seat to Xu, playing Ti as generally a good dad without being anything close to saccharine. Folks expecting a lot of him may be disappointed. His work behind the scenes is pretty good for most of the film, but it does seem to come apart a bit in the end - after an hour or so of fun, CGI-enhanced slapstick, the movie decides to get serious and be heartwarming, and that leaves the ending kind of a downer on the one hand and kind of random on the other.

Kids might not mind that, though, and that is who CJ7 was made for. The question is, just how many English-speaking kids are likely to see this movie, even if it is a lot better than much of the stuff being sent their way?

Also on HBS.

The Forbidden Kingdom

* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 April 2008 at AMC Boston Common #18 (sneak preview)

I don't know if an attempt to measure such things objectively would actually find that the audience with which I saw The Forbidden Kingdom enjoyed the obligatory scene where martial arts masters Jet Li and Jackie Chan pummel student Michael Angarano in the name of training more than they usually would. You'll forgive us if we took a certain amount of sadistic joy in it, though - after all, no-one came to the movie to see him, and it's fun to see the movie acknowledge that.

Angarano plays Jason Tripitikas, a South Boston teen who loves his chop sockey movies. A group of bullies forces him to help rob the shop where he gets his import DVDs, and after the owner is shot, he winds up in possession of a golden staff that fans of the genre and those who watched the prologue will recognize as belonging to the Monkey King. It somehow pulls him back in time to ancient China, where he's told the story of how the Jade Warlord (Collin Chou) tricked the Monkey King, freezing him as a statue until his staff is returned. That job's too big for James, but he does meet up with drunken master Lu Yan (Chan), revenge-seeking orphan Sparrow (Liu Yifei), and a mysterious monk (Jet Li). Together, they attempt to reach the Warlord's fortress atop Five Elements Mountain, though he has sent white-haired Wolf-Witch assassin Ni Chan (Li Bingbing) after them.

It is easy to mock The Forbidden Kingdom for casting Jet Li and Jackie Chan in the same movie and having them technically be supporting characters to the American kid. There's probably a line of less-than-ideal compromises that have to be made to get to that point - it takes Hollywood money to make it happen, Hollywood money means Hollywood producers, and Hollywood producers means it has to make money in America, so shoot it in English with a central American character so that the previews don't look too foreign. It's forgivable, though, in part because the movie did, in fact, get made, and in part because John Fusco's script wears its love for these movies on its sleeve. He makes Jason an annoying name-dropping fanboy, but he drops good names. Fusco tailors his script to his cast, giving Jet Li chances to do both quick hand-to-hand combat and wire-fu, while Jackie Chan gets to reference what is likely his most beloved work (the Drunken Master movies) and do his "using whatever is near at hand" shtick. Heck, we got a "Journey to the West" movie when I'm certain that at one point, some American studio exec said "what's all this 'Monkey King' stuff; can't they just be rival cops?"

That's not saying it's a great script; it's frequently sort of awkward, and the Boston scenes feel a little rote. There are great huge information dumps, although I do like the way Fusco and director Rob Minkoff quietly toss the basis for a clever plot twist into the middle of a long-winded retelling of the Monkey King myth. That one bit of misdirection makes up for a story that seems to be cobbled together from several sources. It's worth noting that despite the presence of a time-traveling American teenager, this is probably the sanest Journey to the West movie I've seen; be relieved or disappointed as you will.

Enough about the script, though - Jackie Chan and Jet Li fight! How cool is that? Pretty darn cool, actually. I must admit to being a little worried during Chan's early scenes; combine Lu Yan's bulky hair and more shots from behind than usual, and he could have been doubled as he was in bits of Rush Hour 3. The Chan-Li centerpiece dispels those fears, though; they're both in good form, and Minkoff makes sure the audience gets a good look at them in action. Fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping keeps things going at an exciting pace and does a good job of blending their styles - Chan's drunken boxing is a fun contrast to Li's more violent fighting. The two are clearly having a blast, and that's conveyed to the audience. There are probably a couple places this sequence could have stopped, but the movie lingers on it; after all, this is what the audience came for.

The pair acquit themselves well enough when they're not fighting as well. Chan seems more comfortable being funny in English than in many of his other movies; Jet Li does a nice job of making his character seem human as well as being a testy man of mystery, as well as being surprisingly funny in other scenes. Anganaro sometimes does perform his role a little too well - he's sort of fan that collects and catalogs, but hasn't yet moved beyond that superficial level, and that's kind of annoying. Liu Yifei is a bit tough to get a handle on, since Sparrow is given an odd way of speaking, referring to herself in the third person in a sort of disengaged manner. I wish Li Bingbing had the chance to do more of the heavy lifting as the villain; as much as Collin Chou hams it up a bit, he never seems as ferocious as she does.

I'm glad The Forbidden Kingdom turned out to be as good - and as much fun - as it is. Aside from not knowing whether we'll ever get to see Chan and Li work together again (it took a bunch of North American money to make it happen and Chan's not getting any younger), I want it to remind audiences how much fun this style of movie is. Last year gave us the depressing one-two punch of Rush Hour 3 and War; hopefully this signals a return to martial arts stars actually putting on a great show on the big screen.

On HBS along with five other reviews.

Son of Rambow

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 20 April 2008 at the Brattle Theatre (sneak preview/Sunday Eye Opener)

Son of Rambow knows kids. You can tell from the opening credits, where a twelve-year-old boy runs through the neighborhood, only stopping long enough to cause mischief, or when the little sister of the other main character simply can't stand still even though her jumping around might distract from the two people talking. The movie shares its young cast's surplus of energy, and even though it's got adult wisdom to it, the end result's never a lecture.

The kid running across town after sneaking a VHS camera into a cinema to record First Blood is Lee Carter (Will Poulter), a brat who lives in the back of a nursing home with his brother Lawrence while their mother spends her time in Spain with her new husband. He soon meets his polar opposite in Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) when both are sent into the hallway during school - Lee for being a disruption, Will because his family's strict religion means he's not allowed to even watch the documentary being shown in geography class. Will already loves to draw, and when he winds up accidentally watching the Stallone movie while hiding from Lee's brother, it's like nothing he's imagined before. Soon the pair are shooting their own sequel together, even though that means hiding the project from Lawrence (Ed Westwick) and Lee's mother Mary (Jessica Stevenson). Meanwhile, the arrival of a group of French exchange students, particularly ultra-cool Didier (Jules Sitruk), is blowing other kids' minds the same way the movie blew Will's.

Among other things, Son of Rambow is a love letter to the movies, making them as much as watching them. We see Will stunned and amazed by his first movie-watching experience, transported into another world where a scarecrow can come alive and be the villain in the movie they're going to make. He's already been making flipbooks, and soon he's drawing scenes in his Bible that evolve into storyboards. Will and Lee are about as far from cool as kids can be, but once the word gets out about what they're doing, Didier and his crew suddenly want to hang out with them, because what's as cool as making a movie? Of course, once Didier joins up, it doesn't take much to read the next scenes as a riff on going from small independent films to big studio works, with more people on the set than you can handle and demanding stars taking charge.

Writer/director Garth Jennings doesn't spend so much time talking about movies that he shirks his duty to make a good one, though. This is basically a coming-of-age buddy flick at heart. Will and Lee are a fine pair of opposites: Lee is a pint-sized thief and con man, Will's a sheltered kid who dives in head-first because he's never had this sort of outlet for his creativity before. They make a good team, whether Lee is taking advantage of Will in a Tom Sawyer manner or just busting out laughing at some of the screwy stuff that Will does. Their misadventures are honestly funny, with a perfect level of whimsy. Jennings is also very good at presenting physical comedy and genuine peril differently, which becomes a factor toward the end of the movie. I love things like the repeated sound of cheering when Lee is kicked out of his classroom, and how it lightens up a potentially heavy moment toward the end.

The most important thing Jennings and his producing partner Nick Goldsmith do, though, is get great performances out of Milner and Poulter. The movie would likely disintegrate completely if we ever stopped believing they were genuine early-eighties kids. One false note, whether it be a script that was too self-aware or a young actor who can't just relax and play on-screen and the movie would be a goner, just adults who couldn't get the kids quite right. Happily, that never happens. Will Poulter is especially terrific; he makes Lee the sort of kid that would drive the adults who had to deal with him absolutely insane but shows the audience he's not really a bad kid (there aren't any really bad kids in this movie's world). Bill Milner finds just the right notes to hit for Will; he's as much a regular kid as his unusual environment will allow. He never plays Will as stupid, or even ignorant - he's just uninformed.

The movie belongs to Milner and Poulter, but the rest of the cast is good. Jules Sitruk is pretty darn hilarious embodying everything about the eighties which has become embarrassing twenty years later. Jessica Stevenson is just right as Will's mother; there's a whole other movie about how she and Neil Dudgeon's fellow sect member Joshua implied whenever they're both on screen, although Jennings keeps it implied, so as not to distract from the kids or make the film too harsh or easy a condemnation of the characters' beliefs.

I can't say for sure that kids will love this movie; there weren't any at the screening I attended. The former kids there got a real kick out of it, though, and there's enough straightforward fun without talking down or over-reliance on nostalgia that there's no reason for them not to have a good time.

On HBS come 2 May, along with at least one other review.

Labels: action, animation, Brattle, comedy, Eye-Opener, family, Hong Kong, independent, UK, USA

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BUFF's closing feature is arguably not underground at all; it's made by a Hollywood insider, stars a bunch of recognizable names, and was produced for a major studio, which is even giving it a Blu-ray release, which isn't necessarily a given for films that wind up showing on a few hundred theater screens.

It was nifty to have that insider there for a Q&A afterward, as a contrast to the other filmmakers who visited. Most of them had been making their first movie and kind of learning as they went, while Krantz had done a lot of work behind the scenes in film and television before stepping into the director's chair. He talked about approaching it as filming it like two episodes of television rather than on a feature schedule. There's always a question about improvisation at this fest, and Krantz was pretty emphatic about saying no, they basically shot the script, because improvisation means that all the lighting and sound guys have to play catch-up and that's time and money they don't have. It's a very practical answer, one which the really indie guys maybe haven't yet got the experience to consider.

Looking at the video cover, I do have to wonder about the marketing of this. Aside from the above-the-title names not appearing on the cover (Daniel Stern, Illeana Douglas, and Kevin Pollack are named, but it's Bostin Christopher and Ashley Johnson who you actually see), it's advertised as "Otis: Uncut". The question is, of course, whether there was ever actually a cut version. As far as I know, Otis will have played about two festivals before showing up on video without a regular theatrical engagement, and I doubt BUFF showed a cut version. Also, to the guy at Bloody-Disgusting who name-drops Juno to describe this... Huh?

Otis

* * * (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2008 at the Brattle Theater (BUFF X)

I didn't think much of Otis when looking at its poster/box cover, but the trailer offers up more black comedy with Illeana Douglas than novelty serial killer stuff. Of course, neat trailers can be a trap; not many movies can keep the pace that such a preview promises.

Otis Broth (Bostin Christopher) is a serial killer. The press is calling him the "Kim" killer, from the name he uses for the young girls he kidnaps and holds prisoner for a mockery of high school dating when he calls their parents. He's just grabbed Riley Lawson (Ashley Johnson), and the only thing driving father Will (Daniel Stern) and mother Kate (Illeana Douglas) more insane than his taunting is the apparent incompetence of FBI agent Hotchkiss (Jere Burns). Otis isn't counting on Riley being as smart as she is pretty, or Kate deciding that she's got nothing to gain by remaining timid.

Writers Erik Jendersen and Thomas Schanuz have come up with a pretty clever script. It starts out with what looks like a torture porn set-up - girls chained to a bed inside what looks like a massive toaster oven, watched by a creepy man who dispatches an escaping captive in the teaser - although the killer is a forty-year-old pizza deliveryman obsessed with taking his crush to the prom. The movie takes a couple of hard right turns, though, and the movie winds up being less about a lunatic killing girls than the Lawsons deciding to take the law into their own hands. It's to their credit that the story can change direction a couple of times without ever feeling disjointed.

The cast is pretty good, too - Illeana Douglas walks off with every scene she's in, whether she's called on to be impatient, frightened, or half-crazy with her thirst for revenge. You almost have to feel a little bad for Daniel Stern, whose Will is far more reasonable but often isn't nearly as much fun to watch as Douglas's Kate. The pair both work well with Jared Kusnitz, playing their trouble-making son Reed, especially when it comes down to Kusnitz and Douglas playing nuts and Stern trying unsuccessfully to be the voice of reason. Jere Burns does the sort of smarmy and not-so-bright character he's long since mastered, and always delivers the laugh asked of him. Bostin Christopher does a good job of making Otis a little more layered than this character otherwise might be, but Kevin Pollack is kind of under-used as his more openly abrasive brother.

Producer/director Tony Krantz does a pretty good job of tying everything together; the movie looks pretty good for a direct-to-video flick. The opening set piece, with Tarah Paige as the previous "Kim" trying to escape, is a really nice piece of work (it helps that half of Paige's credits are stunts, so he doesn't have to shoot around much). He does have a bit of trouble settling on just the right note for the black comedy at points in the middle, especially with one sequence that extends past the terrible mistake being funny (in a nasty way) without quite becoming horrifying.

That's part of the risk with a movie like Otis, though; switching directions like it does isn't always smooth. It makes up for much of its awkwardness by the end, and the dark comedy angle winds up being more entertaining than the serial killer movie this initially appears to be.

Also at HBS.

Labels: Boston Underground Film Festival, Brattle, comedy, direct-to-video, horror, independent, indiefilmcafe, USA

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I'd planned to start the EFC/HBS review for this one with something about how curious it is the the Middle East gave us both the burqa and the celebration of the female form that is belly dancing, but scrapped that soon after the movie stated that belly dancing antedates Islam by thousands of years. Still, considering how far away this art is from the way we perceive that part of the world now, it is kind of amazing how cultures change.

It was a fun screening, with the filmmaker in attendance and a belly dancing demonstration beforehand. One thing I hadn't realized before the director Steve Balderson started talking was that I had seen one of his previous films at Fantasia two and a half years ago, and it's interesting to look back at that review and see that, for example, his tendency to mix black and white and color had annoyed me a bit back then, too, or that the star of Underbelly had worked with him on Firecracker.

One thing he said in the Q&A that kind of amused me was a comment that for a documentary, he likes using grainier stock or video because that makes it look more "real", like someone's home movies. I don't deny the effect, but I wonder how long that aesthetic will last now that there are 1080p camcorders available for less than a thousand bucks on Amazon. The next generation's home movies are going to look pretty good, detail-wise, so in a few years filmmakers won't have that crutch to lean on.

Underbelly

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2008 at the Brattle Theater (BUFF X)

It's fitting that woman that Underbelly spends the most time following has the name "Pleasant". If this movie makes the audience feel bad about anything - even having misconceptions about its subject - it is likely entirely by accident. As an overview of belly dancing and and introduction to one of its better-known American practitioners, it is, well, pleasant.

Pleasant Gehman, that is. In the 1970s and 1980s, she was a fixture on the L.A. music scene as a party girl, fan, and writer, and then in the early 1990s she learned belly dancing and it took over her life. Now, she dances under the name "Princess Farhana", books other dancers for gigs in the Los Angeles area, and teaches dance to others. The film spends a year with her as she travels the world, dancing and teaching at various events and talking about the controversy she stirred up within that community when she merged burlesque with belly dancing.

We learn some basic facts about belly dancing over the course of the movie; that it's arguably the oldest continuously practiced art form in the world, originally spread by the Romany as they traveled around the Mediterranean from Morocco to Spain where it was a huge influence on flamenco. There are several styles, notably Egyptian and Tribal, with Tribal being more open to outside influences, leading to "Tribal Fusion" which incorporates a variety of western dance styles. Director Steve Balderson doesn't go into a lot of detail here; just enough to make sure the audience knows enough to understand what the interview subjects are talking about (and doesn't necessarily think of the dance primarily in terms of titillation).

Mostly, we're talking to Gehman and her friends, and you probably couldn't ask for a more enjoyable documentary subject. She's got a ton of funny stories at her disposal, and always seems well-aware that today's irritation is the price for having a new story to tell tomorrow. She laughs a lot and draws laughter from the people around her, but is also willing to confess her anxieties and describe the dissatisfaction she was feeling with her body when she discovered belly dancing. We also get to see and hear what makes her such a good teacher, from her positive attitude to her knack for breaking complex processes down to bits that can be mastered individually.

As delilghtful as Pleasant is, Balderson sometimes seems a little too enamored of her. At times we're not sure whether he's making a movie about belly dancing or about Gehman; the film will get into interesting topics about the art form that don't have much to do with her until, inevitably, it leads to people saying how great Pleasant is. The last twenty minutes or so are spent on burlesque, which feels like a detour away from what the audience came to see. The style is also distracting, with everything in black and white except for performance bits, which seem to be recorded on consumer equipment.

It's a nice little movie. If you're looking for a movie about belly dancing, this might come off as somewhat slight, but Pleasant Gehman is a nifty subject herself.

Also at HBS.

Labels: Boston Underground Film Festival, Brattle, documentary, independent, indiefilmcafe

(1) comments

There was a guy next to me at this movie who just laughed constantly. Not really enough to be obnoxious, but it was just constant, from the time he and his friends sat down through the projection problems through the movie, no matter what was happening on-screen at the time. I wondered whether he was drunk or high or something. I guess that's defensible at this sort of festival, but, man, it's annoying.

Also annoying: The same guy was among the guys yelling when the guys behind the screen were having trouble getting the projection to work properly on the short scheduled to screen before the film. I occasionally wonder if the people who yell "focus!", "sound!", "well that was short and disappointing!" ever give it a moment of thought. The way I figure it, if there's someone in the booth, he already knows about the problem, is likely already at work, and your yelling is just irritating and distracting him. If not, it's doing no good and irritating me.

Il Bosco Fuori (Last House in the Woods)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2008 at the Brattle Theater (BUFF X)

So, who here likes blood? And mayhem? Flesh-eating? Do you mind if that's pretty much a movie's got going for it? Because that's what you get from Il Bosco Fuori. That's Last House in the Woods in English, but doesn't "Il Bosco Fuori" sound much more exciting? The English title is ominous, sure, but "fuori" is just a violent-sounding word (even if it just means "outside"), and this film doesn't waste a lot of time in trading ominous for violent.

We start with the initial attack to establish that this is a bad stretch of road, where a young couple traveling with their son get a flat tire that turns out to be a trap. Later, we meet up with Rino (Daniele Grassetti) and Aurora (Daniela Virgilio), a couple on the outs that may be getting back together or not after falling back into bed together. They, too, fall into a trap, and are attacked by a trio of young men who knock Rino unconscious and try to rape Aurora. Fortunately, Anotonio (Gennaro Diana) and Clara (Santa De Santis) are driving by and bring the younger couple to the safety of their house. Naturally, "safety" is perhaps the wrong term to use.

To say filmmaker Gabriele Albanesi isn't re-inventing the wheel here is putting it mildly. A lot of the beats are standard issue - opening violence to show the filmmaker means business, cutesy scenes to establish that our potential victims are basically nice people, violence, lull, recognition that things are worse, terror at grotesquery, bad guys versus worse guys/the enemy of my enemy is my friend, blood, blood, blood. If you like horror, either in the American grindhouse or Italian giallo tradition, you know what you're in for - Albanesi isn't about to change the rules on you.

He will, however, serve it up with relish. He's serious about his violence early on, before the blood really starts to fly; the opening leaves a kid orphaned and in mortal danger, and the muggers' attack on Aurora is intensity without gimmicks. He doesn't lose that intensity entirely as things get messier, but his attempts to keep topping himself point out how thin the line between the grotesque and the ridiculous can be (and how skewed one's perception on what belongs on which side can be in the middle of a movie). A kid with shark-like teeth chowing down on someone's leg can be played as creepy, but once you've got a couple feral rednecks sitting down with him for family dinner, that's going to get laughter.

Still, props to Albanesi for be willing to go there, wherever there might be, to gross the audience out. He's probably working on a pretty tight budget, so some of the gore effects look a bit dodgy, but he does spring for the large barrel of fake blood, and does come up with some admirably nasty ways to kill and maim his characters - honestly, I'm not sure why more horror filmmakers have not recognized that, while it's hard to create a situation where there's the possibility of a character getting a lot of pus spewed at them, it is undeniably disgusting when it happens.

His resources (or lack thereof) betray him a little. The cast is good enough to get sawed and stabbed, although you certainly won't remember any performances after the movie: Just be glad that Santa De Santis's Clara does seem to be having some thoughts as she moves between Antonio and Aurora, and that Daniela Virgilio fills out her tight, blood-spattered clothes nicely. There's nothing especially forbidden or atmospheric about the locations; Anotonio's and Clara's house seems a bit homey and suburban to be as isolated as would seem to be necessary.

Albanesi's enthusiasm, at least, is admirable. A little more money, maybe a writing partner who can come up with a real story to give his apparent skill at mayhem a worthy outlet, and this could be a good sign of nasty times to come.

Also at HBS.

Labels: Boston Underground Film Festival, Brattle, horror, independent, indiefilmcafe, Italy

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One of the characters in this movie is named "Theo Huxtable". Let me just point out, as I must, that someone having the same name as an 80s sitcom character is not funny.

Who Is KK Downey?

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2008 at the Brattle Theater (BUFF X)

I wonder how many times a secret identity has ever worked in actual practice. Not living a double life, where you're just trying to keep two groups separate, but a bona fide secret identity where you're trying to someone you know from realizing that these two people they know in different contexts are actually the same person for an extended period of time.

Who Is KK Downey? is basically a secret identity movie. Young would-be author Theo Huxtable (Matt Silver) has written a book called Truck Stop Hustler that is about as far from his real suburban middle-class life as could be. His best friend Terry (Darren Curtis) is starting to realize that he's never going to be a rock star and can't stomach the thought of an ordinary life working in his father's helicopter factory. When a publisher rejects Theo's book, saying that in modern publishing, you're selling the author's persona as a package with the book and tubby whitebread Theo doesn't fit with his lurid narrative, they concoct a scheme - they would claim Truck Stop Hustler was a memoir, with Terry posing as its protagonist. With the package in place, the book is a smash hit, with only local critic Connor (Pat Kiely) hating the book - and to add insult to injury, "Downey" is soon stealing away Connor's girlfriend Sue (Kristin Adams)... who just happens to be Terry's ex.

The movie's big lie, of course, is that Connor, Sue, and everyone else that Theo and Terry know that isn't in on the gag don't immediately twig to the fact that KK looks and sounds a whole lot like Terry with a blond wig and a generic southern accent (and that Terry never seems to be around his old friends). We buy it, to a certain extent, because pretty much everybody in this movie's world is a cartoon character to a certain extent. Connor is the most ridiculous, the type of alternate weekly critic who doesn't actually like anything, and is so effete that one wonders why, in this sort of stereotype-derived world, he's dating a woman other than to make Terry miserable. Theo's ridiculous hair is always worth a giggle.

This isn't quite a one-joke movie, but its bread and butter is mocking the art world, especially the cottage industry that exists between the artist and the audience. Yes, there are jokes at the expense of artists (Sue's art is adding eyes to everyday objects, Theo initially acts as though adding more and stranger sexual escapades to K.K.'s history adds to the work's sophistication) and fans (people do seem to eat that book up), but mostly it's the idea of art as a business, and in particular its gatekeepers, that come in for mockery. Aside from Conner's snobbery, there's the publisher willing to engage in fraud and the very idea that an artist should be marketed, rather than his work; Theo becomes a monster once his book becomes a business. It's fertile ground, and the filmmakers never let up on it, tough they're not harping. It's also not their only trick; the characters are generally funny and ridiculous people.

These goofy characters are the work of a comedy troupe - Curtis, Kiley, and Silver write as well as starring; Curtis and Kiley direct. With that kind of collaboration, there's a lot of potential for disaster; the cast could easily go improv-crazy with no-one to rein them in. The acting is pretty over-the-top - Terry, Theo, and Connor are all broad caricatures - but its seldom out-of-character nuttiness or so far out as to not be funny. Kristin Adams is nice enough as Sue, but she's The Girl, and in this sort of movie The Girl has to be the mature one who explains why the relationship didn't work and just isn't quite as wacky as the boys. Dan Haber shows up toward the end to add a little extra craziness but packs a lot of funny into a relatively short appearance.

Crazy is what is called for; this is one of those premises which the audience might reject if they were ever given time to stop and think about it, even though the story is inspired by an actual incident. This isn't an indie comedy that's going to be praised for its subtelty or realism, but it is pretty darn funny.

Also at HBS.

Labels: Boston Underground Film Festival, Brattle, Canada, comedy, independent, indiefilmcafe

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I have to admit, I'm not a big fan of Castle's movies - I came upon him too late, if this movie's point of view that his audience was kids is correct. Still, you've got to respect a guy who was this willing to show his audience a good time like he did.

I've talked about the difference between good camp and bad camp a few times - good camp is the result of someone making the best movie possible based on limited resources and talent; bad camp is making a crap movie when you're able to do better. I think Castle tends to fit in between, to a certain extent: He did do the best he could with limited resources, making fairly entertaining movies on minuscule budgets... But he did limit those budgets himself, sometimes out of realism, sometimes out of fear. He's an earlier Roger Corman, a guy who has a fair amount of talent, but was too worried about losing money to ever fully unleash it.

Spine Tingler!: The William Castle Story

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2008 at the Brattle Theater (BUFF X)

There hasn't been anyone in the film business like William Castle since his last films in the mid-1970s. Theater owners owners probably wish that there was; his gimmicks put butts in seats and created a generation of loyal fans. Indeed, you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone in Spine Tingler! who doesn't love Castle.

Castle's story is an interesting one. Born William Schloss in 1914, he was orphaned at an early age and got into show business as a teenager, doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work on the New York stage as well as appearing in small parts. He met Orson Welles and was soon running his own theater, where he showed an early knack for establishing himself as a brand name and doing everything he can to promote his shows. Soon, he made his way to California, got a job with Columbia, moving up to directing B pictures before forming his own production company, where his famous gimmicks would come into play.

There's a lot of nifty stories told here. Filmmaker Jeffrey Schwarz is able to bookend the film with stories of the ones that got away. Early in his career, he came to Columbia with an idea for a film that he wanted to make with Orson Welles; the studio eventually decided to have Welles direct; the result was The Lady from Shanghai. Much better known is how he would later purchase the rights to Rosemary's Baby with the hopes that this would be the film that changed how people remembered him as a director. Instead, Robert Evans cajoled him into selling Paramount the rights and working as a producer for Roman Polanski. Schwarz spends a fair amount of time on these stories, which have big names and big personalities, but also illustrate something about Castle's character that stayed constant throughout his life and career - that he did want to entertain moviegoers more than anything, and that despite his showmanship, he was one to put others before himself.

We're told as much by the people who knew him, primarily his daughter Terry Castle and niece Marcia Scully Little; he seemed to have a genuine fear of leaving his family to fend for themselves the way he had had to. As much as showmanship, that was the reasoning behind his use of gimmicks - he felt the need to ensure success, even when he had a good movie. Friends, family, and colleagues all speak highly of him, and when we get to hear his own voice (taken from a television appearance and a college lecture late in his career), he's laughing and high-spirited.

Schwarz gets a number of filmmakers and fans to comment on Castle, mostly the people you'd expect: Joe Dante, John Waters, Leonard Maltin, John Landis, etc.; people who clearly loved and were inspired by Castle and have worn that on their sleeves for their entire careers. Although Schwarz wasn't able to interview some of the big names - Roman Polanski and Mia Farrow are notably absent - he does get good stories from people who worked for him, notably The Tingler co-star Darryl Hickman and Straight-Jacket co-star Diane Baker, describing the surprisingly easy camaraderie between Castle and urbane Vincent Price and how working with a demanding star like Joan Crawford was a difficult experience. Marcel Marceau is also a great interview; he seems to retain great fondness for the director of his oddball feature Shanks.

There's not much behind-the-scenes footage to be had; Castle was a guy who worked fast and cheap and wasn't one to spend film on anything but the feature. Schwarz makes up the difference with film clips and black-and-white stills with Castle's face the sole color element. It's a bit reminiscent of The Kid Stays in the Picture, actually, or one of the DVD features that comprise the bulk of the output of Schwarz and his company.

That will likely be this film's ultimate destination, disc n+1 in an n-movie Castle box set. It's a pleasant overview of Castle's career, likely not revealing anything new to his die-hard fans, but a fun look at a certain corner of movie history.

Also at HBS.

Labels: Boston Underground Film Festival, Brattle, documentary, independent, indiefilmcafe, USA

(1) comments

Back at work, trying to catch up on these while on the bus or waiting for a query to run.

It was pretty close to a game-time decision between the Leah Myerhoff presentation and Altamont Now or Onward to Calgary and Pop Skull on Saturday. Ultimately, it was the trailers that nudged me in the direction I went - Altamont Now has a nifty parody of the preview for Contempt (which I'd just seen the week before, pushing the upcoming run at the Brattle), whereas Onward to Calgary was kind of off-putting the first time - it's definitely in the "Look, I'm WACKY!" category.

Probably the right decision; Onward to Calgary looks like a long 100 minutes, Pop Skull has epilepsy warnings [I'm not epileptic, but it's generally not a good sign if a movie has to warn against causing actual injury to its audience (then again, I am writing about the William Castle doc next, and that was right up his alley)], and I rather liked Altamont Now.

On the other hand, going the other way would have allowed for food breaks. I think Saturday's nutrition was an egg sandwich in the morning and Twizzlers at seven-ish. Festivals can lead to some really crappy eating if you're determined to see as much film as possible.

Altomont Now

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2008 at the Brattle Theater (BUFF X)

"Someday", the main character of Altamont Now says, "the Altamont babies are going to track down the Woodstock babies and beat them up." That's kind of a clever idea, though it winds up being just one of many bits tossed against the wall in this chaotic movie. This one sticks, and it's joined by enough other clever bits to make the movie generally successful.

Main Character Richard Havoc (Daniel Louis Rivas) was born during the Altamont concert documented by Gimme Shelter and has himself become a huge rock star, in spite/because of the middle fingers he throws the music industry. As the concert's thirtieth anniversary approaches in 1999, Havoc has retreated to an abandoned nuclear missile silo along with former child star Karen Kennedy (Frankie Shaw), one-handed public access ranter Travis Hook (Teddy Eck), and newly-sober but still angry parolee Alex Urban (Matthew Humphries), all of them spewing anger and calls for revolution. Why wouldn't documentary filmmaker Mark Clark (Raphael Nash Thompson) want to capture this group of personalities?

Altamont Now takes the form of a faux documentary, claiming to be the movie that Chuck cut together while he and Havoc were shut in the silo's fallout shelter after 1999's nuclear holocaust, although if that's the case, you've got to wonder who's holding the camera much of the time, because it's certainly not Clark. Indeed, the documentary angle could easily have been dropped completely, except that the scenes of Clark and Havoc in the editing room, arguing over what they see and pointing out some of the artifice, are too good and too central to lose.

What comes in between is a broad but vicious parody of both angry and complacent youth, as the bunker youths let loose a constant stream of vitriol with no comprehension of the system that they're railing against. Aside from the "like, whatever"s that interrupt and undercut their rants, they're buied under a wave of advertising (Alex can't help plugging Mountain Dew-like Green Lightning) and pop cultural obsession (the boys keep asking Karen to repeat the signature line from her 80s TV show, "Why's Daddy Acting Funny?"). They're angry, ridiculous morons, but kids even younger and more sheltered lap them up.

This is one of those independent/underground movies where enthusiasm outstrips talent and resources. It was fun to try and identify which 1980s computers were being used as anachronistic set decoration in the actual decommissioned missile silo (I think I spotted a Commodore 64 and a TI 99/4A, and maybe a Radio Shack Color Computer). Director Joshua Brown has a knack for handling that enthusiasm; the performances that are a little broad for belief do work as people aware of the camera and trying to play it up, and there's a nice bitterness to the scenes in the fallout shelter, as Havoc and Clark get throroughly sick of each other over eight and a half years.

The cast is good enough, for the most part. Rivas is actually pretty good when those shelter scenes call for him to calm down as Havoc is faced with examining his life. Frankie Shaw does a pretty nice job in making Karen open and vulnerable despite the fact that she's being very pushy and running around with a machine gun and pretty clearly trying not to be vulnerable. I think there were some opportunities missed with Raphael Nash Thompson as Mark Clark; he never really manages to be the straight man or as funny a spoof of what the kids are rebelling against.

Altamont Now is enthusiastic, and has some pretty good nuggest buried in it. (The best, though, isn't part of the film proper - its trailer is a nifty riff on the preview for Contempt that works as both parody and homage; I hope it's on the DVD). There are plenty of moments that don't quite work, but there are more hits than misses.

Labels: Boston Underground Film Festival, Brattle, comedy, faux-documentary, independent, indiefilmcafe

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BUFF is an odd festival for me; I know, going in, that I'm probably going to dislike roughly half of what I see there, really viscerally hating some of it. I get email about those reviews, saying I didn't get the movies - it's not as much fun as when the directors of small documentaries are just thrilled that someone saw and wrote about their work.

That's part of why I didn't ask for a pass this year; I didn't want to feel obligated to see and write about everything. Then I saw the lineup and saw it looked good enough to buy a festival pass for. I don't know that I'll necessarily see enough movies this weekend to make the pass worth more than buying single tickets, but not having to wait in line and see if I can get in is worth something.

Anyway, if you're reading this within an hour or three of my posting it, you might be able to catch The Wizard of Gore at its encore show at the Brattle, today at 2:30pm. Otherwise, you're probably waiting until Dimension Extreme releases the DVD late this summer.

The Wizard of Gore

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 March 2008 at the Brattle Theater (BUFF X)

You've got to love how the title "The Wizard of Gore" puts it right out there, both for the Herschell Gordon Lewis original and Jeremy Kasten's new remake: This is one for the folks who like blood and guts. It does have ambitions beyond that, sure, but like the title character, it knows you've got to sell the visceral.

Said title character is Montag the Magnificent (Crispin Glover), a stage magician whose underground magic shows feature a woman being pulled from the audience, horribly mutilated, and then restored to life. The next day, though, she is found dead of wounds like the ones she apparently suffered during the show. Underground newspaper publisher Edmund Bigelow (Kip Pardue) and his girlfriend Maggie (Bijou Phillips) have been going to these shows, and team up with Edmunds coroner friend Jinky (Joshua John Miller) to investigate.

As befits a mystery story centered around a magic show, much of what we and Edmund see and learn is lies and misdirection, a challenge to figure out what is really going on. As mysteries go, it's not bad, although it does hinge on a somewhat fantastical element that, while it is revealed early enough to be considered fair play, still requires a bit of a leap of faith from the audience. The setting is a little peculiar, too - a subtitle early on reminds us that the film takes place in the present day, since one might get the impression from Edmund's vintage suits, printing press, and apartment decor that it takes place in the past, while the industrial-goth style everywhere else might suggest "bleak (near) future" to us boring middle-class suburban types.

The cast, at the very least, is a bunch of fun. Pardue comes across as a sort of lower-cost Matt Damon, not quite managing the charm but convincingly deteriorating as the film goes along. Bijou Phillips and Joshua John Miller are fairly likable as his partners-in-crime-solving. But it's the familiar faces in supporting roles that are the big draw: Brad Dourif as a local herbalist and acupuncture practitioner who uses leeches to cleanse his blood makes exposition fun. Jeffrey Combs is almost unrecognizable at first, but does well in his creepy part. And then there's Crispin Glover, spending almost all his time on stage, playing the creepy showman as funny and threatening as few others could.

But what, you may ask, of the gore? To be honest... It's a little disappointing. Kasten and writer Zach Chassler come up with imaginative ways to dispatch a series of Suicide Girl models and various others, and there are a couple of nasty money shots, but if you've got "gore" in the title, you should probably be raising the bar or something. Also, most of the bloody scenes during the magic shows are kind of difficult to see - there's a prop that consistently gets in the way, the lighting is low, and the quality of the digital projection wasn't that great. The latter means it might look better in another situation, but I don't get the rest - if you're selling gore, let us see the gore.

Clearer shots of the viscera probably wouldn't make this new Wizard of Gore a good film, even with the genre's frequently lowered expectations - the story's kind of a mess, for starters. Still, it's a decent enough effort, and not really a bad choice if you're in the video store looking for a bit of blood, camp, and nudity that you haven't seen before.

Also at HBS.

Labels: Boston Underground Film Festival, Brattle, gore, horror, independent, indiefilmcafe, mystery

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I'm starting to fall behind here, so I'll just capsule a couple that are beginning to fall out the back of my brain. I feel kind of lame doing it, since there isn't any review for I Don't Want to Sleep Alone on eFilmCritic and it's always an interesting challenge to do a good one for something so far outside the mainstream.

It's also the mood I'm in;

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 14 January 2008 at the Brattle Theater (Recent Raves)

There's much to admire about this movie, no question. Maybe about half an hour too much, really; it's one of those films where what's going on is very clear early on, but it keeps going on and on to make sure the audience really gets it. And then it keeps going, driving home the point of how Jesse James was perceived differently from Ford all the way to Ford's death.

The buzz on this movie has mostly been about Casey Affleck's performance as Robert Ford, and it's very good, but I think it caused people to unfairly overlook just how great Brad Pitt is. Affleck's Ford is starry-eyed and ingratiating, but it's a performance where one can really see the acting; it loudly proclaims itself to be a performance. Pitt's James takes a little more effort to crack; we get glimpses of the charismatic figure who became a folk hero despite being a murderer and a thief, but Pitt and writer/director Andrew Dominik get to chip away at that. James is nuts, killing off the gang from is last robbery one by one, and that's engrossing: His paranoia is exerting more and more power over him, but he continues to act as though he's being perfectly reasonable.

What really made this movie feel longer than it is, though, was Sam Shepard, or more precisely, the lack thereof. It's just borderline cruel to introduce a character who is as much fun to watch as his Frank James and then shuffle him off for the vast majority of the movie, other than a wordless and brief reappearance midway through. Similarly, Zooey Deschanel is underused at the end.

Hei yan quan (I Don't Want to Sleep Alone)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 January 2008 at the Brattle Theater (Recent Raves)

It's a real shame art house films like this don't get released on the HD formats yet. This is a tremendously good-looking movie, but few will be able to see it in theaters, and Tsai Ming-liang's compositions may wind up getting clobbered at DVD resolution. He likes wide shots, putting the character we're supposed to pay attention to in the background, and forcing us to look closely, to really engage our attention even though not much seems to be happening.

Like the other films of his I've seen, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone is a record of people who manage to be isolated despite having no place of their own. The stories are small, but heartfelt - an illegal worker nursing a man beaten nearly to death back to health, and a young woman who later encounters that second man when she's not caring for a comatose relative. The connections between them are pretty straightforward, but since the story is not the primary concern, the simplicity isn't much of a problem.

Labels: Brattle, drama, independent, indiefilmcafe, Malaysia, USA, western

(2) comments

I almost missed this at the Brattle because I would have been the only one to see the Saturday midnight show, and there's no point in running a film just for one guy who wasn't actually going to pay money for it (usher-level members don't pay for each ticket. Sound good? Join The Brattle yourself!). Luckily, I guess, someone else decided he wanted to see it at the last minute.

We each bought some candy and soda, so the theater didn't have to run the movie for just seven dollars and fifty cents of return, but they must have taken a bath on it, despite the write-up in the program saying what a gloriously trashy, ridiculous movie it is. Sadly, I think they were overselling it.

I Know Who Killed Me

* ½ (out of four)
Seen 12 January 2008 at The Brattle Theater ("Recent Raves"/Best of 2007. Seriously)

There's a part of me that would like it if I Know Who Killed Me ended Lindsay Lohan's career. That's not scadenfreude or any dislike of her as an actor talking; I actually like her enough to wish she'd be in better movies. But if a career that started with a better-than-expected remake of The Parent Trap is going to crash and burn, well, this is exactly the movie that should form the other bookend.

In it, Lohan plays Aubrey Fleming, an honor student in a prosperous suburb who vanishes one night, apparently the latest victim of the limb-severing serial killer who is apparently the community's only blight (especially if you have an attractive and intelligent daughter). But wait! She seems to have survived and escaped, somehow, though not before losing an arm and a leg. And, apparently, her marbles - when she wakes up in the hospital, she claims to be someone else entirely, a stripper by the name of Dakota Moss, which understandably upsets her parents (Neal McDonough and Julia Ormand), the psychiatrist assigned to help her recover (Gregory Itzin), and the FBI agents investigating the case (Garcelle Beauvais and Spence Garrett). Not so much her boyfriend (Brian Geraghty), what with Dakota being willing to put out and all.

As with its main character, the film seems to have a split personality. At times it feels like it wants to be a murder mystery, or a psychological thriller. So we spend a lot of time before the abduction watching Aubrey's life for something suspicious, paying attention to the seemingly inconsequential scenes that the film lingers over because it might contain clues that will be important in the end. After she's taken, there's a great deal of earnest procedural work, puzzling over the short stories Aubrey wrote about Dakota earlier, and trying to figure out just how to crack through Dakota's resistance to find the necessary clues. This, quite honestly, isn't much fun. Writer Jeff Hammond and director Chris Sivertson don't really have what it takes to tell a good mystery story; they can't tell the difference between boring filler and legitimate red herrings. They also don't give us much in the way of interesting characters; Dakota may be a figment of Aubrey's imagination, but she's still the richest and most entertaining person on