I don't imagine there were a lot of guests scheduled for BUFF, especially the first night where the schedule was Sunday-evening tight, but I wonder how many are backing out. Nicole & Kevin might be joking about how the audience chooses the awards at this festival which means there's still democracy here, but the stories about people getting arrested by ICE folks trying to meet quotas at Logan aren't good, and film festivals sure seem like something where someone might come in on a tourist visa only to have someone who might have looked the other way before decide that was working. Like, I might not risk it.
Bleh.
Still, it was a fun night where the studio movie with indie roots and the restoration shared a theme of rage leading to murder in a sunny beach community. If you want more, The Surfer director Lorcan Finnegan's debut feature, Without Name, is currently sitting on my shelf in a disc released by Yellow Veil, a partner label of Vinegar Syndrome, who are apparently behind the restoration/re-release of Muerte en la Playa. The weird horror community crosses over a lot!
The Surfer
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)
Huh, I don't think I've ever heard Julian McMahon's actual accent before (and maybe I haven't; if the Sydney-born actor is laying Perth on something thick). There's something kind of funny about how he's been playing [North] American folks for twenty-five years without really scanning as Australian while Nicolas Cage's character is supposedly Australian but they've got to spend a couple minutes claiming that a few years in California twenty years ago has him talking like Nic Cage.
Or maybe it was longer; whatever the length, he's back in Australia now, intending to take his son (Finn Little) to the beach where he surfed growing up, pointing out the childhood home that he is repurchasing from the crest of a wave, presuming he can put together the financing to beat a last-minute all-cash offer. Since then, though, the locals have been bullying any outsider who comes to the supposedly-public beach, led by Scott "Scally" Callahan (McMahon), a motivational speaker who whips the local men into a frenzy. As Cage's surfer continues to haunt the beach, various things start going wrong, and the only ally he's got is a bum living out of his car (Nic Cassim) who blames Scally and his crew for his son's death.
The Surfer is the sort of Nicolas Cage movie that makes you wonder what would have happened if Cage hadn't taken the role. it might have been more timid, or it might have been the same but more unnerving because we're not looking for him to Nic Cage it up. He's good at this, and good in this movie, but it's not necessarily going to take one by surprise; we can sort of track how Cage will play his escalation from seemingly reasonable everyman to deadpan sarcasm to manic violence from previous experience at this point.
I do like the compact setup, though, with director Lorcan Finnegan and screenwriter Thomas Martin clearly establishing stakes and how the title character is trying to recapture things that are gone, in large part due to his own self-destructive action, and seeing up little bits of entitlement that keep him from being totally sympathetic and get him deeper and deeper in trouble. It's so keenly and carefully set out up front that what comes after is kind of drawn out as a result, stripping away everything he's rebuilt in maybe too finely granular a fashion, before a turn that maybe requires more or less of the movie, because there's a whole other basket of issues that demand a bit of attention after that, from the "localism" that seems to drive the folks on the beach to how Scally's guru status is likely more about giving people permission to be cruel than channeling aggression.
The film's got a look, though, a real way of getting across how Australia is unforgivingly beautiful (it is a place where dehydration can sneak up on you while you enjoy the sunshine and interesting plants and animals), and an eye for how the rich folks near this beach are kind of cosplaying at being hooligans enough for it to become real. The comic timing of each new bit of cruelty is impeccable, and the frustration and heatstroke making this guy feel even more unstuck in time is effective.
I hate to be a "cut 15 minutes" guy, especially since the grindhouse flicks that inspired this were often sort of padded themselves, but it does feel like there's a 90-minute version that attacks the viewer as ruthlessly as the opening does throughout rather than vamping because it's going to take a couple of days to wear this guy down. Maybe there's not quite a correct pace for this story, and you've just got to roll with how good many of the moments are.
Muerte en la Playa (Death on the Beach)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the disc at Amazon or direct from Vinegar Syndrome
You never totally know about IMDB entries for filmmakers outside the English-speaking mainstream, but to watch Muerte en la Playa is to be surprised that this comes near the end of the career of Enrique Gómez Vadillo rather than the start; it's got the feel of a young filmmaker trying to get things out as an outsider rather than a veteran who has had a decade or so and plenty of opportunities to hone his craft. That's both good and bad; transgressive energy pushes the film through periods where there are awkward talent gaps between some of the folks involved.
It opens with a nastily sexual murder at a boarding school that will have it closed, sending student David (Andrés Bonfiglio) home to his wealthy mother Lorena (Sonia Infante) and her latest paramour, Paul (Rodolfo de Anda), who seems an honest and pleasant enough gigolo. Lorena figures this will be a good time to start teaching David the family business; although she is disappointed that he would rather spend time with a pair of male hippies and deaf-mute servant Ruffo (Antonio Eric) than the various "secretaries" she has recruited to show him the ropes and prove he's the sort of man she imagines him to be, even if Paul and the rest quickly suss out that he is gay. Eventually, he finds new friends Tony (Humberto Lobato) and Nubia (Angela Alaltriste), while Paul quietly makes sure that the unusual amount of dead bodies showing up near the estate aren't investigated too closely.
I am mildly curious about the sources of Vinegar Syndrome's restoration, because the very start and end of the movie look like they are sourced from VHS copies, priming the audience to see it as the sort of disreputable, shot-on-video underground cinema of the 1980s, except that it quickly shifts to 35mm film and the sort of pretty darn passable cinematography that comes from pointing the camera at people with good physiques in sunny locations and not messing up the framing or the lighting, even if the point of view often movies like someone who just got their first camcorder for Christmas. Much of the rest of the movie feels like they only had so much time and film, so there's not always a great take or two to when they got to the editing bay.
Or they might have been going for a certain level of camp from the start; there are lines that it's hard to imagine being written in sincere fashion, although the actors do a fair job of delivering them without winking or stumbling over just how the character is supposed to be feeling to say this. The film isn't delivering great performances, but everyone is a well-cast match of the sort of guy they're meant to be.
Mostly, the vibe is right; one can feel the movie riding the line between the characters who are cosmopolitan enough to accept David as gay and the ones who will view that with contempt or disappointment. Squint, and you can see the bodies piling up as Lorena refuses to see her son for what he is in more ways than one. Any sort of message you might try to get from the film might be mixed at best and the ending is a bloody mess, but you can't really argue that maybe there's an argument to make being in the closet less scary in circa 1991 Mexico.
Or maybe it's not that deep, but just a portion of sleaze just capable enough to be watchable while also being quite ridiculous.
Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Tuesday, November 14, 2023
IFFBoston 2023½.03-04: Robot Dreams, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, and Tótem
As I said the other day, I missed the first night of IFFBoston 2023½, reading a tweet that it was sold out as I was on the subway. The closing night film was sold out well ahead of time, and I discovered the next film after Robot Dreams, Evil Does Not Exist was sold out when I got out of the first and went to get another ticket. I killed some time in the square, saw Monster was sold out, and then took the train to the Common for Under the Light.
Sunday, I tried to get tickets for everything at the start, and was told only the first two films had seats left. End result was only four films seen out of twelve, but it's not that huge a bummer, even if I was interested in most. You can't necessarily assume these things will all have Boston-area releases, true - the Kendall is basically a regular multiplex that has a couple limited releases on screens 8 & 9 these days, while the Seaport and Causeway Street reopenings being stalled means things need to be release-date-lucky to get a screen at Boston Common because it's bearing the whole load for Boston proper - but the odds are pretty good for most of them, especially if they get Oscar nominations That lets me basically treat this as a fundraiser for IFFBoston - a worthy cause! - and basically shrug it off in the case that I didn't get in Someone did, and that means they've maxed out, right?
In the meantime, this has taken long enough to post that All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is already opening at the Kendall this weekend. The release date for Robot Dreams is fast approaching, too, although I don't know if it gets screens on the 22nd with both Disney and DreamWorks have big animated movies. It feels like it could have benefitted from staking out a date right between big releases and hanging around for matinees for the better part of a month, although maybe not; it's not family-unfriendly, but not necessarily made specifically for kids, either, although who knows - it looks like the sort of thing showing up on the Alamo Seaport schedule for one show a day, although I don't know how linked they are with Neon.
Anyway - good movies! Glad IFFBoston could preview them, and enjoying their rollout!
Robot Dreams
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 21 October 2023 in the Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival Boston Fall Focus 2023, DCP)
Robot Dreams is thoroughly my sort of thing, from its Atari-playing canine protagonist to its somewhat surprising ending. It's cute as can be without being saccharine and revels in its authentic small details without ever seeming to try to score points for 1980s nostalgia.
That protagonist is Dog Varon, alone and lonely in Manhattan's East Village, what he sees in neighboring buildings appearing to remind him of what he doesn't have. An advertisement for the "Amico 2000" companion robot plays on late night TV, and soon he's assembling a new best friend, who activates with a childlike wonder at the world that gets Dog seeing it with new eyes. They go to a public beach, but Robot's body does not react well to the sand and salt water, leaving him immobile as it's time to leave. Dog reluctantly returns home without Robot, intending to return the next day, but…
Well, that's the end of the first leg of a movie that splits pretty naturally into three parts, although without ever having a hard break or discontinuity. The first segment, in particular is close to pure fun, filled with blink-and-miss-it visual gags, the robot's sheer joy at every new discovery New York City has to offer, and the chance to identify with Dog's new sense of contentment, before that day at the beach sends the middle part of the movie into surreal territory. That allows screenwriter/director Pablo Berger to use the same style for different ends without creating a crazy tonal shift as the movie becomes sort of dark but allows the comedy and character evolution to continue without it actually becoming a dark comedy.
It works, in a way, because Robot is a robot, even if the temptation is to read them as a pet, roommate, or mail-order bride. It would be a cruel film otherwise - and likely still reads that way for many - but this does let it read as sad rather than mean. And that sadness is a part of life that the film acknowledges, and which is massive the point: That you can be surrounded by people in the city and struggle to make a connection, and sometimes they will be broken in ways you choose, have forced upon you, or stumble into. Dog has a perfect friend in Robot, but things change, and the why is less important than how everyone keeps going. That knowing Robot has Dog more willing to put himself out there in different ways could be played as betrayal, but instead it's growth.
That could be maudlin, but it's never the case, really. The film has a lot of 1980s Saturday morning cartoon DNA, from the character designs that seem more or less unchanged from Sara Varon's graphic novel to the pacing of it, with a ton of little comedic gags and offset but not overwhelmed by more serious moments. The film's anthropomorphic-animal-populated city is just grounded enough to allow for an occasion gag around Dog wagging his tail or the like (the clearances team must have worked overtime so that everything in the background could feel like the right detail rather than a pun on a real brand name). The lack of dialogue, with just a little reading needed, does something similar from a different direction, letting audiences of all ages wrestle with the emotions and how real they feel without forcing a viewer to get bogged down in details.
Yes, it's a bit heavier than the typical Saturday morning show, but its makers aren't intent on upending or subverting that too much. It's more inclined to be fun than sad, or at least find something hopeful in that sadness, and manages that quite well.
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 October 2023 in the Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival Boston Fall Focus 2023, DCP)
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt does the thing where the filmmakers weave wisps of story into large amounts of imagery until there's something feature-length, which isn't always to everyone's taste. It does so very well, at least, resulting in something very solid when the same technique can often result in something that tries one's patience.
Filmmaker Raven Jackson initially introduces the audience to MacKenzie (Kaylee Nicole Johnson) as her father Isaiah (Chris Chalk) takes her and sister Josie (Jayah Henry) fishing, with mother Evelyn (Sheila Atim) showing how to clean and gut it. She's got a crush on a local boy, Wood (Preston McDowell), but when we see them as adults (Charleen McClure & Reginald Helms Jr.), they didn't wind up together, though that brief reunion may be what leads to Mack's pregnancy, even though she may not see herself as prepared for the responsibility.
The film starts by teaching patience, letting the audience patiently watch Isaiah show Mack how to cast, wait for a bite, and then reel her catch in without losing it, which in addition to setting the pace also allows the film to initially present itself as a set of images that ask for little aside from the audience giving things a close look. Closer than one might expect, at times, as Jackson and cinematographer Jomo Fray often crop faces out to focus on other details. That it is intriguingly composed and beautifully photographed is enough, at least for a while.
For some time, Jackson seems to be primarily concerned with capturing a specific place and time - rural Black life a few decades back - until something happens to shake young Mack's life, and she never really stops shaking. At that point, the film sort of becomes unmoored in time, jumping backwards and forward, sometimes in a purposefully jarring way, like Jackson doesn't want lines to be drawn that are too straight. Charleen McClure shines as the adult Mack in part because she almost never lets the woman's fragility appear front and center; she plays Mack as incomplete and just uncertain enough that her father and sister accepting it seems natural enough, but isn't showy about it. She entirely settles from her trauma until late, when she's not only become wise enough to recognize her lack of wisdom, but to recognize that she may be more capable than she thought.
That's sort of all there is to the film, but it's enough. The images are beautiful, and while some may be familiar, some are odd or fragmented in an interesting way. A particularly notable one is a a wedding, where the camera doesn't linger on the ceremony but initially concentrates on the elder women in the pews, marking the important event, but winds up shooting the bride and groom in the distance, out a window. Mack is part of this community, but cannot entirely engage with it directly, no matter how but young Kaylee Nicole Johnson's performance initially implies she'll grow up different than she does.
Mack doesn't have a journey so much as she grows and ultimately understands the world we live in a little better, and the audience comes to understand that. It's just personal enough to not feel anthropological, but also stands back enough that a viewer feels like they're giving Mack the space she needs.
Tótem
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 October 2023 in the Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival Boston Fall Focus 2023, DCP)
It seems like you seldom see the child performers in movies like this listed in the credits in a way that highlights their actual importance; they're usually tucked away after the notable adults, or given an "Introducing... where a grown-up might have an "and..." This one puts newcomer Naíma Sentíes right up first, though, which is impressive, because the movie is designed to feel like an ensemble piece.
She plays Sol, seven or eight years old, whose mother Lucia (Iazua Larios) is dropping her off at her grandfather's house, where much of the rest of the family is gathering to celebrate the birthday of Sol's father Tonatiuh (Mateo Garcia), notably his sisters Alejandra (Marisol Gasé) and Nuria (Montserrat Marañon), whose daughter Ester (Saori Gurza) is a couple years younger and a bit of a troublemaker. As the adults prepare, Sol wanders a bit, looking at snails, insects, birds, and other creatures. "Tona", on the other hand, seems determined to stay in his room, as he is very sick and needs the assistance of his caregiver Cruz (Teresita Sánchez) for almost everything.
If filmmaker Lila Avilés (who, in addition to writing, directing, and producing, also appears to have a casting credit) hadn't found such a good Sol, she probably could have put together quite a fine movie about the adults hanging on by a thread: The sisters, for example, are a kind of fascinating pair, Montserrat Marañon playing Nuria as sensible and organized, even when things are going wrong, while Marisol Gasé's Alejandra seems like pure comic relief, but the way Nuria has worn down by the end while Alejandra hasn't, and there's tension as a result. There's grandfather Roberto (Alberto Amador) who seems annoyed by all this, even hostile, and Mateo Garcia not only looking like he is always on the verge of physical collapse but further burdened by shame. It's a family that is not broken or dysfunctional, but also clearly one that is not hanging out in each other's kitchens every day.
That would have been a pretty good movie, but Avilés always comes back to how, ultimately, this little girl wants to see her dying father, but he feels too ashamed of his illness and the extended family's noise is hard to cut through, and every time she does, the movie feels sharper, like her main priority is making sure that the audience understands that this is the important part and so it gets just enough more attention to really pop. Senties gives Avilés what she needs every time, from how she studies various animals with tremendous concentration to how she pours out her knowledge of them when given a chance. For all the chaos around her, there's a potentially comic scene that feels like genuine horror when Sol breaks something and worries a bit about getting into trouble but also seems to sense that something worse than "trouble" is in the air.
And, man, that last scene, where she suddenly looks terrifyingly grown up, as if the reason why this has become such a big party hits her. Just a really tremendous gut punch, and absolutely the culmination of everything Avilés and her crew have done so well - a combination of perfect lighting, framing, and wordless performance - which also both seems to connect every thread that has been running through the film and letting the less important ones fall away. Avilés puts Sol at the center in this last moment, and she and Senties do not disappoint.
Sunday, I tried to get tickets for everything at the start, and was told only the first two films had seats left. End result was only four films seen out of twelve, but it's not that huge a bummer, even if I was interested in most. You can't necessarily assume these things will all have Boston-area releases, true - the Kendall is basically a regular multiplex that has a couple limited releases on screens 8 & 9 these days, while the Seaport and Causeway Street reopenings being stalled means things need to be release-date-lucky to get a screen at Boston Common because it's bearing the whole load for Boston proper - but the odds are pretty good for most of them, especially if they get Oscar nominations That lets me basically treat this as a fundraiser for IFFBoston - a worthy cause! - and basically shrug it off in the case that I didn't get in Someone did, and that means they've maxed out, right?
In the meantime, this has taken long enough to post that All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is already opening at the Kendall this weekend. The release date for Robot Dreams is fast approaching, too, although I don't know if it gets screens on the 22nd with both Disney and DreamWorks have big animated movies. It feels like it could have benefitted from staking out a date right between big releases and hanging around for matinees for the better part of a month, although maybe not; it's not family-unfriendly, but not necessarily made specifically for kids, either, although who knows - it looks like the sort of thing showing up on the Alamo Seaport schedule for one show a day, although I don't know how linked they are with Neon.
Anyway - good movies! Glad IFFBoston could preview them, and enjoying their rollout!
Robot Dreams
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 21 October 2023 in the Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival Boston Fall Focus 2023, DCP)
Robot Dreams is thoroughly my sort of thing, from its Atari-playing canine protagonist to its somewhat surprising ending. It's cute as can be without being saccharine and revels in its authentic small details without ever seeming to try to score points for 1980s nostalgia.
That protagonist is Dog Varon, alone and lonely in Manhattan's East Village, what he sees in neighboring buildings appearing to remind him of what he doesn't have. An advertisement for the "Amico 2000" companion robot plays on late night TV, and soon he's assembling a new best friend, who activates with a childlike wonder at the world that gets Dog seeing it with new eyes. They go to a public beach, but Robot's body does not react well to the sand and salt water, leaving him immobile as it's time to leave. Dog reluctantly returns home without Robot, intending to return the next day, but…
Well, that's the end of the first leg of a movie that splits pretty naturally into three parts, although without ever having a hard break or discontinuity. The first segment, in particular is close to pure fun, filled with blink-and-miss-it visual gags, the robot's sheer joy at every new discovery New York City has to offer, and the chance to identify with Dog's new sense of contentment, before that day at the beach sends the middle part of the movie into surreal territory. That allows screenwriter/director Pablo Berger to use the same style for different ends without creating a crazy tonal shift as the movie becomes sort of dark but allows the comedy and character evolution to continue without it actually becoming a dark comedy.
It works, in a way, because Robot is a robot, even if the temptation is to read them as a pet, roommate, or mail-order bride. It would be a cruel film otherwise - and likely still reads that way for many - but this does let it read as sad rather than mean. And that sadness is a part of life that the film acknowledges, and which is massive the point: That you can be surrounded by people in the city and struggle to make a connection, and sometimes they will be broken in ways you choose, have forced upon you, or stumble into. Dog has a perfect friend in Robot, but things change, and the why is less important than how everyone keeps going. That knowing Robot has Dog more willing to put himself out there in different ways could be played as betrayal, but instead it's growth.
That could be maudlin, but it's never the case, really. The film has a lot of 1980s Saturday morning cartoon DNA, from the character designs that seem more or less unchanged from Sara Varon's graphic novel to the pacing of it, with a ton of little comedic gags and offset but not overwhelmed by more serious moments. The film's anthropomorphic-animal-populated city is just grounded enough to allow for an occasion gag around Dog wagging his tail or the like (the clearances team must have worked overtime so that everything in the background could feel like the right detail rather than a pun on a real brand name). The lack of dialogue, with just a little reading needed, does something similar from a different direction, letting audiences of all ages wrestle with the emotions and how real they feel without forcing a viewer to get bogged down in details.
Yes, it's a bit heavier than the typical Saturday morning show, but its makers aren't intent on upending or subverting that too much. It's more inclined to be fun than sad, or at least find something hopeful in that sadness, and manages that quite well.
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 October 2023 in the Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival Boston Fall Focus 2023, DCP)
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt does the thing where the filmmakers weave wisps of story into large amounts of imagery until there's something feature-length, which isn't always to everyone's taste. It does so very well, at least, resulting in something very solid when the same technique can often result in something that tries one's patience.
Filmmaker Raven Jackson initially introduces the audience to MacKenzie (Kaylee Nicole Johnson) as her father Isaiah (Chris Chalk) takes her and sister Josie (Jayah Henry) fishing, with mother Evelyn (Sheila Atim) showing how to clean and gut it. She's got a crush on a local boy, Wood (Preston McDowell), but when we see them as adults (Charleen McClure & Reginald Helms Jr.), they didn't wind up together, though that brief reunion may be what leads to Mack's pregnancy, even though she may not see herself as prepared for the responsibility.
The film starts by teaching patience, letting the audience patiently watch Isaiah show Mack how to cast, wait for a bite, and then reel her catch in without losing it, which in addition to setting the pace also allows the film to initially present itself as a set of images that ask for little aside from the audience giving things a close look. Closer than one might expect, at times, as Jackson and cinematographer Jomo Fray often crop faces out to focus on other details. That it is intriguingly composed and beautifully photographed is enough, at least for a while.
For some time, Jackson seems to be primarily concerned with capturing a specific place and time - rural Black life a few decades back - until something happens to shake young Mack's life, and she never really stops shaking. At that point, the film sort of becomes unmoored in time, jumping backwards and forward, sometimes in a purposefully jarring way, like Jackson doesn't want lines to be drawn that are too straight. Charleen McClure shines as the adult Mack in part because she almost never lets the woman's fragility appear front and center; she plays Mack as incomplete and just uncertain enough that her father and sister accepting it seems natural enough, but isn't showy about it. She entirely settles from her trauma until late, when she's not only become wise enough to recognize her lack of wisdom, but to recognize that she may be more capable than she thought.
That's sort of all there is to the film, but it's enough. The images are beautiful, and while some may be familiar, some are odd or fragmented in an interesting way. A particularly notable one is a a wedding, where the camera doesn't linger on the ceremony but initially concentrates on the elder women in the pews, marking the important event, but winds up shooting the bride and groom in the distance, out a window. Mack is part of this community, but cannot entirely engage with it directly, no matter how but young Kaylee Nicole Johnson's performance initially implies she'll grow up different than she does.
Mack doesn't have a journey so much as she grows and ultimately understands the world we live in a little better, and the audience comes to understand that. It's just personal enough to not feel anthropological, but also stands back enough that a viewer feels like they're giving Mack the space she needs.
Tótem
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 October 2023 in the Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival Boston Fall Focus 2023, DCP)
It seems like you seldom see the child performers in movies like this listed in the credits in a way that highlights their actual importance; they're usually tucked away after the notable adults, or given an "Introducing... where a grown-up might have an "and..." This one puts newcomer Naíma Sentíes right up first, though, which is impressive, because the movie is designed to feel like an ensemble piece.
She plays Sol, seven or eight years old, whose mother Lucia (Iazua Larios) is dropping her off at her grandfather's house, where much of the rest of the family is gathering to celebrate the birthday of Sol's father Tonatiuh (Mateo Garcia), notably his sisters Alejandra (Marisol Gasé) and Nuria (Montserrat Marañon), whose daughter Ester (Saori Gurza) is a couple years younger and a bit of a troublemaker. As the adults prepare, Sol wanders a bit, looking at snails, insects, birds, and other creatures. "Tona", on the other hand, seems determined to stay in his room, as he is very sick and needs the assistance of his caregiver Cruz (Teresita Sánchez) for almost everything.
If filmmaker Lila Avilés (who, in addition to writing, directing, and producing, also appears to have a casting credit) hadn't found such a good Sol, she probably could have put together quite a fine movie about the adults hanging on by a thread: The sisters, for example, are a kind of fascinating pair, Montserrat Marañon playing Nuria as sensible and organized, even when things are going wrong, while Marisol Gasé's Alejandra seems like pure comic relief, but the way Nuria has worn down by the end while Alejandra hasn't, and there's tension as a result. There's grandfather Roberto (Alberto Amador) who seems annoyed by all this, even hostile, and Mateo Garcia not only looking like he is always on the verge of physical collapse but further burdened by shame. It's a family that is not broken or dysfunctional, but also clearly one that is not hanging out in each other's kitchens every day.
That would have been a pretty good movie, but Avilés always comes back to how, ultimately, this little girl wants to see her dying father, but he feels too ashamed of his illness and the extended family's noise is hard to cut through, and every time she does, the movie feels sharper, like her main priority is making sure that the audience understands that this is the important part and so it gets just enough more attention to really pop. Senties gives Avilés what she needs every time, from how she studies various animals with tremendous concentration to how she pours out her knowledge of them when given a chance. For all the chaos around her, there's a potentially comic scene that feels like genuine horror when Sol breaks something and worries a bit about getting into trouble but also seems to sense that something worse than "trouble" is in the air.
And, man, that last scene, where she suddenly looks terrifyingly grown up, as if the reason why this has become such a big party hits her. Just a really tremendous gut punch, and absolutely the culmination of everything Avilés and her crew have done so well - a combination of perfect lighting, framing, and wordless performance - which also both seems to connect every thread that has been running through the film and letting the less important ones fall away. Avilés puts Sol at the center in this last moment, and she and Senties do not disappoint.
Tuesday, September 01, 2020
Fantasia 2020.10: Minor Premise, Born of Woman 2020, and Sanzaru
Go figure, the two-plus-hour group of short features took some effort to get through. Good news/bad news is that the last few days only have a few "scheduled" items that have screeners, so maybe I'll be able to catch up a bit.
I struggled a bit more with the "Born of Woman" package than I did last year; it felt like there were more things in it that I just didn't get, and even the ones I did seemed more complicated by how including them in a block of films from women often seems to imply more than just the simple fact that women directed them, so meaning feels just a bit further out of reach. Still, a lot of good stuff in there.
I also found that I really liked Sanzaru; it's got a lot of moments when it could go off in typical horror movie directions of shock and trippiness, and while it never runs from either, there's purpose to every bit rather than just red herrings. It's kind of art-house horror, the sort of thing I could see A24 picking up, although the polish is in different places.
Minor Premise
* * (out of four)
Seen 24 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival, Vimeo via Roku)
There's a stretch at the start of Minor Premise when I wondered how a movie shot during quarantine was already finished and on the festival circuit, so cut off did it seem from the rest of the world even when a character was supposed to be delivering a lecture. That proves not to be the case, and it's kind of a shame; working their way around that sort of logistical challenge, whether it was part of the on-screen action or not, would have made for a much more interesting movie than the rickety Jekyll-and-Jekyll-and-Hyde-and-Hyde thing that viewers get.
The man in question is Ethan Kochar (Sathya Sridharan), who had long worked with his father Paul (Nikolas Kontomanolis) on technology to read and edit memories, although that was a mess - the father tried to take credit for the son's work and while a working prototype was built, crucial information was missing for their intended project of editing consciousness. Months later, a building at the college is being dedicated to Paul Kochar, but department head Malcolm (Dana Ashbrook) is pushing the difficult Ethan for results and presentations to the board; Ethan's ex-girlfriend Alli (Paton Ashbrook) has also returned to the university, as established a figure as he is. It's the sort of situation that inspires rash self-experimentation.
At least, it does in movies; in real life, it would seem like a long shot that Ethan's basement laboratory, with no graduate students or other team members to check his work, or any sort of proper protocols that include an actual control group, would get any sort of funding, and even if some rich eccentric did bankroll him, it seems unlikely that he'd be able to publish any sort of peer-reviewed paper, no matter how lax the standards have grown, or have what he has created gain government approval for commercial or therapeutic use. This may seem like party-pooping, nit-picking complaints to make, but it's indicative of how much the filmmakers are going to sweat the rest of the details or have supposedly smart people approach problems later, and it's also frustratingly uncreative: The movie is made up of tropes that were silly when they first started getting used for simplicity's sake decades ago, and it's big "what-if" idea is basically phrenology with more modern terminology on top.
The really frustrating thing is, all of this isn't even in service of making a streamlined, thrilling narrative; director Eric Schultz and co-writers Justin Moretto and Thomas Torrey create a downright goofy scenario where different mental states cycle out at precisely timed intervals that just so happen to alight with the exact tops and bottoms of hours (dumb, but useful for the audience that has to keep track of it), but they don't use it very well on any scale. There's seldom any tension in how Ethan has to get some useful chunk of work done in six minutes, or how these passing hours are bringing him closer to some sort of collapse. They start subplots out of a sense of apparent obligation - Malcolm just has to knock on the door and discover Ethan isn't himself - and then do nothing with them, and the way Alli being there to assist is handled is just as frustrating as she literally walks in and out of things depending on whether they want Ethan to have someone to talk to or whether the story requires she be ambushed, despite it clearly not being a good idea to leave him on his own. She never particularly looks like this marathon effort is taking anything out of her, either.
Sathya Sridharan and Paton Ashbrook at least commit to what they're given, even if that's not much (especially in Sridharan's case, since he should be getting the chance to create ten memorable variations on Ethan but is never given the opportunity); they handle the commit to the pair being intelligent people who care for each other, in the specific way that Alli is going to be professional and friendly despite Ethan's arrogance having hurt her before, a chemistry between them that is not necessarily being pushed in the expected direction. And while Ethan's lab is silly in concept, it's a fun place to be an on-screen mad scientist from how the lighting is just the right combination of shadowy and fluorescent sterility, with blackboards, cobbled together computer systems, and a memory-reading barber's chair that matches the mood. If nothing else, Schultz and company know what they want this movie to look and feel like and nail that.
Unfortunately, that serves as a nice coat of paint on a movie that is dumb from its silly remote lectures to the one last twist that everybody knows is coming likely before the film even starts. It's a mess that could have created much more intrigue had it been just a little more smartly organized.
Originally published at eFilmCritic
"Come F*ck My Robot"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
I'm not sure that I've ever seen a better distillation of why women groan and say "why even are men?" than this movie's 12 minutes, where the range from villain to male hero is from an engineer (Ian Abramson) who creates a robot with a vagina and immediately starts to pimp it out (despite calling her "like a daughter") to a confused and generally decent young virgin (Nicholas Alexander) who decides he's not okay with this after meeting "Ivy" (voice of Catherine Tapling) but still has trouble with the fact that she is, shall we say, not conventionally attractive and not going to fall head over heels in love despite him doing one good thing. Nobody's perfect, but one might want that range to extend a little further in one direction.
That said, "Come F*ck My Robot" is still an entertaining, mostly-upbeat short film, with Alexander able to bring the audience on a pretty good emotional ride in that time while Tapling does nice voice work and Abramson makes his character awful while hugging the line between cartoonish and skin-crawling. Filmmaker Mercedes Bryce Morgan keeps things moving at an enjoyably frantic pace, slowing down just long enough to have Brian and Ivy connect while showing how Abramson's engineer resents that. I'm not sure that the anachronisms quite match up - I don't think cragislist was around until after car phones had evolved into flips - but the filmmakers are smart in how they use them, placing this far enough into an ambiguous past that Ivy doesn't have to be a perfect gynoid but where the film still doesn't come off as period. Ivy's actual design is a nifty blend of sleek and boxy plopped in the middle of sets that are both disturbing and sad.
It's a fun little short that gets at female frustration with men from an abstract place but does so in an extremely enjoyable, goofy way.
"Blocks"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
"Blocks" is just surreal enough that I keep wanting to assign some sort of meaning to it and then stepping back, thinking that's a little much although there's got to be something there from the way the film is built, and then wondering whether young mothers would say I'm reaching or not stretching far enough. It's got the feeling of being clever but is absolutely not smug about it.
That weird premise - mother-of-two Ashleigh (Claire Coffee) suddenly finds herself, shall we say, unlikely to ever run out of Legos - feels like the sort of thing filmmaker Bridget Moloney came upon by accident and then found just enough variations to fill a ten-minute short with, not building toward anything extra-crazy but not exactly repeating herself either. It's a nice job of milking a joke just enough, while also having eccentric stuff going on around it to keep the giggles coming and a fun performance from Claire Coffee, who is very much in line with Moloney's sense of humor.
It's agreeably absurd, doesn't wear out its welcome, and ends in a way that makes one feel like it has accomplished something, even if you're not quite sure what.
"Break Us"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
The part of me that loves crime movies and thrillers is kind of disappointed that Rioghnach Ni Ghrioghair didn't hit the double cross that I was looking for when I was looking for it, because there are bit where it certainly looks like Sophie (Danielle Galligan) is scoping out how she can not be caught on camera while the more apparently enthusiastic Mark (Gavid Drea) is. Of course, what she does is probably better, telling a story that evolves because of what's going on rather than just mechanically playing out what happened before the audience got there.
It's a fun play either way, as the pair launch a plot to rob a post office but find things immediately diverging from their plans, building the tension up a little and getting things rolling. I don't know that the main pair ever get a chance to show how well they work off each other for more than a second or two, but Galligan is especially good as she often has to make Sophie look like she's not connected with any of what Mark is doing but still have what she's feeling run across her face.
"Snowflakes"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
I'm not sure that the summary listed for this movie in its IMDB listing is necessarily something you can deduce for sure from the movie, in which a pair of Jamaicans (Sharon Duncan-Brewster & Cherrelle Skeete) who have been in the UK all their lives are being deported before an attempt to sedate the older, more agitated Esther seems to kick off an alarming series of events that turn the tables and then some.
As with a lot of shorts, I wonder a bit if filmmaker Faye Jackson (who wrote, produced, directed, and edited) initially saw this as a part of something bigger; the film poses a question but stops before it gets to any sort of logical endpoint, although I don't know that there's really a feature here, either. It's a lot of nifty pieces that form into a snapshot if not quite a story. It's an impressive snapshot, though, and the style is aces - there's a moment with two or three great moments coming rapid-fire and the big one leaves the audience shocked enough to carry through to the end, with what they seen on-screen reflecting that.
"Diabla"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
There are two separate moments in "Diabla" when I stop and wonder if it's supposed to indicate that what filmmaker Ashley George just showed the viewer was meant to be a premonition or something she's feared, and while I'm pretty sure it's not, I'm not quite sure what circling back around to that same shot or moment is accomplishing. Is it the last time Nayeli (Ruth Ramos) trusted the world around her, or a reminder that one still has to walk the same path even though something terrible has happened on it? I'm not quite sure.
In between, it's impressively strong. It feels strange to compliment a movie for how well it handles a rape scene, but it must be tremendously difficult as a filmmaker to make it appalling without actually stopping a short film that only has a little time to work with while not diminishing it or even making it exploitative. Part of why it works, I suspect, is because George and editor Diana Mata do an impressive cut to the doctor's office, with the visit ending on a whispered line delivered well enough to make one skip a breath. What comes after is a bit out there, but well-done.
Actress Ruth Ramos is in the middle of it, and she's pretty great; one gets a quick impression of her Nayeli and the of how what was done to her is huge but doesn't fundamentally change her - she may be warier, and a little harder, but she is still the same young woman underneath. It may take a great deal of support and help, but she never surrenders herself.
"The Rougarou"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
Huh. There are something like half a dozen short films and TV episodes about a "rougarou" in just the past few years. Is this some sort of new emerging urban legend or something that's been out there that I'd never heard of?
I genuinely thought it was just some sort of nonsense word being made up on the spot by a father recently released from jail (Jacob Tolano) trying to entertain his daughter Gerty (Victoria Dellamea) while explaining the scars he has picked up along the way. The pair are a nifty contrast, even if a sometimes alarming one - as much as Vin seems to genuinely adore his little girl, he's over-polished, slick, and not nearly as clever as he thinks he is compared to the smart, practical, if naive Gerty. It's great odd-couple energy that can't hold.
Still, it's fun to watch Gery see that there's potentially a monster in her neighborhood and start working to deal with it - Dellamea is a genuine delight - and then see how things play out as she confronts the reality of it. I like the direction filmmaker Lorraine Caffery takes with it, very much aware that Gerty's specific circumstances might not have this on the usual track.
"Narrow"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
Anna Chazelle's "Narrow" was probably not specifically inspired by A Quiet Place, but it's hard not to think of that feature when watching this short, with the scavenging for post-apocalyptic resources, paths you can't leave, and the like. It's science fiction/horror built around following the rules of its universe without really making the reason for them self-evident or building a mythology that makes them interesting. There's not even a metaphor that seems to work for it when all is said and done. Sure, at one point it looks like it will be about how exhausting staying on the path that someone else has left down is exhausting and often leads to dead-ends that force you to backtrack, but unfortunately, Chazelle doesn't wind up bringing her short somewhere that could actually get anything out of it.
It looks great, and Chazelle (who writes/produces/directs/stars) knows what she wants out of her own performance, but it feels empty at the end, even if it's intentionally making a point about how not following society's rules even as they exhaust you will have you destroyed. There's dark truth in that, but there's a point where making the in-story situation so arbitrary hurts the effort to do more.
"F For Freaks"
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
At 30 minutes this is the longest of the shorts in the block but the one that feels like it can best be summed up with "ugh". To a certain extent, I get why filmmaker Sabine Ehrl does what she does, dragging Ursula Werner's wheezing, elderly Gabriela through scenes where she's not just absolutely unneeded, but a practical liability, and takes every opportunity to detour into cruelty; there's got to be no excuse, no way to offer sympathy to someone who is old and sick and maybe being exploited in a different way to the elves or gnomes (or whatever the little people being hunted are). She is not going to let her viewers miss her point.
Still, one wonders whether she could have maybe found a way to do this efficiently, because for all that she creates a striking, memorably ugliness, highlighted on occasion by pinpricks of wonder when the elves show up - Ehrl and her visual effects crew do a nifty job of putting them right on the line where a viewer can't be sure whether they're seeing an unusually small child or something unreal - it's just miserable enough to watch that I can see people bailing if it's the last piece in a collection (as the longest sometimes is) or getting unruly if it plays before a feature. It's the sort of movie where you can see the cynical realism and intent behind each decision, but while that is worthy, it's not necessarily worth enduring.
"Ils salievent" ("They Salivate")
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
Huh. That's a lot of fluid.
A lot of fluid.
I kind of don't have more than that. It's one of those shorts that I watch closely, because filmmaker Ariane Boukerche is obviously doing something very deliberate that has meaning to her, but where I watch all this drool happen and just don't connect it to anything. It just strikes me as weird images in sequence, with things escalating, but which never makes me think anything but "huh, that's weird".
Sanzaru
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival, Vimeo via Roku)
The opening scenes of Sanzaru are genuinely peculiar; most of the rest of the film is grounded and commonplace. In a lot of movies, that might serve as a reminder that there is some sort of dark force lurking in the background, but that's often the opposite of what filmmaker Xia Magnus is up to here. Larger-than-life evils are not always invented, but they may be easier to deal with than the more prosaic situations that they're used to explain.
Evelyn (Aina Dumlao) is far from home in Victoria, Texas; the Flilipina nurse provides in-home care to Dena Regan (Jayne Taini), a mostly-bedridden widow whose mind is starting to go. Daughter Susan (Tomorrow Shea) hired her; son Clem (Justin Arnold) is staying in his RV on the property, while Evelyn's nephew Amos (Jon Viktor Corpuz) is staying in Clem's old room, visiting while suspended from school in Dallas for fighting. It would be a slow, uncomfortable downward spiral, but Dena is panicking over a missing piece of jewelry, which she thinks Amos may have stolen; Amos is beginning to realize that his absent mother and aunt are keeping something from him, and Evelyn is starting to hear spooky noises from the intercom that lets her monitor Dena while doing other work in the house - at least, when the power isn't randomly cutting out. On top of that, the mail occasionally contains a letter for a Mr. Sanzaru, despite the mailman mentioning that Evelyn and "Mo" are the only Asians he can remember being in the area.
Though the audience is primed by the opening narration from Evelyn's dead mother and voices coming from the cemetery, they rapidly come to seem metaphorical. Not entirely - if the static and mysterious sounds from the intercom weren't enough to remind the audience that they were watching a horror movie, the glimpse she catches of old VHS tapes hidden in a room she hadn't realized was there in the preceding months certainly sound alarm bells for savvy viewers. More often, though, what haunting there is seems much more prosaic - Dena freezing, or suddenly seeming to be trapped in the past is the most obvious, but Mo, Clem, and Evelyn all have things that weigh them down. They don't need ghosts, even though there certainly seems to be one there.
Full review at eFilmCritic
I struggled a bit more with the "Born of Woman" package than I did last year; it felt like there were more things in it that I just didn't get, and even the ones I did seemed more complicated by how including them in a block of films from women often seems to imply more than just the simple fact that women directed them, so meaning feels just a bit further out of reach. Still, a lot of good stuff in there.
I also found that I really liked Sanzaru; it's got a lot of moments when it could go off in typical horror movie directions of shock and trippiness, and while it never runs from either, there's purpose to every bit rather than just red herrings. It's kind of art-house horror, the sort of thing I could see A24 picking up, although the polish is in different places.
Minor Premise
* * (out of four)
Seen 24 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival, Vimeo via Roku)
There's a stretch at the start of Minor Premise when I wondered how a movie shot during quarantine was already finished and on the festival circuit, so cut off did it seem from the rest of the world even when a character was supposed to be delivering a lecture. That proves not to be the case, and it's kind of a shame; working their way around that sort of logistical challenge, whether it was part of the on-screen action or not, would have made for a much more interesting movie than the rickety Jekyll-and-Jekyll-and-Hyde-and-Hyde thing that viewers get.
The man in question is Ethan Kochar (Sathya Sridharan), who had long worked with his father Paul (Nikolas Kontomanolis) on technology to read and edit memories, although that was a mess - the father tried to take credit for the son's work and while a working prototype was built, crucial information was missing for their intended project of editing consciousness. Months later, a building at the college is being dedicated to Paul Kochar, but department head Malcolm (Dana Ashbrook) is pushing the difficult Ethan for results and presentations to the board; Ethan's ex-girlfriend Alli (Paton Ashbrook) has also returned to the university, as established a figure as he is. It's the sort of situation that inspires rash self-experimentation.
At least, it does in movies; in real life, it would seem like a long shot that Ethan's basement laboratory, with no graduate students or other team members to check his work, or any sort of proper protocols that include an actual control group, would get any sort of funding, and even if some rich eccentric did bankroll him, it seems unlikely that he'd be able to publish any sort of peer-reviewed paper, no matter how lax the standards have grown, or have what he has created gain government approval for commercial or therapeutic use. This may seem like party-pooping, nit-picking complaints to make, but it's indicative of how much the filmmakers are going to sweat the rest of the details or have supposedly smart people approach problems later, and it's also frustratingly uncreative: The movie is made up of tropes that were silly when they first started getting used for simplicity's sake decades ago, and it's big "what-if" idea is basically phrenology with more modern terminology on top.
The really frustrating thing is, all of this isn't even in service of making a streamlined, thrilling narrative; director Eric Schultz and co-writers Justin Moretto and Thomas Torrey create a downright goofy scenario where different mental states cycle out at precisely timed intervals that just so happen to alight with the exact tops and bottoms of hours (dumb, but useful for the audience that has to keep track of it), but they don't use it very well on any scale. There's seldom any tension in how Ethan has to get some useful chunk of work done in six minutes, or how these passing hours are bringing him closer to some sort of collapse. They start subplots out of a sense of apparent obligation - Malcolm just has to knock on the door and discover Ethan isn't himself - and then do nothing with them, and the way Alli being there to assist is handled is just as frustrating as she literally walks in and out of things depending on whether they want Ethan to have someone to talk to or whether the story requires she be ambushed, despite it clearly not being a good idea to leave him on his own. She never particularly looks like this marathon effort is taking anything out of her, either.
Sathya Sridharan and Paton Ashbrook at least commit to what they're given, even if that's not much (especially in Sridharan's case, since he should be getting the chance to create ten memorable variations on Ethan but is never given the opportunity); they handle the commit to the pair being intelligent people who care for each other, in the specific way that Alli is going to be professional and friendly despite Ethan's arrogance having hurt her before, a chemistry between them that is not necessarily being pushed in the expected direction. And while Ethan's lab is silly in concept, it's a fun place to be an on-screen mad scientist from how the lighting is just the right combination of shadowy and fluorescent sterility, with blackboards, cobbled together computer systems, and a memory-reading barber's chair that matches the mood. If nothing else, Schultz and company know what they want this movie to look and feel like and nail that.
Unfortunately, that serves as a nice coat of paint on a movie that is dumb from its silly remote lectures to the one last twist that everybody knows is coming likely before the film even starts. It's a mess that could have created much more intrigue had it been just a little more smartly organized.
Originally published at eFilmCritic
"Come F*ck My Robot"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
I'm not sure that I've ever seen a better distillation of why women groan and say "why even are men?" than this movie's 12 minutes, where the range from villain to male hero is from an engineer (Ian Abramson) who creates a robot with a vagina and immediately starts to pimp it out (despite calling her "like a daughter") to a confused and generally decent young virgin (Nicholas Alexander) who decides he's not okay with this after meeting "Ivy" (voice of Catherine Tapling) but still has trouble with the fact that she is, shall we say, not conventionally attractive and not going to fall head over heels in love despite him doing one good thing. Nobody's perfect, but one might want that range to extend a little further in one direction.
That said, "Come F*ck My Robot" is still an entertaining, mostly-upbeat short film, with Alexander able to bring the audience on a pretty good emotional ride in that time while Tapling does nice voice work and Abramson makes his character awful while hugging the line between cartoonish and skin-crawling. Filmmaker Mercedes Bryce Morgan keeps things moving at an enjoyably frantic pace, slowing down just long enough to have Brian and Ivy connect while showing how Abramson's engineer resents that. I'm not sure that the anachronisms quite match up - I don't think cragislist was around until after car phones had evolved into flips - but the filmmakers are smart in how they use them, placing this far enough into an ambiguous past that Ivy doesn't have to be a perfect gynoid but where the film still doesn't come off as period. Ivy's actual design is a nifty blend of sleek and boxy plopped in the middle of sets that are both disturbing and sad.
It's a fun little short that gets at female frustration with men from an abstract place but does so in an extremely enjoyable, goofy way.
"Blocks"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
"Blocks" is just surreal enough that I keep wanting to assign some sort of meaning to it and then stepping back, thinking that's a little much although there's got to be something there from the way the film is built, and then wondering whether young mothers would say I'm reaching or not stretching far enough. It's got the feeling of being clever but is absolutely not smug about it.
That weird premise - mother-of-two Ashleigh (Claire Coffee) suddenly finds herself, shall we say, unlikely to ever run out of Legos - feels like the sort of thing filmmaker Bridget Moloney came upon by accident and then found just enough variations to fill a ten-minute short with, not building toward anything extra-crazy but not exactly repeating herself either. It's a nice job of milking a joke just enough, while also having eccentric stuff going on around it to keep the giggles coming and a fun performance from Claire Coffee, who is very much in line with Moloney's sense of humor.
It's agreeably absurd, doesn't wear out its welcome, and ends in a way that makes one feel like it has accomplished something, even if you're not quite sure what.
"Break Us"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
The part of me that loves crime movies and thrillers is kind of disappointed that Rioghnach Ni Ghrioghair didn't hit the double cross that I was looking for when I was looking for it, because there are bit where it certainly looks like Sophie (Danielle Galligan) is scoping out how she can not be caught on camera while the more apparently enthusiastic Mark (Gavid Drea) is. Of course, what she does is probably better, telling a story that evolves because of what's going on rather than just mechanically playing out what happened before the audience got there.
It's a fun play either way, as the pair launch a plot to rob a post office but find things immediately diverging from their plans, building the tension up a little and getting things rolling. I don't know that the main pair ever get a chance to show how well they work off each other for more than a second or two, but Galligan is especially good as she often has to make Sophie look like she's not connected with any of what Mark is doing but still have what she's feeling run across her face.
"Snowflakes"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
I'm not sure that the summary listed for this movie in its IMDB listing is necessarily something you can deduce for sure from the movie, in which a pair of Jamaicans (Sharon Duncan-Brewster & Cherrelle Skeete) who have been in the UK all their lives are being deported before an attempt to sedate the older, more agitated Esther seems to kick off an alarming series of events that turn the tables and then some.
As with a lot of shorts, I wonder a bit if filmmaker Faye Jackson (who wrote, produced, directed, and edited) initially saw this as a part of something bigger; the film poses a question but stops before it gets to any sort of logical endpoint, although I don't know that there's really a feature here, either. It's a lot of nifty pieces that form into a snapshot if not quite a story. It's an impressive snapshot, though, and the style is aces - there's a moment with two or three great moments coming rapid-fire and the big one leaves the audience shocked enough to carry through to the end, with what they seen on-screen reflecting that.
"Diabla"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
There are two separate moments in "Diabla" when I stop and wonder if it's supposed to indicate that what filmmaker Ashley George just showed the viewer was meant to be a premonition or something she's feared, and while I'm pretty sure it's not, I'm not quite sure what circling back around to that same shot or moment is accomplishing. Is it the last time Nayeli (Ruth Ramos) trusted the world around her, or a reminder that one still has to walk the same path even though something terrible has happened on it? I'm not quite sure.
In between, it's impressively strong. It feels strange to compliment a movie for how well it handles a rape scene, but it must be tremendously difficult as a filmmaker to make it appalling without actually stopping a short film that only has a little time to work with while not diminishing it or even making it exploitative. Part of why it works, I suspect, is because George and editor Diana Mata do an impressive cut to the doctor's office, with the visit ending on a whispered line delivered well enough to make one skip a breath. What comes after is a bit out there, but well-done.
Actress Ruth Ramos is in the middle of it, and she's pretty great; one gets a quick impression of her Nayeli and the of how what was done to her is huge but doesn't fundamentally change her - she may be warier, and a little harder, but she is still the same young woman underneath. It may take a great deal of support and help, but she never surrenders herself.
"The Rougarou"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
Huh. There are something like half a dozen short films and TV episodes about a "rougarou" in just the past few years. Is this some sort of new emerging urban legend or something that's been out there that I'd never heard of?
I genuinely thought it was just some sort of nonsense word being made up on the spot by a father recently released from jail (Jacob Tolano) trying to entertain his daughter Gerty (Victoria Dellamea) while explaining the scars he has picked up along the way. The pair are a nifty contrast, even if a sometimes alarming one - as much as Vin seems to genuinely adore his little girl, he's over-polished, slick, and not nearly as clever as he thinks he is compared to the smart, practical, if naive Gerty. It's great odd-couple energy that can't hold.
Still, it's fun to watch Gery see that there's potentially a monster in her neighborhood and start working to deal with it - Dellamea is a genuine delight - and then see how things play out as she confronts the reality of it. I like the direction filmmaker Lorraine Caffery takes with it, very much aware that Gerty's specific circumstances might not have this on the usual track.
"Narrow"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
Anna Chazelle's "Narrow" was probably not specifically inspired by A Quiet Place, but it's hard not to think of that feature when watching this short, with the scavenging for post-apocalyptic resources, paths you can't leave, and the like. It's science fiction/horror built around following the rules of its universe without really making the reason for them self-evident or building a mythology that makes them interesting. There's not even a metaphor that seems to work for it when all is said and done. Sure, at one point it looks like it will be about how exhausting staying on the path that someone else has left down is exhausting and often leads to dead-ends that force you to backtrack, but unfortunately, Chazelle doesn't wind up bringing her short somewhere that could actually get anything out of it.
It looks great, and Chazelle (who writes/produces/directs/stars) knows what she wants out of her own performance, but it feels empty at the end, even if it's intentionally making a point about how not following society's rules even as they exhaust you will have you destroyed. There's dark truth in that, but there's a point where making the in-story situation so arbitrary hurts the effort to do more.
"F For Freaks"
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
At 30 minutes this is the longest of the shorts in the block but the one that feels like it can best be summed up with "ugh". To a certain extent, I get why filmmaker Sabine Ehrl does what she does, dragging Ursula Werner's wheezing, elderly Gabriela through scenes where she's not just absolutely unneeded, but a practical liability, and takes every opportunity to detour into cruelty; there's got to be no excuse, no way to offer sympathy to someone who is old and sick and maybe being exploited in a different way to the elves or gnomes (or whatever the little people being hunted are). She is not going to let her viewers miss her point.
Still, one wonders whether she could have maybe found a way to do this efficiently, because for all that she creates a striking, memorably ugliness, highlighted on occasion by pinpricks of wonder when the elves show up - Ehrl and her visual effects crew do a nifty job of putting them right on the line where a viewer can't be sure whether they're seeing an unusually small child or something unreal - it's just miserable enough to watch that I can see people bailing if it's the last piece in a collection (as the longest sometimes is) or getting unruly if it plays before a feature. It's the sort of movie where you can see the cynical realism and intent behind each decision, but while that is worthy, it's not necessarily worth enduring.
"Ils salievent" ("They Salivate")
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival: Born of Woman 2020, Vimeo via Roku)
Huh. That's a lot of fluid.
A lot of fluid.
I kind of don't have more than that. It's one of those shorts that I watch closely, because filmmaker Ariane Boukerche is obviously doing something very deliberate that has meaning to her, but where I watch all this drool happen and just don't connect it to anything. It just strikes me as weird images in sequence, with things escalating, but which never makes me think anything but "huh, that's weird".
Sanzaru
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 30 August 2020 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival, Vimeo via Roku)
The opening scenes of Sanzaru are genuinely peculiar; most of the rest of the film is grounded and commonplace. In a lot of movies, that might serve as a reminder that there is some sort of dark force lurking in the background, but that's often the opposite of what filmmaker Xia Magnus is up to here. Larger-than-life evils are not always invented, but they may be easier to deal with than the more prosaic situations that they're used to explain.
Evelyn (Aina Dumlao) is far from home in Victoria, Texas; the Flilipina nurse provides in-home care to Dena Regan (Jayne Taini), a mostly-bedridden widow whose mind is starting to go. Daughter Susan (Tomorrow Shea) hired her; son Clem (Justin Arnold) is staying in his RV on the property, while Evelyn's nephew Amos (Jon Viktor Corpuz) is staying in Clem's old room, visiting while suspended from school in Dallas for fighting. It would be a slow, uncomfortable downward spiral, but Dena is panicking over a missing piece of jewelry, which she thinks Amos may have stolen; Amos is beginning to realize that his absent mother and aunt are keeping something from him, and Evelyn is starting to hear spooky noises from the intercom that lets her monitor Dena while doing other work in the house - at least, when the power isn't randomly cutting out. On top of that, the mail occasionally contains a letter for a Mr. Sanzaru, despite the mailman mentioning that Evelyn and "Mo" are the only Asians he can remember being in the area.
Though the audience is primed by the opening narration from Evelyn's dead mother and voices coming from the cemetery, they rapidly come to seem metaphorical. Not entirely - if the static and mysterious sounds from the intercom weren't enough to remind the audience that they were watching a horror movie, the glimpse she catches of old VHS tapes hidden in a room she hadn't realized was there in the preceding months certainly sound alarm bells for savvy viewers. More often, though, what haunting there is seems much more prosaic - Dena freezing, or suddenly seeming to be trapped in the past is the most obvious, but Mo, Clem, and Evelyn all have things that weigh them down. They don't need ghosts, even though there certainly seems to be one there.
Full review at eFilmCritic
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
3-D Rarities Volume II, including El corazón y la espada
Another bit of "let's not even let new stuff make it onto the shelf as the pre-order gets delivered a bit late, but it's no big deal. You are probably not buying this particular Blu-ray unless you already have a ton of stuff on the shelf that you can enjoy.
A part of me is a little curious about the format and contents of this disc, although I wonder if it's just a matter of what the 3-D Film Archive can do with its distributors. They and 3-D SPACE crowdfunded a restoration of El corazón y la espada last year, but I suspect that this Mexican adventure film might be a little too niche for either Kino or Flicker Alley, although a "rarities" disc with it and a couple other bits of content that didn't particularly make a lot of sense as special features on other discs might be better branding. Meanwhile, it seems like the didn't quite accumulate enough content for a second rarities disc without a feature (my review of Volume 1 from back in 2017 notes that a second disc was planned for 2018 at the time, but it came out in 2020 and there's only a few short films on it, all strung together, with 3D photo collections that are presented as slideshows with narration rather than as galleries as was the case on The Bubble, one of them part of the big compendium of shorts and one on its own. It's not the most straightforward way to do it.
The fun thing about the photos was how much the Kodak "Stereo-Realist" camera used to take most of them looks like the RETO camera I got from a different crowdfunding campaign which I've been playing with for the past few months:
Though I haven't been back to Hunt's to pick up the two or three rolls of film I shot in New Zealand, so I can't speak for those, I'm intensely jealous of the results shown. Part of it is just that the process - the Kodak camera these people (including silent film star Harold Lloyd) used was generally built for slide film and developed to slides, while I'm using regular film and having the lab scan it, then screwing around with software to put them together despite the RETO camera taking vertical photos while every viewing device I've got (aside from maybe making a wigglegram meant to be viewed on phones) is horizontal, meaning I lose resolution. They're also using Kodachrome film, which helps a lot.
The slide shows are kind of neat, but the narration is odd, and I imagine it would drive me nuts on the second or third time through, like when you're going through a museum and there's no way to turn the audio guide off. Also, Mr. Lloyd's granddaughter seemed a tiny bit uncomfortable talking about his fondness for photographing naked ladies (though I seem to remember there were many more pictures like that in the collection of 3D photos included with the box set New Line released.
It's still a very fun set for those of us that dig the format. I may wind up turning the sound off for some parts or wish there were a bit more of a direct path to the best bits the next time I put it on, but I still enjoyed seeing these oddities.
"A Day in the Country" (aka "Stereo Laffs")
* * (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)
Speaking of narration that fills every second and leads as much to cringe as actual laughs, let's talk about - or, at least, quickly and regretfully acknowledge - Joe Besser talking all over "A Day in the Country". I don't know whether it was shot silently with the idea of adding narration, the soundtrack was degraded in the ten years it took for the thing to get released after being shot, or if filmmaker Jack Rieger just looked at the footage and decided it needed a little something more because it was just a bunch of shots without a strong story (and both editing and reshooting would be tricky). However it got to this point, the result is not great.
It does come across as something of a weird beast, though, because the subject matter as well as the staging feels a lot like a 1910s/1920s silent short, although still somewhat off - it's like Rieger is trying to capture the sort of goofy comic pastoral Lloyd or Keaton might have made but isn't quite getting the impersonation right, and the camera angles used to enhance the 3D effect as well as the things thrown at the camera break the illusion. That they often hit the camera and send the picture to black feels a bit like a growing pain that other 3D filmmakers learned from - the flinch as something zips past works better than the head-on collision.
For an half-experimental short film at a time when this just wasn't something filmmakers and theaters were working with on a regular basis, a lot of the work is impressive, and there are some funny gags in it. Find a way to do it without the voiceover, and maybe it's more than an interesting curiosity, both at the time and years later.
"The Black Swan" '52
* * * (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)
The previews for various opera, ballet, and stage presentations in movie theaters seldom show 3D shows any more, and that feels like a real missed opportunity. Dance is a natural for the medium with how it uses three-dimensional space, and two of the more interesting 3D movies to come out during the current wave, Pina and Cunningham, were dance documentaries. It's no surprise, then, that "The Black Swan" is probably the most impressive thing on the disc, feeling very much like the spiritual ancestor to Cunningham, taken off a stage that needs to be built for an audience and into a somewhat more complex environment that that a camera can move around in it. It's still not realistic, but it's not quite stagebound.
The music and dancing are quite good to my decidedly inexpert eyes, although at 13 minutes it feels like something of a long short. I suspect that, to a certain extent, the way stereoscopic advisor Raymond Spottiswoode frames the shoot contributes to that - though the effect of a window seemingly floating in front of the screen is undoubtedly nifty and apparently erases flat bits at the edges, it tends to encourage one to lean forward and strain even when one doesn't need to. That is something common with a lot of 3D formats, which don't quite work as well as they should until one learns to relax while focusing.
"Games in Depth"
* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)
The liner notes indicate that this was apparently created for Expo 1967 before being replaced with something else, which seems like a good call - it's a random-seeming montage of various play-related scenes melded with an often atonal soundtrack, but it never becomes hypnotic in the way this sort of installation can. There are nifty moments - shots of a high-school football game briefly give an idea of how 3D can be used in a sportscast - but by the time this was shot, its 3D effects weren't spectacular, and the imagery and music doesn't seem like something that will make people stop, put on glasses, and watch an entire loop as they walk through the American pavilion.
Prologue to La marca del Hombre Lobo
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)
It's listed as a "prologue" but feels more like a pitch reel; I'd need to see the actual movie (either the original Spanish La marca del Hombre Lobo or the American Frankenstein's Bloody Terror) to have some idea of how it actually works at its intended function. You can at least get a sense of how this thing would have looked, enough that I'd be interested if the film itself were part of "3-D Rarities Volume III".
Preview for The 3-D Movie
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)
Okay, I guess. The film, which never got made, would apparently have been a bunch of 3-D footage from various other films stitched together as a sort of documentary, and this is definitely a trailer for that. It's got that slow, early-1980s trailer feel where it goes on a bit too long,nothing ever seems the right length, and the voiceover sounds like it's over-promising but in actuality is just saying what you can see in front of you.
El corazón y la espada (Sword of Granada)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)
El corazón y la espada (aka Sword of Granada) is the first 3-D film to be produced in Mexico and there's no missing that the third dimension was near the fore of everybody's mind as they made it; the new restoration by the 3-D Film Archive highlights every way in which someone making such a movie can push into and out of the screen. There's no other single piece of it showing the same sort of ambition, but despite that, it's a surprisingly entertaining film. This film knows what it is and has all of its parts pulling in the same direction.
As it opens, Pedro (Cesar Romero) and Ponce (Tito Junco) are sneaking across a Moor-occupied castle's courtyard, aiming to kill the Khalifa within (Fernando Casanova) and bring forth a revolution. They, it turns out, are not the only ones with that idea - they run into swordswoman Lolita (Katy Jurado) in the chambers of a captured priest (Miguel Ángel Ferriz). Aside from the Khalifa, the castle is rumored to contain a rose that confers eternal life and an alchemist who knows how to transmute base elements into gold - but though Pedro has a map to the various secret passages that litter the castle, every path seems to lead through the chambers of Princesa Esme (Rebeca Iturbide).
Secret passages are the sort of adventure-story trope that lies precariously balanced between being tremendously fun and being a tacky cliché - it's kind of like quicksand or swinging on ropes and vines that way - and this film is so full of hidden doors and tunnels and secret spaces behind walls that it's almost impossible for it not to be overkill. And while there are certainly times when the amount of sneaking around stone passageways that seem a bit too well-illuminated seems like it would be overkill, that never quite happens. The filmmakers build fake-stone sets that look like the platonic ideal of hidden staircases, and they turn out to be fun things to shoot and project in stereo - it creates a box for the characters to occupy behind the screen, staircases lead up and back, and tight spaces are suggested by foreground pieces that are clearly not in the same plane. It's never busy enough that it wouldn't work in 2-D, and the crisp black-and-white photography looks very nice even as it highlights that this is obviously a film set.
It creates an atmosphere of larger-than-life, admittedly simplified legends, and though there are plenty of moments when the filmmakers are more than a bit heavy-handed in creating a sanitized fifteenth century suitable to an audience of all ages in the 1950s, they're pretty good at setting things up so that's the path of least resistance rather than something that's ever jarring. They mostly do a good job in having enough action going on that the pace never particularly flags even when the raiders are captured and Esme is figuring out where she stands. The sword-fighting will likely not make anybody's list of the most technically-proficient and well-choreographed screen duels - there's a lot of swinging wildly at two guards at a time - but it's energetic and makes good use of the three-dimensional stage (even if the attempt to have blades push out of the screen shows you really shouldn't shoot that sort of thing head-on).
The cast is willing to throw themselves into this with enthusiasm as well, and it's a fairly impressive group. Star Cesar Romero was imported from America and seems right at home as the confident aristocrat, blustery but charming and comfortably occupying the center of the movie without anyone else appearing slighted. Co-star Katy Jurado would also crossover to some Hollywood success and has probably played a lot of roles like Lolita - firey and not afraid to make the likes of Don Pedro come to her - but she can make that familiarity funny without making it a joke. The writers seem to do the least amount possible to make their inevitable pairing-off happen, but the two of them know how to turn on the charm to the point where they sell it. They've got a brace of good character actors behind them, with everyone knowing their job - Miguel Ángel Ferriz's priest is the wise advisor, Victor Alcocer's Khalifa is cruel but not quite scary, Rebeca Iturbide's princess is ignorant but basically good - and making sure they entertain rather than just fill slots.
It doesn't exactly make for a classic - it's not entirely unjust that this movie fell into obscurity and was restored for a "3-D Rarities" disc rather than something with a broader audience. It's still a trim, entertaining swashbuckler even in two dimensions, worth stumbling upon even for those who can't view it as intended.
Also on EFilmCritic
A part of me is a little curious about the format and contents of this disc, although I wonder if it's just a matter of what the 3-D Film Archive can do with its distributors. They and 3-D SPACE crowdfunded a restoration of El corazón y la espada last year, but I suspect that this Mexican adventure film might be a little too niche for either Kino or Flicker Alley, although a "rarities" disc with it and a couple other bits of content that didn't particularly make a lot of sense as special features on other discs might be better branding. Meanwhile, it seems like the didn't quite accumulate enough content for a second rarities disc without a feature (my review of Volume 1 from back in 2017 notes that a second disc was planned for 2018 at the time, but it came out in 2020 and there's only a few short films on it, all strung together, with 3D photo collections that are presented as slideshows with narration rather than as galleries as was the case on The Bubble, one of them part of the big compendium of shorts and one on its own. It's not the most straightforward way to do it.
The fun thing about the photos was how much the Kodak "Stereo-Realist" camera used to take most of them looks like the RETO camera I got from a different crowdfunding campaign which I've been playing with for the past few months:
Though I haven't been back to Hunt's to pick up the two or three rolls of film I shot in New Zealand, so I can't speak for those, I'm intensely jealous of the results shown. Part of it is just that the process - the Kodak camera these people (including silent film star Harold Lloyd) used was generally built for slide film and developed to slides, while I'm using regular film and having the lab scan it, then screwing around with software to put them together despite the RETO camera taking vertical photos while every viewing device I've got (aside from maybe making a wigglegram meant to be viewed on phones) is horizontal, meaning I lose resolution. They're also using Kodachrome film, which helps a lot.
The slide shows are kind of neat, but the narration is odd, and I imagine it would drive me nuts on the second or third time through, like when you're going through a museum and there's no way to turn the audio guide off. Also, Mr. Lloyd's granddaughter seemed a tiny bit uncomfortable talking about his fondness for photographing naked ladies (though I seem to remember there were many more pictures like that in the collection of 3D photos included with the box set New Line released.
It's still a very fun set for those of us that dig the format. I may wind up turning the sound off for some parts or wish there were a bit more of a direct path to the best bits the next time I put it on, but I still enjoyed seeing these oddities.
"A Day in the Country" (aka "Stereo Laffs")
* * (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)
Speaking of narration that fills every second and leads as much to cringe as actual laughs, let's talk about - or, at least, quickly and regretfully acknowledge - Joe Besser talking all over "A Day in the Country". I don't know whether it was shot silently with the idea of adding narration, the soundtrack was degraded in the ten years it took for the thing to get released after being shot, or if filmmaker Jack Rieger just looked at the footage and decided it needed a little something more because it was just a bunch of shots without a strong story (and both editing and reshooting would be tricky). However it got to this point, the result is not great.
It does come across as something of a weird beast, though, because the subject matter as well as the staging feels a lot like a 1910s/1920s silent short, although still somewhat off - it's like Rieger is trying to capture the sort of goofy comic pastoral Lloyd or Keaton might have made but isn't quite getting the impersonation right, and the camera angles used to enhance the 3D effect as well as the things thrown at the camera break the illusion. That they often hit the camera and send the picture to black feels a bit like a growing pain that other 3D filmmakers learned from - the flinch as something zips past works better than the head-on collision.
For an half-experimental short film at a time when this just wasn't something filmmakers and theaters were working with on a regular basis, a lot of the work is impressive, and there are some funny gags in it. Find a way to do it without the voiceover, and maybe it's more than an interesting curiosity, both at the time and years later.
"The Black Swan" '52
* * * (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)
The previews for various opera, ballet, and stage presentations in movie theaters seldom show 3D shows any more, and that feels like a real missed opportunity. Dance is a natural for the medium with how it uses three-dimensional space, and two of the more interesting 3D movies to come out during the current wave, Pina and Cunningham, were dance documentaries. It's no surprise, then, that "The Black Swan" is probably the most impressive thing on the disc, feeling very much like the spiritual ancestor to Cunningham, taken off a stage that needs to be built for an audience and into a somewhat more complex environment that that a camera can move around in it. It's still not realistic, but it's not quite stagebound.
The music and dancing are quite good to my decidedly inexpert eyes, although at 13 minutes it feels like something of a long short. I suspect that, to a certain extent, the way stereoscopic advisor Raymond Spottiswoode frames the shoot contributes to that - though the effect of a window seemingly floating in front of the screen is undoubtedly nifty and apparently erases flat bits at the edges, it tends to encourage one to lean forward and strain even when one doesn't need to. That is something common with a lot of 3D formats, which don't quite work as well as they should until one learns to relax while focusing.
"Games in Depth"
* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)
The liner notes indicate that this was apparently created for Expo 1967 before being replaced with something else, which seems like a good call - it's a random-seeming montage of various play-related scenes melded with an often atonal soundtrack, but it never becomes hypnotic in the way this sort of installation can. There are nifty moments - shots of a high-school football game briefly give an idea of how 3D can be used in a sportscast - but by the time this was shot, its 3D effects weren't spectacular, and the imagery and music doesn't seem like something that will make people stop, put on glasses, and watch an entire loop as they walk through the American pavilion.
Prologue to La marca del Hombre Lobo
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)
It's listed as a "prologue" but feels more like a pitch reel; I'd need to see the actual movie (either the original Spanish La marca del Hombre Lobo or the American Frankenstein's Bloody Terror) to have some idea of how it actually works at its intended function. You can at least get a sense of how this thing would have looked, enough that I'd be interested if the film itself were part of "3-D Rarities Volume III".
Preview for The 3-D Movie
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)
Okay, I guess. The film, which never got made, would apparently have been a bunch of 3-D footage from various other films stitched together as a sort of documentary, and this is definitely a trailer for that. It's got that slow, early-1980s trailer feel where it goes on a bit too long,nothing ever seems the right length, and the voiceover sounds like it's over-promising but in actuality is just saying what you can see in front of you.
El corazón y la espada (Sword of Granada)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)
El corazón y la espada (aka Sword of Granada) is the first 3-D film to be produced in Mexico and there's no missing that the third dimension was near the fore of everybody's mind as they made it; the new restoration by the 3-D Film Archive highlights every way in which someone making such a movie can push into and out of the screen. There's no other single piece of it showing the same sort of ambition, but despite that, it's a surprisingly entertaining film. This film knows what it is and has all of its parts pulling in the same direction.
As it opens, Pedro (Cesar Romero) and Ponce (Tito Junco) are sneaking across a Moor-occupied castle's courtyard, aiming to kill the Khalifa within (Fernando Casanova) and bring forth a revolution. They, it turns out, are not the only ones with that idea - they run into swordswoman Lolita (Katy Jurado) in the chambers of a captured priest (Miguel Ángel Ferriz). Aside from the Khalifa, the castle is rumored to contain a rose that confers eternal life and an alchemist who knows how to transmute base elements into gold - but though Pedro has a map to the various secret passages that litter the castle, every path seems to lead through the chambers of Princesa Esme (Rebeca Iturbide).
Secret passages are the sort of adventure-story trope that lies precariously balanced between being tremendously fun and being a tacky cliché - it's kind of like quicksand or swinging on ropes and vines that way - and this film is so full of hidden doors and tunnels and secret spaces behind walls that it's almost impossible for it not to be overkill. And while there are certainly times when the amount of sneaking around stone passageways that seem a bit too well-illuminated seems like it would be overkill, that never quite happens. The filmmakers build fake-stone sets that look like the platonic ideal of hidden staircases, and they turn out to be fun things to shoot and project in stereo - it creates a box for the characters to occupy behind the screen, staircases lead up and back, and tight spaces are suggested by foreground pieces that are clearly not in the same plane. It's never busy enough that it wouldn't work in 2-D, and the crisp black-and-white photography looks very nice even as it highlights that this is obviously a film set.
It creates an atmosphere of larger-than-life, admittedly simplified legends, and though there are plenty of moments when the filmmakers are more than a bit heavy-handed in creating a sanitized fifteenth century suitable to an audience of all ages in the 1950s, they're pretty good at setting things up so that's the path of least resistance rather than something that's ever jarring. They mostly do a good job in having enough action going on that the pace never particularly flags even when the raiders are captured and Esme is figuring out where she stands. The sword-fighting will likely not make anybody's list of the most technically-proficient and well-choreographed screen duels - there's a lot of swinging wildly at two guards at a time - but it's energetic and makes good use of the three-dimensional stage (even if the attempt to have blades push out of the screen shows you really shouldn't shoot that sort of thing head-on).
The cast is willing to throw themselves into this with enthusiasm as well, and it's a fairly impressive group. Star Cesar Romero was imported from America and seems right at home as the confident aristocrat, blustery but charming and comfortably occupying the center of the movie without anyone else appearing slighted. Co-star Katy Jurado would also crossover to some Hollywood success and has probably played a lot of roles like Lolita - firey and not afraid to make the likes of Don Pedro come to her - but she can make that familiarity funny without making it a joke. The writers seem to do the least amount possible to make their inevitable pairing-off happen, but the two of them know how to turn on the charm to the point where they sell it. They've got a brace of good character actors behind them, with everyone knowing their job - Miguel Ángel Ferriz's priest is the wise advisor, Victor Alcocer's Khalifa is cruel but not quite scary, Rebeca Iturbide's princess is ignorant but basically good - and making sure they entertain rather than just fill slots.
It doesn't exactly make for a classic - it's not entirely unjust that this movie fell into obscurity and was restored for a "3-D Rarities" disc rather than something with a broader audience. It's still a trim, entertaining swashbuckler even in two dimensions, worth stumbling upon even for those who can't view it as intended.
Also on EFilmCritic
Sunday, June 09, 2019
Boston Underground Film Festival 2019.04: Bucket of Truth, Nightshifter, Knife+Heart, and A Hole in the Ground
You know what the best part of being behind on your blogging is? Trying to write up 14 short films with an average length of 7-ish minutes a month and a half later. You can either zip through it or make yourself absolutely crazy!
Obviously, I went for making myself crazy.
So, left to right, I believe we've got Adam Murphy, an animator on "A Chest of Drawers"; Joe Donovan (music), JB Sapienza (Producer) and Jim McDonough (writer/director) from "I Owe You One Banana and Two Black Eyes"; Alex & Peter, part of the team that made the bumper that played before every feature; Brian Petillo, who directed "Shake It Off"; someone whom my notes only say "Glen - ed", probably from "The Odd Sea" with its director Porcelain Dalya; Brett McCabe, who gave us "The Cuckoldress"; Stuart Roelke, director of "Fauxmote"; "In Love" filmmaker Candice Nachman; and finally "Falcon & Hawke", respectively writer/director Dane Benton and Paul Wilson. That's a lot, and I apologize for anyone whom I short-changed with my crappy notes!
It was a solid night of horror after that - even the stuff I didn't love was pretty solid, and how do you not smile a bit at how, after playing one of director Yann Gonzalez's music videos before his movie, there's a title card announcing Knife+Heart, "aka the queer slasher fim you came to see". I'm not sure what the reason for A Hole in the Ground being a secret screening was unless it's some weird contractual thing, like DirectTV doesn't want any of the movies that are part of their deal with A24 advertised as playing in theaters in any way.
"I Owe You One Banana and Two Black Eyes"
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
First up, a short that makes me wonder if maybe I hadn't skpped the wrong block and was going to see the music videos. Probably not, because the song itself is pretty goofy, which describes the film, in which a couple of bunny puppets are lip-syncing while racing to outrun various predators, with the whole thing eventually becoming a crazy, over-the-top car chase. It's the sort of animation where you can't quite see the strings but never entertain the possibility that there might not be any there.
It's fairly funny, especially if you like a certain flavor of finger-raising bloody cartoon violence. Jim McDonough and his team aren't bad at escalating the insanity from a pretty nutty start at all, and do a fine job of hitting peak over-the-top right when the music says they should.
"In Love"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
A whole two minutes long, but two minutes that offer a specific sort of pure delight of filmmaking, as director Candice Nachman shoots on Super-8 and does her effects and jumps and "cutting" in-camera, just like a bunch of filmmakers did when they started and all they had was the camera and there was no cutting/scanning/post-production you could do. It's kind of like getting a poem someone wrote out with a fountain pen, ink drops, occasional bad penmanship, and all.
Given those restrictions, it's kind of straight-ahead in its literalization of the whole "giving you my heart" thing, but effective for it. It's not necessarily better or more sincere than the similar scene Robert Rodriguez and James Cameron played with in Alita: Battle Angel, but the sheer earnestness of it can't help but add a certain amount of charm.
"Fuzzite Fighters"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
Kids fighting monsters is almost always a good time, especially when done with the sort of sincerity Jenna Tooley and her young cast bring to "Fuzzite Fighters". As much as it spends a bit of time taking a step back and having a giggle at the little kids swinging hockey sticks at monsters only they can see through their dorky goggles, protected by cardboard armor. It walks in the general direction of being cutesy in regard to those kids and their crazy imaginations (and the mean ones who won't just let them have their fun), but never quite crosses that line where it's about making the audience feel good that they like watching kids imagine.
The delight comes in large part from Tooley et al taking the kids' mission seriously, even as they menace Emma and James with monsters that looks more like sports mascots than aliens. The action is crisply shot and cut to excite, and even if that's a joke, it's one that has to be done well to work. The kids feel genuine, especially the young actress playing Emma, who does a nice job of playing the kid who chooses adventure when given the chance.
"The Odd Sea"
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
There are some good gags in "The Odd Sea", enough that I'd kind of like to see director Porcelain Dalya do this sort of behind-the-scenes comedy about a documentary crew without the whole bit where the filmmakers' subject is Odysseus re-imagined as a contemporary painter, because that's almost always just a little too cutesy, with each dropped reference to The Odyssey more a reminder of how it doesn't fit than a play on how it unexpectedly does. Moving an epic fantasy about a journey into a static, mundane setting in this case makes it harder for Dalya to use what's fun about either in any way that feels natural. It careens between frantic and stretched as a result.
It's a fun group she's put together, and there are a few great moments where she's able to do a thing and wink at it simultaneously, such as coming up with a more varied group of siren body types than is typical. Big laughs and big whiffs is probably better than just getting by without a reaction, even if I wish the proportions were a little different.
"B's Hole"
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
For a couple of years, BUFF programmed a whole program of shorts about ignorant young twerps, and this would have fit right in. It's maybe a little more sympathetic in some respects - director Peter Levine and his cast play the speakeasy-seeking hipsters as earnest in their desire for cool new experiences even if they haven't done anything close to the proper research, while the guy who takes advantage of their naivete eventually finds little joy in it. There's probably a lesson here about how trying to get a laugh out of samming these guys can turn sour when they don't realize that they're supposed to be suffering, although it's one that the short seems to stumble on rather than assert.
"Flower"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
The description of the short on BUFF's website - "a zombie finds a flower that brings her to the threshold of consciousness—only to be dispatched by a heartless survivor" - is awful close to the whole film, as is sometimes the case when you're looking at something five minutes long that asks the viewer to take a moment and let what's happening wash over them. There's not a whole lot of room for twisting.
Kik Udomprasert and company manage some nice craft, though, from the way the purple flower stands out from the background to quality make-up and gore. In a movie without much if anything in the way of words, it can be tricky to manage the difference between disaffection and contentment, but that's a problem that the film never has. It's simple, but nevertheless kind of satisfying.
"El Amo de Cuchillo"
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
Rodrigo González's short is one of the longer ones in the package, and one can't help but feel that length; the point is kind of that it stretches out so that it can wrap up shockingly quickly; it either ends with "that's it?" or the viewer amused at how impressively the film turned the tables on them.
In this case, it never quite seems to fit together; there's a whole bunch of flashbacks and history that seems like it's meant to be just heightened enough that the audience recognizes the parody but there doesn't seem to be quite enough tension between this chef at home in his well-appointed kitchen practicing his knife work and his job at a family pizza kitchen. The film kind of meanders when it could be building, never quite random but never quite having all of the comedic/dramatic purpose it really needs to make the finale work.
"Happy Ending"
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
There are a few shorts in this block playing off movie tropes, with this one actually building its jokes off "if this was a movie…" It's kind of an easy sort of gag repeated a few times, but Fernando González Gómez has a couple of game actors to play it, even if the whole thing does come off as just a bit more self-aware than laugh-out-loud funny at times.
"Shake It Off"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
If not quite the best short in the comedy block, "Shake It Off" is probably the most cheerily peculiar and well-placed, dipping into a well of weirdness that makes the audience squirm a bit but doesn't judge all that much; it recognizes and embraces the fetish at the center without scolding either the girl who likes to watch guys pee or the guys who are kind of uncomfortable but are trying not to be because it's basically harmless, right?
Director Brian Petillo and his cast do a nice job of keeping it fun, especially the actress playing Megan, who has to come off as casual but not entirely disconnected or oblivious. Her understated sense of fun paris well with how co-star gets tied up in knots. The whole thing gets extended just long enough to be uncomfortable but not torture, and there's just enough table-turning on who is getting a kick out of looking at who to add a pinch of satire without ever really getting close to lecture.
"Falcon & Hawke: Space Race, Episode 4"
* ½ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
There's apparently more of this, which is kind of terrifying, because this twelve minutes is already overstuffed with weak point-and-laugh parody that feels desperate to extend itself every minute or so because there actually isn't that much material to be mined from the last crazy, over-the-top thing that they just did. Or at least, that's not the way they're going to go. They're just going to mash-up goofy Eighties cop shows with cheap Eighties space opera and try to get laughs out of how deliberately tacky the result is, even if intentional camp pretty much never works.
It's the sort of short film that can wreck a package - once this is starting to feel drawn out and just unwilling to wrap things up, it's a short jump to feeling like the whole block is past the point of pain. This is the loud bore who corners you and makes you want to leave the party even if you haven't had a chance to see your old friend yet.
"Fauxmote"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
"Fauxmote" is a cute sort of one-joke movie where the filmmakers never quite manage to build a story around that joke but tell it well enough that they can get away with doing it ten or twelve times in seven minutes. There's really no part of this guy wearing a big, clunky, difficult-to-operate thing that displays emoticons on his head that actually makes sense, but director Stuart Roelke manages some terrific timing and finds a tough-to-achieve balance of characters accepting it like it's a thing that people might do and recognizing it as pretty stupid.
The Fauxmote itself helps in that it's not quite a brilliantly designed prop but it's one that kind of works, like it's been crowdfunded and doesn't quite have to be a seamless part of a consistent world, but it's not too far out there. A little bit more slick or fourth-wall-breakingly amateurish, and the whole thing might not work.
"The Cuckoldress"
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
Got nothing; sometimes they just flee your brain.
"A Chest of Drawers"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
I recall this particular "got nothing" as a bit more ambitious, but still kind of wobbly.
"Chowboys: An American Folktale"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
Supposedly this is the last official Astron-6 project, although its members will probably work together again in some configuration later. If so, they go out in fitting style, with a bloody but very funny movie that shows more filmmaking chops than the work of a great many people who appear to take the work much more seriously.
That's impressive, because this one is screwy for them, with a group of cowboys sitting around the campfire, trading stories, talking about how they got into this situation, and casually revealing that things are a lot more dire and absurd than initially seems to be the case. The script is all over the place, but unlike a lot of movies that pull randomly-connected things together like that (I'm talking to you, four shorts ago!), this team builds the insanity up just enough that the audience is always ready to take that sharp left turn with the movie rather than skid off the road. The movie plays kind of like a stream-of-consciousness thing, but that was probably the first draft; it's been refined to work since then.
I think a big part of what makes this and most of their better projects work is that they respect the genres their playing with ad have figured out what makes them work (to the extent that I'd often rather see them try playing something straight). Here, for instance, they recognize that campfire scenes are often funny already, so if you're going to spoof or twist them, there's got to be some give-and-take: The more ridiculous topics of conversation may require the acting to be a little more deadpan, or shooting style built around shooting the outdoors on a soundstage may call for a little extra detail.
Anyway, I hope these guys are able to do even more entertaining genre projects now than they could before. They do the sort of thing that tends to attract amateurs who think they know a lot more than they do, but they do it like pros.
Morto Não Fala (Nightshifter)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
I suppose that once a person finds out that they can converse with corpses, their career is pretty much set - it would be a heck of a waste to be able to do that and work anywhere but the city morgue. From there, it's a matter of whether you think you're on an American TV show or not - if you are, the obvious next step is to start solving murders; otherwise, you may wind up on the sort of path Stênio does here, which is more nastily entertaining than the procedural approach.
There's enough crime in Sao Paolo that Stênio (Daniel de Oliveira) will find himself conversing with people who died in pretty gnarly fashion, and not only is it taking its toll, but the job doesn't even pay enough for a beer at the local cafe after work. It's making things strained with wife Odete (Fabiula Nascimento), and when he finds out that she is having an affair with Jaime (Marco Ricca), the cafe's owner, it's enough for him to finally make some use of his ability, using what he learned from a dead gangster to convincing his boss that Jaime got the man killed, counting on them to exact his revenge. It seems like a slick plan, but it turns out that telling the dead's secrets marks a sman, and soon gangsters who realize that the tale doesn't quite add up may be the least of Stênio's problems.
Stênio brings a lot of what's coming upon himself - he is not some stupid teenager messing around with things he's got no reason to expect are actually dangerous - and the filmmakers do a nifty job of offering no excuses while still giving the audience reason to care beyond just how the blowback from his actions may hit the decent people around him, whether his kids or Jaime's daughter Lara (Bianca Comparato). Everyone in this movie is stressed or frustrated in some way, and when Stênio crosses that line to make Jaime a target, the audience recoils, but can recognize the desire to lash out at that point. Stênio is not exactly a good person who has a moment of weakness - his bickering with Odete is petty on both sides and he's as selfish as anyone else - but he hasn't exactly been looking for an excuse. He's just too close to the darkness.
Full review on EFilmCritic
"Les Vacances Continuent"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Sometimes music videos like this look a little amateurish and homemade and it's not entirely a bad thing even if you do snicker a bit; and it's kind of about expectations - the viewer processes it as a stream of consciousness inspired by the song, and lets it have bits that need to be filled in or which don't add up, even if there's also clearly enough planning for flashbacks and the like, even if you strongly suspect that a song whose title translates to "Vacation Continues" doesn't really have much to do with a woman getting murderous revenge.
So, sure, this one was kind of silly in spots even as it's also just insanely bloody. The tune is catchy enough even if your French is as terrible as mine, and the sheer enthusiasm of it plays, especially when it allows the video to do the quick reversals necessary in order to cram everything into three and a half minutes.
Un couteau dans le coeur (Knife+Heart)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Knife+Heart is a slasher set against a backdrop of gay porn in 1979 Paris and it's just as lurid as it sounds, which means it is not for everyone. It is top-notch as those go, clever and sometimes surprisingly emotional considering that it's also often well over the border of camp. There isn't much like it, and most of what is doesn't pull it off nearly so well.
Anne Parèze (Vanessa Paradis) is kind of a mess; she produces cheap adult films with all-male casts and has screwed up enough of that girlfriend Loïs McKenna (Kate Moran) has left her, although she's still editing those movies. Director Archibald Langevin (Nicolas Maury) is not the only one to notice that new actor Nans (Khaled Alouach) looks an awful lot like another guy, Fouad, who did few films with them a few years ago. He might not be in the business very long, or on this Earth - there's a serial killer on the loose, and the police are not exactly prioritizing the case. That means Anne winds up playing amateur sleuth on top of everything else, which includes making her new movie transparently based upon the case.
Vanessa Paradis seems like a bit of an odd choice for the central character of this movie, even once you consider that many of the characters are inspired by real people; she's a glamorous former model and singer whose character is in a grimy, low-rent business. She imbues Anne with a sense of ease and experience but not necessarily responsibility, someone who has found her niche in part because it lets her occasionally be immature without much penalty in the right proportion with any den-mother instincts she might feel. It's a natural fit with Kate Moran's Loïs, who never comes off as quite so at ease with this world - sure, nobody has anything against her being gay, and Anne is smart and exciting, but even before the murders, the excesses that came from being around Anne were not exactly what she wanted out of life. She does the editing because someone has to and she's the only one with the temperment for this methodical part of filmmaking.
Full review on EFilmCritic
The Hole in the Ground
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Consume enough fantasy and horror, or get enough of a feel for various sorts of mythology, and you will start to recognize various things to the point where you maybe want a little more, even if a story is a decent example of what it is. The Hole in the Ground is like that: It's a perfectly fine little movie drawn from Irish folklore, and as soon as the specific bit of mythology is clear, the viewer will say "ah, it's about those", let it play out, and then maybe recall it when someone asks for movies about changelings but not come back to it that often otherwise.
It opens with Sarah O'Neill (Seána Kerslake) and her son Chris (James Quinn Markey) moving into an old house in need of some work on the outskirts of a small Irish village, the sort that comes complete with a weird old lady (Kati Outinert) who wanders out into the middle of the street saying foreboding things, and has ever since some sort of childhood trauma. Chris is sullen, not understanding why they're making this move and why his father isn't coming with them, though people who notice certain types of scars and bandages on Sarah will get it. While walking in the woods, they discover a huge sinkhole, and though Sarah says to stay away, kids do get curious in the middle of the night, sometimes having a curious change of behavior afterward.
Director and co-writer Lee Cronin tends to keep the film closely centered on Sarah and Chris, and that's by no means a bad way to go. They're a well-cast pair that can certainly carry the weight of a small film like this, with James Quinn Markey doing quite all right as both the disappointed version of Chris and the one that seems somewhat off; it's not necessarily meant to be a subtle difference, but it is one that doesn't immediately make Sarah look like a fool when she doesn't pick up on it. Seána Kerslake is impressive as well; there's the tiniest hint of her trying to make herself feel enthused about working on the house herself as the film starts, and nice alarm and self-doubt as she starts to wonder about Chris. She's seldom flashy, but she's convincing in a lot of little ways, so she and the filmmakers are able to fill a fair amount of who Sarah is in without a lot of obvious effort.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Obviously, I went for making myself crazy.
So, left to right, I believe we've got Adam Murphy, an animator on "A Chest of Drawers"; Joe Donovan (music), JB Sapienza (Producer) and Jim McDonough (writer/director) from "I Owe You One Banana and Two Black Eyes"; Alex & Peter, part of the team that made the bumper that played before every feature; Brian Petillo, who directed "Shake It Off"; someone whom my notes only say "Glen - ed", probably from "The Odd Sea" with its director Porcelain Dalya; Brett McCabe, who gave us "The Cuckoldress"; Stuart Roelke, director of "Fauxmote"; "In Love" filmmaker Candice Nachman; and finally "Falcon & Hawke", respectively writer/director Dane Benton and Paul Wilson. That's a lot, and I apologize for anyone whom I short-changed with my crappy notes!
It was a solid night of horror after that - even the stuff I didn't love was pretty solid, and how do you not smile a bit at how, after playing one of director Yann Gonzalez's music videos before his movie, there's a title card announcing Knife+Heart, "aka the queer slasher fim you came to see". I'm not sure what the reason for A Hole in the Ground being a secret screening was unless it's some weird contractual thing, like DirectTV doesn't want any of the movies that are part of their deal with A24 advertised as playing in theaters in any way.
"I Owe You One Banana and Two Black Eyes"
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
First up, a short that makes me wonder if maybe I hadn't skpped the wrong block and was going to see the music videos. Probably not, because the song itself is pretty goofy, which describes the film, in which a couple of bunny puppets are lip-syncing while racing to outrun various predators, with the whole thing eventually becoming a crazy, over-the-top car chase. It's the sort of animation where you can't quite see the strings but never entertain the possibility that there might not be any there.
It's fairly funny, especially if you like a certain flavor of finger-raising bloody cartoon violence. Jim McDonough and his team aren't bad at escalating the insanity from a pretty nutty start at all, and do a fine job of hitting peak over-the-top right when the music says they should.
"In Love"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
A whole two minutes long, but two minutes that offer a specific sort of pure delight of filmmaking, as director Candice Nachman shoots on Super-8 and does her effects and jumps and "cutting" in-camera, just like a bunch of filmmakers did when they started and all they had was the camera and there was no cutting/scanning/post-production you could do. It's kind of like getting a poem someone wrote out with a fountain pen, ink drops, occasional bad penmanship, and all.
Given those restrictions, it's kind of straight-ahead in its literalization of the whole "giving you my heart" thing, but effective for it. It's not necessarily better or more sincere than the similar scene Robert Rodriguez and James Cameron played with in Alita: Battle Angel, but the sheer earnestness of it can't help but add a certain amount of charm.
"Fuzzite Fighters"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
Kids fighting monsters is almost always a good time, especially when done with the sort of sincerity Jenna Tooley and her young cast bring to "Fuzzite Fighters". As much as it spends a bit of time taking a step back and having a giggle at the little kids swinging hockey sticks at monsters only they can see through their dorky goggles, protected by cardboard armor. It walks in the general direction of being cutesy in regard to those kids and their crazy imaginations (and the mean ones who won't just let them have their fun), but never quite crosses that line where it's about making the audience feel good that they like watching kids imagine.
The delight comes in large part from Tooley et al taking the kids' mission seriously, even as they menace Emma and James with monsters that looks more like sports mascots than aliens. The action is crisply shot and cut to excite, and even if that's a joke, it's one that has to be done well to work. The kids feel genuine, especially the young actress playing Emma, who does a nice job of playing the kid who chooses adventure when given the chance.
"The Odd Sea"
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
There are some good gags in "The Odd Sea", enough that I'd kind of like to see director Porcelain Dalya do this sort of behind-the-scenes comedy about a documentary crew without the whole bit where the filmmakers' subject is Odysseus re-imagined as a contemporary painter, because that's almost always just a little too cutesy, with each dropped reference to The Odyssey more a reminder of how it doesn't fit than a play on how it unexpectedly does. Moving an epic fantasy about a journey into a static, mundane setting in this case makes it harder for Dalya to use what's fun about either in any way that feels natural. It careens between frantic and stretched as a result.
It's a fun group she's put together, and there are a few great moments where she's able to do a thing and wink at it simultaneously, such as coming up with a more varied group of siren body types than is typical. Big laughs and big whiffs is probably better than just getting by without a reaction, even if I wish the proportions were a little different.
"B's Hole"
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
For a couple of years, BUFF programmed a whole program of shorts about ignorant young twerps, and this would have fit right in. It's maybe a little more sympathetic in some respects - director Peter Levine and his cast play the speakeasy-seeking hipsters as earnest in their desire for cool new experiences even if they haven't done anything close to the proper research, while the guy who takes advantage of their naivete eventually finds little joy in it. There's probably a lesson here about how trying to get a laugh out of samming these guys can turn sour when they don't realize that they're supposed to be suffering, although it's one that the short seems to stumble on rather than assert.
"Flower"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
The description of the short on BUFF's website - "a zombie finds a flower that brings her to the threshold of consciousness—only to be dispatched by a heartless survivor" - is awful close to the whole film, as is sometimes the case when you're looking at something five minutes long that asks the viewer to take a moment and let what's happening wash over them. There's not a whole lot of room for twisting.
Kik Udomprasert and company manage some nice craft, though, from the way the purple flower stands out from the background to quality make-up and gore. In a movie without much if anything in the way of words, it can be tricky to manage the difference between disaffection and contentment, but that's a problem that the film never has. It's simple, but nevertheless kind of satisfying.
"El Amo de Cuchillo"
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
Rodrigo González's short is one of the longer ones in the package, and one can't help but feel that length; the point is kind of that it stretches out so that it can wrap up shockingly quickly; it either ends with "that's it?" or the viewer amused at how impressively the film turned the tables on them.
In this case, it never quite seems to fit together; there's a whole bunch of flashbacks and history that seems like it's meant to be just heightened enough that the audience recognizes the parody but there doesn't seem to be quite enough tension between this chef at home in his well-appointed kitchen practicing his knife work and his job at a family pizza kitchen. The film kind of meanders when it could be building, never quite random but never quite having all of the comedic/dramatic purpose it really needs to make the finale work.
"Happy Ending"
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
There are a few shorts in this block playing off movie tropes, with this one actually building its jokes off "if this was a movie…" It's kind of an easy sort of gag repeated a few times, but Fernando González Gómez has a couple of game actors to play it, even if the whole thing does come off as just a bit more self-aware than laugh-out-loud funny at times.
"Shake It Off"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
If not quite the best short in the comedy block, "Shake It Off" is probably the most cheerily peculiar and well-placed, dipping into a well of weirdness that makes the audience squirm a bit but doesn't judge all that much; it recognizes and embraces the fetish at the center without scolding either the girl who likes to watch guys pee or the guys who are kind of uncomfortable but are trying not to be because it's basically harmless, right?
Director Brian Petillo and his cast do a nice job of keeping it fun, especially the actress playing Megan, who has to come off as casual but not entirely disconnected or oblivious. Her understated sense of fun paris well with how co-star gets tied up in knots. The whole thing gets extended just long enough to be uncomfortable but not torture, and there's just enough table-turning on who is getting a kick out of looking at who to add a pinch of satire without ever really getting close to lecture.
"Falcon & Hawke: Space Race, Episode 4"
* ½ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
There's apparently more of this, which is kind of terrifying, because this twelve minutes is already overstuffed with weak point-and-laugh parody that feels desperate to extend itself every minute or so because there actually isn't that much material to be mined from the last crazy, over-the-top thing that they just did. Or at least, that's not the way they're going to go. They're just going to mash-up goofy Eighties cop shows with cheap Eighties space opera and try to get laughs out of how deliberately tacky the result is, even if intentional camp pretty much never works.
It's the sort of short film that can wreck a package - once this is starting to feel drawn out and just unwilling to wrap things up, it's a short jump to feeling like the whole block is past the point of pain. This is the loud bore who corners you and makes you want to leave the party even if you haven't had a chance to see your old friend yet.
"Fauxmote"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
"Fauxmote" is a cute sort of one-joke movie where the filmmakers never quite manage to build a story around that joke but tell it well enough that they can get away with doing it ten or twelve times in seven minutes. There's really no part of this guy wearing a big, clunky, difficult-to-operate thing that displays emoticons on his head that actually makes sense, but director Stuart Roelke manages some terrific timing and finds a tough-to-achieve balance of characters accepting it like it's a thing that people might do and recognizing it as pretty stupid.
The Fauxmote itself helps in that it's not quite a brilliantly designed prop but it's one that kind of works, like it's been crowdfunded and doesn't quite have to be a seamless part of a consistent world, but it's not too far out there. A little bit more slick or fourth-wall-breakingly amateurish, and the whole thing might not work.
"The Cuckoldress"
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
Got nothing; sometimes they just flee your brain.
"A Chest of Drawers"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
I recall this particular "got nothing" as a bit more ambitious, but still kind of wobbly.
"Chowboys: An American Folktale"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival: Bucket of Truth, digital)
Supposedly this is the last official Astron-6 project, although its members will probably work together again in some configuration later. If so, they go out in fitting style, with a bloody but very funny movie that shows more filmmaking chops than the work of a great many people who appear to take the work much more seriously.
That's impressive, because this one is screwy for them, with a group of cowboys sitting around the campfire, trading stories, talking about how they got into this situation, and casually revealing that things are a lot more dire and absurd than initially seems to be the case. The script is all over the place, but unlike a lot of movies that pull randomly-connected things together like that (I'm talking to you, four shorts ago!), this team builds the insanity up just enough that the audience is always ready to take that sharp left turn with the movie rather than skid off the road. The movie plays kind of like a stream-of-consciousness thing, but that was probably the first draft; it's been refined to work since then.
I think a big part of what makes this and most of their better projects work is that they respect the genres their playing with ad have figured out what makes them work (to the extent that I'd often rather see them try playing something straight). Here, for instance, they recognize that campfire scenes are often funny already, so if you're going to spoof or twist them, there's got to be some give-and-take: The more ridiculous topics of conversation may require the acting to be a little more deadpan, or shooting style built around shooting the outdoors on a soundstage may call for a little extra detail.
Anyway, I hope these guys are able to do even more entertaining genre projects now than they could before. They do the sort of thing that tends to attract amateurs who think they know a lot more than they do, but they do it like pros.
Morto Não Fala (Nightshifter)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
I suppose that once a person finds out that they can converse with corpses, their career is pretty much set - it would be a heck of a waste to be able to do that and work anywhere but the city morgue. From there, it's a matter of whether you think you're on an American TV show or not - if you are, the obvious next step is to start solving murders; otherwise, you may wind up on the sort of path Stênio does here, which is more nastily entertaining than the procedural approach.
There's enough crime in Sao Paolo that Stênio (Daniel de Oliveira) will find himself conversing with people who died in pretty gnarly fashion, and not only is it taking its toll, but the job doesn't even pay enough for a beer at the local cafe after work. It's making things strained with wife Odete (Fabiula Nascimento), and when he finds out that she is having an affair with Jaime (Marco Ricca), the cafe's owner, it's enough for him to finally make some use of his ability, using what he learned from a dead gangster to convincing his boss that Jaime got the man killed, counting on them to exact his revenge. It seems like a slick plan, but it turns out that telling the dead's secrets marks a sman, and soon gangsters who realize that the tale doesn't quite add up may be the least of Stênio's problems.
Stênio brings a lot of what's coming upon himself - he is not some stupid teenager messing around with things he's got no reason to expect are actually dangerous - and the filmmakers do a nifty job of offering no excuses while still giving the audience reason to care beyond just how the blowback from his actions may hit the decent people around him, whether his kids or Jaime's daughter Lara (Bianca Comparato). Everyone in this movie is stressed or frustrated in some way, and when Stênio crosses that line to make Jaime a target, the audience recoils, but can recognize the desire to lash out at that point. Stênio is not exactly a good person who has a moment of weakness - his bickering with Odete is petty on both sides and he's as selfish as anyone else - but he hasn't exactly been looking for an excuse. He's just too close to the darkness.
Full review on EFilmCritic
"Les Vacances Continuent"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Sometimes music videos like this look a little amateurish and homemade and it's not entirely a bad thing even if you do snicker a bit; and it's kind of about expectations - the viewer processes it as a stream of consciousness inspired by the song, and lets it have bits that need to be filled in or which don't add up, even if there's also clearly enough planning for flashbacks and the like, even if you strongly suspect that a song whose title translates to "Vacation Continues" doesn't really have much to do with a woman getting murderous revenge.
So, sure, this one was kind of silly in spots even as it's also just insanely bloody. The tune is catchy enough even if your French is as terrible as mine, and the sheer enthusiasm of it plays, especially when it allows the video to do the quick reversals necessary in order to cram everything into three and a half minutes.
Un couteau dans le coeur (Knife+Heart)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Knife+Heart is a slasher set against a backdrop of gay porn in 1979 Paris and it's just as lurid as it sounds, which means it is not for everyone. It is top-notch as those go, clever and sometimes surprisingly emotional considering that it's also often well over the border of camp. There isn't much like it, and most of what is doesn't pull it off nearly so well.
Anne Parèze (Vanessa Paradis) is kind of a mess; she produces cheap adult films with all-male casts and has screwed up enough of that girlfriend Loïs McKenna (Kate Moran) has left her, although she's still editing those movies. Director Archibald Langevin (Nicolas Maury) is not the only one to notice that new actor Nans (Khaled Alouach) looks an awful lot like another guy, Fouad, who did few films with them a few years ago. He might not be in the business very long, or on this Earth - there's a serial killer on the loose, and the police are not exactly prioritizing the case. That means Anne winds up playing amateur sleuth on top of everything else, which includes making her new movie transparently based upon the case.
Vanessa Paradis seems like a bit of an odd choice for the central character of this movie, even once you consider that many of the characters are inspired by real people; she's a glamorous former model and singer whose character is in a grimy, low-rent business. She imbues Anne with a sense of ease and experience but not necessarily responsibility, someone who has found her niche in part because it lets her occasionally be immature without much penalty in the right proportion with any den-mother instincts she might feel. It's a natural fit with Kate Moran's Loïs, who never comes off as quite so at ease with this world - sure, nobody has anything against her being gay, and Anne is smart and exciting, but even before the murders, the excesses that came from being around Anne were not exactly what she wanted out of life. She does the editing because someone has to and she's the only one with the temperment for this methodical part of filmmaking.
Full review on EFilmCritic
The Hole in the Ground
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Consume enough fantasy and horror, or get enough of a feel for various sorts of mythology, and you will start to recognize various things to the point where you maybe want a little more, even if a story is a decent example of what it is. The Hole in the Ground is like that: It's a perfectly fine little movie drawn from Irish folklore, and as soon as the specific bit of mythology is clear, the viewer will say "ah, it's about those", let it play out, and then maybe recall it when someone asks for movies about changelings but not come back to it that often otherwise.
It opens with Sarah O'Neill (Seána Kerslake) and her son Chris (James Quinn Markey) moving into an old house in need of some work on the outskirts of a small Irish village, the sort that comes complete with a weird old lady (Kati Outinert) who wanders out into the middle of the street saying foreboding things, and has ever since some sort of childhood trauma. Chris is sullen, not understanding why they're making this move and why his father isn't coming with them, though people who notice certain types of scars and bandages on Sarah will get it. While walking in the woods, they discover a huge sinkhole, and though Sarah says to stay away, kids do get curious in the middle of the night, sometimes having a curious change of behavior afterward.
Director and co-writer Lee Cronin tends to keep the film closely centered on Sarah and Chris, and that's by no means a bad way to go. They're a well-cast pair that can certainly carry the weight of a small film like this, with James Quinn Markey doing quite all right as both the disappointed version of Chris and the one that seems somewhat off; it's not necessarily meant to be a subtle difference, but it is one that doesn't immediately make Sarah look like a fool when she doesn't pick up on it. Seána Kerslake is impressive as well; there's the tiniest hint of her trying to make herself feel enthused about working on the house herself as the film starts, and nice alarm and self-doubt as she starts to wonder about Chris. She's seldom flashy, but she's convincing in a lot of little ways, so she and the filmmakers are able to fill a fair amount of who Sarah is in without a lot of obvious effort.
Full review on EFilmCritic
Thursday, May 02, 2019
Boston Underground Film Festival 2019.02: Industrial Accident: The Story of Wax Trax! Records and The Girl on the Third Floor
Huh, were there actually no guests for Industrial Accident? You'd think there would be, but if there were, I didn't get any pictures.
So here's Chris Hallock talking to The Girl on the Third Floor director Travis Stevens:
He's had a hand in other movies that have played BUFF, Fantasia, and the like, but I think this is the first feature that he's directed. It's a pretty basic horror movie, so some of the most interesting discussion was about casting Phil "CM Punk" Brooks, because you don't necessarily go with a big wrestler-type for this sort of movie, but they thought he would be an interesting choice because you do see a lot of guys in finance these days with tattoos who spend all their off-time at the gym, not quite the button-down type of the past.
I must admit, I wound up thinking more about other ways the movie could have gone. It's got a ghost who may have died 100 years ago, but is mostly seen as contemporary, and I wonder about that - is Don just seeing what he expects from a spiritual force, or is the ghost a character that can grown and learn? Similarly, I kind of wonder if the attachment of a ghost to a place can potentially work both ways - if you renovate a house to serve a new purpose, can a vengeful spirit be refocused and redirected?
Something to play with on my own, I guess.
Industrial Accident: The Story of Wax Trax! Records
* * (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Industrial Accident tests the limits of how far a documentary can get on large reserves of affection for its subjects, and it's no small distance, especially when the viewer shares it, or at least has the sort of overlapping fandom that can at least get them a head start. Without that, it can quickly become a string of different people asserting that they loved something more or less the same way, losing track of just exactly why it was so beloved.
Wax Trax! Records was spawned in Chicago from the Wax Trax! record store, which itself had moved to that city from Denver in 1978, after founders Jim Nash and Dannie Flesher found themselves pushing against the barriers of straight-laced Colorado. The store quickly develops a reputation as one of the premiere punk record stores in the country, bringing up-and-coming acts to Chicago and importing records from Europe. And as seems inevitable with any fan-started enterprise, it's hard to maintain when the founders get new interests or the business gets too large.
Wax Trax! was particularly noteworthy as one of the first places to bring industrial metal to the United States, and fans of that music will likely have a blast seeing its stars talk about their early days, how Jim & Dannie were instrumental in their success, and so on. There's talk about how the pair often seemed to have tastes too broad for the label to have a signature style but also of how they tended to see a sort of comedic absurdity beneath the grim and angsty surface industrial presents. It's likely interesting to fans, but also a fair amount of the same thing repeated over and over - several different people say something about the pair not actually signing contracts with bands, for instance, which isn't terribly helpful for either newcomers or fans who know the broad outline of the label's story.
Full review on EFilmCritic
"La Mirilla" ("The Peephole")
* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Enrique Manzo Escamilla's "The Peephole" is probably just good enough to be worth seeing again; stuck in front of a feature with even slightly more polished edges, it looks kind of bare-bones and stretched, the product of a filmmaker with some style working frantically to get the most out of the time and resources he's got, tossing enough violence onto the screen to try and provoke a visceral reaction. It feels kind of like a demo reel, slick camerawork and editing and effective use of blood.
Thinking it through, though, there's some neat stuff going on here.
So, here's the question - is it actually dangerous to go outside of your little bubble, or does it just feel that way because we're so pushed to see the world as frightening and dangerous even though the reality is that there are no monsters? That wasn't exactly my first thought here - the film plays pretty well as a straight-ahead bit of supernatural horror, and there are maybe too many POVs and camera angles to make it a slam dunk that the violence is subjective imagination - but it feels more right the more I turn it over.
I don't know that it makes a great short film - as much as it takes a bit of skill to make a movie that can be read multiple ways, I'm not necessarily sure it's tremendously useful to make a movie that can be read as saying one thing or its opposite. Still, it marks this short as a bit more than just a speed bump on the way to the main feature.
Girl on the Third Floor
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre #17 (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Horror movies aren't the only place where viewers can spot big missed opportunities, but because something either scares a person or it doesn't, they can seem like bigger misjudgments there. Such is the case with Girl on the Third Floor, where it seems like there are a few opportunities that, if they don't pull the entire film together, are still perhaps a bit more unique or less random than well-executed haunted home improvement.
That's what Don Koch (Phil "CM Punk" Brooks) is aiming to do, though he doesn't know that the place he's working on has secrets. He's got time but not a lot of expertise - he's a former finance bro who has cut a deal with the feds - and wants to have the place ready for a new start by the time his wife Liz (Trieste Kelly Dunn) gives birth. This place has challenges that might baffle even an experienced renovator, though - rot without apparent cause, sticky fluids in the walls, marbles that seem to roll out of nowhere. And, of course, there's Sarah (Sarah Brooks), the cute (and very interested!) young neighbor that represents another sort of temptation that has nearly wrecked his life in the past.
That particular vice is the one that ties into why the house is haunted, but it takes a while for the movie to get there, during which time writer/director Travis Stevens does a bunch of entertaining haunted house bits that, because the film is fairly sparsely populated and it doesn't look like writer/director Travis Stevens is going to pull a Psycho by switching up the protagonists, sometimes leans toward dark comedy as this guy who is obviously used to hiring contractors has to deal with supernatural interference on top of everything else that goes with renovating a house. He's got a strong enough handle on tone that it never goes too far down that path, especially since he and his crew are able to make the kind of moments between the real violence just gross enough to not get a laugh, and cranks things up when he wants to mess the audience up without going too far over the top.
Full review on EFilmCritic
So here's Chris Hallock talking to The Girl on the Third Floor director Travis Stevens:
He's had a hand in other movies that have played BUFF, Fantasia, and the like, but I think this is the first feature that he's directed. It's a pretty basic horror movie, so some of the most interesting discussion was about casting Phil "CM Punk" Brooks, because you don't necessarily go with a big wrestler-type for this sort of movie, but they thought he would be an interesting choice because you do see a lot of guys in finance these days with tattoos who spend all their off-time at the gym, not quite the button-down type of the past.
I must admit, I wound up thinking more about other ways the movie could have gone. It's got a ghost who may have died 100 years ago, but is mostly seen as contemporary, and I wonder about that - is Don just seeing what he expects from a spiritual force, or is the ghost a character that can grown and learn? Similarly, I kind of wonder if the attachment of a ghost to a place can potentially work both ways - if you renovate a house to serve a new purpose, can a vengeful spirit be refocused and redirected?
Something to play with on my own, I guess.
Industrial Accident: The Story of Wax Trax! Records
* * (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Industrial Accident tests the limits of how far a documentary can get on large reserves of affection for its subjects, and it's no small distance, especially when the viewer shares it, or at least has the sort of overlapping fandom that can at least get them a head start. Without that, it can quickly become a string of different people asserting that they loved something more or less the same way, losing track of just exactly why it was so beloved.
Wax Trax! Records was spawned in Chicago from the Wax Trax! record store, which itself had moved to that city from Denver in 1978, after founders Jim Nash and Dannie Flesher found themselves pushing against the barriers of straight-laced Colorado. The store quickly develops a reputation as one of the premiere punk record stores in the country, bringing up-and-coming acts to Chicago and importing records from Europe. And as seems inevitable with any fan-started enterprise, it's hard to maintain when the founders get new interests or the business gets too large.
Wax Trax! was particularly noteworthy as one of the first places to bring industrial metal to the United States, and fans of that music will likely have a blast seeing its stars talk about their early days, how Jim & Dannie were instrumental in their success, and so on. There's talk about how the pair often seemed to have tastes too broad for the label to have a signature style but also of how they tended to see a sort of comedic absurdity beneath the grim and angsty surface industrial presents. It's likely interesting to fans, but also a fair amount of the same thing repeated over and over - several different people say something about the pair not actually signing contracts with bands, for instance, which isn't terribly helpful for either newcomers or fans who know the broad outline of the label's story.
Full review on EFilmCritic
"La Mirilla" ("The Peephole")
* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Enrique Manzo Escamilla's "The Peephole" is probably just good enough to be worth seeing again; stuck in front of a feature with even slightly more polished edges, it looks kind of bare-bones and stretched, the product of a filmmaker with some style working frantically to get the most out of the time and resources he's got, tossing enough violence onto the screen to try and provoke a visceral reaction. It feels kind of like a demo reel, slick camerawork and editing and effective use of blood.
Thinking it through, though, there's some neat stuff going on here.
So, here's the question - is it actually dangerous to go outside of your little bubble, or does it just feel that way because we're so pushed to see the world as frightening and dangerous even though the reality is that there are no monsters? That wasn't exactly my first thought here - the film plays pretty well as a straight-ahead bit of supernatural horror, and there are maybe too many POVs and camera angles to make it a slam dunk that the violence is subjective imagination - but it feels more right the more I turn it over.
I don't know that it makes a great short film - as much as it takes a bit of skill to make a movie that can be read multiple ways, I'm not necessarily sure it's tremendously useful to make a movie that can be read as saying one thing or its opposite. Still, it marks this short as a bit more than just a speed bump on the way to the main feature.
Girl on the Third Floor
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2019 at the Brattle Theatre #17 (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Horror movies aren't the only place where viewers can spot big missed opportunities, but because something either scares a person or it doesn't, they can seem like bigger misjudgments there. Such is the case with Girl on the Third Floor, where it seems like there are a few opportunities that, if they don't pull the entire film together, are still perhaps a bit more unique or less random than well-executed haunted home improvement.
That's what Don Koch (Phil "CM Punk" Brooks) is aiming to do, though he doesn't know that the place he's working on has secrets. He's got time but not a lot of expertise - he's a former finance bro who has cut a deal with the feds - and wants to have the place ready for a new start by the time his wife Liz (Trieste Kelly Dunn) gives birth. This place has challenges that might baffle even an experienced renovator, though - rot without apparent cause, sticky fluids in the walls, marbles that seem to roll out of nowhere. And, of course, there's Sarah (Sarah Brooks), the cute (and very interested!) young neighbor that represents another sort of temptation that has nearly wrecked his life in the past.
That particular vice is the one that ties into why the house is haunted, but it takes a while for the movie to get there, during which time writer/director Travis Stevens does a bunch of entertaining haunted house bits that, because the film is fairly sparsely populated and it doesn't look like writer/director Travis Stevens is going to pull a Psycho by switching up the protagonists, sometimes leans toward dark comedy as this guy who is obviously used to hiring contractors has to deal with supernatural interference on top of everything else that goes with renovating a house. He's got a strong enough handle on tone that it never goes too far down that path, especially since he and his crew are able to make the kind of moments between the real violence just gross enough to not get a laugh, and cranks things up when he wants to mess the audience up without going too far over the top.
Full review on EFilmCritic
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