The subject line shows that the folks at the Brattle clearly have more restraint than I have; that's a bad pun I would have slapped right on the calendar right where they usually stick "Double Feature".
(Yes, I'm inordinately proud of coming up with that.)
Let me say this: Ong Bak 2 is dozens of times more comprehensible when you haven't spent the whole day traveling from Boston to Austin, walking from the motel to downtown to pick up credentials, then from there to South Lamar because you haven't caught on with the shuttle schedule yet, and then waiting for the show to start because the Alamo guys are doing a fun intro until 12:30am (which is sitll like 1:30am Eastern Time on the first day). One is far more likely to intermittently fall asleep under those conditions than a Brattle showing that starts right on time at 9:30pm. It cleared things up enough to raise the rating a good half-star from when I first saw it.
Of course, time has chipped away at a little bit of the enthusiasm I displayed for the original Ong Bak when I saw it at the inaugural Boston Fantastic Film Festival back in 2004. Of course, back then, muay thai was something we hadn't seen on film, and I hadn't yet stumbled upon Twitch or made my first trip to Fantasia or NYAFF yet, so crazy martial arts on the big screen was an even more rare treat. I hope not to become jaded about it, because even as Jaa and company improved on their technique for this follow-up (you can't really call it a sequel), there is still a raw energy to people first making their mark to the first one that is very difficult to resist.
Ong Bak 2
* * * (out of four)
Seen 26 January 2010 at the Brattle Theatre (Brattle Selects 2010)
I haven't actually run the numbers, but I suspect that martial arts action has an unusually high number of movies titled as though they were sequels but only vague connections to each other, and that's even before considering how things get retitled for foreign markets. Ong Bak 2 is a fairly obvious example; despite the title, it is not a continuation of the story of the first; in fact, it takes place some 550 years earlier. Still, it's hardly like Ong Bak's story mattered, and this movie does offer more of what the first delivered: Tony Jaa, demonstrating amazing athletic and martial arts skills.
In 1431, a young boy named Tien (Natdanai Kongthong) escapes when his noble father and bodyguards are assassinated, but it's a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire as he falls into the hands of slavers before being rescued by Chernang (Sorapong Chatree), head of a group of bandits. Tien is offered the chance to stay, learn their ways, and train with them, growing into a man (Tony Jaa) who is groomed to take Chernang's place as bandit king. And he intends to, but the men who killed his parents are still out there, amassing more power...
Though the story is not the complete mess it appeared to be on my first go-round (it was effectively 2am after a full day of travel when I saw it at SXSW last year), it has its problems. I imagine the bulk can be traced to the tumultuous shoot: Star Tony Jaa apparently bit off more than he could chew in attempting to make his directorial debut, flaking on the production until the producers dragged him out of seclusion and hired Panna Rittikrai to take over directing duties. Getting it done required some script changes and as a result, there's an occasional disjointed feel; we spend a fair amount of time with Tien's childhood friend Pim in flashbacks, only to see her briefly as an adult (Primorata Dejudom may not actually have any lines, though she dances well). New villains appear during the last action sequences without any sort of introduction, and the film stops abruptly.
Though the movie's story suffers a bit for Jaa overextending himself, the actual direction is actually fairly impressive. In many ways, even beyond the time period, Ong Bak 2 is the opposite of Ong Bak - where the previous movie was rather good-natured (even the villains were amusingly over-the-top) and shot in a straightforward manner with few stylish flourishes beyond the occasional "instant replay", there's a grim earnestness about this one, and a melodramatic tone enhanced with frequent use of slow motion. Jaa, Rittikrai, and cinematographer Nattawut Kittikhun use a lot of stark blacks and whites in their color palette, creating plenty of striking images. It's hard to know where Jaa's work stops and Rittikrai's begins, but if he matures a little and grows into the role, Ong Bak 2 indicates that there may be more to Jaa as a filmmaker than just knowing to point the camera at himself in the action sequences.
And, yes, he has quite the knack for that. Jaa and Rittikrai are credited as splitting those duties as well (Jaa as "action director", Rittikrai as "fight choreographer"), and in this category, at least, there can be little doubt that Ong Bak 2 is worth the price of admission. Jaa's athleticism is on full display, and the film makes a point to show that several different techniques and weapons are in play (as excellent as the action in Ong Bak was, it got a bit predictable: Don't let Jaa get any vertical lift, or you will take elbows to the top of the head). The last half-hour is close to non-stop martial arts, and Jaa does some absolutely amazing things on, under, and around an elephant.
Get right down to it, that's what you want from this movie - Tony Jaa doing a bunch of crazy martial arts with an elephant. Looking great is a bonus. A story that is completely coherent would be fantastic, but you can't have everything.
Also at EFC
Showing posts with label SXSW. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SXSW. Show all posts
Friday, January 29, 2010
Friday, June 19, 2009
Just a reminder...
Just a reminder: Moon (full review) opens in the Boston area (the AMC Harvard Square Theater in Cambridge and Embassy Theater in Waltham) today.
It is easily the best science-fiction movie to come out this year.
Sam Rockwell is fantastic.
The script is tight, the direction by first-timer Duncan Jones even more so.
It looks as good as something with many times its $5M-ish budget.
Anyway, you know what to do. Head into Harvard Square (or Central Square, Waltham) this weekend so that you can say that you had the discerning taste to catch this one in its original theatrical run when other folks start gushing about "discovering" it on video or at the sci-fi marathon, or when people ask you what the best movies of the summer/year were.
It is easily the best science-fiction movie to come out this year.
Sam Rockwell is fantastic.
The script is tight, the direction by first-timer Duncan Jones even more so.
It looks as good as something with many times its $5M-ish budget.
Anyway, you know what to do. Head into Harvard Square (or Central Square, Waltham) this weekend so that you can say that you had the discerning taste to catch this one in its original theatrical run when other folks start gushing about "discovering" it on video or at the sci-fi marathon, or when people ask you what the best movies of the summer/year were.
Friday, May 29, 2009
SXSW Flashback: Drag Me to Hell
I don't generally make a point of seeing festival films again once they hit the regular theaters, but I will probably make an exception this weekend or next for Drag Me to Hell. The digital file projected in Austin was, well, a digital file, and I'd like to see it on film, from a better seat (I was sitting with some of the eFilmCritic and Cinematical folks, and they wanted to be able to get in and out for photography and the like). It was also a work-in-progress presentation, and though it looked pretty good, there were some scenes that were a little rough. One looks a bit better in the ads being shown, although coming as it does very late in the movie, it's got no business being in the ads.
Having set this review for time-release on HBS/EFC, it's a little amusing to see that while I'm talking about Raimi not losing any of his edge, part of the conversation about this movie has been how some want to skip it in the theater and wait for an unrated DVD/Blu-ray since the theatrical version has a PG-13 rating. I'd advise against that, because this is a tremendously fun audience movie; this sort of horror works much better with a crowd than alone in one's living room. PG-13 is also the movie's natural state; it's not looking to gross the audience out as much as creep them out, and it's not working on a slasher paradigm where most of the characters are cannon fodder to be bumped off in ever more disgusting ways.
As a side note to that, I don't know whether Universal is premiering a new logo with this or whether it's just a one-time thing, but the screening at SXSW didn't have the familiar "sun rising over CGI Earth" bit. Instead, it was a newly-rendered version of the old "zooming in on Earth through cosmic dust clouds" logo. That's kind of fitting, since the movie is a bit of a throwback to the sort of horror movie Universal did back in the day, which had jumps and scares but wasn't looking to exclude kids and teens.
Drag Me To Hell
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Special Screenings)
Can you believe it's been over twenty years since Evil Dead 2? Considering how much of Sam Raimi's reputation and career is built on that movie and its particular style (he was considered an inspired choice for the Spider-Man films because of it), one would think he'd done more like it, but in fact he's ranged pretty far afield. Even Army of Darkness was something rather different, more PG-13-ish Ray Harryhausen tribute than horror. So while seeing him return to this genre is exciting, it's not unreasonable to wonder whether he's still got something like that in him.
Thankfully, he does. Drag Me to Hell is the Evil Dead 2-iest thing he's done since Darkman, if not ED2 itself, and reassuring in how it demonstrates that his time in the world of of big stars and big budgets hasn't changed him, but rather given him access to and mastery of new tools. Part of the reason why this one manages to retain the feel of an old-school Raimi movie is that it sort of is one - the script was first written years ago, and (I believe) pulled out during the 2007 writers' strike - but give Raimi (along with brother and co-writer Ivan) credit for not deciding to tone it down too much now that they're older and wiser.
When we meet Christine (Alison Lohman), the loan officer is up for a promotion to assistant manager of a Los Angeles bank; the branch manager (David Paymer) has it down to her and less senior but more aggressive Stu (Reggie Lee). An old woman (Lorna Raver) comes in seeking an extension on her mortgage payments; Christine hems and haws but ultimately refuses, noting Mrs. Ganush has had two already. The woman is upset, attacking Christine in the bank's parking garage. Boyfriend Clay (Justin Long) is just glad she's okay, but Christine doesn't think it's over, as weird things start happening and a slick-talking fortune teller (Dileep Rao) tells her she's been made the target of a lamia, a demon which will torment her for a few days before pulling her into Hell.
Full review at EFC, along with several others.
Having set this review for time-release on HBS/EFC, it's a little amusing to see that while I'm talking about Raimi not losing any of his edge, part of the conversation about this movie has been how some want to skip it in the theater and wait for an unrated DVD/Blu-ray since the theatrical version has a PG-13 rating. I'd advise against that, because this is a tremendously fun audience movie; this sort of horror works much better with a crowd than alone in one's living room. PG-13 is also the movie's natural state; it's not looking to gross the audience out as much as creep them out, and it's not working on a slasher paradigm where most of the characters are cannon fodder to be bumped off in ever more disgusting ways.
As a side note to that, I don't know whether Universal is premiering a new logo with this or whether it's just a one-time thing, but the screening at SXSW didn't have the familiar "sun rising over CGI Earth" bit. Instead, it was a newly-rendered version of the old "zooming in on Earth through cosmic dust clouds" logo. That's kind of fitting, since the movie is a bit of a throwback to the sort of horror movie Universal did back in the day, which had jumps and scares but wasn't looking to exclude kids and teens.
Drag Me To Hell
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Special Screenings)
Can you believe it's been over twenty years since Evil Dead 2? Considering how much of Sam Raimi's reputation and career is built on that movie and its particular style (he was considered an inspired choice for the Spider-Man films because of it), one would think he'd done more like it, but in fact he's ranged pretty far afield. Even Army of Darkness was something rather different, more PG-13-ish Ray Harryhausen tribute than horror. So while seeing him return to this genre is exciting, it's not unreasonable to wonder whether he's still got something like that in him.
Thankfully, he does. Drag Me to Hell is the Evil Dead 2-iest thing he's done since Darkman, if not ED2 itself, and reassuring in how it demonstrates that his time in the world of of big stars and big budgets hasn't changed him, but rather given him access to and mastery of new tools. Part of the reason why this one manages to retain the feel of an old-school Raimi movie is that it sort of is one - the script was first written years ago, and (I believe) pulled out during the 2007 writers' strike - but give Raimi (along with brother and co-writer Ivan) credit for not deciding to tone it down too much now that they're older and wiser.
When we meet Christine (Alison Lohman), the loan officer is up for a promotion to assistant manager of a Los Angeles bank; the branch manager (David Paymer) has it down to her and less senior but more aggressive Stu (Reggie Lee). An old woman (Lorna Raver) comes in seeking an extension on her mortgage payments; Christine hems and haws but ultimately refuses, noting Mrs. Ganush has had two already. The woman is upset, attacking Christine in the bank's parking garage. Boyfriend Clay (Justin Long) is just glad she's okay, but Christine doesn't think it's over, as weird things start happening and a slick-talking fortune teller (Dileep Rao) tells her she's been made the target of a lamia, a demon which will torment her for a few days before pulling her into Hell.
Full review at EFC, along with several others.
Monday, April 20, 2009
This Week In Tickets: 13 April 2009 to 19 April 2009
The week nearly had a "name of the city in the title" thing going on, but the film in the BIFF session did not actually include "Boston" or "Southie" in the name.
More SXSW reviews:
* The Promised Land: A Swamp Pop Journey
* Make-Out with Violence
* Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
* The Eyes of Me
With luck, I should have the last of them finished up just in time for the whole process to start up again with The Independent Film Festival of Boston on Wednesday. It's looking like a pretty good line-up (including the above-linked Make-Out With Violence, which I liked rather a lot). My ridiculously overbooked schedule can be seen there, but I'm not sure how to share it properly. Everybody's using B-Side for these things nowadays, so I'm going to have to wrap my brain around it eventually.
Between IFFB and a cluster of Red Sox games, I'm going to wind up not seeing more than the opening night selection at the Boston International Film Festival, which is more than I've done in the past. BIFF seems to fly completely under the radar; the only sort of advertising I've ever seen for them is one poster at the Boston Common theater each year. This year, they pushed it up to April so that it overlaps with IFFB, which just strikes me as dumb - they started at about the same time, but IFFB has done a much better job of growing into something very good, while BIFF...
In a Herald article, they said they didn't bother to check for competing festivals when moving to April, which can be taken a bunch of ways, none good. They could be foolhardy - yes, there is something every week, as the organizers said, but some weeks are obviously less competitive than others. Or they could be trying to compete, but I don't think it'll do much good.
Anyway, saw one movie there. Won't see another this year, as IFFB starts in two days.
Faubourg 36 (aka Paris 36)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 14 April 2009 at Landmark Kendall Square #8 (first-run)
Not really my sort of movie, in general - I tend to get my back up at these sort of movies that basically point one's head at some sort of nostalgic art form and basically say "love musical theater! LOVE IT!!!" Fortunately, this one doesn't get quite so heavy-handed with that. It's got a nice enough cast, especially Gerard Jugnot and Nora Arnezeder, and the musical numbers aren't bad.
It may have played better in France; there's a lot of detail that seems like it would play out better for those familiar with it. At any rate, it's a pleasant enough two hours at the theater.
What Doesn't Kill You
* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 April 2009 at AMC Boston Common #2 (Boston International Film Festival)
Though this movie takes place in Southie, at least parts of it were filmed in Brighton - the armored car robbery shown in the opening is being perpetrated at a building that was a K-Mart up until a year or two ago, part of a shopping plaza owned (I believe) by Harvard University that has been steadily emptying out with no new tenants appearing - all that's left is a supermarket that I stop at once a week or so because it's on the 70A route between my work and home. I think some of the interiors may have been shot there, too, as the closed-up Fashion Warehouse next door had what looked like a house and other sets built inside. It was neat to see what had been shooting there.
The movie itself isn't bad; it's a well-acted bit of true crime. It's tough to go far wrong with Ethan Hawke and Mark Ruffalo in the lead roles as lifelong friends who graduate from petty to organized crime, and there's good supporting work from Amanda Peet, Donnie Wahlberg, and others.
La Frontière de l'aube (aka Frontier of Dawn)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 19 April 2009 at the Brattle Theatre (Sunday Eye-Opener)
Yet another precisely-crafted film that is, at times, a bit of a tough slog to get through. On the whole, I like it more than I don't; the things that seem contrived and fake at least seem to feel that way for a reason. The way Laura Smet always seems to be posing looks like bad acting, but it's also kind of amusing. Maybe not quite enough to offset how dour the rest of the movie is - it is one of those extremely French movies where people sit around, talking about pretentious intellectual foofery, and it really skates the line between self-parody and being an occasionally painful example of what it's parodying.
More SXSW reviews:
* The Promised Land: A Swamp Pop Journey
* Make-Out with Violence
* Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
* The Eyes of Me
With luck, I should have the last of them finished up just in time for the whole process to start up again with The Independent Film Festival of Boston on Wednesday. It's looking like a pretty good line-up (including the above-linked Make-Out With Violence, which I liked rather a lot). My ridiculously overbooked schedule can be seen there, but I'm not sure how to share it properly. Everybody's using B-Side for these things nowadays, so I'm going to have to wrap my brain around it eventually.
Between IFFB and a cluster of Red Sox games, I'm going to wind up not seeing more than the opening night selection at the Boston International Film Festival, which is more than I've done in the past. BIFF seems to fly completely under the radar; the only sort of advertising I've ever seen for them is one poster at the Boston Common theater each year. This year, they pushed it up to April so that it overlaps with IFFB, which just strikes me as dumb - they started at about the same time, but IFFB has done a much better job of growing into something very good, while BIFF...
In a Herald article, they said they didn't bother to check for competing festivals when moving to April, which can be taken a bunch of ways, none good. They could be foolhardy - yes, there is something every week, as the organizers said, but some weeks are obviously less competitive than others. Or they could be trying to compete, but I don't think it'll do much good.
Anyway, saw one movie there. Won't see another this year, as IFFB starts in two days.
Faubourg 36 (aka Paris 36)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 14 April 2009 at Landmark Kendall Square #8 (first-run)
Not really my sort of movie, in general - I tend to get my back up at these sort of movies that basically point one's head at some sort of nostalgic art form and basically say "love musical theater! LOVE IT!!!" Fortunately, this one doesn't get quite so heavy-handed with that. It's got a nice enough cast, especially Gerard Jugnot and Nora Arnezeder, and the musical numbers aren't bad.
It may have played better in France; there's a lot of detail that seems like it would play out better for those familiar with it. At any rate, it's a pleasant enough two hours at the theater.
What Doesn't Kill You
* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 April 2009 at AMC Boston Common #2 (Boston International Film Festival)
Though this movie takes place in Southie, at least parts of it were filmed in Brighton - the armored car robbery shown in the opening is being perpetrated at a building that was a K-Mart up until a year or two ago, part of a shopping plaza owned (I believe) by Harvard University that has been steadily emptying out with no new tenants appearing - all that's left is a supermarket that I stop at once a week or so because it's on the 70A route between my work and home. I think some of the interiors may have been shot there, too, as the closed-up Fashion Warehouse next door had what looked like a house and other sets built inside. It was neat to see what had been shooting there.
The movie itself isn't bad; it's a well-acted bit of true crime. It's tough to go far wrong with Ethan Hawke and Mark Ruffalo in the lead roles as lifelong friends who graduate from petty to organized crime, and there's good supporting work from Amanda Peet, Donnie Wahlberg, and others.
La Frontière de l'aube (aka Frontier of Dawn)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 19 April 2009 at the Brattle Theatre (Sunday Eye-Opener)
Yet another precisely-crafted film that is, at times, a bit of a tough slog to get through. On the whole, I like it more than I don't; the things that seem contrived and fake at least seem to feel that way for a reason. The way Laura Smet always seems to be posing looks like bad acting, but it's also kind of amusing. Maybe not quite enough to offset how dour the rest of the movie is - it is one of those extremely French movies where people sit around, talking about pretentious intellectual foofery, and it really skates the line between self-parody and being an occasionally painful example of what it's parodying.
Monday, April 13, 2009
This Week In Tickets: 6 April 2009 to 12 April 2009
Not a lot of movies seen this week, as baseball started, and that's been getting a lot of my attention. Not that it's been a particularly great week to be a Red Sox fan - opening day rained out, the game I went to cold and miserable, neither pitchers nor hitters (not named Kevin Youkilis) looking very good.
On a baseball & movies note, Sugar is really good. The post may have been buried under this one, so it's worth noting. In the Boston, it's playing at the two Landmark Theaters and the Regal Fenway (given their location, they may as well fill screens with something baseball-related until the big guns start hitting in May (even if it does have subtitles).
Not a lot to talk about here, but I can direct you to a few more of my SXSW reviews on EFC:
* Sin Nombre
* Women in Trouble
* The 2 Bobs
* Observe and Report
That last one just in time for its regular release. Out of five reviews on EFC, I'm the only guy who doesn't like it. One thing I do find myself noticing, reading all the positive reviews: None of them make any sort of case that the movie is actually funny. It's daring and dark and edgy and uncompromising, but not much said about why it will make people laugh or entertain them. Humor's a subjective thing, I know, but was everybody just so stunned by what Jody Hill got Warner Brothers to pay him to do that whether or not it was actually funny was beside the point?
Sauna
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2009 at the Brattle Theater (Sunday Eye-Opener)
I didn't realize, going into the Eye Opener this week, that Sauna was made by the same team that had done Jade Warrior a couple years earlier. I don't know if that would have affected what I thought about Sauna, but I might have had something to add to the conversation afterward. It's an interesting body of work director Antti-Jussi Annila and writer Iiro Kuttner are putting together, as both movies take relatively obscure bits of Finnish culture and history (at least, obscure to us non-Finns!) and build perhaps unexpected genre films around them.
I don't know if it fully works with Sauna, although I certainly would be interested in watching it again with both a previous viewing under my belt and Jade Warrior in the back of my mind. It's a pretty darn engrossing film, if only for the relationship between the two brothers - one a warrior, one a scholar - as well as how they deal with the Russian team that they must work with in order to chart a border after a long war between Russia and Sweden (Finland being a part of Sweden at the time). Things start to get strange once they arrive at a village in the middle of a swamp, populated by the exact number of innocent souls warrior brother Erik (Ville Virtanen) has on his conscience, and academic Knut (Tommi Eronen, who starred in Jade Warrior) becomes obsessed with a sauna there which pre-dates any other settlement.
Annila seems to have cut his movie to the bone (it's 85 minutes including credits), and he maybe could have left a little more flesh on there. It's the sort of movie where the metaphor is fairly clear, but not as specific as it could be, and the mechanics are vague even beyond the point where being inexplicable adds to it being scary.
That said, there is a flat-out awesome make-up effect at the end, the sort of think Clive Barker would look at and nod approval of in terms of being messed up (but unlike his Cenobites, it's a pretty simple, straightforward design).
On a baseball & movies note, Sugar is really good. The post may have been buried under this one, so it's worth noting. In the Boston, it's playing at the two Landmark Theaters and the Regal Fenway (given their location, they may as well fill screens with something baseball-related until the big guns start hitting in May (even if it does have subtitles).
Not a lot to talk about here, but I can direct you to a few more of my SXSW reviews on EFC:
* Sin Nombre
* Women in Trouble
* The 2 Bobs
* Observe and Report
That last one just in time for its regular release. Out of five reviews on EFC, I'm the only guy who doesn't like it. One thing I do find myself noticing, reading all the positive reviews: None of them make any sort of case that the movie is actually funny. It's daring and dark and edgy and uncompromising, but not much said about why it will make people laugh or entertain them. Humor's a subjective thing, I know, but was everybody just so stunned by what Jody Hill got Warner Brothers to pay him to do that whether or not it was actually funny was beside the point?
Sauna
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2009 at the Brattle Theater (Sunday Eye-Opener)
I didn't realize, going into the Eye Opener this week, that Sauna was made by the same team that had done Jade Warrior a couple years earlier. I don't know if that would have affected what I thought about Sauna, but I might have had something to add to the conversation afterward. It's an interesting body of work director Antti-Jussi Annila and writer Iiro Kuttner are putting together, as both movies take relatively obscure bits of Finnish culture and history (at least, obscure to us non-Finns!) and build perhaps unexpected genre films around them.
I don't know if it fully works with Sauna, although I certainly would be interested in watching it again with both a previous viewing under my belt and Jade Warrior in the back of my mind. It's a pretty darn engrossing film, if only for the relationship between the two brothers - one a warrior, one a scholar - as well as how they deal with the Russian team that they must work with in order to chart a border after a long war between Russia and Sweden (Finland being a part of Sweden at the time). Things start to get strange once they arrive at a village in the middle of a swamp, populated by the exact number of innocent souls warrior brother Erik (Ville Virtanen) has on his conscience, and academic Knut (Tommi Eronen, who starred in Jade Warrior) becomes obsessed with a sauna there which pre-dates any other settlement.
Annila seems to have cut his movie to the bone (it's 85 minutes including credits), and he maybe could have left a little more flesh on there. It's the sort of movie where the metaphor is fairly clear, but not as specific as it could be, and the mechanics are vague even beyond the point where being inexplicable adds to it being scary.
That said, there is a flat-out awesome make-up effect at the end, the sort of think Clive Barker would look at and nod approval of in terms of being messed up (but unlike his Cenobites, it's a pretty simple, straightforward design).
Friday, April 03, 2009
The "Interplanetary Era" (and a review of Moon from SXSW)
I don't know how many "catch-up" posts I'll do, but I did want to do one for Moon, specifically, because I love it. It's a solidly executed movie, with a very good performance from Sam Rockwell (which is good, because he doesn't share the screen with anybody else except for very brief moments). The folks with knee-jerk anti-CGI reactions will likely appreciate that much of the effects work is done with models, and it looks pretty good.
I've got a special affection for movie like Moon, though, because they take place in a part of future history that is both tantalizingly close and generally ignored. It was a staple of print science fiction for a long time, but never got a lot of serious play in film and television because. My parents, who watched Americans land on the Moon as teenagers, probably expected to live in it, and if they didn't, their kids certainly would.
Call it "the interplanetary era" - the period where we make permanent settlements on other planets and moons within our solar system, but before we've made the leap to being an interstellar civilization. We're arguably on the fringe right now, with our brief visits to the Moon and unmanned missions to Mars. Moon is not much further into the progression, showing us an outpost on the Moon which exists entirely to service Earth, populated by a single astronaut.
We don't see much of this period on the big and small screen, in large part because it's hard. Even if most of the action would likely take place in tight sets, that's not such an advantage, as you'd have to simulate microgravity. Sticklers for accuracy might want the horizon drawn in, sure, but it's making sure that everything on the moon falls at 1/6 normal speed that's the killer, even before figuring out what to do with the ground and the sky for exteriors (or how to make people in spacesuits active and visually interesting).
That's inconvenient, but I think we've got the tools to do it now. If someone wanted to set a movie on Europa, the computer guys could create an ice field that stretches to the near horizon with a dynamic Jupiter dominating the sky. Make it an action movie and set the fight choreographers loose to see what sort of wire-fu they'd come up with for a low-gravity world.
The trouble is, I think that many people are already beyond interplanetary, at least mentally. Despite being technically much further out, it's a lot easier to film something where we can quickly travel to other Earth-like planets. Look at the Stargate series, for instance; they're great fun, but their basis is that most planets in the galaxy (and, apparently, another galaxy or two) have roughly Earth's mass and atmosphere, and plant life that closely resembles that of western Canada. Stargate is doubly convenient, because it's also contemporary.
(This is why I kind of shake my fist at people who gripe about the time period of Enterprise or the new Star Trek movie, saying Trek should be about looking forward, not back. It's still the future, but it's a more challenging, exciting future than the sanitized, familiar, safe places of the TNG era.)
To a certain extent, I think this has hurt space exploration - in the popular imagination, everyone already has their sights set on things that are hundreds of years in the future, and the challenges of spreading through our solar system seem too prosaic compared to what people are used to. In the way that prosecutors have come to hate CSI for giving potential jurors unreasonable expectations of what forensic investigation can do, the public thinks Star Trek when they hear "space exploration", when in fact it will take NASA decades to get us to StarCops.
What, no-one remembers StarCops? A BBC series that ran for nine episodes back in 1987, then appeared on US Public Television a year or two later. It's very much a space detectives series, but it actually made an effort to show microgravity and had an international cast of characters. Smart writing and decent acting if I remember correctly; sadly, I haven't seen it in a while because it hasn't shown up on American airwaves recently, has never been released on Region 1 DVD, and (I think) even the R2 DVD is out of print.
Something you can find if you want a good look at this era is Planetes. It started life as a wonderful manga about outer-space salvage by Makoto Yukimura, and was adapted into a very good animated series, though unlike many comic-to-animation series in Japan, the animators change the structure a lot, introducing some characters earlier, others not at all, and adding new ones, to make it feel more like a TV series. The credits mention HD work, so I hope it gets a Blu-ray release. I'll happily buy it again.
Anyway, the film which got me on this line of thought is Moon. It's pretty great; hopefully Sony Pictures Classics gives it a good push in June. I think they will; Sony does seem to be pretty good about not sitting on the films they acquire, and even pushing them into more mainstream theaters when they can, although summer is competitive.
Moon
* * * * (out of four)
Seen 14 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Spotlight Premieres)
I will not lie to you; as soon as I read the description of Moon, I had mentally anointed it my favorite film of the festival, to the point where not only would another film have to blow me away, but this one would have to screw up. I like Sam Rockwell, good acting, nifty visuals, and I have a particular fondness for this particular, underappreciated part of future history (the "interplanetary era"). Well, as it turns out, a film or two did impress me a lot, but this one not only didn't screw up, but it wound up being one of the smartest, most well-rounded science fiction films in recent memory.
In the future, the energy crisis has been averted by cheap fusion, fueled by Helium-3. Lunar Industries maintains a mostly-automated base on the dark side of the moon to collect it, with astronaut Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) and base computer GERTY (voice of Kevin Spacey) monitoring the four rolling drone refineries. He's nearing the end of his three-year tour, and it's a good thing; the isolation is starting to make him peculiar; it doesn't help that the relay satellite that would allow him to communicate with Earth in real time is busted. Days before his return trip, there's an accident when he takes his buggy out to retrieve the contents of one of the rovers; fortunately, there are failsafes in place and he wakes up back in the base. Something seems amiss, though; is GERTY hiding something?
There's a mystery at the center of Moon, of course, one that it would be terribly wrong of me to spoil. Thankfully, filmmaker Duncan Jones (director, author of the original story) and screenwriter Nathan Parker do not feel the need to keep things from the audience past the point where keeping secrets creates more plot holes than it does suspense. The keystone revelation comes fairly early, and though there is a surprise or three after that, nearly all of them fall under the heading of details. When Jones turns things on their head, he makes sure that both Sam and the audience has a chance to consider and react to it.
Full review at EFC.
I've got a special affection for movie like Moon, though, because they take place in a part of future history that is both tantalizingly close and generally ignored. It was a staple of print science fiction for a long time, but never got a lot of serious play in film and television because. My parents, who watched Americans land on the Moon as teenagers, probably expected to live in it, and if they didn't, their kids certainly would.
Call it "the interplanetary era" - the period where we make permanent settlements on other planets and moons within our solar system, but before we've made the leap to being an interstellar civilization. We're arguably on the fringe right now, with our brief visits to the Moon and unmanned missions to Mars. Moon is not much further into the progression, showing us an outpost on the Moon which exists entirely to service Earth, populated by a single astronaut.
We don't see much of this period on the big and small screen, in large part because it's hard. Even if most of the action would likely take place in tight sets, that's not such an advantage, as you'd have to simulate microgravity. Sticklers for accuracy might want the horizon drawn in, sure, but it's making sure that everything on the moon falls at 1/6 normal speed that's the killer, even before figuring out what to do with the ground and the sky for exteriors (or how to make people in spacesuits active and visually interesting).
That's inconvenient, but I think we've got the tools to do it now. If someone wanted to set a movie on Europa, the computer guys could create an ice field that stretches to the near horizon with a dynamic Jupiter dominating the sky. Make it an action movie and set the fight choreographers loose to see what sort of wire-fu they'd come up with for a low-gravity world.
The trouble is, I think that many people are already beyond interplanetary, at least mentally. Despite being technically much further out, it's a lot easier to film something where we can quickly travel to other Earth-like planets. Look at the Stargate series, for instance; they're great fun, but their basis is that most planets in the galaxy (and, apparently, another galaxy or two) have roughly Earth's mass and atmosphere, and plant life that closely resembles that of western Canada. Stargate is doubly convenient, because it's also contemporary.
(This is why I kind of shake my fist at people who gripe about the time period of Enterprise or the new Star Trek movie, saying Trek should be about looking forward, not back. It's still the future, but it's a more challenging, exciting future than the sanitized, familiar, safe places of the TNG era.)
To a certain extent, I think this has hurt space exploration - in the popular imagination, everyone already has their sights set on things that are hundreds of years in the future, and the challenges of spreading through our solar system seem too prosaic compared to what people are used to. In the way that prosecutors have come to hate CSI for giving potential jurors unreasonable expectations of what forensic investigation can do, the public thinks Star Trek when they hear "space exploration", when in fact it will take NASA decades to get us to StarCops.
What, no-one remembers StarCops? A BBC series that ran for nine episodes back in 1987, then appeared on US Public Television a year or two later. It's very much a space detectives series, but it actually made an effort to show microgravity and had an international cast of characters. Smart writing and decent acting if I remember correctly; sadly, I haven't seen it in a while because it hasn't shown up on American airwaves recently, has never been released on Region 1 DVD, and (I think) even the R2 DVD is out of print.
Something you can find if you want a good look at this era is Planetes. It started life as a wonderful manga about outer-space salvage by Makoto Yukimura, and was adapted into a very good animated series, though unlike many comic-to-animation series in Japan, the animators change the structure a lot, introducing some characters earlier, others not at all, and adding new ones, to make it feel more like a TV series. The credits mention HD work, so I hope it gets a Blu-ray release. I'll happily buy it again.
Anyway, the film which got me on this line of thought is Moon. It's pretty great; hopefully Sony Pictures Classics gives it a good push in June. I think they will; Sony does seem to be pretty good about not sitting on the films they acquire, and even pushing them into more mainstream theaters when they can, although summer is competitive.
Moon
* * * * (out of four)
Seen 14 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Spotlight Premieres)
I will not lie to you; as soon as I read the description of Moon, I had mentally anointed it my favorite film of the festival, to the point where not only would another film have to blow me away, but this one would have to screw up. I like Sam Rockwell, good acting, nifty visuals, and I have a particular fondness for this particular, underappreciated part of future history (the "interplanetary era"). Well, as it turns out, a film or two did impress me a lot, but this one not only didn't screw up, but it wound up being one of the smartest, most well-rounded science fiction films in recent memory.
In the future, the energy crisis has been averted by cheap fusion, fueled by Helium-3. Lunar Industries maintains a mostly-automated base on the dark side of the moon to collect it, with astronaut Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) and base computer GERTY (voice of Kevin Spacey) monitoring the four rolling drone refineries. He's nearing the end of his three-year tour, and it's a good thing; the isolation is starting to make him peculiar; it doesn't help that the relay satellite that would allow him to communicate with Earth in real time is busted. Days before his return trip, there's an accident when he takes his buggy out to retrieve the contents of one of the rovers; fortunately, there are failsafes in place and he wakes up back in the base. Something seems amiss, though; is GERTY hiding something?
There's a mystery at the center of Moon, of course, one that it would be terribly wrong of me to spoil. Thankfully, filmmaker Duncan Jones (director, author of the original story) and screenwriter Nathan Parker do not feel the need to keep things from the audience past the point where keeping secrets creates more plot holes than it does suspense. The keystone revelation comes fairly early, and though there is a surprise or three after that, nearly all of them fall under the heading of details. When Jones turns things on their head, he makes sure that both Sam and the audience has a chance to consider and react to it.
Full review at EFC.
Monday, March 30, 2009
This Week In Tickets: 16 March 2009 to 29 March 2009
No TWIT last week, as I was doing more-or-less daily updates, and, besides, the purple tickets that SXSW handed out to give you a primo spot in line (you could have up to two daily) didn't quite fit in my appointment book. So, the alternative was posting this:
... and, let's face it, I take a lousy picture, especially when I've been flying all day. Here's a quick index to my SXSW posts. The date brings you to the blog post for the day, the title (where applicable) to the review of the movie itself on eFilmCritic (they get me my mediapass badge, they get exclusives).
Quick aside - I was terribly thrown the first couple of days, since I thought I had a pass, but apparently it was a badge. A pass is like a badge, only much less expensive, and you have to wait until all badge-holders have been admitted before you see if you can get a seat. After all the pass-holders are seated, then they'll sell tickets. But, if you've got an advance ticket, you actually go in first - of course, you need a badge to get an advance ticket, and you can only get two a day, and they only give out an amount equal to 10% of the theater's capacity. What's remarkable is this makes some sense by the end of the first weekend, although you still get the odd badgeholder in the ticket line afterward.
13 March 2009 (Friday): Monsters from the Id, Ong Bak 2
14 March 2009 (Saturday): Sorry, Thanks, Bomber, Objectified, Moon, Black
15 March 2009 (Sunday): Letters to the President, Garbage Dreams, Sin Nombre, Women In Trouble, Drag Me to Hell (Work in Progress)
16 March 2009 (Monday): Blood Trail, MINE, Best Worst Movie, The 2 Bobs, Observe and Report
17 March 2009 (Tuesday): Splinterheads, Four Boxes, The Promised Land, Make-Out with Violence
18 March 2009 (Wednesday): Still Bill, Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love, The Eyes of Me, The Slammin' Salmon
19 March 2009 (Thursday): Humpday, The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle, The Way We Get By, ExTerminators
20 March 2009 (Friday): The Least of These, Three Blind Mice, Number One With a Bullet, TRIMPIN: the sound of invention, A Film With Me In It
21 march 2009 (Saturday): RiP: A Remix Manifesto, Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, True Adolescents, Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie, Intangible Asset Number 82
... Tuesday, I believe, also was Joe Dante's "Trailers from Hell", but the less said about that the better. I think a really fun presentation could have been made from that, maybe running the trailer, stopping, and having Joe talk for a bit, but instead it was just a selection of trailers from the website, with commentary on, for 90 minutes. I slept. Many others slept or walked out. It drained a lot of the joy out of something potentially fun.
Then I got back home, and did this:
... A page for Hausu and Deadgirl will be up tomorrow; after that there's just a couple things to say about the others, which have in common that I didn't like them quite so much as I wanted to (and I really wanted to like both)
Monsters vs. Aliens
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 March 2009 at Jordan's Furniture Reading (IMAX 3-D)
Don't get me wrong, Monsters vs. Aliens is a lot of fun, and I may decide to revise my opinion upward to that third star if I get a chance to see it again, say at a digital theater where I don't wind up off-center in the front row, which is no way to see an IMAX movie.
This is a movie that is so close to making the leap to, if not greatness, at least very-goodness. It stays within its relatively modest ambitions, has fun characters with well-used celebrity voices, and has a couple really stupendous action sequences. It looks spectacular. Unlike a lot of Dreamworks pictures, it doesn't feel like it's trying to recreate Shrek. I'll recommend it to anyone who likes sci-fi and good comedy. It just never has the moment where it outright floors me.
Knowing
* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 March 2009 at Regal Fenway #4 (first-run)
This, though... This just made me kind of upset. It didn't help that I spent Saturday night watching the last four hours of Battlestar Galactica, which covered a fair chunk of similar themes (many of which rub me the wrong way). It was a little too much.
The thing is, I love Alex Proyas. He's made one masterpiece (Dark City), one fun comedy (Garage Days), one movie that is damn good despite being utterly fused with tragedy (The Crow)... and one movie where he wasn't able to prevent Fox from raping the source material (I, Robot). There are moments in Knowing where you see how awesome Proyas is, and someone at Summit is to be thanked for not putting all the really great visuals in the trailers. There is some high-quality eye candy awaiting at the end of the movie, and he does what he can in other places. It's just, good lord, the script sucked.
SPOILERS FOLLOW; they go right to the end of the movie
Now, I personally have no trouble when a movie is putting out an "angels are assholes" message. I liked Signs, which this movie has a fair amount in common with. But don't do it so stupidly. If these alien/angel types are going to be whispering in some poor autistic girl's ear about future events, why give her a bunch of information about disasters rather than, say, schematics for an FTL drive so that we can evacuate, or schematics for a planetary radiation field? Something useful? Because I don't think rescuing a couple dozen kids (and one bunny each) is doing humanity a lot of good.
And even when you put aside the utter stupidity of this stuff, a lot of what leads up to it is in real "who would do that?" territory. Everything is either implausible or random or too custom-fitted to make sure the audience feels exactly this.
No More Spoilers
... and now it looks like Proyas has been outbid for the rights to Asimov's Foundation novels by Roland Emmerich. I'm not absolving him of blame for this debacle, but it really seems like he can't catch a break.
... and, let's face it, I take a lousy picture, especially when I've been flying all day. Here's a quick index to my SXSW posts. The date brings you to the blog post for the day, the title (where applicable) to the review of the movie itself on eFilmCritic (they get me my media
Quick aside - I was terribly thrown the first couple of days, since I thought I had a pass, but apparently it was a badge. A pass is like a badge, only much less expensive, and you have to wait until all badge-holders have been admitted before you see if you can get a seat. After all the pass-holders are seated, then they'll sell tickets. But, if you've got an advance ticket, you actually go in first - of course, you need a badge to get an advance ticket, and you can only get two a day, and they only give out an amount equal to 10% of the theater's capacity. What's remarkable is this makes some sense by the end of the first weekend, although you still get the odd badgeholder in the ticket line afterward.
13 March 2009 (Friday): Monsters from the Id, Ong Bak 2
14 March 2009 (Saturday): Sorry, Thanks, Bomber, Objectified, Moon, Black
15 March 2009 (Sunday): Letters to the President, Garbage Dreams, Sin Nombre, Women In Trouble, Drag Me to Hell (Work in Progress)
16 March 2009 (Monday): Blood Trail, MINE, Best Worst Movie, The 2 Bobs, Observe and Report
17 March 2009 (Tuesday): Splinterheads, Four Boxes, The Promised Land, Make-Out with Violence
18 March 2009 (Wednesday): Still Bill, Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love, The Eyes of Me, The Slammin' Salmon
19 March 2009 (Thursday): Humpday, The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle, The Way We Get By, ExTerminators
20 March 2009 (Friday): The Least of These, Three Blind Mice, Number One With a Bullet, TRIMPIN: the sound of invention, A Film With Me In It
21 march 2009 (Saturday): RiP: A Remix Manifesto, Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, True Adolescents, Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie, Intangible Asset Number 82
... Tuesday, I believe, also was Joe Dante's "Trailers from Hell", but the less said about that the better. I think a really fun presentation could have been made from that, maybe running the trailer, stopping, and having Joe talk for a bit, but instead it was just a selection of trailers from the website, with commentary on, for 90 minutes. I slept. Many others slept or walked out. It drained a lot of the joy out of something potentially fun.
Then I got back home, and did this:
... A page for Hausu and Deadgirl will be up tomorrow; after that there's just a couple things to say about the others, which have in common that I didn't like them quite so much as I wanted to (and I really wanted to like both)
Monsters vs. Aliens
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 March 2009 at Jordan's Furniture Reading (IMAX 3-D)
Don't get me wrong, Monsters vs. Aliens is a lot of fun, and I may decide to revise my opinion upward to that third star if I get a chance to see it again, say at a digital theater where I don't wind up off-center in the front row, which is no way to see an IMAX movie.
This is a movie that is so close to making the leap to, if not greatness, at least very-goodness. It stays within its relatively modest ambitions, has fun characters with well-used celebrity voices, and has a couple really stupendous action sequences. It looks spectacular. Unlike a lot of Dreamworks pictures, it doesn't feel like it's trying to recreate Shrek. I'll recommend it to anyone who likes sci-fi and good comedy. It just never has the moment where it outright floors me.
Knowing
* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 March 2009 at Regal Fenway #4 (first-run)
This, though... This just made me kind of upset. It didn't help that I spent Saturday night watching the last four hours of Battlestar Galactica, which covered a fair chunk of similar themes (many of which rub me the wrong way). It was a little too much.
The thing is, I love Alex Proyas. He's made one masterpiece (Dark City), one fun comedy (Garage Days), one movie that is damn good despite being utterly fused with tragedy (The Crow)... and one movie where he wasn't able to prevent Fox from raping the source material (I, Robot). There are moments in Knowing where you see how awesome Proyas is, and someone at Summit is to be thanked for not putting all the really great visuals in the trailers. There is some high-quality eye candy awaiting at the end of the movie, and he does what he can in other places. It's just, good lord, the script sucked.
SPOILERS FOLLOW; they go right to the end of the movie
Now, I personally have no trouble when a movie is putting out an "angels are assholes" message. I liked Signs, which this movie has a fair amount in common with. But don't do it so stupidly. If these alien/angel types are going to be whispering in some poor autistic girl's ear about future events, why give her a bunch of information about disasters rather than, say, schematics for an FTL drive so that we can evacuate, or schematics for a planetary radiation field? Something useful? Because I don't think rescuing a couple dozen kids (and one bunny each) is doing humanity a lot of good.
And even when you put aside the utter stupidity of this stuff, a lot of what leads up to it is in real "who would do that?" territory. Everything is either implausible or random or too custom-fitted to make sure the audience feels exactly this.
No More Spoilers
... and now it looks like Proyas has been outbid for the rights to Asimov's Foundation novels by Roland Emmerich. I'm not absolving him of blame for this debacle, but it really seems like he can't catch a break.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
SXSW Day Nine: RiP, Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, True Adolescents, Saint Misbehavin', Intangible Asset Number 82
Random notes from SXSW:
* The warm cookies at the Alamo Drafthouse are delicious. I would eat those every time I went to a movie if I could, although you really need the table service of the Alamo to make the whole idea of fresh-baked cookies made to order work.
* A large part of why I didn't tack a sixth movie onto this last day was that as midnight approached, my stomach was upset. I blame the Italian Soda with Hazelnut syrup that I had with Beetle Queen. Admittedly, that sounds nasty in retrospect, but I had no idea just how terrible it would be.
* Sixth Street gets loud once the music festival starts, starting at roughly noon daily. For someone like me who really doesn't love loudness, waiting to be let into the Ritz isn't all that much fun. Fortunately, it is pretty amazing how quickly the noise level drops off as one walks toward the Paramount.
* The printed program drove me absolutely nuts until I figured out that the films were indexed in the back. Eleven different categories of screenings meant 11 colors on the program, some of which are hard to tell apart if you're even a little color-blind.
* I wrote most of the reviews posted during the festival in a Mead Five Star Fat Li'l Notebook. It fits in the pocket, takes no time to turn on or off, can be used while standing, never loses a charge, and I'm only out four bucks if I lose it. For all my love of its low-tech beauty, I still feel a Pavlovian urge to press "control-S" after finishing a paragraph.
* There really are no drug stores in downtown Austin - and the one CVS I found was not open late. This boggles my mind; I have a hard time imagining not being able to walk to a place like that should the need arise. Besides, with all the bars in the area, you'd think it would make sense to balance it with places to get aspirin.
* This will probably be a one-and-done festival for me; I'm not giving up Fantasia and I don't want to use all my vacation time for the same two film festivals every year (especially when there's a certain amount of overlap with IFFB). It's a fun festival, though, and being in Texas for a week when it was still chilly in Boston certainly did not stink.
RiP: A Remix Manifesto
* * (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2009 at the Alamo Ritz #1 (SXSW 24 Beats Per Second)
I take no joy in disliking RiP: A Remix Manifesto. I agree with many of its principles; I've done plenty of highly-derivative works for fun in my time and think U.S. copyright law is out of control. But, wow, does it ever find the most obnoxious and borderline-dishonest ways of articulating those views. It's so bad in that regard that I could almost feel my mind changing as the film went on just so that I wouldn't be stuck agreeing with the filmmakers.
There's a good chance that how an audience member will feel about the movie will be determined in the opening minutes, when director Brett Gaylor's narration over a Gregg Gillis (aka "Girl Talk") appearance asks us who the author of a song is, quickly followed up by "if you said the Jackson 5, you're wrong". If you're already on the same page, it's a relatively uncontroversial statement that establishes the filmmaker's perspective. If you're not, then this is something Gaylor needs to establish, and though he'll make an argument later on, I was not wholly convinced: That opening segment shows Gillis using a large, recognizable portion of a song, while the later demonstration involves copying a single note. The principle may be the same, but believing that everyone watching the movie will find the two activities equivalent is making certain potentially unwarranted assumptions about the audience.
It goes on from there. Toward the beginning of the movie, Gaylor describes how giving a Girl Talk album a legitimate release would be impossible by throwing some simple math at the audience: x tracks multiplied by y samples per track multiplied by z companies per sample = xyz companies with their hands out. Later on, when railing about how consolidation of the entertainment industry has led to the perversion of copyright law, there's only four companies. There is truth to both arguments, but this is not a movie willing to explore subtleties, thus leaving it looking like Gaylor is talking out both sides of his mouth.
Full review at EFC.
Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2009 at the Alamo Ritz #2 (SXSW Emerging Visions)
Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo would be a fine name for a tacky kaiju sci-fi movie (heck, I wouldn't be surprised if it's been used). It's not that, not even a little. Instead of being another bizarre and fantastic piece of Japanese pop culture, it's a low-key documentary that does a nice job explaining an aspect or two of Japanese life and philosophy.
It starts with a boy pestering his father to buy him a pet beetle. The first one he sets his eyes on would cost his father fifty-seven dollars. The father convinces him to set his sights on one that's less expensive. That's still an eyebrow-raising purchase and amount to most westerners, but insects have an important place within Japanese culture. We are told of the kokugakushu, scholars of centuries ago who attempted to define what it meant to be Japanese, and the theory of mono no aware, finding beauty in that which does not last. Art forms like the haiku are prized for being precise and minuscule.
We are told this by Haruku Shizuku's soft-spoken, subtitled Japanese narration. That's an interesting choice, considering that director Jessica Oreck is American and the film is presumably being made for a non-Japanese audience. It works, though; we are being given quite a few facts, but her voice is friendly, closer to a parent explaining things to a child than a lecturing professor; her speaking in her native tongue makes her somewhat more trustworthy. People curious enough to seek this movie out are likely not going to be overly concerned about subtitles.
Full review at EFC.
True Adolescents
* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2009 at the Alamo Ritz #1 (SXSW Narrative Competition)
True Adolescents is a small-budgeted independent film that's just a swift kick or two from the mainstream. Yes, the execution is mostly what one would expect from the recent wave of chatty, self-examining indie filmmakers, but the basic theme of "immature adult forced to man up when placed in charge of kids" is pretty standard. That's no knock on it; this is an entertaining movie, and if this wave of filmmakers want to be something other than indie darlings, doing stuff like this won't hurt.
The immature adult is Sam (Mark Duplass), a guy in his early to mid thirties fronting a local Seattle rock band that's not really going anywhere. A fight with his girlfriend leads to her kicking him out of the apartment, and since none of his friends have much interest in letting him crash on their couches, he winds up in the spare room of his aunt Sharon (Melissa Leo). When Sharon's ex-husband backs out of a camping trip he'd planned on taking with their teenage son Oliver (Bret Loehr) and his best friend Jake (Carr Thompson) - and Sam's gig that weekend gets canceled - it's time for him to start earning his keep by chaperoning the teenagers.
Yes, you've heard this story before. Writer/director Craig Johnson isn't trying to re-invent the wheel here, but he does find a relatively unique way to present it. A mainstream film would probably try to stuff it with more wacky one-off characters for Sam and company to meet on the road and trail, or structure the last act so as to present them with more obvious challenges, or ones which require their specific skills. (If Jack Black were starring in this movie, there would be a bear somewhere.) Instead, Johnson keeps the cast fairly tight and lets situations play out to their full awkwardness.
Full review at EFC.
Saint Misbehavin: The Wavy Gravy Movie
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2009 at the Austin Convention Center (SXSW Special Screenings)
Can I be honest about something? I can't warm up to hippies, or counterculture. In the abstract, I am all for a philosophy of living your life any way you want so long as you don't hurt anyone else, but in practice, I get suspicious. So, as you might imagine, I wound up at a screening of a documentary on Wavy Gravy that was packed with his fans not because of any particular interest on my part, but because I cut it too close on another screening and it was the only thing that fit my schedule. I can't say it particularly changed my view; when it ended, I had gained some respect for the man, though not much affection.
Because of that, the film perhaps might consider itself a failure with me - I often got the vibe that it wasn't enough for the audience to know about the man and his accomplishments. Filmmaker Michelle Esrick wants us to love him, and short of that, at least admire him. I'm hesitant to call what she presents a slanted take on the man, because there's a good chance that he is just what he appears to be, no more and no less, a pure soul who has never done anything worse than give his son an embarrassing name. If that's the case, though, she doesn't have to make such a point of it. We don't need people addressing the camera telling us how great he is.
There's also something a little off about the film at times. Take an early scene, where Wavy enters a room filled with various religious and spiritual symbols, and prays to be "the best Wavy Gravy I can be." I don't doubt that this is a regular ritual for him, or that he's less than sincere (although it's the sort of deliberately pantheistic activity that can seem more calculated than heartfelt). It just feels semi-staged, like Esrick knew her subject well enough to get exactly what she wanted from any scene. It's not quite like she was shooting from a screenplay, but there's not a single moment in the film that feels like it surprised the filmmaker. The end result is that although I learned things from watching the movie, I rarely had the excitement of discovery.
Full review at EFC.
Intangible Asset Number 82
* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2009 at the Austin Convention Center (SXSW 24 Beats per Second)
Intangible Asset Number 82 seems to have become a fascinating movie almost by accident. Certainly director Emma Franz would have covered much of the same material if things had gone according to plan, but when life hands you a road movie, you roll with it.
Simon Barker is a jazz drummer, and a great one; likely Australia's best, and one of the best in the world. Part of the reason for that is that he takes interest in and draws inspiration from music from all around the world, and lately he's become fascinated by a drummer from South Korea, Kim Seok-chul. The friend who gave him the recording hated it, but Barker was entranced by the work of this shaman. He made several trips to Korea to try and meet the man, but Kim is old and somewhat reclusive. One day Barker gets a note from a teacher, Kim Dong-won, who says a meeting may be possible. Barker comes to meet Dong-won, who is impressed not only with Barker's skill, but with his respect for the culture. He initiates contact with Seok-chul, but it will take some time; in the meantime, he takes Barker on a tour of South Korea to show him traditional Korean music and culture first-hand.
It's a fascinating trip from the very first stop, where we learn about pansori, a traditional form of Korean music, from practitioner Bae Il-dong. It is jarring, to say the least, perhaps seeming more like atonal shouting than music to western ears. Il-dong lives in a shed near a waterfall, where he trained himself for seven years. Practicing by the waterfall strengthens his voice, so that he can get through the marathon eight-hour singing sessions that a pansori singer needs to tell a story. Film-wise, it's a great place to start, as it really drives home just how different traditional Korean music is from traditional Western music, while getting us into the countryside and establishing what a strong tradition music has in the culture.
Full review at EFC.
* The warm cookies at the Alamo Drafthouse are delicious. I would eat those every time I went to a movie if I could, although you really need the table service of the Alamo to make the whole idea of fresh-baked cookies made to order work.
* A large part of why I didn't tack a sixth movie onto this last day was that as midnight approached, my stomach was upset. I blame the Italian Soda with Hazelnut syrup that I had with Beetle Queen. Admittedly, that sounds nasty in retrospect, but I had no idea just how terrible it would be.
* Sixth Street gets loud once the music festival starts, starting at roughly noon daily. For someone like me who really doesn't love loudness, waiting to be let into the Ritz isn't all that much fun. Fortunately, it is pretty amazing how quickly the noise level drops off as one walks toward the Paramount.
* The printed program drove me absolutely nuts until I figured out that the films were indexed in the back. Eleven different categories of screenings meant 11 colors on the program, some of which are hard to tell apart if you're even a little color-blind.
* I wrote most of the reviews posted during the festival in a Mead Five Star Fat Li'l Notebook. It fits in the pocket, takes no time to turn on or off, can be used while standing, never loses a charge, and I'm only out four bucks if I lose it. For all my love of its low-tech beauty, I still feel a Pavlovian urge to press "control-S" after finishing a paragraph.
* There really are no drug stores in downtown Austin - and the one CVS I found was not open late. This boggles my mind; I have a hard time imagining not being able to walk to a place like that should the need arise. Besides, with all the bars in the area, you'd think it would make sense to balance it with places to get aspirin.
* This will probably be a one-and-done festival for me; I'm not giving up Fantasia and I don't want to use all my vacation time for the same two film festivals every year (especially when there's a certain amount of overlap with IFFB). It's a fun festival, though, and being in Texas for a week when it was still chilly in Boston certainly did not stink.
RiP: A Remix Manifesto
* * (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2009 at the Alamo Ritz #1 (SXSW 24 Beats Per Second)
I take no joy in disliking RiP: A Remix Manifesto. I agree with many of its principles; I've done plenty of highly-derivative works for fun in my time and think U.S. copyright law is out of control. But, wow, does it ever find the most obnoxious and borderline-dishonest ways of articulating those views. It's so bad in that regard that I could almost feel my mind changing as the film went on just so that I wouldn't be stuck agreeing with the filmmakers.
There's a good chance that how an audience member will feel about the movie will be determined in the opening minutes, when director Brett Gaylor's narration over a Gregg Gillis (aka "Girl Talk") appearance asks us who the author of a song is, quickly followed up by "if you said the Jackson 5, you're wrong". If you're already on the same page, it's a relatively uncontroversial statement that establishes the filmmaker's perspective. If you're not, then this is something Gaylor needs to establish, and though he'll make an argument later on, I was not wholly convinced: That opening segment shows Gillis using a large, recognizable portion of a song, while the later demonstration involves copying a single note. The principle may be the same, but believing that everyone watching the movie will find the two activities equivalent is making certain potentially unwarranted assumptions about the audience.
It goes on from there. Toward the beginning of the movie, Gaylor describes how giving a Girl Talk album a legitimate release would be impossible by throwing some simple math at the audience: x tracks multiplied by y samples per track multiplied by z companies per sample = xyz companies with their hands out. Later on, when railing about how consolidation of the entertainment industry has led to the perversion of copyright law, there's only four companies. There is truth to both arguments, but this is not a movie willing to explore subtleties, thus leaving it looking like Gaylor is talking out both sides of his mouth.
Full review at EFC.
Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2009 at the Alamo Ritz #2 (SXSW Emerging Visions)
Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo would be a fine name for a tacky kaiju sci-fi movie (heck, I wouldn't be surprised if it's been used). It's not that, not even a little. Instead of being another bizarre and fantastic piece of Japanese pop culture, it's a low-key documentary that does a nice job explaining an aspect or two of Japanese life and philosophy.
It starts with a boy pestering his father to buy him a pet beetle. The first one he sets his eyes on would cost his father fifty-seven dollars. The father convinces him to set his sights on one that's less expensive. That's still an eyebrow-raising purchase and amount to most westerners, but insects have an important place within Japanese culture. We are told of the kokugakushu, scholars of centuries ago who attempted to define what it meant to be Japanese, and the theory of mono no aware, finding beauty in that which does not last. Art forms like the haiku are prized for being precise and minuscule.
We are told this by Haruku Shizuku's soft-spoken, subtitled Japanese narration. That's an interesting choice, considering that director Jessica Oreck is American and the film is presumably being made for a non-Japanese audience. It works, though; we are being given quite a few facts, but her voice is friendly, closer to a parent explaining things to a child than a lecturing professor; her speaking in her native tongue makes her somewhat more trustworthy. People curious enough to seek this movie out are likely not going to be overly concerned about subtitles.
Full review at EFC.
True Adolescents
* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2009 at the Alamo Ritz #1 (SXSW Narrative Competition)
True Adolescents is a small-budgeted independent film that's just a swift kick or two from the mainstream. Yes, the execution is mostly what one would expect from the recent wave of chatty, self-examining indie filmmakers, but the basic theme of "immature adult forced to man up when placed in charge of kids" is pretty standard. That's no knock on it; this is an entertaining movie, and if this wave of filmmakers want to be something other than indie darlings, doing stuff like this won't hurt.
The immature adult is Sam (Mark Duplass), a guy in his early to mid thirties fronting a local Seattle rock band that's not really going anywhere. A fight with his girlfriend leads to her kicking him out of the apartment, and since none of his friends have much interest in letting him crash on their couches, he winds up in the spare room of his aunt Sharon (Melissa Leo). When Sharon's ex-husband backs out of a camping trip he'd planned on taking with their teenage son Oliver (Bret Loehr) and his best friend Jake (Carr Thompson) - and Sam's gig that weekend gets canceled - it's time for him to start earning his keep by chaperoning the teenagers.
Yes, you've heard this story before. Writer/director Craig Johnson isn't trying to re-invent the wheel here, but he does find a relatively unique way to present it. A mainstream film would probably try to stuff it with more wacky one-off characters for Sam and company to meet on the road and trail, or structure the last act so as to present them with more obvious challenges, or ones which require their specific skills. (If Jack Black were starring in this movie, there would be a bear somewhere.) Instead, Johnson keeps the cast fairly tight and lets situations play out to their full awkwardness.
Full review at EFC.
Saint Misbehavin: The Wavy Gravy Movie
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2009 at the Austin Convention Center (SXSW Special Screenings)
Can I be honest about something? I can't warm up to hippies, or counterculture. In the abstract, I am all for a philosophy of living your life any way you want so long as you don't hurt anyone else, but in practice, I get suspicious. So, as you might imagine, I wound up at a screening of a documentary on Wavy Gravy that was packed with his fans not because of any particular interest on my part, but because I cut it too close on another screening and it was the only thing that fit my schedule. I can't say it particularly changed my view; when it ended, I had gained some respect for the man, though not much affection.
Because of that, the film perhaps might consider itself a failure with me - I often got the vibe that it wasn't enough for the audience to know about the man and his accomplishments. Filmmaker Michelle Esrick wants us to love him, and short of that, at least admire him. I'm hesitant to call what she presents a slanted take on the man, because there's a good chance that he is just what he appears to be, no more and no less, a pure soul who has never done anything worse than give his son an embarrassing name. If that's the case, though, she doesn't have to make such a point of it. We don't need people addressing the camera telling us how great he is.
There's also something a little off about the film at times. Take an early scene, where Wavy enters a room filled with various religious and spiritual symbols, and prays to be "the best Wavy Gravy I can be." I don't doubt that this is a regular ritual for him, or that he's less than sincere (although it's the sort of deliberately pantheistic activity that can seem more calculated than heartfelt). It just feels semi-staged, like Esrick knew her subject well enough to get exactly what she wanted from any scene. It's not quite like she was shooting from a screenplay, but there's not a single moment in the film that feels like it surprised the filmmaker. The end result is that although I learned things from watching the movie, I rarely had the excitement of discovery.
Full review at EFC.
Intangible Asset Number 82
* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2009 at the Austin Convention Center (SXSW 24 Beats per Second)
Intangible Asset Number 82 seems to have become a fascinating movie almost by accident. Certainly director Emma Franz would have covered much of the same material if things had gone according to plan, but when life hands you a road movie, you roll with it.
Simon Barker is a jazz drummer, and a great one; likely Australia's best, and one of the best in the world. Part of the reason for that is that he takes interest in and draws inspiration from music from all around the world, and lately he's become fascinated by a drummer from South Korea, Kim Seok-chul. The friend who gave him the recording hated it, but Barker was entranced by the work of this shaman. He made several trips to Korea to try and meet the man, but Kim is old and somewhat reclusive. One day Barker gets a note from a teacher, Kim Dong-won, who says a meeting may be possible. Barker comes to meet Dong-won, who is impressed not only with Barker's skill, but with his respect for the culture. He initiates contact with Seok-chul, but it will take some time; in the meantime, he takes Barker on a tour of South Korea to show him traditional Korean music and culture first-hand.
It's a fascinating trip from the very first stop, where we learn about pansori, a traditional form of Korean music, from practitioner Bae Il-dong. It is jarring, to say the least, perhaps seeming more like atonal shouting than music to western ears. Il-dong lives in a shed near a waterfall, where he trained himself for seven years. Practicing by the waterfall strengthens his voice, so that he can get through the marathon eight-hour singing sessions that a pansori singer needs to tell a story. Film-wise, it's a great place to start, as it really drives home just how different traditional Korean music is from traditional Western music, while getting us into the countryside and establishing what a strong tradition music has in the culture.
Full review at EFC.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
SXSW Day Eight: The Least of These, Three Blind Mice, Number One With a Bullet, TRIMPIN, and A Film With Me In It
Despite seeing five movies, I actually had a good-sized chunk of time between The Least of These (which is very short) at 11am and Three Blind Mice at 3pm to go out and have a meal at somewhere other than the Alamo Drafthouse. I didn't go terribly far, just to the Iron Works near the convention center, but that was a pretty good baked potato with with shredded beef.
It does bring up what sort of a mixed blessing visiting a film festival with a press pass can be. I've probably mentioned it before, but I feel like the deal is, you give me the pass, and I will see as many movies as possible and get the word out about them, good or bad. SXSW is so packed, with screenings starting at 11am and midnight screenings every day, that I really couldn't tell you much about the city beyond a square bounded by the Paramount Theater in one corner and the Convention Center in another, with extensions in the direction of the Rodeway Inn University in one direction and the Alamo Lamar in the other (and another in the direction of Hut's Hamburgers, where I ate on Gil & Amanda's advice on Thursday). Montreal, I get to see during the week at Fantasia, with movies not starting until 3pm or so. Aside from the fact that it was 80 degrees in March (for which I am truly grateful), and a good chunk of the 13th and 22nd got muched by air travel, I really don't know that I feel like I've been to Texas.
The Least of These
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount (SXSW Lone Star States)
The Least of These is maybe not a rarity as far as documentaries go, but it does seem unusually focused. The way things were being run at the T. Don Hutto detention facility offers the filmmakers plenty of opportunities to go off on various policy-related tangents, winding up with a film that might be almost too tight.
The T. Don Hutto detention facility in Taylor, TX is, as of this writing, a former prison used by the Department of Homeland Security's Immigrations and Customs Enforcement division to house unapproved immigrants from countries other than Mexico, specifically those arriving with families. It is operated by Correctional Corporation of America, a government contractor whose primary business is managing prisons. The facility went into operation because in May of 2006, the US government ended the "catch and release" policy where most immigrants were given a court date and monitored intermittently.
As obviously imperfect as the old system was, The Least of These argues that Hutto is far worse. We are introduced to several families of detainees - notably the Yourdkhani family, Iranians seeking to return to Canada, where they had previously been granted political asylum, with their Canadian-born son Kevin; Denia, who fled domestic abuse in Honduras while pregnant; and Ana Mabel, who came from El Salvador with her daughter. We also are introduced to several activists that advocate for them: Michelle Brané of the Women's Refuge Commission, Barbara Harris of the University of Texas at Austin Law School's Immigration Clinic, and Vanita Gupta of the ACLU.
Full review at EFC.
Three Blind Mice
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 March 2009 at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz #2 (SXSW Spotlight Premieres)
One night is just enough time. It's enough time to fall in love (or out of it), enough time to get into trouble, and enough time to come to a decision. A lot can change in one night, and this goes double when the next morning will find you heading for a war zone.
That's how far it is for three junior officers in the Royal Australian Navy, checking into a hotel room for a night of shore leave before they sail for the Gulf. As soon as the youngest, Sam (Ewen Leslie) heads for the shower, Harry (Matthew Newton) and Dean (Toby Schmitz) start talking about what happened to Sam on the ship. Dean asks the others along to dinner with his fiancee Sally (Pia Miranda) and her folks, although Sam ditches tehm after meeting Emma (Gracie Otto), a pretty waitress. This is a bit of a concern, since even before meeting Emma, Sam has called his mother to say he wouldn't be getting back on the ship.
There's another secret or two to be revealed before the night is over and maybe a spot of trouble; poker games and family dinners can be equally dangerous in that regard. Writer/director Matthew Newton doesn't so much keep us guessing about what the night and morning will bring as he gives us chance to see the stakes. Going AWOL doesn't ge one locked up for life, but it's obviously deeply shameful from the way Sam bursts into tears when confessing his intended desertion to the way Harry won't let people use the word, lest it get attached to Sam before absolutely necessary - even though it's pretty clear that Harry and Dean were looking to keep an eye on Sam, just in case.
Full review at EFC.
Number One With a Bullet
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW 24 Beats Per Second)
Number One With a Bullet begins provocatively, with a black man walking into a custom framing store looking to have the clothes he was wearing when he was shot framed. The man at the counter doesn't seem to consider this much more than a somewhat unusual request, promising that the framing will preserve the blood.
One slick-looking set of opening titles later, we're in Colorado, where an energetic white gun shop owner, "Dragon Man", demonstrates that it's not jut inner-city hip-hop fans with a taste for handguns and assault weapons. After that, the movie settles into something of a groove, interviewing hip-hop artists who have either been targets of or participants in shootings and exploring the relationship between hip-hop and gun violence. The short answer: Music doesn't make people shoot each other; the rappers are just applying the old adage of "write what you know", and what people in poor neighborhoods know is violence.
That's not a particularly unreasonable conclusion, and it thus doesn't take the movie very long to get around to it. It's more of an assertion than a truly convincing argument, though: For all the evidence that hip-hop is not nearly the bad influence that poverty is, the film shies away from addressing the possibility of a more complex relationship. Artists are more dismissive than defensive at any suggestion that they're part of the problem, but Cypress Hill's B-Real does admit that it troubles him a bit when he gets mail saying people played his music to psych themselves up to go out and shoot some people.
Full review at EFC.
TRIMPIN: the sound of invention
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Documentary Feature Competition)
As much as I enjoyed South by Southwest, I must admit that I wish I had seen more of Austin. I bought a guidebook but never cracked it open, and thus my experience with the city is more or less limited to a square of about eight blocks, with the Paramount Theater at one corner, the Austin Convention Center at the other, and the Alamo Ritz in between. To give some idea of how heads-down and focused on seeing movies I was, there was a gallery showing some of Trimpin's works right next door to the theater where I saw it, and I never found a moment to go in and take a look. I wish I had, and hope that some Boston institution (the ICA, perhaps), finds a way to do something similar when the film shows as part of the IFFB next month. I hope so; I'd like a second chance.
Trimpin's works, you see, are equal parts music, sculpture, and engineering. He builds sometimes-gigantic works that make sounds, often incorporating found objects into the work. Though born in Germany's Black Forest (which several people in the film point out is the land of the cuckoo clock, a wonderfully intricate mechanical noisemaker) he states that he moved to the United States for the quality of junk to be found here. Family members describe him as a lazy student, although gifted mechanically from a young age and displaying an uncanny ear.
I could go on like this for a while, repeating little gems about Trimpin (he opts to use only his last name, though his sister refers to him as Gerhard) that I scribbled in my notebook because I found them kind of delightful. One could be led to believe from subtitle on the poster ("featuring the Kronos Quintet") that the film is about one specific collaboration, and indeed director Peter Esmonde makes motions in the direction of structuring it that way - there's a scene in the beginning where they meet, one in the middle where they experiment, and a performance toward the end - but mostly it's a collection of facts and demonstrations of his various projects and installations.
Full review at EFC.
A Film With Me In It
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 March 2009 at the Alamo Ritz #1 (SXSW Midnighters)
As much as I (and most critics, I imagine) am happy to shred a movie that relies too heavily on coincidence and seemingly random events. After all, at some point, the characters should succeed based on their own actions rather than arbitrary decisions by the writer. Sometimes, though, it can be fun for a film to embrace the unlikely and run with it the way A Film With Me In It does.
The Me of the title is Pierce (Dylan Moran), an actor whose resume is mostly bit parts. He lives in a ramshackle Dublin flat with his girlfriend Sally (Amy Huberman) and disabled brother David (David O'Doherty); he spends most of his time hanging out with his neighbor Mark (Mark Doherty), a writer who drinks and gambles too much. Then one day, after Sally has moved out, there's an accident - and before Pierce can report it, there's another. Now, you can call the police with one dead body, and they'll nose around a bit but ultimately probably believe the truth. A second, unrelated corpse? That's suspicious.
A Film With Me In It builds from that first bizarre coincidence; once it has acknowledged that Pierce is in trouble because no reasonable person would believe his story, it's free to make things worse in increasingly unlikely fashion. That's not to say the movie is entirely Pierce and his eventual accomplice being tormented by some sadistic deity; they spend some time digging their own graves and working at extricating themselves. The events aren't directly meant to stymie them, either; it's just the worst "one of those days" ever.
Full review at EFC.
It does bring up what sort of a mixed blessing visiting a film festival with a press pass can be. I've probably mentioned it before, but I feel like the deal is, you give me the pass, and I will see as many movies as possible and get the word out about them, good or bad. SXSW is so packed, with screenings starting at 11am and midnight screenings every day, that I really couldn't tell you much about the city beyond a square bounded by the Paramount Theater in one corner and the Convention Center in another, with extensions in the direction of the Rodeway Inn University in one direction and the Alamo Lamar in the other (and another in the direction of Hut's Hamburgers, where I ate on Gil & Amanda's advice on Thursday). Montreal, I get to see during the week at Fantasia, with movies not starting until 3pm or so. Aside from the fact that it was 80 degrees in March (for which I am truly grateful), and a good chunk of the 13th and 22nd got muched by air travel, I really don't know that I feel like I've been to Texas.
The Least of These
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount (SXSW Lone Star States)
The Least of These is maybe not a rarity as far as documentaries go, but it does seem unusually focused. The way things were being run at the T. Don Hutto detention facility offers the filmmakers plenty of opportunities to go off on various policy-related tangents, winding up with a film that might be almost too tight.
The T. Don Hutto detention facility in Taylor, TX is, as of this writing, a former prison used by the Department of Homeland Security's Immigrations and Customs Enforcement division to house unapproved immigrants from countries other than Mexico, specifically those arriving with families. It is operated by Correctional Corporation of America, a government contractor whose primary business is managing prisons. The facility went into operation because in May of 2006, the US government ended the "catch and release" policy where most immigrants were given a court date and monitored intermittently.
As obviously imperfect as the old system was, The Least of These argues that Hutto is far worse. We are introduced to several families of detainees - notably the Yourdkhani family, Iranians seeking to return to Canada, where they had previously been granted political asylum, with their Canadian-born son Kevin; Denia, who fled domestic abuse in Honduras while pregnant; and Ana Mabel, who came from El Salvador with her daughter. We also are introduced to several activists that advocate for them: Michelle Brané of the Women's Refuge Commission, Barbara Harris of the University of Texas at Austin Law School's Immigration Clinic, and Vanita Gupta of the ACLU.
Full review at EFC.
Three Blind Mice
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 March 2009 at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz #2 (SXSW Spotlight Premieres)
One night is just enough time. It's enough time to fall in love (or out of it), enough time to get into trouble, and enough time to come to a decision. A lot can change in one night, and this goes double when the next morning will find you heading for a war zone.
That's how far it is for three junior officers in the Royal Australian Navy, checking into a hotel room for a night of shore leave before they sail for the Gulf. As soon as the youngest, Sam (Ewen Leslie) heads for the shower, Harry (Matthew Newton) and Dean (Toby Schmitz) start talking about what happened to Sam on the ship. Dean asks the others along to dinner with his fiancee Sally (Pia Miranda) and her folks, although Sam ditches tehm after meeting Emma (Gracie Otto), a pretty waitress. This is a bit of a concern, since even before meeting Emma, Sam has called his mother to say he wouldn't be getting back on the ship.
There's another secret or two to be revealed before the night is over and maybe a spot of trouble; poker games and family dinners can be equally dangerous in that regard. Writer/director Matthew Newton doesn't so much keep us guessing about what the night and morning will bring as he gives us chance to see the stakes. Going AWOL doesn't ge one locked up for life, but it's obviously deeply shameful from the way Sam bursts into tears when confessing his intended desertion to the way Harry won't let people use the word, lest it get attached to Sam before absolutely necessary - even though it's pretty clear that Harry and Dean were looking to keep an eye on Sam, just in case.
Full review at EFC.
Number One With a Bullet
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW 24 Beats Per Second)
Number One With a Bullet begins provocatively, with a black man walking into a custom framing store looking to have the clothes he was wearing when he was shot framed. The man at the counter doesn't seem to consider this much more than a somewhat unusual request, promising that the framing will preserve the blood.
One slick-looking set of opening titles later, we're in Colorado, where an energetic white gun shop owner, "Dragon Man", demonstrates that it's not jut inner-city hip-hop fans with a taste for handguns and assault weapons. After that, the movie settles into something of a groove, interviewing hip-hop artists who have either been targets of or participants in shootings and exploring the relationship between hip-hop and gun violence. The short answer: Music doesn't make people shoot each other; the rappers are just applying the old adage of "write what you know", and what people in poor neighborhoods know is violence.
That's not a particularly unreasonable conclusion, and it thus doesn't take the movie very long to get around to it. It's more of an assertion than a truly convincing argument, though: For all the evidence that hip-hop is not nearly the bad influence that poverty is, the film shies away from addressing the possibility of a more complex relationship. Artists are more dismissive than defensive at any suggestion that they're part of the problem, but Cypress Hill's B-Real does admit that it troubles him a bit when he gets mail saying people played his music to psych themselves up to go out and shoot some people.
Full review at EFC.
TRIMPIN: the sound of invention
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Documentary Feature Competition)
As much as I enjoyed South by Southwest, I must admit that I wish I had seen more of Austin. I bought a guidebook but never cracked it open, and thus my experience with the city is more or less limited to a square of about eight blocks, with the Paramount Theater at one corner, the Austin Convention Center at the other, and the Alamo Ritz in between. To give some idea of how heads-down and focused on seeing movies I was, there was a gallery showing some of Trimpin's works right next door to the theater where I saw it, and I never found a moment to go in and take a look. I wish I had, and hope that some Boston institution (the ICA, perhaps), finds a way to do something similar when the film shows as part of the IFFB next month. I hope so; I'd like a second chance.
Trimpin's works, you see, are equal parts music, sculpture, and engineering. He builds sometimes-gigantic works that make sounds, often incorporating found objects into the work. Though born in Germany's Black Forest (which several people in the film point out is the land of the cuckoo clock, a wonderfully intricate mechanical noisemaker) he states that he moved to the United States for the quality of junk to be found here. Family members describe him as a lazy student, although gifted mechanically from a young age and displaying an uncanny ear.
I could go on like this for a while, repeating little gems about Trimpin (he opts to use only his last name, though his sister refers to him as Gerhard) that I scribbled in my notebook because I found them kind of delightful. One could be led to believe from subtitle on the poster ("featuring the Kronos Quintet") that the film is about one specific collaboration, and indeed director Peter Esmonde makes motions in the direction of structuring it that way - there's a scene in the beginning where they meet, one in the middle where they experiment, and a performance toward the end - but mostly it's a collection of facts and demonstrations of his various projects and installations.
Full review at EFC.
A Film With Me In It
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 March 2009 at the Alamo Ritz #1 (SXSW Midnighters)
As much as I (and most critics, I imagine) am happy to shred a movie that relies too heavily on coincidence and seemingly random events. After all, at some point, the characters should succeed based on their own actions rather than arbitrary decisions by the writer. Sometimes, though, it can be fun for a film to embrace the unlikely and run with it the way A Film With Me In It does.
The Me of the title is Pierce (Dylan Moran), an actor whose resume is mostly bit parts. He lives in a ramshackle Dublin flat with his girlfriend Sally (Amy Huberman) and disabled brother David (David O'Doherty); he spends most of his time hanging out with his neighbor Mark (Mark Doherty), a writer who drinks and gambles too much. Then one day, after Sally has moved out, there's an accident - and before Pierce can report it, there's another. Now, you can call the police with one dead body, and they'll nose around a bit but ultimately probably believe the truth. A second, unrelated corpse? That's suspicious.
A Film With Me In It builds from that first bizarre coincidence; once it has acknowledged that Pierce is in trouble because no reasonable person would believe his story, it's free to make things worse in increasingly unlikely fashion. That's not to say the movie is entirely Pierce and his eventual accomplice being tormented by some sadistic deity; they spend some time digging their own graves and working at extricating themselves. The events aren't directly meant to stymie them, either; it's just the worst "one of those days" ever.
Full review at EFC.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
SXSW Day Seven: Humpday, The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle, The Way We Get By, and Exterminators
Once more, I'm finishing this up just before hitting the street to see my first movie of the day. Just one anecdote to mention; I only wound up seeing The Way We Get By because I cut something else too close; I wanted to see Made In China, but it started too soon after The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle. So add another one to the list of movies I missed at SXSW that I hope plays the IFFB (see also For the Love of Movies, The Last Beekeeper, Modern Love is Automatic, and, of course, Lesbian Vampire Killers).
Humpday
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount (SXSW Spotlight Premieres)
I haven't seen Lynn Shelton's first feature, but My Effortless Brilliance and Humpday form an interesting pattern, and not just in how both are kicked off by an old friend visiting unannounced. Unlike many female independent filmmakers who focus on making movies about women, Shelton opts to explore male relationships.
Here, the unexpected visitor is Andrew (Joshua Leonard), a globetrotting artist. It's two in the morning when he arrives at the Seattle home of Ben (Mark Duplass) and Anna (Alycia Delmore), who are married and ready to start a family. Andrew soon meets up with a local artsy crowd, and Ben's intention to just stop by for an hour becomes a long drink-and-weed-fueled evening. One of the guests mentions and upcoming art-porn fest, and Andrew and Ben hatch the idea of shooting themselves having sex as an expression of their friendship. After they sober up... Well, offering each other the chance to back down triggers a thoroughly incongruous macho response.
There's a scene in the middle of the film that is so sitcom-like that the audience might almost expect to hear a laugh track. From the plot description, you can probably guess what it is. Answering audience questions after, the cast member and crew talked like good indie filmmakers about how they tried to avoid that impression, but in all honesty, I think the sitcom feel of that scene makes it, and maybe even the movie as a whole, work. Shelton has already set up a kind of out-there situation and then pushed it further when it might have been a whole lot more logical for the characters to back down. Inserting a moment that conventional makes it easier for the audience to buy into the story. Besides, things do become conventions because they work on some level, and that scene is darn funny.
Full review at EFC.
The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2009 at the Alamo Ritz #1 (SXSW Emerging Visions)
David Russo had a bunch of nifty ideas that he threw into The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle, and they're the kind of ideas that work as part of this sort of strange stew movie - not big enough to serve as a story's foundation, but good for depicting a film's surreal world. The trick is to arrange and connect them into a movie rather than a movie-sized blob of wacky concepts, and I don't know that Russo does it.
Take the film's zippy opening credits, following a message in a bottle with a bunch of cool photography, editing, and effects work to a kind of funny punchline. It's nifty, and referred back to later, but the link feels obligatory, not strong. It could link to the way Dory (Marshall Allman) is looking for any kind of belief system for guidance, but it's in the wrong place for that. The film has a few clever fantastical bits, but what they build up to isn't as keen as the lead-up. Individual characters' stories fork off and reconnect later, but don't affect each other in the meantime.
The bits are nifty, though. We follow Dory, who joins a custodial service after screaming his way out of a data management company. There, he joins a staff run by transvestite Desert Storm vet Bergsman (Russell Hodgkinson) which also includes junkie lovers Methyl & Ethyl (Tygh Runyan and Tania Raymonde) and would-be artist O.C. (Vince Vieluf). O.C. has a crush on research company exec Tracy (Natasha Lyonne), who upon discovering that the janitors will eat any samples left lying around, uses them as guinea pigs for a cookie that warms itself upon contact with saliva - which also proves to be highly addictive and have certain bizarre side effects.
Full review at EFC.
The Way We Get By
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2009 at the Austin Convention Center (SXSW Documentary Feature Competition)
Film festivals overflow with movies like The Way We Get By, which are little documentaries about reasonably interesting people that have just enough of a spark of something unexpected or unusual that they grow to feature length when their natural size is that of a short. This one feels especially long, because there's only so many ways the Maine Troop Greeters can say they appreciate our soldiers' sacrifice.
ExTerminators
* * (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2009 at the Alamo Lamar #1 (SXSW Lone Star States)
Geez, all the effort I went through to see this one - I actually took the shuttle out to Lamar on Sunday, only to be told that it was sold out before I got off the bus - and it's pretty dull. The reason why is quickly apparent: As much as I like Heather Graham, she's a spectator despite being the main character here. Since we follow her, we don't get to enjoy the black comedy of her friends killing rotten guys, nor do we get to solve a mystery with her police detective boyfriend. If you're going to give us a movie about people doing bad things, you've got to really commit to the dark comedy, and ExTerminators keeps it at arms' length.
Humpday
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount (SXSW Spotlight Premieres)
I haven't seen Lynn Shelton's first feature, but My Effortless Brilliance and Humpday form an interesting pattern, and not just in how both are kicked off by an old friend visiting unannounced. Unlike many female independent filmmakers who focus on making movies about women, Shelton opts to explore male relationships.
Here, the unexpected visitor is Andrew (Joshua Leonard), a globetrotting artist. It's two in the morning when he arrives at the Seattle home of Ben (Mark Duplass) and Anna (Alycia Delmore), who are married and ready to start a family. Andrew soon meets up with a local artsy crowd, and Ben's intention to just stop by for an hour becomes a long drink-and-weed-fueled evening. One of the guests mentions and upcoming art-porn fest, and Andrew and Ben hatch the idea of shooting themselves having sex as an expression of their friendship. After they sober up... Well, offering each other the chance to back down triggers a thoroughly incongruous macho response.
There's a scene in the middle of the film that is so sitcom-like that the audience might almost expect to hear a laugh track. From the plot description, you can probably guess what it is. Answering audience questions after, the cast member and crew talked like good indie filmmakers about how they tried to avoid that impression, but in all honesty, I think the sitcom feel of that scene makes it, and maybe even the movie as a whole, work. Shelton has already set up a kind of out-there situation and then pushed it further when it might have been a whole lot more logical for the characters to back down. Inserting a moment that conventional makes it easier for the audience to buy into the story. Besides, things do become conventions because they work on some level, and that scene is darn funny.
Full review at EFC.
The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2009 at the Alamo Ritz #1 (SXSW Emerging Visions)
David Russo had a bunch of nifty ideas that he threw into The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle, and they're the kind of ideas that work as part of this sort of strange stew movie - not big enough to serve as a story's foundation, but good for depicting a film's surreal world. The trick is to arrange and connect them into a movie rather than a movie-sized blob of wacky concepts, and I don't know that Russo does it.
Take the film's zippy opening credits, following a message in a bottle with a bunch of cool photography, editing, and effects work to a kind of funny punchline. It's nifty, and referred back to later, but the link feels obligatory, not strong. It could link to the way Dory (Marshall Allman) is looking for any kind of belief system for guidance, but it's in the wrong place for that. The film has a few clever fantastical bits, but what they build up to isn't as keen as the lead-up. Individual characters' stories fork off and reconnect later, but don't affect each other in the meantime.
The bits are nifty, though. We follow Dory, who joins a custodial service after screaming his way out of a data management company. There, he joins a staff run by transvestite Desert Storm vet Bergsman (Russell Hodgkinson) which also includes junkie lovers Methyl & Ethyl (Tygh Runyan and Tania Raymonde) and would-be artist O.C. (Vince Vieluf). O.C. has a crush on research company exec Tracy (Natasha Lyonne), who upon discovering that the janitors will eat any samples left lying around, uses them as guinea pigs for a cookie that warms itself upon contact with saliva - which also proves to be highly addictive and have certain bizarre side effects.
Full review at EFC.
The Way We Get By
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2009 at the Austin Convention Center (SXSW Documentary Feature Competition)
Film festivals overflow with movies like The Way We Get By, which are little documentaries about reasonably interesting people that have just enough of a spark of something unexpected or unusual that they grow to feature length when their natural size is that of a short. This one feels especially long, because there's only so many ways the Maine Troop Greeters can say they appreciate our soldiers' sacrifice.
ExTerminators
* * (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2009 at the Alamo Lamar #1 (SXSW Lone Star States)
Geez, all the effort I went through to see this one - I actually took the shuttle out to Lamar on Sunday, only to be told that it was sold out before I got off the bus - and it's pretty dull. The reason why is quickly apparent: As much as I like Heather Graham, she's a spectator despite being the main character here. Since we follow her, we don't get to enjoy the black comedy of her friends killing rotten guys, nor do we get to solve a mystery with her police detective boyfriend. If you're going to give us a movie about people doing bad things, you've got to really commit to the dark comedy, and ExTerminators keeps it at arms' length.
Friday, March 20, 2009
SXSW Day Six: Still Bill, Youssou N'dour: I Bring What I Love, The Eyes of Me, and The Slammin' Salmon
Not much time to write or anything particular to say, so Wednesday's movies:
Still Bill
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 18 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount (SXSW Special Screenings)
The recording studio that occupies a fair-sized chunk of Bill Withers's Los Angeles home in Still Bill is a tremendous tease. It's new-looking, with plenty of digital tools, which certainly suggests that the man behind "Lean on Me" and "Just the Two of Us" has written and recorded new music relatively recently, even though his last album came out in 1985.
Still Bill doesn't get into the specifics of the conflicts between Withers and Columbia Records back then; that information is out there for those who want to look. Instead, it gives us a look at Withers' life and personality to perhaps explain why he was able to just walk away from show business when many other men would fight the labels or do whatever was necessary to stay in the public eye. It's not so much that he's a man at peace with himself - indeed, he's wise enough to say, in a roundabout sort of way, that his calm demeanor owes as much to shyness as it does to contentment. He is fairly content; one of the aphorisms he offers to the camera and to his children is "on the way to wonderful, you'll pass through all right. Stop and take a look around, because you may be staying," and he does seem to be all right with all right.
Indeed, he seems to have come to that realization before he made it in show business. We learn about his childhood in Slab Fork, West Virginia, a played-out coal town, followed by stints in the Navy and working for various aerospace companies. not only is Bill a fine storyteller, but we go on trips with him, back to Slab Fork to visit a childhood friend and to reunions with Navy buddies and high-school classmates. A scene where Bill walks through a white graveyard to visit the overgrown patch where his father and other relations are buried says more about the segregation of his youth than words could; it's close to being randomly placed stones in the middle of the woods.
Full review at EFC.
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount (SXSW 24 Beats per Second)
Youssou Ndour is the biggest pop star in Africa; he is also a devout Sufi Muslim. Which, apparently, is fine as long as those two qualities don't intermingle as they did on his album Egypt, a disc full of devotional songs that was tremendously well-received internationally but led to criticism in his native Senegal. I Bring What I Love follows him as he tours Europe to packed audiences but fights censorship and derision at home.
It's a nice enough movie, although I found myself wanting a little more from the end: Senegal has no time for Egypt at all, and then, after Ndour wins the Grammy, everything is hunky-dory? There's something to be said about how it took outside validation for Senegal to accept the album, but this movie skips right past that potentially interesting idea.
The Eyes of Me
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 18 March 2009 at the Alamo Lamar #1 (SXSW Lone Star States)
A good-intentioned documentary that will probably find its natural home on local public television sooner rather than later. This story about Austin's high school for the blind does do some neat things with animation to demonstrate how the visually impaired kids perceive the world (all four were sighted at one point).
The Slammin' Salmon
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 18 March 2009 at the Alamo Lamar #1 (SXSW Speical Screenings)
Hmm... Maybe I'm going to have to revisit Broken Lizard in the future. Most of the previews for their movies have done nothing for me, so I've skipped their releases, and to be perfectly honest, I wasn't terribly interested in this one.
The Slammin' Salmon takes a while for me to get into - aside from Michael Clarke Duncan, who is a blast from his first minute on the screen - but it's a little engine that could of comedy, plugging away constantly to make you laugh, and after a bit, the film's pace and sense of humor clicked with me, to the point where I was laughing pretty darn hard by the end.
Still Bill
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 18 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount (SXSW Special Screenings)
The recording studio that occupies a fair-sized chunk of Bill Withers's Los Angeles home in Still Bill is a tremendous tease. It's new-looking, with plenty of digital tools, which certainly suggests that the man behind "Lean on Me" and "Just the Two of Us" has written and recorded new music relatively recently, even though his last album came out in 1985.
Still Bill doesn't get into the specifics of the conflicts between Withers and Columbia Records back then; that information is out there for those who want to look. Instead, it gives us a look at Withers' life and personality to perhaps explain why he was able to just walk away from show business when many other men would fight the labels or do whatever was necessary to stay in the public eye. It's not so much that he's a man at peace with himself - indeed, he's wise enough to say, in a roundabout sort of way, that his calm demeanor owes as much to shyness as it does to contentment. He is fairly content; one of the aphorisms he offers to the camera and to his children is "on the way to wonderful, you'll pass through all right. Stop and take a look around, because you may be staying," and he does seem to be all right with all right.
Indeed, he seems to have come to that realization before he made it in show business. We learn about his childhood in Slab Fork, West Virginia, a played-out coal town, followed by stints in the Navy and working for various aerospace companies. not only is Bill a fine storyteller, but we go on trips with him, back to Slab Fork to visit a childhood friend and to reunions with Navy buddies and high-school classmates. A scene where Bill walks through a white graveyard to visit the overgrown patch where his father and other relations are buried says more about the segregation of his youth than words could; it's close to being randomly placed stones in the middle of the woods.
Full review at EFC.
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount (SXSW 24 Beats per Second)
Youssou Ndour is the biggest pop star in Africa; he is also a devout Sufi Muslim. Which, apparently, is fine as long as those two qualities don't intermingle as they did on his album Egypt, a disc full of devotional songs that was tremendously well-received internationally but led to criticism in his native Senegal. I Bring What I Love follows him as he tours Europe to packed audiences but fights censorship and derision at home.
It's a nice enough movie, although I found myself wanting a little more from the end: Senegal has no time for Egypt at all, and then, after Ndour wins the Grammy, everything is hunky-dory? There's something to be said about how it took outside validation for Senegal to accept the album, but this movie skips right past that potentially interesting idea.
The Eyes of Me
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 18 March 2009 at the Alamo Lamar #1 (SXSW Lone Star States)
A good-intentioned documentary that will probably find its natural home on local public television sooner rather than later. This story about Austin's high school for the blind does do some neat things with animation to demonstrate how the visually impaired kids perceive the world (all four were sighted at one point).
The Slammin' Salmon
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 18 March 2009 at the Alamo Lamar #1 (SXSW Speical Screenings)
Hmm... Maybe I'm going to have to revisit Broken Lizard in the future. Most of the previews for their movies have done nothing for me, so I've skipped their releases, and to be perfectly honest, I wasn't terribly interested in this one.
The Slammin' Salmon takes a while for me to get into - aside from Michael Clarke Duncan, who is a blast from his first minute on the screen - but it's a little engine that could of comedy, plugging away constantly to make you laugh, and after a bit, the film's pace and sense of humor clicked with me, to the point where I was laughing pretty darn hard by the end.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
SXSW Day Four: Blood Trail, MINE, Best Worst Movie, The Two Bobs, and Observe and Report
So, I'm watching Best Worst Movie, remembering how the good folks at the Brattle have programmed Troll 2 once or twice but I have never been able to get to it, and Caitlin Crowley shows up on screen. She's one of the dozens of people in the Boston movie scene I have a thoroughly one-way fondness for, and anyone who is willing to profess their love of an apparently terrible movie in something that, like, hundreds of people may see is even cooler in my book.
Soon after that, the movie includes a montage of places where Troll 2 has played during its recent series of screenings. The Alamo Drafthouse shows up, of course, and the crowd in the Paramount goes nuts. The Brattle is a couple after that, and I raise my hands to applaud, realizing just after the last possible second that one guy applauding sounds just a bit more pathetic than zero guys applauding. Fortunately, I don't make much sound when clapping; not sure why.
Anyway, put that on a list of movies from SXSW I'd like to see playing IFFB - just so I can watch it again and see indifference to the Alamo and applause for the Brattle.
(Why yes, the "and I'm so glad to be showing this in Austin!" is getting on this tourist's nerves. Lack of sleep, I guess.)
Blood Trail
* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 March 2009 at the Alamo Ritz #2 (SXSW Special Screenings)
Robert King does not give the impression of a great war photographer when we first see him in Blood Trail. In 1990s Sarajevo, he's walking around a war zone like a naive kid; in 2007 Tennessee, we watch him stumble trying to set up a hunting blind. If the film ended there, one's mind would easily extrapolate the story of a man who had his sanity wrecked from witnessing horrors he wasn't ready to handle.
That's not this film's story, though King is changed by what he sees, as he must be. Instead, we watch him mature as both a journalist and as a man as he moves to Moscow, covers the wars in Chechnya, Kosovo, Rwanda, and Iraq. Colleagues who treated him with derision when he started become close friends; a lifetime of binging between assignments settles down; and the means by which war photographers access the battlefield changes radically.
According to director Richard Parry, this film started out as a comedic short about a callow young American in way over his head, accumulating more depth as Parry (a fellow war journalist) crossed paths with King anew. Those roots occasionally show through, especially during the opening act in Bosnia. It's black comedy; there is, after all, a bit more of an edge to "ha ha ha, that fool's going to get himself killed!" when it's a real war zone with real bullets - but we soon see that a large part of success is surviving one's initial inexperience (true in all fields, if not always so literally so).
Full review at EFC.
MINE
* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 March 2009 at the Austin Convention Center (SXSW Documentary Feature Competition)
There are a lot of fiction films that don't set their main plot up as artfully as MINE does. After all, the title speaks pretty directly to what the movie is about, and yet director Geralyn Pezanoski is able to lull us into looking in a different direction, telling one interesting story that we forget is merely prelude to the main tale.
The opening tells us about how the evacuation of New Orleans, Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina frequently involved people leaving their four-legged family members behind for one reason or another. Fortunately, there are dedicated animal-rescue activists like Karen O'Toole and Jane Garrison, who mobilize almost immediately to rescue stranded pets (O'Toole comments that it's amazing that just by having "animal rescue" painted on the side of their vans, the army would let them into the flooded city when people trying to return to their homes were turned away). It's a gigantic logistical undertaking, not always happy - they come across people who treated their animals terribly, and one rescuer grimly notes that "cats don't bark". In order to make it work, the rescuers must often ship the animals they rescue to other shelters to make room for more incoming.
The trouble with that is, just as people weren't always able to take their pets with them as they escaped, they may not have known how to find them after returning home, or the various humane societies might have put them out for fostering/adoption relatively soon. Victor's bulldog Max is sent to Florida, where a woman adopts him and calls him Joey; Jesse's beloved JJ is sent to California; retired nurse Gloria's black lab Murphy becomes "Shadow" in California; 85-year-old Creole Malvin's poodle Bandit is sent to a shelter in Pittsburgh whose operator won't return any animals; Linda's German Shepherd Precious becomes Katia in Texas and she tries to sue for her return.
Full review at EFC.
Best Worst Movie
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 16 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount (SXSW Spotlight Premieres)
A pretty darn entertaining feature on Troll 2 fandom and its cast. It's hard not to love George Hardy, the Alabama dentist who played the lead in Troll 2 twenty years ago and retains a sense of humor about it to this day; he's among the most outgoing and genuinely nice guys you'll ever see. The movie itself is frequently hilarious without being mean-spiritd about what is, apparently, a really bad movie.
(No, I haven't seen it yet. I'm hoping the Brattle pairs it with this sometime in the next few months)
The 2 Bobs
* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount (SXSW Spotlight Premieres)
Writer/Director Tim McCaniles described The 2 Bobs as his attempt to do a Kevin Smith movie, which is funny since Smith most recently released his attempt at a Judd Apatow movie. McCaniles makes a pretty entertaining one, though, a zany low-budget story packed full of nerd humor.
I think it will have legs even if you aren't a nerd, though - there are many different genuses of nerds, after all, with this movie's main source of gags being games and gamers, a group of which I am not a member. It's not quite so good/universal as Fanboys, but I liked how agreeably madcap it is.
Observe and Report
* * (out of four)
Seen 16 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount (SXSW Spotlight Premieres)
This one, not so much. It does have some huge, huge laughs, don't get me wrong, and is a nice demonstration that Seth Rogen has more than fat stoner roles in him, but those moments of explosive hilarity come in the middle of long patches of uncomfortable, and not necessarily the sort of uncomfortable that makes one more likely to laugh.
To be fair, though, it's probably the one nice character that messes the balance up. Collette Wolfe's Nell is really too likeable to be attracted to Rogen's goonish character; seeing the movie headed that way makes me cringe much more than a bunch of jerks being jerks to each other.
Soon after that, the movie includes a montage of places where Troll 2 has played during its recent series of screenings. The Alamo Drafthouse shows up, of course, and the crowd in the Paramount goes nuts. The Brattle is a couple after that, and I raise my hands to applaud, realizing just after the last possible second that one guy applauding sounds just a bit more pathetic than zero guys applauding. Fortunately, I don't make much sound when clapping; not sure why.
Anyway, put that on a list of movies from SXSW I'd like to see playing IFFB - just so I can watch it again and see indifference to the Alamo and applause for the Brattle.
(Why yes, the "and I'm so glad to be showing this in Austin!" is getting on this tourist's nerves. Lack of sleep, I guess.)
Blood Trail
* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 March 2009 at the Alamo Ritz #2 (SXSW Special Screenings)
Robert King does not give the impression of a great war photographer when we first see him in Blood Trail. In 1990s Sarajevo, he's walking around a war zone like a naive kid; in 2007 Tennessee, we watch him stumble trying to set up a hunting blind. If the film ended there, one's mind would easily extrapolate the story of a man who had his sanity wrecked from witnessing horrors he wasn't ready to handle.
That's not this film's story, though King is changed by what he sees, as he must be. Instead, we watch him mature as both a journalist and as a man as he moves to Moscow, covers the wars in Chechnya, Kosovo, Rwanda, and Iraq. Colleagues who treated him with derision when he started become close friends; a lifetime of binging between assignments settles down; and the means by which war photographers access the battlefield changes radically.
According to director Richard Parry, this film started out as a comedic short about a callow young American in way over his head, accumulating more depth as Parry (a fellow war journalist) crossed paths with King anew. Those roots occasionally show through, especially during the opening act in Bosnia. It's black comedy; there is, after all, a bit more of an edge to "ha ha ha, that fool's going to get himself killed!" when it's a real war zone with real bullets - but we soon see that a large part of success is surviving one's initial inexperience (true in all fields, if not always so literally so).
Full review at EFC.
MINE
* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 March 2009 at the Austin Convention Center (SXSW Documentary Feature Competition)
There are a lot of fiction films that don't set their main plot up as artfully as MINE does. After all, the title speaks pretty directly to what the movie is about, and yet director Geralyn Pezanoski is able to lull us into looking in a different direction, telling one interesting story that we forget is merely prelude to the main tale.
The opening tells us about how the evacuation of New Orleans, Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina frequently involved people leaving their four-legged family members behind for one reason or another. Fortunately, there are dedicated animal-rescue activists like Karen O'Toole and Jane Garrison, who mobilize almost immediately to rescue stranded pets (O'Toole comments that it's amazing that just by having "animal rescue" painted on the side of their vans, the army would let them into the flooded city when people trying to return to their homes were turned away). It's a gigantic logistical undertaking, not always happy - they come across people who treated their animals terribly, and one rescuer grimly notes that "cats don't bark". In order to make it work, the rescuers must often ship the animals they rescue to other shelters to make room for more incoming.
The trouble with that is, just as people weren't always able to take their pets with them as they escaped, they may not have known how to find them after returning home, or the various humane societies might have put them out for fostering/adoption relatively soon. Victor's bulldog Max is sent to Florida, where a woman adopts him and calls him Joey; Jesse's beloved JJ is sent to California; retired nurse Gloria's black lab Murphy becomes "Shadow" in California; 85-year-old Creole Malvin's poodle Bandit is sent to a shelter in Pittsburgh whose operator won't return any animals; Linda's German Shepherd Precious becomes Katia in Texas and she tries to sue for her return.
Full review at EFC.
Best Worst Movie
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 16 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount (SXSW Spotlight Premieres)
A pretty darn entertaining feature on Troll 2 fandom and its cast. It's hard not to love George Hardy, the Alabama dentist who played the lead in Troll 2 twenty years ago and retains a sense of humor about it to this day; he's among the most outgoing and genuinely nice guys you'll ever see. The movie itself is frequently hilarious without being mean-spiritd about what is, apparently, a really bad movie.
(No, I haven't seen it yet. I'm hoping the Brattle pairs it with this sometime in the next few months)
The 2 Bobs
* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount (SXSW Spotlight Premieres)
Writer/Director Tim McCaniles described The 2 Bobs as his attempt to do a Kevin Smith movie, which is funny since Smith most recently released his attempt at a Judd Apatow movie. McCaniles makes a pretty entertaining one, though, a zany low-budget story packed full of nerd humor.
I think it will have legs even if you aren't a nerd, though - there are many different genuses of nerds, after all, with this movie's main source of gags being games and gamers, a group of which I am not a member. It's not quite so good/universal as Fanboys, but I liked how agreeably madcap it is.
Observe and Report
* * (out of four)
Seen 16 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount (SXSW Spotlight Premieres)
This one, not so much. It does have some huge, huge laughs, don't get me wrong, and is a nice demonstration that Seth Rogen has more than fat stoner roles in him, but those moments of explosive hilarity come in the middle of long patches of uncomfortable, and not necessarily the sort of uncomfortable that makes one more likely to laugh.
To be fair, though, it's probably the one nice character that messes the balance up. Collette Wolfe's Nell is really too likeable to be attracted to Rogen's goonish character; seeing the movie headed that way makes me cringe much more than a bunch of jerks being jerks to each other.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
SXSW Day Five: Splinterheads, Four Boxes, The Promised Land, and Make Out With Violence
Hey, I'm on vacation. If I think it makes sense for me to post days out of order, I'll go right on and post them out of order!
Basically, Sunday wiped me out but good, leaving me with no time to post its stuff on Monday morning, but I had two reviews in my little notebook. I'll eventually get around to Tuesday, but for now, I'll just skip over it.
Today was an object lesson in both why it pays to get to the theater early, even if you have a badge, but also in how a good program can soften the blow. I was just after the cutoff for The Last Beekeeper, so I moved myself into the line for The Promised Land, since the other option at the Lamar, Eggshells, had this for a description in the program:
As much as Tobe Hooper has built (and squandered) a name in horror history... No. Just no.
I did like The Promised Land quite a bit, though, and Make Out with Violence even more so. Then I got shut out of The Horseman, and opted against The Haunting in Connecticut because, even though it's directed by the man who did the brilliant animated short "Ward 13", I looked at the line and felt like I'd be taking the place of people who really wanted to see it early. Plus, the idea of getting a decent night's sleep was starting to appeal.
(And then I wound up staying up because I have to give my roommate the new hotel key after he gets back from his midnight and party and whatever. Joke's on me!)
Splinterheads
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Emerging Visions)
Apparently "splinterheads" are a subset of what I've always thought of as "carnies", but that's apparently like calling a sailor, Marine, or airman a "soldier" - outsiders may think it's close enough, but in actuality it's not. Carnies work the rides, splinterheads the midway, and neither does much mixing with the townies.
Justin (Thomas Middleditch) is just about the towniest townie who ever towned. He lives with his mom Susan (Lea Thompson) and works mowing lawns with his best friend Wayne (Jason Rogel). Local cop Bruce (Christopher McDonald) is making Justin's life tough after Susan dumped him because of something Justin said, and he's got a perfect excuse when Justin drives away from a gas station after paying the girl running a game rather than the cashier. Just seens the girl, Galaxy (Rachael Taylor), working the dunk tank at the carnival which just came to town, which figures, doesn't it? So despite her attractiveness, he is somewhat less than pleased when their paths cross again the next morning.
Splinterheads could very easily have poured on the syrup with talk of destiny, fate, and stuff like that. Thankfully, it knows better than to act as if a comedy that goes for the rare triple meet-cute has any real mystery about how it's going to end. It's also not breaking any particular ground in having Galaxy not just be beautiful and outgoing, but have hobbies that are quirky but also show off just how cool she is, while Justin is a perpetually tongue-tied goofball. You can see the thuggish splinterhead boyfriend coming a mile away.
Full review at EFC.
Four Boxes
* ¼ (out of four)
Seen 17 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Emerging Visions)
If you hang on through the end of Four Boxes, everything will make sense. Yes, even the "nobody on earth actually talks like that" dialogue. That doesn't mean that you should hang on to the end, unfortunately, because not only doesn't explaining everything make it good, but there's a whole new bunch of dumb at the end.
Trevor (Justin Kirk) and Rob (Sam Rosen) have a small business where they purchase and resell the property of people who die without heirs. Their latest find is a bizarre mess, with boxes of junk, crime scene tape from where the deceased's wife hanged herself six months earlier. They find a sticky note near the computer for fourboxes.tv, which Rob says started out as a camgirl site, but the original girl moved out while leaving the cameras live. The new resident is creepy and sinister, and Trevor soon becomes obsessed with the site. As if that wasn't enough, Rob's fiancee Amber (Terryn Westbrook) soon joins them, and the fact that she used to be Trevor's girlfriend makes things uncomfortable.
Watching TV is not the most exciting thing to have your characters doing in a movie. Especially when the program in question is grainy webcam video, and the picture, when blown up to movie-screen size, becomes vague compression-artifcated blobs. Maybe seeing the movie on video rather than the big screen will help with that, but that still leaves the characters not doing much of anything for a good deal of the running time.
Full review at EFC.
The Promised Land
* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 March 2009 at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #1 (SXSW 24 Beats per Second)
The Promised Land may not be a great documentary if you already know something about the swamp pop of Southern Louisiana - it's a broad overview, although if there's any better way to introduce the living legends of a type of music than having them get together and form a supergroup, I can't think of one. The picture is sometimes hard to see, low-resolution and not well-lit.
The music is pretty darn great, though, a Cajun mix of old-school rock & roll, country, and dixie blues, a throwback to fifty years ago before all those influences went their separate ways. The Li'l Band of Gold performs throughout, and there's bits of a couple dozen songs packed into the film's 77 minutes, most of it as yet unreleased. That part is no disappointment at all.
Make-Out with Violence
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 March 2009 at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #1 (SXSW Emerging Visions)
Make-Out with Violence isn't quite so good as Let the Right One In, but that's the film it brings to my mind. Both take horror-movie tropes and twist them into service of a strange story of young love, and have a young boy at the center. Make-Out goes with zombies instead of vampires, and rather than a Swedish winter focuses on the summer after high school graduation in the American suburbs. The critical similarity is that both movies take a genre that is extremely played-out, tie it to a story where I believe in every one of the characters, and still leave me wondering what is going to happen next because it seems fresh and new.
That's fantastic, and the nifty soundtrack doesn't hurt a bit, either.
Basically, Sunday wiped me out but good, leaving me with no time to post its stuff on Monday morning, but I had two reviews in my little notebook. I'll eventually get around to Tuesday, but for now, I'll just skip over it.
Today was an object lesson in both why it pays to get to the theater early, even if you have a badge, but also in how a good program can soften the blow. I was just after the cutoff for The Last Beekeeper, so I moved myself into the line for The Promised Land, since the other option at the Lamar, Eggshells, had this for a description in the program:
Eggshells, an American Freak Illumination Time & Space Fantasy of the exploding Austin inevitable. A crypto embryonic hyper-electric presence duels with itself as Vince Sobrosek goes to the bathroom yelling "listen to yellow dog, goddamn yellow dog!" while the uninvited dinner guests make love to the ghosts of Don Levy and Nic Roeg in a threesome with Carlos Casteneda in a bedroom that paints itself on its way to a wedding and your girlfriend and her lover dance out of the hemoglobin balloon forest as the writer-man takes an axe to the windshield and runs home naked to make love to the girl he loves for her breasts and they all grab seats under the transmogrifying hair dryers as Vince proclaims, "Ye shall know the truth and the truth will make you free." BYO
As much as Tobe Hooper has built (and squandered) a name in horror history... No. Just no.
I did like The Promised Land quite a bit, though, and Make Out with Violence even more so. Then I got shut out of The Horseman, and opted against The Haunting in Connecticut because, even though it's directed by the man who did the brilliant animated short "Ward 13", I looked at the line and felt like I'd be taking the place of people who really wanted to see it early. Plus, the idea of getting a decent night's sleep was starting to appeal.
(And then I wound up staying up because I have to give my roommate the new hotel key after he gets back from his midnight and party and whatever. Joke's on me!)
Splinterheads
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Emerging Visions)
Apparently "splinterheads" are a subset of what I've always thought of as "carnies", but that's apparently like calling a sailor, Marine, or airman a "soldier" - outsiders may think it's close enough, but in actuality it's not. Carnies work the rides, splinterheads the midway, and neither does much mixing with the townies.
Justin (Thomas Middleditch) is just about the towniest townie who ever towned. He lives with his mom Susan (Lea Thompson) and works mowing lawns with his best friend Wayne (Jason Rogel). Local cop Bruce (Christopher McDonald) is making Justin's life tough after Susan dumped him because of something Justin said, and he's got a perfect excuse when Justin drives away from a gas station after paying the girl running a game rather than the cashier. Just seens the girl, Galaxy (Rachael Taylor), working the dunk tank at the carnival which just came to town, which figures, doesn't it? So despite her attractiveness, he is somewhat less than pleased when their paths cross again the next morning.
Splinterheads could very easily have poured on the syrup with talk of destiny, fate, and stuff like that. Thankfully, it knows better than to act as if a comedy that goes for the rare triple meet-cute has any real mystery about how it's going to end. It's also not breaking any particular ground in having Galaxy not just be beautiful and outgoing, but have hobbies that are quirky but also show off just how cool she is, while Justin is a perpetually tongue-tied goofball. You can see the thuggish splinterhead boyfriend coming a mile away.
Full review at EFC.
Four Boxes
* ¼ (out of four)
Seen 17 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Emerging Visions)
If you hang on through the end of Four Boxes, everything will make sense. Yes, even the "nobody on earth actually talks like that" dialogue. That doesn't mean that you should hang on to the end, unfortunately, because not only doesn't explaining everything make it good, but there's a whole new bunch of dumb at the end.
Trevor (Justin Kirk) and Rob (Sam Rosen) have a small business where they purchase and resell the property of people who die without heirs. Their latest find is a bizarre mess, with boxes of junk, crime scene tape from where the deceased's wife hanged herself six months earlier. They find a sticky note near the computer for fourboxes.tv, which Rob says started out as a camgirl site, but the original girl moved out while leaving the cameras live. The new resident is creepy and sinister, and Trevor soon becomes obsessed with the site. As if that wasn't enough, Rob's fiancee Amber (Terryn Westbrook) soon joins them, and the fact that she used to be Trevor's girlfriend makes things uncomfortable.
Watching TV is not the most exciting thing to have your characters doing in a movie. Especially when the program in question is grainy webcam video, and the picture, when blown up to movie-screen size, becomes vague compression-artifcated blobs. Maybe seeing the movie on video rather than the big screen will help with that, but that still leaves the characters not doing much of anything for a good deal of the running time.
Full review at EFC.
The Promised Land
* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 March 2009 at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #1 (SXSW 24 Beats per Second)
The Promised Land may not be a great documentary if you already know something about the swamp pop of Southern Louisiana - it's a broad overview, although if there's any better way to introduce the living legends of a type of music than having them get together and form a supergroup, I can't think of one. The picture is sometimes hard to see, low-resolution and not well-lit.
The music is pretty darn great, though, a Cajun mix of old-school rock & roll, country, and dixie blues, a throwback to fifty years ago before all those influences went their separate ways. The Li'l Band of Gold performs throughout, and there's bits of a couple dozen songs packed into the film's 77 minutes, most of it as yet unreleased. That part is no disappointment at all.
Make-Out with Violence
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 March 2009 at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #1 (SXSW Emerging Visions)
Make-Out with Violence isn't quite so good as Let the Right One In, but that's the film it brings to my mind. Both take horror-movie tropes and twist them into service of a strange story of young love, and have a young boy at the center. Make-Out goes with zombies instead of vampires, and rather than a Swedish winter focuses on the summer after high school graduation in the American suburbs. The critical similarity is that both movies take a genre that is extremely played-out, tie it to a story where I believe in every one of the characters, and still leave me wondering what is going to happen next because it seems fresh and new.
That's fantastic, and the nifty soundtrack doesn't hurt a bit, either.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
SXSW Day Three: Letters to the President, Garbage Dreams, Sin Nombre, Women In Trouble, and Drag Me to Hell
This day started with me not being able to get to the Almo South Lamar in time to see ExTerminators at noon, and continued to nearly three in the morning before walking back to the hotel, so you'll forgive me if I fell a little behind. The time waiting for Letters to the President did give me a chance to write up a review of Objectified in my little festival notebook, so you can go read that.
I must confess, I'm not totally proud of my behavior vis-a-vis Drag Me to Hell. I sort of cut in line in front of a few hundred people when Jason Whyte stopped me while I was following it to the end, and then, when Sam Raimi came out to introduce it, I sent a text message to my brother who won't be able to see this for a couple of months so that he knew just where I was and what I was doing. Of course, since it was about 2am EDT for him, he probably just slept through it.
Letters to the President
* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Special Screenings)
Letters to the President is somewhat difficult to review as a film because it does its job so well. It is trying to give the audience a snapshot of the relationship Iran has with its populist president, and it does so with so little pretense that I'm initially more interested in the facts than the filmmaking.
Iran's current president is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he's the highest ranking elected official in the country, after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He was born in a village of 2,000, though his father moved to Tehran where Ahmadinejad was a child. He would later become a university professor and the mayor of Tehran before being elected President in 2005. He is extremely popular with the people, both for his religious faith, his commitment to nuclear power, and his unusual accessibility. His proximity to people in public appearances would give the USA's Secret Service nightmares, and he encourages the people to write him with their problems.
The latter is the film's stated topic, and it's not hard to be impressed by the scale of the undertaking. Nine to ten million Iranians have written since his election, and an official tells us that 76% have received a response. Ahmadinejad can't do all that personally, of course, so we get looks at the bureaucracy put into place to handle it. The response is also not always positive, as a thoroughly frustrating interview between petitioner and official demonstrates.
Full review at EFC.
Garbage Dreams
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Documentary Competition)
Mai Iskander has made a fine documentary in Garbage Dreams, the type that is about people first, and does a fine job of being issue-oriented without hammering away at buzzwords like "globalization". For all that, I must admit that one of the most memorable things from the movie is a simple number: Eighty percent.
That is the amount of residential waste that the Zaballeens of Cairo are able to recycle. That's a fantastic number - most developed nations manage something in the twenties - and as might be expected, it comes through unconventional means: Though Cairo is a city of eighteen million, the largest in the Arab world or Africa, it had no official city-wide garbage collection program, instead relying on sixty thousand independent garbage collectors (the Zaballeens) who are paid a pittance for their services. Entire communities are built around garbage collection and recycling.
The largest is Mokattam, and Garbage Dreams focuses on three teenage boys and one young woman from the area: 17-year-old Adham collects garbage to support his family as the man of the house with his father in jail; 18-year-old Nabil has been working since the age of seven and has twin dreams of marrying and opening a can-recycling shop; and 16-year-old Osama is kind of a screw-up, unable to hold a job even though his father is pushing him to do something with his life other than root through other people's trash. Then there's Laila, a local social worker who tries to keep the people in her neighborhood healthy. She also finds herself fighting for the neighborhood's very survival when the city hires several European companies to handle trash collection.
Full review at EFC.
Sin Nombre
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Spotlight Premieres)
An impressive first feature, this is. Cary Fukunaga has made something that feels larger than its relatively short running time, depicting the difficult crossing across Mexico from Guatemala to the U.S., made more difficult by a gang member marked for death. Tense as can be, with moments of really shocking violence.
Women in Trouble
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Spotlight Premieres)
A thoroughly entertaining comedy, with ten women given a chance to do broad, crude comedy that somehow comes around to something vaguely heartfelt without it seeming too terribly ridiculous. Carla Gugino and Connie Britton get the meatiest roles and play well off each other, but the standout is probably Adrianne Palicki, who does great things with the dumb blonde role.
Director Sebastian Guiterrez said during the Q&A that the film was shot with a skeleton crew in something like twelve days, with the sequel (which focuses more squarely on Gugino's character) already finished with photography. I'll be looking forward to it next year; hopefully if it's nearly as much fun as this one.
Drag Me To Hell
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Special Screenings)
Can you believe it's been over twenty years since Evil Dead 2? Considering how much of Sam Raimi's fame and career is built on that movie and its particular style, one would think he'd done more like it, but in fact he's ranged pretty far afield. Even Army of Darkness was something rather different, more PG-13-ish Ray Harryhausen tribute than combination of horror and slapstick comedy.
Drag Me to Hell, thankfully, is the Evil Dead 2-iest thing he's done in a long while, and a real blast to watch. He tosses Alison Lohman around like a ragdoll, heaping all the abuse that used to be handed out to Bruce Campbell. It's a fun combination of slapstick comedy and no-kidding-around horror, and it's a real treat to see Raimi back in this sandbox.
I must confess, I'm not totally proud of my behavior vis-a-vis Drag Me to Hell. I sort of cut in line in front of a few hundred people when Jason Whyte stopped me while I was following it to the end, and then, when Sam Raimi came out to introduce it, I sent a text message to my brother who won't be able to see this for a couple of months so that he knew just where I was and what I was doing. Of course, since it was about 2am EDT for him, he probably just slept through it.
Letters to the President
* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Special Screenings)
Letters to the President is somewhat difficult to review as a film because it does its job so well. It is trying to give the audience a snapshot of the relationship Iran has with its populist president, and it does so with so little pretense that I'm initially more interested in the facts than the filmmaking.
Iran's current president is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he's the highest ranking elected official in the country, after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He was born in a village of 2,000, though his father moved to Tehran where Ahmadinejad was a child. He would later become a university professor and the mayor of Tehran before being elected President in 2005. He is extremely popular with the people, both for his religious faith, his commitment to nuclear power, and his unusual accessibility. His proximity to people in public appearances would give the USA's Secret Service nightmares, and he encourages the people to write him with their problems.
The latter is the film's stated topic, and it's not hard to be impressed by the scale of the undertaking. Nine to ten million Iranians have written since his election, and an official tells us that 76% have received a response. Ahmadinejad can't do all that personally, of course, so we get looks at the bureaucracy put into place to handle it. The response is also not always positive, as a thoroughly frustrating interview between petitioner and official demonstrates.
Full review at EFC.
Garbage Dreams
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Documentary Competition)
Mai Iskander has made a fine documentary in Garbage Dreams, the type that is about people first, and does a fine job of being issue-oriented without hammering away at buzzwords like "globalization". For all that, I must admit that one of the most memorable things from the movie is a simple number: Eighty percent.
That is the amount of residential waste that the Zaballeens of Cairo are able to recycle. That's a fantastic number - most developed nations manage something in the twenties - and as might be expected, it comes through unconventional means: Though Cairo is a city of eighteen million, the largest in the Arab world or Africa, it had no official city-wide garbage collection program, instead relying on sixty thousand independent garbage collectors (the Zaballeens) who are paid a pittance for their services. Entire communities are built around garbage collection and recycling.
The largest is Mokattam, and Garbage Dreams focuses on three teenage boys and one young woman from the area: 17-year-old Adham collects garbage to support his family as the man of the house with his father in jail; 18-year-old Nabil has been working since the age of seven and has twin dreams of marrying and opening a can-recycling shop; and 16-year-old Osama is kind of a screw-up, unable to hold a job even though his father is pushing him to do something with his life other than root through other people's trash. Then there's Laila, a local social worker who tries to keep the people in her neighborhood healthy. She also finds herself fighting for the neighborhood's very survival when the city hires several European companies to handle trash collection.
Full review at EFC.
Sin Nombre
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Spotlight Premieres)
An impressive first feature, this is. Cary Fukunaga has made something that feels larger than its relatively short running time, depicting the difficult crossing across Mexico from Guatemala to the U.S., made more difficult by a gang member marked for death. Tense as can be, with moments of really shocking violence.
Women in Trouble
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Spotlight Premieres)
A thoroughly entertaining comedy, with ten women given a chance to do broad, crude comedy that somehow comes around to something vaguely heartfelt without it seeming too terribly ridiculous. Carla Gugino and Connie Britton get the meatiest roles and play well off each other, but the standout is probably Adrianne Palicki, who does great things with the dumb blonde role.
Director Sebastian Guiterrez said during the Q&A that the film was shot with a skeleton crew in something like twelve days, with the sequel (which focuses more squarely on Gugino's character) already finished with photography. I'll be looking forward to it next year; hopefully if it's nearly as much fun as this one.
Drag Me To Hell
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 March 2009 at the Austin Paramount Theater (SXSW Special Screenings)
Can you believe it's been over twenty years since Evil Dead 2? Considering how much of Sam Raimi's fame and career is built on that movie and its particular style, one would think he'd done more like it, but in fact he's ranged pretty far afield. Even Army of Darkness was something rather different, more PG-13-ish Ray Harryhausen tribute than combination of horror and slapstick comedy.
Drag Me to Hell, thankfully, is the Evil Dead 2-iest thing he's done in a long while, and a real blast to watch. He tosses Alison Lohman around like a ragdoll, heaping all the abuse that used to be handed out to Bruce Campbell. It's a fun combination of slapstick comedy and no-kidding-around horror, and it's a real treat to see Raimi back in this sandbox.
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