Independent Film Festival Boston 2013 Closing Night: In a World... plus! Twenty Feet from Stardom

Aaaand, done, sixteen days after the festival. It probably could have been a couple days earlier, but Talk Cinema's last program screening before summer break was one that had played during IFFBoston (good thing I made other choices on Sunday!), and it's kind of a sensible thing to pair with the festival's closing night program, so I'll act like it was a festival screening that just got delayed.

Of the two movies about female voices, Twenty Feet from Stardom was the better one. It's got the advantage of being able to tell several stories rather than just one, and really has its mind set on what it wants to talk about. It also doesn't hurt that the ladies in Twenty Feet are by and large creating things that the audience loves - a lot of classic songs get mentioned over the course of the film - while the voiceover folks are fighting to do something people at best tolerate.

One other thing about Twenty Feet that's not in the review, but it did help me develop a bit more of a respect/fondness for Bruce Springsteen. I've got friends who are absolutely nuts about him - when a new tour is announced, they'll spend a couple of weeks plotting out who's going to but how many tickets for which shows, and do they want to see some of the ones outside the immediate Boston area, and do they have signs ready to request "The Fever" (and that's nothing compared to when a new album drops) - but to me he's just been sort of pretty good. Still, it's neat to see him discussing these singers' history and just what a good set up backing vocals does for a song enthusiastically but knowledgeably. So often, rock & roll, like comedy, is treated as something that's basically instinctive, and it is to a point, but the guys who do it really well and who last the way Springsteen has know what they're doing, and have probably put a lot more thought into what works, artistically and commercially, than you might assume.


Well, anyway, back to the festival proper. I showed up for this closing night show pretty late, nearly 7:45pm for an 8:00pm scheduled start. Normally, that's pretty good, but it's also about when they assume the passholders who haven't yet shown aren't coming and start selling tickets to whoever was in the rush line; I wound up getting in just before that happened. Working in Burlington can stink. Sometime, I'm going to spend a couple of weeks even when I don't plan on seeing anything at the Coolidge figuring out which is the best route: Get off the Red Line at Harvard Square and take the 66 bus, or continue on to Park Street and take the Green Line's C train. Now, the 66 is such a frustrating part of the MBTA as to have inspired a belligerant parody twitter account that most people say captures the experience perfectly, but the C line is really underrated as a pain in the ass - you can easily wait twenty minutes for one at Park Street while a half-dozen B line trains go by, and while the Cleveland Circle stop-at-every-intersection-and-go nature isn't as pronounced as it is for the Boston College trolley, it's no fun. I need to solve this with science.

Sorry for the T-angent. Anyway, I did get there, was able to find a single seat front and center (where I like to be, anyway), and catch a few potato chips that were tossed into the audience to slake my "not eating until 11pm at least" hunger. I was pleased to see Bobcat Goldthwait and friends grab some seats in the front left-hand section of the theater; it seems relatively rare to me to see higher-profile film festival guests actually attending movies other than their own, but I like to make a note of the guys who wait in line and sit in the audience with us civilians; they're genuine fans. I just kind of hope that the guy directly behind me who was planning a "bad movie night" with his friends and suggested Goldthwait's movies didn't see he was there, because otherwise... Well, not cool.

As it was the last night, the traditional thanking of the sponsors and was followed by the introduction of the staff and special guest (a la opening night) and, shall we say, random distribution of prizes:



Charming lady, Lake Bell, but she really doesn't have the arm Casey Affleck does. I also must admit, I miss the days of Harmonix being a sponsor and Nancy faking that she was going to throw a deluxe Rock Band set into the audience and cause serious injury. A lot of the big-name sponsors were gone, for that matter, and as much as not seeing the same Ford and Jet Blue ads twenty times was a fair trade for not having door prizes, it's a bummer that the festival was a day shorter than it was last year. I don't think the quality of the films shown suffered - even if I gave out fewer four-star reviews this year, that's more personal taste than feeling like they were having to settle for second-tier stuff.



So, Lake Bell introduced her movie, we watched, she came back and answered questions. Having a Q&A follow a movie does odd things to the experience, as it's hard to not conflate them. If you really like the filmmaker who answers questions in a witty, informative way, it can skew what you think of the movie, and what they say about the plot that wasn't shown in the movie can get stored in your brain like it was. If, as was the case with In a World..., the judgments and reactions to the film's strengths and weaknesses can color how you think of the filmmaker as a person, which is kin of uncomfortable and, really, downright unfair.

So, as much as I'm sure Ms. Bell's a great person, the answers she gave to some questions rubbed me the wrong way a bit more than they should have. Consider: The previous night, I more or less let the discussion of music choices in Some Girl(s) go in one ear and out the other; this night, the way she explained that some songs were favorites that she associated with the themes sounded random. Unfair of me. She also talked about trying to avoid Los Angeles landmarks and not showing people using smartphones to keep the movie from being tied to a specific time and place, and I think that was kind of silly - it's a movie about people who narrate movie trailers that specifically mentions Don LaFontaine having died a few years ago - where and when else is it going to be set?

Still, I liked her; she was cheerful and enthusiastic, and had as good a laugh as anyone when the obvious question of what the heck the trailer for this movie would look like came up. It was fun hearing that she did a lot of phone voices herself - sometimes with the engineers adjusting things, sometimes with her just using different tones and accents. I kind of wish she'd done that more in the movie - heck, in more movies she does - because it's something both she and the character are good at, and that's what you want to see.

And with that, it's time to put IFFBoston to bed for another year... And start looking for apartments in Montreal for Fantasia!


In a World...

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 30 April 2013 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival Boston, digital)

Funny thing; even when trailers starting with "in a world..." supposedly happened all the time, I don't ever recall hearing it enough to snicker when it did show up. Still, the very fact that people act like it was ubiquitous makes it a good title for a comedy set in the competitive world of voice-over narration - the audience knows exactly what it's about when they hear the name. It's a shame, then, that the movie itself doesn't always seem quite so clear on what it's trying to accomplish.

While the voice most of us identify with movie previews belonged to Don LaFontaine, In a World... gives us Sam Sotto (Fred Melamed) as the clear #2 and heir to LaFontaine's throne. His daughter Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) lives in his house is sort of in the same business, working as a dialect coach since she has a fantastic ear for accents. With Sam's much-younger girlfriend Jamie (Alexandra Holden) moving in, Carol winds up crashing with her sister Dani (Michaela Watkins) and her husband Moe (Rob Corddry). She also winds up getting a couple of voice-over jobs, and may be in a position to get the most coveted job of all - a trailer for an adaptation of a hot series of young-adult novels, previously expected to go to Sam's protégé Gustav Warner (Ken Marino), where those three words will be used for the first time since LaFontaine's death.

That may seem like a small and silly thing to fixate on, but that's what makes it potentially such great material for a comedy: It practically guarantees eccentricity from its characters, puts them in odd situations, and the very fact that what they're gunning for is so seemingly trivial makes the lengths that people will go to achieve it even funnier. Writer/director/star Bell seems to get that most of the time, especially as she loads up the film with truly oddball characters. Carol "collects" accents and practically has her hair stand up on end whenever she hears a grown woman talking like a teen valley girl (especially Jamie), Gustav is bizarrely self-centered, and everyone at the recording studio where she works is full of people who would be misfits anywhere else - including and especially sweetly awkward sound engineer Louis (Demetri Martin). It's an ensemble with a lot of potential.

Full review on eFilmCritic.

Twenty Feet from Stardom

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 5 May 2013 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (Talk Cinema, digital)

I kind of wish Twenty Feet from Stardom hadn't just come out and said that the story of backup singers is the evolution of popular music over the last fifty years, from gospel-trained black voices pushing stiff WASPs out of the spotlight to hyper-layered multitrack recording creating technical perfection at the cost of spontaneity. Oh, it tracks, right down to Phil Spector being a great producer but a human turd, but I was feeling so good about having figured that out myself a few minutes earlier. And while someone who actually knows something about music may disagree with this thesis, they'd be hard-pressed not to enjoy the stories of the talented ladies (mostly) used to illustrate it.

They include Darlene Love, who as part of The Blossoms was one of the first groups of black background singers in the studios, and who has gone through seemingly every possible up and down since then. There's Dr. Mable John, now a minister, and Claudia Lennear, a sex symbol back when she performed behind Ike & Tina Turner and the Rolling Stones. Lisa Fischer and Tata Vega are tremendously talented vocalists who flirted with solo careers but may have found their niche in harmonizing. And then there's Judith Hill, who was to have her big break on Michael Jackson's "This Is It" tour and is now weighing the benefits of steady work as a back-up singer and how it could keep people from thinking of her as a solo artist.

The business of music, after all, is a capricious thing, and the movie is filled with stories of people either missing their windows for a solo career - which, especially if you're an African-American woman from a working-class background like most of the film's subjects, can be vanishingly small - or having their ambitions be, by all appearances, actively thwarted. Director Morgan Neville does well to track that with the evolution of the music business, but he also doesn't make it so specific to that one industry; the subjects frequently talk about it in pragmatic enough terms that anybody who has ever felt stuck in a dead-end job or seen what they do automated is going to understand where they're coming from.

Full review on eFilmCritic.

Talk Cinema: Lore, Renoir, and Still Mine

I didn't actually see Lore at a Talk Cinema showing - that was the plan, but then it got delayed a week due to that old-fashioned February blizzard, bumping it to the week of the sci-fi marathon. That means that there are two movies on the ten-movie season pass I didn't get to see (I forget exactly which one played while I was in London), and I'm not sure that I'll spring for it again next year. It's nice to see movies early, sure, and sometimes you get good discussion, but it's also $15+ for a 10am Sunday morning show of things that generally show up later.

And the discussion can be iffy at times, too. It starts with the comment cards - a half-hour to get one's thoughts together after the movie isn't really enough time, so you hear a lot of puffed-up superlatives when they're read the next week. Plus, folks can get stuck on the path where the host guides them.

For Renoir, we had a fellow who produces new plays most of the time, and he went on and on about how "brave" it was for the movie to consist of lengthy, static shots for most of the time. And, certainly, I agree that it was an unusual choice, but given the older art-house audience that this was likely targeting even in its native France, it wasn't really going out on any sort of limb. But we got into an anti-Hollywood mode, and talking about how good it was for a movie to be slow sort of prevented much discussion of why this particular movie benefited from that sort of pace.

Similarly, Peter Keogh - amid a few jokes about the late, lamented Boston Phoenix - made a comment about Still Mine having a disturbing subtext about being anti-government-regulation, dropping the phrase "Tea Party" (triggered, in part, from his having first seen the film during election season last fall), and the room full of good Massachusetts liberals wasn't going to let that go. I think it's a misguided observation, considering that the movie (a) certainly has no problem with Canada's universal health care, and (b) has a line from Campbell Scott's character that explains the issue perfectly - that these rules are about standards, and when enforcement loses sight of that, it's an invitation to absurd situations like the one depicted here. The funny thing is, I think this is something liberals and conservatives should be able to agree on, as the effect of these onerous rules is to push business toward the corporations that can absorb their expense.

We talked about that so much that we really didn't get much of a chance to discuss the James Cromwell character's father, who clearly casts a tall shadow and is linked to the main characters by the baseball the group found kind of problematic. Ah well, at least I was able to sort that out for the review.

One other thing I noticed about Renoir and Still Mine: They appeared to have some cheap opening credits. Admittedly, I have tended to think that pretty much all opening titles look like they were rendered on an Amiga 500 ever since digital projection at 2K started becoming the norm (and honestly, before that, when a great deal of post-production started going digital), and I was sitting in the front row for movies projected from what appears to be a Blu-ray. But these looked like placeholders until something more elaborate could be created.

Lore

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 25 March 2013 in Landmark Kendal Square #9 (first-run, DCP)

Set Lore in almost any other time and place, and it's an impressive adventure story of a certain type, with fine young actors playing kids who must make an impossible-seeming journey against incredible odds. But it's not set in some generic time period; it's set in the aftermath of World War II, with filmmaker Cate Shortland determined that we not give its title character our sympathy too readily.

See, Lore (Saskia Rosendahl) is about fifteen, and her parents (Ursina Lardi & Hans-Jochen Wagner) were active in the Nazi party - she a scientist, he a member of the SS. Soon, she is the one left in charge of her siblings: Liesel (Nele Trebs), a few years younger; Günther (André Frid) & Jürgen (Mika Seidel), twins in the mid-single-digits; and newborn Peter. Their grandmother awaits in Hamburg, but the country's infrastructure would be a mess even if the Allies weren't busy dividing it up. Thomas (Kai-Peter Malina), a young man they encounter along the way, may be able to help, but can the family trust anyone now?

The obvious thing to provide a twist here happens - Thomas does, in fact, have a Star of David stamped on his papers - but it doesn't necessarily happen in the obvious way. Thomas is neither overtly angry and Lore and her family nor some ideally kind-hearted person despite all that has happened to him. Lore learns this through glimpses, and the audience does with her, but doesn't necessarily react immediately, giving everyone involved time to mull things over, and maybe think pragmatically about what they need from each other. Shortland plays things a little ambiguous at times, especially with Thomas's age and what that would make Lore to him between being potential love interest, kid sister, or just a kid. Malina does a nice job of portraying him as both mysterious and complex.

Full review on eFilmCritic.

Renoir

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 7 April 2013 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (Talk Cinema, Blu-ray)

I'm certain that I must, at some point, learned that famed Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and noted filmmaker Jean Renoir were father and son. Somehow the information failed to stick, so re-learning that bit of information was kind of neat. That's not all the movie has to offer, happily; it's a modest but interesting look at the Renoir family from someone who straddled its boundary.

That would be Andrée "Dedée" Heuschling (Christa Theret), who arrives at the family's Riviera estate in 1916 saying that the artist's wife has suggested she model. Auguste's youngest son, Coco (Thomas Doret) says his mother is dead, but brings her to the main house anyway. She'll do, says the artist (Michel Bouquet), bidding her to come bak daily. Soon the household will grow by a member, as son Jean (Vincent Rottiers) returns home from the war, a handsome fellow not sure what he will do after.

One can tell straight off that this is a movie about a painter; the leaves on the trees form a colorful backdrop and one of my first thoughts upon seeing both Dedée and Coco was that they had the sort of reddish-orange hair that one sees on the canvas more than in life. Director Gilles Bourdos, cinematographer Mark Ping Bing Lee and the rest of the crew responsible for the look of the film reference a number of paintings by Renoir and others, and even when they're not doing so, they're making a film that is quite a pleasure to look at. If you feel that a film about an artist should represent their art, Renoir certainly has that covered.

Full review on eFilmCritic.

Still Mine (aka Still)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 21 April 2013 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (Talk Cinema, digital)

It's funny what gets to a person during this type of movie. I was doing okay through most of Still Mine (which played festivals as "Still", and may have kept that name in some places), and then I see that this elderly couple has a door frame where they recorded the growth of their kids and grandkids like my own grandparents did, and then I start to lose it. I suspect that there's a thing like that in this movie for everyone, which will make it even more effective beyond just being a fine movie on its own.

Craig Morrison (James Cromwell) is one of those wiry old farmers who may have slowed down some, but still tends to his strawberries, chickens, and the like in his mid-eighties. Though he hasn't changed much over the years, the world around him has - not just because the local market will no longer purchase his berries because of policy, but because his wife of sixty years, Irene (Geneviève Bujold) is in the early stages of dementia. He wants to build a smaller house to meet their needs, but if he thought selling strawberries involved onerous regulations, he can barely imagine modern building codes.

Still Mine is about memory and continuity, most obviously in how Irene is slipping away despite Craig's attempts to remain the independent, capable person he is. Writer/director Michael McGowan also populates the movie with more tangible symbols of these ideas, though, from that briefly-glimpsed door frame to a kitchen table that has, in its own way, recorded the Morrison family's entire life. The film starts and ends with the story of a baseball Craig owns, signed by both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, and while its purpose in the story can sometimes be unclear, it's also a solid representation of Craig's memories of his father, a figure who may be long dead but who clearly still looms large in his life. These connections may seem temporary and massless, as Irene's deterioration suggests, but that's only one side of it - lives well-lived, we see, leave impressions.

Full review on eFilmCritic.

Coming and Going: Ginger & Rosa and Upside Down

I don't know if Ginger & Rosa will actually be sliding into the same screen at Kendall Square that Upside Down currently occupies, but that's the way they're rotating things at that theater this Friday. One movie where Timothy Spall serves as the cast's secret weapon out, one in.

Kind of wish I'd managed to get to Upside Down during the weekend; it's surprisingly fun even if it's bonkers. The funny thing is, nearly everybody I've heard from seems to have pretty much that reaction - it's ridiculous, but just look at it. I wonder if it's playing in 3D anywhere; the Blu-ray appears to have a 3D version, but I don't remember ever seeing that on a poster. It would have looked pretty impressive; there were a lot of shots that even in 2D seemed to be setting up multiple clear planes.

Thing I just realized: The Talk Cinema series that included Ginger & Rosa also had The Oranges last year, which went "father takes up with best friend's daughter" rather than "father takes up with daughter's best friend". That other movie seemed to find the pairing more sympathetic, which may have something to do with the girl being some five years older.

Anyway, both pretty good movies. Worth a look, either before they leave or when they arrive.

Ginger & Rosa

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 17 March 2013 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (Talk Cinema, Blu-ray)

Sally Potter has spent her career making movies that ranged from the experimental to the eccentric and back again, but Ginger & Rosa is not one of them; it's a coming-of-age story with settings and certain details reminiscent of her own formative years. Not exactly an uncommon thing, but it's not always done this well, and certainly not always so blessed in terms of the performance by its young lead actress.

The two title characters were born at the same moment during the final days of World War II - Ginger (Elle Fanning) to former painter Natalie (Christina Hendricks) and academic Roland (Alessandro Nivola); Rosa (Alice Englert) to working-class Anoushka (Jodhi May) and a man who leaves well before 1962, when the girls are sixteen or seventeen. Ginger is becoming quite aware and frightened of the possibility of nuclear annihilation even as her parents' marriage is falling apart, while Rosa's attention is mostly focused on boys, though she'll be looking to move on to men soon enough.

The Cold War era is maybe not uniquely suited to this sort of story - I'm sure that kids who reached their teens near the start of the millennium will have apt terrorism metaphors for their tortured adolescence. It can actually seem kind of quaint for the next generation, but in a way, that's what makes paralleling that sort of real-world event work; the world does not actually end, although there's no way for a teenager to know that. The potential for an apocalypse on a personal level, at least, is never in doubt.

Full review on eFilmCritic.

Upside Down

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 March 2013 in Landmark Kendall Square #4 (first-run, DCP)

I admit, you can't honestly look at Juan Solanas's Upside Down and call the writing much other than a mess - there really isn't one thing in this movie that makes sense. But, on the other hand, I can't help but admire the fact that Solanas actually got enough people to give him money to put his elaborate, beyond-quirky fantasy on screen. Just look at this thing - it's so weird and beautiful as to be worth at least one big-screen viewing.

Adam (Jim Sturgess) and Eden (Kirsten Dunst) quite literally live on different worlds, although at their closest point these planets nearly touch, and each planet's gravity only affects its own matter. They met as kids when climbing to the top of mountains, but Adam thought Eden was killed when the border patrol caught them as teenagers. Ten years later, though, he finds out otherwise, and takes a job at Transworld Industries, whose massive skyscraper headquarters connects the two worlds, with the intent of seeing her again - with a little help from Bob (Timothy Spall), who has the cubicle on his ceiling.

I honestly tried not to be the left-brained guy who can't enjoy something because of bad science, so let me get this out of the way: That's not how gravity works! What about tidal forces? My brain hurts just thinking about how these planets rotate to have day and night without that building being shredded! And while I sort of get "inverse matter heats and burns when in contact for too long" in a metaphorical sense, does this not apply to air? We see characters drink upside-down cocktails, which is a nifty visual, until you think of what kind of choking hazard it must be, let alone the danger of one's insides catching on fire!

Thank you for putting up with that. I feel better having let it out.

Full review on eFilmCritic.

Talk Cinema: Blancanieves

I missed the last Talk Cinema screening while I was in London, but since Quartet opened today, that's just money spent rather than opportunity lost. I actually didn't get much of a chance to look forward to this one, since it wasn't announced until pretty much the day before. The description didn't even say that it was an actual silent, just that it was silent-influenced, so that was a nifty surprise.

Gerald Peary introduced, and I kind of groaned a bit when he spent a lot of time talking about The Artist both before and after the movie. Sure, it's the obvious comparison, but it seems like an easy one that doesn't really tell us anything, especially since the two films were made roughly simultaneously. It seems like there would be much more to talk about by discussing the influences, both general and specific.

Also, it's not like The Artist is the only recent silent film. I get that very few people have had a chance to see Louis - from what I gather, it's not getting a release until it can play with Bolden!, which has finished shooting but the filmmaker anticipates screwing around with editing and post-production for another six months to a year - but Call of Cthulhu exists and I've seen a fair amount of silent shorts at festivals. Heck, just last year two Chinese films used silent movie bits for flashbacks (The Bullet Vanishes and Tai Chi Zero) - there's actually enough modern silent stuff to talk about to notice patterns.

For instance, one thing I've noticed is that expository intertitles are almost non-existent in modern silents compared to those made back in the day. If you watch an old silent movie, the title cards are actually used for much more than just dialogue, or introducing a character (which does occasionally happen in the new ones). At times, those old movies can feel a little like reading a book, as the scripter expands on a character's motives, explains what's going on, or fills in things that happen off-screen. Some of this is material that sound films will use dialogue to fill in, but modern silents will try to depict it visually in one way or another - either by doing the "show a newspaper" or adding an extra scene scene or just expecting the audience to take in and process more background detail. In some ways, it resembles how modern comics differ from their "Golden Age" ancestors (including the elaborate newspaper strips that preceded original comic books) - static images with captions has given way to dynamic action, thought balloons (often serving more as asides to the reader than what the character would actually be thinking) are gone, etc. Part of it's technology and budget; you can shoot (or draw) more elaborate things because of new devices, more comfort in reproduction, and longer schedules with more resources. But it's aesthetic, as well - modern moviegoers really do expect to be shown rather than told.

Anyway, there's a starting point. Here's the review of the movie for EFC; if you've seen the movie, stick around afterward for discussion of the ending, where the movie really lost me.

Blancanieves

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 January 2013 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (Talk Cinema, digital)

Two movies based on Snow White came out in the United States last year, and that seemed a little excessive. That wasn't the extent of it, though - aside from the inevitable direct-to-video knock-offs, Blancanieves came out in Spain, and was even submitted as the country's entry in the Oscars' Foreign-Language Film category. And give it its due - as a silent, black-and-white film that imagines the characters as bullfighters, it won't be easily confused with other versions.

Once upon a time (roughly 1910), there was a great bullfighter, Antonio Villata (Daniel Giménez Cacho), who had a beautiful wife (Inma Cuesta), but their child would enter the world in tragic circumstances. As "Carmencita" (Sofia Oria) is raised by her grandmother (Ángela Molina), Antonio is seduced by his nurse Encarna (Maribel Verdú). Eventually the three are all living in the same house, and Encarna sees her now-grown stepdaughter Carmen (Macarena García) as a threat, and sends her driver and lover into the woods to dispose of her. Left for dead, she's discovered by a traveling troupe of midget bullfighters, who nurse her back to health and make her part of the act.

"Snow White" has been adapted as a feature-length film any number of times not just because it's public domain and famous and thus very appealing to cheap, risk-averse producers, but because the idea at its core - an woman who used her looks to get where she is feeling threatened by a younger, prettier girl - will probably always be something the audience will be able to hook onto. The trouble with the story is, it can tend to leave the Snow White character something of a blank, since any sign of actual ambition would serve to legitimize the villainess's fear and potentially make her too sympathetic a character. Sometimes the queen/stepmother/witch ironically makes Snow into an enemy by her actions, but that's not what happens here - Berger actually seems to go out of his way to prevent Carmen from actually doing anything besides learn bullfighting: He spends a long time on her childhood, doesn't establish a strong personality before the attempted murder, and then finds a reason for Carmen to just hang out with her new friends rather than address it.

Full review on eFilmCritic.

SPOILERS!

Blancanieves is a pretty good movie, even if it does have the Snow White problems I mentioned in the main review. I really do think they're kind of intrinsic to the concept and tough to get around - I remember being kind of frustrated with Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs even before I really started trying to work out how plots worked; I always think of Snow not doing much of anything active and the end really being pulled out of nowhere. I only saw Mirror Mirror out of last year's Snow White double feature - Tarsem Singh directing the funny one, I figured, had to be seen to be believed - and they had to work hard to get Snow active while still mostly sticking with the Disney story.

The end of Blancanieves is annoying beyond that, though. Carmen has to be given amnesia so that she doesn't do much to actually deal with Encarna, and then the traditional last act winds up hyper-compressed - Carmen starts to get snippets of memory back, Encarna hits her with the poisoned apple, dwarfs chase her to her death, then the coma and glass coffin. And then... nothing. No Prince Charming, no idea how long Carmen stays in the freak show with Rafita (I think), the handsome dwarf who loves her; no definitive resolution at all. Even a dark ending would be better than that, I think, especially since Rafita's affection was a minor enough subplot brought up late enough in the game that it's tough for the audience to feel anything but "that's kind of creepy" as he tends to her in the circus; there's just not enough to it for it to feel romantic or tragic. And while the dwarfs do chase Encarna down so that she's trampled by a bull, it is so completely off-screen that even if one doesn't argue that she could have escaped (highly unlikely), the audience still doesn't get the emotional release of seeing her done in, even if that does mean that both Encarna and Carmen & the dwarfs score a pyrrhic victory.

For that matter, the jump to the freakshow is awkward; as much as the reference to Freaks is probably well-intended, it's a new situation given very little time to establish itself, and not clear at all - several in the audience, including Peary, didn't quite catch that the person running the show was Carmen's agent, who tricked the illiterate Carmen into signing a lifetime contract. It's too fast, the illiteracy seems kind of odd itself (it seems hard to believe that neither her grandmother or father would have taught her to read in the twentieth century), and the shyster agent is a side story that the movie really doesn't need, especially since it's already got a villain in Encarna.

Basically, even the things that are resolved at the end don't feel resolved, so when the screen fades to black and the credits start rolling, it's unsatisfying, like Berger just ran out of time, and it really deflates what he'd been doing until then.

!SRELIOPS

This Week In Tickets: 14 January 2013 - 20 January 2013

No, I didn't miss a posting; I just had one of those rare weeks where I didn't see movies due to low churn at the boutique houses and uninspiring choices at the multiplex. Plus one of those colds that borders on being the flu. Can't really say you're sick, since the food stays down, but you're not going to please anyone by leaving the house. So one page in the scrapbook stays blank until you get to this:



Stubless: Blancanieves at the Coolidge on 20 January at 10am.

Still not a big week, though one which (aside from Blancanieves, which has a mark on a multi-show pass instead of a ticket) divides into two parts. First was a bit of catch-up, seeing Promised Land on 35mm before it left the Coolidge (and the area, I think) and then Beasts of the Southern Wild on its re-release so that I could have one more movie to vote on before the Chlotrudis Awards nomination meeting. After that, mainstream releases that I would have seen anyway even if they didn't need reviewing on EFC: The Last Stand was a pretty darn good return for Arnold Schwarzenegger and English-language debut for Kim Jee-woon; Mama had its good moments but also its moments where things happen mroe because they happen in horror movies rather than they make sense.

In between, I went to the Chlotrudis nominations meeting, which was weird in that every previous year I've gone, it took place in at least six inches of snow which is still coming down on a cold, gray day. Having the walk be easy and then seeing things finish up in a relatively timely fashion (even if we never did get around to whether or not sequels/continuations are considered original or adapted screenplays) was kind of nice

Here's the list of nominees we set; I'm doing okay in being qualified for voting on most categories despite not having seen The Sessions or The Perks of Being a Wallflower. My nomination for Buried Treasure was A Simple Life, and, guys, I really thought it was available to watch on Hulu, though I apparently had it mixed up with A Beautiful Life (curse you, generic names!).

Promised Land

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 January 2013 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (first-run, 35mm)

Promised Land presents itself as being about environmental and business matters: The dangers about extracting natural gas from the land via a process known as "fracking" and how casually corrupt corporate interests can run roughshod over small towns that need something to prop up their rickety economies and ways of life. And that's there, although the movie seems to carefully avoid taking any stance strong enough as to require defending. What it's really about is Matt Damon being charming.

It's not quite a vanity project for co-writer/producer/star Damon (who, apparently, was also slated to direct at one point, but a busy schedule passed that job to Gus Van Sant, who could probably use something commercial like this to fund some slow, artsy experiments) as much as it is him knowing his strengths and playing to them. And Damon is good at playing this kind of smart guy who's basically good not far under the surface; it's easy to like his Steve Butler and hope for his eventual awakening more than his defeat.

The rest of the cast is like that, too - Frances McDormand, John Krasinski, Rosemarie DeWitt, Titus Welliver, and Hal Holbrook all play folks the audience can understand and sympathize with even when they don't agree. And Gus Van Sant works with that nicely, with cinematographer Linus Sandgren catching the beauty of rural America without over-romanticizing it. Still, all that niceness makes the movie rather toothless, and what cleverness it displays in explaining why Krasinski's activist seems absurdly oversimplified doesn't make up for it. And the end is just too soft - not only does it reduce the protagonist's crisis of conscience to "will this girl like me?", but it pushes the very real questions it raises about how much of a future rural America has right out of the audience's mind, even though they should be genuinely troubling.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 18 January 2013 in Landmark Kendall Square #4 (awards re-issue, 2K digital)

During the Chlotrudis meeting (and in various other things I've read), there was some discussion about nominating Quvenzhané Wallis for Best Actress awards - does a fourth-grader really have the skill to act, to consciously make decisions about how to express a character's inner feelings, or is it more a matter of casting someone who matches the role, directing them closely, and then getting the good stuff in the editing room? Having watched Beasts of the Southern Wild, I suspect the latter is the case, but as I said in the meeting, the category is actually for "Best Performance by an Actor/Actress in a Leading Role", and we're awarding the end result, not the means by which the performer got there.

Wallis does, for the most part, get there, there's a very enjoyable toughness to Hushpuppy that complements her childish simplicity of thought well. Even when we're seeing Hushpuppy be self-reliant or independent, it feels like a kid with the capabilities of a kid, not someone who is mature, let alone wise, beyond her years. It makes a nice complement to Dwight Henry as her physically and emotionally unstable father Wink. Wink lashes where Hushpuppy retreats, and Henry does a pretty great job of making him as big and complete a mess as the post-flooding delta without ever seeming to play for the balconies.

Director Benh Zeitlin and the other filmmakers do pretty spiffy things with that environment, too. It's shot beautifully, as you may have heard, and the practical but effective effects used in conjuring Hushpuppy's imagined aurochs are nice too, but it's the way the part of Louisiana that the characters call "The Bathtub" is presented as a place with people in it that most impressed me. In last week's post, I mentioned not warming to Blues for Willadean in part because it seemed to look down on its characters in a way beyond them being flawed human beings, but Beasts avoids that. Certainly, the filmmakers don't always show their characters in the best light, but they do a very good job of showing the characters' world, warts and all, without ever seeming to condescend.

Blancanieves

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 January 2013 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (Talk Cinema, digital)

This one will get a little more detail in a couple of days when I write up a full review, but my main reaction was that writer/director/producer Pablo Berger had a nifty idea for a movie to do in silent style, but really didn't have enough material for a feature. That seems an odd thing to say when there have been a whole bunch of other Snow White films made (including two others released last year), but most seem to struggle to give Snow any sort of standing as the protagonist, and that's what happens here - Berger actually seems to go out of his way to prevent Carmencita from actually doing anything.

There's other fun to be had - Maribel Verdú is a sexy, funny, villainous Wicked Stepmother, and I sort of love that at least one of the dwarfs is more than just part of an assemblage of sidekicks. Kiko de la Rica's cinematography is pretty nice, even if (like a number of recent silents) it does feel more modern than pastiche. Alfonso de Vilallonga's score is terrific, a nice blend of traditional bullfighting fanfares, flamenco, and orchestral silent scoring that does an excellent job of holding the film together.

At least until the end, when... Man, I don't know what Berger was trying to get at. I'm not saying you have to go for the neat, happy Disney ending, but you need some kind of resolution. This thing just stops, and I honestly can't see how the rest of the movie could be said to be leading to that.

Full review at EFC.

Waiting for Lightning

This edition of Talk Cinema was a little different, in that instead of the typical post-film discussion, we had a Q&A. Bring on the horrible photography!



That's Waiting for Lightning writer Bret Anthony Johnston & Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips, who I think is the first out-of-town critic I can remember hosting one of these sessions. It was a fortuitous but somewhat ad-hoc situation, too - until just a day or two before the screening, it was Silver Linings Playbook scheduled for this slot until, well, it was no longer a preview, opening at Boston Common on Friday. It worked out, because Johnston happens to teach creative writing at Harvard and was able to join us for a Q&A rather than go skateboard himself that morning.

The position of a writer on a documentary is interesting; he mentioned that he wrote a profile of the film's subject - skateboarder Danny Way - for a magazine some years earlier, and described the job in this case as coming in after photography was mostly done in order to help shape the thing by taking the hundreds of hours of interview transcripts and piecing it together to tell a story. That makes sense, although that would be a completely backwards way to make a fictional film.

One point he returned to a couple of times was that Way is apparently one of the most articulate people on the subject of pain he's ever spoken to. At first I thought he was talking about emotional pain, but he actually meant literal, physical pain. It's kind of easy to nod half-seriously about that, seeing some of the falls he takes on a skateboard in this movie, but Johnston described him as being able to converse like a doctor on that subject despite only getting through his freshman year of high school and otherwise speaking like a dropout. And that's kind of interesting, since it implies not just familiarity, but an instinctive understanding of a specialized subject. It's probably a big part of why he's been able to rise to the top of his field and innovate there; being able to recognize what one's body is capable of handling has probably kept him from being scared off or Darwin-ing himself out of the game.

Waiting for Lightning

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 November 2012 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (Talk Cinema, digital)

Most extreme sports movies sell spectacle; if one has been booked for a night or two at a local theater before hitting the shelves at the local ski/surf/skate shop, you can usually bet on quality photography of impressive feats in nice locations. Waiting for Lightning is different; although it's got a heck of a stunt at its center, it is primarily a biography of the man who attempted it and what got him there.

That man is Danny Way, a skateboarding prodigy from Vista, CA, who excelled at an unusually young age, dropping out of school and turning pro when he was fifteen. While he mastered street skating after the skate parks where he grew up in started closing down, those were clearly his first love, and he recreated those experiences on a grand scale with "Megaramp". As the movie opens in 2005, he's planning a record-setting Megaramp stunt - jumping the Great Wall of China.

Even a large-scale stunt like the China jump is over relatively quickly, so director Jacob Rosenberg and writer Bret Anthony Johnston spend some time building up to it. Some of that time is spent on the literal building, and it might have been interesting to take a somewhat closer look at that if the footage were available; what we see of American designers working with a Chinese crew on a structure that must be built quickly but within precise specifications would be the basis of a nifty "how things work" documentary. This might especially be the case for non-skaters who only see the fearlessness involved as opposed to the physics of the ramp and the skill involved.

Full review at EFC.

Preview series: Headshot and The Other Son

Well, usually CineCaché is a preview series, but while Headshot was a good match for it, that film's release window came and went ridiculously fast: From what I can tell, it had a NYC/LA theatrical release on 28 September and was out on video on 2 October. Not much time for a preview or booking there, which is kind of disappointing; it's a good movie and one where, when I missed it at Fantasia, I consoled myself that it was almost certain to get a release in Boston anyway. clearly, not the case.

Both it and The Other Son fall into the same category: Pretty good movies that won't knock your socks off but do the job they set out to do well enough to be worth a recommendation. The biggest issue with them is that my reaction (and the in-theater discussion) afterwards dwelt quite a bit on what they didn't do.

When writing, I try not to do that; it's a pretty strong rule with me that you should review the movie you see, not the one you wanted to see or thought you were going to see. It's not fair and doesn't tell the reader anything really useful. I couldn't help doing it for Headshot, though: I wanted that upside-down action scene, especially since the next person who happens upon the idea of having someone's vision inverted like this (which I think I once read is a very rare but not unheard of thing - though I think the context was more about how the brain is generally able to rewire itself to flip the image back in most cases) is likely not going to be as talented as Pen-Ek Ratanaruang and probably won't have a cinematographer up to the challenge, either; it was a wasted opportunity.

Similarly, there was a lot of talk after The Other Son about how it apparently was originally planned to have a different ending (SPOILERS! - probably a bomb going off; I half-guess that it would have been at older brother Bilal's hands - !SRELIOPS), and much of the talk was about this hypothetical darker ending versus the oen the movie had.

I seldom speak much in these conversations (preferring to let my thoughts ferment for a few days before writing them down, apparently), but... Who cares? For that other ending to be satisfying or fitting, the movie's content would likely have had to change throughout, enough to make it a very different movie. That might have been a better movie, or a worse one, but nobody was making an argument that this particular story was heading in a dark direction and thus the finale was a cop-out. It just seemed like a frustratingly faux-sophisticated assumption that a generally positive resolution is a "fairy tale" ending, and the moer negative one is "realistic".

That's a heck of a sad way to look at the world, I think, but even if it weren't... I figure it's one thing to say that an ending feels like a break from the rest of the film's momentum and that that's a flaw, and quite another to wish it was some other specific thing. One's looking at something concrete, the other is comparing it to something that only exists in your head.

Headshot

* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 October 2012 in the Brattle Theatre (CineCaché, Blu-ray)

Headshot has a nifty enough visual gimmick at its center that one has to wonder why the filmmakers don't lean on it a bit more. Sure, even without the main character's unique visual impairment, this would be a quite enjoyable thriller, but it's got the chance to be quite the memorable one and only seizes that opportunity intermittently.

A few years ago, Tul (Nopporn Chaiyanam) was a rising star on the Bangkok police force; intelligent, fearless, and above reproach. As the film opens, though, he's a vigilante; he and partner Torpong (Apisit Opasaimlikit, aka rapper "JoeyBoy") gun down those that the law can't touch at the direction of the mysterious Dr. Suang (Krerkkiat Punpiputt). The last mission leaves him with a bullet in his head, and he wakes from a three-month coma with his vision inverted (up is down and vice versa). Always a reluctant killer, he soon finds this is the sort of business few retire from, winding up on the run with Rin (Sirin Horwang), the hostage he takes while fleeing for the country.

Screenwriter/director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang made a splash in boutique houses with Last Life in the Universe, a gorgeous picture that takes a simple-sounding crime story and creates something grander, and everything he's done since has been compared to that, fairly or unfairly. Headshot stays much closer to its pulp roots; dishing out bounteous servings of sex, violence, and betrayal without particularly looking to transcend the genre. Sure, Ratanaruang (via Tul) may wax somewhat philosophical toward the end, but that's not completely out of character for a hard-boiled crime story. Still, it's more likely to delight the audience on the basis of suddenly realizing what was going on in the background of a specific earlier scene than what it has to say about the world at large.

Full review at EFC.

Le fils de l'Autre (aka The Other Son)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 21 October 2012 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (Talk Cinema, 35mm)

My half-a-lifetime-ago high school French tells me that the title of this movie doesn't quite translate to "The Other Son", but to "The Son of the Other", and that does turn out to be a fairly important distinction. As a simple switched-at-birth story, The Other Son is all right, but it's the matters of cultural identity that make for interesting questions.

Tel Aviv resident Joseph Silberg (Jules Sitruk) is about to turn eighteen and start his military service, but the physical turns up something odd - his blood type is A-negative while both mother Orith (Emmanuelle Devos) and father Alon (Pascal Elbé) are A-positive, a genetic impossibility. It turns out that on the night Jo was born, the hospital in Haifa was locked down against a potential Scud attack, and in the confusion the Silbergs' baby was switched with that of Leila and Said Al-Bezaaz (Areen Omari and Khalifa Natour), a Palesinian couple now living in the West Bank. Though the families initially intend to keep this secret from Jo and Yacine (Mehdi Dehbi), Joseph's sudden ineligibility for military service demands an explanation.

This sort of mix-up affects a lot of people, and the somewhat circuitous path co-writer and director Lorraine Levy takes to show this is perhaps kind of unusual: The film starts out focused on Jo, then spends a fair amount of time with his parents before introducing the Al-Bezaazes and then takes a little bit longer before finally bringing Yacine home from school in Paris. Doing it this way does tend to establish the Silbergs' perspective (and by extension, that of Israel) as the default, but does also let the audience get to know the entire cast in small enough groups that the other side doesn't feel sold short. And while the shifts in perspective during the first act are noticeable, it doesn't drag out to the point where Yacine seems to be held back.

Full review at EFC.

Coming Soon (or Now Playing): Preview screenings of The Oranges and Keep the Lights On

Ah, fall, when the film preview programs start. Both Talk Cinema and CineCaché (in its previous incarnation as the "Sunday Eye-Opener") used to run at the same time, and they operate in a similar manner - introduction, movie that will open soon in the boutique houses, discussion. Talk Cinema goes with higher-profile films and the discussion tends to be more moderated (depending on which local critic is on stage, it can be more about his/her opinions than the audience going back and forth); CineCaché often digs a little deeper and has a much more informal interaction.

The first Talk Cinema and second CineCaché of the season (I missed the first a couple weeks ago) were both kind of middling experiences. The movies themselves were both pretty close to average in one direction or another, where you can't exactly call them bad or point out crippling mistakes, but which are fairly forgettable. Believe it or not, boutique films can be mediocrities despite the cultivated image as something the smart folks appreciate and the masses hate, and that's the case with both The Oranges and Keep the Lights On; some good work but little spark.

The post-film discussions were a little muted, too. I didn't get any Horrible Photography, but director Ira Sachs was present, and I don't know about you, but that makes me a bit uncomfortable when the movie isn't well-above average. The director who realizes and admits that his movie isn't all he wants it to be is rare (for instance, Michael Biehn admitting The Victim's failings at Fantasia this year), so while you can get some insight into the inspiration and process, it puts a real chill on "I kind of thought the movie was boring".

In some ways, the Talk Cinema discussion was just as weird; the guy leading the discussion spent a lot of time talking about how he spent a lot of the movie's first half confused and weirded out over who was which character's kid, and a few members of the audience agreed. The argument appeared to be that Alia Shawkat is more likely to be the daughter of Oliver Platt and Alison Janney than Hugh Laurie and Catherine Keener, and I'm not sure I buy that - I think if Shawkat was placed next to Keener as much as Laurie, it's not such a big deal - but even aside from that, this is a movie with the most definitive narration you can imagine at the beginning. Were you guys just not paying attention or what?

Anyway, kind of a weird couple of screenings. The Oranges opened at Kendall Square today, and Keep the Lights On opens there next week; the next CineCaché is Headshot on the 15th (I'm excited and hoping for 35mm because I missed it at Fantasia and Thai films always look fantastic), and the next Talk Cinema on the 21st has not yet been named.

The Oranges

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 30 September 2012 in Coolidge Corner #2 (Talk Cinema, 35mm)

The Oranges isn't bad as "stripping the sheen from suburbia" movies go. It's just kind of lazy, apparently satisfied enough with the number of jokes that get a chuckle to let a talented cast coast as things amble on toward a soft ending. Those who dislike it will probably disdain it for its premise, while most will likely just forget it quickly enough.

After all, the characters at the center seem standard enough in two families that live across the street from each other in West Orange, New Jersey (or is it East Orange? doesn't matter). David Walling (Hugh Laurie) and Terry Ostroff (Oliver Platt) are best friends, and have been for a long time; David's wife Paige (Catherine Keener) and Terry's wife Carol (Alison Janney) are close as well. Daughters Vanessa (Alia Shawkat) and Nine (Leighton Meester) were too, until high school. Nina has been living on the west coast for a while, but a bad breakup sends her home for Thanksgiving, and her mother Carol is eager to set her up with Toby Walling (Adam Brody). And while Toby's nice and all, it's his father that winds up connecting with Nina.

Give a lot of credit to Hugh Laurie and Leighton Meester - this is a particularly discomfiting May-December romance, and it would be easy for these two characters to come off as nothing but selfish or oblivious to others' feelings. They are, of course, but Laurie and Meester also play the characters with enough overlapping areas of charm and self-awareness that the audience can believe that this guy and that girl are going to see something in each other rather than it being a cynical matter of the universe throwing a pretty blonde half his age at a guy whose marriage is on the rocks. Hugh Laurie, especially, manages to takes the moments meant to show that David is old and smart enough to know better and still come out not looking like an ogre.

Full review at EFC.

Keep the Lights On

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 1 October 2012 in the Brattle Theatre (CineCaché, video)

Keep the Lights On is the sort of semi-autobiographical movie that just goes to show that one's real-life drama, even if translated to the screen without a hitch, is not necessarily compelling for others. Director Ira Sachs goes for honesty here, and does well by it, but perhaps could have added something else to the mix.

The Sachs surrogate is Erik Rothman (Thure Lindhardt), a documentary filmmaker originally from Denmark but living and working in Manhattan. As the film starts, it's 1998, and a lonely Erik meets Paul Lucy (Zachary Booth) on a phone sex line. Erik is lonely despite being close with his sister Karen (Paprika Steen) and collaborator Claire (Julianne Nicholsonn), so he and Paul are soon together, but Paul's issues with secrecy and addiction will put a strain on the relationship.

Not enough of a strain to actually end it, though, though so Erik and the audience are in for ten years of ups and downs, and if you've ever had a friend who was in an extended bad relationship, this is kind of like that. It's not always in a crisis, but the problems aren't improving, so it just runs in a loop that may be a sort of agony for the ones involved but is mostly frustrating for those on the outside looking in. That's where Keep the Lights On spends most of its time - Paul's an addict, Erik's immature, and periodic two year jumps don't show much in the way of change.

Full review at EFC.

Talk Cinema: 2 Days in New York

Just in case anybody from Magnolia is reading this and wants to get on me, eFilmCritic, or Independent Film Festival Boston - I'm not breaking the embargo imposed on the IFFBoston screening, because I wasn't there (I saw Think of Me instead) and didn't go to this screening to try and exploit some sort of loophole (I bought tickets for the entire Talk Cinema series last year). Besides, eFilmCritic has an international audience and this has already come out in the UK.

I mean, I'll take it down if you insist because I don't want of those entities to deal with any crap, but can we just take a moment to pause and think about the absurdity of embargoing film festival screenings, especially since every one with filmmakers present includes an exhortation to get the word out? That's basically an implicit amendment to what the guests are saying: "If you liked the movie, please vote for it on IMDB, tweet/Facebook/blog about it -- except you guys who people might listen to; you've got to wait!"


Anyway, now that that's out of the way, this was the last screening in the Talk Cinema series, which turned out pretty good. I likely would have seen most of the ones I got to anyway, and I regret missing the one I did for misreading the calendar. I'll probably do it again next year, although it is a bit of cash for movies that will likely be getting a local release soon enough. The feedback portion can be a mixed bag; the portion that a critic has prepared beforehand is usually pretty good, but I'm a bit skeptical about what we all say immediately after the movie. I need a bit of mulling-over time to really formulate my thoughts, which sometimes only really solidify as I'm writing (and aren't you glad that you mostly just see the result, rather than "I think A, B, and C... oh, wait, C totally changes A, select, delete, new words, control-end, blah-blah backspace backspace backspace..."?), so I don't contribute much.

The conversation at this one was a little like that, a lot of half-formed thoughts. There's a bit of a theme of how liberals can stereotype just as much as the conservatives who are often painted as racists - hence the way Marion's family acts kind of crassly around Mingus - but that sort of petered out, and it took me until I was actually writing the review to connect it less with politics than how these French people view America, kind of a counterpoint to how 2 Days in Paris had fun dashing American preconceptions of France.

I don't recall how many people in the room had seen 2 Days in Paris at all, for that matter; I'm guessing not that many, because the first movie barely came up in the discussion. In fact--

(SPOILERS!) when discussing the matter of who had purchased Marion's soul at auction, the discussion was mostly about what people thought of Vincent Gallo outside the movie. That's fair; it's all of those things that make his unbilled cameo very funny (although maybe kind of inside/obscure, as Marion actually has to say "you're Vincent Gallo" before things start to click), but saying "I hate Vincent Gallo so I hated this part" is kind of frustrating; it's such an over-the-top parody that it should be funny for exactly the reasons you hate him. Still, as much as I liked that gag, I was pretty much expecting it to be Adam Goldberg's character from the previous movie. Jack has sort of been hanging over things a little, much like Marie Pillet's absence has, and while I don't think the story really needed an appearance by the guy, it's a place I could see the movie going.

Or maybe a lot of other people had the same thought, and didn't raise their hands for the same reason I didn't.(!SRELIOPS)

Still, pretty good movie, and while I'm glad I saw Think of Me at IFFBoston - I've got my doubts as to that getting distribution - I do rather wish I'd been able to see Julie Delpy introduce/answer questions in person. (Haven't had time to watch this yet, unfortunately.)

2 Days in New York

* * * (out of four)
Seen 6 May 2012 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (Talk Cinema, 35mm)

Sequels to independent films that didn't really break out are kind of odd things; the audience is as much those who heard the first movie was pretty good as the people who loved it, so even more than with studio productions, they've got to be accessible and familiar, though without actually repeating anything. 2 Days in New York manages this pretty well; it amuses whether you've taken the previous trip to Paris or not.

When we last saw Marion (Julie Delpy), she and her boyfriend Jack were visiting her family in Paris. Now they have a son but are no longer together; Marion and Lulu (Owen Shipman) instead share an apartment in New York City with new boyfriend Mingu (Chris Rock) and his daughter Willow (Talen Riley). Marion is having her first gallery show of her photography tomorrow (where, as a conceptual piece, she will auction off her soul), and has invited her father Jeannot (Julie's own father Albert Delpy) and sister Rose (Alexia Landeau) - who brings a boyfriend, Manu (Alex Nahon), who had been with Marion years ago.

While both 2 Days movies are rooted in the same thing - the hidden tensions between Marion and her boyfriend being brought to the surface and exacerbated by her crazy, crude family, at first glance New York seemed a bit less clever and subversive than Paris, which gleefully demolished the romantic mystique of Paris one horribly racist cab driver at a time - an ambition this movie seemingly does not share. Then it dawned on me that I'm an American, and thus wasn't looking at things from Rose's and Manu's point of view, which has them discovering that New York, Americans in general, and black Americans in particular, are not exactly the anarchic rebels they had imagined. It's not quite the same - Rose & Manu are such broadly-sketched characters that I somewhat doubt that French audiences saw them as surrogates (though, to be fair, Adam Goldberg's Jack was pretty weird, too).

Full review at EFC.

Traumatized Children: Monsieur Lazhar and Intruders

A day mostly spent at the Boston Underground Film Festival didn't figure to be a day when I saw good work from a bunch of young actors. But, go figure, I liked the kids in both of these movies, and the little girl in Some Guy Who Kills People, and the boy in Klovn. It wound up becoming the theme for the day, albeit not exactly a pleasant one. (No kids in Gandu, which is probably for the best)

I liked both of the non-BUFF movies quite a bit, and I hope that both do well - though if you want to see Intruders, you'd better do it tonight (Thursday); it's apparently one week and done on one screen in Boston. Monsieur Lazhar is at least a couple of weeks off, or so it seems. And while both are mainly focused on the adults, I don't think either would be nearly as good if the child actors weren't so strong.

It would be hard to imagine two reactions to a movie more opposite than the ones seen here - the audience at the Coolidge loved Monsieur Lazhar, and both they and Boston Globe critic Ty Burr (leading the conversation) seemed genuinely enthused. The audience was, at best, indifferent to Intruders, with one guy walking out about halfway through, quickly followed by a couple of others once they apparently realized this was an option (and yelling "this movie sucks!" as they left). Happily, the movie got pretty good almost right away, but it didn't really seem to draw the audience in; it was kind of willing to let the audience examine it rather than get sucked in.

Both, though, have interesting takes on (SPOILERS!) kids dealing with something traumatic. In Monsieur Lazhar, the horror is completely human and plainly shown - a teacher hanging herself in the classroom, to be found by her students - and Lazhar and his students must deal with it as-is, with him eloquently stating why it's so terrible toward the end. Intruders, in a nifty final-act flashback, turns out to have become a horror movie because Juan could not confront the thing that scared him directly; the monster literally grows from his own fear, and he winds up spreading it to his own daughter before acknowledging it for what it is. (!SRELIOPS)

It's an interesting comparison, I think. Monsieur Lazhar and Intruders are both fairly low-key unusual examples of their respective genres - teacher movies usually have a bit more bombast and inspirational rallying, while few horror movies are quite so willing to unambiguously deconstruct their monsters without being self-referential. I suspect Lazhar will be justly praised for this while Intruders will likely be unjustly forgotten, which is too bad - while Monsieur Lazhar is something special and Intruders is mostly just pretty good, both treat their audience with a very pleasant respect.

Monsieur Lazhar

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 1 April 2012 in the Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (Talk Cinema, digital)

Monsieur Lazhar, Canada/Quebec's nominee for best foreign language feature at the recent Oscars, is a quite remarkable piece of work, and all the more so for how quietly and efficiently it goes about its business. It is amazingly low-key for a movie that opens on a moment of genuine horror and could easily become schmaltzy and simple, but no less powerful for it.

At an average-looking primary school in Montreal, a popular teacher has just died in the worst possible way, and Mme. Vaillancourt (Danielle Proulx), the principal, is having some difficulty finding a long-term replacement when Bachir Lazhar walks into her office and volunteers his services. The middle-aged Algerian immigrant soon finds that the classroom is different in Quebec than back home, and finds himself especially concerned with two students who are most directly affected by their teacher's death than others: Alice (Sophie Nélisse), a bright girl whose airline-pilot mother (Evelyne de la Chenelière) is frequently absent, and her best friend Simon (Émilien Néron) - or, at least, the 11-year-olds were best friends before. And even as he becomes closer with his colleagues, they don't realize that his immigration status is not quite as settled as he let on.

One amazing thing about Monsieur Lazhar is how instantly we know the title character. The camera pans from Proulx to Fellag and the audience likes him immediately; even before he says a word, his body language is striking the right balance of relaxed self-confidence and old-world formality. When he speaks, it is with the propriety of a man who understands what sort of responsibility he has taken on but with the humanity of a person with great capacity for cheer and joy. There are several related themes to this movie, but the one most embodied in Fellag's performance is how there are, amid the terrible things that happen in the world, new things to delight in, and you survive the former by making room for the latter. Bachir is so good at it that it should almost be surprising when something like real despair comes, but Fellag has shown just enough hints of what the character has been through that the audience finds itself admiring his quiet strength.


Full review at EFC.

Intruders

* * * (out of four)
Seen 1 April 2012 in AMC Boston Common #15 (first-run, DLP)

It's hard too believe that Intruders is just Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's third feature film; the past decade-plus has been pretty good for Spanish genre filmmakers whether working in their native tongue or English, and Fresnadillo's 2001 film Intacto was creative and atmospheric. And yet, since then he's only directed 28 Weeks Later before this Spanish/English hybrid. It's puzzling, because he makes good, creepy movies, even if his latest takes a while to get going.

Although their parents dutifully inform them that there are no such things as monsters, two children - Juan (Izán Corchero) in Madrid and Mia (Ella Purnell) in the London suburbs - are about to learn different. A wandering cat leads each of them to encounters with "Hollowface", a formless creature that attempts to steal the faces of children. While Juan's mother Luisa (Pilar López de Ayala) turns to handsome young priest Father Antonio (Daniel Brühl) for help, Mia's working-class father John (Clive Owen) tries to take matters into his own hands, even as her mother Susanna (Carice van Houten) finds herself terrified.

Fresnadillo doesn't mind taking his time to set a movie up; even a sequel like 28 Weeks Later gives the audience a little time to let its concept sink in. That's a double-edged sword here; while the deliberate opening gives the film plenty of time to build atmosphere, introduce storytelling as an important factor in how Hollowface takes shape and becomes a threat, and establish strong parent-child relationships, the split between England and Spain means that everything is, to a certain extent, being done twice, and that does tend to make things seem slower than they actually are. Fresnadillo and screenwriters Nicolás Casariego & Jaime Marquesl also introduce a (literal) mystery box very early on but seem to ignore it for far too long, perhaps because there just aren't enough layers of mystery to it to peel them away slowly.

Full review at EFC.

Talk Cinema: We Have a Pope

Usually, the roughly-monthly Talk Cinema series is hosted by a local film critic; this time around, it was hosted by the man who runs the program (which also occurs in other cities and puts together travel packages to film festivals), and... Well, it was a bit of a different experience. He'd seen Habemus Papam at Cannes and seemed to have really fallen for it despite the fact that his fellow critics didn't seem to love it. It seems to have made him determined and defensive on the subject, with the post-film discussion not quite becoming a lecture, but very much shaped by his opinion all the same. It's one I wasn't quite able to share; as I say in the review, it has real, massive problems of execution despite a premise with great possibility.

(Of course, the Q&A and latter half of the movie also had the accidental soundtrack of the Lord of the Rings marathon going on downstairs as part of the Viggo Mortensen tribute. I kind of feel sorry for the people who were seeing silent movie The Artist or frequently-still movie The Secret World of Arrietty later!)

As I say in the review, it's a shame. I'm not Catholic - far from it, I'm so far from religious that I tend to describe it as being superstitious - but as the movie starts, I did kind of find myself fascinated by the dynamic of organized religion. I can sort of get believing in God, but how that translates into giving a small group of old men in funny hats (and how ridiculous is it in the twenty-first century that the leadership is still all male?) such tremendous power and influence with any sort of transparency or checks on their power?

It's strange to me, but still intriguing, enough so that I wish this movie was able to skewer the whole situation and process much more effectively.

We Have a Pope (Habemus Papam)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 4 March 2012 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (Talk Cinema, 35mm)

While many films lack even one original, interesting idea, Habemus Papam has at least two at its heart. Quite possibly three, and maybe even four if you're feeling very generous. Nanni Moretti gets fairly far by sharing his curiosity about the papal election process and what might happen if it hit a snag with the audience; he just seems to wind up adrift when it comes time to make a real story out of it.

The process of the Catholic Church selecting a new pope is shrouded in mystery; the college of cardinals not only sequesters themselves, but burns all records of their voting and all notes kept during the deliberations. The faithful (and press) massed outside the Vatican have an idea of who is likely to be chosen, and very few expect it to be Cardinal Melville (Michel Piccoli), who has more humility than ambition. It is him, though, and just as the smoke changes color and "habemus papam" is announced from the traditional balcony, the new leader has a panic attack and refuses to address his flock. The church finds itself at an impasse, with the layman administrator (Jerzy Stuhr) bringing in a noted professor of psychiatry (Nanni Moretti) before trying more desperate measures.

To give it its due, it starts out with the right actor in the right part - Michel Piccoli is the perfect man to play Father Melville. At first, he certainly looks like just another old man in a room full of old men, but a closer look shows an almost youthfully open heart and lack of guile. Melville must be utterly deserving but also terrified at the responsibility he's been entrusted with. Piccoli is able to sell the cardinal as somebody that anyone can approach and trust but also seemingly out of place in every situation he's placed into. That paradox is at the heart of the character and the movie - the things that make Melville the person one would want as Pope also make him terrified of the job - and Piccoli embodies the role wonderfully.

Full review at EFC.

Previews: The Salt of Life and We Need to Talk About Kevin

Super Bowl Sunday for me started and ended with previews - We Need to Talk About Kevin has opened in some places, but not Boston, while The Salt of Life is apparently another month away from even limited release.

Both of them have their premises pretty much out there for anyone looking, although I tried to avoid them. In Kevin's case, it's kind of silly, especially since one of the main points in my review is that director Lynn Ramsay makes a concerted effort to avoid things that frame it as a suspense picture. But for Salt... Well, I just don't like the description that's being used for it, which focuses on Gianni being "invisible to women". That's there, to an extent, andin some ways I think Di Gregorio tried to make the movie about that, but, well...

Gianni e le donne (The Salt of Life)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 5 February 2012 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (Talk Cinema, 35mm)

The Salt of Life is the title given to this movie for it's American release; the actual title translates to "Gianni and the Women", which is kind of literal but less pretentious, which might have been preferable. "The Salt of Life" implies that some sort of wisdom or philosophy will be imparted, but in reality, the audience must settle for a few decent anecdotes.

Gianni (Ginni Di Gregorio) is about sixty, and having taken early retirement ten years ago, is relatively free to spend his days in Rome doing not much of anything. Often, this means tending to his spendthrift mother (Valeria De Franciscis). He and his wife (Elisabetta Piccolomini) sleep in separate beds, and though his daughter Teresa (Teresa Di Gregorio) still lives at home, he spends more time with her boyfriend Michi (Michelangelo Ciminale). After his friend and lawyer Alfonso (Alfonso Santagata) gets a look at Cristina (Kristina Cepraga), the pretty nurse Gianni's mother overpays and underutilizes, he tells Gianni that he really should be getting some of that on the side - even that old guy who hangs out at the café in a tracksuit has a mistress! - but truth be told, it barely occurs to Gianni to do more with his sexy and potentially-receptive neighbor Aylin (Aylin Prandi) than offer to walk her dog.

That, it seems, is Gianni's problem in a nutshell - he has no ambition whatsoever. Set aside the questionable aspects of married men looking for younger lovers; it's apparently part of the Italian culture and because guys like Gianni and Alfonso trying to score mistresses could be a pretty funny movie. Gianni's efforts in that direction are half-hearted, though, and while that could also be the basis of a good movie ("man discovers age and maturity suit him"), he's got to do something. Or even do nothing, if the apathy said something about him. Instead, he just sort of floats along, until co-writer/director/star Gianni Di Gregorio tries to show some sort of frustration at women ignoring him or taking him for granted at the end, but by that point such emotions seem out of character.

Full review at EFC.

We Need to Talk About Kevin

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 5 February 2012 at the Harvard Film Archive (Lynn Ramsay, 35mm)

At no point during We Need to Talk About Kevin are the words of the title actually spoken, but it's not like it would have made a difference if they were. There's just nothing you can do about some situations - they play out in horrifying slow motion, and even when the endgame seems inevitable, most people have a hard time actually believing it. It's terrible, but in the skilled hands of director Lynn Ramsay and star Tilda Swinton, also engrossing.

Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton) was once a happy and successful travel writer/editor, but that was before Kevin. Now, in the wake of what her teen-age son (Ezra Miller) has done, she's a pariah in her small Connecticut town, doing filing at a storefront travel agency and hoping that having red paint thrown at her house is as bad as her day gets. What makes it worse is that this didn't entirely come out of the blue for Eva; Kevin has been a monster from the start, but has had his father Franklin (John C. Reilly) snowed, manipulating him practically since birth, only showing his true face to Eva. Inevitably, their opposing views of their son will make their marriage a slow-motion train wreck, one more casualty of Kevin.

Or is it in fact more complicated? Almost the entire film is seen from Eva's perspective, and while there is nothing that particularly hints that she is an unreliable narrator who changes details to make herself look less culpable (or more so, depending on her mood), what Ramsay shows us is designed to get the audience thinking in a way similar to Eva. Sure, some kids may just be born bad, but does that come from the same genes as give Eva her own short temper, and does that mean the townspeople are right to treat her like she's the monster? As psychotically difficult a child as Kevin was, and how he occasionally manipulated Eva into feeling direct guilt for specific actions, she does some things that a parent clearly shouldn't - if she'd done better, would things have been different? It's impossible to know, and Ramsay makes sure it can't be otherwise: She and co-writer Rory Kinnear (working from Lionel Shriver's novel) draw few lines between particular events in Kevin's childhood and the young man he becomes, with the most obvious being so far-fetched that it's as impossible to credit as it's meant to be.

Full review at EFC.

Like Crazy

This is the second movie I've seen at the Coolidge-hosted "Talk Cinema" series, and as with Eye-Opener and CineCaché flicks, some of what I write about in the review is not insight I've reached unaided. And, as usual, I had a bit of a "hey, don't say anything about the movie before it starts" reaction to Ty Burr's intro. It's not just Burr, of course - every entry in one of these screening series seems to start with the host saying he or she learned this, that, or the other thing while researching the movie, and this really struck me when I saw the movie at a festival, and the director is best known for doing this thing... but I don't want to say too much. And I'm thinking, geez, you just did.

And now, to avoid being a total hypocrite, I'll let you jump right to the review (or, heck, the Full version at EFC) before getting into what association I heard that I could have done without. Note that there's going to be some spoilers in the next section.



Okay, no need to go crazy with the blank space.

The word Burr used that I didn't really need influencing how I thought about the movie was "mumblecore", along with the usual note about how the people most associated with it hate it. As much as that's where director Drake Doremus came from, and how there are certain similarities between this and a typical mumblecore picture, I don't really think of this as being near that category. Mainly, it's because too much money is spent on it - it's slick looking, shot in London and Los Angeles, and has River Song and Pavel Chekov in the cast as opposed to just the director's fellow film/music buddies. Clearly, Doremus has graduated from "underground" to "indie".

One thing that ran through my mind during the post-film discussion (I probably should have raised my hand and mentioned it, but the conversation went in a different direction very quickly) is that a lot of the young filmmakers making films like this never seem to have held long-term jobs, and soemtimes don't seem to get the mindset. Sure, maybe Jacob's indifference to deadlines is supposed to reflect how Anna didn't give thought to the consequences of overstaying her ­visa, and young people apparently do quit jobs for emotional reasons like Anna does at the end, but... Well, the movie is meant to cover three years, and a person does get settled in a job by then; the thought of losing insurance coverage and retirement benefits gives one pause. I kind of wonder whether a filmmaker in his twenties would get this, though; it's a life where you're less "unemployed" than "between gigs", and while you may have a much more intense identification with what you do with half your waking hours than those of us who sit behind a desk, you also know that it's a temporary thing.

Another thing: The filmmakers could have done much better in indicating that there was time passing; though they probably didn't have the sort of shooting schedule to show the change of seasons (which they don't have in L.A. anyway), you could give the characters haircuts or something. It's mainly a problem as it relates to the other boyfriends and girlfriends we meet - we've barely heard that Jacob and Anna agreed to Just Be Friends sometime earlier before we meet Jennifer Lawrence's Sam, and in the last act, it's not long after we see Jacob and Anna have gotten married (and then having some issues) that we jump forward far enough to hear that Anna and Charlie Bewley's Simon have been seeing each other for six months.

That's a real problem with the end of the movie, quite honestly - even though the marriage was presented as roughly equal problem-solving and true love, that Anna and Jacob seem to be dismissing it so quickly from the audience's perspective does a number on any sympathy we may feel for them when the visa problems clear up and they get back together. Up until then, their relationship was immature, but at least it was genuine; this sort of pulls the rug out from under the characters in the wrong way, and Doremus's tendency to skip over pivitol moments really hurts the movie especially badly here.

It's not a bad movie by any means, but it's also not that much better than the trailer that seems to have been on repeat at the theater for the last month or two. As I mention in the review, I think it will do well over time as the younger audience that is maybe inclined to take it at face value eventually gets to look at it with a more mature perspective.

Like Crazy

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 23 October 2011 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (Talk Cinema)

First love can burn very bright but not be that complicated, and since that's what Like Crazy is about, it makes a bit of sense for it to have a certain shallowness about it as well. The question is whether the movie demonstrates this sort of unconditional affection or whether it falls victim to it, even when the audience may be ready for more.

The two young lovers start out as students at a Los Angeles college. Anna (Felicity Jones) is a journalism major from England; Jacob (Anton Yelchin) is a local studying furniture design. They connect and fall hard for each other, and when Anna's student visa expires, she stays for the summer before returning home for a family wedding. The government is not particularly flexible about this sort of thing, though, and she's deported before Jacob can pick her up. Her parents (Alex Kingston, Oliver Muirhead) hire a lawyer to help sort things out, but in the meantime, a long-distance relationship can be a fragile thing.

The movie has a lot going for it, most obviously Felicity Jones. Anna is a part that would be very easy to oversell; she's got to be smart and passionate but also very immature at times. That immaturity is not exaggerated, though, so it's something that the audience recognizes as it starts to recede. It's quite the charming performance, all the more so because we get a chance to discover Anna's flaws without ever being pushed to turn on her.

Full review at EFC.