Jay's Movie Blog

Sometimes, having a media pass works against you - if I had bought a ticket, I would have gotten into Repo! The Genetic Opera, but it was so sold out and popular with the media/VIPs that about half of us were left out. Not that I think it's unfair - I got the email about the press screening, which I passed on of my own free will in order to see An Empress and the Warriors and May 18, and it would be downright churlish to act like I haven't made out like a bandit seeing dozens of movies over the past few weeks and often being first in line to get seats. Besides, it gave me time to have a late dinner, and that was a pretty good steak and baked potato.

Also, it helps to speak French. I sat through the La Bête du Lac Q&A hoping in vain for someone to either ask a question in English of for my 15-years-dormant high school french to suddenly kick in, but to no avail.

Today's plan is to camp at the Hall theater, where the movies are somewhat spread out: Island of Lost Souls, Seven Days, 4bia, Sasori, and Midnight Meat Train (with Ryuhei Kitamura present). If you're here, I can recommend The Rebel highly, Le Grand Chef with reservations, and wish I could make Triangle work for me.

Kod (Handle Me With Care)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

When you're born with a third arm, losing your tailor is far more traumatic than losing your girlfriend.

At least, that's the impression one gets from Kwan Traithep (Kiatkamol Latha) at the start of Handle Me With Care. His high-school girlfriend Lin is getting married, and his current girl Ann has just broken up with him, but it's the sudden death of "Uncle" Tawee, the tailor who makes his special three-sleeved shirts, that apparently pushes him to take a Bangkok clinic up on their offer to amputate his extra left arm. Getting there from rural Lampang will be something of an adventure - his car is busted, so he winds up hitching a ride with his friend Lorlee, who is delivering a bus there. On the way, they meet up with Na (Supaksorn Chaimongkol), also on her way to Bangkok to find the husband who she hasn't seen for a year.

Take away the whole third arm thing, and what's left is still quite the entertaining road movie. Writer/director Kongdej Jaturanrasamee plagues Kwan, Na, and Lorlee with a series of disasters that are more challenging than dangerous, and shuffles Lorlee off the stage once he starts just being an interruption to the scenes with Kwan and Na (and it becomes clear that the bus would make things too easy). They meet up with some interesting people, but the emphasis never shifts too much from them getting to know each other.

They're a nice pair to meet for the audience as well. Both of them tend to draw looks for their appearance (many comments are made about the size of Na's breasts, although she seems more generally curvy than notably busty), leaving them more alienated as they feel nobody pays attention to them as whole people. Latha plays Kwan as having a chip on his shoulder for much of the movie, although he's charmingly awkward at other times. Chaimongkol tends to present Na as more extroverted and likely to joke around, but shifts gears to lonely and sad well enough to make it abundantly clear that being seen as sexy isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be. The simple and heartfelt way she pays off a sort of annoying series of comments about having a great ringtone is kind of wonderful.

Full review at EFC.

Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival, Documentaries from the Edge)

I missed this one at IFFB, so I was glad to catch up with it here. It doesn't quite clock in at feature length at a mere 62 minutes, but does fill that time with an intriguing portrayal of two men trying to do something extraordinary amid their ordinary lives. Director Jay Delaney walks a nice tightrope here, looking at their claims in a way that's not quite skeptical but lets the evidence (or lack thereof) speak for itself, without being too harsh on his subjects.

La Bête du Lac

* * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival, Documentaries from the Edge)

I couldn't find myself nearly as intrigued by Nicolas Renaud's half of the Cryptozoology double bill, though. It drew plenty of local interest by taking part in a Quebec community near the Maine border, but despite being even shorter than Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie, sometimes felt very stretched out. There are some nice bits of underwater photography, and a couple of interesting storytellers, but when you get right down to it, it's kind of repetitive: People say they've seen the lake's monster fish, but can't offer any evidence other than "if you've seen it, you know", even though, as one resident says, when one person says they've seen a monster, everybody starts looking for them.

Le Tueur (The Killer)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Le Tueur is the very image of what the phrase "French film" often brings to mind. It's alternatively talkative and quiet, casually sexual, and deals with matters of life and death with what seems like emotionless detachment. What makes it notable is that it manages to scratch beneath that surface without seeming arch or self-satisfied about it.

We start out with Leo Zimmerman (Gilbert Melki), a reasonably successful financier, doing some shopping with his beautiful daughter Alana. He seems nervous, as if he can sense the man following and filming him. That footage winds up in the hands of Dimitri Kopas (Gregoire Colin), an assassin who has been hired to kill Leo. When Kopas visits Leo in his office, he knows his number is up, so he confronts him and asks a favor - let him live until Saturday, so he can pull off one last big deal and make sure Alana is taken care of. He knows his wife Sylvia (Sophie Cattani) is having an affair with his partner Xavier Franzen (Xavier Beauvois), and the idea of Franzen raising his daughter makes him blind with rage. Kopas agrees - why not? - using the free time to strike something up with Stella (Melanie Laurent), a model he meets in the hotel lobby.

There have been hundreds of cinematic hitmen, so often played as cool to the point where it's become almost impossible to avoid self-parody. Gregoire Colin doesn't quite sidestep that, but he handles it. He's got the cool exterior (and interior, for that matter), but there's something awkward about his isolation from regular people. He trips over his own tongue when hitting on Sylvia, and seems to become keenly aware that he doesn't have much of an existence outside of his job. He is so conditioned to leave no trace of his presence that he sometimes seems likely to disappear entirely.

Full review at EFC.

Special Magnum (Strange Shadows in an Empty Room)

N/A (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Damn, I wish I hadn't nodded off during this one. Not just because it's apparently not available on DVD, and was only issued cut on VHS, but just because it is a really crazy action movie. The big car chase in the middle of the movie really needs to be seen to be believed (especially since it was apparently filmed without permits of any kind), and even on the 16mm print the Montreal locations looked gorgeous. I really hope this comes out on DVD or Blu-ray soon; I want to catch up.

Labels: action, Canada, comedy, crime, documentary, drama, Fantasia, fantasy, France, Italy, road, Thailand, USA

(1) comments

I love Werner Herzog. I've previously described him as my favorite crazy person and as an utterly fantastic deadpan comedian, but I also love that he's got this adventurous spirit as well. He commits strange, unpredictable cinema. Even though he can tell a story with the best of them - last year's Rescue Dawn is a rock-solid narrative in addition to being visually arresting - but so many of his films seem to come from him getting an idea and seeing where it takes him. There may not be a story in going to Antarctica, but he's sure he can find interesting things to show the audience.

And with that, we pretty much reach the end of IFFB. I'm still waiting on a list of credits for Twelve (if you're making a movie in English, why wouldn't you put as much as you could in the IMDB as soon as possible?), and I've got a screener for another movie that played the festival. As usual, it was a ton of fun. It's amazing how fast and big the festival has grown in just a few years.

Encounters at the End of the World

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2008 at Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)

A couple years ago, Werner Herzog made a peculiar little film called The Wild Blue Yonder, with Brad Dourif as an alien who has been marooned on Earth for some time. Herzog used photography taken under the ice shelves of Antarctica to create the alien's apparently unearthly home, and it was effective enough to make the audience wonder why some movies spend tens of millions of dollars on special effects. Now Herzog has gone to Antarctica himself, looking for and sometimes finding a land as strange as those where his fictional films have been set.

Herzog is unimpressed with McMurdo Base when he arrives; it has all the visual charm of a run-down mining community. He was expecting something like a frontier town, perhaps, something completely unlike the conventional world, but instead he finds "abominations" such as an aerobics center, yoga classes, and even an ATM machine. He is, as might be imagined, quite happy to get away from the base and visit some of the smaller camps where people are doing nifty science and there are interesting things to aim his camera at.

And there are amazing sights to see. He came in part on the suggestion of a friend who is a master diver, so the camera goes under the Ross ice shelf to see the strange creatures living there, including armored starfish with long, fleshy tentacles that would look quite at home in a science fiction film. We spend time on the lip of an active volcano, one of only three in the world with an exposed magma pool. There are penguins, of course, but also great seals, and the perfectly preserved cabin from Shackleton's doomed expedition. There are people with buckets on their heads to train for white-out conditions, and even the tightly-packed cargo plane from New Zealand excites Herzog's curiosity.

The encounters of the title aren't just with the local wildlife, of course; we also meet the people who live and work in Antarctica. Many are brilliant, among the best in the world in their chosen fields. Others tell tales of hitchhiking across Africa and South America, professional wanderers who may have come to Antarctica because they've been everywhere else. It's clear that ordinary people don't come to this place, and Herzog presents them in all their eccentricity. Herzog walks an interesting line with his cast of characters; the easy routes might be fetishizing their oddness or mocking them as freaks, but we're allowed to see them as singular folks who have found their way to the environment that best suits them. We get a lot of laughs at their expense; the scene of a half-dozen men, likely experts in their fields, wearing buckets on their heads and utterly failing to follow a rope back to their shed is brilliant comedy. There's always respect for their abilities, though, even if it is sometimes so specialized that Herzog has to ask if he's just witnessed a big moment.

All this talk of peculiar characters would be complete without mentioning director and narrator Werner Herzog himself as one of them. Herzog is a man who knows his reputation, and he doesn't shy away from playing on it. As weird a guy as he might actually be, I sort of doubt that his proposal to the National Science Foundation referenced The Lone Ranger, ants keeping other insects as slaves, and why chimpanzees don't ride goats. It makes a fantastic bit of narration for the beginning, and his dry, deadpan way of saying it combined with his reputation makes it seem possible. He transitions from one scene to another by stating that his interview subject's story seemed to go on forever. He asks questions of the penguin expert that the G-rated March of the Penguins overlooked. He idly muses on what an alien civilization would think of Earth if they found these installations.

Herzog portrays himself as a bit of a nut, but in some ways that serves as cover for the sort of pure, far-ranging curiosity that led him to join these scientists for a few weeks. Almost every detail can catch his eye, from the labels on the cans still sitting in the Shackleton cabin's shelf to a penguin wandering away from its flock, and he usually has something funny and interesting to say about it. As is usually the case with Herzog, what we see on screen is entrancing. He captures the strange and bizarre, but also makes interview segments interesting, veering into random subjects or holding a shot a second longer than usual to point out how odd the previous answer was rather than just letting it stand. Even the shots of McMurdo under his disgusted narration are hard to peel one's eyes from.

Very few of us are ever going to get to Antarctica, so Herzog's film is a delight just from the perspective of seeing new and different things. The documenting of its unusual community that makes it even more special; we're able to feel a kinship with them while still admiring what a different sort of person is drawn to that hostile, far-off land.

Also on EFC.

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

(0) comments

Guy Maddin is not a weirdo.

If you've seen his movies, that might be a bit of a surprise, but it's true. I expected him to be something like David Lynch, or what I imagine David Lynch must be like. But, no, he's an affable, funny, self-deprecating guy who took a bunch of questions after My Winnipeg, with a ready smile and joke. The Chlotrudis folks were excited to meet him, and he seemed sincere about wanting to come back to Boston more often. I suspect he'll be next year's Chlotrudis Awards honoree.

My Winnipeg

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2008 at Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)

Guy Maddin has long had a love-hate relationship with his home town of Winnipeg; most of his previous films have been set there and portrayed it as a place nearly as dreary as it is bizarre. My Winnipeg isn't very different from his purely fictional films in that respect. The affection comes across more clearly here than in those films, even as it is delivered with a kick.

Maddin describes My Winnipeg as "docu-fantasia", which is as good a term as any. He inserts himself into the film with a couple of peculiar devices - in one, he is on a train out of town hoping to escape before the hypnotic snow causes him to sleepwalk back home; in another, he is renting his childhood home and hiring actors to play his siblings so that he and his mother can re-enact crucial moments from his childhood in a scientific experiment to determine the cause of his neuroses (Darcy Fehr plays Maddin, noir actress Ann Savage plays his mother). He posits that not only do rail lines and rivers converge in in Winnipeg - "the forks", he repeats, like a dozy mantra - but so do the ley lines along which mystic energy flows. This is Maddin's world, after all, and therefore peculiar.

It's so peculiar that the audience has to wonder how far the tall tales Maddin tells have evolved from reality. Does Winnipeg really have an uncommonly high population of sleepwalkers, and if so, do the city laws requiring their accommodation actually exist? Was a team of horses flash-frozen in the river after a fire, their protruding heads forming a grotesque yet arousing backdrop for the locals' evening promenades? Did "What If?" Day, with its simulated Nazi invasion, actually panic the city? One could look such things up, but does it really matter? These legends may say more about the city and Maddin's relation with it than mere facts might, and the stories themselves are uniformly hilarious. There's a great collection of anecdotes here, and they absolutely make Winnipeg a memorable city.

Other sections of the movie focus on how the city has changed over the years, and there's something kind of universal about those segments. He talks about how the diminishing importance of river and rail transport have reduced Winnipeg's importance as a shipping hub. There's a section on the city's uniquely constructed public swimming pool. Local department stores close and are replaced with chains. But for all that, the real passion comes out when it comes time to discuss how the city's hockey fans have been treated. We hear how the Winnipeg Arena was a major part of Maddin's youth, and there's a certain satisfaction when the 2006 implosion only destroys the additions to the original structure. There's no such love for the MTS Centre that replaced it, which isn't even large enough to host an NHL team should the Jets be replaced.

Anger fairly drips from Maddin's voice when he talks about the Jets leaving the city, a change from the whimsical or resigned tones he uses through much of the rest of the feature. It's a bit odd to hear Maddin's voice so directly; for as much as many of his films contain autobiographical material, he would distance himself by having an actor portray him, placing the stories in a fantastic context, and a visual style that suggests the first third of the twentieth century. That's all still there; My Winnipeg's black and white photography mostly looks like a long-lost movie, frequently grainy but sometimes sharp. The action itself is often silent, with just Jason Staczek's music and Madidn's narration, with the exception being the recreated scenes from Maddin's youth, where we get to enjoy femme fatale Ann Savage's first major role in fifty years.

To a certain extent, this verbiage is kind of unnecessary; this film is mainly going to appeal to those with an interest in Winnipeg and Guy Maddin's fans. If you're in the first group, remember that the title does promise that it's Maddin's Winnipeg and expect strangeness (although this may be Maddin's most mainstream film). For those in the second, well, enjoy. This is Maddin at his funniest and most playful.

Also on EFC.

Labels: Canada, comedy, documentary, IFFB, independent, Independent Film Festival of Boston, indiefilmcafe, silent

(0) comments

I wish I was able to get my thoughts about something sorted out much quicker than I do. Whenever there's a Q&A or other discussion about a film right after seeing it, I find I have no questions. It took me a bit of time to figure out just why I didn't think that much of Frontrunner, although someone in the audience did ask just what Dr. Falal's platform was. That's when I found out that leaving such things out was a deliberate decision.

It makes sense, although I think it makes the film weaker. Ms. Williams said they wanted to focus on what it was like for a woman to be running for office in Afghanistan, and that's a laudable goal. I think we could have learned more from looking at this woman and her platform more closely. Put it this way - if a similar documentary were being made about the 2008 U.S. election, how compelling would we find Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama if their only apparent selling points were being female or black? Not very, right?

I also thought that this film presents a much tamer Afghanistan than Beyond Belief. I wonder if it's a matter of Frontrunner mostly being filmed in Kabul while Beyond Belief went to smaller villages; perhaps the cities are less conservative and more cosmopolitan.

Frontrunner

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 27 April 2008 at Somerville Theater #4 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)

The ending of Frontrunner is a matter of the public record, so I don't feel like I'm spoiling much of anything by saying that it does not have a triumphant fairy-tale ending: In Afghanistan's first democratic ever, after the ouster of the ouster of the Taliban, a woman is not elected president. But, to be blunt, we're not given a compelling case that she deserves to be.

That woman is Dr. Massouda Jalal; as the movie starts, we're shown that she was a surprising second-place finisher when a group of Afghani representatives got together to choose an interim president after the fall of the Taliban government. Four years later, she runs in the general election. She is the only woman on the nineteen-candidate ballot, and as such faces problems that the others don't, such as soldiers removing her campaign posters and religious leaders who flatly declares that the Koran forbids a woman from being in a position of authority over men, making her potential election sacreligious. Jalal points out other women who have led Muslim nations, but it's clear that some of her foes are not to be dissuaded, making it an uphill battle.

That Jalal is a woman running for president of a nation that until very recently had codified the oppression of women into law is remarkable, but it's far from the only remarkable thing going on. Consider that not only has this nation never had a democratic election before, but it has an extremely high rate of illiteracy. Experts from oversees have to be brought in to advise not only the candidates but the officials running the election. Ballots have to include pictures. The incumbent has an even greater advantage than usual; he appears on television every night, has international backing, and what seems like an almost unlimited budget compared to Jalal and others who are running their campaigns from their living rooms; Dr. Jalal's young children regularly running in and jumping on her lap during meetings. The election itself serves as a referendum on the very belief in democracy; hints of impropriety could cost the nation its faith in the process.

Where the film ultimately disappoints is in presenting Dr. Jalal's candidacy as much more than a novelty. She's an intelligent, capable person, but we never get a sense of what her individual accomplishments are such that she, rather than some of the other educated women we see, is a viable candidate for office. Director Virginia Williams takes great care to omit anything that would tell us about her platform or that of the other candidates. Her goal, I suppose, is to keep the focus on the challenges faced by a female candidate in this country, but it backfires; we wind up with "vote for the woman" and questionable logic along the lines of "well, men were in charge during the decades of war..." There's also something disheartening about her assertion that if she fails, she'll run again and again and again; it presents her as a candidate with no purpose other than running for office, which is hardly inspiring.

That's especially frustrating, because it's a very nicely made documentary otherwise. Williams has great access to her principle subject and the later parts of the film are very interesting: Voting irregularities start appearing, leading to Dr. Jalal having to engage in some politics in terms of how she'll react to the situation. It's the sort of in-the-trenches documentation of the nation's emerging political process that would have been much more interesting than the bland praise of her female-ness and motherliness we get.

Williams must have footage of that, but we rarely get to see anything that makes Dr. Jalal individual and interesting. That's not to diminish her accomplishment; even the 1.1% of the vote she did manage was remarkable. It might have seemed even more so if we'd gotten a chance to know her and her views a little better.

Also on EFC.

Labels: Afghanistan, documentary, IFFB, independent, Independent Film Festival of Boston, indiefilmcafe, USA

(1) comments

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

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

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

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

The Linguists

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also on EFC.

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

(0) comments

I have to admit, I'd never heard the term "sex positive" before seeing this film. I kind of like it, both for what it and the corresponding "sex negative" mean, but because it's a useful reminder that all groups attempt to use language to cast their opponents in a negative light, and persecuted/minority groups are no exception.

Anyway, this was my first film of the night - I saw it before Jetsam, but it's usually harder to write a review of a documentary with just pen, paper, and program. In this case, not so much - I was actually able to write this up without further reference. Ah, well - one lives and learns.

Sex Positive

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 25 April 2008 at the Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival of Boston)

In another recent documentary about a man preaching the gospel of safe sex (Darling!), there's a line about how condoms are a matter of simple hygiene. It seems like a simple and obvious thing to say now, but there's an argument to be made that this line of thought may not have taken root in America's gay community if not for a former S&M hustler by the name of Richard Berkowitz.

Berkowitz will tell you this; he's a chatterbox when the camera is rolling and we soon learn his life story: Growing up in upstate New York, he thought his dalliances with other males was something he would grow out of, but college saw him out of the closet and writing editorials protesting hate speech by Rutgers' fraternities. After school, he wound up in Manhattan, living the life of indulgence that characterized the late nineteen-seventies, falling into S&M by accident and then finding it profitable. As the early eighties came, people started dying in large numbers. Berkkowitz was diagnosed with AIDS, and wound up working with virologist Dr. Joseph Sonnabend and musician Michael Callen to educate the community on the disease and how risk could be mitigated. The message was not popular, to say the least.

Director Daryl Wein does a good job of painting a picture of the late-seventies/early-eighties New York City gay scene. It comes across as a singular moment in time, when this culture of promiscuity was able to be accepted as normal, between prior years' conservatism and the fear that the disease later created. We hear how the scene created ideal conditions for an epidemic as well as the panic and grief that follows in such an epidemic's wake. There's a well-crafted sense of chaos, especially when what seems like common sense advice in retrospect is ignored and discredited by people who don't want to compromise their own lives to save them.

Wein lets Richard and his friends tell the story first-person; the film consists almost entirely of interview footage where the picture occasionally breaks away from the person talking to show photographs from the period. Indeed, even the archival footage tends to be interview footage of a sort - Richard and others appearing on talk shows of the time to discuss and debate their views. as Richard is a charming, engaging speaker, but we see just enough of other people (including his elderly mother, who still seems a little puzzled by her son's homosexuality) that the movie doesn't wind up feeling like an autobiography.

In fact, Richard Berkowitz is so likable that the audience may not realize what a slanted version of the story its been fed until Wein crams all the footage that portrays Richard as something other than a saint into the end of the movie. Early on, for instance, Berkowitz mentions that he wound up spending some time in Miami during the eighties, presenting it as the gay establishment driving him out of town; it's later portrayed as something akin to a year-long bender, and part of the reason why Sonnabend and Callen got fed up with him. Both he and the film occasionally fall into the trap of thinking the New York City is the entire world, with Berkowitz's efforts more important to that place than being as universal as is occasionally implied. There's also the tricky matter that much of Berkowitz's and Sonnabend's evangelizing centered not just on the need for safe sex, but that AIDS was a multifactor syndrome rather than having a primary cause in the HIV virus. Sometimes the movie seems like it wants to try and fight that battle again rather than point out that the same preventive measures are called for in either case. Also, it sometimes seems like the movie would more logically be about Berkowitz, Sonnabend, and Callen as a group, and focusing primarily on Berkowitz is playing to his ego.

This may just be an issue of editing and inexperience; Wein is young and working on a feature about a friend of a friend. It makes the filmmaking seem clumsy and presenting all the shades of gray in one chunk does more to discredit what came before than it should. Maybe if Wein had made more of an effort to present Berkowitz as a complex figure throughout, rather than the guy who was right despite his colorful background, the whole film would have been more satisfying.

Also on EFC.

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

(0) comments

Charles M. Schulz once said that cartooning was the art of drawing the same thing every day for decades without repeating yourself. I wonder why reviewing a bunch of generally good comedies as a group makes me think this.

The condensed version: If you missed The Grand or Miss Pettigrew, you missed out (although I think Pettigrew is still kicking around Somerville and/or Arlington, here in the Boston area), and Forgetting Sarah Marshall is just as funny as it looks.

Also, I'd like to thank Zak Penn for using an archival still in The Grand that allows me to use my favorite tag.

Definitely, Maybe

* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 February 2008 at AMC Boston Common #17 (First-run)

Just by the numbers, Definitely, Maybe doesn't make for an uplifting romantic comedy - its premise, after all, depends on things not working out for at least two of the women in the flashbacks, while the present day framing sequences tell you right off the bat that the ones that do get together wind up getting divorced. If I had been seeing it with a girlfriend on Valentine's Day, this might not be the message I'd want sent.

And even better, there's an adorable little girl caught in the middle of this disintegrating marriage! Things kick off when Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds) picks up his eleven-year-old daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin) from school for his weekend with her, only to find out she had a sex-ed class and now wants details about how she came to be. Will's reluctant, but she insists, so he makes it a game - he'll tell her the story, but he's changing the names, and she has to figure out who he wound up marrying - college sweetheart Emily (Elizabeth Banks), fellow Clinton campaign worker April (Isla Fisher), or journalist Summer (Rachel Weisz).

Given how politically polarized the country has become since Clinton's 1992 campaign, using that as the backdrop for a film looking to attract a broad audience may seem like a commercially questionable decision - why potentially alienate half your audience when the film isn't really about politics? It works, though, because Will's feelings about candidate and later later President Clinton are a nice barometer for his romantic life and maturation as a man - initially full of wide-eyed optimism and faith, later brokenhearted and cynical, and by the end no longer in a position where his feelings must be all-or-nothing. It's a metaphor well worth enduring some political talk that doesn't do much for the movie as a romance or a comedy.

It also works because Ryan Reynolds turns in a nice performance. He's generally relied on some form of slickness or another in his previous roles, whether it be the boys that the universe can't rattle (as in Van Wilder) or the wiseasses with a quip at the ready (as in Blade Trinity). Will gets hurt, confused, and angry, and it plays well. He's gotten to the point where he can turn off the charm, let us see the character as an immature jerk for a moment, and earn his way back into our good graces. He also pulls off my favorite moment in the movie, when an excited Maya is looking at penguins, chattering about how they mate for life, and the camera turns around to show Reynolds and the actress playing Maya's mother. They're a note-perfect display of lost chemistry; it's a moment which earns the movie a shot at an improbably happy ending.

Breslin's pretty great in that moment too, all the bubbly optimism that the other characters have lost, even though it wasn't long before that Maya had been nearly crushed by the way Will's story was heading. She does have her extra-precious moments, but not too many. We're probably supposed to be equally charmed by other other three ladies in the story, but that's not quite possible. Elizabeth Banks is nice enough as Emily, but we don't get the chance to meet her for the first time alongside Will, so she seems a little bland in comparison. We do get to meet Rachel Weisz's Summer, who seems fantastically wicked and enticing, and brings along Kevin Kline as the older professor she's been sleeping with (we just don't see enough of Kline on the big screen these days). And then there's Isla Fisher as April; she's the one who makes us laugh but also deftly handles the scenes that give her character some heft.

I like the job filmmaker Adam Brooks does; he balances his mix of characters well, not tipping his hand as to the end of the movie by favoring one character too much over another. He handles the passage of time well, so that the flashbacks cover a fair amount of time without either feeling like there are gaps or that Will is ping-ponging between women without the breakups having an effect on him. There's plenty of good jokes, but you can always take the characters seriously.

Definitely, Maybe is a low-key charmer. It's arguably not primarily a romantic comedy, but a story about growing out of youthful naïveté and through cynicism to become a true adult.

Also at HBS, along with two other reviews.

Accepted

* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 March 2008 in Jay's Living Room (rental HD DVD)

Accepted is not complicated or subtle, which is part of its charm: It will, at any moment, go for the biggest joke that the people making it can think of, and will not let any opportunity for even a little one pass. The upside of this is that only something like one out of three jokes have to work for the movie to provide a pretty constrant string of laughs. The downside is that the jokes that don't work really don't work, some of the extra bits that are crammed in feel like too much (Justin Long's pratfalls, for instance), and when it starts trying to get the audience to pull for the characters in a story, it's got no weight whatsoever.

Not that it needs it, I suppose, although the central idea - that the relentless push for every kid to attend college and the one-size-fits-all education offered there doesn't serve their interests - is good enough to merit a little weight. And there are some times when less would be a little more, given all the talent attached - there's a ton of fun young actors, and a lively performance from Lewis Black.

Nine reviews at HBS.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 8 March 2008 at AMC Boston Common #10 (First-run)

Mrs. Pettigrew doesn't initially look like much, and that applies to both the character and the film itself. And in some ways, they aren't much; a simple woman and a spritely period comedy. There's beauty in their simplicity, though, along with an awareness that simple doesn't necessarily have to mean stupid.

Guinevere Pettigrew (Frances McDormand) is a middle-aged governess, who finds herself homeless after being fired from her last of last chances. She swiped a name before being dismissed from her agency, though, and shows up the next morning at the apartment of actress Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams), who was not looking for a nanny but a social secretary (though she doesn't quite know what one does), whose first job is disposing of Phil Goodman (Tom Payne), a young would-be theater producer. That's not the only man in Delysia's life; there's also Nick Colderelli (Mark Strong), who owns the nightclub where she sings, and Michael Pardue (Lee Pace), the piano player there who was recently released from jail. Then there's Delysia's friend Edythe (Shirley Henderson) and her fiancé Joe (Ciarán Hinds), who make life difficult for Guinevere in their own ways.

The film takes place in 1930s London, and feels like a film of that period, with beautiful Art Deco style, women in fabulous gowns, and nightclubs full of jazz and sophistication. It's wiser than that, though. It's keenly aware that those glamorous images were mirages into which audiences were escaping, with the reality being the Depression. There's a dark recurring joke about Guinevere not getting a chance to eat, and the desperation she feels is palpable. Similarly, it's also the eve of World War II, and there's a wonderful moment between Guinevere and Joe late in the movie, sharing their memories of the last war as the younger characters cheer the planes flying overhead.

As you might gather from that last paragraph, McDormand is giving her usual fine performance. There is, from the beginning, something rebellious about her that doesn't quite fit with her nervous, spinstery exterior, and it's a delight to watch her come out of her shell without ever losing her grounding. McDormand handles the trick of being very funny while also being very serious like it hasn't tripped a great many actors up. Amy Adams, on the other hand, often seems lighter than air as Delysia, moving from event to event like she was blown by a strong wind and rapid-firing her lines in classic screwball style. She does, on occasion, also get serious, giving Delysia self-awareness without making her less of a naif. Neither part is a particular departure from the actress's recent work, but that just lets them concentrate on the details that make Guinevere and Delysia come alive.

The rest of the cast is good, too, although their characters are a distant third in priority behind Guinevere and Delysia. Shirley Henderson's Edythe is maybe the most complex, rather callow and selfish and yet still strangely vulnerable. The men form a continuum along which the wisdom of age and experience can be plotted, from Payne's spoiled and childish Phil to Hinds's Joe, a much more grounded fellow than the usual male character who designs lingerie for a living. Pace shows us a charming if battered romantic, while Strong makes Nick altogether more pragmatic.

Director Bharat Nalluri and company make a nifty little movie. There's actually quite a lot of story packed into Guinevere's twenty-four hours and our ninety minutes, with characters and plotlines darting in and out quickly enough for us to sympathize with how dizzy it might make her, even while slowing it down just enough at points so that actual important information is quite clear. They never lose sight of the fact that they're making a comedy, even though there are frequent and needed detours into the less cheery aspects of the period. They don't overdose on realism, though, so that when things end in the rushed but tidy manner of a stage comedy, it feels entirely appropriate.

Yes, Miss Pettigrew could be more realistic. It's perhaps just a little more sophisticated than the 1930s films it pays homage to. Its faithfulness to those films' ideals and aesthetics is a great part of its charm, though, and it would gain very little by being more complex than it is.

Also at HBS, along with two other reviews.

Roadie

* * (out of four)
Seen 9 March 2008 at The Brattle Theatre (The 80's Rock!)

I don't know if I'd actually call myself a fan of Meat Loaf's, at least not in an active, going to concerts that require more effort than getting on the T, talking him up to friends, or trying to amass everything he's done sense. I like him as an entertainer, though, and the idea of him doing a wacky rock 'n roll movie directed by Alan Rudolph, of all people, with Zalman King somehow in the mix, made me giggle at the potential for quality insanity.

Unfortunately, the "quality" part isn't always there. There are some wonderfully daffy bits, such as a sedate and charming Alice Cooper, and some of the goofy contraptions Meat's Travis Redfish constructs out of whatever's on hand at the time. There's some fun music, including a thoroughly gratuitous appearance by Roy Orbison. The batting average on the jokes isn't that great, though, and a number of them are pure "check it out - rednecks! They're stupid! That's funny!" stuff.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 13 March 2008 at AMC Harvard Square #3 (sneak preview)

For all of the crazy bits that can be found within this film itself, perhaps the strangest thing about Forgetting Sarah Marshall is that the film got its creative team the chance to make the next Muppet movie. It makes sense, in a way - Sarah Marshall has that sort of anything-goes sense of humor and even uses puppets at one point - but it's also gleefully raunchy, enough so that giving its makers a beloved G-rated franchise is not the obvious course of action.

It's crude almost from the very beginning, when TV star Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) returns home early to break up with her boyfriend Peter Bretter (Jason Segel), but finds herself rather distracted by his nakedness. She does manage to get the job done, though, leaving him a quivering mass of jelly who finally bends to his brother's advice to get away for a few days. That's a good idea, but he makes it a bad idea by choosing a Hawaiian resort that Sarah had told him about, and he gets there at the same time as Sarah and her new boyfriend, rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). The woman manning the front desk (Mila Kunis) takes pity on him, though, and soon he and this Rachel Jansen are hanging out during her off hours, which makes things awkward for everybody.

Star Jason Segel wrote the screenplay, and it turns out that he's pretty good at it: He's got a knack for good pop culture jokes that are more than just name-dropping, for instance, and the dumb or strange things his characters do are dumb or strange in a way that seems to be in character. The movie isn't bogged down with characters who advance the plot but are not actually funny, and all the main characters get a chance to be both sympathetic and unreasonable at various points.

As an actor, Segel avoids being the boring center that all the insanity happens around mostly by being kind of over-the-top mopey, but every once in a while he breaks out something that makes us realize that Peter is more than a little weird; he's got quite a knack for finding the border between eccentric and uncomfortable and hovering there. Mila Kunis is the closest thing the movie's got to a straight man, but she's good at adding a bit of snap to her set-ups and reactions and being generally charming enough to distract Peter from Sarah. That's pretty remarkable, because Kristen Bell does not play Sarah as the villain of the piece; she makes Sarah likable enough that we never wonder what Peter was doing with her in the first place. There's material for a cute love triangle here.

And then there's Russell Brand, who plays Aldous as broadly as he can and collects big laughs whenever he's on-screen. Yes, he's every spoiled rock-star cliché rolled into one, but he's too hilariously relaxed about it to be the bad guy. He's joined by a bunch of supporting characters who are sort of one-note, but hit that note with perfection: Jonah Hill's over-eager waiter (who happens to be a big fan of Aldous), Jack McBrayer and Maria Thayer as as a pair of newlyweds who, having saved themselves for marriage, are having radically different reactions to their new intimacy, and Paul Rudd as a surfing instructor whose memory is pretty much fried. Rudd has built up quite a roster of scene-stealing minor roles, but for this movie it's tough to beat Billy Baldwin's self-parody as Sarah Marshall's co-star in Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime; every clip of that series kills.

There are going to be a lot of people who assume Judd Apatow directed this movie from the advertising, and hopefully Nicholas Stoller will take that as a compliment. It does have a lot of the same feel as The 40 Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, and winds up being a little better than the latter. It's got a very nice balance of crude but effective jokes and honest emotion, and seldom stops being funny in order to be sentimental - in fact, the final sequences, when the movie could have gotten maudlin, are some of the most densely-packed with jokes of the movie.

Which is saying something; there's a lot of funny stuff in the movie. Wouldn't it be great if all actors could write such good vehicles for themselves?

On HBS as soon as the movie comes out; there will probably be more than one other review then.

Run Fatboy Run

* * * (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2008 at AMC Boston Common #18 (first-run)

There's a scene in Run Fatboy Run where Thandie Newton's Libby more or less baldly states that the basic outline is ridiculous - she's not going to dump her boyfriend and go back to the man who has disappointed her so much just because he runs a marathon. This makes a ton of sense, because as insanely difficult as running twenty-three miles is for someone who starts from where Simon Pegg's Dennis does, it's nothing compared to getting back into a woman's good graces after what he's done.

What he's done is leaving her at the altar on their wedding day - when she was seven months pregnant. Now, five years later, there's a new man in her life, and Whit (Hank Azaria) is everything Dennis is not - handsome, well-off, responsible, and athletic - he even runs marathons. In a bid to not look totally emasculated in front of Libby and their son Jake (Matthew Fenton), Dennis says he could run one, too, and it becomes harder to back out once Libby's cousin (and Dennis's best mate) Gordon (Dylan Moran) bets on him to finish, and he bets his landlord Maya Goshdashtidar (India de Beaufort) his back rent versus eviction. So it's training time, though Jake, Gordon, and Maya's father (Harish Patel) aren't exactly a crack coaching staff.

The comment from Libby that Dennis running the marathon won't win her back, aside from being a challenge to the filmmakers to come up with a situation where that could actually happen, has the additional effect of moving the film out of the romantic comedy arena. This is a nice move - it keeps Libby from being presented as just a prize to be won, and running a marathon for a prize is kind of a silly thing to do, anyway. You do that sort of thing to improve and test yourself, not beat someone else, and that's what we see Dennis do - go from slacker man-boy to maybe being someone who can accomplish something.

Pegg and Moran make an entertaining pair of slacker man-boys in the meantime. Pegg plays the excitable, sort of whiny one; he's the victim of all kinds of good slapstick and abuse, while also being kind of off-handedly charming and funny. Moran, on the other hand, plays Gordon just about as dry as is possible; he's got the sort of accent that makes one feel as if they've just been insulted by someone a great deal more learned than is actually the case. Hank Azaria does a really nice job with Whit; for much of the film, the audience is actually inclined to like him. Azaria, director David Schwimmer, and writer Michael Ian Black do a nice job of piling little things on so that the audience feels some of Dennis's natural, if not necessarily fair, annoyance at the very idea of this guy; when he starts doing kind of jerky things, there's the feel that Dennis brings out the worst in him, rather than him just being a bad guy and Libby being unable to see it.

It's interesting that the creative team for this movie is mostly actors - sitcom veteran David Schwimmer directs, Michael Ian Black writes, with Pegg Anglicizing American Black's script. The three of them know their comedy, and tend to approach it by giving people funny things to do rather than just setting up a situation or having the cast read potentially-funny lines. Pegg, especially, tends to act with his whole body here, and just the way he stands when discovering he's locked himself out of his apartment again can draw a laugh. The climactic race itself has a bunch of little gems sprinkled through it, as well - I'll probably giggle during sports coverage for a while, imagining the commentators yelling "Bastard!" during instant replays.

Run Fatboy Run isn't sophisticated comedy, and there are some things like Gordon's aversion to pants that maybe play better in the UK than they do in the States. It's got plenty of laughs from start to finish, though, more than enough to make up for the occasional bit that doesn't quite work.

On HBS along with three other reviews.

Leatherheads

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 5 April 2008 at AMC Boston Common #18 (first-run)

George Clooney has many fine qualities, but among the ones I most appreciate is an appreciation for past eras in film and American life that doesn't approach blind worship. Leatherheads could easily wallow in nostalgia, but that wouldn't really be funny, and it's always worth noting that the good old days had a lot of the same issues as today.

The film opens with a comparison of professional and college football in 1925. The college game, as exemplified by Princeton's Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski), is just as huge as you might remember from Harold Lloyd's The Freshman; the "professional" Duluth Bulldogs play in cowfields with shoddy uniforms and equipment, booking games with whichever teams haven't yet succumbed to bankruptcy. When the Bulldogs go under, its fortysomething star player and brain trust, Dodge Connelly (George Clooney)comes up with a radical plan to save it - recruit Rutherford and use his star power to draw a much larger crowd. There's side effects to this, though - Rutherford brings reporter Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger), who is secretly trying to expose the truth behind Rutherford's war hero status, and the increased money in play attracts the likes of C.C. Frazier (Jonathan Pryce), who acts as Rutherford's agent.

Clooney's film is something of a throwback, though not quite all the way to its period - that would have meant making it black and white and silent, which the studio likely would have balked at. Still, he gets as far back as the thirties, and the rapid banter between Clooney and Zellweger is well worth it. They've got a sharp chemistry from the very start, and the script never insults us by having them not recognize it. There's just Carter, who is legitimately charming, and neither of them is really the romancing type. Zellweger is prety good here; the sharp-tongued character suits her, and she's able to make Lexie more than just abrasive.

Clooney gets a chance to do a little bit of everything. His character is something of a tragic figure, in that he winds up destroying the thing he loves in order to save it, but he's not an angry or self-pitying character. Clooney's got gobs of matinee-idol charm, and has the knack for making Dodge both kind of cocky and self-deprecating at once. He snaps of his lines with perfect rapid-fire pacing, but gets some of his biggest laughs just from facial expressions.

John Krasinski is pretty good, too; he makes Rutherford smooth without making him seem deliberately smooth. There's a lot to like about the guy, although you can also see where Dodge might resent him, from the way everything seems to come so easily. There are a bunch of other fun supporting characters, though the team itself isn't a big part of that, the way one might expect it to be. Stephen Root is laid back as the rummy sportswriter who lets Dodge dictate his stories, and Johnathan Pryce is perfectly oily as the money man who represents every negative of the transformation of the game into a business. I also like Jeremy Ratchford (a regular scene-stealer on Cold Case), who shows up in the last act as an old war buddy of Dodge's.

Composer Randy Newman has a funny cameo in the same scene (he is, of course, the piano player), and he contributes a soundtrack that embraces its period but is seldom intrusive about it. The whole production feels like that; there's attention to detail and fondness for the details of the period and classic movies - it's a shame sleeper cars don't come into play in more modern movies - but the story recognizes that although the past is something that has great appeal, holding steadfastly to the way things are doesn't make a bad situation better.

The movie's not perfect: The last act both forces an unlikely "big game" scenario and a fairly ridiculous resolution to it, and as director George Clooney occasionally sets too slow a pace both for a modern movie or an authentic screwball comedy. Many more moments zing than drag, though, and the cast fits their parts so well as to make up for any issues with the story.

On HBS along with three other reviews.

The Grand

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 7 April 2008 at Landmark Kendall Square #4 (first-run)

Like the Marvel superheroes in the movies for which he writes screenplays, Zak Penn lives a double life. Sure, by day he's churning out nondescript comic book adaptations, but by night he directs mock documentaries with Werner Herzog - and they're far more entertaining than the likes of his X-Men scripts would have you expect.

The Grand focuses on a Las Vegas poker tournament with a ten million dollar winner-take-all pot. Though it takes place in the Golden Palace, it was started by the founder of The Rabbit's Foot, whose embattled owner Jack Faro (Woody Harrelson) needs the money to cover a bridge loan or risk losing his grandpappy's casino. He starts the movie in rehab for every kind of addiction available - drugs, alcohol, tobacco, marriage (he's been married approximately 72 times). He's got some stiff competition at the tournament, though: Twins Larry (David Cross) and Lainie (Cheryl Hines) Schwartzman hail from Long Island, New York, and have been competing from a very early age, when their father (Gabe Kaplan) would pit them against each other but only encourage Lainie in order to motivate Larry. Lainie brings her family along with her, three kids and husband Fred Marsh (Ray Romano), who has been more than a bit peculiar ever since surviving a lightning strike. He doesn't quite compared to Harold Melvin (Chris Parnell) In the strange department, though; Melvin still lives with his mother (Estelle Harris) in his late twenties or early thirties, although his obsessive nature (to the point of being Asperger's) gives him a leg up calculating odds at the table. We also meet "Deuce" Fairbanks (Dennis Farina), who is basically Dennis Farina, an old rat-packer who misses the days when Vegas was committed to his trashiness; not enough legs get broken these days. Then there's The German (Werner Herzog), who is basically Werner Herzog on an especially crazy day, and Andy Andrews (Richard Kind), a rube from Wisconsin who won his seat playing poker online.

Those are just the main characters, of course; the likes of Jason Alexander, Judy Greer, Michael McKean, Hank Azaria, and others show up for quick bits as other players or supporting cast. The script for this movie is said to be only thirty or forty pages long, which means that there was not only plenty of room for improvisation, but most of the good jokes likely had to come from there. Some of these actors are playing fairly familiar personae - Dennis Farina, Richard Kind, and David Cross are playing exactly the characters one might expect, for instance, but that just means they know just what these people will do without thinking.

The less-obvious characters are just as funny, though. Werner Herzog arguably belongs in the "familiar" category - the photographs of Herzog used to tell us of The German's strange exploits are likely unretouched - but The German is so deadpan bizarre that even Herzog's reputation for eccentricity isn't enough. Consider that during the sit-down interview segments, he's patting his pet rabbit like he's Ernst Stavro Blofeld, and it still feels like a tease for something even stranger. Then there's Parnell's Harold, who eschews the usual basement-dwelling nerd stereotypes in favor of an obsession with David Lynch's adaptation of Dune, which is just far enough off the beaten path to be humorously strange to non-fans but to give those who are just familiar with the franchise a laugh when he recites the Mentat's Mantra or says Lainie has the hairstyle of an Arrakinean prostitute. Which, of course, leads to a joke about the announcer who immediately claims experience with Arrakinean prostitutes.

Penn does a nice job herding all these strange characters; there was likely a lot of good stuff to edit. In style, it's much closer to Christopher Guest mockumentaries like A Mighty Wind and Best in Show than his previous entry in the genre: Incident at Loch Ness, aside from having Werner Herzog play the sanest person in the cast, was played with a completely straight face and a fairly linear story. There's story to The Grand, but the majority of it is jokes packed into a loose structure.

Most of them are good jokes, although every viewer will likely have a list of things they'd like more of and less of (I would trade a bunch of Ray Romano for more Werner Herzog). I'm sure aficionados could find flaws with the poker, as well, but you don't have to be a Mentat to calculate that the bits that work add up to much more than the bits that don't.

On HBS along with two other reviews.

Labels: comedy, documentary, drama, independent, indiefilmcafe, romance, UK, USA, werner herzog in the jungle

(0) comments

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

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

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

Underbelly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also at HBS.

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

(1) comments

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

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

Spine Tingler!: The William Castle Story

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also at HBS.

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

(1) comments

I've been going to The Boston Sci-Fi Marathon for several years now - started at the Coolidge, followed it to Dedham and West Newton before it landed back at Somerville for what seems like a fairly permanent arrangement - and I admit, I've got some mixed feelings about it. It's the sort of event that is absolutely the most fun the first time, and eventually becomes as much a social event as a chance to see a bunch of movies. That's probably why my love for it has waned a bit since I started going; I don't have a group of friends I meet there, and none of the people I've ever tried to talk into going has ever come. So it has, for me, become about endurance to a certain extent, and that's no attitude to have toward something you mainly do out of love.

This year actually had a pretty nice line-up; I wish I could have stayed awake through the whole thing. Maybe next year I'll have someone to elbow me during whatever the equivalent of 1984 is.

Cloverfield

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 February 2008 at the Somerville Theater #1 (SF/33)

As I said in my previous review, this is one that grew on me quite a bit even after liking it a lot the first time. A second viewing didn't do anything to dissuade me from that view; although I still wonder about some of the things that Hud films when I think he and sane people everywhere would either turn the camera off and devote all his attention to running, or when it might not be convenient to evesdropping, there's enough slack because the movie needs it.

Also, it's fun to check for the things I missed the first time around but read about later, like the very last scene, which doesn't just serve a fitting coda.

Full review at HBS, along with eight others.

King Dinosaur

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 February 2008 at the Somerville Theater #1 (SF/33)

Later on in the marathon, people were subjected to A Sound of Thunder, which is similarly awful but in a cynical way. The makers of King Dinosaur, on the other hand, lack the resources of both finance and talent that the makers of today's terrible sci-fi movies possess, and that works in their favor a bit. You see the terrestrial animals shot in extreme close-up to make them appear to be giant alien creatures, and admire the attempt to make something out of nothing.

That doesn't make this a good movie or close to it; too much is still laughable - the useless woman who traveled months in a rocket-ship to Counter-Earth an wants to go home ten minutes after landng, the amount of filler necessary to nudge the running time over an hour, the gung-ho use of an atomic bomb that isn't just awful in retrospect. This is a bad movie all around, the type that is only partially excused by the earnest effort put into it.

The Last Mimzy

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 17 February 2008 at the Somerville Theater #1 (SF/33)

The Last Mimzy doesn't quite rate "buried treasure" status, but it's certainly in the "buried thing worth seeing" category. It's about kids who find a box of toys from the future, which gives them strange powers but also draws out their innate abilities. They draw the attention of Homeland Security, of course, and inevitably escape with the help of a sympathetic teacher.

It's a kids' movie, but one of the good ones which doesn't talk down to its audience or assume they've got ADHD. The adult characters are sympathetic and reasonable. The effects are restrained but nifty when they do appear. It's a fine sci-fi movie whether or not you've got any little guys watching it with you.

Five reviews at HBS

In the Shadow of the Moon

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 February 2008 at the Somerville Theater #1 (SF/33)

There were a couple people talking behind me during this one, which isn't particularly noteworthy in and of itself, although it bothered me more than usual. The manned space program is one of the most fantastic things in human history, and the moon program its greatest achievement. I'm not a religious person, but I suddenly understood the feelings of anyone who ever shushed me for talking in church.

For this really is an exceptional document - there is no narration beyond a title card or two; the film consists almost entirely of the reminiscences of the surviving Apollo astronauts and actual footage cobbled together from NASA, television news, and other sources. The archival footage (we are reminded that it is all the real deal) generally looks to be either exceptionally well-preserved or restored; the interview segments show us lean men who are still capable of inspiring awe despite their age, but are also generally genial and funny. There's anecdotes that even die-hard space fanatics may not have heard, and the familiar ones are well-told. The closest thing to a complaint is one I have with many documentaries that lean on "talking head" segments, in that I'd like to have everyone constantly identified; the nature of this particular film means we're juggling a bunch of old white men. But it's a small quibble.

Now I just have to hope that the UK HD DVD announced for the end of March actually comes out; I've got that pre-ordered and I'm not quite hopeful about a Region A Blu-ray disc coming out any time soon.

One review at HBS

Ever Since the World Ended

* * (out of four)
Seen 17 February 2008 at the Somerville Theater #1 (SF/33)

This faux-doc has a nifty idea - chronicling life after a nasty plague wipes out ninety-odd percent of humanity - and does a pretty good job of making the audience believe that the characters are living in a nearly-empty San Francisco. The trouble, I guess, is that this world-building doesn't really lead to anything. We find out that the world's children aren't really interested in the pre-plauge world's history and the reaction is just "yeah... that makes sense". We wind up kind of short on interesting conflict; what there is is deliberately small in scale.

It's also a movie where I was still trying to decide whether or not I had already seen it until about about thirty minutes in or so. It has been kicking around for about five years, and I do enough events where a low-budget sf-y film like this might show up that it was a possibility. Eventually, I think I decided that I hadn't, but you know what? If I see it again in five years, I strongly suspect that the only way I'll know that I'd already seen it would be because it's documented here.

One review at HBS

War of the Worlds '53

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 February 2008 at the Somerville Theater #1 (SF/33)

Speaking of anti-climaxes, this story in all its forms is predicated on a thoroughly deliberate one. When Matt saw the recent Tom Cruise version, he actually complained about the ending until being reminded that without that ending, more or less exactly, it's not War of the Worlds. I do kind of wonder how H.G. Wells would react to this film's insinuation that the aliens were eventually brought down by prayer, as he tended toward the atheistic.

That aside, this version of War of the Worlds still stands very tall among fifties sci-fi films. It shares many of that group's faults - it treats "scientists" as something close to magicians and tends not to question authority - but its sights and sounds hold up very well.

(And, besides, it inspired that stupid but fun late-eighties sci-fi/horror series. The first year of that holds a special place in my heart for teaching me that gore can be fun!)

Two reviews at HBS

2001: A Space Odyssey

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 18 February 2008 at the Somerville Theater #1 (SF/33)

There's seldom been anything quite like 2001, either before or since. Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke shared both a grand vision and a mania for detail, along with the skill (and obsessiveness) necessary to actually get it on screen. I tend to gravitate toward the detail; seldom has interplanetary flight ever seemed so right, so precisely imagined and reasonably extrapolated, as it does here.

The grander story, the alien monoliths scattered throughout the solar system that guide and boost human evolution, leaves me a little colder; I tend to be pretty fond of the idea that we got where we are by hard work and taking advantage of favorable mutations. I do love how the stargate grabs the audience and forces them to think, while also staring in wonder at what Kubrick and company created with the visual effects and animation capabilities of the time.

I did start nodding off during this movie, though (at least I made it past midnight!). i'm sure of it, because I missed HAL singing "Daisy, Daisy". Ah, well - at least it gives me an excuse to see just how good the HD version is; I've heard great things.

Two reviews at HBS

Black Sheep

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 18 February 2008 at the Somerville Theater #1 (SF/33)

Some of the SF/33 promotion labeled this as a regional premiere, which wasn't the case - I saw it at the Boston Fantastic Film Festival a couple years back, which is just a quick hop on the red line or 91 bus away. I liked it then, and liked it again on the second go-round It's perfect for the wee hours of a marathon like this - shockingly funny and gross as well as bright and colorful enough to fool your brain into thinking its still daytime.

Some people describe it as a horror movie, but I really don't see it that way - it's never really trying to scare you. Make you jump, yes. Gross you out, yes. But no-one's going to have nightmares about killer sheep gnawing off their dangly bits because of this movie, or worry about anything. It's just a fine, gross, black comedy.

(I was surprised by the people I overheard saying they had trouble with the accents. On the scale of accents being close to "American", New Zealand is way closer to the Canada side of the scale than the rural Scotland side!)

Full review (and four others) at HBS

1984

N/A (out of four)
Seen 18 February 2008 at the Somerville Theater #1 (SF/33)

Here is where I got most of my sleep for the night. Remember how bright and colorful I described Black Sheep as being? 1984 is the opposite of that. It's grey and overcast, populated by serious people speaking in level tones. The voiceovers are probably taken directly from Orwell's prose, and they're dry political theory rather than something that comes from the characters as individuals.

Which, I think, might be a problem with the movie even if it wasn't a 4am death slot. 1984, after all, is about its ideas; the story is close to incidental. It is so thoroughly a lecture on how fascism works and where it ultimately leads that any sort of plot twist would be completely missing the point. That's why I could tell that I had fallen asleep several times during the movie but not really feel like I had missed anything, even though I could see that the story had moved forward without me.

One review at HBS

Journey to the Seventh Planet

N/A (out of four)
Seen 18 February 2008 at the Somerville Theater #1 (SF/33)

I'm just not charmed by old, bad sci-fi movies. Some folks are connisseurs, I guess, of such things, and look at John Agar's name in this film's credits as a sort of stamp of legitimacy; he's been in other bad sci-fi flicks and he's a comfortable, reassuring presense. These people tend to be in their forties or fifties or older, and probably don't like the movies themselves as the years in their lives in which they were encountered, whether that be in the theater or on television.

They're not good movies detached from that, and this one is worse than usual, bad enough for the American distributor to actually spring for new visual effects. The film involves landing on Uranus to find an environment that is not hostile - except, of course, for the telepathic creature that convinces the crew that there are some fine-looking women there, in order to lure them to some sort of doom. It's ridiculous, it's been done better, it's just generally not worth the time.

One review at HBS

A Sound of Thunder

* (out of four)
Ignored 18 February 2008 at the Somerville Theater #1 (SF/33)

I generally don't get that much of a kick out of writing negative reviews. I know there are people who do, and the general image most people have of film critics is something like Jay Sherman ("it stinks!"), but I sometimes worry that my reviews cluster in the 2.5-3.5 star range, because even the worst movie still has something within it worth watching.

Not this one. This one is just junk, through and through, and a lot of people were justifiably upset at its inclusion.

I took it as an opportunity to get myself a bacon-and-egg crepe next door and hit up the ATM across the street. This movie's vortex of suck was so powerful that that meant walking out into a downpour, which had mostly cleared up by the end of the marathon. After that was done, I hung out in the upstairs lobby for a half hour or so, enjoying the leg room that you just don't find in the Somerville Theater's balcony section.

Full review at HBS, along with four others.

A Boy and His Dog

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 18 February 2008 at the Somerville Theater #1 (SF/33)

Post-apocalyptic stories generally don't do much for me. Not just because many are set in the far-off year of 1999 only to be tripped up by the fact that we didn't blow ourselves up leaving all of North America a radioactive wasteland and it looks less likely all the time so stop making these things even if they are cheap and people think a cynical view of the future is cooler than an optimistic one...

Ahem. Sorry; pet peeve. Anyway, this isn't a genre I'm particularly fond of, but A Boy and His Dog is a better-than-average example of it. The telepathic bond between the title characters is a neat idea, and there's some fun insanity in the underground society where Don Johnson's horny teenager winds up. Curiously, these two things don't intersect much at all - the title characters are separated at this point. Before then, though, there's a bunch of wandering around the desert, encountering various hostile but uninteresting groups. Been there, done that.

One review at HBS


I did wonder if I might have gotten through everything better if the films had played in their intended order - A Boy and His Dog was initially scheduled to play at about 10pm, while War of the Worlds was scheduled to close things out at 10am, but the brand new film print that the director had struck just for the Marathon (it did look pretty nice) wound up locked up in a UPS warehouse until it opened on Monday morning

Ah, well. Another one in the books. As cranky as these pieces generally are, I'm looking forward to next year's.

Labels: comedy, crap, documentary, drama, sci-fi, USA

(0) comments

Look at the last post and the next one, and you might get the idea that the 16th was a busy day for me, movie-wise. Yeah, it was, and I still haven't written a review for Jumper yet. (For those wondering about the order - The Spiderwick Chronicles and Jumper at Boston Common, to Coolidge Corner for the Oscar shorts, and then the the MFA just in time for Beyond Belief. Then I went to a 24-hour movie marathon the next day. That was a lot of movies.

I was glad to get to see Beyond Belief, though - aside from it being cool to be offered a comp ticket because of this blog (yes, my attention can be bought cheaply, if not necessarily my approval), it's a pretty good movie, and there were a ton of filmmakers and subjects there, most of whom actually had something interesting to say. I hope I haven't said that the movie references things that I remember from the Q&A.

Anyway, pretty good doc. Beyond Belief formally opens at the MFA tomorow (1 March 2008), and will screen sporadically during March and April.

Beyond Belief

* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 February 2008 at the Museum of Fine Arts Remis Auditorium (preview screening)

Humanity is still around as a species because most of its members are basically good. They need to be, because one person giving into his or her more destructive impulses can create damage that require the actions of dozens to counter. Beyond Belief focuses on two of the people trying to make the world a better place.

Patti Quigley and Susan Retik came together because of their similar stories. Both women were stay-at-home mothers in the Boston area, both had husbands on the jets that were crashed into the World Trade Center, both were pregnant at the time. That's not a terribly uncommon story; it's what they did afterward that is notable: They started a foundation (Beyond the Eleventh) dedicated to raising money to assist widows in Afghanistan.

It's a noble gesture and the movie spends a fair amount of time showing us why it's a needed one. There are plenty of interesting facts handed out to us, both as numbers - the number of widows in Afghanistan, for instance - and facts about the culture - we learn that few widows remarry in large part because tradition dictates that the father's family would claim their children if they did so. The filmmakers spent some time shooting in Afghanistan, and we see first hand how devastated it is from decades of near-constant war, and how while the Taliban is no longer in control of the government, many of the rigid doctrines they enforced are still very much in place. Several widows are interviewed, so that we get to know them before seeing the relief efforts.

(Not in the movie, but worth noting: During a Q&A session after the screening, director Beth Murphy noted that they likely could not show this film on Afghani television, as the candid women interviewed sans burqa might face reprisals.)

That's a well-appreciated move on Ms. Murphy's part, as it does allow us to see the Afghan widows as strong women in their own right, as opposed to simply recipients of Americans' charity. The time we spend following Patti and Susan as they work to set up the foundation shows that they are committed to helping these women become self-sufficient as opposed to just distributing money in the short term. We're given just enough of a look at how their organization works to see what's going on, and also see the risks involved when they are glued to the news because a woman they met with earlier in the film is kidnapped.

It's not just about the foundation; Murphy also spends a fair amount of time highlighting these women as individuals and focusing on how they handle their grief aside from their charitable work. Patti seems especially uncomfortable with people not just identifying her as a widow, but as a 9/11 widow, even though she knows that's what keeps the charity visible. There's an amusing bit about how wearying it is, even years on - Susan says she still feels so lonely, Patti that there are people there for her, and Susan says, yeah, but they won't have sex with me. It's a nice little moment that illustrates the grieving process nicely - some things will always hurt, but life does go on.

What's most notable about Beyond Belief is that it integrates all three of these threads remarkably well - many a well-meaning documentary has fallen down by leaning too hard on outrage or admiration for its subjects, and while those factors are clearly present, they never overwhelm the need to show the audience interesting and useful things. Murphy and her crew manage to do a good job of both collecting raw material and putting it together, and resist the urge to over-dramatize events.

Which makes for a pretty good documentary. There are likely others about the same subject which push harder, but aren't necessarily more convincing.

Labels: documentary, drama, independent, indiefilmcafe

(0) comments

Stuff has started falling out the back of my brain, so it's time to do some capsules and then see which ones expand themselves into full reviews. President's Day weekend was kind of a cruncher - something like 11 films at the sci-fi marathon, the Academy Award shorts, and three other features. My brain just can't store that many details about that many movies.

Evil Dead 2

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 1 February 2008 in Jay's Living Room (Blu-ray Disc)

At last count, I think I've purchased something like four cop