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.
Showing posts with label indiefilmcafe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label indiefilmcafe. Show all posts
Monday, May 12, 2008
Friday, May 09, 2008
IFFB 2008: My Winnipeg
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.
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.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
IFFB 2008: Frontrunner
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
IFFB 2008: Triangle and Severed Ways
At some point in any festival, unless you're made of sterner stuff than I, you're probably going to hit the wall. There's just a point where the running between theaters (whether in the same building or in three neighboring cities), waiting in line, going through the rigamarole of getting a full house crammed into the room, and sitting through movies which demand a bit more than the usual matinee fare becomes tiring, and you maybe can't write an honest review because there's a very good chance that you napped through fifteen or twenty minutes.
For Triangle, I'm placing the blame solidly on my decision to go home, eat something marginally closer to a balanced meal than Cherry Coke and Twizzlers, and watch the Red Sox postgame show in the time between the Q&A for Turn the River in Somerville and the start of Triangle in Brookline. I must have fooled my body into thinking I was done for the day, when, no, there was still an hour and a half of Hong Kong action to go. For Severed Ways (where I don't think I missed much important), there's still being tired from not getting home until two-thirty-ish, rushing to Somerville, and winding up in a seat so far toward the front that you have to lean back to see the picture, way closer than digital projection was meant to be seen.
I spent the next couple hours really wishing I had waited a bit and gone to see the jump-rope movie instead. People need to be warned about this turd. (Note that the review for Severed Ways contains coarser language than usual - not my usual, but it's the best words for the job.)
Speaking of projection, I must confess that by the time Triangle showed, I was starting to get a little cranky about the first "F" in "IFFB" being kind of inaccurate; I think the opening night showing of Transsiberian was the only thing I saw on actual film rather than digital video up to that point. It kind of surprised me when Triangle wound up not being digital. Apparently the American movies with people in attendence couldn't get a print shipped, but the one from Hong Kong could. It just doesn't figure.
Tie Saam Gok (Triangle)
N/A (out of four)
Seen 26 April 2008 at the Coolidge Corner Theater #1 (Independent Film Festival of Boston After Dark)
I hope to get a chance to see Triangle again sometime soon, because the idea behind it is a lot of fun - getting three big-name action-adventure directors to make one film, handing the reins off to each other, allowing them to change styles to do what they do best... Well, that sounds like a lot of fun, and from the way the credits are arranged, it looks like each director had his own writers, too, and I know that's a lot of fun.
The story starts out as looking like a crime movie, as three down on their luck men are recruited for what initially looks like a robbery but either becomes a treasure hunt or was one all along (my subtitle comprehension does kind of go to heck after midnight). There's complications, of course, with one of the trio's wife having an affair with a corrupt cop who appears to be in on everything.
As it turns out, I think I missed the entire middle segment. I saw most of the set-up which led to the robbery, which is good, gritty crime; it could have been either Ringo Lam or Johnnie To. Then I missed the middle act, picking up for the end, which is much more a caper bit, as the getaway cars break down outside the city, the wife starts acting weird (she may just have one heck of a concussion), and there's a bunch of identical-looking bags, one containing rare coins, one smuggled guns, the other someone's dinner that keep getting mixed up. I'm pretty sure this leg is directed by Tsui Hark, if only because he's the one I most associate with being funny.
Taken on its own, that last act is a lot of goofy fun, but it might not play so well put together with two other acts that I assume are being played more or less straight. Hopefully I'll get a chance to find out soon; Magnolia's "Magnet" label seems to be putting it out sometime later this year.
Of course, they're also listed as distributor for...
Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America
* ¼ (out of four)
Seen 27 April 2008 at the Somerville Theater #5 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
Believe it or not, Severed Ways was one of the movies I was initially fairly excited about when the IFFB announced their roster of films. How many Viking movies do you get at the typical independent film festival, after all, and the fact that it wasn't banished to the "After Dark" segment of the program held out hope that it might be pretty good. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a miserable enough experience that I would have happily traded Vikings for the documentary about competitive jump-roping next door if I could have.
The text at the beginning sounds enticing - it sets up the backstory from the Vinland Sagas, telling us of a group of Norsemen who by 1007 AD had made a settlement in what is now Canada sending a further expedition south, only to be beset by "Skraelings" (the Abenaki) and driven back home. Two scouts, Orn (Tony Stone) and Volnard (Fiore Tedesco) were left behind and must survive off the land while they try to make their way back north, with hundreds of miles of wilderness, natives, and Christian missionaries between them and their goal.
I wonder if I might have enjoyed this movie a little more had it appeared at the Underground Film Festival rather than the Independent Film Festival. It would seem to fit there better; Severed Ways is very much a backyard film, which Tony Stone shot in Vermont and at Viking ruins in Newfoundland. Stone does practically everything, writing, directing, producing, and editing as well as starring in the picture. Costumes and props do look like they were made in his basement - probably more true to life than something from an elaborate Hollywood production, but still feeling like stuff they cobbled together out of what was lying around. It also feels a little underpopulated, as homemade movies tend to be.
Still, seeing it in a context where I'm more inclined to be generous would not have made it a good movie. Even discounting the question of what those Catholic missionaries are doing in the New World something like five hundred years too early, Stone makes a lot of decisions that maybe seemed to make sense at the time but don't quite work. The heavy metal soundtrack is a good idea, but actually showing Orn headbanging is weird. The actors speak in Greenlandic, apparently the closest thing going to ancient Norse, but it sounds stilted, and the subtitles are in idiomatic twenty-first century English ("we're toast if we stay here!"), further breaking the spell. The overblown chapter titles don't help, either - the small act of mayhem that follows the proclamation of "Conquest" is laughable.
A lot of that can be overcome, but Stone loses his audience pretty decisively early on. There are certain on-screen images you have to earn, and actual shit coming out of your ass is one of them. There was a palpable wave of revulsion that went through the audience at that, and smaller ones when Orn/Stone killed and dressed chickens and fish on-screen, and as much as you can try to defend that by saying it has documentary value, it just feels gratuitous, and no matter how much merit the rest of the film might have, there's no getting over that the audience just doesn't want any part of it any more.
That sort of thing throws the rest of the movie's faults into greater relief. Severed Ways runs nearly two hours but it's generally a slow, introspective 110 minutes, and the audience feels trapped by a performer who mistakenly thinks that every minute detail of his character's actions is just that fascinating. Stone isn't a good enough actor to pull it off, though, and the way he cavorts on screen makes the film seem like a sustained act of egotism. Which is too bad, because there is material for an interesting film here - the idea of being lost that far from home is powerful, as is Volnard's spiritual growth from encountering the Christian monks.
Maybe Stone is a guy to watch, even if his ambition greatly outstrips his resources and skill right now. Someday after working with and learning from the right people, he could become a decent filmmaker. In the meantime, though, I can't think of any good reason for someone to actually watch this movie.
Also on EFC.
For Triangle, I'm placing the blame solidly on my decision to go home, eat something marginally closer to a balanced meal than Cherry Coke and Twizzlers, and watch the Red Sox postgame show in the time between the Q&A for Turn the River in Somerville and the start of Triangle in Brookline. I must have fooled my body into thinking I was done for the day, when, no, there was still an hour and a half of Hong Kong action to go. For Severed Ways (where I don't think I missed much important), there's still being tired from not getting home until two-thirty-ish, rushing to Somerville, and winding up in a seat so far toward the front that you have to lean back to see the picture, way closer than digital projection was meant to be seen.
I spent the next couple hours really wishing I had waited a bit and gone to see the jump-rope movie instead. People need to be warned about this turd. (Note that the review for Severed Ways contains coarser language than usual - not my usual, but it's the best words for the job.)
Speaking of projection, I must confess that by the time Triangle showed, I was starting to get a little cranky about the first "F" in "IFFB" being kind of inaccurate; I think the opening night showing of Transsiberian was the only thing I saw on actual film rather than digital video up to that point. It kind of surprised me when Triangle wound up not being digital. Apparently the American movies with people in attendence couldn't get a print shipped, but the one from Hong Kong could. It just doesn't figure.
Tie Saam Gok (Triangle)
N/A (out of four)
Seen 26 April 2008 at the Coolidge Corner Theater #1 (Independent Film Festival of Boston After Dark)
I hope to get a chance to see Triangle again sometime soon, because the idea behind it is a lot of fun - getting three big-name action-adventure directors to make one film, handing the reins off to each other, allowing them to change styles to do what they do best... Well, that sounds like a lot of fun, and from the way the credits are arranged, it looks like each director had his own writers, too, and I know that's a lot of fun.
The story starts out as looking like a crime movie, as three down on their luck men are recruited for what initially looks like a robbery but either becomes a treasure hunt or was one all along (my subtitle comprehension does kind of go to heck after midnight). There's complications, of course, with one of the trio's wife having an affair with a corrupt cop who appears to be in on everything.
As it turns out, I think I missed the entire middle segment. I saw most of the set-up which led to the robbery, which is good, gritty crime; it could have been either Ringo Lam or Johnnie To. Then I missed the middle act, picking up for the end, which is much more a caper bit, as the getaway cars break down outside the city, the wife starts acting weird (she may just have one heck of a concussion), and there's a bunch of identical-looking bags, one containing rare coins, one smuggled guns, the other someone's dinner that keep getting mixed up. I'm pretty sure this leg is directed by Tsui Hark, if only because he's the one I most associate with being funny.
Taken on its own, that last act is a lot of goofy fun, but it might not play so well put together with two other acts that I assume are being played more or less straight. Hopefully I'll get a chance to find out soon; Magnolia's "Magnet" label seems to be putting it out sometime later this year.
Of course, they're also listed as distributor for...
Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America
* ¼ (out of four)
Seen 27 April 2008 at the Somerville Theater #5 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
Believe it or not, Severed Ways was one of the movies I was initially fairly excited about when the IFFB announced their roster of films. How many Viking movies do you get at the typical independent film festival, after all, and the fact that it wasn't banished to the "After Dark" segment of the program held out hope that it might be pretty good. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a miserable enough experience that I would have happily traded Vikings for the documentary about competitive jump-roping next door if I could have.
The text at the beginning sounds enticing - it sets up the backstory from the Vinland Sagas, telling us of a group of Norsemen who by 1007 AD had made a settlement in what is now Canada sending a further expedition south, only to be beset by "Skraelings" (the Abenaki) and driven back home. Two scouts, Orn (Tony Stone) and Volnard (Fiore Tedesco) were left behind and must survive off the land while they try to make their way back north, with hundreds of miles of wilderness, natives, and Christian missionaries between them and their goal.
I wonder if I might have enjoyed this movie a little more had it appeared at the Underground Film Festival rather than the Independent Film Festival. It would seem to fit there better; Severed Ways is very much a backyard film, which Tony Stone shot in Vermont and at Viking ruins in Newfoundland. Stone does practically everything, writing, directing, producing, and editing as well as starring in the picture. Costumes and props do look like they were made in his basement - probably more true to life than something from an elaborate Hollywood production, but still feeling like stuff they cobbled together out of what was lying around. It also feels a little underpopulated, as homemade movies tend to be.
Still, seeing it in a context where I'm more inclined to be generous would not have made it a good movie. Even discounting the question of what those Catholic missionaries are doing in the New World something like five hundred years too early, Stone makes a lot of decisions that maybe seemed to make sense at the time but don't quite work. The heavy metal soundtrack is a good idea, but actually showing Orn headbanging is weird. The actors speak in Greenlandic, apparently the closest thing going to ancient Norse, but it sounds stilted, and the subtitles are in idiomatic twenty-first century English ("we're toast if we stay here!"), further breaking the spell. The overblown chapter titles don't help, either - the small act of mayhem that follows the proclamation of "Conquest" is laughable.
A lot of that can be overcome, but Stone loses his audience pretty decisively early on. There are certain on-screen images you have to earn, and actual shit coming out of your ass is one of them. There was a palpable wave of revulsion that went through the audience at that, and smaller ones when Orn/Stone killed and dressed chickens and fish on-screen, and as much as you can try to defend that by saying it has documentary value, it just feels gratuitous, and no matter how much merit the rest of the film might have, there's no getting over that the audience just doesn't want any part of it any more.
That sort of thing throws the rest of the movie's faults into greater relief. Severed Ways runs nearly two hours but it's generally a slow, introspective 110 minutes, and the audience feels trapped by a performer who mistakenly thinks that every minute detail of his character's actions is just that fascinating. Stone isn't a good enough actor to pull it off, though, and the way he cavorts on screen makes the film seem like a sustained act of egotism. Which is too bad, because there is material for an interesting film here - the idea of being lost that far from home is powerful, as is Volnard's spiritual growth from encountering the Christian monks.
Maybe Stone is a guy to watch, even if his ambition greatly outstrips his resources and skill right now. Someday after working with and learning from the right people, he could become a decent filmmaker. In the meantime, though, I can't think of any good reason for someone to actually watch this movie.
Also on EFC.
Monday, May 05, 2008
IFFB 2008: Turn The River
Sunday afternoon, I was IMing Matt and mentioned that Famke Janssen was letting folks take pictures with her and signing autographs after the screening of Turn the River, but I didn't go in for that. I don't remember the exact conversation, but I believe the word "coward" was used.
It's apt; I've long been a fan, apparently since that guest appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation, since I remember being disappointed that she was the bad Bond girl in GoldenEye, rather than the one that got all the screen time. To be fair, I was 18, a big sci-fi fan, and she was aptly cast as the ideal woman. It's not unreasonable that she could have made that sort of impression.
What I say in the first paragraph of the review below is totally true, though - The Brattle's Ivy Moylun gave me the "I know!" reaction when I mentioned it a couple days later, but look at her filmography on IMDB, and try to figure out exactly why we packed it in to see her (and Eigeman). She really has not had big parts in many movies that were both good and high-profile since GoldenEye aside from the X-Men flicks, and people talked about her being sort of wasted there.
Well, okay, there's Deep Rising, which I love unreservedly, but still...
Anyway, Turn the River was one of the things I made my festival plans around, since Janssen and Eigeman are folks I really like and seeing them in person was just too good to pass up.
Bonus festival fun: The line for Turn the River and American Teen was around the block at the Somerville Theater, and was being held up by Paramount Vantage insisting on a bunch of security for American Teen's print (aside - yes, something at the IFFB actually screened on film!), so the line got pretty long. I wound up waiting just around the second corner, and after about ten minutes, my line-mates and I were cracking up laughing every time someone would turn that corner, after having walked from the theater's door, past Mr. Crepe, and down the side of the building only to see that the line just kept going, letting out some "holy crap, are there even this many seats?" or "are we in Arlington yet?" comment. We weren't laughing at you, specifically, guys - just the waves of people making the same comment.
Turn the River
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 26 April 2008 at Somerville Theater #1 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
When talking to people waiting in line for Turn the River and at other screenings over the weekend, a certain consensus emerged: We loved Famke Janssen, but couldn't name very many movies she was in that were very good or where she was the lead. Chris Eigeman, apparently, was similarly perplexed by this situation after working with her in The Treatment; fortunately, he was able to write and direct Turn the River to remedy that.
The part Eigeman wrote for her is Kailey Sullivan, a small-time Long Island pool and card hustler who hates the city but makes trips in anyway because that's where her son Gully (Jaymie Dornan) lives with his father David (Matt Ross) and stepmother Ellen (Marin Hinkle). Kailey has only recently been a part of Gully's life, and she doesn't like what she's seeing - a private school he hates a domineering, hard-line Catholic grandmother (Lois Smith), and having to communicate with him by dropping letters off at a pool hall owned by Teddy Quinette (Rip Torn). Having been pressured into giving up custody when she and David divorced, there's only one thing Kailey can think of to do - win enough to pay for good papers, grab him, and head to Canada.
Put that way, it doesn't sound like the wisest decision. Kailey is a nomad without the kind of money her paper guy needs, and Gully doesn't exactly seem to be in danger at his home - Grandmother Abigail seems to relish making things uncomfortable and David makes it worse by being suspicious of everything Gully says (the fact that Gully is hiding something in this case makes it no less overbearing), but Ellen does seem to be trying to do well by him in her ineffectual way. There's something about those scenes in Gully's home that makes it seem like a set of pipes ready to burst, but we can't tell where the pressure is being relieved or where the explosion is going to come.
Then there's Kaylie. It was created specifically for Janssen, and unsurprisingly fits her like a glove. Kailey's tough but not quite hard, which is not quite the ideal it sounds like. This is not a lady who tears up, or ever seems to let her guard down, but Janssen still manages to convey her unconditional love for her son in her scenes with Dornan even when she's also looking over her shoulder. There's also this sad but wonderful cockiness to Kailey - as much as we see that she's barely able to keep her head above water, she's able to keep convincing both herself and the audience that she can come out ahead - even though it's pretty clear that she's overreaching, again.
Matt Ross is also quite good as David; the guy has to be both ground-down and a bit menacing, and he covers that divide nicely. Jaymie Dornan is good as Gully, too, especially toward the end. Terry Kinney brings some welcome comic relief as the guy getting fake passports for Kaylie. A couple of the most memorable performances come from veterans playing somewhat against type. Lois Smith, for instance, is quietly vicious as Abigail; she's only in three or four scenes, but makes such an impression in that brief time that the character is able to cast a large shadow over the rest of the movie. Meanwhile, Rip Torn is almost cuddly as Quinette, his growls something more like a protective papa bear than usual.
Chris Eigeman opts to stay mostly behind the camera in his first film as a writer and director, and it looks like he could make a pretty good living there if he chooses to continue. He's not particularly flashy, but he and his cinematographer do a nice job of making the film easy to follow even though a lot of it takes place in dark rooms and alleys. It's also good to see that even though he is known, as an actor, for playing talky, sarcastic roles, he doesn't fall into the trap of trying to get the same thing from his cast. He gives each member of that cast a character to can sink his or her teeth into, though, and the plotting is really nice - I love the last act, where we see just how fragile Kailey's plan is. Getting away with something is tough, after all, and it's in Kailey's nature to push it.
I think this is the first time Janssen's has a bona fide starring role, and it's great to see that she's up to it. And that's not even taking into account what she and Eigeman told us in the double play - that the scene every pool movie has to have was shot in one take, without special effects. That probably doesn't change the quality of the movie any, but as cool bits of trivia goes, it's a nice one.
Also on EFC.
It's apt; I've long been a fan, apparently since that guest appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation, since I remember being disappointed that she was the bad Bond girl in GoldenEye, rather than the one that got all the screen time. To be fair, I was 18, a big sci-fi fan, and she was aptly cast as the ideal woman. It's not unreasonable that she could have made that sort of impression.
What I say in the first paragraph of the review below is totally true, though - The Brattle's Ivy Moylun gave me the "I know!" reaction when I mentioned it a couple days later, but look at her filmography on IMDB, and try to figure out exactly why we packed it in to see her (and Eigeman). She really has not had big parts in many movies that were both good and high-profile since GoldenEye aside from the X-Men flicks, and people talked about her being sort of wasted there.
Well, okay, there's Deep Rising, which I love unreservedly, but still...
Anyway, Turn the River was one of the things I made my festival plans around, since Janssen and Eigeman are folks I really like and seeing them in person was just too good to pass up.
Bonus festival fun: The line for Turn the River and American Teen was around the block at the Somerville Theater, and was being held up by Paramount Vantage insisting on a bunch of security for American Teen's print (aside - yes, something at the IFFB actually screened on film!), so the line got pretty long. I wound up waiting just around the second corner, and after about ten minutes, my line-mates and I were cracking up laughing every time someone would turn that corner, after having walked from the theater's door, past Mr. Crepe, and down the side of the building only to see that the line just kept going, letting out some "holy crap, are there even this many seats?" or "are we in Arlington yet?" comment. We weren't laughing at you, specifically, guys - just the waves of people making the same comment.
Turn the River
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 26 April 2008 at Somerville Theater #1 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
When talking to people waiting in line for Turn the River and at other screenings over the weekend, a certain consensus emerged: We loved Famke Janssen, but couldn't name very many movies she was in that were very good or where she was the lead. Chris Eigeman, apparently, was similarly perplexed by this situation after working with her in The Treatment; fortunately, he was able to write and direct Turn the River to remedy that.
The part Eigeman wrote for her is Kailey Sullivan, a small-time Long Island pool and card hustler who hates the city but makes trips in anyway because that's where her son Gully (Jaymie Dornan) lives with his father David (Matt Ross) and stepmother Ellen (Marin Hinkle). Kailey has only recently been a part of Gully's life, and she doesn't like what she's seeing - a private school he hates a domineering, hard-line Catholic grandmother (Lois Smith), and having to communicate with him by dropping letters off at a pool hall owned by Teddy Quinette (Rip Torn). Having been pressured into giving up custody when she and David divorced, there's only one thing Kailey can think of to do - win enough to pay for good papers, grab him, and head to Canada.
Put that way, it doesn't sound like the wisest decision. Kailey is a nomad without the kind of money her paper guy needs, and Gully doesn't exactly seem to be in danger at his home - Grandmother Abigail seems to relish making things uncomfortable and David makes it worse by being suspicious of everything Gully says (the fact that Gully is hiding something in this case makes it no less overbearing), but Ellen does seem to be trying to do well by him in her ineffectual way. There's something about those scenes in Gully's home that makes it seem like a set of pipes ready to burst, but we can't tell where the pressure is being relieved or where the explosion is going to come.
Then there's Kaylie. It was created specifically for Janssen, and unsurprisingly fits her like a glove. Kailey's tough but not quite hard, which is not quite the ideal it sounds like. This is not a lady who tears up, or ever seems to let her guard down, but Janssen still manages to convey her unconditional love for her son in her scenes with Dornan even when she's also looking over her shoulder. There's also this sad but wonderful cockiness to Kailey - as much as we see that she's barely able to keep her head above water, she's able to keep convincing both herself and the audience that she can come out ahead - even though it's pretty clear that she's overreaching, again.
Matt Ross is also quite good as David; the guy has to be both ground-down and a bit menacing, and he covers that divide nicely. Jaymie Dornan is good as Gully, too, especially toward the end. Terry Kinney brings some welcome comic relief as the guy getting fake passports for Kaylie. A couple of the most memorable performances come from veterans playing somewhat against type. Lois Smith, for instance, is quietly vicious as Abigail; she's only in three or four scenes, but makes such an impression in that brief time that the character is able to cast a large shadow over the rest of the movie. Meanwhile, Rip Torn is almost cuddly as Quinette, his growls something more like a protective papa bear than usual.
Chris Eigeman opts to stay mostly behind the camera in his first film as a writer and director, and it looks like he could make a pretty good living there if he chooses to continue. He's not particularly flashy, but he and his cinematographer do a nice job of making the film easy to follow even though a lot of it takes place in dark rooms and alleys. It's also good to see that even though he is known, as an actor, for playing talky, sarcastic roles, he doesn't fall into the trap of trying to get the same thing from his cast. He gives each member of that cast a character to can sink his or her teeth into, though, and the plotting is really nice - I love the last act, where we see just how fragile Kailey's plan is. Getting away with something is tough, after all, and it's in Kailey's nature to push it.
I think this is the first time Janssen's has a bona fide starring role, and it's great to see that she's up to it. And that's not even taking into account what she and Eigeman told us in the double play - that the scene every pool movie has to have was shot in one take, without special effects. That probably doesn't change the quality of the movie any, but as cool bits of trivia goes, it's a nice one.
Also on EFC.
Friday, May 02, 2008
IFFB 2008: Medicine for Melancholy
Of all the filmmakers I saw doing Q&As at the festival (a bunch, especially considering The Twelve had eleven), I think Barry Jenkins has to be one of the most enjoyable to watch. The man was just excited to be at the festival, and from the way he described the writing and making of the Medicine for Melancholy, I wouldn't be surprised if he was that way on set, which must have been a great deal of fun for everyone involved.
Medicine for Melancholy
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 26 April 2008 at the Somerville Theater #2 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
The "getting to know you" movie is a vital part of the independent film scene. Aside from being something that can be shot on a budget - get a couple actors, some friendly locations, and a script with interesting things to say, and you're good to go. It certainly doesn't hurt that they often play against independent film type: Rather than trying to prove their sophistication by showing how screwed up relationships can become, they tend to be hopeful and positive, and try to photograph their beloved settings at their best.
With Medicine for Melancholy, the location is San Francisco, and the couple who discovers their chemistry after a random meeting is Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and JoAnn (Tracey Heggins). They awake from a drunken hookup at a party the night before with Micah far more smitten than Jo', who just wants to go home and forget the whole thing. Sharing a cab home doesn't get Micah any closer at first, but fate has her drop her wallet on the cab's floor. He tracks her down, and his persistence gets him a little more time to charm her. There's obstacles, of course - Micah finds Jo at her boyfriend's place, and his recent break-up has him not necessarily acting on the best motivations.
Jo', to her credit, picks up on it fairly quickly, wanting to know how much of Micah's interest is from who she is individually and how much is from both being black. Race is a constant factor, with Micah quick to point out that San Francisco has one of the smallest populations of African-Americans for a city its size, a number he discounts further by excluding folks who see themselves as part of some other group first (hipsters and the like) and then lamenting that when he does see another black person, he or she has an arm around a white person. It's interesting how writer/director Barry Jenkins presents the issue - as much as Micah's pride in his heritage is to be admired, his obsession with it is a little unnerving. It's not hard to see why, despite how charming and intelligent Micah is, his constant returns to the subject are anything but reassuring to Jo'.
Their African-American heritage also plays a role in which parts of San Francisco Jenkins highlights as the pair spend the day together; Micah turns his nose up at the museum Jo' suggests and instead brings them to MOAD (the Museum of the African Diaspora); other scenes take place among statues honoring the civil right movement. That is, however, just a portion of the city that we visit. Jenkins and cinematographer James Laxton capture it with sharp photography desaturated almost to the point of being black and white (except for a pair of segments), staying away from familiar landmarks but still capturing the hilly terrain and frequent juxtapositions of squeaky-clean and grimy neighborhoods that make the city unique. He also puts the characters on bicycles, keeping them in the open air without tying them to a limited area.
There's not a lot of talking to be done on bikes, and that's some of the best times to watch the characters enjoying themselves, free as only people moving under their own power can be. The actors playing the couple portray that simple pleasure beautifully, and are just as charming when they're interacting more directly. Cenac is a comedian by trade, and as expected can tell a story or deliver a story with the best. Even though there is an undercurrent of anger or hurt to a lot of his actions, he's genuinely charming and funny, and for all Micah's faults, Cenac is able to convince the audience that his anger at the city and the world comes from how much he loves it and expects better. Heggins makes Jo' optimistic in the places where Micah is jaded, and though she sometimes comes off as a little naïve, she's also more open to complexity and individuality than Micah. There's a nice chemistry between them, too, although it's neither instant nor perfect; one can see how they're drawn to each other but still need to feel each other out.
Jenkins doesn't just turn the camera on and expect this chemistry to do its thing; he chooses and creates little moments that ring true. I love when the driver of the cab Micah and Jo' share is surprised that Micah's stop is on the other side of town, and Micah gives him this "c'mon, why do you think I did this?" dismissal; I like the story of what Micah does for a living; I like the dealer-looking guys pushing hydration outside a club. He gives his characters interesting things to talk about, though sometimes he gets carried away with it (though the scene of advocates talking about the need for rent control isn't nearly as out of place as it could be).
Which makes getting to know Micah and Jo' a distinct pleasure.
Also on EFC.
Medicine for Melancholy
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 26 April 2008 at the Somerville Theater #2 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
The "getting to know you" movie is a vital part of the independent film scene. Aside from being something that can be shot on a budget - get a couple actors, some friendly locations, and a script with interesting things to say, and you're good to go. It certainly doesn't hurt that they often play against independent film type: Rather than trying to prove their sophistication by showing how screwed up relationships can become, they tend to be hopeful and positive, and try to photograph their beloved settings at their best.
With Medicine for Melancholy, the location is San Francisco, and the couple who discovers their chemistry after a random meeting is Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and JoAnn (Tracey Heggins). They awake from a drunken hookup at a party the night before with Micah far more smitten than Jo', who just wants to go home and forget the whole thing. Sharing a cab home doesn't get Micah any closer at first, but fate has her drop her wallet on the cab's floor. He tracks her down, and his persistence gets him a little more time to charm her. There's obstacles, of course - Micah finds Jo at her boyfriend's place, and his recent break-up has him not necessarily acting on the best motivations.
Jo', to her credit, picks up on it fairly quickly, wanting to know how much of Micah's interest is from who she is individually and how much is from both being black. Race is a constant factor, with Micah quick to point out that San Francisco has one of the smallest populations of African-Americans for a city its size, a number he discounts further by excluding folks who see themselves as part of some other group first (hipsters and the like) and then lamenting that when he does see another black person, he or she has an arm around a white person. It's interesting how writer/director Barry Jenkins presents the issue - as much as Micah's pride in his heritage is to be admired, his obsession with it is a little unnerving. It's not hard to see why, despite how charming and intelligent Micah is, his constant returns to the subject are anything but reassuring to Jo'.
Their African-American heritage also plays a role in which parts of San Francisco Jenkins highlights as the pair spend the day together; Micah turns his nose up at the museum Jo' suggests and instead brings them to MOAD (the Museum of the African Diaspora); other scenes take place among statues honoring the civil right movement. That is, however, just a portion of the city that we visit. Jenkins and cinematographer James Laxton capture it with sharp photography desaturated almost to the point of being black and white (except for a pair of segments), staying away from familiar landmarks but still capturing the hilly terrain and frequent juxtapositions of squeaky-clean and grimy neighborhoods that make the city unique. He also puts the characters on bicycles, keeping them in the open air without tying them to a limited area.
There's not a lot of talking to be done on bikes, and that's some of the best times to watch the characters enjoying themselves, free as only people moving under their own power can be. The actors playing the couple portray that simple pleasure beautifully, and are just as charming when they're interacting more directly. Cenac is a comedian by trade, and as expected can tell a story or deliver a story with the best. Even though there is an undercurrent of anger or hurt to a lot of his actions, he's genuinely charming and funny, and for all Micah's faults, Cenac is able to convince the audience that his anger at the city and the world comes from how much he loves it and expects better. Heggins makes Jo' optimistic in the places where Micah is jaded, and though she sometimes comes off as a little naïve, she's also more open to complexity and individuality than Micah. There's a nice chemistry between them, too, although it's neither instant nor perfect; one can see how they're drawn to each other but still need to feel each other out.
Jenkins doesn't just turn the camera on and expect this chemistry to do its thing; he chooses and creates little moments that ring true. I love when the driver of the cab Micah and Jo' share is surprised that Micah's stop is on the other side of town, and Micah gives him this "c'mon, why do you think I did this?" dismissal; I like the story of what Micah does for a living; I like the dealer-looking guys pushing hydration outside a club. He gives his characters interesting things to talk about, though sometimes he gets carried away with it (though the scene of advocates talking about the need for rent control isn't nearly as out of place as it could be).
Which makes getting to know Micah and Jo' a distinct pleasure.
Also on EFC.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
IFFB 2008: My Effortless Brilliance
Saturday was probably my favorite day at the IFFB this year - pretty nice day, which makes getting from home to the Brattle to Somerville to Brookline and back again less annoying, good movies from start to end, and entertaining guests. You really can't ask for a whole lot more than that.
I liked My Effortless Brilliance a lot, and it had probably my favorite short I saw at the festival playing before it - "Woman in Burka" is funny stuff, with a middle-eastern New York actress up for a role in what may be a drama and may be a horror movie while also worrying about her visa and other day-to-day issues that come up. Part of the fun is that most of the actors are playing versions of themselves, so the insider-y joke about how every actor in New York has done some Law & Order at some point is funnier when two of the other actresses up for the role were regulars on the shows at some point - which gave little impression that the actresses in question could be so funny; Samantha Buck, especially, is hilarious.
My Effortless Brilliance
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 26 April 2008 at the Somerville Theater #4 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
I suppose it speaks well of me and the people I know that I've never had a friendship end like in the beginning of My Effortless Brilliance. Sure, there's a long list of people I've fallen out of contact with once we weren't in the same place on a regular basis, but it's never been the break-up, where one person says "you're a terrible friend and I don't want to be around you any more."
That's how Lynn Shelton starts My Effortless Brilliance, but one "two years later" caption and cast-off Eric (Sean Nelson) is trying to reconnect. The East Coast writer is in Washington State on a book tour, and his stop in Walla Walla is near where Dylan (Basil Harris) is the editor of a community newspaper. Well, four and a half hours away, and he had to ask for the directions to the cabin in the woods where Dylan is living. And he didn't tell Dylan he was coming. Dylan's a little sarcastic and annoyed when he finally gets home, but offers to let Eric stay the night. Things do get a little weird when Dylan's new best friend Jim (Calvin Reeder) pops in; there's a fair amount of drinking leading up to the crew deciding to hunt the cougar that's been prowling around.
"Relationship" is a word with a general meaning (how two people or things effect each other) that is often assumed to have a more specific meaning (romantic or sexual). Shelton and her cast play with that dual usage while staying well back from confusing them. What goes on with Eric, Dylan, and Jim plays off the sorts of jealousies and emotions that frequently crop up among dating couples - it's not really that much different to wonder why an old pal has this guy for a best friend than to judge his new girlfriend harshly, and the parallel is amusing. It's a thin line, though, because one step too far and suddenly there's a weird subtext that might perhaps make for a good movie on its own but isn't what this one is about. Eric and Dylan and Dylan and Jim are friends, nothing more, even if they do occasionally do the same things couples do.
They're funny doing it, too. The film is mostly improvised - the cast members are also given writing credits - and most of the film is a stream of guy talk, one-liners that strike the characters as funny at the time. It rings truer than the guy talk we often get in movies - it's not just swearing, comments about women and their body parts, and pop-culture references. It's kind of random, sometimes alcohol-fueled, and generally seeks chuckles rather than guffaws. The only time it doesn't quite ring true is in a discussion of the merits of Charles Bukowski, which seems too obviously designed to show the continuum of personalities, from Eric's literary snobbishness to Jim's lack of concern with things other than the practical.
All three actors turn in nice work. Nelson gets the most broadly comic role, the somewhat overweight city boy who doesn't belong out in the woods, but plays him a bit short of ridiculous. Yes, he's a fish out of water, and kind of selfish, but also kind of lonely and frequently able to bring the genuinely funny line. Harris does what initially looks like a classic slow burn, irritated by Eric's unannounced presence and how ridiculous the guy is. He's got a bit of an edge to his voice sometimes; he looks like he belongs in this rural wooded cabin but is quite able to break out a shapr, sarcastic wit. Reeder makes Jim less sophisticated but good to share a drink with, smart in areas where the others are kind of ignorant, and amusingly jealous or at odds with the city folk at a certain point.
Friendship is probably the most common relationship that exists, to the point where most movies take it for granted. Lynn Shelton's got a nifty take on it here, and it's a nifty treat to see it treated as something dynamic and challenging as romance without being a gateway to the same.
Also on EFC.
I liked My Effortless Brilliance a lot, and it had probably my favorite short I saw at the festival playing before it - "Woman in Burka" is funny stuff, with a middle-eastern New York actress up for a role in what may be a drama and may be a horror movie while also worrying about her visa and other day-to-day issues that come up. Part of the fun is that most of the actors are playing versions of themselves, so the insider-y joke about how every actor in New York has done some Law & Order at some point is funnier when two of the other actresses up for the role were regulars on the shows at some point - which gave little impression that the actresses in question could be so funny; Samantha Buck, especially, is hilarious.
My Effortless Brilliance
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 26 April 2008 at the Somerville Theater #4 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
I suppose it speaks well of me and the people I know that I've never had a friendship end like in the beginning of My Effortless Brilliance. Sure, there's a long list of people I've fallen out of contact with once we weren't in the same place on a regular basis, but it's never been the break-up, where one person says "you're a terrible friend and I don't want to be around you any more."
That's how Lynn Shelton starts My Effortless Brilliance, but one "two years later" caption and cast-off Eric (Sean Nelson) is trying to reconnect. The East Coast writer is in Washington State on a book tour, and his stop in Walla Walla is near where Dylan (Basil Harris) is the editor of a community newspaper. Well, four and a half hours away, and he had to ask for the directions to the cabin in the woods where Dylan is living. And he didn't tell Dylan he was coming. Dylan's a little sarcastic and annoyed when he finally gets home, but offers to let Eric stay the night. Things do get a little weird when Dylan's new best friend Jim (Calvin Reeder) pops in; there's a fair amount of drinking leading up to the crew deciding to hunt the cougar that's been prowling around.
"Relationship" is a word with a general meaning (how two people or things effect each other) that is often assumed to have a more specific meaning (romantic or sexual). Shelton and her cast play with that dual usage while staying well back from confusing them. What goes on with Eric, Dylan, and Jim plays off the sorts of jealousies and emotions that frequently crop up among dating couples - it's not really that much different to wonder why an old pal has this guy for a best friend than to judge his new girlfriend harshly, and the parallel is amusing. It's a thin line, though, because one step too far and suddenly there's a weird subtext that might perhaps make for a good movie on its own but isn't what this one is about. Eric and Dylan and Dylan and Jim are friends, nothing more, even if they do occasionally do the same things couples do.
They're funny doing it, too. The film is mostly improvised - the cast members are also given writing credits - and most of the film is a stream of guy talk, one-liners that strike the characters as funny at the time. It rings truer than the guy talk we often get in movies - it's not just swearing, comments about women and their body parts, and pop-culture references. It's kind of random, sometimes alcohol-fueled, and generally seeks chuckles rather than guffaws. The only time it doesn't quite ring true is in a discussion of the merits of Charles Bukowski, which seems too obviously designed to show the continuum of personalities, from Eric's literary snobbishness to Jim's lack of concern with things other than the practical.
All three actors turn in nice work. Nelson gets the most broadly comic role, the somewhat overweight city boy who doesn't belong out in the woods, but plays him a bit short of ridiculous. Yes, he's a fish out of water, and kind of selfish, but also kind of lonely and frequently able to bring the genuinely funny line. Harris does what initially looks like a classic slow burn, irritated by Eric's unannounced presence and how ridiculous the guy is. He's got a bit of an edge to his voice sometimes; he looks like he belongs in this rural wooded cabin but is quite able to break out a shapr, sarcastic wit. Reeder makes Jim less sophisticated but good to share a drink with, smart in areas where the others are kind of ignorant, and amusingly jealous or at odds with the city folk at a certain point.
Friendship is probably the most common relationship that exists, to the point where most movies take it for granted. Lynn Shelton's got a nifty take on it here, and it's a nifty treat to see it treated as something dynamic and challenging as romance without being a gateway to the same.
Also on EFC.
Monday, April 28, 2008
IFFB 2008: Sex Positive
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.
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.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
IFFB 2008: Jetsam
Not much time to post before running out the door again - just time to note that Jetsam is playing again at 10pm tonight, and is pretty decent. It's certainly worth a look for fans of The Descent (and, really, who isn't?), since it features two of the lead actresses in rather different roles, which is part of the fun.
Jetsam
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 25 April 2008 at Somerville Theater #4 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
Jetsam certainly opens with a nifty hook - a man and a woman have apparently washed up on the seashore. She checks to see that she still has a USB drive and then looks for him, but he is not happy to see her, to say the least. They both break for a stone church in the distance. What is going on here?
We soon get some clues - the film flashes back to the woman, calling herself Rachel (Alex Reid), returning to her new boyfriend's apartment after her morning run. Jack (Cal Macaninch) is working on something top-secret - so much so that he handcuffs his laptop to his wrist for the commute - and he really should be more careful, because Rachel is going through his stuff as soon as he's out of sight. She's working with her real boyfriend Kemp (Jamie Draven), the man from the beach. Unbeknownst to Kemp, Jack, and Rachel, Jack's employers have hired their own security detail, including hard-nosed chief Bevan (Adam Shaw) and a woman assigned to keep a particularly close eye on Rachel (Shauna Macdonald).
A great deal of this film is about sleight-of-hand and misdirection; filmmaker Simon Welsford gives us plenty of details about the tradecraft and the methods used to infiltrate and monitor the other sides. The information on the flash drive winds up being a MacGuffin in the classic Hitchcockian sense, in that its most important property is the lengths people will go to acquire it. Indeed, it's never quite clear just who the two sides are in this battle; the thieves don't seem to be nearly as ruthless as the people secretly protect Jack. Jack himself seems nice enough, but is the sort of absent-minded nerd who could very easily be working on something terrible and be so fascinated by the challenge of it that the moral implications don't register.
With the rightness and wrongness of the characters' goals so unknown, the movie lets us focus squarely on how the game affects the characters. The men are pretty straightforward: Cal Macaninch's Jack isn't quite odd enough to draw attention, but is so aware of his own intelligence that he can come off as a bit patronizing (even as he is naive in other things). Adam Shaw is icy as Bevan, the character most likely to draw a gun to solve a problem and with no qualms about either monitoring the situation without telling Jack that his girlfriend is a spy or pushing Grace to the point of breaking. Jamie Draven does a nice job of having Kemp break down over the course of the movie, increasingly paranoid that Rachel may be shifting alliances.
Alex Reid is the star of the show, though, and she's great here. She has to go from tough and resourceful to feeling over her head to being shattered when things start going to hell, and for the most part she has to do it while her character is immersing herself in her own role. It's a role that could be tough to get a handle on - she could very easily come across as just a blank - but Reid always makes it intriguing, and sympathetic even when she's doing questionable things. Shauna Macdonald doesn't show up until later, but makes a great impression in her limited time.
The film was made quickly for extremely little money, and it does show; unlike other productions at the festival shot and projected on HD video, this one does look more like television than a movie, with the exteriors looking a bit washed out and the camera work sometimes looking somewhat shaky. The structure of the story is ambitious, and Welsford doesn't always set the right pace; toward the end, when we should be caught up in the action and everything being explained, I was occasionally noticing that we hadn't been back to the beach for a while.
That just mean that Welsford has more of a future as a writer than a director; his story is well-built, at the very least. Or that he just may need a bigger budget to work with. Jetsam doesn't quite meet its potential, but it certainly shows a great deal.
Also on EFC.
Jetsam
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 25 April 2008 at Somerville Theater #4 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
Jetsam certainly opens with a nifty hook - a man and a woman have apparently washed up on the seashore. She checks to see that she still has a USB drive and then looks for him, but he is not happy to see her, to say the least. They both break for a stone church in the distance. What is going on here?
We soon get some clues - the film flashes back to the woman, calling herself Rachel (Alex Reid), returning to her new boyfriend's apartment after her morning run. Jack (Cal Macaninch) is working on something top-secret - so much so that he handcuffs his laptop to his wrist for the commute - and he really should be more careful, because Rachel is going through his stuff as soon as he's out of sight. She's working with her real boyfriend Kemp (Jamie Draven), the man from the beach. Unbeknownst to Kemp, Jack, and Rachel, Jack's employers have hired their own security detail, including hard-nosed chief Bevan (Adam Shaw) and a woman assigned to keep a particularly close eye on Rachel (Shauna Macdonald).
A great deal of this film is about sleight-of-hand and misdirection; filmmaker Simon Welsford gives us plenty of details about the tradecraft and the methods used to infiltrate and monitor the other sides. The information on the flash drive winds up being a MacGuffin in the classic Hitchcockian sense, in that its most important property is the lengths people will go to acquire it. Indeed, it's never quite clear just who the two sides are in this battle; the thieves don't seem to be nearly as ruthless as the people secretly protect Jack. Jack himself seems nice enough, but is the sort of absent-minded nerd who could very easily be working on something terrible and be so fascinated by the challenge of it that the moral implications don't register.
With the rightness and wrongness of the characters' goals so unknown, the movie lets us focus squarely on how the game affects the characters. The men are pretty straightforward: Cal Macaninch's Jack isn't quite odd enough to draw attention, but is so aware of his own intelligence that he can come off as a bit patronizing (even as he is naive in other things). Adam Shaw is icy as Bevan, the character most likely to draw a gun to solve a problem and with no qualms about either monitoring the situation without telling Jack that his girlfriend is a spy or pushing Grace to the point of breaking. Jamie Draven does a nice job of having Kemp break down over the course of the movie, increasingly paranoid that Rachel may be shifting alliances.
Alex Reid is the star of the show, though, and she's great here. She has to go from tough and resourceful to feeling over her head to being shattered when things start going to hell, and for the most part she has to do it while her character is immersing herself in her own role. It's a role that could be tough to get a handle on - she could very easily come across as just a blank - but Reid always makes it intriguing, and sympathetic even when she's doing questionable things. Shauna Macdonald doesn't show up until later, but makes a great impression in her limited time.
The film was made quickly for extremely little money, and it does show; unlike other productions at the festival shot and projected on HD video, this one does look more like television than a movie, with the exteriors looking a bit washed out and the camera work sometimes looking somewhat shaky. The structure of the story is ambitious, and Welsford doesn't always set the right pace; toward the end, when we should be caught up in the action and everything being explained, I was occasionally noticing that we hadn't been back to the beach for a while.
That just mean that Welsford has more of a future as a writer than a director; his story is well-built, at the very least. Or that he just may need a bigger budget to work with. Jetsam doesn't quite meet its potential, but it certainly shows a great deal.
Also on EFC.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
IFFB 2008: Mister Lonely
Harmony Korine is a name I have generally avoided in the past. He's got the stink of Dogme 95 on him, after all, and everything I've read about his works has suggested that he's one of those artistes who think that realism, especially where young people are concerned, is obtained with misery and perversity. Despite the frequently whimsical nature of this film, I haven't really shaken that impression; there is still the impression of a writer who thinks nastiness is a positive in and of itself, rather than something that can be learned from.
So why this? I do like Samantha Morton and Werner Herzog. Herzog may just be one of the greatest deadpan comedians ever, if only because he is just crazy enough that he may be completely serious. Those two certainly didn't disappoint.
Korine was, I'm told, there for a Q&A after the show, but I missed it because I was bolting for the T to catch Death Car at the Coolidge. I actually left before the credits finished rolling, and feel vaguely ashamed for that, especially when the wait for the red line was long enough that I could likely have stayed another minute or two.
Hopefully my press pass won't be revoked for that.
Mister Lonely
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 April 2008 at Somerville Theater #5 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
Mister Lonely invites the audience to ponder many philosophical questions. What is the purpose of a miracle? Is it a blessing or a curse to find oneself among people who share your passions completely? Can you choose your own identity, or must it be stumbled upon? And, of course, which is funnier/freakier - a Scottish castle populated entirely by celebrity impersonators, or Werner Herzog dropping nuns out of an airplane without parachutes?
These are the twin stories told by Harmony Korine's new film. In the main path, we meet a Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna). While performing at a home for the elderly, he is discovered by a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton) who describes their community and invites him to join - they don't have a Michael yet! Michael's and Marilyn's arrival is greeted with excitement by most of the group except for Marilyn's husband Charlie Chaplin (Denis Levant), who is jealous. There are more practical concerns there, though, as the group is trying to build a theater to put on a show and dealing with a disease that has stricken their herd of sheep.
Meanwhile, in Africa, a mun who falls out of Father Umbrillo's (Herzog) plane during a food drop concludes that faith gives one the power to fly.
Almost every shot in the film is surreal in some way, whether it be the dizzying shots of the nuns falling through the sky or frames which have hazmat-suited health officials inspecting the sheep while Abraham Lincoln, Charlie Chaplin, and James Dead look on from the background. Even though Michael Jackson is already a punchline, Korine does a nice job of mining laughs from just how silly his routine looks removed from context.
Not all of these weird, off-kilter moments work. Korine has a reputation for being strange or perverse simply because the option is there (I don't know first-hand; I've not seen his previous films), and there are certainly signs of that here. The image which opens and closes the film is kind of random - beautiful, in a way, but rather disconnected from the rest of the film. There's no story connection between the celebrity impersonators and the flying nuns, and the thematic one I came up with after the film feels tenuous. And there's one scene where Korine screws with the focus on the camera for what seems like no purpose other than irritating the audience. One could probably find an artistic reason for it in hindsight, but it's the sort of artistic decision that can literally take an audience out of the film, to the lobby, to complain about the screwy projection.
Some of that's to be expected and forgiven; the movie has a bizarre premise, so some strange execution is probably to be expected. It is, arguably, a worthwhile trade-off in order to be introduced to some of the strange characters who populate the film's world. That Werner Herzog is a treat goes almost without saying; even if he never directs another film, he could have a great career delivering off-kilter lines with a straight face and the sort of precise diction that tells us that this is exactly what he means. Michael's Parisian friend and booker Renard (Leos Carax) steals both of his scenes. Most of the impersonators are at least amusing enough to get the audience curious about them, although it is Richard Strange's Abraham Lincoln who seems to get a huge laugh almost every time he appears. A grouchy, f-bomb-dropping, no-nonsense Lincoln is a great counterweight to some of the other characters.
Like the main character. Luna does a good job of suggesting Michael Jackson, though not really looking like him, and his dancing bits are a stitch. Luna does capture the sort of creepy, deliberate childishness that has made the real thing so unnerving in his performance, but a side effect of that is that his Michael winds up being just a bit too much a blank slate. The audience just never has any relationship with this guy aside from laughing at his dancing.
Samantha Morton's Marilyn winds up much more interesting; she's kind of chatty, has a contentious relationship with her husband, and there's always this question about how much and what kind of interest she has in Michael. As much as Michael remains a cipher despite his occasional narration and other moments of self-description, Morton gives us a nuanced portrayal of fragile self-esteem. So does Lavant, although his Charlie doesn't shrink the way Marilyn does; he's more the type to compensate by being a bully.
Is there something worthwhile to be found here? Absolutely, no question about that - Richard Strange and Werner Herzog may be worth the price of admission alone. The question is, how much of the movie will come across as interestingly strange and how much is strange as a substitute for interesting?
Also on EFC.
So why this? I do like Samantha Morton and Werner Herzog. Herzog may just be one of the greatest deadpan comedians ever, if only because he is just crazy enough that he may be completely serious. Those two certainly didn't disappoint.
Korine was, I'm told, there for a Q&A after the show, but I missed it because I was bolting for the T to catch Death Car at the Coolidge. I actually left before the credits finished rolling, and feel vaguely ashamed for that, especially when the wait for the red line was long enough that I could likely have stayed another minute or two.
Hopefully my press pass won't be revoked for that.
Mister Lonely
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 April 2008 at Somerville Theater #5 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
Mister Lonely invites the audience to ponder many philosophical questions. What is the purpose of a miracle? Is it a blessing or a curse to find oneself among people who share your passions completely? Can you choose your own identity, or must it be stumbled upon? And, of course, which is funnier/freakier - a Scottish castle populated entirely by celebrity impersonators, or Werner Herzog dropping nuns out of an airplane without parachutes?
These are the twin stories told by Harmony Korine's new film. In the main path, we meet a Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna). While performing at a home for the elderly, he is discovered by a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton) who describes their community and invites him to join - they don't have a Michael yet! Michael's and Marilyn's arrival is greeted with excitement by most of the group except for Marilyn's husband Charlie Chaplin (Denis Levant), who is jealous. There are more practical concerns there, though, as the group is trying to build a theater to put on a show and dealing with a disease that has stricken their herd of sheep.
Meanwhile, in Africa, a mun who falls out of Father Umbrillo's (Herzog) plane during a food drop concludes that faith gives one the power to fly.
Almost every shot in the film is surreal in some way, whether it be the dizzying shots of the nuns falling through the sky or frames which have hazmat-suited health officials inspecting the sheep while Abraham Lincoln, Charlie Chaplin, and James Dead look on from the background. Even though Michael Jackson is already a punchline, Korine does a nice job of mining laughs from just how silly his routine looks removed from context.
Not all of these weird, off-kilter moments work. Korine has a reputation for being strange or perverse simply because the option is there (I don't know first-hand; I've not seen his previous films), and there are certainly signs of that here. The image which opens and closes the film is kind of random - beautiful, in a way, but rather disconnected from the rest of the film. There's no story connection between the celebrity impersonators and the flying nuns, and the thematic one I came up with after the film feels tenuous. And there's one scene where Korine screws with the focus on the camera for what seems like no purpose other than irritating the audience. One could probably find an artistic reason for it in hindsight, but it's the sort of artistic decision that can literally take an audience out of the film, to the lobby, to complain about the screwy projection.
Some of that's to be expected and forgiven; the movie has a bizarre premise, so some strange execution is probably to be expected. It is, arguably, a worthwhile trade-off in order to be introduced to some of the strange characters who populate the film's world. That Werner Herzog is a treat goes almost without saying; even if he never directs another film, he could have a great career delivering off-kilter lines with a straight face and the sort of precise diction that tells us that this is exactly what he means. Michael's Parisian friend and booker Renard (Leos Carax) steals both of his scenes. Most of the impersonators are at least amusing enough to get the audience curious about them, although it is Richard Strange's Abraham Lincoln who seems to get a huge laugh almost every time he appears. A grouchy, f-bomb-dropping, no-nonsense Lincoln is a great counterweight to some of the other characters.
Like the main character. Luna does a good job of suggesting Michael Jackson, though not really looking like him, and his dancing bits are a stitch. Luna does capture the sort of creepy, deliberate childishness that has made the real thing so unnerving in his performance, but a side effect of that is that his Michael winds up being just a bit too much a blank slate. The audience just never has any relationship with this guy aside from laughing at his dancing.
Samantha Morton's Marilyn winds up much more interesting; she's kind of chatty, has a contentious relationship with her husband, and there's always this question about how much and what kind of interest she has in Michael. As much as Michael remains a cipher despite his occasional narration and other moments of self-description, Morton gives us a nuanced portrayal of fragile self-esteem. So does Lavant, although his Charlie doesn't shrink the way Marilyn does; he's more the type to compensate by being a bully.
Is there something worthwhile to be found here? Absolutely, no question about that - Richard Strange and Werner Herzog may be worth the price of admission alone. The question is, how much of the movie will come across as interestingly strange and how much is strange as a substitute for interesting?
Also on EFC.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
IFFB Opening Night: Transsiberian
So, there's opening night. There will be pictures later, as soon as I find the USB cable to get them off my camera. My brothers mocked said camera at the ballgame last week, pointing out that it had the resolution of the one built into their phones, and this makes it look a bit sillier. Still, I can't bring myself to replace it, both because I don't take that many pictures and the darn thing isn't broken yet.
Opening night was fun; the writers, producer, director, and one of the stars of Transsiberian were on hand - Anderson is from the area (he once worked at the Brattle theater), and Sir Ben Kingsley is shooting Shutter Island nearby (so is Emily Mortimer, but maybe her part is done or something like that). Seeing them on stage, I wasn't sure whether Anderson was very tall or Kingsley is short. Kingsley had some nifty stories to tell about how he winds up playing people from so many different countries: As he puts it, his genetics are a mix and he's good at mimicry. For Transsiberian, one of the Russian-speaking crew would stand off camera reading the lines, and he would copy his pronunciation and accent.
Anyway, that was day one. Tonight's plan is to hope Mister Lonely starts (and thus finishes) on time and then head from Somerville to Brookline for Blood Car; if that doesn't look possible, I'm not sure what the backup will be.
Transsiberian
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 23 April 2008 at Somerville Theater #1 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
The train thriller is almost a genre in itself: You get a group of people on a train, something bad happens, and the characters have to figure out who can't be trusted by the rest, and the impending arrival at the destination is a ticking clock. Brad Anderson's latest is a nifty train thriller, in part because it doesn't always play by the rules.
The Transsiberian railroad of the title runs between Moscow on one end and Beijing and Vladivostok on the other. After a brief opening in Vladivostok, where Russian narcotics detective Ilya Grinko (Ben Kingsley) is investigating a drug-related murder, we meet up with Roy (Woody Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer), a married couple from Iowa on a church mission. Roy loves trains, while Jessie has taken up photography. At the border, they're joined by Abby (Kate Mara) and Carlos (Eduardo Noriega), a young couple who have been teaching English and Spanish in Japan. The couples take to each other. At the next stop, Roy gets left behind, and when Jessie gets off at the one after that to wait for him, Abby and Carlos join her - but is it because it's not safe for Jessie on her own or because they're nervous about the police sniffing around the train?
So there's your first difference from most train movies - the train is making stops with passengers getting on and off. As much as the story plays on the claustrophobia of having no place to go or hide on a moving train at times, a lot of the important action takes place at the stops. That's part of the fun of taking the train, and lots of train movies wind up twisting themselves into knots to figure out ways to keep everyone on the train when it stops. Instead, the script by Anderson and co-writer Will Conroy opts to toss a few surprises at the audience. As much as it sets up the basic plot of the story early on (you'd have to be pretty dim to not figure out why Carlos only lets Jessie examine that matryoshka doll), the first big twist is surprising both in and of itself and in how many new directions the film can go in. Anderson and Conroy have another moment or two like that up their sleeves, and it's exciting not to know what's going to happen next.
Brad Anderson's previous movies have fallen into two categories - romances built around female characters (Next Stop Wonderland and Happy Accidents) and nightmare scenarios with mostly male casts (Session 9 and The Machinist). He mixes it up a bit here by centering this thriller around Emily Mortimer's Jessie, and it's an interesting if not perfect set-up. Mortimer is great when it comes time to ratchet up the tension, really selling us on the character's desperation as she tries to find a way out of her situation, only to be stymied at every turn. I don't know if we're ever totally sold on Jessie's bad-girl past; as much as there's clearly some tension and restlessness in their marriage, she seems a bit too reformed at settled much of the time.
Similarly, Jessie's insistence that Abby is basically a good girl is a little tough to swallow; Kate Mara plays Abby as far more twitchy and suspicious than Eduardo Noriega's Carlos. It does make sense that Jessie believes from experience that there's something decent behind Abby's abrasive exterior, but it doesn't quite connect as well as the simple thriller elements. That's not a knock on either Mortimer or Mara; the story just doesn't showcase the hidden parts of their characters in a flashy or obvious way; it's an "awful close" case. The guys don't have as much hidden: Woody Harrelson plays up Roy's simplicity; he's basically a small-town guy with a big heart and a big train set, though it not surprising when we see him able to make quick decisions - he's simple, not stupid. Eduardo Noriega is casually charming as Carlos, taking advantage of how well the audience knows the basic story to avoid heavy-handed foreshadowing of his darker side. Ben Kingsley is fun to watch as a hard-edged cop who plays off Roy unexpectedly well.
As much as the screenplay has a few nifty twists, it is conventional in other spots. Sometimes the film telegraphs what's going to happen a little too obviously; a long shot of Jessie's camera bag in one scene and a flashback to what must have happened off-screen there seems a bit like overkill, and some of the more graphic bits of violence are more than the movie needs. Anderson is good at playing up the swerves, and there are a few really well-played action beats in the film. He does a good job playing to the movie's strengths - any time he can go to Emily Mortimer under pressure, he does, and he also does a fine job of immersing the audience in the environment (Lithuania doubles for Siberia), giving the film a great sense of place.
The train movie is a bit of a dying form, as most passengers today opt for air or the trips go too fast to really fill a movie. Transsiberian is a worthy entry in the genre, with a good knack for when to obey its rules and when to break them.
Also on EFC.
Opening night was fun; the writers, producer, director, and one of the stars of Transsiberian were on hand - Anderson is from the area (he once worked at the Brattle theater), and Sir Ben Kingsley is shooting Shutter Island nearby (so is Emily Mortimer, but maybe her part is done or something like that). Seeing them on stage, I wasn't sure whether Anderson was very tall or Kingsley is short. Kingsley had some nifty stories to tell about how he winds up playing people from so many different countries: As he puts it, his genetics are a mix and he's good at mimicry. For Transsiberian, one of the Russian-speaking crew would stand off camera reading the lines, and he would copy his pronunciation and accent.
Anyway, that was day one. Tonight's plan is to hope Mister Lonely starts (and thus finishes) on time and then head from Somerville to Brookline for Blood Car; if that doesn't look possible, I'm not sure what the backup will be.
Transsiberian
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 23 April 2008 at Somerville Theater #1 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)
The train thriller is almost a genre in itself: You get a group of people on a train, something bad happens, and the characters have to figure out who can't be trusted by the rest, and the impending arrival at the destination is a ticking clock. Brad Anderson's latest is a nifty train thriller, in part because it doesn't always play by the rules.
The Transsiberian railroad of the title runs between Moscow on one end and Beijing and Vladivostok on the other. After a brief opening in Vladivostok, where Russian narcotics detective Ilya Grinko (Ben Kingsley) is investigating a drug-related murder, we meet up with Roy (Woody Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer), a married couple from Iowa on a church mission. Roy loves trains, while Jessie has taken up photography. At the border, they're joined by Abby (Kate Mara) and Carlos (Eduardo Noriega), a young couple who have been teaching English and Spanish in Japan. The couples take to each other. At the next stop, Roy gets left behind, and when Jessie gets off at the one after that to wait for him, Abby and Carlos join her - but is it because it's not safe for Jessie on her own or because they're nervous about the police sniffing around the train?
So there's your first difference from most train movies - the train is making stops with passengers getting on and off. As much as the story plays on the claustrophobia of having no place to go or hide on a moving train at times, a lot of the important action takes place at the stops. That's part of the fun of taking the train, and lots of train movies wind up twisting themselves into knots to figure out ways to keep everyone on the train when it stops. Instead, the script by Anderson and co-writer Will Conroy opts to toss a few surprises at the audience. As much as it sets up the basic plot of the story early on (you'd have to be pretty dim to not figure out why Carlos only lets Jessie examine that matryoshka doll), the first big twist is surprising both in and of itself and in how many new directions the film can go in. Anderson and Conroy have another moment or two like that up their sleeves, and it's exciting not to know what's going to happen next.
Brad Anderson's previous movies have fallen into two categories - romances built around female characters (Next Stop Wonderland and Happy Accidents) and nightmare scenarios with mostly male casts (Session 9 and The Machinist). He mixes it up a bit here by centering this thriller around Emily Mortimer's Jessie, and it's an interesting if not perfect set-up. Mortimer is great when it comes time to ratchet up the tension, really selling us on the character's desperation as she tries to find a way out of her situation, only to be stymied at every turn. I don't know if we're ever totally sold on Jessie's bad-girl past; as much as there's clearly some tension and restlessness in their marriage, she seems a bit too reformed at settled much of the time.
Similarly, Jessie's insistence that Abby is basically a good girl is a little tough to swallow; Kate Mara plays Abby as far more twitchy and suspicious than Eduardo Noriega's Carlos. It does make sense that Jessie believes from experience that there's something decent behind Abby's abrasive exterior, but it doesn't quite connect as well as the simple thriller elements. That's not a knock on either Mortimer or Mara; the story just doesn't showcase the hidden parts of their characters in a flashy or obvious way; it's an "awful close" case. The guys don't have as much hidden: Woody Harrelson plays up Roy's simplicity; he's basically a small-town guy with a big heart and a big train set, though it not surprising when we see him able to make quick decisions - he's simple, not stupid. Eduardo Noriega is casually charming as Carlos, taking advantage of how well the audience knows the basic story to avoid heavy-handed foreshadowing of his darker side. Ben Kingsley is fun to watch as a hard-edged cop who plays off Roy unexpectedly well.
As much as the screenplay has a few nifty twists, it is conventional in other spots. Sometimes the film telegraphs what's going to happen a little too obviously; a long shot of Jessie's camera bag in one scene and a flashback to what must have happened off-screen there seems a bit like overkill, and some of the more graphic bits of violence are more than the movie needs. Anderson is good at playing up the swerves, and there are a few really well-played action beats in the film. He does a good job playing to the movie's strengths - any time he can go to Emily Mortimer under pressure, he does, and he also does a fine job of immersing the audience in the environment (Lithuania doubles for Siberia), giving the film a great sense of place.
The train movie is a bit of a dying form, as most passengers today opt for air or the trips go too fast to really fill a movie. Transsiberian is a worthy entry in the genre, with a good knack for when to obey its rules and when to break them.
Also on EFC.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Comedies, romantic and otherwise
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.
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.
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