The new L Magazine website launched this week, and accordingly there is a wealth of new material available. In my review of Belgian director Bouli Lanners' Eldorado I discuss the film's recurring odes to Americana and Hollywood genres (buddy and road trip movies especially). Thankfully, though, Lanners avoids the simple psychological portraits of most American festival fare in favor of characters – a vintage car salesman and the recovering addict he catches robbing him – whose uneasy friendship slowly reveals the contours of injured personalities and disappointing lives. Read the whole review here.
Showing posts with label Independent Film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Independent Film. Show all posts
Eldorado
The new L Magazine website launched this week, and accordingly there is a wealth of new material available. In my review of Belgian director Bouli Lanners' Eldorado I discuss the film's recurring odes to Americana and Hollywood genres (buddy and road trip movies especially). Thankfully, though, Lanners avoids the simple psychological portraits of most American festival fare in favor of characters – a vintage car salesman and the recovering addict he catches robbing him – whose uneasy friendship slowly reveals the contours of injured personalities and disappointing lives. Read the whole review here.
Sleep Dealer
Don't miss my review of Alex Rivera's sci-fi immigration movie Sleep Dealer. Now firmly entrenched as one of the most common genres (along with "quirky indie"), immigration narratives have officially begun their fracturing into various sub-generic categories, as evidenced here with this near-future vision of networked outsourcing, eXistenZ-style biological telecommunication, brain-controlled video-blogging and multinational water conglomerate totalitarianism. Read the whole review here.
Sin Nombre
Don't miss my review of Sin Nombre, the latest Sundance-wooing immigration movie. In this kinetic and beautiful Western-updating chase film, Cary Joji Fukunaga keeps the action coming and renders it all with beautiful cinematography and sharp editing. Sadly, this doesn't leave much time for us to pause and ask whether this deathrace to the border is worthwhile. Are the hardships of illegal immigration worth the supposed pay-off? Is making a movie about said hardships without asking the broader questions worthwhile? Read my review to find out.
Goodbye Solo
Check out my review of Rahmin Bahrani's latest film, Goodbye Solo, for The L Magazine. Continuing his stories of cultural outsiders struggling to achieve some scrap of the American Dream that's brought them so far, Solo tells the story of a Senegalese cab driver in Bahrani's hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. As always, a subtle visual beauty and sense of craft makes Bahrani's humble films so much more than their synopses might suggest. Avoiding moral consecension or overblown story archs, they present simple stories of lives eeked out on the peripheries of brutally alienating systems. Read my whole review here.
Lately
It's been forever and a day since I posted anything to this blog, but I'm trying to be better about staying updated and linking to my work elsewhere.
I've been writing full time for the list-themed blog Listicles.
I've been writing my usual slate of film, music and art reviews for The L Magazine (Taken, The Lodger, Serbis, Donkey Punch, The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, Notorious, Top 10 of 2008, Dust, Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak, Beyonce's I Am... Sasha Fierce).
I've begun a weekly art column Wicked Artsy for The L Magazine's blog (first installment: Meaning in Saturation).
An article I wrote about Chelsea's elevated public park The High Line appeared on the cover of the latest issue of ARTisSpectrum Magazine.
And a recent academic article on hip hop and Busta Rhymes will be posted soon.
Also, as I begin a new class entitled "Media and Architecture" I will be posting related materials on a regular basis.
I've been writing full time for the list-themed blog Listicles.
I've been writing my usual slate of film, music and art reviews for The L Magazine (Taken, The Lodger, Serbis, Donkey Punch, The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, Notorious, Top 10 of 2008, Dust, Kanye West's 808s and Heartbreak, Beyonce's I Am... Sasha Fierce).
I've begun a weekly art column Wicked Artsy for The L Magazine's blog (first installment: Meaning in Saturation).
An article I wrote about Chelsea's elevated public park The High Line appeared on the cover of the latest issue of ARTisSpectrum Magazine.
And a recent academic article on hip hop and Busta Rhymes will be posted soon.
Also, as I begin a new class entitled "Media and Architecture" I will be posting related materials on a regular basis.
Towelhead
Directed by Alan Ball
In indie American cinema’s recent tradition of quirky, vacuous back-patting (Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, etc.), Towelhead elevates the status quo semi-successfully. Many of its failures and successes follow from director Alan Ball’s HBO show Six Feet Under. That series about a family-run funeral home delved expertly into bodies and middle-class psychosis, rarely addressing its LA setting’s economic and racial rifts. Similarly, Towelhead – Ball’s feature debut adapted from Alicia Erian’s eponymous novel – mobilizes more issues than it can tackle intelligently.
During Gulf War I adolescent Jasira (Summer Bishil) and her Lebanese-American father (Peter Macdissi) butt heads, reacting to their Houston cul-de-sac’s suburban seediness. Imagine American Beauty blended with Paul Haggis’s Crash. Like the latter, Towelhead’s engagement with racism never transcends one-dimensional tokenism (economic inequality, meanwhile, seems non-existent in cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel’s magical realist suburban wonderland). Adults are one-dimensional here, social ills boiled down to knee-jerk behaviors: Jasira’s infantile mother (Maria Bello), Aaron Eckhart’s rapist reservist (he’s conservative and a sex offender, wow, don’t Republicans suck!?), and Toni Colette’s perpetually pregnant superwoman (well, okay, it’s always nice to see Colette, and the idea of her actually playing Wonderwoman is not unappealing).
For better or worse, this makes Towelhead’s intelligent and horny teens the fascinating core of the film, and the site of its greatest successes. Jasira’s sexual initiations, especially, provide an unflinching portrayal of childhood sexuality sadly absent from contemporary cinema. If it takes feigning topical interest in American race relations for Towelhead to address a more taboo topic with greater intelligence, the result is worthwhile despite its shortcomings.
A similar version of this review appears in The L Magazine, and can be read here.
In indie American cinema’s recent tradition of quirky, vacuous back-patting (Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, etc.), Towelhead elevates the status quo semi-successfully. Many of its failures and successes follow from director Alan Ball’s HBO show Six Feet Under. That series about a family-run funeral home delved expertly into bodies and middle-class psychosis, rarely addressing its LA setting’s economic and racial rifts. Similarly, Towelhead – Ball’s feature debut adapted from Alicia Erian’s eponymous novel – mobilizes more issues than it can tackle intelligently.During Gulf War I adolescent Jasira (Summer Bishil) and her Lebanese-American father (Peter Macdissi) butt heads, reacting to their Houston cul-de-sac’s suburban seediness. Imagine American Beauty blended with Paul Haggis’s Crash. Like the latter, Towelhead’s engagement with racism never transcends one-dimensional tokenism (economic inequality, meanwhile, seems non-existent in cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel’s magical realist suburban wonderland). Adults are one-dimensional here, social ills boiled down to knee-jerk behaviors: Jasira’s infantile mother (Maria Bello), Aaron Eckhart’s rapist reservist (he’s conservative and a sex offender, wow, don’t Republicans suck!?), and Toni Colette’s perpetually pregnant superwoman (well, okay, it’s always nice to see Colette, and the idea of her actually playing Wonderwoman is not unappealing).
For better or worse, this makes Towelhead’s intelligent and horny teens the fascinating core of the film, and the site of its greatest successes. Jasira’s sexual initiations, especially, provide an unflinching portrayal of childhood sexuality sadly absent from contemporary cinema. If it takes feigning topical interest in American race relations for Towelhead to address a more taboo topic with greater intelligence, the result is worthwhile despite its shortcomings.
A similar version of this review appears in The L Magazine, and can be read here.
August Evening
Directed by Chris Eska
Veronica Loren, Pedro Castaneda
Another for the ever-expanding “immigration movie” category, though Eska’s border neorealism often plays more like a melodrama whose machinery is alternately slowed and sped up by the ennui and displacements of migrant work and limited citizenship than a straight-forward “issue movie.” Eska’s characters have an inner life whose mere backdrop is the perpetual tension of being without status in a country where one’s only valued insofar as one can work. Gentle, firm Jaime is nearing the end of his (working) life despite his resilience while his daughter in law Lupe stays withdrawn after her young husband’s (Jaime’s son) death.
The film opens, like City of God, with chickens. Where that trickster favela chicken symbolized a life spent perpetually fleeing slaughter, August Evening’s multitudinous chickens are crammed into a factory farm, kept as long as they produce eggs then unceremoniously evacuated the second they drop. The analogy is frightful – particularly set to Windy & Carl’s ominous electronic score – and if it quickly takes a backseat to the family drama at the film’s center it still remains crushingly present.
Often in August Evening, family drama is truncated by the demands of work. Amidst arguments and reconciliations, Jaime’s surviving children – down and out dad Victor (Abel Becerra) and cold suburban career woman Alice (Sandra J. Rios) – are repeatedly called away from family matters and back to the grind. Family-centric communal life, it seems, is incompatible with a “time is money” society. Not surprisingly, by film’s end characters often opt for TV over conversation.
The characters – compelling for the most part – seem awfully familiar. For much of its mid-section, August Evening plays like one of those Victorian novels wherein our young heroine slowly but surely succumbs to the advances of her sweet, deserving mate. Lupe, granted, is a very strong presence around whom to structure a film (it’s disappointing that the final image is of Jaime, not her), but it’s certainly no surprise when she finally discards her mourning armor for Luis (the film’s only depthless, blindly benevolent character).
Solid acting throughout often keeps Eska’s work from being too noticeable, though he and director of photography Yasu Tanida’s visual style calls attention to itself repeatedly, both for its flair and its ugliness. Early countryside scenery – especially brief still asides to contemplate minor details of mis-en-scene – looks terrific in soft, bold video. Later city photography, meanwhile, provides a good argument for why video has yet to completely eclipse film (think of Michael Mann’s Collateral).
For all its ugly and pretty, urban and rural melancholy, August Evening keeps viewers’ attention on the strength of its leading actors for its first hundred minutes. The final chapter slows considerably, merely dramatizing events best left implicit. The section’s inclusion has the added effect of positing frail and lonely Jaime as the film’s lasting image, where Lupe’s shifting fortunes seem more appropriate. In an earlier scene she and Luis discussed the various misfortunes that had finally brought them together, and in a film about turning one’s disadvantages into strengths theirs seems the more relevant tale of survival.
A similar version of this review appears on The L Magazine's website, and can be read here.
Veronica Loren, Pedro Castaneda
Another for the ever-expanding “immigration movie” category, though Eska’s border neorealism often plays more like a melodrama whose machinery is alternately slowed and sped up by the ennui and displacements of migrant work and limited citizenship than a straight-forward “issue movie.” Eska’s characters have an inner life whose mere backdrop is the perpetual tension of being without status in a country where one’s only valued insofar as one can work. Gentle, firm Jaime is nearing the end of his (working) life despite his resilience while his daughter in law Lupe stays withdrawn after her young husband’s (Jaime’s son) death.The film opens, like City of God, with chickens. Where that trickster favela chicken symbolized a life spent perpetually fleeing slaughter, August Evening’s multitudinous chickens are crammed into a factory farm, kept as long as they produce eggs then unceremoniously evacuated the second they drop. The analogy is frightful – particularly set to Windy & Carl’s ominous electronic score – and if it quickly takes a backseat to the family drama at the film’s center it still remains crushingly present.
Often in August Evening, family drama is truncated by the demands of work. Amidst arguments and reconciliations, Jaime’s surviving children – down and out dad Victor (Abel Becerra) and cold suburban career woman Alice (Sandra J. Rios) – are repeatedly called away from family matters and back to the grind. Family-centric communal life, it seems, is incompatible with a “time is money” society. Not surprisingly, by film’s end characters often opt for TV over conversation.
The characters – compelling for the most part – seem awfully familiar. For much of its mid-section, August Evening plays like one of those Victorian novels wherein our young heroine slowly but surely succumbs to the advances of her sweet, deserving mate. Lupe, granted, is a very strong presence around whom to structure a film (it’s disappointing that the final image is of Jaime, not her), but it’s certainly no surprise when she finally discards her mourning armor for Luis (the film’s only depthless, blindly benevolent character).
Solid acting throughout often keeps Eska’s work from being too noticeable, though he and director of photography Yasu Tanida’s visual style calls attention to itself repeatedly, both for its flair and its ugliness. Early countryside scenery – especially brief still asides to contemplate minor details of mis-en-scene – looks terrific in soft, bold video. Later city photography, meanwhile, provides a good argument for why video has yet to completely eclipse film (think of Michael Mann’s Collateral).
For all its ugly and pretty, urban and rural melancholy, August Evening keeps viewers’ attention on the strength of its leading actors for its first hundred minutes. The final chapter slows considerably, merely dramatizing events best left implicit. The section’s inclusion has the added effect of positing frail and lonely Jaime as the film’s lasting image, where Lupe’s shifting fortunes seem more appropriate. In an earlier scene she and Luis discussed the various misfortunes that had finally brought them together, and in a film about turning one’s disadvantages into strengths theirs seems the more relevant tale of survival.
A similar version of this review appears on The L Magazine's website, and can be read here.
Garden Party
Directed by Jason Freeland
Vinessa Shaw, Richard Gunn
A post-millennial copycat of grand, multi-narratived, L.A. films like Short Cuts or Magnolia, Garden Party is bad, obnoxious and too short, in that order. There’s plenty of material here for a massive three-hour epic – indeed, the structure of multiple characters’ stories occasionally intersecting as they glide through the fabric of the city (which, ideally, evolves into a character all its own) practically demands butt-numbing length. However, Garden Party is so flawed that its short running time is a godsend.
The script raises some interesting (if not very original) thematic preoccupations with voyeurism, selling out, and the effects of class in the suburban sea of America’s dream factory. All three meet in April’s (Willie Holland) journey from her bathroom-peeping stepfather’s home to couch surfing and a differently creepy photographer’s studio. Sadly, her engaging pratfalls get sidelined by the embarrassingly clichéd exploits of emo-rocking space cadet Sammy (Erik Smith), and the castrating, Weeds-evoking (and porn-named) power broker Sally St. Clair, to whose story April gets stapled in the final rush for tidy resolutions.
There’s also Sally’s sexually undecided, latte-ordering assistant Nathan (Alexander Cendense), with his quarterback looks (he’s from Nebraska, of course) and a pot habit supported by the weed his boss grows to slip to her real estate clients (hence the Weeds connection). And, as in every suburban story, we have a midlife crisis-suffering husband in Todd (Richard Gunn), with his lackluster marriage and stalled artistic career. Gunn is terrible in this role (partly because half his lines come awkwardly dubbed), with his Keanu Reeves-level monotone.
In fact, most of the acting in Garden Party is sub-par, which, for a film set in film-land, is either a telling state-of-the-industry shortcoming or a muddled Brechtian move. Probably the former. The greatest scenes come between Nathan and April, when these two beautiful youngsters lost in a narcissistic sea of billboards and business cards try to make sense of their lives. Occasional charming dialogue can’t make sense of this jumbled mess though, and the script’s crisp moments fade quickly into the surrounding noise.
Poor acting and uninspired writing aside, Freeland and cinematographer Robert Benavides keep things predictably (boringly) indie. Garden Party is all handheld long-ish takes with a couple scenes shot through with gels and filters, gold- and blue-hued because, apparently, that’s what so-called independent American cinema “looks like” these days. Were all these problems fixed, we’d have a legitimate heir to the dystopic urban sweep of the aforementioned classics, instead we have another one for the trash heap, a film so unremarkable it’s rather a shame it was even made.
Vinessa Shaw, Richard Gunn
A post-millennial copycat of grand, multi-narratived, L.A. films like Short Cuts or Magnolia, Garden Party is bad, obnoxious and too short, in that order. There’s plenty of material here for a massive three-hour epic – indeed, the structure of multiple characters’ stories occasionally intersecting as they glide through the fabric of the city (which, ideally, evolves into a character all its own) practically demands butt-numbing length. However, Garden Party is so flawed that its short running time is a godsend.
The script raises some interesting (if not very original) thematic preoccupations with voyeurism, selling out, and the effects of class in the suburban sea of America’s dream factory. All three meet in April’s (Willie Holland) journey from her bathroom-peeping stepfather’s home to couch surfing and a differently creepy photographer’s studio. Sadly, her engaging pratfalls get sidelined by the embarrassingly clichéd exploits of emo-rocking space cadet Sammy (Erik Smith), and the castrating, Weeds-evoking (and porn-named) power broker Sally St. Clair, to whose story April gets stapled in the final rush for tidy resolutions.There’s also Sally’s sexually undecided, latte-ordering assistant Nathan (Alexander Cendense), with his quarterback looks (he’s from Nebraska, of course) and a pot habit supported by the weed his boss grows to slip to her real estate clients (hence the Weeds connection). And, as in every suburban story, we have a midlife crisis-suffering husband in Todd (Richard Gunn), with his lackluster marriage and stalled artistic career. Gunn is terrible in this role (partly because half his lines come awkwardly dubbed), with his Keanu Reeves-level monotone.
In fact, most of the acting in Garden Party is sub-par, which, for a film set in film-land, is either a telling state-of-the-industry shortcoming or a muddled Brechtian move. Probably the former. The greatest scenes come between Nathan and April, when these two beautiful youngsters lost in a narcissistic sea of billboards and business cards try to make sense of their lives. Occasional charming dialogue can’t make sense of this jumbled mess though, and the script’s crisp moments fade quickly into the surrounding noise.
Poor acting and uninspired writing aside, Freeland and cinematographer Robert Benavides keep things predictably (boringly) indie. Garden Party is all handheld long-ish takes with a couple scenes shot through with gels and filters, gold- and blue-hued because, apparently, that’s what so-called independent American cinema “looks like” these days. Were all these problems fixed, we’d have a legitimate heir to the dystopic urban sweep of the aforementioned classics, instead we have another one for the trash heap, a film so unremarkable it’s rather a shame it was even made.
This review also appears on The L Magazine's website, and can be read here.
Quid Pro Quo
Directed by Carlos Brooks
Nick Stahl, Vera Farmiga
Regarding his debut’s aesthetic – wherein a wheelchair-bound radio journalist investigates handicap wannabes – Brooks explains trying to evoke those seconds “between deep sleep and wakefulness.” Too much vacillating between stories and styles, sadly, is exactly what keeps his film from being astute social commentary (delving into victimhood envy and fetishism) or an immersive psychological drama addressing embodied trauma. Instead we get whiffs of both but chewy chunks of neither; all tagged with an inexplicable R-rating (save for some intense dry-humping).
This review appears on The L Magazine's website, and can be read here.
Nick Stahl, Vera Farmiga
Regarding his debut’s aesthetic – wherein a wheelchair-bound radio journalist investigates handicap wannabes – Brooks explains trying to evoke those seconds “between deep sleep and wakefulness.” Too much vacillating between stories and styles, sadly, is exactly what keeps his film from being astute social commentary (delving into victimhood envy and fetishism) or an immersive psychological drama addressing embodied trauma. Instead we get whiffs of both but chewy chunks of neither; all tagged with an inexplicable R-rating (save for some intense dry-humping).This review appears on The L Magazine's website, and can be read here.
Mean Streets (1973)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Harvey Keitel, Robert DeNiro
At the risk of overstating how autobiographic this film is, Scorsese might as well have re-titled it My Streets. Many of the Little Italy locations were his childhood hangouts, he speaks Charlie’s (Keitel) interior monologue, and the delightfully eclectic soundtrack was culled from his personal record collection (half the film’s budget then went to clearing rights to the songs). Still, thank San Gennaro (during whose annual feast the film takes place) he didn’t keep the original title, “Season of the Witch” (which gets name-dropped right after a William Blake reference, how’s that for self-aggrandizing?). These friends are no literati gang though, and amidst the shenanigans of perpetual-adolescence all other name-dropping (aside from confusion over the term “mook”) signals alternately misogyny, racism and homophobia. This lashing out signals an immigrant community’s uneasy adjustment to fading family and religious rituals, and intimates the general crisis in masculinity that’s preoccupied Scorsese since. Mean Streets also marks DeNiro’s first (and funniest, save perhaps King of Comedy) collaboration with Scorsese, and the director’s most darkly funny (aside, perhaps, from Taxi Driver) wink-nudge out-Hitchcocking-Hitchcock cameo.
This review will appear in the program for The L Magazine's upcoming Summerscreen series.
Harvey Keitel, Robert DeNiro
At the risk of overstating how autobiographic this film is, Scorsese might as well have re-titled it My Streets. Many of the Little Italy locations were his childhood hangouts, he speaks Charlie’s (Keitel) interior monologue, and the delightfully eclectic soundtrack was culled from his personal record collection (half the film’s budget then went to clearing rights to the songs). Still, thank San Gennaro (during whose annual feast the film takes place) he didn’t keep the original title, “Season of the Witch” (which gets name-dropped right after a William Blake reference, how’s that for self-aggrandizing?). These friends are no literati gang though, and amidst the shenanigans of perpetual-adolescence all other name-dropping (aside from confusion over the term “mook”) signals alternately misogyny, racism and homophobia. This lashing out signals an immigrant community’s uneasy adjustment to fading family and religious rituals, and intimates the general crisis in masculinity that’s preoccupied Scorsese since. Mean Streets also marks DeNiro’s first (and funniest, save perhaps King of Comedy) collaboration with Scorsese, and the director’s most darkly funny (aside, perhaps, from Taxi Driver) wink-nudge out-Hitchcocking-Hitchcock cameo.This review will appear in the program for The L Magazine's upcoming Summerscreen series.
Sangre de mi Sangre
Directed by Christopher Zalla
Such technical prowess reinforces characters’ unstable situations while Zalla’s hybrid immigration and identity theft script keeps the moving parts in flux. After all, what better occasion to remake oneself or replace another than the complete identity erasure experienced by so many undocumented entrants? The three men – hulking hardworker Diego, trusting loser Pedro and trickster Juan – assume different compromised identities formed in response to the demands of a society driven by the bottom line. If money makes the man, these marginalized characters are never completely themselves – or someone else, for that matter.
A similar version of this review appears in the May 13 issue of The L Magazine, and can be read here.
Part relentlessly dehumanizing immigration movie, part identity theft thriller, Christopher Zalla’s stylish Sundance-winning debut (originally titled Padre Nuestro) picks apart its male protagonists’ fractured psyches. An outstanding Latin drum-fueled opening chase – only the most obvious similarity between this film and 2002’s City of God – sets the terms of their personality crises. The pursuit of money hurtles Zalla’s male trio across borders, through life and identities.
Evading his chasers, Juan (Armando Hernandez) befriends Pedro (Jorge Adrian Espindola) in a Northbound shipping container. Upon arrival in Brooklyn, Juan finds Pedro’s estranged father and poses as his son. The film then charts the two men’s (mis)fortunes, Juan’s relationship with Pedro’s father Diego (Jesus Ochoa), and Pedro’s fraught exchanges with local squatter and sex worker Magda (Poala Mendoza). Though Sangre’s immigration politics are well developed, the gender issues raised by the Magda character remain frustratingly unexplored. Throughout, the action unfolds in moody monochromes, with alternately blue-, gray- and golden-hued scenes. Cinematographer Igor Martinovic puts his artistry on full display, reveling in expressive zooms, instinctual handheld movements and an isolating focus.
Such technical prowess reinforces characters’ unstable situations while Zalla’s hybrid immigration and identity theft script keeps the moving parts in flux. After all, what better occasion to remake oneself or replace another than the complete identity erasure experienced by so many undocumented entrants? The three men – hulking hardworker Diego, trusting loser Pedro and trickster Juan – assume different compromised identities formed in response to the demands of a society driven by the bottom line. If money makes the man, these marginalized characters are never completely themselves – or someone else, for that matter.A similar version of this review appears in the May 13 issue of The L Magazine, and can be read here.
Poultrygeist: Night of the Living Chicken
Directed by Lloyd Kaufman
Jason Yachanin, Kate Graham
In true Troma form, no taboo is left unexplored, no stereotype unquestioned, no bodily secretion un-spewed in this biting indictment of just about anybody who opens their mouth in contemporary American discourse. Poultrygeist is card-carrying low-class art, and the crass context gives the filmmakers license to go after everyone. Kaufman expertly balances political satire and all-out parody (and musical numbers). Throughout unrelenting class-conscious, military-theme zombie chicken action, only the fast food industry comes out completely vilified, but everyone gets at least a little dirty.
This review appears on The L Magazine's website, and can be read here.
Jason Yachanin, Kate Graham
In true Troma form, no taboo is left unexplored, no stereotype unquestioned, no bodily secretion un-spewed in this biting indictment of just about anybody who opens their mouth in contemporary American discourse. Poultrygeist is card-carrying low-class art, and the crass context gives the filmmakers license to go after everyone. Kaufman expertly balances political satire and all-out parody (and musical numbers). Throughout unrelenting class-conscious, military-theme zombie chicken action, only the fast food industry comes out completely vilified, but everyone gets at least a little dirty.
This review appears on The L Magazine's website, and can be read here.
Viva
Directed by Anna Biller
Jared Sanford, Bridget Brno
Jared Sanford, Bridget Brno
This periodically hilarious feminist revision of seventies sexploitation movies frustrates expectations of raunchy parody. Viva spreads itself thin as creator and star Biller’s suburban housewife covers a checklist of generic conventions (modeling, sex work, nudists, hippies, orgies, etc). If the narrative is demanding, the colorful awesomeness and ultra-tackiness of the set, costume and make-up design provide constant gratification. Better for an art gallery than a movie theater, Viva restores honest sexual politics to a genre that frequently masqueraded misogynist blackmailing as sexual liberation. (NR,
Smart People
Directed by Noam Murro
Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker
The insecurities and coded aggressions of academia turned this middle-class home into a house of horrors. Quaid’s miserable professor-father has raised a monstrous daughter (Ellen Page), who performs her deceased mother’s tasks between devastating put-downs and obsessive studies. Murro and novelist-screenwriter Mark Poirier nail the banter of an academic household wonderfully, but stay couched in the quirks of character types (though Parker’s romantic interest is initially spirited). Complexity (see The Squid and the Whale) is eschewed for campus-film conventions.
The Visitor
Directed by Thomas McCarthy
Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman
As a widowing professor, Jenkins (Six Feet Under’s passed-on patriarch) first appears looking through a window, a visual expression of detachment that recurs throughout the film. Befriending an immigrant couple living in his
Sleepwalking
Directed by William Maher
Charlize Theron, Dennis Hopper
First-time director Maher organizes this family melodrama around the most uninteresting of the film’s cardboard characters, all of whom are made from 100% recycled materials. Naïve man-child James looks after his eleven year-old niece, whose down-and-out mom ditches. Even Hopper’s monstrous patriarch is a shadow of his Blue Velvet role. The rural North California settings are elegantly filmed, but the script’s simplistic family psychology is hopelessly clichéd.
This review appears in the March 12 issue of The L Magazine.
Charlize Theron, Dennis Hopper
First-time director Maher organizes this family melodrama around the most uninteresting of the film’s cardboard characters, all of whom are made from 100% recycled materials. Naïve man-child James looks after his eleven year-old niece, whose down-and-out mom ditches. Even Hopper’s monstrous patriarch is a shadow of his Blue Velvet role. The rural North California settings are elegantly filmed, but the script’s simplistic family psychology is hopelessly clichéd.
This review appears in the March 12 issue of The L Magazine.
Chop Shop
Directed by Ramin Bahrani
Alejandro Polanco, Isamar Gonzales
The Iranian-American director’s second feature grafts family melodrama onto a documentary, revealing an economy of leftovers operating in a strip of car repair shops near Shea Stadium. In this refugee camp for car parts and recent immigrants, 12 year-old Alejandro and his 16 year-old sister Isamar are forced to take up the New York work ethic. By day they don thick adult skins to carve out a living, by night they moonlight in more illicit enterprises, and the rituals of adolescent development awkwardly erupt into these workaholic routines. Rather than mine his characters’ cuteness, Bahrani lets their situation take its toll, and their behaviors get ugly.
A similar version of this review appears in the February 27 issue of The L Magazine.
Alejandro Polanco, Isamar Gonzales
The Iranian-American director’s second feature grafts family melodrama onto a documentary, revealing an economy of leftovers operating in a strip of car repair shops near Shea Stadium. In this refugee camp for car parts and recent immigrants, 12 year-old Alejandro and his 16 year-old sister Isamar are forced to take up the New York work ethic. By day they don thick adult skins to carve out a living, by night they moonlight in more illicit enterprises, and the rituals of adolescent development awkwardly erupt into these workaholic routines. Rather than mine his characters’ cuteness, Bahrani lets their situation take its toll, and their behaviors get ugly.A similar version of this review appears in the February 27 issue of The L Magazine.
Bless this Little Piece of Film Art (With your Attendance at its Screening this Weekend)
In its ongoing mission to quench New Yorkers’ thirst for film esoterica, Anthology Film Archives is screening 1984’s Bless Their Little Hearts this weekend (7:30 and 9:30 Friday thru Sunday, with 5:30 matinees on Saturday and Sunday) as part of their Charles Burnett retrospective. Burnett’s friend and fellow film student Billy Woodberry directs, while Burnett collects writing and cinematography credits. The collaboration is powerful, highlighting both filmmakers’ devotion to the stark conditions of Los Angeles’s black working classes in the 1980s.
For filmgoers in a vertical city, whose skyscrapers represent an imagined upward mobility, the flatness of Woodbery’s L.A. is suffocating. The landscape Charlie Banks (Nate Hardman) crosses en route to the employment office – and later towards his mistress’s house – provides no refuge for hope. Abandoned lots, unused train tracks, highways and parking lots look a lot like hell under the SoCal sun. The Banks home offers little respite from this horizontal tyranny. Charlie, his wife Andais (Kaycee Moore) and their three children rarely withhold their unhappiness with life and one another, and it’s hard to imagine any of them getting up and out of these bleak circumstances.
Bless Their Little Hearts’ most incredible scene, a one-take argument between Charlie and Andais, relentlessly outs all their problems and anxieties without thereby alleviating their stresses. Beautiful black-and-white photography immerses us in a family sketched in shades of grey. Virtually all Woodberry’s characters have sympathetic moments, but these are quickly submerged in the dark currents of the odds stacked against them. So esoteric or not, any filmgoer can find things to like (and dislike) about Woodberry’s Banks family.
This article appears on The L Magazine's blog, and can be read here.
For filmgoers in a vertical city, whose skyscrapers represent an imagined upward mobility, the flatness of Woodbery’s L.A. is suffocating. The landscape Charlie Banks (Nate Hardman) crosses en route to the employment office – and later towards his mistress’s house – provides no refuge for hope. Abandoned lots, unused train tracks, highways and parking lots look a lot like hell under the SoCal sun. The Banks home offers little respite from this horizontal tyranny. Charlie, his wife Andais (Kaycee Moore) and their three children rarely withhold their unhappiness with life and one another, and it’s hard to imagine any of them getting up and out of these bleak circumstances.
Bless Their Little Hearts’ most incredible scene, a one-take argument between Charlie and Andais, relentlessly outs all their problems and anxieties without thereby alleviating their stresses. Beautiful black-and-white photography immerses us in a family sketched in shades of grey. Virtually all Woodberry’s characters have sympathetic moments, but these are quickly submerged in the dark currents of the odds stacked against them. So esoteric or not, any filmgoer can find things to like (and dislike) about Woodberry’s Banks family.
This article appears on The L Magazine's blog, and can be read here.
The Indie Insurgency
Strong cast and script raise low-budget terrorism thriller above its means
The indie thriller The Insurgents addresses political discontent and terrorism in post-9/11 New York more intelligently and honestly than its big-budget counterparts. Currently at the Cobble Hill Theatre, and available on bare-bones DVD November 20, it focuses on a foursome of would-be terrorists planning a downtown Manhattan attack.
The Insurgent’s ostensible protagonist is the group’s lone female member, ex-sex worker Hana (Juliette Marquis). The narrative is constructed around her participation in the attack, particularly as she becomes a bargaining chip the men deploy to keep each other in check. Their discontent with the current political climate does not, apparently, include discontent with its misogyny. James (Michael Mosley), the object of Hana’s faked affection, turns out to be a CIA agent posing as a pawn to Robert’s machinations. Hana’s slightly more genuine love interest is Iraq veteran Marcus (Henry Simmons), sent home when an accident leaves him castrated. Epitome of the emasculated brute type, Marcus articulates a frightening nothing-to-lose abandon that confuses the personal with the political: if he can’t assert his masculinity by fucking women, the logic goes, he might as well die attacking the system that destroyed his manhood (and some less-important things like Iraq). The plot’s mastermind is Robert (John Shea), a charismatic leftist author and ex-CIA agent whose charm and intelligence bring his three co-conspirators onboard. In the most disquieting moments of writer-director Scott Dacko’s film, Robert’s eloquent diatribes tap into viewers’ cynicism and discontent, nearly eliciting our support for his scheme.
As double-crossings and covert agendas emerge, however, The Insurgents starts to focus less on terrorism and more on acting. The talented cast-members strive to decipher each others’ performances, all the while trying to maintain their own multiple roles. Between its political drama investigation – how can individual citizens change a spiraling system – and its more classic thriller elements – how many lies can each character convincingly balance – the acting and writing in The Insurgents keeps it compelling and nerve-wracking to the last moment.
A similar version of this review appears on the New York Press blog and can be seen here.
The indie thriller The Insurgents addresses political discontent and terrorism in post-9/11 New York more intelligently and honestly than its big-budget counterparts. Currently at the Cobble Hill Theatre, and available on bare-bones DVD November 20, it focuses on a foursome of would-be terrorists planning a downtown Manhattan attack.
The Insurgent’s ostensible protagonist is the group’s lone female member, ex-sex worker Hana (Juliette Marquis). The narrative is constructed around her participation in the attack, particularly as she becomes a bargaining chip the men deploy to keep each other in check. Their discontent with the current political climate does not, apparently, include discontent with its misogyny. James (Michael Mosley), the object of Hana’s faked affection, turns out to be a CIA agent posing as a pawn to Robert’s machinations. Hana’s slightly more genuine love interest is Iraq veteran Marcus (Henry Simmons), sent home when an accident leaves him castrated. Epitome of the emasculated brute type, Marcus articulates a frightening nothing-to-lose abandon that confuses the personal with the political: if he can’t assert his masculinity by fucking women, the logic goes, he might as well die attacking the system that destroyed his manhood (and some less-important things like Iraq). The plot’s mastermind is Robert (John Shea), a charismatic leftist author and ex-CIA agent whose charm and intelligence bring his three co-conspirators onboard. In the most disquieting moments of writer-director Scott Dacko’s film, Robert’s eloquent diatribes tap into viewers’ cynicism and discontent, nearly eliciting our support for his scheme.
As double-crossings and covert agendas emerge, however, The Insurgents starts to focus less on terrorism and more on acting. The talented cast-members strive to decipher each others’ performances, all the while trying to maintain their own multiple roles. Between its political drama investigation – how can individual citizens change a spiraling system – and its more classic thriller elements – how many lies can each character convincingly balance – the acting and writing in The Insurgents keeps it compelling and nerve-wracking to the last moment.
A similar version of this review appears on the New York Press blog and can be seen here.
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