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| SAVED! |
| 05.30.04 (12:27 pm) [edit] |
SAVED!
Cast: Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, Macauley Culkin, Eva Amurri, Patrick Fugit, Chad Faust, Heather Matarazzo, Martin Donovan and Mary-Louise Parker
Directed by: Brian Dannelly
Written by: Brian Dannelly and Michael Urban
Distributor: United Artists/MGM (US 2004)
Rated: PG-13 for strong thematic issues involving teens - sexual content, pregnancy, smoking and language
As Reviewed by: Gabriel Shanks
In Hollywood, the road to cinematic hell is paved with great pitch ideas. Case in point: [b]SAVED![/b] The surprising twist in director/co-writer Brian Dannelly's comedy cocktail is religion, but the mix is watery at best. Teen angst and religious fervor is a promising combination -- and probably sounded great in a studio pitch meeting -- but it's a concoction that requires the courage of its convictions. In an age where personal belief so often influences public opinion and national politics, films about the subject demand a strong point-of-view; fuzzy-edged platitudes are no match for fire and brimstone. [b]SAVED! [/b]is not without its charms, but it's a middling effort...an okay film that could have been, and should have been, great.
[b]SAVED! [/b]skewers the religious absolutism of the neo-Christian movement by contrasting it with the difficult moral dilemmas faced by modern adolescents: homosexuality, teen pregnancy, peer pressure, and single parents. Set in a Christian private high school, it follows a set of devout proselytizers led by Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore) and a motley group of outcasts who don't quite fit in: the questioning Mary (Jena Malone), her recently-out boyfriend Dean (Chad Faust), Hilary Faye's wheelchair-bound brother Roland (Macauley Culkin), Jewish punk grrl Cassandra (Eva Amurri), and Patrick (Patrick Fugit), the skateboarding son of the school's pastor. The clique-driven warfare comes with a religious righteousness that is witty and savvy, as Hilary Faye launches into overdrive to save the poor souls of those who don't understand just how great Jesus (and by association, she) is.
Witty and savvy, yes. But [b]SAVED! [/b]is not challenging or thought-provoking -- required elements in effective social satire, even for the teen genre (think [i]Heathers [/i]or [i]Clueless[/i]). Clearly informed by a secular point of view, the filmmakers are simply not brave enough to challenge Christianity on its own terms, positioning people of faith as easily dismissable cardboard cutouts. It's funny, sure. But sadly, it's also insubstantial and uncoordinated.
There are many points to make about the blind acceptance of ideology (of whatever stripe), but [b]SAVED! [/b]wimps out and settles for mere gags...at its own expense. Its timidity also engenders unearned plot turns, which render it pointless. Example: the feel-good ending of the comedy presents a culturally aware, diverse group of people who have overcome the strictures of their faith; such liberal fantasizing feels good emotionally, but it's dishonest and forced. (A truly disastrous storyline involving Mary Louise Parker as Mary's single mother and Martin Donovan as Patrick's dad loses all sense of direction; their struggles over a budding romantic relationship seem to echo the struggles of the screenwriters.) There's a very interesting picture buried in [b]SAVED![/b], but sadly, they chose to make this one instead.
[b]SAVED! [/b]is saved (ha ha) to a degree by its talented young cast, who bring much more to their characters than the script does. Malone, in particular, uses many silent scenes to express Mary's frustration at constantly having Christianity's black-and-white truisms flouted by the intricacies of real-life experience. Teen pop singer Mandy Moore, who has starred in Christian films in the past, breaks out surprisingly as the villainous do-gooder Hilary Faye; her comic timing is flawless, as snickeringly enjoyable as it is unexpected. Perhaps best is Culkin, who plays Roland with a welcome understated irony. The charming, now-adult actor manages to impress while reminding us of the spirited talent that first made the world fall at his feet in [i]Home Alone[/i].
The teen comedy is becoming more sophisticated as a genre; films like [i]Camp [/i]explore a multicultural universe in charming detail, and quirky brilliance like [i]Election [/i]and [i]Crazy/Beautiful[/i] transcend adolescence altogether. [b]SAVED! [/b]had a shot at being in their company, but ultimately, its promise was derailed by its execution. Whatever your opinion of the religious right, one cannot deny that their faith makes them strong, fearless and often fascinating. The makers of [b]SAVED! [/b]could have learned from their example.
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| ADORED: DIARY OF A PORN STAR (Poco più di un anno fa) |
| 05.28.04 (8:47 am) [edit] |
ADORED: DIARY OF A PORN STAR
Cast: Marco Filiberti, Urbano Barberini, Alessandra Acciai, Rosalinda Celentano, Claudio Vanni and Edoardo Minciotti
Directed by: Marco Filiberti
Written by: Marco Filiberti
Distributor: Wolfe Releasing (US 2004)
Rated: Not Rated
As Reviewed by: Gabriel Shanks
Anyone with a sense of cinema that extends beyond [i]The Rugrats[/i] will see it for what it is, but still, you have to give the U.S. distributors of Marco Filiberti's train wreck credit -- that title is a sure-fire ticket seller. Not as lurid (or as interesting) as its mistranslated English title implies (the Italian roughly translates as [i]Little More Than a Year Ago[/i]), [b]ADORED: DIARY OF A PORN STAR[/b] is an unfortunate exercise in ego run amok, a wish fulfillment fantasy for Filiberti coupled with inexperience and ineptitude. Did I mention its near-complete insubstantiality? Filiberti is making his professional debut as a director, writer, and actor (guess who's playing the porn star?), according to [url=http://www.imdb.com]IMDB.com[/url] . And on all three counts, it shows.
What takes this vanity project from mere indulgence to vapid inconsequentiality is its lack of maturity -- with no strong dramatic ideas or understanding of screenplay structure, [b]ADORED [/b]drags its sluggish carcass into been-there, done-that melodrama. Riki Kandinsky (Filiberti) is Italy's most famous gay porn star; over the years, Riki has ostracized himself from his family, while (somehow) keeping his internationally renowned career a secret. When his father dies, he must return home briefly for the funeral...attracting the attention of his estranged brother Federico (Urbano Barberini), who shows up unexpectedly to visit Riki in Rome soon afterward. Suddenly, the "Big Secret" isn't a big deal anymore, and Riki reveals all to his stunned heterosexual brother. (But not so stunned to keep Federico from visiting Riki's porn shoot the next day, or feeling the steel hardness of Riki's stiffie through his underwear. Yeah, I though it was dumb too, but implausibility doesn't seem to slow [b]ADORED [/b]down at all.)
Absurdity follows inanity for the first hour, as we are introduced to Riki's friends, including a morose sculptress of angels (metaphor alert!) named Luna (Rosalindo Celentana) and his puppy-dog boyfriend in waiting Claudio (Claudio Vanni). But just as the audience realizes that [b]ADORED [/b]has run completely out of gas, Filiberti throws in the most hackneyed cliché imaginable -- an adorable orphaned child. Plapla (Edoardo Minciotti) is the child that Riki becomes inexplicably infatuated with after witnessing the traffic accident in which Plapla's mother died. Suddenly, we're transported into a TV movie-of-the-week from hell, as the porn star (!) tries to get custody of a child he has no relationship with (!!). Does anyone have any doubt about how this is going to end?
If there is a connective theme between the two halves of this story, it is the dismayingly dull revelation of the horror -- the horror! -- of gays in general and pornography in specific. [b]ADORED [/b]wants it both ways: to tease with PG-13 titillation while simultaneously being shocked at the debauchery of it all, arguing a conservative value set with none of the passionate virulence that epitomizes sex-phobic cultures. I can't believe I'm saying this, but [b]ADORED [/b]manages to demean both homosexuals AND homophobes at the same time. There's nothing interesting enough to be offensive.
If you're feeling charitable, you might give [b]ADORED [/b]the benefit of the doubt and say that it is a victim of the inexperience of its creative team. But that inexperience is palpable. [b]ADORED [/b]is terribly acted, with melodramatic flourishes that would be laughed off the stage of any dinner theatre. Filiberti is neither handsome nor buff enough to play a [i]porno divo [/i](sex god), but his acting ability is certainly bad-porno quality; expressionless, unaffecting, his leaden performance is the weight that sinks [b]ADORED [/b]once and for all. The ensemble's work ranges from acceptable (Barberini's conflicted brother) to downright incoherent (Celentana's dispassionate and ultimately irrelevant Luna).
Filiberti and cinematographer Stefano Pancaldi create boring, static shots and emotionless frames, revealing an unrefined style that reeks of first-year film school. [b]ADORED[/b]'s weird pop-music score sets up a jarring tonal disconnect with the sedate drama unfurling onscreen. And although the production design by Livia Borgognoni finds some beautiful decaying backdrops in Rome and in the Italian countryside, it is completely obscured by Filiberti, who wears pounds of distracting eyeliner and pancake makeup throughout the film. This isn't [i]Cleopatra[/i], mister, and you're not Elizabeth Taylor.
Ultimately, though, this [b]DIARY [/b]is just vapid and empty; to paraphrase a far more accomplished artist, Gertude Stein, there's just no [i]there [/i]there. The most challenging questions -- of the disconnect between love and sex, of the economic viability of a career based on the body, of connecting with a family that by all rights should not want to connect back -- are left untouched or skimmed over. Ultimately, [b]ADORED: DIARY OF A PORN STAR[/b] reveals none of the intimacy that diaries are famous for. Do not be seduced by the sleazy allure of the title, because in this case, the emperor has no clothes...and even with pornography, that's a very bad thing.
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| The OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET (O Outro Lado da Rua) |
| 05.23.04 (11:52 am) [edit] |
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET
Cast: Fernanda Montenegro, Laura Cardoso, Marcio Vito, and Raul Cortez
Directed by: Marcos Bernstein
Written by: Melanie Dimantas and Marcos Bernstein
Distributor: Columbia TriStar (Brazil 2004)
Rated: Not Rated
As Reviewed by: Gabriel Shanks
Marcos Bernstein, the noted screenwriter who crafted the sensational 1999 drama [i]Central Station[/i], mines similar material in his debut directorial effort [b]THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET[/b], a well-constructed character study about a lonely older woman searching for connection and meaning in her later years. Bernstein even brings along his acclaimed [i]Central Station star[/i], Fernanda Montenegro, who garnered an Academy Award nomination for their previous collaboration. (History may begin repeating itself with their current film; Montenegro recently picked up the Best Actress prize at the Tribeca Film Festival for [b]THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET[/b].) Such a formidable pairing should have cineastes trembling with anticipation; it could be argued (and I would) that no actress has more acutely captured the tribulations of later life since Geraldine Page, and no screenwriter has given such ripe expression to these issues since Horton Foote did so for Page in [i]The Trip To Bountiful[/i].
But Bernstein doesn't crib from Foote in [b]THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET[/b]; he prefers to steal from Hitchcock. Refashioning the central conceit of [i]Rear Window[/i], Montenegro plays Regina, a lonely divorced Brazilian woman who spends her days and nights as "Snow White", an informant for the police department's Senior Service volunteer program. The effectiveness of the program is in much dispute; having little old ladies snooping and apprehending bad guys is perhaps not the best urban social policy idea. It's clear, however, that it gives Regina purpose; with her mournful, sad eyes, the loneliness is never far below the tough surface. Hanging out her windows with her binoculars until all hours of the night, Regina finds tough solace in watching other people's lives. It serves both as a balm for her pain, and a substitute for her own empty existence.
One night, while peering through her neighbors' windows, Regina spies what she thinks to be a murder. Her boss, however, isn't happy -- she has I.D.'ed an important judge, Camargo (Raul Cortez), and there's no evidence of the supposed crime. Obsessed, Regina decides to pursue the judge on her own. But as she gets closer and closer, she learns more about her subject than she expects too...that he too is lonely, for starters.
Part-whodunit and part-tearjerker, [b]THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET[/b] is an eloquent social statement, quietly railing against an uncaring and increasingly impersonal society that overlooks the humanity in all of us. The emotional damage of loneliness is exquisitely rendered in Regina; disaffected from her family by the divorce, she has no one to share her days with. After witnessing a bank robbery in progress, she calls her own answering machine and breathlessly relates every detail...to her attentively listening dog. Montenegro never wallows in the pain, but creates a brittle shell that Regina projects to the world. Her performance is enough to splinter your heart into a thousand pieces.
The film itself, alas, does not quite attain the perfection of its star. [b]THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET[/b] lacks the dramatic tension that would make the thriller aspects of its story compelling; unhurried and methodical, Bernstein's pace may lull audiences to sleep while waiting for the clues. As Camargo, Cortez never finds the suavity or mystery that would make the judge a captivating enigma. Although Toca Seabra's luxuriant cinematography is enthralling, Guilherme Bernstein Seixas’ incredibly repetitious piano score -- perhaps the worst film music of the modern era -- decimates its power. But more than these small details, it is Bernstein's choice to mix genres that undercuts the effort. In a film that argues passionately that life is not comprised merely of black and white, it's absurdly easy to figure out who did what and to whom. In this context, the film seems superfluous and overwritten.
Still, any chance to see a great actress at work is to be taken advantage of, and Montenegro elevates the material to make [b]THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET [/b]more than watchable. Films rarely take the time to get to know their characters anymore; plot has become the engine of filmmaking, and usually the faster, the better. Even in an imperfect effort like Bernstein's drama, it is refreshing to spend time with a character of such dexterity and depth as Regina. If only she had a better story to tell.
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| BLIND FLIGHT |
| 05.14.04 (6:46 pm) [edit] |
BLIND FLIGHT
Cast:Ian Hart, Linus Roache
Directed by: John Furse
Written by: Brian Keenan, John McCarthy (memoirs), John Furse (screenplay)
Distributor: BBC Films(UK 2004)
Rated: R
A TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW
read more reviews from Tribeca at [url=http://www.mixedreviews.net]Mixed Reviews[/url]
As Reviewed by: Jill Cozzi
This question is posed by teacher Brian Keenan (Ian Hart) in director John Furse's shattering new film, [b]BLIND FLIGHT[/b]. In 1985, Brian Keenan left the horrors of working-class Belfast to work in Lebanon, where he was kidnapped by an Islamic Jihad splinter group that operated in Lebanon and was funded out of Iran. The ostensible reason for the kidnapping was as a reaction to British and American support of Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. (Yes, it's true, we did support Iraq -- and Saddam Hussein -- in the 1980's during the Reagan and Bush 41 Administrations.) It was also an attempt to obtain the release of 14 Muslim freedom fighters held in prison in Kuwait.
Keenan was held in a series of prisons for over four years. Alone, with no government entity overseeing his imprisonment, and no idea if or when he might ever be released, Keenan is left to fall prey to encroaching madness, until he is moved to another site, where in one of those rare and unpredictable gestures of mercy by his captors, he is given a cellmate in the person of John McCarthy (Linus Roache). These literally strange bedfellows -- the working-class Irish Republican Keenan and the handsome, urbane, upper-crust journalist McCarthy, would undoubtedly have found themselves at opposite ends of the Irish/English conflict in Belfast. Yet in these circumstances, both men transcend their political differences to form a bond that not even torture could break.
On its surface, [b]BLIND FLIGHT[/b] would seem to be just another entry in the Hellish Foreign Prison Movie genre, but in the hands of writer/director Furse and cinematographer Ian Wilson, it unfolds slowly, almost imperceptibly, into a gripping story about the power of the human will, the impact of war on those who fight it, and the redemptive power of friendship.
As I write this, disgusting and disturbing photographs of the torture (yes, Mr. Rumsfeld, TORTURE) of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq are aising questions about where the line falls between justice and dehumanization. "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," Keenan says as he and McCarthy attempt to reach out to find the humanity in their captors. One is just a boy, who vascillates between "I like Jesus...he speak to me" and episodes of utterly gratuitous cruelty. Another, a new father, brings his baby for the prisoners to admire, its pink cheeks and soft blanket representing uncorrupted humanity contrasted against the diminished state of both captor and captive. "We are prisoners too," the new father says.
[b]BLIND FLIGHT[/b], with its claustrophobic setting, seems to have been written for the stage. This type of character study, much like [i]Jailbait[/i] (also showing at Tribeca), must rely on the power of performance to hold the audience's interest. For the role of Keenan, Furse has wisely cast the excellent character Ian Hart. Since a strong debut as a young John Lennon in [i]Backbeat[/i], Hart has inhabited a succession of memorable supporting characters. As Keenan, he's at once stoic and ferocious as he slowly lets his defenses fall to allow McCarthy's friendship to help him survive. The less flashy role of McCarthy is perhaps Linus Roache's best work to date. He has always been a rather "wet" screen presence, but here he finds both the humor and the strength in his character.
[b]BLIND FLIGHT[/b] is a meticulously constructed film that finds the poetry in even the most squalid prison settings. Furse wisely (and these days, bravely) resists the temptation to tub-thump about Islamic terrorism and turn his captor characters into cartoon Arabic villains. Instead, he makes the point that individuals are the casualties of bad policy decisions by their leaders. While not an easy film to watch, [b]BLIND FLIGHT[/b], despite its nearly twenty-year-old subject matter, is more timely than ever.
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| THE 24TH DAY |
| 05.09.04 (11:47 am) [edit] |
THE 24TH DAY
Cast: Scott Speedman, James Marsden and Sofia Vergara
Directed by: Tony Piccirillo
Written by: Tony Piccirillo
Distributor: Screen Media Ventures (US 2004)
Rated: R
A TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL PREVIEW
read more previews from Tribeca at [url=http://www.mixedreviews.net]Mixed Reviews[/url]
As Reviewed by: Gabriel Shanks
[b]THE 24TH DAY[/b], a low-budget star vehicle for two budding Hollywood players, is an ethically repugnant, relentlessly monotonous chamber drama that manages the difficult trick of boring and irritating its viewers simultaneously. Adapted from first-time director Tony Piccirillo's play of the same title, [b]THE 24TH DAY[/b] recycles the kidnapping setup of [i]Death and the Maiden[/i] and many other films, desperately trying to spice it up with [i]au courrant[/i] concerns about the AIDS crisis. Insulting to people with HIV and the educators who have worked hard to fight just this kind of misinformation, the drama (what there is of it) takes a flimsy revenge premise over the edge of implausibility...where, hopefully, it will crash on the rocks of public opinion, never to be heard from again.
The reason we're hearing about [b]THE 24TH DAY[/b] in the first place is the presence of its two up-and-coming leading men, Scott Speedman ([i]Underworld[/i]) and James Marsden ([i]X-Men[/i]). Probably sick of being typecast as pretty boys of limited talent, the two have jumped into their roles as two men who met five years ago during a one-night stand. Speedman however, with a crazy glint in his untalented eye, has an ulterior motive for this reunion with Marsden -- he has contracted HIV, and is certain he got it from their night of barely-remembered passion long ago. In the interim, his wife has died, and he is hell-bent on revenge.
But the revenge can't just be revenge; in Piccirillo's jacked-up reality, it must come through the paper-thin conceit of a forced AIDS test, which is why he kidnaps Marsden for two entire days. The film documents the interim, as these two implausibly chatty guys form those ridiculous bonds that can only happen in one-room movies about victims and victimizers. [b]THE 24TH DAY[/b] is a bad movie to begin with, set upon this musty old cliché...but it becomes even worse with an unconscionable demonization of people with HIV, where a diagnosis turns an otherwise rational man into a raving, violent psycho bent on retribution.
Piccirillo's script stumbles often over its own details, endlessly chasing its dull "who is lying here?" tail. Despite its punishing moral absolutism (self-hating clichés like "I got what I deserved" are a sign to head for the exits), the film is not especially intense, psychologically or otherwise. If this is a thriller (as the press literature suggests), then where are the thrills? The climax is as uninteresting and as featureless as cardboard, with a now-freed Marsden making the incomprehensible choice to stick around and talk some more.
Cinematographer J. Alan Hostetter, debuting after many years as a gaffer, has shot the film with all the grace of a middle-school science fair project. But even oversaturated DV photography and fuzzy camera angles can't hide the subtle internalized homophobia of this film, where the theoretically gay guys don't even hold hands, discuss sports ad nauseum, and agree that the lack of trust is the problem with gay relationships. You don't have to be a genius to figure out where [b]THE 24TH DAY[/b] is coming from; one can only hope that is goes back from whence it came.
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| THE LAST OF THE FIRST |
| 05.07.04 (7:02 am) [edit] |
THE LAST OF THE FIRST
Cast:Al Casey, Larry Lucey, Johnny Blowers, David "Bubba" Brooks, Laurel Watson
Directed by: Anja Baron
Distributor: Kenyja Media Productions (US 2004)
Running time: 88 minutes
Rated: unrated
A TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL PREVIEW
read more previews from Tribeca at [url=http://www.mixedreviews.net]Mixed Reviews[/url]
As Reviewed by: Jill Cozzi
The 1920's and 1930's were arguably the most important years in the development of jazz as a musical form, growing out of the restrictions of the Tin Pan Alley style that had dominated American popular music until then. Most of the iconic figures most familiar to us today -- Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Cab Calloway and others -- are gone now. But what of the sidemen; the lesser-known musicians in these bands who lent their talents to the music, but received little of the money and even less of the recognition outside jazz circles?
Alas, many of them too have left us, but some of those still here are keeping the music alive, thanks to Albert "Doc" Vollmer, a jazz enthusiast born in Sweden, who in 1973 lured some of the best of them out of retirement to form the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band. Director Anja Baron caught the band during their six-year gig at New York's now-defunct Louisiana Bar and Grill, and was so enamored of the musicians and their music that she spent the next two years filming what became THE LAST OF THE FIRST, a loving tribute to these underappreciated artists and the importance of doing what you love regardless of your age.
While many musicians have been a part of the band, this film focuses on 87-year-old Al Casey, who had worked closely with Fats Waller throughout the 1930s; guitarist Lawrence Lucie, 95 years young, from the bands of Louis Armstrong, Benny Carter and Duke Ellington; saxophonist David "Bubba" Brooks, 79, who played with Bill Doggett; Edwin Swanston, 80, pianist with Louis Armstrong's Orchestra; 91-year-old drummer Johnny Blowers, who played for Bunny Berigan, Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra; Ivan Rolle, 85, bassist with Jonah Jones; and 88-year-old Laurel Watson, one-time vocalist with Duke Ellington and Count Basie.
In this film, Baron travels with the band through tours in Mexico, Germany, Sweden and Russia; all of which have an appreciation for the American jazz tradition that these musicians no longer find in their home country. The film is packed with jazz lore from documentary and archival footage, as well as the priceless reminiscences of the musicians themselves.
Anja Baron has done something wonderful here in capturing on film perhaps our last chance to hear these eyewitness accounts. Whether it's the 87-year-old Al Casey mischievously bursting into a few lines from "If You're a Viper", Larry Lucey working in out in the gym and telling us "I gotta make it to a hundred", or Ivan Rolle attributing his kidney failure to the scarcity of toilets available to black musicians in the pre-Civil Rights south, this film is also a chronicle of the black experience in America.
The key to successful documentary filmmaking is to make the viewer care about the subject(s) of the film. These musicians project to the viewer the infections joy they still derive from playing that we wish our visit with them could go on forever, and we share their grief when they lose two from their ranks during the filming.
And then there's the music. Ah, the music. These musicians are still at the top of their game, but the music has a depth and maturity that gives a new dimension to the exuberance of the early recordings we have from their heyday. The rendition of "You Made Me Love You" in this film that the band plays in memory of a departed member takes the breath away. Barton also touches on the influence of these musicians on the regrettably short-lived swing revival from a few years ago, with footage of Al Casey, the inspiration for the Squirrel Nut Zippers song "Pallin' with Al", playing with that band just a few years ago in New York.
For anyone inspired by vivid personalities who may not have lived easy lives, but still manage to find joy in their art, this film an exuberant reminder of how "I'm here, I might as well live", as one musician says. For fans of early jazz, it's an absolute joy. Drummer Johnny Blowers is right: "It doesn't get any more beautiful."
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| HAPPILY, EVEN AFTER |
| 05.05.04 (4:27 am) [edit] |
HAPPILY, EVEN AFTER
Cast: Jason Behr, Marina Black, Fay Masterson, Michael Goorjian, Deb Fink, Samantha Weaver
Directed by: Unsu Lee
Written by: Rebecca Sonnenshine
Distributor: Hotbed Films (US 2004)
Running time: 88 minutes
Rated: unrated
A TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL PREVIEW
read more previews from Tribeca at [url=http://www.mixedreviews.net]Mixed Reviews[/url]
As Reviewed by: Jill Cozzi
The death of a parent carries repercussions that can last forever. The theme of “lost boys” who are still suffering from losing parents at an early age is one repeated in a number of recent films, from Mark Ruffalo’s aimless loser Terry Prescott in Ken Lonergan’s gentle family study [url=http://www.mixedreviews.net/m...][i] You Can Count on Me [/i][/url] to Jamie Sives charming depressive in this year’s [url=http://www.mixedreviews.net/m...][i]Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself[/i][/url] , directed by Lone Scherfig.
The latest marcher in this parade of emotional baggage-toting twentysomethings is [b]HAPPILY, EVEN AFTER[/b]'s Jake Singer (Jason Behr), an arguably talented painter and chronic screwup whose prized possession is an ancient truck he can’t drive. The marginally employed Jake lives alone in the house left him by his parents, who were killed in a taxi accident on their way to a revival of La Dolce Vita, as his sister Elizabeth (Fay Masterson) annoyingly tells us in an introductory narration meant to set up the story. Jake, who in true movie fashion just happens to be drop-dead gorgeous, even if he does bear a striking and unfortunate resemblance to Ashton Kutcher, has a life that consists largely of drinking whiskey straight from the bottle and listening to the same mournful recording of “Ne Me Quitte Pas” recently used in a comic sequence in Cirque du Soleil’s VAREKAI. This of course makes him the ideal Tortured Young Man, and so when his sister, taking the advice of her stock Goofy Buck-Toothed Co-Worker (the Eve Arden role, played by Deb Fink), hires him a “fairy godmother” in the person of Katie (Marina Black). Unbeknownst to both of them, Katie, an aspiring playwright and also only marginally and intermittently employed, has already had her “meet cute” with Jake in the laundromat/café where she formerly worked.
Of course you can write the rest of this one for yourself; for you’ve seen this film a million times and can see everything that’s about to happen fifteen minutes before it does. And while director Unsu Lee wisely leaves the end of the film ambiguous, he doesn’t take that extra step and make it real, even if making it real would be less satisfying. The script can’t decide whether it wants to be whimsical or dramatic, and the segues between the two themes are often awkward. There are some truly eye-rolling plot contrivances, such as the fact that Jake and Katie BOTH have “Ne Me Quitte Pas” sitting on their turntables, a credibility-stretching piece of synchronicity, given that most twenty-somethings don’t even OWN a turntable or vinyl records, never mind sharing a passion for 1960’s French singers. In places the dialogue falls completely flat where it needs to soar.
This is not to say that [b]HAPPILY EVEN AFTER[/b] is a bad film. Lee has a nice feel for his actors and for integrating the romantic environment of San Francisco into his whimsical story. There’s some lovely cinematography by Jeffrey Chu and a light score by the U.K. band Kid Galahad that’s never intrusive. There’s a competent supporting cast of appropriately quirky characters. Among the leads, Fay Masterson does her best with the “brittle career woman with too many responsibilities who needs to soften up” role that has been played on HBO for six seasons by Cynthia Nixon, whom she strongly resembles, in [i]Sex and the City[/i]. Marina Black, an HBO veteran from [i]Six Feet Under[/i], is competent, if never electric, as Katie.
If anything shines about [b]HAPPILY EVEN AFTER[/b], it’s Jason Behr, who gets under Jake’s skin and shows us the nervous energy the character tries to drown in alcohol and inane pseudo-philosophical pronouncements. Behr lets us see Jake’s emergence from his cocoon without even bothering to shave or change his mode of dressing; it’s all in his carriage and voice. Granted, this kind of role is always a star-maker when done well, as we saw with Mark Ruffalo, but making it real is not easy to achieve, and making the character likeable in spite of his faults is even more difficult. And this is where the film stops working. In this kind of “boy meets girl, boy loses girl” story, you’re supposed to WANT these characters to fall in love and be together. But Behr and Black lack sufficient on-screen chemistry for this to occur. You’re supposed to fall in love with the loser boy yourself (for these films are primarily geared towards women, for all that the protagonists are male), in spite of the fact that he’s self-indulgent and in real life would drive you crazy. But Jake isn’t charming like Wilbur, nor does he make you want to mother him like Terry Prescott does. In fact, once you get past “Oh, my, look at those eyelashes,” you just want to tell Jake to shut the fuck up and get over himself.
Audiences are going to love [b]HAPPILY EVEN AFTER[/b], with its attractive cast, tried-and-true plot, and romantic setting. It’s a nice little film, a good little film, that should have been better.
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| ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB |
| 05.05.04 (4:17 am) [edit] |
ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB
Directed by: Carey Schonegeval
Distributor: Unquiet Projects/IFC Entertainment (US 2004)
Rated: unrated
A TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL PREVIEW
read more previews from Tribeca at [url=http://www.mixedreviews.net]Mixed Reviews[/url]
As Reviewed by: Jill Cozzi
Inspired by the Thomas Merton poem of the same name, Carey Schonegeval’s powerful but heavy-handed documentary is a visual reflection on the aftermath of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that resulted in the Japanese surrender and the end of WWII. Making liberal use of footage, suppressed for decades, shot by a U.S. Army film team in Hiroshima and Nagasaki just after the war; home movies, interviews with “hibakusha” (survivors), and stock newsreel footage, the film uses musings from Merton’s poems to offset the horrific images, juxtaposed with scenes of contemporary Japan. Stock footage of the 1960’s atomic tests in the Nevada desert are narrated by skeptical American veterans who witnessed that event and later realized they had been exposed to radiation, while animated sequences by second-generation animator Emily Hubley and Jeremiah Dickey) portray a young girl and horse appear intermittently to emphasize the effects of nuclear proliferation on children.
[b]ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB[/b]’s intentions are admirable, but aside from being a painful reminder of the effects of our actions even in a just war, the film often plays as a quaint relic of the “no nukes” rallies of the 1960’s. Although nuclear weapons have now been lumped together with other horrific means of destruction into the acronym “WMD”, and the U.S. is now led by an administration seemingly itching to push that particular button in Iraq to see what happens, juxtaposing Harry Truman's declaration of victory over Japan against George W. Bush's phony claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq seems, even to this unabashed and unrepentant liberal, to be somewhat disingenuous.
While there is certainly room for discussion about whether the use of such destructive weaponry, even by the United States, was necessary to end WWII, for a director with the sentiments Schonegeval is obviously trying to portray to equivocate the ill-conceived Iraq invasion with our necessary involvement in WWII is to play right into the current Administration’s hands.
[b]ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB[/b] is at its most effective when it avoids the temptation to tub-thump and instead relies on the power of its own imagery to make its point.
(Tribeca Film Festival screenings of this film are preceded by [b]LEGENDS FROM CAMP[/b]. At twelve minutes, [b]LEGENDS [/b]is a compact, sometimes primitive and at the same time visually stunning computer-animated short film inspired by Lawson Inada’s poetry about his experiences in the Japanese internment camps as a boy. It plays like a version of [i]Toy Story[/i] as if it were written by Rod Serling and conceived by Terry Gilliam.)
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| LET'S ROCK AGAIN |
| 05.05.04 (4:09 am) [edit] |
LET'S ROCK AGAIN
Cast: Joe Strummer, Scott Shields, Martin Slattery, Tymon Dogg, Simon Stafford, Luke Bullen
Directed by: Dick Rude
Distributor: Dick Rude Productions (US 2004)
Rated: Not Rated
Running Time: 67 min.
A TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL PREVIEW
read more previews from Tribeca at [url=http://www.mixedreviews.net]Mixed Reviews[/url]
As Reviewed by: Jill Cozzi
Perhaps no image in director Dick Rude's documentary [b]LET'S ROCK AGAIN[/b] about the 2000-2002 tours of a little-known band called the Mescaleros is more poignant than the sight of the band's lead singer, ex-Clash frontman Joe Strummer, leafletting on the Atlantic City board in an effort to interest passersby in the band's show at the Trump Marina. It's one thing for Justin Guarini to land on the ash heap of pop history, but when Joe Strummer, the Voice of a Movement, is standing outside a small radio station in southern New Jersey begging for airplay for his new CD, the suits truly have won.
Strummer was the gravelly voice of the Clash, those quintessential icons of the 1970's punk rock scene. This film is more than a tribute to someone who is really quite a minor icon, it's a tribute to an accomplished, mature songwriter and musician. Strummer emerges here as a thoughtful artist, mellowed with age, whose lyrics still rage at the machine, but with a more focused and almost mournful leaning; an artist more influenced by King Tubby and Nina Simone and Woody Guthrie than by his earlier influences as he cites in this film; such lesser lights as ? and the Mysterians, Iggy Pop, and the Standells. The Mescaleros, a far more accomplished set of musicians than Strummer's previous band, with a sound that's at once jazzy and brash, with strong world music influences ranging from reggae to soca to lilting, hypnotic African guitar sounds, are brought to many of us for the first, and regrettably last, time. This band, which was greeted with near-fanatical enthusiasm by the Japanese, and near-indifference by Americans who have largely moved on to hip-hop as the Testosterone-Fueled Angry Young Man's genre of choice and the synth-pop manufactured by record companies, emerges in Rude's film as an interesting, underappreciated band, with a unique and polished sound.
Filmed on harsh digital video, [b]LET’S ROCK AGAIN[/b] is in some ways a very conventional concert tour film, mixing live concert footage with the backstage nitty-gritty of ad hoc songwriting, last-minute set changes, and beer. Curiously missing, perhaps intentionally, are the obligatory drugs and groupies that tend to go along with a rock ‘n’ roll tour, although like most rock ‘n’ roll documentaries, this film further underscores just how right on the money [i]This is Spinal Tap[/i] really was in portraying the sheer goofiness of backstage life.
In its final edit, [b]LET'S ROCK AGAIN[/b], which was filmed during 2002 in the months before Strummer’s untimely death due to a congenital heart ailment, is clearly a labor of love on the part of director Dick Rude, a eulogy that celebrates the life of the man it honors instead of mourning his untimely passing. The film emerges as a bittersweet tribute to a surprisingly humble artist, one who cheerfully refers to himself as a hack ("because #1, it's true, and #2, you don't want to get too hifalutin' about it, and #3, you’re a hack anyway"), admits to hating classical music, and who doesn’t take his endeavor at all seriously. “It’s like being a crossword puzzle writer,” he says. It seems yet another cruel cosmic joke in the annals of rock ‘n’ roll history that a singer/songwriter renowned more for anarchic, rage-fueled yells, should be taken from us just as he demonstrates himself to be a disciplined, accomplished musician.
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| SEARCHING FOR THE WRONG-EYED JESUS |
| 05.04.04 (7:40 pm) [edit] |
SEARCHING FOR THE WRONG-EYED JESUS
Cast: Jim White, Johnny Dowd, and The Handsome Family
Directed by: Andrew Douglas
Written by: Steve Haisman
Distributor: Films Transit (US 2004)
Rated: unrated
A TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL PREVIEW
read more previews from Tribeca at [url=http://www.mixedreviews.net]Mixed Reviews[/url]
As Reviewed by: Gabriel Shanks
If David Lynch made a road documentary about the rural communities of the American South, it might look a great deal like [b]SEARCHING FOR THE WRONG-EYED JESUS[/b], Andrew Douglas' meditation on the nexus of music, poverty, and faith. Told with a minimum of dialogue, Douglas' documentary quietly unearths rough-hewn spirits of all kinds: in the rootsy folk/blues of its blisteringly talented musicians, in the alcohol of blue-collar bars that pepper the highways, and in the fire and brimstone of the region's home-grown religious faith, Pentecostal Christianity. Eschewing any major characters except a philosophic tour guide, the musician Jim White, Douglas sets his sights on the beautiful but harsh landscape, from the bayou country of Louisiana to the rocky foothills of Tennessee to the foreboding forests of Virginia. The entrancing cinematography is accompanied by what is, hands down, the best film score of 2004. Sitting next to the everyday people that Douglas often captures in their vulnerable moments are master roots musicians, including Johnny Dowd, The Handsome Family, 16 Horsepower, and Lee Sexton. Inserted into these piercing pictorials of Southern life, the musicians become otherworldly ghosts, bringing the life-is-tough message of their songwriting into sharp relief with the lives they are singing about, for, and with. It is a powerful, and moving, dramatic device that underscores the brutality of being left out of the American Dream.
Harsh lives require harsh religions, and the explorations of Pentecostal faith are both eloquent and disturbing. Douglas, a British director of commercials working under the auspices of BBC Arena, naturally brings a cultural distance to an examination of The South that refines the film's wavering focus. The pervasiveness of religiosity is hammered home time and time again; under Douglas' watchful camera, even those hearty souls who reject the church and its teachings are unable to escape its reach. The fact that many of the participants in the film consider drinking a beer at a local tavern to be a virulent sin may stun more urbane viewers. The danger of [b]SEARCHING FOR THE WRONG-EYED JESUS[/b] is that those viewers may summarily dismiss its subjects as uneducated or, worse, nutjobs. The truth is far more complex. As the inheritors of generations of poverty, religion has become the promise of more than an afterlife...it is the promise of a better existence. If these people speak in tongues, Douglas argues, who are we to say that God has not found them? Perhaps there truly is no middle ground between Heaven and Hell. Douglas' film asks the question: have we all been looking for the wrong deity?
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| ZATOICHI |
| 05.04.04 (7:37 pm) [edit] |
ZATOICHI
Cast: Beat Takeshi, Tadanobu Asano, Michiyo Ogusu and Yui Natsukawa
Directed by: Takeshi Kitano
Written by: Takeshi Kitano
Distributor: Miramax Films (US 2004)
Rated: R for strong stylized bloody violence
A TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL PREVIEW
read more previews from Tribeca at [url=http://www.mixedreviews.net]Mixed Reviews[/url]
As Reviewed by: Gabriel Shanks
Zatoichi, the indelible blind swordsman first portrayed by the late Shintaro Katsu in 1963, is the central character is the longest series in Japanese film history. With 26 films and over 100 television episodes, Zatoichi became an iconic presence in Japan, the equivalent of James Bond in Britain. This year, Zatoichi has been revived by Japanese cinema's undisputed kingpin, Takeshi Kitano, in a film of the same title. While fans of Kitano and Katsu may find much to love in this spunky update, [b]ZATOICHI [/b]finds a legacy diminished by his new masters.
Despite the period dress and warlord-heavy plotting, [b]ZATOICHI [/b]still exudes the too-cool-for-school ambience of Takeshi Kitano, whose modern crime pictures like [i]Sonatine [/i]and [i]Hana-Bi[/i] have firmly established him as a counterculture superstar. The bones crunch at deafening volumes in Kitano's world; the blood flies in operatic arcs, and even a gentle breeze sounds like a thousand rushing birds. This is Cinema of the Obvious, but like Kitano's most successful efforts, [b]ZATOICHI [/b]climbs the heights of action -- fierce swordplay, fiery tempers, and style to spare.
What gets lost in this blood-soaked period drama is the plot, which is immaterial at best and thuddingly simple at worst. Our favorite blind swordsman continues to make dry jokes in between stabbings, but the story -- which involve triad gang turf wars, gambling, and a pair of devious geishas -- never really adds up to much. Some of the dialogue, at least in the English subtitles, made this writer visibly cringe.
Despite its massive success last year in its native Japan, [b]ZATOICHI [/b]doesn't strike me as a massive crossover hit. Packed with action, it still only intermittently entertains those who didn't grow up loving the character.
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| Kill Bill, Volume II |
| 05.02.04 (8:30 am) [edit] |
[b]KILL BILL: VOL. 2[/b]
[b]Cast[/b]: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Gordon Liu, and Caitlin Keats
[b]Directed by[/b]: Quentin Tarantino
[b]Written by[/b]: Quentin Tarantino
[b]Distributor[/b]: Miramax Films (US 2004)
[b]Rated[/b]: R for violence, language and brief drug use
As Reviewed by: [b]Martin Scribbs[/b]
[b]Part 3: What's Taking Him So Long In The Editing Room? (And Why'd He Take His Own Headshot?)[/b]
There's a reason that a Google search of "Tarantino + masturbatory" yields 452 pages. For all that QT lifts from cinema history, he samples no-one as extensively as himself.
1. After all, what is the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (DiVAS) if not a realization of Foxforce Five, the pilot that Mia Wallace of [i]Pulp Fiction [/i] starred in?
Fox, as in we're a bunch of foxy chicks (Thurman, check. Liu, check. Vivica A. Fox, check. Daryl Hannah, check. Michael Madsen... was obviously a replacement member).
Force as in we're a force to be reckoned with.
Five, as in there's one... two... three... four... five of us.
Mia's character had a special skill with knives, closely akin to the Bride's skill with blades.
2. Is there any doubt that Butch killed Zed with a Hattori Hanzo sword? Budd lies that he pawned the sword. Zed's buddy ran a pawn shop.
3. Note that in the Bride's ride through Tokyo, she passes an ad for Red Apples cigarettes -- the brand Butch got in Marsellus Wallace's bar.
4. What did Tony "Rocky Horror" supposedly get thrown out the window for? Excessive attention to the feet of "Marsellus Wallace's bride" -- which attention Quentin provided in Volume 1, as the Bride willed her piggies to move. In Volume 2 we get to see those same feet squish an opponent's eye -- that's what you get just for looking.
5. Neither Copperhead nor Mr. Pink are happy with the distribution of the codenames.
6. And on and on and on...
***
[b]PART ONE: GET THIS MAN A GUIDANCE COUNSELOR![/b]
If QT were a chef, he would make pineapple upside down cake with bacon and broccoli. He'd bake it at a quarter the recommended temperature, but let it cook for four times the prescribed time. Then he'd break into the middle of your entree course to serve it.
If Tarantino edited your high school yearbook, all of the boys would look venal and all of the girls fatale, the text would be rife with in-jokes about previous years' classes, and he would have signed every page of every copy.
If the great man were a standup, all of his routines would be about other standups.
If Quentin were a Senator, he'd be Joe Biden.
If [b]KILL BILL[/b]'s director wrote a novel, it would be ten pages long but have a 300 page index.
However, he really should have gone to law school. He's a master of precedent, obsessed about details, and completely tone-deaf to normal human emotions.
***
[b]P.a.R.t T.w.O: A Relative Review[/b]
Did I like [b]KILL BILL[/b]? Do I consider it a worthy successor to [i]Resevoir Dogs[/i], [i]Pulp Fiction[/i], and [i]Jackie Brown[/i]? I'd like to answer that question with a montage of my past reviews.
But I won't. 'Cos that would be me at my most sadistic. And I'd like to think, dear readers, that you know me well enough by now to realize that this review is me at my most...masochistic. At least, it's been a pain in the ass to write.
There are many cool moments in [b]KILL BILL[/b], Volume 2. There's also a lot of the movie that doesn't work, dead air, wrong turns, monologues so stagy and unnatural that they beg vainly for excision. But, most of all, the ending is TOTAL BULLSHIT. When you see the movie, ask yourself if any child, ever, would be as sanguine about events as the Bride's little girl. It's not that Volume 1 was more substantial, just active and visceral enough to distract us.
Even QT's failures, and I count Volume 2 as a relative bust, are interesting to watch. But if he ever wants to tackle adult themes like love, motherhood, and the costs of revenge, he needs to ditch the gimmicks.
Look at the beautiful work he does with Bill and the Bride's faces in their first encounter outside the Two Pines Chapel. Tarantino and lenser Richard Rodriguez, in beautiful black and white photography, bring out a gentleness, a mildness in the eyes of these cold-blooded killers, a look reserved only for each other. Scenes like that give you the feeling that if he were willing to drop the Videohound, Tarantino would be capable of so much more than Volume 2.
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Welcome to Mixed Reviews Single Servings. Here you'll find short reviews of current and past movies for people too busy to read a full review.
You can find full-length reviews of present and past films, from Hollywood releases to independent films to "hidden treasures" that haven't been released yet, at our main site, Mixed Reviews. Please browse our archive for links to reviews of films dating back to 1998.
For more smart stuff about movies, please visit the Cinemarati Roundtable.
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