This week, we feature a pair of excellent documentaries: Frederick Wiseman’s At Berkeley (review here) and The Punk Singer, about riot grrrl icon Kathleen Hanna (review and interview here). Read on for short takes on this week’s new releases!
Art Gods: An Oral History of the Tower Records Art Department Bay Area filmmaker Strephon Taylor (2012’s The Complete Bob Wilkins Creature Features) turns his lens on Tower Records circa its 1980s heyday, when the hard-partying bros of the store’s in-house art department crafted displays for the hottest new album releases. Taylor, himself a veteran of the crew, gathers its founding members to reminisce, including original store artist Steve Pollutro, who made eye-catching magic using everyday supplies (posters, foam board, X-Acto knives, spray paint, etc.) and spawned an art style that invaded record stores worldwide. An odd length at just over an hour, Art Gods could have been trimmed of some of its superfluous anecdotes (a story about Pollutro’s failed attempts to enter the UK to help Tower set up its London branch drags on forever) and presented as a more fine-tuned shorter doc — or made more substantial by widening its interview pool beyond nostalgic former artists. (1:12) Balboa. (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shvYNVlHMm8
Bettie Page Reveals All Mark Mori’s affectionate Bettie Page Reveals All is narrated in the form of a rambling, chuckle-punctuated interview with the late pin-up icon herself. (We never actually see her except in archival film and images.) Even die-hards who already know the story behind the legend — a rough childhood, several unsuccessful marriages, mental-health issues — will likely learn some new tidbits. (A friend recalls watching 2005’s unauthorized biopic The Notorious Bettie Page with its subject, who hollered her opinion — “Lies! Lies!” — throughout.) Associates like Hugh Hefner and Dita Von Teese drop by to praise Page’s talents and legacy, but there’s no greater proof of lasting glamour than Page’s famous photographs, which she clearly loved posing for, and never regretted, even after embracing Christianity later in life. (1:41) (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClzRVlMhU2E
Out of the Furnace Scott Cooper is best-known for directing Jeff Bridges to a long-overdue Oscar in 2009 country-music yarn Crazy Heart. Perhaps that’s why his follow-up contains so many stars: Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Forest Whitaker, Willem Dafoe, Sam Shepard, Zoe Saldana, and Woody Harrelson. That cast is the main draw for Out of the Furnace, a glum fable of dying American dreams co-written by Cooper and Brad Inglesby. Furnace retains Crazy Heart‘s melodramatic tendencies and good ol’ boy milieu, though this time we’re deep in Pennsylvania’s Rust Belt, which manages to be even more depressing than Crazy Horse‘s honky-tonks. Cue gray skies, repeated shots of train tracks and smoke stacks, an emo banjo score, and dialogue that casually mentions that “the mill,” the only source of income for miles around, is about to close. Probably the nicest guy in town is Bale’s character, arrested early on for causing a fatal car accident thanks to his inability to turn down a drink offered by the town heavy (Dafoe). Post-prison, he discovers that his girlfriend (Saldana) has taken up with another man, and that his money-troubled Iraq-vet brother (Affleck) has been entering high-stakes pit fights. Really, this can’t end well for anyone. Adding to Out of the Furnace‘s bleak take on modern masculinity is Harrelson, stealing all his scenes with ease as a psychotically violent redneck. Mickey Knox lives! (1:56) (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrGkVdL8xUA
Sweet Dreams When the all-female drum troupe at the center of Sweet Dreams performs — and we hear some of the players’ stories about their battles to emerge from the enormity of the Rwandan genocide — we fully understand why Oscar-winning editor Lisa Fruchtman and her brother, documentary director Rob Fruchtman, gravitated toward this story. Ingoma Nshya is rooted in a tradition that was once reserved for men, and is composed of the orphans, widows, wives, and offspring of both the victims and perpetrators of the genocide. Music seems to be one of the sole sources of creative expression and healing for them, until founder and theater director Kiki Katese convinces the hipster owners of Brooklyn’s Blue Marble Ice Cream to start a collective with the women to open the country’s first ice cream shop. The Fruchtmans touch on the horrors of the past but devote most of the drama to the quietly emotional as well as physically tangible issues of opening the store and actually going about making its soft-serve treats. With that focus, Sweet Dreams sometimes seems to overlook the obvious — the ever-lingering specter of violence and trauma, the unanswered questions of justice, and the women’s daily struggle to coexist — and those with a journalistic, or even musically ethnographic, mindset, will be frustrated by some of the absences, like the lack of information about the performances and music itself. That’s not to say Sweet Dreams‘ story isn’t worth telling — or relishing. (1:23) (Kimberly Chun)
FILM At Berkeley, the latest documentary from the great Frederick Wiseman, runs 244 minutes — a time commitment intimidating enough to deter any casual viewer. But viewers intrigued by Wiseman’s long tradition of filming institutions (a small sampling: 1968’s High School; 1973’s Juvenile Court; 1985’s Racetrack; 2011’s Crazy Horse — the latter about a Parisian nude-dancing establishment) with fly-on-the-wall curiosity will want to carve out an afternoon for At Berkeley, as will those interested in 21st century educational issues, California’s financial crisis, and the care and maintenance of UC Berkeley’s free-spirited image, among other topics.
UC Berkeley students and grads also seem like a built-in audience, which means the film’s local screenings are likely to be more populated than they would be elsewhere. Folks who attended while Wiseman was filming (he shot 250 hours of footage over 12 weeks in what appears to be mid- to late-2011) might even catch a glimpse of themselves in crowd scenes and shots of casual moments on campus, which comprise the smallest portion of At Berkeley‘s divided interests. But the local-color moments do much to flesh out what’s not seen in the classroom and administrative-meeting sequences: the fading-hippie glow of Telegraph Avenue; two men with impressive yo-yo skills; a student tussling with his bicycle; a couple napping on a grassy expanse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L2_yLBrQsM
We’re also shown what goes into the maintenance of that postcard-perfect campus. Berkeley’s landscaping starts looking especially impressive when — during a retreat of school bigwigs that Wiseman had apparent free rein to shoot — one administrator points out that budget cuts mean the school employs just one person to mow all of its lawns. “Well, he’s doing a good job!” interjects Robert J. Birgeneau, chancellor of the school 2004-2013. At the time of filming, UC Berkeley was weathering a series of painful fee increases, staff furloughs and layoffs, and widespread budget cutbacks, with Birgeneau serving as its pragmatic, stern-yet-sympathetic eye of the storm.
Birgeneau, like everyone else in the film (including probably the most recognizable figure: former Clinton cabinet member Robert Reich, now a Berkeley prof), is never identified by name. At first, this feels disorienting; most docs strive to hook the viewer with first-act exposition, but At Berkeley simply plunges in with a woman (a teacher? a student?) regaling (a class? an extracurricular club?) with a myth about Berkeley’s origins (spoiler alert: it wasn’t founded by gamblers) that leads into a broader rumination on what the school represents. “A sense of imagination, of diversity,” she says. “An ideal.”
Before long, it’s obvious that we don’t need to know the back stories of everyone who appears in the film. This portrait of UC Berkeley — as a complex place, not without unrest, but also not without spontaneous a capella performances — emerges with all of its subjects sharing equal footing, their experiences and points of view presented with equal interest. Some of the most compelling scenes take place in classrooms, with remarkably articulate students (though, yes, Wiseman’s camera does catch a few looking sleepy and bored) discussing subjects as wildly diverse as poverty in America, advancements in robotics, Thoreau, and racism. There are also fascinating snippets of lectures, including an amusing, anecdote-heavy treatise from Reich on the importance of self-evaluation.
“The film has to work on both a literal level and a metaphoric, or abstract, level,” Wiseman writes in his At Berkeley director’s note. Filmgoers grasping for a through line will pick up on the financial stress that permeates every corner of the school. A student who describes herself as middle-class weeps at the financial burden she’s imposing on her parents. A professor advises a pair of eager students that their engineering dreams will require raising funds from government entities. Another professor expresses her concerns that increasing student fees will encourage new grads to seek out big paychecks to pay off their debts, rather than lower-paying jobs that might be more socially conscious.
The unrest percolating throughout the film culminates in coverage of a late-2011 Occupy Cal demonstration, in which the main campus library is overtaken by passionate protestors. The focus shifts away from the chanting students to UC Berkeley’s behind-the-scenes response, or rather, the phone calls and meetings that decide what the response should be (a “generic acknowledgement” is met by jeers from the protestors; a heavy police presence is suggested, but not visually documented).
In the library, a young man grasps the bullhorn and advises his fellow students that they need to organize their guiding principles more efficiently — an observation echoed later by Birgeneau. Unlike the headline-grabbing demonstrations that fill UC Berkeley’s storied past — its rabble-rousing legacy gets surprisingly few mentions here — there’s no underlying philosophy, he points out. A few moments later, we’re in a classroom, listening to students grumble about how the protests disrupted their midterms.
As its fourth hour draws to a close, At Berkeley‘s final sequence leaps from a discussion of one of John Donne’s sexier poems into a science class discussing interplanetary space travel. Sure, it’s possible, the affably geeky instructor says — but the practical concerns (like building a vessel with incredibly robust power sources that could sustain life for generations upon generations) tend to get in the way of one’s brilliant ideas and imagination. Here Wiseman’s affection for metaphor is made abundantly clear. *
FILM Clad only in a dingy T-shirt and tighty-whities, with an overgrown beard and a hollow look of defeat in his eyes, shut-in Ian (Adrian DiGiovanni) spends his days channel-surfing and plotting ways to commit suicide. When his beloved vintage TV (“His name was Kent,” he tells the camera, in the first of many direct addresses) fizzles, smokes, and goes dark, he finally takes action.
But after he’s lurched off the couch and dumped enough household chemicals into his bathtub to kill several hundred depressed agoraphobics, he falls and hits his head. When he wakes up some time later, groggy and bleeding from the mouth, he realizes his grimy bathroom has a new inhabitant: a talking pile of mold that immediately starts spouting Tony Robbins-like encouragement at our sad-sack hero.
A lot happens in the opening act of first-time feature director Don Thacker’s Motivational Growth. Delightfully, and sometimes gruesomely, the rest of the film keeps pace, even though we never leave Ian’s apartment. Unwelcome visitors (a wacked-out TV repairman; a snarky delivery girl; Ian’s angry landlord) and a series of surreal hallucinations, in which Ian imagines he’s appearing in the shows he used to watch on Kent’s screen (the best one: an alien buddy-cop drama that looks straight outta Troma), are troubling — though the pretty neighbor he glimpses through his apartment peephole offers brief moments of relief.
But Ian’s main focus, of course, is Motivational Growth‘s title character (voiced with purring bravado by the great Jeffrey Combs). The mold — it insists on referring to itself in the third person — looks like a Krofft Superstar Hour prop that fell into a sewage tank; it has barely-discernable features beyond an expressive mouth that never stops talking (and “when the mold talks, you listen,” it says, sternly). Though the mold encourages Ian — who hasn’t left his apartment in over a year, to tidy up and set a course for “Successville” — there’s also something undeniably sinister about Ian’s increasingly bossy new buddy.
With its pleasingly retro vibe, including a bleep-blorp video game-y soundtrack, Motivational Growth is quirky without getting in your face about it — though it may inspire you to rush home and scrub every inch of your bathroom. It’s a high point in the 10th annual Another Hole in the Head Film Festival, produced by SF IndieFest and stuffed tighter than a turducken with indie horror, sci-fi, and fantasy flicks.
The fest offers a sprinkling of classics (for all you Room 237 obsessives out there, it features screenings of both 1980’s The Shining and projection-booth stunt “The Shining Forwards and Backwards” — talk about a labyrinth). But mostly, it’s a showcase of new films that might be having their only local theatrical screenings, including several intriguing imports.
Billed as the Philippines’ first-ever indie zombie movie, T.A. Aderto’s The Grave Bandits has a few major flaws, including an overload of bodily-function jokes and some of the worst mad-scientist acting ever captured on film. But its young leads — particularly Marti Sandino San Juan as the slingshot-wielding Peewee — and some gushing gore effects mitigate most of The Grave Bandits‘ more unfortunate elements.
The premise: Two scrappy ragamuffins (Peewee and his slightly older buddy, played by Ronald Pacifico) make their living robbing corpses, a survival strategy that makes them unpopular enough to be chased by angry mobs. They’re able to steal a small boat and escape to one of the country’s tiny islands — unluckily, it happens to be the same place a gang of pirates acted the wrong way around a giant gemstone tainted by “an alien virus, dormant for over 100 years.” Ergo, a new angry mob to evade — one made up of flesh-ripping zombies.
Elsewhere among the international selections is French Canadian filmmaker Renaud Gauthier’s Discopath. The writer-director is clearly a fan of cult-horror nasties — 1980’s Maniac and 1979’s Don’t Go in the House, and to a lesser extent 1977’s Suspiria, seem to have influenced this stylish, self-assured creepfest. After witnessing a terrible tragedy as a child, shy loner Duane (Jeremie Earp) can’t stand music, particularly that newfangled genre called disco. For whatever reason, he agrees to go to a dance club with a girl he’s just met — with disastrously bloody results. Fast-forward a few years, and he’s fled New York City for Montreal. Living under a fake name, he’s working as a handyman at a Catholic girl’s school and wearing hearing aids that mute out the dreaded sound of music (insert your own “Disco sucks!” joke here).
But once a psychopath, always a psychopath, and heads soon start rolling (and spinning on turntables, in fact). If Discopath‘s plot is familiar to the point of homage, its synth-scored commitment to detail reaches exceptional heights: period-perfect clothes, cars, tabloid newspapers, décor (including a giant remote control that Motivational Growth‘s Ian would covet), and carefully-calibrated amounts of garbage scattered on NYC’s Me Decade sidewalks. *
LIT Forget the glossy one-sheets you’ve seen reproduced a thousand times. The colorful Alternative Movie Posters: Film Art from the Underground (Schiffer Publishing Ltd, 207 pp., $34.99) highlights creatively re-imagined posters for pop classics like 2004’s Mean Girls (styled as a retro YA novel); 1990’s Misery (a stark drawing of a shattered ankle); and 1984’s Gremlins (a box of instant oatmeal: “Just add water!”) It also includes interviews with each of the artists, most of whom are diehard movie junkies themselves. I spoke with the book’s editor, Matthew Chojnacki, to get the inside scoop on his new project.
SF Bay Guardian Your first book, Put the Needle on the Record: The 1980s at 45 Revolutions Per Minute, was about record-album art. Were movie posters a natural progression?
Matthew Chojnacki I’m a huge music fan, and I was going to a lot of music festivals and seeing concert-poster artwork all over the place. I noticed a lot of those artists were also starting to do movie posters. Since I also love movies, I thought this would be a cool follow-up to the first book, because it’s a similar idea: How do you boil down a whole album, or a whole movie, into one image?
SFBG How did you choose which posters to include in the book?
MC I had this big matrix of what I wanted. There are a lot of different styles of art in this movement. A lot of it’s minimalist, but on the flip side, a lot of it’s hand-drawn cartoons, like Mad magazine style. And a lot of artists are doing their own, unique thing — glow-in-the-dark ink, stuff like that. So I wanted to include a lot of different styles of art, but also genres of movies and decades of film.
Also, especially with cult classics, a lot of the posters have been re-done hundreds of times; I tried to find the best [examples] for films like Fight Club (1999) and The Big Lebowski (1998). It became a big curation project. I boiled something like 10,000 images down to just over 200, and I probably contacted 105 artists and 100 agreed to do it. Most artists got two pages that show their style, with an interview alongside, which shows what types of movies motivate them and their thoughts on why these posters are important.
SFBG What are the elements that make an effective poster, and why have these alternative posters become popular?
MC What movie posters do these days is generally just [publicize] the celebrity in the cast. What they used to be, and what this [alternative art] does, is give the spirit of the movie. There are a lot of great, classic posters like The Exorcist (1973) — it didn’t tell you much about the movie, but it was an effective way to get people to see it.
I think the motion picture industry has gotten kind of lazy. They know celebrity sells, of course, but they could tell you who’s in the movie and still make it a piece of art. There are some more visual directors who do this very well, like Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, or Tim Burton. It seems like they’re really involved with their marketing; their posters really pop, and give you the feeling or the emotion of what you might get with one of their movies.
But the other 95 percent of posters — you’ve probably seen those articles where they compare 100 action movies and they’re all done in the same exact way. It’s a regurgitation of the same concept. My point with the book is not only are these examples of cool posters, but also this is what it could be. It used to be a medium — just like album covers — where it took the project above and beyond. Even if the album or the movie was kind of crappy, there was still some collectibility around the imagery of these films. They used to put a lot of style and intrigue into these posters, and I think that’s something that can still be done while communicating that Will Smith’s in the movie.
SFBG Do you have a favorite poster in the book?
MC I think it’s all how you were raised. In the 1970s and ’80s, I loved hand-drawn posters, National Lampoon or Garbage Pail Kids-style, because they always revolved around T&A comedies or horror movies — R-rated movies geared toward underage people. I tend to like that kind of comic-book style. One of my favorite artists who hand-draws is Ghoulish Gary Pullin, who has a Big Lebowski and a Teen Wolf (1985) in the book. I really like his style; it’s way up my alley of what I used to like as a kid.
I love posters for movies that are kind of underrated a little bit. Everybody does Big Lebowski and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), but I love when, once in awhile, someone will pluck out a Teen Wolf or something a little more obscure, and do it in a really cool way. *
This week, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire stands poised to crush all who dare step to it, but there are some alternatives out there. There’s the San Francsico Film Society’s weekend-long Cinema By the Bay festival (my overview here), as well as the latest from acclaimed director Alexander Payne, the small-scale but still very moving Nebraska (Dennis Harvey’s review here.)
Plus: a festival favorite from Belgium, and Vince Vaughn’s sperm-bank comedy. Reviews for both (plus guaranteed big kahuna Catching Fire) below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a50DJkCxqw
Broken Circle Breakdown This Belgian movie by director Felix Van Groeningen arrives bearing major awards (from the Berlin and Tribeca festivals) and promising to nab plenty more of them. Why, you ask? I haven’t the faintest idea. Didier (Johan Heldenbergh) is leader of a bluegrass group; Elise (Veerle Baetens) is a tattoo artist until she meets him, they get together, and it’s discovered that when she opens her mouth Alison Krauss falls out. They have a child, Maybelle (Nell Cattrysse), who develops cancer at age six or so, and whose prospects are grim. So far, so ordinary — Once (2007) meets Lorenzo’s Oil (1992), a tearjerker in which people sing high lonesome American roots music (in English, too) well enough, but not so well that you ever stop wondering “Why are these Belgians doing this?” The expected tragedy hits halfway through, and that’s when the movie really gets into trouble. Its protagonists fall apart, understandably, but in irksome ways — mostly picking on each other — with particularly annoying sequences occurring in both past and present tense. It’s hard to tell which one is worse, the arch flashback wedding scene, her deciding to rename herself “Alabama,” his endless onstage outburst about Yahweh, the climactic psychedelic flashback crisis montage, or the wholly gratuitous final … well, never mind. This was originally a stage play, and in the usual way that seeing musicians act and actors play instruments live is exciting, it probably worked well in that medium. But on film it seems like a contrived pileup of ill-matched ideas and plot devices. Don’t take my word for it, though: From Seattle to Osaka, apparently there’s been nary a dry eye in the house. So knock yerself out. (1:50) (Dennis Harvey)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocMnYUSzniU
Delivery ManTwenty years ago David Wozniak (Vince Vaughn) “put love in a cup” 600-plus times to finance a family trip to Italy. His mother was sick, his father couldn’t afford it, and with time running out, David embarked on a harebrained scheme to make (a lot of) “it” happen. The sperm bank that paid him $23K for his “seed” overused it, and 18 years later he has 533 kids, 143 of which are on a hunt to find their biological father, “Starbuck.” (This also the name of the 2011 Canadian comedy on which Delivery Man is based.) With a premise this quirky you’ll have a hard time finding something to hate, even if this is technically a film about runaway jizz. This heartwarming Thanksgiving release isn’t really appropriate for youngsters (unless you’re been trying to find a entrée to explain sperm banks) but the way Delivery Man deals with the seemingly limitless generosity contained in each of us is both touching and inspiring. Maybe David’s contribution to “Starbuck’s Kids” doesn’t obligate him to reveal his identity, but he’s desperately attached, and goes embarrassingly far outside his comfort zone to interact. The kids’ emotional stake in this is murky, but the way their search for identity finds a voice in tune with the current tech-confident yet socially-confused younger generation could make Delivery Man relevant to more generations than X or Y. (1:45) (Sara Maria Vizcarrondo)
The Hunger Games: Catching FireBefore succumbing to the hot and heavy action inside the arena (intensely directed by Francis Lawrence), The Hunger Games: Catching Fire force-feeds you a world of heinous concept fashions that’d make Lady Gaga laugh. But that’s ok, because the second film about one girl’s epic struggle to change the world of Panem may be even more exciting than the first. Suzanne Collins’ YA novel The Hunger Games was an over-literal metaphor for junior high social survival and the glory of Catching Fire is that it depicts what comes after you reach the cool kids’ table. Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) inspired so much hope among the 12 districts she now faces pressures from President Snow (a portentous Donald Sutherland) and the fanatical press of Capital City (Stanley Tucci with big teeth and Toby Jones with big hair). After she’s forced to fake a romance with Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), the two watch with horror as they’re faced with a new Hunger Game: for returning victors, many of whom are too old to run. Amanda Plummer and Jeffrey Wright are fun as brainy wackjobs and Jena Malone is hilariously Amazonian as a serial axe grinder still screaming like an eighth grader. Inside the arena, alliances and rivalries shift but the winner’s circle could survive to see another revolution; to save this city, they may have to burn it down. (2:26) (Sara Maria Vizcarrondo)
FILM In movies, maybe more than in life, trouble awaits outsiders who poke into cults that don’t take kindly to outsiders. Sound of My Voice (2011) is a recent example, but The Wicker Man (1973) remains probably the gold standard of “Pardon me, but I’ll be infiltrating your society, passing judgment, and suffering the inevitable consequences” cinema. For every recruitment-happy group (step right up, young ladies, and throw your lot in with 2011’s Martha Marcy May Marlene), there are plenty more that would just as soon be left alone.
A new entry into this genre, Holy Ghost People, comes courtesy of Mitchell Altieri, half of the directing duo known as the Butcher Brothers (the other “brother,” Phil Flores, co-wrote and co-produced). You may remember the BBs from their 2006 breakout, The Hamiltons — about a family with a bloody secret. It’d make a perfectly nightmarish double-feature with another recent indie horror, Jim Mickle’s We Are What We Are. Holy Ghost People, which borrows its title and some archival footage from the 1967 documentary about Pentecostal churchgoers in West Virginia (now in the public domain, it’s viewable on YouTube), aims more for dread than gore, and represents an artistic step forward for the San Francisco-bred pair.
If certain choices don’t entirely work (a bookending voice-over feels unnecessary, given the film’s vivid visuals; the score can feel intrusive at times), Holy Ghost People is bolstered by some blistering performances, chiefly from co-writer Joe Egender as Brother Billy, the boyish leader of a church compound tucked into the Southern wilderness. (The film was shot at a summer camp — a setting not used so creepily since the first few Friday the 13th flicks.) Stumbling not-so-innocently into Billy’s lair are unlikely friends Wayne (Brendan McCarthy) and Charlotte (Emma Greenwell), who pretend to be spiritual wanderers when really they’re searching for Charlotte’s long-lost sister, last seen spiraling into junkie oblivion.
Anyone — but particularly Billy, whose tidy pompadour and welcoming words can’t hide the fact that he’s as sinister as the serpents he handles during sermons — can see that Wayne, a haunted alcoholic, and Charlotte, who’s battling her own demons, aren’t who they claim to be. Still, they’re cautiously accepted by lower-ranking members, including Sister Sheila (Cameron Richardson), a soft-spoken blonde whose beauty is marred by prominent facial scars.
As events get freakier in God’s country (or is it?), Holy Ghost People doesn’t quite offer a grand payoff to all that suspense — though it does establish a new clause to that old cinematic rule about guns: If you see a poisonous snake in the first act, damn certain it’ll bite someone by the end.
Holy Ghost People kicks off the San Francisco Film Society’s fifth annual Cinema By the Bay Festival, which showcases movies made “in or about the Bay Area,” as well as works made by artists with Bay Area connections. This agreeably loose thematic structure allows the Tennessee-shot Holy Ghost People to share marquee space with SF-centric doc American Vagabond, by Finnish director Susanna Helke.
American Vagabond, about homeless LGBT youth, is particularly timely in light of the SF Board of Supervisors’ recent vote to close parks overnight. Golden Gate Park is home for James and Tyler, a young couple who’ve fled their close-minded families, dreaming of a better life in the rainbow capital of California. Guided by James’ poetic, confessional narration — as well as other voices that chime in to share their experiences — American Vagabond is a specific, deeply personal story that also offers a broader comment on how gay youths and the homeless are treated, even in a city as progressive as SF. And it does take some unexpected turns, as when James reunites with the family that rejected him — though the reasons for the reconciliation are not happy ones.
Elsewhere in the fest, take note of Berry Minott’s The Illness and the Odyssey, a medical whodunit of sorts that explores the history and controversy surrounding Lytico-Bodig, a neurological disease found almost exclusively in Guam. For years, scientists have believed that finding its cause would be like “a Rosetta stone,” according to Dr. Oliver Sacks, resulting in cures for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and related illnesses. But since nobody can settle on a hypothesis — is it infectious? Caused by plants? The result of a curse? — and nobody really wants to share research (what, and let that Nobel Prize slip away?), there’s been little progress other than clashing speculation, to the great annoyance of those in Guam whose families are affected by the disease. Ultimately, The Illness and the Odyssey is more about the scientific process than anything else, with plenty of prickly personalities (in both current and vintage footage) stepping up to share their views.
Also worth a mention: In Hak Jang’s The Other Side of the Mountain, a Korean War-era romance (with musical numbers) that happens to be the first-ever North Korea/US cinematic co-production. And don’t miss “Street Smarts: YAK Films’ Dance Then and Now,” an Oakland-born phenomenon that has spawned a international array of films showcasing so-called urban dance — staged on subway cars, in intersections, and other unexpected places — of the most limber, slinky, sassy, acrobatic, and awe-inspiring varieties. *
This week, doc lovers are in luck: not only is Chris Marker’s seminal 1962 Le Joli Mai making a return to theaters (Sam Stander’s take here), but Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney delves into cycling’s greatest scandal in The Armstrong Lie (my review here).
American Promise This remarkable look at race, education, parenting, and coming-of-age in contemporary America is the result of 13 years spent following African American youths Seun and Idris (the latter the son of filmmakers Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson). At the beginning, the Brooklyn pals are both starting at the exclusive Dalton School, where most of their classmates are rich white kids. This translates into culture-clash experiences both comical (a 13-year-old Idris estimates he’s been to 20 bar mitzvahs) and distressing, as both boys struggle socially and academically for reasons that seem to have a lot to do with their minority status at the school. Culled from hundreds of hours of footage — a mix of interviews and cinéma vérité — Brewster and Stephenson’s film captures honest moments both mundane and monumental, sometimes simultaneously, as when Seun’s mother, driving the kids to school, discusses her battle with cancer as his younger siblings trill a Journey song in the back seat. (And even this seemingly light-hearted aside takes on heft later in the film.) Extra props to Brewster and Stephenson, who clearly made a conscious choice not to edit out any of their own foibles — for the most part, they’re caring, involved parents, but be warned: strident homework nagging is a recurrent theme. (2:20) Roxie. (Eddy)
The Best Man HolidayTaye Diggs and Sanaa Lathan lead an ensemble cast in this seasonal sequel to 1999 hit The Best Man. (2:00)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sPr4snZqcM
The Book Thief One of those novels that seems to have been categorized as “young adult” more for reasons of marketing than anything else, Markus Zusak’s international best seller gets an effective screen adaptation from director Brian Percival and scenarist Michael Petroni. Liesl (Sophie Nelisse) is an illiterate orphan — for all practical purposes, that is, given the likely fate of her left-leaning parents in a just-pre-World War II Nazi Germany — deposited by authorities on the doorstep of the middle-aged, childless Hubermanns in 1938. Rosa (Emily Watson) is a ceaseless nag and worrywart, even if her bark is worse than her bite; kindly housepainter Hans (Geoffrey Rush), who’s lost work by refusing to join “the Party,” makes a game of teacher Liesl how to read. Her subsequent fascination with books attracts the notice of the local Burgermeister’s wife (Barbara Auer), who under the nose of her stern husband lets the girl peruse tomes from her manse’s extensive library. But that secret is trivial compared to the Hubermanns’ hiding of Max Vandenburg (Ben Schnetzer), son of Jewish comrade who’d saved Hans’ life in the prior world war. When war breaks out anew, this harboring of a fugitive becomes even more dangerous, something Liesl can’t share even with her best friend Rudy (Nico Liersch). While some of the book’s subplots and secondary characters are sacrificed for the sake of expediency, the filmmakers have crafted a potent, intelligent drama whose judicious understatement extends to the subtlest (and first non-Spielberg) score John Williams has written in years. Rush, Watson, and newcomer Schnetzer are particularly good in the well-chosen cast. (2:11) (Dennis Harvey)
How I Live Now As 16-year-old Daisy (Saoirse Ronan) arrives to spend the summer with cousins she’s never met, England is on the brink of war with an unnamed adversary. Daisy wants nothing to do with her new family and their idyllic countryside home — she’s too caught up in self-loathing image and diet obsessions, which manifest in the movie as overwhelming voiceover chatter. Her eldest cousin, Eddie (George MacKay), begins to draw her out of her shell, but everything changes when a nuclear explosion hits the country. At first, the cousins’ post-apocalyptic life is a charming bucolic, soundtracked by British folk-rock. But the horrors of war soon find them, and the movie’s latter half takes on a quite different tone. Adapted from Meg Rosoff’s YA novel, How I Live Now is almost eager to tackle the ugliest aspects of wartime existence — mass graves, prisoner abuse, work camps — and this unflinching approach is compelling, despite some flaws in the acting and character development. (1:41) (Sam Stander)
Your Day Is My Night Multidisciplinary artist Lynne Sachs returns to SF with this feature set in the world of NYC’s Chinatown “shift bed” apartments — ones whose crowded tenants take turns using sleeping space, a phenomenon that exists in many US cities and immigrant communities. An experimental mix of documentary and staged narrative, Day’s cohabiting protagonists are primarily older émigrés from China with diverse current jobs and divergent memories of life back home — from fond family reminiscences to the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. The individual stories told here are related not just in verbiage (both scripted and improvised), but song, dance, theater, poetical imagery, and composer-sound designer Stephen Vitiello’s collage soundtrack. At Other Cinema, Sachs will also present several of her short film works, including 2006’s Three Cheers for the Whale, a collaboration with the late Chris Marker that revised his 1972 Viva la Baleine, which was co-directed with Mario Ruspoli. In addition to its ATA screening Sat/16, Your Day Is My Night also plays the Pacific Film Archive Nov 20. (1:03) Artists’ Television Access. (Dennis Harvey)
If something appears too good to be true, the saying goes, it probably is. Take Lance Armstrong, who beat cancer to become a cycling superstar, winning the grueling Tour de France a record seven consecutive times. He vehemently denied using performance-enhancing drugs until January 2013, when he ‘fessed up during a tastefully choreographed sit-down with Oprah. By that point, the big reveal wasn’t that he’d doped his way to athletic glory — it was that he was finally admitting to it.
“This is a story about power, not doping,” a talking head points out in Alex Gibney’s latest doc, The Armstrong Lie. Gibney, an Oscar winner for 2007’s Taxi to the Dark Side (he also made this year’s We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks), set out to make something more along the lines of The Armstrong Return, shadowing Armstrong as he prepped for his 2009 Tour de France comeback. He envisioned crafting a “feel-good movie,” especially when Armstrong notched an impressive third-place finish — a feat intended to silence the drug rumors once and for all. In the end, it only amplified the skepticism that loomed over his accomplishments. And as the evidence against Armstrong mounted, Gibney scrapped his original concept and went in a decidedly darker direction.
Gibney, who narrates in the first person, unwittingly became a character in his own film. Armstrong’s critics, interviewed for Lie, admit they spotted the acclaimed documentarian among Armstrong’s Tour de France entourage and feared he was “buying into the bullshit.” Among these voices are Armstrong’s former US Postal Service teammate, Frankie Andreu, and his wife, Betsy, who both testified during the US Anti-Doping Agency’s investigation into Armstrong. Over the years, they’d been excoriated by their former good friend and his supporters for speaking out against him.
A feel-good movie, this is not. One need only read the film’s title to understand what motivated Gibney’s second attempt at making an Armstrong doc. “For this new film, doping was not the most important thing,” he writes in his director’s notes. Doping, he says, “was an essential part of the culture of professional cycling … and evidence of [Armstrong] doping had been hiding in plain sight since 1999.” Instead, “it was the lie that interested me” and “the abuse of power. Armstrong was so powerful in his sport that he could protect and defend his lie with the arrogance and cruelty that he showed his cycling rivals on the road.”
That arrogance extended to his participation in Gibney’s original film; unsurprisingly, he made for a control-freak documentary subject. But all bets were off once Armstrong came clean. He wasn’t Superman — he’d been pumping dope like everyone else. He was also revealed to be a bullying jerk who’d used his celebrity power to cover his tracks, according to his former teammates and associates. And once the curtain was lifted, he forfeited the luxury of being “the manager of his own storyline,” as Gibney puts it.
For someone like Armstrong, possessed of such carefully tended personal mythology, that was huge. His reputation suffered and sponsors cut ties. (In at least one San Francisco gym, an image of the Golden Gate Bridge was hastily tacked over an Armstrong photo mural.) His seven victories were stripped away, and — worst of all — cancer survivors who’d lifted him up as a hero were left feeling deeply deceived.
Ultimately, Gibney’s film probes deeper than Armstrong’s flaws; it’s careful to point out that drug use is widespread among professional cyclists (and in other pro sports, too — just ask Barry Bonds), who are surrounded by an insular, high-stakes culture that encourages it. The sports world lives and dies by the next world record or superhuman achievement. Is it any wonder that elite athletes seek out that extra competitive edge? And that Armstrong would believe he had the power to rearrange reality to keep his victories intact? *
THE ARMSTRONG LIE opens Fri/15 in Bay Area theaters.
Two big ‘uns this week: blockbuster-to-be Thor: The Dark World(reviewbelow), and the very fine drama Dallas Buyers Club,featuring standout performances by Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto (Dennis Harvey’s review here). If you seek a respite from Hollywood, check out San Francisco’s own South Asian International Film Festival (some recommendations from me, here), or read on for more short takes on this week’s new offerings.
The Motel Life Brothers (Stephen Dorff, Emile Hirsch) go on the run after a tragic accident. Kris Kristofferson and Dakota Fanning co-star. (1:25) Roxie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfGYqdTAxEk
Running From Crazy Can one ever escape one’s toxic genetic legacy, especially when one’s makeup, and even one’s genius, is so entangled with mental illness, the shadow of substance abuse, and a kind of burden of history? Actor, author, healthy-living proponent, and now suicide prevention activist Mariel Hemingway seems cut out to try, as, eh, earnestly as she can, to offer up hope. Part of that involves opening the door to documentarian Barbara Kopple, in this look at the 20th century’s most infamous literary suicide, Mariel’s grandfather Ernest Hemingway, and just one of his familial threads, one full of lives cut deliberately short. For Running From Crazy, Kopple generally keeps the focus on Mariel, who displays all the disarming groundedness and humility of the youngest care-taking, “good” child. Her father, Ernest’s eldest son, Jack, regularly indulged in “wine time” with his ailing wife and, according to Mariel, had a pitch-black side of his own. But we don’t look to closely at him as the filmmaker favors the present, preferring to watch Mariel mountain climb and bicker with her stuntman boyfriend, meet up with her eldest sister Muffet, and ‘fess up about the depression that runs through the Hemingway line to her own daughters. Little is made of Mariel’s own artistic contributions in acting, though Kopple’s work is aided immeasurably by the footage Mariel’s rival middle sister Margaux shot for a documentary she planned to do on Ernest. Once the highest paid model in the world, Margaux leaves the viewer with a vivid impression of her brash, raw, eccentric, and endearingly goofy spirit — she’s courageous in her own way as she sips vino with her parents and older sister and tears up during a Spanish bull fight. Are these just first world problems for scions who never hesitated to trade on their name? Kopple is more interested in the humans behind the gloss of fame, spectacle and sensation — the women left in the wake of a literary patriarch’s monumental brand of masculinity and misogyny. And you feel like you get that here, plainly and honestly, in a way that even Papa might appreciate. (1:40) (Kimberly Chun)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPHaLkd4J28
Spinning Plates Joseph Levy’s enjoyable documentary contrasts life at three widely disparate U.S. restaurants: the Martinez family’s modest enterprise La Cocina de Gabby, a Tucson showcase for a wife and mother’s Mexican cooking; Breitbach’s Country Dining in rural Iowa, a 151-year-old purveyor of all-American comfort food; and superstar chef Grant Achatz’s Chicago Alinea, where a 24-course meal of culinary art/science experiments can set you back $800 (yes, that’s for one diner). The latter is a global destination for serious foodies, acclaimed by the industry’s most prestigious observers. (Its nearly 24/7 supply deliveries are also a noisy nightmare for someone I know whose apartment is next door.) The teensy town that’s grown up around Breitbach’s has a population of 70; on a busy weekend, the business attracts up to 2,000, many driving long distances to get there. Yet the people we get to know the best here, the émigré Martinezes, illustrate another side of restaurant life — the side in which a majority of new eateries fail within three years, despite (as seemingly is the case at Gabby’s) all palate-pleasing, reasonable pricing and tireless labor. Tying together these three stories is … well, nothing, really, beyond some vague notion that good food is something that breeds “community.” (Yet high-ticket Alinea can hardly be said to reflect that, while Levy doesn’t actually bother interviewing any patrons to let us know whether the other two establishments’ food is anything special.) Still, and despite some rather bogus dramatic chronology-manipulation of events that happened several years ago, Spinning Plates is an entertaining sampler plate of a movie. And the Martinez family’s story lends it a bit of real gravitas. (1:32) (Dennis Harvey)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npvJ9FTgZbM
Thor: The Dark World Since any tentacle of Marvel’s Avengers universe now comes equipped with its own money-printing factory, it’s likely we’ll keep seeing sequels and spin-offs for approximately the next 100 years. With its by-the-numbers plot and “Yeah, seen that before” 3D effects, Thor: The Dark World is forced to rely heavily on the charisma of its leads — Chris Hemsworth as the titular hammer-swinger; Tom Hiddleston as his brooding brother Loki — to hold audience interest. Fortunately, these two (along with Anthony Hopkins, Natalie Portman, Idris Elba, and the rest of the supporting cast, most of whom return from the first film) appear to be having a blast under the direction of Alan Taylor, a TV veteran whose credits include multiple Game of Thrones eps. Not that any Avengers flick carries much heft, but especially here, jokey asides far outweigh any moments of actual drama (the plot, about an alien race led by Christopher Eccleston in “dark elf” drag intent on capturing an ancient weapon with the power to destroy all the realms, etc. etc., matters very little). Fanboys and -girls, this one’s for you … and only you. (2:00) (Cheryl Eddy)
FILM Central India’s Gulabi Gang, composed of rural women fighting violence and oppression, has become a popular media subject, and it’s not hard to see why: Not only does it offer an inspiring story, it’s visually compelling, since its members dress in matching, hot-pink saris. Pink Saris, in fact, was the title of documentarian Kim Longinotto’s portrait of the group; it played in the 2011 San Francisco International Film Festival. Now, there’s Gulabi Gang, Nishtha Jain’s doc, which screens as part of the San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival, presented by 3rd i. (A Bollywood narrative, Gulaab Gang, is reportedly in production as well.)
Front and center in Jain’s film is formidable leader Sampat Pal, who speaks loudly and carries a big stick she’s perfectly willing to use. Though the Gulabi Gang’s trademark acts of physical retaliation are only discussed anecdotally, we do get to see the activists sharply criticize corrupt village leaders and dismissive cops. We also tag along as the women circulate among communities recruiting new members. The main plot thread follows Pal as she investigates a woman’s suspicious death — likely a murder, and one that’s being shoddily covered up by her husband and his family. (Later, it’s revealed that the wife was just 15 or 16, having been married off at age 11.)
Pal, who founded the group in 2006, is a skilled agitator, speaking for the voiceless and cannily grabbing whatever platform is available. “The video camera is recording it all,” she declares after visiting a crime scene that’s clearly been tampered with. “Your artistry will be shoved up your asses.”
But though Pal is backed up by fellow activists (Gulabi Gang notes that the group has some 150,000 members), Jain is careful to show that a happy ending is impossible amid an epidemic of violence against women. “Only God knows what happened,” the teen bride’s own father remarks with case-closed dismissiveness. Still, the women press on, and there’s hope to be found in their determination, and in the fact that there’s a trend of women’s rights docs coming out of India lately. Another, Invoking Justice — about women in southern India who’ve formed their own “Jamaat” to handle disputes traditionally settled by men according to Islamic Sharia law — screened at the Center for Asian American Media’s 2013 CAAMfest.
There’s a bit of feminist subtext to be found in Beyond All Boundaries, about India’s obsession with the sport of cricket. Er, ‘scuse me: “It’s not a sport — it’s a religion!” according to a first-act interviewee, hyperbole that starts to feel like fact once Boundaries gets rolling. Sushrut Jain’s doc, shot during the lead-up to the 2011 World Cup, follows three young people who’ve found their identities via cricket: homeless megafan Sudhir, who bicycles (sometimes for weeks) to every India match and coats himself with paint to become a living embodiment of team spirit; 12-year-old cricket prodigy Prithvi, whose skills are his golden ticket out of poverty, and (one hopes) a means to escape his sports-Svengali father; and Akshaya, an 18-year-old with a horrific home life who’s dropped out of school to pursue her dreams of playing professionally.
Reaching cricket’s elite level is no easy pursuit, even for a very talented boy — but for a girl, it’s nearly impossible. (Think of it this way: even in big-budget America, pro teams for women are pretty damn scarce.) And even if Akshaya makes it, whatever pay she earns will be laughably low; a coach interviewed in Boundaries is embarrassed to name the salary range on camera. But she has to try, since cricket is the only bright spot in what’s been a trying life. She seems so deserving that it’s hard to blame the filmmakers for stepping in and paying for medical care when an injury threatens an important try-out session.
Though Prithvi’s story contains some worrisome figures — the rich benefactor who’s funding the boy’s early career ominously notes, “If he doesn’t make it as a cricketer, that would be like a curse to me”; the youngster’s father, who jovially admits he “has to” hit his son from time to time — his future prospects seem brighter than Akshaya’s. Most uplifting is the tale of Sudhir, whose devotion to cricket makes him a misfit in his estranged family, but a hero to fellow supporters who admire his dedication.
Boundaries is more character piece than Cricket 101, but even if you don’t know its rules (seriously, why so many runs?), the language of sports fandom is universal. And in this case, it’s political: “Cricket was one way of showing the colonial rulers that we were your equal,” a sports journalist points out, and indeed the race to the World Cup finals, against long-standing rivals like Pakistan, makes for some highly charged matchups.
Elsewhere in the fest — which celebrates “100 Years of Indian Cinema” as well as offering a “Spotlight on Pakistan” — is a must-see for film history buffs: Celluloid Man, a nearly three-hour portrait of 80-year-old P.K. Nair, “the Henri Langolis of India” who founded the country’s National Film Archive. His is described as an “obsessive passion” (hey, for some it’s cricket, for some it’s film), and Shivendra Singh Dungarpur’s doc is an appropriately thorough, affectionate tribute, jammed with clips from movies Nair helped rescue and preserve. *
SF INTERNATIONAL SOUTH ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL: BOLLYWOOD AND BEYOND
The movie you need to see this weekend, ASAP, is 12 Years a Slave — one of the most important releases of the year, and a likely contender for all possible awards, including Best Actor and Best Picture. (Review here.) Also new to theaters is the Cannes-winning, controversy-stirring Blue is the Warmest Color. (Review here.)
Read on for more short takes on today’s new releases, plus a 1979 cult classic that’s ripe for rediscovery.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Ir5LsraA4
About Time Richard Curtis, the man behind 2003’s Love Actually, must be enjoying his days in England, rolling in large piles of money. Coinciding with the 10-year anniversary of that twee cinematic love fest comes Curtis’ latest ode to joy, About Time. The film begins in Cornwall at an idyllic stone beach house, as Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) describes his family members (Bill Nighy is dad; Richard Cordery is the crazy uncle) and their pleasures (rituals (tea on the beach, ping pong). Despite beachside bliss, Tim is lovelorn and ready to begin a career as a barrister (which feels as out of the blue as the coming first act break). Oh! And as it happens, the men in Tim’s family can travel back in time. There are no clear rules, though births and deaths are like no-trespass signs on the imaginary timeline. When he meets Mary (Rachel McAdams), he falls in love, but if he paves over his own evening by bouncing back and spending that night elsewhere, he loses the path he’s worn into the map and has to fix it. Again and again. Despite potential repetition, About Time moves smoothly, sweetly, slowly along, giving its audience time enough to feel for the characters, and then feel for the characters again, and then keep crying just because the ball’s already in motion. It’s the most nest-like catharsis any British film ever built. (2:03) (Sara Maria Vizcarrondo)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oOG3vUkKUM
A.K.A. Doc Pomus “All greatness comes from pain.” The simple statement comes from Raoul Felder, brother of legendary R&B songwriter Doc Pomus, in the beautiful, crushing mediation on his brother’s life, A.K.A. Doc Pomus, opening theatrically this week after serving as the closing-night film of the 2012 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. Doc wrote some of the greatest music of a generation: R&B and early rock’n’roll standards such as “This Magic Moment,” “A Teenager in Love,” “Save the Last Dance For Me,” and “Viva Las Vegas” — songs made famous by the likes of Dion, the Drifters, and Elvis Presley. Jewish, debilitated by polio, and vastly overweight, Doc defied expectations while struggling with a lifetime of outsider status and physical pain. William Hechter and Peter Miller’s doc offers a revealing look at his remarkable life. (1:38) Vogue. (Emily Savage)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axLcfpj7xeU
Diana The final years of Diana, Princess of Wales are explored in what’s essentially a classed-up Lifetime drama, delving into the on-off romance between “the most famous woman in the world” (Naomi Watts) and heart surgeon Hasnat Khan (Naveen Andrews). Relationship roadblocks (his Muslim family, back home in Pakistan, is hesistant to accept a divorced, Christian Brit as their son’s partner) are further complicated by extraordinary circumstances (Diana’s fame, which leads to paparazzi intrusions on the very private doctor’s life), but there’s real love between the two, which keeps them returning to each other again and again. By the third or fourth tearful breakup — followed by a passionate reunion — Diana’s story becomes repetitive as it marches toward its inevitable tragic end. Still, director Oliver Hirschbiegel (2004’s Downfall, another last-days-in-the-life biopic, albeit of a slightly different nature) includes some light-hearted moments, as when a giggling Diana smuggles Hasnat through the palace gates (past guards who know exactly what she’s up to). As you’d expect, Watts is the best thing here, bringing warmth and complexity to a performance that strives to reach beyond imitation. (1:52) (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UNWLgY-wuo
Ender’s Game Asa Butterfield (star of 2011’s Hugo), Harrison Ford, and Ben Kingsley appear in this adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi novel. (1:54)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mueIglaVYDk
Free Birds Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson lend their voices to this animated turkey tale. (1:31)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3_hKv4pEM4
God Loves Uganda Most contemporary Americans don’t know much about Uganda — that is, beyond Forest Whitaker’s Oscar-winning performance as Idi Amin in 2006’s The Last King of Scotland. Though that film took some liberties with the truth, it did effectively convey the grotesque terrors of the dictator’s 1970s reign. But even decades post-Amin, the East African nation has somehow retained its horrific human-rights record. For example: what extremist force was behind the country’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which proposed the death penalty as punishment for gayness? The answer might surprise you, or not. As the gripping, fury-fomenting doc God Loves Uganda reveals, America’s own Christian Right has been exporting hate under the guise of missionary work for some time. Taking advantage of Uganda’s social fragility — by building schools and medical clinics, passing out food, etc. — evangelical mega churches, particularly the Kansas City, Mo.-based, breakfast-invoking International House of Prayer, have converted large swaths of the population to their ultra-conservative beliefs. Filmmaker Roger Ross Williams, an Oscar winner for 2010 short Music by Prudence, follows naive “prayer warriors” as they journey to Uganda for the first time; his apparent all-access relationship with the group shows that they aren’t outwardly evil people — but neither do they comprehend the very real consequences of their actions. His other sources, including two Ugandan clergymen who’ve seen their country change for the worse and an LGBT activist who lives every day in peril, offer a more harrowing perspective. Evocative and disturbing, God Loves Uganda seems likely to earn Williams more Oscar attention. (1:23) Roxie. (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxGgkEHmHHg
Kill Your Darlings Relieved to escape his Jersey home, dominated by the miseries of an oft-institutionalized mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and long-suffering father (David Cross), Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) enters Columbia University in 1944 as a freshman already interested in the new and avant-garde. He’s thus immediately enchanted by bad-boy fellow student Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), a veteran of numerous prestigious schools and well on the road to getting kicked out of this one. Charismatic and reckless, Carr has a circle of fellow eccentrics buzzing around him, including dyspeptic William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster) and merchant marine wild child Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston). Variably included in or ostracized from this training ground for future Beat luminaries is the older David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall), a disgraced former academic who’d known Carr since the latter was 14, and followed him around with pathetic, enamored devotion. It’s this last figure’s apparent murder by Carr that provides the bookending crux of John Krokidas’ impressive first feature, a tragedy whose motivations and means remain disputed. Partly blessed by being about a (comparatively) lesser-known chapter in an overexposed, much-mythologized history, Kill Your Darlings is easily one of the best dramatizations yet of Beat lore, with excellent performances all around. (Yes, Harry Potter actually does pass quite well as a somewhat cuter junior Ginsberg.) It’s sad if somewhat inevitable that the most intriguing figure here — Hall’s hapless, lovelorn stalker-slash-victim — is the one that remains least knowable to both the film and to the ages. (1:40) (Dennis Harvey)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMnr-R7BkkU
Last Vegas This buddy film may look like a Bucket List-Hangover hybrid, but it’s got a lot more Spring Breakers in it than you’d expect — who beats Vegas for most bikinis per capita? Four old friends reunite for a wedding in Vegas, where they drink, gamble, and are confused for legendary men. Morgan Freeman sneaks out of his son’s house to go. Kevin Kline’s wife gave him a hall pass to regain his lost sense of fun. Kline and Freeman trick Robert De Niro into going — he’s got a grudge against Michael Douglas, so why celebrate that jerk’s nuptials to a 30-year-old? The conflicts are mostly safe and insubstantial, but the in-joke here is that all of these acting legends are confused for legends by their accidentally obtained VIP host (Romany Malco). These guys have earned their stature, so what gives? When De Niro flings fists you shudder inside remembering Jake LaMotta. Kline’s velvety comic delivery is just as swaggery as it was during his ’80s-era collaborations with Lawrence Kasdan. Douglas is “not as charming as he thinks he is,” yet again, and voice-of-God Freeman faces a conflict specific to paternal protective urges. Yes, Last Vegas jokes about the ravages of age and prescribes tenacity for all that ails us, but I want a cast this great celebrated at least as obviously as The Expendables films. Confuse these guys for better? Show me who. (1:44) (Sara Maria Vizcarrondo)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v5ZXAxTGHg
Let the Fire Burn In 1985 a long-simmering conflict between Philadelphia police and the local black liberation group MOVE came to a catastrophic conclusion. Ordered to leave their West Philly building after numerous neighborhood complaints about unsanitary conditions, incessant noise, child endangerment and more, the commune refused. An armed standoff came to a halt when a helicopter dropped two FBI-supplied water gel bombs on the roof, killing 11 MOVE members (including five kids) and creating an uncontrollable fire that destroyed some 60 nearby homes. It’s hard to deny after watching Jason Osder’s powerful documentary that MOVE then looked like one crazy cult — its representatives spouting extreme, paranoid rhetoric in and out of court; its child residents (their malnutrition-bloated stomachs nonsensically explained as being due to “eating so much”) in visibly poor health; its charismatic leader John Africa questionably stable. But whatever hazards they posed to themselves and the surrounding community, it’s also almost undeniable here that city law enforcement drastically overreacted, possibly in deliberate retaliation for an officer’s shootout death seven years earlier. The filmed and amply media-reported trials that ensued raised strong suspicions that the police even shot unarmed MOVE members trying to escape the blaze. This outrageous saga, with numerous key questions and injustices still dangling, is an American history chapter that should not be forgotten. Let the Fire Burn is an invaluable reminder. (1:35) (Dennis Harvey)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIKQCZDYfEI
Man of Tai ChiKeanu Reeves directs and plays a supporting role in this contemporary Beijing-set martial-arts drama. (1:45)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6lImifpiZM
The PinCanadian film about a romance between two Eastern European youths, in hiding during World War II. (1:23)
The VisitorDirected by “Michael J. Paradise” (aka Giulio Paradisi), this 1979 Italian-US. co-production is belatedly starting to acquire a cult following. Joanne Nail is Barbara, mother of Katy (Paige Conner), a seemingly normal little girl with a disconcerting tendency to swear like a longshoreman when out of ma’s earshot. Also unbeknownst to mom is that her boyfriend (Lance Henriksen, no less), as well as characters played by Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford, John Huston, Sam Peckinpah, and the inimitable Shelley Winters are all very interested — on the good and the evil side — in Katy, a “miracle of nature” with “immense powers.” Those powers apparently include making Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s basketball explode at the hoop, and sending teenage boys through plate glass at an ice rink. Some of the adults nosing around Katy really, really want Barbara to give her a similarly gifted baby brother, others do not. It all involves some kind of interplanetary conspiracy to … well, beats me, frankly. Its utter senselessness part of the charm, The Visitor includes any number of bizarre moments, including Winters’ evident enjoyment of slapping some sense into Katy (the child thesp later confirmed that the Oscar winner went a little too Method in that scene), and crusty old Huston intoning the line “I’m, uh, the babysitter.” This glossy sci-fi horror mess. which the Roxie is showing in a new digital transfer, borrows elements freely from 1977’s Exorcist II: The Heretic (a fiasco that inspired very little imitation), 1976’s The Omen (or rather 1978’s Damien: Omen II) and, strangely, Orson Welles’ 1947 The Lady from Shanghai (directly ripping off its famous hall of mirrors scene). Yet there’s a certain undeniable originality to its incoherence. (1:48) Roxie. (Dennis Harvey)
FILM Pop culture’s engagement with slavery has always been uneasy. Landmark 1977 miniseries Roots set ratings records, but the prestigious production capped off a decade that had seen more questionable endeavors, including 1971’s Goodbye Uncle Tom (from the Italian filmmakers who invented “mondo” films) and 1975 exploitation flick Mandingo (“the first true epic of the Old South,” according to its trailer). The latter is often cited by Quentin Tarantino as one of his favorite films; it was a clear influence on his 2012 revenge fantasy Django Unchained.
It’s fitting that Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave is being released almost exactly one year post-Django, though the two films share little beyond the slavery theme. Django (which won Oscars for Tarantino’s screenplay and Christoph Waltz’s dentist-cum-bounty hunter) is loud, lurid, and gleefully anachronistic, with proto-KKK members arguing about the placement of eyeholes on their hoods, and hip-hop on the soundtrack. It approached its subject matter in a manner that paid homage to the Westerns it riffed on: with guns blazing.
By contrast, 12 Years a Slave is nuanced and steeped in realism. Though it does contain scenes of violence (deliberately captured in long takes by regular McQueen collaborator Sean Bobbitt, whose cinematography is one of the film’s many stylistic achievements), the film emphasizes the horrors of “the peculiar institution” by repeatedly showing how accepted and ingrained it was. Early on, a woman is sold and separated from her young son and daughter. Her new owner, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, urges her not to be upset, even as she screams in anguish, because “your children will soon be forgotten.” He has no awareness of the pain he’s inflicting — and he’s one of the more sympathetic white characters in the film.
12 Years a Slave is based on the true story of Solomon Northup, an African American man who was sold into slavery in 1841 and survived to pen a wrenching account of his experiences. An acclaimed violinist, Northup had a unique perspective on the South’s surreal status quo; he was born free and had lived a happy, cultured life until he was kidnapped and subjected to over a decade of mental and physical torture. As Northup, Chiwetel Ejiofor (best-known for supporting roles in films like 2005’s Serenity and 2006’s Children of Men) delivers a powerful, star making performance.
As for McQueen, the director’s familiar moniker may still confuse mainstream filmgoers, but once 12 Years a Slave opens, the Brit should finally enjoy some stand-alone name recognition. A large ensemble cast (Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano, Sarah Paulson, Michael K. Williams) populates a film that balances technical virtuosity with brutal subject matter, scripted from Northup’s book by John Ridley (in a huge step up from 2012’s overly sentimental Red Tails).
Increasingly ubiquitous actor Michael Fassbender has seen his biggest critical triumphs come when he’s worked with McQueen. The director, who started his career making art films, made his first feature, Hunger, in 2008; it starred a then-unknown Fassbender as IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands. McQueen’s daring 2011 follow-up, NC-17 sex-addict tale Shame, earned Fassbender a raft of accolades. In 12 Years a Slave, he’s his best yet playing the film’s troubled villain, a plantation owner who exacerbates what’s clearly an unwell mind with copious amounts of booze. He’s tauntingly cruel to Northrup, but slave Patsey — played by talented newcomer Lupita Nyong’o — receives the bulk of his unwanted attentions, affectionate and otherwise.
There’s one false note in 12 Years a Slave, so glaring it deserves a mention. The film is full of recognizable faces; parts played by big stars like Giamatti and Alfre Woodard amount to little more than cameos. But the last-act appearance of Brad Pitt (as an enlightened, worldly builder) proves a jarring intrusion. Pragmatically, perhaps it was worth it; Ejiofor has said in interviews that the megastar’s involvement helped the film get made. But that doesn’t mean it’s not completely distracting. *
12 YEARS A SLAVE opens Fri/1 in Bay Area theaters.
Incredibly, Hollywood is allowing this hallowed weekend to pass without releasing a single horror movie. (Unless you count Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, which I don’t.) Frights galore exist in local rep houses, however (right this way for a calendar), and for those who’d simply like turn off the lights, pretend nobody’s home, and eat all the Fun Size Snickers themselves, there’s some non-seasonal fare worth checking out (plus, two of those rep-house chillers!) in the below reviews.
All Is Lost As other reviewers have pointed out, All is Lost‘s nearly dialogue-free script (OK, there is one really, really well-placed “Fuuuuuck!”) is about as far from J.C. Chandor’s Oscar-nominated script for 2011’s Margin Call as possible. Props to the filmmaker, then, for crafting as much pulse-pounding magic out of austerity as he did with that multi-character gabfest. Here, Robert Redford plays “Our Man,” a solo sailor whose race to survive begins along with the film, as his boat collides with a hunk of Indian Ocean detritus. Before long, he’s completely adrift, yet determined to outwit the forces of nature that seem intent on bringing him down. The 77-year-old Redford turns in a surprisingly physical performance that’s sure to be remembered as a late-career highlight. (1:46) (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ML50I0mVHY
The Counselor Ridley Scott directs Cormac McCarthy’s script about a lawyer (Michael Fassbender) who gets involved in the drug underground. The supporting cast includes Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz, and Brad Pitt. (1:57)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_O2OATk97k
I Am a Ghost In local director H.P. Mendoza’s latest, a young woman named Emily (Anna Ishida) wanders the claustrophobic corridors of a sumptuously decorated Victorian house, repeating her actions in each room in a perfunctory loop: frying eggs, flipping through old photographs, dusting the furniture, stretching in bed. Besides herself, the place initially appears to be uninhabited, until the house begins to creak and groan restlessly around her, and a disembodied voice begins to address her by name. It doesn’t give too much away to reveal at this point that Emily is a ghost, and the voice purportedly that of a professional medium (Jeannie Barroga) who has been hired to assist her out of the house and “into the light.” Unraveling who Emily is and what is keeping her from ascending to the next level takes up most of the rest of the film, and the eerie tension that builds as Emily’s memories return, filling in the unpleasant blanks, explodes at the end with a brutal chaos only otherwise hinted at in earlier scenes. Ishida’s Emily is full of complexity and confusion, and much of the movie’s real “horror” stems from her own sense of powerlessness and realization that the world that she’s inhabiting doesn’t appear to be one rooted in reality, or at least in other people’s realities. Experimental musician and Fringe Festival performer Rick Burkhardt makes a terrifying cameo as the presumed source of Emily’s inability to move on — and speaking of experimental music, the movie’s score, penned by Mendoza, does a lot to create the sense of creeping unease that characterizes most of the film. (1:14) Castro. (Nicole Gluckstern)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTlnlam8ZYM
InformantLocal filmmaker Jamie Meltzer’s complex, compelling Informant makes its theatrical bow at the Roxie a year and a half after it premiered at the 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival (it’s been playing festivals nearly nonstop since). The doc explores the strange life of Brandon Darby, a lefty activist turned FBI informant turned Tea Party operator who helped send two 2008 Republican National Convention protestors to jail. He’s a polarizing guy, but the film, which is anchored by an extensive interview with Darby, invites the audience to draw their own conclusions. (Side note: if you conclude that you want to yell at the screen and give Darby a piece of your mind, chances are you won’t be alone.) (1:21) Roxie. (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MSrAwfagG4
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa Hidden-camera pranks with Jeff Tremaine, Johnny Knoxville, and other Jackass alums. (1:32)
Space Battleship Yamato The year is 2199, five years after mysterious aliens began bombarding Earth with radiation. The scrappy humans who’ve managed to survive by living underground are rapidly dying out — so a crew assembles for a deep-space “journey of hope” to a planet where a “radiation elimination device” might be acquired. Based on a 1974 Japanese anime series (it aired in the US under the name Star Blazers), this live-action adventure contains plenty of CG-enhanced battles and a cast stuffed with stock characters: the gifted, brash young pilot who’s haunted by a dark past (Takuya Kimura, whose flowing locks betray his teen-idol origins); the tough chick who gradually softens (Meisa Kuroki); the grizzled, wise captain (Tsutomu Yamazaki of 2009’s Departures), etc. Fans of the original series may gobble this up, but the casual viewer might find there’s not much to distinguish the overlong Space Battleship Yamato — saddled with a score that vacillates between bombastic and sentimental — from space operas (particularly Battlestar Galactica) that’ve come before. (2:18) Four Star. (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg5nvnUMbbg
Spine Tingler! The William Castle StoryOther Cinema anticipates Halloween in vintage style with Jeffrey Schwarz’s 2007 documentary about the late, beloved Hollywood schlockmeister. After a mostly undistinguished early career in programmer mysteries, Westerns, and 3D features, William Castle found his métier in the late 1950s making horror thrillers with B budgets (and C scripts) but A-plus marketing gimmicks. Macabre (1958) offered life insurance policies to patrons who might die of fright; the next year’s The Tingler infamously gave patrons in select theater seats slight electric shocks; the same year’s House on Haunted Hill had ushers yank a plastic skeleton over the audience’s heads; Mr. Sardonicus (1961) gave ticket buyers a chance to vote on its title character’s fate. (It was so predictable that they’d vote for mortal punishment, an alternative “happy ending” never actually existed.) Straight-Jacket (1964) had Joan Crawford as a battle-ax axe murderess, a concept that could sell itself. Castle’s perpetual hopes to gain respect and make a “serious” picture were somewhat rewarded by Rosemary’s Baby, even if he wound up merely producing that 1968 smash. (He’d hoped to direct, but was smart enough to realize Roman Polanski was the more inspired choice.) This fond portrait includes input from various Castle collaborators, admirers and family members, as well as plenty of priceless clips. Guest host Christian Divine will offer additional retro horror goodies during this evening of cheap thrills. (1:22) Other Cinema at Artists’ Television Access. (Dennis Harvey)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjyJI2YTOm4
Torn An explosion at a mall throws two families into turmoil in this locally-shot drama from director Jeremiah Birnbaum and scenarist Michael Richter. Maryam (Mahnoor Baloch) and Ali (Faran Tahir) are Pakistani-émigré professionals, Lea (Dendrie Taylor) a working-class single mother. Their paths cross in the wake of tragedy as both their teenage sons are killed in a shopping center blast that at first appears to have been caused by a gas-main accident. But then authorities begin to suspect a bombing, and worse, the principals’ dead offspring — one as a possible Islamic terrorist, another for perhaps plotting retaliation against school bullies. As the parents suffer stressful media scrutiny in addition to grief and doubt, they begin to take their frustrations out on each other. An earnest small-scale treatment of some large, timely issues, the well-acted Torn holds interest as far as it goes. But it proves less than fully satisfying, ending on a note that’s somewhat admirable, but also renders much of the preceding narrative one big red herring. (1:20) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Dennis Harvey)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF_jh3_p_gw
The Trials of Muhammad Ali If you’ve seen an Ali doc before (or even the 2001 biopic), a lot of the material in The Trials of Muhammad Ali will feel familiar. But Bill Siegel’s lively investigation, which offers interviews with Louis Farrakhan and Ali’s former wife Khalilah, among others, does well to narrow its focus onto one specific — albeit complicated and controversial — aspect of Ali’s life: the boxing champ’s Nation of Islam conversion, name change, and refusal to fight in Vietnam. And as always, the young, firebrand Ali is so charismatic that even well-known footage makes for entertaining viewing. (1:26) (Cheryl Eddy)
LIT Every student of salacious San Francisco history knows the tale of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. Over Labor Day weekend in 1921, the silent-film comedian hosted a rager at Union Square’s Hotel St. Francis (now known as the Westin St. Francis), the largest hotel on the West Coast at the time. Starlet Virginia Rappe fell ill at the party, and when she died days later as a result of internal injuries, Arbuckle went on trial (three times) for the crime.
The resulting media frenzy was the first of its kind, a show-biz scandal in the earliest days of movie stars. The public greeted it with both disgust and relentless curiosity. The industry reacted first by shunning Arbuckle — to this day, he’s rarely championed on the level of Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin — and then ushering in nearly four decades of the Motion Picture Production Code, “moral” guidelines by which studios self-censored film content.
Delving into l’affaire de Arbuckle is Room 1219: The Life of Fatty Arbuckle, the Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal that Changed Hollywood (430 pp., Chicago Review Press, $29.95), Greg Merritt’s page-turner that explores not just the trial, but the often-misunderstood lives of both Arbuckle and Rappe. I called him up to further discuss the book, a must-read for film-history buffs.
SF Bay Guardian Why were you drawn to this story?
Greg Merritt To me, it had always been the ultimate Hollywood scandal. And there just wasn’t a good book that really dealt fairly with the two principals, Arbuckle and Rappe.
SFBG How did Arbuckle’s fame impact his trial?
GM People were just getting to know these movie stars. They saw them in their little towns, up on the big screen. And suddenly, this character that people thought of as a friend — they changed their opinion of him basically overnight. There were headlines calling him a beast. That is paramount to this whole story, that he was one of the first people to experience what it was like to be a movie superstar, and then he was accused of rape and murder.
SFBG What bearing did the Arbuckle case have on the film industry?
GM It stopped his career in 1921, which is huge; we never got to see what he could have done, especially since [at that time] comedy features were a phenomenon that hadn’t really developed yet. And it changed the public’s whole relationship with movie stars. Suddenly, people wanted to know what these stars were really like, not just the PR from the studios. Not just the bad, but what they were really, truly like.
And then probably the most important way that it affected the industry was the wave of movie self-censorship [that followed in its wake]. [The case] received so much condemnation that Hollywood had to censor itself to avoid actual censorship.
SFBG What role did Prohibition play?
GM It was all part of the changing society. This was the beginning of the Jazz Age, a time when women were coming out to nightclubs — before that, public drinking had been kind of a guys’ thing. When this erupted in 1921, a lot of the [outrage] was about how Fatty was at a party with these women who weren’t his wife, and effectively breaking the Prohibition laws, although the laws were complicated about where or when you could drink. It was the Victorian Age versus the Jazz Age — it was kind of the first culture war.
SFBG Was it hard finding information on Virginia Rappe? Why has she been so misunderstood?
GM Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard to find out information about her. She was putting herself out there in the papers, doing interviews when she was a model and a costume designer, and I was able to find out so much about her story.
As for why she was treated so poorly, I think both sides just used her during the case. The press built her up as this innocent, and then the defense did the opposite. Decades afterwards, no one stood up for her, and she was called a slut or a prostitute or whatever. The case was eventually, essentially, blamed on her.
SFBG Why do you think history has distorted so many of the facts of this case?
GM I think the rumors were probably so spectacular that they eventually sort of replaced the facts. Now, when I talk to people, most haven’t heard of Fatty Arbuckle. Or if they have, they only know that he supposedly raped someone with a bottle. That story just took off, and now it seems to be the only thing people know about this case. It’s incredible, because he was the second-biggest movie star at the time after Charlie Chaplin. People ask me, “Can you imagine a scandal being this big today?” It’s really hard to imagine someone so hugely popular being accused of murder today. O.J. Simpson wasn’t Fatty Arbuckle, you know. It just doesn’t compare. *
FILM Daniel Farrands’ 400-minute documentary Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th received coverage last month in an unlikely outlet: the New York Times. “A Seven-Hour Documentary About a Horror Franchise? The Director Explains,” read the skeptical headline.
“A seven-hour documentary about a horror franchise?” I said. “Gotta get my mitts on that!”
Seven and some odd hours later, I was on the phone with the Los Angeles-based Daniel Farrands for my own interview with the Crystal Lake Memories director. Farrands, whose previous docs include 2010’s Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy and 2009’s His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th, was as stoked about the Times piece as you’d expect.
“I was really honored and sort of surprised that they were interested,” he says. “It’s a coup for our little slasher show that could.”
Any student of the Friday the 13th series can understand Crystal Lake Memories‘ running time. It covers the entire hockey-masked enchilada: 10 Friday films, late-1980s TV curio Friday the 13th: The Series, 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason, and the 2009 Friday remake. Frankly, it’s surprising Farrands was able to cram the whole thing into 400 minutes.
“It’s amazing to me that we got it down to that length,” he agrees. “We had hundreds of hours of interviews that we had to cut. And there are always those stories you wish you could have told, but for some reason they didn’t really work within the narrative as it’s developing.” (To that end, he adds, true diehards who early-ordered the straight-to-DVD/Blu-ray title through its official website — www.crystallakememories.net — got an additional disc containing four more hours of bonus material. You can still buy the film there, but not the bonus disc.)
It goes without saying that you should probably view the Friday series before checking out the doc. Why attempt the epic experience of watching Crystal Lake Memories if you’re not already a confirmed Jason Voorhees freak?
“The Friday the 13th franchise has been around since 1980 and has amassed a huge and loyal fan following,” Farrands says. “[Crystal Lake Memories] is unabashedly intended for them. That being said, we really wanted it to be something that would be of interest even to the non-horror crowd — if you’re into cinema, and [interested in] what it takes to make a low-budget film. This film and our four-hour retrospective on the Nightmare on Elm Street series, Never Sleep Again, are kind of film-school courses in the form of horror documentaries. There’s so much interesting stuff in there in terms of being in the [low-budget filmmaking] trenches; our edict was to tell the real stories about making these kinds of films.”
Crystal Lake Memories tracks down some 160 cast and crew members spanning the Friday series (Betsy Palmer, the veteran actor who played Mrs. Voorhees in the original film, grins as she remembers reading the script and thinking “What a piece of junk!”). Many of the thespian interviewees are still unknowns, but several cult favorites — including special effects makeup pioneer Tom Savini, series creator Sean S. Cunningham, and prolific producer Frank Mancuso Jr. (Farrands’ longtime mentor) — stop by to share memories. Corey Feldman, who appeared in 1984’s Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter during the height of his child-star days, narrates the film.
One notable omission: Kevin Bacon, whose gruesome fate in the first Friday came years before he broke out in 1984’s Footloose.
“Recently, he appeared on the Tonight Show and he talked all about Friday the 13th,” Farrands says. “So he’s not ashamed of it, necessarily. But unfortunately, while we were conducting our interviews, we couldn’t make it work with his schedule. But we tried, and they tried! I think people have this misunderstanding that some of these bigger stars are embarrassed by it, and that’s just not true. I mean, Johnny Depp wasn’t ashamed that he was in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).”
Farrands’ own résumé is filled with horror-related credits. Just a smattering: he wrote the screenplay for 1995’s Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers; directed multiple History’s Mysteries episodes on the Amityville phenomenon; and is developing a TV show set “in the universe of Jason Voorhees” called Crystal Lake Chronicles. His earlier Friday doc, His Name Was Jason, was a 90-minute work that “focused on Jason Voorhees as a pop-culture icon,” he says.
For Crystal Lake Memories, “we wanted to sequentially chronicle the making of the entire series.” It does make use of some Jason footage, particularly outtakes from interviews conducted for that film. But, “we did 60-some new interviews for this film that were not in Jason.“
Fresh faces include Dana Kimmell, star of 1982’s Friday the 13th Part III, and Jennifer Cooke, star of Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI. “[Cooke] has literally never spoken of her experience with the film other than, I think, one article back in 1986 when the film was made. It took a lot of convincing to get her to go on camera. But she was very nice and gave us a terrific, in-depth interview.”
As you might suspect, the actors’ recollections tend to revolve around their death scenes — achieved, in the pre-CG era, via the wizardry of artists like Savini, who made Friday‘s signature gore as outrageous as possible.
“The Friday the 13th violence was very in-your-face. The violence in Halloween (1978) was kind of subdued, and suggested, more like Psycho (1960). Friday the 13th took it to the next level. People walked out, like, ‘How did they do that?’ The audaciousness of what they pulled off, and the fact that the film was released by a major studio and put on 1,600 screens at the time — it just hadn’t been done. So I think that’s why Friday the 13th was kind of a watershed film.”
Perfectly timed to coincide with the start of basketball season: the release of Franklin Martin’s Long Shot: The Kevin Laue Story, billed as “Hoop Dreams meets Murderball,” with a healthy shot of Linsanity (now playing) to boot.
Martin spent four years following the Pleasanton-raised Laue, who was born with a left arm that ends just below his elbow. We see the budding hoops star — an honor student at Amador Valley High School as the film begins — mature from tousle-haired teen standout to Division I hopeful, refining his skills at a tough Virginia military academy along the way.
Laue is commandingly tall (nearly seven feet) and naturally gifted (despite, as all his coaches agree, also being naturally left-handed). He’s also appealingly self-deprecating, which makes him an ideal doc subject. But college scouts are hesitant to take a chance on a kid with just one hand — even though game footage makes it clear that Laue’s disability has no bearing on his ability to block shots and capture rebounds.
It’s frustrating, to put it mildly, especially for a kid whose entire life seems to revolve around basketball, but Laue is (for the most part; military school’s strict rules do inspire a few rebellions) willing to work harder than any other kid to keep up with the competition. He’s driven not just by his own dreams, but also nagging regrets over not saying a proper good-bye to his father, who passed away from cancer when Laue was 10. It’s clear he views his athletic success as a tribute to his dad.
Long Shot could have benefitted from interviewing more of Laue’s teammates — what’s it like to play with someone with just one hand, whose abilities are underestimated by nearly every opponent? — or even some of his friends. We see him attend one post-high school beer bash and hear a few offhand comments from his classmates. But beyond that, Long Shot focuses on Laue, his family, and his coaches (all of whom seem to be cut from the same gruff-yet-secretly-kind cloth).
Still, sports stories don’t come more inspirational than this, and locals who recall Laue’s rise to national prominence — including coverage in Sports Illustrated which attracted the attention of then-President Bush — will especially enjoy this inside peek at his hard-won success. Oct 25-Nov 1 Vine Cinema 1722 First St, Livermore www.thekevinlauestory.com
This week’s fare includes a thoughtful doc about the debate over late-term abortions, Benedict Cumberbatch’s star turn as Julian Assange, the Carrie remake, and more.
After Tiller Martha Shane and Lana Wilson’s After Tiller is incredibly timely, as states like Texas and North Carolina continue to push forth increasingly restrictive abortion legislation. This doc focuses on the four (yes, only four) doctors in America who are able to perform late-term abortions — all colleagues of Dr. George Tiller, assassinated in 2009 by a militant anti-abortionist. The film highlights the struggles of what’s inherently a deeply difficult job; even without sign-toting (and possibly gun-toting) protestors lurking outside their offices, and ever-shifting laws dictating the legality of their practices, the situations the doctors confront on a daily basis are harrowing. We sit in as couples make the painful decision to abort babies with “horrific fetal abnormalities;” a rape victim feels guilt and relief after terminating a most unwanted pregnancy; a 16-year-old Catholic girl in no position to raise a child worries that her decision to abort will haunt her forever; and a European woman who decides she can’t handle another kid tries to buy her way into the procedure. The patients’ faces aren’t shown, but the doctors allow full access to their lives and emotions — heavy stuff. (1:25) Roxie. (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BSPh6QhLYc
Broadway Idiot “I can’t act, I can’t dance … compared to a lot of these people, I can’t even sing,” Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong admits, moments before he’s seen taking the Broadway stage in the musical based on his band’s American Idiot. (He played the character of St. Jimmy for stints in both 2010 and 2011.) Director Doug Hamilton’s doc mixes concert, rehearsal, and full-on musical footage; interviews (with Armstrong, show director Michael Mayer, music supervisor Tom Kitt, and others); and behind-the-scenes moments to trace the evolution of American Idiot from concept album to Broadway show. Fans will feast on those behind-the-scenes moments, as when the band stops by Berkeley Rep — where the show had its pre-Broadway workshop performances — to hear new arrangements of their songs for the first time, or cast members prep to perform with Green Day at the Grammys. For everyone else, Broadway Idiot offers a slick, energetic, but not especially revealing look at the creative process. Good luck getting any of those catchy-ass songs out of your head, though. (1:20) Vogue. (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdoVioPv0fs
Carrie A high-school outcast (Chloë Grace Moritz) unleashes hell on her bullying classmates (and her controlling mother, played by Julianne Moore) in Kimberly Peirce’s take on the Stephen King classic. (1:32)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOnproVO7NM
Concussion Robin Weigert (Deadwood, Sons of Anarchy) stars in this tale of a lesbian housewife who pursues a new career as a prostitute after suffering a bump on the head. (1:36)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gmt89TXjYBI
Escape Plan Extreme prison breaking (from, naturally, an “escape-proof” facility) with Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Caviezel, and Vincent D’Onofrio. (1:56)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT1wb8_tcYU
The Fifth Estate After being our guide through the world of 1970s Formula One racing in Rush, Daniel Brühl is back serving that same role — and again grumbling in the shadows cast by a flashier character’s magnetism — for a more recent real life story’s dramatization. Here he’s German “technology activist” Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who in 2007 began collaborating with the enigmatic, elusive Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) on WikiLeaks’ airing of numerous anonymous whistleblowers’ explosive revelations: US military mayhem in Afghanistan; Kenyan ruling-regime corruption; a Swiss bank’s providing a “massive tax dodge” for wealthy clients worldwide; ugly truths behind Iceland’s economic collapse; and climactically, the leaking of a huge number of classified U.S. government documents. It was this last, almost exactly three years ago, that made Assange a wanted man here and in Sweden (the latter for alleged sexual assaults), as well as putting US Army leaker Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning in prison. The heat was most certainly on — although WikiLeaks was already suffering internal woes as Domscheit-Berg and a few other close associates grew disillusioned with Assange’s megalomania, instability, and questionable judgment. It’s a fascinating, many-sided saga that was told very well in Alex Gibney’s recent documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, and this narrative feature from director Bill Condon and scenarist Josh Singer feels disappointingly superficial by contrast. It tries to cram too information in without enough ballasting psychological insight, and the hyperkinetic editing and visual style intended to ape the sheer info-overload of our digital age simply makes the whole film seem like it’s trying way too hard. There are good moments, some sharp supporting turns, and Estate certainly doesn’t lack for ambition. But it’s at best a noble failure that in the end leaves you feeling fatigued and unenlightened. (2:04) (Dennis Harvey)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uJh2-Sx1Ls
VinylWhen the surviving members of a long-defunct, once-popular Welsh pop punk outfit reunite for a less lucky member’s funeral, the squabbles that have kept them incommunicado for decades are forgotten — with the help of lots of alcohol. They even jam together, and lo and behold, the hungover next morning reveals recorded evidence that they’ve still “got it.” In fact, they’ve even thrown together an insanely catchy new song that would be a perfect comeback single. Only trouble is, when they shop it around to record companies (including their own old one), they’re invariably told that no matter how good the music is, audiences today don’t want old fogeys performing it. (That would be “like watching your parents have sex,” they’re told.) The all-important “tweens to twenties” demographic wants stars as young as themselves, only hotter. So Johnny (Phil Daniels) and company have the bright idea of assembling a quintet of barely-legal cuties to pose as a fake band and lipsynch the real band’s new tune. Needless to say, both take off like wildfire, and eventually the ruse must be exposed. Sara Sugarman’s comedy is loosely inspired by a real, similar hoax (pulled off by ’80s rockers the Alarm), and might have dug deeper into satire of an industry that has seldom deserved mocking evisceration more than it does now. Instead, Vinyl settles for being a brisk, breezy diversion, likable if a bit formulaic — though that single, “Free Rock ‘n’ Roll,” really is catchy in an early Clash-meets-Buzzcocks way. (1:25) Roxie. (Dennis Harvey)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7seQlcJlAg
ZaytounIt’s 1982 in war-torn Beirut, and on the semi-rare occasion that streetwise 12-year-old Palestinian refugee Fahed (Abdallah El Akal) attends school, he’s faced with an increasing number of empty desks, marked by photos of the dead classmates who used to sit there. His own father is killed in an airstrike as Zaytoun begins. When an Israeli pilot (Stephen Dorff — a surprising casting choice, but not a bad one) is shot down and becomes a PLO prisoner, Fahed’s feelings of hatred give way to curiosity, and he agrees to help the man escape back to Israel, so long as he brings Fahed, who’s intent on planting his father’s olive sapling in his family’s former village, along. It’s not an easy journey, and a bond inevitably forms — just as problems inevitably ensue when they reach the border. Israeli director Eran Riklis (2008’s Lemon Tree) avoids sentimentality in this tale that nonetheless travels a pretty predictable predictable path. (1:50) (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtgoAt7ZTyE
Zero Charisma Scott (Sam Eidson) is a raging nerd, of the staunchly old-school variety: he lives for the sacred ritual of “game night,” where as Game Master he guides his minions through Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy role-playing. His hobby, which is really more of a lifestyle, is the only thing he really likes; otherwise, he’s a self-described “loser,” in his late 20s but still living with his grandmother (a delightfully acidic Anne Gee Byrd) and working a crappy job delivering tacos and donuts, sometimes to his former co-workers (who all hate him) at a game shop straight out of The Simpsons. When “cool” nerd (and insufferable hipster) Miles (Garrett Graham) joins Scott’s game and threatens his fantasy world — at the exact moment his long-lost mother (Cyndi Williams) swoopes in, intent on selling Nana’s house out from under her — chaos reigns. Writer Andrew Matthews (who co-directed with Katie Graham) clearly knows Scott’s world well; the scenes revolving around gaming (“But we’re almost to the hall of the goblin queen!”) are stuffed with authentic and funny nerd-banter, and while Scott himself is often mocked, RPGs are treated with respect. Scott’s personal journey is a little less satisfying, but Zero Charisma — an Audience Award winner at SXSW — has at least as much quirky appeal as a pair of multi-sided dice. (1:27) Roxie. (Cheryl Eddy)
First things first: do not pass go or collect your turkey leg until you’ve seen Escape From Tomorrow, the shot-secretly-at-Disney sci-fi drama that will, in fact, blow your mind. Dennis Harvey’s review here. (Speaking of mind-blowing, have you seen Gravity yet? If not, why are you still reading this? Why aren’t you rushing to the theater RIGHT NOW?)
Elsewhere this week: two powerful tales of survival are told in doc The Summit and Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips, which stars Tom Hanks and will make you glad your job doesn’t require you to traverse pirate-infested shipping lanes. My reviews of both here.
We’ve also got the latest exploitation-fan catnip from Robert Rodriguez, Machete Kills, starring Danny Trejo (fantasy role-swap: Danny Trejo as Captain Phillips), a comedy in which Amy Poehler plays Adam Scott’s stepmother, a Twilight-informed Shakespeare flick, and more. Read on!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axFqZUkO5tw
A.C.O.D. When happy-go-lucky Trey (Clark Duke) announces rather suddenly that he’s getting married, cranky older bro Carter (Adam Scott), the Adult Child of Divorce of the title, is tasked with making peace between his parents (Richard Jenkins and Catherine O’Hara). Trouble is, they haaaate each other (Jenkins: “If I ever see that woman, I’m gonna kick her in the balls”) — or so Carter thinks, until he discovers (to his horror) that there’s long-dormant passion lurking beneath all the insults. He also discovers that he was part of a book about kids of divorce written by a nutty PhD (Jane Lynch), and is drawn into her follow-up project — through which he meets fellow A.C.O.D Michelle (Jessica Alba, trying way too hard as a bad girl), a foil to his level-headed girlfriend (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). As the life he’s carefully constructed crumbles around him, Carter has to figure out what really matters, blah blah. Stu Zicherman’s comedy (co-scripted with Ben Karlin; both men are TV veterans) breaks no new ground in the dysfunctional-family genre — but it does boast a cast jammed with likable actors, nimble enough to sprinkle their characters’ sitcom-y conflicts with funny moments. Amy Poehler — Scott’s Parks and Recreation boo — is a particular highlight as Carter’s rich-bitch stepmother, aka “the Cuntessa.” (1:27) (Cheryl Eddy)
The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and PeteJennifer Hudson, Jordin Sparks, and Anthony Mackie play the grown-ups and assorted parental figures in this drama about two young boys coming of age in New York City. George Tillman, Jr. (2009’s Notorious; 2000’s Men of Honor) directs. (2:00)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sjnoJE30LM
Machete Kills Herewith we have the first sequel to a film (2010’s Machete) spawned from a fake trailer (that appeared in 2007’s Grindhouse). Danny Trejo’s titular killer has been tasked by the POTUS (Charlie Sheen, cheekily billed by his birth name, Carlos Estevez) to take down a Mexican madman (Demian Bechir) who’s an enemy of both his country’s drug cartels and the good ol’ USA. But it’s soon revealed (can you have plot spoilers in a virtually plotless film?) that the real villain is weapons designer Voz (Mel Gibson), a space-obsessed nutcase who’d fit right into an Austin Powers movie. The rest of Machete Kills, which aims only to entertain (with less social commentary than the first film), plays like James Bond lite, albeit with a higher, bloodier body count, and with famous-face cameos and jokey soft-core innuendos coming as fast and furious as the bullets do. As always, Trejo keeps a straight face, but he’s clearly in on the joke with director Robert Rodriguez, who’d be a fool not to continue to have his exploitation cake and eat it too, so long as these films — easy on the eyes, knowingly dumb, and purely fun-seeking — remain successful. (1:47) (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF7IPYNElKA
Mother of George Fashion photographer and music video director Andrew Dosunmu’s second feature opens with one of the most rapturous setpieces in recent cinematic memory: a wedding ceremony and banquet in Brooklyn’s Nigerian expat community so sensuously rich it washes over the viewer like a scented bath. Afterward, restauranteur Adoydele (Isaach De Bankole) and his younger immigrant bride Adenike (Danai Gurira) live in a connubial bliss increasingly compromised by the pressure on her to bear children. When that doesn’t happen, it could be either party’s biological “fault;” but tradition and an imperious mother-in-law (Bukky Ajayi) place blame firmly on Adenike’s shoulders, till the latter considers a desperate, secret solution to the problem. Like Dosunmu and his cinematographer Bradford Young’s 2011 prior feature Restless City, this followup is so aesthetically transfixing (not least its Afropop soundtrack) you can easily forgive its lack of equally powerful narrative impact. Someday they’ll make a movie that works on both levels — but meanwhile, Mother of George is gorgeous enough to reward simply as an object of sumptuous beauty. (1:47) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auGUm2r0cLs
Muscle Shoals Hard on the heels of Dave Grohl’s Sound City comes another documentary about a legendary American recording studio. Located in the titular podunk Northern Alabama burg, Fame Studio drew an extraordinary lineup of musicians and producers to make fabled hits from the early 1960s through the early ’80s. Among them: Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman,” a slew of peak era Aretha Franklin smashes, the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar,” and those cornerstones of Southern rock, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird” and “Sweet Home Alabama.” Tales of how particular tracks came about are entertaining, especially when related by the still-lively likes of Etta James, Wilson Pickett, and Keith Richards. (Richards is a hoot, while surprisingly Mick Jagger doesn’t have much to say.) Director Greg Camalier’s feature can be too worshipful and digressive at times, and he’s skittish about probing fallouts between Fame’s founder Rick Hall and some long-term collaborators (notably the local in-house session musicians known as the Swampers who were themselves a big lure for many artists, and who left Fame to start their own successful studio). Still, there’s enough fascinating material here — also including a lot of archival footage — that any music fan whose memory or interest stretches back a few decades will find much to enjoy. (1:51) (Dennis Harvey)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu-lMzHSNNk
Romeo and JulietEvery director sees the star-crossed lovers differently: Zefferelli’s apporach was sensuous, while Luhrmann’s was hip. Carlo Carlei, director of the British-Swiss-Italian production hitting theaters this week, is so hamstrung by the soapy mechanics of the Twilight series and the firmament of high school productions he fails to add much vision — what he does instead is pander to tweens as much as possible. Which means tweens might like it. Hailee Steinfeld makes Juliet’s foolishness seem like the behavior of a highly functional teenager, while Douglas Booth’s chiseled Romeo can’t help resembling a cheerful Robert Pattinson. Juliet’s maid has never been more memorable than Leslie Mansfield and Paul Giamatti is occasionally not self-consciously Paul Giamatti as the cunning friar. Yet the syrupy score is miserably persistent, and the sword fights are abundant and laughable. Tybalt (Gossip Girl’s Ed Westwick) leads a group that walks in slo-mo, hats flopping behind them. Carlei wrongheadedly stages the double suicide to resemble Michelangelo’s Pietà, but Romeo and Juliet aren’t martyrs for our fantasies, they’re the Adam and Eve of young love. Cinematic adaptations should remind you they’re original, but this Romeo and Juliet simply doesn’t know how. (1:58) (Sara Maria Vizcarrondo)
Paul Greengrass‘ latest action film, Captain Phillips, stars Tom Hanks as an American cargo-ship captain taken hostage by Somali pirates. This based-on-true-events tale also stars newcomer Barkhad Abdi as pirate leader Muse. It opens tomorrow — but today, read on for more intel from my recent interview with Greengrass when he stopped by San Francisco to promote the film.
(Note: this interview was conducted as part of a “roundtable” that featured other journalists.)
Paul Greengrass, who is known for his use of handheld camera (or “shaky cam”) in films like 2004’s The Bourne Supremacy, 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum, and 2006’s Flight 93, discusses handheld cameras, which leads into an overview of his own philosophy of filmmaking — and praise for Hanks’ towering lead performance.
“If you try and make films in an authentic way — if you’re on a ship, ships rock around. And they’re small spaces. If you’ve ever been on a lifeboat, Jesus Christ. I mean, it’s like the worst Disney ride you could possibly imagine. So how do you shoot on a lifeboat, and keep it steady? It’s impossible. It’s not like I’m sitting there, going like that [mimes shaking a camera]. In fact, all of the time, I’m saying, ‘Keep it steady!’
If you want to be in a real space, and you want the images that you’re capturing to authentically arise out of the environment you’re shooting in — so, if you’re running it’s going to feel like what it feels to run. If you’re in a lifeboat, it’s gonna feel like you’re [at sea]. It’s a fundamental tenant of cinematic simplicity. I think shaky-cam is ineffective when [filmmakers use it] when they don’t need to do it, and it’s just some kind of stylistic tic that in a general sense is meant to mean immediacy when it actually doesn’t. It’s like a fashion accessory. But actually you’re not developing moments. You’re not capturing detail. It’s just a jarring mess.
The faster-moving your sequence, the more intensely complicated and simultaneous your action is, the more imperative it is upon you as a director to render detail. Detail is what gives you acceleration. It’s when you are able to show an audience detail — it’s like hop scotching, when you’re moving from step to step to step, but sure-footedly, with each footfall landing on significant detail that each leads to the next, to the next, so you get a sense of acceleration and focus. Whereas that [mimes shaking a camera] gives you lack of focus, because it’s generalized. What is that motion? Who’s doing what? You’ve got to be inside the action and your filmmaking must unlock the inner dynamics in a way that’s clear.
That takes a number of things: an intense amount of planning, absolute attention to detail while you’re shooting, moment by moment, that you’ve got this moment and you’ve got this particular piece. It requires a supremely rigorous process of editing. And last, but most importantly, you’ve always got to [know that] what all this action, whatever it’s conveying is, it’s got to convey character. And the character’s got to involve your point of view.
That’s abstract, but what I mean is, when you’re a young filmmaker — unless you’re a genius, and there are some filmmakers who are just geniuses, though they’re few and far between — you want to be a craftsman. You want to learn your craft and develop a point of view, because point of view has to do with your experiences in life, and your sense of maturity, and the inner confidence that comes slowly. It’s hard-won. You’ve gotta say, ‘What is the song that only I can sing? What is the film that only I can make? Why is that? What is it that I want to say?’ Crucially, you have to find what it is that you don’t know, that the film is going to be an exploration of.
So if you take [Captain Phillips], for instance, you’ve got a very simple, unbelievably dramatic but stark, simple story. It takes place on the high seas on the far-flung edge of the global economy, which is what the shipping lanes are. Four desperate young men, armed to the teeth, attacking a US-flagged container ship, taking the captain and a bunch of his guys hostage on the bridge while the rest of the crew hide. They manage to take one of the kidnappers hostage themselves and they do an exchange, but the pirates double-cross them and take the captain. They make for Somalia, but before they get to Somalia, the US Navy intercepts them. That’s the story! It’s almost old-fashioned in its simplicity. Staggeringly stark.
What does it mean? I don’t know. But that’s why we made the film. If we render this with as much authenticity as we can, we’ll find out what it means. That’s your point of view. And all of that maelstrom of action in the film gets you to that final scene in the infirmary, because only then do you see the fragility of humanity. I think that’s the brilliance of Tom Hanks in this film, because he takes you on that journey every step of the way. And you end up in that little tiny room, and what you see is, and what you feel — I think you feel it with him, because it’s quite an emotional moment.
That’s what you couldn’t have found out [about Phillips’ story] from the news, because you’re looking at it from the outside. You could only find it by being in it. It’s what gives you a deep engagement with the character, and I think — and I’m being biased — it’s one of those great, great performances. Because this man of few words, working man — my father was a merchant marine, which is one of the reasons I made this film; I know what those guys are like — goes through this extraordinary experience, and the audience goes along with him.”
FILM Eye of the tiger, baby. The fight for survival is a dominant theme this season at the movies, with astronaut Sandra Bullock grappling for her life in Gravity; lone sailor Robert Redford piloting a leaky boat in All Is Lost; and Tom Hanks battling Somali pirates in Captain Phillips. (More on that film — directed with trademark urgency by Paul Greengrass — in a moment.)
No movie stars appear in The Summit, a documentary from Irish filmmaker Nick Ryan, but that doesn’t lessen its power. In fact, this tale of a staggeringly tragic mountaineering accident — in which 11 people perished in a 48-hour period atop K2, the second-highest peak in the world — might be the most terrifying of the bunch. Along with the expected historical context, talking heads, and some stunning aerial footage, The Summit crafts its tale using a seamless blend of re-enactments and archival footage shot during the deadly 2008 expedition. Editor Ben Stark picked up two awards at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, and you can see why — it’s difficult at times to pick out what’s real and what’s not.
“Only 18 percent of the footage is reconstructed. I actually did the calculation, because it was coming up a lot,” Ryan explained on a recent visit to San Francisco. In this era of obsessive self-documentation, it’s not surprising that many of the climbers happened to be carrying cameras. “I was always aware, though, that perhaps once things started to go bad, there wasn’t going to be much footage there. People were going to be too busy surviving, and filming was probably the last thing on their minds. As a director, the reconstructions were a very conscious choice — I knew how complex the story was. The best method would be to tie [its fragments] together with a strong narrative structure.”
Accompanying Ryan to SF was Pemba Gyalje Sherpa, a professional climber who was a hero amid the chaos in 2008. Though K2 claimed the life of his teammate and close friend, charismatic Irishman Ger McDonnell, he didn’t hesitate when Ryan asked him to participate in the film.
“The documentary allowed us to show the public what happened on the mountain,” Sherpa explained. “But the reconstructions did bring up some difficult feelings.”
The Summit has been compared to Kevin Macdonald’s 2003 Touching the Void — a documentary enhanced by re-enactments that’s also about a controversial climb. Ryan said he saw the movie when it came out, but he’s avoided other obvious touchstones, like Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, about the 1996 Mount Everest disaster. “You don’t want to be influenced. But though they’re substantially different, I was always envious of the simplicity of Touching the Void as a story. The Summit was the polar opposite of that, because of its complexity.”
The Summit also delves into the more metaphysical aspects of climbing, including “summit fever” — sharing the startling statistic that for every four people who attempt K2, one will die. “As a non-climber, I was fascinated by that,” Ryan said. “Why would anyone take worse odds than Russian roulette?”
Those who do must understand the sport’s unwritten rule of self-preservation. “Morality is skewed when you get above the [high-altitude] death zone. The morally right thing to do isn’t necessarily the actual right thing to do,” Ryan said. “If you climb these mountains, I think you have to realize that when things go wrong you can only rely on yourself. You can’t expect anyone to help you — when you’re stuck there, you might as well be stuck on the moon. Nobody is coming to help you.”
Fortunately for cargo ship captain Richard Phillips, the Gulf of Aden is neither K2 nor the moon. In 2009, Phillips was taken hostage by pirates who’d hijacked the Kenya-bound Maersk Alabama. His subsequent rescue by Navy SEALs came after a standoff that ended in the death of three pirates; a fourth, Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse, surrendered and is serving a hefty term in federal prison.
A year later, Phillips penned a book about his ordeal, and Hollywood pounced. Hanks is perfectly cast as Phillips, an everyman who runs a tight ship but displays an admirable ability to improvise under pressure.
“He was essentially trying anything to shake them off his path. [The pirates] let him hold onto his radio, and he was able to communicate with everybody else on the ship that way,” Hanks said, in town to promote the film with Greengrass and co-star Barkhad Abdi. “[Phillips] had so much knowledge as a merchant mariner. Prior in his career, he’d been in a hurricane in the middle of the Pacific, in which he was helpless — so he’d experienced a different type of terror at sea. With [the pirates], he had somebody he could interact with. It was a different type of fear and anxiety.”
Abdi, cast from an open call among Minneapolis’ large Somali community, plays pirate leader Muse. Captain Phillips focuses mostly on Hanks’ character, but it takes the time to emphasize that piracy is one of few grim career options for Somali youths. The first-time actor, who left Somalia at a young age, brings nuance to what could’ve been a one-note villain.
“I relate to that character, because that could have been me,” he said. “I was lucky enough to have parents that took me to another country, where I could be a better person. But what if my parents had been killed? I don’t excuse [Muse’s] actions, but I understand his motives.”
With a résumé full of intelligent, doc-inspired thrillers (2006’s United 93, 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum), director Greengrass has mastered the art of fast-paced action filmmaking. He’s especially known for his use of handheld cameras, and Captain Phillips is no exception.
“Ships rock around. How do you shoot on a lifeboat and keep it steady? It’s impossible. You want the images that you’re capturing to authentically arise out of the environment that you’re shooting in,” Greengrass explained, with a caveat. “The faster-moving your sequence, and the more intensely complicated your action is, it [becomes] imperative to render detail. Detail is what gives you acceleration and focus. You’ve got to be inside the action, and your filmmaking must unlock the inner dynamics in a way that’s clear. With this film, you’ve got a very simple, unbelievably dramatic, stark story. If we render it as authentically as we can, we’ll find out what it means — which you couldn’t have found from the news, because you’re looking at it from the outside. You can only find out by being in it.” *
THE SUMMIT and CAPTAIN PHILLIPS open Fri/11 in Bay Area theaters.
The 36th Mill Valley Film Festival opened last night and runs through Oct. 13, filling the North Bay’s travel-worthy venues (the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center is the main one) with must-see films. Check out our recs here, and read on for short takes on Hollywood’s offerings, including the season’s must-see sci-fi film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Gi-ow4hr0
Blind Detective Johnnie To’s latest makes its local debut as part of the San Francisco Film Society’s “Hong Kong Cinema” series, hot on the heels of his Drug War, which had a theatrical run earlier this year. Blind Detective shares Drug War’s crime theme and moody palette, but it also has — whimsy alert! — an accordion-inflected score. The cute quotient is further upped by Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng, who’ve been frequently paired in To’s lighter fare (perhaps most memorably in 2001’s Love on a Diet, which attired its attractive stars in fat suits). Lau plays a former cop who left the force after losing his vision, yet continues to solve crimes (in pursuit of reward money) using, among other unorthodox methods, his superior sense of smell. Cheng plays a scrappy policewoman who admires his investigative skills and asks him to track down a long-lost childhood friend. He agrees, but not before slyly tricking her into helping him pursue lucrative paydays on unrelated cases. Lau’s wannabe-Sherlock antics and Cheng’s lovelorn flailings wear thin after two-plus hours, but Blind Detective still manages to entertain despite its odd blend of broad comedy and serial-killer thrills. (2:10) Vogue. (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiTiKOy59o4
Gravity “Life in space is impossible,” begins Gravity, the latest from Alfonso Cuarón (2006’s Children of Men). Egghead Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is well aware of her precarious situation after a mangled satellite slams into her ship, then proceeds to demolition-derby everything (including the International Space Station) in its path. It’s not long before she’s utterly, terrifyingly alone, and forced to unearth near-superhuman reserves of physical and mental strength to survive. Bullock’s performance would be enough to recommend Gravity, but there’s more to praise, like the film’s tense pacing, spare-yet-layered script (Cuarón co-wrote with his son, Jonás), and spectacular 3D photography — not to mention George Clooney’s warm supporting turn as a career astronaut who loves country music almost as much as he loves telling stories about his misadventures. (1:31) (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnJIA7oqqcM
The Institute In 2008, mysterious flyers began popping up around San Francisco that touted esoteric inventions such as “Poliwater” and the “Vital-Orbit Human Force Field” and included a phone number for the curiously-monikered Jejuene Institute. On the other side of the phone line, a recording would direct callers to a Financial District office building where they would undergo a mysterious induction process, embarking on an epic, multi-stage, years-long alternate reality game, designed primarily to reveal the magic in the mundane. In Spencer McCall’s documentary The Institute, viewers are introduced to the game in much the same way as prospective inductees, with few clues as to what lies in store ahead. A handful of seemingly random interviewees offer a play-by-play recap of their own experiences exploring rival game entities the Jejune Institute and Elsewhere Public Works Agency — while video footage of them dancing in the streets, warding off ninjas, befriending Sasquatches, spelunking sewers, and haunting iconic Bay Area edifices gives the viewer a taste of the wonders that lay in store for the intrepid few (out of 10,000 inductees) who made it all the way to the end of the storyline. Frustratingly, however, at least for this former inductee, McCall’s documentary focuses on fleshing out the fictions of the game, barely scratching the surface of what must surely be an even more intriguing set of facts. How did a group of scrappy East Bay artists manage to commandeer an office in the Financial District for so long in the first place? Who were the artists behind the art? And where am I supposed to cash in these wooden “hobo coins” now? (1:32) New Parkway, Roxie. (Nicole Gluckstern)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgPjt_BRLvY
Parkland Timed to tie in with the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination, writer-director Peter Landesman’s sprawling ensemble drama takes that tragedy as its starting point and spirals outward, highlighting ordinary folks who were caught up in the drama’s aftermath by virtue of their jobs or circumstance. There’s a lot going on here, with a huge cast of mostly-recognizable faces (Billy Bob Thornton as Secret Service Agent Forest Sorrells; Paul Giamatti as amateur filmmaker Abraham Zapruder; Ron Livingston as an FBI agent; hey, there’s Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden in two scenes as a stern nurse!), but the events depicted are so familiar that the plot never becomes confusing. Landesman — who favors scenes of breakneck-paced action punctuated by solemn moments of emotion — might’ve done better to narrow his focus a bit, perhaps keeping just to the law-enforcement characters or to Lee Harvey Oswald’s family (James Badge Dale plays his shell-shocked brother, while Jackie Weaver hams it up as his eccentric mother). But paired with 2006’s Bobby, Parkland — named for the hospital where both JFK and Oswald died — named for the hospital where both JFK and Oswald died — could make for an interesting, speculative-history double-feature for Camelot buffs. That said, Oliver Stone fans take note: Parkland is strictly Team Lone Gunman. (1:33) (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2INdFpHPpQ
Runner Runner Launching his tale with a ripped-from-the-headlines montage of news reports and concerned-anchor sound bites, director Brad Furman (2011’s The Lincoln Lawyer) attempts to argue his online-gambling action thriller’s topicality, but not even Anderson Cooper can make a persuasive case for Runner Runner’s cultural relevance. Justin Timberlake plays Richie Furst, a post-2008 Wall Street casualty turned Princeton master’s candidate, who is putting himself through his finance program via the morally threadbare freelance gig of introducing his fellow students to Internet gambling. Perhaps in the service of supplying our unsympathetic protagonist with a psychological root, we are given a knocked-together scene reuniting Richie with his estranged gambling addict dad (John Heard). By the time we’ve digested this, plus the image of Justin Timberlake in the guise of a grad student with a TAship, Richie has blown through all his savings and, in a bewildering turn of events, made his way into the orbit of Ben Affleck’s Ivan Block, a shady online-gambling mogul taking shelter from an FBI investigation in Costa Rica, along with his lovely adjutant, Rebecca (Gemma Arterton). Richie’s rise through the ranks of Ivan’s dodgy empire is somewhat mysterious, partly a function of the plot and partly a function of the plot being piecemeal and incoherent. The dialogue and the deliveries are also unconvincing, possibly because we’re dealing with a pack of con artists and possibly because the players were dumbfounded by the script, which is clotted with lines we’ve heard before, from other brash FBI agents, other sketchily drawn temptresses, other derelict, regretful fathers, and other unscrupulous kingpins. (1:31) (Lynn Rapoport)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXKogr0O-Zc
We Are What We AreThe title of Jim Mickle’s latest film sums up the attitude of the Parker family: We Are What We Are. We eat people. Our human-flesh cravings go back generations. Over the years, our dietary habits have become our religion. And that’s just the way it is — until teen sisters Iris (Ambyr Childers) and Rose (Julia Garner) start to have some doubts. As We Are (a remake of Mexican director Jorge Michel Grau’s 2010 film) begins, the girls’ mother has suddenly died amid a punishing rainstorm — and their grief-stricken Dad (Bill Sage) has become awfully twitchy. As the local police, a suspicious doctor (Michael Parks), and a curious neighbor (Kelly McGillis) begin to poke into their business, the Parkers prep for “Lambs Day,” a feast that most definitely involves whoever is chained up in the basement. Though not all of the dots connect in the Parkers’ elaborate backstory (how do Mom and Dad have an obscure variation on mad-cow disease if they’re only eating man-meat once a year?), We Are still offers a refreshing change from indie horror’s most recent common denominators — no found-footage tricks here. The last-act dinner scene is required viewing for any self-respecting cannibal-flick connoisseur. Check out my interview with director Mickle here. (1:45) (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rwr-U1z1F60
When Comedy Went to School This scattershot documentary by Ron Frank and Mevlut Akkaya is about two big subjects — the Catskill Mountains resorts that launched a couple generations of beloved Jewish entertainers, and mid-to-late 20th century Jewish comedians in general. There’s a lot of overlap between them, but the directors (and writer Lawrence Richards) can’t seem to find any organizing focus, so their film wanders all over the place, from the roles of resort social directors and busboys to clips from History of the World Part I (1981) and Fiddler on the Roof (1971) to the entirely irrelevant likes of Larry King. That said, there’s entertaining vintage performance footage (of Totie Fields, Woody Allen, etc.) and interview input from the still-kicking likes of Sid Ceasar, Jackie Mason, Mort Sahl, Jerry Stiller, and Jerry Lewis. For some this will be a welcome if not particularly well crafted nostalgic wallow. For others, though, the pandering tone set by one Lisa Dawn Miller’s (wife of Sandy Hackett, who’s son of Buddy) cringe-worthy opening rendition of “Make ‘Em Laugh” — to say nothing of her “Send in the Clowns” at the close — will sum up the pedestrian mindset that makes this doc a missed opportunity. (1:23) (Dennis Harvey)
FILM The title of Jim Mickle’s latest film sums up the attitude of the Parker family: We Are What We Are. We eat people. Our human-flesh cravings go back generations. Our dietary habits have become our religion. And that’s just the way it is — until teen sisters Iris (Ambyr Childers) and Rose (Julia Garner) start to have some doubts.
As We Are (a remake of Mexican director Jorge Michel Grau’s 2010 film) begins, the girls’ mother has suddenly died amid a punishing rainstorm — and their grief-stricken Dad (Bill Sage) has become awfully twitchy. As the local police, a suspicious doctor (Michael Parks), and a curious neighbor (Kelly McGillis) begin to poke into their business, the Parkers prep for “Lambs Day,” a feast that most definitely involves whoever is chained up in the basement.
Next up for Mickle and his co-writer Nick Damici — they’re best-known for 2010’s Stake Land, which starred Damici — is Cold in July, an actual non-horror film (though it is based on a novel by Bubba Ho-Tep author Joe R. Lansdale). But first: who’s hungry?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXKogr0O-Zc
SF Bay Guardian How did the success of Stake Land affect your career?
Jim Mickle We Are What We Are is really more non-horror than it is horror, and I think Stake Land gave us the confidence to do that — to explore within the genre and try new things.
SFBG Can you expand on why you think We Are is more “non-horror”?
JM To me, it’s more of a dark story about faith and religion, even though the word “cannibal” is a horror idea, and there are obviously scenes that hit that. Stake Land is a vampire-apocalypse story with action scenes, but the heart of it was the orphaned [lead character] coming of age in a destroyed world. The horror elements are just kind of the sprinkles on the ice cream.
It was the same thing here. I was much more interested in the girls’ story, and the story of a family trying to hold together after a tragic event.
SFBG This film is a remake, but it seems you were pretty intent on putting your own stamp on the story.
JM Yeah, definitely. I’m one of the biggest haters of remakes. It’s funny, because I’ll see people online going, “Why did they redo this?” And usually, that’s me complaining. I’m a fan of so many of the horror movies that then get butchered by Hollywood. So when I was first [asked to do] an American version of this, I kind of rolled my eyes a little bit. And when [Damici] and I first watched the movie, we were like, “Why redo this? It’s a good movie!”
But then, over a couple of days, we started to sort of brainstorm ideas. The first thing was taking it out of a Mexican city and putting it into rural upstate New York. Instantly it’s very different, but it’s also something that I know very well and can talk about personally and uniquely.
Still, we wanted to hang onto [certain things] about the original. I loved what [Grau] did with the tone, and its restraint and simplicity.
SFBG Kelly McGillis was so memorable in Stake Land, and it’s great to see her back for We Are. What’s your relationship with her like?
JM I think she had a great time on Stake Land — she hadn’t done a movie in years before that. I like shoots that are fun, and I try to remember that getting to make movies is a privilege and that we should enjoy it as we go, and I think she has the same sense. We clicked instantly.
[Damici] wrote this character specifically for her. She’s very goofy in real life, and we wanted to play that up. It’s the perfect role for her, the wise-but-also-nosy neighbor. We called her about it, and before we had even said anything she said “I’ll do it! I can’t wait!” *
For this week’s longer reviews, check out Dennis Harvey’s take on the doc Inequality for All, and my chat with Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett in honor of the band’s new 3D IMAX concert film, Metallica: Through the Never. Read on for short takes galore!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUiuzXP41aY
Baggage Claim Robin Thicke may be having the year of a lifetime, but spouse Paula Patton is clearly making a bid to leap those “Blurred Lines” between second banana-dom and Jennifer Aniston-esque leading lady fame with this buppie chick flick. How competitive is the game? Patton has a sporting chance: she’s certainly easy on the eyes and ordinarily a welcome warm and sensual presence as arm candy or best girlfriend — too bad her bid to beat the crowd with Baggage Claim feels way too blurry and busy to study for very long. The camera turns to Patton only to find a hot, slightly charming mess of mussed hair, frenetic movement, and much earnest emoting. I know the mode is single-lady desperation, but you’re trying too hard, Paula. At least the earnestness kind of works — semi-translating in Baggage Claim as a bumbling ineptitude that offsets Patton’s too-polished-and-perfect-to-be-real beauty. After all, we’re asked to believe that Patton’s flight attendant Montana can’t find a good man, no matter how hard she tries. That’s the first stretch of imagination, made more implausible by pals Sam (Adam Brody) and Janine (singer-songwriter Jill Scott), who decide to try to fix her up with her old high-flying frequent-flier beaus in the quest to find a mate in time for her — humiliation incoming — younger sister’s wedding. Among the suitors are suave hotelier Quinton (Djimon Hounsou), Republican candidate Langston (Taye Diggs), and hip-hop mogul Damon (Trey Songz), though everyone realizes early on that she just can’t notice the old bestie (Derek Luke) lodged right beneath her well-tilted nose. Coming to the conclusion that any sane single gal would at the end of this exercise, Patton does her darnedest to pour on the quirk and charm — and that in itself is as endearing as watching any beautiful woman bend over backwards, tumbling as she goes, to win an audience over. The strenuous effort, however, seems wasted when one considers the flimsy material, played for little more than feather-light amusement by director-writer David E. Talbert. (1:33) (Kimberly Chun)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzkAFDwllPQ
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 The sequel to the 2009 animated hit based on the children’s best-seller promises the introduction of “mutant food beasts,” including “tacodiles” and “shrimpanzees.” (1:35)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuPXDuqicmo
Don Jon Shouldering the duties of writer, director, and star for the comedy Don Jon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has also picked up a broad Jersey accent, the physique of a gym rat, and a grammar of meathead posturing — verbal, physical, and at times metaphysical. His character, Jon, is the reigning kingpin in a triad of nightclubbing douchebags who pass their evenings assessing their cocktail-sipping opposite numbers via a well-worn one-to-10 rating system. Sadly for pretty much everyone involved, Jon’s rote attempts to bed the high-scorers are spectacularly successful — the title refers to his prowess in the art of the random hookup — that is, until he meets an alluring “dime” named Barbara (Scarlett Johansson), who institutes a waiting period so foreign to Jon that it comes to feel a bit like that thing called love. Amid the well-earned laughs, there are several repulsive-looking flies in the ointment, but the most conspicuous is Jon’s stealthy addiction to Internet porn, which he watches at all hours of the day, but with a particularly ritualistic regularity after each night’s IRL conquest has fallen asleep. These circumstances entail a fair amount of screen time with Jon’s O face and, eventually, after a season of growth — during which he befriends an older woman named Esther (Julianne Moore) and learns about the existence of arty retro Swedish porn — his “Ohhh…” face. Driven by deft, tight editing, Don Jon comically and capably sketches a web of bad habits, and Gordon-Levitt steers us through a transformation without straining our capacity to recognize the character we met at the outset — which makes the clumsy over-enunciations that mar the ending all the more jarring. (1:30) (Lynn Rapoport)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1TDTv_tGd8
Enough Said Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is a divorced LA masseuse who sees naked bodies all day but has become pretty wary of wanting any in her bed at night. She reluctantly changes her mind upon meeting the also-divorced Albert (James Gandolfini), a television archivist who, also like her, is about to see his only child off to college. He’s no Adonis, but their relationship develops rapidly — the only speed bumps being provided by the many nit-picking advisors Eva has in her orbit, which exacerbate her natural tendency toward glass-half-empty neurosis. This latest and least feature from writer-director Nicole Holofcener is a sitcom-y thing of the type that expects us to find characters all the more adorable the more abrasive and self-centered they are. That goes for Louis-Dreyfus’ annoying heroine as well as such wasted talents as Toni Colette as her kvetching best friend and Catherine Keener as a new client turned new pal so bitchy it makes no sense Eva would desire her company. The only nice person here is Albert, whom the late Gandolfini makes a charming, low-key teddy bear in an atypical turn. The revelation of an unexpected past tie between his figure and Keener’s puts Eva in an ethically disastrous position she handles dismally. In fact, while it’s certainly not Holofcener’s intention, Eva’s behavior becomes so indefensible that Enough Said commits rom-com suicide: The longer it goes on, the more fervently you hope its leads will not end up together. (1:33) (Dennis Harvey)
Haute Cuisine Director and co-writer Christian Vincent’s unassuming ode to French food takes for granted that we’re here to learn about the life, joys, and preoccupations of a working female chef, regardless of politically correct concerns (dig that foie gras reference) or gossipy tendencies. Precisely encapsulating a very un-haute attitude that falls in line with its mild-mannered protagonist, Haute Cuisine breaks its cool only when the country’s head of state comes into view or a testosterone-y rival pulls a power play. As the movie opens, Hortense Laborie (Catherine Frot) is hard at work at a far humbler job — cooking fine food for the rough crowd of workers at the Alfred Faure base in Antarctica while dismissing the attentions of a visiting video crew. Flashback to the story they’re hot to uncover, as the country innkeeper, farmer, and cooking teacher is swept off her feet by none other President François Mitterrand, not for romance but to make home-cooked regional food for his personal meals. The halls of power — and Hortense’s passage through the labyrinthian bureaucracy and pecking order — threaten to blot out the identity of the little cook from the country, but she holds her own in her chaste relationship with Mitterrand as she coaxes him to let her source directly from farmers and producers. However, the mostly one-way, closed relationship between the two can’t last forever. Haute Cuisine doesn’t attempt to reinvent the wheel — much as Hortense would never claim to tweak her beloved St. Honoré —and it generally refrans from looking much deeper into its main character beyond what Frot offers in her acutely telling looks and her playful give-and-take with sous chef Nicholas (Arthur Dupont). But it does gently draw the food lover and the more oblivious eater alike into its spell, with a soupçon of tasteful, and tasty-looking, food porn and its obvious respect for chefs who are dedicated to giving pleasure to those they serve. (1:35) Opera Plaza. (Kimberly Chun)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fBkfXvhzTE
Inuk Though the Greenlandic-language Inuk takes its name from its troubled Inuit protagonist, ice is arguably its central character. And the lyrical sweep and striking beauty of the icy expanses in Uummannaq Bay and Nuuk, Greenland, threaten to upstage the adventure story at Inuk’s heart. Seeking refuge from his alcoholic mother and her abusive friends and escaping into hip-hop, the teenage Inuk (Gaaba Petersen) has been found battered and sleeping his car far too often, so he’s taken to a in the north by teacher and foster care worker Aviaaja (Rebekka Jorgensen) to learn about the old ways of hunters and an ancient wisdom that is melting away with the polar icecap. A journey by dogsled with local hunters turns into a rite of passage when bear hunter Ikuma (Ole Jørgen Hammeken) takes Inuk under his damaged wing and attempts to reconnect him to his heritage. “The ice is no place for attitude,” he declares, as Inuk makes foolish choices, kills his first seal, and learns the hard way about survival north of the Arctic Circle. You can practically feel the freezing cold seeping off the frames of this gorgeous-looking film — a tribute to director Mike Magidson and his crew’s skills, even when the overt snow-blinding symbolism blots out clarity and threatens to swallow up Inuk. (1:30) Roxie. (Chun)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hteIj01zyo
“Millie Perkins in the Exploitation Cinema of Matt Cimber” Millie Perkins was a successful 20-year-old model with no acting experience when she made her film debut in 1959’s The Diary of Anne Frank, playing the title role. But her mainstream Hollywood career almost immediately foundered and soon she was playing much less angelic roles in B-movies — among them several subsequently cult-worshipped Monte Hellman films and the 1968 AIP counterculture-nightmare hit Wild in the Streets. In the mid-1970s she made two back-to-back movies for Italian exploitation maestro Matt Cimber (aka Thomas Vitale Ottaviano), who a decade earlier had briefly been married to Jayne Mansfield. The Film on Film Foundation is screening rare 35mm prints of both in this one-night tribute bill. The better known of the duo, The Witch Who Came From the Sea (1976), is a bizarre psychochiller in which Perkins gets one hell of a role as SoCal cocktail waitress Molly, who seems normal enough (if a tad taciturn) but is prone to irrational rages, blackouts, drinking binges, indiscriminate pill-popping, and … murder, though we (and she) aren’t always sure whether her crimes are real or delusional. While Witch has gained some critical appreciation in recent years, the prior year’s Lady Cocoa (also released, even more improbably, as Pop Goes the Weasel) remains obscure — a late addition to the early ’70s blaxploitation craze with “First Lady of Las Vegas” Lola Falana in a non-singing role as a tough jailbird who gets a 24-hour pass to testify against her evil thug ex-boyfriend — or at least try to, if his goons (including NFL Hall of Famer “Mean” Joe Greene) don’t snuff her first. Perkins has a supporting role as one half of an alleged honeymooning couple who aren’t quite as harmless as they seem. Perhaps overwhelmed by the challenge of topping these two films, Perkins was inactive for several years afterward, then found herself welcomed back to Hollywood via numerous roles in TV movies and big-screen ones, plus recurring roles on primetime soap Knots Landing and the 1990 miniseries Elvis (as the King’s mom). Roxie. (Dennis Harvey)
On the Job Filipino director Erik Matti’s gritty crime thriller has such a clever hook that Hollywood is already circling it for a remake. No shock there. It is surprising, however, that On the Job is based on true events, in which prisoners were temporarily sprung to work as hired guns for well-connected politicos. (Kinda genius, if you think about it.) The big-screen version has veteran inmate Tang (Joel Torre) dreading his imminent parole; he’d rather have the steady income from his grisly gig than be unable to provide for his wife and daughter. As he counts down to his release, he trains volatile Daniel (Gerald Anderson) to take his place. Poking around on the other side of the law are world-weary local cop Acosta (Joey Marquez) and hotshot federal agent Francis (Piolo Pascual), who reluctantly team up when a hit cuts close to home for both of them. The case is particularly stressful for Francis, whose well-connected father-in-law turns out to be wallowing in corruption. Taut, thrilling, atmospheric, and graphic, On the Job makes up for an occasionally confusing storyline by offering bang-up (literally) entertainment from start to finish. Groovy score, too. (2:00) Metreon. (Cheryl Eddy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99XxMLgE3AM
Out in the DarkMeeting in a Tel Aviv gay bar, Nimr (Nicholas Jacob) and Roy (Michael Aloni) are instantly smitten with each other, though there’s much dividing them. Roy is a Jewish lawyer working at his father’s high-end firm, while the former is a Palestinian graduate psychology student who’s lucky just to get a temporary travel pass so he can take one prestigious course at an Israeli university. Even this small liberty brings him trouble, as his increasingly fanatical older brother considers any contact with Israelis borderline traitorous to their homeland and to conservative Muslim values. Needless to say, Nimr is not “out” to his family — and even though Roy is, his parents’ “tolerance” proves superficial at best. The men’s relationship soon runs into considerable, even life-imperiling difficulty from various political, cultural, religious and personal conflicts. Director and co-writer Michael Mayer’s first feature isn’t the first screen love story between star-crossed Israelis and Palestinians (or even the first gay one). It can be a bit clumsy and melodramatic, but nonetheless there’s enough chemistry between the leads and earnest urgency behind the issues addressed to make this a fairly powerful story about different kinds of oppression. (1:36) Elmwood. (Dennis Harvey)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_u3FODrenM
Rush Ron Howard’s Formula One thriller Rush is a gripping bit of car porn, decked out with 1970s period details and goofily liberated camera moves to make sure you never forget how much happens under (and around, and on top of) the hood of these beastly vehicles. Real life drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda (played by Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl, respectively) had a wicked rivalry through the ’70s; these characters are so oppositional you’d think Shane Black wrote them. Lauda’s an impersonal, methodical pro, while Hunt’s an aggressive, undisciplined playboy — but he’s so popular he can sway a group of racers to risk their lives on a rainy track, even as Lauda objects. It’s a lovely sight: all the testosterone in the world packed into a room bound by windows, egos threatening to bust the glass with the rumble of their voices. I’m no fan of Ron Howard, but maybe the thrill of Grand Theft Auto is in Rush like a spirit animal. (The moments of rush are the greatest; when Lauda’s lady friend asks him to drive fast, he does, and it’s glorious.) Hunt says that “being a pro kills the sport” — but Howard, an overly schmaltzy director with no gift for logic and too much reliance on suspension of disbelief, doesn’t heed that warning. The laughable voiceovers that bookend the film threaten to sink some great stuff, but the magic of the track is vibrant, dangerous, and teeming with greatness. (2:03) (Sara Maria Vizcarrondo)
FILM The 3D IMAX concert film may be lurching toward cliché status, but at least Metallica: Through the Never has more bite to it than, say, this summer’s One Direction: This is Us.
Director Nimród Antal (2010’s Predators) weaves live footage of the Bay Area thrash veterans ripping through hits (“Enter Sandman,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” etc.) into a narrative (kinda) about one of the band’s roadies (The Place Beyond the Pines‘ Dane DeHaan). Sent on an errand, the hoodie-wearing hesher finds himself caught in a nightmarish landscape of violence, fire, hanging bodies, masked horsemen, crumbling buildings — more or less, the dude’s trapped in a heavy metal video, and not one blessed with particularly original imagery. Yet despite Never‘s deliberately baffling storyline, it’s also often very literal: a fight scene set to “Battery,” for example.
Lead guitarist Kirk Hammett — other members: singer-guitarist James Hetfield, bassist Robert Trujillo, and drummer Lars Ulrich — is the band’s resident movie fanatic; for proof, see Too Much Horror Business, the 2012 book chronicling his memorabilia collection. (Through the Never offers a larger-than-life chance to ogle his Boris Karloff guitar.) Though it contains unsettling elements, Hammett admits that Through the Never isn’t really a horror film.
“We needed to find a concept that fit all four of us as people, as well as Metallica as a band,” he says, holding forth a day after the movie’s Metreon premiere. “There were a lot of different concepts thrown at us. Most of them were science fiction — and while I’m a big sci-fi fan, I just don’t see Metallica making a sci-fi movie. But Nimród’s concept was loose enough that we were able put our own ideas and personalities, and the band personality, into it. Sure, it would’ve been great to have a scary, 60-foot troll tromping around with a Metallica shirt on. It would have been fun for me. But I don’t know if it would have been as much fun for the other guys!”
About that “loose concept” — though Hammett says the decision not to give DeHaan’s character any dialogue was so “anyone could understand [the film] anywhere in the world,” he admits that some viewers have been confused by the story.
However, “the great thing about this movie is that it’s open to interpretation,” he says. “It’s being told in a metaphoric fashion, which means that depending on who you are, and where you are in your life, you’re going to have a different interpretation of this movie. And that’s the beauty of it — it’s like Metallica lyrics. It acts almost as a mirror to what your own life perspective is. That is something that we wholeheartedly chase in all our creative endeavors — we want something that is not, ‘This is a square and that’s it.’ That’s boring! We want something like, ‘Is this a rectangle in a different dimension that has capabilities that we don’t even know about?’ It’s much more of an interesting approach, and I think it was the right one to take with this movie.”
Of course, this isn’t the first time Metallica has been the focus of a feature film — prior to Through the Never came searing, deeply personal 2004 documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.
“Two different animals altogether,” Hammett says of the films. “Monster was a documentary about four people and their real struggles against adversity. This is more along the lines of pure entertainment, being able to put forth a concert scenario and tell a story at the same time. That was really unique and cool for us.” *
METALLICA: THROUGH THE NEVER opens Fri/27 in Bay Area theaters.
