"Caesar Must Die" and "Simon Killer" (Philadelphia Film Festival)

The Taviani Brothers' "Caesar Must Die" and Antonio Campos' "Simon Killer" are two films about bad communication, hopelessness, and predestination. However, in how they examine physical and mental prisons, the movies differ drastically. The Tavianis possess a sentimentality and belief in transformations that Campos almost completely veers away from. The Italians also maintain a distracting artifice that ultimately undermines their film's strengths, while the American largely strives for verisimilitude in depicting boredom, sexuality, violence, and heartache.

Berlin Golden Bear winner "Caesar" follows prisoners putting on "Julius Caesar" in Italian, which means that Shakespeare's language has been translated into a different tongue and (for our English-speaking benefit) back through the subtitles. This essentially turns the brilliant dialogue of this great play into bad, blunt screenwriting. Sure, certain sections are preserved, but for the most part it feels watered down. This diminishes the experience of watching the play, which is a shame, since the production itself is well-done and strongly acted. 

Another huge thorn in my side was the bothersome use of what appeared to be staged docudrama. A raw documentary style, though perhaps impossible, would have suited this film much better, as moments of transcendence are made trivial by their probable fabrication. The whole film would have felt like more of a revelation if it didn't feel scripted; this is especially true for the bits that are compelling nonetheless, such as Salvatore Striano's devotion to his role as Brutus and the grandeur of Giovanni Arcuri as Caesar. But unfortunately the Tavianis pour this artifice on, in hopes of hammering their thesis into place. The film peddles some interesting ideas and stunning images (courtesy of Simone  Zampagni's incredible B&W cinematography), but the whole is repetitive and scattershot, if enjoyable in certain moments. 

"Simon Killer," Campos' similarly cerebral follow-up to his haunting and successful "Afterschool," was a real handful while I was watching it, but after the final monologue ended, it came together to hit me, and hard. Simon (Brady Corbet), its main character (read: definitely not a hero, more of a total asshole), doesn't deserve any of what he stumbles upon, but due to his charms, he continues to end up in potentially worthwhile situations that he continues to squander. He's on a self-imposed exile outside of the US following the dissolution of a stable relationship. He starts out pathetically lonely, aimlessly wandering to Parisian museums, listening to the same few songs, writing notes to his ex, hitting on random French women, and videochatting with his mother. 

He ends up finding a beautiful and hopeful prostitute (Mati Diop) with whom he starts to spend his days. Though their first meetings seem full of good (intensely sexual) chemistry, one can sense a rift due to their disparity in terms of French. One scene, where "Victoria" (her real name isn't listed online) tries to share a horrible memory from her past and Simon (out of ignorance most likely) doesn't understand, is devastating, and kept me in the theater when I was close to walking out. The film often doesn't seem to be going anywhere, but on closer study it definitely is, and it eventually comes into the clear as a work of repetition. 

The setbacks are technical mostly, as Campos is too reliant on empty, common Dardennes-esque formalism when he's capable of much more (take the long take of the opening monologue, the stationary camera during the first sexual encounter between Simon and "Victoria," and the shooting of a disturbingly callous scene in a club set to "Dance Yrself Clean"). However, I really liked the "Enter the Void"-esque psychedelic transitions. The whole film feels pretty empty at points. But I give Campos credit ultimately, as he pushes all the way to a dispiriting, wrenching finish where a stuttering letter motif is repeated for a final time. I can see why this film has only played sparingly since its Sundance premiere, since it angers you, bores you, and eats at you in an uncommonly unsettling way. Yet I see those things as more valuable than most of what "Caesar" had to offer. 

"Simon Killer" is ingenious in its slow playing out of a previously doomed relationship in microcosms for all to see and gasp in horror at. Campos, in his provocative way, stresses how important good communication of various sorts is (stranger/stranger, lover/lover, mother/son, brain/eye), especially in this increasingly disjointed age. It's the kind of film that you might have to see again, even if you can't really muster up the courage to do that. 

Caesar Must Die: C+

Simon Killer: B

Compliance

Here's a movie that upset me. That was trying to upset me, but more enraged me due to its poor handling of the material at hand than due to what it was going for. "Compliance" by Craig Zobel, a man making a career based around films about lying to and humiliating people, is a misfire, a film that's way too quick to vilify and build up disturbing incident. It makes many problematic decisions that derail it from being a meaningful provocation.

Even if events like the one portrayed here have taken place, Zobel nonetheless crudely fashions the situation in an implausible way and hammers hard at his message with contemptuously drawn, stereotyped characters and setting. He removes the audience from sympathizing with the characters (either mistakenly or because he wants us really to hate humanity) by making all the details of the situation, most importantly ones unknown to the central players, known to us from early on. And, with a crappy film-school aesthetic designed to try to dramatize a scenario lacking in cinematic appeal and a score that tries to force you into anger, "Compliance" seethes.

There's nothing wrong with a filmmaker being angry at people. Lars von Trier, most prominently with "Dogville," does this sort of thing all the time, but he knows how and picks his subjects well. Zobel clearly has ire towards the myriad of sexually abusive fast-food prank calls that have sprouted up recently. That these things happened is terrible. But you or I know that just by reading about them. Making a whole film whose core thesis is "strip-searching dehumanizes" or "fast-food working conditions suck" is a waste of time. There has to be more. Zobel scores few points for essentially documenting an inherently appalling spectacle. It's how he treats it, and earns it (or, in this case, doesn't), that really proves what he's all about. And he's done a shitty job of validating it, much like Ben Wheatley ("Kill List") and Lynne Ramsay ("We Need to Talk About Kevin") have recently. The emotions shown by the actors I guess are worth something, but even they seem somewhat calculated and slapdash. I admit that I was held by "Compliance" for much of its running time. But I would have been whatever way this story had been told, and I wish it had been under the control of someone much more capable, someone who could have seen the potential depths. D

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Unfortunately for a film whose title features the words "Beasts," "Southern," and "Wild," Benh Zeitlin's debut doesn't very much truly capture the spirit any of those things. It hits all the marks it has to in order to be a mass-appeal success. Employing starkly enervating vibraphone music and the occasional jittery camera on the technical end, it trusts most of its responsibilities to Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry (who will appear in Steve McQueen's "Twelve Years a Slave"). These are (previously non-)actors who at times are capable of excellent things but at times are given things to do that really exasperated me as a filmgoer. For me, this is a largely unnecessary work that provides some minute perspective but for the most part stirs up a bunch of clatter while trying to pull the occasional heartstring.

It takes place apparently during Hurricane Katrina, on an intensely communal island called The Bathtub off the Louisiana mainland. Hushpuppy (Wallis) and her father Wink (Henry) live in a couple of dilapidated dwellings with a lot of animals and have great kinship with their neighbors. Most people would call this squalor or poverty, but the two relish it and sense of place and community that these people have far surpasses many of those with a more conventional upbringing. The film seems too anxious to get moving, though, and I for one didn't get enough of this environment (save one sequence towards the start, one of only a few, that lives up to the title's promise of craziness) to feel ingrained in the movie. But Zeitlin doesn't seem too concerned with fleshing things out, and thus he lost me pretty early on. The rest of the film concerns their weathering of the extreme storm, and how they stay, and how it's frowned upon to stay. Also the human world (including health) intruding upon their seclusion. This could have been very interesting and engaging, but instead it feels flat and offhand (even if these are people who throw crabs on the table and say "pussy" and are in general "colorful").

Zeitlin and his screenwriting partner Lucy Alibar are pretty dramatically lazy all around, giving his heroine an absent mother and lines of "charming," essentially obvious narration to string things together. He also throws in some legendary creatures that seem to have no effect on the film other than to bloat the budget and to give some weight to Hushpuppy's bouts of stoicism. Sure, there is some real tenderness here at times, but that's largely due to Wallis and Henry (though there are some good lines at times). Nowhere near as restless as it should be, "Beasts of the Southern Wild" is problematic and ultimately fits right into the tradition of mediocre Sundance pictures. To say it's a major highlight of the independent festival's history is to discredit works like Shane Carruth's "Primer." (Even more outrageous may be the fact that it won the Camera d'Or for Best First Film at Cannes.) C

Safety Not Guaranteed (and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter)

I'm huge into cinematic greatness and perfection, but there's an obvious limit on these two quantities when it comes to certain types of films. Sundance indies, that much-derided sub-genre that's become so clear in the past couple decades, is probably the most prominent example of this, along with Hollywood blockbusters. "Safety Not Guaranteed" is in many ways a textbook example of a cliched low-budget film. But even though it has a flawed framework, it comes to work marvelously in spite of itself, and though many of its sins can be pardoned, I wish it had gone the extra mile and done all of the work for us. Alas, neither Colin Trevorrow as director nor Derek Connolly as writer has the chops to make a film like that at this point in their careers, as they're still cutting corners with bright montages and jokes about nerds. But they do provide some surprisingly provocative insights under the playfulness. Most of all, though, they have a remarkable cast of actors, each at the top of their game, who make this a movie worth taking the time to see.

The chemistry achieved by Audrey Plaza and Mark Duplass (also individually outstanding) is an amazing thing, harkening back to the work done by Britt Marling and William Mapother in last year's "Another Earth" but flowering more because this is a stronger film. Both play people on the societal fringes who are looking for happiness in  what appear to be wrongheaded ways. Darius (Plaza), working on a potentially illuminating magazine story with Jeff (Jake M. Johnson) and Arnau (Karan Soni), hasn't been happy since her childhood, and looks dubiously on this assignment to try and find out about Kenneth (Duplass). Kenneth posted a very unspecific classified ad asking for a time-traveling partner, and after Jeff tries to be his man (failing as no doubt many others have in Kenneth's eyes), Darius steps in with the right amount of confidence to satisfy the role. Kenneth has extremely high standards and at first seemingly warped ones; he's a longtime social reject who is routinely considered crazy and whom fears rejection and scorn. In Darius, he finds someone willing to take him seriously and who's actually serious about something herself. 

The film feels the need to take some detours since it apparently can't be only about the relationship of these two. Thus, there is a subplot involving the other two members of the team, most prominently Jeff. Jeff wants to rekindle a long-gone relationship with a girl he used to know in high school (because, weirdly enough, Kenneth is set up in the same Washington town where Jeff went to high school). This could have been a significant misstep, as could have Jeff's attempts to get the shy and conventionally nerdy Arnau laid. But these scenes are played very right, with perfectly chosen details (the aviator sunglasses), and at certain points reach a beauty that really floored me. (They also fit into the film's perceptive overall message about revision and regaining a lost feeling.) I was also impressed with Johnson, whom I remember as being incredibly annoying in the not-often-discussed indie "Paper Heart" with Charlyne Yi and and Michael Cera. Here he's certainly abrasive but much more bearable. 

You have to meet this film halfway. No doubt about it. Perfectionists stay away. It's not incredibly polished, and you might not be happy with the directions it goes in (and avoids). But if you're willing to accept it for what it is, it's quite a pleasure, and certain moments and performances (Duplass' most especially; a heartbreaking and very intense contender for best male acting of the year) are to be savored. B

Abraham Lincoln was already a badass. Okay, maybe not as much as George Washington, but surely, freeing slaves and helping end the Civil War count for something. Add to that an unknown history of vampire hunting, and man, this guy's the real deal. This could have provided for an outlandish, campy, schlocktastic blast, but somewhere along the way, the fun stopped. Was it the studio head, the screenwriter (Seth Grahame-Smith, who also wrote the book), or the director (Timur Bekmambetov, who made the plenty insane "Wanted")? My guess is some combination of the first two (as Bekmambetov has run wild in the past), but there's no way to know why "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" failed to be a transcendent B-movie diversion. Sure, it has some slaying and historical inconsistency, but all the same, this is nowhere near as hilarious and irreverent as it should have been. I did read in an in-flight magazine interview something that may indicate Grahame-Smith was trying to please historical scholars along with regular filmgoers, but that honestly shouldn't have been a factor in the slightest. If only it had been scarier, wackier, or funnier. Only one scene (a completely left field chase sequence through a stampede of horses) shows the kind of tone the film should have had.

Dominic Cooper was the absolute right actor to cast as Henry Sturgess (who teaches Honest Abe in the vampire-hunting arts), and Anthony Mackie is good to have on hand as a freed slave, but having the stolid and too rigidly Lincoln-like Benjamin Walker as the great man was a huge mistake. A better or more game actor could have saved the film from becoming too polite, but Walker seems caught in the middle. The film can be dismissed on these grounds alone, so I suppose it's not particularly worth it to comb through the film's ridiculously-PC racial politics or lack of coherent follow-through. It all feels so tasteful, when very little of it should have been. It does look good, though: Caleb Deschanel (who shot the gorgeous "Natural" way back when), lends allure to mundane moments. C

Martha Marcy May Marlene; Tyrannosaur; Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Philadelphia Film Festival)

I saw two of these three as part of the Philly Film Festival, but "Martha Marcy" (which is now technically in its general release) played earlier in the fest so it's valid in rounding up here. I saw about 15 minutes of "House of Tolerance" (or "Pleasures," whichever you wish to call it), but I walked out so I could catch the end of Game 7 between the Cardinals and the Rangers. Much more interesting, as far as I could tell.

Sean Durkin has made one of the year's most propulsive, engaging films with "Martha Marcy May Marlene." Yet despite being so magnetic, it falls far, far short of being a great film. Durkin is a phenomenal director when it comes to look and atmosphere, but he stumbles mightily in the area of screenwriting. He fails to develop the plot to a satisfactory degree, and thus is unable to reach the heights he's more than capable of achieving.

Martha (Elizabeth Olson), who joined a cult due to her lack of a stable family (and who was renamed Marcy May), ultimately gets fed up and leaves to lay low with her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson), who's on vacation in Connecticut. But Martha's flashbacks and cult-induced tendency towards uncouth behavior quickly start to alienate Lucy and her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy), and Martha's future seems uncertain.

The film's depiction of the cult is unsettling and riveting, full of many beautifully observed details (the men eating as a group, then the women) and POV quirks (rituals are seen from Martha's eyes). But it would be nice if there was just more there, since when the film comes to a close, we feel as if we only caught a glimpse of this faction. When you have John Hawkes at his absolute best, it's a pity to underuse him. (He does have one particularly extraordinary scene, where he sings and plays on guitar a tune called "Marcy's Song.") And Olson's work calls for more as well.

The film's strongest element is its overwhelming technical prowess. Jody Lee Lipes and Zachary Stuart-Pontier do incredible jobs with cinematography and editing, respectively. Though sometimes Lipes uses the wrong lenses in the wrong places, he accomplishes a stark, rattling visual style. And Stuart-Pontier's deft cross-cutting between the present and the past borders on too good at times-- editing usually isn't this seamless anymore. Yet Durkin confuses the pieces he has for a full puzzle when indeed there are some big holes that aren't filled. Thus, though it impresses in spades, "Martha Marcy May Marlene" isn't a full enough work. B-

Paddy Considine's "Tyrannosaur," is a cohesive film, but feels banal and unassured in ways that Durkin was able to avoid. A drunkard named Joseph (Peter Mullan), depressed after kicking his dog to death and being persecuted by the goons of the store owner whom he annoyed, looks for some support in the form of Hannah (Olivia Colman). In his abrasive way, he at first insults Hannah's naivete and devout Christian piety but eventually forms a strong bond with her. She needs some emotional aid as well, seeing that her husband James (Eddie Marsan) is a violent, manipulative, despicable version of his former self.

If it weren't for Colman's magnificent supporting performance, this movie wouldn't be moving in the slightest. It's still not that affecting, but Colman gives it all she can give. Considine does her and Mullan (solid as well) absolutely no favors, soundtracking the film as if it were a folly and piling on disaster after cliche disaster with the grace of a Disney auteur. If I still favored Jim Sheridan over Terence Davies (who, admittedly, did come to mind during this film's better moments), I think I would enjoy this. No dice. C

Nuri Bilge Ceylan has one of the most distinctive eyes in cinema today. Neither of the films of his that I've seen ("Distant" and "Climates") ever caught up to their images. "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" perfectly illustrates why the man should stick to photography or video art and stop with the pretense of making feature length narrative motion pictures. None of the film's rambling philosophy or stilted, patently unfunny comedy ever rings true in the way a single still does. What would have been nice if all of these images had been his, but in fact, Ceylan lifts a whole lot from the canon of Abbas Kiarostami: the use of the zigzag landscape, dashboard cam, the apple rolling from the tree downstream just like the can does in "Close-Up."

Despite these problems, Ceylan has still made a somewhat interesting film with great shots and many memorable, well-defined characters (a prosecutor, a driver, and a police chief among them). It follows a convoy of police officials as they drive around looking for a buried body at the mercy of the captured killer. In a regular film, this section would only take up a fraction of the film. The body would be found and that would be that. But Ceylan decides to devote 120 of 150 minutes on it, and thus incites us into thinking more about this process. I don't think much comes of it at the end, but it's a solid approach. Ultimately, it's less about what happens to the suspected killer and more about what happened to the body and the family of the deceased.

I was rather annoyed with the film's main character, a righteous doctor (Muhammet Uzuner) who seems to be solving everyone's problems and having all sorts of profound psychological quieries. I think most people who can take this guy will enjoy the movie, and those who can't (like me) will be less likely to appreciate it. As for Ceylan, he's becoming a director like Nicolas Winding Refn whose films I like in theory but not all that much in practice. It always seems like he's aspiring to far less than he could. C+

Take Shelter

I'm often very into performance-driven, high-concept works like Jeff Nichols' "Take Shelter." Unfortunately, this film doesn't reach the same heights as its peers due to patchy screenwriting and a dreary rhythm. But it does feature one of the best performance work of the year: a sweaty, committed piece of acting by Michael Shannon, working as the film's borderline schizophrenic lifeblood. He's not always fun to watch, but the film would be rendered ineffective if he were. Seeing him go for broke, it's hard not to be disappointed in Nichols for not coming through.

"Take Shelter" follows about a week in the life of Curtis LaForche (Shannon), a satisfied family man and construction worker, as he gets increasingly freaked out by his dreams and hallucinations of inclement weather (possible symptoms of the insanity that's continued to plague his institutionalized mother since her 30's). Trying to prevent horrific damage, he ends up threatening his relationship with his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain), who's already somewhat occupied making life nice for her deaf daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart). She's not too happy about his spending money (even taking out a loan) on a decked-out tornado shelter when the family could be saving up for a summer in Myrtle Beach. But for Curtis, survival is the only thing worth thinking about.

This potentially brilliant scenario proves to be too tricky for Nichols to pull off. For one, the writing often just isn't there. The final storm scene is an example of when tension can be a bad thing; Nichols draws it out way too far and ends up making a heavy-handed fool of Jessica Chastain. Her part in particular suffers throughout the film. Nichols' debut work, "Shotgun Stories," was centered around father-son conflict and featured primarily male actors. Perhaps that's why "Take Shelter"'s treatment of Samantha doesn't fully work?

Also, Nichols doesn't examine the storm in the fullest way he possibly could have. The film does make a connection between money and the storm, but all the same, the idea of it representing the economic crisis is a bit too muted. But, on an even more fundamental level, fascination with storms (separate from worry), which propels many a storm chaser, is left somewhat in the dark as well. I must say though that the way in which Nichols implements a possible and much-remarked-upon religious angle (displayed in by far the film's best scene, when Curtis vehemently preaches to a stupefied cafeteria, as well as in the fact that Curtis is in his 30's) is ace. But all-in-all, "Take Shelter" is too locked-down for its own good. Nichols may have had to sacrifice some of the intensity, but perhaps it would have been a better film if he had opened it up a bit. B-

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Goran Olsson's extremely uneven "The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975" is a depressingly systematic and repetitive documentary that serves as a vehicle for valuable, recently found clips shot by Swedes during the eponymous time and regarding the eponymous movement. The group of people surveyed, from famous pioneers (Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis) to anonymous protesters and ex-addicts to the head of TV Guide, not to mention a sprinkling of modern voiceovers that include Talib Kwali and Questlove, is brilliantly diverse. But the strength from these interviews is diluted by the film's intense lack of focus and hammering, formulaic structure.

Olsson, along with Hanna Lejongvist, won an editing award at Sundance for finding a moderately coherent rhythm within tons of footage and marrying dozens of formats. To me, that's more just honoring the work than celebrating a real achievement. I don't think Olsson has much directorial control, as he often wanders and makes it seem as if the archives are thin. He has a motif of displaying the year in large print on the screen and noting every time a speaker changes, to keep things down. I can't say that these things made the film a more digestible experience, however, and, though one may argue that I'm being too pedantic about a potentially edifying work such as tis, I feel as though this film falls below the standards set by the top movies in the nonfiction cinema canon.

But there are strong stretches here, such as when Talib Kweli talks about the power of Stokely Carmichael, when Louis Farrakhan speaks avidly about the philosophy of the Nation of Islam, or when Angela Davis (caught in a bold, iconic close-up) expresses her frustration about the popular notion of violence. These are worth seeing. The rest is a mix of stylization and sharp preachiness, tolerable but hardly outstanding. I wish this project was in better hands. B-

The Guard

Bland and salvaged from dreariness only by the moderate strength of its two lead actors, John Michael McDonagh's "The Guard" is a lackluster answer to brother Martin's "In Bruges," much in the same way Carlos Cuaron's "Rudo y Cursi" was to any of brother Alfonso's films. A good time at the picture show? Yeah, I liked watching it, but it's nowhere near as strong in any department as its predecessor, and you have wonder eventually what the point is.

It's a good idea to star Brendan Gleeson instead of giving him a supporting role, but if you're going to do that, you have to give him better material. Watching this film, I was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something funnier or more interesting to come. Don Cheadle, playing the straight man, supplies some laughs and holds the screen, but it's really not enough. I admittedly didn't pick up some of what was said early on, due to the thickness of the characters' accents (this movie is set in Ireland and proud of it), but really there seemed to be something lacking.

The film follows abrasive Sgt. Gerry Boyle (Gleeson), who, though not really a horrible person, is not above taking (and doing) drugs from the pockets of deceased lawbreakers, as he investigates a case involving $500 million worth of cocaine. That's where FBI Agt. Wendell Everett (Cheadle) comes in, who comes to appreciate Boyle's company, despite some initial racial and nationalist issues (which, truth be told, are actually pretty humorous).

Since the POV is objective, we also get to meet the criminals (played by "Hunger"'s Liam Cunningham, "Kick-Ass"'s Mark Strong, and David Wilmot), who, though they talk about philosophers and insult colorfully, aren't the most interesting guys to watch (though one moment when Cunningham and Strong burst into laughter is pretty golden). There are also scenes with Gerry's dying mother Eileen (Fionnula Flanagan), probably the only well-defined female character in the whole film. (Of course, when you watch a film like this, you're not likely to find a lot of depth there. But the other three we get, two prostitutes and an ever weeping "Romanian" widow, are paltry stereotypes.) Around her, we get to see Gleeson show off his sweeter side, which is nice, though it doesn't really solve the film's problems (although I think McDonagh hopes it might).

I enjoyed this film perhaps a bit more than I'm letting on. But when I think back on an experience, I want it to be worth something in some way, and "The Guard" doesn't meet those standards. It's very uneven and ultimately doesn't really work. I really hope the next film by a McDonagh is Martin's. C

The Future

At the center of Miranda July's appeal is a contradiction. In my opinion, she's a far stronger actress than writer or director. However, I feel it would be strange, almost not right, to see her performing in anything except for works that she herself has created. If only the two sides of the equation could fit together. "The Future" at certain points gets close to equilibrium, but doesn't succeed in the end due to a problematic lack of cohesion and a dreadful opening half. For me, "Me and You and Everyone We Know," her essentially unwatchable but bizarrely beloved first film, is the beginning of this movie blown up to feature length. Luckily, as the film progresses, July touches on issues and concepts that illuminate the film as a whole and prevent it from being as awful as its predecessor, but when she does, it's too late (ironically enough, when you consider the subject of the film).

The film is framed around the adoption of an injured cat named Paw-Paw (to whom July gives a scratchy voice) by two unhappily employed people, Sophie (July as well) and Jason (Hamish Linklater). They want to do more with their lives, but they feel they should do their part and bring this cat to live with them. That means having their freedom drastically cut (to roughly a month, when they are scheduled to pick the cat up), as the cat could live for a long time and, when it dies, could leave them stranded past the halfway mark in their own lives.

This constraint seems to be a liberation of sorts, as both quit their jobs and strive to do something: Sophie undertaking a project known as "30 Days 30 Dances," Jason trying to sell trees and save the earth as part of a small environmental operation. But ultimately, the constraint sort of disappears, as Sophie grows frustrated and bored with her web series (it doesn't really go anywhere) and goes off on a different tangent and Jason tries to hang on to their semblance of a life while maintaining the idea that everything's gone anyways.

The film includes a few elements of the surreal, such as the moon talking (pessimistically) and Jason's ability to stop time, which seems like a folly (everyone's pretending at first) until it actually takes effect. This mood of spontaneity both helps and hurts the film, as it leads the action into interesting territory but also ends up undermining the emotional impact, as it feels like there's no center holding things together.

But it must be said that the film's strong second half is devastating, quite probably because one cannot see it coming from the beginning. It shows that people settle into different roles as time passes and ultimately inhabit them for good, eventually feeling like they've always held them, even if at one point the idea of doing so would seem incredibly crazy or sad. That's something. If July 1) had made the opening feel like more than just a tedious setup and 2) had more fully realized her theses, a piercing film could have resulted. Instead, she juggles a bunch of plots (as she's done before), only getting little bits of gold out of each. C

Note: Despite the objections I find with her work, I still think July is superb at naming her films. However, though "The Future" is a great, intriguing title, when all is said and done, "Satisfaction," her working title, fits much better.

Terri

Azazel Jacobs' "Terri" is at its best towards the beginning. Here, the lulling, moderate pace jells with the sharp, shrewd, and enjoyably subtle examination of the characters provided by Jacobs and fellow screenwriter Patrick Dewitt. As the film proceeds into its later portions, the brushstrokes with which the filmmakers paint their subjects become a bit more erratic, and the incisive part of the equation comes to disagree somehow with the movie's speed. The climactic scenes are sensitive and unearth character traits, but since something's slightly off they are a little less entertaining.

That being said, John C. Reilly holds down each and every scene he's in, only faltering when the script lets him down. He plays Mr. Fitzgerald, the principal (or maybe assistant principal) who takes the disillusioned Terri (Jacob Wysocki) under his wing. Reilly plays glib but sincere, spinning off of his usual persona (most drawn out as Dr. Steve Brule on "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!") into more complex areas, places I haven't seen him go in a long time--if ever. It's the best performance of his career by far, giving Jacobs exactly what he needs, transcending the minor problems written into his role.

Terri is considered a "good-hearted kid," that is, he has an extremely strong moral center. Stuff gets in the way of that sometimes, but ultimately, he knows what's right and wrong. The problem is, he's been having a hard time keeping up with the bare minimum requirements of school, always showing up late to every class. This is not helped by the fact that he needs to take care of his unstable Uncle James (Creed Bratton, most famously known for "The Office," though he's not exceptional here), not to mention his obesity (which gets him picked on and gets in the way of his getting with his romantic interest, namely Heather, played by Olivia Croicchia). A number of things happen, though, that point to leading him from glumness. His counseling with Mr. Fitzgerald is the most prominent catalyst, even though that involves some tremors. He also gets closer to Heather once he lifts some of the burden off of her that resulted from a pariah-making PDA. But catharsis doesn't come so simply in the end, emotionally and otherwise, especially because of two other characters: Mr. Fitzgerald's dying secretary Ms. Hamish (Mary Anne McGarry, who gives more than what seemed possible in the confines of her role's original one-joke routine) and consistently problematic Chad (Bridger Zadina), who seems to be the product of some sort of emotional neglect.

I appreciated the film's comedic aspects (Wysocki and Reilly are strong in this field), as well as the awareness it has of its characters. However, I found certain bits of the story nebulous, especially towards the end. It's nice how Jacobs and Dewitt don't feel the need to spell every little thing out, but I would have been happier if the resolution had felt slightly more assured. "Terri" has definite plusses, but lacks in depth where it could have been well-shaded, and thus probably will not age terribly well. B

Another Earth

Mike Cahill's "Another Earth" feels sort of tossed off. Maybe that was because the film got rushed for Sundance (if so, that decision paid off handsomely with a Special Jury Prize). Even if that wasn't the case, I wish Cahill had gotten more of a sense of what his movie was about. He has two winning actors in Brit Marling (his fellow screenwriter on the project) and William Mapother, and he and Marling have a potentially stimulating idea in having an exact copy of the Earth appear and be open to scientific and popular speculation. But they hardly explore what it really means to have another planet right there in the sky. I'm pretty sure tidal movements would be totally screwed up, not to mention orbits and all that jazz. We get the invasion angle, and the "what can that me tell me about me" angle (as humans are the same on that planet as well), but not really any satisfactory depth. It's woven into the plot in a way that makes sense, but at the same time it would have been cool to actually know more about it, instead of just having newsspeak thrown at us. And although I know the ending fits in with the processes of science and is somewhat sound on a thematic level, it feels rather like a cop-out, especially since a lot of great fiction has the protagonist eventually experience the mystery at the center of the plot, and as a result we do too. Not here.

As for what I experienced when I watched "Another Earth": I'm from the area where "Another Earth" is set and was shot, and perhaps I might have been more into the film if I hadn't been so distracted by the locations (Truffaut was right when he said that watching a film in a place you're familiar with is hard). Nonetheless, we plunge into the action in the suburbs of New Haven, as Rhoda Williams (Marling) drinks to celebrate her getting into MIT and then drives and, while taking her eyes off the road to take a look at the other Earth (as a radio broadcaster, DJ Flava, chimes in, one of the film's finest details), gets into a fatal crash where only she and the driver of the other car survive (a wife and a son are killed). This leads to her imprisonment (and thus her not going to college), which sends her into a state of intense depression (long walks and laying down in the snow naked are not out of the question), still hanging on her when she gets out four years later.

Working a menial job far below her possible trajectory, she goes to try to get the forgiveness of the other driver, a composer and ex-Yale-professor named John Burroughs (Mapother), but instead keeps quiet about the accident and atones in a different way, by cleaning his extremely messy house. The two are initially distanced, but they bond over Wii Boxing and discussions of the other planet. Soon, though, they do share profound things, like music played with a bow on a saw (not feasible, seemingly, but who knows?*) and an anecdote about a cosmonaut. You can see where this is going, but the tropes that the film employs sometimes do work, mostly do to the work of the leads. ALL of the actors in the film are superior to the script with which they are supplied. Better writing could have led to a great success.

There are scenes that really work, but as a whole, the film has trouble with justifying its existence. In retrospect, it just barely does, but there are sections of the film that don't go far in giving the film any point (other than the somewhat shallow notion of "can I learn from me"; I'm more interested in the film's idea of "how would I confront me"). Ultimately, "Another Earth" is not really in the right hands, and as a result lacks the muscle and cohesion it takes to tell a story like this. C+

*I learn from @SawLady on Twitter: "Playing music on a saw is totally possible." Here's the link she provided to the NYC Musical Saw Festival, an amazing-sounding event. Also, if you want to know what the fuss is about regarding the saw in this film, go here to the other link she gave.

The Ledge

"The Ledge," in its basic plot and structure, stands as both convoluted and banal, but until about the final ten minutes I was pretty sure that it had a saving grace: it dealt with religion in a way outside of the norm. However, after having seen how the whole film plays out, I'm not sure exactly what the film's stance on faith is, and I think that's a problem. Even when it seems like it's achieving some degree of clarity, "The Ledge" is really dancing around the issue. There are a couple moments in the film where this is obviously happening (where writer/director Matthew Chapman tries to supply levity about it by conflating it with vulgarity), but I thought that ultimately the film had really worked things out. Such was not the case.

The way the film unfolds imitates many other recent films and fails to achieve success. Gavin (Charlie Hunnam, a goofy romantic presence with bad haircut and voice not unlike the kid in this) seems to be one of those routine cases, a jumper on the ledge of a building who can be coaxed off with much pleading from a cop, in this case Hollis (Terrence Howard). Nope, he's not normal, as you probably guessed. He's a hotel manager or something who has gotten into an affair with Shauna (Liv Tyler), who's married to an ultra-strict Born Again Christian named Joe (an extremely corny Patrick Wilson). Gavin gets to know Shauna through her position as a maid at the hotel, and also because she lives across the hall from him. This proximity leads to much "temptation," as Joe would look at it. Not to mention much intramural tension, as Joe, when the two meet at dinner and a "philosophy discussion," comes to get pissed about Gavin's very pronounced lack of faith and apparent homosexuality. Each thinks the other is "cold-hearted," though, while Joe would suggest conversion to Evangelical Christianity and being "saved," Gavin's way of solving that turns out to be trying to help out Shauna. This comes to bear disastrous consequences.

I'm not really sure what Chapman is trying to prove here, other than that different people have different views of faith, which couldn't be more clear. He doesn't seem to understand that you can't really make a movie about a subject like this and avoid the responsibility of having to say something about it. The vacant conclusiveness of the end scene, which is part of a subplot to further the idea that really everybody has problems (except for gay secondary characters), really reveals that the film has no particular thesis; that's a big problem. To add to that, despite its somewhat out-of-the-ordinary dialogue about doctrine, "The Ledge" doesn't have original ways of presenting information, and we are subject to the usual confessional stories about what sins these people committed in the past that defined their lives. I have to admit, "The Ledge" has more value than I thought it was possible for it to have. That being said, I'm still disappointed that it came up short, as it realizes some but (importantly) not all of its opportunities. C+

Attenberg; Shut Up Little Man! (New Directors/New Films)

The second and final day of my ND/NF sojourn (split up over two Saturdays) was much more uneven and much less revelatory than the previous one. I saw one very good feature, but the other film I saw and the two shorts that accompanied the two movies were rather poor.

Without further ado: I first saw "Attenberg" by Athina Rachel Tsangari, after the lame short "Match" by Kate Barker-Froyland (which took a weird manner in revealing information about the characters, as well as in concluding). To give you a good idea of what to expect from this film, it apparently stemmed from the question "Do you imagine me naked?" Tsangari said in her Q&A that her making of this film was finding out the parameters of this question: "to whom, and why?" It turns out to be Marina (Ariane Labed) asking her expiring widower father Spyros (Vangelis Mourikis), one of a couple of people who are in her life. Though his answer is one of disgust, this is not a conventional dad, as he is one inclined to scream and act like a wild animal right with his daughter. We are led to believe, as there is no mention of an sort of higher education, that Marina's reading, watching Sir David Attenborough (whose mispronounced name is the basis for the title) on TV, and acting crazy with her father is the only sort of upbringing that she's ever had.

Her only other contact in the world at the film's opening is a close friend named Bella (Evangelia Randou), whom she calls a "dirty slut." The two of them do outlandish shit, like spitting, riding around on motorcycles, walking arm in arm, and looking at their shoulder blades (in the film's most beautiful image). Bella also explains about sex to her, about "prick-trees" and how to French kiss effectively. It is an interesting and insightful look at the sort of friendship that leaves everybody else out, most prominently noted in a scene where the two lip-synch together to a song about loneliness, divided by a curb from the rest of their youthful cohorts. This is one of about three scenes in the film where we see other people besides the direct characters in the film, though in each the leads remain pretty much completely isolated. Tsangari mentioned her friendship with Giorgos Lanthimos, director of "Dogtooth," as "a partnership of two" and maybe that's where she got the inspiration to include this bond between Marina and Bella.

Lanthimos is also in "Attenberg" himself, as the engineer that Marina shuttles into town (which can only remind one of the father bringing in the woman for the son to have sex with in "Dogtooth"). The two of them will go on to intercourse themselves, but not before they have a discussion about their favorite Suicide songs, perhaps somewhat of a jab at the postmodernism peddled nonstop by Tarantino (which has ironically come in without a pop culture overload consumed).

I had some qualms with "Attenberg" on an ideological level (that I still mildly bear, but feel foolish bringing up just in case I'm way off base), and its lack of a cadence is understandably anti-establishment but also unfortunate. But other than those problems, it is a diverting and intelligent film. Like "Dogtooth," it's about how the "normal," especially sexually, isn't always quite so normal. It also has one of the least sentimental views of a person on their deathbed in a long time, yet it's anything but hard-hearted, due to Mourikis' very good acting. But the most impressive job is done by Labed, who is entirely deserving of the Best Actress award she won at Venice. She throws herself into this role, and the result of this intense devotion is an astonishing performance. The cinematography is also masterful, especially in its use of color (and, as my friend noted, its absence) and framing. All-in-all, "Attenberg" goes down easier than the suffocating "Dogtooth" (a companion piece of sorts), and I wouldn't mind seeing it again. B+

Despite its shortcomings, "Attenberg" of the films I saw is the one that seems most like it should have been saved for a higher, if you will, festival (perhaps the NYFF?). "Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure" by Matthew Bate from Sundance's US Documentary Competition, however, should have been rejected from even ND/NF, or else shown in an ironic, this-is-what-not-to-do sort of way. After I had just seen the documentary form totally trashed by the surreal and totally unrevealing nonfiction short"Fwd: Update on My Life" by Nicky Tavares (which strung bits of information incoherently together without anything explaining them), Bate's wall-to-wall use of completely cliche technique shows that we shouldn't hand over the medium to amateurs.

The film talks about how audio tapes made by two sleep-deprived (well, one of them isn't affected by it) San Fran émigrés of their neighbors began to circulate, acquire devoted listeners, and started to become material for plays, samples, and comic books. In the hands of a talented documentarian, maybe this would have been interesting, but instead, it fails to improve (I assume) on the experience of reading one of the many articles waved in front of the camera. We never hear/read/see any of the recordings or their spinoffs from beginning to end, which suggests either 1) the filmmaker assumes the audience has some degree of familiarity with them or 2) that there's really not much there.

For this film to be successful, it would have to be much more probing and a lot more succinct. Instead, we get bad and anachronistic dramatic re-enactments that are used over and over again due to a lack of authentic video. 85 minutes is a short running time, but it consists mostly of padding and thus one may confuse it for 170. The film claims to have some sort of heady ideological angle, but it comes off not only as more inflicting flab but also, as my friend and reviewers such as Nick Schager have pointed out, as crap. I thank the film for introducing me to this subject, but I can't give it much more credit than that, and can only say that sitting through it is a cinematic misadventure (apologies to Dane Cook). C-

An Interview with Jon Foy, director of “Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles”

(src)

“Resurrect Dead” played at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Documentary Competition. Foy won the award for Best Director.

Flick Pick Monster: How did you conceive of this project and why did you choose this to be your first film?

Jon Foy: I think that for me a lot of this stuff happens on a gut level, so it’s really hard to know exactly why. I wanted to do something that seemed kind of fantastical, like magical realism, but this is all a documentary, it’s all true. And so I sensed that I could kind of present it is being this fantastical thing—that’s the mode of delivery, but it’s all real information and real events. That really appealed to me on that level. I’ve seen this kind of trend in Hollywood of doing films that are presented as found footage—stuff like “Blair Witch” or “Cloverfield” or things like that--- and that’s pretty cool, but to me it seemed interesting to me to go in the opposite direction, to take something as real and present it as unreal as possible [laughs].

FPM: I understand you composed the music and also edited the movie. How was that and do you like controlling all the aspects of the movie?

JF: Well, I self-funded the movie as a house cleaner. I spent 5 and half years working odd jobs. And the whole time I did clean houses. I did some other stuff: I did drug studies, I stocked shelves at a local food store. I did all sorts of crazy stuff. I was able to do everything myself because there was nobody that was controlling the money that was able to say, you’re crazy, directors don’t get to write their own scores.

I taught myself how to score specifically so that I could score this project. The score’s pretty key to the movie. I would say that goes back to what I said before about this being like a cinematic delivery: I wanted it to feel unreal, I wanted it to feel cinematic, like you’re actually seeing something that’s fictional. But again, it’s all very true-we’re not literally making anything up, it’s just that there’s this fantastical, whimsical music, and mysterious music going underneath that sort of elevates the mood of it.

I did compose the score, I edited, I shot it, I funded it, I directed it. I also did other smaller things, like the sound design and the sound mixing and the color. Pretty much everything, although I had a lot of helping as far as like dealing with concepts from Colin Smith, who also was producing the film. He would do a lot of quality control, of watching the film and letting me know, this part goes on too long, things like that, and he worked on the pacing…

FPM: What films and directors have influenced you? When I heard of this documentary, I was thinking it sounds kind of like Banksy [and his "Exit Through the Gift Shop"].

JF: We loved that movie. Well, that movie came out late in the game, in the last year or so, when our movie was being more or less wrapped up. But, yeah, certainly: we were so happy when we heard that movie came out that we actually went to the theater and saw it as soon as we could because we thought, oh my god another movie that’s kind of like ours [laughs].

I would say my influences were around the time that I was growing up—maybe around like 10 years old, I was seeing all these wonderful films that a lot of us probably grew up with. The Spielberg stuff, the early Tim Burton stuff, Star Wars-- all these wonderful escapist Hollywood films. That was the stuff that really planted the seed for me to want to be a filmmaker.

And then what happened was I got into punk rock, and that shaped my understanding of this raw approach to art and feeling as if you can do things yourself, you don’t need to hire professionals. You can just do things, and if they’re a little rough, then whatever, they’ll come across as being more honest anyway.

It is a very lo-fi film. I pretty much learned how to do everything as I went [laughs]. Not a whole lot of training or anything. So I would say a mix of those two things: those wonderful, fantastical films, and then, as viewed through the lens of someone who cobbles together things very raw and immediate, through the lens of punk rock, that’s how you end up with stuff like this [laughs].

FPM: Without spoiling anything, do you feel like you’ve found a satisfying answer to the mystery of the tiles in the making of this documentary?

JF: Well, the answer is yes and no. We leave people to decide what they think, but we present our evidence, we’re satisfied with what we discovered, and where the story took us. We felt like it was an adventure, and we shared that on film. We hope that people will enjoy it as well. And I guess people can make up their own minds, because a lot of it is conjecture, a lot of it is guesswork; we bring together things from the past… And so I guess it’s kind of interesting: we leave people to debate it afterwards and leave them to decide what they think of what we found. But hopefully it’ll be entertaining, regardless of what people come up with.