August 27, 2008
REVIEW | Once Upon a Time in the East: Takashi Miike's "Sukiyaki Western Django"
by Leo Goldsmith (August 27, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
Django,
Tarantino,
Miike: These names alone are enough to tell anyone whether or not "
Sukiyaki Western Django" is for them. If you only know the middle guy, don't bother (and for shame!); if you know and like all three, you've probably already seen and blogged about the movie anyway.
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August 26, 2008
REVIEW | Dite-moi: Jiri Menzel's "I Served the King of England"
by Michael Joshua Rowin (August 26, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
For the last decade American movie audiences have been bludgeoned so mercilessly with poorly and vacuously executed whimsy ("We're drowning in quirk,"
Michael Hirschorn famously wrote in the September 2007 issue of
Atlantic Monthly, and I wholeheartedly agree) that an even partially successful excursion into magical realism like Czech New Waver
Jiri Menzel's "
I Served the King of England" comes as nearly a relief, a rare contemporary example of how fanciful, wide-eyed filmmaking can be employed not simply for the sake of ironic condescension or set design window-dressing but for genuine emotional and political exploration.
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August 21, 2008
REVIEW | The Rising: Tia Lessin and Carl Deal's "Trouble the Water"
by Michael Joshua Rowin (August 21, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
"I'm showing the world that we had a world before the storm," says
Kimberly Rivers Roberts, a.k.a. Black Kold Madina, on August 28, 2005, the day preceding Hurricane Katrina's devastating touch down in New Orleans. Kimberly is poor, black, and, unlike the majority of the city's wealthier white citizens, unable to "afford the luxury" of transportation that could take her out of what will prove to be a very vulnerable Dodge. Armed with a newly purchased camcorder, she records and narrates her preparations for the storm as well as the ongoing life of her Ninth Ward community, including neighbors' defying boasts in the face of reports warning residents to evacuate their homes due to the impending category-five hurricane.
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August 18, 2008
REVIEW | Tomb of the Mommy: Azazel Jacobs's "Momma's Man"
by Michael Koresky (August 18, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
Considering that
Azazel Jacobs, the director of "
Momma's Man," is the offspring of American avant-garde filmmaker extraordinaire
Ken Jacobs, one would be forgiven for expecting his film to be more experimental and abstract than the seemingly conventional narrative that plays out. Yet buried beneath the poignant clutter of this occasionally familiar stunted-youth-in-life-transition tale is a surprisingly complex, elegantly detailed meditation on creativity and artistic growth. While Ken Jacobs may work with found footage, purposefully elongating time and reassembling it into tapestries of pointed Americana, his son has constructed a personal fiction film using the detritus of his own life: the downtown Manhattan loft where he grew up, the gadgets and tchotchkes strewn about it like cherished memories, and his parents themselves.
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August 12, 2008
REVIEW | Split Ends: Claude Chabrol's "A Girl Cut in Two"
by Kristi Mitsuda (August 12, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
At first glance,
Claude Chabrol's latest seems yet another in his long line of slow-boiling thrillers, set mostly amongst the upper classes, in which the sinister bobs up above a seemingly placid surface -- compulsively watchable and strangely unsettling, sure, but par for the course for the erstwhile New Waver. Yet while "
A Girl Cut in Two" treads in waters made murky with mysterious allusions to disreputable pasts and intimations of impending murder, the filmmaker intriguingly muddies the generic proceedings by probing his characters' ingrained sexism; it's an approach that deepens what could have been just another true crime story.
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August 10, 2008
REVIEW | Pale Fire: Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
by Michael Koresky (August 10, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
Each review of a new, annual
Woody Allen film needn't require an overarching, state-of-his-art introduction, but it's hard to fight the urge to do so. The fact that, even at this late stage in his career, America's most prolific just-off-mainstream filmmaker instigates such charged responses from so many viewers -- whether a bemused, wistful smile or a fly-swatting "feh" -- goes a long way in proving that there's still vitality here, even if it often exists in the debates around his work more than in the worlds of the films themselves. Antiquated though Allen's brand of verbose, narcissistic city-dwellers may now be (even at wishfully young ages in such films as "
Anything Else," "
Melinda and Melinda," and now "
Vicky Cristina Barcelona"), there will always be a core of truth to their self-aware bourgeois bitterness.
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August 7, 2008
iW AUGUST PRODUCTION REPORT | "Palace," "Exam," "Heart," "Magic Bus" and "New York, I Love You"
by Jason Guerrasio (June 4, 2008)
[EDITOR'S NOTE: indieWIRE's monthly production report looks at independent films in various stages of production. If you'd like to tell us about a film in production for future columns, please
contact us.]
In June's edition of indieWIRE's production column, Jason Guerrasio profiles five new films in various stages of production. This month's group includes David Kaplan's "7 to the Palace," Stuart Hazeldine's "Exam," Zak Forsman's "Heart of Now," Alex Gibney's "The Magic Bus," and concept creator Emmanuel Benbihy's "New York, I Love You."
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August 6, 2008
REVIEW | Age of Consent: Isabel Coixet's "Elegy"
by Nick Pinkerton (August 6, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
In what may be a perfect sophisto storm, none other than Sir
Ben Kingsley plays
Philip Roth's academic antihero David Kepesh, a solemn piano underscoring his negotiations with sex, art, and mortality in the Continental Manhattan of
Isabel Coixet's new film, "
Elegy." Kepesh teaches literature at Columbia and, as a low-key celebrity cultural critic -- is there any other kind of intellectual celebrity -- works the NPR/
Charlie Rose circuit.
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August 4, 2008
REVIEW | Circle Jerk: Rodger Grossman's "What We Do Is Secret"
by Michael Koresky (August 4, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
The world certainly isn't wanting for hagiographies of Seventies punk-rock trailblazers, but rarely has one felt as inauthentic as
Rodger Grossman's feature debut, "
What We Do Is Secret." Grossman short-changes his subject by framing the tragic, brief musical career and suicide of the Germs' front man
Darby Crash (ne Paul Beahm) as a by-the-book rise-and-fall narrative. Even if the film pretends to problematize his image (as hesitant political proselytizer; as scum poet) by inserting half-focused, black-and-white talking-head interview footage of Crash (as embodied by
Shane West) making provocations about the need for a fascist state, Grossman is far more interested in him as rock god, capitulating to the standard biopic romanticization of truly unhappy people. (
Gus Van Sant smartly abstracted such deification in "
Last Days.") Grossman may purposely portray Crash as self-mythologizing, but the film is all too happy to follow that lead.
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August 3, 2008
REVIEW | Corked: Randall Miller's "Bottle Shock"
by Kristi Mitsuda (August 3, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
In "
Bottle Shock," director and co-scripter
Randall Miller -- of such disparate (and dismal) output as the
Sinbad-starring "
Houseguest" and painfully twee indie "
Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing and Charm School" -- seemingly extrapolates
Virginia Madsen's centerpiece soliloquy on wine from "
Sideways" and stretches it out to feature length, but with none of
Alexander Payne's eloquence or wit.
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August 1, 2008
PARK CITY '08 REVIEW | Women of the Year: Courtney Hunt's "Frozen River"
by Steve Ramos (August 1, 2008)
EDITORS NOTE: This review of Sundance Film Festival grand jury prize winner "Frozen River" was originally published during festival. As Ray Eddy, the heroine of filmmaker
Courtney Hunt's riveting melodrama "
Frozen River;" a working-class mom in Upstate New York trying to care for two sons after her husband skips out with the family savings, actress
Melissa Leo sports a nose turned red from the winter cold. She has creased cheekbones weathered by hard living and tattoos on her thin body. Leo is the female embodiment of harsh New York winters and the impoverished rural communities along the St. Lawrence River. But don't think for a second that Leo's unforgettable lead performance in "Frozen River" is purely a physical one. As Ray, the type of workingwoman seldom seen in movies, Leo shows a fiery passion to do right by her sons and emotional power bright enough for ten movie dramas.
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July 31, 2008
REVIEW | Sweatin' to the Oldies: Darryl Roberts's "America the Beautiful"
by Michael Koresky (July 31, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
Opening with "vintage" black-and-white footage of women from the Fifties huffing and puffing through antiquated exercise routines, set to
Bruce Channel's "Hey, Baby," the ostensible investigative documentary "
America the Beautiful" establishes its de-facto glibness within seconds. Throughout the course of the film, further video montages will be set to such ferociously on-topic chestnuts as
Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy,"
Marilyn Manson's "The Beautiful People," and
Letters to Cleo's "I Wanna Be a Supermodel," ironically backing images of primped, preening girls or magazine model cut-outs. Director
Darryl Roberts's mode of address is so hackneyed and juvenile, and the editing strategies and muddy non-aesthetic so predictable, that one has to try and look beyond the surface of things to find any value here; after all, that's what Roberts himself has attempted to do in making it.
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July 29, 2008
REVIEW | Soft Shoe: Alex Holdridge's "In Search of a Midnight Kiss"
by Kristi Mitsuda (July 29, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
From "
Sunset Boulevard" to "
Mulholland Drive" and beyond, most movies revolving around Hollywood hopefuls portray the greater Los Angeles area as a soulless cesspool into which the hordes can't help but sink. But in his Tinseltown-set feature "
In Search of a Midnight Kiss," Alex Holdridge reimagines L.A. as a place of renewal and unsung beauty: Skyline shots inclusive of freeway traffic, graphic compositions incorporating the city's variegated architecture, and even the Hollywood sign shrouded by smoggy haze are lovingly lensed in stark black-and-white in obvious homage to
Woody Allen's "
Manhattan" (though this hipster kid on the block scores his images to the indie rock of Shearwater rather than Gershwin).
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SHORTS COLUMN | Outfest 2008 Scouting Report: Ten Short Filmmakers You Should Know
by Kim Adelman (July 29, 2008)
Outfest 2008: The 26th Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival scheduled an amazing 12 short film programs over the course of this year's festival, which runs July 9 to 21st. With the programs centering around themes such as "Young and Restless" and "Laugh All You Want," the shorts ranged from earnest coming of age dramas to irreverent political riffs. And while production values and the quality of acting varies wildly, one thing unites all Outfest shorts: each showcases a unique filmmaking voice. While some like
Guinevere Turner are already known entities, many other directors are student filmmakers who may not be on the radar yet but should be. Here's a look at ten short film helmers making some noise at Outfest.
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July 28, 2008
REVIEW | Dropped Ball: Paul Weiland's "Sixty-Six"
by Leo Goldsmith (July 28, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
There is a certain class of British film -- for which
John Boorman's "
Hope and Glory" is perhaps the prototype -- which follows an adolescent boy's coming of age during a notable or sentimentality-laced period of twentieth-century English history. Invariably in such films, there is a female object of incipient pubescent desire; a belligerent older brother who usurps most of the family's attention; and a redemptive father figure through whom the protagonist learns to stiffen his upper lip and be an Englishman. More often than not, the garden shed is a focal point of action.
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July 24, 2008
REVIEW | Carnival of Old Souls: Margaret Brown's "The Order of Myths"
by Michael Koresky (July 24, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
It may come as something of a shock to most that in Mobile, Alabama, a culturally sanctified segregation still exists. And documentary filmmaker
Margaret Brown must be relying on that shock from viewers of her exacting new film "
The Order of Myths," even if it resolutely avoids sensationalism or polemics from the top down. On the face of it, Brown's document of Mobile's annual Mardi Gras celebration, a centuries-old tradition that predates even the establishment of New Orleans and which still maintains separate events for black and white residents, is an energetic, if unsettling, tribute to the strange persistence of tradition; yet like gently lifting a decaying flagstone with a twig, Brown has managed, in a fleet 75 minutes, to uncover quite a lot about (obviously) America's entrenched racism and (perhaps not so obviously) why our presumably modern sensibilities allow for its continuity.
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July 22, 2008
REVIEW | Walking in the Air: James Marsh's "Man on Wire"
by Michael Koresky (July 22, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
A blow-by-blow account of how, in 1974, the impish French performance artist, and ludicrously appropriately named
Philippe Petit achieved (and survived) the seemingly otherworldly when he walked on a tightrope situated 1350 feet in the air, anchored between the World Trade Center's twin towers,
James Marsh's documentary "
Man on Wire" is a fleet, engagingly narrated, and [insert "taut" here] suspense narrative. Like the events it's based on, "Man on Wire" is the kind of film that's more inspiring to witness than it is to later think (or write) about, but let it be said that Marsh's adeptness at mounting his tale is undeniable, and what the film lacks in any sort of subtextual richness it more than makes up in narrative functionality and the clarity with which it reconstructs Petit's mission impossible.
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July 19, 2008
REVIEW | Disconnect Four: Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass's "Baghead"
by Michael Koresky (July 19, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
A refreshingly high-concept low-budget outing, the
Duplass Brothers' "
Baghead" is an immensely likeable and surprisingly well-executed genre hybrid. The difficulty one finds in trying to categorize it is part of its charm, and this is not just whether one sees it as horror, comedy, or relationship roundelay but also how one defines and compartmentalizes its aesthetic: "Baghead"'s makers and at least one of its stars may have crawled out from under the "mumble"-corps, but its adherence to a somewhat conventional narrative framework successfully contorts and expands the boundaries of what that short-lived almost-collective of filmmakers were after. And furthermore, and of greater significance, it smartly proves that it only takes the slightest, smartest tweaks to temporarily revitalize an entire genre.
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July 17, 2008
REVIEW | Post Traumatic Stress: Aditya Assarat's "Wonderful Town"
by Michael Koresky (July 17, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
In many ways, the debut feature from Bangkok-born, American-educated
Aditya Assarat, "
Wonderful Town," has all the hallmarks of a workshopped Sundance indie: an eminently tasteful romance between two ingratiatingly sweet people burgeoning against a backdrop of recent tragedy, buoyed by delicate guitar score, bracketed by self-consciously lovely landscape shots. A detailing of the emotionally and physically ravaged coastal area of Takua Pa following the December 2004 tsunami that cost it more than 8,000 local lives, "Wonderful Town" means to use the event's aftereffects to evoke its characters' personal displacement. There's no doubt that Assarat has talent for situating people within gracefully framed environments, but in an overly studied manner that leaves no room for the sort of spontaneity in performance and composition that the film's subject matter warrants.
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July 16, 2008
WORLD CINEMA COLUMN | Slovenian Cinema and "Rooster's Breakfast"
by Vadim Rizov (July 16, 2008)
In 2007, "
Rooster's Breakfast" became the most successful Slovenian film of all time, third in seats only to "
Troy" and "
Titanic." (176,807 admissions and counting.) Yet it has virtually no presence outside the ex-Yugoslavia area: appearances at
FilmFest Munich and a small Madrid festival aside, its success is a perversely insular affair, built around engagements in Sarajevo, Croatia and the like. If dank, depressing Romanian films can conquer the film festival world, why not a leisurely, ingratiating portrait of small-town life built around drinking hijinx and a low-key romance? (
Variety didn't even review it.) Showing tomorrow and Saturday as part of a Slovenian retrospective organized by
Lincoln Center and the
Slovenian Film Fund, the most commercially successful film in Slovenian film history is barely a blip on the international radar. Director
Marko Nabersnik has a few explanations for both why it's domestically successful and internationally a little inert, and why the Slovenian film industry generally remains below the radar.
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July 15, 2008
REVIEW | Sympathy Strike: Charles Oliver's "Take"
by Leo Goldsmith (July 15, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
Like
Lee Chang-dong's 2007 "
Secret Sunshine,"
Charles Oliver's debut feature "
Take" deals with the awkward moral quandaries of infanticide and the subsequent, touchy relations between a killer and his victim's mother. That Lee's film remains unreleased in this country is no doubt due in part to the fact that his film, unlike Oliver's, did not star
Minnie Driver (although it did win an award at Cannes for its actress,
Jeon Do-yeon). But in spite of this star pedigree, Oliver's film manages to grapple with some knotty questions about justice, even if it is not quite as bold or ironic as Lee's.
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July 11, 2008
REVIEW | Dear Johns: Jacques Nolot's "Before I Forget"
by Michael Koresky (July 11, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
The catchwords for "
Before I Forget" would seem to be direct, intimate, unsparing; yet, conversely, it also feels cavernous and, in its seeming brutal frankness, slippery and elusive. Either drenched in unyielding shadow or flooded with harsh light, "Before I Forget" follows the sixty-something Pierre (played by writer-director
Jacques Nolot), a former hustler, HIV-positive for 24 years, living alone in a spacious Parisian apartment, who's unmoored after the death of his elder benefactor. The premise is simple, intensely character-driven, and the structure linear and compartmentalized -- we see Pierre's daily activities, which involve, in no discernible order, meeting with fellow gay former gigolo friends of the same age, having comparatively impersonal trysts with hustlers of a much younger age, visiting his psychiatrist, and generally putting around his flat -- but the result is enormously complex, a surveying of an entire life just past its midpoint via its practicalities and lost promises.
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July 9, 2008
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REVIEW | The Material World: Silvio Soldini's "Days and Clouds"
by Kristi Mitsuda (July 9, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
In its detailing of a couple's financial freefall after the loss of a job,
Silvio Soldini's "
Days and Clouds" -- recently featured in the
Film Society of Lincoln Center's annual roundup of new Italian cinema -- couldn't ask for a more fittingly precipitous point in time for its American theatrical release than this disquieting summer of soaring gas prices, staycations, anxious awaiting of stimulus checks, and shuttering Starbucks.
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July 8, 2008
REVIEW | Los Angeles Plays With Itself: Jason Freeland's "Garden Party"
by Michael Koresky (July 8, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
What is it about Los Angeles that makes it prone to multicharacter, excess-minded ensembles and devoted tributes to itself disguised as critiques? Well, as we learned from
Paul Haggis's ethnography-as-racial-burlesque "
Crash," everyone in that city just sort of, well, crashes into each other--presumptively it's strictly a car thing, because I've had my share of sidewalk collisions while walking on New York's even more crowded streets. Perhaps the city's denizens are united by a certain, unspoken shared misery, eventually exacerbated or cleansed by some greater destructive force, as in "
Short Cuts" and "
Magnolia." Or is it that everyone oozes an icky superficiality that doubles as a mighty adhesive, connecting disparate people stuck in ignoble circumstances, as in "
Happy Endings" or "
Boogie Nights"?
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July 7, 2008
QUEER CINEMA NOTEBOOK | Fest Forward: Activism. Identification, Titillation and Entertainment
by Michael Koresky and Chris Wisniewski (July 7, 2008)
[EDITORS NOTE: This is the first in a regular series of articles that will take a critical look at the state of contemporary queer cinema. In developing this column, indieWIRE turned to New York City based writers Michael Koresky and Chris Wisniewski, inviting them to take a sort of "he said, he said" approach to discussing queer films.]
Michael Koresky: Surveying the landscape of queer cinema has become increasingly difficult in recent years. Where there was once a thriving independent gay-lesbian film scene -- confident enough in itself to exist on film culture's fringes, populated with genuinely outcast movies that didn't have their sights set on wider audiences -- there seems to be an increasing disinterest among viewers in seeking out smaller films simply because of gay content.
[ read more in Movies ] [ 3 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Queer Cinema, Queer Cinema Column ]
July 2, 2008
REVIEW | Gathering Moss: Alex Gibney's "Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson"
by Elbert Ventura (July 2, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
Hunter S. Thompson's prose was nervy and pugnacious, his judgments bullying and hyperbolic, his life as volatile as any in postwar American letters. "
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson" couldn't be any more different in mien and spirit. A couple of passages aside, it is almost perversely straightforward in light of its unstable subject, a chronological march through the heavy '60s, the downer '70s and the post-Reagan blur with a dutiful assemblage of talking heads and archival footage. The historical and cultural insights are all textbook, the music choices "Gump"-esque (if I hear
Jefferson Airplane playing over images of Summer of Love San Francisco one more time...). What saves the movie is the man himself.
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REVIEW | House of Cards: Terry Kinney's "Diminished Capacity"
by Kristi Mitsuda (July 2, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
One could surmise the mediocrity of "
Diminished Capacity" from reading the synopsis alone: Cooper (
Matthew Broderick), a small-town-boy-made-good in the big city but lately suffering from the lasting effects of a serious concussion, heads back home to visit his fading Uncle Rollie (
Alan Alda). As Cooper's mother explains of the latter's condition in a letter, "Dr. Hoyt calls it 'diminished capacity'; that's the legal term for a man who thinks that fish are typing poetry out on the end of his pier." Got that last bit? To clarify: Rollie connects fishing lines to each letter on his typewriter, the nibbling of which results in a jumble of words (Rollie edits).
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July 1, 2008
REVIEW | High Times in the 90's: Jonathan Levine's "The Wackness"
by Steve Ramos (January 20, 2008)
This review was originally published during the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. A filmmaker who matters is someone capable of re-invigorating genres with spunk and a playful lack of caution. That's
Jonathan Levine, who wowed the 2006
Toronto International Film Festival audiences with his gory, sly horror film "
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane." His follow up is even better, the high-energy coming-of-age tale "
The Wackness," a fun-loving movie that audiences will find impossible to resist.
[ read more in Movies ] [ 4 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Park City, Reviews ]
REVIEW | Best Kept Secret: Guillaume Canet's "Tell No One"
by Leo Goldsmith (July 1, 2008)
[An indieWIRE review from
Reverse Shot.]
Guillaume Canet's "
Tell No One" begins with a certain nonchalance that one wouldn't ordinarily expect from a suspense thriller, least of all one that adapts
Harlan Coben's multi-twist mystery plotting with the brio of a distinctly "Bourne"-again action film. In its first minutes, the film draws us into a group of French yuppies summering enviably in woody Rambouillet.
Kristin Scott-Thomas rolls a joint, someone passes a baby around, and all seems serene enough for Dr. Alex Beck to take his wife Margot for a languorous, moonlit skinny-dip at a nearby lake where they used to swim as children. How cruel it seems of Canet to ruin this moment, allowing Dr. Beck to be beaten unconscious and left naked on the dock, while Margot falls prey to a knife-wielding, cat-murdering serial killer.
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June 28, 2008
LAFF '08 NOTEBOOK | Top Docs: "Trinidad," "No Name," "Pressure Cooker," "Loot" and "Boogie Man"
by Michael Lerman (June 28, 2008)
"Everyone feels the need to express themselves and they hope that when they do the world accepts them." Truer words were never spoken by director
PJ Raval whose first feature, "
Trinidad" (co-directed by
Jay Hodges), premiered in competition at the
Los Angeles Film Festival in the past week. In Raval's case, he was speaking about the subjects of his film, a group of transgender women who undergo sex-change operations in a small Colorado town. But, he might as well have been talking about himself, Hodges and their competition-mates, a strong group of documentary filmmakers with very distinct stories to tell about the world around them. The diverse pool of talent drummed up by programmers
Rachel Rosen and
Doug Jones has offered plenty of hope for the future of independent documentaries and, ironically enough, the ones that float to the surface favor aptitude with classic filmmaking models over innovation.
[ read more in Movies ] [ 2 comments ] [ filed under Documentary, Festival Dispatch, Lead Story, Los Angeles Film Festival ]
