SHORT FILM REVIEWS
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Echo
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Each artfully composed single shot is a moving diorama that uses foreground, background, movement within the frame to rivet the eyes and engage the imagination. Each sequence becomes an incomplete and implied narrative. While it speaks to contemporary Iceland, it is bigger: a dazzling non-narrative visual document on human nature and labor. The muted colors are enchanting and the acting undetectable as performance.
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Jafar Panahi's Tehran Taxi
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Like his narrative tricks in The Mirror and under 'house arrest' during this filming, Jafar Panahi, as a taxi driver, creates line where the line between actual and performed is undetectable. This is bold guerrilla filmmaking with surreptitious comments on Iranian society via a lively cast of characters. His young adorable and highly opinionated actual niece Hana opines on filmmaking and the 'rules' that she is taught in school. Children are often used in Iranian film to express critique. He employs some of her actual footage, which she shoots as she accompanies him in his taxi. A human rights lawyer speaks boldly of Iranian justice. A dwarf sells DVDs is a comic foil as he sells 'Hollywood Blockbusters and tries to engage Panahi as an unwilling 'partner' & more. It is all done with great humor, serious intent, courage, and a wry smile on the face of the driver/director - a political masterpiece
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Listen to Me Marlon
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Marlon Brando kept an archive of audiotapes and this documentary (directed by Stevan Riley) draws on these recordings to create a unique confessional profile of the actor. The tapes are filled with opinions and ruminations; they are also chockfull of self-hypnosis sessions. Brando was troubled by a lot of things: an abusive father, his own fame, troubled relationships, his negligence as a parent, acting as a craft, and the hypocrisy of the movie industry in general. Predictably, the monologues leave a lot of questions unanswered. The film acknowledges this with its opening shot of Brando, who is reciting lines from Shakespeare, his rotating and fuzzy head an incomplete digitized image (apparently his noggin was being scanned for future special effect uses). It is an apt metaphor for this documentary: the soliloquies offer lots of information but the portrait of Brando remains incomplete. And so it should, given that the actor’s private voice is at the center of the narrative. This is a memoir — not an exposé. Brando is hard enough on himself. Did he mean for the tapes to be heard eventually? Is this a form of performance? And what motivated his archiving all this material?
Drawing on scenes from Brando’s films as well as on-camera interviews and TV clips, Listen to Me Marlon moves briskly through Brando’s career, often providing insights into his best performances. His pent up anger was infused into Stanley Kowalski, guilt and warmth shaped Don Corleone, confessional panache was part of his turn in Last Tango in Paris. Brando is defensive about Apocalypse Now: “The script was stupid. I rewrote the whole thing. I told him how to shoot it.” He claims that director Francis Ford Coppola, in retribution, lied to the press about the actor coming to the set late, overweight, his lines unlearned. Brando was devastated: “Coppola is a card-carrying prick.” His comments about studying under Stella Adler at the Actor’s Studio are illuminating: “Stella said ‘don’t be afraid of who you are. Act your soul, not the words. Everybody has a story; everybody is hiding something. We’re always acting. Acting is surviving.’” About his mother, whom he adored and respected, he admits: “My mother was an alcoholic. I loved the sweet smell of liquor on her breath.” His father was brutal. When Brando Sr. appears with the actor on TV, Brando cracks his killer smile, but his eyes tell another story. Brando’s combination of beauty, sexuality, and pain was riveting. As it should, the movie avoids judgment on the tragic episodes in the actor’s life. Brando changed film acting forever, but he was an uncomfortable revolutionary. In the end he says, “I never asked for this life.” He hated being stared at in public, but confesses that the work had value. “Actors give the audience what they want, what they need.” |
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The world of transsexual (and transitioning) prostitutes and hustlers is not one with which I am familiar. I am now. Director Sean Baker, working with Indie actor/producer Mark Duplass, did an extensive amount of research. Tangerine is set on Christmas Eve at a location where such underground activity is common: the intersection of Santa Monica and Highland in Los Angeles. There are also a number of scenes shot at a local Donut Time restaurant. The filmmakers cast Mya Taylor, a local African-American transgender woman, as Alexandra and her friend Kitana Kiki Rodriguez as Sin-Dee Rella. The story follows Sin-Dee and Alexandra as each goes about their trade. Sin-Dee, however, has one goal – to get her revenge on the white girl with whom her boyfriend Chester had an affair while Sin-Dee was serving a short prison sentence. A third story involves an Armenian cab driver, Ramzik, who picks up badly behaved fares and later leaves his family’s dinner to seek out a prostitute. The various stories converge.
Christmas Eve in LA doesn’t feel quite like a traditional Christmas, but then again nothing seems right or predictable as Sin-Dee and Alexandra walk the streets, jabbering and kvetching. The camera follows them everywhere. They never stop talking and the cab driver has his own bizarre agenda. The colors are garish and the action moves very fast. The composition of the frame is woozy; the two prostitutes explode off the screen. I asked producer Shih-Ching Tsou how the creators achieved the kinetic camera work and saturated colors. The answer, to my amazement, is that it was all shot on an iPhone 6 in just 5 days and edited with Final Cut Pro. This has since become quite a topic of conversation on blogs and in the press. The producer also said that the owners of the Donut Time restaurant haven’t seen the film yet |
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Nasty Baby
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I was in the minority when I applauded at the end of this unconventional film. The storyline veers from one plot point to the next and then changes genres about 2/3 of the way through. Avoiding spoilers, the essential narrative is this: a mixed race gay couple in Brooklyn, Freddy (the film’s director Sebastián Silva) and Mo (Tunde Adebimpe from the band TV On the Radio), want a baby. Their best friend, Polly (Kristen Wiig), volunteers to be the surrogate mother. It turns out to be a messy and challenging task.
Freddy’s sperm is not quite up to the task, nor is Mo’s ability to perform. In a sub-plot, Richard (Mark Margolis, in a distinct change from his demented Tio Salamanca in Breaking Bad), is a kindly neighbor. He comes to the couples’ defense when they have problems with a slightly insane resident known only as “The Bishop” (Reg E. Cathey from House of Cards). That pesky neighbor has been rousing the couple every morning with noise from his unnecessary leaf blower. He harasses Polly for dealing with “fags.” While all this is going on, Freddy, a struggling artist, is creating a video-performance piece in anticipation of the baby. The work will be called “Nasty Baby,” and it includes adult performers doing babbling infant impressions. Nothing goes well for anybody. Eventually, the movie moves to another story entirely before reaching a darkly comic, open-ended conclusion. Chilean director Sebastián Silva also wrote and directed the 2009 film The Maid, which was about a family servant who, after 27 years of service, seriously oversteps her bounds. In 2013, he was at the helm of Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus, which can best be described as a psychedelic comedy. In that film, two Americans (Michael Cera and Gaby Hoffmann) go on a quest in Chile for a special hallucinogenic cactus plant.The storyline is a send-up of New Age culture, but it is based on Silva’s own experiences taking mescaline in the desert and meeting a woman named Crystal Fairy. Inspired by a 20-page outline, the dialogue is largely improvised. Silva finished this film just prior to receiving funds for the film Magic Magic, which also starred Michael Cera. I knew none of this when I saw Nasty Baby, but I had loved The Maid and Crystal Fairy. Silva’s political edge, improvisational style, unpredictable plots, and non-traditional characters are enchanting. He casts actors who ordinarily wouldn’t work together and pulls from them natural and brave performances. As in his other films, Nasty Baby‘s scenario is unpredictable and outrageous, but somehow it feels true. The film is a sly satire on parenthood, adult responsibility, gay acceptance, city neighborhoods, the pretentions of the art world, mental illness, and the fickle comedy of fate. Most commercial cinema has become predictable to the point of putrefaction. I love that now and again I see a film where I have no idea where I’m headed. |
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THE DAZZLING LIGHT OF SUNSET
(2016) |
The entire film consists of slices of Georgian life as covered by a tiny news team. It documents the simple lives of the people, as well as the ambitions of this scrappy crew of two. The affirmation of these everyday stories and moments constructed as cinema raises the nobility of the common to art. Salome Jashi sequences and edits to keep our attention and composes some artful frames. The news crew provides an original context for exploring the beauty of the everyday and far away. The ending sequence is terrific. I was kind of riveted in that I love watching real people without big drama and music tugging me along. .
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100 YEARS OF HITLER (1989)
Christoph Schlingensief |
I went to director Christoph Schlingensief's show at PS1 because his films are so decadently compelling. The other work of this provocative German director are more like performance art; they conjure up Fassbinder, Herzog, George Kuchar, early Warhol, and even Paul McCarthy videos. The Hitler films aim to degrade the difficult historical memory of Germany as a country having spawned a monster. It would be great to toss to Schlingensief our own garbage can of deplorables as subjects: Atwater, Cheney, Kissinger, Rove, and of course the king them all - Trump.
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SILENCE (2017)
Martin Scorcese |
Nice pictures and earnest intentions don't add up to much when one does not give a hoot about the travails of the arrogant Catholic Church. Is this part of the a spiritual awareness in film? It's more like a Scorcese god-letting and as such is brilliantly made. The stakes are high only if you can empathize with the tortured priests. Our conflicted times are so ravaged and savaged by religion and may call for stories like this, I suppose. I say renounce your god, save everybody the misery, shorten the film and let me go home.
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PUNISHMENT PARK (1971)
Peter Watkins |
Not to be missed. This stunning faux documentary fashioned with anger and utter disenchantment with the American system. It is frighteningly prescient. . When I show the film to college students, there is usually a foreign student who asks seriously; "Is this what really happened?" The film made me a Peter Watkins fan. His commitment to the agit-prop style is inspirational.
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A bittersweet film. I thought Marc was a wonderful portrait of a modern romantic, He's caught in a nebbishy body with an artist's soul and too much money, and that makes for a wonderful story. He is a genuinely sweet man blessed with both too much and too little and keeps his head in the stars. I'm not gay so there's little erotic appeal here, but are his dreams and fantasies so different form anyone's really?
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KEANE (2004)
Lodge Kerrigan |
Masterful. Damien Lewis earns a reputation as a riveting actor of enormous commitment: the camera is in on him hard for 90 minutes. We feel his confusion and desperation. Kerrigan's lack of music heightens our senses & handheld shooting makes it very personal. Keane searches for a missing daughter. Is she real? Great early performances by Amy Ryan and Abigail Breslin. They are scary good. Last shot is heartbreaking.
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Charming is probably overused for this, though it is; it is also photojournalistic slice of the 1950's with all its innocence and goodness. There are thankfully no big moments of endangerment, just a child's blissful adventure. The Brothers 'Daddy Longlegs aka Go Get Some Rosemary (another film well worth seeing) borrowed from this film as did Truffaut, Maysles, Pennebaker: it's all here first. I do remember THIS version of Coney Island. A great, unique, magical film.
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THREE MONKEYS (2008)
(Turkish) Nuri Bilge Ceylan |
The story proceeds through ambiguous details creating an emotional landscape as well as a nicely plotted story. The patient shooting style and devastating close-ups thrust the viewer into the world of the characters. This is a great example of how world cinema can tell a powerful story filled with ambiguities, paradoxes, and delectable ironies. The final image is a stunner. Possibly larger metaphor? Ceylan is one of the world's great directors (Winter's Sleep, Once in Anatolia, Climates). This is typical and easier than some others. His films are all worth seeking out, sticking with, and meditating on because they get under your skin and into your soul.
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CAESAR MUST DIE (2012) (ITALIAN)
TAVIANI BOTHERS |
The Taviani Brothers are masters. At their age (80's) to pull this off is a miracle. I saw it in a theater not knowing the film's background. To call it a even a pseudo-dumentary lessens the achievement. The line it creates between art and life in both its conception and the application and with adaptation of Shakespeare is profound. Real prisoners play the parts of prisoners putting on Julius Caesar in the prison. It is all scripted and rehearsed. The use of color and B&W, of spaces and faces, of artifice and actuality work to create a masterpiece.
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A reflection on creativity and the themes and motifs that make up storytelling, Through the imagination of a troubled young girl's screenplay - devised by the director - multiple movie/stories with the film riff and repeat, play off one another, barely skirt cliche and eventually descend into wish fulfillment. Isabel Huppert is dryly brilliant as always and the Korean actors are hysterical. As tricky as any Bunuel film
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Three poor writers try to put together a spy movie on the titular train and we watch the results. Characters and crime tropes come and go and fold back over themselves. It moves along without any real sense of cause and effect. The clichés and scenes are lodged in our collective memory from decades of thrillers. Music peppers it randomly. It very New Wave poetry. I would consider it a kind precursor to Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control with the abandonment of actual plot in favor of tropes that avoid an actual story.
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