Film Review: Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Don Jon

There are oh so obvious allusions to the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever, all throughout this film, but one could also look at Gordon-Levitt's directorial debut as something akin to Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas.  Just replace the mob and drugs of Scorsese's iconic 1990 film with the sex and porn of Don Jon. Now I am not trying to make some outrageous claim like Don Jon is as great a film as Goodfellas.  Sure, JGL's film is enjoyable (more enjoyable than I expected it to be) if not a bit "on the nose" as far as human dramadies go, but it sure ain't in the same realm as Scorsese's modern classic, but still, there are things here that remind one of Scorsese's film.  Perhaps nothing but superficial stuff (circumstantial evidence at best officer), but stuff nonetheless.  The relatively constant voiceover, the straight on shots, the abrupt endings to certain scenes or shots, the Italian family atmosphere all smell of Scorsese 101.  Granted, they are not done here to the expertise of the master, but when perpetrated by the nubile youthful exuberance of the aforementioned Mr. Gordon-Levitt, these things can have a fun effect to them.  But enough of the good, what of the bad, and perhaps even the ugly?

Early on in the film, Gordon-Levitt's Jon Martello, aka the titular Don Jon (he's got a way with the ladies), talks about the superiority of internet porn over the typical Hollywood romantic comedy, which is an ironic thing because the writer/director/star has made what is basically, a typical romantic comedy.  Well, at least for the most part.  There is a third act twist (though twist is probably overstating it) that gives one a somewhat refreshing atypical romcom feeling.  Well, okay, the so-called twist really isn't that surprising, but it's at least something.  Sure, Gordon-Levitt does a fine job in his self-created role (the actor does possess a certain charm), and even Scarlett Johansson gives what she can (she is basically just eye candy with a semi-faltering Jersey accent after all), and Julianne Moore gives the film some quirk and even some depth (albeit unsurprising depth), and we get a wife-beater-wearing Tony Danza to boot (and I mean that very sincerely, and not ironically at all), but overall the film falters mainly for its utter disdain for the out-of-the-ordinary. It certainly does seem like perhaps it wants to venture outside the safe insular world of the Hollywood (or Indie) romcom, but is just scared to take those dangerous steps.

We shouldn't be surprised to see someone like Gordon-Levitt in such a safe film.  He has done so many films that have had the potential to go somewhere different and out of the ordinary but chose safe and dry instead.  Films such as Looper, (500) Days of Summer, The Lookout, even Inception and The Dark Knight Rises were all films that thought they were going over the edge, but pulled themselves back before anything really intriguing happened.  Gordon-Levitt had no creative say in those films (with the possible exception of (500) Days of Summer) but here he is nothing but sole creator, and still he takes the safe road more traveled.   Like I said, there are some enjoyable things in here (there is more god than bad, but only slightly), and some pretty nifty potential (the porn storyline should give it at least some over the edge stuff), and it is a shame that the young first time director didn't do more with said potential.  Perhaps something grittier but still charming.  Perhaps something like the aforementioned Saturday Night Fever, which one must assume was the biggest influence on Don Jon.  Oh well, perhaps next time JGL will dig a bit deeper.  But still, it could have been much worse.  How's that for some back door praise?

Film Review: Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers

Much the way Ken Russell's infamous 1991 film, Whore, turned the tables on Disney's ultra-sanitized, hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold film, Pretty Woman, Harmony Korine's controversial new film, Spring Breakers, gives all of those exploitative teen sex comedies the proverbial middle finger.   But, unlike the rather unremarkable Whore, Spring Breakers is a rather surprisingly wry satire on the drinking, drugs and general debauchery of that annual college-age springtime ritual we know as spring break.  In fact, it is probably Korine's most satisfying film yet.  Well, I am not sure if satisfying is the best term to use when describing anything by l'enfant terrible Harmony Korine (just ask David Letterman and/or Meryl Streep), but I must admit, I was pretty damn satisfied, so I am sticking with the word.

Korine, who for better or for worse, can be considered the Lars von Trier of American cinema, has been the controversial sort ever since his screenwriting debut with Larry Clark's 1995 film, Kids.  Making his own directorial debut with the 1997 film Gummo, a movie that was called both vile and sublime at the time - and sometimes by the same person - Korine has been a purveyor of the ugly and downtrodden.  Influenced by the likes of Cassevetes, Fassbinder, Herzog and Alan Clarke, Korine directed four feature films (and a slew of shorts and art installations) before this, and not a single one has met with anything less than disdain from the so-called mainstream, but yet here he is with what is surely his most accessible film yet.  Taking the idea of spring break, and turning it on its head, Korine's film is loud and brash and quite confrontational.  Spring Breakers is also a stunning work of cinema, that captures the harrowing side of society, and creates something strangely beautiful.  Korine's film, decorated with the bathing beauties of the Florida beaches - most of them drunk and apt fodder for a comeback of those Girls Gone Wild videos of the 1990's - is alluring and erotic, not so much for the sexuality of the goings-on (said goings-on are more ridiculous and/or pathetic, than sexy), but for the way Korine puts it altogether in a way that matches the surprising beauty of his third (and my favourite of his oeuvre) film, the enigmatic Mister Lonely.

What really makes Korine's film as intriguing as it damn well is, is the unique casting of the whole thing.  Now, I am sure such casting is unique just in order to be unique, just as Korine often pushes buttons just to, well..you know, but it still is quite a fun little crew the director has put together.  Korine takes Vanessa Hudgens of Disney's High School Musical fame, Ashley Bensen of ABC Family's Pretty Little Liars, and ex Disney star (and ex-Beiber girl) Selena Gomez, and tosses them right into the middle of the aforementioned debauchery of spring break.  Most likely taking the roles in order to dirty up their typically squeaky images (granted, Hudgens already managed that through a publicly-outed sexting incident a few years back) this trio of former teen TV shows, manage, for the most part, to do just that.  Granted, Gomez still acts the good girl here, never delving into the nudity and so-called sexual depravity (not really depravity in any sense of the word in my mind, but other, more conservative folk would surely think so) that the other girls do, but for her, one supposes it is a stretch.  Benson and Hudgens definitely stretch.  Korine also tosses in his own wife, Rachel Korine, as the fourth in this out-for-kicks quartet (and media hype be damned, for the mostly unknown Mrs. Korine is, probably because of being the most real of the girls, the sexiest of the bunch - and perhaps the most fleshed out, character-wise as well) and, in the role of Alien, a rapper-cum-drug dealer-cum-nasty-assed white boy gangsta-wannabe, the rather ubiquitous Mr. James Franco - right off his own Disney-funded project, Oz the Great and Powerful.  Putting all of these unique factors together, Harmony Korine has handed us what can surely be called, his most satisfying work yet.  Hell, let's just come right out and call it the director's best damn movie yet.  So there.

Film Review: Alex Karpovsky's Red Flag

In an interview once - I am not sure from where or with whom - writer/director/editor/actor Alex Karpovsky said that he aspired to be in the same realm of fame as directors such as Spike Jonze and Jim Jarmusch.  According to Karpovsky, this was just the right amount of fame.  Only the cool people know who you are, and you are not bothered by the world at large.  I am sure that Karpovsky would agree with the statement that he is not quite there yet, but with the release of Red Flag, a charmingly disarming comedy in the vein of a small-time Woody Allen, he is most certainly one step closer, or at the very least, should be one step closer.  The main problem with the director's new film, is not its narrative nor Karpovsky's filming techniques, nor really any of the acting, even if it does suffer from an amateurishness on occasion (a silly criticism that is really just a minor one in the whole scheme of things), but from a lack of distribution.  

You see, for Alex Karpovsky to achieve his rather median-flying aspirations of Jarmusch-hood, people need to actually see his films, and even though Red Flag is easily the most prominent of his films so far, its quite miniscule limited release, concurrent with, as is the norm in Indie Cinema these days, a Video-on-Demand release, ends up making it an unseen quality in most of the movie-going world.  But then again, those who should see it - those who would naturally enjoy a film such as Red Flag - are seeking it out, and perhaps this is something after all.  Of course, the fact that Karpovsky is one of the co-stars of the HBO series, Girls, created by friend and fellow Mumblecorish filmmaker - and newly-minted Golden Globe winner - Lena Dunham (he can be seen in Dunham's obscure slacker-gen film, Tiny Furniture as well), surely helps out in the whole recognizable face department.  And, I don't know if it helps or not, but Red Flag is being released side-by-side with Karpovsky's other new film, Rubberneck.  This latter film, a departure for the filmmaker, is a dark thriller, that never really does what one assumes Karpovsky wants it to do, and therefore sags while Red Flag, in all its dark comedic fun, blooms.  But, exposure is exposure, eh? 

As for the film itself, the story is pretty simple.  Alex Karpovsky plays a filmmaker named Alex Karpovsky, who, after being dumped by his long-time girlfriend for an apparent lack of commitment, is traveling the arthouse cinemas and colleges of the south, promoting a film called Woodpecker, which incidentally, is a film that Karpovsky actually made back in 2008.  This simple - and one would assume, easily played by Karpovsky - scenario is given a twist as the filmmaker is joined on his journey by an old friend and a new obsessed fan, either one of which can be described as the true looney of this haphazard road trip. Taking the typical idea of indie filmmakers writing movies about there own lives and own problems, Karposvsky twists it about to blend fact with fiction almost seamlessly.   With obvious comparisons to Woody Allen (whenever a filmmaker decides to talk frankly, yet comically, about adult relationships, one must always compare said filmmaker to Woody Allen - I believe it is a film critic rule actually) Red Flag takes its time building up to the eventual, and inevitable, climactic emotional showdown, in a film that is really not all that much like the aforementioned Mr. Allen, but is quite a fun piece of indie cinema in its own right.  Perhaps Karpovsky is not quite up to that cool factor realm of Jonze and Jarmusch, but if he keeps making films like Red Flag, he should be there soon.

Film Review: Austin Chick's Girls Against Boys

One one thinks of rape and revenge films, one's mind goes back to, or at least should go back to, the 1970's and 1980's, and seminal films such as I Spit on Your Grave, Lipstick and Ms. 45, as well as variation on a theme installment, The Last House on the Left, or the Swedish film that so influenced Tarantino's Kill Bill, Thriller - A Cruel Picture, ie. They Call Her One Eye.  One could even go all the way back to Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring, arguably the first in the genre.  Whichever way one wishes to go, they will see a brutal, vicious film, where a woman raped (or, in some cases, the parents of the woman raped) will seek out her revenge on those who caused her such brutality, and hand out even more brutality upon them.  One finds oneself cheering for these women.  It is vigilante justice at its best - an eye for an eye, and all that.  What one gets with the latest entry in the genre, Girls Against Boys, is a cheaply made - and, unlike many other small budget films, it shows - film full of ridiculous plot holes and even more ridiculous character developments and narrative choices.  One need only look at the theatrical poster, and then watch the film, to realized what is being sold here, is not what is being advertized.

Girls Against Boys, is about a twenty-something bartender who is raped by a man she meets at a nightclub, and who ends up teaming up with her friend to seek him out and kill him.  What ensues is a weekend of murder, mayhem and, as is the case in many exploitationesque films, lots of lesbian undertones.  The fact that these two women (girl-next-door Danielle Panabaker as our intrepid victim out for payback, and sultry Nicole LaLiberte as the quite twisted, but quite helpful friend) end up cutting down men that, granted may be douche-bags of the most royal kind, but have nothing whatsoever to do with the rape, or any rape as far as we know, makes them less a scorned woman out for revenge with her kick-ass friend, and more a two-girl hit squad, who are no better than the men they have killed.  Sure, as misogynistic as cinema is - especially in the more horror/thriller based properties - I, as a male of the species, should probably not worry too much when cinematic women go on a killing spree, justified or not, for it goes the other way much more often than not (and here too, these women are sexualized more than they need to be), but it does make for a rather mangled piece of moral ambiguity - all written and directed by another male of the species, Austin Chick.

Chick takes the rape and revenge model, an already controversial one, and warps it into his own obsessive male adolescent fantasy, where women are victims of their own sexuality, and who have no recourse but to blindly destroy everything around them, before succumbing to their own latent sexual desires in the end.  Sure, both Ms. 45 and I Spit on Your Grave were directed by men, but the brutality in those films seems justified, considering what was done to the women in the films, and even when they cross a line, it too seems justified.  Here, not so much.  Here it just seems like a cheap cop-out in the narrative (the brutality here is rather low on the scofield scale of such things) or just more fodder for the sexualization of the revenge.  Yes, there of course does have to be brutality against women in such a genre, for one cannot have the revenge part with the rape, but in all the films I mentioned earlier, as well as more modern renditions like The Brave One with Jodie Foster and, in a more comedic vein, Mitchell Lichtenstein's darkly hilarious Teeth, this brutality, against the women and the caddish bastard men, is narratively necessary.  Here, again, not so much.

Still though, moral ambiguity has never been one to bother this critic - some of my favourite films fly in the face of morality - so such a thing really doesn't bother me on any level other than it's just lazy storytelling.  Then again, the fact that these women are killing people just because they happened to know the rapist, or because they left the one girl to go back to their wife (watch Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank to see how that should be handled), is not even the laziest thing in here.  Why oh why, after a weekend that includes five murders, does everything go back to relative normalcy?  Is there no investigation here?  No clues leading back to these women?  Even when the murder of a cop is involved in the festivities?  Really, nothing at all?  Okay, whatever.  I guess these women are suddenly professional hit men, and know full well how to get rid of all bodies and all evidence.  Okay, let's go with that.  Even letting such lazy storytelling slide, we are still handed the most obvious of cliché in the inevitable last act of the story.  All-in-all, we are left with a sour taste in our mouths, not necessarily for the aforementioned moral ambiguity (remember, I kinda like that aspect, at least when it is done properly), but for the cheapness of the entire production.  I suppose now I should go and re-watch I Spit on Your Grave, in order to - and this will probably sound quite weird - cleanse my palette of this junkheap of a movie.

Film Review: Don Coscarelli's John Dies at the End

From the director who gave us the Phantasm series and the enigmatic Bubba Ho-Tep, comes yet another strange creature of a film.  John Dies at the End, adapted from the novel of the same name by David Wong, is a horror-comedy that is part Kafka, part Evil Dead, part Cronenberg (the earlier stuff), and part "Naked Lunch".   These things all rolled together make for a fun film - perhaps not a great film, or even an overly good one, but still a fun film.  I know, I know, damning with faint praise and all that, but hey, what can a guy do?  The film is silly and stupid, but in that good kind of way, often associated with the likes of earlier Sam Raimi, whose films are obviously a big influence on Coscarelli's film, but the film is also quite one-note, and such a one-trick pony show as this cannot expect to survive 99 minutes of itself.  

The film stars Chase Williamson, in his feature debut, as David Wong, and Rob Mayes as John Cheese, which incidentally are the nom de plumes of Jason Pargin, writer of the book and senior editor at Cracked.com, and fellow internet writer and old school chum, Mack Leighty.  They are sort of a slackerish duo of supernatural detectives, here pitted against demons from another dimension.  All this is fine and dandy, and a whole lot of fun when it wants to be, but the film often just sags, and therefore saps the inherent fun out of the whole shebang.  Then again, we go into such a film as John Dies at the End - a title that may or may not hold true by the way - not with whims of cinematic glory, hoping and praying for a new classic, but with giddy anticipation of something akin to the great fun that was the even sillier and even stupider (yeah, I know) Bubba Ho-Tep.  We do get the latter part, in part, but is that enough to save the film?  I would have to say, with honest-to-goodness sincerity, that the answer to that question is a big fat...um, maybe.  Perhaps?  Kinda?  Yeah, right.

Sure, the film never makes one feel like a daffodil or anything like that, but it does have some rather fun moments interspersed within its walls.  Moments like a faux Rastafarian telling fortunes for beers at a kegger before literally losing his head, or a giant spider/crab-like creature that can only be seen through one's peripheral vision, and that sufficiently freaks the fuck out of newspaperman Paul Giamatti, an actor often found in bizarro worlds such as this, or a festooning swarm of, um, of whatever that festooning swarm is of, or a talking and driving dog, or a frozen meat-creation that looks like a butcher shop exploded all over one of William S. Burroughs' mugwumps.  Okay, perhaps I did enjoy the film more than I thought I had.  Like I said, it may be far from perfect, but at least it is fun, even if that fun is sapped out long before the ending where John may or may not, die.  But then, there sure is a lot worse out there in movie land.  Again, with the damning with faint praise crap.  Oh well.

Film Review: Daniel Schechter's Supporting Characters

I must admit that I was not expecting to like Supporting Characters all that much.  Hovering perhaps just a foot or two this side of the Mumblecore demarcation line - even starring Mumblecore stalwart Alex Karpovsky - Daniel Schechter's bromance-cum-old school conversational comedy, a la Woody Allen and/or Albert Brooks, perhaps even Paul Mazursky, caught this critic way off guard.  Granted, it may not be the greatest film since that proverbial sliced bread, but what it is, is a smartly written, wryly acted comedy, that pulls no punches and plays out as a witty and articulate indie film - something not often seen in this day and age of creatures such as the offensively over-rated Bridesmaids and the just plain offensiveness of things like Jack and Jill and whatever other dick-joke-and-fart-filled Adam Sandler thing that came out recently.  Something not often seen indeed.

Starring the aforementioned Mr. Karpovsky and Tarik Lowe, as a pair of film editors working on what appears to be a low budget New York-based film (the budget of this film came in at right around the whoppingly low figure of fifty grand), Supporting Characters is both a quaint look at the film industry, albeit inside the realms of the off-off-off Hollywood kind, but real enough to even be peppered with insider-speak just to make it all the more cinema-geeky for those of us who love such things, and a somewhat biting, but never cliché, take on love and friendships.  Shot on digital video, which gives it more a TV feel than a movie feel (yeah, yeah, I know, TV is great these days, and more than able to compete with cinema, but it is still different - for now), the film is purposefully small - in both stature and storytelling - and this is what gives it its offbeat charm.  A big budget version, with maybe Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller, would of course, never work, but as a small film like this, it is pulled off with a realistic, humanity that would be lacking in most (but not all, mind you) Hollywood vehicles.

Now don't get me wrong, I love the artificiality of cinema more than most people, and the fantastical dialogue in the films of directors such as Tarantino or De Palma or Martin Scorsese - all more cinematic pretension and art-for-art's sake beauty than how anyone really talks - but reality-for reality's-sake can be a refreshing turn of events at times, and the conversations in this film, between Karpovsky and Lowe, come off as real conversations, as if these two men are really truly friends and are actually having real conversations about real life, sometimes in a realistic passive-aggressive manner, that Schechter's camera just happens to catch on tape...er, on digital video.  Never trying to go into realms the writer/director (and the screenplay is co-written with second lead, Lowe) may not know, or that may be over his artistic head - i.e. the aforementioned artificiality of Tarantino, De Palma and Scorsese - Supporting Characters comes off as a quirky, but not quirky in that annoying Little Miss Sunshine-y way, little indie film about two friends and the trials and tribulations of working in, and working around the foibles and egos of actors and directors and such, the film industry.  Now, with word, true or not, that Schechter is at work on Quentin Tarantino's supposed Jackie Brown prequel (at work as what, I am not sure, unless he is helming the project and QT is merely a producer), we may just get to see what he can do with something unlike he has ever worked on before.

Film Review: Barry Battles' The Baytown Outlaws

The one thing I wonder, when detractors and haters begin to put down Quentin Tarantino as nothing more than a director who rips off every movie he has ever seen, is why then, have so many directors since QT first put his foot into the directorial waters, try to copy him?  If he is only a copy, then why is everyone trying to copy him in turn?  The 1990's had a slew of bad Pulp Fiction wannabes lining dusty video shelves, and there have been multiple attempts at recreating the director's Kill Bills over the better part of a decade now.  None of which can stand up to the originals, or, if the aforementioned haters are talking, the originals of the originals.  Now, here we are in early 2013, eight films deep into Tarantino's career, and we have a film that vainly tries to recreate, not just one of these, but pretty much all but the director's latest (they were filming at the same time after all).  And, for more or less, this latest QT wannabe, is as successful, or should we say unsuccessful, as all the others.

Directed by Barry Battles, an actor-turned-director so obscure that he doesn't even warrant a Wikipedia entry, The Baytown Outlaws is the story of three redneck brothers who work as hired guns.  One of the brothers is a large mute ex-wrestler, the other two are so interchangeable that I had a hard time telling them apart throughout the film.  I suppose this is apropos of how unoriginal the movie as a whole is.   With dialogue that sounds like a cheap knock-off of Tarantino, and cinematic aspects lifted right out of Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill 1 and 2, Deathproof and Inglourious Basterds, but given a cheap twist that makes them even drabber than the typical Tarantino wannabe film.  Hell, Battles even gets Zoe Bell, QT's ass-kicking, stunt-driving, car-surfing bella donna from Death Proof (and muse Uma's stuntwoman in Kill Bill), to play a small part in his film.  Hell, he's not only stealing ideas and scenes and the such, but actors as well - and she doesn't even kick any ass in this one.

Now, I should probably take it easy on Battles for his so-called theft of ideas, for my vaunted dear Quentin does this as well (he is quoted as "I steal from every movie ever made"), so let us look at this film with newly opened eyes.  How exactly does it stand on its own two feet?  Not well I'm afraid, not well at all.  Hitting on every cliché in the proverbial book, Battles, whomever he may be, has created - nay, concocted - one hell of a messy movie.  The lines given to Billy Bob Thornton as the mob boss our aforementioned redneck brothers run afoul of, would be the perfect opening chapter in a book describing how to act and sound like a stereotypical bad guy.  Granted, Billy Bob is good enough that he almost manages to make it work, but no one else fares as well.  When one of the brothers is hurt, guess who comes to the rescue of these white trash, immigrant-hating killers.  That's right, an illegal immigrant.  Seriously, who is writing this shit?  Perhaps Battles is better to keep himself under the radar.  Anyway, going on from here would just be unsportsmanlike, so I will end things right here.  So long.

Anomalous Material Feature: 10 Best Kevin Smith Characters

Here we are once again true believers, with my latest 10 best feature written for the fine folks over at Anomalous Material.  For those of you not in the know, those same said fine folks have given me a (possibly foolish on their behalf) regular gig as feature writer.  It is a series of top ten lists on all kinds of various cinematic subjects - and anyone who knows me at all can surely attest to how perfectly suited I am to such an endeavor (yes I am a  list nerd).  This newest feature, my thirtieth such feature, takes a look at a place called the View Askewniverse, that world created by writer/director Kevin Smith, and inhabited with all his made-up miscreants.  In this piece, I reveal those ten miscreants that I consider to be his best.

Read my feature article, "10 Best Kevin Smith Characters" at Anomalous Material.

No, Stan Lee, for his great performance as himself in Mallrats, is not on the list, but since he is Stan Lee, the man who created Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The Hulk, Dr. Strange, The Man-Thing, Iron Man, Thor (well, at least the Marvel version of Thor) and The X-men, among a multitude of others, there was never any way I could not mention him here.  Anyway, go check out the list. 'nuff said.

Film Review: Craig Zobel's Compliance

A willing suspension of disbelief can only go so far.  The premise of a fast food manager locking up, strip searching and sexually humiliating a nineteen year old employee because a man on the phone, claiming to be a police officer, tells her to do so, goes way beyond such aforementioned suspension of disbelief.  The fact that Compliance is based on true events (and, if one were to read and believe the transcripts, a surprisingly accurate portrayal of said events as well) makes the unbelievability of the film even that more disconcerting.  Now whether any even moderately intelligent person would fall for such a prank (and I cannot reasonably believe any would) is made null and void once we realize that the strip searches and the sexual degradation (and it does go further down an even more unbelievable avenue about midway through the film, but we will leave that suspense the opportunity to unfold naturally) did indeed occur in real life.  

The events though, which took place at a McDonald's restaurant back in 2004 (here set at the fictional ChickWich chain), and which were just the apex of a slew of over seventy such incidences over a ten year period, and which would culminate in another slew of events, this time of the lawsuit variety, are so vastly unbelievable, so incredibly unrealistic, so ridiculously unfathomable, that they only serve to make Craig Zobel's film about the events seem just as unbelievable, just as unrealistic and, at times, just as ridiculous.  Which should be a shame really, because the casually intense manner in which the events unfold, and the way they are quite powerfully portrayed by a mostly unknown cast, are overshadowed by the utter ridiculousness of the events as they unfold and unfold and unfold some more into even more and more unbelievable scenarios.  But then, I find myself still thinking about the film, still talking about the film, still reeling the film around inside my head (both the ridiculous and the more realistic aspects) well after watching it, so perhaps this post-intensity (whether it be anger at the film and/or train wreck fascination at these unbelievable events), in turn overshadows the already overshadowing aspects mentioned above.  In other words, that aforementioned suspension of disbelief may not make you believe this unbelievably true story (some conspiracy theorists claim it was all an act to get a lot of money out of McDonald's, but that seems just as unbelievable) but the eerily calm intensity of the whole thing just might let you get beyond that and see the film for the strange provocative creature that it ends up being.

It is really the cadence of the narrative, shown through a naturalistic, dirty snow-like lens (both figuratively and literally), and the way this steely naturalism (played out in an almost cinéma vérité manner) is presented by Zobel and his cast (long time TV and film character actress Ann Dowd is quite superb in the role of the easily manipulated store manager), that makes an otherwise ridiculous story, work as well as it does here.  Though the events supposedly go down in the film pretty much just as they do on the video surveillance that captured the said events at that McDonald's back in 2004, we are shown a much less frantic, much more compliant rendition in Zobel's divisive and controversial film.  From all I have read, the poor innocent nineteen year old fast food employee whose life is turned upside down by the sick and twisted prank call and the unbelievably stupid reactions of her manager and fellow employees, here portrayed by ex-Gossip Girl regular Dreama Walker, as a naive and quite bewildered, but ultimately compliant victim, pleaded, begged, cried and lashed out at the violations that were befalling her.  Zobel attempts at making the film, and the events within the film, all that more - shall we say creepy - and therefore making a ridiculous situation, perhaps not quite believable (I still cannot quite believe something like this could happen), but at least intense enough to make us rethink what may or may not be believable.  What Zobel gives us is the most believable of unbelievable situations - and it works.

Film Review: John Frankenheimer's Killer Joe

Killer Joe, the latest film from Oscar winning director William Friedkin, is a sadistic, bloody and depraved film - and it may just be the best damn genre movie of the last few years, as well as a film that will most assuredly be included in the eventual best of the year list I will be compiling when such times come around. I suppose what I am trying to say here is that Killer Joe is a killer movie - and one sure to shock and/or piss off a whole lot of unsuspecting Matthew McConaughey rom-com fans, who go into this looking for another Failure to Launch or How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, or even those hoping for another A Time to Kill or even another Sahara.  Of course one look at the trailer and one should certainly know better.  In fact one look at the trailer and one will surely see a reborn McConaughey.  An actor who has put most of his past mistakes away, and has gone back to the promise we all saw in things like Lone Star and The Newton Boys and Dazed and Confused.  Once one goes beyond the trailer and sees the film itself, one will have no doubt that Matthew McConaughey is indeed, for lack of a better term, back.

This comeback of sorts began last year with the sadly overlooked The Lincoln Lawyer, and continued this year with scene-stealing supporting roles in both Richard Linklater's Bernie and Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike - the latter of which seeming to have a bit of early Oscar buzz fluttering about.  With juicy looking roles in upcoming films such as Lee Daniels The Paperboy and Jeff Nichols' Mud, this resurgence of quality material does not appear to be coming to an end anytime soon.  But it is here, as the titular rogue cop-cum-hired killer, that McConaughey gets his juiciest, his meatiest, his what-the-fuckiest role - and it is here, in a movie taglined as "A totally twisted deep-fried Texas redneck trailer park murder story," that McConaughey runs away with one of the most batshitcraziest performances in one of the most batshitcraziest films of the year.  Though I do not see what all the fuss is about - neither my mind nor my stomach are turned by such brutality on film - I do see why this film received the dreaded NC-17 rating - especially for those last twenty minutes or so - and much of this has to do with coolly maniacal performance and sudden explosive outbursts of one Mr. Matthew McConaughey.

But, yes Virginia, there is more to this movie than just the aforementioned batshitcraziness of good ole boy McConaughey.  The story, in all its fucked-up glory, adapted incidentally from the hit stage play by Terry Letts, is about a father and son who hire our intrepid anti-hero to whack their mother/ex-wife for the insurance money that will befall little sis.  The only problem our wouldbe killer hirers have is coming up with the money.  Simple solution Joe thinks - just give him baby sis as collateral.  And to add to the fucked-upness of the film, they do just that.  Both Emile Hirsch and Thomas Haden Church are fun as hell as the rather inept father and son duo, and Juno Temple is quite riveting as the virginal seventeenish piece of collateral-cum-ass, but when it comes to that final twenty minutes everyone is up in arms about, it is Gina Gerson, as the step-mom from hell, who gets the brunt of what can only be described as the best and the worst damn fried chicken scene ever put onto film.  'nuff said.  Just see the film and you will know of what I speak - and will you ever.

My Ten Favourite Things About Breathless (No, Not That One, the Other One, the Kinda Sleazy One from the 1980's)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, or À Bout de Souffle if you will (damn dirty translators), is one of the finest achievements of cinema in the whole damn history of cinema - and yes, the film, and its director, along with his Nouvelle Vague compatriots and their earliest films, pretty much changed the way cinema is made and seen lo these past fifty years or so.  Real important stuff indeed.  I personally rank the groundbreaking 1960 film in my twenty favourite films of all time, and place it as one of the greatest French films second only to Renoir's Rules of the Game.  So yes, Godard's Breathless is both an important film and great film, and a personal favourite of mine.  But alas, this particular subject has been kind of talked to death by now (including from yours truly) so why add to the muddle.  No siree!  Not gonna do it.

We are here today to talk about that other Breathless.  You know, the oft-maligned (and sometimes quite viciously) American remake version of 1983.  Yeah, that one.  Well guess what?  I like the damn thing.  I went many years refusing to see the movie - mainly due to my love of Godard's original masterpiece - but then, after hearing so much praise from one of my favourite current filmmakers (see number one below), I finally gave in and watched the thing up on the big screen at my cinema.  Now I am not about to say it is anywhere near as good as Godard's film, nor would I ever place it in my own top 100, let alone top twenty (though if I were to stretch my favourites list to 200, who knows what strange and unusual things might occur) but damn if it isn't entertaining as hell.  With that exclamation made, let us move on to exactly why I find it so damn entertaining - in seven and a half reasons or less.

1) Quentin Tarantino and His (Questionable) Taste in Film - Usually included in the same breath (yeah, that was a purposeful pun) as films like Taxi Driver, Rio Bravo and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, QT has been pretty consistent in his adoration for Jim McBride's quite unnecessary but quite fun remake.  A die-hard cinephile, who puts every once of his vast film knowledge into every moment of cinematic homage he puts on screen, how could I say no to his (imagined?) pleading for me to watch the damn film already.  Now granted, Tarantino does have a penchant for such low brow fare as women in prison movies and 1970's kung-fu films, so perhaps one should take a recommendation from the auteur with a proverbial grain of salt.  Then again, the other three aforementioned favourite films are all favourites of mine, so what the hell, I said to myself, I am going to watch this damn thing.  And watch it I did - projected up on the big screen at my cinema.  The rest, as they say (whomever they may be) is history.

2) Richard Gere's Final Shot - Now normally, considering it is the, duh...final shot of the film, I would place this as the last "thing" to like about a film, but since this one is so ridiculously great - ie, silly as all fuck - it needed to be talked about before we get to the end ourselves.  Breaking the fourth wall in a way (just like little Jean Seberg does at the end of the 1960 original, though to a less devastatingly tragic, more unbelievably comi-tragic way here) Gere looks right into the camera like some deranged, hipster clad Mr. Roper (those in the know get that reference) and yells Breathless.  Gotta admit, pretty fun stuff indeed.  Fun stuff that only a guy like Gere, at a time like 1983 (having just given such over-the-top performances as he had in American Gigolo and An Officer and a Gentlemen the prior couple of years) could have pulled off as well as he did.  He did pull it off, right?  Anyway, I digress.

3) How the Film Resembles an Homage Made by a Shiny Guy Named Vince Who Hangs Out at Strip Clubs at Two O'clock on a Tuesday Afternoon - Now I am not saying director Jim McBride is actually a shiny guy named Vince who hangs out at strip clubs at two in the afternoon (though he may be, who knows), but let's face it, this film does look like it was made by such a guy.  That creepy guy drinking scotch and sodas, pinky ring extended so all can see, while getting a lap dance from somewhat bruised, drugged-out woman who goes by the name of Brandi but whose real name is Tina, and who says she is just doing "this" so she can feed her two year old son Tyler, who stays with his chain-smoking grandma while Tina/Brandi is hook...er, I mean stripping, but who in reality is actually doing "this" so she can feed her meth habit and pay for all the beers consumed by her boyfriend Gill, who beats her on a regular basis, but whom she cannot leave because she "loves" him....okay, perhaps this is dragging on too long, and maybe this really has nothing whatsoever to do with the film, and in essence is merely just a space filler because I could not come up with enough things I liked about Breathless to make up a respectably long enough post.  But yeah, this is the kind of guy one would expect to have made this ridiculous but quite entertaining little film.

4) How Film Snobs Look Down Upon the Whole Thing - You know what grinds my gears?  All those so-called film snobs, those who look down on any film that is not a pseudo-serious art film by Antonioni or Bergman (two directors I personally love, so this is not meant as a dig on them so much as on the aforementioned film snobs).  All those snooty bastards genuflect to anything and everything from someone like Tarkovsky or Fellini (again, two filmmakers I like) but toss aside most of the oeuvre of a Nick Ray or Sam Fuller (two more filmmakers I quite like) because they may not take themselves seriously enough.  All those narrow-minded cinephiles who cannot get past Citizen Kane being the greatest film of all-time (and once again, this is a film that I truly love and adore, but a film that I can see past to see other, somewhat non-canonical works to fill a best of list with).  Yeah, I hate 'em.  Now me on the other hand, I tend to lean toward the so-called film geek side of things.  That group that includes people like Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich and Quentin "There is That Name Again" Tarantino.  Ones that can appreciate the finer things in cinema (the Bergman's, the Fellini's, the Antonioni's) while also taking great pleasure in the, for lack of a better term, seedier side of cinema (that would be your Polanski's, your Powell, Pressburger's, your, and here is the zinger, your Jean-Luc Godard's).  These aforementioned film snobs are the ones who will not even mention this film when talking about cinema other than to degrade it for their own wicked, self-serving purposes.  This was me for a while, but then, thanks to that Tarantino fella, I have now seen the goddamn light.  Hallelujah!

5) Sometimes It is All About the Music Baby - Now one would think, with me being born in 1967 and ostensibly growing up in what was the mid seventies and into the early eighties, my musical tastes would run somewhere in either the glam rock, disco, punk or new wave realms - and yes, to varying degrees, I do like most of those genres and their ilk - but thanks to my Elvis fanatic mom, my tastes go back a bit further than that.  My early introduction to the likes of Del Shannon and Frankie Lyman and Sam Cooke, and such long lost groups as the Diamonds and The Fleetwoods and The Crests, as well as Presley and Jerry-Lee and Bill Haley and the Comets, kinda makes me quite predisposed to the soundtrack that McBride puts together for this film.  Now granted, there is more modern music in here - Brian Eno, Phillip Glass, X, even a Dexy's Midnight Runners song can be heard at one point - but Gere's bad boy Jesse and his obvious love for the music of Jerry Lee Lewis (not to mention his wardrobe, which we will get to in a bit) send the feel of this film right back to those days that are so often called the days of old time rock and roll.

6) Gere Perfectly Cast as a Last Days of Disco era Belmondo - Perhaps Gere's coolness as an actor is not the same kind of coolness shown by Belmondo in his younger days (think Richard Widmark cool versus Humphrey Bogart cool) but there is no denying, as I more than alluded to way back at number two, that Gere in this time and this place - the Looking For Mr. Goodbar/American Gigolo Gere, not the Pretty Woman era Gere, though when you really look at it, he was pretty sleazy there as well - is perfectly cast to play cad cop killer Jesse Lujack.  And those eyes are so dreamy too.

7) Valérie Kaprisky, From Porn to Breathless, and then Into Obscurity - Let's face it, French actress Valérie Kaprisky, having starred in a few soft-core films in the early eighties (think French Skinemax), was not hired here for her great thespianic endowments.  Even Gere said he told McBride to cast her because she looked like someone who could make love to - a thing that was reputedly going on during the time of filming, and a thing the actress said was the most thrilling thing about filming her scenes ("It was half real" she said) though Kaprsiky has since denied such stories.  No siree, even though she would garbner a César nomination the year after Breathless (for La femme publique), Ms. Kaprisky was definitely hired for a different set of endowments than acting.

8) To Paraphrase a Famous Saying by Alfred Hitchcock and Twist it Around so it Sounds Like it Was Coming from Edith Head, Wardrobe Wardrobe Wardrobe - I told you I would get around to talking about the clothes in this film.  Gere's bad boy, like Belmondo's own bad boy, is dressed like someone on the edge of society.  In Belmondo's case it is a lot less noticeable due to men still having a rather sophisticated style in 1960, but in 1983 L.A., after the advent of the hippies and hipsters and punk and glam rockers, Gere's wardrobe shows how his character is not someone that you would trust to walk your dog...or your girl.  In fact he resembles what one would imagine Charlie Sheen to look like when he goes out on one of his strip club nights.  Hey, lookie there, we came back around to the stripper motif once again.

9) On Meeting Kit Carson, the Guy Who Wrote the Damn Thing - I suppose talking about meeting screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson is not really a "thing to like" about the movie -and let's be honest, his actual screenplay really is not either - but it was fun to have the man who gave Gere his howl, as a guest of our cinema.  For those of you who are unaware (and really, why aren't you paying better attention to my life dammit), my lovely wife and I run a three screen arthouse cinema in Harrisburg Pa.  Last year, during our capital city's film festival, we hosted a screening of Jim McBride's 1967 film David Holzman's Diary.  The film starred the aforementioned Kit Carson, so somehow (he is such a big star after all) we managed to get him to come and do a Q&A after the film.  He seemed like a pretty fun guy while he was here - and he even signed the leg cast of one of our cinema employees.  Carson would later go on to write the screenplay for the modern classic Paris, Texas, as well as for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.  His screenplay for Breathless?  Certainly not great, but once again, a damn entertaining film.

10) Behold the Sentinel of the Spaceways, Norrin Radd, the Spectacular Silver Surfer - Being a comic book nerd from long ago, it should not surprise me that one of my favourite things about this particular film is Gere's character's obsession with that classic Sentinel of the Spaceways, the former herald of the Mighty World Devourer Galactus, and friend and ally to The Fantastic Four and belated founding member of the non-group super hero team The Defenders.  Yeah, I'm a nerd.  What's it to ya?  But I digress once again.  One of my favourite things about this version of Breathless, is how Gere's bad boy identifies with the loner Marvel super hero Silver Surfer.  This also brings us all the way back around to Quentin Tarantino, as we see Jesse's obsession with the Surfer copied in Reservoir Dogs, with a strategically placed Surfer poster in Freddy's (Tim Roth's Mr. Orange) apartment.  See, everything goes back to QT (and he likes strip clubs too), which is why you should listen to the man and watch this damn film.  So there.  Breathless!!

Film Review: Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master

Many of my fellow critics tend to toss around the term masterpiece like one would toss around the word dude or bro at a frat party.  I on the other hand, tend to reserve such a vaunted term for only the greatest of cinematic endeavors - those films that truly deserve such accolades.  The last time I awarded a film such an honour was about a year and a half ago, when I bestowed such a monicker on Terrence Malick's brilliant The Tree of Life.  Before that, one needs to go back another two years to Quentin Tarantino's 2009 work, Inglourious Basterds.  Before that, one must go back another two years to Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film There Will Be Blood.  A truly rare thing indeed.  Well now I think it is about time we dusted off that rarely used title and once again bestow said honour upon a new film.  In this case, the masterpiece we speak of, is P. T. Anderson's (there he is again) rather appropriately titled film The Master.

Just the director's sixth film in seventeen years of filmmaking, and his first since the aforementioned 2007's There Will Be Blood, the long awaited and highly anticipated The Master is the the kind of filmmaking that will be looked back upon a hundred, two hundred years from now, as a classic of early twenty-first century cinema.  Wellesian in nature, Fordian in scope and Kubrickian in style, Anderson collects together every aspect of moviemaking, from acting to writing to editing to cinematography, to the sound, look and music of the film, and coheses it all into a mesmerizing picture of hope and faith and the folly of humankind - a sort of, and please pardon the rather cliché sound of the next few words, visual and spectral poetry of storytelling.  Bringing together a real world malaise in the form of Joaquin Phoenix's cragged, simian-like psychotic ex-sailor, and an otherworldy calmness in the form of Philip Seymour Hoffman's cool and collected cult leader, PTA has forged something from air and earth, from fire and water, to create something akin to a fifth and final element - pure imagination, pure cinema.

Now there are those who have opposed such a film.  Those, including a vocally critical Tom Cruise, who worked with Anderson in his Magnolia, take offense to what the film is - supposedly and ostensibly - really all about.  In reality, the film is about a mixed-up ex Navy man named Freddie Quell, played with as much bravura by Phoenix as one can imagine - very probably his single greatest performance to date, and perhaps one of the finest performances in not only the past decade but dare I say in all of film history - who has lost his way in the world until he meets up with a seductively open-armed prophet named Lancaster Dodd, but referred to by most as the titular Master.  The story is loosely based on L. Ron Hubbard and the creation of Scientology, here referred to as The Cause, and this of course is making some people, including many so-called high-falutin' Hollywood types, quite a bit nervous.  Now, Anderson claims this is not the story of Scientology, and even though Hoffman bears a rather striking resemblance to the late Mr. Hubbard, and the chronology of the birth of Hubbard's cultish religion and the events transpiring in the film are pretty much dead on, this is indeed a story about something more universal than one man's quest for answers.  This is the story of lost souls and what gives them hope and what takes that hope away.

Freddie is that human animal, that lost soul, that Dodd rails against but also an animal Dodd needs desperately to save, not for Freddie's sake, but for Dodd's own selfish goals of proving his teachings as the truth.  Meanwhile Dodd represents, and for a time acts as that father/master figure that Freddie so desperately needs and longs for - even if he will never admit that to himself.  These two opposite forces - nature versus nurture if you will - will inevitably undo one another if left to their own devices, and it is Phoenix and Hoffman in their brilliant portrayals (can we say career best) of these lost souls - each one lost in their own unique way and each one both needing the other and brought to their proverbial knees by the other - that make Anderson's already glowing, clamoring creature of a movie (this film works as the inner world yin to PTA's other million-headed beast movie There Will Be Blood's batshitcrazy outer-skinned yang) a near perfect creation.  And on top of these counterintuative and counterbalanced, eternally warring performances, we also get the usually doe-eyed Amy Adams pulling off her own version of visceral attack, using her typical sparkle as rapid cannon fire.  All-in-all, the film is one of the best performed films in a long long while - and Anderson locks his actors into the frame, 70mm or 35mm, with the precision of a surgeon.

As I stated earlier, the film may be disturbing to those of a certain bent, as Anderson cinematically turns L. Ron Hubbard into even more of a false prophet than he is already seen as by most of the thinking world, by more than alluding to the fact that perhaps he, along with his filmic counterpart, Lancaster Dodd, just made it all up as he went along, creating out of his sci-fi-fueled imagination a pseudo-scientific, quasi-religious cult of personality.  Yeah, I can see why his disciples, very much including his celebrity poster boy Cruise, are opposed to such an interpretation - though officially this is not the L. Ron Hubbard story or an expose on Scientology - and would like it to be shot down in flames.  Too bad for them that it is such a work of art that it will most assuredly go into the future canonical annals of cinematic history.  Too bad for them.  The film may also be rather off-putting for that gaggle of so-called average filmgoers who want their entertainment simple, safe and uncluttered, and will most likely be looked upon poorly because of said group's perceived notion of strangeness (a thing many erroneously equate with bad filmmaking), but once again, too bad for them.  Too bad for them indeed.  For the rest of us, it is a welcome boon of creative filmmaking in today's world of simple, safe and uncluttered entertainment.  Thank god for that and thank god for Paul Thomas Anderson.  Take that.

Film Review: Hit & Run

When an actor (Dax Shepard) decides to write and co-direct a film, and casts himself, his fiancee (Kristen Bell) and their closest friends (Bradley Cooper, Tom Arnold), it could go one of two ways.  The first, and probably the more likely, is that it ends up being a clusterfuck of a movie that was probably a lot more fun to make than it is to watch.  The second, and probably the trickier of the two outcomes, is to create a solid work that is as much fun to watch as it probably was to make.  Lucky for us, and for Shepard, Bell and the gang, Hit & Run ends up definitely being the latter of these two possibilities.

Granted, it is a rather generic story - man on run from violent past who unwittingly drags his girl into the fray and must prove himself to her and others - and it does have one of the most run of the mill titles out there, but Shepard and Bell and Cooper and even Arnold - sometimes especially Arnold - make the film work on levels it really should have no right working on.  It is an old school action-comedy, that has a look and a feel that makes it act as if it verily sprung forth from the thigh of the Zeus of its genre-specific cinematic past.  No silly souped-up hi-jinx that are usually found in the breed lo these past two decades or so (think of the offal that is spewed forth in such ugly fare as the Bad Boys or Rush Hour films).  With Hit & Run we get just the good old fashioned hi-jinx of films like 48 Hours or the Lethal Weapon films (at least the first two), or maybe even the kind of decades-gone charm seen in films like Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and/or Freebie and the Bean.  What we get is fun.  Pure and simple fun.

Shepard, playing an ex-criminal hiding away in the witness protection program - under the self-chosen name of Charlie Bronson by the way - and Bell, the ooh la la dream girl of the nerd world, as his much smarter girlfriend (the real life couple are engaged and will finally tie the knot once gay marriage is made legal), not surprisingly considering, work perfectly together in that what-is-she-doing-with-that-guy kind of way.  The banter they play at seems real - which of course I am sure much of it is - and never seems like just movie dialogue, which granted works both for and against itself.  Bradley Cooper, as the dreadlocked thug out to kill Shepard's Charlie Bronson, is also quite good.  A scene involving his character beating and humiliating a dog owner for feeding his pit bull cheap dog food, is especially hilarious.  But actually the best thing about the film may be Tom Arnold.  Yeah, you read that correctly.  Arnold, as a more-than-frazzled US marshal, is a comic highlight indeed.  In sum, what I am trying to say is - this is a fun film that, if not a great cinematic work, should not be ignored.  And you get to watch Kristen Bell too.

Film Review: Beasts of the Southern Wild

There are films that work hard to play on your emotions and then there are films that seem to let everything fall into place naturally.  Beasts of the Southern Wild is one of those films that seem to do both simultaneously.  Yes, the film can be rather contrived at times, but that never stops it from feeling quite sincere in that same said contrivance.  Yes, I know this sounds more than a bit weird (and possibly quite implausible), but don't let that fool you, for first time feature writer/director Benh Zeitlin's Beasts is certainly an enigma of a film.  Perhaps it isn't the proverbial riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside that enigma, that a film like last year's The Tree of Life, or even Blue Valentine - a pair of recent films that share a strange, certain kindred spirit, if not in narrative then at least in spirituality, with Beasts - but it is definitely a film that runs the gamut of emotions from the legitimate to the manipulated, and in mixing these two types of storytelling - the broad and the mindful - the film actually manages to work surprisingly well.  I would not call the film a groundbreaking creature, or beast if you will, like it is being marketed as, but the film does indeed work surprisingly well.

And the thing that empowers this film the most, and gives it the emotional center it has in spades, is the wonderful performance of a wonderful six-year-old newcomer by the wonderful name of Quvenzhané Wallis (pronounced Kwa-VAHN-Je-Nay).  Lying about her age when answering the audition notice for six to nine year olds, Miss Wallis, nicknamed Nazie, must have assuredly blown them away, much like she does to those watching her performance on the big screen.  To say this little girl with the giant voice, is a force of nature, may sound a bit cliché on my part, but in this particular case, it is more than true.   Wallis plays a girl named Hushpuppy who lives with her daddy in the flooded-out Bayou region known as The Bathtub.  Left alone to fend for themselves, this fictional community, based on many of those who were forced out of their homes after Katrina devastated the area, can also be looked upon as being a kindred spirit to the backwoods Appalachian folks of 2010's Winter's Bone - though to a much lesser degree of twisted evil found in that film.   And much like Jennifer Lawrence's suffering character in that film, Wallis is the guiding force through the hell on Earth that is her experience.

Zeitlin's film plays out like a mini Tree of Life, at least in style if not subject or scope (not to mention never even breaching the level of cinema chutzpah in the Malick film), and it is little Nazie that is at the center of of such a zeitgeist, such a southern wild if you will.  Even in those moments that seem a bit contrite - a fault that would be quite hard to overcome considering the story being told, and the inherent preachiness of such a subject - it is the performance of Nazie that pulls the film back up and into a better realm of cinema.  As I said at the outset, Beasts of the Southern Wild may not be the all powerful creature it is being advertised as, but with the help of little Quvenzhané Wallis (could she sneak in as the, by far, youngest Best Actress nominee come Oscar time?) the film is certainly one of the brighter spots of this year's American cinema output - and very possibly the best first feature of the year.

Film Review: Safety Not Guaranteed

"Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. Safety not guaranteed."  This is the ad, originally appearing in a 1997 issue of Backwoods Homes Magazine, and brought to prominence when read by Jay Leno on The Tonight Show, that became the inspiration for this little indie comedy directed by first timer Colin Trevorrow.  Starring Mublecore maestro Mark Duplass as Kenneth, the writer of said ad (in reality, the ad was written as a joke by the magazine's editor), Safety Not Guaranteed is not about whether this borderline nutjob actually can travel through time (though we do get an answer to whether he can or cannot during the final fifteen minute frenzy of the film) so much as why he wants to, and even moreso, why we end up wanting him to.

Trevorrow infuses his film with a calming northwestern feel (shot in and around Seattle and Ocean Shores WA) and gives it what he has called a "Hal Asby look", and just allows the story to unfold in the least pretentious manner.  And it is this story, and the performances within the story that make the film fly.  Duplass' Kenneth, who is paranoid about government agents following him, actually does get stalked by a Seattle Magazine reporter and his two interns, one of which, Darius, a twentysomething slacker played with a witty nonchalance by Aubrey Plaza of Parks and Recreation, manages to infiltrate herself into Kenneth's life.  At first posing as someone who wants to go back in time with him, Darius slowly (or actually not so slowly) begins to not only believe that they can indeed go back, and wanting to, but also, of course falling for the off-kilter Kenneth.  We also get a few subplots, one involving Jake Johnson's magazine reporter hooking up with his high school sweetheart, and this same said reporter trying to get his naive, nerdy intern laid, but these never really go much of anywhere, and only work to distract us from the main plot of Kenneth and Darius and their attempt at traveling through time.

The quirky, but not too quirky screenplay aside (and we all know how indie cinema likes to over do everything and outquirk each other), the film's heart and soul, so to speak, comes from Duplass and Plaza, and their strange interactions.  Plaza, playing her usual pretty little slacker routine (which is not a dig, as I think she does a good job at such a routine) is at first a bewildered Gen Y nowhere girl, gliding through life with no seeming ambition, and no seeming way to achieve any.  But through Duplass's lovable lunatic Kenneth, and the idea of time traveling, i.e. escaping her lost and lonely life, Plaza's Darius grows past this slacker mentality into something greater, and perhaps something more hopeful as well.  And as for Duplass, his portrayal of a man who may or may not be completely insane, is one of the most subtly charming performances of the cinematic year, and it is through him that the film succeeds as well as it does.  Half little boy lost and half determined mad scientist, Duplass gives the part his own weird sense of frat-slack style.  And by the time the finale finally comes along (and it is not that long to wait as the film clocks in at a mere 86 minutes), we are all invariably rooting for his time machine to actually work.  Whether it does or whether he is just a lovable crankcase with a flair for the dramatic, I will not divulge here, but we are certainly rooting for him to pull it off.

Film Review: Damsels in Distress

Aside from the lack of a French setting and the lack of anyone speaking French (though there is a lone French character here), Whit Stillman's Damsels in Distress may very well be the Frenchest movie out there that doesn't have, well, that doesn't have a French setting nor anyone speaking French.  In other words, Damsels in Distress plays out, both narratively and cinematically, with a much more French aesthetic than an American one.  This is neither a compliment nor is it an insult, it is just an educated opinion from this particular film critic.   

What this new film is for sure, though of course this is mere opinion as well, is pure, unadulterated fun.   But it is a kind of fun with that aforementioned French aesthetic, which by definition shies away from any Americanized moviemaking traits such as over-explanation and typical three act story arcs, and therefore may very well be a welcome boon to we of the more cinepiliac bent, but will be, and has been from my perspective, the kind of so-called snooty art film from which the average multiplex moviegoer, and even many who call themselves indie film lovers, will run away from in either a fit of boredom at being subjected to something that is not so easily palatable and therefore not so easily understood for art's sake or one of indignation over their refusal to admit the damn thing went right over their respective heads.  In other words, Damsels in Distress is just the kind of film that this critic can hunker down and get all kinds of cozy with.  In other other words, it is a damn fine, damn witty and damn downright hilarious motion picture - no matter what anyone else may counter.

I keep harping on the reactions of the so-called huddled masses because as a person who not only writes about cinema for a living, but also runs an art house cinema with his lovely wife, I have seen first hand the droves of disgruntled filmgoers exiting the theatres with complaints of boredom and confusion over this very same film.  Whether they just do not get what is going on - the film is set in a rather straight-forward linear manner and should not be seen as confusing in any way - or they are just used to a less free-form style of moviemaking and inevitably become disinterested with Stillman's choices as a writer and director, not to mention his rather keen seventies-esque cinematography choices, I do not dare speculate.  But then I am not really here to take cheap jabs at those with more middle-of-the-road tastes than I or my film snob ilk (though, whether I like it or not, it is part of my rather snarky nature), so perhaps we should just end this line of questioning right now and move on to exactly what it was about this film that I enjoyed so much while others did not.

The smartness of the dialogue and the sly way Stillman manipulates us into changing allegiances several times throughout the film, are a big part of what this film does so so right.  Stillman, who has not made a film since 1998's acerbic look at the waning days of Studio 54, The Last Days of Disco, is the kind of filmmaker who would never pander to his audience - who would never dumb down.  Stillman's writing is pitch perfect in its wry and witty stylings and the way these words are put forth by the director's stable of peripherally known actresses is nothing shy of narrative brilliance, even if it is written and put forth in the most subtle, crafty manner.  The highlight of these aforementioned relative unknowns is Greta Gerwig.  Ms. Gerwig first gained cinephiliac prominence with the little-known but quite fascinating mumblecore film Hannah Takes the Stairs, before moving on to being Russell Brand's dream girl in the quite horrendous Arthur remake.  Gerwig is an actress who should be more well known than she is, especially after seeing her crazy-eyed sweetheart Violet in this film, and hopefully she will be as she has a Woody Allen film on this coming fall's horizon.

But it is more than mere words and acting that make this quite, unassuming film all that and a bag of chips.  Stillman's ability to blend a quick-witted, intellectuality (some would say, and some have said pretentious) with a unique charm that can only be called highfalutin' kitsch, makes for the most intriguing of films.  Sort of playing out as Heathers all grown-up - or at least slightly more grown-up - Damsels tells the story of a group of too-cool-for-school types who run a college suicide prevention center, and the random boys (listed as "Their Distress" in the credits) who either titillate or repulse their individual and oft-times ridiculously precocious sensibilities.  Stillman incorporates a real sense of old timey storytelling into his modern day march of mental problems, and thanks to Violet and her gal pal's idea of depression therapy through dance, a few fun dance numbers to boot scoot boogie to as well.  Why more moviegoers are not catching onto this film we may never know (though some rather snobbish reasons snarkily flit in and out of mind) but it is a shame that this film will be left wallowing in inevitable obscurity (outside of we freaky film folk) just because it is too smart or too witty or two "French" or too whatever.  But then, what a way to go.

My 10 Favourite Things About P. T. Anderson's Boogie Nights

When I first saw PTA's Boogie Nights, back on video sometime around 1998 (no, I did not see it in theaters at the time of its release for some reason or another), I hated it.  Really, I just hated the damn thing.  Could not have been less impressed.  Granted, it was my first taste of the auteur Anderson (his first film, Hard Eight, would actually not be sen until just this past year), long before Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood (the latter being one of the five best films of the last decade), and well before I would herald him as one of the best directors working in cinema today (if you do not believe me, just read this).  But anyway, I digress.   

So I decided to watch the film again, sometime in 2003 (after Punch Drunk came out) and really liked it.  Somehow, my mind had been changed, and rather drastically at that.  So with my mind now going in another direction (was I just in a bad mood during that first attempt?) and with There Will Be Blood now firmly encased in such a vaunted position, I decided to watch the film a third time this past year.  This time I would do it the proper way - or at least the most proper way outside of a 35mm print thrown at a silver screen - and project my newly purchased Bluray disc on the big screen at my darling Midtown Cinema.  Well, now we got ourselves one humdinger of a cinematic event (or is that hummer?  Hmmm?).  Now we get a film that is suddenly the blastiest of blasts.  Gorgeous.  Succulent.  Fantastic.  Awe-Inspiring.  Gleefully decadent.  All that kind of jazz.  Do I dare even say, a masterpiece?  Sure, I dare, let us praise it as a modern day masterpiece!   A masterpiece indeed.  How's that for a turnaround?  But I digress once more, and will now get on with why we are all gathered here today in the first place.

What follows is the long-awaited return of my one-time regular series known as My 10 Favourite Things.  I suppose it was once a favourite among those who matter.  The last one I did was nearly ten months ago, so it's about time, huh?  Yes it is.  Anyway, here are my ten favourite things about a movie I once hated - imagine that.  I have numbered things just to keep a general semblance of decorum, but really these are in no particular order, save for maybe the last one needing to be at the end, so do not take them as such.  And as always, there may very well be spoilers ahead, so for those who care about such things, ye have been warned.   Oh, and one more thing - if you are interested in even more PTA-related stuff, check out the piece I did over at Anomalous Material, titled, appropriately enough, The 10 Best Paul Thomas Anderson Characters.  Now on with the show.

1) Julianne Moore Showing It All as Amber Waves - Wow, she really is a red head.  Ha!  Actually we already knew this from Short Cuts. Seriously though, not only is Ms. Moore sexy as hell here, the actress shows just how damn good of an actor she really is.  Going from porn queen to mother hen to tragic heroine, Moore gives one of the finest performances of an already more than fine career.

2) The More-Than-Obvious Scorsese Connection - It is certainly no secret that Martin Scorsese is one of the biggest influences on PTA's career, but it is more evident in Boogie Nights than anywhere else in the auteur's oeuvre, and the most obvious Scorsese-influenced connection is to the master's 1990 modern day masterpiece Goodfellas.  From the rags to riches and back to rags story arc of Goodfellas' Henry Hill and Boogie Nights' Dirk Diggler to the ever-roaming, ever-moving camera of both films, the long, always-sharp-eyed tracking shots, Anderson shows his prowess as a filmmaker while also honoring his stylistic mentor with a hot-blooded homage.  To watch as Wahlberg's wouldbe porn icon weaves his way through clubs and pool parties and recording studios is like watching Ray Liotta leading a wide-eyed, bewildered Lorraine Bracco through the back passages of the Copacabana in Goodfellas.  Great stuff indeed.

3) Burt Reynolds and His Non-Comeback Comeback - Once upon a time, Burt Reynolds was the top box office draw in Hollywood.  He began in television and broke into movies in the early seventies in films like Deliverance and The Longest Yard.  Then Smokey and the Bandit hit theaters.  For five years running, from 1978 through 1982, Reynolds was the main man at the box office.  The main man!  Then, with films such as Stick and Rent-A-Cop and All Dogs Go to Heaven, came a quick and wicked stumble from stardom to has-been.  Relegated to appearances on game shows, the actor's career seemed pretty much over.  Then came a TV show called Evening Shade which ran from 1990 to 1994.  After the success of that he garnered a comeback in films as well with the one two punch of Striptease and Boogie Nights - the latter of which would earn him his first, and so far only Oscar nomination.  It was an award he lost to Robin Williams for his treacly performance in Good Will Hunting.  It was an award he should have won.  It was an award that would have gone to his performance of porn king Jack Horner - a role that was pretty much built just for the actor.  But alas, it was an award that would not be and it was a comeback that was quite short lived.  Now relegated to voice work on animated shows and video games, and the occasional guest spot on TV, Reynolds' film career is pretty much back where it was in the late eighties (his role as Uncle Jessie in the Dukes of Hazzard movie is the highlight of an otherwise stupendously bad movie).  But we will always have Jack Horner.

4) The Soundtrack That Brought Sexy Back -  Just how Scorsese's pop and rock infused Goodfellas soundtrack (see - another connection!) led us through the rise and fall of Henry Hill, Anderson's Boogie Nights soundtrack takes us from the beginnings of Dirk Diggler's meteoric rise during the golden age of porn to his darkest days in the 1980's age of excess.  From Jethro Tull and Three Dog Night to Hot Chocolate and K.C. and the Sunshine Band this is a soundtrack for the ages.  Well at least for the ages of my lifetime.  From God Only Knows by The Beach Boys to Rick Springfield's Jessie's Girl, from Best of My Love by the Emotions to Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now by McFadden & Whitehead to Andrew Gold's Lonely Boy (left off the official soundtrack), we grow with the characters from one decade to the next.  Of course the two best and most important numbers from the film, not only in the songs themselves but their connection with other parts of the film, are Melanie's Brand New Key (incidentally my current ringtone) and Sister Christian by Night Ranger.  But these will be addressed later on down the list.

5) Rollergirl as Male Fantasy Id Incarnate - Heather Graham may not be the world's best actress - or even close to it - but the girl sure can make a pair of roller skates sing.  As the troubled high school dropout who becomes a plaything both on and off the set (in those days of pre-Aids promiscuity, sluttiness was much more quaint) and rolls around on her skates - Melanie's aforementioned mesmerizing melody playing behind her - Graham's childlike sexuality (there's a strange-sounding concoction, but that is how best to describe the actress and character's more freewheeling sensibilities) steals much of the show.  And baby, she doesn't take off her skates for anything.  Not for anything.

6) A Wardrobe Blast From the Decadent Past - Now of course any film set in the time period of Boogie Nights is bound to showcase a kick-ass wardrobe, but the outlandish sensibilities of PTA's film make it even more kick-ass than expected.  Of course being set in the porn industry doesn't hurt either.  From Rollergirl's knee-high tube socks and hot pants to Dirk Diggler, Reed Rothchild and Buck Swope's array of disco-era fashion, there is no doubt the wardrobe department had one hell of a good time coming up with how to dress their cast.

7) The Other Guys In and Out of the Shot - Speaking of the fashion sense of Reed Rothchild and Buck Swope, John C. Reilly and Don Cheadle do more than an admirable job living up to their being cast as porn studs.  Granted, they may not have a certain attribute that Dirk Diggler has (see number ten in our list) but they hold their own as the necessary second string stud material.  We also get Philip Seymour Hoffman as Scotty J., a typically queer (in several senses of the word) PSH kind of character and William H. Macy as Little Bill, the most pathetic but also possibly the most sympathetic character outside of Moore's Ms. Waves.

8) The Batshitcrazy World of Rahad Jackson and Sister Christian - Now there are a lot of great scenes in Boogie Nights.  Okay, pretty much all of them.  But even with all this greatness (and this from a guy who hated the film on first sight!?), there is one scene that goes bananas over all of them - batshitcrazybananas!  That scene is near the end when Dirk, Reed and Todd go to coke dealer Rahad Jackson's pad in order to (stupidly, mind you) rob the noted maniac.  Alfred Molina's  one-scene cameo performance as the maniacal Jackson, and his rendition of Night Ranger's Sister Christian, is pure cinematic bravura.  In other words - batshitcrazy!

9) The Long Gone Halcyon Days of the Golden Age of Porn - Once upon a time, porn was something very different than what it is now.  Granted, it was still very far from respectable, but back in the 1970's, the porn industry was filled with men and women that wanted to create art - and believed they actually were.  Compared to today's age of internet porn excess (really, who can not find every single pornographic fetish with a mere click of a mouse!?) this so-called golden age was an age of porn auteurs.  Films like Deep Throat proved that one could create porn with certain artistic values.  Sure, it is not high art, but at least at the time, it was some sort of art.

10) And Then Came Dirk Diggler and the Money Shot - Sure, we all know it wasn't really Mark Wahlberg, but a rather lengthy prosthetic, that made its long-awaited appearance in the final, money shot of the film, but that does not take anything away from its thunderous, unzipped screen debut.  I mean really, we are talking about porn, and this is what it is all about.  After all, as Diggler says, everyone has something special, and this was his...um, his thing.