2004 Foreign, Alternative and Independent Films - Page 8

Lew Crippen · 11-06-2004, 05:29 PM

Lightning in a Bottle

A concert/documentary film of a blues concert at Radio City Music Hall in Febuary 2003. Musicians of today are featured, but they play and sing music of the entire spectrum, spanning everyone from Blind Lemon Jefferson and Robert Johnson to Jimi Hendrix. There is some archival film and recordings of performances by such as Ledbelly and Muddy Waters but the film focuses on the live performance.

Director Antoine Fuqua, the editor, cameramen and DP do a great job of capturing the energy of the music and the interplay and raw sexual presence of the performers.

This is a must-see for those who love the blues—but it should be avoided by anyone who dislikes this music. Those who are neither lovers nor haters, may well become lovers after watching the movie.

Pick a theater with a good sound system—and one where they are not afraid to crank up the volume.

**HTF Ads**

Michael Reuben · 11-07-2004, 02:43 PM

Undertow

This is the second film I've seen by critical darling David Gordon Green, and I will not be seeing a third. Green is undeniably talented, but his interests don't interest me.

Green has often been compared to Terence Malick, and while I thought the comparison inapt for All the Real Girls, it suits Undertow (on which, appropriately enough, Malick is one of the producers). Green cares little about character and even less about plot. In his films, it's all about mood. Girls explored the pains and pleasures of small town life for people coming of age. Undertow works the more colorful territory of Southern gothic, and because the events are (potentially) so much more dramatic, the film is all the more maddening when experiences of conflict, jeopardy and violence are reduced to just moments in the flow of a cinematic tone poem. If you didn't mind the way World War II combat was handled in The Thin Red Line, this may be a film for you.

The film revolves around two sets of brothers: the adults, John and Deel (Dermot Mulroney and Josh Lucas), and John's sons, Tim and Chris (Devon Allen and Jamie Bell, a long way from Billy Elliot). The first 20-25 minutes establish the characters of John (cryptically stern), Tim (mysteriously ill, in a way that the audience quickly learns may be self-induced for reasons never explained), and Chris (rebellious and horny).

Then Uncle Deel appears bearing Josh Lucas' trademark glower. Ancient conflicts resurface, followed by violence and a pursuit that lasts the rest of the movie but never feels terribly urgent. New characters are introduced and often disappear with as little explanation as the abundant freeze-frames that seem to have become Green's preferred way of ending a scene. There is a McGuffin consisting of gold coins, which, according to family legend, were given to Tim and Chris's grandfather by Charon, the ferryman of the River Styx (no, I'm not making this up). The film has a resolution of sorts, but it feels neither earned nor satisfying.

Undertow has received glowing reviews from respectable critics, including Roger Ebert; so obviously Green is connecting to some viewers in a way that escapes me. I appreciate that the arthouse circuit provides an outlet for directors with such a singular vision, but it's not one I'm interested in seeking out again.

M.

Michael Reuben · 11-07-2004, 03:08 PM

Red Lights (Feux rouges)

For some reason, I thought I had reviewed this a while ago, but I guess that was one of the weeks when I ran out of time. It's been nearly two months since I saw it, but it keeps slipping back into my thoughts. It's no longer playing in New York City, but it may be making the arthouse rounds elsewhere, and I highly recommend it.

Red Lights is essentially a two-character drama in three acts. In the first, we get scenes from a marriage, the marriage being that of Antoine and Hélène, a couple played by Jean-Pierre Darroussin and former Bond girl Carole Bouquet (For Your Eyes Only). Trapped together in a car on a weekend road trip to pick up their children from camp, this is a couple who can barely suppress their conflicts -- and it doesn't help that Antoine has started drinking heavily even before they leave.

In the second act, Antoine and Hélène are separated, and we follow Antoine on a bizarre odyssey in which he alternately searches for Hélène and revels in the sudden freedom that he feels in her absence. As Antoine grows ever more reckless, you know that he's headed for trouble. To say more would be a spoiler.

In the third act, Antoine awakes from his drunken night and begins to search for Hélène in earnest. This leads to a tour-de-force sequence in which the director, Cédric Kahn, and his leading man create an astonishing mood of tension and urgency as Antoine does nothing more than stand at a bar and make phone call after phone call looking for his wife. Bad things have happened, some of which the audience knows, some of which they only suspect. The ending is, at best, bittersweet. (Again, to say more would be a spoiler.)

It's interesting to compare this film to another that it superficially (very superficially) resembles, Jonathan Mostow's Breakdown. The comparison says a lot about what differentiates Hollywood studio product from the arthouse circuit. In Breakdown, the characters are functional; they are filled in just enough to serve the machinations of the thriller plot, which is what the movie is about. In Red Lights, the thriller plot, such as it is, is not the end but merely the means to explore the characters and reveal their layers -- notably Antoine, who is very different by the end of the film. He's the same person, and Jean-Pierre Darroussin's exquisitely calibrated performance never lets you forget that. But now you know him a lot better, warts and all. You may even have come to like him. I did.

M.

Dave Hackman · 11-08-2004, 09:52 PM

Head in the Clouds

Charlize Theron in bed with Penelope Cruz, I had to forgo my star trek morals and force myself to see such filth. Theron plays Gilda, a free spirit who uses men to her advantage, and is the main mama in this story of a trio of lovers set adrift by the looming war with the Germans. Stuart Townsend plays the male lead and I found him to be pretty good and since he is Theron’s real boyfriend their affection appears more real. Cruz seemed a littlie dippy at times without a clearly written character but she sure looked sultry with her sexy self.

This story is long and reminded me of the red violin, just went on and on and in the end I think it paid off. I never would have guessed the sad ending and it made the journey well worth it. I did care what happened to the main characters since I watched them for so long and Theron’s performance is really good.

I don’t think this is great or really full of depth, but it is a decent story that held my attention until the end.

C+

Michael Reuben · 11-15-2004, 12:34 PM

Kinsey

Given this film's Oscar hopes (which are well-justified), I expect it will have its own thread soon enough. But it's a Fox Searchlight film currently playing in five theaters, and I think it belongs here.

There's already controversy over the accuracy of the film's portrayal of sex research pioneer Alfred Kinsey, and that's not surprising. Kinsey was probably more responsible than anyone (including Hugh Hefner) for the so-called sexual revoluation of late 20th century America. One's attitude toward Kinsey is very much a product of how one feels about that trend. What should not be controversial is the qualiy of writer-director Bill Condon's film, which is superbly crafted and brilliantly performed.

Condon doesn't make the mistake of trying to avoid bio-pic cliches -- on the contrary, he embraces them and makes them work to his advantage. His subject was a man who interviewed thousands of people about their sexual histories; so Condon opens the film with Kinsey being interviewed by several of his assistants as a training exercise. It's an efficient narrative device that, coupled with flashbacks, very quickly gives us a portrait of Kinsey as he was just beginning the landmark studies of sexual behavior that, for better or worse, are his legacy.

Liam Neeson's portrayal of Kinsey is extraordinary. It may suffer during awards season, because Neeson doesn't hesitate to make the audience uncomfortable. There's something unsettling in the single-minded devotion of this fundamentally shy individual to digging out the most intimate secrets in people's lives -- his own and everyone else's. In his own way, Kinsey was as rigorous, uncompromising and ultimately insensitive as the puritanical father (played by John Lithgow) against whom he rebelled. There is a key scene in the latter part of the film where Kinsey and an assistant interview a voracious sexual explorer played by William Sadler, who, like Kinsey, is obsessed with documenting his explorations. When it emerges that those explorations included pedophilia, Kinsey's assistant, despite all the training in objectivity and detachment, leaves the room in disgust. But Kinsey remains and listens. The scene is the film's way of showing that scientific detachment has its perils.

Of equal caliber is Laura Linney's potrayal of Clara Kinsey, who is, if anything, an even more complicated character than her husband. In scene after scene, Neeson and Linney draw you into the inner world of what had to be one of the more unusual marriages of its time. The scene where Kinsey confesses a homosexual encounter with one of his assistants (another exceptional portrayal by Peter Sarsgaard) is equal parts moving and disturbing. The later scene where Clara herself has an open fling with the same assistant is both disturbing and very funny. It takes an extraordinary cast and a very sure directorial hand to get away with this material and not lose the audience.

Kinsey's landmark 1948 publication Sexual Behavior in the Human Male made him a household name, and the film deftly covers that development (complete with Cole Porter lyrics!) and the inevitable backlash that followed. Given the national debate about "values" in which we are now engaged, the film actually seems more timely than perhaps it did when the project was first conceived. There is no doubt where the film's sympathies lie -- Kinsey's chief nemesis on the faculty at Indiana University is played by Tim Curry as a repressive buffoon (which is pretty funny if you remember him as Frank 'N' Furter) -- and the film could easily become a contemporary lightning rod. But even if one disapproves of Kinsey, the bell that he rang can't be unrung. As he says in the film, there is an enormous gap between what people imagine sexual experience to be and what it is, and the film provides numerous examples. (Interview question to a couple: "How many sexual positions have you tried?" Answer: "There's more than one?") One only has to look at contemporary popular culture to realize that perception today is very different.

The film's production values are extraordinary given the limited budget. The film has a rich period look that transports you back into an era of much greater formality and reserve. The cinematography by Frederick Elmes (whose work I always enjoy) casts an odd kind of serenity over scene after scene in which mighty forces are churning just under the surface.

As an aside: I'd love to know how they got some of these scenes past the MPAA. I can't remember a recent film from a major studio that had so much male full frontal nudity. The scene with Kinsey lecturing to a room full of students shocked by the explicit photographs he's projecting in giant enlargements is almost guaranteed to have people in the theater audience squirming. But writer-director Condon is smart enough to relieve the tension with a joke, which I won't spoil here.

M.

Michael Reuben · 11-16-2004, 02:33 PM

Finding Neverland

It's beautifully acted, expertly directed and features some gorgeous scenery. But it left me cold. Maybe it's because I've never been a big fan of the Peter Pan story. If one isn't enchanted by the Neverland saga, one isn't likely to be enchanted by the experience of someone conjuring it up.

Still, I wasn't bored and, more importantly, I wasn't uncomfortable watching this (heavily fictionalized) story of how English playwright J.M. Barrie inserted himself into the Davies family and used them as raw material for his most successful creation. In different hands, both behind and in front of the camera, this could have been downright creepy. Johnny Depp's portrayal of Barrie is so winning, and Marc Forster's direction is so assured, that the more questionable elements of the story remain banished to the edges. It's also good to have Dustin Hoffman (as Barrie's producer) and Julie Christie (as the Davies grandmother), because their characters supply a needed dose of skepticism and a tartness that helps cut the sentimentality.

I doubt Johnny Depp will win the Oscar for this film, unless it's considered some sort of make-up. But he's always interesting to watch, and this film is no exception. I can't quite bring myself to recommend this, but I don't think you'll feel the time was wasted.

M.

Jason Seaver · 11-16-2004, 02:51 PM

Overnight -

The title of Tony Montana's and Mark Brian Smith's Overnight implies some sort of change, but the truth is that Boondock Saints writer/director Troy Duffy was probably a jerk before he got a movie deal. That said, his unpleasantness is right out there for the world to see - one must infer it for Montana and Smith.

The movie starts with news coverage of the deal that Troy Duffy signed with Miramax - where he would not only get to direct his screenplay, but his band would do the soundtrack, he would have casting approval, and Harvey Weinstein was buying him the pub where he'd been tending bar for good measure. His band, The Brood, includes his brother Taylor and a couple others; this documentary's directors are the band's co-managers. They probably intend for this documentary, started in 1997, to cover Duffy's rise.

Duffy is full of himself, though, and soon alienates people at Miramax. The band's record deal evaporates, and he lashes out at Tony and Mark, saying that they don't deserve to get paid for what little they'd done for the band, that all the group's success came from him. This is likely the moment where Overnight stopped being a documentary and started being a hatchet job.

One might wonder, though, why Montana and Smith kept up with it, or why Duffy let them keep following him around. If I'd basically been called worthless and told I wasn't getting paid for my services, I'd be looking for actual gainful employment. But, then, I'm not a hanger-on, which seems to be the best way to describe Montana and Smith based upon what we see in their movie. And apparently hell hath no fury like that of a pair of hangers-on scorned. They take great delight in showing Duffy getting his come-uppance, and because Duffy is a pompous ass, the audience enjoys it too. As to why Duffy let them keep following him around, well, I've never had hangers-on, either. Losing them must be like losing some sort of ongoing validation that you're important and matter.

But, underneath it all, I couldn't help but find something I liked about Duffy. I never want to meet him, or work with him, mind you, but I can't help but admire that when all is said and done, he made a movie, one which has something of a cult following, and wound up doing it for half the budget he'd originally planned on having. He doesn't seem too bright (he didn't get a piece of the TV and video action where the movie has made most of its money), and he made a classic mistake: He didn't realize that the industry was filled with people smarter than he was - or if he did, he thought being hard-headed would be enough. His perception that he could make it by being as big a bully as the Harvey Weinsteins he met up with didn't bear out, but it's born out of the same drive that made him a worthy documentary subject in the first place.

So... now that I've gotten through my emotional reaction to the subject matter, I suppose it's time to say what I thought of Overnight as a film. It's not bad at all, once you've made the adjustments for who is making it and their readily apparent antipathy for their subject. The film compresses five years of time into an hour and a half, and they must have had a lot of footage to sift through. The editors do a great job constructing a coherent, attention-keeping narrative from that raw material. There is, of course, the question of selective endpoints - the film sort of treats the Boondock Saints screenplay as something which came into existence on its own, giving no indication that writing it must have been hard work, or really any depiction of who Duffy was before the fame/infamy. The IMDB shows Duffy at work on a sequel to Boondock Saints, but you'd never know he was anything but finished by the end of Overnight.

Overnight is an entertaining movie and a useful parable about a man living the dream and then pissing it away because he couldn't grasp how lucky he was. You'll laugh at Troy Duffy and probably come away with some small feeling of moral superiority. Just keep in mind the likely motivations of the filmmakers.

The Machinist -

Man, Brad Anderson has gotten dark. He's good at it, but I'm starting to wonder if he's got another Next Stop Wonderland or Happy Accidents in him.

This is Anderson's first feature based upon another person's screenplay, and it's fairly clear. His previous films had a much more evident spark of creativity to them, whether it be the background Sam claims in Accidents or the literally dangerous atmosphere to the mental hospital in Session 9. Writer Scott Kosar's other credits are for horror movie remakes, and certain elements of The Machinist will seem very familiar.

The story unfolds at a leisurely pace. Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) is a machinist at a tool and die company who hasn't been able to sleep for a year. He tries, but it just doesn't happen, and he fills his time off the floor by seeing a hooker (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and by coffee and conversation with a waitress (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) at an airport diner. His apartment is sparse, devoid of any ornament, and he's wasting away - both women remark that if he were any thinner, he wouldn't exist. Soon, though, a man named Ivan (John Sharian) appears at his workplace, and when he distracts Trevor at one point, it sets of an accident that causes a co-worker to lose an arm. During the insurance investigation, though, Trevor is told that Ivan doesn't exist.

It's not terribly difficult to predict the trajectory of the movie after this - Reznik will get paranoid, he'll be shunned at work, and the audience will figure out well ahead of Reznik that someone who has gone seven thousand hours without sleep may not have the most reliable perspective on any given situation. That hampers the movie a bit, because when the audience knows something terribly obvious that the main character obviously doesn't, that character is always going to be a step or three behind. The only way for the audience not to feel frustrated with how dim the protagonist is then becomes "withheld information", which merely delays aggravation.

Anderson makes the movie visually striking, though - the desaturated colors are a good indicator of how numb Reznik seems to be growing to the world, with the occasional object rendered in full color (such as Ivan's red convertible) thus seeming to have significance. A sequence in an amusement park house-of-horrors ride is certainly disturbing. And the way in which Reznik opts to make his claim of a hit and run believable enough for the police to give him information on Ivan is not for the squeamish.

Still, the most talked-about visual in the movie is Christian Bale's insane weight loss. Dropping a third of the mass from his six-foot-two frame to a final weight of 130 pounds, Bale is so skinny as to make the audience uncomfortable. Heck, he tripped my reality filter - I looked at him and thought "that's a CGI effect; he doesn't look human". It certainly makes Reznik look like a ghost, fading away from his life. It occasionally overshadows the story and character, though, making me feel more like I was watching a freakshow than a movie.

And it can't be healthy. If I ever hear of my theater-major brother doing something like this for a role, I will call our mother and make sure that he is inundated with cookies and pies and cakes until he relents.

The story is of the variety that comes together well enough by the end, but starts to look a little less plausible about ten minutes later. As with many unreliable-narrator stories, that's when you can start to piece together what literally happened and what may not have, and that's fine, but when you try to figure out where the stuff that may not have comes from, why it interjects itself into Reznik's mind at that point and in that way, that's a little trickier.

Whether you ultimately like or dislike the movie, Bale's emaciated body will stick in your mind, probably well after the somewhat derivative story and decent performances fade.

Dave Hackman · 11-20-2004, 10:17 PM

Being Julia

This is a movie that is outside my comfort zone and I really had no idea if I would like or dislike it. I can say by the end of this film my initial discomfort vanished and I found myself absorbed within the story. I felt like I left the theater seat and traveled to England to witness this story and returned without the jetlag or the expense. When this happens it really is special and so much more rewarding then those times when you’re just looking at surround placement and counting track lights on the floor. If this is in your area, I recommend you give it a try.

Annette Bening is radiant in this piece with wonderful looking shots that catch her in all her beauty. She had a lot of dialog and she delivered it with great enthusiasm and energy that carried until the final scene. Her son, played by Tom Sturridge is also quite stunning to look at and he really had a nice way about him that made me want to see more of him. Jeremy Irons played the husband/producer and he delivered an excellent performance with the limited allotted screen time given to him. The young lover Tom played by Shaun Evans was good initially, but he seemed to act really poorly after their breakup and by the end became a true eyesore.

Julia the ultimate stage actress performs the lead role for London’s artsy crowd in a play that is produced by her boss/husband played by Jeremy Irons. They are in their middle 40’s and have a teenage son that is attempting to forge his own path different from his parents. Julia/Michael’s relationship is built upon their united commitment to deliver a great show and this is what both desire the most. Julia receives inspiration for her characters from her escapades outside her marriage and is introduced to Tom a 20ish year old lifelong fan and newly hired yank played by Shaun Evans. He becomes her newest muse when her current fling with Lord Charles played by Bruce Greenwood abruptly ends due to his fear of bad publicity and his desire to travel abroad. Julia and Tom’s fling is fun for a while but eventually comes to a grinding halt when her young lover’s interest sways toward an actress his own age. Julia finds herself in competition with this younger actress who is on her way up and she on her way down. Tired and performing poorly as her husband insists, she returns to her hometown in Jersey and tries to recover physically and mentally. While in Jersey she unites with Lord Charles and gains insight as to why he ended their former relationship and why he is unwilling to rekindle their passion. Julia returns to England to find her husband entangled in a twist that really motivates her to deliver a stunning ad lib performance that exposes all involved and that ultimately brings down the house.

B

Dave Hackman · 11-21-2004, 12:40 PM

Sideways

Miles played by Paul Giamatti is recently divorced and officially bummed out. He is about to take his buddy Jack played by Thomas Haden on a relaxing driving trip to sample some wine and play a little golf before his ensuing wedding to a wealthy Armenian beauty. Miles is a schoolteacher who has been trying to complete/publish his book and is hoping for that big break. Jack is a hardly working actor that is looking to marry for security and is an amateur when it comes to wine. Jacks idea of fun is a little more adventurous then miles, and Jack feels it’s his duty to get Miles out of his rut by finding him a love interest.

This was better then expected, seen some good reviews and figured it wouldn’t live up to them, but thankfully it does. I know absolutely nothing about wine but I appreciate the passion these characters displayed about their hobby.

The camera was put real close to the characters during most scenes and this provided a very intimate setting which helped draw me in to their little world. Washed out sun shots preventing me from un-focusing on what was immediately taking place and helped zone me in on what the characters were doing. I was impressed with the dark motel scene, Jack returns naked to the motel and wakes Miles and it was extremely dark. This is usually lit too much which doesn’t convey the dead of night but this sure did. The scenery shown as Miles and Jack drive from winery to winery was beautiful and relaxing with gorgeous vineyards and a rolling countryside, it felt like I was really there with them.

I found this movie to be very funny, and it really sparked laughter from different people at different times, fun to see with a full theater. Look for Bush & friends on the television during the wallet scene. I don’t think kids would enjoy this movie much as it seems to be for adults only. There is a frontal nude shot of a man in one scene and a couple of semi naked scenes so if this bothers you then prepare to close your eyes.

This movie is for those who enjoy watching not so perfect humans attempting to deal with their not so perfect lives utilizing there under funded arsenal of life skills. You get a little love story mixed with a dash of sophomoric humor aged in a cellar to create a fine film.

A

Edwin Pereyra · 11-25-2004, 09:00 AM

Just to be on the safe side, I'll post this one here, as well.

Sideways

Alexander Payne’s character study of two unlikable individuals in their mid-life years who have very little to show for is well acted, heartfelt and emotionally realized. Paul Giamatti follows his breakthrough performance in American Splendor with yet another nuanced performance worthy of mention for one of this year’s top acting awards.

Payne, and mostly through Thomas Haden Church, sprinkles his script with the right touch of comic moments that keep this dramedy on balance. As with his previous films, Payne has a gift of giving us flawed characters along with their transgressions lest be judged by their actions – individuals that may not be like one of us but all the while, someone that we can relate to.

Sideways delves into failed relationships and unsatisfied lives that it also becomes a second coming of age for the midlife guy.

~Edwin