Archive: Film
In its fourth year, the Migrating Forms film festival at Anthology Film Archives continues to present ambitious films of unclassifiable nature. In their past interview for The Brooklyn Rail, the festival co-directors Nellie Killian and Kevin McGarry stressed their interest in works that move "in and out of different viewing contexts," and for which it may be hard to find "an ideal audience."
Abendland, by Austrian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter, meets these criteria by being mostly a meditative documentary in which images do all the talking. Considering that no poetic voiceover ties the loose ends, the film's eloquence is pretty remarkable. Is Abendland a metaphor for contemporary Europe? Following glum economic news, some critics have espied in its title an allusion to decay and decline. Perhaps, but watching the nocturnal going-ons in factories and in hospital wards, in whorehouses or at an anti-nuclear protest, I wasn't so sure the film delivered one particular message. This is partly because Geyrhalter, whose background is in photography, has a patient and a discerning eye when it comes to capturing the prose of life and rendering it strange. In one early scene, a nurse feeds a tiny human infant attached to a tangled network of tubes. Her soft patter and the baby's cherry-red skin seem almost menaced by the life-saving machines. By the time the infant is back in the incubator, and the lights go off, leaving it to its precarious breathing, you may find yourself holding your breath as well. From the start, then, this movie is more broadly about "the human factor" in an increasingly mechanized world. Continue Reading »
Tags: Abendland, Kevin McGarry, Migrating Forms, Nellie Killian, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, The Brooklyn Rail
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[Editor's Note: Poster Lab is your weekly dose of movie poster dissection, wherein the House examines the pluses, minuses, and in-betweens of the poster design(s) for a buzzworthy film.]
You never know what you're going to get with a Woody Allen poster. Sometimes, it's a great beauty like the one-sheet for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which slices its lead trio's faces in half, leaving each with an eye that's free to wander. Sometimes, as with the poster for Midnight in Paris, it's an inspired merger of film still and relevant masterpiece. Other times, it's a hasty design without a plan, as has been the case with both posters for Allen's latest, To Rome with Love.
Continuing the director's love affair with European hotspots, this cryptically described romantic jaunt has all the signs of an Allen misfire, seemingly tossed together from casting to marketing. The initial poster was an odd mix of cells, swoony backdrops, and awkward clipping paths, which allowed the title to be flanked by clownish cutouts of Roberto Benigni and Allen himself, back on screen for the first time since Scoop. The second poster can't even earn points for tasteful minimalism, so lazy and generic is its whitewashed approach. Both ads don't just imply that no one knows how to sell this thing, but that no one particularly cares about putting in the effort. Continue Reading »
Tags: Midnight in Paris, Penélope Cruz, Poster Lab, Posters, Roberto Benigni, scoop, To Rome with Love, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Woody Allen, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
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Chloë Moretz and Blake Lively get their hillbilly on in Hick, one of this weekend's Dark Shadows alternatives and, quite possibly, one of the year's worst. It is indeed good for something, though, as it's inspired this 15-wide roster of cinema's unforgettable rednecks. While far more prevalent in recent movies, characters who don't quite hail from the upper crust have long been giving fuel to the likes of Jeff Foxworthy, who might have made the list himself if not out-hicked by a slew of fictional kinfolk. Whether hailing from the sticks or the trailer park, these hayseeds might even make Jerry Springer blush. Continue Reading »
Tags: all the king's men, Billy Bob Thornton, Brad Pitt, Charles Laughton, Charlize Theron, dark shadows, drop dead gorgeous, Ellen Barkin, hick, In the Heat of the Night, jeff foxworthy, jerry springer, joe dirt, kalifornia, mary boland, Monster, national lampoon's christmas vacation, Nicolas Cage, planes trains and automobiles, r. lee ermey, raizing arizona, Randy Quaid, Rob Zombie, Ruggles of Red Gap, sllng blade, the devil's rejects, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Winter's Bone
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Rounding out its 55th year, the generally celebratory San Francisco International Film Festival seemed to open on a melancholy note, with the deaths of two illustrious film-culture stalwarts still fresh in the memories of local cinephiles: Graham Leggat, who had since 2005 been the San Francisco Film Society's executive director, succumbed to cancer last year; and Bingham Ray, a veteran force in the indie circuit who'd agreed to take over the position, passed away in January at the Sundance Film Festival. Just as Nietzsche envisioned art as "the redeeming, healing enchantress" that could confront despair, it was up to cinema then to alleviate the event's potentially mournful mood. Indeed, the titles chosen to pay tribute to the two men—Benoit Jacquot's unusual Versailles-set drama Farewell, My Queen, which opened the festival in dedication to Leggat, and Carol Reed's sardonic 1949 masterpiece The Third Man, reportedly Ray's all-time favorite film—served as reminders not only of SFIFF's characteristically eclectic selection, but also of its dedication to acknowledging the medium's past while steadfastly gazing ahead for discoveries. Continue Reading »
Tags: ALPS, Ben Chaplin, Benoit Jacquot, Bingham Ray, Carol Reed, Caveh Zahedi, Emanuele Crialese, Eran Kolirin, Eric Baudelaire, Farewell My Queen, Filippo Pucillo, Francis Ford Coppola, Graham Leggat, Hong Sang-soo, Laurent Achard, Masao Adachi, Mathieu Kassovitz, Pascal Cervo, Pierre Rissient, Pierre Rissient: Man of Cinema, Rebellion, Rotem Keinan, San Francisco International Film Festival, Sharon Tal, Terraferma, The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu Masao Adachi and 27 Years Without Images, The Day He Arrives, The Exchange, The Last Screening, The Sheik and I, The Third Man, Timnit T., Todd McCarthy, Twixt, Val Kilmer, Yorgos Lanthimos, Yu Jun-sang
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[Editor's Note: Poster Lab is your weekly dose of movie poster dissection, wherein the House examines the pluses, minuses, and in-betweens of the poster design(s) for a buzzworthy film.]
If you find yourself compelled to purchase the poster for Lionsgate's The Possession, and need a clue about what to hang beside it, look no further than the fine print atop the film's title. The latest body-snatching thriller to court an audience that keeps on buying tickets, The Possession is presented and produced by Sam Raimi, and its icky one-sheet is a retread of that for Raimi's own Drag Me to Hell, with the volume pumped up to full gross-out decibels. No need to employ the scaly hands that delivered Alison Lohman to Satan; young Hannah (Madison Davenport) has a taloned creep right inside her person, who can ship her soul to hell without even opening up the earth.
The Possession poster isn't anywhere near as handsome as its counterpart. It trades ironic gleam for what is believed to be heebie-jeebie envelope-pushing, presenting an anatomical nightmare that makes one gulp and shudder. But the truth is, this poster, albeit strikingly macabre, is far more disciplined than defiant. Unremarkable in every way beyond its specific bodily harm, it joins an overstretched line of ads that routinely showcase shocks, which shuffle through a bland template like a stomach-turning slideshow. Continue Reading »
Tags: alison lohman, Drag Me to Hell, Jessica Alba, madison davenport, one missed call, Poster Lab, Posters, Sam Raimi, The Devil Inside, the eye, The Last Exorcism, the possession
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by Tom Stempel on May 6th, 2012 at 9:13 am in Film
Coming Up In This Column: The Deep Blue Sea, A Separation, The Forgiveness of Blood, The Kid With a Bike, Salt of Life, Letters to Young Filmmakers: Creativity & Getting Your Film Made (book), Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark (book), but first...
Fan Mail: I will take David Ehrentstein at his word that he was serious about Mandingo (1975) is one of the best films about race in America, but I am not sure anybody else will. On Smash's Ellis I don't think I made it clear that I think he is bi as well. And I agree completely with David that the "Don't Say Yes Until I Finish Talking" number is the best one so far in Smash. That episode had not shown up at the time I wrote US#92. Interesting though that they only showed the rehearsal/audition version and did not cut to the fully produced number as they sometimes do. Well, some people can look forward to seeing all those chorus boys in just their towels.
The Deep Blue Sea (2011. Screenplay by Terence Davies, adapted from the play by Terence Rattigan. 98 minutes.)
Terence, meet Terence: Terence Rattigan (1911-1977) was one of the leading British playwrights of the middle of the twentieth century. The period of his greatest success was from 1946 to 1956. His dramas were literate and restrained, usually about members of the upper class stifling their emotions. His work became almost instantaneously unfashionable with the arrival of the Angry Young Men playwrights like John Osborne. But even before his death, Rattigan's reputation began to regain some of its luster, as did the reputation of his contemporary Noël Coward, and for some of the same reasons. Both wrote dramas about people with restrained emotions, which gives actors a lot of subtext to play. Both were also extraordinary theatrical craftsmen, especially in the area of dramatic structure. Continue Reading »
Tags: A Separation, Andamion Murataj, Asghar Farhadi, Brian Kellow, Gianni Di Gregorio, Howard Suber, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Joshua Marston, Letters to Young Filmmakers: Creativity & Getting Your Film Made, Luc Dardenne, Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark, Salt of Life, Terence Rattigan, Terrence Davies, The Deep Blue Sea, The Forgiveness of Blood, The Kid with a Bike, Understanding Screenwriting, Valerio Attanasio
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No, this list-maker hasn't had the pleasure of devouring Kate Hudson's ticking-clock romance, A Little Bit of Heaven, which sees everyone's favorite Almost Famous alum continue to chase her first hit like an undiscerning free-baser. The movie did, however, inspire thoughts of cinema's approach to the great hereafter, which has been visualized as everything from an inhabitable oil painting to your good old field of clouds. Diagnosed with terminal cancer by a doctor (Gael García Bernal) who in turn becomes her squeeze, Hudson's character tries for a little heaven on earth before her time runs out. These 15 heavens, however, almost all exist on another plane. Continue Reading »
Tags: 15 famous, A Matter of Life and Death, Albert Brooks, almost famous, Angels in America, Audrey Hepburn, Carousel, Chris Rock, claude rains, defending your life, down to earth, Emeric Pressburger, field of dreams, Gael García Bernal, Gladiator, Heaven Can Wait, here comes mr. jordan, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Jeffrey Wright, kate hudson, Kevin Costner, kim hunter, lists, Michael Powell, Mike Nichols, Peter Jackson, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Montgomery, Robin Williams, Steven Spielberg, Terrence Malick, the lovely bones, The Tree of Life, Tony Kushner, warren beatty, What Dreams May Come
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by Dan Callahan on May 2nd, 2012 at 1:07 pm in Film
According to IMDB, there are no less than twenty print biographies of the actress Romy Schneider, sixteen of which are in German, four in French, and zero in English. At this point Schneider is barely known in America, though her beauty used to be world-renowned. Alain Delon, one of French cinema's greatest male beauties, had a long running on- and off-screen affair with Schneider, and in 2009 he told the French newspaper Le Provence that Romy was the love of his life. Schneider's movie stardom arced across three distinct periods: teenaged German ingenue turned overnight national icon; all-purpose Euro superstar on jet-setting international co-productions; and, finally, worldly grand dame of French cinema, her hair pulled severely back from her face. Yet even or especially at the end of her career, Schneider remained a kind of living toy, a fetish doll that directors, costume designers and makeup artists delighted in dressing up and re-painting. And thus it seems apropos that Schneider is perhaps most recognizable today not for a particular role or performance but for posing in test footage for a film that was never actually finished.
To read the rest of the article at Alt Screen, click here.
Tags: French Institute Alliance Française, Romy Schneider
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by Gerard Raymond on April 29th, 2012 at 7:27 pm in Film
Commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, it's no surprise that BAM150 is both celebratory and promotional. But the story of the arts institution that's survived a century and a half is certainly worth commemorating. And director Michael Sládek, best known for Con Artist, the documentary about 1980s New York art world celebrity Mark Kostabi, makes this particular pleasure to watch by adeptly interspersing high-definition performance footage with backstage moments, archival material, and historical commentary. Continue Reading »
Tags: Beijing Dance Theater, Berliner Ensemble, Bertolt Brecht, Con Artist, Harvey Lichtenstein, Haze, John Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Kurt Weill, Les Arts Florissants, Mark Kostabi, Michael Sládek BAM150, Mike Wallace, Philip Lopate, Richard III, Robert Wilson, The Bridge Project, Tribeca Film Festival, Wang Yuanyuan
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[Editor's Note: Poster Lab is your weekly dose of movie poster dissection, wherein the House examines the pluses, minuses, and in-betweens of the poster design(s) for a buzzworthy film.]
If recent sci-fi film ads are any indication, all we are is pixels in the wind. Movies like Total Recall, a remake that's poised to give you déjà vu this August, face the predicament of promoting themes like memory and alternate reality, which aren't exactly the easiest things to visualize. Common solutions have been to break matter apart like low-res jpegs, and let the debris disperse in smoky, techy milieus. The first Total Recall poster follows this path, depicting futuristic hero Doug Quaid (Colin Farrell) as if his very identity is being erased in geometric fragments. Why does it look so familiar? Well, you just saw a variation of it—same font and all—during the release of last year's Source Code, whose poster also shattered the hero's existence into flashes and swept them up like confetti. Though not not as clean as the Total Recall one-sheet, the Source Code ad uses the trend as a tool to integrate film stills, filling the pieces with headshots of co-stars Michelle Monaghan and Vera Farmiga. More generically, Farrell's gun-toter just disapparates into thin air, which may well point to how this F/X cash cow will be received. Continue Reading »
Tags: arnold scwarzenegger, Colin Farrell, columbia pictures, Fright Night, In Bruges, Jake Gyllenhaal, Kate Beckinsale, michelle monaghan, Poster Lab, Posters, sharon stone, Snow White and the Huntsman, Source Code, Total Recall, underworld, Vera Farmiga
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Though the title of Alex Karpovsky's new film takes on a literal meaning its final moments, it also applies metaphorically to Rubberneck as a whole—not only to the circumstances surrounding its main character, Paul (played by Karpovsky himself), but also to the unsettling aura of psychological disturbance it instills in a viewer.
Paul is a man unable to shake the memories of the one sexy weekend he had with a female co-worker, Danielle (Jaime Ray Newman), a weekend that ends unceremoniously with her expressing—not directly, but in so many words—her lack of romantic interest in him. The fact that, eight months later, he continues to work in the same building with her naturally increases his obsessive feelings, which shade into jealousy when he witnesses her reciprocating the romantic advances of another male co-worker. This incident, though, is merely the latest manifestation of deep-seated childhood traumas that continue to exert a hold on him in adulthood; the filmmakers leave these stresses tantalizingly vague throughout—something to do with Paul's own broken family and a mysterious basement. Continue Reading »
Tags: Alex Karpovsky, Beeswax, Rubberneck, Sleepwalk with Me, Tiny Furniture, Tribeca Film Festival
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In what's unfortunately one of the lesser films about a literary great, John Cusack wields a quill and a gun as The Raven's Edgar Allen Poe, a legend who would've skewered this thriller in one of his sharp-tongued newsprint critiques. What's perhaps best about the movie is the eerie mood that's established, a mood symbolized by the titular winged creature. Blackbirds have been harbingers of doom in many a dark tale, and otherwise added spooky style to countless filmic palettes. Even in lighter fare, they point to something sinister, be it imminent attack, loneliness, or even racism. Continue Reading »
Tags: 15 famous, 28 days later, blackbird, brandon lee, brendan gleeson, Charlize Theron, Dario Argento, Disney, dr. seuss, DUMBO, Edgar Allen Poe, Frank Darabont, horton hears a who!, Humphrey Bogart, i am sam, John Cusack, lists, lon chaney, Madonna, nightwatch, opera, Paul McCartney, Snow White and the Huntsman, The Beatles, The Birds, the blackbird, the crow, The Lord of the Rings, the maltese falcon, the shawshank redemption, The Stand, Timur Bekmambetov, tippi hedren, warwick davis, willow
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by Gerard Raymond on April 28th, 2012 at 10:59 am in Film
Morgan Spurlock tries hard to keep his documentary on men's grooming habits lively, but Mansome is only fitfully amusing and doesn't have anything really interesting to say. Two of the movie's executive producers, actors Will Arnett and Jason Bateman, lend their talents (and commercial appeal) by appearing in a framing story that follows the comedic duo as they offer commentary and banter with each other while receiving various treatments at a Los Angeles spa. The movie's other talking heads include Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief Kate White, director Judd Apatow, Adam Carolla, Zach Galifianakis, as the anti-groomer, and a genuinely funny Paul Rudd. A very droll John Waters, whose appearance is all too brief, promises that when he eventually shaves off his pencil-thin moustache, he'll do it as part of a final performance on stage before retirement. Continue Reading »
Tags: Adam Carolla, Cosmopolitan, Jack Passion, Jason Bateman, John Waters, Judd Apatow, Kate White, Mansome, Morgan Spurlock, Paul Rudd, Ricky Manchanda, Shawn Daivari, super size me, Tribeca Film Festival, Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis
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by Gerard Raymond on April 25th, 2012 at 1:38 pm in Film
Namir Abdel Meseeh's documentary is more about the "Me" rather than the "Virgin" or "the Copts" of its title, but since Meseeh is charming, if somewhat self-centered, that's not altogether a bad thing. The French-Egyptian filmmaker, whose parents emigrated from Egypt in 1973, decides that he's going to make a documentary (his first feature-length film) about the various sightings, mainly by the Christian Coptic community, of the Virgin Mary in Egypt. A secular skeptic himself, Meseeh becomes intrigued by the phenomenon when his mother claims that she actually saw the Virgin in a blurry videotape recording of one of the alleged events. Continue Reading »
Tags: Cairo, Egypt, Israel, Namir Abdel Meseeh, Six Day War, The Virgin the Copts and Me, Tribeca Film Festival, Virgin Mary
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by Ted Pigeon on April 24th, 2012 at 9:43 pm in Film
As commercial cinema goes, animation and live action are seen as divergent modes of filmmaking sharing the mutual goal of aesthetic cohesiveness; they only achieve it by different means. While Avatar and The Adventures of Tintin achieve a melding of live-action and animation techniques, other examples suggest that the sensibilities of animation and live action are more disparate and incompatible. If the static shots and deadened rhythms of the big-budget fantasy films John Carter and the first two Chronicles of Narnia entries are any indication, the qualities of animation may not so easily translate to live action. These films were directed by animation veterans—Andrew Stanton and Andrew Adamson, respectively—whose authorial voices evaporated under the conditions of live-action filmmaking. Continue Reading »
Tags: Andrew Adamson, Andrew Stanton, Avatar, Brad Bird, Christopher Nolan, Inception, J.J. Abrams, Jeremy Renner, john carter, John Woo, Kathryn Bigelow, Léa Seydoux, Matthias Stork, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Paula Patton, Pixar, Ratatouille, Super 8, The Adventures of Tintin, The Hurt Locker, The Incredibles, Tom Cruise, Wesley Morris
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