Filly Brown plays out like a caricature of every stereotypical Sundance drama about plucky young heroines who overcome great adversity just by sticking to their guns and never abandoning their dreams. Unfortunately, the filmmakers don't know how to dramatize the travails of a supposedly talented Latina rapper—"supposedly" because the song that's meant to prove she's a talented and soulful performer has laughably obnoxious lyrics that boast how Maria "Filly Brown" Tonorio (newcomer Gina Rodriguez) is true to herself because she doesn't have "fake tits" or that she's so fierce that she practically has two clitorises and will even take on "anyone with two tits." But these lyrics aren't apparently all that Maria's about; there's also her naïve free-style verses about how Latinos working minimum-wage jobs in Los Angeles go unnoticed by rich white folks. Maria's sophomoric calls for people to notice the guy that washes their cars is understandable; she is, after all, presented as a young, boastful star-in-the-making. But what's not as defensible is the constant way that neophyte screenwriter and co-director Youssef Delara defines Maria's world in broad and laughably klutzy terms. Continue Reading »
Antonio Campos's much-awaited second feature, while less clear-cut than his supremely affectless debut Afterschool, is just about as unsettling. An American-in-Paris story of sorts, it follows a slow but acute mental unraveling of the eponymous character (played by the film's co-screenwriter, Brady Corbet) as he seeks a post-breakup consolation in the "city of love." The Paris of the movie, intermittently respectable and seedy, becomes a scene for Simon's desperate pursuit of affection, which gradually turns more and more insidious and scary.
The opening sections (redolent somehow of Sofia Coppola's much gentler universe) offer some beautifully rendered stretches of epic ennui, with Simon's self-avowed pursuit of "doing absolutely nothing" slowly curdling into a disturbing maze of near-psychotic self-delusion. As Campos coolly multiplies discomfiting narrative ripples that make us question Simon's credibility, then his sanity, Corbet goes from cutely absent-minded to disheveled to plain cuckoo with fearful precision. Given that the whole film plays with the notion of false appearances, it makes perfect, if a tad too symmetrical, sense that Simon's alleged profession has something to do with studying "the relationship between the eye and the brain." Continue Reading »
Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie: The first feature-length film by comedy duo Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim is pretty much exactly what their Tim and Eric Awesome Show would be like as a 90-minute narrative. Beginning with a characteristically surreal short film within the film, Tim and Eric have turned out a predictably exhausting but fitfully funny extension of their stream-of-conscious brand of humor. Their jokes, which rely heavily on dead air, echolalia, and body horror-centric sight gags, are still very reliant on alternately quick and staggered editing cuts that make you wonder if you're watching what it looks like you're watching. Rest assured, that is definitely a bad Johnny Depp impersonator, that is a metal stud being jammed into a prosthetic penis, and you bet that's someone getting shat on. Take it or leave it seems to be Tim and Eric's mantra, a mentality that has served them well when they inundate their Adult Swim fans with loopy, sub-Dada skits. But that same approach is more tedious when used in a feature film. Continue Reading »
[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.]
Picked up by Focus Features at January's Sundance Film Festival, Pariah has an opportunity to be an uncompromising portrait of an oft-unseen sect of lesbian, transgender-leaning sexuality—the black Boys Don't Cry, to speak in boxed-in terms. It's an opportunity that the film, written and directed by Dee Rees (who expands her 2007 semi-autobiographical short of the same name), only half seizes, as hard-edged subculture access and scenes of tense honesty are punctuated throughout by the grating itch of pandering convention. Scenes like an introductory visit to a strip club that blasts Khia's "My Neck, My Back (Lick It)," or a mortifying/freeing/funny first encounter with a strap-on unapologetically yank you into the confusing, wide-eyed world of half-closeted, 17-year-old Brooklynite Alike (Adepero Oduye), as well they should. But other scenes, like a poetry-reading session with a high school mentor, or a scanning of Alike's best friend's bedroom that reveals perfectly posed mens' caps and a conveniently placed GED study guide, are generically, deliberately painted, and they represent an allover inconsistency that makes the film a constant tug of war between sincere discovery and familiar, watered-down drama. Continue Reading »
Is there another Palm d'Or in Emir Kusturica's future?
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What would happen if some of the greatest directors int he world made Super Bowl ads? Don't think they would necessarily all look like this, but there are a few chuckles here:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
Zach Wahls, a 19-year-old University of Iowa student spoke about the strength of his family during a public forum on House Joint Resolution 6 in the Iowa House of Representatives. Wahls has two mothers, and came to oppose House Joint Resolution 6 which would end civil unions in Iowa (his eloquence, alas, didn't fully work on those intended):
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
Funny how quickly the world changes. This clip made me think of the first time I logged onto the Internet, around 1994, to look up information about The Simpsons for a TV class.
From the kids at Lawrence High School comes a new video—a punk update of Mack David's "Sunflower"—that is a celebration of Kansas (now 150 years young), the arts (a cut in funding has recently been proposed in the state), and the diversity of the state's youth:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
Murder of prominent gay activist David Kato sends chill in Uganda.
Guess what Lady Gaga's first perfume will smell like?
Today is the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
"Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on Wednesday left intensive care for the first time since she was shot in the head in Arizona more than two weeks ago, the latest big step in the long road to recovery." Read the full story at The Huffington Posthere.
The New York Review of Books on the truth about The King's Speech. Related: In Contention's Guy Lodge, one of the very few smart awards pundits out there, doesn't think Academy members are thinking too hard about this.
Brian De Palma's new one will be Passion, an adaptation of Alain Corneau's Crime d'Amour.
It would appear that Alejandro Jodorowsky has granted interviews to everyone except us. For The A.V. Club, Noel Murray chats with the cult director.
In more Sundance news, at least the kind that matters: Jury duty was was not an easy task for Kim Morgan, and James Franco explains how he will try and film what many consider the unfilmmable:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
The nominees for the 83rd Academy Awards have been announced.
Yesterday, a suicide bomber attacked Moscow's busiest airport, killing dozens of people and injecting new pain into a country already split along ethnic lines.
Dan Callahan has a thing for Joan Bennett's outstretched legs.
Nice resource: MUBI is building an index to coverage of the Sundance 2011 coverage.
Matt Zoller Seitz wonders if David E. Kelley has finally run out of stream.
Wanna bet there will be at least one ad like this one to play during this year's Super Bowl?
Below, an ode to cinema's greatest slaps:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
An appealing little oddball of a movie, Septien is ironic yet genuinely sweet. Writer-director Michael Tully's hipster Southern gothic starts slow, its long takes giving us plenty of time to adjust to the laconic rhythms of a family farm that's home to two brothers who get paid by the government not to work the land. Amos (Onur Tukel) spends most of his time in the barn, making cartoonish paintings that serve up an American goulash of football, sex, and violent death. Wilbur (Jim Willingham), the brothers' sweet but slow former farmhand, lives outside in a tractor tire and spends his days like Of Mice and Men's Lennie, stroking his kitty or digging up buried treasures. Ezra (Robert Longstreet) plays mom, cooking, cleaning, and clucking over the others. Continue Reading »
In a Better World concerns itself with a thicket of mature moral questions, only to resolve them in the most glib and banal means possible. Working from a script she co-wrote with Anders Thomas Jensen, and following up her superior Things We Lost in the Fire, Danish director Susanne Bier opens her latest with the clichéd sight of young African children chasing after a truck carrying a white man—in this case, Anton (Mikael Persbrandt), a doctor who regularly visits Kenya to treat the sick, leaving behind the wife, Marianne (Trine Dyrholm), from whom he's now separated, and the son, Elias (Markus Rygaard), whose need for a full-time father figure is epitomized by the constant punishment he receives from bullies at school. Meanwhile, in a concurrent strand that soon dovetails with the aforementioned tale, young Christian (William Jøhnk Juels Nielsen) moves to town after the death of his mother, which has left him estranged from his father, Claus (Ulrich Thomsen), and furious at the world. It's an anger that—after he spies the bucktoothed Elias being taunted at school as "rat face"—he expresses by viciously confronting Elias's tormentor and, later still, by concocting an explosive scheme to punish a belligerent auto mechanic who publicly slaps Anton around. Continue Reading »
Cuba is producing its first zombie movie—and it's called, naturally, Juan of the Dead.
R. Sargent Shriver, founder of the Peace Corps, brother-in-law of John F. Kennedy, and, late in life, father-in-law of Arnold Schwarzenegger, passed away yesterday. He was 95.
Today, House Republicans's uphill battle against Obamacare commences. Related: Is the White House wimping out on the matter? Also, half of people under 65 have pre-existing conditions.
According to Cinematical, the five best and worst Sundance purchases.
Peter Bogdanovich reflects on Jean Renoir's The Southerner.
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
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