Friday, October 10, 2014
This week in movies you missed: It's October again, season of crappy horror releases, so I'm on the hunt for a scare flick that will actually scare me. Where better to look than among movies I missed?
Let's start with The Sacrament, the latest from director Ti West (The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers). This found-footage film has a simple premise: What if Jonestown had happened last year, and Vice Media was there to film it?
What You Missed
Vice reporter Sam (A.J. Bowen) explains self-importantly to the camera that he practices a new form of gonzo journalism called "immersionism." Next up: He'll immerse himself in a utopian community that could well be a cult.
Sam's photographer friend Patrick (Kentucker Audley) has arranged to visit his ex-addict sister at Eden Parish, an overseas colony built by a religious community with a charismatic leader called "Father." Patrick, Sam and Vice photographer Jake (prolific indie director Joe Swanberg) take a helicopter into the jungle, where they're met by guards with machine guns.
Tags: the sacrament , ti west , jonestown , movies you missed , Image , Video , Web Only
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Dedicated to the newest of the new in film, the 11-day FNC includes films, videos and interactive digital works from all over the world. All types of moving-image artworks — nearly 400 of them — make up the program: animated and live-action; fiction, documentary and avant-garde; funny, serious, confusing and everything in between.
Cinephiles who wish to see the latest by master filmmakers can feast on new works by Jean-Luc Godard (Adieu au langage), Bruno Dumont (P'tit Quinquin) and David Cronenberg (Maps to the Stars), among others. The festival is also particularly rich in new independent films, such as the Kazakh film The Owners and the Lebanese film Scheherazade's Diary.
Tags: film , movie , film festival , festival du nouveau cinema , montreal , Image , Video , Web Only
Friday, October 3, 2014
Director Joseph Kahn's little-seen 2011 horror comedy is the film Easy A should have been. Namely, a self-referential high school flick that takes the genre to the limit and drops it off a cliff, then stands and watches gleefully as it explodes into candy-colored smithereens.
What You Missed
The resident queen bee of Grizzly Lake High (Alison Woods) rises from her bed and lectures the camera on the art of being popular, Ferris Bueller-style. No sooner has she explained the day's fashion statement ("The '90s are the new '80s") than a knife-wielding maniac dressed like the villain of the Cinderhella film series appears and puts a merciful (for us) end to her existence.
Meanwhile, in another bedroom, misfit Riley Jones (Shanley Caswell) is considering suicide. Her former BFF (Spencer Locke) has morphed into an evil cheerleader and stolen her secret crush (Josh Hutcherson, who got a huge career boost from The Hunger Games shortly after this was released). The school's resident geek (Aaron David Johnson) won't stop propositioning Riley; and the only person less cool than she is is the girl who committed an unspeakable act on the school's resident stuffed grizzly bear in 1992.
I've just described the film's first 10 minutes, tops. The plot spins out of control as we meet more dramatis personae: the vengeful nerd principal (Dane Cook); the pissed-off quarterback (Parker Bagley), who hides a dark secret; a goth girl; a geek named Toshiba; Ione's cougar mom; the guy (Walter Perez) who's been in detention for literally decades; and, of course, the killer hiding behind Cinderhella's bloody prom dress.
Tags: Movies you missed , joseph kahn , detention , josh hutcherson , Image , Web Only
Monday, September 29, 2014
UPDATE (October 7, 2014):
5 to 9 has just been made freely available online by its makers, and you can watch it in full below. That means that you can now vicariously experience some seriously hardcore winter-sports acrobatics. Gear up for winter without leaving the comfort of your own computer desk!
HG Skis Presents: 5 to 9 FULL MOVIE from HG Skis on Vimeo.
In high school, my friend Chris used to work in our town's skate shop. He worked the counter, selling "trucks" and wheels and other stuff that skateboarders understood. I never 'boarded but had several friends who did, and we all used to hang around at the store when Chris was working. On the wall behind the counter, the store owners had mounted a TV with a VCR and, when we weren't watching The Song Remains the Same or Pink Floyd: The Wall, we watched skate videos.
These were unencumbered by narratives, composed of shot after shot of incredible skateboard stunts (and plenty of wipeouts — the funnest parts). They were usually set to thrash music, which is how I got my taste for Suicidal Tendencies. As a budding film enthusiast, I was interested in these videos. Now I see that they're actually pretty close to avant-garde film in their rejection of story and emphasis on astonishing visuals.
Screening this week for the first time in Vermont is the new film 5 to 9, directed by Charles Stemen and Sam Rogers. Produced by the Burlington-based freestyle ski company HG Skis, the film isn't exactly avant-garde. But viewing it brought me back to the days of watching all those VHS tapes of skateboarders riding and crashing spectacularly.
Tags: film , movie , ski , skiing , documentary , hg skis , 5 to 9 , Image , Video , Web Only
Saturday, September 27, 2014
RoboCop just looks more and more prescient every year: Its bitter commentary on the militarization of urban police forces couldn't help but evoke recent events in Ferguson, Mo. Good satire endures, and RoboCop, to my eyes, remains entirely fresh. I didn't understand in 1987, and don't understand now, how some viewers can fail to take note of the film's social satire, but evidently this misapprehension persists. It's not hard to track down reviewers who take high-and-mighty moral stances about the film's famously over-the-top violence, and therefore condemn the film as a whole. Context, people. Context.
Tags: film , movie , what i'm watching , robocop , satire , pov , sci-fi , paul verhoeven , go robo , Image , Web Only
Friday, September 26, 2014
What You Missed
A title card tells us 10 years have passed since the global "collapse." In the sparsely populated Australian outback, Eric (Guy Pearce) is minding his own business when three punks fleeing a robbery happen along, crash their car and steal his.
That was a mistake. Because Eric will do whatever it takes to reclaim his unprepossessing vehicle, and he has no qualms about killing those who stand in his way.
Tags: rover , david michod , robert pattinson , guy pearce , Movies you missed , Image , Video , Web Only
Monday, September 22, 2014
As odd as Don't Look Now is — and if you haven't seen it, I urge you to check it out (it's streaming on Netflix) before continuing, as here there be spoilers — it stars major actors of the time (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie), and was released on a wide scale by a major studio, Paramount Pictures. It still sometimes astonishes me that 1970s cinema audiences could see such challenging fare as Don't Look Now simply by going to their local theater. It's been said many times, but the 1970s really was a remarkable time for filmmaking.
This time around, I really focused on the ways that the title creates and emphasizes various meanings in the film. As someone who has trouble coming up with headlines for his articles, I'm impressed at titles that perfectly, and complexly, inform the cinematic experience. I would argue that Don't Look Now has such a title.
Tags: film , movie , what i'm watching , don't look now , title , nicolas roeg , daphne du maurier , esp , clairvoyance , donald sutherland , julie christie , Image , Web Only
Monday, September 15, 2014
Call it mercenary, if you like, that all of the Beatles' albums have recently been reissued — again — on the 50th anniversary of the band's first incursion into America. Some of us have purchased them several times over, perhaps even taking note of the improvements in sound quality. But, as many fans seem to agree, when the music on those albums is arguably still the best pop music ever recorded, it's a worthwhile investment.
The Beatles were more than a band, of course. They were an international phenomenon, and they left behind a remarkable legacy in other media, as well as music. Of their four fiction films, none is better than their debut, A Hard Day's Night, which has also been extensively restored for its 50th anniversary.
The new 4K digital restoration will play for one night only in Burlington, on Thursday, September 18, at the Main Street Landing Film House, presented by the Burlington Film Society and the Vermont International Film Foundation.
Tags: film , movie , beatles , a hard day's night , the beatles , main street landing , vtiff , burlington film society , restoration , 4k , music , pop music , Image , Video , Web Only
Saturday, September 13, 2014
One of the most exciting cinematic rediscoveries of the last few years is now available to anyone with a Netflix streaming account, thanks to the splintered nature of modern film distribution. I'm referring to the unearthing of Ted Kotcheff's 1971 film Wake in Fright, an Australian-American coproduction that is surely among the bleakest films I've ever seen. And I've seen Salò, Grave of the Fireflies and Nil by Mouth.
The story of Wake in Fright is very simple. At the end of the school year, John Grant, a teacher at a one-room schoolhouse in the Australian outback, leaves the remote town in which he's stationed and does his best to get back to Sydney. He gets waylaid, though, in the even more remote (and fictional) town of Bundanyabba, where he soon falls into alcohol- and violence-fueled dissolution. He loses all sense of propriety, all his morals and all hope of ever getting home.
I won't reveal the ending (though it's more than 40 years old, this still somewhat obscure film has been reintroduced into circulation only within the last two years). But suffice it to say that even Grant's last-ditch attempt to escape his own personal hell is unsuccessful.
The story of Wake in Fright's rediscovery and rerelease is far more complex. Made with a small budget for United Artists, the film was released (in some locations under the title Outback) to generally favorable reviews. Even some critics prone to moralizing viewed the film positively, despite its harrowing depictions of violence and vicious alcoholism. Wake in Fright achieved little success in the U.S., UK and Australia, but it was greeted more warmly in France. It vanished quickly from most theaters.
Tags: film , movies , what i'm watching , wake in fright , australia , outback , restoration , kangaroo , alcohol , cult film , bundanyabba , ted kotcheff , netflix , Image , Video , Web Only
Friday, September 12, 2014
This week in movies you missed: Two young graffiti artists scheme to pull off the score of a lifetime: "bombing" the New York Mets' Home Run Apple at Citi Field.
Local note: The film's editor, Morgan Faust, is or was a part-time Brattleboro resident. I wrote about her own Vermont-shot film project here.
What You Missed
Sophia (Tashiana Washington) and Malcolm (Ty Hickson) work well together. She's tough and surly, he's gangly and wistful — and they're both good at lifting spray cans from stores and leaving their mark on city buildings.
Fed up with the Mets fans who keep defacing their art, the platonic pair plot the ultimate revenge: defacing the Mets Apple. Footage from a vintage cable-access show informs the viewer that this seemingly undoable stunt has been the holy grail of NYC graffiti artists for the past 20 years, putting the fictional characters in a real context.
Tags: gimme the loot , adam leon , tashiana washington , ty hickson , Movies you missed , Image , Web Only