Friday, May 9, 2014
This week in movies you missed: A few months ago, proud papa Dave Donohue of South Burlington, a cinephile and sometime filmmaker, wrote to tell me that his son Zachary's feature directorial debut was being released by IFC Midnight.
Cowritten by Zachary Donohue — who grew up in Vermont and the Adirondacks — and his partner, Lauren Thompson, The Den is a horror flick visualized entirely through web and phone cams that has drawn positive notice from outlets ranging from the New York Times to FEARnet. It hasn't screened in Vermont, but it is available on VOD, and I finally got a chance to watch it.
What You Missed
Elizabeth Benton (Melanie Papalia) just won an academic grant to study the sociology of a video-chat site called the Den. Like Chatroulette, it pairs users randomly for real-time web-cam chats as long or short as they desire.
At first, meeting random people is addictive, even if most of them are guys asking to see her boobs. Elizabeth starts shunning face-to-face encounters with her pregnant sister (Anna Margaret Hollyman), her friends and her boyfriend (David Schlachtenhaufen) to hang out in the Den.
Then she encounters a user with a blocked video feed who starts sending her odd messages. Her computer wakes up mysteriously at night. Suddenly she's looking at footage of a young woman being brutally murdered.
Tags: Movies you missed , horror , webcam , IFC Midnight , Image , Web Only
Friday, May 2, 2014
This week in movies you missed: Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace get uncomfortably close in the latest from director Brian De Palma, returning to his Hitchcockian thriller origins.
What You Missed
High-powered ad agency exec Christine (McAdams) loves to be surrounded by reflections of herself. She makes her lovers (of whom there are many) wear a mask that looks like a stylized version of her face. She has a creepy backstory involving her identical twin. And she's doing her best to make over her ambitious underling, Isabelle (Rapace), in her own image.
Christine takes credit for Isabelle's viral-video smartphone campaign, then patronizingly tries to turn her low blow into a teachable moment. Isabelle learns the lesson well and strikes back, seizing something her rival wants. But Isabelle is also sleeping with Christine's slimy boyfriend (Paul Anderson), which makes her vulnerable.
By the film's end, the women's twisted relationship will have encompassed murder, making out, police interrogations, double-crosses, trances, hallucinations and the wearing of umpteen sumptuous designer ensembles.
Tags: passion , brian de palma , rachel mcadams , noomi rapace , Movies you missed , Image , Video , Web Only
Saturday, April 26, 2014
This week in movies you missed: This film features James Franco and explicit male-on-male BDSM. Not together.
What You Missed
In case you haven't visited the internet since 2005, let me take the time to inform you that actor James Franco has recreated himself as an all-purpose merry prankster and multimedia provocateur. (Here's a piece on his latest NSFW art project. Ask Seth Rogen about that when he comes to town next week.) As part of that effort, Franco is now a prolific director of short films, features and sort-of-features, like this one, which he codirected with Travis Mathews.
"Interior. Leather Bar." is the title of a scene in William Friedkin's 1980 thriller Cruising, in which Al Pacino played a cop who went undercover in the gay club scene to catch a killer. To avoid getting an X rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, Friedkin had to cut 40 minutes of explicit footage, which was later destroyed.
Franco's mission? Recreate the missing reels using actor Val Lauren as a Pacino lookalike.
Tags: Movies you missed , interior leather bar , james franco , Image , Web Only
Friday, April 18, 2014
This week in movies you missed: This drama about a group home for at-risk kids got wide-spread acclaim and Independent Spirit Awards, but no wide theatrical release.
What You Missed
Twentysomething Grace (Brie Larson) works at a residential treatment facility for teens with her boyfriend, Mason (John Gallagher Jr.). Both are veterans of the foster-care system. But, while Mason was raised by a loving family, Grace harbors dark memories that start to emerge when she tries to help a sullen girl from a middle-class home (Kaitlyn Dever) who's been cutting herself.
Meanwhile, all the young employees of the facility struggle with the built-in limits of their jobs: They can't question the decisions of therapists and "experts" who don't interact daily with the kids, and they can't do much to retrieve kids who manage to leave the property. All they can do is provide "safe space" in an unsafe world.
Tags: short term 12 , destin daniel cretton , brie larson , kaitlyn dever , Movies you missed , Image , Video , Web Only
Friday, April 11, 2014
This week in movies you missed: Want to know how to make an acclaimed indie flick on the cheap? Ask Laura Colella, faculty chair of the Vermont College of Fine Arts' MFA program in film.
Colella shot Breakfast With Curtis, her third feature, literally in her backyard. The cast members were her friends and neighbors — fellow residents of a three-story house in Providence, R.I., informally known as the Purple Citadel. Having missed a couple of sold-out screenings of Breakfast in Montpelier, I recently caught Colella's flick on Netflix Instant (it's also on Amazon Instant).
But first, a timely word about VCFA: If you love film, you don't have to be a student in the college's low-residency MFA program to reap its benefits. Twice a year, VCFA brings working filmmakers — including big names — to screen and discuss their work at the Savoy Theater in Montpelier.
These events are free and open to the public, but tickets go fast — or they certainly did when John Turturro visited last year. This year, you can catch a Skype session with Andrew Bujalski (Computer Chess) and meet Debra Granik, director of Winter's Bone, who gave teenage Jennifer Lawrence the showcase that made her a star. More info here.
Now, back to Colella's film.
What You Missed
Syd (Theo Green), a micro-publisher and all-around self-important, underemployed artsy fellow, has a fondness for red wine and a genius for alienating his neighbors. It starts when Syd threatens to murder 9-year-old Curtis (Gideon Parker) for allegedly tossing a stone at his cat, Dijon.
Tags: laura colella , vermont college of fine arts , vcfa , breakfast with curtis , Movies you missed , Image , Video , Web Only
Friday, April 4, 2014
This week in movies you missed: Yeah, I know. It's called Movies You Missed, not TV You Missed. But this year, despite watching almost nothing live, I keep discovering great new drama series I want to recommend. To use a bad cliché, this one might just fill the "Breaking Bad"-shaped hole in my heart.
What You Missed (if, like me, you don't want to pay for 150 or so channels you won't watch just to get the Sundance Channel)
Daniel Holden (Aden Young) has served 19 years on death row for raping and murdering his girlfriend when he was 18 years old. Now DNA evidence has vacated his conviction, to the joy of his sister, Amantha (Abigail Spencer), who always believed in his innocence.
But the rest of Daniel's small Georgia town isn't so sure. After all, he confessed to the crime — albeit after a prolonged, unrecorded interrogation. The prosecutor of his case, now a state senator (Michael O'Neill), is eager to get him back behind bars.
Tags: rectify , sundance channel , ray mckinnon , aden young , adelaide clemens , Movies you missed , Image , Video , Web Only
Friday, March 28, 2014
This week in movies you missed: The Netflix blurb for this one hooked me: "An idealistic teen from a devout Mormon family believes that she's been impregnated by listening to music and travels to Las Vegas to find the father."
I figured Electrick Children would play this bizarre premise for cheap laughs ("Oh, aren't naïve Mormons who believe in immaculate conception funny?"). Wrong. Rebecca Thomas' directorial debut is very much in earnest.
What You Missed
Fifteen-year-old Rachel (Julia Garner) lives in a fundamentalist Mormon compound in rural Utah. The man she knows as her father is the sect's prophet (Billy Zane). But her mom (Cynthia Watros) tells mysterious stories of meeting a "red Mustang" in the desert that suggest Rachel may have had a less holy origin.
Curious about forbidden technology, Rachel finds a rickety old tape recorder in her basement and plays the first cassette that comes to hand — a cover of "Hanging on the Telephone" by the Nerves. She finds the raw sound so powerful that, when she discovers months later that she's pregnant, she believes the unknown singer has done the deed with divine assistance.
Tags: electrick children , rebecca thomas , julia garner , billy zane , mormon , flds , Movies you missed , Image , Video , Web Only
Friday, March 21, 2014
This week in
What You Missed
Four years ago, a small French mountain town lost 39 children to a freak bus accident. Now, as the power grid flickers ominously in the twilight, one of those kids comes back.
Fifteen-year-old Camille (Yara Pilartz) doesn't remember anything after the accident. Not aged a day, she expects to pick up her life where she left off. Instead, she returns to a home driven asunder by grief, to parents who have split and an angry sister (Jenna Thiam) who spends all her nights at the local pub.
Camille and her family aren't the only ones getting a rude surprise on this idyllic summer evening. Librarian Adèle (Clotilde Hesme) is about to marry her live-in boyfriend when a dead lover (Pierre Perrier) knocks at her door. An elderly man receives a similar visit from his wife, who died more than 30 years ago. And a serial killer who hasn't struck in years is suddenly active again.
Why is it happening? How can it happen? No one knows, and, for the most part, no one cares. They just want to keep their loved ones from disappearing again.
Tags: the returned , les revenants , resurrection , Movies you missed , Image , Web Only
Friday, March 14, 2014
This week in movies you missed: Is bluegrass the saddest music in the world? This Oscar-nominated love story from Belgium might make you think so.
First, a local note: You can see The Broken Circle Breakdown on the big screen in Burlington next Thursday, presented by the Burlington Film Society, the Vermont International Film Festival and Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center. That's March 20, 7 p.m., at the Main Street Landing Film House. $5-8, free for VTIFF members. More details here.
What You Missed
The film opens with banjo player Didier (Johan Heldenbergh) and his bluegrass band singing the standard "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" (Characters in this movie speak in Flemish and sing in English.) The next scene, set in a hospital, shows us that Didier's circle will not be unbroken. He and his wife and bandmate, Elise (Veerle Baetens), are preparing their 7-year-old daughter for chemotherapy.
Director Felix van Groeningen uses a nonlinear narrative to tell the story of these two free spirits who settled down, became parents and too quickly found themselves facing the unthinkable. From Didier and Elise tending young Maybelle (Nell Cattrysse) in the hospital, we flash back to a night that might have been her conception. We don't see the couple's first meeting — at Elise's tattoo shop — until we've grasped its long-term consequences.
The movie juxtaposes moments of bliss with moments of despair, as Didier and the volatile Elise struggle to weather events. It's all glued together by their performances of heartfelt standards — songs seeped in the faith in God and an afterlife that this modern couple finds it all but impossible to feel.
Tags: broken circle breakdown , felix van groeningen , johan heldenbergh , veerle baetens , burlington film society , best foreign film , oscars 2014 , Movies you missed , Image , Web Only
Friday, March 7, 2014
This Week in Movies You Missed: Two best friends take a shine to each other's hot sons in an arty drama that doubles as a virtual vacation for middle-aged ladies.
What You Missed
Lil and Roz (Naomi Watts and Robin Wright) have always lived virtually next door on an idyllic part of the Australian coast. They've always been BFFs. Their husbands and kids have done little to change the equation — conveniently, their sons are BFFs, too. After Lil is widowed, and Roz's husband leaves her for a job in Sydney, the foursome becomes inseparable.
Like, really inseparable. When Lil's son, Ian (Xavier Samuel), makes a pass at Roz, she's into it. Roz's son, Tom (James Frecheville), is weirded out by the relationship between his friend and his mom for a second or two. But he quickly decides that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and makes his play for Lil.
It all works amazingly well until Tom takes a jaunt to Sydney and realizes that other places and women exist.
Tags: Adore , Naomi Watts , Robin Wright , Anne Fontaine , melodrama , Nicholas Sparks , Sundance , cougars , Movies you missed , Image , Video , Web Only