Friday, July 18, 2014
This week in movies you missed: I watch "the weirdest feature film ever to make an Oscar shortlist," according to Steve Pond of the Wrap.
What You Missed
We are somewhere in Greece, in a house with a garden surrounded by a high wall.
Three teenagers listen to a tape introducing them to new vocabulary words. The tape gives glaringly incorrect definitions. The kids, a boy (Hristos Passalis) and two girls (Aggeliki Papoulia and Mary Tsoni), aren't fazed. They plan a new game: They'll see who can keep his or her finger under burning hot water the longest.
Dad (Christos Stergioglou) returns home from work, bringing a young woman named Christina (Anna Kalaitzidou). She goes into the boy's room and has mechanical sex with him, then leaves. The two sisters greet her as one might greet a cleaning woman.
The non sequiturs continue. The brother (none of these characters have names) speaks to someone invisible through the hedge. A plane buzzes overhead, and Mom (Michele Valley) encourages the kids to run and catch it if it falls. A wandering cat in the yard inspires bloodcurdling terror.
The more the film progresses, the more it becomes clear that the rules of this family are not our rules. The parents know this — it's by design. The kids, raised in isolation, do not. By the end, the teens' struggle to achieve independence — and their parents' countermeasures — will have led to genuinely disturbing transgressions against everything most of us consider "natural" and "right."
Tags: dogtooth , Giorgos Lanthimos , Movies you missed , Image , Web Only
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Followers of the Mac Parker saga, which Seven Days and other local news outlets have covered extensively for the last several years, have come to expect curveballs. The most recent development is less of a headline-grabber, but one that will likely lend some context to the fascinating story of this man's alleged criminal activities. Two Vermont filmmakers have contributed to a new, soon-to-be-broadcast documentary that details the tale's strange twists and turns.
Rob Koier, the director of the 2012 documentary Strength of the Storm, and Mark Covino, co-director of the music doc A Band Called Death, are developing a full-length film about Parker. For now, some of the footage they've shot will appear in an episode of the long-running CNBC series "American Greed." The deal to license the footage was struck in January, and the episode will air later this week.
Parker, an Addison County-based storyteller, was convicted of defrauding investors of $28 million to fund a putative film project called Birth of Innocence. Most of the money was reportedly funneled to Parker's "silent partner" and former spiritual guru, a Connecticut man named Louis Soteriou. Soteriou has been sentenced to seven years in prison; a judge recently upheld Parker's own 55-month sentence for his part in the fraud scheme.
The footage that Covino and Koier licensed to CNBC originates from three lengthy interviews that Covino shot with Parker in October 2013. In the first, Parker told the filmmakers about his background; the second, clocking in at seven hours, finds Parker discussing Birth of Innocence and his ensuing legal troubles. The third interview, says Covino, wasn't even intended to be an interview — just some shots of Parker arriving at prison in upstate New York.
Tags: mac parker , birth of innocence , fraud , mark covino , film , movie , rob koier , cnbc , documentary , doc , tv , Image , Video , Web Only
Saturday, July 12, 2014
More than 20 years ago, I recall my film-nerd friend Bill recommending to me John Boorman’s 1968 film Hell in the Pacific. Bill has good taste in films, so I filed away his suggestion. Perhaps 10 years later, I found a used DVD of the film for a few bucks, so I picked it up. It languished on my shelf for another decade, unwatched until a few nights ago, when my wife went to sleep early. (I suppose I shatter no gender-role stereotypes here: When my wife is asleep or out of town, my cinematic choices tend toward war films and Westerns.)
Not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse that I can recount my personal history with most of the DVDs in my collection.
In any case, it’s a shame that it took me so damned long to get to Hell in the Pacific, as it’s a pretty fascinating film for a number of reasons. For one thing, there are only two people in its cast, and they’re both world-class screen actors: Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune. Each man plays a soldier — of the Allies and the Axis, respectively — who, after undisclosed oceanic wartime disasters, happens to wind up on a deserted island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. (Coincidentally, both men served their respective countries in World War II.)
I can think of only one fiction film with a cast smaller than this one (though I’m sure there are plenty that aren’t coming to mind): Robert Altman’s fascinating and little-seen Secret Honor (1984), in which the great Philip Baker Hall plays a delirious, rambling Richard M. Nixon.
Tags: film , movies , what i'm watching , hell in the pacific , lee marvin , toshiro mifune , john boorman , world war ii , Image , Web Only
Friday, July 11, 2014
This week in movies you missed: In our world of omnipresent cameras, it's hard to believe that a regime could starve and slaughter millions of people and leave little direct evidence of its atrocities on film. But that's what the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Among its victims were the family of Rithy Panh, this film's director, who was then 11 years old.
Panh made this documentary to fill in history's "missing pictures" with those he carries in his memory. He uses clay figures and dioramas to illustrate deportation, forced labor, "re-education" and genocide, supplementing these images with existing documentary footage (much of it from Khmer Rouge propaganda films). The Missing Picture earned an Oscar nomination last year for Best Foreign Film and was honored in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes 2013.
What You Missed
Voice-over narration by Jean-Baptiste Phou (in the English-language version) tells Panh's story. It starts with tableaux of Phnom Penh in the early '70s — a lively city where young Panh, whose father teaches school, visits film studios and marvels at the beautiful actresses.
On April 17, 1975, the communist revolutionaries take the city. They herd the urban dwellers onto transports and bring them to the countryside, leaving the city a wasteland. They take their possessions and dye their clothes black. They force them to abandon modernity and work the land on starvation rations. They take away pens and eyeglasses. They control every aspect of their lives.
Tags: missing picture , rithy panh , Movies you missed , Image , Web Only
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
An annual moviegoing tradition in Brandon continues this month, on July 12, with a screening of one of the greatest of all movie comedies: Buster Keaton’s 1924 masterpiece The Navigator. Brandon Town Hall will show the film as Buster meant it to be seen: with live musical accompaniment.
Professional accompanist Jeff Rapsis, of Bedford, N.H., will use a digital synthesizer to improvise a musical score that approximates the sounds of a full orchestra. Rapsis has been accompanying Bradford’s annual silent film series since 2010.
Regarded as one of Keaton’s finest achievements as both an actor and a director, The Navigator concerns a wealthy idiot whose antics endanger an entire ocean liner and land him on an island of hungry cannibals. Preceding the feature will be screenings of two of Keaton’s short comedies, The Boat (1921) and The Love Nest (1923).
For a small town with no actual movie theater of its own, Brandon’s cinematic ambitions are large. The Navigator is but one offering in a monthly silent film series. Still to come are the 1928 Marion Davies pic Show People on August 16, a series of shorts by the great silent comedian Harry Langdon on September 13, and a Lon Chaney double feature on October 18.
Jeff Rapsis provides live musical accompaniment to a screening of Buster Keaton’s The Navigator, Saturday, July 12, at 7 p.m., Brandon Town Hall. Free. brandontownhall.org
Tags: film , movies , buster keaton , the navigator , jeff rapsis , silent film , accompaniment , Image , Web Only
Friday, July 4, 2014
This week in movies you missed: Last Thanksgiving saw the release of a film directed by Spike Lee and starring Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Olsen and Samuel L. Jackson. Almost nobody saw it. I find out why.
To be honest, I already knew why this movie wasn't a good fit for a post-turkey family trip to the movies. And if you saw the original Oldboy (2003), a cult film from Korean director Chan-wook Park, so do you. The question is, is Lee's Oldboy really as bad a film as its dual status as unnecessary remake and box-office bomb might suggest?
What You Missed
Joe Doucett (Brolin) is an asshole. Everybody hates him, from his boss to his business clients to his ex-wife, who can't believe he doesn't care enough to show up for his daughter's third birthday. On this day, somebody does something about it.
Joe passes out drunk and wakes in a hotel room with a locked door and barred windows. Each day his invisible captors feed him vodka and Chinese dumplings. The television informs him that his ex-wife has been brutally murdered and he is the prime suspect.
Why You Missed It
Oldboy reached 583 U.S. theaters — none in Vermont — and ended up grossing about $4.9 million worldwide. Its production budget was $30 million. The property had originally been optioned by Steven Spielberg, and Will Smith had expressed interest in playing the lead role.
Oldboy is now on Netflix and Amazon Instant.
Tags: oldboy , spike lee , chan-wook park , josh brolin , Movies you missed , Image , Video , Web Only
Saturday, June 28, 2014
I visited my old friend Dan this past weekend and we got to talking about the films we’d seen recently, as he and I often do. As it happened, we’d both seen World War Z, a movie we’d missed in the theaters, within the previous week. “So you saw it listed in the ‘New on Netflix’ list, too, huh?” he asked. Indeed I had.
There’s plenty to say about the myriad ways Netflix has insinuated itself into the lives of cinephiles everywhere: how it breaks the longstanding distribution model, how it pushes back against the nasty cable companies, how its archives of old films runs a lot deeper than you might think. Personally, I’m pulling for Netflix to slay a few Goliaths in a rise to even greater prominence. I’m not usually on the side of corporations, but I like this one’s scrappiness (as well as its extensive archive of 1950s Westerns). But I’ll save all that for another column.
I’d heard that World War Z was a somewhat grim, uninteresting affair, but I found it to be precisely the opposite. Despite the fact that I’ve gone on record many times saying it was a fool’s errand to make a zombie film in the wake of Shaun of the Dead — since that masterpiece is basically the last word on this overdone subgenre — I enjoyed World War Z quite a bit. It’s solid, smart genre filmmaking with a decent degree of visual sophistication.
Tags: film , movies , what i'm watching , world war z , graphic match , editing , marc forster , brad pitt , zombies , Image , Video , Web Only
Saturday, June 21, 2014
You may not have given it much thought, but the majority of mainstream American films are astonishingly similar from a structural perspective. Not that the stories are the same, of course, but most Hollywood films have the same “skeleton.”
I’m not talking about the three-act structure (or two- or four-act, depending on which screenwriting guru you prefer) that governs story development. Rather, this level of structure runs even deeper: the intertwining of the “Action” and the “Romance” storylines.
The heroes in most Hollywood films have two goals: to defeat the Bad Guy (or destroy the microfilm, save the world, etc.) and to achieve love — what used to be called “getting the girl.” Typically, the achievement of one of these goals is accompanied by the achievement of the other; they reinforce one another.
One of the clearest examples is that of The Matrix. The central question of the Action storyline is: “Is Neo truly ‘the One’ who will deliver humankind from the clutches of the Matrix?” And the central question of the Romance storyline is: “Will Neo and Trinity fall in love?”
The answer to both questions is yes. In fact, the story of The Matrix is set up in such a way that a single gesture — a kiss — simultaneously confirms both affirmative answers.
Tags: movie , film , what i'm watching , man hunt , story , screenplay , the matrix , three-act structure , Image , Web Only
Friday, June 20, 2014
This week in movies you missed: Let's take a break in the south of France, where a three-week summer vacation is considered "short." Let's soak up the sun glinting from the waters of a gorgeous lake and — wait, why is everybody on this beach a naked dude? What's that sound coming from the bushes? And what's that happening out there in the water — could it be a murder?
What You Missed
Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) is a young vegetable seller who frequents a beach known as a cruising spot. He has his eye on Michel (Christophe Paou), a handsome bruiser with facial hair, but Michel's possessive boyfriend makes sure he keeps his distance.
So, instead, Franck finds himself spending his time by the lake with Henri (Patrick d'Assumçao), a pudgy, middle-aged logger who just ended a relationship with a woman. Henri declares himself interested only in friendship, saying he's weary of letting sexual desire consume his life.
One day, as Franck watches from the woods, Michel drowns his lover in the lake. There are no other witnesses. He doesn't go to the police.
And the next day, when Michel approaches him with an invitation, Franck says yes.
Tags: stranger by the lake , alain guiraudie , Movies you missed , Image , Web Only
Saturday, June 14, 2014
This week in movies you missed: Sometimes in the summer, you just wanna watch something languid, gorgeous and trippy. Something with a weird title. Who cares if you "understand" it? Go with the flow!
So I checked out the 2010 Cannes Palme d'Or winner, a newish arrival on Netflix Instant. This art film from director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Syndromes and a Century), shot in his native northern Thailand, has provoked lots of online commentary. Some wags reportedly refer to it as "Uncle Bong Hit."
What You Missed
Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) is slowly dying of kidney failure. He invites his city-dwelling sister-in-law, Jen (Jenjira Pongpas), to his remote farm, where he grows tamarinds and keeps bees, and asks her to take over the place after his death.
So far, so normal. But then, one night while Boonmee and Jen are having dinner, the ghost of Boonmee's wife (Natthakarn Aphaiwonk) shows up. With her comes their son, Boonsong (Geerasak Kulhong), also deceased, who appears covered with hair, Chewbacca-style, with glowing red eyes. He explains in a matter-of-fact manner that he followed a "ghost monkey" into the jungle, mated with her and became one of her kind.
It's a pretty mellow family reunion, all things considered. In the following days, Boonmee continues to contemplate imminent death, which he says makes him feel excited, like the prospect of giving a presentation the next day. He does not recall his past lives or ever discuss doing so.
Unless that's what's happening in the out-of-nowhere sequence with the princess and the catfish sex — well, you'll just have to watch it and decide for yourself.
Why You Missed It
Do I really need to tell you why this film didn't get a wide release in fly-over country? It reached six U.S. theaters and is now available on DVD/Blu-ray and for streaming practically everywhere.
Tags: uncle boonmee who can recall his past lives , Apichatpong Weerasethakul , Movies you missed , Image , Web Only