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Because of a forthcoming week-long vacation, the past few days have been incredibly hectic work-wise, a situation that frustratingly forced me to skip Funny People and Thirst. Nonetheless, I'll have reviews of both those new releases - as well as the highly anticipated District 9 - upon my return, as well as a feature for a new outlet.
The Sandbox: iGaming (and the 10 Indie iPhone Games You Need to Check Out Now (IFC News)
Out Now:
Not Quite Hollywood (Slant magazine)
Funded by the Oceanic Preservation Society (and directed by
one of its co-founders, Louie Psihoyos), The
Cove boasts a rather upfront propagandist agenda – stopping the slaughter
of dolphins, for food, in an infamous cove in Taiji, Japan. Yet as far as
one-sided activist works go, Psihoyos’ documentary is a quite stirring call to
arms against the senseless, copious murder of animals. The movement against
dolphin captivity is spearheaded by Richard O’Barry, whose quest to save
aquatic mammals is driven by guilt over having helped create a global maritime
park industry through his tenure as head trainer on Flipper. The Cove is a
four-headed beast, functioning as a portrait of O’Barry, a critique of
Japanese dolphin policy, a look into dolphins’ self-conscious intelligence, and
an espionage thriller replete with night-vision cinematography, hidden cameras,
and lurking villains that plays like a cross between Ocean’s Eleven and last year’s Man
on Wire. Psihoyos’ talking-head commentary pushes the proceedings towards
infomercial territory, and his discussion about Japan’s cultural impetus for
continuing to engage in internationally frowned-upon activities – their
clinging to “tradition” posited as a rebellion against Western hegemony – is
given too short shrift. Yet even if it amounts to merely the slaughterhouse
imagery one expected, the payoff footage of what really goes on in the
mysterious cove delivers a requisite sting. At times graceless, The Cove nonetheless forcefully
expresses, and correlates, O’Barry’s righteous fury, the International Whaling
Commission’s ineffectiveness, and Japan’s inhumane practices, which are
damningly depicted as merely one component of an international corporate system
driven by ruthless self-interest.
This week's new releases include You, the Living, the latest phenomenal work from Roy Andersson (Songs from the Second Floor). Aside from that review, however, this link collection is short on positivity.
Coming Soon:
You, the Living (Slant magazine)
Gotta Dance (Slant magazine)
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Lorna’s Silence received less-than-glowing notices upon its Cannes
premiere because – horror of horrors! – it exhibited faint traces of an actual
genre plot, a development perhaps not wholly in line with the Belgian auteurs’
realist canon but which nonetheless suits them smashingly. Relocating from
their usual hometown stomping ground of rural Seraing to urban Liege, the
Dardennes focus their latest on Lorna (Ellen Page lookalike Arta Dobroshi, in a
transfixing performance), an Albanian woman stuck in a loveless marriage to
junkie Claudy (a piercing Jérémie Renier). Like water seeping through the
cracks of a brick wall, slivers of context gradually trickle out from Lorna’s
day-to-day grind at home, at work, and in conversations with Sokol (Alban Ukaj),
a boyfriend with whom she plans to entrepreneurially set up a snack shop. It
turns out that Lorna married Claudy to become a citizen, and that her mobster
benefactor Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione) plans to kill Claudy via OD so that Lorna
can then marry a Russian seeking citizenship. Complications arise when Claudy
makes a good-faith effort to get clean, thereby engendering unexpected sympathy
from Lorna, which manifests itself in a bout of lovemaking that, once Fabio
goes ahead with his plans, turns out to have unintended psychological
consequences for Lorna. Lorna’s immigration scam affords the filmmakers with another
vehicle for socio-economic inquiry – especially in Lorna’s complicity in her
own economic exploitation – with euro notes, a recurring sight (and sure to prompt
more Bresson comparisons), soon taking on an almost totemic quality. Nonetheless,
such issues resonate less powerfully than the Dardennes’ humanistic fixation on
flawed characters from society’s margins stumbling, unexpectedly, toward enlightenment
and salvation. Throughout, the Dardennes’ trademark handheld cinematography and sparse
musical scoring proves as assured and intimate as ever. It’s a signature style
that, particularly in the film’s latter sequences, creates a sense of disquieting
suspense, amplifying the story’s more thriller-esque machinations while also
allowing for a penetrating, deceptively sly interior portrait of Lorna, a
wayward soul whose stoic exterior masks tumultuous inner change, and who
ultimately finds meaning, and liberation, in a slow slide into madness.
In the Loop offers
a fictionalized backstage look at American and British diplomatic and
government machinations during the build-up to a Middle East war, its scathing Colbert Report-by-way-of-Dr. Strangelove screwball comedy
energized by rat-a-tat-tat verbal zingers. Armando Iannucci’s feature debut
(expanded from his BBC comedy The Thick
of It) is a razor-sharp farce that imparts insights from all directions –
the unwarranted egomania of mid-level politicos, the cunning deceptions of spin
doctors, the bluster of militaristic suits, and the cutthroat selfishness and
hard-partying wildness of young, hungry staffers and assistants. Iannucci’s
story concerns the fallout from Minister for International Development Simon
Foster (Tom Hollander) giving an unauthorized opinion on radio that war is
“unforeseeable,” a statement that sends his boss, the Prime Minster’s Director
of Communications Malcolm Tucker (Scottish scene-stealer Peter Capaldi), into
fits of apoplectic profanity. Capaldi’s barrage of hilariously inventive
vulgarity gives In the Loop its nasty
edge, while Foster and his new assistant Toby (Chris Addison) lend the material
its awkward Office-style drollness.
Just about everyone involved is in top form, including James Gandolfini as an
American Lieutenant General opposed to conflict, Anna Chlumsky as the
right-hand-woman to US Assistant Secretary for Diplomacy Karen Clark (Mimi
Kennedy), and David Rasche as a Rumsfeldian blowhard with no qualms about
fudging evidence to help his warmongering aims. In its portrait of the myriad
competing and/or parallel self-interests that help drive national policy to
fruition, Iannucci’s film gets not only the big picture right but also the
details, laying out, with more quotable bon mots than any film in recent
memory, the intricate, often nonsensical series of deals, subterfuge, and
compromises that form the backbone of our seriously screwy – and screwed-up –
democratic systems.
A heavy work (and life) schedule delayed this latest round-up post, which features my latest Sandbox column, another IFC feature, and a host of reviews (some of them a few weeks old), including one for the latest Harry Potter.
The Sandbox: Western Expansion (IFC News)
Vascillating Voiceovers: A History of Unreliable Narrators (IFC News)
Now Playing:
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Slant magazine)
The Way We Get By (Slant magazine)
Blood: The Last Vampire (Slant magazine)
Coming Soon:
The English Surgeon (Slant magazine)
The Answer Man (Slant magazine)
Human Rights Watch 2009:
Kabuli Kid (Slant magazine)
Look Into My Eyes (Slant magazine)
Striving for naturalism while pivoting its action around a
preposterous conceit, Humpday locates
truth mostly on the margins of its too-cute-for-school story. Ben (The Puffy Chair’s Mark Duplass) is a
married homeowner trying to have a baby with wife Anna (Alycia Delmore). His
Seattle domesticity is rudely interrupted when college friend and free-spirit
world-traveler Andrew (The Blair Witch
Project’s Joshua Leonard) unexpectedly shows up on his doorstep in the
middle of the night and, a day later, invites him to a party at a house of
hedonism (the front door reads “Dionysus”). There, after many drinks, the two
decide to enter an upcoming amateur porn festival by making and starring in a
film whose hook will be two straight guys having sex. It’s a premise
practically begging to be dubbed boundary-pushing. However, despite Ben and
Andrew’s copious man-on-man hugging, basketball-wrestling, and endearing use of
the word “fuck,” Lynn Shelton’s central narrative device plays less like a ribald means of exploring the boundary between hetero and homo male
camaraderie than as a gimmick that could be replaced by countless other dares
and, thus, seems to have been chosen primarily for its maximum titillation
potential. In a superb morning-after scene, Ben and Andrew’s decision to go
through with their porn plan is revealed to be driven by a case of
I-won’t-back-down macho pride and ego, with both men compelled to make smut as
a means of both living up to their own (phony, idealized) notions of self as
well as rebutting the other’s stereotypical conception of themselves. Boasting strong lead performances, Humpday’s
occasionally acute depiction of male psychology (specifically, maturation
anxieties) is matched by its pinpoint portrait of marital dynamics,
highlighted by an opening scene in which Ben and Anna both opt for sleep over
sex. Yet such insights are tethered to a tale that’s not only
impossible to swallow and too satisfied with its own tee-hee provocation, but
ultimately devoid – thanks to a climax that goes limp at the money-shot moment
of truth – of anything much to say about sexuality or friendship.
Because of the July 4th holiday, I'm a bit late in delivering a link to my latest Sandbox column. It's about thatgamecompany's Flower, a downloadable PS3 title that's taken a central position in the games-as-art debate.
The Sandbox: Flower's Video Game Poetry (IFC News)
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