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Human Capital

22 Mar

‘Human Capital’: A deal goes bad all too quickly, and financial risks rise to demand untenable toll

By Tom Meek
Friday, March 20, 2020
Human Capital movie review & film summary (2020) | Roger Ebert
With the Covid-19 state of emergency and shutdown of movie theaters, we’re highlighting new streaming option for people stuck in their homes by social distancing.

An Americanized retread of Paolo Virzi’s 2013 Italian adaptation of Stephen Amidon’s 2004 book about greed and small-town social politics. So it’s an American adaptation of an Italian adaptation of an American story – got it? “Human Capital” lurches out of the gates with a certain amount of swagger, and the casting is something a wonderment, even if the confluence of happenstance and direction squanders the opportunity from time to time.

The setting is a quiet upstate New York hamlet where Drew (Liev Schreiber), a middling real estate agent, drops by the manse of a hedge fund honcho by the name of Quint Manning (Peter Sarsgaard) to pick up his daughter Shannon (Maya Hawke, of “Stranger Things”), who’s dating Quint’s son, Jamie (Fred Hechinger). Quint, none too social, is in the throes of an intense doubles tennis match and irate about losing to his employees. On a whim, Quint flushes his partner and inserts Drew, an aw-shucks kind of guy who doesn’t let on that he played competitively in college. The match immediately becomes a non-contest and, as a show of his appreciation, Quint invites Drew to buy shares in his hedge fund at the reduced “family and friends” rate of $300,000 per share – nothing for even the well off to sneeze at. Drew, as we learn, is hoping for more kids with his second wife Ronnie (Betty Gabriel) and a bit tight on finances, but nonetheless jumps at the opportunity despite the high-wire entry point.

It’s clearly a bad idea, made worse when Drew takes out a loan by fudging his credentials. As if on cue, the fund takes a massive dive. Drew returns to the manse wanting his cash back, but Quint not only denies him, he shuts him out and even threatens legal repercussions. Meanwhile Ronnie’s expecting twins, Jamie develops a major drinking problem and Shannon takes up with Ian (Alex Wolff of “Hereditary”), a reclusive bad boy with a dark past. Don’t forget the opening scene, in which a young man on a bike gets blown off the road by a surging SUV, which comes back to haunt late in the game.

Yup, there’s a lot going on in “Human Capital,” but the script by Oren Moverman keeps it all grimly juggling and spinning – even if you’re given pause at how, in such a small burg, titans of industry (struggling or not) such as Quint and Drew are not acquainted, and why Drew, not being a gambler by nature, would buy in given all the upfront red flags and hurdles. The true power to Marc Meyers’ serpent-in-suburbia drama is Sarsgaard (“Shattered Glass,” “An Education”) who’s always played slippery eels with complexity and nuance. It’s hard to tell here, though, if his Quint is setting Drew up as a mark or if the timing of the deal just happens to be bad. It doesn’t much matter; Quint’s response plays like the former, as the well-heeled stockbroker moves Drew around his plate like a sprig of superfluous parsley constantly in the way. On par with Sarsgaard is Marisa Tomei, who’s not on screen nearly enough as his wife. The two are like hissing cobras dancing with each other as they look to strike, and they’re even less cordial to those who have the misfortune of getting in their way. Hawke too, as Shannon, carries a certain amount of venom that, like the other two, gets directed at Drew, a man whose fate feels predetermined from the first scene.

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First Cow

14 Mar

‘First Cow’: Risks of frontier entrepreneurship go beyond financial, but milk it while you can

By Tom Meek

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For her latest collaboration with writer Jonathan Raymond, Kelly Reichardt heads back to the same Oregon frontier territory that made “Meek’s Cutoff” (2010) so narratively rich and foreboding. The time’s a few years earlier than that existential traverse; it’s the early 1820s as folks spread west, hoping for land, gold and a new way of life. Those dreams are not without hardships along the way. Take Otis Figowitz (John Magaro), a cook signed on with a rugged party of uncouth trappers who hold the threat of violence over him, even though the foraging skills of their “Cookie” are the only thing keeping them alive in the Pacific Northwest wilds. Such aggression (“When this is all over, I’m going to kick your ass for real”) don’t seem to faze Cookie, almost as if he knows something no one else does.

One night, while on a foraging run, Cookie discovers a naked man hiding among the ferns. At first he believes he’s run into a Native American, but no, King Lu (Orion Lee) harks from China and is clearly in trouble. Knowing the hostile inclinations of his fellow trail mates, Cookie provides silent aide and sustenance to King along the way. Eventually the party and King make it to a trade outpost, and that’s where Reichardt’s tale shifts from a frontier odyssey to a startup endeavor and social testament of a micro crime and macro punishment (think those affected disproportionately by drug laws). The heart of “First Cow” is the bond between Cookie and King that grows from that unselfish helping hand in the wilds to the cozy shack nearby that King invites Cookie to share and, ultimately, where they cook up a scone biz.

The “first cow” is the lone bovine on an estate outside the outpost, brought in by a wealthy bureaucrat known as Chief Factor (Toby Jones). Where there’s milk, there’s scones. Each morning Cookie sets up a cauldron of boiling oil and drips honey on his freshly fried “oily cakes” as King takes gold ingot and other tender from the line of frontiersmen hungry for a sweet taste of civilization – but to make the treats, each night the enterprising duo furtively milk Chief Factor’s cow. They’re something of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid by way of Gates and Allen, with King as the brains of the operation and Cookie as his genius creator. King knows this is a limited-time opportunity before more cows and skilled chefs make their way to the remote port of commerce. Also too there’s the prideful Chief Factor who, curious as to why his cow bears no milk, commissions Cookie to make a special cake for a visiting mucky-muck. You know something has to give, but with Reichardt behind the lens you know it’s not going to go in a pat or predictable direction. Her denouements are an art form in their own right, always subtle and never registering more then a murmur on the plot-disruption scale, yet ever resonating in their lingering emotional impact. “First Cow” is no different. It’s a classic Reichardt branding that highlights the talents of Magaro and Lee, who, like Michelle Williams after her collaboration with Reichardt on “Wendy and Lucy” (2008), should see their stock rise. What the three have achieved here is one of the most unique and palpable portraits of male bonding captured on film in recent memory.

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The Hunt

14 Mar

‘The Hunt’: Liberals don’t want to take their guns – because they really add zest to the human hunt

By Tom Meek
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The film “The Hunt,” not to be confused with the 2012 Danish film of the same name starring Mads Mikkelsen, had been shelved by Universal last year because of sensitivity issues related to the film’s central plot of humans using other humans as prey – nothing new, but back in the day Fay Wray was in “The Most Dangerous Game” (1932) or Cornel Wilde was “The Naked Prey” (1965), Charles Whitman had yet to show the world what human-on-human carnage was really about.

The strategy had been to release “The Hunt” as a horror film; now the curio is being spun as a satire-cum-horror, or something “unclassifiable.” If we hadn’t seen Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” (2017) or “Us” (2019), tagging it as unique, new or groundbreaking might work, but that crossover zone has already been defined and owned. “The Hunt” begins like a “Saw” chapter with a dozen random people waking up in the kind of bucolic field you might find in “Midsommar” (2019), semi-bound and gagged and not knowing where they are. Turns out they’re in a kill zone. Once they find a key to unlock the gags, a helpful park ranger comes out bearing arms. “Why do we need these?” comes a groggy question as semi-automatic pistols and assault rifles are meted out. Before there is any real answer, the asker’s brains are splattered by a high-caliber projectile and it’s game on, with the rest of the crew scattering and taking cover.

The what and why as bullets and arrows fly pull at the minds of those on the run as well as the audience. A trio eventually gets outside the barbed wire confines, muttering something about “Mansongate.” It’s along their journey that we get an inkling of what’s going on: rich liberals hunting deplorables and rednecks for their racially insensitive online posts, denial of climate change and so on. “I bet he used the N-word a lot,” one Richie Rich says. “You fail and we pay,” another says in the middle of hand-to-hand combat. It’s cheeky irony that the East Coasters have set up their slaughter shop in Arkansas, and another wicked barb that filmmaker Craig Zobel and his writers, Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof (both of TV’s “Watchmen”), have us rooting for the “deplorables,” who in this case seem far less a threat to democracy than rich liberals who want to impose their will with dollars and cents, and, in this case, semiautomatic weapons.

It’s hard to discuss “The Hunt” more without selling the farm, and that’s the real fun of the film: the twists, pitfalls and revelations that confront the hunted as they seek safe ground. I will say that Betty Gilpin of Netflix’s “Glow” cuts a captivating presence as the unassuming waif with kick-ass can-do (think Ripley by way of “Emma”) tagged Snowball (“Animal Farm” tries to factor into the plot, but the convention is oddly inserted). She’s matched by Hilary Swank’s righteously indignant badass, who likes to discuss the delineating factors between a house and a mansion, and Amy Madigan and Reed Birney make a wonderful side dish as a pair of yokels who run a ma-and-pa gas station. The plot’s got a bunch of holes in it, but “The Hunt”’s more about the pursuit, cheeky spoofs and the notion that elitism ain’t pretty no matter what flag you’re waving.

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The Way Back

8 Mar

‘The Way Back’: Affleck delivers true gravitas to star turn as a coach burdened by addiction

By Tom Meek
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Watching “The Way Back,” the story of an alcoholic has-been who finds redemption taking the reins of a losing high school basketball team, I was pretty sure I was taking in something based on true events. A quick gander of the press notes and the answer was a solid nay, and somehow I felt cheated. I mean, would “Hoosiers” (1986) resonate as thoroughly if it weren’t true?

Given that the film stars Ben Affleck with his tabloid-chronicled struggles with alcohol, there’s a truth here that you can feel in the actor’s convincing “been there” performance. Affleck has puffed up for the role; he’s boxy and bloated. Gone is the buff Batman physique, and his face is weary and heavy. It’s a lived-in performance that may go down as one of Affleck’s finest, even if the film, while hitting all the requisite marks, feels thin – moving and meaningful, sure, but thin.

We catch up with Affleck’s Jack Cunningham working a construction job in L.A. He’s isolated, a barely functioning alcoholic who pops a can of beer in the shower each morning but at least has the presence of mind to get a ride home from the bar each night. During a tense Thanksgiving dinner at his sister’s house we learn Jack was once an all-state ball player at a small Catholic high school and had a scholarship to the big time, but events sidelined his success and have him separated from his wife, Angela (an effectively sensitive Janina Gavankar). The opportunity for Jack’s “way back” comes in the form of a random call from the head of Jack’s old high school. Turns out the basketball coach had a heart attack; the school asks Jack to step in, even though he hasn’t picked up a ball in 20 years, let alone ever coached.

The crew Jack has to oversee is fairly pat platoon of misfits and castoffs, unable to win a game against a team of gnomes, including the slack showboat who thinks he’s better than he is (Melvin Gregg), the full-of-himself ladies man (Will Ropp), the portly prankster (Charles Lott Jr.) and the team’s taciturn star with home life challenges (Brandon Wilson). The assemblage of coach and kids who need each other screams cliché, but director Gavin O’Connor – who’s been down this path before with “Miracle” (2004) and “Warrior” (2011) – keeps things gritty and realistic, adroitly avoiding what otherwise might have been maudlin pitfalls. The script by Brad Ingelsby (“Out of the Furnace”) may come off as forced and coy in the way it introduces backstory and developments, but to its credit, it moves in directions that are anything but Hollywood. The real buzzer beater here, however, is the chemistry between Affleck and his squad. Sure, they grow as young men and the team begins to come together and win, but it’s more palpably conveyed than just simply checking those boxes. The dynamic with Jack’s sensitive assistant coach (Al Madrigal), a math teacher who’s onto Jack saucing it up in the office, helps deepen the complex nature of addiction and recovery. Overall, “The Way Back” might not be an instant classic, but it is a sobering spin on hopelessness and despair and finding the way forward.

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Burden

5 Mar

‘Burden’: Change of heart over racism easier than taking off the hometown hood forever

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By Tom Meek

With the understanding that the KKK factors heavily in the plot, you’d think the title “Burden” would have something to do with the onus of racism or the dismantling of it. But no, the film, based on true events, is simply about a gent named Mike Burden, a narrow-minded peckerwood who, à la “American History X” (1998), has an awakening to the hate etched so obviously in front of his face. The film, by actor turned first-time filmmaker Andrew Heckler (“Armageddon,” “Ally McBeal”), won the Dramatic Audience Award at Sundance 2018. But “Burden,” despite its prestigious pedigree and firebrand topic, is a fairly straight-ahead narrative that misses opportunities as it checks off social justice boxes.

As Burden, Garrett Hedlund (“Pan,” “Four Brothers”) gets the snaky, snot-snorting, chew-spitting redneck down to a T. The film catches up with Mike in the mid 1990s, just back from a stint in the military and about to pitch in with de facto father figure Tom Griffin (Tom Wilkinson), the grand leader of a podunk South Carolina chapter of the Klan who’s about to demo, remodel and transform the town’s derelict nickelodeon into a KKK gift shop and museum. The gory baubles of violence (knives, crosses and masks) are almost as cringeworthy as the frequent drop of the N-word from the beer-drinking bums who undertake the task. Such a public establishment doesn’t sit well with the Rev. David Kennedy (Forest Whitaker) or any of the African American population of Laurens, rightfully fearful of the Klan – and the law. Protests and violence ensue. Ultimately, because of his developing relationship with Judy (Andrea Riseborough), a single mother with a progressive mindset, and a rekindled friendship with childhood friend Clarence (Usher Raymond), Mike hits a crisis of conscious and wrestles with exiting the Klan. That proves to be a none too easy endeavor, and potentially dangerous.

The cast, most especially (and predictably) Hedlund and Academy Award winner Whitaker, execute Heckler’s vision with ardor and investment. Wilkinson, so good in everything does (“In the Bedroom,” “Michael Clayton”) nearly elevates his villainous Griffin to the realm of human complexity, but Heckler, doing double duty as screenwriter, doesn’t trust the audience enough – the shock of the N-word and notion of bred-in hate gets so overused they become just more drool in the spittoon. No matter, “Burden” in its generic construct manages to raise the flag effectively on racism and a chapter of history that’s too close and relevant to the here and now.

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Night Sweats

4 Mar

Edgy thriller with a pulse on the coronavirus scare

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With the coronavirus (and fear) spreading in the United States, “Night Sweats” checks in not only as a cautionary tale but also as a pretty taut thriller as well. The vast reaching plot centers on an infectious disease break out in New York City that while not a pandemic, confounds public health authorities among others. The lo-fi production casts an ambitious net and smartly makes the most of its cloistered locations—spartan millennial apartments, dive bars and the kind of generic office space that became its own character in Kitty Green’s “The Assistant”— framing it all in tight and embossing the emotional impact.

We catch up with a wide-eyed Yuri (Kyle DeSpiegler) as he meets Mary Kate (Mary Elaine Ramsey) a toothsome wait person at the hip haunt his roommate Jake (John Francomacaro) works at. Sparks fly and soon enough, Yuri and the coquettish object of his desire are back at his place and between the sheets. Handsome people in the throes of the ultimate pleasure are always a captivating spectacle, but before the rise to satisfaction can be notched, mood killing wails ripple down the hall from Jake’s room. The cause of the coitus interruptus? A satanic seizure replete with convulsive vomiting and eyes rolled back into the head and ghastly white. The two young lovers panic as most anyone would but at least have the presence to dial 911. In a freaky twist, the second Yuri hangs up the phone, a mysterious mountain of man claiming to be an EMT comes a knocking and attends to Jake. Just what he does in that brief interlude before the ambulance arrives is unclear and concerning to both Yuri and MK. Days later Jake’s dead, MK’s suddenly aloof and the restless Yuri uncovers a bug planted in Jake’s room inside a trophy from a self help company called True Healing. More cases of the illness crop up, health authorities (Allison Mackie as the lead) continue to pepper Yuri with questions, and Yuri, unsatisfied with the lack of answers, goes undercover as a new hire at True Healing.

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Rickety in construct, yet riveting in its enigmatic aura “Night Sweats” hits a few plausibility snags along the way. Treading on the notion that fact is stranger than fiction, before the credits roll we’re informed that the film’s based on true events. A delve into the the press notes tells us that one of the writers, Seth Panman, toiled at a shady self help firm that had some dubious endeavors in the works. “Night Sweats”’s clearly a jumping off from there and what holds Andrew Lyman-Clarke‘s ever expanding thriller together are the edgy performances by Ramsey as the barbed lure and DeSpiegler as the dude interrupted, with a can do attitude. The behind the scene stars that help sell it are the moody atmospheric score by John Kaefer that adds pins-and-needles to a scene and Hilarion Banks’s floral yet focused cinematography. It’s not fully incubated but “Night Sweats” does manage to get under your skin.

Emma.

27 Feb

‘Emma.’ puts the period on period dramas, debuting director who lets era breathe free

Emma' allows Anya Taylor-Joy, a horror star, to try her hand at comedy - The Washington Post

By Tom Meek Wednesday, February 26, 2020

I always find it curious that “Emma” was the last novel Jane Austen wrote before her passing. “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility” always felt more mature, wise and insightful. They’re also less gleeful and spry. It’s important to note that the title of the film by Autumn de Wilde, tackling Austen in her feature debut, is “Emma.” with a period at the end of the title. One might think it’s to not to be confused with the 1996 version staring Gwyneth Paltrow, or maybe to simply inform cinema-goers that this is the definitive celluloid (well, digital) version – period! However you take it, de Wilde’s vision of 19th century English countryside is a rich one, rooted in details, period dress and the title character’s ever alluring array of earrings. One astute detail is the use of folding panel draft screens, each a piece of period art in their own right, positioned by the help to keep their wealthy estate owners warm as they relax in the living room gabbing and imbibing a cordial or, more mundanely, reading. In one scene, Emma (Anya Taylor-Joy) instructs the helping hands to move two such panels to exact locations to keep her father (the indomitable Bill Nighy) warm. The hyper (draft) sensitive effete is certainly snug and happy, but what Emma has more intentionally done is create space for her and her next-door neighbor (fields and sculpted gardens away), the overly solemn Mr. Knightley (Johnny Flynn), to whisper privately about affairs of the heart.

Emma, it turns out, is a master manipulator, ever so prim on the outside but inside scripting the love lives of the young and unsuspecting roaming the quaint confines of the bucolic burg just a day’s jaunt from London. Those caught up in her matchmaking, besides Knightley, are her tag-along of lower social station, Harriet (a wonderful Mia Goth),  Robert Martin (Connor Swindells), a sensitive, hardworking farmer with a square jaw , the prideful world traveler Frank Churchill (Callum Turner) and Emma’s de facto social rival, Jane Fairfax (Amber Anderson). Most of Emma’s semi-well-intentioned plots (most with a modicum of personal gain attached) backfire with a dour muffled cough. Nothing in Austen’s very staid land ever erupts outwardly, though Flynn’s brooding Knightley feels like a bull in a narrow stall looking to explode. It’s a Heath Ledger-esque performance, understated yet thoroughly compelling. (Interestingly, Flynn in is slated to play rockers David Bowie and Ray Davies in upcoming projects.)

It’s hard to pick a shining star in de Wilde’s opulent period piece. Goth, Nighy and Miranda Hart as Miss Bates, a nonstop chatterbox as sweet as she is annoying, all add perfect bits of garnish to the Knightley-Emma Woodhouse tug-of-war of emotion and desire. Mark one thing: “Emma.” lifts Taylor-Joy over the top as a serious young performer in the ranks of Thomasin McKenzie (“Leave No Trace,” “Jojo Rabbit”) and Saoirse Ronan (“Lady Bird,”“Little Women”). Coincidentally, the name of her occult young woman in her breakthrough, Robert Egger’s “The Witch” (2015), was Thomasin, and she’ll star this year with McKenzie in the Edgar Wright (“Baby Driver,” Shaun of the Dead”) project “Last Night in Soho.” And as much as Joy-Taylor lifts the film with her ebullient, wide eyes that mask mixed feelings, credit for a work that feels like both a fairytale and a master painting goes to de Wilde – amazingly, at nearly 50, notching her first-time shot. The script by “The Luminaries” novelist Eleanor Catton, like Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women,” metes in just the right amount of modern female gaze without unsettling a single apple in Austen’s cart. Flynn and Taylor-Joy have their trajectories mapped, but it’s de Wilde (who got her detailed eye making videos for Beck and Jenny Lewis) that’s the eye-opener here, and the new hot one to watch.

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Tread

21 Feb

‘Tread’: They did this bulldozer owner wrong, and he’ll take out half the town to make it right

By Tom Meek
Thursday, February 20, 2020
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Documentarian Paul Solet takes a newsreel curio and turns it into “Tread,” a riveting, anthropological examination of small-town life, the hairs that get curled during long legal proceedings and the psychological pathology of righteous retribution. If you dial back to 2004 you may recollect a pissed-off citizen going berserk in the podunk town of Granby, Colorado, with a bulldozer. It was no ordinary piece of construction equipment, but a Komatsu D55A tricked out with armor and automatic weapons – in essence, a tank that authorities were ineffective in stopping for a several-hourlong rampage.

But before getting to that, Solet rewinds to what would send Marvin Heemeyer over the edge. It’s important to keep in mind that Granby’s a close-knit mountain town of 2,000. In interviews, many townsfolk reflect fondly on Heemeyer, noting his amiable manner and skill as a welder and skimobile racer. During the buildup we also meet Trisha Macdonald, Heemeyer‘s girlfriend, whose sensible and reflective presence doesn’t suggest the kind of person who would take up with someone who was arguably off their rocker, let alone a brimming sociopath. But then there are tape recordings by Heemeyer himself, righteous and delusional: “God bless me in advance for the task which I am about to undertake.” In a pivotal scene underscoring the psychological mood, a re-enactor playing Heemeyer shaves his head, Travis Bickle style, before firing up the big rig.

The pushing point, we’re told, is a long simmering land dispute. Heemeyer owned and operated a muffler and welding shop, but the parcel he bought at auction was also desired by a local businessman with strong municipal and political ties. Infractions and numerous legal battles – that Heemeyer lost – added up and took their toll, forcing the 50-something craftsman to withdraw and put his skill to work. The killdozer, when you first catch a glimpse of it, seems like something out of a zany sci-fi or post-apocalyptic film. What’s also impressive is Solet’s meticulous orchestration of the narrative, especially during that final chaotic showdown when a gantlet of police, grenades, 50-caliber bullets and even earth movers couldn’t stop Heemeyer from obliterating half the town. The blend of archival footage, commentary from the participants and re-enacted dramatization builds with the taut grit of a hardboiled thriller.

Solet, born and raised in Cambridge, cut his teeth in the horror genre (“Grace,” “Dark Summer” and a “Tales of Halloween” segment). His last outing, “Bullet Head” (2017) was something of a crime thriller with an envious cast, featuring Adrien Brody, Antonio Banderas and John Malkovich. The project wasn’t quite fully baked, but perhaps a helpful warm up for “Tread,” a clear departure for Solet that’s a compelling ride and a window into the machinations of small-town life that push one of their own too far.

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What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael

21 Feb

‘What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael’: Sweet kiss for film critic with acid tongue

By Tom Meek Wednesday, February 19, 202

What She Said' Review: Film Critic Pauline Kael Gets Own Documentary | IndieWire

Rob Garver’s hagiographic ode to the life and work of film critic Pauline Kael adequately covers the writer’s rise to her post at The New Yorker, her daunting (perhaps exaggerated?) influence on the film industry and her legions of A-list admirers. What distinguished Kael, besides being the lone woman in an all-male club when she got into film criticism back in the 1950s, were her uniquely punchy, eloquent and visceral reactions, many imparted in a single sentence. Kael also became famous for her embrace of graphic violence (she largely adored Scorsese, De Palma, Peckinpah and Coppola) and envelop-pushing erotica (“Last Tango in Paris”) while gouging away at sacred cows such as French New Wave icon “Hiroshima Mon Amour” and Christmas classic “The Sound of Music” (“the sugar-coated lie that people seem to want to eat”).

“What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael” is framed with tape recording of Kael being interviewed by a young girl who gaily asks the critic her first movie (Chaplin) and later, her favorite film is (a detail I’ll let the moviegoer discover). Kael, who lived in Great Barrington and died just before 9/11, came from humble roots in Northern California, where she attended college at Berkeley. She never graduated, failed as a playwright in New York and her one marriage ended quickly, but throughout it all she maintained a deep passion for emotion-provoking narratives, be they bound by book jacket or cinematically projected. Her early reviews were on radio and for free, but being a single mother Kael looked to get paid for her labor; before landing at The New Yorker she was at McCall’s, which ended badly. 

Film clips spruce up the narrative, sometimes to echo Kael’s thoughts and other times simply as illustrating the film being trumpeted or impaled. We get Kael’s personal reflections from letters and other scrawlings read by Sarah Jessica Parker in voice only, evoking a smooth, husky Hollywood starlet persona that feels warmly congruent with the actual Kael we hear at the bookends, and in interview clips with Dick Cavett and other TV talk show hosts of the era. Plenty of celebrities lend their talking heads to the project, most prominently screenwriter/director Robert Towne (“Chinatown”), Alec Baldwin and film-nerd-turned-auteur Quentin Tarantino. Continue reading →

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Love is Not Love

16 Feb

Looking for Love in all the wrong places, or a walk on metaphysical side

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Stephen Keep Mills, a character actor for decades, now in his spry early 70s, makes his feature directorial debut with this tres meta contemplation about love, desire and the actualization of. Shot in stark black and white, Mills’s satire “Love is Not Love” rambles through the streets of New York as we drop in on dicey shards of dialogue ranging from the weird, “He wants to lick my arm pit,” to the provocative, “I could love more than one man at the same time. Even the same day, no problem!” and as one might expect, the sophomoric, “Dude, jacking off is not cardio.”

Yes, Mills is looking to give us a kick in shins and he does so effectively until we settle in with Frank (Mills) our protagonist, a silver maned lion with sad eyes, well past his prime and no longer king of a pride. We follow him along somberly as he lags behind two Irish construction workers debating the merits of women and Thomas Mallory’s seminal work, “Tristan and Isolde.” Frank seems invisible to the two like Bruno Gantz’s rueful angel in “Wings of Desire.” Interestingly too, “Love is Not Love” is rendered in a similar lush, matted black and white texture, a mood accentuating signature of Wim Wenders’s international masterpiece. Wenders shot as much of his 1987 film on location as the East Germans would allow him (Germany was not united at the time and shooting scenes at the Berlin Wall was denied and required sets). Mills on the other hand, shot his New York story on a sound stage in Los Angeles using old rear-screen projection for the backdrop imagery that for all its antiquated gimmickry provides tremendous field of depth and virtuosity. The lo-fi effect’s not only impressive, it’s aesthetically mesmerizing. Continue reading →

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