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Birth of a Nation

5 Oct

A searing slavery epic contributes to modern understandings on race

Rebirth of a Nation

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Nate Parker's Birth of a Nation is as much a harrowing historical drama as it is a commentary on modern violence and race relations in America

Courtesy of Fox Searchlight

Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation is as much a harrowing historical drama as it is a commentary on modern violence and race relations in America

Birth of a Nation, the much-anticipated dramatization of Nat Turner’s bloody 1831 slave rebellion, has great timing and relevance in its arrival, especially given the spate of the blue-on-black violence that has swept headlines and caused angry protests all over the country. The film is both a look forward and back, with the promise of a unified nation, where all are treated equal regardless of color. It serves as a grim, yet provocative probe into the relationships between humans, where one owns the other in the manner of livestock, and holds the power to do with as they please — including slaughter — with righteous impunity.

The film, which in its branding boldly reclaims the title from D. W. Griffith’s 1915 silent classic extolling the heroics of Confederates and Klansmen, also became the righteous answer to the “Oscars so white” outcry when it premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. It went on to score the biggest purse ($17.5 million) for any picture snapped up in the snowy hills of Park City. Cause and effect? Much like the young Nat (Tony Espinosa) experiencing prophetic dreams of his ancestors, the film from that moment on, whether it desired to or not, had become anointed and earmarked for some greater purpose.

Nat is born and grows up on a Virginia plantation filling the role of a playmate to the owner’s young son, Samuel Turner (Griffin Freeman), who in a decade or so will become Nat’s master. Because of such proximity, Nat (Nate Parker, who also directs the breakout project) learns to read, and due to his master’s over-indulgence in drink and poor fiscal standing, is passed from plantation to plantation to read the scripture to fellow slaves in an effort to help calm and motivate them in their work. It’s a plan that initially works for all involved, though Nat, head hung, becomes painfully aware that he’s selling his brother out, if even for the ephemeral moments of solace. Continue reading →

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The Magnificent Seven

28 Sep

The Magnificent Seven maims rather than slays 

Cookie-Cutter Killers

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The all-star lineup fails to shine through in Antoine Fuqua's remake of The Magnificent Seven

Courtesy Sony Pictures

The all-star lineup fails to shine through in Antoine Fuqua’s remake of The Magnificent Seven

Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and Yul Brynner — that’s a pretty tough trio to beat in any context and just one half of the star-studded cast of the original Magnificent Seven. That Western classic directed by John Sturges was itself a rebranding of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (1954) and while the cross-genre translation made sense back in 1960, the current redux by Antoine Fuqua (Shooter and Training Day) doesn’t offer much of a spin besides boasting a diverse crew (an African American, Asian, Native American, and Mexican among the mix). Even then, with the exception of one “his kind” comment in reference to Byong-hun Lee’s blade-wielding character of Chinese descent, there’s not one drop of racial tension. Had the septet been hot pink fuchsia, the bad guy’s wouldn’t take notice. It certainly wouldn’t flavor their dull backlot dialog, but it might improve their ability to shoot and hit anything, because as the movie has it, their blazing guns — sans a lone Gatling gun mounted outside the cow-poke town — couldn’t strike the broadside of Kim Kardashian’s famous posterior.

Fuqua’s posse, which features Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, and Ethan Hawke, is a pretty well-armed lot, but as they team up and ride out it becomes clear that something’s off with thisSeven. Sure, the scenery’s panoramic and lovely, but after a long, bouncy canter across the prairie, saddle soreness sets in well before the first bullet’s chambered. What’s missing are personality and philosophical idealism let alone brooding, macho conflict — all requisite when telling a tale of morally ambiguous men walking in a lawless land. It’s as if Fuqua took Sturges’ blueprint, connected the dots, then forgot to bring his palette to the set. Continue reading →

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Demon

21 Sep

Demon brings up the old country dead 

Freaky Folktale

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Don't tell us that dancing the funky chicken at wedding receptions is any less unnerving than demonic possession

Courtesy of Telewizja Polska, The Orchard

Don’t tell us that dancing the funky chicken at wedding receptions is any less unnerving than demonic possession

Marcin Wrona’s soft-horror thinker Demon unfurls a competent and moody bit of filmmaking, which much like Robert Eggers’s Puritan period piece The Witch, becomes just as much about the dynamics of the society it’s set against as it is about a supernatural incursion. In this case a Polish man, about to be wed, gets possessed by a dybbuk (a demon of Jewish lore). The real eerie air swirling about, however, comes in the sad side note that Wrona, having had this, his third film, play the Toronto International Film Festival last year, committed suicide on the eve the film was to be shown at the Gdynia Film Festival, Poland’s annual film fest. There remains as much mystery in his tragic parting as there is in his protagonist’s slow consumption by the soul of another.

Much of the action takes place against bawdy wedding proceedings. There’s plenty of drinking and merriment, even as the spiritual affliction begins to break down the couple at the center of the celebration. Adapted from Piotr Rowicki’s 2008 playAdhere ce, the film begins on a somber, hopeful chord as Piotr (Itay Tiran), who like Jeremy Iron’s work-seeking Pol in Jerzy Skolimowski’s Moonlighting (1982), labors for a living wage in London, returns to Poland to marry the lovely Zaneta (a radiant Agnieszka Zulewska). The pairing is something of an arranged marriage. After the two are wed, they will be gifted Zaneta’s grandparents’ old farmhouse in the country, which is also the site of the wedding. Continue reading →

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Lo and Behold

21 Sep

Werner Herzog mines the net for a documentary look at the future 

Virtual Insanity

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In Lo and Behold, famed director Werner Herzog takes a look at the digital world's effect on our own reality

Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

In Lo and Behold, famed director Werner Herzog takes a look at the digital world’s effect on our own reality

In 10 micro chapters, Werner Herzog, the director of the classic odysseys Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Aquirre, the Wrath of God(1972), tackles the internet, its rise, and the perils and promise of a connected world. The scope and the questions are nothing new — “Who is going to be liable if a computer makes a mistake?” Herzog asks about self-driving cars — but the filmmaker’s laid-back yet probing style and quest for getting at the human condition is nothing short of infectious, viral, if you will.

The segments, with pointed titles like “The Internet of Me,” “The Glory of the ‘Net,” and, of course, “The Future,” each delve into a different facet of the internet, be it historical or conjecture. Herzog buffers most of the blips with the Dickian question, “Does the internet dream of itself?” The segments that provoke the most are the segments that tackle the downside of being connected. One woman tags the Net as a “manifestation of the Anti-Christ.” The underscoring of that is a family who lost their daughter in a car accident, and the pain that the graphically snapped photos from the scene inflicted on them during their grieving as they were unleashed out onto the web, ever proliferating, unretrievable and unstoppable.

That tale of tragedy becomes the sad underbelly to hypertext inventor Ted Nelson’s optimistic allusion to water as a metaphor for flow of connectivity. Other notable talking heads in the documentary include convicted hacker Kevin Mitnick, and Pay Pal and Tesla entrepreneur Elon Musk. Continue reading →

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Wiener-Dog

7 Jul

Todd Solondz’s indie classic Welcome to the Dollhouse gets a quasi-sequel 

Dogs and Dolls

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The titular dachshund goes through several owners in Wiener-Dog

Courtesy of Annapurna Pictures

Todd Solondz’s films have always been about the quiet struggles in dark corners. His 1989 debut, Fear, Anxiety, and Depression,pretty much tells you that in the title, but it was his sophomore effort, 1995’s Welcome to the Dollhouse, a coming-of-age tale down all the wrong paths, that cemented that notion and branded Solondz an indie auteur to watch for.

Solondz’s latest, Wiener-Dog, is a sequel of sorts to Dollhouse as that film’s protagonist, Dawn Wiener, is one of several owners of the film’s titular dachshund. This is not the first mention of Dawn in Solondz’ cinematic universe; her name also popped up in the director’s 2004 flick Palindromes, which featured the travails of her cousin Aviva played by seven actors of varying race, age and gender. Sadly, it was revealed early on in Palindromes that Dawn had committed suicide. With Wiener-Dog, it’s unknown if Solondz has had a change of heart or if this film take places before Dawn’s death. Either way, Dawn “Wiener Dog” Wiener is back, with Greta Gerwig taking over for Dollhouse‘s Heather Matarazzo.

In Solondz’s latest, the titular pup evokes, much in the same way the onerous ass does in Robert Bresson’s timeless classicAu Hasard, Balthazar (1966), the true nature of its handlers. Just how humane are they behind closed doors with no one but the dog as a mute witness. But unlike Au Hasard, Balthazar‘s donkey, Christ-like and in ways, more human than the people around it, Wiener-Dog is just a furry prop, however sad and vulnerable, that is passed from one set of hands to the next to elicit the truthful testimony of Solondz’s troubled souls. Continue reading →

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Swiss Army Man

7 Jul

Daniel Radcliffe stars as a farting corpse in the touching buddy comedy Swiss Army Man 

It’s a Gas

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Hank (Paul Dano) uses Manny (Daniel Radcliffe) to jet board across the ocean, among other things

Courtesy of A24

Flatulence abounds in Swiss Army Man, a surreal curio straight out of Sundance. I shit you not.

Daniel Radcliffe, the fresh-faced young lad who brought Harry Potter to life, plays a dead body named Manny who washes ashore and ass burps his way through the film, spouting more gas than lines — and yes, he talks. How’s that, you might ask. It’s a qualified answer and one of the many enigmatic facets and WTFs of Swiss Army Man that along with a limitless stale rush of methane, drives the film piquantly along.

To its benefit, the film revels in its weird comic absurdity. It’s never as existential or nihilistic as something more flatlined and high-brow like Waiting for Godot, but it does feel freely mined from the cranium of Michael Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) had he been locked up in solitary with nothing but a stack of Mad magazines to pass the day. At its palpable core,Swiss Army Man is a buddy film and a touching one at that without ever submerging into the maudlin, though its arc could have been better tempered given the myriad of Sundance incubator labs it went through — it won the festival’s directing award this year after all.

We begin with a nearly unrecognizable Paul Dano, bearded and grossly weathered by the sun and sea, as Hank, a man who we assume has been stranded on an island for a long enough period of time to let the destitute of loneliness consume him to the point of wanting to off himself. Standing on an ice chest, noose around his neck, Hank’s about to do the deed when Manny arrives in the briny surf. The sight of another fellow human gives Hank pause, but his attempts to revive Manny just brings around gurgling gushes of gas. The next thing you know, Hank’s jet boarding across the ocean atop Manny, driven by sphincter propulsion.  Continue reading →

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De Palma

23 Jun

Director Brian De Palma offers behind-the-scenes stories from his decades-long career in cinema 

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Brian De Palma has directed over 25 films in his career, including Scarface, the cult classic starring Al Pacino

Brian De Palma’s career has been a veritable roller coaster of highs and lows. Carrie was a blockbuster, Bonfire of the Vanitieswas a bomb. Mission: Impossible kickstarted a long-running franchise, Life on Mars crashed and burned. More curious perhaps is how some of De Palma’s less successful films are now warmly embraced many years later, with some even ascending to cult status, Blow Out, Scarface, and Body Double to name a few.

Fellow filmmakers and De Palma acolytes, Noah Baumbach (Squid and the Whale and Frances Ha) and Jake Paltrow (Gwyneth’s bro) have crafted a fond rewind of the storied director’s life with their documentary De Palma. In the doc, Baumbach and Paltrow go through each of the director’s films in chronological order and get the suspense-thriller auteur’s perspective on the politics of makings of those movies and the fine line between a masterpiece and disaster.

If you’ve never been a fan of De Palma and his blood-covered output, you’ll at least walk away with respect for the director who, in the documentary, comes across as an amiable raconteur with a huge heart for the filmmaking process as he warmly takes you behind the scenes to show you the tricks of the trade and the taxing challenges of working with mega egos. Continue reading →

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A Bigger Splash

26 May

Tilda Swinton is captivating as a rock star without a voice in the hedonistic A Bigger Splash 

Ripples from the Past

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A Bigger Splash takes its title from a David Hockney painting

Courtesy of Fox Searchlight

In A Bigger Splash, Tilda Swinton delivers a riveting performance despite the fact that she doesn’t get much to say. Her character, Marianne Lane, has just had throat surgery and must, by medical decree, not speak.

To the viewer, it might not register on the first glimpse of Marianne lounging nude by a villa pool, but she’s an arena-filling rock star, world adored and aging gracefully — one dash Marianne Faithful, one part Patti Smith, and a big splash of David Bowie. It’s uncanny too as Swinton, with her ageless elven features, may be the most natural incarnate of the late, beloved rocker.

Accompanying Marianne on her retreat is her younger, doting lover Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts, the brooding Belgian actor inFar From the Madding Crowd and The Danish Girl), who’s more than just a boy toy and man servant. He makes documentary films, which is how the two met. He’s also a recovering alcoholic struggling with addiction. Also dropping by unexpectedly, because these things just happen on remote locations in the middle of the Mediterranean, is Marianne’s ex-lover and producer Harry (Ralph Fiennes) with a nubile young blonde named Penelope (Dakota Johnson) in tow who claims to be the daughter Harry didn’t know he had. She’s the fly in the ointment while Harry’s the life of the party and Paul remains passively discontent while Marianne remains at the center, drinking in the healing merriment. Continue reading →

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High Rise

5 May

Tom Hiddleston stars in blood-soaked dystopian satire High Rise 

Terror of Tower

By

Ben Wheatley's High Rise is a tale of decadence and debauchery

Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

When the Poseidon Adventure came out during the tumultuous 1970s with Nixon in the White House, there were those who saw the capsized ocean liner as a metaphor for a society that had been upended. Much like Bong Joon-Ho’s Snowpiercer, the new film from British avant-goremeister Ben Wheatley, High Rise,turns to a spiritually similar device to explore a civilization’s descent into madness. In this case, it’s the titular high rise in which the wealthy and privileged live. Inside, various cliques compete for the best party, the best booze, and the best women, all in their depraved pursuit of libertine activity.

Sound off the hook? Wheatley’s latest definitely is — you might even call it gonzo. All of this is to be expected considering the director’s previous films, Kill List, a hitman saga that veers off into Wicker Man territory, and A Field in England, a nutty, black-and-white psychedelic epic. High Rise, based on the novel of the same name by the edgy futurist J. G. Ballard, is a frenetic, sometimes incoherent, dystopian roller coaster ride that ultimately comes together. Continue reading →

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Midnight Special

28 Apr

Indie auteur Jeff Nichols ventures into Spielberg territory with Midnight Special 

Bright Eyes

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We're pretty sure this kid has the power to kill a yak from 200 yards away ... with mind bullets

Jeff Nichols, the budding auteur from Arkansas behind Take Shelter and Mud, gets a tad heavy-footed in his latest Midnight Special, a further contemplation on the Rapture, sanity, and the supernatural. Like his prior efforts, Nichols employs a fly-on-the-wall POV that offers an intimate look into the lives of his protagonists. In Shelter and Mud that technique allowed viewers inside the complex internal struggle of his characters, but in the plot-driven Midnight Special, the conflict is nearly all external. Although Nichols’ latest is more ambitious than his previous efforts, he very nearly hits the mark.

The film begins in a boarded-up hotel room. Inside, there are two armed men and a boy who sits under a blanket reading a comic book with a flashlight. The men are edgy — this is clearly some sort of last stand event, or is it? Without resistance they flee the room and climb into a classic muscle car in the lot and take off under cover of the night; the man behind the wheel even dons night-vision goggles so he can drive without headlights. As the viewers soon learn, these men have a higher calling: trying to save mankind. Unfortunately for them, the rest of the world hasn’t gotten the memo.

In small, teasing strokes, including news clips and an immersion into a doomsday cult, Nichols slowly reveals the bigger picture. Roy Tomlin (played by Nichols’ onscreen alter-ego Michael Shannon) and his able driver, Lucas (Joel Edgerton) have abducted an 8-year-old boy named Alton (Jaeden Lieberher, St. Vincent) from the aforementioned cult. The authorities are after the two men for kidnapping the boy, and the cult, led by the venerable Sam Shepard, sporting a too small sports coat and a bad Flowbee cut, has dispatched a goon squad as well. Alton happens to be Roy’s biological progeny, but Shepard’s cult leader is the child’s legal guardian. Their differences aren’t so much about Alton’s theological upbringing so much as the kid has certainly super-human talents, one of which is the ability to shoot beams of light out of his eye. As a result, the Feds (led by Adam Driver’s nerdy greenhorn) want him too. Alton’s clearly a gifted kid, but is he even human? Continue reading →

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