Cess Pool Cinema:
Hobo With a Shotgun (2011) Dir. Jason Eisener - US
The Banal, the Blah, the Banausic:
The Evictors (1979) Dir. Charles B. Pierce - US
Guilty Pleasures:
The Countess (2009) Dir. Julie Delpy - US/Germany/France
Of Interest:
The Clowns (1970) Dir. Federico Fellini - Italy
Epidemic (1987) Dir. Lars Von Trier - Denmark
Essential Cinema:
El Mar (2000) Dir. Agusti Villaronga - Spain
Beware of a Holy Whore (1971) Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder - West Germany
Theatrical Screenings:
Gun Hill Road (2011) Dir. Rashaad Ernesto Green - US 10/10
The Whistleblower (2010) Dir. Larysa Kondracki - Canada/Germany 10/10
Our Idiot Brother (2011) Dir. Jesse Peretz - US 8/10
The Help (2011) Dir. Tate Taylor - US 8/10
Hobo With a Shotgun (2011): Another film project based on a fake Grindhouse trailer and starring Rutger Hauer (in the midst of a career resurgence) is this complete and utterly irritating waste of time. Rutger stars as a hobo, looking for a good life, ending up in Fuck Town thinking he can make good there. However, Fuck Town, run by a goofily abrasive criminal known as The Drake and his two sons, feels like a violent SNL sketch filmed in Joel Schumacher's version of Gotham City. Rutger actually managed to illict a few chuckles from me, but the rest of the acting is atrocious and painful to watch. While I happened to enjoy Machete (2010)---despite Jessica dead-behind-the-eyes Alba--this is a complete waste of time and money.
The Evictors (1979): About ten minutes into this tale about a house in 1930's and '40's Louisiana where the tenants repeatedly get murdered, I predicted the completely irrational and nonsensical ending, groaning, "Oh, they are going there with this, huh?" Director Charles B. Pierce does manage to build some tension, but it doesn't last. Vic Morrow is touted as the headliner, but he's really a supporting character. The real lead is Jessica Harper, who it took me a while to place as the ballerina from Suspiria (1977). Poor Ms. Harper is saddled with playing a character that keeps going home to a house where someone keeps trying to kill her every night. I don't know, but if a creepy looking redneck came at me with a knife in broad daylight after locking me in the kitchen with one of those there nifty 2X4s, well, goshdarnit, I donnot think I reckon I would go back. Brave little miss, she does though. Completely ridiculous.
The Countess (2009): Speaking of completely ridiculous but in more of a so-bad-it's-good sense, is this balding turkey directed by actress Julie Delpy. Her prior directorial effort, 2 Days In Paris (2007) was quite good, so I did have high expectations for this period piece about Hungarian countess, Erzebet Bathory, a woman who bathed in the blood of virgins in order to stay young, and whom apparently the idea of Dracula was based on. Well, let me tell you, we run through the countess' childhood and adolescence (where she bears a peasant's son out of wedlock, no less) in 4 minutes of running time. And then, there's Julie Delpy, speaking in weirdly clipped English with her French accent. Other Hungarians are played by William Hurt (yes, the American William Hurt) as a Count who wants to own the widow's extensive amount of land, and his son, Daniel Bruhl (he is Spanish, but you may recognize him from Inglourious Basterds, 2009) who falls madly in love with the Countess. Hurt is hurt by this and ruins their romance, which, this film asserts, causes her descent into madness, as Bathory assumes she has been abandoned for looking old. Oh, and then there is Anamaria Marinca, a Romanian actress, starring as a witch and Bathory's lesbian advisor. Any grotesque curiosity about Bathory, infamously invoked in many a vampiric film, including my favorite, Daughters of Darkness (1971), is squashed by the insanely inane dialogue and very strange tone of the film. I've seen Mary Kay sales ladies more passionate about aging skin than Delpy's listless performance here---where's the drama and the intensity? This is a tale about a bitch who bathed in the blood of virgins! Yet Delpy insists on sandwiching her tale with Bruhl's terrible narration at her grassy grave, griping about how misunderstood Erzebeth Bathory is. Yes, figured that---but this is a tale for Grand Guignol. Let's just pray that German auteur Ulrike Ottinger gets her project The Blood Countess off the ground starring Tilda Swinton and Isabelle Huppert---that will be a creature feature for the ages.
The Clowns (1970): Fellini happens to be one of the best filmmakers that's ever lived. This experimental documentary about clowns made for Italian television bears his signature style, but it's really got no plot, rhyme or reason. Still, there's a couple highlights, like a weird little scene with Geraldine Chaplin. The camera crew keep whispering and pointing to her saying, "that's Chaplin's daughter." She had already been in several films and I'm unsure when she took up with Spanish director Carlos Saura, but was she really part of a circus troupe traveling through Italy? Also, there's a strange sequence where Anita Ekberg is randomly at a circus trying to buy a panther. She just wanted one. Crazy lady. Oh, and there's lots of clowns. (An interesting film to watch after something like The Last Circus, 2010).
Epidemic (1987): This very experiemental second film from Lars Von Trier is interesting, if not a titch dull at times. Von Trier stars as himself, along with screenwriter Niels Vorsel as himself, making a film called Epidemic. After the screenplay is written, an actual worldwide plague occurs. Von Trier is making big, bold, statements in this grainy black and white no-budgeter, which is intriguing at times, especially towards a hysterical conclusion, in which the relationship of cinema and hypnosis is used to masterful effect.
El Mar (2000): After watching Agusti Villaronga's amazing first film, I got my hands on his 2000 film, The Sea, set during the Spanish Civil War. While the opening scenes featuring some child actors engaging in dastardly deeds comes off a bit stagey, the shocking murder/suicide is quite well done. Jumping ahead a decade, the surviving boys are now young adults being treated for tuberculosis at a hospital where a nun happens to be the young girl that witnessed their youthful violent act. The title references the main character, Ramallo's (Roger Casamajor) place of peace---all is quiet in the sea. Ramallo, struggling to overcome TB, further develops a very homoerotic relationship with the relgious fanatic, Tur (Bruno Bergonzini) while also trying to figure out how to escape from the pedophile drug boss Morell (Juli Mira) that controls him on the outside. Moments of shocking violence erupt in this intriguing and moody piece. Highly recommended.
Beware of a Holy Whore (1971): Rainer Werner Fassbinder, one of my all time favorite directors, helmed this classic flick, one of the best movies about the making of movies ever made. It has drawn universal comparison to Godard's Contempt (1963), which is also good, but Fassbinder's flick is much more petulant, bitchy, and entertaining. Based on the experiences of the making of Fassbinder's Whity (1971) in Spain, Whore consists of a cast and crew stuck at a Spanish resort, working on a film that lacks materials, budget, and one huge douchebag of a director (Lou Castel)---which is really a characterization (and not caricature) of Fassbinder himself. And then Fassbinder stars as a bitchy production manager. Standouts include French star Eddie Constantine as himself, Hanna Schygulla as the blonde lead actress, Margarethe Von Trotta as wife of the production manager, and Magadalena Moctezuma as an actress wronged by the sexually manipulative director. Fassbinder himself, a known homosexual, married twice and purportedly was not the, umm, nicest of gay husbands. His then wife, actress Ingrid Caven, also has a small part here. Kurt Raab, Ulli Lommel, and Werner Schroeter, are also present. Wicked and savage, Whore is really just a hotbed of histrionics about a film not getting made. But it's classic Fassbinder.
Gun Hill Road (2011): One of the best films I've seen in a while concerning a transgendered protagonist, this debut from Rashaad Ernesto Green features some excellent performances from newcomer Harmony Santana, Esai Morales, and Judy Reyes. Recently released from prison, Enrique (Morales), returns home to find that his wife (Reyes) has grown distant from him and his son Michael (Santana) is dressing like a girl. An exploration of father/son relationships in the machismo, Latino culture, the bare bones essentials of the film, are, of course, nothing new. But the film, simply, is a story about a man loving and trying to understand his life in the context of his child's. Personally, I felt that material that could have been cliche was moving, provoking, and intense. We live in a world where there is little to no understanding for LGBT people across the US---and there's not enough love for the last letter in that acronym. The more stories we have access to, the better. This is one well made, heartfelt film.
The Whistleblower (2010): The directorial debut of Larysa Kondracki features an amazing performance from Rachel Weisz as a Nebraskan police officer that takes a job as a contract peacekeeper for the UN in post-war Bosnia. She quickly discovers a sex trafficking scandal that involves, well, everyone. When she tries to bring light to the situation, she is threatened. As she gets more insistent, she is removed from "the mission." Obviously, we are watching a cinematic reennactment of her story, so word got out. What will you see in this film is not entertainment. It is sickening, disgusting, tragic, despicable, gut-wrenching, horrifying and if you don't feel ashamed and/or disgruntled after watching something like this, I don't know what's wrong with you. I heard audience members grumbling, "You picked this film, remember that," during some especially gruesome scenes. While I am not condoning violence, this story, (and others like it) are important---You can accuse Ms. Weisz of Oscar baiting, but her name brings an audience to a film many would perhaps not watch. The men that ended up being sent home were not punished in their home countries---and we're talking rape, murder, etc. There's just so many things wrong, I mean foundationally, and in a global sense, with the human race. This film is just one example of that---this kind of shit, human trafficking, happens here too, everyday. And this contractor is still used by the US government in Iran and Afghanistan. As a film, it's pieced together like an intense thriller, but it's story is so much more important and lethal than that. Film criticisms aside, it is important.
Our Idiot Brother (2011): Please click here for my review for ioncinema.com.
The Help (2011): I was curious to see this flick after hearing about the astounding cast as it went into pre-production. And the subject matter, well, at first made me uncomfortable---for some reason, the presence of the incomparable Viola Davis made me think, well, if she's in it, this has got to be good. And The Help is good; at times, it's excellent. But after the tears dried, there's a lot of problems I had with it, all the same. The film features three excellent performances, coming from Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, and Jessica Chastain---the film's strongest moments come from the truthfulness of the disenfranchised social outcasts. And while the black housemaids are treated cruelly and disrespected, the decision to make this a PG-13 chick flick that erases the reality of the stunningly cruel violence against blacks in the Jim Crow South, may be the biggest detraction. While I believe material like The Help is important, and the perspective of black maids raising white children is relevant, this is no The Color Purple (1985) or Mississippi Burning (1988). Well, those films aren't 'entertaining,' you might say. Frankly, The Help should not be viewed as entertainment either. Black maids that raise white children in white homes yet are forced to use outside bathrooms because "they carry different diseases" is racist cruelty bullshit. Many an article has already been written about this film denouncing it as a fable alleviating white guilt---and, actually, I would have to agree. The lovely Bryce Dallas Howard plays an evil incarnate racist white lady (her mother, the sadly underused Sissy Spacek, suffering from some form of dementia) and she is so cruel, so wicked, so lamentably hateful, no one in their right mind would align themselves with her. She's hateful to the point of caricature. What white person in 2011 wouldn't say, "that's one evil bitch?" Now, I quite enjoy cute little Emma Stone as the representative of the good white person here---her performance is fine, the character a tad blandly written---but just fine. But I feel like her character is where the biggest problem lies. She's buddy buddy with Howard until going away to college. Upon returning to Jackson, Stone discovers her beloved maid (a very brittle but good Cicely Tyson) has been fired by her cancer-laden mother (Allison Janney). And she also realizes that her friend Howard is a racist extremist. Howard has taken it upon herself to get a bill passed stating that all white homes with hired black help must have separate toilets---she tasks her friend, Stone, to publish this in the local paper (where Stone has achieved employment as a ghost writer for a domestic cleaning column). Stone, making it obvious that her sympathy lies with the maids and that she was, in fact, really "raised" by her black maid, doesn't publish Howard's proposal. But she also never stands up for the maids---she never really confronts Howard. It's her white voice that makes it possible for the black help's words to be published---and it's her career that it jumpstarts. She gets to leave Jackson, Mississippi for NYC---and her maids, well, they get to stay in hell. Yes, a lot has changed (now we have latin women as maids), but, hell, not enough has changed. Just look at how uncomfortable the mere existence of this film has made people. Should The Help be responsible for 100% accurate depiction of how blacks were treated in Mississippi in the 1950's? Should it be the story of all black maids from that era? Well, no, it shouldn't be. But we have so few examples of these perspectives in the main stream that we examine the shit out of the ones we do have and trample them into the ground. There's a lot to love about The Help---it's heart is in the right place. The last ten minutes I had the biggest problem with. A flashback depicts the firing of Cicely Tyson by Allison Janney. A few scenes later, Janney is given a redemption scene---but, sorry, that doesn't cut it. There is no redemption for how these white women treated their black help. Of course, it's easy to be judgemental in 2011. But I felt nothing whatsoever for all the white characters in this film, with the exception of the "white trash" character played by Jessica Chastain, who is thankful to even have a maid, and treats her as a friend--but it's sad to realize that in reality, if her character was not ostracized by the other white women, she would act the same as them. As bad as it is for any of the maids in The Help, while enjoying this rather "feel good" film, remember, that it was much, much, worse. And I hope Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer get some recognition come awards time.
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