I’d like to thank Kimberly Lindbergs and Greg Ferrara for subbing for me while I was at Sundance and dealing with other issues. This Tuesday TCM will screen five films starring Dean Martin: The Stooge (Norman Taurog, 1952), The Caddy (Norman Taurog, 1953), Artists and Models (Frank Tashlin, 1955), You’re Never Too Young (Norman Taurog, 1955), and At War with the Army (Hal Walker, 1950). I haven’t seen a single one, but the lineup did inspire to finally purchase Nick Tosches’ unauthorized biography of Dean Martin, Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams. I cracked it open and…
… dang.
“He closed his eyes, feeling that dark seduction, that inkling, like the reverberation of a tolling in emptiness. The sunlight had never even been real. He had imagined it. The sky of the old days had been a sulfurous pall. The shadows had been real, the sunlight dreamt. He saw himself, half a century ago – a vanished breath ago, three lifetimes ago; it was all the same, improbable and without meaning – moving through them, the shadows and the sunlight. The toy gun and the cowboy hat had suited him well then. He was, after all, Tom Mix, nevvero? And this, this was after all, l’America.”
This in the foreward alone! Fasten your seat belts, this is going to be one helluva bumpy ride into the abyss. I’m ready to curl up and hopefully finish this baby by Tuesday. In meantime, and at Kimberly’s request, I’m attaching my cribsheet from Sundance below.
The Lobster
Pity Kafka’s cockroach for never having found his perfect match. Guests at a countryside hotel have 45 days to find a suitable mate or be turned into an animal of their choice. Yorgos Lanthimos, the Greek director who made a stir with Dogtooth, enlists Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, and John C. Reilly to help with this absurdist masterpiece shot in Ireland.***** (I loved this nightmarish parable of the wedding industry and match.com-like mindsets, as taken to totalitarian extremes. You suffer from frequent nose-bleeds? So do I! Let’s get married and have nose-bleedy kids! If we don’t, society will eliminate us so c’mon… couple up, or else.)
Author: The J.T. LeRoy Story
The son of a prostitute becomes a hit author – but the dude looks like a lady. J.T. LeRoy created characters so interesting that they came to life, wrote hit books, and were the basis of movies – everything was going swimmingly well until LeRoy is unmasked by the NYT as being Laura Albert. Jeff Feuerzeig previous doc on a schizophrenic musician, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, makes him a good choice for this story of a one-time phone sex operator who stumbles across fame in a most unusual way. *** (The theme of “unreliable narrator” was popular this year at Sundance. This was a very interesting story about a young girl who was sexually abused, gained weight as a result, and was so shy that she got her sister-in-law’s daughter to pose for her at book readings and other special events. The fact that her pen-name was under the guise of being the son of a prostitute who serviced truckers adds to the intrigue. My only beef, however, is that the entire doc feels like a very one-sided version of events from Laura Albert’s POV. All the people she deceived get short shrift.)
The Bad Kids
The struggles of troubled teenagers in Twentynine Palms, CA. Kids who deal with teenage pregnancy, drug abuse, and parental problems end up having one shot at graduation from a special school – if they can make it on the wait-list. A follow-up doc by the duo behind Lost in La Mancha takes a decidedly different tack by veering into the educational realm of kids with special needs. ** (Important subject, but mostly dry and slow-going. It would have been nice if the filmmakers had dug a bit deeper into the financial picture behind the school.)
Nuts!
The P.T. Barnum of goat-testicles gets everyone animated. The true story of John Romulus Brinkley, a small-town doctor who in 1917 built an empire around transplanting goat testicles into flaccid men who needed help in the bedroom. The director of Our Nixon, Penny Lane, must have a thing for larger-than-life tricksters and here delivers the goods with the help of nine animators. **** (The memoirs of an unreliable narrator provide the basis for this hugely entertaining and informative documentary. Preceded by a solid animated short about Eadweard Muybridge titled Emperor of Time.)
The Greasy Strangler
For those who wish Pink Flamingos and The Toxic Avenger could be fused together under a disco-ball. Braydon is an awkward adult who likes to walk around in his underwear. He lives with his father, Ronnie, who has this habit of dipping himself in grease and strangling people before cleaning himself off in the carwash. Prominent genre film producers from across the globe, including Tim League and Elijah Wood, came together to help fund “this triumph of the bizarre.” *** (Yeah – but why? Some things, once seen, can’t be unseen, and this has a lot of messed-up WTF moments. Totally bonkers. I dug the “deliriously fun lo-fi score by Andrew Hung of Fuck Buttons”. And, well… it does get points for being both completely repellent, totally unpredictable, and entirely unforgettable – no matter how hard I try. I wonder if the filmmakers were disappointed when Swiss Army Man – aka: the Daniel Radcliffe farting corpse film – eclipsed The Greasy Strangler as the gross-out event of the fest, with record walk-outs.)
Miles Ahead
Don Cheadle stars and directs in this biopic about Miles Davis. The troubled and drugged-up musician known as Miles Davis is holed up in his Manhattan apartment and haunted by memories of old glories, humiliations, and one great love. Cheadle’s directorial debut deftly interweaves the wild biographical elements behind the great trumpeter into a dynamic package, with assist from Ewan McGregor as The Rolling Stone writer who gets involved. *** ½ (This was surely a dream-project for Cheadle and I can only guess how long it took to put everything in place. It’s solid, and Cheadle does good work both in front and behind the camera.)
LO AND BEHOLD Reveries of the Connected World
Does the internet dream of itself? Werner Herzog wants to know. A host of different perspectives weigh in on a variety of topics as they relate to the pitfalls and potential that the internet continue to unleash for the human civilization. Herzog’s brand of playful and inquisitive thinking adds humor and poignancy to a variety of issues revolving around the growing technology around us. *** ½ (Several chapters pose different ideas and are succinctly addressed. On their own, they each feel a bit threadbare, but as a whole they provide a satisfying experience.)
Under the Shadow
A kindred Persian spirit to The Babadook set during the Iran-Iraq war. A once-politically active mother in Tehran finds her dreams of a medical career thwarted and is relegated to her claustrophobic apartment as the city is bombed by cruise missiles. Her anxieties are made worse by demonic spirits. Iranian-born filmmaker Babak Anvari is currently based in London and got help from Jordan/Qatar for a low-key twist on The Exorcist. *** (An accomplished feature debut that blends political and social critique with a decent ghost story. It’s nowhere as scary as The Babadook – but still very worthy and interesting for different reasons.)
The Settlers
A comprehensive exploration of the Zionist movement. Hot House director Shimon Dotan flits between the past and the present Israeli borders by focusing on aggressive Israeli settlers and their expansive goals. Righteous vanguard or overzealous squatters? You be the judge. **** (Super interesting and horrifying, with extremely powerful original music by Ray Fabi. I was floored at end.)
Certain Women
Three lives of quiet desperation and conflicting emotion get mapped out. A lawyer tries to diffuse a hostage situation. A married couple tries to get access to an elderly man’s sandstone stockpile. A ranch hand gets attached to a young adult education class teacher. Kelly Reichardt’s latest will appeal to fans of her previous work, including Old Joy, Wendy, and Meek’s Cutoff. *** (An “unhurried, observational style that resists judgment or sentimentality” is, indeed, what sets Kelly’s work apart from her peers – among many other attributes. Her mature wisdom is here working on all cylinders, but likely to meet a similar fate – alas – as her previous quality work.)
Dark Night
A lyrical cinematic poem that re-imagines a time, people, and place; one leading up to a mass shooting. Every scene is perfectly composed with evocative sound design and a growing sense of dread as it boils toward inevitable doom. From the director of Memphis comes another meditative piece that, this time, takes a coffee-table-picture-book page from the Aurora theater shootings. **** (As long as you know what you’re walking into – a non-narrative visual contemplation of darkest of moods – be ready to set your phasers for “stun.”)
Tickled
Endurance-tickling is a thing. In some cases, a very dark and sinister thing. A New Zealand film team stumbles across endurance-tickling videos, want to know more, get slapped with lawsuits and aggressive lawyers, and dig deeper anyway. What starts out like a comedic romp in the vein of “Roger & Me” takes several very unexpected twists and skirts darker territory more akin to Fatal Attraction. **** (I initially avoided this film due to someone describing it as a straight-up doc on “endurance tickling”. Who cares?! Thankfully I took a chance on this blind date, as I was gripped and engrossed and… in last act… oddly sad and sympathetic towards all involved. Score by Upstream Color mastermind Shane Carruth!)
Manchester By The Sea
Sundance audiences went coo-coo for coconuts for this drama. A brooding and irritable janitor gets summoned to his hometown when his brother dies and he is appointed guardian to his nephew. Kenneth Lonergan, the screenwriter behind Analyze This and Gangs of New York takes Casey Affleck under his wing for this directorial work on family tragedy. *** (It’s goodif a bit overhyped amidst those here at the festival, but still solid. Casey’s performance is top-shelf, and it’s got Oscar potential and falls into the mold of such classics as Ordinary People.)
Holy Hell
This documentary about a spiritual community in California intimately chronicles decades of submersion into a cult led by an enigmatic guru from the 80s. How often does one come across a doc about a cult filmed from within, by someone who belonged to the cult, and was also sexually assaulted by the guru? *** (What unspools feels like a home-movie of sorts, but what the footage captured is pretty amazing and the subject matter that starts out effusive and light quickly turns weird and dark. Another case dealing with an unreliable narrator.)
The Birth of a Nation
Based on the true story of a slave revolt, this is *the* film that took Sundance by storm. A slave boy grows up reading The Bible and turns preacher to fellow slaves. His life is upended even further until he leads other slaves to violent rebellion. “Humanitarian, actor, writer, director, and producer” Nate Parker just had his break-out moment in cinema history. You’ll undoubtedly hear more about him soon. **** (Hey, D.W. Griffith, karma is a bitch, even if it takes a hundred years to come around. The title of your famous movie is being re-appropriated – but from the slaves perspective. And guess what? Fox Searchlight is ready to pay reparations at a record-setting tune of $17.5 million to distribute. The robust enthusiasm is probably based on the standing ovation at the largest Sundance venue in town. Is it better than 12 Years a Slave? No. The latter works on a higher level, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that all the actors herein deliver on a tale worth telling.)
Kate Plays Christine
The acting process is examined via a tragic real-life suicide. In 1974 Christine Chubbuck committed the first on air suicide at a Sarasota, Florida, news station. The premise here is that this is now being re-inacted for a “stylized cheap ‘70s soap opera” and we get to follow the actress as she delves into her role. Robert Greene has blurred the line between fact and fiction before with Actress. Here he goes deeper and further into that gray area. ** ½ (I went into this blind, and had not yet seen Christine – the narrative film also dealing with Christine Chubbuck screening up here at Sundance and which ended up being my last film. More on that later… Anyway, I was suckered into this story hook-line-and-sinker, which is to say I didn’t know that the entire premise – SPOILER ALERT – is mostly fiction. Pesky unreliable narrators are everywhere up here at Sundance, and I finally got taken. During the end of the “doc” I was pretty shook up and thinking: “whoa!” but, as it turns out, it was mostly trumped up drama which later made me feel a bit the chump. But… there was also a part of me that was like, “Well played, sir. You got me.”)
Eat That Question – Frank Zappa In His Own Words
The ultimate, zany, non-conformist and no-bullshit musician finally gets his due. An energetic celebration of all things Zappa. “Fiercely intelligent.” Any rational person, even if they were not fans of Zappa’s sometimes cacophonous but glorious and creative musical style, will fall in love with him after seeing this doc. ***** (Watching this was a glorious experience, with lots of great footage that was new to me. I’ve always been a casual Zappa fan, but this doc really deepened my admiration for the musician and activist who steered clear of bogus politics and pretensions.)
Christine
A young news reporter kills herself on air and inspires Network. In 1974, Christine Chubbuck, a 29-year-old reporter at a small Sarasota news station, commits the first-ever case of a “live” TV suicide. Rebecca Hall put in a star turn with The Gift, but here she grabs the brass ring with an Oscar-worthy performance as Christine Chubbuck. ***** (Antonio Campos can now be officially forgiven for the disappointing Simon Killer. This is a masterpiece that blends a perfect story with great acting, and it has much to say about being a woman in a male-dominated industry. And – despite the ‘70s backdrop – it tells us much about current problems now made even more pervasive thanks to a 24-hr news cycle.)