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SXSW Review: PING PONG SUMMER

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“Ping Pong Summer”
Directed by Michael Tully 
Starring Marcello Conte, Myles Massey, Emmi Shockley, Lea Thompson, Susan Sarandon, Amy Sedaris, John Hannah, Robert Longstreet
Comedy
United States

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The opening scene to Ping Pong Summer sees Rad – our very uncool, ironically named protagonist – trying to make a hardboiled egg. After getting a pot of water boiling, he eyes the microwave, opting for the easier route, hoping to satisfy his need for eggy goodness as quickly as possible. As that white egg spins in the hollows of a 1980s microwave, you could hear the audience groan with unease. “Is it gonna explode?” you could almost hear them fret. When Rad pops the now piping hot egg out thirty seconds later, peels it and chomps down, the yolk – now essentially a yellow sun of melty goo – explodes onto his face like yolked magma. Half of the hapless audience explodes with laughter. After digesting the contents of the remainder of this helplessly uncool flick though, one ought to see this dismal cold open as the perfect analogy for the film at large – an easy route to the finish line that just ends up exploding in its own face.

The most insurmountable problem of Ping Pong Summer is that it thinks it’s ironic but never does anything to convince us that they even know what the word means. Imitation is not art nor is it satire. Simply recreating the oddness of an epoch without actually trying to make some statement about it just goes to show the work of someone who doesn’t quite understand what irony means. A film about the 80s isn’t ironic because it’s about the 80s, there needs to be something more, something deeper. As it is here, you could measure the depth with a few clicks of pencil lead.

The characters are hammy archetypes, the plot essentially a familiar riff on the underdog sports flick – a tacky take on Rocky; the Out Cold of ping pong – and the acting is bottom shelf. If there’s one thing I learned at SXSW, it’s don’t drink too much of the cheap stuff. It may be tempting but you’ll end up paying for it later. It’s too bad that Ping Pong Summer didn’t learn that lesson as well.

Myles Massey as Rad’s snarky sidekick is the picture of everything Ping Pong gets wrong. As an actor, he’s an absolute nightmare. Every last phrase Massey cloyingly utters feels like it was read from the crook of his underarm. It’s recited like bad Shakespeare, spewed like a word burp, overblown and ham-fisted. I get it, he’s a kid but he’s exactly the reason why children actors get such a bad rap. This kid is bad. Not Michael Jackson bad, not “so bad he’s good” bad, just plain old, tried-and-true bad.

Heading up the show, Marcello Conte as Rad is surprisingly enough the best part of the film and is the only one who feels like a living breathing person. It seems like he was the solitary kid in this overblown production that actually took a few acting classes beforehand. Good on him. Even veteran Susan Saradon phones it in from a million miles away. Her halfhearted take on a Mrs. Miyazaki is downright dreadful, an abject failure from beginning to end. From the place-holder writing of her character to her tepid arc that fails to work on even the shallowest level, she is another symptom of director Michael Tully‘s essential misunderstanding of how to treat character. In one fell swoop, he’s proven he has no handle on how to direct his actors, even those that’ve been at the game for decades.

With the sporadic fits of laughter that Ping Pong pulled from the audience, I often wondered if I was just not in on the joke, if my lack of being a preteen in the mid-80s was what created the emotional distance I felt from everything going on onscreen. Upon further reflection though, whether that’s the case or not, it’s no excuse. Film is supposed to be transportative. A film about the 80s is supposed to make the audience feel a time and a place – to appreciate, or at least, understand it. To rely on nostalgia alone is never enough and results in something as uneven and pale as this. In the future, Tully ought use nostalgia as a tool, not a crutch.  Here though, he’s nostalgia crutching so hard that it’s no wonder the film can hardly stand on its own two feet.

D

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SXSW Review: THE RAID 2: BERANDAL

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“The Raid 2: Berandal”
Directed by Gareth Evans
Starring Iko Uwais, Julie Estelle, Yayan Ruhian, Donny Alamsyah, Oka Antara, Tio Pakusodewo, Arifin Putra
Action, Crime, Thriller
148 Mins
Indonesia
R

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To try to boil down what is so sublimely excellent about The Raid 2: Berandal is a futile exercise in tilting at windmills. It’s like boxing a griffin, outthinking a Sicilian, or KY-Jelly wrestling an anaconda. Instead of trying to describe the irrepressible satisfaction this balls-to-the-walls, smarter-than-your-dad actioner elicits, instead conjure up what it felt like to lose your virginity, if you lost your virginity in a ten-on-one man brawl in a pit of mud.

Director Gareth Evans is so incredibly tuned into what his audience wants that without hesitation, he’s responded to any and all of the problems of the first film, making this a sequel that’s far more resplendent in scope and, amazingly enough, emotionally involving throughout. While the first film felt like the best game of Mortal Kombat we’ve ever played, Berandal (which translates to ‘Thugs’) gets the video gaming, non-superpowered Neo on crack elements mixed up with the glory and grandiose of The Godfather. If The Raid: Redemption taught us that the martial arts techniques we learned from Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan are outdated, The Raid: Berendal makes them look fossilized. Berandal may not be the nonstop battle sequence that Redemption is but when affairs do heat up, they boil over faster than a knuckle sandwich to the shnoz.

Action junkies trying to recapture their high need not fret though. The close-quarters, hand-to-hand combat that prompted the wow factor outpouring from installment numero uno has been racketed up past 11, breaking the dial as it cycles beyond conventional bounds. Taking things to the next level in the best of ways, star and fight coordinator Iko Uwais‘ masterful choreography is a helicopter; whirling and seemingly chaotic, but something that can only be achieved with the measured precision of a scientist.  For the flurry of fists that appear to attack at random, each blow is executed with careful exactitude. It’s a ballet of fury, a symphony of violence. It’s righteous.

Baseball bats, hammers, seatbelts, anything can be used as a weapon in The Raid‘s world to incredible, bone-rending effect. There’s no limits, no boundaries and no frills to what Gareth will use and where he will go. The blood flows liberally, in poetic gobs and visceral streams. Viscus is Gareth’s crimson signature, his lascivious Joker grin, his coup-de-grace. From crunching skulls to snapping bones, there’s joyous awareness in his mortal destruction. We gasp, we laugh, we shutter. We can’t help ourselves. That furtive conflict guru has harnesses us like hogs and rides us up and down the spectrum of reactions. Like Clockwork Orange‘s Alex, we unblinkingly take in barbery as snuff.

As the second part in a planned trilogy, I feared Berandal might suffer middle-child syndrome, that it could feel incomplete in the context of a larger arc. The reality couldn’t be further from the fact. You can essentially go into this film blind and not struggle a second trying to keep up. Be that because The Raid: Redemption has about one page of exposition – more an excuse for Iko’s revelatory action than anything – or because Berandal catches you up in moments before delivering you to a conclusion that could easily serve as a bookend, it matters not. All that matters is The Raid 2 is an unforgettable ride and one I can’t wait to embark on again, and again, and again.

A

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SXSW Review: CESAR CHAVEZ

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“Cesar Chavez” 
Directed by Diego Luna
Starring Michael Pena, Rosario Dawson, John Malkovich, America Herrera, Kevin Dunn, Mark Moses, Michael Cudlitz
Biography
PG-13

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For a biopic about a man with steely resolve and an unflinching soul, Cesar Chavez lacks the laser focus and steadfast heartbeat of an exemplar, or even a worthy apprentice. It’s a soft-skinned take on a boulder of a man, a notebook sketch of a behemoth. Not fearless enough to nose the camera in the dramatic mire, like a soldier to the cause in a personal guerrilla war, Diego Luna‘s film beckons a paint-by-numbers summary of the man’s greatest achievements, the spark notes of a six-plus year period that glosses all with thin coats, rarely taking the opportunity to remain in the moment and settle in with the hard-won emotional beats of the characters.  

Chavez himself earned popularity and legitimacy in the thick of the issues, making those things he stood for inseparable from his own problems. The issues of his brothers were not theoretical troubles but matters to immerse himself in. Rather than stand idle in the soft florescence of an office, Chavez took to backbreaking labor working the fields in the blinding California sun. But instead of going out to the battlefield and working shoulder-to-shoulder like the eponymous character, Luna’s film takes the straight and narrow, delivering a softball pitch right over the plate. Like Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom before it, Cesar Chavez tries to take on too much without ever going deep enough in any particular plot of emotional soil. Trying to sow too many acres with too small a hoe, Luna’s spreads his seed thin. Accordingly, his efforts rarely solidify into the powerhouse moments they ought.

Playing it close to his chest and obviously passionate about the subject, Luna’s intentions are in the right place, he just so happens to make a dire mistake. He memorializes rather than understands. Chavez is a gentle obituary, not the scathing meditation that makes for good film. As this fact solidifies, Luna’s attempts to piece everything together feels like the King’s Men playing at Dumpty Humpty. Chavez, in truth, is a series of vignettes, cut with the themes of self-sacrifice and family but these elements are left dealt with in afterthought, never something tight and essential to the piece.

When I heard that Michael Pena – a massively talented and massively underrated actor – would finally get a certifiable leading role, I was frankly delighted and my interest in this project spiked. But taking up the mantle of Chavez, it feels that Pena got too wrapped up in mimicry. Luna’s camera doesn’t help though, it’s too flighty for any of Pena’s dramatic gravitas to settle in. Bogged down in photocopying, impersonating Chavez’s choppy cadence, his signature blend of TexMex intonation and penguin-like gait, there isn’t room for honest emotional reflection. Even a dressed down Rosario Dawson, playing up the chameleonesque nature of her illusive roots, is robbed of a single moment worth remembering. Such is the nature of the performances here; they’re squashed, condensed and never given room to breathe. For all the opportunity Chavez ought to afford Pena to stand out in a harrowing and brilliant performance, he never really has much of a chance to shine. He’s a flashlight in midday, washed out by everything else, unnoticeable from twenty feet away. But Pena can’t truly be blamed for the pockets of problems Chavez runs into. The issues are inherent in a script this deferential.

Too often are biopics achieved as glossaries, skimping over events like a sleep-deprived college student licking their thumbs and skimming as hard as they can. The best film biographies though don’t worry about the events so much as the emotions behind them. They need characters, and if sometimes that means bending the rules, so be it. The reason The Social Network was so compelling was not because Jesse Eisenberg was a pitch perfect Xerox of Mark Zuckerberg but because we had a crystal clear notion of who he was, whether that was necessarily Zuckerberg or not. Watching Idris Elba do Mandela or Pena do Chavez means nothing if we never reach a greater sense of what makes these men tick. We know the history, now deliver the feelings.

C-

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SXSW Review: BAD WORDS

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“Bad Words”
Directed by Jason Bateman
Starring Jason Bateman, Kathryn Hahn, Rohan Chand, Philip Baker Hall, Allison Janney, Steve Witting
Comedy
88 Mins
R

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Jason Bateman‘s directorial debut, Bad Words, is aptly congruously to his post-Arrested Development career. That is, it’s no good. Like Identity Thief and The Change-Up before it, Bateman has proved that having his name on a movie’s billing is a blaring warning sign of slow and low-blow comedy to come, a notice of an impending La Brea-sized originality tar pit, a Bat-Signal in the shape of a crotch kick. While some of us may have suspected Bateman of being on the receiving end of some Les Grossman-level manhandling – a puppet maliciously directed into comic obscurity – as the proud director of this comedy clunker, Bateman has shown his wisecracker cards, revealing that he may not be playing with a full comic’s deck after all.

To call him a hack seems harsh but it’s the only description I can find fitting the dreck that he continuously churns out. The pedestrianly crafted Bad Words, for example, earns Bateman his gold standard R-rating with a string of unimaginative and unfunny curse words. Since R-rated comedies have turned into something of a marketable commodity since the first Hangover movie, we’ve seen more and more comedies (which once mostly existed within the PG-13 realm) turn to this “Restricted” hail sign. But rather than employ that R-rating to their artistic advantage, the folks behind the helm of Bad Words simply use it to check mark their way through George Carlin‘s seven dirty words like a record stuck on repeat. In essence, Batman has made the equivalent of a feature film version of the Blink-182 song so sophisticated titled “Shit Piss Fuck”. Charming.

Comedy being as sink or swim as it it, it’s a true tragedy that Bateman has relied on the life raft of obscenity to keep him afloat over the past five year. Subbing in swear words for jokes is a shortcut cohabiting the same hoary level of the time-honored fart. The first time history heard a squeak of gas passing through an actor’s anal cavity and into the light of day, it must have been an uproariously occasion. The first time the word ‘fuck’ was used in the film Ulysses (1967), I’m sure people were gasping “Well I never”s as they minted their juleps, pinkies upturned.

In 2014 though, we’re in a post-Three Stooges-era. Last year, we saw The Wolf of Wall Street drop the infamous f-bomb a total of 522 times. Though Wolf still probably wasn’t the easiest film for the more conservative film-goers to digest, it hardly elicited the “Off with their heads!” outrage that it would have in years past. So even though the crew behind this missed the message, us in the real world are aware of how humdrum and trite swear words in themselves have become. They’re not shocking, they’re not gasp-inducing, and when used as a fill in for comedy, they’re boring, inert and downright lazy. Now don’t get me wrong, I cuss like a sailor but it’s just part of my regular lexicon, not to be confused as a substitute for real comic goods. Batman and crew miss the distinction.

In Bateman and script writer Andrew Dodge‘s out-dated notion that everything needs to be racketed up to the next level, that bigger is indefinitely better, we come to see these bad words transform into snoozy strings of non-sequitors. Again though, it’s nothing more than lazy cliches playing dress up as comedy. If this is Bateman riffing, he needs to enroll in an improv course. If this junk was actually written down, Dodge shouldn’t quit his day job. With Bateman’s rump half-stuck down the farty, sweary rabbit hole, he’s stuck confusing racism, boobies and cussing for something truly funny. When he tells a 10-year old Indian kid to “shut his curry hole,” the writing is on the wall. And that’s only about 20 minutes in.

The premise itself is somewhat intriguing, if not at all profound: 40-odd-year old Guy Trilby (Bateman) enters spelling bee competitions after discovering a loophole that stipulates contestants must have have not yet finished the fourth grade. Being an elementary school dropout and gifted speller, there’s no regulations in place to keep him out of the contest that he’s become intent on winning. At the cost of becoming a national pariah and the target of scorn from hordes of maligned parents, Guy won’t reveal why he in enduring such derision. There’s a $50,000 prize at the end of the tunnel but we’re repeatedly told its about more than that. “Hmmm,” we think, “where could this all be going?” But after stringing us along for 88 minutes of watching Trilby be a flat out bad person, the ultimate payoff is unsatisfying and predictable. Another tired excuse for resolution, another narrative shrug.

No matter how adorable little Rohan Chand is as Guy’s unsuspecting sidekick, the chemistry to develop between the two feels like it was cooked up with all the artistry of a bowl of instant ramen. We’ve seen it before but, in the past, we’re at least lead to like the curmudgeonly protagonist by the end of it all. Here, it feels like we’re dealing with Holden Caulfield who’s bigged himself into Jason Bateman. Immature and unlikable throughout are not admirable traits in a main character. But in its attempts to be Bad Santa, its always more Bad Teacher. I guess if you find humor in being racist and borderline sexually abusive towards kids, you’ll probably get a kick out of Bad Words. Otherwise, it’s probably a good choice to avoid this one.

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SXSW Review: THE INFINITE MAN

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“The Infinite Man”
Directed by Hugh Sullivan
Starring Josh McConville, Hannah Marshall, Alex Dimitriades
Comedy, Sci-Fi
Australia

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Equal helpings cerebral sci-fi and deadpan comedy, The Infinite Man is independent cinema at its most rewarding. Chartering a high-strung scientist whose well-intentioned attempts to create the perfect anniversary weekend goes horribly awry, director Hugh Sullivan‘s film at first seems narratively minimalist but by the time we’re a few layers deep, it begins to gingerly unfold into something far more brainy and grand than we first imagined.

With only three actors and a shoestring budget, Sullivan weaves gold from flax. His wryly-wrung time-travel chronicle shrewedly packs enough twists and turns to keep the audience completely in the dark, never knowing what to expect next and yet chewing ourselves to the nail-bed in anticipation. Unpredictability is the magic potion of independent cinema and Sullivan uses that to significant advantage. Without the crutch of any brand named performers at his beck and call, Sullivan is able to use the anonymity of his cast to further play up our lack of expectation.

Josh McConville plays Dean like a meerkat on Percocet. When his lover Lana (Hannah Marshall) walks out on him, he scurries to come up with a solution to fix a pair of broken hearts with the magic of science. On his hopeless hunt for Lana, he’s always bobbing his little head, peaking around voyeuristically and waddling from lookout to lookout before eventually dipping into the shallows of melancholia. He’s a bona-fide blues man, tortured by his own brilliance and unable to admit a problem is greater than he. His persistence though is admirable. He’s a proven “Ain’t no mountain high, ain’t no valley low” kinda guy, but that’s likely because he has a time machine working in his favor.

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 Filmed in the remote desert of the Woomera Australian Outback, the bleached landscape adds a hazy texture to the film’s intellectual underpinnings. Caught out here in the stark isolation of an abandoned hotel and blasted with sharp rays of unrelenting light, everything has a dreamlike quality to it. The film reels themselves feel sun-stained and otherworldly. And here we are, right there in the moment, caught in limbo with Dean and Lana. Even though a premise so superfluously heady might be regularly taken with a grain of salt, Sullivan serves it up with a spoonful of sugar. It’s like The Shining meets Groundhog Day as a rom-com.

Veering down highways we can’t possibly expect, the further down the rabbit hole Sullivan takes us, the more the brilliances of the film crystallize. With this many webs within webs, The Infinite Man is like Inception‘s Australian cousin. Developed from a mere one-page conceptual treatment, Sullivan’s ability to keep all the parallel story lines in check really boggles the mind. He’s always one step ahead, waiting for you at the next junction. He’s prepared with an answer for every question, a counterpoint to every argument. And like all time travel films, you can get bogged down trying to untangle the logic, but then you’re really missing out on the point. But even if you’re not ready to jettison your suspicions, Sullivan’s bone-dry wit will distract you with jab after jab of side-splitting jest.

Rounding out this tactfully told piece of genre-blending cinema, Sullivan’s painstaking planning brings unwavering clarity to a dizzily complex web of movement throughout strands of time and emotion. And like an elegant piano concerto, there are so many pieces to this puzzle that each sound funky on their own but when laid atop each other, craft a harmonious refrain that’ll have you grinning from ear to ear. Like he’s born for the craft, Sullivan handles this fine-fingered balancing act with the gusto of a master.

B+

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Sundance Review: APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR

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“Appropriate Behavior”
Directed by Desiree Akhavan
Starring Desiree Akhavan, Rebecca Henderson, Halley Feiffer, Scott Adsit, Anh Duong, Arian Moayed
82 minutes
U.S.A./United Kingdom

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Appropriate Behavior might be another entry in the growing ‘struggling NYC girl’ genre but it’s generously funny,  sexy (in a weird, gangly way) and has a great cultural bent to boot. I’ll admit that the synopsis, which tells us of her New York habitat, her wishy-washy sexual preferences and her strict Persian parents, is as much a turnoff as any Sundance unknown but pure chance and serendipitous scheduling got me in the theater and I’m certainly glad it did.

Writer, director and star Desiree Akhavan has broken out in a big way. She says that she’s been developing Appropriate Behavior since she was a mere 10 years old when she realized just how strangely unique her position as a bisexual, female, Iranian-American was. Caught between an Iranian family based in tradition, jolted by post-911 distrust of immigrants, and an America staggering towards a growing acceptance of the “other,” Akhavan sees herself as a bit of a mutt – a sometimes sinking perspective that rings out through her native. In Akhavan’s eyes, creating this kind of film was a therapy of sorts. A way for her to come to terms with her own  instinctual predilections. Trapped somewhere between the pull of tradition and self-discovery, her own identity is the crossroads of the stratification between the old world and new. Let’s just say that being a gay child of an immigrant ain’t always peaches and cream.

As Shirin, Akhavan is able to play a shade of herself, letting this semi-autobiographical tale spin a yarn at once both nonfictional and ethereally make believe. We’re left wondering exactly how much of the material comes from the playbook of Akhavan’s true life escapades but regardless of what is fact and what is fiction, her ethos is heartfelt, her emotional stake crystal clear and her intent never wavers. In a sort of coming out party, she lets Appropriate Behavior function like a celebration of her once hidden self exploding free. As such, her shaky voice shines through with purpose and unshuttered dignity.

Arkhavan’s freshly forthcoming perspective drives this deadpan narrative, allowing herself the creative liberty to spread wings in oft tread but nonetheless exciting directions. For a freshman effort, she shows a fine balance of caustic “could only be New York” humor, dreary but not-too-dreary dramatic overture and a topping of love story that actually allows the audience to dig our heels in. For all the well-intended love stories that grace the scene each year, it’s always appreciated to get one that feels earnest and real – an unfortunate rarity. Seeing Shirin’s often uncomfortable nesting ways against girlfriend Maxine’s (Rebecca Henderson) ‘girl who know’s what she wants’ brand of strength provides some genuine relationship moments and lays the groundwork for some nice, and not so nice, chemistry between the two.

Never too standoffish and not afraid to leave things unresolved, Arkhavan has done a fine job her first time out. With her stony guile and smart directorial hand, it’ll be interesting to see what territory she’ll foray into next. Now that she’s touched on those issues most important to her, we’re left to wonder what else is left beneath the hood.

B-

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Sundance Review: BLUE RUIN

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“Blue Ruin”
Directed by  Jeremy Saulnier
Starring Macon Blair, Amy Hargreaves, Kevin Kolack, David W. Thompson, Brent Werner, Sidne Anderson
Thriller
92 Mins
R
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Enveloped in a scent of Coen Bros, Blue Ruin is a masterclass in indie reinvention – reinvention of genre, of character, even of plot subversion. But no matter how familiar the elements we know to comprise revenge flicks, we never exactly know where Blue Ruin is going to turn next. It’s a quiet tirade of doomed duty with explosive showdowns and tactful character arcs that adds up to a hell of a good movie.

Relatively unknown actor Macon Blair heads up the show as Dwight, a vagrant, homeless type with a penchant for breaking into people’s houses to get his bathe on. Living out of a bullet-ridden car, overlooking the ocean and grown over with sandy seagrass, we can immediately reconcile the sad existence of this bearded transient with life gone awry. So when a policewoman (Sidne Anderson) shows up and asks him to come down to the station and reveals that his parent’s killer is getting out of prison early on parole, his recluse desperation clicks with us as fresh-born necessity clicks on for him.

What soon unfolds is an accelerated game of cat and mouse that almost seems to wrap itself up too soon but that’s only when it gets interesting. Following Dwight’s act of self-retribution, we’re lost, oblivious to where things will turn next. Rightfully so, the pathway that twists and turns to the final scene is as unpredictable as it is plainly awesome.Part of the fun of the whole adventure is not knowing that will transpire so I would urge you to learn as little about the film as possible. 

Jeremy Saulnier, who wrote and directed the film, has transmuted the greatness of iconically American revenge narratives into something entirely his own. He’s drained his film of the eye-rolling easy outs we’ve seen from so many Hollywood narratives, strained it of incredulity and served it cold and somber, the best, and only way, to do revenge right. His refreshing take on a genre that’s been kicked around in the mud since the birth of storytelling is at once startling and radiant with part of the credit needing to find it’s way to star Macon Blair.

Behind his scraggly beard and muted eyes, Blair is modestly restrained and seeing his transformation, both physically and emotionally, is one of the great joys of this gritty saga. Though he’s had his hands in some other small projects, Blair is a talent who’s never gotten his name out there and I’m willing to bet that after a performance of this magnitude, that’ll be quick changing. His haunted numbness and jumpy brooding bring such well-tempered yet acrimonious life to the character. For a man on a mission, Dwight is about as three dimensional as they get, a godsend born of Saulnier’s able script and Blair’s even-keeled execution.

With foreboding cinematography and an anxious score, both also from Saulnier, that help fill in the blanks of this mysterious back country and the people who inhabit it, everything feels very much real world. But here, things are cloaked in mystery, blanketed in doubt and raging with subtext.

Unexpectedly wonderful, Blue Ruin is the reason why America needs independent cinema. It’s the tap on the shoulder the increasingly derivative Hollywood needs, a gentle, almost soft-spoken, reminder that iconic storytelling traditions are born on foundations of greatness for good reason. Revenge narratives are a dime a dozen but when storytellers are able to really get to the root of why these archetypal tales are so compelling, as Saulnier is able to do here, they strike a collective nerve, making us cheer at their ability to both homage and be wholly original at the same time.

A-

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Sundance Review: DINOSAUR 13

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“Dinosaur 13”
Directed by Todd Douglas Miller
Documentary
U.S.A.
105 Mins

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The first documentary I saw at Sundance has weighed heavily on my mind. At once about dinosaurs, humans and the failings of the justice system, Dinosaur 13 has singled out a mind-boggling small town event that slipped under the national radar. While the story itself is every bit worthy of our attention and empathy, in telling this infinitely gasp-inducing story, Todd Douglas Miller digs up a bevy of first time-level fumbles that robs some of its meteoric impact.

Named after the historical relic that the characters find themselves helplessly orbiting around, Dinosaur 13 takes aim at the discovery of the the 13th T-Rex fossil: the largest, most intact T-Rex fossil find at the time. Intriguing though that may be, the highligh is the calamitous aftermath that no one could foresee. Slapped with a cool, callused numerical label, the film’s title foreshadows the detached “bag it and tag it” ethos of the film’s “enemy,” a shadowy hand juxtaposed against the deep-set emotional turmoil of the little guys fighting to preserve this colossal fossil and their reputations. Collection of bones though they may be, this T-Rex skeleton becomes so much more to this group of fledging South Dakota scientists who have lovingly named it “Sue.”

Peter Larson and his younger brother began collecting fossils as children and have since opened the South Dakota’s Black Hills Institute of Geological Research where they prepare fossils for museums, private buyers, and, most of all, for their own love of the craft. Wandering in a sandstorm, one of their volunteers, Susan Hendrickson (for whom Sue is named), discovers the distinctive arc of a dino vertebrate emerging from the graystone of a cliffside. When the Larsons arrive to access the situation, they find that they have come across what is arguably “the greatest paleontological find in history.”

It all seems well and good for the few years to follow as the Larson’s buy the fossil from (almost sketchy) landowner Maurice Williams and proceed to undergo the timely process of preparing the fossil for its eventual reveal. It’ll be the treasure of their musuem to be, a savior for the struggling town and a hot ticket destination-maker for non-tourist friendly South Dakota.  Nearly two years pass in which Larson and company tediously sculpt and scrape millennium of build up from the preserved bones when, out of thin air, the National Guard show up with a small army of thirty-plus men, armed to the teeth, and demand the seizure of the Sue.

In the most WTF twist of the year, it takes the rest of the film to really unfold exactly what went down with the Larsons and their Sue but it all revolves around the tricky wording of land ownership laws and ends up as more or less an inditement of the US government sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong. A circus of a trial plays out, players are sent to the same prisons that held the likes of Timothy McVeigh and John Gotti, and the most persistent note to follow is one of sorrowful disappointment. “I thought this was America” has never rang so true.
 
With it’s solid tenor of us vs. them and a crystalline case of the judicial system failing on the most basic of levels, Dinosaur 13 is a beast. But trying to wring all he can from the emotional recounting of events, Miller takes too many detours and let’s the paltry production budget shine through more than he ought. Matt Morton‘s repetitive guitar-plucked score sounds recorded in a matter of minutes while the unnecessary wealth of recreation play with the limp zeal of a daytime news special. With a topic this strong and subjects welling with emotion, it’s really a head-scratcher why Miller takes these missteps. With a good 20 minutes or so shaved off, this is a great documentary. As is, it’s still worth the trip down the rabbit hole.

C+

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Sundance Review: FISHING WITHOUT NETS

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“Fishing Without Nets”
Directed by Cutter Hodierne
Starring Abdikani Muktar, Abdi Siad, Abduwhali Faarah, Abdikhadir Hassan, Reda Kateb, Idil Ibrahim
U.S.A./Somalia/Kenya
109 Mins

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No name cast recreates Somali pirates premise, the left-field zeitgeist du jour, exploring themes of hubris and self-preservation in its slack-lined narrative that sporadically delivers emotional welts. With a hook of a first act and a gut-wrenching conclusion, the middle bits of Fishing Without Nets are left a little undercooked but by the time we get to the tail end of it, we’ve all but forgotten any moments of ennui. We’re too busy collectively picking our jaws up off the floor.

Expanded from the 2012 short film of the same name which won him the Sundance Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking, director Cutter Hodierne returns to the high seas of pirating. Abdi, who through years of working as a fisherman is a veteran navigator of international shipping channels, is hard won into the gun-totting pirating industry. But what can you expect of a young family man whose aquatic resources have seemingly swum towards better waters? With the influx of more and more tankers disrupting a once lively ecosystem, the supply and demand chain has been forever shifted, perhaps forever tainted, and the salt of desperation has the power to force even the most ethical of hands.

There’s something a bit fishy about the fact that the writer/director, Cutter Hodierne, of this Somalian-perspective drama is a white American. Attempts to adopt another culture’s perspective can read ham-fisted but when you take Hodierne’s dramatic background into consideration, it’s no wonder the man is sea-obsessed. Before his birth, his parents left behind their lives, jobs, and families and took to a 32-foot sailboat, for which he was named, subsequently raising him aboard the craft for the first three years of his life. Accordingly, salt water must run deep in his veins.

It’s no wonder then that the most chilling sequences of Fishing Without Nets comes from the harrowing uncertainty of ocean living. Plowed in by waves and surrounded by endlessness, there is visceral fear in the assumed serenity of the sea. Seeing that fear translate to desperation and then added to the high stakes of pirating makes for some incredibly compelling and emotional viewing.

Filmed entirely in Somali, we can only imagine the behind-the-scenes language barriers Hodierne and his cast had to fight through. According to Hodierne, the heavy physicality and frequent improvisation made for light-footed scene work, “I relied on the translator and the actors for ideas and culturally relevant conversations and scenes so working with them was a collaborative process. They brought cultural and linguistic elements to the film that I could not.” Though this set the stage for some scenes that stretched on past their dramatic limitations, the glowering scowls beading from Abdi Siad‘s Blackie is enough to keep us on the edge of our seats and drive the tension to skyward heights.

B-

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Sundance Review: LIFE AFTER BETH

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“Life After Beth”
Directed by Jeff Baena
Starring Aubrey Plaza, Dane DeHaan, John C. Reilly, Molly Shannon, Cheryl Hines, Paul Reiser
U.S.A.
91 Mins

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The scales may tip all over the place on this zom-rom-com but even with all its tonal inconsistency, we’re dumped in a place of smirky satisfaction and forgiving admiration of intent. Life After Beth is narrowly shoddy, but still an easy crowd-pleaser and an affable experiment in reckless absurdity.

As Tomboy one famously said, Dane DeHaan could sell a ketchup Popsicle to a woman in white gloves, so even though his chemistry will Aubrey Plaza might be hard sold, it’s impossible not to believe the earnestness evidently pouring from his drippy soul. Plaza, that beloved goon, is no certifiable dramaturge and rides her quirky shtick hard here but, for what it’s worth, seeing her strapped to an oven, face peeling away with rot and sauntering towards brains is worth the price of admission alone.
 
Beth (Plaza), for whom the movie is cleverly named, met her end at the tip of a raddler’s fang solo hiking at night. The film opens on her funeral which sets the stage for a rather dour half hour with DeHaan almost over-committing to the conceit that his star-crossed lover has met her end. His performance oozes grief, demanding the likes of the Beth’s parents, John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon, who help keep things frothy as the film boils towards full-blown satire.

Without announcement, Beth reappears as if nothing had happened and overwhelmed with the miracle that is her revival, all are willing to overlook how this Beth isn’t quite the same as the one they put in the ground a week prior. Like the changing tides of puberty, Beth begins to undergo a new transformation, budding into a full blown zombie.

Leaps and bounds away from the breed of zombies George Romeo has familiarized us with, these Z’s suffer a case of super strength and amnesia but lack the malevolent, herdish brain-gobbling qualities. At least, at first. It’s during these introductory “zombie” moments when director Jeff Baena experiments with his own, unique faction of the obnoxiously popular iconography that the movie proudly rears its creative head and is at the top of its game for it. With zombies’ unnatural penchant for smooth jazz and love of reassurance-laden chatting, Life After Beth proves fitfully riotous. But when chaos breaks out and everything goes to piece, that flair of individuality and precision of vision falls apart as well.

More of a fun experiment than a certified success, this zillionth installment in the zombie niche has its share of dicey moments but it’s also riddled with guffawable zingers and crafty physical comedy. Plaza goes for broke and will surely be remembered for one of the strangest performances this year while DeHaan is rarely off the mark and it’s their unlikely chemistry that rounds Life After Beth round the bases, even if it occasionally limps its way across home plate.

C+

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