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SXSW Review: THE HEART MACHINE

by Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged , , , , , ,

“The Heart Machine”
Directed by Zachary Wigon
Starring John Gallagher Jr., Kate Lyn Sheil, David Call, Libby Woodbridge, Louisa Krause, Halley Wegryn Gross, RJ Brown
Drama, Thriller
85 Mins 
United States

Would you fall in love in the wild, wild west of romance that is online dating? What if you believe that your betrothed were living in a foreign country only to discover that they are instead a mere stone’s throw away? Would you get jealous? Angry? Violent? Director and writer Zachary Wigon provides his surreptitious take on the ‘romance as app’ generation in what can only be described as a romantic thriller in The Heart Machine. Read More

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Out in Theaters: THE LUNCHBOX

by Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged , , , , , ,

“The Lunchbox”
Directed by Ritesh Batra
Starring Irrgan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, Nawazuddin Siddiqui
Drama, Romance, Comedy
104 Mins
PG

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Sitting in the theater for a screening of Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox, I overheard someone comment that it was a “nice little movie.” I would agree with that assessment, however, this is a very well done “nice little movie.” Being my first modern foreign film experience in a while, I found excitement in telling myself what would happen if this were a Hollywood movie and was delighted to see Batra subvert those expectations. The result is a subtle, layered, and realistic film about a lunch delivery service in Mumbai, famous for not making mistakes, making a mistake.

A neglected housewife, played by Nimrat Kaur, in the midst of trying to woo her distant husband through her culinary excellence, realizes that through a mix-up her lunch is being sent to a nearly retired, lonely, man, played by Irrfan Khan. Sharing their loneliness, they begin to write back and forth in lunchbox notes. This plot immediately calls to mind that cheesy, technologically outdated rom-com from the 90’s with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, but unlike the shallow clichéd musings of their e-mail’s, The Lunchbox’s messages give us an entirely human view of aging, fear, hope, and quiet disappointment. Our characters alienation is played up by a dingy, crowded, Indian backdrop, where they are slowly beaten down by repetition and tedious monotony.  

While this description makes the film sound incredibly dark, it just goes to show that a film can contain authentic humanity, and still be comfort food. Instead of non-stop unrealistically happy moments, the moments of joy feel earned, as nothing is handed to anyone.

This script is beautiful in its simplicity. Outside the main characters, the only characters serve to enhance those main two. Saajan Fernandes (Khan) shows positive growth from his slump as a retiring introvert, while training the man who will take up his job. Ila (Kaur) gets advice from an upstairs neighbor who we never see, while occupying herself with her daughter. The notes they exchange give them simple pleasure, a pleasure much more relatable than the grand gestures of most love stories.

What I found brilliant, as someone who is completely jaded over Hollywood conventions, is how The Lunchbox doesn’t go for the easy drama. When Ila becomes suspicious of her husband’s infidelity, there is no confrontation – no fight. We just watch her grow to live with her suspicions, realizing that she is now more invested in this mysterious stranger than her own husband. Her passivity is a clue to how he has treated her, even though the film only shows them interacting a few times.

Our two main actors do a tremendous job, especially Saajan Fernandes. With hints of Ikiru’s Kanji Wantanabe in his portrait of alienation, he is completely convincing. Even as a young man, I related to his insecurities over aging. As more of his story is filled in, and we learn the source of his early bitterness, he portrays his character growth in a completely convincing fashion. Nimrat Kaur’s performance was heartbreaking, but slightly more monotone. For her character, however, it worked.

Rom-com conventions tell us that this story must end with a bang. When it doesn’t, we are brought to earth, reminded of how limited in scope this is, how insignificant our personal troubles are to the world around us. And that becomes the thing our characters must accept. Saajan is no different than the aging men he sees sitting on the bus, no matter how much he craves the adventure that Ila brings to his life. Ila relates to a woman driven to suicide by isolation, but realizes she must choose her own way, free from the ties of others. Nothing is defined in the simple black and white terms. There are no life and death struggle, just slight growth and simple pleasures. Even with its open-ended conclusion, it is immensely satisfying.   

The Lunchbox is as good as a film of its ambitions can be. It is not a perfect film though. It’s a “nice little movie.” Still I struggle to think of anyone who would take nothing away from it or derive no small joy from it. The film in itself is much like one of the two protagonist’s notes. But like one of those notes, it will not change a life in any grand way. It’s hard to diagnose any flaws, because it is quite effective for a film of its scope. However, it will never be anything more than a “nice little movie.” Comfort food at its finest.  

B-

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SXSW Review: SEQUOIA

by Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

“Sequoia”
Directed by Andy Landen
Starring Aly Michalka, Dustin Milligan, Sophi Bairley, Todd Lowe, Joey Lauren Adams, Demetri Martin
Comedy, Drama, Romance
86 Mins
United States

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Coming to terms with your own mortality is not something that a 20something should have to do. But disease has a will of its own. Instead of drifting off to sleep in some cushy bed at a ripe old age or being blindsided by a simple, but nonetheless devastating, twist of change, disease is the worst of fates because you have to live with the knowledge of what’s to come. Anyone with cancer or AIDS can look at where they’ll be a few months or maybe years down the line, how their humanity and agency will be whittled away until they are a shell of what they once were. This hellish circumstance demands a timeline marked with fates worse than fading away physically. It involves the slow death of self; the disappearance of what gives you meaning into a vacuous machine of needs, a pill-popping potato of tubes and drips. For the self-sufficient young adult, there is no crueler sentence.

In this Kevorkian-as-criminal age, people in this demoralized position are faced with only two options: sticking it out until the bitter end or taking their own lives. In both impossible cases, there is no dignity. We live in a generation where the ailing must suffer for their sufferings, where shame accompanies pain, where people who just want to crawl up like a dog under a shed and close their eyes are seen as criminals by the merciless laws of the gun-totting right. Instead, the victimized are strong-armed into dying penniless and in excruciating pain. After all, that’s the American way.

Sequoia tells the story of Riley (Aly Michalka), a 23-year old with irreversible oral cancer. Laid out with news that she’s entered the fourth and final stage of her affliction and faced with the reality that the next step in the process involves sawing off  her lower jaw (even though the odds would still be 80% against her favor), Riley has decided to take her own life in the serenity of Sequoia National Park. She muddles up a few bottles of sleeping pills, spikes her water with it, and waits for the white light.

Along the way, she runs into Christian-on-a-mission Ogden (Dustin Milligan) who becomes an unlikely confidante. In the spirit of good Christian spirit, he agrees to accompany Riley through her final day after her plans with her younger, helplessly punk rock sister Van (Sophi Bairley) fall through. Ogden soon knows that Riley’s  slurped down her deadly cocktail but the moral dilemma to follow overcomes him. Likewise, audience members are prompted to ask themselves where they side here. Is there a right choice or just a shitty situation no matter how the dice fall? Likely the latter, but again, that’s up to you.

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Back at the homestead, Van crashes her dad’s car and is forced to spill the beans to her and Riley’s separated and heedless parental unit. Dad, Oscar (Todd Lowe), swallows the news like a sack of potatoes, choking on the idea of losing his daughter so imminently, while Mom, Bev (Joey Lauren Adams), aided by new psychologist boyfriend and resident douche Steve (Demetri Martin) shrugs it off as a cry for attention. Their little girl is going to off herself, Oscar pleads. They have to do something.

Instead of trying to come to terms with Riley’s lucid justification for suicide, they rush across the state to her side to try and stop her from fulfilling her one tragic wish. There’s no intellectual vigil to hold, no meditative stasis, their gut reaction is the instinctual response of an animal whose young is in danger. They protect witlessly, they defend without thought for what they’re fighting for. 

Disease is the death of possibility, it’s being teether to an IV. It’s watching medical bills skyrocket past reasonable sums, the only will that you’ll then be able to pass on. It’s bearing witness to the forlorn faces of loved ones trying to remain strong for you. Suicide may be an escape but to call it cowardly in this circumstance is simple-minded and borderline pigheaded. Let’s just say that if there is a God turning those who have decided to take their own lives rather than rot from the inside out, I would love to give him a piece of my mind.

An old wives tale says that if you touch a baby bird, the mother will abandon it, leaving it to starve to death. Of course the anecdote is bogus, an invention of moms who don’t want their children poking around at nasty birds. In the animal kingdom, animals are irrevocably tied to their offspring (that is when they’re not busy eating them). No matter how many feathers may be ruffled on your young, most will battle against all odds until the bitter end. Old feuds fade, past wrongs erased, in the moment of trigger pulling, there is only the need to save your young. Ironically enough, at least in Riley’s case, this parental instinct becomes more a curse than anything. Instead of just letting her go the way she wants, they demand to keep her around, jaw or no.

Writer Andrew Rothschild said the idea for Sequoia came from a nightmarish period where he had himself convinced he was riddled with cancer. Thankfully, he did not. All his  worrying was for naught. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case, a truth that Riley knows only too well. His helplessly affecting story is much a commentary on the US health care system as it is a solemn ballad to those who took their lives for just cause. It’s heartbreak city but at least it tries to laugh its way to the end of the highway.

With Rothchild’s tenderly biting words married to Michalka’s soul-melting performance, director Andy Landen proves there’s still a place for storytellers with a unwavering voice and a powerful message. He makes Sequoia painfully honest and emotionally gutting, wistful but never sentimental. Watching it unfold is like listening to your mom tell the baby bird story. Michalka plays the baby bird perfectly, putting in an absolutely devastating performance, marked equally with wry deathbed humor and a kind of frankness only someone on their way out the door can offer. Disheveled and morose though she may be, baby momma still brings the worm in the end, but at what cost?

A-

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Patrick Brice Talks CREEP

by Posted in Interviews, Uncategorized Tagged , , , , , ,

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At the premiere of his debut horror/thriller Creep, director and star Patrick Brice took to the stage to put some A’s to some Q’s and give some context for his found-footage creeper. But Brice’s film;s greatest accomplishment lies in the performance eeked from Mark Duplass. He’s magnetic, unpredictable and an absolute joy to watch. From our review,

“No matter how valiant his intentions sound on paper, Joseph (Duplass) is an unreliable character from the get go. From his startling first appearance to the unsavory wolf mask, ironically called Peach Fuzz, he keeps stuffed in his closet, he’s a hard guy to get a read on. But that’s half the fun. Throttling between waxing on his own mortality and jumping from behind a doorway to startle Patrick (and by extension us), one thing is for certain: Joseph’s a weird dude. He’s always quick on his toes to offer some soundbite explanation for his abnormal actions but his backstory is about as reliable and consistent as Heath Ledger‘s Joker.”

Revealing his long standing friendship with co-star Duplass, Brice talked stalker behavior, the colloborative nature of Creep and how he went from an artsy filmmaker to directing a found footage horror movie. Read on to hear all he had to say.

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How did you get Mark involved in the film?

Patrick Brice: Mark Duplass and I are close friends. I just graduated from Cal Arts film school in 2011. He was kind of mentoring me and trying to figure out what the next project would be. We’d talked about working together on something. This project came out of those conversations. He just said, “Why don’t we go do something together?” So we went up to a cabin in the woods for five days and filmed an initial cut of this movie and ended up showing it to friends, doing some test screenings with filmmaker buddies – kind of refining it and toning it into the film that it is now. Eventually Jason Blum, from Blumhouse, watched the film, liked it, and agreed to kind of help us make it a little darker.

When you were writing it, was it tempting to turn it more into comedy and change the ending? Or did you know that you wanted it like this?

PB: We had no idea. There was like seven different versions of that ending. And I’m sorry I’m totally low blood sugar today. I’ve only eaten tacos for a meal. I can’t (EDITED FOR SPOILERS). I’m having an existential crisis. There was sort of a weird test, because we knew we wanted it to be funny and Mark’s insanely funny and gifted with improv. Jason saw it and was like, “You guys, this is teetering on the edge. Let’s bring this a little more into the realm of darkness.” It’s kind of a weird balance but hopefully it will work for some people.

Your movie reminds me of someone I know. I’m not even kidding.

PB: Mark and I, we love weird people and we love people that you can’t really get a serious beat on. We also are both the type of dudes who end up being friends with those people. This was kind of our exploration into that.

His behavior was kind of textbook stalker. How much research did you do on stalking behaviors and stuff like that?

PB: I didn’t do research whatsoever. One discussion we did have was talking about people we’ve known in our lives who are like pathological liars – just thinking about traits of those type of people and trying to express that.

I find it thrilling, because it’s clearly so stripped down and just like you have a great idea and a great story. You made it happen. I would love to hear what you shot on. Was it literally you and Mark? Did you have a small crew?

PB: We had a small crew and actually one of them is here, Chris Donlon, our editor. This guy’s a story genius and we wouldn’t have been able to do what we did, without him. We shot it on one of these Panasonic cameras that compresses to a small card. It was a great exercise for me. Coming out of film school, I was like, “I’m going to make very defined, formal films.” This was just like throwing that all by the wayside and saying, “Let’s just go run completely on instinct, and forget about aesthetic as much as we can and just try to make something that’s compelling and focused on characters.”

Were you holding the camera the whole time?

PB: Yeah. It was either me or Mark holding the camera the entire time.

How much of this do you guys do in tandem? Did you direct each other?

PB: Yeah. The film was a collaboration. When Mark was on screen, I was directing him and when I was on screen, he was directing me. Neither of us had any ego with that sort of thing. A lot of these takes were initially six or seven minute takes that have been cut up. So we would just run each take. We didn’t have a script. We had a ten page outline, we were just improvising all the dialogue, so we would run one of these takes, watch it, figure out camera placement and what we should say when, go back and do it over and over again. Because it was just a small group of us, we could do that.

Were you developing the characters as you went along?

PB: I had never acted before, so I was relying on Mark in terms of what was working and what was not. It’s super hard to be objective when you’re directing yourself. We kind of went scene by scene. It was a story we develop, in reaction to whatever nuances happened in the last thing we shot. We shot it all in continuity. But we still have that outline that was like, “This needs to happen within these parameters.”

All the paintings of the wolves, who did those?

PB: My best friend since I was 11 years old, his mom did all those. She just paints multiples of those wolves. That’s like what she does. I was so happy I got to include them. That’s something we used to always make fun of his mom about when we were kids. Now it’s like, “Jason, can I get like 50 of those paintings?”

I love how the end opens up all these side possibilities of what happens before and what happens after. One of the things I’m wondering about Mark Duplass’s character is: when you were developing a backstory for him, does he have a similar approach to all his victims? Does he take them all to the heart springs? Is this something you talked about at all?

PB: No. Not really. I think there’s a world of possibilities there. I don’t think he’s done this before. In my mind I like to think that he has something special for each person. Or maybe he doesn’t (SPOILER) everybody. Maybe it takes a special someone, to want to (SPOILER) them.

How did the concept for the movie come about?

PB: At first this movie was like a relationship movie, I guess. We weren’t necessarily thinking that it was going to go as far as it did, in terms of evil. We wanted it to be a balance between the two of us. I do think there’s something wrong with Aaron. Don’t do that.

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SXSW Review: CREEP

by Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged , , , , , 1 Comment

“Creep”
Directed by Patrick Brice
Starring Patrick Brice, Mark Duplass
Comedy, Horror, Romance
82 Mins
United States

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Mark Duplass has had quite a run in the fledgling stages of his career. From small roles in the likes of Oscar baity films, such as Zero Dark Thirty and, le sigh, Parkland, to larger roles in unsung indie hits Humpday and Safety Not Guaranteed, and simply as the reliably affable straight man, Pete, on The League, it’s easy to admit that Duplass has got range. He dips his toes in the pools of all different genres and mediums, working as an accomplished dramatic actor and solid comedian to boot. It’s then such a surprise that perhaps the greatest work he’s done is in a found little footage horror movie called Creep.

Captured in what has become the oh so familiar first person POV framework, Patrick Brice takes on dual responsibility as the film’s lead and director. He is our window into the events to unfold, a fluctuating moral guide through a stew of character grays. Brice is Aaron, a videographer gun-for-hire who responds to a mysterious Craigslist ad claiming it will take one day of his time and pay a cool grand. Up in the mountains, he meets a Joseph, a man with claims of imminent death, making a farewell video for his unborn son.

No matter how valiant his intentions sound on paper, Joseph (Duplass) is an unreliable character from the get go. From his startling first appearance to the unsavory wolf mask, ironically called Peach Fuzz, he keeps stuffed in his closet, he’s a hard guy to get a read on. But that’s half the fun. Throttling between waxing on his own mortality and jumping from behind a doorway to startle Patrick (and by extension us), one thing is for certain: Joseph’s a weird dude. He’s always quick on his toes to offer some soundbite explanation for his abnormal actions but his backstory is about as reliable and consistent as Heath Ledger‘s Joker.

Brice and Duplass love playing with the idea of the unreliable narrator as they fill the film with palpable moments of transitioning allegiances. There are times when Duplass feels like the titular creep, other times when it’s Brice. There’s even some fleeting moments where we turn the mirror on ourselves to see if we’re the ones prescribing oddness to an otherwise savory and sweet situation. Could there actually be nothing wrong at all (save our unsavory expectations?) What am I talking about, this is a movie called Creep, of course some creeping is bound to go down. And go down it does.

When a film backs itself into a corner like Creep does about sixty minutes in, it usually becomes increasingly reliant on familiar tropes. The fringes of possibility become a picket fence and the audience is able to pick off the thread count like floating sheep. There are only so many ways to wrap things up in a horror movie and we usually know which of those endings will transpire when we’ve got about thirty minutes to go. But when Creep seems like its reaches the last track, it smartly changes things up, transforming from what may have dissolved into an unsatisfying slasher into a whole new type of paranoid tension machine.

From his backlit framing to the long, empty, awkward silences that fill the air like smog, Brice plants all the seeds of doubt required to make his audience want to stand up and shout “Don’t go in there!” at the screen. Thankfully, his characters are rarely dumb enough to go the way of the slasher victim. It may not subvert the horror genre, but at least it doesn’t sink down to its level. And though Brice does his fair share of leaning on genre mainstays to milk some frights, he remains true to his characters throughout and they’re what made it interesting in the first place.

B-

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Weekly Review 43: LIVES, CRONOS, FAST, VALKYRIE, SOMEWHERE, BICYCLE, INEQUALITY

by Posted in Weekly Review Tagged , , , , , , , ,

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They’ve been longer hiatuses from Weekly Review in the past but I admit that it’s been a while since I’ve posted about what I’ve been watching from home. Busy with SXSW and the many, many, many reviews to come pouring out of that, I honestly didn’t have a ton of time over the past month to watch much at home. There were a few here and there (accounted for in this list) but it wasn’t until this week that I really felt like I had much to talk about in the segment to follow. In addition to the films mentioned below, I also re-watched The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and my opinion on it hasn’t really changed since the first time I saw it, for better or for worse, and The Fly, which still continues to be one of my favorite horror movies and a shining example of why practical effects will always be scarier than anything CGI.

I dipped into the theater just once (to my relief, there were no press screenings all week) to catch up on a film that I missed whilst in Austin, Enemy, which Chris reviewed for the site. I absolutely loved it and it’s easily one of my favorite films of the entire year, especially if you only account for stuff in theaters and not just in the film fest circuit. I can’t get Enemy out of my head and that’s exactly the kind of movie I want to see more of.

In other news, I also decided I couldn’t wait and watched Nymphomaniac: Part 2 on VOD with a bottle of vino. Whether that was a good call or not, I can’t really say but look for a full review of that sometime next week. Other than that, I got into a bucket of classics, so take a trip down memory lane with me to visit a bunch of first time watches that have been lingering on my to watch list for far too long.

THE LIVES OF OTHER (2006)

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Sitting high on IMDB’s top 250, Das Leben der Anderen takes a hard look at a frequently unexplored chapter of German facism. In the ideological cell of the eastern block, before sledgehammers were taken to the Berlin wall, Ulrich Muhe plays a government agent known for his no-nonsense enforcement of party-friendly ideology. Everything soon changes when he heads up an investigation into a local artist and begins to sympathize with what was once his opposition. It’s a moving and informative picture chalked with a fog-laden, almost nightmarish landscape and moral claustrophobia. Muhe is a revelation, putting forth a man swimming through the tumult of changing tides. As a character study and pseudo-biography both, The Lives of Others is not to be missed.  

A-

CRONOS (1993)

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Diving deeper into Guillermo del Toro‘s filmography, I found Cronos to be a wonderfully crafted little yarn that shows a different side of Toro. Working in elements of body horror and sci-fi iconography, this film feels more Cronenberg-esque than much of his later work: a contained picture of hubris, a tight story of man vs. mythos. Foreign film offers the chance to see frameworks that just wouldn’t fly on American soil so it’s nice to Toro flex that muscle. From having an older gentleman as the center piece – a true rarity for Hollywood genre flicks – to the mysterious scoops of mythology, this is classic new-age Spanish cinema.

B

THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS (2001)

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I was always under the impression that I was not a big fan of the original installment in what was to become one of the biggest international franchises going. It was only until I actually popped the disc in (a DVD in all its low resolution glory) that I realized that I had actually never seen The Fast and the Furious. What I got was not quite what I expected (and boy has Paul Walker‘s Brian changed from the eager puppy he once was). And even though it shamelessly scammed on Point Break to an almost embarrassing point, it properly sets the thematic footing for the sequels to come. Family first baby, family first.

C+

VALKYRIE (2008)

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Bryan Singer‘s foray into historical drama didn’t quite turn out as he imagined it. First of all, casting Tom Cruise as a one-handed, eye-patched German is a hard enough sell on on paper but works even less in execution. As an admittedly big fan of Cruise’s work, this is not the role for him and he sticks out like a sore thumb the whole way through. And that’s kinda the whole issue with the film on a larger scale. It seems strange that Singer, an American filmmaker, would helm such an apologetic project from a distinctly German lens. About a gaggle of high ranking German officials attempts to assassinate Hitler, Valkyrie feels like a story that ought to have been told from a German auteur, not some Hollywood showboater.

C-

SOMEWHERE (2010)

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Sophia Coppola only makes movies about rich and famous people bored with being rich and famous. But none (not even Lost in Translation) hit the nerve of ennui as much as Somewhere. It’s a film that drains the sweet out of the sweet life, that makes fame look more like a curse than a gift. Ironically, it’s Coppola’s style of noncommittal narrative structure  that makes Somewhere as good a movie as it is but also holds it back from being great. There’s style spilling over and Coppola’s use of long shots often transcend the boredom she’s trying to encapsulate, posing scenes that feel inescapably real and human. Elle Fanning offers a breakout role as Steven Dorff‘s young, independent daughter, showing up the seasoned actor at his own game of woes.

B

BICYCLE THIEVES (1948)

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Vittorio De Sica‘s story of Post WWII poverty in Italy is asset rich with atmosphere and tone. It captures a time and a place with untempered clarity, offering a father and son relationship that may ring a touch uncouth in modern times but is unapologetically true to the epoch it represents. As much a tone poem about a devastated economy as it is a unblinking condemnation of the governing parties of the time, Bicycle Thieves deals enough moralistic gray zones to make for an intriguing watch. 

B+

INEQUALITY FOR ALL (2013)

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A smartly laid out indictment of the wealth disparity problem in the US, Inequality for All is as heartbreaking as it is informative. With former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich leading the charge, this is a must-see documentary that will confirm your worst fears about modern America. More terrifying than the scariest of horror films, Reich lays out a dire situation where the middle class lays victim to an ideological genoice. It’s An Inconvenienter Truth, Rich Dude Nation. It should not be missed by any American.

A

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Out in Theaters: NYMPHOMANIAC: PART 1

by Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

“Nymphomaniac: Part 1”
Directed by Lars von Trier
Starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stacy Martin, Stellan Skarsgard, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Sophie Kennedy Clark
Drama
118 Mins
NR

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Charlotte Gainsbourg plays Joe, a woman looking back on her life with deep-seated scorn, hounding for condemnation, beaten and broken. We meet her lying on the knotted facade of a cobblestone street corner, caked with dark, unexplained bruises, limp and abandoned like a dove craddling a broken wing. To the head banging tune of Rammstein‘s thumping German heavy metal, Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard) spots Joe crumpled under a gentle but deadly snowfall. After attempts to contact the authorities are met with threats of her fleeing the scene, he takes her home for some bed rest and a steamy cup of Earl Grey.

Upon his bed, she finds in Seligman’s comfort a private confessional for her laundry list of lustful sins. Seligman is her priest, her unwavering forgiver, her absolver of indecencies past and present. From the first chapter of her life of loose sexual morals, Seligman is compassionate and curious towards Joe. It’s a first contact moment, like an alien interviewing its first human. The only way he knows how to approach her is by relating her carnal conquests to the deft arts of fly fishing.

Seligman seeks to understand the instinctual explanations behind her erotic urges, quickly transforming into a dual supporter and therapist for Joe. As she attempts to rap off her worst transgressions,  Seligman is there with a sound interpretation of why she’s not really to blame. Their offbeat relationship is entirely unique, a perversely complex dance of savior and saved, all anchored by Gainsbourg and Skaarsgard’s wonderfully grounded pair of performances.

While Gainsbourg prattles off her top of the charts, worst of the worst list of dirty deeds like a dark fairy tale narrator, Stacy Martin guides us through the experiences firsthand. From the inklings of her sexual self-discovery to her playing a game of “who can bang the most dudes on this train ride,” Joe is a force of nature and Martin’s fearless performance paves the way for her undying depth of character. Though the older, more embittered version of Joe brews with regret and self-hatred, young Joe is full of life. She wants the whole world of men, in every shape, size and color.

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Joe’s sexuality is her weapon and she wields it like a long sword. Having managed to completely divorce sex from emotional connection, as her list of suitors grow so does her heartlessness. Eventually managing entire relationships by the roll of a dice, Joe gets tangled up in a hysterical middle chapter led with brutish force by an unbound Uma Thurman. It’s been years since Thurman has put her name to something so iconic and unforgettable. And in a film stuffed with fantastic performances, hers is an implausible highlight, impossible to ignore. Her brief vignette brings humor and hardship to the table, serving them up as the same dish, indistinguishable and essential as one and the same.

In this marriage of comedy and tragedy, Trier mines the unparalleled success of Nymphomaniac. Captured through an admirable stripped down cinesphere of grubby locales and queued with a truly bipolar score, the technical aspects surrounding the film are a deft house of cards. Without cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro‘s grim but provocative pictures, the uninviting hospitality of Trier’s landscape would lose its oddly captivating appeal. In a way, Joe’s scarred humanity is a victim of circumstance, a product of his European bleakness.

Through all, Joe’s often brutal, cold mentality is accented by Trier’s uncharacteristically warm and understanding direction. For all her self-deprecation, we’re left wondering what to make of her tidal wave of remorse, especially in a patriarchal society. Would an older gentleman display such penitence? Obviously not. Is her unscrupulous vaginal record the fault of her ice queen mother? A few hours in, we haven’t yet pinpointed the source of Joe’s despondent temperament but we’re beginning to understand. And though old Joe may be depressive, Trier’s film most certainly is not.

An oddball combination for sure, it’s truly a wonder that Nymphomaniac works as well as it does, especially considering that this is only the first part of an ongoing saga (and you definitely feel the punch of a truncated story). One might have thought that nearly five hours of sexual confession (and one montage of penises) is too much. After seeing the first two hours though, all I can say is bring on part 2.

A-

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Out in Theaters: DIVERGENT

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“Divergent” 
Directed Neil Burger 
Starring Shailene Woodley, Miles Teller, Kate Winslet, Jai Courtney, Theo James
Science-Fiction, Action
139 Mins
PG-13

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Watching Divergent is like trying to figure out what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. You’re thrust a grab-bag of emotions ranging from awe to complete disbelief. Who made this thing? What terrible atrocity happened to these people? Why didn’t the technology work? Where the hell did everything go wrong? Did this really happen?

Divergent is the rare oddity where the trailer is more exciting than the movie ever gets. Director Neil Burger’s (Limitless) latest big-screen project is trapped in Act One purgatory. Somehow he never manages to make it to Act Two (forget about Act Three), while only fitting ten minutes of action into a nearly three-hour movie. Simultaneously the slowest and most pointless flick this year, it never seems to start or end.  At 139 minutes in run-time, it’s about 130 minutes too long. Divergent takes longer to reach a climax than… well, you get it.

The film, based on Veronica Roth’s novel of the same, stars Shailene Woodley in her first foray into high-budget Hollywood film. Miles Teller, Jai Courtney, Theo James and Kate Winslet (!?) join her. Stealing elements from Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games and similar teen-fiction titles, Divergent gets old fast.

Based in a worn-down Chicago (somehow the last place on Earth), a “utopian” society is divided into five separate factions: Abnegation, for the selfless; Amity, for the peaceful; Candor, for the honest; Dauntless, for the brave; and Erudite, for the knowledgeable. Every year, 16-year olds must go through testing to determine which faction they should join. Of course, there’s a problem with this: sometimes kids can show competency in the characteristics of several factions, hence the eponymous “Divergent.”

 “Abnegation” dresses like they’re in a prison camp, while their social responsibility is to feed the homeless—dubbed “Factionless”—and avoid all forms of comfort, including looking in the mirror—oh, how selfless! Since they’re considered the most altruistic, they also run the government… I won’t venture a joke at that one, it’s not even worth it.

“Dauntless” are gymnasts who spend their days sprinting everywhere, jumping on rooftops and giggling their asses off. They’re Chicago’s “police,” charged with defending the citizens and keeping order. Of course, they’re also the most diverse group. Let’s put it this way: you won’t see a black kid in Erudite. They look like the United Colors of Benetton teamed up with Nike to help the under-privileged. Supposedly, their fitness makes them fearless. Instead, they just look delirious.

Woodley, a Divergent, decides to join Dauntless, which is right about when this film loses all impetus. Similar to the Hunger Games, in order to join the faction, she has to beat out her competition by proving herself in various activities.This quickly turns Divergent into a futuristic Summer Camp for the fit and beautiful, complete with a ropes course; Capture the LED-Flag; team-building exercises; zip-lines through Chicago; and, you guessed it, Tag. I’m surprised they chose not to fit in a friendship bracelet workshop or a round of Duck Duck Grey Duck. Burger spends two full hours trying to entertain you by showing teens doing things you barely enjoyed doing yourself when you were younger. “Look how much fun they’re all having!”

To prove their mettle and fearlessness, Woodley and her pledge class of giddy recruits have to jump onto a train, then subsequently jump off. At one point, they compete in a five-minute paintball fight. They’re told to get tattoos to show their badassery. These feats of strength continue for about an hour and forty-five minutes. A love-story is also interspersed throughout, as camp-instructor Theo James and Woodley must overcome various obstacles in order to finally make out.

The only real conflict in this film involves whether Woodley will get kicked out of camp. We’re constantly submitted to idiotic recitations of the same bullshit, over and over. Again and again, she’s told: “You’re dauntless, so act dauntless or get kicked out.” My question: why would anyone choose to be part of this group of tattooed douchebags? I’d much rather live on the street, being fed by horribly clothed government workers than spend my days getting harassed by tatted-up jocks in leather windbreakers.

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Her final initiation ritual before ultimately becoming one of these idiots involves submitting herself to some sort of virtual reality fear-machine where her fearlessness is tested. Phobias that she must overcome include sexual assault by James, death by killer crow, murdering her family, and drowning in a sealed glass case. She’s able to conquer these fears by telling herself “This isn’t real.” I wish.

Around two hours in, things finally ramp up. The last fifteen minutes are actually decent, dragged along by great acting from Woodley and the ever-spectacular Miles Teller. Everyone else slows them down, notably James, Jai Courtney, and Kate Winslet, who is in this movie for no apparent reason. She’s terrible.

Ultimately, Divergent is Hunger Games without the stakes, Twilight without the romance, Harry Potter without the magic. The Disney Channel-level acting and plot cramps you up like Hunger Pangs; this isn’t Katniss, it’s cat piss.

In the end, you leave Divergent telling yourself that this was just a dream; maybe you ate some bad shellfish and hallucinated the whole thing. You tell yourself, “this isn’t real,” hoping against all hope that it isn’t. Maybe Flight 370 never even existed. This is all a figment of your imagination, a cruel joke. Yeah, this week was just a wild nightmare. You click your heels together three times. This isn’t real… This isn’t real… This isn’t real…

Screams snap you out of it. You’re sitting next to a pre-pubescent girl’s volleyball team from the local middle school—they shriek every time Miles Teller is on-screen. Now it’s clear who this movie was made for, except this film calls for a different brand of ‘spike.’ You’ll have to down a few drinks to make it through this one.

D-

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Out in Theaters: ENEMY

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“Enemy”
Directed Denis Villeneuve
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon, Isabella Rossellini
Erotic Thriller
90 Mins
R

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Doppelgangers have been contemplated endlessly in history. Shortly before he died, Abraham Lincoln wrote in his diary that he had dreamt an encounter with his doppelganger. It’s an eerie concept:  two completely identical copies in the same dimension. Cloning isn’t natural, it’s dangerous, un-Godly. Dopplegangers bring out the evil inside.

“Chaos is order yet undeciphered,” flashes on the screen in deep yellow font. Enemy tricks and weaves, flowing its way through psyche until you’re left wondering what’s true and false, what’s real and what’s not.

Enemy is steganography in its purest form. Every twist and turn holds some truth within the winding web Director Denis Villeneuve spins. All is hidden in plain sight, or maybe it isn’t hidden at all.

The film is based on a Spanish novel, The Double, which looks into the life of a man who meets his exact replica, a man who can ruin his life. Jake Gyllenhaal is a history teacher at a university in Toronto. He lectures about time, about Mesopotamian empires. These empires use distractions to divert the masses, to entertain them and keep them at bay. History repeats itself. Time is a flat circle.

But the film doesn’t begin there. Another Jake Gyllenhaal walks through a dimly lit corridor, sliding a key into an austere door, revealing a strange underground club of ponderous-looking men. There’s a main stage. A pregnant woman masturbates in front of them. She orgasms. Gyllenhaal buries his face in his hands. He’s shocked.

Then, the main attraction. A woman walks out with a silver platter. She disrobes, pulls the lid off the silver plate. Out steps a tarantula crawling around the stage.

Gyllenhaal—the history teacher—he’s boring. We’re not sure who that just was at that Tarantula mess, but it definitely wasn’t him. It couldn’t have been. This man’s too clean-cut. His evenings are spent tangled in bed railing his girlfriend, falling asleep alone when she goes home. His days are spent delivering the same lecture, over and over again. History repeats itself. Time is a flat circle.

One day a colleague tells him to check out a movie. What movie? Any movie. Sure, why not? Not like he’s got much else to do.

Gyllenhaal rents a random film, pops it into his laptop. A deep organ sounds, the score eviscerating the scene, ripping the emotions out of you: there’s another Jake Gyllenhaal, an extra in the film dressed as a bellhop.

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Enemy catches you quick, pinning you down, choking you to the edge of that last breath. Things cavalcade, piling on until the tension boils over. Contributing foremost is the sound design, which is monstrous, creeping and crawling like an eight-legged beast on your skin, making you shiver at the slightest touch. The organ tones, the elegiac score pulsate and drip their venom in your deepest corners. Daniel Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans spin a masterpiece, weaving you and garroting you until you turn blue.

Villeneuve is no stranger to quirky set design. Rooms in the film are eerily dressed, calling attention to the empty space as if there’s something lurking underneath, inside, everywhere. Every set piece has an uncanny quality. A bed with green sheets takes on the appearance of a murderer. For a film that relies so heavily on symbology to confuse and contort, Enemy’s set-work is a masterpiece.

Enemy has an incandescent glow to it, a yellow hue mixed in with the dark shadows. Villeneuve wipes his color pallet clean save a gelatinous yellow and a ghastly black. Walls ooze a chaotic nausea. This film uses color psychology to wreck your psyche, gnaw at you with anxiety on the brain. Every symbol, every color in Enemy is carefully thought out, fine-tuned to bring out the soul’s deepest fears and terrors. It’s a creepy brand of traumatic.

We mustn’t forget Jake Gyllenhaal, however, who here collaborates with Villeneuve again after their work on Prisoners. Gyllenhaal has two credits in Enemy, possibly more. He plays too men, completely identical yet separately unique. When they meet, their temperaments flash. One is aggressive, almost murderous; the other is terrified, squirmish. They pull up their shirts to reveal the same scar. Were they born on the same day? History repeats itself. Time is a flat circle.

What occurs as Enemy progresses is quaking, the earth below your feet seems to tremor faster and faster, moving its way up the Richter scale. A floating Tarantula as big as a Goodyear blimp slinks its way over Toronto. A woman’s body with a Tarantula’s head walks upside down through a corridor. At 90 minutes, it shrinks and expands the mind, then ends abruptly with no questions answered. Enemy is a rollercoaster personally designed by the Devil. Twist and turn, crash and burn.

Billed as an erotic psycho-thriller, Enemy is bare as “After Dark” on CineMax, but far more violently erotic. Naked bodies contort together, almost like two spiders dancing on a delicate web. Aggressive, deep thrusts and hollow moans add to the erogenous aura that swallows the theater whole. Villeneuve uses sex like a weapon, goring open the mind’s thoughts and bleeding them out like venom. Mélanie Laurent and Sarah Gadon are splendid in their supporting roles. They make writhing spine-tinglingly sexy.

I have never left a theater so thoroughly mind-wrecked. Gyllenhaal’s gritty performance combined with all the production elements that Villeneuve flaunts breaks this story open. They subject you to their hegemony then trap you in it. The story is captivating, corrosive. It scared the shit out of me then left me fallow. This is more mysterious than Memento, more intricate than Inception. Enemy is the movie you’re too afraid not to watch twice. It will take a while to decipher this psychosomatic chaos.

A-

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Talking with Miles Teller of DIVERGENT

by Posted in Interviews Tagged , , ,

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Miles Teller has gone from zero to hero in the last few years. With roles in films like Whiplash, Rabbit Hole and The Spectacular Now, Teller has shown an intriguing dramatic side that all but evens out the heap of not-so-inspiring (read: disastrous) broad comedies he’s participated in, take for example 21 and Over and That Awkward Moment. Looking towards the future, Teller has a lot of promise so long as he continues to involve himself in solid project while he’s busy paying the bills with mainstream crud. With The Fantastic Four on the horizon, the only question is how high will Teller’s star rise?

 

Over the prattle and coos of preteen girls, Teller and I had a chance to chat at the Seattle premiere of his latest, and largest, film yet: Divergent. But we only talked briefly about the YA wannabe sensation, to preference some of his more serious roles. We touched on drumming, the recurring themes of his fledgling career, his trajectory since college and what makes him an all around bad ass.

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So I caught Whiplash down at Sundance. Loved the movie, with the way it was edited, you looked like you were just slaying on those drums. So, tell me what you were doing for preparation for that? Have you always played?

Miles Teller: I’ve played for like 10 years, I got a kit when I was like 15. Never played jazz before and then just kinda started taking some lessons, took like lessons for a few weeks, like four hours a day, four times a week.

Obviously some of the stuff you were playing was like off the charts and some of the best drumming, do you have a guy who is like subbing in and you were body doubled?

MT: I did, like I did do pretty much did all of it, you know what I mean? Like, there’s a couple of things, like the director would shoot some stuff for his hands. Like anything that’s like a real close up is probably not me. But, a lot of that is just me crushing it.

Another film that you were great in was The Spectacular Now, and now you’re doing another movie with Shailene Woodley. How is it working with her again and what’s your guys’ relationship?

MT: Yeah, man she’s great, I think she’s a really natural actress, she’s really easy to play off of, but this was easier, I mean in The Spectacular Now we’re like falling in love and I’m like breaking her heart and stuff, and in this movie I just beat her up.

So you get to get your hands on her in a different way in this movie? You wrestle her to the ground, etc.

MT: Yeah, definitely more violent.

So you’re a villain in this. This is obviously your first bad dude role, what was that like?

MT: Yeah, I mean obviously I wanted to make him likeable. That was a big part of it for me. It’s nice playing somebody where I didn’t have to make everyone laugh all the time.

The line for this movie is like, you know, “If you’re different, you’re dangerous…”

MT: You just turned around and read that off the poster.

Yeah, I did… but I’ve read the book like eight times.

MT: Yeah, me too…

What makes you dangerous, what makes you a badass?

MT: I think the mind. I just think if you outsmart somebody. You gotta be a couple steps ahead of the next person. If you’re in control you’re pretty relaxed in the situation. So I’d say relaxation is key.

What got you into acting in the first place?

MT: I did some plays when I was a little kid. And then, I just played sports and played in some bands in stuff. In high school we got a pretty hot drama teacher, so then I was very into drama. One day my best friend who drove me home everyday said “we should audition for this play” and then I got into it for the last two years of high school. And then I went to NYU and spent a lot of money.

You went like right from your senior year to being in the movies, yeah?

MT: Senior year of college. The first movie I booked was this movie called Rabbit Hole, and so I did that. I booked that like two weeks before I graduated.

In a lot of your movies – Rabbit Hole, The Spectacular Now, even Whiplash – you’re always a character who’s involved in a car crash.

MT: Yeah and in real life I was in a car crash.

Is that a little too surreal for you, do people typecast you for those kind of roles?

MT: I don’t think I get cast as a guy who gets into car accidents, I’m just taking all those roles right? It is weird though, it is a theme in my career so far.

That and alcoholism.

MT: So you said you went down to Sundance? Did you get a chance to see any movies down there?

Yeah, I saw about twenty movies. Did you get a chance to see anything?

MT: I didn’t get a chance to see anything. I got to meet Phillip Seymour Hoffman, that was the coolest thing.

You shot 21 & Over here in Washington, over at UW. What did you think of that?

MT: I dug it man, we shot in August, there wasn’t that many kids around. When you’re walking arouatt:nd in a tube sock and there’s like Summer Session going on. It was cool, man, the Square is like Hogwarts, it’s very nice looking.

What did you think of NYU and what kind of advice would you give to young aspiring actors out there?

MT: Yeah, I really loved it. I think, whatever is good for you go for it. I think New York does propel you forward, it is a city where you can’t really just stay stagnant. People are always doing stuff and it inspires you to create. Also, I just think it’s the best city in the world.

Is that where you’re living now?

MT: No, I live in LA now, because that’s where all the things happen at. There’s a lot of TV in New York though.

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