SIFF 2011: The First Grader ***1/2

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 22, 2011)

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Even though I could glean from frame one that The First Grader (this year’s SIFF opening night selection) was one of those dramas expressly engineered to tug mercilessly at the strings of my big ol’ pinko-commie, anti-imperialist, bleeding softie lib’rul heart, I nonetheless loved every minute of it. Produced by the BBC and beautifully directed by Justin Chadwick, the film dramatizes the true story of an illiterate 84 year-old Kikuyu tribesman (Oliver Litando) who, fired up by a 2002 Kenyan law that guaranteed free education for all citizens, makes a beeline for his local one-room schoolhouse, eager to hit the books.

Bemusement from the school officials (who initially balk) turns to respect for the aging gentleman’s quiet determination to realize his life-long dream, especially from the school’s compassionate principal (Naomie Harris). As you may have already guessed, there is much more to the protagonist’s story; through flashbacks we learn that he was a freedom fighter against the ruling British during the nearly decade-long Mau-Mau uprising that took place in Kenya in the 1950s. The full sacrifice he made and personal tragedy he suffered comes slowly and deliberately into focus; resulting in a denouement that packs a powerfully emotional gut punch.

SIFF 2011: Trollhunter ***

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 28, 2011)

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Like previous entries in horror’s “found footage” sub-genre,  Trollhunter features an unremarkable, no-name cast; but then again you don’t really require the services of an Olivier when most of the dialog is along the lines of “Where ARE you!?”, “Jesus, look at the size of that fucking thing!”, “RUN!!!” or the ever popular “AieEEE!”.

Seriously, though- what I like about Andre Ovredal’s film (aside from the surprisingly convincing monsters) is the way he cleverly weaves wry commentary on religion and politics into his narrative. The story concerns three Norwegian film students who initially set off to do an expose on illegal bear poaching, but become embroiled with a clandestine government program to rid Norway of some nasty trolls who have been terrorizing the remote areas of the country (you’ll have to suspend your disbelief as to how the government has been able to “cover up” 200 foot tall monsters rampaging about). The “trollhunter” himself is quite a character. And always remember: while hunting trolls…it’s best to leave the Christians at home!

SIFF 2011: Killing Bono ***

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 28, 2011)

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Killing Bono is a darkly funny, bittersweet and thoroughly engaging rock ‘n’ roll fable from the UK, based on a true story. A cross between Anvil: The Story of Anvil and I Shot Andy Warhol, it revisits familiar territory: the trials and tribulations of the “almost famous”.

Dublin-based writer/aspiring rock star Neil McCormick (Ben Barnes) co-founds a band called Yeah! Yeah! with his brother Ivan (Robert Sheehan) right about the same time that their school chum Paul Hewson puts together a quartet who call themselves The Hype. The two outfits engage in a friendly race to see who can get signed to a label first. Eventually, the Hype change their name to U2, Hewson reinvents himself as “Bono” and-well, you know.

In the meantime, the McCormick brothers go nowhere fast, as the increasingly embittered and obsessed Neil plays Salieri to Bono’s Mozart. There are likely very few people on the planet who know what it feels like to be Pete Best (aside from Pete Best)-but I suspect that one of the players in this particular drama knows that feeling-and my heart goes out to him (no spoilers!). Nick Hamm directs a wonderful cast, which includes a fine swan song performance from the great Pete Postlethwaite (R.I.P.).

SIFF 2011: The Trip ****

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 28, 2011)

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Pared down into feature film length from the 6-episode BBC TV series of the same name, Michael Winterbottom’s film is essentially a highlight reel of that show-which is not to denigrate it, because it is the most genuinely hilarious comedy I’ve seen in many a moon. The levity is due in no small part to Winterbottom’s two stars-Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, basically playing themselves in this mashup of Sideways and My Dinner With Andre.

Coogan is asked by a British newspaper to take a “restaurant tour” of England’s bucolic Lake District, and review the eateries. He initially plans to take his girlfriend along, but since their relationship is going through a rocky period, he asks his pal, fellow actor Brydon, to accompany him. This simple narrative setup is basically an excuse to sit back and enjoy Coogan and Brydon’s brilliant comic riffing (much of it feels improvised) on everything from relationships to the “proper” way to do Michael Caine impressions. There’s some unexpected poignancy-but for the most part, it’s pure comedy gold.

SIFF 2011: Gainsbourg: a Heroic Life *1/2

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 28, 2011)

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Well…it was intriguing on paper.

So who was Serge Gainsbourg? He was a so-so painter, questionable poet and inexplicable pop music icon (well, in France). Nonetheless, he apparently was quite the babe magnet (he bedded Bardot and wedded English supermodel Jane Birkin, the latter with with whom he co-created his Greatest Hit-the talented Charlotte Gainsbourg).

His music career was largely built on the success of one tune-“Je t’aime…moi non plus”, featuring Birkin essentially feigning an orgasm at the denouement, over an organ riff suspiciously similar to “A Whiter Shade of Pale” (surely paving the way for future seduction mix tape staples like “Love to Love You Baby” and “Jungle Fever”).

Star Eric Elmosnino bears an uncanny resemblance and chain-smokes Gitanes with conviction, but director Joann Sfar seems more enamored with his own cinematic technique than with his subject; it’s an impressionistic study that barely makes any impression at all.

SIFF 2011: Bruce Lee, My Brother **

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 28, 2011)

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Co-directors Manfred Wong (who also wrote the screenplay) and Wai Man Yip based this biopic on the memoir of  Bruce Lee’s younger brother Robert (although it is interesting to note the disclaimer in the opening credits that disavows any endorsement by or participation with Lee’s estate). Not that the film necessarily dishes any dirt. In fact, it’s a relatively tame, by-the-numbers affair, recounting young Lee Jun-fan’s formative years growing up in Hong Kong (he was born in San Francisco, but his acting-troupe parents were not U.S. citizens). For a movie about someone who went on to become one of filmdom’s premier action movie superstars, there’s very little action. Still, it’s slick and entertaining (if short on insight) and leading man Aarif Rahman plays his role with verve.

SIFF 2011: Another Earth ***1/2

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 28, 2011)

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Writer-director Mike Cahill’s auspicious narrative feature debut concerns an M.I.T.-bound young woman (co-scripter Brit Marling) who makes a fateful decision to get behind the wheel after a few belts. The resultant tragedy kills two people, and leaves the life of the survivor, a music composer (William Mapother) in shambles.After serving prison time, the guilt-wracked young woman, determined to do penance, ingratiates herself into the widower’s life (he doesn’t realize who she is). Complications ensue.

Another Earth is a “sci-fi” film mostly in the academic sense; don’t expect to see CGI aliens in 3-D. Orbiting somewhere in proximity of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, its concerns are more metaphysical than astrophysical. And not unlike a Tarkovsky film, it demands your full and undivided attention. Prepare to have your mind blown.

Big Star in heaven: RIP Alex Chilton

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on March 20, 2010)

O My Soul:  Alex Chilton, 1951-2010

In the early to mid 70s, a then yet-to-be-named rock ‘n’ roll subgenre emerged. It was a sound that took chiming Beatlesque harmonies and jangly Roger Mcguinn chord shapes, threw in a dash of The Who, Small Faces and the Kinks, plugged it all into a Marshall stack and said all that it had to say in 3 minutes. Thusly, “power pop” was born. For my money, the Holy Trinity of its first wave was Badfinger, The Raspberries, and Big Star. The latter outfit proved to be the most influential, paving the way for bands like Cheap Trick, The Flamin’ Groovies and Pezband, kicking the door open for early 1980s New Wave power poppers like The Plimsouls, 20/20, The Records, The Shoes and The dBs.

Big Star co-founder Alex Chilton may not be a household name, but to power pop aficionados, he is an icon; I was saddened to hear of his death this week at age 59. I still get a warm and fuzzy feeling whenever a Big Star staple like “When My Baby’s Beside Me”, “September Gurls”, or “Back of a Car” pops up in my mp3 player’s shuffle. Anyone who has heard “The Letter” by his first band, the Boxtops will surely recognize his voice (unbelievably, the owner of those soulful pipes was only 16 at the time).

I once had the pleasure of seeing Chilton perform here in Seattle during a Big Star revival tour, with a lineup that included original Big Star drummer Jody Stephens, along with local musicians Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies (one of the better contemporary power pop bands). It was a magical evening, with the 50-ish Chilton demonstrating to the crowd that he still had “it”. Please join me, as we bow our heads for a four-chord salute:

I owe my soles to the company store: Repo Men **1/2

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on March 20, 2010)

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Inside scoopers: Jude Law and Forest Whitaker in Repo Men

You could say that the new sci-fi action thriller Repo Men is a film with heart-as well as kidneys, livers, lungs and the odd spleen. David Cronenberg meets John Woo at the corner of Brazil and Logan’s Run in this dystopian vision of a near-future in which life-extending high-tech advancements in organ replacement have become available to all.

Teabaggers needn’t panic-it isn’t a government-sponsored health care program; as long as you flash a credit card, make a down payment and sign up for an EZ installment plan, you too can be the happy recipient of a shiny new mechanical bladder (hopefully bereft of any “sudden acceleration” issues). There is one catch. If your account goes delinquent, a repo man is sent to retrieve it…with no regards as to anything else it might be attached to.

Organ repo is a messy job, but somebody has to do it; somebody who is stealthy, skilled with knives, impervious to pleas for mercy, has a good gag reflex and doesn’t mind paperwork. Remy (Jude Law) and his long time partner Jake (Forest Whitaker) are two such men. For example, Jake has no problem excusing himself from a backyard barbecue  to perform a quick “favor”-the unceremonious disembowelment of a deadbeat client in the driveway, then returning to the business of grilling hot dogs and shooting the shit with family and co-workers. As he reminds Remy, “A job… is a job.”

Remy has been suffering through a personal crisis . His wife (Carice van Houten) is at the end of her rope; she’s tired of him leapngi out of bed at 3am to go running off into the night so he can yank out some hapless debtor’s entrails in order to keep food on the table. Under threat of separation, she’s pressuring him to go into sales-but he’s a repo man, through and through, and knows he’s not, erm, cut out for sales (you could say he’s more of an “opener” than a “closer”). The weaselly head of sales (Liev Schreiber) knows that as well-Remy is his number one man in the field, and he’d prefer to keep him there.

Fate intervenes when Remy suffers a heart attack while out on a call. Awakening from a coma, he discovers that he’s being kept alive with a “Jarvik-39”. The bad news is that he can’t recall signing the sales contract that now makes him an indebted client of his own employer, which makes him subject to that fine print about overdue accounts. I’ll give you three guesses as to what happens next.

Although Repo Men borrows freely from the films I mentioned earlier, it is directed with a certain amount of verve by Miguel Sapochnik. The screenplay, adapted by Eric Garcia and Garrett Lerner from Garcia’s own novel The Repossession Mambo, works best when it waxes satirical, which helps take the edge off the gruesome aspects.

Although I am quite squeamish when it comes to blood and guts, the “repossessions” didn’t bother me; perhaps because it was so over the top as to be cartoonish. The action scenes are stylish and well-choreographed, which moves things along. One kinky and visceral scene sure to have audiences buzzing involves Law and Alice Braga (as a character who is like the Bionic Woman-with bad credit). I wouldn’t exactly call it a “sex” scene, but it is consensual, and does involve penetration (that’s all I’m prepared to disclose at this time).

I’ve gleaned some fan boy hysteria on the web concerning this film’s alleged similarities to the indie musical Repo: The Genetic Opera, which I have not seen, nor frankly had ever heard of until I was doing some background research for my review. So alas, I can only offer ambivalence regarding this particular issue. Then again, if I allowed myself to lose sleep over every Hollywood script that was cloned from another Hollywood script, I would suffer terminal insomnia.

It is kismet that the film is opening just as the health care bill debacle is coming to a head. I’m sure the filmmakers see that merely as happy coincidence, as I didn’t sense any purposeful political subtext (aside that one could interpret the film to represent the speculative extreme of an unregulated free market-health care system, just as Robocop did for the concept of corporate-run law enforcement). Aw, hell, I’m thinking too much. See it for the cool action scenes.

Two new stars in heaven: Tony Curtis and Arthur Penn

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on October 2, 2010)

Match me, Sidney: RIP Tony Curtis 1925-2010

Tony Curtis was likely better known to the general public in recent years from his appearances on TV talk shows (and as Jamie Lee Curtis’ dad), but for those of us “of a certain age” he was, and will always remain, a Movie Star-in the classic sense. He may not have vibed the smoldering, “Method” intensity of contemporaries like Monty Clift, Brando or James Dean, but there was no denying that he was ridiculously handsome, charismatic, and possessed of an effortless versatility (the latter of which many critics seemed to overlook-undoubtedly due to that Bronx honk). Granted, the bulk of his best work may have been behind him by the late 60s, but it’s still an impressive body of work.

I’m sure that the majority of people would say that his memorable pairing with Jack Lemmon in Billy Wilder’s wonderful and riotous 1959 screwball romp Some Like It Hot rates as their favorite Tony Curtis performance, but for me, that runs a close second to his role as the slime ball press agent Sidney Falco in the 1957 film noir, The Sweet Smell of Success. Curtis gives a knockout performance as the toady who shamelessly sucks up to Burt Lancaster’s JJ Hunsecker, a powerful NYC entertainment columnist who can launch (or sabotage) show biz careers with a flick of his poison pen .

Although it was made 50 years ago, the film retains its edge and remains one of the most vicious and cynical ruminations on America’s obsession with fame and celebrity. Alexander Mackendrick directed, and the sharp Clifford Odets/Ernest Lehman screenplay veritably drips with venom. Lots of quotable lines; Barry Levinson paid homage in his 1982 film Diner, with a character who is obsessed with the film and drops in and out of scenes, incessantly quoting the dialogue.

Rounding off my Top 10: The Boston Strangler (Curtis received a Golden Globe nomination), The Defiant Ones, Operation Petticoat, Spartacus, The Great Imposter, Houdini, The Vikings, and Insignificance (1985 Nicolas Roeg sleeper-highly recommended!).

American maverick: RIP Arthur Penn 1922-2010

And alas, more sad news-we also lost an artist of note from the other side of the camera this week. Director Arthur Penn was responsible for crafting some of the most significant films of the late 60s to mid 70s (America’s “golden age” of the maverick moviemakers). He was a filmmaker of great intelligence and vision, with deep roots in the theater (which I’m sure is what helped make him such a great “actor’s director” as well).

Most of the more perfunctory obits floating around the last several days might give casual film goers the impression that the only movie he ever made was 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde; and while the importance of that breakthrough work cannot be overstated, one certainly cannot ignore a resume that also includes The Miracle Worker, Alice’s Restaurant and Little Big Man (in which Penn reinvented the western just as surely as he reinvented the crime drama with his 1967 masterpiece). My personal favorites by this director, however, are two less-heralded efforts, which I feel are also two of the best post-1950s film noirs.

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Mickey One –Penn’s 1965 existential film noir stars Warren Beatty as a standup comic who is on the run from the mob. The ultimate intent of this pursuit is never made 100% clear (is it a “hit”, or just a debt collection?), but one thing is certain: viewers will find themselves becoming as unsettled as the twitchy, paranoid protagonist. It’s a Kafkaesque nightmare, with echoes of Godard’s Breathless. A true rarity-an American art film, photographed in expressive, moody chiaroscuro by DP Ghislain Cloquet (who also did the cinematography for Bresson’s classic Au Hasard Balthazar and Woody Allen’s Love and Death).

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The other Penn film that I feel compelled to return to now and then is Night Moves. In this 1975 sleeper, which you could call an existential noir, Gene Hackman gives one of his best performances as a world-weary P.I. with a failing marriage, who becomes enmeshed in a case involving battling ex-spouses, which soon slides into incest, smuggling and murder. Alan Sharp’s multi-layered screenplay cleverly parallels the complexity of the P.I.’s case with ruminations on the equally byzantine mystery as to why human relationships, more often than not, almost seem engineered to fail.

More Penn to explore: Four Friends, The Missouri Breaks, Target, The Chase.