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That Obscure Object of Desire

Daniel Loria — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:39:12 GMT

Transformations Buñuel cast the Spanish Angela Molina and the French Carole Bouquet in the role of Conchita, two women who don’t look or sound anything alike. The two women alternate scenes in the film haphazardly; while Molina’s fiery Conchita differs somewhat from Bouquet’s more sensual interpretation, their collaboration is more of a surrealist gesture than an attempt at implying a deeper meaning. We therefore see Conchita through Mathieu’s eyes: volatile, erratic, two completely different people occupying the same person.

Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet

Victoria Large — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:46:14 GMT

IFFB IFFB has a history of programming worthwhile music docs, and this one stands out for its compelling subject matter. Vile has a rich story to tell here, but he deserves credit for neither dwelling on what Becker has lost nor milking his latter day achievements – including the release of new music – for sticky sentimentality. Becker’s story gets the sensitive, measured treatment that it deserves.

Aglow

Victoria Large — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:38:32 GMT

IFFB 2012 – “The myth about the muse visiting you is just that – a myth,” artist Paul Chojnowski says in Aglow, a short documentary about his work. Indeed, while I’ve seen a number of films about visual artists throughout the years at IFFB, Aglow offers perhaps the most practical view of the art world. Chojnowski is very much aware of his professional profile and the potential markets for his art, which influence the subject matter and even the size of some pieces. Director Howard Libov takes us inside meetings with art dealers, and Chojnowski voices his desire to “negotiate a poster deal.”

Yet while the above might sound cynical, it’s also an underrepresented reality for many artists. Libov also doesn’t focus strictly on business, capturing Chojnowski at work in his studio, where he creates cityscapes and small narratives using his signature ingredient: fire. The careful planning that goes into each piece is evident, reflecting the methodical attitude that Chojnowski brings to his business dealings. By focusing on all aspects of Chojnowski’s working life, Libov gives us a unique glimpse at art as a profession.

The Love Competition

Victoria Large — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:17:44 GMT

IFFB 2012 – The subject matter of director Brent Hoff’s entertaining short documentary The Love Competition is in itself intriguing: researchers at Stanford ask their human subjects to “love” as much as they can while in an MRI machine. The researchers than study the results to see who has produced the most love – neurologically speaking. The varied choices of love objects on the part of the contestants is fascinating. People think of spouses and significant others, certainly, but there’s also a ten-year-old contestant who chooses to focus on his baby cousin, a young man who opts to think of “the first eight months” of his relationship with his ex, and a twenty-four-year-old woman who plans to meditate on love itself. The results are surprising, and offer viewers a chance to reflect on their own definitions of love.

Face/Off

Glenn Heath Jr. — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:07:50 GMT

Transformations The mortal coil that binds Sean Archer and Castor Troy, with both John Travolta and Nicolas Cage getting to engage the stoic desperation of the former and the manic sadism of the latter, is essentially a dynamic physical tango. As the actors transform, with the normally heroic Travolta turning into a diabolical madman and the usually maniacal Cage turning vulnerable and thoughtful, it almost feels like both performers are trying to deconstruct and amplify the persona each has spent years perfecting.

Time Zero: The Last Year of Polaroid Film

Victoria Large — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:34:55 GMT

IFFB Time Zero’s story doesn’t end with the end of Polaroid film. The latter portion of the documentary traces the evolution of The Impossible Project, an incredibly ambitious undertaking aimed at reformulating and reintroducing instant film. It’s great seeing fans of analog photography turning their outrage into action, and the story largely hits its stride with the introduction of this real-life narrative twist. Indeed, though not perfect, Time Zero is an informative and often quite engaging look at an analog obsession—and its unexpected next act.

The Curse of the Cat People

Victoria Large — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:48:48 GMT

Transformations Irena’s transformation in this film, then, is not the expected shift from human to beast, but rather a change from a supernatural menace to a supernatural(?) comfort. Through Amy’s eyes, Irena becomes the perfect childhood friend: a fairy princess, playmate, and caregiver rolled into one. In that scene where Amy calls out, awaken by a nightmare, and Alice shrugs the noise off instead of checking on her daughter, it’s Irena who sings Amy to sleep. That’s kind of the melancholy heart of the film right there: a rejected child turns to a dreamed-up dead woman; or to read it another way, to her imagination – herself – for help.

Cerro Rico, Tierra Rica

Katherine Follett — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:38:13 GMT

IFFB In the high desert plateau of Bolivia is a mountain, Cerro Rico, that once seemed to be a pure tower of silver ore. After thousands of years of human work, almost all the silver is gone, but a large community relies on the tin, zinc, lead, and lithium that still lies in the mine-riddled mountain and on nearby salt flats. This stark economy is the subject of the documentary Cerro Rico, Tierra Rica.

An American Werewolf in London

Victoria Large — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:55:38 GMT

TRANSFORMATIONS The guilt and anxiety doesn’t dissipate; it just builds to a crescendo, consistently undermining the film’s romantic subplot. After David has gone home with his sympathetic hospital nurse, Alex, and enjoyed a Van Morrison-soundtracked romp with her in the bedroom (and shower), he wakes in the middle of the night and finds his dead friend lurking in the bathroom mirror—a great stinger of a scare that’s been imitated ever since). Of course Jack is there. In the wake of the attack, David can’t simply be a young man enjoying a surprise love affair in London, not without consequence.

Headhunters

Victoria Large — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:17:49 GMT

IFFB The film never approaches the pathos of, say, the Coen brothers’ Fargo, in which Jerry Lundegaard’s speedily unraveling plans carry with them a sobering dash of reality and even banality. Headhunters, adapted from a novel by Jo Nesbø, will win most of its fans with its high style and audacious setpieces. Still, it makes for a worthy diversion to take in—perhaps through splayed fingers.

Teen Wolf Too

Katherine Follett — Thu, 10 May 2012 20:31:12 GMT

Transformations It’s difficult to focus much on Todd’s physical transformations. It’s clear throughout the film that its budget is even less than that of Teen Wolf, or, honestly, that of the Thriller video. Todd’s switch from boy to wolf happens in discrete cuts, switching from non-transformed to fully-transformed with makeup already intact. There is almost no sense of an evolution from one to the other, and the makeup feels cheap and obvious. Jason Bateman can’t help being lovable, but his white-bread boyishness seeps through even full wolf makeup, and once transformed, he acts more like a pet than a wild animal.

Sun Don’t Shine

Katherine Follett — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:46:29 GMT

IFFB Sun Don’t Shine is simple and completely stripped-down. There is a hysterical young woman, a man, an old car, an ominous object in the trunk, and the relentlessly stifling Florida sunshine. Out of these few ingredients, director and writer Amy Seimetz creates a small but haunting and inescapable portrait of desperation.

Teen Wolf

Evan Kindley — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:00:05 GMT

Transformations The solution to all of his problems, of course, is for Scott to turn into a werewolf, which he proceeds to do: a transformation that makes him popular, attractive to the ladies, and excellent at basketball while giving him almost no lupine characteristics. In contrast to its antecedent, 1957’s I Was A Teenage Werewolf, where the title character’s werewolfism is perceived as a problem and implicitly likened to a psychiatric disorder, in Teen Wolf lycanthropy is pretty much a lifestyle choice: Scott seems to retain total control over when he turns, and his transformation is cheered by his fellow students.

Polisse

Katherine Follett — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:34:23 GMT

IFFB The film is haphazardly put together, with quick editing, a huge load of characters, and cases that weave in and out without resolution. At times, this style is immersive, and I’m grateful that the filmmakers managed to stay away from the reality-TV hand-held-camera technique that seems to have overtaken “naturalistic” US films. On the other hand, the film’s style doesn’t allow scenes and characters to unfold in anything like real time or even narrative time, causing an abruptness that undermines the storytelling.

The Toxic Avenger

David Carter — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:50:40 GMT

Transformations Post-transformation, Melvin has mutated from a meek victim into a hulking monstrosity capable of doing whatever he pleases. He becomes a hero by accident, coincidentally being in the right place at the right time to mete out gory, arm-ripping justice. While foiling a restaurant robbery, Melvin saves and later becomes romantically involved with Sarah, a beautiful blind woman. The tragedy of his mutation has become a triumph. Melvin now has everything he desired in his previous life: power, respect, and love.

All-Ages: The Boston Hardcore Film

Katherine Follett — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:48:38 GMT

IFFB It makes sense that gritty, dense, repressed Boston also had a thriving hardcore punk scene, but few people outside New England have probably heard of SS Decontrol, Freeze, Jerry’s Kids, or the F.U.s. Though it certainly shrinks the target audience for All-Ages: The Boston Hardcore Film, this anonymity also ensured that Boston hardcore remained an endeavor of, by, and for the kids. As a result, All-Ages is a documentary less about a music scene and more about what feels like a family.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

Jonathan Foltz — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:30:58 GMT

Transformations There is no disguising that the film is about the necessity, and problems, of leaving childhood behind, but Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is actually quite ambivalent about the form of maturity which it presents as a happy ending. The scenes of shrinking and unshrinking themselves are not prolonged spectacles, like many adolescent werewolf transformations that cloak a knowledge of budding sexuality and the body’s distention. Instead, these transformations happen almost instantaneously, lending a magical unreality to their effects; still, the film opts to give thickness and visceral force to the sticky, magnified world of grass and insects that the children wander through, negotiating their maturity but also resisting it.

Burn

Victoria Large — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:15:10 GMT

IFFB The film offers a sharply detailed view of Detroit, but it also speaks to larger crises in American right now: fire stations around the country are facing problems similar to those seen in Detroit, and what’s more, the country’s view of what it means to be a public servant seems to have shifted. A firefighter expresses his dismay that firefighters, teachers, and policemen are cast in a negative light in the political arena, despite the vital and challenging nature of their work.

The Women

Josh Bell — Sun, 06 May 2012 17:29:25 GMT

TCM Fest George Cukor’s cast features no male actors, and yet the unseen male characters often motivate the action far more than the women onscreen. The uniformly strong performances ease some of the discomfort, since stars like Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell and Joan Crawford bring such verve to their characters that it’s easy to imagine their subjugating themselves to men as a strange sort of empowerment rather than the oppression it really is.

Behind the Eyes are the Ears

Victoria Large — Fri, 04 May 2012 22:38:58 GMT

BALAGAN – Screening at the Brattle Theatre as part of this month’s Balagan film series, Nancy Andrews’ experimental short Behind the Eyes are the Ears offers a dreamlike mix of images, blending found footage with animation and live action, with each frame tinted a single color, like a silent film. Andrews’ images of part-human, part-insect creatures (there are insects with human heads and humans with insect eyes, recalling creatures out of monster movie classics like The Fly) have the power to stay on one’s mind, and the short has a hypnotic quality as well as a sense of humor.

“I’ve not gotten much support from my work from the mainstream scientific community,” Dr. Sheri Myes, the film’s ostensible lead character, says of her work as her animated profile grows distorted – she sprouts eyes and spider legs from her head. It’s a particularly idiosyncratic tale of transformation, blending our B-movie heritage with the avant-garde.