Not Coming to a Theater Near You
What do you think she meant when she said “a huge black monster with giant claws”?
What do you think she meant when she said “a huge black monster with giant claws”?
IFFB coverage – This short chronicle of music enthusiast Paul Mawhinney’s (thus far futile) quest to sell his massive music archive, much of it containing recordings that are unavailable most anywhere else, exposes the interconnection between Mawhinney’s desire to preserve the music of the past and his fear of having his own legacy as an archivist wiped out. His obsessions may be specific, but his desire for somebody to “give a damn” is universal.
by Victoria Large | Source: 35MM Print
31 May 2009 4:12 PM | Submit Comment
IFFB coverage – In this sad, simple sketch of a Pennsylvania general store closing its doors, one interviewee explains how the store’s sleek, chain-store competitors will fail to fill in one of the holes that O.W. Houts & Sons will leave. At those places, he says, “You can’t stand around and bullshit.” Linking thematically to both I Need That Record! and The Archive, this short offers an elegiac glimpse at a disappearing part of American life.
by Victoria Large | Source: 35MM Print
31 May 2009 4:05 PM | Submit Comment
IFFB coverage – This profile of Dutch kinetic sculptor Theo Jansen offers a glimpse at the man’s astonishing creations and unique life’s work that’s more about evoking a mood than delivering the facts. With a running time of only four minutes, it lingers just long enough to take your breath away.
by Victoria Large | Source: 35MM Print
31 May 2009 3:52 PM | Submit Comment
In one of Drag Me to Hell’s characteristically and elaborately nonsensical sequences, Christine, the cursed principle character, encounters the witch she’s been tormented by in her garage. This confrontation is as viscously embellished as the others in the film, what with blood or vomit or some other bodily substance slathered upon our unlucky protagonist at every opportunity, but it’s arguably at this point that Sam Raimi’s absurdest tendency reaches its climax, once the witch is momentarily tempered by an anvil hanging from a truss in Christine’s garage—a determinedly ordinary room full of unused electronic and sports equipment, common implements of suburban residential maintenance, and an anvil hanging from the ceiling.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Universal 35mm print
31 May 2009 1:56 PM | Comments (4)
Resolutely beauteous in its entirety, this is the first proper evocation of Terrence Malick’s central thematic concerns that I’ve seen, even if it doesn’t exactly reach Malick’s transcendence.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: DVD
31 May 2009 1:56 PM | Comments (1)
Joe Swanberg’s latest film is a fine exampling of the themes, characters, and locations that characterize each of his films, which is to say Alexander the Last is a perfectly serviceable independent film concerning twenty-something relational conflicts in nondescript apartments in an urban American location. Of the three Swanberg films I’ve seen, Nights and Weekends remains his most mature and challenging work.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: DVD screener
31 May 2009 1:55 PM | Submit Comment
Just like Minor Threat used to say, “Good guys don’t wear white.” The Western costume is turned around in this two-reeler as Franklyn Farnum dons a black hat and black clothes and plays an alcoholic cowboy with a penchant for shooting bottles and taking his horse into the saloon with him. Meanwhile, a young nurse carries out her patient’s dying request to marry her son so the two can inherit her fortune. To her dismay, the nurse accidentally marries the wrong man – Farnum. Parting ways, the two eventually run into each other when Farnum is hired as a ranch foreman and must go on the wagon. Not only does he have the booze to deal with, but also a jealous suitor with malicious plots of his own.
The story and characters are much more developed than the other Franklyn Farnum two-reeler I saw, The Desert Rat. Instead of the idealistic cowboy hero of high moral values, Farnum plays a highly flawed character, and much of the movie attempts to deal with his own inner battle to overcome alcoholism. It represents a step away from the simplistic conceptions of the genre and a move towards more complex, darker themes that characterize some of the best Westerns.
by Cullen Gallagher | Source: Grapevine VHS
14 May 2009 9:12 AM | Submit Comment
Franklyn Farnum stars in this silent oater as a gold-hungry “Desert Rat.” The movie opens as he and his Native American guide, Standing Bear (played by fellow Western star Buck Jones), return to town rich with gold. A local scheming, lecherous barkeep and his blonde partner-in-crime have designs of their own for how to con Farnum out of his riches. Problems arise when a young woman wanders into town looking for work and finds employment in the saloon. Lust for gold turns to lust for girls when the barkeep turns his attention towards this new girl, who happens to also be Farnum’s long lost love! One bar fight, one main street brawl, and one gunshot later, it is up to Standing Bear to save the day and deliver the happy ending.
Archetypal two-reeler that doesn’t wow you the way a William S. Hart or Tom Mix film can today. Still, a pleasant dusty yarn with nicely illustrated title cards that stand out from the standard text-on-black design from the era.
by Cullen Gallagher | Source: Grapevine VHS
13 May 2009 11:22 PM | Submit Comment
Jim Jarmusch’s new film dispenses with much in the way of characterization or narrative, but it achieves such a consistent, penetrating tone that it doesn’t matter if none of it make much conventional sense at the end; it just feels right. “Tone” is a cinematic quality that is difficult to describe and, I imagine, difficult to coerce, but it’s the spine of many great films, and a signature of many great filmmakers. In Jarmusch’s case, every single frame of this film is characterized by uncertainty, mystique, understatement, incongruity, and cool. Lots and lots and lots of cool. I can see precisely why his movies, and this one in particular, frustrate; and I, to come right out with it, am consistently enthralled by everything he’s done.
(To elaborate on Jarmusch’s tendency for understatement, in this film he manages to understate Boris’ drone metal, which is totally amazing.)
The Limits of Control is aptly titled, considering this is easily Jarmusch’s most considered and deliberate film. Even in Dead Man, to which this film is regularly compared, he implements genre tropes with a sort of ironic distance—this contributes immensely to Dead Man’s humor, but in that film he’s still adhering to pre-established genre components instead of building upon or reinterpreting them. Dead Man is more a philosophical and surreal funeral train in the guise of a Western, whereas The Limits of Control is more unadulterated in levying its influences. It’s drawn from lone wolf crime films, road movies, euro-art movies, but it doesn’t belong to any of these tenets. It is, needless to say, clearly a Jarmusch film.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Focus Features 35mm print
09 May 2009 3:52 PM | Submit Comment
This must be one of the most curious pieces of Hollywood miscasting ever — Cary Grant as a socialist activist (although of course he’s never quite described in the film in those terms) on the run from the police after the town’s local corrupt magnate has had him framed for the burning down of a factory. Fortunately, the screwball comedy soon kicks in with Grant hiding out in the attic of the house that Jean Arthur is renting to law professor Ronald Colman. The argument between Grant and Colman over the law Ñ realism as to its flawed application versus hands-off idealistic abstractions Ñ is simultaneously a romantic rivalry that director George Stevens very nicely underplays, so much so that the outcome is unsure right to the very last shot. Unfortunately, dullness also sets in as the film devolves into something of a civics lesson (the Capra effect: Professor Lightcap Goes To Washington). And there are some frankly bizarre moments, such as when Lightcap shaves off his beard and Stevens gives us a close-up (rare for the film) of Lightcap’s black manservant literally weeping at the sight. It’s a jarring moment both for its excessive sentimentality and its dubious racial politics, and it’s indicative of the lack of control Stevens has over his material as it veers off into to many directions Ñ and doesn’t stay with Jean Arthur enough.
by Ian Johnston | Source: Sony DVD
07 May 2009 1:07 PM | Submit Comment
Wolverine begins with an efficient and succinct montage explaining the early lives of Logan and his half-brother Victor, their one hundred years of fighting wars for America, and their recruitment into a top-secret group of fellow mutants. The montage takes up less than five minutes in total but contains nearly as much exposition as the whole of the film that follows. Wolverine is the very definition of “roller coaster cinema” as it speeds by some interesting ideas at such a breakneck pace that one barely even registers they were there.
In comic books, whenever a character references an event that occurred in a previous issue, a little yellow box appears in one of the corners to guide the reader to the issue in question. Wolverine the film is an extended series of these footnotes; one gets the distinct feeling that everything not shown would have been far more interesting than what ended up on screen. We hear of a government force tracking down dangerous mutants, dramatic escapes from heavily secured prisons, and impressive displays of power. Hear being the operative word since all of those things happen off camera while the audience watches Logan adjust to the quiet life as a lumberjack in the Canadian Rockies. Once the film returns to action sequences during its final act it doesn’t disappoint, however, the remaining scenes are almost apologetically over-the-top as if to compensate for the previous ill-conceived forays into romance and comedy.
There is little of substance in Wolverine but what is there is all the more disappointing because of its brevity. Liev Schreiber gives an excellent performance but is sparsely used. The same can be said for the rest of the cast; everyone but Hugh Jackman and Danny Huston has but a glorified cameo. Still, Wolverine has a likeability to it; a human heart buried somewhere beneath the layers of confusion and explosions. I left the theatre feeling unfulfilled on many levels but thoroughly entertained. In that regard, perhaps Wolverine is one of the more successful comic book adaptations to date. I didn’t get anything out of it, but I immediately wanted to read the next issue.
by David Carter | Source: 20th Century Fox Theatrical Print
03 May 2009 11:01 PM | Submit Comment
The rule of Rain Man would dictate that Jamie Foxx as the mentally imbalanced character would be the flashy role while Robert Downey Jr. as the straight-laced cynic would be the thankless supporting role. Curiously, the inverse is true in the case of The Soloist with Downey Jr. inhabiting the peach of a role while Foxx just barely manages not to be overshadowed. This seems to be a product of both the filmmakers’ intent and the performances. Of course, a quick survey of Downey Jr.’s career reminds that he never plays “the background” anyway (except maybe in U.S. Marshalls). But can it be considered showboating when it’s done by someone this talented? Downey Jr. is a joy to watch at every moment, completely engrossing from start to finish with nary a false note. The only flaw in his performance is beyond his control: the inconsistency of the amount of gray in his hair.
by Stephen Snart | Source: 35MM Print
03 May 2009 3:10 PM | Submit Comment
