TIFF ’11: Pearl Jam Twenty (d. Cameron Crowe) + Sarah Palin: You Betcha! (ds. Nick Broomfield & Joan Churchill)

Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Documentary, Film Festivals, Music, TIFF, TIFF 11, UK

When Cameron Crowe’s Pearl Jam Twenty was over, I lined up to use the bathroom between two other people, a woman and a man, who were at the same screening. The woman, who looked perhaps like she might’ve been in kindergarten when Pearl Jam‘s “Ten” came out, asked me, “That Chris Connell [sic], the guy with the–” she crooked her finger over her lip to indicate a pencil moustache, “–was he in the band?” “No,” I said, “he’s the lead singer of Soundgarden.” “Oh,” she replied, and I could tell this answer didn’t satisfy her in the least, but the bathroom became vacant and she excused herself. Then the man behind me, who was closer to my age (36) and patchouli-scented, wanted to know what I thought of the film. I told him that as someone who lost track of the band–lost interest in it is the truth, but something told me not to say that, for he’d take it personally–after “Ten,” I had trouble keeping up with it. He nodded sagely and said, “The thing about the drummers?”

A Very Civil Dialogue: FFC Interviews Tom Shadyac

Posted in2011, Authors: Ian Pugh, Documentary, Interviews

TshadyacinterviewtitleMay 1, 2011|”Ian, my brother.” A casual greeting turned into an awkward embrace, and I realized then that all the time I had spent researching director Tom Shadyac’s career wasn’t going to play much of a role in the ensuing conversation. Shadyac was in town to discuss I Am, his self-conscious documentary break from light family fare–which, he hopes, will change a few minds about the essential nature of humanity. (If he doesn’t consider the days of Ace Ventura, The Nutty Professor, and Bruce Almighty to be behind him, this was not, I correctly surmised, the publicity tour on which to discuss it.) When we sat down to talk, I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about I Am. The director sensed my skepticism from the very beginning, and he didn’t try to convert me in any traditional sense of the word. He just wanted to hash out our respective feelings on the film and have a decent conversation about them. I sort of wish that his vibrant personality shone through in I Am as well as it did in person; his statements here were delivered like an interesting university lecture, whereas the movie feels a bit more hectoring in its approach. And, yes, he followed through with a second hug at the end of the interview.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011) + I Am (2011)

Posted in****/****, 2011, Authors: Ian Pugh, Canada, Directors: Werner Herzog, Documentary, France, Germany, Theatrical, UK

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS
****/****
directed by Werner Herzog

I AM
**/****
directed by Tom Shadyac

by Ian Pugh The introduction to Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams is unforgettably right. Ever the inquisitive narrator, Herzog tells us that, upon its rediscovery in the mid-’90s, France’s Chauvet Cave did not appear to be of unique significance, “other than being particularly beautiful.” But, say they hadn’t found the prehistoric cave paintings within (the oldest on record, with some dating back 32,000 years)–would that ‘particular beauty’ have been enough to inspire Herzog? What is it about this specific cave that made it, and makes it, such a hotbed for creativity? So begins anew our search for mankind’s place in the universe and, moreover, a human imprint on nature, even where one isn’t readily apparent. The skeletons contained in the cave (all animal bones, none human) beg further questions to that end. Was this an altar, perhaps? A refuge for ritual sacrifices?

Hereafter (2010) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

Posted in2000s, 2010, 2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Clint Eastwood, Documentary, Drama, DVD, Fantasy, Romance, Spielberg

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
starring Matt Damon, Cécile De France, Jay Mohr, Bryce Dallas Howard
screenplay by Peter Morgan
directed by Clint Eastwood

by Ian Pugh It’s an age-old problem: how do you make a movie (or write a book, or stage a play) about the broad and ultimately philosophical subject of death? Not like this, that’s for sure. Looking and feeling like it was shot from inside an aquarium, Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter is a failure of staggering proportions. Three stories intertwine to form a bland whole: George (Matt Damon) is an honest-to-gosh psychic who’s trying and failing to stay out of the racket; Marie (Cécile De France) is a French TV presenter who recalls visions of the afterlife after being caught in the Indian Ocean tsunami; and Marcus (Frankie McLaren) is a young lad who seeks answers when his twin brother dies in a traffic accident. Rest assured, their paths will cross in profoundly obvious ways as they wrap their heads around the very concept of death and what comes next. I’m certainly not the first person to compare Hereafter to Babel, but Eastwood offers little alternative. Hereafter approaches the various perceptions of death in the same way that Alejandro González Iñárritu approached “life,” and the end result is equally bloated and condescending.

Sundance ’11: If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front

Posted in2011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Crime, Documentary, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance, Thriller, UK
**/****directed by Marshall Curry by Alex Jackson I have officially reached the point in my life where when I see a cop beating up on a hippie, I identify with the cop. There's a shot in Marshall Curry's If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front in which the police spray two ELF members directly in the eyes with mace during a peaceful sit-in. Some audience members behind me interjected, I think by pure reflex, "That's not fair!" But I found myself feeling considerably less enraged. Yes, these protesters were being entirely non-violent, but what alternatives have…

Sundance ’11: Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

Posted in2011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, Film Festivals, Sundance
*½/****directed by Jon Foy by Alex Jackson I'll admit that I can't readily imagine anybody ever making a better film on the subject of the Toynbee Tile phenomenon than Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles. The problem isn't that it's done poorly--it's that anybody thought it should have been done at all. Filmmakers Justin Duerr, Jon Foy, Colin Smith, and Steve Weinik worked on this project for five years, but I don't really understand why. Were they actually hoping to solve the mystery? And if they solved it, well, what then? Insofar as the Toynbee Tiles hold any…

Sundance ’11: Crime After Crime

Posted in2011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Crime, Documentary, Film Festivals, Sundance
***/****documentary; directed by Yoav Potash by Alex Jackson From 1983 to 2009, Deborah Peagler was incarcerated at the Central California Women's Facility for the murder of her boyfriend, Oliver Wilson. Wilson battered Peagler, forced her into prostitution, and molested her daughter from a previous relationship, but because he took out an insurance policy before his death naming Peagler as a beneficiary, and because the actual murder was carried out by two Crips she went to for protection, the district attorney at the time presented this as a hired killing. All evidence of abuse at the hands of Wilson was suppressed.…

Sundance ’11: The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Posted in****/****, 2011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, Film Festivals, Music, Sundance, Sweden
****/****directed by Göran Hugo Olsson by Alex Jackson Goran Hugo Olsson's The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 begins with a disclaimer explaining that this film is not intended to categorically define the Black Power movement, but merely to represent a few Swedish filmmakers' impressions of it. This seemingly innocuous statement raises more questions than it answers. Why would Swedes want to tell this story in the first place? Do they have the right to tell this story? And what's the point of looking at the Black Power movement of the late-Sixties and early-Seventies in 2011? It seems the moment you make…

TIFF 2010: Wrap It Up

Posted in2010, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Documentary, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Horror, Music, Mystery, Sci-Fi, South Korea, Superhero, Thriller, TIFF, TIFF 10, Time Travel

by Bill Chambers

  • The films are fading fast in the rearview for me (no reflection on them, necessarily), but before they become too vestigial I want to at least highlight the rest of what I saw at this year’s TIFF, starting with a movie called White Irish Drinkers (*/****). How I wound up catching this flick is fairly embarrassing: the director is “John Gray,” which I misread in my bleary, end-of-festival state as “James Gray.” I was severely late for the flick, so I don’t want to pummel it (or even officially rate it), but keen auteurist that I am, I figured out my mistake pretty quickly: James Gray just wouldn’t have a naked girl (the maddeningly familiar Leslie Murphy) run around a cemetery with “free spirit” music cued up on the soundtrack–he’s not a de facto film student anymore. Though it turns out that John Gray has an extensive TV-movie resume, having done everything from The Marla Hanson Story to the remake of Brian’s Song, this feels very much the work of a novice, not a little for its pretensions to be the next Mean Streets. Because Stephen Lang salvaged Public Enemies virtually single-handedly, I was hopeful when he turned up here, but his character may be even more one-note than the one he played in Avatar. As his put-upon wife, Karen Allen has seemingly recovered from the stupefying euphoria of getting to resurrect her iconic Marion in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Strangely, I missed said goofy grin, yet she makes the most of a thankless role that indirectly references her previous brush with this genre, Philip Kaufman’s The Wanderers. The rest of the cast is made up of baby-faced thugs who have to be given black eyes at regular intervals in order to pass for tough. On a related note, I never could shake the feeling that this is exactly the sort of project Vinnie Chase would be hot for on “Entourage”.

I’m Still Here (2010)

Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2010, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Esoterica, Jack Nicholson, Music, Satire, Theatrical

****/****
starring Joaquin Phoenix, Antony Langdon, Casey Affleck, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs
screenplay by Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix
directed by Casey Affleck 

by Ian Pugh It’s far too easy to believe that Casey Affleck’s I’m Still Here hinges on whether or not its subject has perpetrated a hoax. Joaquin Phoenix grows a lunatic’s beard, declares he’s quitting acting, and starts planning a hip-hop career? Surely, he can’t be serious. But here’s how it ends, kids: yes, I guess you could call it a “put-on” in the strictest sense of the word–yet at the same time, he is deadly serious. What needs to be understood about Phoenix, and this film, is that there was a kernel of truth to everything the man mumbled through that maniacal persona. I do believe that Phoenix is tired of acting (or, at least, tired of stardom), and, for his farewell performance, he’s blurred the line between actor and role so completely as to obliterate all our preconceived notions of who he is and what he is supposed to represent. The false Phoenix–the bedraggled, abusive prophet spouting non-sequiturs–is, for all intents and purposes, the “real” Phoenix, the iconic artist who pulls a disappearing act by forcing the art and the iconography to consume his entire being. You can’t call I’m Still Here a mockumentary, exactly, because, inside and outside of the “act,” that is precisely what happened. And what came out of it is a harrowing thought exercise about artistic failure and the baggage of celebrity.

Soul Power (2009) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2009, 2010, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Concert Doc, Documentary, Music

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
directed by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte

by Jefferson Robbins There’s a double filter of nostalgia on Soul Power, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte’s assemblage of decades-old footage from the Zaire ’74 music festival. The Kinshasa-based event opened the fabled Muhammad Ali-George Foreman bout “The Rumble in the Jungle,” where Ali reclaimed the world heavyweight championship–back when the thought that music and sport could change the world seemed less far-fetched. But while the concert showcase captures stirring performances from some of soul music’s greatest figures, it still winds up being only half a documentary. The miles of film accumulated in Kinshasa–shot by Albert Maysles, among other notables–sat in storage until it got aired out for Leon Gast’s rousing sports doc When We Were Kings in 1996. That piece is a valuable curation, recording exactly how Ali-Foreman (mostly Ali, by seizing the narrative early) energized a nation oppressed first by Belgian colonialism, then by Mobutu Sese Seko’s dictatorship. That’s not to mention how the fight (again, via Ali) reasserted ties between African-Americans and their ancestral continent, and was billed (by Don King) as a triumph for American black pride.

It Might Get Loud (2009) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2009, 2010, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Documentary, Music

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
directed by Davis Guggenheim

by Bryant Frazer In the U2 concert film Rattle and Hum, Bono finishes speechifying about Apartheid in the middle of the song “Silver and Gold” by growling an acid faux-apology: “Am I buggin’ ya? Don’t mean to bug ya.” Then he says, “OK, Edge–play the blues,” and The Edge holds up his guitar and goes WEEDLE-DEEDLE-DEEDLE-DEEDLE-DEEDLE-DEEDLE-DEEDLE! Watching the movie with friends in college, I always savoured the absurdity of that moment. We imagined Bono scrunching up his face in a grimace and scolding The Edge for reverting to his ordinary clamour. “Aw, Edge,” he might say, “that ain’t the blues. That’s the same shit you always play.” And I’d collapse in helpless laughter.

Sundance ’10: Smash His Camera

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Alex Jackson, Documentary, Film Festivals, Sundance
**/****directed by Leon Gast by Alex Jackson Leon Gast's Smash His Camera isn't much more than bubble gum: it's kind of sweet for a while and gives you something to chew on, but it has no nutritional value. A hagiography of paparazzo Ron Galella, the film is so deliriously meta in conception that it feels like some kind of joke at our expense. We're told by one of Galella's critics that his photographs are interesting simply because he photographs interesting people--we look at them for the subject, not for the artistry. That's all quite true, and perhaps even so obvious…

Sundance ’10: Double Take

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Alex Jackson, Belgium, Documentary, Esoterica, Film Festivals, Germany, Netherlands, Sundance
***/****starring Ron Burrage, Mark Perrywritten and directed by Johan Grimonprez by Alex Jackson Johan Gimonprez's Double Take imagines an instance where Alfred Hitchcock is interrupted from filming 1963's The Birds to talk to his "double." This doppelgänger is from 1980--the year, you may remember (or reasonably guess), that Hitchcock died--and not his "double" at all, but rather his wraith, a vision of himself on the eve of his death. Hitchcock asks him who wins the Cold War and the wraith dismisses the question as unimportant. He wants to talk about how television is destroying cinema. The bulk of Double Take…
This Is It (2009) – Blu-ray Disc

This Is It (2009) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2009, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Concert Doc, Documentary, Music

**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B-
directed by Kenny Ortega

by Ian Pugh Cobbled together from the rehearsals for Michael Jackson’s planned fifty-show tour, the almost-concert film This Is It is intended to provide a simulacrum of the man’s “vision” before his untimely death. However, its primary attraction may very well be the rumble you feel from the unforgettable basslines of “Smooth Criminal” and “Beat It” when played in a movie theatre. It proves an experience unto itself, as does watching Jackson perform his greatest hits with impossible elegance–but the picture stumbles whenever it slows things down to hold a love-in for Jacko, which is pretty often. This Is It gets itself into trouble off the bat, with the unending praise from the singer’s tearfully grateful dancers (pre-audition/pre-mortem) giving way to a screen bathed in white light and a choir of angels; the whole affair is so beatific that it crosses the line from loving eulogy to revival tent. It’s a feeling the film never quite shakes.

The Cove (2009) + Home (2009)

Posted in2000s, 2009, 2010, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Crime, Documentary, DVD, France

THE COVE
***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B+
directed by Louie Psihoyos

HOME
***/**** Image C+ Sound B-
directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

by Jefferson Robbins Critically assessing the environmental documentary is often a hard road, because it forces you to bear the competing tensions of shame, anger, and self-righteousness. You know you’re part of the problem as you sit there spinning a petrol-derived video disc, typing on a laptop with tantalum capacitors strip-mined from Africa, but, damnit, you didn’t personally spit-roast those lemurs. The best you can hope for, usually, is some beautiful photography, a compelling story, and a degree of responsibility on the filmmakers’ part–a commitment to balancing science and passion in respectful measure.

Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001) [Deluxe Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DIFF/SDFF, Documentary, DVD, Film Festivals, Sports

***/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B
BD – Image C- Sound A Extras B
directed by Stacy Peralta

by Walter Chaw Winner of the Audience and Director’s awards at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, the kinetic social history document Dogtown and Z-Boys suggests that the amalgamation of art and sport created a unique brand of protest performance art centred around eight kids growing up in the “dead wonderland” of Venice Beach (and the surrounding urban wasteland referred to by the locals as Dogtown). Directed by Stacy Peralta, a member of the legendary Zephyr Skating Team that almost single-handedly defined the modern X-Game at the 1975 Del Mar Nationals Bahne-Cadillac Skateboard Championship, Dogtown and Z-Boys accomplishes several tasks at once, evoking the ethic that captured the imagination of American punks, portraying the dangers of stardom, and telling a rags-to-riches fable about how boys (and a girl) from the wrong side of the tracks sometimes make good on their own terms. The film is so intent on harnessing the off-the-cuff spirit that informed the Zephyr Team (“Z-Boys”) that we hear narrator Sean Penn cough and clear his throat.

A Serious Man (2009); The Invention of Lying (2009); Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)

Posted in2000s, 2009, Authors: Ian Pugh, Coen Brothers, Comedy, Crime, Documentary, Drama, Esoterica, France, Romance, Satire, Theatrical, UK

A SERIOUS MAN
***½/****
starring Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick
written and directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

THE INVENTION OF LYING
*½/****
starring Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner, Jonah Hill, Tina Fey
written and directed by Ricky Gervais & Matthew Robinson

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY
**½/****
directed by Michael Moore

by Ian Pugh The appropriate, even inevitable capper to a loose nihilist trilogy following No Country for Old Men and Burn After Reading, the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man is so utterly dark and dire that it almost plays like self-reflexive parody–an adaptation of Barton Fink's "beautiful" wrestling script, perhaps, or an honest-to-gosh realization of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? Preston Sturges imagined once upon a time. Even the title is sarcastic. This is a scenario whereby life-altering misfortunes fall with ridiculous timing and precision; the dismal tides and the coming storms are now damningly literal, such that it's nearly impossible to take it with any semblance of seriousness. In making time during the game to explain Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, our hapless Job, physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), offers, if you haven't surmised, a fairly concise metaphor for everything that happens in this film. Why are the Coens being so on-the-nose about themes they've lately approached with a legitimately intimidating brilliance? Maybe it's because their mordant philosophy has amassed unprecedented critical and commercial acceptance over their last two pictures. Maybe the idea that anyone could actually commiserate with them strikes the Coens as so terrifying that the time has come to cast such notions aside in the most punishing way possible.1 For now, anyway.

2009 TIFF Bytes #3: A Gun to the Head; Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould

Posted in2000s, 2009, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Documentary, Film Festivals, Music, Thriller, TIFF

Too long for Twitter, too brief for the capsule page, some quick takes on films screened at this year’s TIFF:
A Gun to the Head (d. Blaine Thurier)
Those who, like me, missed Male Fantasy, the sophomore feature of Blaine Thurier, may find themselves at a loss to distinguish between Thurier’s growth as a filmmaker and advancements in digital video since his directorial debut, the better-in-retrospect Low Self Esteem Girl. Thurier’s latest, the Vancouver-lensed A Gun to the Head, is comparatively polished, yet the film, with its focus again on suburban drug culture, feels dismayingly unevolved coming from someone who leads a prolific life that includes a steady gig as the keyboardist for the indie-rock supergroup The New Pornographers–even as it cops to a certain anxiety about abandoning comfortable milieux via Trevor (Tygh Runyan), a newlywed struggling with the demands of marriage in the face of his old freedoms. Basically a bush-league Mikey and Nicky, the picture has Trevor ferrying paranoid cousin Darren (Paul Anthony) all over town on a drug run just to avoid the dinner party his wife (Marnie Robinson, the spitting image of Jordana Spiro) is throwing back home; eventually the two run afoul of Darren’s suppliers, who have already shown themselves capable of murder. I will say that Thurier is good with actors–this cast really brings it, with the suddenly-vivacious Sarah Lind a particular standout. (Revealing hidden comic chops, she plays a nasal-voiced bimbo who only picked up the word for “um” on her trip to Japan.) Lead baddie Hrothgar Mathews unfortunately bears a sometimes-striking resemblance to Glenn Gould the same year a documentary about the famous pianist plays alongside A Gun to the Head at the TIFF. Which leads me to… (**/4, by the way.)