Film Reviews

 

By Francesca McCaffery

“The Salt of Life” is a charming film by Italian actor and filmmaker Gianni Di Gregorio, who plays an aging man trying to come to grips with the fact that he feels like a “discarded engine on the side of the road.” Treated like with condescension by his wife, dealing with a petulant and spoiled daughter, and with an aging mother who treats him like a servant. Gianni (also the character Di Gregorio plays in the film), recently retired, soon begins to watch his older compatriots embark on affairs with younger women, and conspires to do the very same.

This is a sweet, adorable little movie, and a perfect anecdote for those mid-Winter blues. Di Gregorio (most recently of the 2010 hit “Mid-August Lunch”) is a terrific performer, and everyone in the film plays this light comedy to perfect and enlivening pitch. Watching Gianni tear his hair out, as well as soon his old black book (bearing up very few phone numbers) looking for the woman who will save him, one feels the poignancy that certain longings can never quite be satisfied.

Especially the great and endless desire to once be young once again.

Please go and see this delightful film at the IFC Center in NYC this weekend and next week, and soon at the Laemmle’s Theaters in Los Angeles.

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by Francesca McCaffery

The new documentary “Last Days Here” (opening today March 2^nd at the IFC Center in NYC) directed by Don Argott and Demian Fenton, had so much crazy subtext going on, it could be a few tiny little films in itself: The film focuses on “underground heavy metal legend” Bobby Liebling, the singer- songwriter-guitarist for the ‘70s metal band Pentagram. According to some rabid fans, Pentagram was the best metal band from that era, actually helping to form and create what soon became known as “heavy metal” music.

We are first introduced to adorable, bespectacled fan-boy and record collector extraordinaire Sean “Pellet” Pelletier, who enthusiastically tells us that a discovery of an old, vinyl Pentagram album wildly and permanently changed his life. From that point on, it would seem, Pellet has made it his mission to befriend, help, cajole and coax the nearly impossible Bobby, a very active user of crack-cocaine, to mend his ways and get the damn band back together. (As apparently do a great many thousands of other fans across the country.) Pellet’s genuine love for Bobby, as well as his almost obsessive dedication to Bobby’s music as his mission, is the true heart and soul of the film.

The different strains and levels of the story are what I found to be truly fascinating, apart from the much talked-about train wreck which is seeing Bobby (at times) disintegrate in front of the camera: Here we have a heroine and crack user living in the basement of his parent’s house, a place from which the far-older-than-he looks -fifty-four year old Bobby rarely ventures. His parents astoundingly know and enable his drug problem, sweet souls that they are, apparently terrified of what would happen if he was left on his own, and deal with is bouts of appealingly schizophrenic ravings.

Which, for me, got a bit strange. For a few moments, I found the film faltering, exploitative, and very, very hard-to-watch…(Although the editing in clever and the overall production value is quite good for the obvious low-budget, watching someone rant while on crack makes one feel confused about how to feel, to say the very least.) But then, things started to emerge and simmer.

The incredible part of the Liebling family history I found to be this: We are soon shown that Bobby’s father was an security advisor under both the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Flashback photos from the mid-sixties make Liebling, Sr. out to look like an earnest, uber-serious CIA agent. Bobby’s father was once the very picture of Sixties conservatism. Then to top off having a whacked-out metalhead for a son living in the “sub-basement,” his wife, (Bobby’s natural mother) blames their father-son “rivalry” as the very cause of Bobby’s drug problem. What is even more disturbing is how readily the lovely and elderly Liebling Sr. agrees with her. There is then inherent in the film the incredible commentary about one generation producing what is probably its worst nightmare; the story is only unique in the way both parents seem to really adore and genuinely respect their itinerant son.

There are the poignant reminiscences of former Pentagram bandmates, who tell of not once but two times Bobby blew the biggest chance they had to make it big. (Once members of KISS came to their home to see them perform in the 70s, only to be shooed away by an irate landlord; the second time a famous rock-n-roll producer actually working with them stormed out on their demo recording because of Bobby’s unbearable histrionics, never to return again.)

And in the midst of all of this the super-positive and patient Pellet, trying desperately to conjure together a compilation record deal and national tour. Bobby also inexplicably manages to fall in love with an uncommonly beautiful and bright young woman named Halley, who seems just as inexplicably to be in love with him…Whoa. A story of a group of enablers? Rock-n-roll lifestyle commentary? How sixties conservatism nearly ruined the world? Or just a sweet and sharp little film about what happens when your favorite unknown band is so damn great, you want the whole world to know it?

The rest of the film is an ardent, enjoyable rollercoaster ride, making us question the cost of not simply seeking out fame and fortune, but what happens when you are arguable once just this close to it, and it breezily passes you by?

There is a fine line between sanity and greatness in rock-n-roll, and I suppose that Bobby Liebling is living proof. I could have used more of the band’s music throughout, but the two filmmakers have some very obvious talent and chops. If nothing else, in the case of both Bobby and his true-blue buddy Pellet, the film is a gigantic testament to how music you truly love can really change your damn life.

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by Francesca McCaffery

There has rarely been such a non-formulaic and genuinely touching portrayal of a soldier returning home as Liza Johnson’s “Return,” starring the phenomenal Linda Cardelinni (“E.R.”) and always terrific Michael Shannon, opening today in limited release.

To say a movie is independent film at is finest doesn’t even translate any longer, of course, but if it still does in any vernacular, this tiny, perfectly on-point little film is exactly it.

Cardelinni plays Kelli, home from a year’s tour of duty (Iraq? Afghanistan? We are never quite certain.) Shannon plays Mike, her plumber husband who is so game to comfort his returning soldier wife he initially rebuffs her playful advances, advising her primly that “They warned us about rushing this at the Spouse Support Group!”This is a new era, Johnson explains right away, one which we all know, or are supposed to understand, full well the devastating effects of PTSD and trauma war has on the average American soul.

Kelli is thrilled to be back home with her two young daughters, in her sweet little home, and even at her dull factory job. But when out partying with the girls one night, doing shots and cracking up, the conversation slowly delves into “what she saw over there.”

Everyone there, Kelli keeps insisting, had it worse than me. Lots of people. She was only working at a supply base, hauling boxes. Yes, she saw dead bodies, dead animals, “some crazy, fucked-up shit.” But still…Kelli refuses to acknowledge their power over her. Never letting anyone in, and never allowing herself to truly feel her dangerously deep feelings about her time in the National Guard, Kelli soon becomes a slow-burning fuse.

I cannot speak enough about Cardelinni’s performance. Back when actresses still cared about what they were doing for a living, rather than simply shopping and talking about that process, this was the kind of performance they gave: One full of true heart, completely free of stereotypes, and one that free falls into delivering exactly what you need from this character: A person casting about for answers without realizing or knowing what the exact problem is, in the first place. The human condition? Absolutely.

Johnson and the performers show us that regardless of having suffered through a terrible experience or trauma or not, there are just no pert answers, no all-encompassing cure for what ails us, and no trite way out of feeling what you need to really experience in order to heal. This film seems to be saying, that, sometimes, you simply cannot go home again.

At the end of the film, Kelli not only makes the only logical choice left, but it is, quite thankfully almost, made for her.

Please check out “Return” this weekend. Let’s help slam this wonderful little film  out of the park. Playing in NYC at Cinema Village East, and in Brooklyn at Indie Screen Cinema.

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Cook County is a new independent film from first time writer/director David Pomes exploring a specific family and community in rural east Texas, reflecting an entire culture and drug world in America. The film presents the narrative through the eyes of Abe (Ryan Donowho), a teenager living with his meth-cooking and smoking uncle, Bump (Anson Mount). Abe goes day to day simply surviving with his dangerous caretaker, and  trying to protect his young cousin Deandra (Makenna Fitzsimmons) from a drug-addicted future. When Abe’s father, Sonny (Xander Berkeley), shows up after a stint in jail, he promises Abe that he’ll make their lives better. What begins as a promising plan to try to expose Bump and his dealers to the police, becomes more complicated, and more dangerous for Abe and Deandra as Bump spirals further out of control, haunted by paranoia and consumed by his addiction.

David Pomes has made a film exploring a very real problem in much of America, and chose the location of Texas because he heralds from there. The cast and crew filmed in a rural town not far from Houston, and met real people who resembled the characters being portrayed. The film is sparsely made, with just a few main locations and simple yet affective camerawork. The focus is on the characters, and the harsh lives they lead. It is safe to say that Anson Mount steals many scenes (from the stirring opening to the disturbing climax) with his extremely physical and intense performance. As terrifying a person as Bump is, he is also fascinating, and it’s hard to take your eyes off of him.

The film was shelved for the past two years, unable to find a distributor, and Mount’s rise in stardom, due to his role in the television show “Hell on Wheels,” helped it get the support and funds that was needed. It then won awards at South by Southwest, Dallas International Film Festival, and Nashville Film Festival. From these successes, Cook County is finally seeing distribution, and truly deserves it, as it is an impressive first feature, and a moving, as well as distressing, independent film.

by Aria Chiodo

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by Francesca Mccaffery

Cyril Tuschi’s riveting new documentary “Khodorkovsky” focuses on the 2003 imprisonment of Russian oligarch, the billionaire, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who at the time of his arrest at forty-two years old was the richest man in Russia.

Brought to “court” on charges clearly trumped up and false (tax embezzlement and fraud), in a case that had the world watching and the proceedings of which even had then President George Bush deem wrongful and misguided, Khodorkovsky remains in prison in Siberia to this day. This documentary is the story rife with the country’s entire key political, economic and industry players, and it is a dense, richly woven web of intrigue, politics and clashing male egos.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was a rather mild-mannered science and engineering student with an “aura” about him, as fellow students and friends describe him. An avowed socialist, his attentions and ambition soon turn to capitalism when the Cold War began to melt down the country’s communist infra-structure, the U.S.S.R. was becoming Russia again, and soon became very interested in acting and behaving like a proper Western democracy.

As Russian state assets were sold off, the then government, trying to keep the land, assets and industry primarily “Russian,” were forced to sell to the lowest Russian bidder, as funds were simply not accessible, impossible to find on any sort of reasonable scale, inside of mother Russia itself. Khodorkovsky and his friends had cleverly started a bank during this time. In 1995, they acquired the main Russian oil company, later to become Yukos, for the paltry sum of $330 million. The government, again, felt obliged to sell, at an auction, it was noted later, which had very little competition. With part of their original company’s manifesto stating, “Let capitalism be our compass,” Khodorkovsky and his team soon became major global players- meeting with heads of state, zipping around in private jets, and Khodorkovsky himself consulting the Russian government itself about how to form its newly democratic judicial system.

The documentary is really quite fascinating, as it is at once dissecting a current event in Russia’s ever-changing economic-political history, and how it will establish itself in the global economy, as well as examining the will that comes to blows of two very different types of men: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Khodorkovsky himself.

When the government learns that Yukos may soon be going partially public, could be bought and owned by outside investors, (read- the US! Exxon! Mobile!) Putin and his cabinet are clearly hysterically nervous about this: What would a westernized Russia look like? What would it mean? Most importantly, would they have the same control? As we stare at Putin’s face in the footage and photos, we wonder: Does he care about saving Russia, or simply his place in the world, his career, and place in society?

It is due to Tuschi’s film, which is five years in the making, that we get the complete picture. As his interviews with young, hip Russians illustrate, the party line in Russia is still that Khodorkovsky stole from his own government, and is, basically, a pretty evil guy. But as Putin’s actions escalate, we can see it truly is not Russia or her people he is worried about. He is pissed off, and it we see it devolving into a strange, globally witnessed “mano-a-mano” confrontation.

Tuschi actually became pen-pals of sorts with Khodorkovsky, and in voice-over the audience learns what a thoughtful, ambitious, and critical thinker Khodorkovsky is. He also seems steadfast in his views today, and Tuschi even gets the chance to interview him after he stand son trial for another bogus charge of stealing “350 million barrels of oil” from his own company. “You would have to circle the earth three times with a freight train to transport that much oil. Where would we have hidden it?” Khodorkovsky says, exasperated and almost cheerfully. “These charges are absurd.”

Weaving these moments in with a stark, black and white animation to highlight specific flash-backs, it is absolutely fascinating to ponder his refusal to leave Russia as a genius mastermind chess move by Khodorkovsky. He has the will to not have only become the richest man in the world under forty at one time, certainly. But-by showing Russia itself and the rest of the world how corrupt their current Russian government really is, could he really get out of jail and end up running the country? We see a capitalist who is now a major human rights case, a man who is at first incensed by Putin’s smallness. Then, like the entrepreneur that he surely is, the viewer could also surmise that this man with the iron will to succeed could very well turn his catastrophe into a truly grand political opportunity.

“It is difficult for a small-minded man to get over a slight.” to paraphrase Khodorkovsky in writing to Tuschi about Putin. This is a truly a wonderful documentary- expansive, glowing, exhausting, heart-rending and informative- and, like an animated political discussion in an your favorite coffee shop with new friends- it completely stays with you. Playing at the Film Forum in NYC until December 13^th.

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I Am Singh, a new film directed by a veteran Bollywood actor, Puneet Issar, opens today in 50 theaters across North America. It explores the untold story of Sikhs in the post-9/11 U.S. who were subject to discrimination and violence, and targeted as possible terrorists. It is Issar’s second film as director, and he also acts in it. The film does not have a Bollywood star-studded cast, like his first film had. The actor/director told glamsham.com that he wanted his subject to be the star of the film.

I Am Singh focuses on a young Sikh named Ranveer Singh (Gulzar Chahal) who lives in India. His brothers are citizens of the U.S., and when he learns that one of them has suddenly died, the other gone missing, and his father seriously injured, he takes a journey to find what the cause was. He is met with elusive answers and frustrating excuses from authorities and governmental officials. Without any help from local authorities, he teams up with a Pakistani, Rizwan Haider (Rizwan Hyder), who is an American citizen, as well as Fateh Singh (Puneet Issar) a LAPD police officer. He also eventually finds two American attorneys, Amy Washington (Amy Rasimas), a Senior Attorney, and Amelia White (Brooke Johnston), a human rights activist, to fight for his case. With the help of this diverse group of citizens, Ranveer Singh battles injustice while still having faith in the American judicial system to help his family and his people who have been wronged by a country paranoid with fear of outsiders.

This is an important and intriguing new Bollywood film, exploring the ignored story of Sikhs living in post 9/11 America, told from their own point of view.

by Aria Chiodo

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Shot in the picturesque French port city of the same name, “Le Havre,” directed by Aki Kaurismaki, looks like it truly could have been created forty-five years ago. It’s an amazing and lovely film about community and solidarity, without any maudlin nostalgia to muck it up in the middle. It’s truly an original, and already feels like a dyed-in-the-wool classic. 

A shoe-shine man (the glorious Marcel Max), making a meager living and relying on the unconditional adoration of his wide Arletty, (the sad-eyed Kati Outinen) one afternoon spots a young black African boy (Blondin Miguel), who has come here illegally in a freight container with his extended family. The boy has escaped police after temporary capture, and is hiding out in chest-deep seawater underneath a dock, where Andre has been lunching. After his wife must go to the hospital and stay there for treatment, Andre brings the boy into his home, hiding him away from the kind but thorough police captain ( an implacable Jean-Pierre Darroussin), who may or may not have some history with Andre. The entire neighborhood then becomes deftly enlisted in helping Andre with is new mission- getting the boy to London- where his family awaits him.

This film is built so solidly on these beautiful performances, and bears the stamp of a director who knows how to disappear into the ether- making a truly charming, enriching tale of love and community. This is how they used to make ‘em, and it’s amazing that the marriage of all these nameless elements comes together to bring us a tale that is both timeless as well as genuinely topical. The way the director and production designer, (Wouter Zoon) with the obvious help of a genius DP (Timo Salminen), have merged to make a film that seems simultaneously so anchored in time as well as feeling absolutely timeless. (When we see the word “Alchieda” in a newspaper headline, it’s almost jolting) The era or time simply do not matter here. It’s the story that, finally, truly counts.

In the director’s statement, Kaurismaki explains that this is a film about the plight of refugees, in all nations. If this is going to be the shape of politically driven narrative film, this is certainly one way to do it- with an almost unparalleled sense of grand confidence and a purely “cinematic” sense. “Le Havre” will leave you feeling warm inside without the fuzzy, and good without the heinous “feel good” feeling. It’s impossible, in the end, to explain the truly unique charm and beauty of this film: You will just have to go out and see it for yourself…

by Francesca McCaffery

 

 

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Late ‘60s America was so multi-dimensional, so rife with various and extensive cultural and political facets, it’s difficult to get a true hold on what was really accomplished in that era, since the Civil Rights Movement of the early to mid 1960s. But a LOT surely was accomplished, just as much as so much was left bitterly undone. The “Black Power Movement” of that era, spearheaded by a young, brilliant freedom-rider named Stokley Carmichael, has its roots in the soil sown of decades upon decades of poverty, slavery, abuse of all kinds, and political injustice towards African-Americans in the United States.

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Miranda July follows up her lovely and deft first-time film (and 2005 Palm D’Or winner at Cannes) “Me, You and Everyone We Know” with “The Future,” opening today in limited release. The film strikingly asks these timeless questions: What happens to your soul if you fail to recognize your deepest longings? Will having a child change our lives/make me old/limit my possibilities forever? Can we live without ever having really lived at all, without truly giving our life a genuine “shot?” And of course, July being July, she uses some wholly original, courageous, and in the end, sweetly child-like and charming ways of getting us to hear them in her new film.

July gets consistently pegged “The Queen of Quirk” in the mainstream media, which does her an astonishingly huge disservice, I think. As the recent “NY Times Magazine” cover story recently pointed out about her films, stories, online video projects and performance art (July is a bit of a Renaissance Wonder Woman), no one is ever really, well, “cool” in her work. Her “oddball” exteriors are forever pulsing with a heartbeat both very real and very raw and human. But, back to the film.

“The Future” centers around an adorable, symbiotic, mid-Thirties couple in their thrift-shop chic (and very small) Silverlake apartment. Hamish Linklater plays Jason, the boyfriend, and July herself stars as Sophie, his pale, pretty girl with Manet coloring, enormous eyes and sweetheart wardrobe. They are a protypical, “unrealized” LA creative couple. Jason even goes so far as to lament their deadly age of thirty-five, complaining that everything that happens to them after that is “loose change.”

The film opens with a talking cat’s voice-over narrative. The voice is July’s, but the narrative belongs solely to Paw-Paw, the sick cat they are heroically rescuing from the pound. The catch is that the poor feline will need their complete and total attention, much like, you guessed it, having one’s first baby would demand. The couple have one month to make their lives and abode ready for Paw Paw, one month, they reason to themselves, to realize their dreams and live up to their fullest, best potential!

Sophie decides to do a “dance a day,” and put it up daily on YouTube. She quits her job as a dance instructor to three-year olds. Jason ditches his job as an Internet trouble-shooter, and starts fundraising on the streets for a Greenpeace-type of organization.

In a matter of days, the two lovers are jointly miserable and immobilized- plainly paralyzed by the ominous thought of Paw Paw coming into their lives, and the fact that they do not have a real, concrete blueprint, or even sketchy plan, of which to follow their own dreams. They also are filled with accompanying self-loathing and doubt about their creative and overall human abilities- to the point where Sophie decides to have an affair with a bland but grown-up Marshall, (David Washofsky) who lives in the dreaded Valley with his younger daughter.

Jason, in utter desperation and completely beside himself with grief at the break-up, decides to “stop time” in a nifty magical realism touch, and Sophie literally watches her life slipping away from her, getting her job back (but only as a receptionist there- watching her students grow up while she’s still there, answering the phones), and watching her soul trail after like a kicked, wounded dog- in the form of an old, frayed, favorite T-shirt.

It is easy to see, on one level, why critics like Hoberman from “the Village Voice” have such a problem with a July. Her clothes, look and demeanor simply seem too cute, precious and, inaccurately, calculating, to many. But her halo of “quirkiness” is really like strawberry sauce spilled across a telegram announcing some very profound news

Having seen “Me, You and Everyone We Know” and read her wonderful book of short stories, “No One Belongs Here More Than Me,” as well as loosely following some of her on-line projects, like the endearing, viewer-collaborative “Learning to Love You More,” I truly feel that her art provides what is sourly and desperately missing from our culture in this day and age: A genuine purity of heart. It does not appear to be a shtick with July, or to be a ploy at some form of elitist, backhanded irony. She really does give a shit. If you look past her lustrously indie demeanor, you can feel her own heart beating louder than anything. July wants us all to know that time IS running out. That being scared is understandable, but, not really such an option any longer. That love may fade and things can drastically change, but life will be supportive, if you can find a way to move on and forward with it.

July is also an artist fortunate enough to have only worked, her entire life at doing the things she truly loves: Making things for others to see and experience. By her own admission, she has never had to have a “real” job. She did not come from money, and most like worked very hard, and privately, to achieve the things that she has. She is only imagining herself, here in “The Future,” as if she had not been so fortunate. Yet, at the very time, the film is a sweet, nurturing call to arms to heed that little (or Big!) voice inside us all- whether it’s whispering at us to “Have that Baby!” or screaming at us to “Write That Book!”

As “The Future” leaps from a soul that won’t let up until it’s found again, a talking Moon, and poor Paw Paw, conscripted to never find what she really and truly needs, July is daring us to push ourselves to reach a little further- lest we die a pretty banal, boring, and terribly unfulfilled psychic death. Life is Short, “The Future” reminds us. And it will all, sort of, somehow be okay. If we try as hard as we are able to try, at any given moment. The Future Has Been Predicted. Now go out and see the movie!

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“Delhi Belly” is the hilarious, raunchy and new Bollywood Movie from director Abhinay Deo, starring international dream guy Imran Khan, along with Vir Das and Kunaal Roy Kapur playing his hapless yet sweet roommates.

In an almost old Hollywood twist of mistaken identity, and strange, missing bag of something mysterious (Drugs? Money? What?), “Delhi Belly” is really so much fun, like a sweeter, more Eastern version of a deft Judd Apatow film. This is also Bollywood-lite, low on the dance numbers and empty calories, and a great Western intro to the genre. Go, go, go! You and your Saturday night date will adore it. It has something for the girls and the guys, although it does get a bit audibly raunchy (the title is international slang for food poisoning.) Enjoy!

Tashi, Arup and Nitin – flatmates, buddies and partners in crime. Tashi is to get married in a month but still doesn’t know if his fiancé is THE ONE! Arup can’t make up his mind who he wants to kill first – his girlfriend who has just dumped him or his stupid, annoying boss whose idea of creativity is sketching a smiling banana! And Nitin is about to discover that eating delicious tandoori chicken off a street vendor is going to give him the worst case of Delhi Belly he’s ever known! Three regular blokes, living the regular life EXCEPT for one small detail – they are on the hit list of one of the world’s deadliest crime syndicates. Will they be able to get away before the ‘s#!t hits the roof’ and it comes crashing down?

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