Ebony Edwards-Ellis

Partir (Leaving)

annette — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

David McKenzie’s Asylum is a flawed but breathtakingly compelling portrait of violent sexual obsession, deception, and mental illness. Unremittingly dark, this film also presents us with a woman who rails against the constraints placed on women in 1950s middle class Britain.

Stella (Natasha Richardson) is a bored housewife who makes her home on the grounds of a mental hospital outside London. She’s married to Max (Hugh Bonneville), a pompous overbearing psychiatrist who makes it clear that she is expected to devote all of her energies to helping him rise to the top of the hospital hierarchy. The servants who cook meals, clean the house, and care for Stella’s son guarantee that Stella never has anything productive to do.

Stella has a chance encounter with Edgar (Marton Csokas), an inmate who is repairing the gazebo in her garden. They are both instantly attracted and begin having steamy trysts. Edgar, who has been institutionalized after having murdered his wife, is denied release from the asylum. Frustrated, he escapes and re-establishes contact with Stella once he is safely ensconced in a squalid cold-water flat in London.

Meanwhile, Max’s rival, Dr. Peter Cleave (Sir Ian McKellen) puts two and two together and confronts Stella, demanding to know where Edgar is. When Stella refuses, he reminds her that Max, as her husband, can have her committed to the asylum. Stella, trapped and caught in the full grip of hybristophilia, runs to Edgar.

Why did I choose to start off this review of Partir (Leaving) with a synopsis of a completely different film? Quite frankly, the plot of Partir is startlingly similar to Asylum. Although Partir is set in twenty-first century France, both films are keenly rendered character portraits of strong-willed British women who’ve grown tired of sacrificing their happiness for their families’ sake and decide to follow their hearts to tragic results.

Suzanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) is an Englishwoman who’s called France home for more than two decades. She is a stay-at-home mother who decides to go back to work after fifteen years out of the paid labor force. She is completing her training as a physiotherapist, something she’d planned to do before having children. Suzanne is married to Samuel (Yvan Attal), a pompous overbearing doctor, who reluctantly sinks a small fortune into fixing up a shed for her home office.

The man in charge of fixing up the space is Ivan (Sergi Lopez), a Spaniard who went to prison for “kid’s stuff.” When Suzanne causes an accident that causes Ivan to break his ankle, the guilt-ridden Suzanne to offer him a ride to Spain so that Ivan can visit his young daughter. The two, who already feel attracted, embark on a passionate affair.

Suzanne leaves her husband after confessing the affair and unsuccessfully trying to end it. Samuel, who seems to view Suzanne as more of a possession than an equal partner, resorts to blacklisting the couple to the point of starvation and freezing the bank accounts, not at all willing to give Suzanne a quick divorce.

Despite its derivativeness, Partir still managed to absorb me. This is in no small part due to Kristen Scott Thomas’ subtly commanding performance. Scott Thomas effortlessly conveys Suzanne’s conflicting emotions through her eyes and nearly imperceptible gestures.

I also like the fact that Corsini doesn’t feel the need to tell us everything. Many of the films climactic scenes end rather abruptly, requiring the audience to draw its own conclusions and Partir’s lean eighty-five minute run time guarantees that the film’s pacing doesn’t lag.

Partir doesn’t shy away from its feminist subtext, exploring the invisibility and frustrations of homemakers at length. Partir, in brutally honest scenes, depicts how easy it is for a vindictive husband to use his financial clout to punish an errant wife.

Given the date of its release and its serious subject matter, I anticipate Partir becoming a contender for Best Foreign Language Film. (It’s in French with English subtitles). Nominations for its cast and director are probably in short order, too.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, October 26th 2010

Jack Goes Boating

mandy — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Directed by Phillip Seymour Hoffman

Overture Films, Anchor Bay Entertainment

I had no idea that Phillip Seymour Hoffman had such a devoted fan base. Yeah, he won Oscars for his work in Capote and Doubt and he did liven up overrated stinkers like The Talented Mr. Ripley and Magnolia. Still, I was shocked by how many people streamed into the theatre to see his directorial debut, Jack Goes Boating. Nearly all the chairs in the 600-seat space were filled.

Adapted from Bob Glaudini’s play of the same name, Jack Goes Boating revolves around the doings (or, more accurately, not-doings and undoings) of a group of forty-somethings in New York City. The movie opens with limo drivers Clyde (John Ortiz) and Jack (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) discussing Jack’s upcoming blind date with Connie (Amy Ryan), the co-worker of Clyde’s wife, Lucy (Daphne Rubin-Vega).

Connie and Jack are sad sacks, having only their jobs and their relationships with their co-workers cum friends to give their lives any type of purpose. Although Connie and Jack are anxious about romance, the two feel an attraction to each other and embark on a snail’s pace courtship. Jack decides to learn how to swim so he can take Connie on a boat ride the coming summer. (The film begins at the cusp of winter.)

Clyde and Lucy’s long-term marriage is slowly disintegrating under the pressures of sexual betrayal, resentment, and boredom. Lucy is quietly ambitious, railing against her husband’s inertia. Clyde attempts to please her by half-heartedly attending business school. Clyde and Lucy distract themselves from their own unhappiness by coaching Jack and Connie's newly forming relationship.

The four inhabit an urban landscape that is strangely devoid of noise, excitement, or other people. This could have been intentional, a subtle way of depicting the isolation of its characters, but it is an iffy creative choice, forcing the audience to focus exclusively on characters who aren’t fully developed.

The film has other flaws as well. While many of the sly jokes in Jack Goes Boating hit the mark, its glacial pace undercuts the film's overall effectiveness. It takes too long to reap the meager payoff and, like many movies that are based on plays, has entirely too much dialogue.

Jack Goes Boating grated on me for political reasons, too. A woman who is willing to ask for more, Lucy is depicted in a quasi-villainous manner, as she’s the one who breaks the tenuous bond of the foursome. The scene where Connie requests to be “overpowered” by Jack before they have sex wouldn’t have bothered me so much if I hadn’t seen the bloody aftermath of her victimization by a subway pervert earlier in the film… or watched her boss touch her in a highly questionable manner. (Is Glaudini suggesting that some women invite victimization?) And the fact that Lucy and Clyde re-enact the workplace sexual harassment in an impromptu sex game left a bad taste in my mouth.

I did enjoy Jack’s visualization and cooking sequences, though. Exquisitely scored, they have a haunting beauty to them. I also appreciated the defiantly downbeat depiction of a fortyish single woman. Connie is anything but Carrie Bradshaw, and Jack Goes Boating avoids being even remotely similar to a rom-com cliché.

All told, Jack Goes Boating is a grown-folks movie. It doesn’t have a feel good vibe, despite its relatively happy ending, and anyone in search of light fare should skip this thinking person’s romantic comedy.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, September 18th 2010

A Woman, A Gun, and a Noodle Shop

mandy — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 02:00:00 +0000

Directed by Zhang Yimou

Sony Pictures Classics

I walked out of the screening of A Woman, A Gun, and a Noodle Shop feeling vaguely dissatisfied. While the official selection of the 2010 Berlin Film Festival bills itself as a “black comedy thriller [which serves] as an expose of how intense desires can consume humanity,” it neither thrills nor tickles the funny bone. Instead, I found myself repeatedly checking my watch despite the film’s ninety-five minute run time.

A Chinese re-telling of the Coen Brothers’ classic debut, Blood Simple, A Woman, A Gun, and a Noodle Shop is set in a desolate area of northern China during the Late Imperial period. The action opens on the employees (Cheng Ye, Mao Mao, and Xiao Shenyang) looking on as their boss’ wife (Yan Ni) purchases state-of-the-art weaponry—a handgun—from a band of wandering Persians. The boss’ wife is having an affair with Li (Xio Shenyang), a clownish man with a “soft spirit.” After buying the gun, the boss’ wife (she’s never given a name, incidentally) makes it clear that she expects Li to help her kill her abusive and miserly husband, Wang (Ni Dahong). When Wang discovers the affair, he hires Zhang (Sun Hunglei), a patrol officer to murder the two. Greedy and cold-blooded, Zhang has plans of his own—plans that will result in even more bloodshed.

This film is sort of like pectin-free jelly; it has all the right ingredients except something that would firm it up and give it texture. And several hours after leaving the Sony Pictures screening room, I still can’t think of what that indescribable something may be. Better character development? A slightly more sympathetic Zhang? More background characters to give the film more local flavor? Real acting on Xiao Shenyang’s part as opposed to his constant mugging and gesticulation? Genuine comedy or, perhaps, more of a neo-noir feel? Or maybe a tender love scene between Li and the boss’s wife that would have helped me understand why she was willing to tolerate such a cowardly buffoon?

Then again, this film had too much of some things as well: slapstick, time-lapse montages, all of its characters hatching schemes and working at cross purposes. A Woman, A Gun, and a Noodle Shop also has plot holes galore. How does Wang amass such a fortune as a proprietor of such an out of the way business? Aside for the imperial police who stop by early in the film, this shop never has any customers. And why do Wang’s employees stick around when they aren’t being paid? For that matter, how does Zhang find so much time away from his patrol duties and from where does he get the blood-stained clothes?

This is not to say that A Woman, A Gun, and a Noodle Shop was a total waste of time. Many of its early sequences have a colorfully frenetic quality. A scene where employees twirl around like whirling dervishes as they handle noodle dough was beautifully inventive, and the Persian gun dealer’s swordplay was transfixing. The cinematography granted the film’s arid landscapes a bleak sort of beauty.

I admit that I’ve never seen this film’s source material, but given that Blood Simple had the Coen Brothers sharing the director’s chair and a pre-Fargo Frances McDormand in the lead, I am tempted to conclude that this retread isn’t worthy to undo the original’s sandals.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, September 14th 2010

Modus Operandi

brittany — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Directed by Frankie Latina

Sasha Grey/Reign Supreme Entertainment/Special Entertainment

My younger sisters and I used to tune into Lifetime to laugh at the formulaic (read: bad) movies that were regularly broadcast on that network. While I was watching Modus Operandi, a “comical homage to low budget exploitation-style films of the 1970’s,” I kept wishing my sisters were there with me. We would have been rolling in the aisles.

I found the plot to be difficult to follow so I going to quote directly from the synopsis that I received at the screening:

“Two briefcases with mysterious contents are stolen from Presidential candidate Squire Parks (Michael Sottile)... [W]arring…subterranean organizations will stop at nothing to gain possession of the sensitive material… The CIA calls on Black Ops agent Stanley Cashay (Randy Russell) who has been in a semi-comatose twilight since the murder of his wife. Cashay is offered the identity of his wife’s killer in exchange for locating and returning the cases.”

“Agent Cashay uses the dangerous weapons at his command…to unleash a bizarre assortment of operatives… [including] Casey Thunderbird (Barry Poltermann) and exotic Tokyo-based special agent Black Licorice (Nikki Johnson)…When Cashay is finally in possession of the [briefcases], the contents shock even him...”

Modus Operandi has the look of a home movie shot by a precocious eleven-year-old. The film, which was shot in Milwaukee on Super 8, features bad special effects, sparse and stilted dialogue, and acting that suggests that many of the players were reading off cue cards. And, while the movie was supposed to be funny, I still found myself wondering if at least some of the sequences were unintentionally funny.

This would have been fine if a precocious eleven-year-old had written and directed the movie. Unfortunately, this movie was put together by an adult who had four years to refine his product.

This film offended many of my feminist sensibilities as well. The filmmaker shamelessly objectifies the female players, featuring enough T& A to fill an entire year’s worth of Hustler pictorials. Many of these half-naked women were also carrying weapons and committing acts of violence. And the contents of the case indicate that Squire enjoys making snuff films. However, this intertwining of sex and violence didn’t make me squirm nearly as much as the blatant fetishization of lesbians and women of color.

However, with its so-bad-it’s-good charm, Modus Operandi is surprisingly engrossing. The score, which alternated between mournful violins and 70’s style funk, wasn’t half bad, either. I also (perhaps hypocritically) appreciate the fact that none of the “actresses” were surgically enhanced super-skinny models. Every single one of the women had realistic bodies; the fact that none of the (many) black women featured were light-skinned Halle Berry lookalikes indicates a healthy disrespect for the Eurocentric beauty standard on Latina’s part.

Modus Operandi could very well become the twenty-first century’s answer to Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space and Latina does fulfill his goal to “create an intense and unique cinematic experience that lingers with the movie-goer long after he or she has left the theater.” However, I would recommend that anyone interested in this film wait until it hits a festival close to home or becomes available on DVD.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, September 10th 2010

Legendary

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Mel Damski

Samuel Goldwyn, WWE Studios

Inspired by sports movies like Rudy and The Karate Kid, and presenting smatterings of others like Lucas and Hoosiers, the John Cena vehicle, Legendary is the WWE’s ninth foray into the movie making business. The movie centers on Cal Chetley (Devon Graye), a scrawny fifteen-year-old geek who earns pocket money by farming catfish. He’s sweet-natured, and enjoys a tight bond with his mother (Patricia Clarkson).

Cal has the obligatory brushes with bullies, three jackasses on the school’s wrestling team. When Cal isn’t being picked on or considering romantic advances from his neighbor, Luli (Madeleine Martin), he is yearning after the father he barely knew and the older brother who left the family after his father’s death. Eager to connect with his estranged brother, Cal decides to join the wrestling team and tracks his brother down.

Cal’s brother, Mike (John Cena), has spent the last ten years bouncing from dead-end job to dead-end job, drinking heavily, and bedding a bevy of women in the process. He is decidedly disinterested in reuniting with his little brother; however, a barroom brawl lands him in serious trouble and Cal helps get him off. Mike then begins coaching Cal.

The screenplay was written by John Posey, who also plays Coach Tennent. The script offers up dialogue that is filled with wisecracks, but is ham-fisted in some spots and too on-the-nose in others. I found the score by James Alan Johnston to be rather manipulative, too.

Legendary presents a plethora of stereotyped sports film characters. The hero is an underdog who teams up with a rough anti-hero to train toward the climactic contest. The bully is a jerk with an obvious Madonna-whore complex. The coach is tough-talking but soft-hearted. Luli and Cal’s mother do little more than play variations of the supportive woman behind the man. (I took exception to the “girl talk” scene in which Cal’s mother gives Luli advice right out of The Rules.) And Danny Glover’s Red is nothing more than what Spike Lee refers to as the “Super-duper magical negro”; the semi-clever plot twist at the end of the film doesn’t redeem this character’s shocking lack of a back story and direction.

Even the sequences were clichéd. The hero defends his lady’s honor at the school dance. The barroom fights that John Cena finds himself in feature muscled-up thugs with chips on their shoulders. Eighties-style heavy metal provides background noise for the too-numerous training and wrestling match montages. Even the fact that Cena lives in a squalid trailer park is a cliché.

All told, Legendary is guaranteed to do well with the eighteen-to-twenty-five demographic at which this movie was most definitely aimed. But I can’t see this film appealing to anyone else.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, September 1st 2010

Soul Kitchen

admin — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Fatih Akın

Corazón International

Soul Kitchen is a lot like cotton candy—sweet but, ultimately, not very satisfying. Like many festival favorites, the plot of this independent German film revolves around a cast of lovably quirky characters who get themselves eye-deep into trouble.

Zinos (Adam Bousdoukos), a German of Greek descent, has a lot of stuff on his plate. He’s the proprietor of Soul Kitchen, a struggling eatery in a rundown section of Hamburg. The tax people, led by Frau Schuster (Catrin Striebeck), are knocking at his door. His ne’er-do-well brother, Illias (Moritz Bleibtreu), seeks employment at the restaurant wanting “to go through the motions” of working so that he can make parole. Neumann (Wotan Wilke Möhring), a shady real estate agent, is sniffing around in hopes of acquiring the property. An uninsured Zinos makes the mistake of trying to move a heavy dishwasher by himself and gets a herniated disk for his trouble. On top of all this, Zinos is pining away for his girlfriend, Nadine (Pheline Roggan), who has hightailed it to Shanghai.

Attempting to revamp the restaurant’s simple cuisine, he hires the temperamental Shayn (Birol Ünel), a culinary snob who lost his last job for pulling a knife on a paying customer who asked for hot gazpacho. Things start looking up for Zinos when Shayn’s gourmet creations take off with the hip crowd. Eager to reunite with Nadine, Zinos makes plans to move to Shanghai, leaving Illias to manage the place. Illias gambles the restaurant away to Neumann. And poor Zinos discovers that Nadine has been cheating on him and aggravates his back injury on the same day. Zinos burns down his apartment in a fit of painkiller-induced pique. Homeless, loveless, jobless, and broke, Zinos has to figure out a way to get his restaurant back.

The script, co-written by the director and the leading man, is chock full of sly jokes and the dialogue is genuinely inspired. The filmmaker wisely decided not to let the food upstage the story. The problem is that the characters, with the exception of Zinos, are mere stereotypical sketches. Too much of the plot rests on contrivance—the romance between Illias and the surly waitress Lucia (Anna Bederke), for example—and things wrap up a little too neatly at the end. I never could root for the burgeoning relationship between Zinos and Anna (Dorka Gryllus), the physiotherapist who treats his back injury; the two don’t spend enough time onscreen together for me to care.

Full of whimsy, Soul Kitchen is definitely a film I would watch again. I can also see how it won the Special Jury Prize and the Young Cinema Award for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival. It should enjoy a respectable run on the art-house circuit when it’s released in the States later this summer; however, the film is much too flawed to ever make any “best of” list, and it definitely isn’t Fatih Akin’s best work.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, July 31st 2010

Happiness Runs

admin — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Adam Sherman

Strand Releasing

I sat through this eighty-eight minute monstrosity two and half times. And the question that I’m still asking myself is, “What the fuck?”

Set sometimes during the eighties, Happiness Runs is the semi-autobiographical story of its tyro director. Happiness Runs centers on Victor (Mark L. Young), a teen who is desperate to escape from the hippie commune that he was born into. His terminally ill, inexplicably wealthy, and utterly disinterested mother (Andie MacDowell) has been brainwashed into single-handedly supporting the commune by Insley (Rutger Hauer), a creepy self-proclaimed “guru” who has impregnated most of the women on the compound. When Insley isn’t hypnotizing his narcissistic adherents into complete submission, he is training Becky (Hannah Hall) to serve as a sex slave. Due to Insley’s indoctrination, Becky has become a drug-addicted promiscuous mess, having sex with nearly all the boys in the group.

Victor, deeply in love with Becky, resents her naïve embrace of “free love” and repeatedly begs her to run away with him. To complicate matters, Victor’s mother absolutely refuses to give him any money. Because Victor doesn’t seem to understand that he can support himself by finding a job, he drifts from wild party to wild party with the other children in the cult, even half-heartedly drug-dealing, an enterprise which the adults hypocritically disapprove of. Due to their early exposure to drugs and sex, the children are all incredibly damaged, escaping the anger over parental neglect with varying forms of self-destructive behavior.

Just like a lot of movies with a “sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll” theme, the women of Happiness Runs are routinely objectified. There are several instances of full frontal female nudity—the exposed female bodies juxtaposed with male bodies that are always covered with at least boxer shorts, if they aren’t completely clothed. The men and boys routinely use the women sexually, an attitude that the women seem to encourage. Becky is referred to as “everybody’s girlfriend,” not seeming to understand that the males in the commune aren’t automatically entitled to access to her body. She even goes so far as to climb into Victor’s bed, saying, “You can do whatever you want to me.” The fact that Rachel (Laura Peters), the only girl in the bunch inclined to call the boys out on their disrespectful attitudes, is the “ugly” one that none of the boys seem to want is another slap at the women’s liberation movement.

And Happiness Runs marries sexuality and violence in an especially disturbing way, with no fewer than three shots of Becky’s nude body covered in blood. (Becky also gets her hip thrown out during a bout of passionate sex; an event that amuses the boys to no end.) It’s been a long time since a film managed to offend most of my feminist sensibilities. Then again, it’s been a long time since I saw a movie this bad.

I know I’ve spent entirely too much time critiquing the lifestyle choices of the characters. Unfortunately, this movie is so threadbare that I can’t adopt the Oscar Wilde standpoint of not concerning myself with the morality of the characters. The plot and character development are virtually non-existent. The pacing is slack with performances ranging from anemic to downright wooden; none of the actors are skilled or experienced enough to convincingly play world-weary addicts. The dialogue is so vapid and elliptical that it will put even the most committed viewer to sleep. And the cinematography is uninspired. And, like many movies centered on impressionable drug-addled subjects, Happiness Runs repeatedly sinks into surrealistic dream sequences, over-relying on the visions’ hallucinogenic quality to drive the story.

Please don’t waste your time with this one, kids. This movie sucked.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, June 19th 2010

For My Father

admin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Dror Zahavi

Israfilm, Relevant F!lm

Centering on the chaste love affair between a Palestinian and an Israeli, For My Father offers the viewer a Middle Eastern re-telling of Romeo and Juliet while trying to spell out the complexities of post-intifada Israel.

The film opens up on Tarek (Shredi Jabarin), a Palestinian who has decided to act as suicide bomber. He’s ambivalent about the state of Israel—as well as Palestinian resistance to it—but takes action in order to salvage his yet-unseen father’s sullied reputation. After unsuccessfully trying to set off his bomb, he realizes that the device fails due to faulty wiring in the detonator, a jerry-rigged switch. Panicking, he flees, ending up in one of the scruffier areas of Tel Aviv. He ducks into an electronic repair shop, encountering Katz (Schlomo Vishinsky), an elderly Romanian Jew with a chip on his shoulder and a leaky roof. Tarek agrees to fix the hole in Katz’s roof in exchange for a new switch, which has to be ordered. As Shabbat is celebrated the next day, Katz’s shop will be closed until Sunday. Tarek is then forced to spend the weekend with the very people he was planning to kill.

During his sojourn, he interrupts the half-hearted suicide attempt of Mrs. Katz. He also befriends Keren (Hili Yalon), a beautiful tough-cookie who has fled her Orthodox Jewish community after an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. After saving her from a group of Orthodox toughs who object to her independent living and emo clothing, the two spend most of the following two days together, enjoying an easy rapport. Tarek rediscovers a passion for life which deepens his ambivalence about his mission. The fact that his handlers can detonate the bomb with a cell phone—and have threatened to harm his parents—only intensifies Tarek’s dilemma.

Yes, the movie did have its manipulative moments and the director unquestionably downplays the hostilities between Arabs and Jews in Israel. (The “Death to Arabs” graffiti scribbled on a building seemed downright contrived.) I found it odd that the Israeli characters never once questioned the very noticeable lump under Tarek’s clothes. For that matter, Keren and the Katzes seem too accepting of Tarek’s explanation for his very presence in Tel Aviv, a city that has kept Palestinians out via roadblocks for years. I also found myself questioning whether Israelis as a group are as averse to racial profiling as the Katzes and Keren are, and if the decision to paint Shaul, the one Jew who does express suspicion of Tarek, as a pompous buffoon wasn’t a subtle form of self-congratulation on the part of the Israeli director and screenwriters. I couldn’t help but wonder about how a Palestinian filmmaker would have approached this tale—or if a Palestinian would have chosen to tell this particular story at all.

In all fairness, however, this film wasn’t about the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This film is basically a movie about outcasts and how they often instinctively seek out and cling to other outcasts, battling loneliness while skirting the edges of society. For My Father also touches on the very human need to maintain reputation with the emotionally fraught bond between parents and children driving the story in surprising ways. I appreciated the fact that the story doesn’t insult the audience with a tacked-on happy-ending; there’s no way that a movie with a terrorist as leading man can end on an emotional high note.

Despite its over-idealized view of ethnic strife and pseudo-philosophical leanings, I am going to recommend For My Father on the strengths of its understated and powerful performances. But anyone expecting to get a crash course on the current state of Israeli-Palestinian resentments needs to look elsewhere.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, June 18th 2010

Micmacs

admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Sony Pictures Classics

After running through a gauntlet of elevators and security guards at the Sony Tower in midtown Manhattan, I entered a small screening room to see the French film Micmacs. Micmacs follows a group of ragtag junkyard denizens as they attempt to help a newcomer in their midst get revenge.

The story opens with Bazil (Dany Boon) receiving word that his father has died after stepping on a landmine in the Moroccan desert. Bazil is effectively orphaned, as his frail mother winds up institutionalized. Several decades later, Bazil is working his shift at the local video store when a random act of violence gets him a bullet in the head.

Bazil returns home from the hospital—bullet in skull—only to find out that he has lost his housing and his job. Suddenly homeless, Bazil scrapes by as a street performer. He crosses paths with Slammer (Jean-Pierre Marielle), a life-long criminal who was pardoned after the guillotine failed to take his head off. Slammer takes Bazil to the junkyard run by Mama Chow (Yolande Moreau). Bazil becomes part of a group that includes, amongst others, Remington (Omar Sy), a Congolese ethnographer; Buster (Dominique Pinion), a man desperate to make it into the record books; and Elastic Girl (Julie Ferrier), a contortionist with more than a friendly interest in Bazil.

Shortly after his “adoption,” Bazil happens across two gigantic buildings that bear the logos of the weapons that destroyed his life. Vowing to get even, Bazil and his new friends work to deceive two unscrupulous arms dealers (Nicolas Marie and Andre Dussolier).

While I watched Micmacs, I couldn’t help but compare it to an earlier Jeunet film, Oscar-nominated Amelie. Both films have a zany charm, presenting gentle dreamers given to surrealistic fantasy sequences. Bazil and Amelie lost parents at tragically young ages, like old movies, distract themselves with silly questions, and anxiously avoid romantic attachments. The plots of both films are driven by coincidences and fortuitous events, have quirky characters who achieve their ends by (repeatedly) breaking into other people’s homes, and present comical sex scenes. In fact, three of Micmacs' cast members also appeared in Amelie.

Unfortunately, Micmacs doesn’t work as well as Amelie did, which I chalk up to an inappropriate tone. While Amelie was basically a romance, Micmacs touches upon corporate greed, international arms dealing, terrorism, and even genocide. To make matters worse, the arms dealers come off like caricatures, despite Jeunet’s efforts. A much darker tenor would have been more suitable for this film.

Micmacs was funny, but not hilariously so. The word that kept coming to mind during the screening was “cute,” and I found myself fidgeting despite the 104-minute run time. I anticipate that Micmacs will have a respectable run in certain American theaters; however, I would suggest that anyone interested in this film wait for the DVD.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, May 21st 2010

Chloe

admin — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 04:01:00 +0000

Directed by Atom Egoyan

Sony Picture Classics

A retread of Anne Fontaine’s 2003 film, Nathalie, I walked out of the theater feeling rather disappointed with Chloe.

Julianne Moore plays Catherine Stewart, a successful gynecologist who is married to a college professor named David (Liam Neeson). After David misses a flight home, Catherine looks through his phone and finds a rather questionable photo. Catherine then becomes consumed with the suspicion that David is cheating on her. After a chance meeting with Chloe (Amanda Seyfried), a young escort, Catherine decides to hire her to seduce her husband, ostensibly to determine what makes him tick and turns him on. Chloe accepts the assignment with alacrity, sharing with Catherine the explicit details of her rendezvous with David.

It is at this point that I began scratching my head. If Catherine thought she had proof of David’s extramarital dalliances, why didn’t she just confront him outright? Or hire a private detective to look into his activities? Or go through his things and check credit card statements, emails, and call records to uncover more evidence? Isn’t that what usually happens in real life when women think their husbands are double dipping? Unfortunately, this isn’t the only poor—or poorly explained—choice Catherine makes.

To up the confusion factor, Catherine’s behavior toward Chloe is often inexplicably maternal. She advises her to get checked for STI’s, expresses concern over Chloe’s health simply because Chloe sneezes, and all but kisses her boo-boo when Chloe takes a spill on her bike and skins her knee.

Chloe enjoys being nurtured and obviously views Catherine as a mother figure. This is impressed as she repeatedly tries to give Catherine a hairpin that belonged to her real mother. Telling viewers about Chloe’s mother could have provided this limp story with some interesting wrinkles; however, Chloe’s back-story is never properly explored. How she ended up becoming a call-girl and exactly what drives her obsession with Catherine is left unexplained.

None of the characters are suitably fleshed out, for that matter. We know David is a flirt, but Liam Neeson’s anemic performance would have you believe that his behavior is merely reflexive. The fact that Catherine seems halfway willing to accept that meager explanation makes it even harder to understand her choices. The couple have obviously had problems in their marriage in the past but we never find out exactly what they were or how (or even if) they got resolved.

And what’s up with their son? Michael (Max Theiriot) feels an obvious hostility toward his mother and his trips to a therapist’s couch are alluded to several times, but this character never comfortably inhabits the world of this story. Throwing all of Michael’s footage on the floor and making a few changes to the story would have helped this film immensely.

To make matters worse, the filmmaker’s decision to violate the show-don’t-tell rule further undermined this enterprise. Newsflash! Stories told by unreliable narrators pack more of a punch when the audience initially believes what it’s been told. Moviegoers should never be able to anticipate plot twists.

Properly executed, Chloe could have been an erotic thriller par excellence. Instead, the filmmakers never actually decide what they want this film to be. Is this movie simply a portrait of marriage where the thrill is gone or a glimpse into a career woman’s mid-life crisis? Is it an indictment of prostitution—a trade where workers are purchased, used, and ultimately discarded—or a metaphor for how some mothers collude with father-daughter incest? Maybe this movie is treatise on how sexual passion and jealousy are almost always inextricably linked.

Chloe, manages to be all of these things and none of these things. It is undone by its slack pacing, under-developed characters, depressive tone, and somewhat implausible story. If you are a fan of any of the featured actors, I would suggest that you wait until this film becomes available on DVD. Chloe just isn’t worth the price of full admission.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, March 27th 2010

Our Family Wedding

admin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Rick Famuwiya

Fox Searchlight

Welcome to the new post-racial America, where at long last African Americans and Latinos can star together in a major studio movie every bit as crappy as anything White people have ever done. Our Family Wedding is... notable only for the racial composition of the cast… (Corey Hall, Metro Times)

Cultures…clash in [this] cartoonish feature about the nuptials of a Mexican American daddy’s girl (America Ferrera) and an African American doctor (Lance Gross)… Plodding predictably through family introductions…the movie leaves no racial stereotype or stale joke unturned. (Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times)

Lucia and Marcus make a charming couple…[If director Rick Famuyiwa had focused this film] just [on] them, it might [have been] a sweet little romance. But because Marcus is Black and Lucia is Mexican American, this strained comedy focuses on the culture clash between the two families—particularly the fathers [Forest Whitaker and Carlos Mencia]. The script…runs through the dumbest racial stereotypes and idiotic sight gags… You'll wish Lucia and Marcus had eloped and taken you with them. (Sean P. Mean, Salt Lake Tribune)

While it's true that culture clashes have long been a staple element of wedding movies, Our Family Wedding… lazily [recycles] from The In-Laws, Meet the Parents, and My Big Fat Greek Wedding… (Jason Anderson, Toronto Star)

Our Family Wedding manages to be offensive to African Americans, Latinos, women, men, and sentient life forms of any kind…The only real connection the audience will have is with the actors, not the characters, as we ask ourselves over and over how so many talented people got stuck in this mess. (Nell Minow, Beliefnet)

At this point, you are probably wondering why I chose to extensively quote other movie reviewers rather than come up with something on my own. To be honest, I found myself in a situation where I thought I was going to rip this film to shreds by drawing some fresh and original conclusion, only to find out that a kajillion other more experienced and articulate people had done it first—and better.

These other reviewers are absolutely right in their assessments of Our Family Wedding; the fact they represent such a diverse range of media and geographical areas makes their opinions seem even more correct to me. To add insult to injury, this movie doesn’t even rise to the level of it’s-so-bad-it’s-good, as it telegraphs all its (weak) punches. Seriously, what made the three screenwriters think that a goat eating Viagra was funny? For that matter, when was the last time you saw a goat in a comedy that didn’t eat something it wasn’t supposed to eat?

I just saved you a lot of aggravation. You owe me. (Kam Williams, The Sly Fox)

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, March 15th 2010

Every F---ing Day of My Life

admin — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:17:00 +0000

Directed by Tommy Davis

HBO Documentary Films

Stark, appalling, and heartbreaking are all words that came to mind when I viewed Every F---ing Day of My Life. Every F---king Day of My Life depicts a woman’s last four days of freedom before being sentenced to ten years in prison for murdering her brutally abusive husband. The film, which follows Wendy Maldonado and her young sons, also bears witness to the resiliency of women and children who must survive within these dysfunctional unions.

The film opens with home video of a long-ago family outing, then cuts to the gut-wrenching 911 call that Wendy made the night she killed her husband, then cuts again to Wendy recounting her early days with her husband, Aaron. After marrying Aaron at age seventeen, Wendy, who is already aware of Aaron’s possessiveness, quickly realizes just how disturbed her young husband is. He becomes increasingly violent, frequently beating her and their four sons. Wendy endures the abuse for nineteen years before impulsively deciding to do away with her partner. She beats him to death with a hammer, caving his skull. Wendy’s eldest son, Randy, who participates solely out of a desire to protect his mother and younger brothers, is eventually charged and convicted of second-degree manslaughter.

Every F---ing Day of My Life serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of ignoring domestic violence. It is a documentary masterpiece due to its very simplicity; there are no voice-overs, no talking head interviews, no fancy cinematography to turn the film’s laser sharp focus away from its emotionally devastated subjects. Instead, the filmmaker cleverly intersperses home video footage (most of which was shot by Aaron) with the present-day activities in the Maldonado house.

As the Maldonados veer between a cheerful denial and a somber acceptance of their circumstances, they discuss the violence they endured at Aaron’s hands. The matter-of-fact, even jocular, tone the Maldonados use to discuss the unrelentingly cruel abuse is even more chilling than the crime scene photos presented at the beginning of the film. As Wendy shows off the only four teeth left in her upper jaw, exhibits the homemade artwork used to disguise the holes Aaron punched in the wall, and takes the film crew to the wooded “kill me” spot that Aaron regularly took her to, she makes an understated yet extraordinarily powerful statement about the chaos that intimate partner violence causes.

The extensive use of the home video footage highlights yet another reality about domestic violence: mainly, that it is perpetrated not by monsters, but by seemingly average men who are often careful not to let their true colors show to the outside world. As Aaron mugs for the camera, he appears almost freakishly normal. He doesn’t look like someone who would beat and terrorize his family for nearly two decades. Director Tommy Davis’ decision to use this footage is an excellent creative choice.

Every F---king Day of My Life also demonstrates how suffering prematurely ages people; as the film progresses, we see Wendy transform from an incandescently beautiful teenager to a worn, nearly haggard woman in early middle age. A teenage Randy, who is interviewed from county jail, also looks old beyond his years.

Every F---ing Day Of My Life should be required viewing for every teenager in America, as well as anyone who is likely to encounter a victim of domestic violence. This story could save lives.

** This film premieres on HBO December 14, 2009 at 10 p.m. ET/PT and will continue to _air throughout December.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, December 13th 2009

The Jazz Baroness

admin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:17:00 +0000

Directed by Hannah Rothschild

HBO Documentary Films

It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set. - William Somerset Maugham

The preceding quote could very well be used to describe the Baroness Pannonica ("Nica") Rothschild de Koenigswarter’s attitude toward her decidedly eccentric lifestyle. The Baroness is the subject of The Jazz Baroness, which premieres tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PT on HBO2. Written, directed, and produced by the Baroness’ great-niece, Hannah Rothschild, this film was originally conceived by the younger Rothschild as an attempt to understand her mysterious fish-out-of-water relative. What Hannah ended up doing was detailing the complex (and most likely unconsummated) twenty-eight-year relationship between Rothschild and jazz/bebop legend, Thelonious Monk.

The daughter of über-wealthy European Jews, Nica escaped from Nazi-occupied France with her five children. After supporting the Free French, Nica traveled to the United States and almost immediately immersed herself into the emerging bebop scene in New York City. She eventually became a beloved patron to musicians like Charlie “Birdman” Parker and Tommy Flanagan. She crossed paths with Monk, the musically gifted son of impoverished sharecroppers, and spent most of the next three decades at his side providing much needed emotional and financial support to the mentally ill and drug-addicted Monk.

Using a well-edited mix of photographs, archival footage of Monk’s performances, and letters from Nica (read by Helen Mirren), Hannah ends up presenting us with a keenly rendered portrait of two quirky people who, under most circumstances, never would have crossed paths, let alone become intimate friends. The film doesn’t over-sentimentalize its subjects. It doesn’t pass judgment on their sometimes unacceptable behavior either. The baby photo montage at the beginning of the film subtly contrasts the drastically different childhoods of the two friends while the reminiscences of their friends exposes the odd things the two had in common—mainly mentally ill fathers and domineering mothers.

I loved the cinematography; the film is filled with absolutely gorgeous shots of the New York City skyline and the bustling streets of midtown Manhattan. The blue/gray/sepia palette of the shots enhance the mournful jazz score. Combined, these elements give the viewer a feel for the seedy-glamorous world of 1950s bebop.

I also liked how the filmmaker skillfully placed the story of Nica and Thelonious within a wider historical context. Dealing with institutionalized prejudices like racism, sexism, and antisemitism most definitely intensified the bond between these two extraordinary people.

That’s not to say that The Jazz Baroness is a perfect film. I took issue with the fact that the talking head interviewees—Quincy Jones, Amiri Baraka, and Thelonious Monk, Jr. among them—were almost entirely men. This left me wondering what type of relationship Nica had with her female contemporaries, or if she even had any. I also wondered how Monk’s long-suffering wife Nellie fit into this dynamic. Although most of Monk’s friends claim Nellie loved Nica, I found myself wondering if Nellie harbored resentment, however well-concealed, toward the Baroness. But Hannah did not properly explore this aspect of the relationship.

All told, I was entertained and educated by The Jazz Baroness, which is no mean feat for a documentary.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, November 25th 2009

Youth Knows No Pain

admin — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 04:07:00 +0000

Directed by Mitch McCabe

HBO Films

Four viewings of Mitch McCabe’s documentary, Youth Knows No Pain, have me scratching my head. I am puzzled over exactly what McCabe was attempting to say with this film. Is Youth Knows No Pain a love letter to McCabe’s deceased plastic surgeon father or an obsession with mortality? Is this is a commentary on the consumerism and increasing narcissism of Western society? How about a meditation on how youth obsessed Americans are? An exploration of how ageism and sexism conflate to render women of a certain age invisible? Youth Knows No Pain is all of these things and none of these things. The film is rather unfocused, never deeply delving into any of the issues raised.

The film all too often degenerates into navel-gazing. McCabe is obsessed with her own image, and there are no fewer than forty shots of McCabe gazing into mirrors or taking photographs of herself. McCabe admits she spends exorbitant sums on wrinkle creams, despite $70,000 of debt. She also says she would happily let her health insurance lapse so that she can afford salon visits every six weeks.

Youth Knows No Pain’s other subjects are equally shallow. Shelley soothes the pain of an impoverished upbringing with unabashed materialism; dropping $35,000 on plastic surgery in one year, she states that she misses being the target of street harassment. Lyndsay feels its her asymmetrical mouth that holds her back from a career in broadcasting. Dr. Zein Obagi injected his fifteen year old daughter with Botox. Erica, another daughter of a plastic surgeon, aspires to appear in Playboy. Erica’s father, Frank, regularly criticized his daughter’s appearance during her teen years, going so far as to ask her if her breasts were symmetrical. And I wanted to slap the taste out of Gary’s mouth when he suggests Hillary Clinton is long overdue for plastic surgery because, according to him, no one wants to see a woman looking “old and haggy.”

All of the subjects state that plastic surgery makes people feel good and that alone is a sufficient justification for it. The subjects equate aging with being ugly and alone, an assumption McCabe seems to share as she never challenges it. Many of the subjects insensitively insult McCabe’s appearance, but McCabe doesn’t have the salt to call any of them on it. She seems not the least bit interested in the “grow old gracefully” position, either. Two interviewees expressed outright disdain for cosmetic procedures, decrying society’s fear of the aged, but neither woman is identified by name and neither gets more than two minutes of screen time.

The film’s title is belied by an interview early in the film. One subject bursts into tears upon seeing a picture of himself at age twenty-four, stating that he was thinking of all the things he put himself through at that age. He also remains unidentified and is never seen again. Freak Out Over Aging would have been a much better title for this movie, which premieres tonight at 9 p.m. EST/PST on HBO.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, August 31st 2009

District 9

admin — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 17:01:00 +0000

By Neill Blomkamp

WingNut Films

In 1982 an alien spacecraft descends into the Earth’s stratosphere and hovers for months over Johannesburg, South Africa. Humans, alternately fearing that the aliens are hostile and hoping that they are harbingers of technological advances, board the ship. They are disappointed to discover that the aliens are neither, being nothing more than incredibly ill and malnourished refugees from a distant planet. Human governments around the world provide aid for the aliens while they bicker over what to do with them. Eventually tensions between humans and the aliens (derisively known as “prawns”) spill over and the aliens are herded into District 9, a trash strewn shanty town. The aliens are then restricted from entering certain parts of South Africa.

After nearly thirty years, the world’s governments turn over control to Multi-National United (MNU), a private contractor much more interested in the advanced weaponry of the aliens than their well-being. A bumbling field agent for MNU, Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is put in charge of relocating more than a million aliens further away from Johannesburg in a new camp. After being sprayed by an unknown substance during a raid, Wikus begins a frightening metamorphosis into an alien. Realizing that Wikus can operate the weaponry due to the fact that his DNA has begun to change (the aliens’ guns cannot operate without alien DNA), MNU plans to experiment on Wikus. Wikus, rightfully fearing for his life, escapes from custody and hides out in District 9 where he seeks help from an alien known as Christopher Johnson. Christopher, who is earlier seen disputing the legality of an eviction notice, has plans of his own.

Inspired by the forced removal of sixty-thousand residents from District 6 in Cape Town, District 9 functions as a metaphor for apartheid-era racial policies. The “prawns” are definitely meant to symbolize members of racial minority groups as they are bipedal, employ verbal communication that is easily understood by humans, and even engage in inter-species sexual relations. The (mostly white) humans put in charge of policing them unthinkingly utilize colonialist arguments to justify their oppressive tactics; “prawns” are stereotyped as uncivilized, aggressive, lacking in initiative, none too bright, and lacking the same concept of land ownership that humans have. And Wikus’ transformation from human to alien mirrors the fates of scores of South African whites who lost their legal standing as whites once the government discovered their “non-white” ancestry.

Despite its interesting premise and inventive storytelling, this movie is eventually undone by its flaws. First, there are a lot of plot holes. For instance, MNU’s decision to kill Wikus and harvest his organs doesn’t make much sense. Isn’t he much more useful to them alive than dead?

Second, racial stereotypes of Africans abound. While always unacceptable, racial stereotypes definitely don’t belong in a movie with an anti-xenophobia message. However, that did not deter the filmmakers from presenting extremely negative images of sub-Saharan Africans. Every black person in District 9 was either: 1) an unthinking toady of white authority figures (Mandla Gaduka), 2) a violent criminal, 3) a believer in witchcraft and superstition, or 4) some combination of 1-3.

I found it very telling that the Nigerian warlords don’t live much better than the “prawns” they regularly exploit. (Even though quite a few Nigerians do live in South Africa, the filmmakers should not have assumed that an international audience would know that, which is yet another flaw in this movie.) I also thought it was odd that none of the South African blacks featured in the film seemed to see any parallels between the aliens’ predicament and their own recent history.

Finally, the third act quickly disintegrates into a standard Hollywood shoot-em-up, and District 9 relies too heavily on gore. Once the audience became aware that the aliens’ military hardware can literally blow its targets to bits, the filmmakers should have kept much of the violence off-screen. I covered my eyes numerous times, and I am not exactly squeamish.

Despite its imperfections, the mockumentary District 9 does make you think while managing to be entertaining, a feat few of the movies released this year have managed to pull off. In fact, District 9 is likely to find a wide audience and make more than a few “Best of 2009” lists.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, August 15th 2009