Chronicle is not a superhero movie. It is a film about three young guys who, after exposure to a mysterious energy source, develop strong telekinetic powers. More to the point, Chronicle is about how having that empowerment in common forges a strong friendship between them, and the ways they deal with the unexpected power surge.
In the sort of telling which has become so familiar thanks to comic books and the TV shows and movies that follow them, those kids should quickly learn that their powers come with an obligation to help society. Then they foil some small-time crime and forge identities through which they can become virtuous examples of humanity, evolved.
That’s not how Chronicle works. I’m not sure these characters would know how to help humanity if they wanted to. There is nothing truly ‘realistic’ in this film, but there is something intimately recognizable in the ways in which these guys deal with their new powers. They’re kids. They play around with pranks and fun. They realize they can fly, and talk about destination vacations for the telekinetically-enhanced. Then — and this is what makes Chronicle stand out, and what really makes it worth seeing — their powers become lenses that magnify their true natures, to destructive and tragic effect. Read More »
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The Lord of the Rings saved the West Memphis Three. It sounds like a crazy statement but one of the many things a viewer takes from Amy Berg‘s breathtakingly detailed and effective documentary West of Memphis is that co-producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh spent a lot of time, and even more money, to assist in the legal defense, new investigations and expert testimony which eventually lead to the 2011 release of the West Memphis Three, three men accused of murdering three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993. Jackson and Walsh got a lot of their money from The Lord of the Rings so, put two and two together, and the statement seems less crazy.
Jumping off where Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky took off with their Paradise Lost documentary trilogy, Berg’s film makes Purgatory, the latest of Berlinger and Sinofsky’s movies, feel elementary. It expands greatly on all of the revelations on that film, and provides new ones of its own that were filmed as recently as January 12, 2012. Whereas the first Paradise Lost was the definitive documentary on the beginning of this massive, controversial case, West of Memphis is the definitive documentary on its conclusion. Read More »
One Oscar winner, an Oscar nominee and the actor who made the EGOT famous simultaneously elevate the quirky family drama Predisposed. Melissa Leo plays a drug addicted mother whose son, played by Jesse Eisenberg, is forced on a madcap adventure on the most important day of his life. On his way to drop mom off at rehab, he’s taken hostage by a a crazy drug dealer (Tracy Morgan), takes oxycontin, is forced to parent his little sister and even takes part in a Revolutionary War reenactment.
Co-directed by first time feature director Phil Dorling and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Ron Nyswaner from their short of the same name, Predisposed is extremely ambitious and, at times, succeeds in fulfilling those promises thanks in large part to fantastic performances by the three leads. Read More »
In another time, The Grey would have been considered a b-movie, but it would have been the best sort of b-movie: one made with a clever craftman’s skill, pulsing with an insistent tension and featuring familiar characters that grow beyond stock types as they reveal their true personalities.
The temptation now is to simply refer to The Grey as an action movie. The film is about a man named Ottway (Liam Neeson) who, with a crew of roughnecks on their way back to civilization from a remote oil field job, crash lands in the Alaskan wilderness, where a pack of wolves stalks the survivors to the last man.
As directed by Joe Carnahan, however, The Grey is also the antithesis of the action-movie template. Most action films exist explicitly to reject death — consider “death-defying stunts,” that clichéd huckster’s pitch — and in doing so define an existence in which reality and death are marginalized by the expression of a blind, inextinguishable will to live.
Carnahan’s last film, The A-Team, was very much cut from that broad action-movie mold. This one, however, could not be further removed from The A-Team‘s bluster and bravado. Here, Carnahan employs a fine-tuned instinct for revealing character through action, and directs with a feeling of stability atypical to most action movies. But amid this movie’s thrilling beats he places scenes characterized by serene compassion. The Grey is an exiting movie that captures the roughnecks’ walk through an icy valley of the shadow of death. It is also a film that accepts human fragility, and suggests that finding faith is a natural step in facing our inevitable end. Read More »
There’s a running joke amongst comedians that people get into stand-up just so they can be TV stars. It works for some but for others, it seems like stand-up might be a better route to get into film directing. It worked for Woody Allen, Louis CK and now it’s worked for Mike Birbiglia, a successful touring comedian who turned his one man autobiographical off-Broadway show Sleepwalk With Me into a feature film. The movie just had its world premiere at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.
Birbiglia stars as Matt, a struggling stand-up comedian who has been with his girlfriend Abby (Lauren Ambrose) for eight years. When the couple begins to have problems, Matt uses that to finally find his voice, which in turn makes the relationship even more difficult. Then there’s the tiny matter of Matt dangerously sleepwalking every night, all of which actually happened in Birbiglia’s life.
Co-starring James Rebhorn, Carol Kane, Marc Maron and produced by Ira Glass (This American Life), Sleepwalk With Me is incredibly clever, well-directed and laugh out loud hilarious. The message isn’t all that new, but the journey there definitely is.
Watch a clip from the movie as well as a video blog featuring myself and Jordan Raup from The Film Stage after the jump. Read More »
While Sundance is best known for movies that sell for millions and stir up controversial topics, most of the movies are simple, well-written, well-acted films that are solid, but often get lost in the mix. Lynn Shelton‘s follow-up to Humpday, called Your Sister’s Sister, is one of those movies. Another is GOATS, the debut feature of Christopher Neil.
Your Sister’s Sister features Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt as estranged sisters Iris and Hannah who end up at their family’s old cabin when Iris’ best friend Jack (Mark Duplass) heads there to get over the one-year anniversary of the death of his brother. The three characters then develop what I’d like to call a “love triangle” but is more like a “love right angle” that flirts on and off with adding that third line.
GOATS stars David Duchovny, Vera Farmiga and Ty Burrell as the parental figures of a young teenager named Eliis, played by Graham Phillips. Ellis lives a care-free, hippie lifestyle in Arizona with his mom (Farmiga) and her groundskeeper named Goat Man (Duchovny) but when he decides to go back east to the prep school run by his estranged father (Burrell), he finds himself torn between two very different set of parental ideals.
Read more about both movies after the jump. Read More »
Craig Zobel‘s Compliance made me want to walk out of the theater. Not as a reaction to the film’s quality, however. On the contrary, Compliance is actually quite accomplished. Actually, it’s so effective it made me want to walk out because the real life events portrayed were so enraging, so unbelievable, so easily avoidable and painted such a bad light on humanity that I could almost not stomach sitting in the theater.
In the film, a man posing as a police officer calls a local fast food restaurant and accuses an employee named Becky (Dreama Walker) of stealing from a customer. The man asks her manager Sandra (Ann Dowd) to at first detain, and later search her employee. From there things devolve to almost unbelievable and upsetting depths. I say “almost unbelievable” because the film is based on true events that happened at a Kentucky McDonald’s in 2004. (In the film, however, McDonald’s isn’t mentioned for obvious reasons.)
At the first public screening of Compliance, Zobel was screamed at by audience members and accused of misogyny. Other Q&A’s also featured awkward and uncomfortable questions/comments as people wrestled with the disturbing events in the film. Read more about the film and its purpose after the jump. Read More »
If Stanley Kubrick were still alive, Room 237 would make him extremely happy. Directed by Rodney Ascher, the experimental documentary gives the legendary filmmaker a ton of credit, maybe too much at times, as it explores several wild, and not so wild, theories about his 1980 horror masterpiece The Shining.
Some theories, such as the suggestion that the film is a metaphor for the murder of Native Americans, are almost plausible. Others, like that insinuation that Kubrick made the film to clue everyone in that he faked the footage of the Moon landing, are much less believable. But no matter the case, Ascher’s film is a fascinating, funny and incredibly well made ode to a film that’s obviously way more dense than most of us give it credit for. The documentary is an absolute must-see.
Room 237 played as part of the New Frontier category of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and, after the jump, you can check on the poster and read more about it. Read More »
