This year, we’re returning to core values — only short, decisive synopses of a film’s most important attributes. No more drunk history about a movie’s genesis, no more gushing all over an actress’s blouse and achievements. Just the cold, hard facts.
In this long awaited remake of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, John Lithgow plays an unscrupulous real estate developer. One who believes that the death of our world is inevitable, that we should embrace self annihilation and live life to its fullest, by kicking octopuses up and down the pier until they’re dead, and make no apologies.
Beatriz, played by Salma Hayek, is a practitioner of alternative medicines. She’s a Californian nowadays, but is originally from some place in Mexico that I can’t even spell or pronounce. She works in a clinic, primarily with cancer patients. Her life is a futile war against suffering and death, and she literally can feel a person’s pain.
This is an unsettling and depressing film. There are a lot of unanswered questions about the hinted-at history that ties Lithgow and Hayek to one another. There are unexplained goat fatalities. See it for the acting and not the answers, which are missing.
Venue: Seattle International Film Festival, 2017
Country: USA
Language: English
Genres: Drama
An unremarkable Icelandic film about a primary school teacher on his summer vacation. The film’s main message seems to be “Get the hell out of Iceland while you still can.” Trying to cope with recent abandonment by a girlfriend, Hugi spends his ample free time either jogging down deserted streets or attending a member-run substance abuse support group.
Flowers are given on many occasions and for only one reason. When words are not possible, people give flowers. Whether to express desire, remembrance or painful regret, beautiful bouquets fill this film with vibrant color and communicate the characters’ thoughts and feelings. Even beyond the grave, a person’s memory coupled with pretty flora can bring together complete strangers to build unlikely human relationships.
This girl from India with cerebral palsy will make you feel like a complaining, lazy, sack of potatoes. Parallel to her studies, she’s the lyricist for a band from school. But Laila wants to study abroad, and ends up attending NYU where she takes a girlfriend, discovers she’s bisexual, and eventually gets hooked on margaritas.
I expected this to be the story of a young girl feverish with idealism and countless flashbacks of events and experiences that drove her to flee civilization in favor of desolation. Not so much though.
Before the story even begins, Robyn’s family has fallen apart. After her mother’s suicide, Robyn’s father is deemed unable to care for her. After subsequent isolation by time spent in boarding school, Robyn gives little explanation for her plans to cross the Australian Outback on foot. We know that her father explored the African continent during the 20’s and 30’s, and surely his stories fired a child’s curiosity and sense of adventure. The screenplay doesn’t portray Robyn’s endeavor as a rash decision, but instead as a lengthy process of training feral camels and preparing for the trip.
Based on a best selling memoir by the same name, “Tracks” follows real-life Robyn Davidson’s 9 month, 1700 mile journey from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean. In 1977, she set out with funding from National Geographic ($4000) and help from a photo journalist named Rick Smolan. According to Robyn, sponsorship felt unnatural but she really needed the money for the walkabout to succeed. As for the trip itself, National Geographic influenced the route — The magazine wanted a beginning, middle and end, not items high on Robyn’s list of importance. But maybe part of “succeeding” in life is realizing that you need to make compromises. In an interview, she noted that one of her goals in going to the desert was “to try to understand some aspects of Aboriginal culture”. For a part of her trek, she’s accompanied by one of the tribal elders as she crosses through sacred areas.
Given this is a mostly historical account, we know that Robyn completes the trip. The photographer (played by Adam Driver) sent by National Geographic to document the journey first strikes me as bit annoying and manipulative. But then we get to know him a little better, and he’s both a passionate and supportive cohort. By the the end of the film he seems more invested in Robyn’s success than she is, going thousands of miles out of his way to deliver water cans along her trek through the desert.
More interesting than anything else is what this film taught me about feral camels. I had no idea there were so many. Thousands of dromedary camels were imported from India and other eastern countries during the period of 1870 to 1900. They were mostly used for riding and heavy work during the colonization of central and western Australia, however when automobiles arrived at the beginning of the 20th century, many were released into the wild. Today there are thought to be about 300,000 roaming the country.
The cinematography is the first and foremost reason to see this film, but acting is a close second. Mia Wasikowska was Robyn’s first choice for the actress to portray her. I’m also impressed with the screen writing, it doesn’t play at all like a true story. Somewhere out there is a forgotten, May 1978 issue of National Geographic sitting on someone’s bookshelf, with photos taken by Rick and an article written by Robyn.
Venue: Seattle International Film Festival, 2014
Country: Australia
Language: English
Genres: Drama
In the year 2014, climate scientists will finally solve the problem of global warming. Countries of the world will be convinced to seed their skies with large amounts of WD-40 in an attempt to halt rising temperatures. Unfortunately, something goes terribly wrong. In the process of lubricating the atmosphere, our world is plunged into a bitterly cold ice age (or maybe just a really bad snow storm).
But there’s still hope for the human race. A young boy with a fascination for model railroads will grow up and build a perpetual motion locomotive. The little engine will pull an obscenely long train of passenger cars on a closed circuit railway encircling the planet once every 365 days. The boy’s name is “Wilford” (played by Ed Harris). He’s an insane capitalist, and he’s here to help. The few thousand, lucky individuals who board Wilford’s train just before the world freezes over manage to survive inside of a closed ecological system for 18 years. No one gets on, no one gets off, everything is recycled and … is that Soylent Green I see on your plate? One of the many mysteries of this film is presence of steak on Ed Harris’s menu.
The Snowpiercer is a not a train of equality. It is a free market economy on wheels, where separation of class is conveniently represented by the linkages between cars. At the rear of the train, we have the impoverished workers. At the front of the train, rich capitalists live in luxury and debauchery. For comedic relief, we have Tilda Swinton (a warped activities director named Mason) who wanders the aisles preaching about how passengers should “know your place, keep your place”. To drive the point home, she sometimes wears a shoe on her head to illustrate how absurd it is for a caboose to be at the head of the train.
(Tanya, Mason, Andrew, Curtis, Grey, Yona — the dumb look on her face is because she’s a “train baby”, and Namgoong Minsoo)
Like any free market economy, there are periodic corrections that must take place. On the Snowpiercer, these corrections take the form of bloody rebellions where car loads of axe wielding, night vision wearing, hooded executioners cull the population and restore balance to the train’s delicate ecosystem. I’d like to tell you that there’s a point to life on the Snowpiercer, but there isn’t. These characters are acting out mankind’s last moments on Earth’s stage, clinging to a failed economic model once embraced by Western society. There are many points to writer-director Joon-ho Bong’s new screenplay however, most of them mocking what our world has become and how it will die.
Some have complained that the director’s cut of this film is too long (125 minutes). Nonsense, you just need a more comfortable seat, perhaps in 1st class. The Weinstein Company, US distributor of the movie, is reported to have screened a shortened version that met with colder acceptance from test audiences. Maybe part of what contributes to a feeling of cabin fever is the film’s four different sound stages, each built out as either a two-car, three-car or four-car set (click on the images below). Except for an occasional glance outside, audiences are trapped along with cast and crew inside of a narrow tin can for over 2 hours.
Coaches to help you relax:A walk-through aquarium, complete with sushi bar and chef. Fresh fish is served semi-annually. Arboretum with plants and things, a breath of fresh air after your bloody fight to the death five cars back.
Coaches to give you nightmares:The protein car, where all food for the tail section is manufactured. You really don’t want to know what’s in those purple, gelatinous meals. An elementary school run by actress Allison Pill. With a machine pistol in one hand, and a world map in the other, she’ll make sure you get the basics of a good education. You’ll learn things like “if you go outside you’ll freeze and die”. The kids are really excited about her class!
Snowpiercer’s screenplay is adapted from the 1982 graphic novel “Le Transperceneige” by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette.
Venue: Seattle International Film Festival, 2014
Country: South Korea, USA
Language: English
Genres: Drama, sci-fi, fantasy
A young girl named Bibicha decides to take a vow of silence for 40 days, a spiritual practice of penance known mostly in Indian and Persian traditions. However, there’s something darker afoot here than a religious cleansing. The voices on the radio talk of culturally condoned physical abuse towards wives, and there’s the question of whether Bibicha may be pregnant. Who’s body is it that’s found in the lake? This is filmed on location in Tajikistan. There are long stretches of silence where dialogue is replace by beautiful cinematography.
Your youngest child is ill, your acting career is in the toilet, and your agent is breathing down your neck to sign the last contract you’ll ever be offered. A few, lucky thespians will be digitized and live on in cinema as caricatures of their former selves. As for the rest, they’ll be sent home without a paycheck. The film industry has moved on. In a dystopian future where the masses take hallucinogenic drugs and live in an animated reality, the physical world around them crumbles and doctors live in blimps above it all. Read the full review here
Operating Big Bird is somewhat of a technological challenge. It’s not just a suit you put on, it’s a one-man puppet you crawl inside of. The right arm is operated by pulley, and external vision is provided by a monitor strapped to Spinney’s chest. But I don’t think that technical challenge is why Caroll joined Jim Henson’s workshop. This film is as much about the Muppets and Jim Henson as it is Caroll and his family. Do you remember Big Bird making a film in China shortly after Nixon’s foreign policy helped open its doors to the western world for the first time in decades? This is the story of a man who’s great at what he does and loves his craft.
Before Jimi Hendrix was big in America, he left New York for London where he launched his career with the help of manager Chas Chandler (former Animal’s drummer). This film portrays the 1966 rock star as a quiet, depressive, womanizing individual, one trying hard not to be pigeonholed as the purveyor of any particular music style. The people Jimi rubbed elbows with will blow your mind. Jamming on stage with Eric Clapton in a small club, giving a concert with Beatles in the audience. A good performance by André Benjamin of Outkast.
Two MIT, freshmen, computer hackers ferry a girlfriend cross country towards Caltech. During their drive, a mysterious rival hacker (pseudonym “Nomad”) lures the trio into a midnight, backroad detour that subjects the students to a close encounter of the “Laurence Fishburne” kind. Held against their will in a secret, underground military installation, the kids are given loving and tender care by the inhabitants of Area 51. Take the green pill if you decide to watch this film.
This is the story of two estranged twins, a brother and sister, struggling with depression and the question of suicide. After the LA brother’s botched wrist slitting attempt, sis brings her gay sibling home to recuperate in suburban NY. But there are lots of issues from their past that the twins will have to work through, not the least of which include infidelity, inappropriate student-teacher relationships, and unloving or missing parents. The duo’s lip synching to Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” is only one of this movie’s many charms, probably my favorite scene. Read a longer review here.
