Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for August, 2017

“WHOSE STREETS?”: Walk a mile in my shoes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 17, 2017| Leave a Comment »

“WHOSE STREETS?” My rating: B+  

90 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The 2014 killing of unarmed Michael Brown by a Ferguson MO police officer was a watershed moment in American race relations, spawning the Black Lives Matter movement and creating widespread resistance among African Americans to social, economic and law enforcement inequality.

It’s one thing to talk about these issues.  It’s another to live them.

After  the Brown shooting,  filmmakers Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis took their cameras to the streets of Ferguson to record the aftermath: protests, looting, rioting (whether by protestors or police depends on your political outlook) and grass roots organizing.

The result is “Whose Streets?”, an incendiary 90 minutes that doesn’t even attempt a conventional evenhanded analysis of the situation.

Folayan and Davis’ film jumps feet first into the action, recording events in the streets in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and, as months go by, examining the growing resistance within the black community.

“Whose Streets?” wants us to feel African American outrage and dismay. It does’t analyze it. It doesn’t provide commentary or counterpoint. It simply observes.

And in doing so this documentary allows viewers to feel  what it’s like to be a black person in Ferguson.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

“PAINT IT BLACK”: Obsessive aftermath

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 17, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Alia Shawkat

“PAINT IT BLACK” My rating: C+

94 minutes | MPAA rating: R

With a title like “Paint It Black” you don’t expect a barrel of monkeys, nor do you get one with actress Amber Tamblyn’s directing debut.

Indeed, “Paint It Black” is a self-consciously artsy downer; not even a last-shot glimmer of hope is likely to rouse audiences out of their glum funk.

Which is not to say the film is terrible.  It’s got some terrific acting and creative visuals. But it lacks the emotional substance to make us care.

Current indie “it” girl Alia Shawkat stars as Josie, an artist’s model, black-out alcoholic and punk music groupie in pre-cell phone ’80s Los Angeles.

Early in the film (the screenplay is by Ed Dougherty and Tamblyn, adapting Janet Fitch’s novel) Josie receives news that her boyfriend Michael, who disappeared some time earlier, has committed suicide in a cheap hotel room.

In flashbacks we see how they met (she posed for nude studies in the class where he was an art student).  Their relationship, depicted in silent (save for music) snippets scattered throughout the film, is presented using Hallmark card visual shorthand (we see them discovering a junked upright piano, painting it together in their living room, spooning in bed etc.) .

They seem happy enough, though what a late-night carouser like Josie sees in the squeaky-clean Michael (Rhys Wakefield) is a mystery. Truth is, because he has only a few words of dialogue in the entire film, we get almost no sense of his personality.

Which makes Josie’s post-mortem obsession with Michael all the more unfathomable.

Turns out Josie isn’t the only one with Michaelmania.  His mother Meredith (the great Janet McTeer), a famous concert pianist, is also driven to the edges of madness by her grief and fury at having had to share her boy with this other woman.

The meeting of the two women is memorable — at Michael’s funeral Meredith tries to strangle Josie in front of the casket and a mortuary full of shocked mourners. Later Meredith raids the apartment where Josie and Michael lived, stealing all of his drawings, journals and personal effects.  Josie retaliates by sneaking into Meredith’s hilltop mansion and stealing back as much of the loot as she can carry.

We’re poised to see the story become a possibly violent test of wills between two women. But it never gets that far.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

“TURN IT AROUND: THE STORY OF EAST BAY PUNK”

Posted in Uncategorized on August 10, 2017| Leave a Comment »

“TURN IT AROUND: THE STORY OF EAST BAY PUNK”  My rating C+ (Opens Aug. 12 at Screenland Tapcade)

155 minutes | No MPAA rating

Exhausting but nevertheless energetic, “Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk” contains more information  than most of us will never need to know about the rise of punk music in the San Franscisco area.

Corbett Redford and Anthony Machitiello’s polished documentary is clearly an act of love. They bring to the table an encyclopedic knowledge of the scene, the bands and players who made the music, the promoters who gave them places to perform, the underground media types who chronicled  and promoted the movement.

Narrated by none other than the great Iggy Pop, this massive opus (2 hours, 35 minutes) mixes clever animation, talking heads, old performance footage and vintage graphics to lay out the tale.

Over in posh San Francisco the fading hippie movement was still wallowing in its own musical decline (in this telling Fillmore Ballroom promoter Bill Graham comes off as a hopeless tool of the establishment). But across the bay in Berkeley and in a host of nondescript working-class cities the kids were creating their own sound, inspired by the British punk movement but with its own indelible American stamp.

The music was driving and relentless (guitar solos were sneered at) and the lyrics embraced teen angst and fierce opposition to the system. Any system.

The film does capture the us-vs.-them attitude that prevailed among young punk purveyors and  fans, and there’s just enough of the music on the soundtrack to give you a sense of the chaotic, liberating scene.

Drawbacks? Well there are maybe three dozen interviewees, ranging from minor players to major figures (Jello Biafra, Billy Joe Armstrong), and while it’s amusing to witness the plump middle age into which so many of  these snarling rebels have slid, most of them are limited to, like, two sentences of on-camera talk before something else fills the screen.

The audience for “Turn It Around” mostly will be limited to hard-core punk fans. But they will not be disappointed.

| Robert W. Butler

Read Full Post »

“THE GLASS CASTLE”: Growing up dysfunctional

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 10, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Brie Larson

“THE GLASS CASTLE” My rating: C+

127 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

There are a few moments when “The Glass Castle” threatens to come to emotional life.

But they pass.

Heaven knows there’s a compelling story here.  Based on Jeannette Walls’ best-selling memoir of a wildly unconventional upbringing and a troubled maturity, this film describes a girlhood dominated by fiercely nonconformist parents who are always just a step ahead of the cops and the child services people. (This was a theme explored, with more success, in last year’s “Captain Fantastic.”)

But despite offering a hair-raising depiction of how not to raise children, Destin Daniel Cretton’s film plays more like a freak show — with one display of parental insanity following another — than the deeply moving drama it obviously aims to be.

New York City, 1989.  From a taxi window gossip columnist Jeannette Walls (Brie Larson, an Oscar winner for “Room”) spots a distressing and deeply personal vignette: An unkempt woman scrounges through a dumpster while her man rages at the passing traffic.

They are Rose Mary (Naomi Watts) and Rex (Woody Harrelson), Jeannette’s parents, who are squatting in an abandoned building and living hand to mouth.

This triggers a series of flashbacks to Jeannette’s nomadic and impoverished childhood and especially her relationship with Rex, a possibly brilliant man who is all ideas and no follow-through, a mean alcoholic and a charismatic ranconteur.

Rex is the kind of guy who, lacking money for Christmas presents, takes his kids outside to pick a star for their very own. (Awww.)  He’s also borderline abusive, teaching his terrified daughter to swim by throwing her in the deep end of the pool.

Rose Mary is only marginally more centered. She devotes herself to painting (without ever improving, apparently) and has no time for mundane stuff like feeding her offspring.  (more…)

Read Full Post »

“STEP”: Stomping to the future

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on August 10, 2017| Leave a Comment »

“STEP” My rating: A-

83 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

We live in demoralizing times.  All the more reason to check out “Step,” a spectacularly engaging documentary about youth, challenge and triumph.

Amanda Lipitz’s film (amazingly, her first) centers on the step team at the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women, an institution designed to give at-risk girls and a shot at a rewarding future.  The institution takes pride in sending every one of its graduates on to a higher institution of learning.

Step is a competitive event in which young persons — predominantly African Americans — put on performances involving complex and often high-speed footwork, gymnastics and chanting.  The lyrics often reflect social issues. These routines are performed accapella — no musical backing — although the awesome sound of a dozen or more feet stomping out an irresistible beat is hypnotic in a most musical way.

It’s like a mashup of glee club and ROTC drill squad — minus the rifles and fueled by funk, sass and optimism. One participant describes it as  “making music with our bodies.”

“Step” follows a group of senior girls — the original class at BLSYW when it opened several years back — as they prepare for their last year of step competitions. That sounds like a formula for your basic sports documentary, but Lipitz casts a much wider net.  By film’s end we’re treated to a rich emotional experience that will leave more than few audience members groping for a Kleenex.

Three of these young women become the focus of the film.

The most charismatic is Blessin, a star-in-training who founded the step team and oozes charisma.  With an apparently inexhaustible collection of wigs and an outsized personality that takes over any room, she’s a force to be reckoned with. (The Marilyn Monroe poster in her bedroom says something about her aspirations.) Brimming over with confidence and energy (outwardly, anyway), Blessin could sell refrigerators to Eskimos.

She’ll need every bit of her drive, beauty and determination, for like most of her fellow students Blessin faces daily challenges that could easily derail her path to success. Her mother is loving but plagued by depression and anger issues — sometimes she can’t find the will to get out of the house to participate in counseling sessions about her daughter’s future.

And then there’s the issue of money. Like virtually all of her teammates, Blessin hasn’t the cash for a college education. Some sort of scholarship is her only hope. But a bad case of senioritis — marked by dropping grades and a quietly demanding boyfriend — makes that an iffy proposition.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

“LANDLINE”: The family that sins together grins together

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on August 3, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Jenny Slate, Abby Quinn

“LANDLINE”  My rating: B-

93 minutes | MPAA rating: R

With “Obvious Child,” her 2014 feature writing/directing debut, Gillian Robespierre achieved the near impossible, delivering a bittersweet comedy/drama about a young woman who opts for an abortion.

Her sophomore effort, “Landline,” is equally ambitious, if not quite so successful.

The topic here is infidelity and its repercussions.  There’s some angst tossed around, yes, but this mostly low-keyed comedy keeps its eye on notion that sometimes marital trauma ends up being better for everyone. (Robespierre has said in interviews that both she and co-writer Elizabeth Holm saw their parents’ marriages break up because of adultery…but that in the long run everyone was better off for it.)

Set in the pre-cell phone ’90s,  the film centers on the four members of the Quinn family in New York City.

Father Alan (John Turturro) is a advertising copywriter who really wants to turn out great poetry and prose.  Mother Pat (Edie Falco) has her hands full with their 17-year-old daughter Ali (Abby Quinn), a bad-tempered rebel specializing in ditching classes, smoking dope and experimenting with sex.

Their oldest daughter, Dana (Jenny Slade, star of “Obvious Child”), has already moved out and is living with her fiancé. She seems to be as straight and uptight as Ali is angry and adventurous; when uncomfortable Dana erupts in helium giggles. Concerned that her life’s turning into a long slog, she suggests to fiance Ben (Jay Duplass) that they have sex during a hike in the woods. All they get for the effort is a bad case of poison ivy.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

“DETROIT”: Long night’s journey

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on August 3, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Will Poulter, Anthony Mackie

“DETROIT”  My rating: B

125 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Kathryn Bigelow doesn’t pull many punches.

In the fact-based “Detroit,” the Oscar-winning filmmaker explores a deadly 50-year-old incident from America’s racial past, an incident so distressing that in comparison it makes her “Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty” seem like lighthearted matinee fodder.

That the film is powerful is beyond dispute. It’s so powerful, so excruciating that one must question whether audiences are willing to take it on.

Bigelow’s subject is the notorious Algiers Motel incident. In July 1967, during rioting (some have called it a rebellion) in Detroit’s black neighborhoods, three young men were killed — murdered by most accounts — when confronted by police at the aforesaid motel.

Employing a docudrama approach of the sort pioneered by Paul Greengrass (“Bloody Sunday,” “United 93”), “Detroit” tells its tale without much explanation. After an animated opening sequence exploring the sources of America’s racial crisis in the late 1960s, the film throws us into the action.

It begins when Detroit police raid an illegal after-hours club, and a crowd gathers. Bricks are thrown. Within hours a full-fledged uprising/riot is underway.

The screenplay by Mark Boal (“Zero Dark Thirty”) introduces a half dozen characters on both sides of the conflict.

When their performance at a big soul revue is canceled because of the rioting, Larry Reed (Algee Smith) and Fred Temple (Jacob Latimore), members of the singing group the Dramatics (the group eventually would be signed by Motown Records), attempt to get home. They decide to hole up where a score of others have taken shelter, in the Algiers’ annex, a once-impressive house now divided up into individual rental rooms.

On the other side of the equation is a white cop, Krauss (Will Poulter), who claims to understand the plight of the urban underclass but who is clearly trigger-happy, weary from days of dealing with arson and looting. Earlier that day he had shot and killed a fleeing looter.

An Algiers tenant (Jason Mitchell) taunts approaching police and National Guard troops by firing a harmless starter pistol, unleashing a series of horrific events. Detroit cops, state police officers and guardsmen storm into the house, rounding up the tenants. Employing psychological terror and beatings, Krauss and company demand to know the whereabouts of the “sniper.” (more…)

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts