Day: October 15, 2013

LFM Reviews All is Lost

By Joe Bendel. There is an old man and the sea—sans marlin. There is no tiger, either. Instead, it is an errant workaday cargo container that leads to a mortal and existential crisis in J.C. Chandor’s All is Lost, which opens this Friday in New York.

“Our Man,” as he is simply billed, is in the midst of a solo cruise through the Indian Ocean when his small yacht is struck by said container. He wakes to find his boat taking on water and the electronics, including the radio, shorted out. He is able to patch up the gaping hole and bail out most of the water, but lasting damage has been done. Sailing blindly as a result, Our Man unknowingly proceeds towards a Sebastian Junger-level storm.

Considering it arrives so soon after Ang Lee’s Oscar winning Life of Pi, viewers might assume Lost is just more of the same. However, there is a muscular leanness to Chandor’s film that frankly compares favorably to its predecessor. All the New Age allegories and comforting sentimentality are stripped away, leaving a mere man to face the elements alone.

On one level, Chandor’s screenplay is relatively simple, with almost no dialogue to be heard from start to finish. Still, despite the limits of the water-bound location, Chandor dexterously introduces one darned thing after another to torment his sole character. Being the one and only face of a film is always a considerable challenge, but the shockingly haggard looking Robert Redford (showing his full seventy seven years) rises to the occasion. Rather than acting out and raging against fate, he vividly portrays the man’s slow deflation, which is far more compelling over time.

If not as visually arresting as Pi, Lost fully conveys the cold, damp, claustrophobic crumminess of Our Man’s precarious situation. Technically, it is quite an accomplished film, with particularly credit due to the Tahoe, the Tenacious, and the Orion, the three vessels that sailed their last as stand-ins for Our Man’s ill-fated Virginia Jean.

If nothing else, Lost should convince viewers not to look in the middle of the Indian Ocean if they want to go find themselves. It is surprisingly gripping stuff, buoyed by a remarkably disciplined performance from its craggy star. Recommended for those who appreciate a realistic man versus the elements survival story, All is Lost opens this Friday (10/18) in New York at the Angelika Film Center.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on October 15th, 2013 at 12:17pm.

LFM Reviews This Ain’t No Mouse Music @ The Margaret Mead Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Chris Strachwitz was born to an aristocratic family in Lower Silesia, but WWII drastically altered his destiny, turning him into the song-hunting heir of Alan Lomax. News that the advancing Soviet army was summarily executing “capitalists” convinced his family to emigrate west. Encountering New Orleans Jazz and Delta Blues as an American teen, he subsequently founded Arhoolie Records (named after a form of field holler Lomax recorded) to seek out and preserve the earthy sounds that spoke to him. Fifty years later, Strachwitz looks back on it all in Chris Simon & Maureen Gosling’s This Ain’t No Mouse Music, which screens during the 2013 Margaret Mead Film Festival at the American Museum of Natural History.

“Mouse Music” is a vague term Strachwitz uses for the sort of slick, mass produced music he can’t abide. His musician friends cannot really define it either, but they know you don’t want to be it. Like Lomax, Strachwitz did much of his recording in the field, tracking down many of the real deal Blues, Cajun, Creole, Cajunto, and Appalachian musicians that had slipped through the modern world’s cracks. The first time out, he hit major pay dirt, “discovering” Mance Lipscomb. Thanks to Arhoolie, artists like Big Joe Williams, post-“Hound Dog” Big Mama Thornton, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Michael Doucet, and Clifton Chenier would find a dedicated national audience.

From "This Ain’t No Mouse Music."

During his travels, Strachwitz met and collaborated with filmmaker Les Blank (to whom Mouse Music is dedicated) and became a family friend to scores of musicians. Evidently, Strachwitz largely picked up the Bay Area politics surrounding him, but Simon and Gosling mostly steer clear of potentially divisive subjects. However, they cannot resist including the story of how Strachwitz obtained publishing rights to Country Joe McDonald’s “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag.” Evidently, the folk-rocker needed to lay down the future Woodstock ditty quickly and was referred to Strachwitz’ living room-studio by friends. In lieu of payment, Strachwitz accepted publishing rights, proving former Silesian aristocrats are better businessmen than hippies.

Simon and Gosling keep up with the only slightly manic Strachwitz quite well, conveying a good sense of the man and his label’s roster of artists.  While not everything Arhoolie releases will be to everyone’s tastes, the depth and breadth of it is quite impressive. Indeed, there is something very Whitman-esque about Strachwitz’s far-ranging pursuit of this roots music. The doc also provides a nice Blues fix, which is tough to get through mainstream media outlets. Recommended for fans of unvarnished musical Americana, This Ain’t No Mouse Music screens this Friday (10/18) as part of this year’s Margaret Mead Film Festival at the AMNH.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 15th, 2013 at 12:14pm.

LFM Reviews Embrace of the Vampire; Now Available on Blu-ray/DVD

By Joe Bendel. There’s one thing vampires dig almost as much as blood. Lurking about a hormonally stoked college campus is as good a place as any to find it. It isn’t even spring break yet, but college life is distinctly feverish for one innocent freshman coed. There will be blood and nudity. The details will sound vaguely familiar to those who fondly remember the erotic cult favorite that forever changed how film geeks thought about Alyssa Milano. Remade for a new generation, Carl Bessai’s unrated Embrace of the Vampire (trailer here) releases today on DVD and Blu-ray (where it so obviously belongs).

Right, if you’re still with me after that, then sweet, let’s do this. Like so many disadvantaged orphans before her, Charlotte Hawthorn is determined to fence her way to a better life. However, the scholarship student feels out of step with the hedonism enjoyed by her trampy roommate, Nicole and her mean girl BFF, Eliza. At least Hawthorn has a nice barista job lined up, working for her sensitive frat boy café manager.

Strangely, as soon as she arrives, Hawthorn starts experiencing sexually charged dreams and visions. It gets so bad, so quickly, she soon has trouble distinguishing reality. The fencing team hazing rituals do not help either. However, one upper class teammate is willing to shield her from the worst of it: Sarah Campbell, the bisexual nymphomaniac. Every fencing squad should have at least one. Meanwhile her coach and mythology professor seems to take an intense interest in her “stance.”

Add in a bit of warmed over vampire slayer mumbo jumbo and there you have it. Except, Bessai’s execution is better than you would expect. Granted, the flashbacks to the old country look like outtakes from a Syfy Channel original movie, but the contemporary campus sequences sort of work. The location is perfect. Every building seems to have an exterior staircase, and surrounding woods encroach on every corner. It is a bit unusual for the women’s fencing team to be at the top of the school’s social pyramid, but the film’s student power dynamics are as well realized as that in the overrated All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. The new Embrace is also less of a tease, pretty much delivering what it promises.

From "Embrace of the Vampire."

Be that as it may, this is not the film that will establish Sharon Hinnendael as the screen thespian of her generation. It is not really her fault, though. Most of her scenes involve her groggily coming to after falling into various states of altered consciousness. Unfortunately, Victor Webster’s Prof. Cole is a pretty cheesy excuse for a Byronic brooder. Still, C.C. Sheffield, Chelsey Reist, and Olivia Cheng play the catty fencing femmes to the hilt.

Embrace commits one cardinal sin. At one point, Cole refers to Hawthorn’s foil as a “sword.” That is a big no-no. Still, the target market is not apt to notice and even less likely to care. Bessai has some legit credits to his name (most notably Emile starring Sir Ian McKellen) and keeps the silly indulgences moving along at a decent pace. By now you should know what you’re getting, but it is still more entertaining than many of the genre underachievers limping in and out of theaters this month. Recommended for those who enjoy horror movies with plenty of naughty bits, the new Embrace of the Vampire is now available for home viewing.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on October 15th, 2013 at 12:05pm.