Day: May 9, 2014

One Jesse Eisenberg Too Many: LFM Reviews The Double

By Joe Bendel. It was Nabokov’s favorite Dostoevsky work, but he might not have recognized this vaguely British, boldly dystopian adaptation. Simon James is about to meet a new co-worker with a familiar face, who will turn his drab little life upside down in Richard Ayoade’s The Double, which opened today in New York.

James is a mousy Winston Smith toiling away in a soul-deadeningly bureaucratic data processing firm. He works like a mule producing mountains of reports, but the boss, Mr. Papadopoulos, constantly belittles him, never even properly remembering his name. Simon James initially befriends James Simon, his relentlessly confident doppelganger, even completing his paper-pushing assignments in exchange for advice on wooing Hannah, a pale young woman in the copy department. Even though she lives across the courtyard from his Soviet-style apartment building, she has only the barest awareness of James’ existence.

Naturally, Simon soon starts pursuing him for his own satisfaction, while insidiously undermining James’ already tenuous position with the company. As the put upon James’ Orwellian world becomes increasingly Kafkaesque, he starts to act out of desperation.

For those who were less than charmed by Submarine, Ayoade’s sad-eyed moppet coming-of-age tale, The Double will come as a pleasant shock. Even though it often feels like the unauthorized sequel to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, there is a real vision thing going on here. Specifically, the strategy of recasting Dostoevsky in a dystopian setting is a brilliant way to still connect to the original story’s Russian-ness, while striving for universality. After all, novels like 1984 were conceived as Stalinist critiques, which suddenly seems highly relevant again given Putin’s re-commencement of Russian May Day parades.

Similarly, it is nice to see Jesse Eisenberg step outside his sheepish hipster comfort zone to create two very distinctively pathological personas as Simon and James (or vice versa). His two-handed scenes played single-handedly crackle with tension and bite. Mia Wasikowska’s Hannah is rather drearily demure, but at least she is a convincing blank slate for James to project his yearnings upon. In contrast, Wallace Shawn and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith ham it up something fierce as the company president and security guard, but the effect is much more unsettling than funny-ha-ha.

Ayoade and co-adapter Avi Korine have created a rigorously consistent, dark, and dank vision of an analog future that almost was and maybe will be again. Production designer David Crank and his team did incredible work making it all feel (uncomfortably) lived in. It is an admirably disciplined film that never trafficks in empty surrealism merely to score points with cult movie fanatics. Recommended for devotees of literate urban fantasy, The Double opened today in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on May 9th, 2014 at 11:52pm.

The Righteous Diplomats: LFM Reviews The Rescuers

By Joe Bendel. Typically, it is the most privileged elite who serve in a nation’s diplomatic corp. They should be the ones who could most afford to follow their consciences’ dictates, yet career preservation and general CYA-ing are more often the norm. British historian Sir Martin Gilbert and his Rwandan research associate Stephanie Nyombayire profile twelve exceptional diplomats who bent the rules and in some cases risked their lives to save Jews from the National Socialists in Michael King’s The Rescuers, which opened today in New York.

Without question, Gilbert is the preeminent historian of the Holocaust. For Nyombayire, who lost one hundred family members in the Rwandan genocide, crimes against humanity are not just an academic issue. Together, they accompany Jewish survivors as they revisit the various stops along their flight to freedom, paying tribute to the diplomats who interceded on their behalf, often in defiance of their nation’s policies. Pointedly, Nyombayire asks where were similar such rescuers in Rwanda, while Gilbert wonders why were there not more of them during World War II?

Essentially, Rescuers becomes a buffet of heroism, profiling both the well known and the unjustly forgotten alike. While the work of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and American Varian Fry are relatively well known, thanks to television dramas (starring Richard Chamberlain and William Hurt, respectively), Gilbert and Nyombayire also give due credit to American diplomat Hiram Bingham IV, who supplied thousands of visas to asylum-seekers and gave Fry’s mission the deceptive veneer of official State Department sanction.

From "The Rescuers."

However, the most extraordinary examples must be Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese counsel to Lithuania, and German National Socialist Party member Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz. In open defiance of his instructions, Duckwitz facilitated the safe passage of 7,200 Jews from occupied Denmark to neutral Sweden, rather than deporting them to Germany.

Rescuers never constitutes ground-breaking filmmaking, but it is highly informative and deeply reverent of its subjects. Granted, some of the staged conversations are indeed stagey, but they also offer real substance. The cynical might also accuse Rescuers of manipulation, but when Gilbert recounts the parable of the Good Samaritan to Nyombayire, if you cannot appreciate the heaviness of the moment, you really ought to have your soul checked.

As a dramatic lesson in history, ethics, and even geography, The Rescuers will be ideal for classroom viewing. Yet, the courageous case studies it chronicles should fascinate viewers of any age. Recommended for general audiences, The Rescuers opened today (5/9) in New York at the Quad Cinema.

LFM GRADE: B+

May 9th, 2014 at 11:36pm.

Break a Leg, Campers: LFM Reviews Stage Fright

By Joe Bendel. These drama camp kids might as well learn the hard truths of show business at an early age. They will watch as the seniors deal with the casting couch, a manipulative producer, and a psycho-stalker. Nonetheless, they keep singing and dancing all the way through Jerome Sable’s musical horror mash-up, Stage Fright, which opens today in New York.

The Haunting of the Opera would have been a triumph for its star-diva Kylie Swanson, had she not been brutally murdered by a knife wielding maniac dressed as the Phantom after her opening night performance. It’s a setback. Roger McCall, Swanson’s producer and one-time lover takes in her young children, Camilla and Buddy, but falls on hard times after the show’s closing. He tries to make a go of it as the director of the Center Stage Camp for Performing Arts, where the siblings work as kitchen staff. Yet, despite a loyal student body, the camp is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

In a last ditch comeback attempt, McCall decides to stage the Andrew Lloyd Weber-ish Haunting as their annual production. In violation of camp policy, Camilla auditions for her mother’s part. Naturally, she nails it, but she will still have to finesse the lecherous student director. News of her involvement even attracts the interest of a career-making producer, but once again a psycho in a Phantom mask starts carving up cast-members. Yet, the show will go on, don’tcha know.

Sable and musical collaborator Eli Batalion were team behind the musical horror short The Legend of Beaver Dam, which is rather amusing, largely because the brief format allows it to just hit-it-and-quit-it without a lot of phony drama. Frankly, Sable might be too pre-occupied with the psychological angst. Yes, character development is generally a good thing, but Camilla’s little orphan complex is not very deep or compelling. Yet, it takes space that could otherwise be used for gory gags.

None of the individual tunes are particularly memorable either, but they are performed by the cast and company with admirable conviction. Fright will probably hold considerably more novelty appeal for midnight movie fans outside of New York, because we can see legit stage productions in this spirit Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway fairly regularly. (In fact, it might have helped Sable to have someone like Rachel Klein on-board as a consultant or whatever.)

From "Stage Fright."

Still, when Fright goes all in, Grand Guignol style, it is a pretty awesome spectacle. Essentially, the opening and closing deliver on its promise, whereas the long midsection merely serves to get us from here to there. For Rocky Horror fans, it also has Meat Loaf (Aday) singing and thesping as McCall. While her character is not long for the world, Minnie Driver dies great in the prologue. Unfortunately, the twentysomething cast playing teenagers are largely undistinguished. Arguably, the best numbers feature the full company rather than the solo spotlights.

The film has its moments, but there should be more subversive glee, so to speak. Recommended eventually as a VOD or DVD pick for horror fans who do not have a lot of genre theaters options in their hometowns, Stage Fright opens today (5/9) in New York at the Cinema Village.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on May 9th, 2014 at 11:31pm.