Month: February 2015

LFM Reviews Meru @ The 2015 Sundance Film Festival

Meru Official Trailer from Chai Vasarhelyi on Vimeo.

By Joe Bendel. You could call it the extremely scenic route. In the alpinist world, the forbidding Shark’s Fin route up Mount Meru was one of the last great conquests. Three climbers came maddeningly close in 2008, but fell short. Filmmaker-alpinist Jimmy Chin and his producer-co-director wife E. Chai Vasarhelyi document the 2008 expedition, their 2011 return, and the dramatic intervening events in Meru, which screens during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

Located in the Northern Indian Himalayas, Meru had been summited before, but never via the Shark’s Fin. It is an arduous field of ice obstacles, frozen sheer, offering precious few footholds or crevices. So why climb it? Presumably, because it is there. As one of the most respected alpinists climbing today, Conrad Anker was an obvious candidate to finally lick the Shark’s Fin. Chin also had extensive experience as a climber and photographer. Renan Ozturk was the junior man on the team, but the trio meshed well together. They just didn’t quite make it on their first attempt.

Frankly, Chin and Vasarhelyi do not spend must time establishing the significance of Mount Meru or the Shark’s Fin, pretty much launching into the climbing right away. Similarly, we do not get much sense of the three climbers’ personalities, until about halfway through. However, when two of the three are sidelined by misfortune, we start to get a better sense of who they are and what Meru means to them.

Anker had previously lost one regular team-member (ultimately marrying his widow), so he already knew tragedy first hand. Nevertheless, the time between Meru expeditions was comparatively less eventful for him. In contrast, after Ozturk barely survives a spectacular accident, it is unclear how much basic mobile function he will regain. Initially, the notion of mountain climbing in general seems awfully ambitious, let alone attacking the Shark’s Fin. Somehow, Chin also survived a freak avalanche. He is relatively unscathed physically, but clearly quite shaken, emotionally and spiritually.

By the time the three men launch their second campaign against the Shark’s Fin, the audience is thoroughly primed for a feast of redemption. Frankly, everything about the 2011 attempt just sort of boggles the mind, especially some of the jury-rigging we see them do with faulty equipment. Co-cinematographers Chin and Ozturk capture some absolutely awesome shots, particularly given the circumstances they were working under. Indeed, the film looks incredible and it eventually delivers the comeback satisfaction it promises.

The stakes have increased for subsequent mountaineering documentaries following the release of the very good to great The Summit, Beyond the Edge, and K2: Siren of the Himalayas, but Meru finds something new to say (and ends on a considerably different note than the first and third films). It seems like a particularly fitting Sundance film, incorporating elements of previous selections, like The Summit and The Crash Reel, but ending with considerably more uplift. Highly recommended for fans of outdoorsy cinema, Meru screens in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on February 1st, 2015 at 10:49am.

LFM Reviews Cartel Land @ The 2015 Sundance Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Dr. Jose Mireles is like a kindly Mexican Marcus Welby, except he also happens to be the leader of a group of paramilitary vigilantes. Tim “Nailer” Foley more looks the part of a border militiaman, but he shares a common enemy with Mireles. It is not the illegal immigrant per se that concerns him, but the drug cartels running the human trafficking business. Matthew Heineman documents the full scale breakdown of law and order south of the border and some of the resulting implications for American border towns in Cartel Land (teaser here), which screens today as an award winner at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about “El Doctor” Mireles’ Autodefensas organization is that they operate in the central state of Michoacán, far away from the border. Although Mireles originally attended Autodefensas organizing meetings wearing a mask, he was so recognizable, he simply chose to embrace his role as the group’s public face and spiritual leading. Under his guidance, Autodefensas has been on a roll, liberating town after town from their cartel occupiers. If that sounds like a military campaign, it darn well should.

Meanwhile, Nailer and his Arizona Border Recon group patrol what is known as “Cocaine Alley,” scouring the hills for the cartels’ spotters and traffic directors. Yes, they are also heavily armed. You do not challenge the drug cartels with good intentions and optimism.

Although Cartel Land started out as a project solely about American border patrol groups, Mireles and Autodefensas completely took over the film once Heineman widened the scope. Frankly, it seems like the film is not sure what to make of the Arizona scenes in light of the chaotic drama it documents in Mexico. You can practically feel the film shrug, as if to admit they might have a point.

In contrast, the sequences in Mexico are absolutely harrowing and massively telling. Early on, there is a mind-blowing scene in which an exasperated village rises up against a military unit trying to disarm the Autodefensas. They make it clear, in no uncertain terms, they consider the government to be in league with the cartels. They therefore put their trust in Autodefensas rather than the military. It is stunning stuff, but it should be noted not every village shares this sentiment.

No matter how you feel about the film, you have to give Heineman credit for making it under genuine battle conditions. He was there filming during live firefights, when nobody really knew who was shooting at whom or from where. This is legit war-reporting, just like Sebastian Junger’s Restrepo films.

From "Cartel Land."

Cartel Land does not necessarily endorse taking the law into one’s own hands. In fact, many of the scenes in Mexico illustrate the ethical perils of doing so. However, it leaves viewers with no illusions about the complete absence of the rule of law in Mexico today. You can question their on-the-ground tactics, but why it is painfully obvious why Dr. Mireles and his comrades joined together in Autodefensas. Arguably, the film might have been tightened up by editing out more of the Arizona material, but who would want to tell them they ended up on the cutting room floor?

Regardless, Cartel Land is quite an eye-opener as it is. (Since the current president refuses to visit the border, perhaps a private screening can be arranged for him). Recommended for anyone concerned affairs in our hemisphere, Cartel Land screens again today (2/1) as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on February 1st, 2015 at 10:49am.

LFM Reviews The Hallow @ The 2015 Sundance Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Blame the Euro. Since Ireland no longer controls its own monetary policy, it has been forced to sell off its national forest to pay down its budget deficit. To facilitate the sale to a lumber concern, a young forester has temporarily relocated his wife and infant son to remote cabin in the woods. The faery people are none too happy about it, but they would probably be after their baby anyway, because that’s what they do. Dread runs like thick gooey sap in Corin Hardy’s The Hallow, which screens during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

The forest is deep, dark, and verdant. Adam Hitchens thinks he is in his element, so he has no qualms about tromping about with his rug rat strapped to his back. Gee, that dropped pacifier sure looks ominous though. Seriously, why doesn’t he just put an ad in the Faery Times that says: “plump baby available for abduction.”

Hitchens hardly has time to toke up at home before things start going bump in the night. Initially, he and his wife Claire assume it is the work of angry farmer Colm Donnelly, who bitterly resents Hitchens’ reason for being there. However, things escalate to a level that is difficult to ascribe to a human agency. Of course, by this point, Claire has already pried the iron bars off the windows. You might wonder why the previous tenant of Victim Cottage felt compelled to put them up in the first place, but not these Londoners. Similarly, he does not think twice about bringing some cool “zombie” tree fungus into hearth and home.

Hardy and cinematographer Martijn van Broekhuizen are strong on atmosphere, so it is a bit of shame the film rushes so quickly into supernatural bedlam. A slower build would have yielded stronger results. He and co-screenwriter Felipe Marino promise a lot of ancient archetypal folklore, but aside from some changeling business, they keep the night terrors relatively conventional. Hardy is also a bit too frugal with Michael Smiley, whose craggy badassery livens up his one scene as Davey, the local Garda (“I’m from Belfast, we had a different sort of bogeyman there”).

From "The Hallow."

Still, the locations and set design are massively creepy and the ectoplasmic body horror is suitably grotesque. As the Hitchens, Game of Thrones alumnus Joseph Mawle comes across as a bit of a pathetically underwhelming environmental hipster (is there any other kind?), while Bojana Novakovic flashes some welcome assertiveness. Much like Smiley, Michael McElhatton also adds some memorably cranky local color as the sour Donnelly.

For genre fans, The Hallow gets the job done, but it raises expectations early on that it will be somewhat more than it is. Ticket holders should note, rather than a stinger per se, a long parting sequence runs throughout the closing credits, building to a final, quiet gotcha shot. An okay excursion into the evil woods, The Hallow is recommended for those who want to maximize the “Park City at Midnight” experience when it screens as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on February 1st, 2015 at 10:49am.

LFM Reviews The Forbidden Room @ The 2015 Sundance Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. It is like Guy Maddin put his collection of vintage silent and early talky prints through a blender and then screened the puree, except none of these films ever existed before. Unlike his Séances project inspired by lost films, these odd (odd is indeed the right term) film fragments are entirely the product of Maddin, his co-writers: co-director Evan Johnson, poet John Ashbery, and co-conspirators Robert Kotyk and Kim Morgan. Yet, as is often true with Maddin’s work, they feel like they must be real on some alternate plane of existence. Prepare for a trip as Maddin’s The Forbidden Room screens during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

It is a tall order to summarize Room and it would be impossible to do the many plot strands justice. Just so you know you you’re in the right film (not that you couldn’t tell immediately), Room starts with a lesson on how to take a bath. It then segues into a submarine disaster film, which is interrupted by a woodsman, who has come to tell the suffocating crew his tale, as if he were the Ancient Mariner. Like Thomas Pynchon on speed, Room thus proceeds on tangents to tangents, as each flashback and incidental anecdote begets more of the same.

Eventually, we will meet Mathieu Amalric playing a collector who lives in a swanky elevator and the train psychiatrist working on the Berlin-Bogota Express. In one story arc, a man meets his doppelganger, while Udo Keir continually pops up as different characters in various sub-films, because he’s Udo Keir.

Trying to track the film from point A to point B is a losing proposition. It could almost play in a continual loop as an installation piece, except viewers would miss the realization of the moment Maddin opens up the final “Russian doll” (to use an apt term from the press notes) and begins to re-pack them again.

From "The Forbidden Room."

The real point of Room is the mind-blowing artistry of it all. Each constituent film begins with its own credits sequences, which are graphically striking and perfectly representative of their respective eras and genres. Likewise the work of cinematographers Stephanie Weber-Biron and Ben Kasulke is never less than stunning, flawlessly evoking the look of noir black-and-white as well as that early nitrate color. It really is like walking through a cinematic dreamscape.

Granted, Room will baffle less adventurous viewers, even though it has an excess of narrative coming out of its ears. This is truly Guy Maddin raised to the power of Guy Maddin. Without question, it is the work of a genuine auteur who has no close comparison. Highly recommended for fans of the unusual and the aesthetically daring, The Forbidden Room screens in Park City as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on February 1st, 2015 at 9:59am.

LFM Reviews The Witch @ The 2015 Sundance Film Festival

From "The Witch."

By Joe Bendel. If you want to psychoanalyze a culture, look at the horror movies it produces, because that will show you what really scares them. Consider this the exception that proves the rule. In writer-director Robert Eggers’ period chiller, early 1600s Puritan New Englanders feared the Devil could have designs on their souls. Worse still, they might be tempted to deal it away. These are not baseless anxieties in Eggers’ The Witch, which screened during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

Thanks to their father’s zealous pride, Thomasin’s family has been expelled from their Puritan community to an isolated hardscrabble farm, where they must fend for themselves entirely. It has not been going well. Their crop failure is bad news in strictly economic and sustenance terms, but it is even more ominous as a sign or portent. Poor teenage Thomasin becomes the family scapegoat after her infant brother uncannily vanishes while she is minding him. Her father is relatively forgiving, but her mother is witheringly judgmental.

Of course, the grieving parents are understandably disturbed, since they believe their unbaptized baby is now surely damned. Unfortunately, Thomasin’s bratty young sister and (now) youngest brother mischievously or perhaps maliciously seem to do everything possible to cast supernatural suspicion on Thomasin, yet they seem to be the ones who are inexplicably drawn to the family goat, Black Phillip.

Who would have thought a moody, suggestive period horror film would be the hot ticket at Sundance, but it clearly pays to have a p&i screening on the first full day of the festival. Regardless, it is an unusually effective and historically accurate film. Those are wooden trunnels holding the farmhouse together, not nails. Throughout the film, you can feel a palpable sense of physical and spiritual isolation that malevolent powers may or may not be exploiting. There is indeed a fair degree of ambiguity in The Witch, but it is still safe to say evil is afoot.

From "The Witch."

The cast also looks and sounds perfectly in keeping with the times. There is no hamming it up or hinting at contemporary ironies. As Thomasin, Anya Taylor-Joy comes across as a genuinely tormented soul, while Ralph Ineson and his rich, commanding voice seem to carry the historical weight of Puritanism and all its collected hypocrisies. These are haunted people in more ways than one.

In the movies, good things rarely happen in the deep, dark woods. The Witch is no exception. It is a visually arresting film, sensitively lensed by Jarin Blaschke with a suitably Puritanical, washed-out color palette, but in a way that pulls viewers into the world and intensifies the mounting dread. Enthusiastically recommended for fans of high end genre films, The Witch screened in Park City as a U.S. Dramatic Competition title at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on February 1st, 2015 at 9:58am.

LFM Reviews The Nightmare @ The 2015 Sundance Film Festival

From "The Nightmare."

By Joe Bendel. It is not a good idea to nod off during this film. You might encounter one of the subjects. Fortunately, it will be very difficult to drift off during one of the scariest documentaries you will ever see that isn’t about Scientology. Shaking it off at bed time will be a different matter. Filmmaker Rodney Ascher documents the very real phenomenon of sleep paralysis and the terrifying figures often seen by those who suffer from it in The Nightmare, which screened during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

Like his interview subjects who agreed to appear on camera, Ascher (the co-director of Room 237) has personally experienced sleep paralysis. Medical professionals generally acknowledge it involves the conscious sensation of rigid immobility, until the afflicted sleeper manages to rouse themselves out of it. Of course, there is more to the story. Those who have endured persistent sleep paralysis often report seeing and sometimes hearing dark, menacing figures. Typically, these are the “Shadow Men,” often observed acting under the direction of the “Hat Man.”

This might sound fantastical, but Ascher has multiple sources attesting to these demonic dream stalkers. Indeed, there is something deeply archetypal about them, especially Hat Man, who can be seen as a forerunner to Freddy Kruger buried deep within our collective subconscious.

While Nightmare adheres to the standard accepted form of documentary films, Ascher’s dramatic recreations of participants’ nightmare encounters are genuinely frightening. Everything about them represents superior horror film mechanics, from the eerie lighting to the evocative set design. This film will scare you in the moment, but it will also challenge your safe assumptions regarding the nature of reality. Clearly, Hat Man is real enough for a considerable number of people out there, so what does that mean for our world view?

From "The Nightmare."

Yet, Ascher does not leave us bereft of hope and deprived of sleep. Surprisingly, Nightmare will hold considerable interest for evangelical audiences, who are not likely to be amongst the film’s target demographic. Nonetheless, one subsequently empowered Christian discovered she could vanquish her sleep demons by invoking a name. No spoilers, but his initials are “J.C.”

This is the rare sort of film that really gets under your skin and stays there. Ascher takes familiar New Age tropes and transforms them into something profoundly dark and threatening. The suggestion that sleep paralysis can be transmitted from person to person, essentially through the telling, is particularly disturbing for obvious reasons. Conveniently, nobody has time to sleep at Sundance. Presumably, Nightmare harbors no long-term ill effects, but it is exceptionally creepy. Very highly recommended for brave genre fans, The Nightmare screened as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on February 1st, 2015 at 9:58am.