Day: September 15, 2015

LFM Reviews Horizon @ The 2015 Toronto International Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Georg Guðni Hauksson did something rather remarkable. The Icelandic artistic came up with an original approach to traditional landscape painting. His work was internationally hailed, but he tragically died at the peak of his productivity. Fridrik Thór Fridriksson & co-director Bergur Bernburg survey Guðni’s work and try to evoke its spirit in Horizon, which screens during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

In some ways, Guðni’s timing was perfect. He attended Icelandic art school in the 1980s, at a time when that was suddenly the thing to do. He duly experimented with loud, fast, punk-inspired styles, but it was his secret landscape work that would eventually make his reputation.

Although perfectly representational, his landscapes look otherworldly and almost avant-garde. Rather than outlining shapes and then filling in colors, Guðni’s laborious method involved the meticulous layering of horizontal lines, one atop another, sort of like a weaver’s loom. The resulting work was often stark, but undeniably Nordic. There are no online records of his art being used on ECM record jackets, but his work would certainly be compatible with Manfred Eicher’s aesthetic.

Fridriksson & Bernburg incorporate long excerpts from archival interviews with Guðni, but they are not as revealing as one might hope. However, they get some helpful context from Icelandic art critics and Guðni’s contemporaries, as well as actor Viggo Mortensen, who published a book with Guðni at his specialty imprint, Percival Press. They also punctuate the talking heads and close-ups of paintings with impressionistic scenes of the Icelandic fields and valleys that so inspired him.

Guðni’s paintings are quite striking once you acclimate yourself to his distinctive look and the nature scenes are perfectly pleasant, but what really makes the film is the haunting minimalist soundtrack composed by Sigur Rós sideman Kjartan Hólm. Frankly, it really sounds like something that could be released on ECM, which is high praise indeed.

Horizon is an earnest and thorough examination of Guðni’s oeuvre that should give any open-minded viewer a keen appreciation of vision. However, even with Mortensen’s participation and support, it is hard to envision it getting a wide American distribution, so if you are in Toronto and are intrigued to any extent, you should see it now. Recommended for contemporary art connoisseurs, Horizon screens again tomorrow (9/15) and Saturday (9/19) as part of this year’s TIFF.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on September 15th, 2015 at 10:31pm.

LFM Reviews Born to Dance @ The 2015 Toronto International Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. It is not just kiwis and hobbits in New Zealand. They also have hip hop. It speaks to working class Maori kids like Tu and his friends, who are looking for their place in society. They have all kinds of moves, but the national hip hop dance competition has long been dominated by Kane’s well-funded, widely-sponsored K-Crew. A grudge match is brewing between them in Tammy Davis’s Born to Dance, which screens during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

If Tu does not figure his post-high school life out fast, his Sergeant father will enlist him in the army. He thinks he sees his opportunity when K-Crew, the reigning dance champions, invite him to audition. This is no mere cattle call. For weeks, Tu will travel to Auckland to participate in the long term process-of-elimination tryout. Naturally, he keeps it secret from his own crew, led by his lifelong platonic pal, Vonnie. Only his semi-delinquent buddy Benjy knows the truth.

Of course, Tu has the right stuff, but all the special attention he gets from Kane’s girlfriend Sasha could be a problem. Frankly, she knows he is pretty scummy, but her snobby, absentee parents only let her stay in New Zealand to dance as she wishes as long as she is still part of a winning squad. She therefore needs Kane.

BTD features a ridiculously charismatic cast in a total Arthur Murray dance-by-numbers screenplay. It is a lead pipe cinch Tu and Kane will eventually face each other. Yet, that hardly matters as long as Davis and choreographer Parris Goebel keeps the energy cranked up. There are some cool dance sequences distributed throughout BTD, but nothing tops the wildly inventive moves Tu’s crew uncorks during the first round of the nationals. On the other hand, it is hard to take K-Crew seriously, because most of their routines bring to mind Mike Myers doing Dieter on Sprockets.

From "Born to Dance."

Former So You Think You Can Dance contestant Kherington Payne shows more presence than you would expect from Sasha. In contrast, Tia-Taharoa Maipi is likably enough, but a bit of a dramatic lightweight as Tu. However, Stan Walker is the real breakout discovery, demonstrating considerable range and all kinds of dance floor cred as the sensitive bad boy Benjy.

Yes, there are some real moments, but Goebels’ choreography is still not as distinctive as Yako Miyamoto’s taiko drumming and dancing that so distinguished Make Your Move. Nevertheless, BTD has more fire and grit than an army of Step Up clones. The fact that Tu, Benjy, and Vonnie are Maori is very important to the narrative, but it is not belabored to the point of distraction. This is a dance film not a social issue drama. In fact, it is a rather enjoyable one, in an underdog-Horatio Alger-kids from Fame kind of way. Recommended for dance movie fans, Born to Dance screens again this Friday (9/18) as part of this year’s TIFF.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on September 15th, 2015 10:31pm.

LFM Reviews A Heavy Heart @ The 2015 Toronto International Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. New Yorkers have a special awareness of the cruel realities of ALS, because of Lou Gehrig. For example, in pre-bucket-challenge days, the New York ALS chapter launched successful give-$4 drives, in honor of his retired number. Sadly, many champion boxers have also succumbed to the neurological disorder. Herbert Stamm was a serious contender during the dark days of the GDR, but he never raised a belt over his head. He took as many blows as any champ, but his massively bad karma will make matters even worse. Stamm faces a slow but inevitable final count in Thomas Stuber’s A Heavy Heart which screens during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

Stamm has always relied on his brawn. Even in his less than golden years, he scrapes by gigging as loan collector and a bouncer. His only hope for the future is Eddy, the talented young fighter he trains. He even feels a bit like a surrogate father to the scrappy up-and-comer. Stamm has an actual genetically-verifiable daughter, but they have not had a relationship for years. He did not necessarily intend to abscond from Sandra’s life. Those prisons tattoos did not happen spontaneously, after all. Stamm was just too embarrassed or too self-absorbed to reconnect. He will soon regret that quite bitterly.

It starts with a simple slip in the shower and a bit of muscle cramping, but it is not long  before he gets the grimly fatal diagnosis. Suddenly, he cannot afford to push away the emotionally needy Marlene, whom he had been transparently using for drunken one night stands. He also dearly wishes to reconcile with Sandra, but her resentment runs deep. Soon, Stamm will only find comradery and respect from his old tattoo artist buddy, but their carousing becomes rather poignant.

So yeah, good times at the movies. Regardless, if you want to see a master class in precisely controlled screen acting, Peter Kurth’s lead performance delivers with quiet power. Kurth, who was rather charming as the down-to-earth but utterly befuddled title character in Schmitke, put considerable weight on his physical frame and his psyche. You can see both slowly disintegrate over the course of the film. It is excellent work that never gets too showy or Streepish. It is Kurth’s film, nearly to the exclusion of all others, but Edin Hasanovic and Udo Kroschwald add real grit and character as Eddy and Bodo the loan shark, respectively.

Stuber occasionally overindulges in unsubtle manipulations, but the gravitas of Kurth’s performance helps muscle the film through such sequences. It is an unusually unsentimental star turn in a film that compulsively discourages false hope. Recommended as a fine vehicle for an actor’s actor, A Heavy Heart screens again today (9/14) and Friday (9/18), as part of this year’s TIFF.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on September 15th, 2015 at 10:30pm.

LFM Reviews The Man Who Saved the World

By Joe Bendel. We joked about shoddy Soviet technology, but it was no laughing matter to Col. Stanislav Petrov. One night while commanding a Soviet early warning station, the system erroneously reported the launch of five American nuclear missiles. In contradiction of standing policy, Petrov insisted on visual verification before proceeding with his own launch. Danish filmmaker Peter Anthony follows the older and crotchetier Petrov as he starts to receive his global accolades and dramatizes that 1983 Cold War night in The Man Who Saved the World, which opens this Friday in New York.

It is rather eerie how history repeats itself. On the night in question, Petrov’s colleagues were still brazenly justifying the accidental shooting down of KAL flight 007, even though it was an obvious mistake and an international PR disaster. Years later, Russian backed Ukrainian separatists similarly bragged about shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, before realizing their stupidity. In 1983, the incident further heightened the tension for Petrov’s colleagues in the Soviet Air Defense, priming them to expect western retaliation. That is exactly what they assumed was happening, but Petrov was not so sure.

Flashing forward from the dramatic recreations, we see the Petrov of today is rancorous and unsociable. Even though he was profoundly right, the 1983 incident did not lead to his promotion, but rather the contrary. Frankly, he never really had much affinity for the military, but when his wife finally succumbed to her long term illness (perhaps not receiving the fullest possible medical treatment, as the film maybe sort of implies), Petrov became an angry, bitter man. He will be quite the handful for Galina Kalinina, who agrees with some trepidation to serve as Petrov’s translator during his NGO-sponsored tour of America.

Probably nobody ever saved so many by doing so much or so little, depending on how you look at it. Russian actor Sergey Shnyryov viscerally conveys the extreme stress Petrov withstood during the longest twenty minutes of his life. However, the real life Petrov’s oracle of doom act gets a little tiresome. Yes, the 1983 near launch is deeply scary, but it was precipitated by Russian systems failures. However, his warnings of nuclear Armageddon certainly argue against welcoming further nations into the nuclear club, especially those governed by religious extremists with vast fossil fuel deposits and a history of supporting terrorism. Seriously, what rational person would want to see a country like that go nuclear?

Petrov is also a Kevin Costner fan, who conducts himself like a worthy ambassador when Petrov and Kalinina visit him on set. The Colonel also met De Niro, but Mr. Tribeca is predictably monosyllabic in his cameo. However, nobody is more awkward than the desperate-to-be-recognized Matt Damon, whom Petrov does not know from Adam.

The film compellingly recreates the slightly Strangelovian 1983 Soviet war room and Petrov scores some convincing points. Unfortunately, Anthony refused to ask the swords-into-ploughshares Colonel some blindingly obvious questions about Russian military interference in Ukraine and Georgia, or he refused to answer. Either way, the absence of such discussion is embarrassingly conspicuous, to such a point that it actually takes a toll on the film’s credibility. As a result, it only really holds up when directly covering the fateful night of 1983. Feeling inconsistent and incomplete, The Man Who Saved the World truly inspires mixed emotions when it opens this Friday (9/18) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on September 15th, 2015 at 10:30pm.

LFM Reviews Wim Wenders’ A Trick of the Light @ The IFC Center

From "A Trick of the Light."

By Joe Bendel. Moving picture technology has always moved at an accelerated rate, even during its infancy. Max Skladanowsky is a perfect example. His Bioscope was the state of the art in flickering images, until the Lumière Brothers introduced something better—a few weeks later. Wim Wenders and his students from the Munich Academy for Television and Film tell the Skladanowsky family’s story with the sort of hand-cranked technology the Skladanowskys would have used in the hybrid documentary A Trick of the Light, which kicks off its first legit U.S. theatrical engagement this Friday at the IFC Center as part of the ongoing Wim Wenders: Portraits Along the Road retrospective.

When Wenders and his student-crew interview the ninety-one year old Gertrude Skladanowsky, they are talking to motion picture history, but it was her older sister Lucie who really witnessed the Bioscope’s short reign first hand. She was raised by her father Max and his two brothers, Eugen and Emil, whom she adored. Their vaudevillian family is scuffling, but they have high hopes Max’s tinkering will lead to something. When he finally gives Berlin’s leading impresarios a sneak peak, they are impressed enough to book the Skladanowsky Brothers for a grand premiere at their Wintergarten Theater.

The better part of the stylized, herky-jerky dramatic recreations are devoted to the various acts they film and the stressful circumstances surrounding their big night. Yet, the tone is always bittersweet, since we know from the start their Bioscope will soon be rendered obsolete by the Lumières. Still, it seems they remained rather enterprising to judge Gertrude’s reminiscences. Far from a conventional talking head interview, her sequences are “haunted” by the rebellious ghost of Lucie, played by the same young actress, but they cannot upstage the nonagenarian’s sense of humor and history.

From "A Trick of the Light."

In terms of its visuals and atmosphere, Trick is probably Wenders’ most Guy Maddinesque film, especially considering Udo Kier appears as Max Skladanowsky, somewhat playing against his usual creepy type (it would go particularly well with The Forbidden Room, which screens at the upcoming NYFF). He actually anchors the dramatic section rather effectively with his tragic Teutonic dignity and uncharacteristic reserve. In contrast, Otto Kuhnle does plenty of shameless mugging as Uncle Emil, but it is not wholly inappropriate given the context—Mack Sennett surely would have approved.

The passion for cinema shared by Wenders, his collaborators, and his subjects comes through in each frame. There is a sense of wonder in Trick that is quite appealing—even playful. While not silent itself, it still makes the Silent Era much more accessible. The use of old school cameras might be a bit of a gimmick, but it certainly gives the film the right look and feel. Warmly recommended for fans of Wenders and silent movies, A Trick of the Light screens for a week at the IFC Center, starting this Friday (9/18).

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on September 15th, 2015 at 10:29pm.

LFM Reviews Fathom Events’ The Hive

By Joe Bendel. Frankly, this horny teen counselor would be better off if a slasher-killer were stalking his summer camp. It would give him more time to hook up. Unfortunately, fending off a horde of zombies with a collective conscience will demand his full attention. He understands this only too well because he was once part of the titular Borg-like group-mind of David Yarovesky’s The Hive, which The Nerdist presented this Monday as a special one-night Fathom Event screening, in advance of a later VOD release.

Adam is more notorious than he realizes for being the player of the camp. Katie is pointedly unimpressed with his attempts to impress her, especially when his clumsiness lands them both in the infirmary. However, a little time in close quarters warms her to the idea of a bit of fooling around. In a case of super-bad timing, they are interrupted by the crash of an apparent military aircraft. Foolishly setting out to investigate with Clark and Jess, another camp counseling couple, they find a really bad scene. Let’s just say there is a zombie-acting pilot and puddles of black goo. Of course, they bring that contagion back to camp.

Logically enough, the principle means of spreading the contamination is through projectile vomiting to the face. Before long, all four get tagged, even Adam. Yet, he seems to have somehow snapped out of it, judging from the film’s flashback structure. On the downside, he seems to have lost his memory, at least in a continuous narrative form. He gets flashes of the previous day, as well as bits and pieces that seem to be other people’s experiences.

Arguably, The Hive owes as much Cabin Fever as it does Night of the Living Dead, but Yarovesky and co-writer Will Honley still put an intriguing spin on the viral-mutant doomsday scenario. While completely apolitical, in contrast to Ladd Ehlinger Jr’s sly, under-appreciated, thematically related Hive Mind, the individual versus the collective motifs greatly enrich Yarovesky’s The Hive. Basically, it is like Adam is stuck at a Bernie Sanders rally, except there is slightly more black sludge vomiting, but only just slightly. In fact, the whole mechanism through which he disconnects from the Hive is well thought out and convincing. Still, it must be said, the staticky, rough-cut flash-forwards and backwards get a bit tiresome after a while.

From "The Hive."

Gabriel Basso and Kathryn Prescott are also surprisingly engaging as Adam and Katie. They actually develop legitimately tragic romantic chemistry, which is something you never expect to find in a teen zombie movie. The camp ground set also look totally authentic, as it should. According to the pre-screening infotainment slides, Yarovesk hired the facilities manager of his own childhood summer camp to recreate its look. For the Fathom Events screening, Nerdist also produced half an hour of special supplemental introductory matter, including a report from the Mr. Wizard Nerdist on the swarming behavior of birds and insects that provided some helpful context.

The Hive has plenty of dark humor and slimey grossness, but it also has heart and a bit of brains. That is a full bill, really. Cult film connoisseurs need to catch up with it, so hopefully Nerdist and Fathom will schedule an encore screening before its promised VOD release.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on September 15th, 2015 at 10:28pm.