Category: Sundance Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. They sound like a law firm or an architectural partnership, but their relationship is far from collegial. It starts with revulsion on the former’s part and obsession for the latter, but quickly goes downhill from there. There will be plenty of stalking and assorted mind games in Oren Carmi’s Goldberg & Eisenberg, which screened last night at the 2014 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

Tel Aviv is a happening city, but you would hardly know it from these two very different losers. Goldberg is exactly the sort of awkward computer programmer he looks like, who spends all of his free time getting rejected on internet dating services. Eisenberg is just off. The slovenly thug just seems to loiter about Meir Park all day. When he sees Goldberg, he immediately wants to be friends, or perhaps something more.

Goldberg wants none of that. He is definitely straight. He just isn’t very good at it. Unfortunately, rejection only makes Eisenberg more aggressive and erratic. Things will get ugly and the cops will be as useless as all the other cops in previous psycho-stalker movies. Yet, to his credit, Goldberg plugs away in his search for Ms. Right.

Given the not so ambiguous nature of Eisenberg’s interest, it is highly doubtful G&E could be produced in America, lest GLAAD be offended. It is decidedly un-PC, but old school indie scenesters will dig its grungy 1980’s-Lower Eastside vibe. Cinematographer Ido Bar-On gives it a murky, dirty look, befitting the tunnel vision of its characters. Frankly, the first hour or so largely consists of standard cat-and-mouse stuff, but Carmi totally pulls the rug out from under the audience’s feet with an inspired third act. It goes from dark to pitch black, cranking up the macabre irony.

As Goldberg, Yitzhak Laor completely looks and acts the part of a nebbish, low rent Frasier Crane. Likewise, Yahav Gal’s Eisenberg is uncomfortably intense and clammy. They fit their roles perfectly, but you wouldn’t want to spend much time with either of them. On the other hand, the charismatic Ronny Dotan shines in her too brief appearances as Noa, Goldberg’s potential geekly chic girlfriend.

Initially viewers might think they have seen G&E many times before, but it is worth staying with it. While it does not have the same manic energy and sinister edge of Aharon Keshales & Navot Papushado’s Big Bad Wolves or Rabies, Carmi proves he has plenty of filmmaking potential. Indeed, it should be the perfect film to see with an appreciative Park City crowd when it screens again tomorrow (1/21) during this year’s Slamdance.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on January 20th, 2014 at 9:19pm.

By Joe Bendel. He was a mother’s boy married to twenty-seven wives simultaneously. In many ways, Fela Anikulapo Kuti is a maddeningly difficult figure to fully take stock of, but he sure could play. Wisely, Alex Gibney focuses more on Kuti’s music than his politics in the infectiously funky documentary Finding Fela, which premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

Kuti was the leading innovator of Afrobeat, the blistering rhythmic fusion of highlife, jazz, and funk music—and he remains far and away the most influential exemplar of the style. In his day, Kuti was probably the only musician more esteemed than James Brown across the African Diaspora. Decades later, his music remained popular enough to spawn a Tony Award-winning Broadway show. That is where Gibney came in. On-hand to document the show’s creative development, Gibney also incorporates a treasure trove of Kuti performance footage to tell the multi-instrumentalist’s story.

Musically, Finding is a rich feast, with real deal Afrobeat band Antibalas performing the music for the Broadway show and living up to the example laid down by their inspiration quite nicely. However, Gibney the documentarian is reasonably forthright addressing some of the darker aspects of Kuti the historical figure.While his musical criticism of Nigeria’s military regime is celebrated at length, Kuti’s less than progressive attitudes towards women and sex are also acknowledged.

To his credit, Gibney also addresses the AIDS issue head-on. Tragically, the voracious Kuti denied the existence of the disease and refused to practice safe sex, even when he began to exhibit obvious symptoms. Admirably, the Kuti family was also rather courageously forthcoming after their patriarch’s death. In contrast, Bill T. Jones, the co-creator and choreographer of the Broadway show admits they basically punted on those problematic final days.

Gibney is a wildly inconsistent filmmaker, who can spin out unsubstantiated conspiracy theories in a film like Client 9, but then craft an insightful sports doc like Catching Hell. In Finding, Gibney obviously decided, when in doubt cut to some music, which is a winning strategy. Whether it is recorded in Kuti’s storied club, the Shrine, or in a Broadway theater, the collected performances are enormously entertaining. There is good stuff during the closing credits as well, so do not be like those squares who walked out of the Sundance premiere during Femi Kuti’s monster solo, recorded during a tribute to his father.

Finding Fela is the rare sort of doc that will have viewers nodding their heads and getting down. Editorially, it also happens to be reasonably balanced and comprehensive. There is really nothing on the negative side of the ledger for it—it is all positive. Enthusiastically recommended, Finding Fela screens again this Tuesday (1/21) in Salt Lake and Saturday (1/25) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on January 19th, 2014 at 3:00pm.

By Joe Bendel. This is Sundance, not Tribeca. Nevertheless, Robert De Niro has some family business to tend to. In revealing interviews, De Niro will discuss the life and artistic reputation of his painter father in Perri Peltz & Geeta Gandbhir’s Remembering the Artist Robert De Niro Sr., which screens as part of Documentary Shorts Program II at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, before its HBO premiere later in the year.

The senior De Niro is often lumped in with his Abstract Expressionist colleagues, but he was always a much more figurative painter. Championed by Peggy Guggenheim at an early point in his career, De Niro was once the leading contender amongst his fellow Hans Hofmann students. Yet, it just never happened for him. Deeply influenced by French Modernists (Matisse in particular seems to echo in his work), De Niro became increasingly out of step with the Pop and Op directions the American art world took.

Peltz & Gandbhir’s battery of experts do an excellent job placing De Niro senior within the context of American art history. After seeing the film, most viewers will be convinced De Niro the artist would be worthy of the documentary treatment even if he were not the father of De Niro the actor. Still, there is no denying the De Niro family connection adds an additional element of drama. As lead interview subject and the narrator of select excerpts from his father’s diary, the junior De Niro is pretty forthright about the senior De Niro’s depression and sexuality issues. Indeed, he opens up to a surprising extent regarding what sounds like a loving but problematic relationship.

Probably the most persuasive part of Remembering’s case for posterity are De Niro’s very paintings, which generously illustrate the film. His bold technique and rich, warm colors are quite striking. At just thirty nine minutes, it is like an especially economically installment of American Masters. Recommended for art lovers and De Niro fans, Remembering the Artist Robert De Niro Sr screens again in Park City today (1/19), Wednesday (1/22), and Saturday (1/25) during the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on January 19th, 2014 at 2:57pm.

By Joe Bendel. In a post-Heisenberg world, we have grown accustomed to the notion that perception influences reality, but what does that mean to you if you happen to be blind? For one woman who recently lost her sight, the world has become drastically smaller. Yet she will still exert a strange influence over it in Eskil Vogt’s Blind (nsfw trailer here), which screens during the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

Ingrid was once an outgoing Norwegian professional, but after the late onset of a congenital condition robbed her of her sight, she rarely leaves her flat. Her husband Morten is becoming increasingly frustrated with her reclusiveness. Yet, she suspects he might secretly spy on her in the flat, at times when he is supposedly at the office or his gym.

In fact, Blind’s small cast of characters can be divided into those who watch and those who are blind. Morten’s old college crony Einar is definitely a watcher. Vaguely resembling the out of shape Val Kilmer of today, Einar is an internet porn addict who graduated to real life peeping. The current object of his fascination is Elin, a struggling single mother and fellow Swede, with whom Morten strikes up a dalliance. Elin is certainly not a voyeur, nor is she initially blind. However, through Twilight Zone-like circumstances, Ingrid might just visit a fearful symmetry on her pseudo-rival.

Or perhaps not. Frankly, it is almost as hard for viewers to parse fantasy from reality in Blind as it is for the characters. Ostensive reality is a malleable, ever changing proposition that often involves nudity. Vogt constantly changes the rules on us, but for reasons of philosophic uncertainty rather than to extricate himself from a narrative corner. This is a very strange film, but the quality of the four principle performances and the oddly mesmerizing vibe help rehabilitate sexually charged hipster pretension.

Ellen Dorrit Petersen is absolutely haunting and maybe a little scary as Ingrid. Likewise, playwright Marius Kolbenstvedt humanizes the potentially creepy Einar to a remarkable extent. Vera Vitali is also quite effective expressing Elin’s fragile vulnerability, suggesting a woman trapped in a stage of arrested emotional development. In contrast, Henrik Rafaelson (somewhat reminiscent of Michael Nyqvist of the Dragon Tattoo franchise) has the least to work with as the coolly detached Morten.

Head-tripping movies are rarely rendered as elegantly as Blind. It is a film that begs for repeat viewing and obsessive analysis. Despite all the talk of pay cable television supplanting cinema as the dominant cultural force, you will only find surreal postmodernism like this in arthouse-festival films. Recommended for mature and adventurous viewers, Blind screens again this Wednesday (1/22) and Saturday (1/25) in Park City as well as this afternoon (1/19) in Salt Lake, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on January 19th, 2014 at 2:54pm.

By Joe Bendel. Practice paleontology, go directly to jail. That is the Federal government’s idea of justice. Frankly, it should hardly surprise us anymore, but viewers will still be shocked and appalled at a multi-agency smack-down that targeted a beleaguered independent fossil hunter. It all started with a T-Rex named Sue. Todd Douglas Miller chronicles the thrill of discover and the agony of government persecution in Dinosaur 13, which screens during the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

Until 1990, the few collected tyrannosaur skeletons were only 40% intact, at best. Sue was about 80% intact, including the s-word, “skull.”  She was named in honor of the woman who found her, Susan Hendrickson, a friend volunteering on a private dig organized by Peter and Neal Larson, paleontologist brothers who operated a for-profit fossil collection agency. They painstakingly excavated Sue and successfully began the early preservation process. Their idea was to keep Sue the T-Rex in economically depressed Hill City, South Dakota, using her to anchor their planned natural history museum. Then one fateful day, the FBI swept in with search warrant and the state National Guard confiscated the fragile fossil.

What follows is an absolute horror story of abuse of power, malicious prosecution, and state sponsored plunder. Unfortunately, the Larsons had been prospecting on the land of the thoroughly shady Maurice Williams, with his full permission. They had duly purchased Sue from Williams, but as a member of the local tribe, Williams’ land was held in trust by the Federal government, which led to rather murky circumstances when Williams decided to reclaim Sue. Naturally, the Federal government fell in line behind Williams, with the IRS quickly ganging up on the Larsons. As the legal battle dragged out, the Feds and the presiding judge grew increasingly vindictive.

Miller’s film raises a number of issues beyond the obvious injustice of an innocent paleontologist sentenced to the same maximum security Federal pen incarcerating Timothy McVeigh. Anyone involved in natural resource industries in the west understands how the vast extent of Federal holdings creates bureaucratic nightmare. However, one of the most fascinating aspects of Dino 13 (deserving more time) is the way university academics joined forces with the government in their contempt for scrappy private sector fossil hunters like the Larsons.

By documentary standards, Dino 13 boasts a rather classy package, incorporating cinematographer Thomas Petersen’s striking Black Hills vistas and composer Matt Morton’s distinctive score. Yet, the film has a muckraking heart. Miller completely convinces viewers a crime was committed in South Dakota and the Larsons were the victims.

Indeed, it is hard to mistake the nature of the persecution that was started by an interim Bush I U.S. Attorney and intensified under his Clinton-appointed successor, given the conspicuous absence of government players willing to sit for an interview. Only one former IRS agent has the guts to try to defend their actions, failing miserably. As a result, you do not have to be a diehard Objectivist to view the Sue T-Rex battle as an attack on free enterprise, driven by greed and vanity. Thoughtfully constructed and dramatically potent, Dinosaur 13 is recommended for all doc watchers when it screens again today (1/18) in Salt Lake, as well as this Tuesday (1/21) and Friday (1/24) in Park City during the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on January 18th, 2014 at 5:55pm.