Sundance Film Festival – Page 2 – LFM: Libertas Film Magazine

LFM Reviews Sky Ladder: the Art of Cai Guo-Qiang @ Sundance 2016

From "Sky Ladder: the Art of Cai Guo-Qiang." — From “Sky Ladder: the Art of Cai Guo-Qiang.”

By Joe Bendel. As a young boy growing up during the Cultural Revolution, Cai Guo-qiang witnessed the turbulence of the era play out within his own family. His father was Cai Ruiqin, an accomplished calligrapher and painter with a vast library of great Chinese literature. His mother was illiterate and evidently not very happily married. Yet, despite painful memories of the time, Cai designed the fireworks display that opened the Shanghai APEC summit meeting. Kevin Macdonald surveys Cai’s life and career while documenting his most ambitious project yet in Sky Ladder: the Art of Cai Guo-Qiang, which screens during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

Growing up in Quanzhou, a traditional center of Chinese fireworks production, had a formative effect on Cai’s art. Although he also build fixed installation pieces, he is best known for literally painting the sky. For years, he has tried to realize his “Sky Ladder,” an illuminated Jacob’s Ladder reaching into the cosmos inspired by the Apollo 11 moon landing. However, circumstances beyond his control, like weather and 9/11, stymied his past attempts.

In between those very expensive false starts, Cai accepted some very high profile commissions from the Chinese government. He and his associates readily defend his work for the Beijing Olympics, because his original artistic conception remained relatively intact. However, his former workshop director is openly troubled by his work on the lavish APEC gala, even though his original plans were almost entirely emasculated by the Communist government.

Frankly, it is pretty impressive how much Macdonald pushes him on this issue. The truth is, that reality check needs to be there, since we have already seen Cai moved to tears when explaining his father’s suffering during the Cultural Revolution. As a result, Macdonald leaves viewers with no illusions regarding the current state of artistic and intellectual liberty in China.

Still, Cai need not feel neglected, because Macdonald’s film vividly presents the artist’s often stunning work. This is one of the few documentaries that would have been suitable for IMAX treatment. His characteristically ambitious work (sans government interference) is more than mere fireworks, in some cases involving explosions of colored dust. You really need to see it to understand the full effect.

Everything is complicated in today’s China, but the Cai that emerges through Macdonald’s lens really is an artist who creates art for art’s sake. In all likelihood, there will be little tangible payoff from realizing the Sky Ladder, yet watching Cai pursue it becomes surprisingly exhilarating. Altogether, Sky Ladder: the Art of Cai Guo-Qiang is an unusually complex and intelligent profiles of one of the most important contemporary artists of our time. Very highly recommended, it screens again this morning (1/22), Thursday (1/28), and Friday (1/29) in Park City, and tomorrow (1/23) in Salt Lake, as part of this year’s Sundance.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on January 21st, 2016 at 6:00am.

LFM Reviews The 414s: the Original Teenage Hackers @ The 2015 Sundance Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. They did in the CBS show Whiz Kids before it even started. Developed before WarGames was released, the young computer prodigies of the sixty minute drama only used their skills to aid law enforcement. Nevertheless, the media was predisposed to be critical following the feeding frenzy ignited by a group of teen hackers who cracked the systems of Los Alamos and the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Now all grown-up and reformed, the first generation hackers look back at their brief notoriety in Michael T. Vollman’s short documentary, The 414s: the Original Teenage Hackers, which screened at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

Milwaukee’s real deal gangs took their names from the numbered streets that defined their territory, so the 414s adopted the local area code in a similar spirit. Frankly, nobody ever claimed they were malicious. They were just fooling around, trying blindly to gain access to any system that acknowledged their random calls. When their breach of the Los Alamos network was finally discovered, the FBI and the media basically freaked.

While some of the 414s who were old enough to be prosecuted had to shut up and do their best to look innocent, Neal Patrick was still under-age and more than willing to talk. In fact, he became a minor media sensation, before tiring of controversy and computers.

Even if you weren’t trying to cold call NORAD, there is a lot of nostalgia in The 414s. It will remind you there was a time a strange cat named Phil Donahue had a talk show that some people took half-seriously. The old hardware is also a blast from the past. Yet, it is also an uncomfortably timely film, arriving at Sundance in the wake of the Sony hack. You would think the Feds would have seriously stepped up their cybersecurity game since 1983, when it was literally nonexistent, but you have to wonder.

The 414s is the sort of short that seems to beg to be expanded into a feature. The participating 414s are all smart and compelling screen presences, who have interesting things to say. Clearly, their influence is still being felt, in ways that could easily be explored in greater detail. Regardless, the short that screened with the terrific Chuck Norris vs. Communism is quite informative and unexpectedly fun. It also got sold, which is something for a short film. It went to CNN Films for some kind of prospective digital platform, but it still counts. Highly recommended, The 414s should have some sort of digital life ahead of it, following its screenings at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Posted on February 16th, 2015 at 11:01am.

LFM Reviews 6 Desires: D.H. Lawrence and Sardinia @ The 2015 Sundance Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. There was a time when D.H. Lawrence’s travel writings were his best received work. Even before his sexually charged novels belatedly achieved widespread critical acceptance, Lawrence’s nonfiction did more than their share to promote Italian tourism. Over ninety years after its initial publication, his Sea and Sardinia continues to lure visitors from the UK to the Mediterranean isle. In this case it is Northern Irish documentarian Mark Cousins and his small intrepid crew, who will retrace the old man’s footsteps in the docu-essay-travelogue 6 Desires: D.H. Lawrence and Sardinia, which screened during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

Clearly, this will be a very personal and impressionist journey, considering Cousins starts his voiceovers by asking Lawrence (presumably in spirit) if he can call him Bert. At this point, the audience can envision the novelist looking down from somewhere, chillily replying: “that’s Mr. Lawrence to you.” Nevertheless, Cousins maintains the intimate, but one-sided dialogue, revisiting the sites from the book, but informing the film’s visits with their full historical and cultural context.

This will never be a breakout Sundance documentary hit like Searching for Sugarman, but it is pleasant enough for a while. Despite his libertine reputation, Cousins’ portrait emphasizes Lawrence’s conservative nature, including his categorical rejection of socialism and his contention feminism would largely emasculate males into what we would now call metrosexuals. Along the way, he offers plenty of tips for prospective tourists. The hearty Lawrence multi-course menu offered at one rustic restaurant sounds like it might be worth the trip by itself.

6DesiresDHLawrence2 — From "6 Desires: D.H. Lawrence and Sardinia."

Strangely though, the film loses focus when Cousins hands over the third act narrating duties to a woman, for gender representational reasons Lawrence probably would have abhorred. It is sort of interesting to hear her contrast Lawrence with Grazia Deledda, Italy’s female proletarian Nobel Prize winner for literature, but the vague yet unmistakable implication he helped contribute to the Holocaust because he never criticized Italian fascists in-print is so excessive, it jeopardizes the entire film’s credibility. As points of reference, Sea and Sardinia was published in 1921 and Lawrence died in 1930, so please, get serious.

Frankly, 6 Desires is often doing odd little things to undercut itself. Many times, when Cousins has a lovely vista in his frame, he ruins it by sticking his arm out, selfie style, with a cheap laminated photo or a plastic overlay frame. These just look bad on-screen.

When the film actually focuses on its ostensive subject, it offers some intriguing insights that might lead to viewers to reappraise Lawrence and his work. To jolt everyone awake, Cousins also includes clips from Ken Russell’s adaptation of Women in Love, so you know what that means: Oliver Reed, full frontal. Unfortunately, this is about the time the film starts to founder. It has its moments, but 6 Desires really ought to have been chopped down to an hour and packaged specifically for television. Regardless, it will likely find more festival play following its screenings at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, thanks to the filmmakers’ reputation, but it is strictly for Lawrence and Cousins completists.

LFM GRADE: C

Posted on February 9th, 2015 at 8:57pm.

LFM Reviews Cop Car @ The 2015 Sundance Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Seriously, does anyone still think keeping the car keys under the sun visor is a good idea? If anyone ought to know better, it should be a corrupt sheriff. Regardless, while burying a body, he leaves them in that conveniently obvious place for two mischievous ten year-olds. A dangerous joyride commences in Jon Watts’ Cop Car, which screened at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

When you see Kevin Bacon playing a sheriff, you have to think he ought to be out there arresting kids for dancing. Instead, Sheriff Kretzer is in bed with a number of dodgy underworld types. Travis and Harrison just happened to blunder along at the right time to take his cruiser for a spin. Obviously, this is trouble for Kretzer. He can hardly explain why he was in the middle of scrub grass nowhere in the first place, let alone how he could allow his wheels to be swiped out from under him.

However, by claiming a faulty radio, he can get dispatch calling in regularly on his cell, as he madly dashes home, while still pretending to be on patrol. Eventually, Kretzer starts tracking the kids in his own pick-up, but troublesome witnesses will inevitably cross their paths.

As Travis and Harrison, James Freedson-Jackson and Hays Wellford really look and sound like real life kids (as they are), trying their darnedest to act tough through foul language and what they think is cool posturing. Watts taps into a sort of archetypal Stand By Me-Huck Finn youth-on-the-fateful-road vibe that gives the film more resonance than one might expect. Kevin Bacon is also entertainingly sleazy and cunning as Kretzer. Unfortunately, the film is more than a tad underwritten, with a fair amount of time-killing required in between its inspired scenes.

Camryn Manheim and Shea Whigham do what they can with their small, near cameo roles, but they do not provide much connective help in the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. Cinematographers Matthew J. Lloyd and Larkin Seiple capture the big expansive emptiness of the Colorado plains and highways. Frankly, we can understand how the boys could do something so rash and potentially hazardous out of unsupervised boredom. Despite pacing issues, Cop Car is recommended for its atmosphere and Bacon’s salty turn, following its recent premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on February 5th, 2015 at 11:25am.

LFM Reviews Station to Station @ The 2015 Sundance Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Where can hipsterdom and traditional Americana come together in common purpose? Evidently, along our nation’s railways. Neither wants to be tied down, nor are either in any particularly hurry. Collaborating with musicians who would feel at home either at Lollapalooza or on Austin City Limits, Doug Aitken documents a twenty-four day coast-to-coast train trip in sixty-one one-minute shorts films (plus beginning and end credits), assembling it all into the restless, slightly avant-garde concert doc, Station to Station, which screened at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

Granted, Aitken’s preferred term of “happenings” is pretty cringey, but the ten stops his transcontinental train made for multi-disciplinary performances mostly look like a lot of fun. It seems the music never stopped, as performer after performer gets their one minute feature spot, sometimes at the happening, other times on the speeding train.

A pair of flamenco dancers, an old school western auctioneer, and the Kansas City Marching Cobras are particularly fun to watch, because they have tons of talent, but they are hardly recognizable celebrities. However, big name recording stars like Beck and Thurston Moore bring their A-game, perhaps even winning over new fans. Of course, nobody can out power soul legend Mavis Staples. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the appearance of Giorgio “Flashdance” Moroder, but it is pretty cool to see him do his thing on the synthesizer.

StationtoStation2 — From "Station to Station."

Despite its linear direction and the imposed limits of the train, Station is a largely shapeless film. However, it has a lot of energy and it is visually quite stylish. Whether it be the lonely desert vistas, the warm glow of an electronica performance, or the evocative sight of Aitken’s movable light show of a train hurtling through the night, he and co-cinematographer Corey Walter always make the rapidly changing visuals look great. On the other hand, when he invites spoken word commentary from the likes of Gary Indiana, we mostly get annoyingly folksy dialectics.

Frankly, Station to Station probably isn’t experimental enough to sit comfortably in Sundance’s New Frontiers section, but it is hard to see where it would more easily fit. It certainly moves along at a good clip. Like Midwest weather, if you’re not digging it, just wait a minute and it will change. Rather pleasant overall, Station to Station is recommended for listeners of Sonic Youth and Patti Smith, as well as the sort of neo-roots artists profiled in No Depression. Having just notched a number of international sales, Station to Station should find its audience after world-premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on February 4th, 2015 at 8:28pm.

LFM Reviews Knock Knock @ The 2015 Sundance Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Eli Roth digs Chile and they dig him back. He’s like Hasselhoff over there, so its not surprising he shoehorned in some Chilean references, shot in Chile (Santiago doubling for the Hollywood Hills) and featured two Chilean actresses (one being his wife, Lorenza Izzo) in his latest film. However, the love affair might end once they get a load of his new psycho-sexual home invasion thriller, Knock Knock, which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

Evan Webber is an architect and a committed family man, but he still remembers his glory days as a DJ. He is home alone working on a commission while his artist wife and kids spend the weekend at the beach. Unfortunately, Webber’s dope smoking is soon interrupted by a fateful knock at the door. That will be Genesis and Bel Who, two party girl flight attendants who got lost in the rain looking for a friend’s bash. At least that is their initial story.

As Webber lets them in to dry off, they start flirting hard. Honestly, flirting is not a strong enough term. They practically wrestle him to the ground and have their way with him. Yet, the opening act is surprisingly effective pitting his awkward attempts at evasion against their sexed-up seduction techniques. There is a sly give-and-take or ebb-and-flow to this first half hour or so, but unfortunately it is completely jettisoned once Webber inevitably succumbs to temptation.

From here on out, Genesis and Bel become moralizing fatal attractions, who declare Webber must pay for his transgressions. Suddenly, Webber is fighting for his life and the well-being of his family, but he never stands a chance. The ladies just keeping beating him down at every turn. Perhaps this constitutes some sort of subversive feminist statement, but as dramatic arcs go, it is pretty darn flat.

knock-knock-keanu-reeves — From "Knock Knock."

One of the biggest disappointments of Knock Knock is the speed bump it drops in front of the Keanu Reeves comeback express. Everyone primed for more badassery after John Wick and Man of Tai Chi, will be let down by this Nic Cage-ish turn. Let’s face it, we don’t want to watch Reeves losing his cool. We want him to be silent, but violent. Still, Izzo and Ana de Armas are sufficiently ferocious and they look good soaking wet, so at least they keep their end up, in exploitation terms.

Knock Knock is largely based on/inspired by the 1977 cult exploiter Death Game, which featured producer Colleen Camp and executive producer Sondra Locke tormenting Seymour Cassel, so there is precedent for everything that feels like a misfire. It is a bit of a departure for Roth, but despite the lack of gore, it still really doesn’t work. It is all cat-toying-with-the-mouse with no promise of table-turning to keep things interesting. Regardless of its shortcomings, Knock Knock was picked up by Lionsgate, so expect to hear more from it following its midnight screenings at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: D+

Posted on February 2nd, 2015 at 9:13pm.