Category: Documentary

By Joe Bendel. They were called “Tramps,” but you could say the post-WWI Czechoslovakian back-to-nature movement was somewhat Bohemian. In some ways, they were early outdoorsmen-environmentalists, but they also had an affinity for Americana culture. They were the closest things to cowboys in Eastern Europe, who formed the original nucleus of the most significant Bluegrass scene outside of the United States. Ethnomusicologist Lee Bidgood & director Shara K. Lange explore the continuing Czech Bluegrass tradition in Banjo Romantika: American Bluegrass Music & the Czech Imagination, which screens during the 2015 Kingston (NY) Film Festival.

Yes, Bluegrass was definitely associated with America—and yes, that was a little awkward during the Communist era. Nevertheless, local musicians and fans managed to hold the nation’s first international Bluegrass festival in 1972. These were hearty, hardy folks who often embraced American music and drove U.S. Army jeeps to express defiance. Not surprisingly, Bluegrass often accompanied the Velvet Revolution protests, particularly the music of Robert Křest’an, whom Lange films recording his latest album.

Thanks to American Armed Forces Radio, pioneers like Marko Čermák heard all the American greats. While they can do their share of fleet Scruggs-inspired picking, they processed the music into something very Czech, yet the affinity for the country hills remains. Frankly, there is an unexpected soulfulness to the music performed in Romantika that sounds wonderfully inviting.

As a documentary, Romantika offers a good balance of performance and cultural context. Lange’s interview subjects clearly establish Bluegrass’s Cold War significance as a symbol of freedom, without belaboring the point. East Tennessee State Prof. Bidgood serves as our guide through the history of Czech/Czechoslovakian Bluegrass, but he does all his talking on the bandstand, leading his combo through a set of the music under discussion. They sound great too.

If you have ever spent time in the Czech Republic, especially in the countryside, Romantika will bring back happy memories and make wish for a return trip, which is not something you would expect from a Bluegrass documentary. This is just a terrific, terrific film. Clocking in just under seventy minutes, it is on the short side but it is well worth every minute spent. Hopefully, it will eventually find a further audience on PBS (or somewhere), because it deserves a chance to be seen widely. Very highly recommended, Banjo Romantika screens this Friday afternoon (8/14) as part of the 2015 Kingston Film Festival in Ulster County.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on August 12th, 2015 at 10:09pm.

By Joe Bendel. The nation of Turkey probably owes Nino Rota nearly its entire GDP in unpaid royalties. During the 1960s and 1970s there was no copyright law in Turkey, so the rough and tumble film industry based on Istanbul’s Yeşilçam Street “borrowed” liberally, but nothing was as frequently “re-purposed” as Rota’s “Love Theme from The Godfather.” Cem Kaya surveys the resulting knock-off films and the filmmakers who cobbled them together in the awkwardly titled Remake, Remix, Rip-Off: About Copy Culture and Turkish Pop Cinema, which screens today during the 2015 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal.

Turkish filmmakers ripped off just about every popular Hollywood film, including John Ford westerns, even though they made no sense in a Turkish cultural context. Easily the most notorious are the riffs on Stars Wars and E.T. that lifted extensive scenes from the original films—naturally, without prior permission. Yes, they look absolutely crazy, but in a dingy, decidedly un-fun kind of way. Even the most adventurous midnight movie patrons are unlikely to be tempted by Omer the Tourist Travels to Space, a rather sad looking shadow of Star Trek.

Frankly, the problem with Re-Re is that it is neither fish nor fowl. It invites us to gawk at the cheesy clips on display, yet is laboriously struggles to find some higher meaning in the phenomenon than the obvious quick cash-ins. Unfortunately, Kaya completely lacks the self-aware attitude that makes sly, thematically related documentaries like Mark Hartley’s Not Quite Hollywood and Mike Malloy’s Eurocrime! so raucously entertaining. To make matters worse, the film often veers off on unrelated tangents, filming leftist trade unions as they protest the current state of things in the moderately reformed Turkish film industry.

Arguably, there is something embarrassing about the Turkish film industry’s crass compulsion to copy. While interview subject Centin Inanc was recycling Hollywood films in ostensibly Turkish packages, the Japanese and Hong Kong film industries were producing iconic works inspired by their national history and folklore. Even Cambodia was regularly producing original fantastical Angkor epics, which sadly did not survive the Communist Khmer Rouge insanity.

Re-Re should have been considerably more fun, but it just takes itself too seriously. Yet, its attempts to valorize the knock-off industry are undermined by its deliberately kitschy selection of clips. The result is an intermittently provocative film that is largely at odds with itself. Of passing interest to cult film fans, Remake, Remix, Rip-Off screens tonight (8/4), as part of this year’s Fantasia.

LFM GRADE: C

Posted on August 4th, 2015 at 4:44pm.

By Joe Bendel. Ostensibly, they both came to debate, but they had very different agendas. William F. Buckley, Jr. was there to present a cogent world view, while Gore Vidal came to engage in character assassination. Nearly as many sparks flew on the makeshift ABC News set as on the streets of Chicago when the conservative and leftist commentators occasionally discussed the 1968 party conventions. Morgan Neville & Robert Gordon chronicle the blow-by-blow in Best of Enemies, which opened this Friday in New York.

The media loves to remind us Buckley lost his cool with Vidal, calling him a “queer” and offering him a punch in the face. They usually neglect to mention Vidal was goading him, calling him a “crypto-nazi,” as if Buckley would have anything to do with National Socialism. To their credit, Neville & Gordon give viewers the full context, including the fact that Vidal agreed to his ten debates with Buckley with the explicit intention of getting personal, in the nastiest, most destructive way possible. It is also rather eye-opening to hear how Vidal pre-tested his “ad libs” with a sympathetic press corps.

Logically, a good deal of Enemies is devoted to the verbal blood sport of their convention debates. However, there is a fair degree of media analysis, arguing Buckley v. Vidal was the watershed moment that unleashed a tidal wave of full throated punditry. Perhaps, but what is most striking is how cut-rate the ABC News operation was in 1968, a time when the networks did not have a heck of a lot of competition. The ABC convention operation was so cheap, their prefab convention soundstage literally collapsed, forcing them to use a makeshift replacement many considered an improvement.

In addition to generous archival clips of the combatants, Kelsey Grammer and John Lithgow also read from the assorted writings of Buckley and Vidal, respectively, with all the appropriate feeling and attitude they demand. Neville, Gordon, and their editor Aaron Wickenden keep it snappy and never get bogged down with talking head analysis. Most importantly, they do not play favorites in the way they present the controversies.

Sadly, Buckley passed away in 2008, but it is nice to hear him again, even under what were frustrating circumstances for him. Evidently, the filmmakers were able to interview Vidal before his death, but according to the directors’ notes in the media kit, he was so bitter and off-putting they declined to use the footage. That says plenty. Recommended as a time capsule of late 1960s politics loaded with sarcasm, Best of Enemies opened this Friday (7/31) in New York, at the IFC Center downtown and the Lincoln Plaza uptown.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on August 1st, 2015 at 3:43pm.

By Joe Bendel. What was someone as young and talented as jazz musician Grace Kelly doing in San Quentin? She was playing in a unique tribute concert for Frank Morgan, her late, great mentor. Morgan himself was always the first to admit he spent far too much time incarcerated there, due to drugs and flawed decision-making. However, Morgan finally left prison for good in 1985 just in time for a mini-renaissance of interest in the old school bop tradition. N.C. Heiken’s chronicles his tumultuous life and beautiful music in The Sound of Redemption: the Frank Morgan Story, which screens this Sunday as part of Sound + Vision 2015.

In a way, music was in Morgan’s blood. He was the son of Ink Spots member Stanley Morgan, but that was a decidedly mixed blessing. Frank Morgan heard Charlie Parker at a young age and was profoundly influenced by his music. Unfortunately, he also developed a Bird-like heroin habit. Like most junkies, Morgan resorted to crime to pay for his habit, but he was especially industrious and/or reckless.

There was indeed a time when people considered the sixteen piece San Quentin Warden’s Band the best big band in California without any intended irony. For years, it was his only gig. Despite all his promise, Morgan was nearly unknown beyond the circle of musicians who played with him when he was literally just a kid, or had had their own stint in the San Quentin Band.

Man, the 1980s were a good decade, especially for real deal jazz greats like Morgan. However, Morgan’s third act not one of absolutely unalloyed triumphalism. In fact, Heikin nicely tempers the inspirational with the darker backsliding realities of life. Things were as they were, but the music remains.

At the heart of the film is the rather remarkable concert featuring Morgan’s friends and colleagues, performing the standards he was most associated with. Even though we do not hear the man himself in these sequences, they have the right spirit nonetheless. They are also very shrewdly edited. In one memorable scene, we clearly see one resident audience member nodding along knowingly as trombonist and master-of-ceremonies Delfeayo Marsalis explains just how much Morgan lost as a result of his habit.

Heikin is also wise enough to show Kelly’s absolutely devastating performance of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in its uninterrupted entirety. Frankly, seeing her in front of that rough-looking crowd will alarm a lot of us jazz fans who remember her as the twelve year-old prodigy who exploded onto the scene (with Morgan’s encouragement), but she is in her early twenties now. Regardless, her rendition is exquisitely fitting. Morgan was inspired by Bird, but he had a tender way with ballads that was more like an alto version of Dexter Gordon (a former Central Avenue comrade).

By following up the chilling yet strangely elegant North Korean expose Kimjongilia with her sensitive and swinging portrait of Morgan, Heikin might just become our new favorite filmmaker. Her instincts are sharp and reliable, while her aesthetic sensibilities are unerringly sophisticated. Executive produced by hipper-than-you-knew mystery novelist Michael Connelly, Sound of Redemption does right by its subject, as well as his fellow musicians (especially including Kelly, Marsalis, pianist George Cables, legendary bassist Ron Carter, drummer Marvin “Smitty” Smith, and alto player Mark Gross, who all gigged on the central prison concert, sounding fantastic). A bittersweet treat, Sound of Redemption is very highly recommended when it screens this Sunday (8/2) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s Sound + Vision.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on August 1st, 2015 at 3:42pm.

By Joe Bendel. For reasons of girth, Chris Farley was often compared to his hero John Belushi when he joined the cast of Saturday Night Live. Perhaps for the same reason, we too readily accepted his tragic early demise. As iconic as Belushi might be, Farley had a good-hearted Chaplinesque appeal that none of his contemporaries can match. Viewers get a sense of how genuine his aw-shucks persona really was in Brent Hodge & Derik Murray’s documentary, I Am Chris Farley, which opens this Friday in New York.

Farley grew up in a loud, loving family in Wisconsin, with a garrulous father much like Brian Dennehy’s character in Tommy Boy (a much more autobiographical film than causal fans may have realized). For a while, Farley was a reasonably successful salesman for his dad’s company, but a chance encounter with semi-professional theater changed the trajectory of his life. His stints in regional theater led to a residency with Chicago’s famous Second City Theatre improvisational comedy troupe, which at the time was practically the farm team for Saturday Night Live (a sketch comedy show that once aired on NBC after the Saturday night local news—and who knows, maybe it still does, but nobody has seen it since 2004).

Logically, Hodge, Murray, and screenwriter Steve Burgess devote the lion’s share of the film to his SNL period (1990-1995). That is what people will be most interested in—and sadly, Farley would tragically die soon after in late 1997. Arguably, Matt Foley, the motivational speaker with unfortunate living arrangements, represents the last truly classic SNL skit. As written, the humor of the situation is quite funny, but Farley’s efforts to break-up his buddy David Spade and guest host Christina Applegate made it legendary. Yet, the best part of the story comes when IACF identifies who the real Matt Foley is, because it reveals so much about Farley.

Indeed, Hodge & Murray paint a comprehensive portrait of Farley as a devout Catholic and a devoted friend and brother. Fortunately, they secured the Farley family’s participation, because his brothers’ reminiscences really help fill out the picture of someone so easy to caricature. They also scored sit-down on-cameras with many of Farley’s famous friends and colleagues, including Spade, Adam Sandler, Jon Lovitz, Jay Mohr, Bo Derek (who still looks fantastic), and Dan Aykroyd.

IACF hits theaters shortly after the release of Bao Nguyen’s SNL doc Saturday Night, but it is by far the superior film. One could say the Farley profile is one hundred times better than the shallow, smugly self-congratulatory, slavishly PC bore that quickly exited theaters, but that would still unfairly imply it is a bad film. In fact, IACF is quite a good film, because it is so surprisingly endearing. Basically, it gets right everything that Saturday Night gets wrong. Ultimately, IACF will increase viewers’ appreciation for Farley as an individual and the value of his work. Recommended for fans of Farley and Second City, I Am Chris Farley opens this Friday (7/31) in New York at the AMC Empire, in advance of its August 10th premiere on Spike TV.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on July 27th, 2015 at 6:40pm.

By Joe Bendel. Dr. Haing S. Ngor had a reasonable productive film career, but he never landed a role that equaled his Oscar winning debut in Roland Jaffe’s The Killing Fields (although Oliver Stone’s Heaven & Earth will have its champions). Yet, the platform it provided Ngor to keep the memory of the Khmer Rouge genocide alive and to criticize the current undemocratic regime was far more important. It might have even been the reason why the actor and activist was murdered in 1996. The late Ngor will offer his survivor’s testimony once again in The Killing Fields of Dr. Haing S. Ngor, which screens as part of a sidebar tribute to documentarian Arthur Dong at the 2015 Asian American International Film Festival in New York.

Rarely is an actor so closely identified with a film as Dr. Ngor and The Killing Fields. He was not a professional actor when he was cast to play Cambodian journalist Dith Pran, but he could identify with the role only too well. Ngor barely survived the Communist re-education camps, but his pregnant common law (formal marriage having been abolished) wife did not. In an environment of horrific deaths, hers was particularly haunting.

You might think you understand the Communist massacre, chapter and verse, but the experiences Ngor describes in his autobiography (extracts of which are read by his nephew, Wayne Ngor) will shock you nonetheless. For instance, even table utensils were banned (on pain of death) as the decadent tools of western capitalism. To illustrate his experiences during the genocide, Dong often relies on Wilson Wu’s dramatic black-and-white animation that starkly reflects the tenor of the times. These are not things we want to see, but they are necessary to understand Ngor’s life and the utopian ideology he fled.

Dong is an experienced filmmaker, who crafts Ngor’s story with great sensitivity, but also with an eye towards the needs of history. Fortunately, Ngor’s life in America was quite well documented. He assembles quite a bit of primary footage of Ngor, including some unusually heavy commencement speeches. The close participation of Ngor’s surrogate daughter-niece Sophia Ngor and his friend, Iron Triangle co-star, and non-profit foundation executive director Jack Ong also inspire confidence. Of course, high level Khmer Rouge officials were not available for comment, but the allegations of Kaing Guek Eav (a.k.a. “Comrade Duch”) that Ngor was assassinated by the Khmer Rouge are given due consideration.

Dong’s film is both inspiring and horrifying, showing both sides of an incredible life cut short under mysterious circumstances. It never peddles in conspiracy theories, but it makes one wonder nonetheless. It is also something of a wake-up call, especially when it addresses Ngor’s opinions on the not-so untainted regime of today. Timely, moving, and even infuriating, The Killing Fields of Dr. Haing S. Ngor is a truly important film, highly recommended for the socially and historically conscious when it screens this Saturday (7/25) at the Village East, as part of this year’s AAIFF.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on July 24th, 2015 at 12:43pm.