Category: Shorts

LFM Reviews The Machine @ The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. There is a second Cold War on and China is winning. Britain’s defense establishment is convinced that their only hope lies in devising killer androids enhanced with artificial intelligence. Oh, but perhaps they succeed too well in Caradog James’ The Machine (see clip above), which screened as a Midnight selection of the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival.

Vincent McCarthy could make bank in the private sector, but he has personal reasons for laboring in a subterranean government facility somewhere in Wales. When Ava’s AI program comes darn close to passing the Turing Test, he recruits her for his double-secret research. However, on her very first day she cannot help noticing the dodginess of the place, particularly the guards, who double as guinea pigs. There seems to be something weirdly unspoken going on with the twitchy veterans who accepted AI implants to counteract their brain trauma.

When Ava is murdered under suspiciously suspicious circumstances, her pre-mapped brain is imprinted on “The Machine.” McCarthy coaches her/it to be human and humane – but Thompson, the ruthless project director, orders a battery of more lethal instructions. This leads to conflict.

It would be nice to see a film that considered the British and American military and intelligence services to be the good guys for a change, especially compared to the oppressive and increasingly militaristic Communist regime in China. Sadly, The Machine is not that film. There really ought to be an epilogue showing how China enslaves the world because of the resulting setbacks to the Free World’s R&D. Instead, we just get Messianic themes warmed over from the Universal Soldier franchise, which in turn were cribbed from Metropolis, R.U.R. and a host of apocalyptically promethean science fiction morality tales.

Nonetheless, Caity Lotz earns favorable notice for her dual role as Ava and The Machine. She presents two distinct personas, yet still credibly hints at connections between the two. Toby Stephens works well enough as the brilliant but short-sighted McCarthy. Sadly, Star Wars alumnus Denis “Wedge” Lawson is completely wasted as the dastardly Thompson, who seems to engage in unnecessary villainy solely to precipitate McCarthy’s crisis of conscience.

Very little of The Machine makes sense, starting with the moody Miami Vice ambiance. One would think a research laboratory ought to be well lit, but evidently this is not the case. Despite Lotz’s interesting performances, The Machine is predictable and heavy-handed. A disappointment, it screened this past weekend at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

LFM GRADE: D+

Posted on April 29th, 2013 at 3:17pm.

New Clip from Zero Dark Thirty; Film Opens Jan. 11th

A new clip has been released from Kathryn Bigelow’s forthcoming SEAL Team 6/Osama bin Laden raid movie, Zero Dark Thirty, which is already receiving awards-season accolades. The film stars Jessica Chastain and Joel Edgerton. Special engagements for Zero Dark Thirty start December 19th, and the film opens wide on January 11th.

Posted on December 6th, 2012 at 11:01am.

A Space Race with China: LFM Reviews Control @ The New York Television Festival’s Independent Pilot Competition

By Joe Bendel. When we think of space, we think of lofty ideals, passed on down to us from JFK and Star Trek. However, an oppressive belligerent power will act the same up there as they do down here. Indeed, China’s saber-rattling off the coast of Taiwan will bedevil an American manned space mission in Josh Bernard & Bracey Smith’s Control, which screens as part of the 2012 New York Television Festival’s Independent Pilot Competition (IPC).

The NYTVF is the only meaningful festival of its kind showcasing independent talent looking to break into episodic television, in the same way scores of film festivals act as launching pads for indie films in search of theatrical distribution. There are real development deals to be won at this year’s festival. The dollar figures may not be much by studio standards, but they would constitute a significant step up compared to the budgets of many competing pilots. In the drama category, Smith & Bernard’s Control may well be the pilot to beat, which is not all that surprising, considering their Pioneer One (see here and here) won the drama competition two years ago.

The American and Chinese navies are engaged in a war of nerves in the South China Sea. Simultaneously, an American spacecraft is racing to beat their Chinese rivals to a resource-rich asteroid. Long in development, the American mission continued, even when China precipitously laid claim to the asteroid, in open defiance of international law. Apparently a quasi-private enterprise conducted with official government sanction, the mission obviously just became a whole lot more complicated.

The flight director isn’t helping much, either. Not only did he call the president a feckless ditherer on national television (but in more colorful terms), he is also carrying on a not so secret affair with the chief medical officer, who happens to be married to the flight captain.

Of all the genre-related pilots screening in the Drama 1 programming block, Control is by far the one that leaves audiences most eager to see more. Shrewdly, Bernard & Smith end on a monster cliffhanger that cannot possibly be as bad as it seems. Though the flight director resents the U.S. military’s secret involvement in the mission, he might be happy to have them around when it is all said and done. Based on the pilot, Control has the potential to become a cool submarine-warfare in space story, much like the classic Romulan episodes on the original Trek.

The tone of Control is sort of like a cross between Apollo 13 and Ben Bova’s geopolitical sci-fi thriller novels. To their credit, Smith & Bernard do not appear to have many naïve notions with respects to the current (and presumably near future) Chinese Communist regime. It also looks reasonably realistic, thanks to the control room full of computers bought on the cheap due to a tech firm’s bankruptcy (finally, the stimulus plan delivers).

Perhaps most importantly, despite all the intrigue and political infighting, it looks like it will still tap into the warm fuzzy feelings many viewers get when they think about the Space Program, particularly in its Apollo-era heyday. Showing loads of potential, Control is definitely worth seeing when it screens again this Friday (10/26) as part of the 2012 NYTVF’s IPC Drama 1 program at the Tribeca Cinemas.

Posted on October 23rd, 2012 at 10:42am.

The Surveillance State & Civil Rights: Watch the New Sci-Fi Short Plurality

We like to keep an eye on short films here at Libertas, so check out this interesting new short above from director Dennis Liu and writer Ryan Condal called Plurality. It went live earlier this week and as of this post has already received over 110,000 views.

Here’s the official synopsis of the film: “After the state of New York gives the police access to ‘The Grid,’ a new technology that allows people to purchase anything with a quick scan of their fingerprint, crime drops almost instantly. However, they also discover that certain people are popping up in two places at once.”

Although the film’s references to Michel Foucault and Jeremy Bentham are a bit on-the-nose (somebody’s been reading Discipline and Punish), Plurality otherwise does a nice job of illustrating how technology may already be leading us down a road to dystopia. Congratulations to the filmmakers, and a hat tip to the folks at io9.

Posted on October 5th, 2012 at 11:55am.

New Clips from Ben Affleck’s Argo on the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis; Film Opens Oct. 12th

Courtesy of Collider, six new clips have been released from director/star Ben Affleck’s new thriller Argo. Based on a true story, Argo centers on a CIA agent (Affleck) who attempts to rescue six Americans trapped in the home of the Canadian ambassador during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The rescue mission went in under the auspices of filming a bogus science fiction movie entitled Argo.

Argo co-stars John Goodman, Alan Arkin and Bryan Cranston and opens October 12th.

Posted on October 4th, 2012 at 10:35am.

LFM Reviews Beyond the Hills @ The New York Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Alina is either tragically co-dependent or possessed by the Devil. Radically different measures would be required depending on the diagnosis – but either way, she will visit a host of trials upon her girlfriend Voichita and her fellow Orthodox convent residents in Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills (see clip above), Romania’s latest official best foreign language Oscar submission, which screens as part of the main slate of the 50th New York Film Festival.

Meek and pious, Voichita appears perfectly suited to a cloistered life. Alina is a different story. However, since her former friend has no real family, Voichita arranges for her to stay temporarily in her quarters. Yet as soon as she arrives, Alina starts badgering her former friend to leave with her (see clip above). Gently rebuffing her, Voichita watches in alarm as her visitor’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic and disruptive, eventually manifesting in several public meltdowns. The priest and the nuns do not want to abandon a soul in need, but after the medical establishment washes their hands of Aline, there seems to be only one remaining course of action: exorcism.

Mungiu implies a great deal in Hills, very definitely including the nature of Aline and Voichita’s relationship, while leaving just as much open to interpretation. It would also have been very easy to portray the priest and good sisters as stereotypical zealots dangerously convinced of their own infallibility. However, Hills constantly reasserts the messy humanity of each character. In fact, the ambiguity of the “possession” gives the film quite a distinctive flavor. Frankly, after about two hours of Aline acting out, most viewers will be ready to throw their lot in with the nuns, holding down the devil-woman as the priest reads the purification scriptures over her.

From "Beyond the Hills."

With a running time of 150 minutes, Hills often feels like what it is: a product of the Romanian New Wave of independent filmmaking. It probably would not have killed anyone had Mungiu shaved off twenty minutes or so. Nonetheless, he elicits several riveting performances, the most notable being Cosmina Stratan as Voichita, the confused innocent. As Alina, Cristina Flutur is also scarily convincing engaging in all manner of aggressive, self-destructive behavior. Yet it is Valeriu Andriută’s work as the priest, simultaneously severe and sympathetic, that really forestalls snap audience judgments.

Based on a novelized account of a real life incident in Moldova, Hills is not a kneejerk attack on Eastern Orthodoxy. Nonetheless, as the Russian Orthodox Church hemorrhages international credibility due to its perceived alliance with the Putin regime, it is hard not to invest Hills with an additional layer of meaning, whether or not Mungiu intended it. Given its ambiguous but evocative treatment of monastic life and supernatural possession, Beyond the Hills would be a fascinating film to see in conjunction with Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s Mother Joan of the Angels. Challenging in multiple ways, Beyond the Hills is recommended for hardy cineastes with at least a couple of Romanian New Wave films already under their belts when it screens tomorrow (10/1), next Sunday (10/7), and the following Thursday (10/11), as part of the 2012 NYFF.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on October 1st, 2012 at 11:52am.