By Joe Bendel. Michael Fassbender is fully clothed, while Liam Cunningham is really drunk. Together, they are a mismatched pair of crooks hired to pull off a very dark caper in John Maclean’s Pitch Black Heist, the winner of the 2012 BAFTA Award for best short film, which screened over the weekend as part of the Status Update programming block at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.
Known simply as Michael and Liam, two safecrackers are meeting each other for the first time on a very unusual job. They are to retrieve some item (it hardly matters what) from a safe with a light-sensitive alarm. To prepare, they practice navigating a dummied-up room in complete darkness. On the day in question, they meet in a quiet pub and wait for their employer to send them the all-clear. However, they find themselves cooling their heels far longer than they expected, so they start doing what you’re supposed to do in a pub, lest they attract attention.
Pitch has a nice little twist at the end that Maclean adroitly lays the groundwork for, without glaringly telegraphing it. Frankly, this concept could be relatively easily expanded into a feature, which makes the economy of Maclean’s thirteen minute storytelling all the more noteworthy. Still, the real entertainment is watching the boozy interaction between co-executive producers Fassbender and Cunningham. Both actors have genuinely intense screen presences, perfectly suited to their roles in Pitch.
It all looks quite stylish as well, thanks to Robbie Ryan’s appropriately noir black-and-white cinematography. A neat little ironic crime drama, Pitch Black Heist is one of the overlooked treats of the Tribeca line-up. As per tradition, all short film blocks screened on the concluding day of this year’s festival.
By Joe Bendel. Representing the fourth dimension in 2D is quite the daunting challenge. Fortunately, none of the filmmakers participating in a new hipster sci-fi anthology take it seriously. Nor will annoying glasses be necessary when watching The Fourth Dimension, three short films produced and assembled by Vice and Grolsch Film Works (cheers, mate), which screened again this afternoon as part of the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.
In the opening The Lotus Community Workshop, Harmony Korine (yes, but don’t panic) takes us to a world much like our own, where Val Kilmer plays a low rent motivational speaker named Val Kilmer. Addressing church groups in roller rinks, he passes off ego-centric tripe as New Agey pearls of wisdom. Occasionally hinting at the metaphysical, Lotus seems more like a confessional piece from Kilmer, admitting to his fans: “I realize I was once Iceman in Top Gun and now I’m kind of a slob, but at least I still don’t have to work at a real job.” This is a case where brevity is definitely Korine’s ally. Given the relatively short running time, the self-referential joke maintains its novelty better than one might expect.
Making a bit of a concession to the film’s umbrella premise, Alexey Fedorchenko’s Chronoeye involves indirect time travel. Employing some analog-style technology, a misanthropic Russian scientist (is there any other kind?) is able to glimpse into the past. However, there is an attractive neighbor above him to remind viewers not to lose sight of the present. Fedorchenko (probably best known for the strikingly austere road movie Silent Souls) maintains a fable-like vibe, preventing Chronoeye from descending into the realm of romantic cliché.
Jan Kwiecinski’s Fawns might come closest to revealing the fourth dimension, since it induces Armageddon. Much like Abel Ferrara’s meandering 4:44 Last Day on Earth, doomsday vaguely involves global warmish-ing, but here it is more Biblical. A cataclysmic flood has led to worldwide evacuation, but a group of Polish slackers are too cool to pay attention. Instead, they careen about a provincial town, hinting at the sexual tensions within their group. Suddenly though, the end of the world takes a serious turn for the aimless youth. Frankly, none of the Kwiecinski’s characters are particularly well defined, but as a mood piece, it is quite eerie.
Defiantly disregarding the theme that ostensibly holds it together, The Fourth Dimension lurches all over the place, but it is not without merit. Indeed, there should be enough eccentricity in each constituent short film to satisfy some strange subset of cult film fandom out there someplace. Recommended for those in search of a bit of bemusement, it screened yesterday as part of the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.
By Joe Bendel. The United Nations has long acted like one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse; in the case of Haiti, it is literally pestilence. Allegedly thanks to the UN peacekeeping force, a deadly wave of cholera has swept the dysfunctional country. Viewers witness the epidemic from the vantage point of a young ball player in David Darg & Bryn Mooser’s short documentary, Baseball in the Time of Cholera, which screens as part of the Help Wanted programming block during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.
Joseph Alvyns and his friends should simply be spending an innocent summer on the baseball diamond. They play as often as they can, but it is impossible to ignore the post-hurricane chaos around them. Yet when Alvyns sees the devastation of the 3/11 hurricane and tsunami in Japan, he is compelled to reach out in a spirit of solidarity. His efforts attract international attention, even earning him a VIP trip to Toronto, courtesy of the Blue Jays. Unfortunately, when he returns cholera strikes at the heart of his family.
Technically, Darg and Mooser do not conclusively establish the Nepalese “peace-keepers” are the source of the cholera outbreak. Still, the sight of raw sewage spilling from their latrine into Haiti’s central river – coupled with the Heisman pose the Nepalese commander gives their camera man – constitutes a pretty convincing circumstantial case. The film also asks a legitimate question: why are there peace-keepers stationed in a country that has not been at war for centuries? However, they largely let the successive authoritarian and socialist governments off the hook for bringing the Haitian state to the brink of complete failure.
Time boasts some unusually big names behind the camera, including executive producers Olivia Wilde and Tesla Motors entrepreneur Elon Musk (one of three POV figures in Chris Paine’s Revenge of the Electric Car, which screened at last year’s Tribeca). To its credit, the film community has rallied to Haiti’s aide, yet there has not been a similar celebrity rush on behalf of Japanese recovery efforts. Therefore, it is worth taking the time to note that those wishing to follow Alvyns’ example can also donate to the Japan Society’s relief fund (details here).
For a short documentary, Baseball in the Time of Cholera nicely balances muckraking and heartrending tragedy. It should screen at Turtle Bay, but instead it will screen again in lower Manhattan this Friday (4/27) and Sunday (4/29) as the Tribeca Film Festival continues throughout the weekend.
By Joe Bendel. The Yakuza are nothing like Chili Palmer in Get Shorty. They do not care about the state of Japanese cinema. They just want a struggling indie filmmaker to pay off his brother’s debts. The would-be auteur just might do so, but in an absolutely harrowing fashion in Iranian expatriate Amir Naderi’s Cut (see clip above), which screens during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.
Shuji is one of the more annoying cineastes you could hope to run across. He spends much of his days decrying the commercialization of cinema through a bullhorn on busy street corners. He has made three poorly received films, financed by his gangster brother Shingo, with money unwisely borrowed from the Yakuza. Unable to clear the debt, Shingo meets a violent end. Now the Yakuza turn to Shuji, giving him a seemingly impossible deadline to pay-up.
From "Cut."
Obviously, the immature Shuji has never been good at that whole money-making thing. However, a proposal made in contempt quickly turns into a Yen-generating enterprise that carries wider significance for the filmmaker. One of the thugs in the Yakuza headquarters-boxing gym-tavern offers him five thousand Yen if Shuji allows him a free swing. Shuji accepts on the condition he do so in the lavatory where his brother was murdered, extending the same terms to any and all takers. With the clock ticking, Shuji endures a nightly beating, fortifying himself with his love of art cinema and guilt over his brother’s demise.
Cut has polarized critics in its European festival screenings, but it is one of the best films screening at Tribeca this year. Naderi (who was in Japan working on Cut at the time of the earthquake and tsunami) subverts the established Yakuza movie conventions, producing one of the most visceral in-your-face indictments of thuggish violence you will ever see on-screen. No, he does not make it easy for viewers, but that is the whole point, forcing them to endure long sequences of violence stripped of any possible romanticism. Like Yoko, the attractive bartender, who has no trouble cleaning up the bloody mess of Shingo’s murder – but is eventually sickened by the pummeling Shuji voluntarily submits to – the audience is forced to confront their own complicity as witnesses.
Naderi is clearly operating on two levels, depicting Shuji’s extreme fund-raising as an act of existential contrition, while also presenting it as a challenge to our sensibilities. Yet Cut also serves as a valentine to cinema, eventually evolving into the Devil’s own homage to Cool Hand Luke, featuring a countdown of Shuji’s top one hundred films, amid absolutely punishing circumstances.
Hidetoshi Nishijima delves into some very dark places, portraying Shuji with convincing grit. Haunted but grounded, his work never allows viewers to dismiss the frankly unbearable on-screen events as the stuff of fable or metaphor. As the reluctant facilitators, Yoko and Hioshi, an old timer Yakuza, Takako Tokiwa and veteran character actor Takashi Sasano give exquisitely subtle, finely calibrated supporting turns, expressing their mounting revulsion and ethical confusion when confronting Shuji’s spectacle.
As drama, Cut is as intimate as the Cassavetes pictures Shuji venerates, but it is definitely big idea filmmaking. There is real substance to it, but it does not spoon-feed a few politically correct bromides to the audience and then send them off to bed with a pat on the bottom, content in their raised consciousness. Naderi calls us all out, daring us to turn away from the mayhem unfolding on-screen. It is an audacious film, bolstered by some uncompromisingly honest performances. Very highly recommended, Cut screens Monday (4/23), Thursday (4/26), and Friday (4/27) during this year’s Tribeca Film Festival now underway throughout lower Manhattan.
The James Bond film Skyfall put a new production update (see above) on-line recently about the film’s shoot in Shanghai. The film’s publicity team has thus far been fairly good about keeping everyone updated on Skyfall‘s progress – without spoiling anything with too many details – so check out this new update above. Shanghai certainly looks exotic and exciting as a Bond location.
New clips have been emerging for Battleship in recent days. This spoilerish clip features an enemy alien being examined/unmasked by a Navy crew, and this clip features Brooklyn Decker and Taylor Kitsch in a bar.
The behind-the-scenes clip above showcases Capt. (Ret.) Rick Hoffman’s involvement as the Navy’s advisor on Battleship, which included getting a cameo as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Not bad for a former Captain.
And speaking of Brooklyn Decker, she’s featured in the May edition of GQ, something that’s also worth looking at. Ahem.
Battleship has already made $58 million worldwide, and opens here in the U.S. on May 18th.
Pitch has a nice little twist at the end that Maclean adroitly lays the groundwork for, without glaringly telegraphing it. Frankly, this concept could be relatively easily expanded into a feature, which makes the economy of Maclean’s thirteen minute storytelling all the more noteworthy. Still, the real entertainment is watching the boozy interaction between co-executive producers Fassbender and Cunningham. Both actors have genuinely intense screen presences, perfectly suited to their roles in Pitch.
