DELAYS

While I'm not one for making excuses, I must admit that, due to the holiday, I was unable to watch a movie in time for a review this week.  Next week will hold two reviews to make up for it.

"The Folly of a Few Can Taint the Lives of Many."

There is something that draws me to old theaters.  The type of theater that has been around for ages.  I can't exactly put my finger on it, but I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that there are many of them where I grew up.  In fact, there are only two facilities that can be called recent in the whole county, and one of them is even at least 6 years old or more.  It must be the inherent memories of those theaters that keeps me seeking older and older buildings.  Art Decco, ancient seats, single to three screen boxes.  Watching a film in a building that is as old as film itself.

I walked into the New Beverly Cinema and that feeling of nostalgia came back to me.  With it's gray, blue, and red color configuration, old seats, lack of stadium set up, and it's single screen.  You can't help but feel the venue's history, regardless of knowing that it's been open since the 70s.  You don't get that at these run of the mill multiplexes who aim to squeeze as much money as quickly as possible out of a print and chuck it on down the line like yesterdays wank towel.

The New Beverly specializes in themed double features, as anyone who has been there can attest to, and retrospectives, but once in a while something truly special comes along to this little revitalized building.  I got to experience that tonight with Rie Rasmussen's feature debut Human Zoo.

The film was paired with Luc Besson's Angel-A a film that Rasmussen had a starring role in.  What I did not realize upon attending this screening, which happened to be the last of a four night run, was that Human Zoo, until now, has never screened in America to date.

The film starts off with a bang, well, a scream to be exact, but it immediately sucks the viewer into a tense and gritty world.  Cross cutting between modern day Marseille, France and Kosovo/Belgrade, Serbia, the film tells the tale of Adria, an Albanian woman who is rescued by a charming Serbian sociopath  during the midst of the the 1998 conflict in the region.

Through the narrative we see how the violence of Adria's past affects her in the present day, reflecting that the borders of countries are merely cages to a larger "human zoo."  This was the intention of the director and she hits the mark pretty hard.  Past reflected in cold blue tones while Present is much warmer and hopeful, although the two collide closer to the end of the film.

At the beginning I found myself turned off by the music choices (she chooses a few rather blunt metaphorical rock songs pertaining to some scenes), but the longer the film played on I couldn't help but become more and more completely absorbed into the story.  The film is NC-17/Unrated probably more due to graphic sexual content than violence (although there is far more violence presence than there is sex) but once again, to me, MPAA ratings don't mean a damn thing when pertaining to the validity of a story.

If you're even a little bit familiar with Rie Rasmussen, you know that she wears many hats.  She's a writer, actress, model, and director.  In this film, she wears three of those hats, starring as the main character Adria, without pulling any punches and showing no fear.  It's a difficult metaphor to show and she drew heavily on personal experience.  Adria's first love, Srdjan Vasiljevic, played by the show stealing Nikola Djuriko, is a predatory individual who opens up a world of mixed morals and violence that affect her deeply for the rest of her life.

Through all the bad choices made in her youth, Adria is drawn into a situation in which she is able to finally atone for past mistakes, and find a healthy love, but not without a price.  What struck me the most about the film is how it reflects the duality of human existence.  On one hand we witness the incredible capability of sadistic behavior drawn out by violence and strife while in the other we hold the tenderness of true love.

Rasmussen seems to be very interested in finding out what it is that makes human's prone to make violent choices and to seek injury and death upon one another.  Her next film Beyond Good and Evil, a biopic about Richard Ramirez, aims to take a further look at this theme.

(unfortunately there is no trailer with English subtitles)

Hopefully, Human Zoo will receive further notice.  Until then if you want to see the film you'll have to keep your eyes trained for screenings at retro theaters, or buy a foreign DVD and hope for subtitles.

A Beautiful Film About The End of the World

Recently, Video on Demand, or V.O.D. if you prefer, has been slowly creeping into more and more homes and changing the distribution model for film releasing.  I mean, let's face it, now you can build a Home Theater for relatively cheap, so why leave the comfort of your living room to go to an overpriced Theater where you'll be surrounded by people eating food, texting on their cell phones, talking, and generally disrupting the film viewing experience?

I have my own reasons for why I prefer the Theater, but the number one reason I don't go as often as I would like is the ticket price.  For those of you living in towns with ticket prices under 9 dollars for general admission, I can only say, "Don't Move To LA."

But back to the point.  You may have seen on various news sites and most certainly on YouTube, that Lars von Trier does not know how to express himself, or how to make a joke.  The filmmaker, whose list of credits are undeniably short but brilliant, was banned from Cannes over some comments he made comparing himself to a Nazi during a Q/A for his recent film Melancholia.  It was announced that the film would be released to V.O.D. in October preceding his American theatrical release in November.

If Anti-Christ was inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky's The Mirror, I think it's safe to say that Melancholia is inspired by The Sacrifice.  The film is about a previously undiscovered planet that, for lack of a better word, has been hiding behind the sun during a massive orbit, and it's orbit is taking it dangerously close to Earth.

The film starts with a 10 minute montage of metaphorical and foreshadowing footage shot entirely with the Phantom HD camera, a camera with shoots the most intense slow motion you've ever seen.  We're talking about 4000fps, which when brought into a 24fps timeline (the typical frames per second at which films are shot), allows you to watch a single drop of water explode into millions of bits on a surface.  All this, to excerpts from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde.

This film itself is very operatic, drawing heavily from the Wagner score.  We follow the grief cycles experienced in differing times of two sister, Justine, played magnificently by Kirsten Dunst, and Claire, played with reserved terror by Charlotte Gainsbourg.  A list of name actors are introduced as friends and family in the first half, only to dwindle out as we are left with our core unit of Justine, Claire, Claire's husband John (Kiefer Sutherland) and their son Leo (first and only current credit for Cameron Spurr).

The approaching Planet looms over the family, bringing out all sorts of tensions between the three adults ending in a climax that, while foreshadowed in the beginning, plays out with beauty and grace that can only be described as magnificent.

Though not a shocker like Anti-Christ, Melancholia is gorgeously shot and contains standout performances by a host of veteran and incoming talents.  I am curious to see what von Trier will do next now that he has famously stated he will no longer speak to the press.  Like many other events going on, Melancholia is set for Limited US Theatrical Release this Friday 11/11/11, an ominous date with apocalyptic entailment.  Fitting, no?

Official HD Trailer.

Smash His Face In!

Everyone seems to have a blog these days.  Everyone also seems to use them to talk about their lives, or films they've seen, or music they love, or their comments on the current status of political destruction of the nation.  That being said I suppose it's about time that I joined this community of wanna be journalista's and editorialist's.

I'm going to talk about a film that everyone is still talking about.

It seems that about a month or two ago, when I would look up what films to see I would sigh negatively and resort to my back-catalogue of DVD's I have yet to watch, most of which are foreign, and make remarks about how american cinema is dead.

All the while I start hearing this buzz from certain friends and co-workers in the independent film community about this amazing film with Ryan Gosling.  "You have to see it!" was a common phrase and the most unanimously praised aspect of the film had been the score.  So finally, I went to see it with my girlfriend and few friends, but not before I did a little research on it.

Looking it up on imdb, resulted in my astonishment at discovering the film was directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, more recently known for his second English language feature Bronson, but known to me by his first feature, The Pusher.  If you know anything about Refn's previous body of work you know that he tackles concepts that are generally hard to handle and that he has an affinity for leaving his films open ended.  Thematically, his stories delve into the realms of man vs. man and man vs. self.

Back to Drive.  The film uses some of the greatest bloody lighting I've ever seen, creating expressions with shadows in a way almost forgotten from the days of Noir and, even further back, German Expressionism.

Since I don't want to spoil it for any of you who are still hiding under your rocks, there is a rather amazing slow motion scene in an elevator through a beautiful lighting pool that preludes an act of ultra violence which left the audience both mesmerized and astounded.

Fans of Refn's work know that he has a very realistic approach to scenes of violence.  Who can forget that scene in The Pusher where our anti-hero comes within an inch of losing his life, but not after a little torture.

I would be incredibly surprised not to see both Gosling and Brooks nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor in the upcoming Oscar Nominations next year.  Gosling threw himself into this role, as he has in all of his previous films, physically and mentally to become an intriguing character driven (pun not intended) by love and the desire to do the right thing (within a few moral gray areas).  Brooks, on the other hand, went way outside of his typical character type to play a cold and calculating man.  I still get chills thinking about a specific scene in the garage involving a straight razor.

There is one other film I saw all year that impressed me as much as Drive, and hopefully there will be a few more coming up as the final bit of Oscar season takes hold, but if you have the time and the cash to go catch this film in the theatre, then climb out from under your rock and do yourself a favor.