A scene from STOLEN KINGDOM. Courtesy of Slamdance.
The documentary Stolen Kingdom uncovers a series of offbeat pastimes and their bizarre convergence. Of course, we’re already aware of Disney fans and collectors. Stolen Kingdom also reveals the world of urban explorers, who trespass into closed and abandoned buildings. They’re enjoying the thrill of being where they’re not supposed to be and gawking at what the public isn’t supposed to see.
In Stolen Kingdom, we meet people who sneak into closed theme park attractions and even some daredevils who jump off the rides while operating and mosey around backstage(see photo above). Those folks can be tempted by the black market in Disneyana. As the behavior escalates from pranks to larceny, we know that somebody’s going to get in big trouble, Centering on the theft of an obsolete animatron, Stolen Kingdom takes on the guise of a true crime story, but with the very nerdiest criminals.
A scene from STOLEN KINGDOM. Courtesy of Slamdance.
Stolen Kingdom is one of those documentaries about our fellow humans that make us shake our heads.
Stolen Kingdom is the first feature for director Joshua Bailey. I screened Stolen Kingdom for Slamdance, a week after its world premiere at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.
Photo caption: Trey Holland and Romina D’Ugo in Woody Bess’ PORTAL TO HELL. Courtesy of Portal to Hell LLC.
In the witty, dark comedy, Portal to Hell, a hangdog bill collector named Dunn (get it?) discovers a portal to hell, replete with hellfire and brimstone, in his local laundromat. Dunn, with best of intentions, strikes a bargain with its proprietor. Dunn is too nice for his wretched job, but just what is he capable of? And how about the insipid pop band who sings your least favorite earworm – who wouldn’t want to consign THEM to hell?
Portal to Hell considers the question, what is a good person? but never too seriously. This is an imaginative, comic triumph for writer/director/cinematographer Woody Bess. Bess has a gift for the deadpan and the absurd.
Trey Holland is excellent as the continually perplexed Dunn, sapped of resilience by a personal loss. So is Romina D’Ugo as the reluctant authority figure at the laundromat. Lauded actor Keith David is perfect as Dunn’s cranky neighbor, ever assessing the younger generation with a critical eye. The great Richard Kind soars as a workaday (but crafty) demon.
Sui Li and Baoqing Li in BANR. Courtesy of ShangJia Picture Film Culture.
The star in Banr is writer/director/editor Erica Xia-Hou’s innovative storytelling – in her first feature film. An elderly husband (Sui Li) is struggling to hold on to his wife (Baoqing Li) as she sinks into Alzheimer’s, with the support of their adult daughter (Xia-Hou herself). That main story is told in a cinéma vérité documentary style, but that’s just what the husband and daughter see in their lucidity. Those segments are interwoven with fragments of the wife’s memory and her delusions and dreams. In depicting the most ordinary daily activities, Xia-Hou keeps us continually off-guard by shifting the points of view between the clear-eyed and the muddled.
With the exception of herself, Xia-Hou used all non-professional actors. Like Sean Baker at his best, she’s directed exemplary performances from her leads, both first-timers. As the wife, Baoqing Li becomes ever more confused, but is radiant when a cherished memory pops up.
Baoqing Li in BANR. Courtesy of ShangJia Picture Film Culture.
As the husband, Sui Li throws all his deep-seated love and his stubbornness into fighting his wife’s memory loss, and then in caregiving. We know, and his daughter wisely advises him, that his efforts are unsustainable, but he obstinately muddles on, until the progression of her condition gives him no other choice. His performance is fully committed and heartbreaking.
This may be Erica Xia-Hou’s directorial debut, but she has a substantial body of work as an actress, screenwriter, editor and art director in the Chinese film industry, after studying dance, broadcasting and acting at three Chinese universities. She co-wrote and acted in the Jackie Chan sci-fi action film Bleeding Steel. She will co-star with Tony Leung and Olga Kurylenko in the upcoming action thriller Fox Hunt, which she also co-wrote and edited.
What’s with the film’s title? Banr is companion in Mandarin, and many older Chinese couples affectionately refer to each other as Lao Banr, meaning old companion.
Banr is an immersive film, filled with humanity, and an important directorial debut. I screened Banr for its world premiere at Slamdance, where it was one of my Must See picks.
Photo caption: Dr. Thomas Noguchi in CORONER TO THE STARS. Courtesy of Slamdance.
The absorbing biodoc Coroner to the Stars tells the story of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the former Los Angeles County Chief Medical Examiner and his bouts with fame (or infamy). His LA County jurisdiction meant that he was responsible for conducting the autopsies of a striking collection of celebrities, including Marilyn Monroe, William Holden, Natalie Wood, John Belushi and the Manson Family’s murder victims. Noguchi was also responsible for making his reports public – and therein lies the rub.
The public is fascinated by the details of celebrity deaths, and the news media eagerly panders to that need, however prurient or ghoulish. Official records in California, including coroner’s reports, are public. Noguchi did not shy away from the media spotlight, which triggered controversy. He was clearly fulfilling his legal duty, but did he enjoy it too much? Was he a publicity hound? Can an official be transparent without being unseemly? Indeed, Coroner to the Star’s tag line is Fame kills.
Writer-director Ben Hethcoat and Keita Ideno, in the first feature for both, present an extraordinarily well-sourced, credible and insightful documentary. Noguchi is still alive at age 98 and appears in the film to speak for himself.
Noguchi’s work (and style) stepped on some influential toes – the families and friends of the deceased, the major Hollywood studios and bureaucratic/political foes. Whenever he came under attack, the subtext was his race and the public perception and acceptance of Asian-Americans. Noguchi was a post-war immigrant who didn’t experience the Japanese-American internment during WW II, but Japanese-Americans traumatized by the camps would organize to defend LA’s highest ranking Japanese-American official.
Noguchi was also an internationally recognized pioneer in forensic science. Coroner to the Stars reveals his determination, in the RFK autopsy, to avoid the mistakes that resulted in the continuing, unresolved contention about the JFK assassination. Coroner to the Stars, without sensationalizing it, also touches on a key finding of the RFK forensic evidence.
Rock-solid in its exploration of race, science and history, Coroner to the Stars thoughtfully considers the challenge of acting professionally with what is sensational. I screened Coroner to the Stars for its world premiere at Slamdance.
Yana Osman (right) in her TWIN FENCES. Courtesy of Slamdance.
In her quirky, and finally profound, documentary Twin Fences, writer-director Yana Osman starts us off with what seems like a a droll, absurdist film about a ridiculously obscure subject, a prefab concrete fence design replicated thru the USSR. Osman stands, hands down at her side, facing the camera, spouting random facts. It may be off-putting at first, but the approach grows to be intoxicating. When she finds talking heads who are actually experts on the fences, we wonder if we’re watching a parody of a talking head expert documentary. We even hear about a Soviet who returned from Chicago in the 1920s, inspired to improve public health with a proprietary sausage.
Osman’s story takes us through Russia, Afghanistan and Ukraine, until there’s a pivotal tragedy in her family. The ending, with her grandfather, is sweet and heartbreaking. Only then do we realize that we’ve just watched a clear-eyed comment on contemporary Russia.
TWIN FENCES. Courtesy of Slamdance.
I’ve never seen a film that wanders across such disparate topics over 99 minutes, seemingly randomly, but which turns out to get somewhere unexpected and worth arriving at. This is Osman’s first feature; Twin Fences is very well-edited, and unsettling tones on the soundtrack help tell the story. Osman is an idiosyncratic, and, I think, pretty brilliant filmmaker.
Audiences who hang withTwin Fences will be rewarded. I screened Twin Fences for its North American premiere at Slamdance.
Photo caption: Giacomo Gex in Richard Melkonian’s UNIVERSE 25. Courtesy of Slamdance.
The thoughtful, ever-surprising and mysterious Universe25 embeds a fable of self-discovery in a dystopian sci-fi framework. Mott the Angel (Giacomo Gex) is sent to Earth, essentially on a cleanup mission, by a Creator (Andre Flynn) who is ready to pull the plug on our world. Mott dutifully searches urban Britain for the planet’s sole remaining saint until he happens upon an unlikely Everyman, the hardscrabble Romanian immigrant Andrei (Dan Socio). As Mott careens from Britain to Romania, he questions just what/who he aspires to be.
The gritty, noirish contemporary world is juxtaposed with Biblical references and imagery.
Photo caption: Giacomo Gex in Richard Melkonian’s UNIVERSE 25. Courtesy of Slamdance.
Hilariously, the story is revealed when the scroll that Mott writes for the Creator ends up in the lost mail bin, where it is read by a bitter postal clerk.
In a singular and impressive feature debut, writer-director Richard Melkonian has imagined a look at humanity from an space alien’s point of view. It’s an imaginative and witty blend of themes and genres.
Photo caption: Adrien Brody in THE BRUTALIST. Courtesy of A24.
The Brutalist opens with László (Adrien Brody) arriving in New York Harbor as a refugee. Emma Lazarus could have been thinking of László when she wrote her immortal poem; having survived Buchenwald, he is tired, poor, huddled, homeless and tempest-tossed.
He makes his way to Philadelphia, where his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), has gone native, Americanizing his name, marrying a Catholic New Englander, and opening a small furniture store that he intends to build into a bigger enterprise. László, who was a architect of accomplishment and renown in prewar Hungary, has no such aspirations. László is grateful merely to be alive and away from war- and Holocaust-ravaged Europe and is content with even the least comfortable accommodations and the most menial employment. He does yearn for reunification with his wife Erzsébet and niece Zsófia, from whom he was separated years before in the Holocaust; they are alive, but in Soviet-controlled territory, and getting them to America will be difficult and complicated.
Just when László gets a taste of a promising situation, things don’t work out with Attila, and László finds himself homeless again. But then fortune smiles upon him – to an incredible, unpredictable and life-changing degree. Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), a local zillionaire, learns of László’s international reputation and commissions a monumental vanity project – one that will bring fame and wealth to László. The only downside is that Van Buren is extremely capricious, and László owes all of his new found comfort to him. Van Buren giveth, and Van Buren can taketh away.
Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce in THE BRUTALIST. Courtesy of A24.
It is an asymmetrical relationship. László is all about expressing himself through his architecture. Van Buren is a collector, and, like any of his collectible objects, Van Buren enjoys László as an amusement and as a marker of prestige. Van Buren’s dominance manifests in countless micro-aggressions, and, finally, in the most degrading way.
László rides this roller coaster alone until Erzsébet arrives with Zsófia. László can be prickly and his confidence is always teetering, but Erzsébet is smooth and comfortable in her skin. Erzsébet is stronger than László, and many times as resilient. She has been able to survive a Nazi death camp, escape from behind the Iron Curtain and make her way to the New World, all while protecting her vulnerable niece. Although physically wrecked by her ordeal, she is eager to resume her career as a writer and her role as László’s coach and cheerleader. Erzsébet intends to make her own destiny, and refuses to be buffeted by the whims of fortune.
No matter how highly valued is his talent, László gets the message that he is too foreign, too Jewish, and, ultimately, is unwanted by America. While that weighs on him, his experience with Van Buren becomes soul-crushing. How much is too much for the human spirit to endure? Can Erzsébet help László find peace and dignity?
Feliity Jones in THE BRUTALIST. Courtesy of A24.
The Brutalist is a sweeping story, told in three hours thirty-five minutes (with an intermission), and every second brims with artistic ambition. Director and co-writer Brady Corbet has acted in movies by Gregg Araki, Michael Haneke, Lars Von Trier, Ruben Ostland and Olivier Assayas, and he is aspiring for his own individualistic masterpiece. Corbet makes every shot visually impactful, and the score juxtaposes period pop standards with throbbing, droning musical cues, and even begins with an overture. Corbet risked making The Brutalist pretentious and self-important, but it never is. Almost everything Corbet throws at the screen works to tell the story and to enhance our experience.
The one thing that doesn’t work is the epilogue, set in 1980, when an adult Zsófia (Ariane Labed) gives a speech at an architectural conference that honors László with a retrospective. Zsófia explicitly connects the dots between László’s artistic themes with the horrors of experience. After such a momentous and vivid story, told with so much artistry and innovation, the epilogue is both unnecessary and a buzz kill. It reminded me of the finale of another great movie, Psycho, in which Simon Oakland plays a psychiatric expert who explains to us that, indeed, Norman Bates was suffering from a recognized mental disorder. But, if you swing for the fences, you are allowed the occasional foul ball.
Adrien Brody in THE BRUTALIST. Courtesy of A24.
The acting is exceptional, especially the three leads, who are each justifiably Oscar-nominated. Adrien Brody brilliantly takes us through László’s remarkably up-and-down journey, with its very high highs and very low lows. (BTW Nikki Glaser’s best joke at the Golden Globes was “Adrien Brody – two-time Holocaust survivor.“)
Similarly, the battle between Van Buren and László (or the one between the good Van Buren and the bad Van Buren) wouldn’t be enough without Erzsébet being so appealing and such a badass. Felicity Jones captures her grace and ferocity.
Much of the film relies on Guy Pearce’ Van Buren, whose appetites, prejudices, emotional needs and entitlement drives the plot, as they buffet poor László. If Van Buren isn’t complicated and unpredictable, there’s no story here. I find Pearce to remarkably resemble classic film star Brian Donlevy here.
The wonderful Ivory Coast-born, French actor Isaach de Bankole is as good as always as László’s American friend Gordon. Gordon often represents the moral center of the story, solidly grounded while László flutters about. Joe Alwyn is appropriately malignant as Van Buren’s rangy snake of a son, Harry Lee, to whom Harrison has not passed on any of his better qualities.
The Brutalist is an epic in several senses of that descriptor, and one of the Best Movies of 2024.
Photo caption: Marianne Jean-Baptiste in HARD TRUTHS. Courtesy of Bleecker Street Media.
Hard Truths is the searing (but sometimes funny) portrait of a woman who lives without ever experiencing a moment of contentment. Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) overreacts to every situation, usually with rage, but sometimes with terror. In a state of perpetual grievance, even when she needs to manufacture one, every encounter is toxic.
Pansy is offended even by the ribbon that a neighbor puts on her baby, and by the affrontery of a retail clerk whose job it is to ask her is needs any assistance. Pansy’s husband Curtley (David Webber) and son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) tiptoe around their own house, bracing for Pansy’s next explosion. The 22-year-okd Moses either slacks in his room or wanders randomly around the city.
In contrast, Pansy’s sister Chantelle (Michelle Austin) enjoys her life and other people; the mood in her more modest apartment is relaxed and playful, and her daughters (Ani Nelson and Sophia Brown) are spirited achievers.
So, why is Pansy so unhappy? Curtley is an inoffensive man with a plumbing company, and he provides well for Pansy. She doesn’t have to work, and the family lives in a leafy neighborhood, in a comfortable house. She says that she is tired and lonely, and claims to have migraine headaches, but we don’t see any of those. I’m not a mental health professional (although I’m married to a licensed therapist), but Pansy is suffering from something more than a sour outlook on life; we see anxiety, depression and paranoia. We learn that she may be damaged from adult burdens prematurely forced on her in childhood by her mother, but she’s going to need some chemicals before she can sit long enough for talk therapy. Unfortunately, she lashes out at family members and doctors who could help, pushing them away. Poor Curtley is mystified and utterly unequipped to see any solution.
Hard Truths is a film by Mike Leigh (Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake, Another Year), who collaborates with hs actors so an usual degree, so Pansy is Leigh and Jean-Baptiste’s joint creation. 28 years ago, Jean-Baptiste played a wholly different character in Leigh’s masterpiece Secrets & Lies, a story in which Brenda Blethyn played the hot mess.
Jean-Baptiste’s singular performance is a tour de force. Everyone in the cast is excellent, and I especially admired David Webber’s for playing a decent man trapped in a hellish situation that he doesn’t understand, with no good choices.
Many of Pansy’s explosions are so absurdly ungrounded as to be funny, but the bottom line is that we’re watching the most unpleasant person imaginable for 97 minutes. Overall, I was saddened by the realization that 1) Pansy can’t help herself and that 2) there is no foreseeable path for relieving her disorder. Still, I’m glad I saw Hard Truths because of Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s sui generis performance.
Photo caption: Richard Gere in OH, CANADA, Courtesy of Kino Lorber.
In Oh, Canada, Leonard Fife (Richard Gere) is a prominent documentarian who is dying, and one of his most successful former students (Michael Imperioli) is honoring him with a biodoc. When he is seated before an Errol Morris Interrotron, Fife demands that his wife Emma (Uma Thurman) take the position behind the camera so he can speak directly to her, and then takes over the filming with an unrestrained, blurted life story. It’s really a confession, and Leo has a lot to confess.
As Leo tells his life story, the young Leo is portrayed (mostly) by Jacob Elordi (Priscilla, Saltburn). Sometimes the older Gere shows up as the young Leo instead of Elordi, which reflects the muddling of Leo’s memory at this final stage of his life.
Besides his achievements as a filmmaker, Leo Fife has been revered as a principled American draft resister who fled to Canada to protest the Vietnam War. Leo reveals that his re-invention in Canada was anything but principled (and that Oh, Canada is a very ironic title). In fact, Leo’s adult life has been that of a weak and selfish man, a man who always takes the easy way, even if that means betrayal or thievery. It would be the life of a sociopath, except that sociopaths don’t feel guilt and the need to confess.
Oh, Canada is a Paul Schrader film. Schrader wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull., adapted The Last Temptation of Christ, wrote and directed American Gigolo and Affliction. All very good. All very dark.
Oh, Canada follows Schrader’s late-career, self-described ‘Man In A Room’ trilogy, following First Reformed and The Card Counter and Master Gardener I would name it the “Man with a Code Seeks Redemption” trilogy. Likewise, Oh, Canada is about a man’s assessment of his life, but it’s not as good as the previous three, perhaps because Leo Fife never lived by a code, and it’s too late for redemption.
Oh, Canada is a searing portrait of a man confessing his sins, but too late to help anyone else, including those he has hurt. He might feel cleansed on his deathbed, but, so what?
In a nice touch, Fife’s protege shows himself to b just as vile as his mentor and visits one final indecency on Leo.
Gere and Thurman are solid. The Wife thought Jacob Elordi was appropriately smarmy, but I didn’t detect any hint of the self-loathing that the young Fife must have felt. Penelope Mitchell sparkles in a small role as an ambitious production assistant.
There’s one brilliant performance in Oh, Canada – that of Zach Shaffer as Leo’s long-abandoned adult son. Shaffer keeps his character contained in a highly charged situation, registering his emotional reaction only with his eyes. It’s a highly nuanced portrayal of a shattering experience.
I was constantly absorbed by Oh, Canada, as I learned who Leo Fife really was, but left the theater feeling indifferent.
Photocaption: Rene Perez Joglar (center) in IN THE SUMMERS. Courtesy of NashFilm and Music Box Films.
In the remarkably authentic and evocative In the Summers, two sisters fly to Las Cruces, New Mexico, for annual summer visits with their divorced dad. The father, Vincente, played by Rene Perez Joglar (AKA the rapper Residente) is a spirited and talented underachiever who tries to show them a Disney Dad experience; the girls soak up the fun, but also absorb lessons about Vincente’s less reliable characteristics. Each summer, the girls return to Las Cruces with additional savvy and sponge up real world lessons from Vincente’s changing behavior.
The girls arrive expecting last year’s Vincente, but they get a new model, shaped by his changing circumstances and emotional needs, and reflecting how he sees himself. From year to year, Vincente bounces between unearned swagger to self-loathing distraction to an uneasy humility. It’s a compelling coming of age for the daughters.
Carmen (Emma Ramos), the bartender at the local pool hall, is the one consistent sounding board who can validate what the girls are experiencing with their dad.
Joglar’s performance, only his second acting role in a narrative feature and first lead, is remarkable. He is able to portray a character who is the same man at the core, but whose behavior each year is formed by the cumulative slings and arrows of his life.
The three sets of actors playing Violeta and Eva as they mature (Dreya Castillo and Luciana Eva Quinonez, Kimaya Thais and Allison Salinas, Sasha Calle and Lio Meliel) are excellent. So is Emma Ramos (New Amsterdam) as Carmen.
Writer-director Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio is able to convey so much narrative without spoon-feeding the audience. She positions the audience in the point of view of the watchful daughters, as they they to assess what is going on with their own father. She also gets fine performances out of actors with little or no movie experience. In the Summers is a triumphant debut feature for Lacorazza and marks the emergence of very promising filmmaker,
In the Summers made my list of Best Movies of 2024 after being my favorite film at last month’s Nashville Film Festival, and it’s streaming now on Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.
