Movies

Cinequest – The Ghastly Love of Johnny X: gum-chewing greasers bring fun from Outer Space

by

You gotta like a movie whose tag line is: “They sing! They dance! They’re juvenile delinquents from outer space!”  I saw The Ghastly Love of Johnny X at its world premiere at Cinequest 22, and writer-director Paul Bunnell said that he was primarily inspired by the teenage delinquent movies of the 50’s.  But it’s also clear that Bunnell has seen more than his share of sci-fi movies from the 50s (and maybe a Russ Meyer film or two).

Bunnell evoked the genre by shooting in a crisply beautiful black and white (on the last of Kodak’s 35mm black and white Plus X film stock).  Ghastly Love is about some space aliens in the form of T-bird driving hard guys.  Having been exiled to our planet,  they grease their hair and snap their gum, and occasionally break into a musical number.

Before I saw it, I was concerned that Ghastly Love might be trying too hard to be the next The Rocky Horror Picture Show cult classic, but, not to  worry, Ghastly Love definitely stands on its own.  The cast and crew evidently had fun making this picture, and the fun carries over to the audience.

This was the last film for the late Kevin McCarthy, who was enough of a good sport to don a Devo hat and play the Grand Inquisitor.  McCarthy, whose Oscar-nominated performance as Biff in Death of a Salesman was 61 years ago, brought some sci-fi cred from the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Cinequest – Forgetting the Girl: ooooof! so this is a horrror movie…

by

Forgetting the Girl starts out like a romantic comedy about a quirky but appealing guy with some emotional issues, and then sucker punches the audience by revealing itself in the final 15 minutes to be a horror film.  The abrupt change of pace is both a strength and weakness of the film.

This is the first feature from director Nate Taylor, from a story by Peter Moore Smith.  I understand that the sudden, explosive violence is supposed to rock the viewer, but I think that I would have enjoyed the film more if the early tone had better prepared me for the darkness to follow.  Instead, the early part is too much Guy Meets Girl, etc.  Taylor then lingers too long on the episodes of horror at the end.  Taylor might benefit from screening Michael Powell’s disturbing horror classic Peeping Tom a few times more to improve the pacing.

Taylor does an excellent job with a red herring in the plot, and shows real promise at producing creepiness and tension.

I saw Forgetting the Girl at its world premiere at Cinequest 22, with the audience packed with friends and family of the filmmakers.  This audience responded more enthusiastically than I think most will.

Cinequest – Dorfman: nothing to see here, move along

by

Dorfman is a well-intentioned indie about a woman who has been sacrificing her own life to support the self-absorbed men in her life.  Moving from the San Fernando Valley to the newly vibrant downtown LA (colorful and trendy, yet edgy) helps bring her a renaissance of spirit.

Unfortunately,the promising premise is betrayed by a cliche ridden screenplay, and poor direction and editing.  The star, Sara Rue, doesn’t bring much to the party, either.  The film only works as a travelogue for downtown LA.

The wily veteran Elliott Gould and Haaz Sleiman (The Visitor, Nurse Jackie) are both good, but they’ll both see much better material than this.

Cinequest – Happy New Year Grandma!: when Grandma is evil

by
Monserrat Carulla in HAPPY NEW YEAR, GRANDMA!

The high stress care of a difficult 88-year-old grandmother is tearing a Basque family apart. They think that she’s addled, until one family member after another come to realize that she actually is lucid and diabolical.  She’s so evil that it becomes either her or them.

Monserrat Carulla makes the most of the delicious role as the conniving grannie.  You may have seen her in the excellent Spanish horror film The Orphanage.  The rest of the cast is excellent, too.

It’s a dark comedy and much, much darker than American audiences are used to.  She does some very bad things to sympathetic human characters and to innocent animals.

This Spanish movie is in the Basque language and is also titled Urte Berri On, Amona!.

Cinequest – Come As You Are: two wheelchairs, a white cane and some condoms

by

The road trip comedy Come As You Are is about three disabled young Belgian men who yearn to discard their virginity.  Two are in wheelchairs and one is blind.  After hearing about a brothel that caters to guys with special needs, they plot a road trip to Spain’s Costa del Sol.  They need their parents to send them with a male nurse, but not to come along or know the true destination.  All goes well, until the parents withdraw their permission and our heroes sneak off under the care of a necessary evil, a no-nonsense female nurse.  Their getaway is expedited by a very funny 11 year-old kid sister.

Along the way, their individual personalities are exposed (for better and for worse) and they experience real unsheltered freedom for the first time (with its pluses and minuses).  It’s a little movie with some poignant moments among the laughs.

The film, titled Hasta La Vista in Europe, is mostly in Flemish, with some French and English.

Cinequest – Children of the Green Dragon: competing for a warehouse and the pizza girl

by
CHILDREN OF THE GREEN DRAGON

In Children of the Green Dragon, a hangdog Hungarian real estate agent must avoid getting fired by selling a rundown warehouse that is currently rented to a shady Chinese import company.  The Chinese watchman is tasked, for his part, to prevent the sale of the warehouse – or face an additional year of involuntary servitude.  Surprisingly, they bond.

This movie is about the  culture clash between the two guys.  Their relationship blossoms despite that and despite their competing job interests.  Then both become fascinated by an edgy pizza delivery woman.  It’s a funny and sweet little film.

The film is titled A Zold Sarkany Gyermekei in Hungarian.

Cinequest – King Curling: surprising hilarity from the Norse ice

by

This Norwegian comedy, set in a sport that even the Norwegians find to be odd and boring, is HILARIOUS.  The star of a curling team suffers a psychotic breakdown and, after years of treatment, is released from an asylum heavily medicated.  To win money for a friend’s lifesaving operation, the curling team must win a tournament and the star needs to go off his meds to regain his game skills.

It’s a broad comedy, but the key is that the actors aren’t trying to be funny, a la Jack Black or Will Ferrell.  Instead, they play it absolutely straight, relying on the characters, situations and dialogue to generate the laughs.  And laughs, they are aplenty.

The curling star tries to maintain despite his recurring hallucinations of floating pink lint.  One of the Norwegian curlers, a womanizer with unusually low standards,  keeps lapsing into American gangsta street talk.  Another has a long-lost father who turns up as, of course, a Rod Stewart impersonator who doesn’t sound remotely like Rod Stewart.  And then there’s the kissing dog.  You gotta see this movie – it’s a top drawer broad comedy.

It’s playing again at Cinequest tonight (March 2) and tomorrow (March 3).

Rampart: a sizzling portrait of a man spinning out of control

by

In a sizzling performance, Woody Harrelson plays a corrupt and brutal LA cop trying to stay alive and out of jail.  Woody’s Dave Brown is always seeking control.  He manipulates his superiors.  From behind his badge, he unleashes sadistic brute force on every other unfortunate within his sight.  Yet he is a man out of control, whose impulses to bully,  to drink and to seduce increasingly endanger his job security, his finances and what is left of his relationship with his family.  He is already skating on the edge of self-destruction when one brutal incident is caught on video and goes viral a la Rodney King.

Rampart benefits from the one of the best large supporting casts – less an ensemble than a series of great single performances as individual characters tangle with Dave Brown.  Ben Foster (The Messenger) is brilliant as a homeless man with too many drugs and not enough meds.  Robin Wright is also superb as an emotionally damaged lawyer who sleeps with Dave until his paranoia takes over.   Sigourney Weaver and Ice Cube are two LA officials who see Dave as a walking, talking threat to public order and the City treasury.  Ned Beatty is the retired cop who has kept his finger in the police corruption racket. The Broadway star Audra McDonald plays a cop groupie that Dave meets in a bar.   As one would expect, Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon are excellent as Dave’s two amiable but bullshit-proof ex-wives.  Brie Larson and Sammy Boyarsky are especially effective as the daughters, who figure in Rampart‘s most breathtaking scenes.

Rampart is a singularly visual film – we always know that we are in the sunwashed, diverse, sometimes explosive anarchy that is LA.  The movie is structured and shot to heighten the experience of both the chaos that Dave causes and that the chaos that he feels.  This is Oren Moverman’s second effort as writer-director, the first being the searing The Messenger, also starring Harrelson and Foster.  Moverman keeps Rampart spinning along wildly as we wonder what will happen next to unravel Dave Brown’s life.

If you need some redemption to leaven a very dark story, this is not the movie for you.  Rampart reminds us that not everyone finds redemption.

Thin Ice: Fargo Lite

by

Thin Ice is the Fargoesque story of a sleazy Wisconsin insurance agent whose small scam spins into a major crime.  By the time that he gets into real trouble, he has already lied to everyone in his life so often, that no help is available.

Greg Kinnear plays the ethically challenged agent who is always “on”; if he asks you the time, you know that he is trying to turn your money into his money.   Literally.

Kinnear is excellent, as is Alan Arkin as the old farmer that he is trying to fleece.  Billy Crudup plays the psycho ex-con who becomes Kinnear’s unwelcome partner in crime.  David Harbour shines as go-getter young salesman.  So does Lea Thompson as Kinnear’s soon-to-be-ex-wife and Bob Balaban as a fastidious luthier (look it up if you have to).  And keep your eye on Michelle Arthur, who plays Kinnear’s long suffering secretary.

Thin Ice is entertaining while Kinnear gets more and more entangled in his own web of lies and the pressure builds.  The final reveal at the end (a loooong eight minutes or so of exposition) is kinda lame, and doesn’t stand up to the top films in the genre.  Still, it’s a harmless and fun diversion.

The Screenplay for a Silent Movie

by

You might ask what the script of a silent movie looks like.  Well, here’s the screenplay for The Artist, a film with only three lines of spoken dialogue (and a fourth line while the credits roll).  BTW in a silent movie, the cards that pop up between live action shots are called “intertitles”.

Here is the complete screenplay.

And here is an excerpt:

In the crowd, a young woman right at the front is staring at him in rapture. She drops her bag and, as she bends to pick it up, a swell in the crowd pushes her underneath the arms of the policeman in front of her, out of the crowd and into George. She stares at him, more in love than ever, delighted to be there. The police wait for someone to give orders. George doesn’t quite know what to do. Nobody moves. The young woman finally bursts out laughing, which, after a moment of shock, causes George to laugh too, thus placating the cops and tacitly signaling to the photographers that they can take pictures of the scene. The flashes seem to lend the woman self-confidence who, in a very carefree manner, begins to clown about in front of them. George is delighted at the sight, by the whole scene and, realizing this, the young woman steals a kiss. Flash. The image becomes static, then dissolves into the printed picture on the front page of “The Hollywood Reporter” newspaper, along with three other pictures of the scene and the headline WHO’S THAT GIRL?