DON VERDEAN: money changers in the temple

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DON VERDEAN
Jermaine Clement, Amy Ryan and Sam Rockwell in DON VERDEAN

Don Verdean is a dark comedy from filmmakers Jared and Jerusha Hess (Napoleon Dynamite), a smart and cynical take on the faux scientists embraced by the Christian Right.  Sam Rockwell plays the title character, a Christian “archaeologist” of dubious credentials and ethics who keeps “discovering” Biblical relics and marketing them to gullible true believers.

Verdean and his assistants (Amy Ryan and Jermaine Clement) find themselves entangled with rival pastors, both charlatans.  One is a former convict (Danny McBride) with a former hooker wife (Leslie Bibb); the other is a former Satanist (Will Forte) with his own bogus academic henchman (Sky Elobar).  The cast is all good.  Sam Rockwell sounds like he is channeling a TV preacher version of Sam Elliott.

But the real revelation is Jermaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords, who plays Verdean’s Israeli fixer, Boaz.  The Hesses start Boaz out as a footnote and then gradually develop him into one of the lead characters.  Clement imbues Boaz with an unintentional sneer, a sometimes puzzling Hebrew accent and ascendant venality.  Clement even gets a very funny dance bit (less extended and sidesplitting than the one in Napoleon Dynamite but funny nonetheless).

Jared and Jerusha Hess are the team behind Napoleon Dynamite, a pretty solid comedy credential.  The Hesses know of what they write.  They’re not just Hollywood religion-mockers – both attended BYU.

Here’s an example.  The Hesses gave Clement’s character the name of Boaz.  Those who know the Old Testament story of Ruth (we’re only talking Jews and Fundamentalist Christians here) will recognize Boaz as a major Good Guy.  Some may even know that Boaz was an ancestor of both David and Jesus, who some scholars see as a “pre-figure” of Christ.  But Boaz is a Biblical name that nobody gives their kid – so you never meet a Boaz today.  Given the arc of the Boaz character in Don Verdean, the name is brilliantly ironic.

There are more cynical chuckles here than there are gut-busting guffaws.   In one particularly inspired touch, the Hesses inserted Put Your Hand in the Hand into the soundtrack.  Don Verdean is a little movie that’s sure to be overlooked during the big Holiday movie season, but there aren’t many good comedies in theaters now, so it’s a good choice for those looking for a dark indie comedy.

CHI-RAQ: Spike’s plea for peace with justice…and a sex comedy

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Teyonah Parris in CHI-RAQ
Teyonah Parris in CHI-RAQ

Chi-Raq is Spike Lee’s impassioned plea for peace with justice in the inner city.  The Chi-Raq of the title is Chicago, where there have been more gun deaths in the past 15 years than there have been Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined – a shocking and wholly unacceptable statistic that opens the movie.

Lee has adapted the Aristophanes play Lysistrata, where the ancient Greek women withhold sex until their men negotiate an end to war.   Here, it’s the women of today’s Chicago who suspend the sexual privileges of their gang-banging boyfriends.  Lee stays pretty close to the original Lysistrata, with lines sometimes in rap verse and with increasingly dapper Samuel L. Jackson as a one-man chorus who comments directly to the audience.

In a particularly inspired tactic, the men try to soften the woman’s resolve with Oh Girl by the Chi-Lites.

Lysistrata herself, the women’s ring leader, is played by Teyonah Parris, who pulls off the responsibility of being in virtually every scene. In her skanky outfits and massive Afro, Parris is unrecognizable as the controlled and restrained Sterling Cooper secretary Dawn Chambers in Mad Men.

John Cusack plays a bleeding heart priest, whose diatribe against the systems that breed violence is the weakest part of the movie (not Cusack’s fault – it’s the writing).   Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Hudson and Angela Bassett are all excellent.  Overall, Chi-Raq is pretty watchable.

another look at SPOTLIGHT

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Mark Ruffalo in SPOTLIGHT
Mark Ruffalo in SPOTLIGHT

I’ve been forced to take another look at Spotlight, a movie that I really liked and admired, but in which I incorrectly found a flaw.  I didn’t like Mark Ruffalo’s performance as the real life Boston Globe reporter Michael Rezendes.  Ruffalo plays Rezendes as high-strung, intensely fidgety and perpetually restless.  I wrote:

“Ruffalo has the most showy part, as a frenetic and volatile reporter, and his scenery-chewing put me off.

But then I played some poker.  It turns out that several guys in my monthly poker game KNOW Michael Rezendes from his time with a Bay Area newspaper.  They report that, in Spotlight, Ruffalo completely captured Rezendes’ characteristics and persona.  So my initial criticism of Ruffalo’s performance for his nervous demeanor was as valid as criticizing Anthony Hopkins for playing Hitler as too evil.

As a result, I’m taking Spotlight up a notch higher in my own rankings, and I’m pretty sure it will end up on my Best of the Year list.

Movies to See Right Now

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Michael B. Jordan and Sylvester Stallone in CREED
Michael B. Jordan and Sylvester Stallone in CREED

The Big Prestige Movies are starting to roll out, including several big openings this weekend.  Of the ones I’ve seen, I’m highest on Brooklyn, Spotlight and Creed – the newest and entirely fresh chapter in the Rocky franchise. I’ll write about Creed this weekend, but don’t wait for my post.  Here are my other top picks:

  • The Irish romantic drama Brooklyn is an audience-pleaser with a superb performance by Saoirse Ronan.
  • Spotlight – a riveting, edge-of-your-seat drama with some especially compelling performances;
  • The Martian – an entertaining Must See space adventure – even for folks who usually don’t enjoy science fiction;
  • Bridge of Spies – Steven Spielberg’s Cold War espionage thriller with Tom Hanks, featuring a fantastic performance by Mark Rylance.
  • Trumbo – the historical drama that reflects on the personal cost of princliples.
  • Spectre – action and vengeance from a determined James Bond.

My DVD/Stream of the week is Amy, documentarian Asif Kapadia’s innovative biopic of singer-songwriter is one of the most heart-felt and engaging movies of the year. It’s available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Saoirse Ronan in BROOKLYN
Saoirse Ronan in BROOKLYN

DVD/Stream of the Week: AMY – emotionally affecting and thought-provoking

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AMY
AMY

Amy, documentarian Asif Kapadia’s innovative biopic of singer-songwriter is one of the most heart-felt and engaging movies of the year.

In a brilliant directorial choice, Amy opens with a call phone video of a birthday party. It’s a typically rowdy bunch of 14 year-old girls, and, when they sing “Happy Birthday”, the song is taken over and finished spectacularly by one of the girls, who turns out to be the young Amy Winehouse. It shows us a regular girl in a moment of unaffected joy and friendship, but a girl with monstrous talent.

In fact ALL we see in Amy is footage of Amy. Her family and friends were devoted to home movies and cell phone video, resulting in a massive trove of candid video of Amy Winehouse and an especially rich palette for Kapadia.

We have a ringside seat for Amy’s artistic rise and her demise, fueled by bulimia and substance addiction. In a tragically startling sequence, her eyes signal the moment when her abuse of alcohol and pot gave way to crack and heroin.

We also see when she becomes the object of tabloid obsession. It’s hard enough for an addict to get clean, but it’s nigh impossible while being when harassed by the merciless paparazzi.

Amy makes us think about using a celebrity’s disease as a source of amusement – mocking the behaviorally unhealthy for our sport. Some people act like jerks because they are jerks – others because they are sick. Winehouse was cruelly painted as a brat, but she was really suffering through a spiral of despair.

The Amy Winehouse story is a tragic one, but Amy is very watchable because Amy herself was very funny and sharply witty. As maddening as it was for those who shared her journey, it was also fun, from all reports. Everyone who watches Amy will like Amy, making her fate all the more tragic.  It’s available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ONE DAY IN AUSCHWITZ: an individual, personal testimony

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Kitty Hart-Moxon in ONE DAY IN AUSCHWITZ
Kitty Hart-Moxon in ONE DAY IN AUSCHWITZ

Kitty Hart-Moxon is an elderly Holocaust survivor now living in the UK. In One Day in Auschwitz, she takes two seventeen-year-old girls – the same age that she entered the famed Nazi concentration camp – to Auschwitz. She guides them around the camp and narrates her experiences there.  We already know about the horrors, but her matter-of-fact testimony helps us appreciate the extra lengths that the Nazis took to dehumanize, in addition to murdering, their victims.  It’s a very personal account and a compelling one.

One Day in Auschwitz is now playing on Showtime.

THE TRIBE: a singular viewing experience, if you can stomach it

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THE TRIBE
THE TRIBE

The Wife often mocks my taste in obscure or challenging foreign cinema, like the “Romanian abortion movie” and the “Icelandic penis movie”.  So I was looking forward to regaling her about the “Ukrainian deaf movie” The Tribe, which sparked much notice at the Toronto and Sundance film fests. Indeed, The Tribe is a singular cinematic experience – both absorbing and exhausting.

Right away, the movie tells us that, although the The Tribe comes from Ukraine, we’re not going to hear any Ukrainian. Nor will we see any English subtitles. It’s set in a residential high school for the deaf, and the entire movie is in sign language. It’s novel for the hearing to experience an entire movie in which we hear only the sound of ambient noises – footsteps, creaking doors and the like – and we know that these sounds are NOT heard by the movie characters.

Writer-director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky also employs fixed-camera shots of very, very long duration. which enhance the feeling that we’re watching something that we haven’t seen before.

At first, The Tribe delivers what we might expect in a teen coming of age film: the new kid in school, practical jokes and high jinks, the boring classroom, the class clown and raging teen hormones. The kids sneak off campus at night to prowl and party. But soon we are shocked to realize that we’re not seeing normal teen rowdiness and delinquency – these kids are operating an organized crime ring!

The Tribe is clearly meant to be a comment on the profoundly rooted corruption of post-Soviet society. Unfortunately, Slaboshpitsky piles on so much horrible behavior and brutality that it becomes distracting. There’s even an unsparing clinical depiction of a back alley abortion in real time; at my screening, I could feel the entire audience, at first frozen and then squirming in our seats. It’s a very unpleasant scene – and meant to be. And after the extreme violence at the very end of the movie, the audience exited with nervous laughter at having endured it.

Two final warnings: Women viewers should be prepared for the squat toilets in the the public restroom – not exactly a travelogue high point for Ukraine. And THIS IS NOT A DATE MOVIE – despite lots of explicit sex, no one is going to want to have sex after watching this!

[SPOILER ALERT – The ending is both a cinematic achievement and barely watchable: all in one camera shot, the protagonist climbs five flights of stairs and commits four individual up-close-and-personal and especially brutal murders.]

THE TRIBE
THE TRIBE

Movies to See Right Now

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Michael B. Jordan and Sylvester Stallone in CREED
Michael B. Jordan and Sylvester Stallone in CREED

I really like Bay Area filmmaker Ryan Coogler’s Creed – the newest and entirely fresh chapter in the Rocky franchise.  I’ll write about it soon, but don’t wait for my post.

Also in theaters now:

  • The Irish romantic drama Brooklyn is an audience-pleaser with a superb performance by Saoirse Ronan.
  • Spotlight – a riveting, edge-of-your-seat drama with some especially compelling performances;
  • The Martian – an entertaining Must See space adventure – even for folks who usually don’t enjoy science fiction;
  • Bridge of Spies – Steven Spielberg’s Cold War espionage thriller with Tom Hanks, featuring a fantastic performance by Mark Rylance.
  • Sicario – a dark and paranoid crime thriller about the drug wars.
  • 3 Left Standing – the wistful stand-up comedy documentary.
  • Trumbo – the historical drama that reflects on the personal cost of princliples.
  • Spectre – action and vengeance from a determined James Bond.

My Stream of the Week is the raucous and raunchy high energy comedy Tangerine (which you can’t tell was shot on an iPhone). You can stream Tangerine on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and some cable/satellite PPV.  (Or you can buy the DVD from a retailer.)

On December 12, there is a real curiosity on Turner Classic Movies, the 1933 anti-war movie Men Must Fight, which predicts World War II with unsettling accuracy.  Then, on December 14, TCM will screen Anatomy of a Murder, with its great courtroom scene, great performances by James Stewart, George C. Scott, Ben Gazzara and Lee Remick and for its superb jazz soundtrack.

TANGERINE
TANGERINE

Stream of the Week: TANGERINE: Two transgender hookers walk into a donut shop…

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TANGERINE
TANGERINE

Two transgender hookers walk into a donut shop in Hollywood…that’s not the start of a joke, but it’s the start of this pretty funny movie. The raucous and raunchy high energy comedy Tangerine centers on Alexandra and Sin-Dee, played respectively by the non-actors Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez. Sin-Dee takes them on a quest to track down her wayward pimp/boyfriend, and, although Alexandra makes her promise “no drama”, you know that’s not gonna happen. Alexandra is focused on her own goal – her singing performance tonight at a local club. We also meet the Armenian cabbie Razmik (Karren Karagulian), who has his own secret. And did I mention that it’s Christmas Eve?

The two leads are wonderfully appealing and their misadventures are very funny.  A confrontation between an Armenian mother-in-law on the warpath, all the main characters and a pimp is wonderfully madcap.  The movie’s ending is surprisingly moving.

Tangerine was shot on an iPhone. This is not a gimmick. The intimacy and urgency of this character-driven movie is a good fit with the iPhone. There really isn’t any call for  helicopter shots or the like. The richness of the colors has been enhanced in post-production, so the iPhone cinematography isn’t any distraction at all. (See the shot below.)

You can stream Tangerine on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and some cable/satellite PPV.  (Or you can buy the DVD from a retailer.)

TANGERINE
TANGERINE

To follow the beginning of the film, it helps to know that “fish” is transgender slang for a person born with female anatomy.

There’s also an extremely funny cameo by Clu Gulager(!) as a loquacious taxi passenger.

Tangerine is written and directed by Sean Baker, who made Starlet, another indie about marginal Angelenos that I admired.

Tangerine is available to stream from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

 

ENTERTAINMENT: no reason for this at all

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Gregg Turkington in ENTERTAINMENT
Gregg Turkington in ENTERTAINMENT

I can’t imagine who would enjoy writer-director Rick Alverson’s movie Entertainment.   Gregg Turkington plays the world’s saddest and least funny professional comedian, who is bouncing around loser gigs in the Mohave Desert (starting at a state prison).  Even with his flamboyant comb-over, he’s walking buzz kill.  He is increasingly a puddle of despair until he has a full-fledged breakdown while performing at a pool party.  Turkington’s portrayal of a protagonist who ranges between dour and nasty is frankly not that all interesting.

Two scenes in particular are unwatchable – a birth scene in a public restroom and the comedian heaping especially vile invective on a bar patron (the filmmaker Amy Seimetz – what is SHE doing in this mess?).  The young actor Tye Sheridan (Mud, The Tree of Life, Joe) is good as a clown who opens for the comedian, but his turn doesn’t justify spending any time watching this hateful blight.

It’s a sad comparison to The Entertainer genre of movies about sad sacks trying to hang on to a place in show business and to their own identities.  Some critics have been taken in by the “unflinching” aspect of this work, but they’ve missed the pointlessness of the whole unpleasant experience. Entertainment may well be the worst movie-viewing experience of 2015.  Available streaming.