Shame, dir. Steve McQueen (2011)

All of the stars were aligning for Shame to be my newest favorite film about destructive addiction.

I entered the theater with an enduring respect and trust for McQueen, and I had been nursing a relatively significant man-crush on Michael Fassbender for the past year. At the risk of sounding dismissive, Shame was overall disappointing, with jigsaw gems shining discreetly within an overly-fragmented narrative.

McQueen is most known for his style, which capitalizes on truthful cinematography and editing with slow gravitas and poise. It’s an eye that is unwaveringly serious and profound, which served him so beautifully in Hunger (McQueen, 2008). Shame, however, does not carry the historical and political drama of the Irish hunger strikes of 1981; Shame pales in comparison, meandering towards melodrama faster than tragedy. I’ll empathize faster with Bobby Sands than Brandon (Michael Fassbender), the wealthy new-yorker-sex-addict who tries to straighten his life out.

That’s not to say that there aren’t several profoundly cinematic moments built carefully into the film. One would be when Brandon’s trashy-yet-charming sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), sings a slow song in a high-rise bar where Brandon and his boss, David (James Badge Dale), watch. Mulligan’s pain dances behind a thin veil of sexuality as we watch her in an uncomfortably close and unwavering shot (which McQueen barely cut away from). It’s hypnotizing and powerful. Another occurs soon thereafter; the three end up at Brandon’s apartment, where Sissy and David lock themselves in Brandon’s bedroom and have sex in his bed. Brandon, with a visceral disgust, undresses, and just as the audience begins to contemplate the the revolting notion that he may be planning to join them, Brandon is in his running clothes out jogging the city streets at night. This jog lasts well over 5 minutes in a continuous take, and it is a well-needed breath for the audience.

There are many moments of beauty in Shame, but for me, the pieces didn’t come together in harmony. I can’t help but feel similarly to how I felt leaving Somewhere (Coppola, 2010). While the vision and pacing of a well-laid film appeared on the screen, the content couldn’t support its very careful presentation. My biggest reaction, overall, is how little I was able to care about Brandon’s situation. I engaged with the film more so on a clinical level than an emotional one; Shame is less of a character-study than a case-study.

I do everything in my power to prepare for a film, but at the end of the day I’ve shot what I’ve shot and I’ve cut what I’ve cut and it’s out of my hands. This is not to shirk responsibility — more to marvel at the moment when all of your time and thought leave your grasp and become something entirely new, all on its own.

Instead of high-tailing it to P-town or sunning ourselves out on the greenway, Emma and I spent our Sunday afternoon hovering over a heavy pot of sticky, viscous, brown liquid goodness. We let it boil (but only just barely), stirred the sediment (with a sanitized spoon) and we cooled the wort (in the coolest of ice-baths).

And after three hours of bubbling and timing and sanitizing and worrying and reassuring, we added the yeast, shut the lid and put the bucket in the corner. We have done all that we can do, now it’s up to the ingredients to mix and ferment and clarify into our first batch of Belgian Amber Ale. We hope. And it’s this exact out-of-control feeling — brewing it all up, breath held back — that’s a critical part of my creative process.

Production for I hope you find what you came here to see begins this Saturday. Glasses raised.

Three pint-sized reviews after spending a day at the Kendall Square Cinema in Cambridge.

Midnight in Paris, dir. Woody Allen (2011)

I love being pleasantly surprised at 11 in the morning. All in all it had the familiar musk of many Allen films – an ensemble cast of characters oversimplified to the point of absurdity buzz around the shruggish and incredulous New Yorker that Allen unabashedly bases on himself. But Owen Wilson, the actor charged with wearing Mr. Allen’s tweed coat (and his rambling speech patterns), pulls it off relatively well. He stumbles through the magical film with wide eyes and wet lips, never abandoning doubt, and never even entertaining the idea that he may very well be insane. It’s a fun watch, with an all-star cast playing the best-of historical art figures, but there isn’t much hiding underneath the surface.

(The ending, in particular, left me with a strange taste in my mouth. Owen Wilson, who plays a character in his early thirties, ends up meeting a french girl (I’d say no older than 17) at a flea market. At the end of the film, they bump into each other on a bridge, and he “walks her home.” Jeepers creepers, Ms. Previn much?)

The Tree of Life, dir. Terrence Malick (2011)

Giampaolo’s review asks the most important question of this film: Is Bigger Better? I’d even stretch it a little further: How Big is Too Big? This film is. It’s too big. The first 20 minutes are some of the most inspired, emotional and thoughtful filmmaking I have ever seen. Bravo multiplied by a billion, but I don’t give a shit about these dinosaurs. Thank god, now we’re back to the brothers romping around in the unsettling suburbia. But then, the conclusion over inflates itself. First thing that struck home – the ending felt as though it was ripped directly Fellini’s 8 1/2. Not okay with me. And then it takes another 20 minutes for the mother to release her son to the circle of life. I never thought I’d say this about a Malick film, but it’s missing ambiguity. In the theater, I found my own perfect conclusion: Sean Penn walks through the door and the dress rustles in the wind. If that was the ending, I’d have walked out shocked and breathless (but still be like WTF Dinosaurs?)

The Trip, dir. Michael Winterbottom (2011)

What a British film. Two Brit comedians go on a reluctant road trip and snipe away quips at each other to no end. However, among the crackle and pop of dry humor there sprout up the most beautiful moments that are so clearly improvised. For 10-minutes we watch them compare impressions, determine how many octaves they can sing or riff off of war drama cliches. At parts, it is truly hilarious, but I found myself exhausted and offended on their behalves by the end. The constant one-upmanship took a lot to put up with; but it also sheds light on the (depicted) lonely life of Steve Coogan. Mr. Coogan lashes out constantly, beating up on the dopey and wiry Rob Brydon. Mr. Winterbottom strives for some emotional significance towards the end, but I wasn’t feeling much sympathy.

Bonnaroo just celebrated its 10th anniversary and I was fortunate enough to be there. Between the delicious Spicy Pie Pizzas, Sweet Water IPAs and the unforgettable Arepas, I caught a couple shows. Here’s who left an impression.

Uncle Skeleton

These guys were my first show at Bonnaroo. I didn’t plan on seeing them, nor did I have any idea what they were, but when I heard the first few groovy measures of “Crosseyed and Painless” by Talking Heads I bolted through the crowd to find this 10+ member band rocking the crap out of one of David Byrne’s greatest songs. Yes, I changed my shape.

I stuck around for the rest of the show and these guys have some real talent. From their driving rhythms and liquid string section to their  surprise synthesizers and frantic vocals, Uncle Skeleton never ceased to satisfy.

Beats Antique

This California group has come up a bunch on my downtempo Pandora, so I wasn’t totally sure I’d be able to stay awake for their 2am-4am time slot. I stumbled into the tent not to a relaxed and phazed-out crowd, but to a writhing and dusty club with bass up to your neck. With dancers playing huge percussion and a live drum kit with violin (plus freaky animal masks!), Beats Antique doled out some of the most inspired hard dance tracks I’ve heard in a long time. Their sound is just a bit more organic than the ripping synth lines of Bassnectar, a bit more individual than Girl Talk’s frenetic Cliffs Notes of Pop but just hard enough to still make you feel dirty.

Iron & Wine

Sam Beam covers a wide spread of his songs with an eleven-piece fusion group. Unforgettable concert ensues. Here’s just a taste.

Junip

Jose Gonzales’ newest venture is a 5-piece ambient acoustic-electric gem. What surprised me is how closely they resemble a jam band, but I never found myself bored at the show. Their rhythms are often plodding, but their instrumentation is always expanding the sound-scape and enveloping you in a warm blanket of smooth and spacey sounds. I felt like I had stumbled into a practice room with some cool dudes and a lot of great instruments; the sound they foster together is casual but controlled, letting you into a groove but then exploring a 10-minute drone solo on Mr. Gonzales’ KAOSSILATOR. I dug it. A lot.

The Decemberists

If you’re looking for honest stage presence, look no further than these vintage vest-wearers from the North West. Colin Maloy was full of pomp and vocabulary, and I couldn’t help but laugh at his banter. Plus, he openly challenged Bela Fleck to a pick-off and they delivered a 5-minute solo of random notes, most of which he missed. It’s all in good fun, understand, because of course The Decemberists can’t shred. To drag it out in front of 30,000 people, however, takes balls the size of Saturn, and I respect that.

Arcade Fire

Holy extraordinary energy, Batman! This was an excellent live show. Each member on stage exuded as much passion and electricity as the leading man, Win Butler – who is sporting a new haircut (think sexy-Hitler). With so many people thrashing about on stage generating the pop-wash of sound that is Arcade Fire, its impossible not to connect. Hell yes it overwhelmed me. Hell yes I’ll see them again.

Ratatat

I love these guys for about 2 minutes per song, but their live show was truly the low point of the festival. Ratatat is very careful to preform each sprawling section of each song, some of which even last upwards of 6 minutes. As groovy as their music is, you’re lying if you say you don’t skip to the next track after 2 minutes. Well you just can’t do that at a live show. Snore.

In the wake of Le Quattro Volte (which I reviewed several weeks back), I’m very pleased to be seeing more and more experimental and careful films coming across my radar screen. Across the board, strange gems are popping up that I simply cannot wait to see. Take a look at these three trailers:

Into Eternity

Film Socialisme

General Order No. 9

Excited? Totally.

What I’m finding curious, however, is the apparent explosion in classification. Not that this is a new development in content; it’s more of a development in marketing, assumedly reflecting what people are open to watching. Essay films? Plodding contemplative neo-documentaries? While these films will probably always have a small fan-base, I’m beginning to see a small niche in the audience rock opening up to works of more experimental nature. A small sliver of the public eye is beginning to pay attention, and I can’t help but think that now is an excellent time to be making films.

What films have you seen recently that are widening this niche?

This roll was first shot at a picnic/concert by our friend Robyn in May of 2009. We then went off for the summer, I shot my thesis and promptly forgot about the roll. Earlier this April, I found it again, having no recollection of it being shot, so I tossed it in my bag and drove out to Bard.

Emma and I were celebrating our anniversary with a multitude of picnics, so I brought my new super16 K-100 along. We shot the short end, and sent it in for processing. This is what I saw.

This is why I shoot film. There are surprises in your dailies, and then there are secret films you didn’t know you were making. I feel like a vessel. I rolled when I rolled, cut when I cut and together Robyn and I accidentally wove something timeless and surprising. And to have two picnics at the same time! Divine.

Le Quattro Volte, dir. Michaelangelo Frammartino (2011)

When A. O. Scott says that a film “reinvents the very act of perception,” you listen.

Michaelangelo Frammartino’s Le Quattro Volte (2011), is the most transfixing and profound narrative I have seen in years. The film structures itself around the four modes of transmigration (an ancient model of reincarnation); a soul wanders from man, to animal, to vegetable, to mineral. An old man trades his goats milk for dust swept up in a church in order to delay his death. Eventually he passes, and we follow his process of transmigration. For such a simple story (that has no dialogue whatsoever), it might seem odd to commend the writing, but any filmmaker that can weave a riveting story while forcing the viewer only to watch understands screenwriting in its truest form. The camera does all the talking.

The cinematography is disturbingly objective: think Robert Gardner without the narration. After the first cycle, you actually start to feel like a spirit, witnessing humanity as a species and people as animals. We scan around the old town up in the mountains; Andrea Locatelli’s camera is often perched on top of houses, hills, steeples. We’re not serenely floating as much as hovering, with a nagging feeling of menace; the next second we’re shocked by the most suffocatingly subjective camera–we are buried in the center of a pile of ash, sealed into a stone tomb or built into a wooden conflagration. In the final stage, we are released. We are smoke and ash. We sweep over the forest where his favorite tree was, we brush the field where his goats fed and we snake through his old mountain town.

What this film capitalizes on so successfully is the simple pleasure of watching. Much like the beginning of There Will Be Blood or Wall-E, it’s comforting when a director forces you to watch. It’s an act of confidence: “I know what I’m doing, just let me show you.” Its effect in Le Quattro Volte is that and more. There are only a few things in the film that place us in time; otherwise this story could have happened hundreds of years ago. In the terms of transmigration, it absolutely has. It’s happening all the time.

The Tillman Story (Amir Bar-Lev, 2010)

What a pleasant surprise!

What a horrible way to start this review.  This is an infuriating film.

I had heard nothing about this film, but it gave me a lot to think about.  The Tillman Story retells Pat Tillman’s decision to abandon his multimillion-dollar football contract in order to serve in the US Army in Afghanistan in 2002.  Already a national football star, Tillman’s decision attracted a fair amount of press, but only in his death did he become a household name.  The film examines how Tillman’s death was taken by the government and spun into a pro-war media spectacle.  Tillman was depicted as an American hero, who died in an intense firefight with the opposition, when in reality he died by friendly fire.

The Tillman Story is very much a post-Michael Moore documentary.  Audiences have grown to be wary of documentaries with a master of ceremonies and are much more open to a “figure it out yourself” narrative.  Do not misunderstand, the information is prescriptive and Josh Brolin’s narration is very sympathetic, but it is tempered with self-explanatory footage–e.g. Donald Rumsfeld and other top officials pleading ignorance in front of the supreme court (shameful footage indeed).  I was consistently surprised with the acuteness of Bar-Lev’s eye; he effortlessly dances between the hilarious and the truly tragic aspects of this young man’s death with such speed that I could only keep up by crying and laughing at the same time.

What struck me about this film is how quickly an idea can consume a person.  Pat Tillman did not believe in god or want a military burial, yet the famous politicians attending his high-profile military funeral all solemnly proclaimed how Tillman was now up in heaven and at peace with god.  Following this, one of his younger brothers speaks (skip to 7:25):

He’s fucking dead. I still can’t shake this clip.  It kicked me in the stomach in the theater and I can’t even watch it now.  Consider sitting through your loved one’s funeral as people who never knew him drone on about the country and the glory of war (Tillman is later recounted watching the bombing of Baghdad and saying. “This war is so fucking illegal.”)–I was shaking in my seat.  To feel such a visceral reaction is rare for me, but the blatant truth in some of the footage is undeniable and simply presented.  I never thought I would describe any documentary as “true”, but The Tillman Story is remarkable.

After the film finished, a woman in the back was loudly chatting with her friends: “You know who really upsets me is Donald Rumsfeld.  If I could just shoot anybody in the head, it’d be him.”  Really?  Really.  Films like this leave me feeling helpless because, while a lot of information is presented, no solutions are even hinted at.  This only enrages the viewer and equips her with enough sound bites to keep up conversation at her monthly olive-tasting and short fiction club.  If you ask about it, she’ll tell you to go see the film instead of running for office.  Information is only useful in concert with action, and I’m alarmed by how satisfying and easy it is to take in information without any consequence for inaction. How does one deal with this barrage of corruption and misinformation?

I, for one, postponed my political campaign and went to see two more films.

]]> http://sainteliotandco.com/reviews/the-tillman-story/feed/ 1 http://sainteliotandco.com/reviews/get-low/ http://sainteliotandco.com/reviews/get-low/#comments Fri, 10 Sep 2010 19:52:14 +0000 Brian Barth http://sainteliotandco.com/?p=2346

Get Low (Aaron Schneider, 2009)

Yesterday was Sunday, September 26, and in my mind, the first fully realized day of fall.  As I was riding to the Landmark Theater in Kendall to catch the 1:25 showing of Get Low, I saw that the humble Boston skyline was subdued under the thick cover of clouds.  The muted gray seeped into everything, and though the summer smoldered it had lost contrast and color.  What better time is there to turn to film, which in itself is just color and contrast?  A descending day of white and gray is the perfect world to abandon for another; it is a variable, where nothing is being missed.

This turned out to be the perfect preface for Get Low – a film about regret in the dwindling years of the hermit protagonist, Felix Bush (Robert Duvall).  The strongest part of the film comes far too soon; we watch an enigmatic Duvall escape from a burning building (where his character is formed) and then see him 40 years later hiding behind an enormous beard, where he threatens trespassers on his remote property (what he has become).  It certainly functions, albeit somewhat of an abridged adaptation of the first 20 minutes of There Will Be Blood (2007), and I found myself entranced by his senseless mutterings and heavy breathing.  Personally, I would have watched Duvall putt about his cabin and tend to his mule for the entire film.  Watching him play awkward around his ex-lover’s sister, Mattie Darrow (Sissy Spacek), was also a treat.  Together they completed a history and a lifetime that we were not privy to.  Regrettably, that was about it for decent acting.

Buddy (Lucas Black) has the unfortunate habit of overplaying his thought process on his face (can you count the beats?).  Bill Murray is both out of time and out of character as he attempts to portray Frank Quinn, the destitute owner of a funeral home.  He’s obviously meant to introduce some lighthearted humor, but I left with the distinct impression that he spent most of his lines making fun of the film itself.

Despite that, it was the filmmaking that left the sourest taste in my mouth.  Every scene dripped so much lubrication that at times I felt transported to some early 90′s TV-rendition of On Golden Pond.  Subtle dolly shots for no apparent reason, pushing in to accentuate a beat–torn from the well-worn pages of the hollywood handbook–it was all too much.  It’s unfortunate because the ideas of the film are relatively interesting, but I was so constantly reminded of the director attempting to heighten the emotion I found it impossible to actually engage.

There are certainly some moments, primarily those alone with Bush, that are worth the ticket price, but I wouldn’t rush out the door.

]]> http://sainteliotandco.com/reviews/get-low/feed/ 0 http://sainteliotandco.com/reviews/the-town/ http://sainteliotandco.com/reviews/the-town/#comments Fri, 10 Sep 2010 18:45:06 +0000 Brian Barth http://sainteliotandco.com/?p=2365

The Town (Ben Affleck, 2010)

I’m always cautious of films made about Boston, and while Affleck makes sure to wear his location-specific windbreakers (Celtics, Red Sox, Bruins, Patriots) he sheds them after about the fifth scene and I felt a little less summarized.  The accents are all there, too, which is probably thanks to endless coaching from Affleck.  And I’m not going to lie, it was awesome watching my block in the North End get blown up in a car chase and seeing my apartment in most of the wide shots; I loved my direct connection to the setting.

The big surprise in this film for me was the humor.  One of the easiest pitfalls for an action film is taking itself too seriously, and Affleck’s quick visual humor lets you breathe out at just the right moments.  It’s a powerful effect because the audience has been wrapped up in the robbery without some perspective on how ridiculous the situation looks from afar.

The performances all around were great: Jeremy Renner is the perfect type of twisted, entirely believable and still disturbing, and Jon Hamm felt perfectly at home on the silver screen (I’ll keep my fingers crossed).  Rebecca Hall and Ben Affleck’s romance seemed a little familiar (the educated and compassionate female falling for the hard-working townie with a quick wit) but Hall hit the right notes when she needed to, and Affleck even charmed me a little.

The Town as a film itself does not push any envelope very far, but it succeeds in achieving everything it needs to be to be a blast to watch.  The true achievement of this film lies in the obvious humor, but more so in the less obvious humor.  For example, Jon Hamm puts on a hilarious fake Boston accent for a sentence or two–just enough time to worry that he’s actually acting–but then, phew, he’s just mocking the suspect.  Overall I do feel a bit summarized (the holy grail of their heists is robbing Fenway Park), but who doesn’t want to sit back and laugh at their own city every once in a while?

The Town is definitely worth checking out.  I’d love to hear what some of you non-Boston people think as well.