IFC.com - Film News

The Sandbox: Breathing New Life Into Old Formulas

2009-11-06T15:10:00Z

Like indie films, indie games are free to take chances that their mainstream competitors can't, but in exchange have to work with limited financial resources that put a crimp on grand stabs at novelty. Because of that, indie games tend to stake out a unique ground where convention and experimentation meet. As seen in "Braid" and the wealth of kick-ass downloads for the iPhone, they tend to take risks within the confines of recognizable genres, whether they're "Mario"-esque run-and-jumpers, puzzlers or combat-strategy games. Putting fresh twists on the familiar has seen some thrilling results from these under-the-radar works. That's definitely the case with "Trine" and "Machinarium," two excellent new indie releases that show what a bit of imagination and artistry can do for the same old formulas.

"Trine," developed by Frozenbyte and published by SouthPeak Games for the PC and, as of two weeks ago, the PS3, is about the efforts of three heroes -- a wizard, a thief and a warrior -- looking to locate a mysterious soul-binding object known as the Trine that holds the key to restoring their evil-plagued world. On the surface, it's just a side-scrolling platformer, one in which you navigate a character from left to right, fight similar-looking enemies, jump over chasms and onto moving ledges, and solve puzzles in order to proceed to the next stage. It's a tried-and-true recipe that's far from revolutionary, and that's part of the point -- "Trine," like so many other indies that don't have a marketing budget, has to make itself immediately appealing to an audience weaned on traditional big-ticket franchises. It entices with a well-known structure, but underneath its old-hat exterior lies a deceptively rich adventure, not to mention one of the year's most purely entertaining gaming experiences.

]]> One of the first ways "Trine" separates itself from the pack is its beauty. With deep, vibrant colors and graphics that stunningly replicate the sort of fantasy-world look of "The Lord of the Rings" (or a Terry Brooks novel come to life), Frozenbyte's game is gorgeous. That's also true of its character animations, which boast fluidity and personality, and blend seamlessly into landscapes of dark caverns, rolling hills and underwater canals. But "Trine" is more than just a pretty face -- it also offers subtle tweaks to standard mechanics, like gameplay that requires you to switch back and forth between the three "Gauntlet"esque protagonists on the fly in order to complete obstacle-course puzzles custom-made for different abilities (the warrior's strength, the thief's leaping and grappling hook, the wizard's power to move objects and create others from thin air). "Trine" combines genres in order to create something at once old and new -- it's innovation on a modest but inspired scale.

That's also true for "Machinarium," created by Amanita Design and available for PCs and Macs. Unlike "Trine," whose luscious 3D characters have to make their way through a 2D environment, everything in the Flash-based "Machinarium" is two-dimensional except for the story itself, which begins as a peripheral concern but soon becomes incredibly absorbing. The game puts you in control of a nameless robot who, at the outset, has been thrown out of his crumbling hometown city and must find a way back in. Once that's completed, other tasks follow, all accomplished by way of a point-and-click style that's been around since the dawn of gaming, and that, faithful to the genre's roots, is put in service of puzzles that can be screamingly challenging.

"Machinarium"'s riddles generally require you to locate key hidden items on the screen and then use, combine or manipulate them in some way in order to allow the robot to make it to the next screen, at which point a new puzzle crops up. It's a rinse-and-repeat template that's eased by a helpful hint system, which can provide both a generalized idea of what needs to be accomplished as well as a detailed diagrammatic walkthrough. Structural variety kicks in about one-third of the way through the game, when you're presented with a more wide-open landscape full of multiple, interrelated paths.

20 Ways to Get Your "Arrested Development" Movie Fix*

2009-11-06T05:00:01Z

*Until they actually make the movie

Forget Scientology or Heaven's Gate. Today, the biggest cult in our country may very well be the teeming masses anxiously awaiting the return of "Arrested Development." After years of rumors and dashed hopes, it seems the beloved TV show will finally, for real, this time, be reincarnated on the big screen.

But don't break out your Cornballers yet: the film isn't set to hit theaters until 2011. How will you last that long? While you can treasure your DVD collection of all three seasons (or, for that matter, catch re-airs on IFC), you'll probably want to vary things up in the year-plus before we get sweet relief. Off the top of your head, you might know to watch Michael Cera in "Juno," but where can you find Judy Greer in a role as crazy as Kitty Sanchez? Will Arnett as a man as bumbling and self-involved as Gob? Or Charlize Theron and Jason Bateman having more comical (and sexual) misunderstandings than they did as Rita Leeds and Michael Bluth? Nerve and IFC have joined forces to give you all the help you need -- here are the 20 best movies to give you your Arrested Development cast fix (until they actually make the "Arrested Development" movie).

Will Arnett (George "Gob" Bluth II): Lou Redwood in SEMI-PRO (2008)

If Gob Bluth ever gave up on magic and turned to booze, he might turn into Lou Redwood from "Semi-Pro," another one of Will Arnett's mellifluous American disasters. Lou is a former forward for the Flint Tropics, the ABA team that Will Ferrell's Jackie Moon has coached into near-bankruptcy. Now a splenetic color commentator for the team, he knocks back whiskeys in between smokes on the sidelines, ogling the cheerleaders and dodging questions about an affair with his broadcast partner's wife. Arnett dons a once-dapper moustache and adds some more gravel to his voice to nail this caricature of faded grandeur. It's as if Gob's narcissism has finally been broken down and replaced with a brittle, drunken shell of self-pity. Whether it's Gob's booming inanities, Lou's bitter diatribes or even his scheming figure skater in "Blades of Glory," Arnett is carving out a uniquely grotesque gallery of American no-talents that's worthy of Preston Sturges.

David Cross (Tobias Fünke): Larry Schwartzman in THE GRAND (2007)

David Cross hasn't really played anyone else like bad-doctor-turned-worse-actor Tobias Fünke; the closest he's ever come before or since to replicating Tobias' guileless stupidity is his cameo in Christopher Guest's "Waiting For Guffman," where he plays a dimwitted UFO expert who claims that the spot of a supposed alien landing "is always 67 degrees with a 40% chance of rain." But there are plenty of other "Arrested Development" connections to his role in another mockumentary. Zak Penn's "The Grand" is about a World Series of Poker-style tournament, and the assortment of wacky characters who make it to the final table. Cross plays Larry Schwartzman, a loudmouth player who prefers to beat his opponents by throwing them off their game with intimidation and mockery. The role gives us the chance to see what it would have looked like if Cross had played GOB; like GOB, Larry's trash talk and cocky attitude cover intense insecurities caused by a lifetime of extreme daddy issues. Larry's constantly trying to impress his father (Gabe Kaplan), who always roots for his more successful daughter Lainie (Cheryl Hines). He even left Larry alone as a child for three days while he took Laine to Disneyland, in order to teach him a lesson about competition; that's the sort of thing that George Sr. used to do to teach his children ("That's why you always try to win at checkers!"). The funny and often touching results in "The Grand" suggest that Cross was right for multiple parts on "Arrested," not just the one he wound up with.

]]> Portia Di Rossi (Lindsay Bluth Fünke): Tess Tobias in WHO IS CLETIS TOUT? (2001)

The "Arrested Development" writers loved to set up a potentially touching scene and then immediately undercut it with a surprising comedic punchline. A scene might start with George Michael sincerely telling his father how much he means to him, then conclude with Michael responding 'That's a little cornball," followed by a closeup of a small, literal cornball to be cooked in the family's "Cornballer" deep fryer. Experienced "Arrested" viewers could often see these punchlines coming, but they were always a little harder to anticipate when Portia de Rossi's Lindsay was involved. Despite the character's materialism and thoughtlessness, there was always something genuinely sad about Lindsay. She was stuck in a loveless marriage with Tobias, saddled with a bratty daughter, and raised by a mother who constantly made fun of her weight. She didn't let her guard down often, but many of the show's most genuinely emotional moments belonged to her. Even before "Arrested," de Rossi'd proven herself adept at playing sincere amidst silliness in the indie crime comedy "Who Is Cletis Tout?" where her character Tess is, like Lindsay, the daughter of a jailed criminal. Most of the movie is about Christian Slater relating his story to a hitman named Critical Jim (Tim Allen) who sees the world only in terms of movie clichés. Surrounded by Tarantino-esque hitmen, carrier pigeons and Billy Connolly hamming it up as a wisecracking coroner, di Rossi brings some real heart to Tess, a sad young woman who misses her father.

Judy Greer (Kitty Sanchez): Penny in THE WEDDING PLANNER (2001)

Whether she's Penny in "The Wedding Planner" or Kitty in "Arrested Development," Judy Greer is the go-to actress for sprightly named, perky blonde assistance. With her precise, bird-like head bobs and chirping line delivery, she adds an eccentric twist to her my-girl-Friday roles. In "The Wedding Planner" she's an asexual super-assistant, covered in tasteful woolens from head to toe while setting Jennifer Lopez up with hunky children's doc Matthew McConaughey. As a character, she's simply a prop, but Greer imbues her with cockeyed ebullience that verges on the grotesque. She loves distorting her cute-as-a-button face with wide-eyed intensity and a slack-jawed grin. In "Arrested Development," she's able to push this way over the top in the show's strong caricatured style. Kitty is a bouncy assistant as well, but a man-hungry, power-tripping one, with a cross-eyed gaze and a frizzy haircut that makes Gob gag. Greer owns the role, a carefree bit of nerdy sexual aggressiveness that is bracingly unique.

Ron Howard (Narrator): Sam Freeman in GRAND THEFT AUTO (1977)

Ron Howard wasn't just the narrator of "Arrested Development," he was also an executive producer. Yet he's rarely discussed as one of the "authors" of the show. If you want to make the case that Howard played a bigger role in shaping "Arrested" than he's given credit for, check out Howard's directorial debut, "Grand Theft Auto" and note how many thematic similarities the two share. In both, Howard plays the voice of reason in a world dominated by greed. Both also feature intensely unfavorable depictions of wealthy families and both delight in knocking their rich characters down a peg or two. Howard stars in "GTA" as Sam Freeman, an average guy who wants to marry a powerful industrialist's daughter; when he rejects their love because Sam's not good enough for her (shades of the Bluth's reaction to George Michael's "bland" girlfriend Ann Veal), the pair steal her father's Rolls Royce and head to Vegas to elope. Paul's rival for his girlfriend's affections is a composite of Lindsay (spoiled, privileged brat) and Buster (immature mama's boy) named Collins Hedgeworth (Paul Linke). Plus "GTA" isn't just about a family, it's by a family: Howard co-wrote the film with his father Rance, who also co-stars, along with Ron's brother Clint.

Hal Holbrook's Sunny Disposition

2009-11-05T19:05:00Z

At 84 years young, actor Hal Holbrook has had drama coursing through his veins for over a half-century, going back to when Ed Sullivan had him on TV to perform a piece from his beloved one-man play, "Mark Twain Tonight." But Holbrook remains prolific in his twilight years, especially after receiving a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for "Into the Wild." He can most recently be seen headlining director Scott Teems' gorgeously atmospheric "That Evening Sun," in which he steals the show as an irritable Tennessee coot named Abner Meecham. After escaping a nursing home to find his land has been rented out by his lawyer son (Walton Goggins) to bad apple Lonzo Choat (Ray McKinnon) and his family, Abner decides to squat on the property anyway, and the southern-fried tensions soon rise. With an avuncular delivery reminiscent of his Twain characterization, Holbrook phoned from California to talk about the family member who inspired the character of Abner, why he rejects the idea of retirement, and how prescient ol' Samuel Clemens was about today's economic mess.

You've worked with so many acclaimed filmmakers, and Scott Teems is still a relatively unknown name. Why did you take a chance on a newcomer?

I just did the same thing a month or two ago with another film. The film business changes a lot, and for an actor who's interested in character work, I suppose you might say, I don't get offered these films where you have to jump out of an airplane with a machine gun, land on both feet and take out half the crowd. When a good script and character comes along, usually there's not much money in it either, but it's much more interesting for an actor. Most of us take a shot at that opportunity. It was a bit worrisome working with a new director, but it turned out to be a great idea. You do it because of the material.

]]> Has that ever backfired, like when you pursued a great screenplay, but the director didn't have the same understanding of it as you?

That's something you have to arrive at. Sometimes with a director, it just seems like a perfect match, like with Sean Penn and "Into the Wild." Sean said very little to me. We just seemed to be on the same wavelength. No matter what you're doing as an actor, there's always a little strain of tension because you're not too sure whether what you're doing is okay. You hope it is. Scott had a very specific idea about how these characters should relate and behave. The character in this movie had to be dried out. That's the best way I can say it.

There's always an instinct in an actor to protect his character, to try to somehow get the audience to feel sympathetic. That's a fly in the ointment sometimes. I learned something very valuable by just doing another take, and another take, drying the character out and not asking for any sympathy. The thing that surprises me, frankly, is that this film has taken a hold of audiences the way it has because I thought it would be too dark and gloomy. When we went to Austin for [South by Southwest] where it premiered, the audience got the humor of the sarcastic insults my character and Lonzo Choat were throwing at each other, and I thought, "My god, that's wonderful. They're laughing!"

Your wife, Dixie Carter, who also has a small role in the film, is from Tennessee. What have you gleaned from your time in the South?

I've learned a great deal from my association with my Tennessee family. People down South have an extraordinary family component. They are very encompassing and defensive about the family. Coming from the no-family structure that I came from, this was a whole new world to me. My father-in-law passed away about three years ago. He lived with us for 20 years or more, and when he was in really bad shape, he said to Dixie one day, "Darling, I'm getting dyin' signals. I want to go back to Tennessee." So we moved there, it turns out to be for two years. My father-in-law was in my mind a lot when I played this character because he was a no-nonsense man, and when he said something, you could believe it. He didn't pussyfoot around. You would never get a word of advice from him. He would never say, "I think you should do this in this way." But if you asked him for his opinion, you got it. Bang!

Pushing Richard Kelly's Buttons

2009-11-05T15:17:00Z

When "Donnie Darko," writer-director Richard Kelly's ominous sci-fi tale of teen angst, premiered at Sundance in 2001, its oddball ambitiousness was generally dismissed. When it was eventually picked up for distribution, it had a weak theatrical run, but grew into a massive cult hit on DVD, paving the way for a double-disc director's cut and Kelly's even bolder follow-up, "Southland Tales." Similarly panned at its 2006 Cannes premiere, that pitch-black sociopolitical (and yes, sci-fi) satire about the end of the world was edited down, but still polarized critics and audiences, which proves that you can't set out to make a cult classic -- only the test of time has that power, meaning the film might still find new life in years to come.

In a fascinating career leap, Kelly has taken his penchant for logic-bending science fiction from Indiewood to the Big Show, as Warner Bros. has produced "The Box," his enigmatic adaptation of Richard Matheson's short story "Button, Button." In Kelly's 1976-set thriller, a NASA engineer (James Marsden) and his high-school teacher wife (Cameron Diaz) are financially strapped Virginia parents who have been gifted with a curious wood box, topped by a cherry-red button. Soon after, a man named Arlington Steward (Frank Langella) arrives unannounced, missing half his face due to a burn and some killer CGI, and imposes a moral dilemma on the couple: push the button, and they'll earn a million dollars in cash, tax free. The catch, however, is that a complete stranger will also die as a consequence. Less than an hour after seeing this dizzying new film, I spoke with Kelly about his favorite movie of 2009, why most Philip K. Dick adaptations suck, and what I believe is his one criminal misdemeanor against cinema.

Come on, admit it. You'd push that button.

[laughs] Listen, it's easy to be self-righteous and say, "Oh, I would never push it." I look at it more from the logical point of view of a scientist. I'd see this little contraption and be like, "Okay, this thing has no technology in it. Whoever built it is playing a trick. If they want to give me a million bucks to come into my life, annoy me, and freak out my wife, I'm going to push it as an act of defiance, to call their bluff." The violence isn't on me unless this thing has some sort of computer chip that's going to shut down someone's pacemaker, you know? I'd push it out of curiosity.

It's appropriate that this is a period piece. In this age of instant gratification, it seems like people are far more inclined to push a button for the sake of ease today.

Absolutely. Now we have all this technology that we didn't have in 1976, the way computers and the internet have transformed our way of life. We're so much more cynical today. That was one of the reasons why I couldn't set the movie in present day. I didn't want to have that scene where Norma goes onto the computer and Googles Arlington Steward. For half the movie, the characters would be sitting in front of laptops. That wasn't really dramatic for me, and it made it implausible. It's an absurd premise. Part of what I love is that it's mischievous.

]]> There's a rug-pull in the film's second half that's far more otherworldly and ambiguously plotted than the naturalistic chain of events leading up to then. Were you ever concerned that mainstream audiences might find that maddening?

We tried to set the film up as science fiction. There's a text crawl at the beginning that refers to NASA and the Mars project, and we tried to lay the groundwork. There's discussion of the potential for intelligent life on another planets, so we planted the seed pretty clear to people. My hope is that audiences will take the ride, be intrigued by the mystery and try to put the pieces together. The magic in this movie, in reference to the Arthur C. Clarke quote about an advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic, that's the button unit. This little contraption that appears to be just a piece of wood has some sort of magic attached to it. When you deconstruct the movie, it doesn't work without that component.

Your father was a NASA engineer, your mother had a similar physical affliction to Diaz's character, and you grew up in the area where the film takes place. What was most exciting about recreating the 1976 of your youth?

Obviously, my production designer Alexander Hammond and my set decorator Tracey Doyle deserve so much of the credit for reaching back into the past, not only in the home décor, but the laboratories, and what the communication scientific technology looked like then. Big mainframe computers that helped send the Viking to Mars. You know, your Blackberry has a hundred times more power in it nowadays then those computers had. I tried to put in a few sitcoms and programs on the TV, Johnny Carson and stuff, because this is a story that has its root in serialized science-fiction, where Richard Matheson got his start. It's an old-fashioned film, and I wanted it to have that nod, like the slight absurdity of seeing a promo for "What's Happening?" That's a bit of an inside joke: it's a question a lot of people ask while watching one of my movies.

I know you were born in 1975, but do you have any memories of that decade?

I barely remember the '70s at all. I have a few memories of moving to my new house, but I think my cognitive memory switch didn't get flipped on until 1981 or '82. [laughs] It's all kind of a blur.

The Many Meanings of Chris Smith's "Collapse"

2009-11-04T18:58:00Z

"Collapse," the title of Chris Smith's new documentary, is a loaded word that applies to the film in a variety of ways. Its obvious implication concerns its main subject Michael Ruppert, a former police officer who turned in his gun and badge for a library card and a newsletter-turned-web site called From The Wilderness, which prizes itself on intensely researched investigative work about government corruption, corporate malfeasance and suspicious activity in every corner of the globe. When presented with the idea that he's a conspiracy theorist, he quickly replies, "I deal in conspiracy fact." And the facts he presents in "Collapse" are both overwhelming and chilling, as he lays out the ways the world is headed towards economic and environmental Armageddon.

"Collapse" could also refer to how Smith has wasted no time in releasing the documentary -- it's been only eight months since he first met Ruppert for a narrative film he was developing and just over a month since the film made a triumphant premiere at this year's Toronto Film Festival. In a sign of the times, "Collapse" will be released simultaneously in theaters and on VOD through Cinetic FilmBuff, where the claustrophobia-inducing nature of Ruppert's analysis of the global financial crisis will literally hit home. Yet "Collapse" may resound most as a compelling portrait of a man whose views have alienated many and whose work has come at a great personal cost. Shortly after putting the finishing touches on the film, Smith called to talk about the film's reception in Toronto, dropping everything to finish it and getting inside Michael Ruppert's head.

Why the rush to release this?

It felt like the movie was very much about what's happening now. It's very much a film that people, when they see it, want other people to see it so they can talk about it -- parts they agree with, parts they disagree with. Seeing that energy out of Toronto, it just made us all the more want to get it out as fast as we could.

]]> It's explained very succinctly at the beginning that you met Ruppert while working on another film about the CIA's connection to drug smuggling, but why did you decide to switch gears to make this film instead?

We were looking at a lot of different narrative projects and one of the directions we were going in was the CIA-drug connection and in doing that, we set up to meet with Michael Ruppert. At the time, I'd said to myself that I was going to stop working on documentary films and move back to narrative, which is where I started in 1996 [with "American Job"]. It's funny how you can think and plan what you want to do in your life, but it doesn't always happen that way.

I think when we met Michael, he was such a fascinating character that it just was just too hard to pass up. Initially, it was more [like] let's do this small side project where we'll film him for a couple days, cut it together quick and see what happens. Then of course, as you get into a project and you start getting further and further invested on a creative level, it can evolve and change into something else. It just seems exciting that from inception to release has been something like eight months. When you compare it to our past films and probably most independent films, that period is generally much longer.

Your previous documentaries like "American Movie" and "The Yes Men" have had a vérité style that has let life unfold, but I would imagine this was a different experience since you have a controlled environment and appears you knew more about what to prepare for, to a certain degree.

Well, I'm glad that it appears that way. [laughs] This one was incredibly challenging because to be able to question Michael and to even try to debate him on certain things required so much research in terms of trying to take in everything that he was going to talk about. He covers so many different subjects and his breadth of knowledge is so vast. But yeah, we had much more control. In the other documentaries at least, and even to some degree on the way we made "The Pool," you're at the mercy of the situation. In those films, it was really about trying to capture as much as you could in the period that you were filming and then put it together in the end, whereas this one was really about trying to prepare as much as you could before so that you could then allow the interview to unfold in a way that felt natural. I wanted to be able to have a dialogue with Michael. When he's working off of a train of thought is when he's at his best -- when you can keep the conversation going as opposed to stopping and saying okay, let's get back to this subject and do these in order. I think one of the things that worked really well in the way that we made the film was the ability to just roll with it and let him go off on tangents and be able to follow up with questions that furthered that conversation.

Did Ruppert seem immediately interested when you proposed a movie?

I think he was okay with it. He wasn't interested in going back to the past and trying to work on something about that period of his life because he felt so consumed about what was happening now. That was very clear to us. So we wrote him a proposal of what we wanted to do, a sit-down interview about his book and the material that's covered, but beyond that, his life and how he's gotten to this point. Ultimately, to me, the film is more a character study on Michael than it is a full examination of the issues that he presents.

Many people have made movies [about the breakdown of society] whether it's food or energy or economics or population, but all those deservedly have been films on their own or are big enough issues that you could make a film on each one. What we thought was so interesting [about] Mike as a person [is] the way that he thinks about the world.

Trailer Premiere: "I'll Come Running"

2009-11-04T16:57:42Z

Here's an exclusive first look at the trailer for "I'll Come Running," the debut feature from Spencer Parsons, a multi-continent romance starring Melonie Diaz ("Be Kind Rewind," "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints") and Jon Lange. The official synopsis:

Pelle (Lange) wants a change of scenery. Another day, another place, another postcard, another girl... But is Veronica (Diaz) really just another girl? It was only supposed to be a stolen, sweaty day together in Texas, and all they have in common is too many hours watching "The Simpsons." But when circumstance brings Veronica to Pelle's door in Denmark, this "casual" fling shakes things up for his best friend and family as well. Comedy and tragedy entwine in "I'll Come Running" a broken romance about what happens when a stranger accidentally changes your life.

"I'll Come Running" opens Wednesday, November 4th, exclusively on IFC Festival Direct.

Head Games

2009-11-04T11:17:00Z

Bearing a snarky, double-take title and a premise like a glazed pig on a platter, Grant Heslov's "The Men Who Stare at Goats" can't help but get us salivating -- be it Chayefskyian satire or schizoid paranormal headtrip or Coenesque destiny farce, we'll gobble it down, especially if it is, as this movie is, based on reported fact. American military new age telekinetic absurdism! The brown-acid substance of reporter Jon Ronson's book by the same name is the dizzying crucible at hand -- too ludicrous and all true to resist, and yet so much the sum of its chortlesome vignettes that filming it would require either the cargo-cult undergroundism of a Craig Baldwin or the imposed narrative arc of an over-punctuated Hollywood biopic. Regrettably, Heslov and screenwriter Peter Straughan and producer/star George Clooney have opted for the latter. Which is to say, the madness has been dressed for dinner, and clear soup is served.

The film's true-story baseline is seductive: after the Vietnam War ended, the Department of Defense and the CIA began various covert "alternative methods" programs that generated, in theory at least, something called the First Earth Battalion -- a group of officers and soldiers dedicated to investigating forms of "psychic warfare," including invisibility, curses, "remote viewing," "sparkly eyes," telepathy, autosuggestion and so on. Ronson corralled scores of tangentially related stories into his book, which even in synopsis scans like a fanged, Strangelove-style satire on the desperate irrationalities of militarist Cold War culture.

]]> The film's tone is goofy and chiffon light, and is as familiar with war as your average Whole Foods-shopping, Obama-sticker Clooney fan. Our surrogate into this nonsense vortex is Ewan McGregor's Bob Wilton, a stand-in for Ronson who, as a small-paper journalist, stumbles onto stories of the "New Earth Army" and its star warrior Lyn Cassady. Sometime after, when his marriage dissolves, he's deployed to Iraq to cover the war. There, he stumbles (again) into the retired Cassady (Clooney), who agrees to take him into the desert on a "secret" mission, and in the process, we bask in digitally de-wrinkled flashbacks of the CIA program's outlandishly dubious history, orchestrated by Jeff Bridges's Lebowski-ish 'Nam-vet guru.

So, strainingly abetted by McGregor's tell-us-about-it narration, Heslov's film hops from one slapsticky New Age debacle to another for comic relief against Wilton's arcing discovery of purpose in his wayward life, which is, frankly, four-day-old fish no one will care to buy. But that's only the largest and dullest problem on the table; much as in Charlie Kaufman and Clooney's "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," the comedy dares itself to be unfunny half the time, and the frequent evocation of the "Jedi" in and around McGregor's fresh-faced innocent does little to respark the fizzle. (The two men lost in the desert are out-bantered by memories of C3PO and R2D2 on Tatooine.)

This might be the silliest movie about Iraq made so far, but a problem inherent in Ronson's fables of idiocy nags when all is said and done: is the paranormal activity "real," as the characters believe, or is it horse feathers? The film indulges in dramatic "evidence" for both conclusions. Bawling that a movie isn't fish nor fowl is as old as the medium, but here it's inescapable: if the psychic phenomena are genuine, then the film is not a comedy. If they're bogus, it is. If it's a little bit of both, the confused chuckles die on take-off and then vanish altogether.

Some nonfiction books are not intended by the god of commercial culture to be turned into mainstream films, and Ronson's book, like Susan Orlean's "The Orchid Thief," appears to fall into that club. ("Adaptation" remains, of course, a sacrilegious miracle.) Nobody wants to beat up on "Men/Goats," because it's made by Hollywooders who conscientiously buck trends and follow their passion and decide against all reason to make films, well, like this. Not that there isn't a Dan Brown tincture at the heart of the material's attraction, searching for the hidden metaphysical whatzits beneath the banality of history. (If it's an itch that needs scratching, look for Richard Stanley's 2001 doc "The Secret Glory," an archival montage detailing the rise and fall of SS officer Otto Rahn, the troubled Nazi in charge of searching for the Holy Grail.) But without going crazy deep into the pathologies or the politics, or even deciding whether or not men could pass through walls given the concentration training, the film's as slight as an unconvincing card trick.

Your Holiday Indie Film Preview

2009-11-03T19:55:00Z

2009 is about to end with a bang, though probably not the apocalyptic kind predicted in the long-awaited adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" or Chris Smith's terrifying doc "Collapse," though those will both be playing at your local arthouse. Instead, audiences will be able to enjoy a winter of wildly different indie film offerings to reflect the wildly different tastes of moviegoers as we leave one decade and move into another. (There are also many different ways to watch them, as you can tell from our Anywhere But a Movie Theater section.)

From November through January, there will be musicals ("Nine"), comedies (Broken Lizard's "The Slammin' Salmon") and stop-motion animated wonderments ("A Town Called Panic") to entertain and new films from Michael Haneke, Pedro Almodóvar, Richard Linklater, Terry Gilliam and Werner Herzog to ponder. And if new movies aren't necessarily doing the trick, you can always cozy up in your local repertory theater during the cold winter. Either way, there will be plenty of cinema to light up this holiday season.

November | December | January

6th | 13th | 20th | 27th

Week Ending November 6

"Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' By Sapphire"

The Cast: Gabourey Sidibe, Paula Patton, Mo'Nique, Mariah Carey, Sherri Shepherd, Lenny Kravitz Director: Lee Daniels Fest Cred: Sundance, Cannes, Toronto, Deauville, San Sebastián, New York The Gist: It's been a long road for Lee Daniels, but after producing such films as "Monster's Ball" and making his directorial debut on the much-maligned "Shadowboxer," the multihyphenate is enjoying the best reviews of his career for this searing drama about an overweight teen who attempts to change the course of her life after getting pregnant with a second child by her father. Besides the endorsement of executive producers Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey, the film picked up audience awards at Sundance and Toronto and if Matt Singer is to be believed, co-star Mo'Nique, who plays Precious' abusive mother, is a "mortal lock for an Oscar nomination."

"Collapse"
Director: Chris Smith
Fest Cred: Toronto
The Gist: Billed as a bit of a breakthrough since it was picked up for a concurrent theatrical and VOD release so soon after its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, Chris Smith's latest doc is far scarier than anything in his making-of-a-horror-film chronicle "American Movie." Smith sits down with a former police officer named Michael Ruppert, who spends the next 82 minutes detailing the interconnected breakdown of the world's economy and destruction of the environment, the product of a lifelong pursuit that may have resulted in collateral damage to his own life.

"La Danse: The Paris Ballet Opera"
Director: Frederick Wiseman
Fest Cred: Toronto, London
The Gist: Legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman ("Titicut Follies") turns his camera towards the Paris Opera Ballet, taking as much pleasure in documenting the artistry of the dancers as the delicate dance the Ballet's administration must do in fundraising to finance their season. The film gives an insider's peek at the production of seven ballets including Wayne McGregor's "Genus," Angelin Preljocaj's "Le Songe de Medée," Mats Ek's "La Maison de Bernarda," Pierre Lacotte's "Paquita," Rudolph Noureev's "Casse Noisette," Pina Bausch's "Orphée and Eurydice," and Sasha Waltz's "Romeo and Juliette."

"Endgame"
The Cast: William Hurt, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jonny Lee Miller, Mark Strong, Derek Jacobi
Director: Pete Travis
Fest Cred: Sundance
The Gist: Based on Robert Harvey's "The Fall of Apartheid," this true-life drama stars Ejiofor as African National Congress leader Thabo Mbeki and Hurt as philosophy professor Willie Esterhuyse, two men whose unexpected bond helped forge a truce during secret talks that led to the end of apartheid in South Africa.

]]> "French Gigolo"
The Cast: Nathalie Baye, Eric Caravaca, Isabelle Carré, Josiane Balasko
Writer/Director: Josiane Balasko
Fest Cred: Sundance, Rome, Seattle
The Gist: "French Twist" director Balasko continues her fascination with relationships between men and women with this comedy about a middle-aged woman (Baye) who hires gigolos to satisfy her carnal needs, but develops a different kind of relationship with her new escort Patrick (Caravaca), a part-timer whose wife gets jealous when she discovers how exactly he's supporting her new hair salon endeavor.

"Humble Pie"
The Cast: Hubbel Palmer, William Baldwin, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Kathleen Quinlan, Bruce McGill, Vincent Caso, Rae Ritke
Director: Chris Bowman
Fest Cred: Slamdance, U.S. Comedy Arts, AFI Dallas, Starz Denver, Bend
The Gist: After kicking around the festival circuit since 2007 under the title "American Fork," first-time feature director Bowman takes the reins of this comedy that features writer/star Hubbel Palmer as an overweight Midwesterner who divides his free time between writing poetry and studying acting with an arrogant has-been (Baldwin) when he isn't working at the local supermarket. The latest from "Napoleon Dynamite" producer Jeremy Coon will open in Portland, Oregon before a December 4th release in Denver.

"The Men Who Stare At Goats"
The Cast: George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey, Stephen Lang
Director: Grant Heslov
Fest Cred: Venice, Toronto, Fantastic Fest
The Gist: Those who have been waiting to see the return of Jeff Bridges in a "Big Lebowski"-esque free spirit vein won't be disappointed (though others might be) by this "more true than you'd like to believe" story about a U.S. military unit dedicated to the research of paranormal and psychic powers. McGregor anchors Grant Heslov's directorial debut as a journalist who accompanies one of the unit's former members (Clooney) in a drive across Kuwait.

"Splinterheads"
The Cast: Thomas Middleditch, Rachael Taylor, Christopher McDonald, Lea Thompson, Dean Winters, Frankie Faison
Writer/Director: Brant Sersen
Fest Cred: SXSW, Oxford, Woodstock, New Hampshire
The Gist: The title of "Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story" director Sersen's second feature refers to a small-time con artist (Taylor) who ensnares the affections of a aimless twentysomething (Middleditch) when her carnival comes to town, though he's the one who is forced to get crafty when her aggressive ex-boyfriend (Winters) and the local policeman (McDonald) get in the way of their burgeoning romance.

"That Evening Sun"
The Cast: Hal Holbrook, Ray McKinnon, Walton Goggins, Mia Wasikowska, Carrie Preston, Barry Corbin, Dixie Carter
Writer/Director: Scott Teems
Fest Cred: SXSW, Nashville, Little Rock, Sarasota, Atlanta
The Gist: Teems' directorial debut was the hit of SXSW when it premiered in Austin, with many buzzing about the performance of 82-year-old Hal Holbrook as a Tennessee farmer who returns from an unpleasant stay at a nursing home to his farm and finds that his so (Goggins) has leased the land to a ne'er do well (McKinnon) who is trying to get his life together.

"Turning Green"
The Cast: Timothy Hutton, Alessandro Nivola, Colm Meaney, Donal Gallery
Writer/Directors: Michael Aimette & John G. Hofmann
Fest Cred: CineVegas, Newport Beach
The Gist: Why distributor New Films International ditched this dramedy's original tagline -- "The story of a boy, a country, and a box of porn" -- for a much more solemn ad campaign fronted by a desperate looking Hutton and a concerned Fiennes and Nivola is a mystery, but not nearly as much as why it took four years for first-time writer/directors Aimette and Hofmann to find a distributor for their film about a 16-year-old American ex-pat who seeks to finance his escape from Ireland by selling adult mags, though the local hoods (Hutton and Nivola) take notice and want in on the action.

"Victory Day"
The Cast: Sean Ramsay, Natalie Shiyanova, Milan Kolik,
Director: Sean Ramsay
The Gist: A triple threat as a writer, director and star, Sean Ramsay puts his dukes up to play a "firebrand journalist with a short fuse" who travels to Prague to take down a Russian oligarch (Kolik), accompanied by a prostitute he rescues from sex slave traffickers (Shiyanova).

"You Cannot Start Without Me"
Director: Allan Miller
The Gist: Appropriately enough, Symphony Space in New York will give a theatrical run to this doc that follows a year in the life of conductor Valery Gergiev, the current director of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg as he jumps around the globe to London and New York, preparing for concerts from the rehearsal process to performance.

Continue to November 13th »

Holiday Preview: Anywhere But a Movie Theater

2009-11-03T19:20:00Z

More Holiday Preview: [Theatrical Calendar]
[Repertory Calendar] [Anywhere But a Movie Theater]

On Demand

IFC Films (with whom, full disclosure, we obviously share a parent company) will be delivering new films all holiday season to homes across the country through their Festival Direct and Sundance Selects labels. These include the cross-cultural romantic dramedy "I'll Come Running" (Nov. 4), Josiane Balasko's farce "A French Gigolo" (Nov. 6), the Inuit tribal drama "Necessities of Life" (Nov. 11), the Brit crime thriller "Adulthood" (Nov. 18), the Indian love story "Return to Rajapur" (Nov. 25), the Christopher Masterson-Bijou Phillips celibacy satire "Made for Each Other" (Dec. 2), "Harry Potter" helmer David Yates' gritty two-part drama "Sex Traffic" (Dec. 2 and 9), the Korean comedy "Night and Day" (Dec. 23) and "The Ghost" (Dec. 30).

Meanwhile, in the newly launched Sundance Selects series, there's a pair of harrowing documentaries VOD premieres: Kief Davidson's coming-of-age boxing doc "Kassim the Dream" (Nov. 27) and the unvarnished biopic "Nick Nolte: No Exit" (Dec. 30).

IFC Films is also releasing four titles simultaneously with their release in theaters including "Uncertainty" (Nov. 13), the latest thriller from "The Deep End" directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Lynn Collins; Lukas Moodysson's "Mammoth" (Nov. 20), starring Michelle Williams and Gael García Bernal; "Swimming Pool" director François Ozon's "Ricky" (Dec. 16), and Cannes Un Certain Regard-winning "Police, Adjective" (Dec. 23) from "12:08 East of Bucharest" director Corneliu Porumboiu.

Magnolia Pictures is also unwrapping a few presents in anticipation of the holidays. We'd suggest big-screen TVs only for John Woo's Han Dynasty-set action epic "Red Cliff," which is already available on VOD in advance of its November 18th release in theaters. But smaller screens will suffice for "Serious Moonlight," Cheryl Hines' directorial debut from one of "Waitress" writer/director Adrienne Shelly's last screenplays that stars Meg Ryan as a woman who puts her husband (Timothy Hutton) through a different kind of couples therapy when she learns he's cheating on her with another woman (Kristen Bell), premiering on VOD on November 6th before hitting theaters on December 4th; and "Wonderful World", a dramedy starring Matthew Broderick as a former children's singer who regains his groove when he meets the sister of his Senegalese roommate (Sanaa Lathan), premiering on VOD on December 4th before coming out in theaters a month later.

Online

While the online cinematheque The Auteurs makes us wait with anticipation to find out what new films will be presented in their next festival of free films (curated by the Criterion Collection) in November, they have plenty of recent highlights now playing to keep cineastes inside during the cold winter. With the click of a mouse, one can currently access a large part of "Cargo 200" director Aleksey Balabanov's oeuvre, including the dramas "It Doesn't Hurt," "The River," "Of Freaks and Men,", "Brother" and "Happy Days"; the award-winning 2001 Uruguayan festival fave "25 Watts"; "Caché" director Michael Haneke's first pairing with Juliette Binoche, the 2000 drama "Code Unknown"; Takeshi Kitano's 1995 sex comedy "Getting Any?"; and Claude Chabrol's 1959 thriller "À double tour." The Auteurs also have made some hard-to-find gems available with the online debuts of "La Belle Personne" director Philippe Garrel's 1993 family drama "The Birth of Love," "A Christmas Tale" helmer Arnaud Despleschin's directorial debut "The Life of the Dead," and a double bill of Kazakhstani filmmaker Darejan Omirbaev's 2001 comedy "The Road" and the 1998 thriller "Killer."

A nice bookend to one of their other new releases, the music education doc "Chops," B-Side Entertainment is already making their recent acquisition "Still Bill" available to the masses. Fresh from a festival run that spanned SXSW, Silverdocs and London, Alex Vlack and Damani Baker's profile of legendary soul singer Bill Withers will have audiences singing "Lean on Me" anywhere where people enlist in B-Side's "Theatrical-on-Demand" program that allows moviegoers to host their own screenings. The company is also contributing to the national health care debate with the doc "Money-Driven Medicine," Andrew Fredericks' screen adaptation of Maggie Mahar's exposé of American health care practices. "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" helmer Alex Gibney serves as a producer on this doc, which is currently holding "Watch-Ins! For America's Health" across the country through November 10th, but is available to anyone through B-Side's web site.

Just in time for Christmas, Cinetic Rights Management will offer "Clarkworld," a documentary about the life and work of Bob Clark, the cult director behind two of the holiday's most renowned (and replayed) film classics "A Christmas Story" and "Black Christmas," on their cable VOD channel FilmBuff, starting in December. In January, FilmBuff will also premiere "Let Them Chirp Awhile," a romantic comedy featuring "Mutual Appreciation" star and Bishop Allen frontman Justin Rice as a screenwriter who hopes to win over his neighbor (Laura Breckinridge) by taking care of her dog as he attempts to free himself from a crippling case of writer's block.

And since 'tis the season of sharing, it's only fitting that in November, Cinetic will team with iTunes to present the online debuts of the 1988 Sherlock Holmes mystery "The Hound of the Baskervilles" in time to compare notes with the new Guy Ritchie interpretation, and the 1997 Ian McKellen Holocaust drama "Bent," which not only features the young Clive Owen and Jude Law, but also Mick Jagger as a Berlin-based transvestite. Cinetic will also celebrate Veterans Day on November 11th with the release of two documentaries honoring soldiers: "When I Came Home," the award-winning 2006 look at homeless vets, and "Jerabek," the story of a Wisconsin family coping with the death of their son in Iraq. Both films will be available on SnagFilms and Hulu. The company is also doing something special for December 6th, releasing Robert Greene's geoengineering doc "Owning the Weather," which will be released online and on cable VOD day-and-date with its screening at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

The independent film store and distributor IndieFlix.com has recently revamped their Web site with a new look and a more user-friendly experience that continues to offer films from truly independent filmmakers that you can find nowhere else. To celebrate, they're kicking things off with the release of writer/director/star Paul Fitzgerald's drama "Forgiven," a political potboiler about a small-town district attorney (Fitzgerald) whose bid for a U.S. Senate seat is complicated by questions surrounding his prosecution of a death row inmate who is later exonerated. Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2006, the film will be available for VOD rental and DVD purchase through IndieFlix starting on November 10th and DVD rental through NetFlix beginning December 8th.

Computer savvy documentary fans can indulge in some self-reflection with SnagFilms upcoming slate of free films, which include Jim Killeen's 2007 doc "Google Me" about one man's search on his computer and beyond to find those who share his name, and "MacHeads," Kobi and Ron Shely's 2009 look at the fanatical users of Apple Computers who worship at the alter of Steve Jobs. Tricia Todd and Eric Matthies' "Agile, Mobile, Hostile: A Year With Andre Williams" also arrives straight from the festival circuit, chronicling a year in the life of the 70-year-old R & B musician behind such hits as "Shake A Tail Feather" before a cocaine addiction left him homeless and without a career. For something you can watch immediately, SnagFilms also just released the doc "From Mara to the Marathon," which follows former "ER" doc Anthony Edwards as he travels to Nairobi to reunite with Ole Kane Lettura, a native Kenyan who met Edwards as a scout for a safari company and discovered that the two shared a passion for running. In return, Edwards tries to convince Lettura to fly overseas to run in the New York City Marathon.

Continue to November »

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Holiday Preview: A Repertory Calendar

2009-11-03T19:07:00Z

Tim Burton invades New York, New Italian Cinema hits Los Angeles, Harold and Kumar spread holiday cheer in Austin and everywhere you look, they're celebrating All Tomorrow's Parties -- just some of the holiday film fun you can have this winter at your local repertory theater.

More Holiday Preview: [Theatrical Calendar]
[Repertory Calendar] [Anywhere But a Movie Theater]

New York

92YTribeca

In November, the 92YTribeca Screening Room will have some special guests in the house when it hosts the already sold out "A Conversation with Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman" on November 10th, with the two longtime collaborators discussing their latest film "Fantastic Mr. Fox." But tickets are still available for the night before (Nov. 9th), when actor Ben Foster and director Oren Moverman will screen their acclaimed new post-war drama "The Messenger". Much of the rest of the month is devoted to Cinema Tropical's Ten Years of New Argentine Cinema series with screenings of Adrián Caetano's immigration drama "Bolivia" and the minimalist comedy "Silvia Prieto" (Nov. 12), and Pablo Trapero's directorial debut "Mundo Grúa" and Lucretia Martel's much-praised drama "La Ciénaga" (Nov. 14).

The 92YTribeca will turns things over to the Other Israel Film Festival on November 17th for a screening of the 2009 Karen Yedaya drama "Jaffa", and then to the New York Public Library on November 18th for a free presentation of New York on Film in the 1970s. Documentarian Judith Helfand will hold court to raise awareness of the coming home experience of female soldiers with a screening of "Lioness" (Nov. 19) and of the distribution of food aid in Swaziland with "The Hunger Season" (Dec. 17). And for some more lighthearted fun, the 92YTribeca will host PFFR Night, where the creators of "Wonder Showzen" will screen plenty of never-before-seen clips in front of an audience encouraged to wear "the best death costumes," "examine prosthetic demise" with an evening of Kevin Geeks Out About... Dummy Deaths on November 20th, and screen a Thanksgiving double bill of "Clueless" and "Mallrats" (Nov. 27-28).

In December, the cinema space will screen the festival fave pseudo-romantic comedy "Breaking Upwards" (Dec. 4, with director Daryl Wein and star Zoe Lister-Jones in person), Leslie McCleave's environmentally conscious relationship drama "Road" (Dec. 9, with McCleave in person), and "Beyond Ipanema: Brazilian Waves in Global Music" (Dec. 10).

Ongoing series include the Queer/Art/Film series with Apichatpong Weerasethakul's 2004 drama "Tropical Malady" (Nov. 5, presented by artist Angela Dufresne) and Sidney Lumet's little-seen 1966 drama "The Group" (Dec. 3, presented by the New Yorker's Hinton Als); "Daily Show" writer Elliott Kalan's Closely Watched Films, which continues with the Gregory Peck oater "The Gunfighter" (Nov. 4) and Preston Sturges' "The Miracle of Morgan Creek" (Dec. 2, with special guest "Flight of the Conchords"' Kristen Schaal); the Not Coming to a Theater Near You series with Thom Anderson's epic Hollywood cine-essay "Los Angeles Plays Itself" (Nov. 21) and Dennis Hopper's curious "Easy Rider" follow-up "The Last Movie" (Dec. 19), and sing-alongs of "Team America: World Police" (Nov. 21, which doubles as a "Swear-Along") and "This is Spinal Tap" (Dec. 19).

]]> Anthology Film Archives

Though October 31st has passed, the Anthology isn't letting up on the scares with the continuation of their tribute to B-picture extraordinaire Roger Corman with post-Halloween screenings of "The Wild Angels" (Nov. 5, 8), "A Bucket of Blood" (Nov. 6, 8), "Bloody Mama" (Nov. 3, 7, 8), "The Little Shop of Horrors" (Nov. 3, 8), "The Intruder" (Nov. 4), "X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes" (Nov. 4, 6, 7), and "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre" (Nov. 5, 7). Sadly, the Anthology couldn't get their hands on "The Day the Clown Cried" for their follow-up series, but they have gathered as extensive a retrospective as one could otherwise hope for to chronicle the work of Jerry Lewis, collecting his directorial work from November 12th through 19th, starting with the "The Bellboy" (Nov. 12, 15) and includes others ranging from "Three on a Couch" (Nov. 14, 19) and "The Patsy" (Nov. 14, 17).

Meanwhile, the Anthology's Essential Cinema series will feature the works of Stan Brakhage (Nov. 7, 8, 21, 22), a program of René Clair, Francis Picabia and Luis Buñuel (Nov. 22), Luis Buñuel's solo "Los Olvidados" (Dec. 22), the shorts of Robert Breer (Nov. 27), two programs of avant-garde innovator James Broughton (Nov. 28), Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's "L'Âge d'Or" (Nov. 28), three programs of Charlie Chaplin shorts (Nov. 29), and the shorts of Joseph Cornell (Dec. 12).

For more experimental fare, the Anthology will present their ongoing their non-fiction Flaherty NYC series with Experiments in Animation (Nov. 9) and "Witness: Selections from Witness's Human Rights Video Campaigns" (Dec. 14, with a post-screening discussion), in addition to the programs New Visions by Mike Kuchar (Nov. 5, with Kuchar in person); Origins, Influences and Interests: Four Women Filmmakers, which pulls together the work of Abigail Child (Nov. 6), Su Friedrich (Nov. 6), Ericka Beckman (Nov. 7), and Peggy Awesh (Nov. 7); The Polyexpressive Symphony: Futurism on Film, culled from early Italian avant-garde cinema (Nov. 1-22); Beyond the Absurd: Ronald Tavel & Andy Warhol (Dec. 10-17), which includes Warhol's take on "A Clockwork Orange," "Vinyl" (Dec. 11 & 14) and "The Chelsea Girls" (Dec. 17), among others; and the Best of AFA, a collection of the films and filmmakers that have been revelations in their past screenings at the Anthology, including the works of painter and filmmaker Alfred Leslie (Dec. 18), a program of selected shorts (Dec. 19, including films from Rip Torn and J. Hoberman), the shorts of James Nares (Dec. 19), the shorts of Beryl Sokoloff (Dec. 20), Jim McBride's "My Girlfriend's Wedding" and "Pictures from Life's Other Side" (Dec. 20), a triple bill of Danny Lyon, Jaime Davidovich and George Stoney (Dec. 21), and Ben Hayeem's "The Black Banana" (Dec. 22). Also worth a look are evenings with legendary avant-garde filmmaker Michael Snow, who will celebrate his 80th birthday at the Anthology with screenings of "Seated Figures" and "Presents" (Dec. 10), and Tony Pipolo, who will tout his new book "Robert Bresson: A Passion for Film" with a screening of 1962's "The Trial of Joan of Arc" (Dec. 17-18).

BAMcinématek

While the Brooklyn-based spot for repertory film goes into hibernation for the winter from December 25 through February 18, they aren't going quietly with a slate blending old and new that offers a welcome break from the pre-holidays crunch. Currently, BAMcinématek is honoring the 75th anniversary of the New York Film Critics Circle with selections from 1962, the year that the Critics Circle did not present awards thanks to a newspaper strike. During the next week, critics will introduce screenings of the likes of Jerry Lewis' "The Errand Boy" (Nov. 3, with J. Hoberman), "Shoot the Piano Player" (Nov. 5, with David Fear), and "Cléo From 5 to 7" (Nov. 7, with Dana Stevens), among others. That tribute segues into contemporary series of New French Films (Nov. 11-15), including screenings of François Ozon's "Ricky" (Nov. 13) and "Shall We Kiss?" director Emmanuel Mouret's "Please Please Me!" (Nov. 15), and New Czech Films (Nov. 18-22), including the North American premiere of Miloš Forman's "A Well Paid Walk" (Nov. 18, with Forman in attendance) and the New York premiere of "Divided We Fall" director Jan Hřebejk's "I'm All Good" (Nov. 22).

The BAMcinématek is also taking advantage of the BAM Harvey Theater's production of "A Streetcar Named Desire" by hosting a tribute to its director Liv Ullmann (Nov. 24-Dec. 6), showcasing her acting work with screenings of "Shame" (Nov. 24-25), "Persona" (Nov. 26-27), "Hour of the Wolf" (Nov. 28) and "Scenes from a Marriage" (Nov. 29). Other highlights from the winter schedule include a screening of "The Audition" (Nov. 10, with the filmmaker in attendance), Susan Froemke's 1980 doc about the Metropolitan Opera's version of "American Idol"; the ongoing Cinemachat with Elliot Stein, where the film historian presents underseen gems like George Cukor and Cyril Gardner's "The Royal Family of Broadway" (Nov. 23) and Kathryn Bigelow's "The Weight of Water" (Dec. 2), and an ActNow: New Voices in Black Cinema screening of the Bill Withers doc "Still Bill" (Dec. 1).

BAMcinématek also didn't need to look far for their major series in December, The Next Director (Dec. 8-17), where Brooklyn-based directors So Yong Kim and Bradley Rust Gray will present their own films including Kim's "Treeless Mountain" and Gray's "The Exploding Girl" in addition to inspirations like the Dardennes' "Rosetta," Hou Hsaio-Hsien's "Café Lumiere" and Wong Kar-wai's "Happy Together." And for a nice bit of bubbly to close out December, the theater has booked a week-long run of Howard Hawks' "His Girl Friday" (Dec. 18-24).

Film Forum

The hallowed arthouse on Houston will set off November with a cinephile's dream -- two-week runs of new 35mm restorations of Powell & Pressburger's "The Red Shoes" (Nov. 6-19) and Jacques Tati's "M. Hulot's Holiday" (Nov. 20-Dec. 3), punctuated by a rare special screening of the 1924 Greta Garbo silent "The Saga of Gösta Berlings" (Nov. 16) and An Evening with Christopher Plummer (Nov. 30). Film Forum will then launch into a series covering the career of "Frankenstein" and "The Invisible Man" director James Whale (Dec. 4-10), showing pre-Code rarities like "Waterloo Bridge" (Dec. 6, with "The Kiss Before the Mirror") alongside his better known classics like "Bride of Frankenstein" (Dec. 5, with "The Old Dark House"). From December 11th through January 5th, the theater will reflect on the cinematic interpretations of their own hometown with the series Madcap Manhattan, where Martin Scorsese's "The King of Comedy" (Dec. 22) will mingle with Leo McCarey's screwball "The Awful Truth" (Dec. 11 & 12, in a pair of new 35mm prints with George Cukor's "Holiday") and other favorites and rarities depicting the Big Apple. Finally, the Film Forum will feature a major retrospective of Akira Kurosawa films to celebrate the Japanese auteur's 100th birthday from January 6th through February 4th. Beginning with a nine-day run of a newly restored 35mm print of "Stray Dog," the series continues with samurai classics like "Throne of Blood" (Jan. 15) and "Seven Samurai" (Jan. 29-30) and potboilers such as "High and Low" (Jan. 22) and "The Bad Sleep Well" (Jan. 26)

Schizo Miracles

2009-11-03T12:59:00Z

Samuel Fuller had one of the most fascinating of Hollywood careers -- a 50-plus-year self-mythologizing rampage that began with scriptsmith work in the mid 1930s at the age of 24, evolving into one of the most distinctive auteurs America has ever produced, writing/directing some 25 movies and having a hand in writing 25 more, helplessly manufacturing himself into a crusty man's-man Hollywood gadfly in the process, readily available for manic interviews and iconic appearances in young auteurs' self-conscious films.

There are always corners in his career that you, whomever you are, haven't yet explored (honestly, any single Fuller film remains half-experienced if you've only seen it once), and so the new Sony set of Fulleriania is a prize, beginning as it does with "It Happened in Hollywood" (1937), Fuller's first screenplay credit, and an utterly freakish, Charlie Kaufman-esque launch of meta-ness that centers on Hollywood's discomfiting transition from silents to talkies, barely a decade after it happened and 15 years before "Singin' in the Rain." Richard Dix, essentially playing himself, is an aw-shucks cowboy star for whom both the demands of dialogue and the moral compromises of early gangster roles proves too much, but it's clear that Dix is indeed a terrible actor past his dubious prime, playing an inept matinee icon and moseying through a scenario about his own career's demise.

Though the dynamic suggests "The Wrestler," Dix keeps to his old westerns' dull and pious persona, initiating a kind of hall-of-mirrors journey that climaxes, phenomenally, with a huge house party populated with a forgotten class of Hollywood creatures: actual stand-ins, look-alikes playing themselves playing their studio stars in a creepy alternative Golden Age where slightly off Mae Wests, Marlene Dietrichs, Eddie Cantors and Clark Gables wander the rolling lawns of Beverly Hills, like a live version of those Warner Brothers cartoons bustling with caricatured celebrity cameos.

]]> It's an early clue to the degree of irony and distance inherent in all of Fuller's work, and it's a unique thing in a filmography of one-of-a-kinds. The DVD box includes six other films (along with four new interview supplements with Tim Robbins, Wim Wenders, Martin Scorsese and Curtis Hanson), including "Underworld U.S.A." (1961), an arch, lurid crime nightmare in which every frame is a cluttered knot of perspectives, contrasts and spite, and which, it seems to me, is precisely where film noir, properly defined, died, burned at the stake of Fuller's psychodramatic hyperbole. But because Fuller's voice was unmistakably his, the sensibility collisions in the films directed by others are the revelations. "Scandal Sheet" (1952) was directed by Phil Karlson, who was as much of a confrontational, subtlety-immune noiriste as Fuller, but whose style was much more pseudo-documentary.

Fuller had no hand in the movie -- it's based on his novel "The Dark Page," published in 1944 while Fuller was fighting in Europe with the Big Red One. Still, it boils over with his storytelling energy and his signature reflex, the urge to discover, expressionistically, the painful, hard-boiled reality as he knew it within the movie-movie universe of Golden Age Hollywood. The set-up itself is nearly autobiographical: Fuller used to work on the New York Graphic, a screaming-mimi, truth-manipulating exploitative tabloid on Park Row that makes the contemporary New York Post look like The London Review of Books.

Broderick Crawford's bulldog editor pulls the daily out of its economic doldrums with lurid front pages and invented news; John Derek is his amoral star reporter, the two of them heading a newsroom that has only Donna Reed to recommend it in the way of moral compunction and compassion. The thorny patter and amoral brio proceeds apace until Crawford is confronted at a publicity event by a middle-aged woman, who summons an entire unwanted past that eventually leads to her manslaughter and a hot news story that must be pursued even if Crawford is its last station. It's a fast-gabbing, meat-eating show, with only one typical handicap: pretty boy star Derek (future husband of Bo) is a baby-faced cipher beside the roaring rockface of Crawford, and even the quick-eyed beauty of Reed. But the story is expertly fashioned, scanning today as a prescient indictment of Rupert Murdoch-style media exploitation.

"Shockproof" (1949) is even odder -- a hard-boiled egg of a Fuller script (co-written with women's-picture foghorn Helen Deutsch), but directed by existentialist-romantic Douglas Sirk, tracking parole officer Cornel Wilde as he attempts to keep smokin' released murderess Patricia Knight away from her flimflam boyfriend and out of the hoosegow. Of course, the story twists up with romantic passion and another murder, and Knight's bitter modern woman so bristles with betrayal that we never know who she wants, but it eventually ends up on the road in a kind of domestic hellfire of poverty and paranoia, a year after "They Live by Night" and before "Gun Crazy." Fullerish in its hidden impulses but Sirkian in its expressionism and moaning self-pity, the movie is a minor and forgotten schizo miracle.

Submitted For Your Approval...

2009-11-02T15:25:00Z

...a "Twilight Zone" podcast. Richard Kelly's new film "The Box" shares source material with an episode of the series, which got us wondering about why there haven't been more movies made from "Twilight Zone" episodes. This week on the IFC News podcast, we suggest six episodes we could see getting fleshed out into features, and discuss films that, while not directly related to Rod Serling's series, are definitely "Twilight Zone"-esque.

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Thinking Outside the Box

2009-11-02T14:50:00Z

A week loaded with oh-so-worthy awards season contenders is offset with the comic relief of Jim Carrey's performance captured flailing, George Clooney's self-deluded staring, and the teasing promise of an affordable(!) trip to the ballet.

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"The Box"
You could make the argument that if Richard Kelly could only get the whole world to come over to his house and listen to his record collection, he might not feel the need to make films at all. That said, his fall from grace following the flop of "Southland Tales" was so total that he went from the director anointed as the hipster's David Lynch to the arthouse M. Night Shyamalan overnight. With much riding on this comeback, Kelly has turned to Richard Matheson's short story "Button, Button," previously immortalized as an episode of "The Twilight Zone," for his source for this story of a mysterious stranger (Frank Langella) who presents a seemingly impossible moral dilemma to a financially troubled suburban couple (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden).
Opens wide.

"A Christmas Carol"
While the eerily artificial presentation of "The Polar Express" ultimately didn't harm its box office numbers, the much-derided "dead-eye syndrome" that inhibited Tom Hanks ensured that Robert Zemeckis' first venture into the world of performance capture films could only go up, qualitywise. Zemeckis is back for another crack at a Yuletide tale, this time with Jim Carrey donning the green-screen suit to play more than half a dozen different roles in this adaptation of the Charles Dickens' classic. Most prominently, he inhabits the role of unrepentant miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who finds himself visited by ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future (all played by Carrey), imploring him to change his ways.
Opens wide in 3D and IMAX.

]]> "Collapse"
Have chronicled both the Yes Men and the enchanting directorial exploits of Wisconsin's own Mark Borchardt, filmmaker Chris Smith continues to gravitate towards indelible misfits and their attempts to get the world's attention with this documentary portrait of noted doomsayer and self-described investigative reporter Michael Ruppert. Employing the same stream-of-consciousness confessional format as James Toback's recent "Tyson," Smith's film takes the form of a series of grimly disturbing monologues in which the former Los Angeles police officer makes his case for the camera as to how our misguided energy policy and unregulated financial industry will ultimately bring about the collapse of western civilization.
Opens in New York; opens in Los Angeles on November 13th.

"La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet"
Let's face it, even in a good economy, the high ticket prices of a ballet performance ensure that the closest most of us will ever get to see some pirouetting is tossing "Billy Elliot" into the DVD player. But now, thanks to legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman, we don't just see the stage, but get to peek inside the hallowed halls of the Paris Opera for an intimate look at the world-renowned Ballet de l'Opera National.
Opens in New York.

"Endgame"
With awards season in full swing, a quick glance at some of the potential Oscar-baiters confirms that this year apartheid is the new Holocaust. Focusing on the revolution as opposed to the conflict, "Vantage Point" director Pete Travis' adaptation of journalist Robert Harvey's book plays out far away from the political turmoil in South Africa in an idyllic country manner in Somerset, England. Brit thesp Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as ANC information director (and future South African president) Thabo Mbeki, who amidst tense negotiations with the National Party discovers a kindred spirit in Will Esterhuyse (William Hurt), a white university professor.
Opens in limited release.

"The Fourth Kind"
You've only got to look at the business "Paranormal Activity" is currently doing to understand why filmmakers return time and again to "found footage" and "documentary reenactment" as the medium of choice for their no-frills thrill rides. (It's bloody cheap, for starters.) This feature debut from director Olatunde Osunsanmi (a Joe Carnahan protégé) announced itself via a meta-movie viral marketing campaign featuring star Milla Jovovich as herself. The Ukranian actress stars as Dr. Abigail Tyler, a psychologist investigating patient reports of alien abduction in the sleepy town of Nome, Alaska. Maybe we'll get really lucky and they'll take her husband.
Opens wide.

"A French Gigolo"
Striking a more somber note than her other recent works, this bittersweet romance from French author, actress and filmmaker Josiane Balasko offers a wounded take on the adage that money can't buy you love, but it does allow you to rent it for a little while. What begins as a simple business attraction between Judith (Nathalie Baye), a wealthy but lonely divorcée, and Marco (Eric Caravaca), a married, working-class gigolo, gradually evolves into a deeper emotional connection, highlighting the many parallels and the hypocrisies that exist between marriage and prostitution. In French with subtitles.
Opens in New York.

"Make The Yuletide Gay"
The latest from queer cinema director Rob Williams, this gay relationship drama once again showcases that, as far as cinema is concerned, Christmas is little more than an excuse to accumulate a few hundred pairs of socks and a naff sweater from Grandma, and engage in a row with your family. Keith Jordan fronts this mug of Christmas cheer as Olaf "Gunn" Gunnunderson, a gay college student who retreats into the closet when he goes home for the holidays, only to be dragged out kicking and screaming by his boyfriend (former "Degrassi: The Next Generation" star Adamo Ruggiero), who shows up unexpectedly on the Gunnundersons' doorstep.
Opens in Los Angeles.

Speak of the Devil: The Many Faces of Cinematic Satanism

2009-10-30T15:05:00Z

The Bible says that Satan "masquerades as an angel of light. In popular culture, we tend to think of him as a big red dude with horns and a pitchfork, or as a talking snake, or as Al Pacino in an Armani suit. The devil, in other words, comes in many different forms. And his followers come in just as many. Unlike a lot of other horror movie staples, there's no visual archetype for satanists. We recognize a vampire when we see his fangs and a zombie by the rotting flesh, but a Satan-worshipper? Tougher to spot.

In the new indie horror film "The House of the Devil," an unknowing teenager looking to make some quick cash is lured into a babysitting job by a crew of weirdos who are ultimately revealed to be devil worshippers (not a spoiler, folks, look at the title). This particular coven of satanists are a bunch of suburban eccentrics, living in their creepy old house, speaking quietly and persuasively.

If the movie makes you worry about satanists (and I'm talking murderous cinematic satanists, not contemporary religious ones) lurking amongst us in society, I have bad news for you: according to the movies, they really are everywhere, and they're awfully hard to spot until they're using your body for a piñata. As a public service to help people identify blood-drinking devil worshippers in a more timely fashion, here's a list of just a few of the different ways satanists have appeared onscreen.

As Refined Greenwich Village Socialites
In Mark Robson's "The 7th Victim" (1943)

The few tried-and-true hallmarks of movie satanists -- unholy rituals, chanting, drinking blood, sadistic brutality against non-believers -- are almost completely absent in this film from famed horror producer Val Lewton. A young girl at boarding school named Mary (Kim Hunter) learns her sister has stopped paying her tuition, and heads to New York City to figure out why. Mary can't find her sister, but the trail of breadcrumbs eventually leads to a group called The Palladists, a cult that's a study in contradictions: they worship Satan, but preach non-violence. They hang out in Greenwich Village, but they're all well-dressed, middle-aged urbanites. Eventually, they do get their hands on Mary's sister, but they don't sacrifice her; they sit her down at a table with a cup of poison and peer-pressure her into drinking it.

]]> Clearly, what we have here are some satanists with their hands tied by the strict morality and violence guidelines of the Hays Production Code. Unless you find the idea of sharply dressed white people alarming, this is not a particularly horrifying bunch, though director Mark Robson does use the Palladists' beliefs as the basis for one terrific shot. Fearing Mary is getting too close to the truth, the cult sends one of their members to intimidate her, which she does while Mary is taking a shower. We never see the cultist's face, just a shadow on the shower curtain, one that bears an unmistakably devilish shape.

As Nosy Neighbors
In Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" (1968)

Since satanic cults worship the devil, and the devil is the embodiment of evil, films about satanists force us to consider what the embodiment of evil looks like. In the case of "Rosemary's Baby," evil is personified by the old couple across the hall who are incapable of minding their own business. Young marrieds Guy and Rosemary Woodhouse (John Cassavetes and Mia Farrow) think they've found the perfect New York apartment: big, cheap and in a great location. There's just one problem: nosy neighbors Minnie and Roman Castevet (Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer), who are constantly sticking their noses where they don't belong.

When Rosemary gets pregnant, they insist she use the obstetrician they recommend; when Rosemary wants to take pre-natal vitamins, Minnie forces her to drink a daily herbal smoothie. And sure, they seem to mean well, but they become so controlling Rosemary starts to wonder; why do they care so much? Could it be... Satan? As in "The 7th Victim," the satanic cult's membership is predominantly older, white, and upper class, though this particular organization is larger and more conspiratorial, with bigger goals and more powerful means at their disposal. It's particularly upsetting how easily -- and how quickly -- they are able to turn husband against wife with promises of undeserved career success, and how no one around Rosemary notices the sad fates that befall anyone who gets curious about the Castevets. If only good people were as nosy as Roman and Minnie.

As Rabid Hippies
In David E. Durston's "I Drink Your Blood" (1970)

"Let it be known, sons and daughters, that Satan was an acid head!" says Horace Bones (Bhaskar), the leader of a band of hippie Lucifer lovers. True to his confused but sincerely held beliefs, Bones and the rest of his motley crew -- including a pregnant girl in an obvious wig, a mute teenager, and a middle-aged Asian woman -- drop acid, freak out, and sacrifice farm animals to their dark, tie-dyed lord. Bones and his gang don't murder people so much as they just rough them up, probably because they're too high to know the difference. One of their victims is a teenage girl who witnesses one of their rituals; when her younger brother finds out what they did to her, he retaliates by feeding the hippies a batch of meat pies poisoned with rabid dog blood. Soon, they're all foaming at the mouth and running amok through the town, killing some of the people they encounter and sickening the rest with rabies. "I Drink Your Blood" is low-rent grindhouse cinema, with dialogue and acting as laughable as you'd expect -- not to mention a story that requires a ten-year-old boy to draw a syringe full of blood from a dead dog and then inject it unnoticed into a dozen meat pies -- but the idea of satanism as an infection spread from one confused young person to the next is a perfectly paranoid metaphor for the early 1970s, when folks were scared shitless of crazy hippies thanks to Charles Manson and his deranged Family.

Troy Duffy Still Packs a Punch

2009-10-29T17:15:00Z

There are really two reasons why you'd recognize the name of writer/director Troy Duffy. One, you're a member of the energized fan base who can recite every line of his 1999 debut, "The Boondock Saints." A John Woo-styled crime thriller that first trickled out in a perfunctory release, Duffy's blood-soaked tale of Irish Catholic twins who go vigilante on some Boston mobsters slowly grew into a monstrous cult hit on home video. But if you haven't seen it, the only other way you'd know Duffy is from the 2003 doc "Overnight," a behind-the-scenes chronicle of the "Boondock" production, in which the novice filmmaker is depicted as an arrogant jerk who shoots his mouth off, alienating his golden-boy relationship with the Weinstein brothers, who pulled out of financing the movie before shooting started.

Finally getting the multiplex treatment, Duffy returns with "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day." Norman Reedus, Sean Patrick Flanery and Billy Connolly are also back -- as, respectively, the vengeful MacManus brothers and their father Il Duce -- who this time team up with a Latino criminal (Clifton Collins Jr.) and a flirty FBI special agent (Julie Benz) to take down a priest-killer with mob ties. The afternoon after the New York premiere, where the police had been called in to calm down the wild swarms of fans, I sat down with Duffy to discuss the sequel, what he thinks of other people's opinions, and his uncensored reaction to seeing "Overnight."

"Boondock Saints II" seems more a love letter to the fans than a necessary continuation of the saga. Would you cop to that?

I definitely made it for the fans, but here's the way I look at it -- we all know the sequels that have worked, the tiniest percent of a percent of a percent, have the same two aspects to them: They give you everything you loved about the first film, plus a brand new, unpredictable storyline. They don't rest on the laurels of the first film. The cleanest example is "T2," when Arnold was suddenly the good "Terminator" protecting Sarah Connor. We ate that up, we fucking loved it.

I tried to give "Boondock" fans a completely new story, so if it was a love letter, it was one with lots of effective prose to inspire and motivate the person I was sending it to. I threw as many curveballs as I possibly could. A female lead in "Boondock II," are you shitting me? Clifton Collins, Peter Fonda and his whole character, with period piece flashbacks to 1950s New York to explain Il Duce's history? We hopefully pushed the envelope further: more humor, more guns, higher body count, bigger stunts, all wrapped within a story that the fan base could never have seen coming.

]]> The first film was made in the '90s, when "bullet ballets" and slow-mo shots of dudes walking were a popular style, yet they're here again in "Boondock Saints II." Was this meant to have a retro feel or match the style of the original?

I don't think about shit in terms of what the fuck's popular or not. I make what I see in my head, and I mainly see myself doing gun scenes in that way, unless there's a real good reason not to. A fucking cheeseburger can just be bread and meat and cheese, or you can put a whole bunch of crap on it and make a tasty fucking treat. I love to do that kind of shit. I learned from guys like Woo. I watched his movies and saw how effective it could be to dip to black in the middle of a gunfight, to give us that one moment of tension, come back up, and something else is going on. Masters like that, sure, I paid attention.

Considering the first film had such a crippled release, what qualities do you think made it such a success on home video?

When you talk to "Boondock" fans, you get a different reason every time. Some people like it because of the relationship of the brothers, the camaraderie, and some people go apeshit for the religious and vigilantism aspect. I just choose to call it a good fucking movie. If you make it, they will come. You're right, this movie was effectively abandoned by Hollywood. Had it been given a chance, it would've been a gigantic fucking hit. That is no longer a matter of opinion.

There's some weird magic in this film. It becomes a comfort film. Fans play it over and over again, they know every frame of this thing. If God could tell me the answer to that right now, I wouldn't want to know. We got together, the kids took over the asylum, and it was just a beautiful fucking explosion. In all fairness, a bunch of people don't like it intensely, who take the time to try to explain to people how bad this movie is: "Don't you know why this is bad? A, B, C and D, I went to film school. I know this." If you see a bad comment posted on "Boondock," I guarantee the next ten comments are from fans, calling that guy a douchebag.

Have you ever heard any criticisms you felt were legitimate?

No. I mean, everybody's got an opinion. I hear a criticism, I can show you a million fans that loved that. To me, it's beyond critiquing, personally. With what this film has achieved, how it was plucked out of the muck by the fans and made successful, that tells me all I need to know it's a good movie.

What about my gay colleague who took issue with "Boondock Saints II" for its homophobic humor?

We're an equal opportunity offender. We will fuck with everybody. There was racial humor in the first one, there's racial humor in the second one. We fuck with Irish, Mexicans, African-Americans, gays, everybody. If anything else rolled into the story, we'd tear that apart, too. If you can't take a joke, go watch another fucking movie. People who actually look for morality in films and say it's not real... Of course, it's not fucking real. It's a movie! Entertainment business. A lot of people have forgotten about that first word. You're just supposed to be entertained.