Film Review

Prairie Home Invasion

Chet Kozlowski — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 23:04:31 +0000

Prairie Home Invasion Chet Kozlowski March 21, 2023 - 19:04

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Erland Hollingsworth's film Homestead is an unsteady hybrid of Western epic and suburban horror film. It poses all the questions of the home invasion scenario: How safe is your home? Can you defend loved ones against unreasonable odds? What does one truly own?

A homesteader family—made up of Paw, Maw, and young-uns—live off the land in an isolated cabin. One day they're visited by a man (Greg Kreik) claiming to be a surveyor for the railroad about to come through. Paw Robert (Brian Krause) orders the man off his land; he has no intention of pulling up stakes, the railroad be damned. That is, until the intruder shucks off his disguise and reveals himself to be the front man of a gang of gunmen intent on violating Robert's domain. The opening scenes set the stage well, with a plucky heroine in 12-year-old daughter Irene, played by Betsy Sligh. She is meant to hit notes of True Grit's Mattie Ross and Ms. Sligh has the resolved brow and a steely stare necessary for the part.

Turns out Robert was once a member of this band of desperados. He took their money and high-tailed it, changed his name, married Beth (Jamie Bernadette), made her Maw to twins Irene and Brian (Cavan Tonascia), and settled down. Now the gang, led by Bible-quoting Ezekiel (Scot Scurlock) wants what's theirs and then some, including for Robert to return to the outlaw life. Ezekiel refers to his motley crew as a "family," and is part gunslinger, evangelist, and cult leader. "Ain't nothing sadder than a man who don't know who he is," he says of Robert.

The action that follows aspires to take us into Straw Dogs territory, but sadly, Hollingworth ain't no Peckinpah. The production values are low-budget, which is not a criticism in itself; the impulse to make a film disproportionate to the cost is one that has yielded great results and launched big-time careers. A frugal budget doesn't have to be a detriment if one can tell a good story in a confined space (Hollingsworth is also credited as writer). And here's where Homestead takes some dubious turns.

Hollingworth's camera is set mostly at midlevel, in tight, maybe to mask a dearth of set design. But between that and the editing, it's hard to tell who's doing what. Hands dart out, rifles fire, people run, but the action is not blocked in a convincing way. You don't know how many people are in the room, since no establishing shot of everybody entering is provided. Much of it happens outside at night, so faces appear out of and disappear into the inky blackness. Deals are made and betrayed ("We're comin’ out!"), strong men crumble, and kids suddenly have guns in their hands. It's even hard to tell who's in the cabin and who's outside. If Hollingsworth was going for a cowpoke version of La Ronde, it'd be one thing. But there's nothing so lofty going on here: this script just can’t make up its mind.

It's difficult to know who this movie is even about. Attach yourself to a protagonist at your own risk. Bullets fly all over the place. The final words of the film, by the survivors of events, are either meant as pithy or to suggest a sequel.

The cast contains familiar faces. Brian Krause (Robert) was a regular on the TV series Charmed. Jamie Bernadette (Beth) is known for TV as well, appearing most recently on CSI New Orleans, and has starred in I Spit on Your Grave: Deju Vu as Camille Keaton's daughter. Young Betsy Sligh (Irene) has been building her resumé with films like Amazon's rom-com I Want You Back.

Writer/director Erland Hollingsworth has a number of shorts to his credit. He filmed Homestead in Knoxville, Tennessee, and makes good use of the rolling hills in the daylight scenes.

The poster for Homestead is lurid and tantalizing, depicting fire and brimstone and maybe a touch of the supernatural. It will do its job and attract attention to the film, which is available to stream. The film doesn't quite match the promise, but it does work up the occasional flair, like the opening shot of two people running in the distance—we don't yet know who they are—fleeing across the fog-shrouded prairie only to be stopped by a rifle shot. It's a spiffy bit of foreshadowing. Italian composer Simone Cilio's mournful score sets exactly the right tone. Jamie Bernadette and Scot Scurlock each have their turn at scenery-chewing in their soliloquies. Dallas Page, Mark Madeo, and Mike Ferguson are grizzled and ominous as the gunmen. Mike Markoff, a glowering long-haired Fabio type, has a surprisingly affecting moment when he demands his captives read to him before he kills them.

All that aside, however, we want to return to 12 year-old Irene, to see what she's capable of. After establishing her creds, she is curiously sidelined for most of the film. In the first minutes, Irene sets her jaw and gives her on-the-nose opinion, then intones, "Just speakin' what I'm thinkin'." Irene is straightforward and a straight shooter. She will have her time, but only after most of the mayhem is over. That's too bad. We want to see her right along. Irene is Homestead's soul.

Homestead. Written and directed by Erland Hollingsworth. 80 minutes.

Streaming and VOD. 2023.

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Star-Crossed Socialists

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 02:03:30 +0000

Star-Crossed Socialists Chet Kozlowski March 19, 2023 - 22:03

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The new film Dancing the Twist in Bamako has a lot on its mind. It's an historical depiction of the political activism that shaped Mali, the eighth largest country in Africa, while also an appealing love story and family drama.

The year is 1962. French colonialists have departed from Mali, abandoning it to local tribes to sort out trade. We meet young Samba Touré as he is spreading the word of socialism and meeting with stiff opposition from village patriarchs and his father, whose livelihood is challenged by the shifting politics. Enter Lara, whom we first see dancing at a popular joint, the Happy Boys Club. The Twist is dance taking the youth of Mali by storm, but Lara is out of sync. Wild-haired and waifish, she flails away in an older style until she is literally pulled off the dancefloor by her husband, and summarily raped. Lara has no defense against the assault: she is the wife in an arranged (read "forced") marriage, and by law a wife must submit. She flees their marital bed, stows away in a pickup that turns out to be Samba's. When Samba discovers this stranger, he wants to take her back. But Lara's defiant, and eventually Samba and his crew take her to their village, arrange lodgings, and she hides out.

Samba and Lara hit it off over the Twist. Western pop culture is analogous to revolution in Dancing, and there's much joie d’vivre in this accomplished film. American rock 'n' roll peppers the soundtrack (some of it out a bit out of time: both the Beach Boys' "I Get Around" and the Supremes' "Where Did Our Love Go" were released later, in 1964) but the point is made. Given its subject matter -- love amongst "economic decolonization" -- Dancing the Twist in Bamako is always involving, due in large part to its attractive young cast.

Stephane Bak as Samba brings strident commitment to the cause yet melts at the very sight of Lara, portrayed by Alice Da Luz. Scenes with the two of them together are charming. Mr. Bak has previously appeared in Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch and Paul Verhoeven's Elle. Ms. Da Luz is a Gucci model born and raised outside Paris; this is her first film.

Lara is skeptical of Samba's fervor. "You think we'll be free one day? Seriously?" she says, when he gets on his soapbox. She reminds Samba that "being equal doesn't make us the same," and when he preaches solidarity to farmers, it's Lara who tells him, "Stop talking. They understand." Samba and Lara's romance will benefit from a socialist government’s adopting of a "family code," which will do away with the sort of arranged marriage under which Lara is oppressed. She's still married, after all; no matter how close she and Samba get, that's always hanging over them, and it gears up the suspense of the film.

Other members of the cast add spice to the proceedings: Bakary Doimbera as Badian, Samba's frivolous younger brother, is comic relief, and Saabo Balde and Ahmed Dramé as Samba’s cohorts make effective foils. Dioc Koma as Namori, Lara's jilted husband, has subtle moments of sympathy for his fugitive wife. He tells Lara’s headstrong brother, with whom he's tasked to retrieve Lara, "Look at her. Her eyes are shining. She's happy," even as they connive to bring her home. Family pride is much venerated in the social order, and Lara's escape and affair casts shade on her family's legacy.

French director Robert Guédiguian (Gloria Mundi, The Snows of Kilimanjaro) has 21 features and many awards to his credit. He co-wrote the script with Gilles Taurand and they pull together the various threads of the narrative with panache: "We wanted to tell a beautiful and tragic love story to embody what I call this 'communist moment', of construction, of revolutionary celebration where possibilities clash with counter-revolution but also with tradition and ancestral customs," says Guédiguian.

His film captures that moment and is a refreshing reminder of the idealism and innocence of the 1960s, which extended as far as Mali. Young people cruise in jalopies and pickups to the strains of "Be My Baby" and "Da Do Run Run." Bedroom walls are adorned with Gene Vincent posters. We see the African countryside in its variety, its dusty roads and dry earth the setting for Samba and Lara's uneasy courtship. (Filming in Mali was impossible due to the political climate, so it was shot in Senegal. "As a result," says Guédiguian, "it is not Bamako that we see on the screen but Thiès, next to Dakar airport, which is Senegal's second largest city.")

Standout moments in Dancing include Samba's father’s charge in a march on the government (foreshadowing the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol), and a wonderful sequence in which Samba's crew visits a small farming village to proselytize, and ends up tilling a neglected garden, bringing it back to life as an illustration of socialism's virtues. Lara is the first to grab a hoe and pitch in, digging while she leads the others, then the entire village, in jubilant song.

Guédiguian was inspired to make the film when viewing an exhibit by photographer Malick Sidibe, and in particular an image of a young couple dancing, he in a white suit, and she barefoot in a dress. In real life, the couple in the photo are brother and sister, but Guédiguian changed them to lovers in the film.

Dancing the Twist in Bamako's distributor, ArtMattan Films, specializes in movies that focus on the human experience of people of color all over the world with a special focus on Africa, the Caribbean, North and South America, and Europe. Their impressive catalog can be accessed at their website, artmattanfilms.com, which also links you to affordable rentals.
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Dancing the Twist in Bamako, directed by Robert Guédiguian. 129 Minutes. France. 2021.

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Coyote Edifying

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 20:53:54 +0000

Coyote Edifying Chet Kozlowski March 13, 2023 - 16:53

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First of all, about that title…

American Bolshevik isn't a History Channel joint or a new Steven Seagal actioner, but a documentary promoting the preservation of … the coyote (?). The title is bit of a stretch—the filmmakers very tenuously connect the endangered species to Russian revolutionaries—and might actually work against this engaging documentary.

American Bolshevik opens with sepia-tinted photos and voiceover about Man's concerted exploitation and extermination many animal species encountered during Manifest Destiny. It then jumps to complaints by residents of Newport, Rhode Island that some critters are coming out of the woods to snatch their pet dogs.

Its true subject is the Narragansett Bay Coyote Study, which quantifies the effects of "persecution, harassment, and poisoning" of the coyote population. Among the startling statistics: since the 1920s, over six million coyotes have been killed by poison. Despite this, the breed has proven resilient, multiplying and spreading to regions of North America where they hadn't been previously (hello, Rhode Island). American Bolshevik suggests we humans learn to live harmoniously with them.

The film's main talking head is Numi Mitchell, the enthusiastic director of the Narragansett Bay Study. She has for years tagged and tracked coyotes and documented their habits. Along the way we get insights from Diana Prince, philanthropist; Dan Flores, historian (who cites folklore that the coyote has been seen as a "flawed deity"); Chris Schadler of the New Hampshire Wildlife Coalition, and most notably Rolland Bellotti, identified simply as a "sharpshooter." Mr. Bellotti's gruffness contrasts nicely with Ms. Mitchell's strident altruism. Despite their contradictory missions—he hunts coyotes to kill them while she does so to study them—he and Ms. Mitchell have become unlikely allies.

American Bolshevik is directed by Julie Marron, whose previous films are Happygram (2015) and Four Games in Fall (2020). Her style in this is straightforward. Don't expect flashiness—the presentation eschews the frills of most modern documentaries, i.e. animation, reenactments, etc. Cinematography by Edward Eacueo and Dan Licht looks to have been captured on the run; these coyotes are fast, after all. The inclusion of Disney's 1961 cartoon The Coyote's Lament (which would be a better title for this film) shows early drumbeating for the cause.

American Bolshevik is designed to screen at fundraisers, chambers of commerce, and in high schools. More power to it: act locally, after all. The film’s message is simple: that it’s high time we humans see our animal brethren not just as inconveniences but as intelligent beings with sophisticated social systems. American Bolshevik is a worthy step in that direction.

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American Bolshevik. Written and directed by Julie Marron. 125 minutes. Released to video and streaming platforms by Lemon Martini Productions, 2023.

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Better Off Buried?

Chet Kozlowski — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 22:11:32 +0000

Better Off Buried? Chet Kozlowski March 8, 2023 - 17:11

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I almost gave up twice on the new film The Burial. The filmmaking is that inept. I'm a fan of low-budget horror films, and appreciate them as a springboard for fledgling talent; many great directors started in that genre. But I had a hard time finding any point at which quality is actually valued in this one. It's not the editing: the pacing in dialogue is all off. It’s not the camerawork: characters in over-the shoulders look like they're in different movies. It's not the score: music cues are truncated and often don't go the length of a scene.

I hate to give up on any film, especially one that presumably has investors behind it and is being put up for public viewing. Somebody believes in it. As a lifelong cinephile, I have a respect, albeit somewhat grudging in this case, for anyone who actually makes a movie. It takes time. It's a labor of love and an act of faith.

The Burial is directed by first-timer Michael Escalante, who also does the music, and whose bio includes interning with Roger Corman's New Horizons Pictures, an impressive credential. Corman is a sort of saint of the "micro budget" entertainment The Burial aspires to.

So I return a third time and try to be more patient with it.

A plot synopsis: city dweller Brian gets a call from his brother Keith, asking him to come to his remote cabin in the woods to help him with something. Significant Other Molly wants to go along. Brian initially says no, warning that his brother is "an alcoholic." But he relents and the couple travels into the backcountry. (Keith's cabin set looks less like the ramshackle abode of an alcoholic than a meeting room in a conference center. Double glass sliding doors (that lead where?) are off the kitchen. Built-in bookshelves that would suit a library are lined with encyclopedias. A big American flag on a pole graces one corner.)

Brian and Molly find Keith in distress: something has happened and it takes a while and a lot of lifestyle exposition (chopping wood, wandering around) to get to it: in a drunken rage, Keith has killed a man and needs to bury the body. He wants Brian to help him. Suspense and sibling bickering ensues.

The action is, as I've said, difficult to watch, not due to plot mechanics but technical prowess. Camera angles are mismatched throughout, which is distracting; for example, the burial scene is blocked to look like Brian and Keith, while working together, are digging different graves. Characters creep up on each other in open fields in broad daylight.

I stay with The Burial because the actors are giving it their all—Vernon Taylor as Brian is emotive and conflicted, Spencer Weitzel's Keith is wild-eyed and ready to blow, and Faith Kearns makes Molly's pluckiness endearing. Here again, the production could help them more: scenes look to be shot on an iPhone and certain cuts give us a startling glimpse of the actors' dental work.

The plot rolls out, and I'm about to hit the STOP button again, when, at the 42-minute mark …

… Lenny arrives.

I won't give it away who (or what) this guy is, but his monologue changes everything. Wisely, Escalante keeps the camera mostly on him, framed tight, for the length of his copious rant. Actor Aaron Pyle as Lenny is compelling and histrionic and funny. And suddenly we realize The Burial has more on its mind than previously suggested. It gets metaphysical on our ass.

The Burial is self-described in press materials as The Cabin in the Woods meets A Simple Plan, though both of those films had stronger narrative arcs, and more than a few ironic surprises. It's clear, after introducing Lenny, that this film's main source of inspiration is Twin Peaks. The confidence with which Lenny is presented hints at the faux naiveté of a David Lynch, and the impulse to make art out of trash cinema myths.

The Burial's press kit declares that it's "for genre fans only; it's a bit rough." Which also isn't exactly true; gore shots are stingy and the blood looks like ketchup. Opportunities for special effects, like people suddenly disappearing before our eyes (an act relevant to the plot) are passed up as well. And yet, after Lenny appears, the film shows some promise.

I don't know that I wholeheartedly recommend The Burial, but I'd watch another film by the same crew. So okay, Michael Escalante, former intern of Roger Corman's New Horizons Pictures. You have the background and the balls: make a more watchable movie next time out.

***

Postscript: after watching The Burial, I thought of Andy Milligan, one of the great virtuosos of Bad Cinema. I hadn't thought of Milligan in years, and used to be a big fan. Imagine him in a room in the Afterlife with Ed Wood. Jr. and Hershel Gordon Lewis and, oh, Ray Dennis Steckler; they were cut from the same cloth and would have much to discuss. Milligan's films, like Guru The Mad Monk, The Man with Two Heads, and Bloodthirsty Butchers—his retelling of Sweeney Todd—are made-on-a shoestring fever dreams full of fake gore and dismembered limbs. They might be exploitive screeds like The Degenerates or period dramas shot in one room, with actors who talk and talk and talk and whose wigs keep falling off. Milligan's films are bizarre, hypnotic, and unforgettable. I'd hazard a guess that David Lynch came upon them in art school and took early inspiration from them.

So why did I think of Andy Milligan after watching The Burial?

He too worked with what The Burial touts as a "micro budget," and was amateurish and lacked taste. Yet, conviction radiates off the screen. You believe. Andy Milligan loved movies, and had a genuine passion to make great ones.

He just didn't know how.

The Burial. 2021. Directed by Michael Escalante. 121 minutes/color. Distributed by Terror Films, direct to video.

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Esther's Come Back to Play

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 15:00:00 +0000

Esther's Come Back to Play Chet Kozlowski February 27, 2023 - 10:00

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Haley Heslip in Esther

What seems at first to be a faulty smoke alarm ends up meaning much more in director Matt Cunningham's creature feature Esther. This is the first in an anticipated slate of "short form horror" films planned by the startup digital production company Red Tower.

Esther is the story of Katy, who has moved back to her childhood home, abandoning her former life for an undisclosed reason. Her nightly sleep is disrupted by a faulty smoke alarm. She takes out the batteries, and it still goes off. Changes the thing, still goes off. She soon realizes that the faulty alarm is not faulty at all, but a ploy by her childhood imaginary friend Esther to re-enter her psyche.

Esther stars Haley Heslip (Void, Case 137), an appealing actress who resembles a young Martha Plympton (that's meant as a compliment). She has a doe-like quality that relays both vulnerability and resilience, difficult to establish in a 10-minute runtime. At that length, and with Ms. Heslip's performance, Esther is a small explosion, and leaves one wanting more.

Which works for and against expectations. There's only so much you can accomplish in ten minutes. Esther, like most contemporary horror, is phone-centric. The thing is virtually Katy's costar. The film opens with Katy FaceTiming her shrink, and goes on to have Katy calling her brother, then videoing the path to her horror. The mise en scéne is simple but the scare ambitions lofty. The score propels the narrative and hits the right knee jerk notes. This reviewer jumped twice, well-timed gooses that rely as much on what one hears as what one sees. I almost dropped my phone.

Director Matt Cunningham has impressive horror roots. While writing for Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, he met Wes Craven of Last House on the Left and Nightmare on Elm Street fame, who became his friend and mentor. Craven advised him to pursue his dream of becoming a horror film writer/director. Subsequently, Cunningham formed Night Prowler Video in 2015 with his wife and Executive Producer, Tara Cunningham, to produce genre film and television with flair and style inspired by his highly influential friend.

Red Tower hopes to attract and foster "world class filmmakers," but one wonders if the short form is suited to that. Just as you get rolling, you're done. No time to stretch out and modulate the chills, no time to brood on ghastly details, or even to admire the design of a creature like Esther. You end up, inevitably, with hot-button reflexes to reliable cliches. It's difficult for a Craven or an Aster or even a Raimi to make a serious impression. Forget Kubrick: in the time it takes for Danny Torrance to Hot Wheel it across the floors of the Overlook Hotel, the film is over. The challenge is one that will probably be taken up more by new filmmakers, adept in brevity, and possibly developing a new visual language.

One wishes Red Tower continued success. They are developing a full docket of films, and it can't come a moment too soon. Digital platforms have little patience for long production times. The way to be memorable is to keep it new and keep it coming. They're doing it, and kudos to them for trying.

Find a profile of Red Tower here.

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Esther, 9:42 minutes, color, produced by Red Tower. Written and directed by Matt Cunningham, Director of Photography Keith Golinski. Executive Producers Keith Golinski and Tara Cunningham. Available on popular digital platforms, including Instagram, YouTube, and Tik Tok.

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Red Tower Brings Short Form Horror to the Internet

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 15:00:00 +0000

Red Tower Brings Short Form Horror to the Internet Chet Kozlowski February 27, 2023 - 10:00

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Into the foray of digital content producers comes Red Tower, a new media house specializing in short form horror, emphasizing high quality and low cost. Their initial release, Esther, a creature feature, is reviewed elsewhere on CultureCatch.

Red Tower is the brainchild of filmmakers Brian Levin (Union Bridge) and D. M. Cunningham (The Spore, 3 Demons). Their mission is to serve genre fans and connoisseurs of contemporary horror in quick narrative bursts. "Having started in 2005 with one of the first online shows and later been involved in legacy television and film, I feel that the moment has truly arrived where old and new Hollywood have merged," said CEO Brian Levin. "The opportunity to bring the best artists in the world into a direct relationship with audiences at a global reach is a century in the making."

Mr. Levin began his career creating content for digital networks Turner's SuperDeluxe and 60Frames. After that, he worked closely with Brian Robbins producing and writing for projects at Comedy Central and Spike as well as AwesomenessTV. In 2016 he wrote and produced the comedy Flock of Dudes, distributed by Hulu and Starz, and in 2020 the film Union Bridge by Breaking Glass Pictures. While he began his career on the creative side of filmmaking, Mr. Levin now involves himself on the business side as well, acting as a producer and executive.

"We are thrilled to get Red Tower off the ground with our exciting first short, Esther, which will set the tone and voice of our digital network," said Mr. Levin.

Directed by D. M. Cunningham and starring Haley Heslip (Void, Case 137), Esther is the story of Katy, a young woman who has moved back to her childhood home for an undisclosed reason. She's in contact with her shrink on FaceTime and her brother. Katy's nightly sleep is disrupted by what she thinks is a faulty smoke alarm, but she soon learns the alarm is not faulty and is actually a ploy by an imaginary friend who has returned from the past to play.

The digital paradigm requires quality and quantity, of course, especially when entries like Esther run a scant 10-minutes. To meet that demand, Red Tower is currently in production on a slate of short form horror titles and is set to release new content weekly on their current digital channels including Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. A case in point is a kinky horror/humor series that begins with Motherhood Bites. The company expects to entice high level established creators into the new media ecosystem. Red Tower envisions a "deep network" of the best filmmakers in the business they can host online and bring to genre lovers everywhere.

"With the right talent and smart distribution, you can essentially build your own network that can connect to people across many screens and especially of interest-connected television sets. This is a new era where 'Creator Networks' will begin to compete with Broadcast and Cable networks," said Brian Levin. "Red Tower will lead the way with the attitude and the artistry to back it up. Transmission begins now."

Our review of Esther, Red Tower's first feature, can be found here.

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Redemption on Ice

Chet Kozlowski — Sun, 26 Feb 2023 19:50:41 +0000

Redemption on Ice Chet Kozlowski February 26, 2023 - 14:50

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Veera W. Vilo in Free Skate

One night, the police come upon body on the side of a dark, icy highway. It's a young woman, face down on the asphalt, in a costume and an "eastern block jacket." A gym bag lies by her side. She is out cold, but there's a pulse. She's alive.

Cut to a scene of practice in a skating rink, highs school girls stretching and gossiping, their revelry interrupted by hoodlums who brutalize one enough to rip out a hank of blonde hair. Her teammate looks on, horrified. A coach comes out of his office and is punched in the stomach before he can intervene. He could get up, but doesn't. He lets the hoods wreak their havoc.

Cut to a hospital, and a girl in bed, injuries tended to by doctors. It's not the blonde girl but her teammate. She's told that she's going away to recover at her grandmother's house in another country. Her grandmother is jovial and welcoming, and soon after the girl embarks on a training course in skating. Her trainers taunt her; one chides her for being "fat." The girl is sullen, and resigned, but keeps at it. She puts up with the tough love because "I just want to skate."

We watch the skater gradually regain her self-esteem and compete. And start to win. And get noticed. At which point a TV reporter requests an interview with this "new" talent. On camera, the reporter ambushes her about her past: why has the skater "jumped" countries? Why has she left a renowned career in Russia to grace humble Finland?

Because remember: there's still the issue of that body on the side of the road, dressed in an eastern block jacket…

Does my synopsis reveal too much? No. Free Skate plays with time, and is about to backtrack to show us what's been withheld. The story is about to open up.

Free Skate is a Finnish production directed by Roope Olenius. It's his second feature, the first being Tuftland (2017). The screenplay is by Veera W. Vilo, whose background is music, medal-winning gymnastics, and acting: in fact, she portrays the protagonist of Free Skate, named simply the Figure Skater. Olenius and Vilo are married, and are a team to watch.

They do an impressive job with a small budget. The first section is naturalistic to seem amateurish. Dialogue goes from Finnish to Russian to English, and readings are a little clunky. But from the TV interview on, director and writer/star show control of the narrative. Production values improve: blocking gets intricate, colors sharpen, edits are more purposeful. A style emerges, or if not a style, at least an intent.

The characters are appealing as well, from the loveable grandmother (Leena Uotil), to the coach and choreographer (Karoliinan Blackburn and Miikka J. Anttila) who believe in our protagonist before knowing who she is. Ms. Vilo especially commands as our focus. She brings a desperation to small moments, especially in that first section described above. She goes from doughy to lithe, flying agilely across the ice, and projects grace. The pivot in plot comes at about the halfway point in Free Skate's runtime. By then we've settled into the human drama and developed sympathy for the characters, largely due to her compelling performance. The look she flashes the camera in the final shot sends chills.

The era of the action is unclear. Production took place 2019-2021, but its technology is old-school analogue, which works to its advantage. The Skater's story would be undercut by social media, her whereabouts easily tracked through the smartphone. In fact, there's not a phone in sight. Practice music is on a CD in a boombox. Grandmother's VHS player blinks and whirs and shows a young woman, a skater, being celebrated at the top of her game, who looks startingly like our protagonist. At this point we realize that the Figure Skater is more than she seems. It's a clue, exposition parsed out in small details. We get much info in a sauna scene with the Skater and her grandmother, the two women naked and making room on the bench for the relationship that connects them. The generational chain has been broken. The link, the mother, is absent. And the father, the grandmother says, has gone crazy.

The press kit describes this as a "thriller;" it’s not that, exactly, at least by Hollywood standards. There are no thrills per se, no daring rescues or narrow escapes. But it's something more subtle. It brings to mind the 1979 film Breaking Away (U.S., directed by Steve Teich). That too achieved a balance between the human story and the one rooted in sports. Free Skate is by no means in rah-rah "Gonna Fly Now" territory; it veers in its second act into a kinder, gentler Black Swan.

And as such, it ends up, for all its ambition, a little too tasteful. Or is it timid? Its topic hits hard: corruption at its basest, both political and psychological. Betrayal by those who should protect. Its climax localizes a conflict whose implications are much vaster -- much more than those implied in this review -- and doesn’t really solve the Skater's dilemma. Did the filmmakers bite off more than they could chew, or do they want simply to attract to the widest audience?

Free Skate takes some surprising narrative paths before settling into a conventional plot. It's inventive and daring in its way. But for all its pleasures, the film pulls back when it should spin and soar forward into a fateful arabesque.

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Free Skate. Directed by Roope Olenius, written by Veera W. Vilo. 142 minutes. Finland, 2021. Bright Fame Pictures. Released to theaters.

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I Was a Serial Puppet Killer or Dennis Cooper’s “Jerk” Splinters onto the Big Screen

Brandon Judell — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 01:57:54 +0000

I Was a Serial Puppet Killer or Dennis Cooper’s “Jerk” Splinters onto the Big Screen Brandon Judell February 20, 2023 - 20:57

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horror

Jerk clearly is in the running for the most disturbing feature presented at the recent Los Angeles-based Film Maudit 2.0, one of the more important alternative arts festivals in the country. (It ended February 12th.)

For the context of this verdict, imagine you saw some of the fest's other offerings such as the visually brilliant, ten-years-in-the-making Agatha, which warns you not to fatally run down a witch's daughter, or Jack James' Wild Bones, an ode to adult madness caused either by an incestuous dancing mom or a cigarette-smoking dad. Then you'd immediately know how discombobulating Jerk is.

I won't even mention Maudit 2.0's programming of shorts where an alien Santa pees on stoned-out gents; a closeted homosexual of Asian descent serial-kills other gays of Asian descent and keeps their bodies for company; or the one where a telepathic metal warehouse makes fun of a young man who once smelled bad in school and was known as "Big Dump."

You may correctly gather from this review's title that Jerk costars puppets as you have seldom seen them manhandled before. Fans of Pinocchio beware!

Giséle Vienne's uninhibited French adaptation of Dennis Cooper's own short story and play is based on the "actual abduction, rape, torture, and murder of at least 28 boys and young men in between 1970 and 1973 in Houston, Texas." Yes, the real-life killers, Dean Corll and his two teenage aides, have very detailed entries on Wikipedia.

One of the two accomplices was David Brooks (1955–2020), who here is performed by the blue-eyed and unshaven Jonathan Capdevielle. In an amazingly controlled yet borderline unhinged take, his Brooks, while in prison, walks onto a dark stage, sits on a wooden chair, and starts reenacting the murders with the aforementioned puppets.

His zippered hoodie, by the way, is imprinted with J-E-R-K. His audience: an unseen but occasionally heard group of visiting students from the University of Texas. Why are they there? For their undergraduate course, "Freudian Psychology Refracted through Post-Modern Examples."

Decidedly, Jerk's both a satire of sorts on academia and a tongue-in-cheek-and-elsewhere look at the full-scale acceptance today of sexual violence that’s now slithered into our living rooms and onto our campuses (e.g. Netflix's Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story).

The characters of Cooper's oeuvre, inspired by his exposure to Rimbaud and the Marquis de Sade from age 15 on, are often in need of knife sharpeners. If you are a teen boy in his stories, you are lucky to die with your body still intact.

Or in his Safe (1984), there is a tale of a quietly buried queer founder of a town whose dug-up corpse years later is discovered to be nourishing the roots of an apple tree. The "fruit was renowned for its sweet flavor . . . . Townsfolk were eating the flesh of their forefather each time they bit in those crisp red apples." Whole Foods doesn't carry this variety. I know. I asked.

Macintoshes aside, Mr. Cooper, a delight in person, also has very fine table manners and is conversationally gifted. We once lunched decades ago. I was interviewing him for a Rosa-von- Praunheim documentary that never saw the light of day. I also, in the late 1970s, carried a gigantic cardboard photo of Mr. Cooper, supplied by his publisher, as part of the gay writers' contingent of the Gay Pride March.

Maybe this is why I usually find humor in his embracing of the Grand Guignol of life even as I more than once have to take a break from his visions to recoup my soul. His creations, often numb, are unable to connect with others whom they see as also emotionally anesthetized. "If I can't feel your love, let me feel your guts," they seem to say.

Take this exchange from "Jerk," which was reprinted in the 2009 collection of Cooper stories, Ugly Man. Here a teen recruits himself for his own slaughter.

"Are you gay?" asks Wayne, vaguely attracted to the guy.

"It doesn’t matter," Brad folds his arms defensively. "Sex is stupid."

"Why do you want to die?" asks David.

"Well, why not, right?" Brad laughs. "That’s one thing. Life is too confusing. And death just sounds like a great place. The worst that could happen is nothing . . . like, just becoming nothing, which sounds okay to me. But if certain people are right, it could really be out there. Demons and shit! Retribution to the living! I'm ready."

Without any forethought, I plunged into Ugly Man this past summer just because it was on my shelf and had been for 13 years. I also liked the cover (a medium-sized pickle), and I wanted a quick read for the subway. I didn't know I would encounter the filmic transformation of "Jerk" within months. I was clearly taken aback last week when the story started unspooling before my eyes and I realized “I know this.”

A half-hour into Jerk, the movie, a blond killer-puppet version of David's lover, Elmer Wayne Henley, is crying over two bloody puppets, one of whom he had previously known from high school: "Jamie . . . Jamie . . . I'm sorry . . . I'm sorry I killed you. . . Jamie, I guess I just thought, you know, it would be sexy like always . . . seeing Dean kill you. And helping him. And Jamie, it was. It was sexy . . . But I'm sorry, you know? Jamie, I loved you, man . . . I could never tell you."

The camera slowly drifts away from the wooden threesome and moves up the arm animating the action. The puppeteer's face fills the screen. David is shaking his head. Is he still upset over this remembrance of the killings or is he more upset that his boyfriend just admitted he was in love with a young man who is now a corpse?

Does David feel betrayed? (It should be revealed that Mr. Brooks apparently was not physically involved in the killings. He just did some of the victim-luring, the filming of the slaughters, and the consigning to the grave of what remained of the youths.)

Without argument, one might honestly declare Jerk a rare, perfect fusion of text and its visualization . . . of brutality and its burlesque . . . of the absurd intertwined with an undeniable element of damnable verisimilitude. All of this reminds me of how Pauline Kael once noted of the film Broken Arrow (1950), a western starring James Stewart: "I've never heard of anybody--man or child--who didn't enjoy this movie. Not that it's film art." Vienne's offering will certainly not be greeted with such unanimous adoration, but then it is film art.

But I must admit I thought Jerk was a work of imagination when I first read the short story, and when I first watched the film. Then I researched the tale's underpinnings. This was all true as noted. Suddenly, I saw less of the humor, except maybe in that David Brooks died at age 65 from COVID-19. For him, that was probably a peacefully banal ending.

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It's Even Worse than You Think

Chet Kozlowski — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 20:14:59 +0000

It's Even Worse than You Think Chet Kozlowski February 13, 2023 - 15:14

Topics

Film Review

Tags

drama

Thomas Sadoski and Brandon Victor Dixon

88 - Written, Directed, Produced and Edited by Eromose

So on a quiet Sunday morning, along comes this unassuming screener for a film that touts appearances by some of my favorite character actors. As I queue it up, I consider how the great quantity of new streaming "content" has revitalized careers that may have been assumed to have run their course. Orlando Jones, Michael J. Harney, and William Fichtner all appear in the subject line. I settle in and am soon immersed in a tasty little political thriller that seeks to do nothing less than cast all our assumptions about our current world order into doubt.

88 premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Festival. It was written/directed/edited/etc. by a fellow named Eromose, who goes by a single name and identifies as having Nigerian roots, an English upbringing, and an education at Columbia University. Eromose is no stranger to Tribeca: his first feature film, Legacy, was an acclaimed entry in 2010 and his short film Nostradamus premiered there in 2015. His resumé lists him also as a coder and software developer. One of 88's executive producers is the radio host and media activist Charlamagne Tha God. The film's mission, according to press materials, is to "capture the cultural zeitgeist of government mistrust and institutional racism."

That said, Eromose has a number of films in his catalogue, and a finely-honed polemic sense. Straight off, one must admire his sense of proportion: 88 is a diminutive film in its production values, but its ambitions are enormous.

The story centers on Femi, a financial director, new to the Super PAC of a forerunner Black presidential candidate. Femi, who is Black himself, uncovers a chilling pattern in the campaign donations: 75% of them come from a nondescript not-for-profit, but each donation totals an amount of 88. What could it mean? His AA sponsor, who is Jewish and an investment blogger, recognizes it as code for the eighth letter of the alphabet, repeated to "HH," which in White Supremacist circles translates to "Heil Hitler." Femi comes to realize that his candidate might have been groomed since high school with this dark money, and in fact part of a secret movement. Do the man's egalitarian talking points mask a next-phase Nazi agenda? Is the Master Race alive and thriving amongst the 1% who covertly rule the world?

It's heady stuff, Matrix-like in concept (that film is directly referenced), but avoids lapsing into shrill Conspiracy Theory mode, instead calmly offering a plausible alternate history and destiny for the USA. Eromose doesn't have nearly the budget of The Matrix, and veers off more into Manchurian Candidate territory, ultimately opting for a cautionary tale over one steeped in special effects and sensationalism.

Brandon Victor Dixon plays Femi Jackson, the financial director, and has a relaxed Everyman appeal. His family dynamic anchors the scenario: they are Black, suburban, and principled. Femi and his pregnant wife Maria (Naturi Naughton) and nine-year-old son Ola (Jeremiah King) navigate hot-button issues of today, mostly the continued subjugation of Black people. Femi is a recovering alcoholic and a reluctant hero, unsure of his own perceptions or how far he wants to take things. He is advised at one point to "Grow some balls," to which he replies, "I have a wife and kid. Balls are a luxury." Maria is strident and works her bullshit-detector within the system; she's a banker calling out systemic loan rejections of enterprising Black customers. She calls out her husband for wanting to theme Ola's birthday party with Wakanda Forever, seeing its hidden message as promoting Western colonialism. Thomas Sadoski, memorable in HBO's The Newsroom, plays Ira, Femi's sponsor with the right amount of charm, alarm, and cynicism. He and Femi are a shaggy Woodward and Bernstein, and their finely wrought scenes mount narrative tension confidently. The "indirect social engineering" threat they expose grows in sinister dimension, the dots connected deftly by the screenplay and direction.

The production values hover at After School Special level. But Eromose does a lot with a little. His film has heart, and goes easy on the flash, indulging in only a few showy montages. Most of it is played naturally and realistically, as with a subtle hand-on-shoulder motif to portray human contact. The narrative ambitions aren't large, which makes the thematic ones more effective.

Those character actors I anticipated are used sparingly. Orlando Jones plays the candidate Harold Roundtree as man who "knows himself" but may be more complicit in the supremacy plot than he appears. Most of Roundtree's brief scenes are staged as a TV news interview with the always-watchable William Fichtner as a Charlie Rose style newsman. And there's a kick to being with a character inside a car, hear a knock at the passenger side window and who slips in but Jon Tenney. The one who gets the most to do is Michael J. Harney: his gruff, old-school political consultant is integral to the team's workings. Less familiar actors include Amy Sloan as the fundraising director in a state of denial, Brian Norris as a shadowy coffee boy, and Jonathan Weir as the unwitting (?) architect of the White Supremacist plan. All do solid work.

88 is a satisfying exercise in social observation and cultural warning. Its script is sharp and its direction crisp. Scenes are full of everyday conflict that keep them crackling (Femi and Maria, for example, have a white cop as a brother-in-law). The film, by the multitalented Eromose, is accomplished, thoughtful, and serious in a way one wishes would be more evident in today's cinematic landscape.

But Eromose, a word of advice? Lose the score. Or at least pare it down. It's too often trite and manipulative. A patriotic drum tattoo is laid under a rah-rah staff meeting. A tender scene gets a tinkly piano. At best the music is clichéd and conventional, at worst distracting and inappropriate to the emotional tone. It smooths out scenes that could stand to be rougher. That's not to say that some don't benefit from the soundtrack, but a stripped-down score, rather than one so reliant on swelling strings, would better suit the film’s straightforward simplicity.

88 is written, directed, produced, and edited by Eromose. 122 minutes. Released by Samuel Goldwyn Films, Feb. 17, 2023.

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Love, Horror, and Hot Dogs

Chet Kozlowski — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 15:00:00 +0000

Love, Horror, and Hot Dogs Chet Kozlowski February 11, 2023 - 10:00

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Film Review

Tags

horror

The heyday of the horror anthology film was arguably the 1960s, when everyone from B-movie maven Roger Corman (Tales of Terror) to French auteur Roger Vadim (Blood and Roses) was making them. Corman, in fact, made a string of films based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. These "omnibus" films featured three or four discrete stories, tied together by a host or some other framing device. They appealed to the audience's episodic sensibility shaped by TV, while still getting them out to the movie theaters. These films were ostensibly inspired by EC Comics, whose titles like Tales from the Crypt established a style of ghoulish fun.

While the anthology form has been relatively dormant lately, except for some entries like the V/H/S franchise and Tales from the Hood, we can now add to it this Spanish entry that touts its exposure of first-time directors.

Vampus Horror Tales opens promisingly with a quote from Robert Louis Stevenson. The film is composed of four "necrophiliac tales" hosted by a wizened grave keeper/robber named Mr. Fettes (but who prefers to be called Vampus) played by Saturnino Garcia. Vampus buries bodies by day and exhumes them by night. He has a surprising number of visitors at his decrepit shed, among them an internet influencer and a doctor, all of whom he dispatches by stabbing them, or bludgeoning them, or sacrificing them to his demon pet Toby. Don't turn your back on this old coot. Some he feeds first, which is where the hot dogs come in. Besides his official duties, Vampus runs a food truck. It specializes in hot dogs. And where does he get the meat…?

You get the idea.

In his connecting segments, Vampus breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to his audience, calling us "little ones." He chatters on, setting us up for the tales by admonishing, advising, and offering aphorisms ("You don't beg for love. You have to earn it"). He works from a large dust-laden comic book, and each episode opens and ends in a drawing that morphs into or out of live action, a device used in everything from The Wild, Wild West to George Romero's Creepshow. The trouble is, the drawings In Vampus Horror Tales are wispy sketches, and lack the high-contrast dynamism of a real comic panel. Sadly, this device, like the most of the movie, is warmed over and passionless.

All four stories take place on Halloween night, and concern love, lust, and betrayal (and hot dogs show up often). It's filmed on video and is entirely in black and white, an odd choice for a mise en scéne so blood-drenched. Throats are cut and heads bashed in, and "blood" spurts out and runs black, as if each character has spouted chocolate syrup.

To be fair, the stories improve as they go along. Vistas widen, effort is obvious. The first, "The Wedding," directed by Manuel Martínez Velasco, is the flattest. A bride in her gown and the wedding's witness find themselves in a sort of purgatory from which they cannot escape and they don't remember coming to, a room below the one in which the actual wedding is taking place. The set-up is little more than two people talking, and the set resembles—and might well be—a warehouse of stage props (a huge teddy bear is an irrelevant set piece).

"Birthday," directed by Erika Elizalde, is next. Same-sex lovers are stranded in a malfunctioning fun house with a masked killer on the loose. The situation is clichéd and uninspired, and looks filmed in the same warehouse as "The Wedding."

"Second Date," directed by Isaac Berrocal, is more ambitious. A man takes a blind woman on a country retreat in order to exploit her disability in a kinky game of cat and mouse. This one could've used more of the EC Comics spirit. EC Comics, which was closed down by Congressional intervention in the 1950s, were notorious not only for their gore but for their subversive sense of humor (EC eventually begat Mad magazine). They dealt in irony and twist endings: turnabout was always fair play, the predator could easily become the prey. "Second Date" suffers from the same lack of cleverness as most of Vampus Horror Tales. Villain and victim are tagged from the get-go, and the situation is resolved not with wit but with carnage.

The fourth and final segment, "Lineage," directed by Piter Moreira, is the most inventive. A Hazmat-suited couple arrive at an abandoned sanitorium, fleeing a pandemic. The wife is inflected and has become a vampire; she's here to either dry out or die. "Lineage" uses more exterior shots, and contains genuine narrative surprises. It has little dialogue but true emotional heft and an array of unpredictable characters. Many of the images attain a haunting moodiness that are reminiscent of Luc Besson's Le Dernier Combat.

But on the whole, Vampus Horror Tales disappoints, which is hard for a film of this sort to do. Horror audiences accept a lot. They come ready for shocks and scares, and look past low budgets and incoherent plots. Fans don't have to be convinced, they just have to be entertained. Horror audiences are there, in every sense of the word. All the filmmaker needs to do is show engagement with the material, some ingenuity with not a lot of money, and a healthy respect for surprises and suspense. The filmmaker fails only due to a lack of conviction.

Vampus Horror Tales lacks that conviction.

(For the record, Victor Matellano directs the "Vampus" interludes.)

VAMPUS HORROR TALES, 142 minutes, black and white, from Spain. Released by Uncork'd Entertainment February 17, 2023 on digital and on demand.

Mr. Kozlowski teaches literature and film. His short stories are collected in a volume titled Home at Last.