Review of the film Louder Than A Bomb

            Disclosure: I was there during the years prior to the filming of this documentary. I remember these kids and I even remember parts of their amazing spoken word poems after years. This movie touched me in a way that people who were not present there would never understand. But I’m sure it does wonders for those individuals as well. You can’t help but be affected by the sincerity, verve and talent.

            The film is called Louder Than A Bomb, named for the explosive annual teen poetry slam that takes place in Chicago. The competition was co-founded by an amazing non-profit organization, Young Chicago Authors, which teaches and promotes creative writing and literature throughout the city and surrounding areas. High school aged youths recite personally written poems to audiences of their peers as well as judges. The judges give them scores, and teams and individuals win, yes, but it’s the poem not the points that stay with you long after the slam is finished.

            Directors Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel document the months, weeks and days leading up to the annual competition by focusing on a few enigmatic and diverse handful of participants in 2008. This angle doesn’t lessen one’s understanding of the beauty of the slam; it serves to deepen that understanding. Nova, Nate, Adam and the Steinmenauts slam team are not rosily lit, tentative, one-dimensional young adults. This is a documentary. Most of the television shows and films that feature teen life are written by those with a heavy nostalgia for that period of their lives. They don’t see with the eyes of those who are living it at this moment. These teens are living it; they are living it and shouting about it to audiences who clap and cheer for the realism of their language and expressions. Part of the wonder of the Louder Than A Bomb slam is the audience, full of other teens who appreciate the cadence of a phrase, the unexpected rhyme of a line, the brave effort to speak exactly what you know exactly how it feels to you.

            I recall snatches and pieces of verse all these years later. I volunteered with Young Chicago Authors for a few years after I moved to Chicago in late 2004. I’ve lived here since that year, and this film is the most distinctly Chicago film that I’ve ever seen. It’s because of the words and faces and love of creativity that spills from the projector onto the screen and beyond. It’s true diversity I see there. And the true acceptance that flows from the young people who fill the audience at the competition, listening and responding to the poems being performed. It’s because those poems take me places I’ve never been with a clarity that I could never get anywhere else. Louder Than A Bomb reflects the best that society has to offer. It’s in the stringing together of thoughts and words and gestures into something that has the power to move and inspire. Listen to the poem.

Review of the film Melancholia

Where will you go when the world ends? Who will you be with? And will you look away? Or will you face the end, open your arms and embrace it?

The film Melancholia begins with long, gorgeous strains of the theme from Wagner's Tristan & Isolde and long, drawn out and beautiful shots of scenes that may have never happened. These scenes lead us to understand that another, larger planet is spinning it's way through the darkness towards Earth. Will the two enormous objects collide? In the reality of Director Lars Von Trier, it seems apparent what the answer is to this question.

There is a wedding party inside a sumptuous mansion, lavish and exorbitant, something beyond what the majority of us will ever experience.  The party seems to go on for hours as Justine (Kirsten Dunst), the bride, attempts to smile and bow to her guests and family. But there is a heaviness to her movements and expressions; they come a step too slowly and are a bit stilted. It becomes evident that, despite the beautiful and sympathetic husband, the sudden grand promotion from her boss, the perfection of the festivities and those attending, Justine is not well. And it all comes from within. Her mind is not well.

There are sensations of feeling that cannot be fully understood by those who have ever experienced them. It's to move as if underwater, attempting to walk through the depths of the ocean, fighting the weightlessness, parting the wall of liquid with your hands and shoving, ripping through. Or perhaps, it is like earthy vines wrapping around your wrists, ankles and waist as you attempt to move forward, their grip and gravity pulling you back and down like the heaviest burdens. The world does exist to those under this spell. But it is so overwhelmingly tiresome living in it. Food holds no comfort, companions do not speak an understandable language, rituals offer no easing of tension. Sleep is the only welcome respite.

 Justine lives for these moments, where unconsciousness and dreams offer something beyond everyday existence. It’s a wonder that, with the patterns of her behavior, that she is as tolerated as she is. Those around her quickly come to their boiling points as she languishes in her depression.

But then that new planet draws nearer, so that its coming can be seen in the daylight sky. And Justine suddenly feels lighter, freer, with the end of life closing in on every one of Earth’s inhabitants. Her dark view of the world is becoming true right above her head. And she is soothed that she was always right.

Melancholia is deeply autobiographical for its director. Von Trier has suffered from sometimes crippling depression and anxiety all his life. The film is beautifully executed and the actors, particularly Dunst, inhabit their characters well. She is utterly convincing as someone weighted with a deeply ill mind. But I wonder what Justine’s story would be if she were not of such privileged stuff. How different would she be if she inhabited a lower rung of society? I see Justine in these elements and I do find her tale believable. However, as I watched this film, I speculated about those other 7 billion stories that Von Trier did not tell in his film. In the end, though, they all came to the same fate, it seems.

Will you realize that the end of the world is what you have been waiting for your whole life?

Review of the film Drive

Moments of violence happen everywhere, all the time, and there seems no explanation for most of them. But there are always actions, decisions leading to those seconds and minutes. We just may never know them; their reasons will remain un-divulged by the universe. Be sure they’re there, though, and that a past always proceeds a present.

Ryan Gosling plays the lead character in the new film Drive, unnamed and quiet—a stunt driver for the movies and a car mechanic. He also moonlights as a getaway driver for criminal heists. He has a mantra that he follows for these night-lit jobs: You go in. I start the clock. You have 5 minutes, and I’m yours during that time. A minute on either side of that 5, and I’m gone. He meets a beautiful and kind neighbor, played by Carey Mulligan, and her young, quick to smile son, and that mantra slips from him in a following moment. This moment, laced heavily with his newfound vulnerability, leads to all that comes afterwards—the weighty actions that bring us through the story.

It will come as a surprise to no one that this movie is extremely violent. Nearly every reviewer who has analyzed the film has discussed this. There’s a slow burn to the violence that pervades the end of the story. And it is so shocking because it has taken so long to appear. Gosling’s Driver has been so quiet and coiled throughout the proceedings, but now he is unleashed, brutal and efficient. He is very good at being the kind of violent that the story shows; he is so good at it that one begins to wonder about how he came to be so effective and severe. What in his past lead him to his skill? It certainly isn’t just the part time occupation of a stunt car driver. There has to be more that happened before this. But it’s never divulged in the film. The plot is laser-focused. There are no extraneous details or subplots here to get lost in. The only thing is this story.

            The director, Nicholas Winding Refn (Bronson, Valhalla Rising), has crafted a film that seems deeply felt but also deeply illusive. We feel for these characters, however little we know about them through the pieces the story gives us. It's in the glances, the tone of a single word, the lean of a spine. How does one glean such emotion from so little? I’ve done more with less, believe me. This movie pulls viewers into it like simply opening a passenger side door and slipping inside. It’s just that good.

Review of the film Another Earth

In the film Another Earth scientists discover a new planet in the sky identical to our own right down to the people inhabiting it. Instead of perplexing over the science behind such a surprising anomaly—tides, gravitational forces, physics—the population is thrown into questioning what this means to each of them individually and as a whole. There is the possibility that those duplicates inhabiting Earth Two have made better choices than us, or perhaps, different mistakes. There is the possibility that they are as curious about us as we are about them, that they have some of the same questions.

On the same night of the sudden appearance of Earth Two in space orbiting our sun, Rhoda, a gifted teenager, is celebrating her admittance to MIT. But the planet's distracting presence in the night sky leads to a deadly car crash with Rhoda at the wheel of one of the vehicles involved. She survives, but her life is thrown off its course by the tragedy. Some years later, Rhoda lives an existence of dangerously self-absorbed guilt and regret. She is yoked with these feelings and spends more and more time gazing at the looming specter of Earth Two, visible even in daylight now, wondering about fate and mistakes.

Depressed to the point of self-harm, unable to find forgiveness from herself, she approaches the only other survivor of the car crash. John is a former music professor and composer whose existence is also in disarray ever since that tragic night. Under false pretenses, Rhoda insinuates herself into his life, and they begin a strange and timid romance greatly hindered by loss and the weight and size of Rhoda's secret.

By this time, space travel to Earth Two has become a reality, and there is a contest for a free seat aboard one of the first flights. Individuals must write a 500-word essay describing why he or she is the most qualified candidate to visit the mirror planet. Rhoda sends a submission and wins the spot. You can begin to guess where this development leads.

Director Mike Cahill worked on nature documentaries for the National Geographic Society before making this film his first fictional foray. There is a raw feeling to the proceedings that seems sincerely organic and truthful. This is despite the often overly precocious score or the overtly significant slow-motion tracking shots. Cahill melds the threads of story about loss and regret and those of the science fiction well. This feels like something that could happen, if only because the questions raised seem so organic, as if ones that each of us would ask upon the sudden appearance of a mirror planet in the sky. An occurrence beyond comprehension. Something that could only lead to the deepest soul-searching for each of us.

Review of the film Cowboys & Aliens

 

The synopsis of the film Cowboys & Aliens is in the title. There isn't much more to say. Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford star in this Jon Favreau (Iron Man) directed summer action extravaganza as cowboys in the Old West who encounter and are terrorized by said aliens. These demonic creatures from outer space are out for them and the cast of townspeople inhabiting this world with them. The two starring growlers must band together in order to save the population from certain destruction, and what comes after that offers few surprises.  That is not to say that I was not somewhat entertained; there are enough characters, talking and movement to bolster a viewer along. Plus, I'm a horse girl. And men in chaps do not bother me in the least, especially Daniel Craig.

But again, don't go into this film expecting anything more than advertised. This is a mash-up of genres, sure, but it serves to add nothing to either one. It's too bad, because  the cast could do more with even less. If there were a consistent market for movie Westerns, then Walter Goggins, Keith Carradine and Adam Beach would be appearing in many. Sam Rockwell, a character actor unafraid of chewing some scenery, certainly isn't given much to work with. And I'm sure that Director Favreau could add more flavor to the alien genre as he did with the superhero genre in Iron Man. I guarantee that after the summer is over, this film will be little more than a fuzzy blip on our summer movie memories.

Review of the film Down To The Bone

Snakes are interesting creatures gifted with bone structures most alien compared to that of the human skeletal system. Their skulls consist of complete and solid brain cases but are hinged loosely to the bones of the jaw, allowing for the ingesting of prey larger than the reptiles doing the ingesting. The vertebral column of snakes are composed of 200 to 400 vertebrae and allow them to bend and undulate, unimpeded by their lack of limbs. Most snakes, when killing their victims, use a combination of sharp bite and constriction to subdue before swallowing their prey whole.

The outstanding film Winter's Bone by Director Debra Granik chilled me with its stark realism and the dignity and intelligence of the female lead. The movie garnered great attention for the director and it's then unknown star, Jennifer Lawrence. Before this, Director Granik had quietly but definitively broken onto the scene with another powerful and realistic depiction of a troubled but strong woman confronted with the worst life has to offer. The film is called Down To The Bone based on her award-winning short Snake's Feed and left me quite astounded with its gravity.

Vera Farmiga plays Irene, a grocery cashier, wife and mother of two in upstate New York who goes to great pains to believe her cocaine addiction does not lead her life. She skims along the surface of her life, sometimes wildly happy with coke in her system, and other times desperately crying because her dealer will not accept her son's birthday check from his grandmother in exchange for a fix. This last episode snaps her into entering drug rehab. There she meets a male nurse named Bob who seems to understand her desire to live her life drug free and may also feel something for her. But when she returns to the real world again after only a week of being clean it is obvious that this will be a battle Irene was not expecting.

Every day, every moment, is dictated by addiction and it's hunger within Irene. She may have gone a week without using, but she will forever be an addict. This is a film where you see the inner workings of a person; her life is happening right before us. There are no flashy time lapses by Director Granik, and we are not sparred the discomforts of Irene's journey by smart camera angles or wild storytelling. She takes up a romance with the rehab nurse Bob. The fevered nature of their relationship challenges both their sobrieties, and, with the coming of winter, there is a downbeat playing out of events that seems as close to reality as anything currently on celluloid.

The film does not end tidily as these things never truly do. Irene reminds us that it is difficult to ever forget that which troubles us--that our minds find every reason not to forget. And, in fact, their natures are not to let go until we are swallowed whole. 

Review of the film Monsters

In the low-budget, independent film Monsters, it is quickly explained that in the near future a space probe is sent to Europa, a moon of Jupiter. Upon returning, it crash-lands in Mexico with some sort of alien life-form aboard that escapes into the open and begins infecting the jungles. The results of this infection are giant alien monsters that roam through the forests, responding aggressively only when first attacked and propagating throughout the countryside. This infected area is quickly quarantined, and the United States builds a massive wall to block the monsters from invading the country and begins assaulting them with missiles and explosives from aircraft above.

Andrew is a photojournalist working in the Central American area bordering this infected zone. He chronicles the effects of the monsters and the collateral damage from the battle against them. His wealthy boss orders him to escort his daughter, Samantha, through the infected zone back to the United States where her fiancé is waiting for her return. They fail to board a boat sailing across the Gulf to the coast of the U.S. and are forced to navigate through the very dangerous and wild terrain with hired guns to protect them.

It seems like a standard alien monster movie from the setup, but the creators seem to be attempting something a bit different. Viewers rarely see the giant creatures, but their threat and that of the wild landscape are always present in the tension of a scene, looming about in cast shadows and the lines in the characters' visages.  We do see the aftermath of the carnage wrecked by the war against the alien infection. A young girl's body lies on the dirt road that the small group uses nears a pickup truck that has been destroyed by a missile or a monster; it is difficult to say which one. Andrew has the opportunity to snap several photos of the scene. Journals back in the States would pay a high price for shots of a poor child killed in this conflict. But he hesitates, gazing at the worn shoe that hangs off her toes. Eventually the group moves on, and the creatures' moans are audible all around them as they call to one another, communing across the distance.

Traveling closer to the U.S. border, we see the huge wall that has been built to keep the monsters and infection out. It is an awesome sight, rendered even more impressive by how low the film’s budget was. In the story, however, this wall may not be as effective as it looks and the authorities had hoped. The final scenes take place just across that border as Andrew and Samantha attempt to find someone to point them in the direction of help. This new landscape appears as devastated and abandoned as that they have just come through. The alien monsters are nearby, and as night descends on them, they witness the creatures and begin, perhaps, to understand what their true desires on our planet are. Monsters is an interesting film, certainly not perfect and, at times, quite silly. But the visuals, tone, and ideas are worth the time.

   

Review of the film The King's Speech

    If you'd like to feel warm, fuzzy and entertained at the conclusion of a film, see The King's Speech. If you don't all ready know what it's about yet, then prepare to be mildly, but not very, surprised. But I think most of you know what it's about--it's been talked about and praised enough in the media that it would have been hard to miss a synopsis at this point.
   I have to say this, it wasn't boring. In fact, it was engaging and extremely well done. The reason I seem so blase during this review is that I feel I have seen this before--the grouchy but lovable underdog rises to the occasion with the help of his sharp-witted, patient girl who gets him in with a unorthodox but successful coach that challenges and pushes him to greatness. And of course, the acting was amazing, but it seems the actors had been through the paces of the story before and the producers and the director and everyone involved in the film. It was, of course, a Merchant Ivory Film, right?
    Not much to say besides that; it seems to have been all ready pontificated from the highest points of the show business mountain. Be sure, it was a lovely film and worth the time. That is all.

Review of the film Hanna

            In the forest, a hunter pursues her prey. She stalks and tracks movements using the bare trees and brush to hide her presence expertly. The male reindeer does not sense her until it is too late. An arrow slams into his chest and he is off, sprinting through the snowdrifts, but death is certain. The hunter follows, her stride assured and quick. The animal breaks out of the trees onto an ice field and eventually collapses. Drawing near, the hunter pulls her pistol and takes aim. We are somewhere near the Artic Circle where ice and snow prevail and silence is only broken by the shot entering the heart of the downed, wounded beast. “I just missed your heart.”

The problem with Hanna is not the journey the new film by Director Joe Wright (Atonement) takes its audience on, it is the fogginess of its destination. The action moves at a frenetic pace and when there is a lull in the action, which isn’t often, the story pops with beautiful scenery, people and dialogue. It leaves us gasping for more, except, there linger questions—why the rush and where are we being taken?

            These questions come, but the velocity at which the conflicts of the film are happening leave little time for ruminations. The frenzied camerawork of the cinematographer and thumping score by The Chemical Brothers make it hard to concentrate on anything other than the action occurring right before our eyes.

Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is 16 and has lived in the forest close to the Artic Circle for as long as memory serves her. She has been raised solely by her father (Eric Bana) with survival skills unusual to most—Hanna is an expert in martial arts and shooting, multilingual, and has a memory of general knowledge that would make an encyclopedia blush. Her father used to be an agent for the CIA but deserted his position long ago. He and Hanna are major persons of interest to many international organizations and especially to agent Marissa Weigler (Cate Blanchett) who has a bloody past with Hanna’s father and Hanna herself. There is a button that her father unearths connected to a tracking beacon that will allow Marissa to locate their position instantly. Hanna stares at the device for a long time, but we know she will eventually press the button—she is ready, dying, to see what will happen. So begins Hanna’s journey out into the world beyond the forest.

There are elements of fairytales here, Grimm’s to be precise—dark and bloody but also whimsical and beautiful. Hanna is a heroine in peril, not helpless pointedly, who must face many trials and obstacles both within and external. She is a young woman without a true sense of self, but through these tests outside of the forest she begins to realize what she is. The boundaries of her being are pushed and prodded, bringing with this knowledge both heartbreaking and events brutally final. However, we are left wondering about Hanna and her cast of characters long after the credits roll—for what purpose did the film go to so much trouble? What really did Hanna realize beyond the simple facts of her own origins and propensity for violence? Why does Hanna create such a character and the very beginnings of her true life only to snuff it out with a black screen?

Review of the film A Serious Man

I have dreamt of approaching tornadoes quite often throughout my life. Suddenly, the sky is darkening, and the funnel begins to descend, swirling and snaking towards the ground. The color of this cloud changes nearly every time, and I often wonder if these altering hues have anything to do with my conscious life as much as I am sure that the tornado’s appearance does. At its nearing, there is fear and an overwhelming sense of inevitability. This force of nature declares that shit is going down.

In A Serious Man, Larry Gopnik’s troubles look something like a fast drawing near force of nature. The funnel is dropping towards earth and taking aim. It starts off kind. He is a professor at a small college in suburban Minnesota during the 60s. He has a wife and two children, a nice one-level home, and he is up for tenure at work. But the Coen brothers, being themselves in the fullest, have other plans for Larry, plans that only they can understand. The film leads with a darkly comic preface in Yiddish set in a time long before Larry Gopnik; it leaves us scratching our heads, but wonderment is the space that the Coens want us in.

The main story and the dirt begin when Larry’s wife says she is leaving him for his best friend. Then a student attempts to bribe and blackmail him simultaneously. His lecherous brother is living on the couch in his home, getting into trouble at seedy bars and casinos. A bully continuously chases his young son home from school. The tenure committee at school is receiving defamatory unsigned letters about him. His daughter is stealing money from his wallet. The doctor’s office is desperately trying to get a hold of him. It seems that God suddenly doesn’t like Larry. But why, when he has always tried to be a good, serious man? The Coens may know, however, they aren’t letting us in on it too easily. This film could have a message, but it’s intentionally unclear.

A Serious Man shares that with the last film they made, No Country For Old Men for which the brothers won the Oscar for Best Picture. This film is quieter, though, less of a crowd pleaser, at least in terms of violence and action, and it leaves more loose ends than it ties. Larry’s best friend Sy Ableman, the man his wife is leaving him for, attempts to counsel with sincere words of sympathy and understanding. There is a sexy neighbor who has taken to sunbathing naked in just the right place for Larry to spy on her. His son is studying for his Bar Mitzvah. There are good things in Larry’s life, but how does he see through all the bad to the good? How do any of us do this? Are we all like Job in the Bible, put through many arduous trails by God on the basis that it forces us to still believe?

Larry goes to several different rabbis to see if he can glean some answers from those who are said to know much more than him. Each gives him more convoluted responses than the last. The Coens show that they can laugh at the mystery they have developed in a way both thoughtful and with appreciation for that which is beyond understanding. I value this in a film, bolstered by wonderful performances, excellent production and exceptional writing. Even the very ending of the film leaves us in a state of awed puzzlement that is both goading and satisfying.