BIFF ’09: Cryptic

They are considered white elephants: those obsolete cell phones stashed in drawers and closets, seemingly waiting for phantom signals. Jessie Graver’s first clunky cell was her last birthday gift from late mother, so she keeps it for sentimental reasons. However, it might offer her an opportunity to undo wrongs of the past in John Weiner & Danny Kuchuck’s Cryptic (trailer here), which screens during the twelfth annual Brooklyn International Film Festival.

Shortly after giving Jesse her ninth birthday gift, Jesse’s mother died in a freak accident. Soon thereafter, her father remarried the flirtatious neighbor lady, greatly straining his relations with his daughter. The next ten years would be difficult for the increasingly bitter and alienated Jesse. Spending a moody nineteenth birthday with her pseudo-boyfriend, Jessie comes across her old phone. When she punches in the phone number of their old house, somehow her nine year-old self answers it.

When Jesse realizes she is talking to herself on that fateful day, she desperately tries to convince her not to let her mother in the pool. As she explains the impending disaster, her younger self notices her father’s dubious behavior, which the older Jesse then consequently remembers. Suddenly, Jesse must contend with her suspicious father at ages nine and nineteen, with both timelines in a state of flux. Time is going to get messy, and so is her family life.

Though it makes no serious attempt to explain its magic cell-phone Macguffin, Cryptic navigates the minefields of time-travel’s inherent logical contradictions reasonably well. Unlike the thematically similar Frequency, Cryptic is far more convincing in its treatment of Jesse’s substantial revisions of history.

Though obviously shot on a shoestring, Cryptic makes a virtue of necessity. Its stark HD look actually helps ground the film in reality. The sound quality of her calls is also effectively modulated, clear enough to be understood, but with a level of distortion sufficient to maintain a degree of mystery, particularly with regards to that unsettling third voice nineteen year-old Jesse thinks she hears during her calls to the past.

As Jesse Graver, at ages nineteen and nine respectively, Julie Carson and Jadin Gould both give smart, intense performances nicely selling the film outlandish circumstances. Toby Huss is also suitably creepy as dear old dad. Unfortunately, Johnny Pacar is a dull, petulant screen presence as Jesse’s on-again-off-again boyfriend (depending on the timeline).

Cryptic’s premise is obviously preposterous, but Weiner and Kuchuck have constructed a tense, character-driven science fiction thriller around it. It is a clever film that will probably appeal more to indie audiences than genre fans. It screens again at BIFF this Friday (6/12).

BIFF ’09: The Last Lullaby

When a retired hitman suffers from insomnia, is it due to boredom or a guilty conscience? Perhaps a little of both for “Price,” the mysterious former assassin created by Max Allan Collins, the prolific writer of crime fiction, including the Road to Perdition graphic novels on which the Tom Hanks film was based. Now Price (a.k.a. Quarry in Collins’s books) has also made the jump to the big screen in Jeffrey Goodman’s The Last Lullaby (trailer here), which recently screened during the Brooklyn International Film Festival.

Price could use a good night’s sleep, but he will settle for a nice payday. During his regular nocturnal ramblings, he happens across a kidnapping underway. After making short work of the original lowlife abductors, Price makes the exchange himself. Easy money, or so it seemed at the time.

Sometime later, the father of the kidnapped woman tracks down Price to lure him out of retirement. Again, it sounds like easy money: one million dollars to kill a librarian. However, it has to look like an accident and happen within the next ten days, neither of which should be a problem for a man with Price’s skills. Yet, there is something about the marked Sarah that gets to the contract killer. So when her stalker ex-boyfriend starts getting physical, Price puts a stop to it—permanently.

It turns out the two have something in common as kindred insomniacs. As an unlikely relationship blossoms between the two, the hunter becomes the protector, setting up an inevitable conflict with Price’s employer. While there are certainly scenes of Price going about his old profession with ruthless efficiency, Lullaby is not an action film per se. It is more in the tradition of moody film noirs, spending more time on character development than gunfire and car chases.

In a case of perfect casting, Tom Sizemore plays the hardened criminal in need of redemption. Regardless of his notorious off-screen life, the character actor has the right brooding screen presence to carry the film as its flawed anti-hero. Lullaby also boasts an intriguing supporting cast, including the believably down-to-earth Sasha Alexander (formerly of Navy N.C.I.S.), who brings out both the vulnerability and resilience of Sarah. 24 viewers will also note the presence of Sprague Grayden (or First Daughter Olivia Taylor), again playing a spoiled daughter of privilege, in a small but memorable part.

Although Lullaby clearly addresses themes of conscience and redemption, Goodman wisely never overplays those emotional cards. The surprisingly subtle script co-written by Collins and Peter Biegen mercifully spares viewers any trite scenes of tearful confessions. More than anything, the characters are simply tired, in every sense.

Lullaby might be too quiet and discrete for genre fans, but not edgy enough for the hipster art-house scene. Still, it ought to find an in-between audience as a thoughtful, well-conceived little crime film. Following its East Coast premiere at BIFF, Lullaby opens this Friday (6/12) in San Jose, as part of its targeted release strategy, while the festival continues through this Sunday (6/14).

BIFF ’09: Landscape No. 2

Unlike the Balkan states, Slovenia’s independence from Communist Yugoslavia was nearly bloodless. However, Slovenian history was not always so peaceful. During WWII, Slovenia was wracked by civil war, which culminated in the notorious Bleiburg Massacre immediately following the triumph of Tito’s Communist partisans. The discovery of the 383 mass graves continues to haunt the country, appearing as the omnipresent focus of Slovenian media in Vinko Moderndorfer’s dark crime drama, Landscape No. 2 (trailer here), which screens as part of this year’s Brooklyn International Film Festival.

Criminal improvisation is always a bad idea. Veteran thief Polde and his young apprentice Sergej have a good racket going. They steal art plundered from the national museum by the former elites of the old regime, only to ransom them back to their wrongful owners for a pretty penny. However, as the thieves liberate the national treasure Landscape No. 2 from a former Communist general, Sergej spontaneously decides to crack the safe and grab the cash inside. Inadvertently, he also scoops up documents that would incriminate the men behind the 1945 massacre.

The old corrupt officer is not about to wait for Polde’s ransom call. He calls in the Instructor, a rather pedestrian looking killing machine to recover and destroy the incendiary document. Of course, the immature Sergej is oblivious to the chaos he has set in motion, off-handedly stashing the unexamined papers at one girlfriend’s flat, before sneaking off for a night of passion with the other. However, his romantic two-timing is rudely interrupted by the shocking news of Polde’s suicide. Suddenly, things get very real for Sergej.

Altthough Moderndorfer uses the conventions of the crime noirs, Landscape is more about the corrosive influence of Slovenia’s national secrets. Years of Communist rule kept the truth of the massacre tightly under wraps. Clearly, many would like to prevent further historical inquiry into such a delicate subject. Yet, for Damjan, Sergej’s archivist neighbor, and presumably Moderndorfer, the truth must be exposed to bring closure to a painful episode in Slovenian history.

The Slovenian cast-members all seem to project a sense of world-weary resignation that well serves Moderndorfer’s naturalistic style. The positive exception would be Maja Martina Merljak’s energetic performance as Sergej’s well-heeled, vivacious girlfriend Jasna. As Sergej, Marco Mandic is a convincing lowlife lothario, whose cad-like behavior makes him a less than sympathetic rooting interest. Regrettably though, Jaka Lah’s supporting turn as Sergej’s infatuated neighbor Damjan comes off as an unfortunate gay stereotype.

Moderndorfer and cinematographer Dusan Joksimovic create a dark, dank vision of contemporary Slovenia, where it seems to be perpetually raining and the sins of the past still exert a malicious influence on the present. Landscape is a smart, but pessimistic film that challenges comfortable Western historical preconceptions of World War II and Tito’s partisans. It screens again Sunday (6/14), as the Brooklyn International Film Festival continues at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema.

BIFF ’09: The Man Who Would Be Polka King

Consider it a Behind the Music for AARP members. This unlikely music documentary follows the spectacular rise and fall of Jan Lewan, who built a polka empire with Bernard Madoff-style financing, only to see it inevitably come crashing down around him. Although it seems like a mockumentary, Joshua von Brown & John Mikulak’s The Man Who Would Be Polka King (trailer here) is evidently a real deal doc, which screened last night during the 2009 Brooklyn International Film Festival.

Music has always been Jan Lewan’s life, but it was not always set to a polka oompah beat. When he defected from Poland, Lewan first sought his fame as a romantic balladeer in the hotels of provincial Canada. Migrating to Pennsylvanian coal country in search of work, he found a Polish community that still took its polka seriously. Before long, he had a band and a growing following.

Lewan would become a Grammy-nominated star of the polka circuit, marrying a would-be beauty queen. However, when his wife won the 1998 Mrs. Pennsylvania pageant under suspicious circumstances, it signaled the beginning of the end for Lewan. The polka king had been financing his empire with high interest bonds. It was a classic ponzi scheme that began to unravel when bad publicity from the Mrs. Pennsylvania controversy scared off new potential investors/marks.

Things quickly went from bad to worse, following the disastrous pattern of many ill-fated metal bands. Lewan would contend with a spiteful former band-member stirring up discord with his investors, as well a tragic bus accident that killed two of his musicians and badly injured his son. Basically, the Lewans are what the Osbornes would be if Ozzy played polka.

Lewan’s story is so bizarre it seems like parody. It is hard to believe the corny world of polka music and beauty pageants could produce such drama. However, having recently been released from prison, where he suffered a violent physical attack, Lewan’s story is as real as it gets. Yet von Brown and Mikulak only heighten viewer incredulity with their casting of actor Greg Korin to host the film as Stan Tadrowski, a fictional authority on Northeastern Pennsylvania polka.

Expanded from a shorter film which aired on Court TV, the current festival cut of King is a thorough but lively examination of the dark side of polka. To their credit, the filmmakers are quite even-handed and clearly had access to most of the key figures of Lewan’s epic implosion. They keep things moving along at a good clip and bring the necessary ironic sensibility so obviously needed for such a strange story. At times, they are victims of the own success, documenting events which seem too odd to be true. Its next BIFF screening will be this coming Thursday (6/11) at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema.

BIFF ’09: Pig Hunt

Northern California can be a dangerous place. There are a lot of things to worry about in those woods, including pot growers, violent hillbillies, freaky hippies, and wild boar. It all turns into a perfect storm for John and his loser buddies in Jim Isaac’s Pig Hunt (trailer here), which screens as part of the twelfth annual Brooklyn International Film Festival.

It has been a longtime since John returned to his backwoods home and it’s not hard to see why he stayed away. Originally conceived as a weekend hunting trip with the guys, his girlfriend Brooks convinces him to let her tag along. Again, it is not hard to see why he agreed. Not only is she beautiful, she can shoot straight and is the only character on the excursion worth talking to.

Arriving at his late uncle’s cabin, they discover it has been defaced with weird, menacing graffiti. Also adding to their anxiety is the sudden arrival of two of John’s former hick friends, who seem to harbor a lingering resentment against him. Still, they seem to have a knack for finding game, so everyone heads out into the woods together. After all, what could go wrong? Besides encountering the legendary Ripper, a three-thousand pound wild pig they were warned about in town, that is.

It is not giving away much to reveal the Ripper turns out to be quite real and very much worthy of his name. Needless to say things go very bad, very fast. Isaac builds the tension quite effectively, leaving clues that there may well be more threats out there than just the killer hog. As is usually the case in horror films, the less the audience actually sees of the Ripper, the scarier he is. Unfortunately, the periodic attempts to draw an analogy between the hunt for the Ripper and the War in Iraq are clumsy, ill-conceived distractions from the gory business at hand.

In general, Pig Hunt’s cast is at least adequate to the genre. However, Tina Huang is a charismatic standout as Brooks. Whether firing off rounds or needling John’s idiot friends, she is just what the doctor ordered for a bloody horror-actioner. She completely outshines the rest of the cast, including the bland Travis Aaron Wade as the characterless John. Also noteworthy is a small but effective cameo by blues mouth-harpist Charlie Musselwhite as the general store owner who issues the fateful warning about the big pig in the woods.

Happily we also get to hear Musselwhite perform the all too brief “Booneville Crossroads.” The balance of Pig Hunt’s soundtrack, largely composed by Les Claypool of Primus (who also appears as Preacher, the head of the redneck clan and a dead-ringer for Richard Petty) and featuring additional percussion by jazz drummer Eric Harland, really brings a down-home vitality to the picture.

For audiences receptive to the exploitation-horror genre, Pig Hunt is an energetic film, with some cool sounds and a really appealing action performance by Huang. It is the sort of blood-splattered picture that would have been a good fit for the late lamented Two Boots Theater. Pig Hunt screens again during the BIFF this Friday (6/12) at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema.