Slamdance ’17: Aerotropolis

Whenever you hear a politician propose a massive public works project, clutch your wallet tightly. Such advice definitely would have been warranted in the case of the Taoyuan special municipal district in Taiwan. Conceived as a regional transportation hub built around a shiny new airport, Taoyuan has become a costly boondoggle. Those on the inside surely profited just the same, but independent speculators like Allen found themselves holding the bag. As a result, the quiet speculator must live a desperate, rootless existence in Jheng-Neng Li’s Aerotropolis, which screened during the 2017 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

Anticipating a real estate boom, Allen sunk his entire inheritance into a Taoyuan luxury condo. Unfortunately, the market drastically underperformed, making the property dashed difficult to flip. In hopes of recouping some of his investment, Allen keeps the flat in pristine condition, sleeping in his car and living in the public spaces of the airport and bullet-train stations (having just flown through several New York airports, we have to admit the Taoyuan facilities look really nice).

The only time Allen spends in his property are the nights when his flight attendant girlfriend Tzu visits, but the only amenities he can offer are an air mattress and a bottle of wine. That is unfortunate, because she obviously craves the warmth and security of a legitimate home.

There is no getting around it, Aerotropolis is a festival kind of film with virtually zero theatrical prospects. It is also the work of a keen stylist that reflects a bitter disillusionment with the Taiwanese political and economic establishment. There are some stunning visual compositions in the film, which you can’t possibly miss, since Li is working almost entirely in long takes. Yet, that kind of aestheticizing technique rather suits the character’s limbo. You can almost think of it as Spielberg’s The Terminal or Lost in Translation, as remade by Bela Tarr.

Even though Li tries to keep his characters at a distance, we still get a direct sense of their inner desperation. Both Chia-Lun Yang and Jui-Tzu Liu express volumes without words and withstand the withering focus of Li’s lens. Viewers will feel for them both, even when he starts to make us rather uncomfortable.

Aerotropolis is best reserved for a high-end sliver of the cineaste world who find the four-hour Romanian films NYFF loves to screen to be excessively perky and commercial. However, it is impressive as the uncompromised consummation of Li’s vision. In addition to writing, directing, and producing, he also served as his own editor, cinematographer, art director, production designer, and sound dude, so pretty much everything in the film is there because of him. You can also see a lot of talent, but it demands a lot from viewers in return. Recommended for patrons of slow cinema, Aerotropolis will find its audience after screening at this year’s Slamdance.

Slamdance ’17: Withdrawn

In the 1980s, there were speed contests for Rubik’s Cube solving. Apparently, millennials like Aaron need YouTube tutorials just to complete a side. If ever there was a poster boy for the entitled dumbing-down of America, it would be him. Even his criminal schemes are pathetically passive in Adrian Murray’s Withdrawn (trailer here), which screened during the 2017 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

You really do not want to be flat-mates with Aaron. He will dodge the rent and the utility bills, but he will drink away your booze in stupid internet challenges. Unfortunately, Adrian is struck with him, but at least that means we aren’t. Of course, he is broke as a joke, but he thinks he might have stumbled across a potential windfall when he finds a stranger’s lost credit card. Most decent, law-abiding citizens would try to return the card or just drop it in a mailbox, but not an unproductive, parasitic, Bernie Sanders-voting millennial, who thinks the world owes him something like Aaron. A good deal of the rest of the film is dedicated to quietly watching him trying to hack the card’s pin number, so he can max out a cash advance.

Arguably, Withdrawn covers the self-absorbed millennial milieu better than any previous film, but sadly, none of it is remotely cinematic. Murray and his lead actor Aaron Keogh give navel-gazing mumblecore a bad name. It could very well be Murray faithfully holds a mirror up to nature, but the results are so sleight and inconsequential, they hardly seem to merit our attention.

Frankly, it seems like Keogh was cast for his near complete lack of charisma and energy. Five minutes of watching him putter about will make most viewers feel logey. Murray himself has more presence playing the namesake roommate, but his passive aggressive confrontation-avoidance undermines any possibility of viewer sympathy and eventually induces nausea.

Withdrawn is the most socially awkward, low impact caper movie you will even come across. That might be a truthful commentary on a certain segment of a certain generation, but that does not make it any easier to watch. Murray’s unblinking gaze captures some sharply telling character details, but they never ultimately amount to much. Not recommended, Withdrawn premiered at this year’s Slamdance.

Slamdance ’17: Commodity City (short)

Buying wholesale sure seems like the thing to do in China these days and the Yiwu International Trade City is the place to do it. Jessica Kingdon takes viewers inside the sprawling wholesale mall to see tomorrow’s dollar store merchandise today, as well as the people who sell it in the short documentary Commodity City (trailer here), which premiered at the 2017 Slamdance Film Festival.

Commodity is definitely the sort of film that could be programmed by the FSLC’s Art of the Real series. However, unlike most non-narrative docu-essays, it is surprisingly bright and colorful. It is slightly surreal to see the various merchants surrounded by cascading plastic flowers and the like, but nobody can fault their merchandising.

Nor can Commodity be casually dismissed as poverty porn. There is a lot of life going on in the mall—and a number of sales are made. Some of the sales staff are pretty attractive and many have their children in tow. Who knows what their margins are, but the Yiwu market is exactly the sort of place where they can make it up in volume, as they say.

Regardless, Yiwu certainly looks like a more pleasant place to work than a Shandong plastic recycling plant. Kingdon, serving as her own cinematographer and co-editor, shows a keen eye for visuals. As a result, general audiences who might otherwise be scared off by its observational aesthetic will actually find it quite accessible. Recommended as a strong festival programming selection, Commodity City screens today (1/30) and Wednesday (2/1) during this year’s IFFRotterdam, following its world premiere at Slamdance ’17, in Park City.

Slamdance ’17: Strad Style

Danny Houck is sort of the Mark Bourchardt or Henry Darger of violin-making, but this outsider luthier might just have a truly great instrument in him. The question is, will the lifelong Ohio resident finish it in time for its expected European premiere. Luthiering looks grungier than you’ve ever seen it before, but the passion is still worthy of old world Cremona in Stefan Avalos’s Strad Style (trailer here), which won both the audience and jury awards for best documentary at the 2017 Slamdance FilmFestival.

Houck never really spells it out, but from what we glean he has struggled with bi-polar disorder throughout his life. Aside from luthiering (which is mostly speculative at this point), he has no discernable source of income. Generally, he lives frugally, but he will not hesitate to purchase tools he deems necessary.

For some reason, Houck is convinced he can replicate the sound of vintage Stradivari and de Gesù violins. Admittedly, he clearly has natural talent, but he doesn’t seem to have any customers yet. However, when he makes the acquaintance of emerging Romanian superstar soloist Razvan Stoica online, Houck convinces the violinist he can deliver a “Strad” quality instrument in time for a high-profile concert in Amsterdam. Yet, it is highly uncertain whether Houck has sufficient resources and can stay in the proper head-space long enough to meet the deadline.

Regardless whether Strad Style launches Houck’s lutherie career or not, it should provide an additional boost to Stoica’s steady climb to international prominence. It might be slightly spoilery to say, but he definitely makes Houck’s work sound great. He also deserves credit for giving an unheralded self-described “nobody” such an opportunity. (Presumably, there are a lot of luthiers out there who would love to say Stoica plays their custom instruments.) In fact, he even used Houck’s violin to record the Strad Style digital EP.

Avalos certainly never whitewashes Houck’s mean living conditions, but he still manages to bring a bit of stylish flair to the proceedings. He pulls off a few wide angle pull-back shots that dramatically illustrate his subject’s rural isolation and the animated recreation of a mouse stealing Houck’s last sound-post is rather amusing. As a result, Strad Style feels like a real film and not just some edited together footage of Houck puttering about his workshop.

Frankly, Strad Style is a rather encouraging film, because we see the eccentric Houck’s devotion to music start to pay-off. Where it leads next remains uncertain, but at least it brought him and Stoica to Park City after their meeting in Amsterdam. Recommended for broad-minded classical music connoisseurs, Strad Style should have many festival screenings ahead of it, after sweeping the doc awards at this year’s Slamdance.

Slamdance ’17: Future ’38

There were no flying cars in the future, nor did we enter a Star Trekian age of peace. We should know, we’re living in it, or at least we soon will be. It is an exercise in retro-futurism, imagining the year 2018 as seen from 1938. Our point-of-view comes from Essex, an intrepid time-traveler who hopes to avert the messy world war brewing in Europe. However, the Germans might not be a defanged as everyone assumes during the years Essex skips over in Jamie Greenberg’s Future ‘38, which premiered at the 2017 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

Thanks to Essex, there was/will not be a war. Instead, we entered era of Pax Formica, ushered in by a demonstration of our secret weapon. It is/was much like the atom bomb, but it was fueled by Formica instead of plutonium or uranium. The tricky thing is it takes eighty years for the Formica core to build up enough power. The solution is obvious. Stash the super-Formica in a secure vault and send Essex eighty years into the future to retrieve it.

Essex arrives in the lobby of a flop-house run by Banky, a glamorous tough cookie, who finds herself strangely attracted to Essex, in a Tracy-Hepburn kind of way. Although she does not believe his time travel mumbo jumbo, she humors him anyway. Thanks to the ticker-tape version of the internet, they learn the old War Department building has been converted into the new German embassy, so naturally they will crash their reception. However, the Germans have some ideas about rewriting history of their own.

Future ’38 is presented as an ostensibly rediscovered lost film, introduced by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Frankly, its retro-futurism is much more informed by contemporary attitudes than those of the 1930s. However, some of technical mash-ups are amusing (smart phones still placing calls through operators and the like). The look of the picture is also terrific, thanks to the way it so perfectly approximates the look of early Technicolor film stock.

Frankly, the first half of the film feels rather precious and gimmicky, but viewers should stick with it, because Greenberg ties everything together surprisingly cleverly in the third act. It legitimately pays off down the stretch, after the game co-leads win us over. Nick Westrate and Betty Gilpin have a good handle on the dialogue’s necessary rat-a-tat-tat tempo, playing off each other quite nicely. Gilpin is particularly charismatic, channeling her inner Rosalind Russell.

It starts slow, but it steadily builds steam. One might argue it also reminds us of the dangers of complacency when it comes to protecting our freedoms, but that is probably a stretch. It is really just a goofy and ultimately quite sweet film. Without question, it has more heart and substance than Space Station 76 (an obvious comp movie). Recommended for fans of time travel films and Golden Age science fiction, Future ’38 screens again tomorrow (1/26), during this year’s Slamdance.

Slamdance ’17: Hotel Coolgardie

The Denver City Hotel makes your local Hooters look cosmopolitan. Coolgardie is located smack dab in the middle of Australia’s Goldfield region, so naturally many of the pub’s patrons are miners. You would expect it to be a ruckus place, but the rustic blokiness reaches highly problematic levels in Pete Gleeson’s documentary, Hotel Coolgardie (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 Slamdance Film Festival.

After losing their money in Bali, Lina and Steph managed to make their way to first-world Australia. Signing on with an employment agency that specializes in short term provincial assignments, they agree to sign on as barmaids at the Denver City. There will not be a lot of distractions to spend the wages on in Coolgardie, so they ought to be able to save money relatively rapidly. However, they are not prepared for the inhospitable treatment they receive from the owner and they are rather taken aback by some of the customers. One in particular could be the live-action version of Barney from Moe’s Tavern on The Simpson’s. Of course, he has a hard crush on Lina.

It is safe to say the two Finns do not fit in well. Frankly, it really seems to be everyone’s fault. They never make much of an effort, but nobody really helps them either. Pretty much all they get from the locals are reprimands and drunken propositions. Regardless, there is no excuse for being a hostile employer.

Not surprisingly, the Goldfields tourism bureau has had a conniption fit over Gleeson’s film, but it is hard to imagine how any of his scenes could be taken out of context. Nor does he portray Coolgardie as monolithically troglodytic. The Finns rather take a shine to an old-timer known as “Canman,” who tragically died shortly after filming wrapped—and at least of the good old boys really seems like a decent chap, who they should have treated better.

Hotel takes a dark turn in the third act that technically has nothing to do with sexism or exploitation, but makes Coolgardie like an even less desirable place to visit. Basically, Gleeson’s film is a stone-cold reality check to horny summer sex comedies. It also lands on the media spectrum around where proper documentaries start to approach reality television. That also means it is never boring. Recommended for the voyeuristic, Hotel Coolgardie screens this Thursday (1/26) at Treasure Mountain Inn, as part of this year’s Slamdance.

Slamdance ’17: The Dundee Project (short)

If you make Mark Borchardt, the director of Coven, sound like the voice of reason, then you must be way out there on the fringe. Once a year, you can easily see the fringe from Dundee, Wisconsin, where they hold the annual UFO Daze festival. Basically, Wisconsin’s most paranoid annually gather to drink large amounts of beer during the day and then, lo and behold, see UFOs at night. Intuitively sensing a story, Borchardt grabbed a camera and documented the latest UFO Daze in the short doc, The Dundee Project, which screens during this year’s Slamdance Film Festival.

As the host of UFO Daze, Bill Benson, the owner and proprietor of Benson’s Hideaway Bar & Restaurant knows his clientele and duly caters to them. Most have just listened to too much Art Bell, but the impending UFO invasion is downright personal for UFO Bob. You will know him when you see him. He is a true believing, veteran UFO watcher. Yet, Borchardt throws him off-stride with devious questions like “how do you know that” and “do you have any proof?”

Man, it is nice to have Borchardt back in action. The Coven helmer was meant to make films—doing cameos in lame movies like Modus Operandi just isn’t sufficient. Dundee is a good way shake off the rust, but we can’t help wondering if Coven II could be in the cards. Regardless, Borchardt definitely captures the participants’ eccentricity and their Wisconsinness.

Ironically, Borchardt gives the UFO Dazers the sort of gawking treatment he received from Chris Simth’s American Movie. Yet, he will probably boost Dundee tourism ten-fold. It is just good to know Borchardt is outing there doing the reporting on issues the man doesn’t want you know about and asking all the hard questions the wingnuts can’t answer. Highly recommended because obviously, The Dundee Project screens again this Thursday (1/26), as part of the Documentary Shorts program at the 2017 Slamdance Film Festival.

Slamdance ’17: Kuro

Living the expat’s life in Paris sounds romantic, but Romi (short for Hiromi) a former home-care nurse from Japan, is probably too profoundly haunted by memory and karma to properly enjoy it. We watch her tend to her paraplegic lover Milou in vignettes and Ozu-like pillow shots while she recounts an earlier incident from their lives together in Tokyo. As its ironic significance emerges, the tale takes a macabre turn in Joji Koyama & Tujiko Noriko’s Kuro, which screens during the 2017 Slamdance Film Festival.

There is a strange relationship between words and images in Kuro. In Romi’s story, Milou lives an active lifestyle and very much still has full command of his limbs. Yet, there seems to be a tragic logic to his current condition, given what transpired with Romi’s former patient, Mr. Ono (or Kuro, as she eventually calls him). Initially, she and Ono had very a pleasant relationship. Granted, he has his eccentricities, but she tolerates and even encourages them. However, when the scuffling Milou moves into Romi’s room in Ono’s flat (without prior agency approval), it destabilizes the balance. Instead of complaining or ratting them out, Mr. Ono’s response is profoundly Kafkaesque.

It is hard to describe the experience of watching Kuro. Frankly, it takes a bit of time to acclimate to, but it is worth the effort. No matter how “real” the story Romi narrates happens to be within Kuro’s diegetic reality, it is darkly compellingly. Technically, Kuro probably fits under a broad experimental rubric, but it really hooks viewers and reels them in.

Even though they are not “in synch,” or perhaps especially so, co-director-co-producer-score composer Tujiko gives two truly great performances as Romi, both through her eerie voice-overs and the hunting scenes of her in Paris, clearly carrying the weight of great sadness and regret. Singularly named musician Jackie is also unusually convincing as the physically and spiritually broken Milou.

As one would hope, given their backgrounds in graphic arts and animation, the filmmakers have a keen visual sense. Yet, they are doing considerably more than just frame shots. There is a subtle gamesmanship to the film, encompassing shifts in first and third person narration and tantalizing moments when audio and video appears to link up, only to become untethered again. Throughout the film, they encourage viewers to make assumptions and then question those assumptions soon thereafter. It sounds frustrating yet the net effect is genuinely transfixing. Highly recommended for adventurous viewers, Kuro screens again today (1/23) as part of this year’s Slamdance in Park City.

Slamdance ’17: Dave Made a Maze

You could almost appreciate it as a masterwork of outsider art, if it were not so lethal. Rather, inconveniently, it happens to be right smack dab in the middle of Dave and Annie’s living room. When the latter returns from a business trip, she discovers the former has been lost inside for three days. She and an oddball group of friends discover it is bizarrely cavernous inside, sort of like the Tardis, but with booby traps. DIY constructionism takes a weirdly fantastical turn in Bill Watterson’s Dave Built a Maze (trailer here), which premiered during the 2017 Slamdance Film Festival.

Don’t call it a maze—it’s a labyrinth. Hence, there must be traps and yes, a minotaur. Dave did not create those per se. His cardboard Escher-like construction just took on a life of its own. Much to Annie’s frustration, he will not let her simply cut into it. He has too much pride in his creation. It could also be catastrophically dangerous given the structure’s instability. The exasperated Annie calls in his friend Gordon as back-up. Unfortunately, the scene soon turns into a circus. Eventually, she just heads into its cave like entrance, with whoever cares to tag along. However, things get real in a hurry when several of their more expendable friends are quickly killed off.

It is hard to fairly convey a sense of the film’s tone. You would never call it cutesy or quirky, nor is it dark or moody. One might start with Michel Gondry and Edgar Wright as reference points, but they are still not quite right. Regardless, Maze is wildly inventive and slyly funny, featuring some absolutely incredible cardboard set designs. Production designers Trisha Gum and John Sumner, along with art director Jeff White deserve standing ovations for what they have realized (presumably on a not-so extravagant budget).

There is also plenty of snappy, archly sarcastic dialogue, delivered with pitch-perfect aplomb by Adam Busch and James Urbaniuk (a.k.a. Ned Rifle), as Gordon and Harry the aspiring documentarian, respectively. Nick Thune’s titular Dave is necessarily a bit off a sad sack, but Meera Rohit Kumbhani’s Annie just lights up the screen with her smart, grounded, star-making presence.

Frankly, it is kind of shocking how well Maze works. There is nothing twee about it, especially not the tripped-out animated sequences. It is all kind of nuts, but it adheres to its own system of illogic. Very highly recommended for cult film fans, Dave Made a Maze screens again tomorrow (1/23), as part of this year’s Slamdance in Park City.