A Murder in the Park: How Advocacy Journalism Subverted Justice in Chicago

It was like the Grisham novel John Grisham would never allow himself to write. To undermine the death penalty, a justly convicted death row murderer was wrongfully exonerated. Of course, that meant an innocent man had to be framed to take his place. The result was a stunning two-fold miscarriage of justice laid out step-by-step in Shawn Rech & Brandon Kimber’s rigorous documentary, A Murder in the Park (clip here), which opens this Friday in New York at the IFC Center.

As the film's interview subjects lay out pretty clearly, in 1983 Anthony Porter murdered Jerry Hillard and Marilyn Green in a Chicago park. During the course of a thorough investigation, the police concluded Porter was indeed the killer, but the prosecutor sent them back to further buttress the case. Porter was subsequently charged, convicted, and sentenced to death. However, at the last minute, a Northwestern professor and his investigative journalism class stepped forward with apparently exculpatory information. The media embraced his narrative, building a groundswell to successfully end capital punishment in Illinois.

What David Protess's shady private detective Paul Ciolino did to extort a false confession from their fall-guy, Alstory Simon is beyond shocking and outrageous. It is simply flabbergasting. Of course, Simon’s attorney, Jack Rimland should have objected. He also should have disclosed his close association with Protess and Ciolino. Yet, Simon was not the only victim of Protess and his accomplices. The police officers who had worked the original case faced potential ruin when Porter sued them, along with the city of Chicago.

As longtime veterans of true crime television, Rech and Kimber know what a proper investigation should look like. They reconstruct the events in the Porter-Simon affair with all the thoroughness and deliberation lacking from the version of events prepared by Protess and his students.  Point by point, they show how Team Protess ignored key witnesses, browbeat others into minor concessions, and used fraudulent evidence and physical intimidation against Simon while he was under the influence of narcotics.

This is a damning film, but it should not be the end of the story. Usually, when cops are caught planting evidence, all their past cases are re-examined. Surely, the same standard should apply to Protess and his “exoneration mafia,” including Shawn Armbrust, who is currently executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project. Every case she ever argued should be closely scrutinized anew, based on what we know of the conduct of the Protess team.

There is plenty of blame to go around in this sad story, starting with a gullible media that Protess played like a virtuoso. In contrast, Rech and Kimber, along with William Crawford, whose book served as a blueprint for the film, deserve enormous credit for asking the tough questions and doing the follow-up work.

It is worth noting many of the controversial participants in the intertwined cases declined invitations to appear in the film, so viewers should judge their absence in that light. Some documentary purists might also object to the frequent use of dramatic recreations, but they are helpful establishing contested spatial relationships on that fateful night. The result is a staggering and infuriating expose of advocacy run amok. Very highly recommended, A Murder in the Park opens this Friday (6/26) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Midnight Swim: Three Haunted Half-Sisters

June, Annie, and Isa are three half-sisters sharing a common mother. Since they are all roughly the same generation, it is easy to conclude their childhood was somewhat chaotic. When their hippy dippy mother meets an untimely end through a diving misadventure, they are brought to together for an awkward reunion. Either supernatural forces or mortal madness (or both) will further complicate the process in Sarah Adina Smith’s Midnight Swim (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Dr. Amelia Brooks’ home is nestled right on seemingly placid Spirit Lake. Supposedly, it is so deep, divers have never reached the bottom. One day, Brooks went down to explore its depths and never resurfaced. According to legend, there is ample precedent for such tragedy. The locals tell of the Seven Sisters who all drowned as each jumped in to save their proceeding siblings.

On their first night, the half-sisters host their old school chum Josh, who is now an eligible single dad. After enough wine, he leads them in a séance trying to raise the spirits of the Seven Sisters. At the time, nothing happens, but strange incidents soon begin piling up. Dead birds start littering the grounds and mysterious time-lapse footage appears on June’s digital camera. She had been documenting their homecoming for some sort of hipster documentary and denies any involvement with the eerie sequences. However, there is something a little off about June.

Of course, it is hard to judge the half-sisters’ degrees of dysfunctionality. None of them seems all that together—and for good reason. As we know from their nostalgic lip-synching, they were raised on the happy platitudes of the New Seekers’ “Free to Be You and Me.” Since then, they have learned the world is not a place where horses run free. Nor does it revolve around their self-esteem.

Smith plays it coy, giving viewers just enough reason to maintain their supernatural suspicions. The legend of the Seven Sisters is particularly compelling, especially when retold by Shirley Venard playing a local amateur folklorist. It feels like the kind of place-specific urban legends every kid grows up with, while holding obvious resonance for the characters. Wisely, Smith is not slavishly beholden to the “found footage” aesthetic. There are times when we completely forget June (or someone or something) must be filming what we are seeing, but it would not have betrayed her Spartan approach to throw the audience a few more ambiguously paranormal bones.

The perfectly cast Beth Grant is terrifyingly crunchy granola as Dr. Brooks, seen in home movies and the like. Ross Partridge is also surprisingly engaging as Josh, despite the film’s very female-centric perspective. Yet strangely, the three co-leads never create strongly differentiated identities for the three half-sisters. Perhaps that is a function of their shared problematic upbringing. Could it be they are actually not separate entities unto themselves, but are in fact the personification of the splinters of a fractured identity? That seems unlikely in the dramatic context of the film, but it sounds cool.

In fact, Smith’s execution is quite accomplished, provided viewers appreciate genre cinema that suggests instead of shows. She masterfully creates a mood of mystery and hard-to-define dread. The backstory is also unusually effective and there is a keen sense of place. Recommended for those who prefer their ghost movies in an art house bag, Midnight Swim opens this Friday (6/26) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Into the Grizzly Maze: Hear Billy Bob Growl

Remember the Reagan commercial warning there might be a bear in the woods, so we should prepare for every contingency? Well, there really is a grizzly in this forest and he is super pissed off. Even Billy Bob Thornton might not be enough to stop him in David Hackl’s guilty pleasure Into the Grizzly Maze (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Rowan the recently paroled ex-con had no intention of telling his sheriff’s deputy brother Beckett he was back in town, but an untimely brawl foiled that plan. The only reason he slunk home was to find his old friend, Johnny Cadillac. The Native American guide had not been seen since taking a dicey group of poachers into grizzly country. As Rowan heads off in search of the buddy who is probably pretty darned dead by now judging from the prologue, Beckett’s deaf zoologist wife Michelle also ventures out to monitor some of the bears she has tagged. Although she refuses to talk about the years she spent in a Ukrainian boarding school, Beckett fell for her hard, swearing off hunting to please her.

Soon the remaining pieces of a group of illegal loggers are found. Basically, they are just a couple of hands still attached to their chainsaws, but even Sheriff “Sully” has to admit this was no boating accident. Slightly concerned, Beckett rushes into the forest hoping to find his wife and brother. Kaley, the town doctor who happens to be Rowan’s ex, tags along, so they will have a fourth hand for bridge. Unfortunately, once they all awkwardly reunite, the bear cuts off their escape route, forcing them to traverse the treacherous Grizzly Maze. Meanwhile, understanding this is one highly motivated bear they are dealing with, Sully recruits the services of Douglass, a weird creepy guy hunter, who has a particular thing for bears.

So yes, the bear is definitely the smartest character in Grizzly Maze. Yet, despite the conspicuous CGI grizzly attacks, there is a primal effectiveness to the film. The colorful supporting cast certainly helps, particularly dudes like Scott Glenn and Billy Bob Thornton. As soon as we see them, we know what to expect from Sully and Douglass, respectively. To be fair, the latter is given a bit of backstory, but it basically boils down to: he hates bears.

As Beckett and Michelle, Thomas Jane and Piper Perabo look suitably outdoorsy, but James Marsden’s Rowan maybe not so much. It is also a shame Adam Beach is so quickly dispatched as poor Cadillac. Still, Bart the Bear is fully capable of carrying the film as the predator known as “Red Machine” in some listings.

To recap, Grizzly Maze has a big honking bear, much death and dismemberment, and Billy Bob Thornton. It’s rather fun in a meathead kind of way. Recommended for b-movie fans with modest expectations, Into the Grizzly Maze is already available on VOD and opens this Friday (6/26) in select theaters.

Frameline 39: Love Island

It’s like the Love Boat or Fantasy Island, except this Adriatic resort caters to a dumber, hornier clientele. Naturally, it is the perfect spot for a precariously pregnant woman to chill out for a week or two, until she runs into her former lesbian lover. Things get very triangular in Jasmila Žbanić’s Love Island (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Frameline in San Francisco.

Island is your basic shticky LGBTQ-friendly farce, but it is notable for the people involved. Believe it or not, it was directed by Žbanić, whose last film was the dramatized documentary For Those Who Can Tell No Tales, about an Australian performance artist’s investigation of the war crimes that were perpetrated at a hotel she unwittingly stayed  in. It stars Ermin Bravo, who previously appeared in Angelina Jolie’s In the Land of Blood and Honey as well as Danis Tanović’s short film Baggage and his feature Cirkus Columbia, alongside Ariane Labed (best known for demanding Greek films like Alps and The Capsule) and Ada Condeescu (who didn’t get much opportunity for comedy in Romanian New Wave films, such as Loverboy and If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle). Yet here they all are, determined to distract us with sweet nothings.

In a way, it is a rather happy development to see a Bosnian film going for crowd-pleasing laughs rather than cathartically analyzing the war’s lingering wounds once more. Perhaps it represents a healthy corner turned, but there is still the film to deal with and it’s a mugging, shameless parade of clichés.

Poor Grebo is an amiable working class buffoon who is indeed taking his mega-preggers French wife Liliane on their long planned Croatian vacation, even though we can tell from one look she will be delivering late in the third act. The schlubby former rocker still fancies himself a ladies man, so he briefly entertains thoughts of some side action with Flora, the scuba instructor with the hot bod. Turns out Flora has different ideas. She wants to win back her former lover, Liliane. Grebo will need some help to stay in contention, finding an ally in the resort’s cover band vocalist, Stipica, who inexplicably fancies the lug himself. Oh, the complications. Where’s Gopher and Isaac when we need them?

Love Island was a crowd pleaser at this year’s Bosnian-Herzegovinian Film Festival. Perhaps it is gratifying for its domestic audience to see Balkan characters making love rather than war. If they enjoy it, more power to them, but for regular festival-going cineastes, it is kind of embarrassing. For cult film fans, it is particularly painful to see Franco Nero ham it up as the island’s old Casanova (Django, No!). Those looking for a sugary, fun-in-the-sun rom-com will get more entertainment out of the admittedly shallow Walking on Sunshine, now available on VOD. For patrons of Bosnian and Croatian cinema who want to see it for themselves, Love Island screens this Tuesday (6/23) and Thursday (6/25) as part of Frameline 39 in San Francisco.

Never Defeated: the Shunzo Ohno Story (short doc)

Shunzo Ohno is like the Timex of jazz, or even its Job. The record shows he took the blows, but still found a way to keep doing his thing. It is an inspiring story of repeated triumph over adversity that Sean Gallagher chronicles in his short but remarkably eventful documentary Never Defeated: the Shunzo Ohno Story, which premiered before Ohno’s Cutting Room gig this past Wednesday in New York.

Hailing from an economically challenged family, Ohno was not given a trumpet until late in his school years, but he quickly made up for lost time. He was one of many international jazz artists who came to America as a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. He experienced considerable initial success, but Ohno subsequently found himself scuffling to the point of actual homelessness, during what were lean years for real deal jazz in general. Of course, he bounced back personally and professionally, but his greatest trials were yet to come.

Somehow, Ohno survived a serious car accident (that caused the sort of damage to his jaw and teeth that make trumpet players shudder) and fourth stage throat cancer approximately eight years later. In each case, Ohno had to radically reinvent his embouchure to keep playing, which is sort of like a sculptor learning to mold clay with his feet. Yet, Ohno continues to play at a lofty professional level.

Frankly, Never Defeated could easily be expanded to feature length without requiring much padding. Gallagher is a tremendously economical storyteller, shoehorning some epic tribulations into a mere ten minutes. Wisely, he also incorporates plenty of Ohno’s music, including a studio performance with his working group and an all-star ensemble concert at Carnegie Hall, featuring musicians like Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Larry Corryell, and Steve Turre.

As an additional attraction for jazz fans, Never Defeated is narrated by Buster Williams, the accomplished bassist who featured Ohno on his Something More album. Williams is a selfless leader. You might hear him give nearly all the solo space to his sidemen at his own gigs, but he always plays with top musicians, so nobody complains. He is always more concerned about serving the music than vice versa, so it makes perfect sense he would sign on to promote awareness and appreciation of his friend and colleague.

Never Defeated is the sort of short doc that deserves a chance to be reincarnated in a larger format. It is tightly constructed and gives the audience a richly flavorful taste of his somewhat Miles-esque music. Ohno next plays at the Bean Runner Café in Peekskill on 6/27 and as part of the Sunset Jazz concert series in Lyndhurst on 8/13, but the venues are sadly not equipped to screen the film, so hopefully shrewdly programmed festivals like AAIFF will be picking it up in the near future. Recommended for jazz fans and “inspirational” audiences, Never Defeated: the Shunzo Ohno Story is definitely worth keeping an eye out for.

Julie Taymor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

It is by far Shakespeare’s most genre friendly play, chocked full of fairies and magical spells. It is the comedy that inspired Czech animator Jiri Trnka’s adaptation 1959. Subsequently, both Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett have riffed on in their signature fantasy worlds, so it should be the Shakespeare play contemporary movie goers can most easily relate to. Now they have no excuse, because Julie Taymor will give them the spectacle they crave in her filmed version of her own dynamic staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (trailer here), which screens nationwide this coming Monday for one night only.

To inaugurate the opening of their first permanent home, Theatre for a New Audience turned to Taymor, who put her distinctive stylistic stamp on Midsummer, in collaboration with composer Elliot Goldenthal. Not only was the production a hit, it also translates well to the big screen (and the bigger the better). Yet, the best surprise is how deftly Taymor and her cast turn the play’s comedic business, getting big laughs everywhere Shakespeare intended them. Many previous productions have been fatally caught up in the dream motifs, resulting in a snoozy atmosphere. In contrast, Taymor’s Midsummer is unusually energetic and pacey.

Of course, it is still Midsummer. That means Hermia and Lysander are still forbidden to marry, they once again abscond to the forest outside Athens, inadvertently blundering into the Fairy Realm. The prospective suitors they rejected, Demetrius and Helena follow after them. Hoping to even out the situation, Oberon the King of the Fairies, orders Robin “Puck” Goodfellow to bewitch Demetrius with Helena, but his trickster servant casts the spell upon the wrong mortal. Meanwhile, a group of roughhewn tradesmen are rehearsing the play they hope to put on as part of the ruling Duke’s impending wedding. This time Puck gets it right, magically morphing the blowhard Nick Bottom into a Donkey-headed beast and enchanting Oberon’s disobedient Queen Titania with the braying prole.

Into this familiar, archetype-rich narrative, Taymor incorporates some incredible wire-work (at least she got something out of the Spiderman experience), the rich yet suggestive costuming (often reminiscent of her Lion King), her trademark billowing fabrics, sparingly effective use of video projections, and pillow fights. Believe it or not, almost all of it looks great on the screen.

However, the incontestable star of Taymor’s Taymor’s Shakespeare’s Midsummer is Kathryn Hunter, playing Puck in the Mary Martin tradition, but with a mischievous glean in her eye worthy of Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion Lannister. Taymor whips her around the stage like Spidey, yet she still totally nails the “if we shadows have offended” epilogue.

There are no weak links per se, but David Harewood’s physical presence as Oberon is pretty darned awesome. Likewise, Roger Clark plays the Duke with gravitas and good humor befitting a nobleman. To an extent, as Demetrius and Helena, Zach Appelman and Mandi Masden somewhat outshine a comparably blander Hermia and Lysander, but it hardly matters.

Filmed theater often looks a little flat, but Taymor makes it an immersive and kinetic cinematic experience. This will be a tough Midsummer to top, so it is great to have it so well preserved. Frankly, it easily ranks within the top tier of Shakespearean comedies for the big screen, up there with Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night and Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing. Very highly recommended, Taymor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream screens this Monday (6/22) as a special Fathom Events presentation at theaters nationwide, including the AMC Empire in New York.

Phantom Halo: Shakespeare and Comic Books in Santa Monica

Brothers Beckett and Samuel Emerson have very different ideas when it comes to supporting their dysfunctional family. The former has launched a counterfeit currency operation, while the latter performs Shakespeare on the streets of Santa Monica. You would think they might try something in between, like working retail. One thing’s for sure, their father’s compulsive gambling and binge drinking is not going to pay the bills. In fact, his debts are the start of all the trouble in Antonia Bogdanovich’s Phantom Halo (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

There was a time when Warren Emerson was the most promising Shakespearean actor in the West End. Now he is just a drunken, abusive shell of a man. He taught Samuel to recite Shakespeare and little else. Each night, he tries to appropriate what little money his sons might have earned, stopping to berate Samuel when he catches him reading the Phantom Halo comic book. Beckett has already had a belly full of his father, even before his old London loan shark lays a beating on him as a warning to Warren.

Logically, Beckett proceeds to jumpstart a counterfeiting operation with a former reform school classmate. Frankly, Emerson never really liked the obnoxious Little Larry, but he thinks his mom, Ms. Rose, is hot. Perhaps buying a Bentley with their first batch is a bad idea, especially if they do not want to attract the attention of Little Larry’s former employer, who also happens to be his mother’s sugar daddy.

Whenever we hear Sebastian Roché reciting the Bard, we invariably think how much nicer it would be to see him in a proper Shakespeare production. He can make the classical language sing, but there’s not much he can do with Bogdanovich’s screenplay (co-written with Anne Heffron). It also seems like the severity of his abusiveness constantly vacillates from the sad drunk inadvertently hurting to ones he loves to a vicious emotional sadist. Either way, it is not a heck of a lot of fun spending time with him. Bizarrely, Bogdanovich tries to layer a low-rent Tarantino-esque crime caper over this bleak domestic horror story, adding a dash of Summer of ’42 for further tonal confusion.

As if the film were not odd enough, it features Rebecca Romijn as the Mrs. Robinson character. Still, it is sort of impressive that she took the part, since one would expect former models to try to play younger rather than older. Regardless, she is not the problem here. When the girl next door comes over at her father’s behest to extract Shylockian retribution for Samuel’s shoplifting, you know Bogdanovich (yes, the daughter of Peter, who signed on as executive producer) is trying way too hard to be hip or edgy. One can only imagine the valiant young actress asking “Seriously, I’m supposed to do what?”

Roché’s voiceovers are rich and sonorous and at least Romijn and Luke Kleintank are better together as Ms. Rose and Beckett than you might assume. It is also somewhat amusing to see Tobin Bell (Jigsaw in the Saw franchise) pop up as a gangster named Smashmouth (another colorful name for his resume). However, the narrative is a messy rat’s nest of flawed motivations and logical shortcomings, while the execution is painfully self-defeating. Not recommended but hard to hate on for its earnest clumsiness, Phantom Halo opens tomorrow (6/19) in New York at the Village 7.

Sinister Cinema: Wyrmwood

There is an ongoing fan debate whether zombies should be fast or slow. A recent Australian film manages to have it both ways. Its zombies are slow during the day, but fast at night. Why? During the day they exhale highly combustible zombie breath, but at night they retain it as super-charging zombie fuel. If you’re wondering how this works biologically, don’t ask me. I’m not the Mr. Wizard of zombies. Just accept it. After all, the zombie apocalypse survivors have to deal with it in Kiah & Tristan Roache-Turner’s Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (trailer here), which opens this weekend as part of Sinister Cinema at Cineplex Yonge & Dundas up north.

One night, most of the world just up and turned into zombies. Only those with the right blood type live to experience the horrors. For some reason, fossil fuels like gasoline also stopped igniting, making getaways even trickier. Brooke manages to phone her brother Barry to warn him, but alas, he still has to cap his beloved wife and child. The despondent Barry will take refuge with Benny, an easy-going Aboriginal dude, a resourceful old-timer named Frank, and another dude you shouldn’t get too attached to.

Despite the horrific circumstances of his bereavement, Barry is still in a better position than Brooke, who is kidnapped by a sadistic hazmat-suited emergency research team. As a result of the disco-crazed mad scientist’s experiments, Brooke gains telepathic control over zombiekind. Things look bad for her nonetheless, but Barry and his fox-hole partners will head out on the highway looking for her, once they figure out how to harness the power of zombie breath.

Wyrmwood has some truly wacky ideas, but that is a good thing. Arguably, their zombie physiology is truly innovative within the shuffling dead canon. However, the ridiculously cruel scientist and his paramilitary associates are a bit of a tired cliché. Aren’t movie people supposed to be “pro-science?” Yet, they constantly invite us to cheer for the Luddite troglodytes whenever they bash scientists’ big, arrogant brains in with a tire-iron.

Regardless, the zombie mayhem is executed with high energy and the survivors’ bickering rapport somehow lures viewers into an emotional investment. The hat-tipping to the Mad Max and Living Dead franchises is also wryly amusing. Even though she has the more problematic narrative arc, Bianca Bradey is poised for geek superstardom with an outside chance of mainstream breakout potential after her action-oriented, screen-commanding turn as Brooke. She is nobody’s victim, that’s for sure.

Shot over several years, Wyrmwood is the sort of scrappy micro-budget underdog you have to root for. Suitably gory and just tongue-in-cheek enough to lighten the post-apocalyptic mood without getting excessive goofy, it serves up the sort of red meat fans crave. A heck of a calling card, it should be the start of something big for the Roache-Turner Brothers. Recommended for Zombie fans, Wyrmwood opens tomorrow (6/19) as a Sinister Cinema presentation at Cineplex Yonge & Dundas.

Burying the Ex: Zombie Codependency from Joe Dante

It is hard for a proud geek like Max to stick with his relationship with an intense environmental activist like Evelyn. At least when she dies tragically young you would expect her to do the green thing and decompose into compost. Unfortunately, she will rise from her grave, reanimated by a nasty case of supernatural codependency. Of all people, Max ought to be reasonably well prepared for a relationship with a zombie, but she is just as jealous and overbearing as she was in life. This leads to problems in Joe Dante’s Burying the Ex (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Max works in a costume shop, chafing under his boss’s rule. He dreams of opening his own shop, but Ashley is not one to encourage such foolishness. When he agrees to cohabitate with her, Max finally realizes what an insufferable piece of work she is. He is even ready to break-up with her, but a city bus does the dirty work for him—permanently, or so he thinks. Thanks to a satanic idol and Evelyn’s intense commitment, she claws her way out of the ground, expecting to pick up where they left off.

Of course, this is awkward for Max. After all, she is kind of pale-looking and just generally creepy to be around. To be fair, he moped over her for a long time, but he only just started pursuing a new, healthier relationship with Olivia, a fellow geek malt shop owner. Right, Evelyn probably won’t like that.

This is a Joe Dante film, which means Dick Miller is in the house. Happily, he is still doing his thing and stealing his scene when he pops up late in the third act as an incredibly unhelpful policeman. Of course, we know he will be money. Essentially, Anton Yelchin falls back the same dweebish nice guy shtick he used in films like Odd Thomas, 5 to 7, and Broken Horses (listed in declining order of entertainment value), but it works relatively well in the context of Ex. In fact, he develops some believably appealing cult-movie loving chemistry with Alexandra Daddario. Dead or alive, a little of Twilight’s Ashely Greene’s Evelyn goes on long way, but she certainly helps the audience feel for poor Max.

Compared to Dante’s best work, Ex looks somewhat restrained. However, his many nods to geek culture (including Fruit Brute cereal, Hollywood Forever cemetery screenings, a Val Lewton double feature at the New Bev, and generous helpings of Ed Wood’s Plan 9) are a lot of fun. Although not nearly as richly executed, Ex could be a nice lite beer chaser to Dante’s true classic Matinee.

Like a seasoned pro, Dante keeps everything moving along quite snappily. There are some clever gross-out gags down the stretch and the design team assembled plenty of fan-friendly props and bric-a-brac. There is no shortage of zombie comedies these days, but this one has some heart and Dick Miller. Recommended for fans of Dante, Miller, and zombies (which ought to be just about everyone, right?), Burying the Ex opens this Friday (6/19) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Anarchy Parlor: Ink & Blood

In Lithuania’s sketchiest tattoo parlor, allergies and infections are the least of the customers’ concerns. Of course, a group of entitled tourists’ combination of stupid hipsterism and a crushing lack of intuition is just asking for trouble. The mystery “Artist” will duly oblige in Devon Downs & Kenny Gage’s torture corn Anarchy Parlor (trailer here), which opens this Friday in limited markets.

Somehow Amy and her friends managed to graduate from college, so they are now partying it up in style. By far, her dumbest friend is the human embarrassment called Brock, who is inexplicably picked up at a party by Uta, a goth tattoo apprentice-artist. Against all common sense, Amy tags along when Uta takes Brock back to her master’s establishment. Amy wants a tattoo, so heck, no time like the present. Naturally, the Artist is happy to oblige, taking quite the shine to her. She has great skin, don’t you know. As we fully expect, she and Brock quickly find themselves strapped to tables with sharp pointy objects headed their way.

Eventually, Amy’s friends will realize they have not returned, but first there will be plenty of graduation sex. During the search, time will also be taken to visit a high-end strip club, sort of the way O.J. Simpson would search for a mysteriously missing girlfriend. At least that allows the casting of British pin-up model Joey Fisher as Zala the “exotic dancer.”

As horror films go, Parlor is pretty lame and awfully conventional, especially in the wake of more ambitious releases like It Follows, Spring, and We Are Still Here. This is your basic strap the victims down and go at it kind of exploitation fare. In fact, the narrative is especially weak, forcing characters to do things that make no sense in hindsight, just for the sake of audience misdirection.

Still, one can see why Parlor was conceived as a vehicle for the heavily inked Robert LaSardo. He is certainly distinctive looking and has an intriguing presence. A Navy veteran, LaSardo has also appeared in Touched by an Angel and Ghost Whisperer, so you can’t say he doesn’t have range. He was also in Human Centipede 3, so Parlor isn’t even his worst film. Some up-and-coming genre filmmaker could definitely build a horror franchise around him, but this is not it.

Downs & Gage make an attempt to craft some mythos-backstory, but it never makes much sense. Sensitive viewers should also be warned, the violence gets pretty grisly. Frankly, this film is about as much fun as an infected tattoo needle. Although we might like to see LaSardo in more featured roles, Anarchy Parlor is disappointingly derivative, neither worth recommending to any extent or working up any outrage over. Nevertheless, it opens in select theaters this Friday (6/19).

AFI Docs ’15: Among the Believers

Apologists constantly claim Islamist madrassas are nothing to worry about. They are simply “schools.” While that might be a literally translation, it deliberately obscures the practical meaning. Throughout Pakistan, the Red Mosque’s network of Wahhabi madrassas act as incubators for virulent extremism, molding their students into fanatics and with shocking regularity, suicide bombers. Viewers meet the Red Mosque’s radical mastermind and his leading critic face-to-face in Hemal Trivedi & Mohammed Ali Naqvi’s Among the Believers (trailer here), which screens during AFI Docs 2015.

Abdul Aziz Ghazi radiates the absolute certainty of evil. A supporter of the Taliban and ISIS, he advocates imposing strict Sharia law uniformly and despises secular government, especially that in Pakistan. This is somewhat ironic, since his father founded the Red Mosque at the behest of the Pakistani government and he still probably counts on considerable support from Islamist elements within the intelligence service. When not sending out self-immolating terrorists into the world (maintaining the thinnest shreds of plausible deniability), Ghazi ruins lives one child at a time.

The education provided at the Red Mosque madrassas guarantees their students a life of marginalization. Forget math and science. They are only taught to memorize the Koran, but not what its passages mean. Even if they were not radicalized to the point socially productive lives are impossible, they are not taught any employable skills, thus perpetuating the cycle of futility and resentment.

However, Ghazi can talk a good game. Despite his clashes with the government, he regularly scores points with the media. His most intrepid critic is Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a nuclear physicist. Frankly, the words “Pakistani nuclear scientist” look a wee bit troublesome together, but it is reassuring to know Dr. Hoodbhoy is on the side of civilized, tolerant society.

There is loads of potentially dramatic material in Believers, but it is not well served by the filmmakers’ unyielding commitment to their observational approach. Ghazi’s severe religious ideology cries out to be challenged, but the only time that happens is in a highly structured television debate with Dr. Hoodbhoy, conducted over the phone. Nevertheless, you have to give Dr. Hoodbhoy credit for standing up to his harsh rhetoric.

Yet, this underscores the film’s weakness, presenting both men’s position and then largely shrugging. Frankly, they do not spend enough time with the victims of the Red Mosque, like Zarina, who ran away from her abusive madrassa and now attends a school that provides education rather than religious indoctrination. Even when they do provide wider context, like the Taliban massacre of 132 school children in Peshawar, the filmmakers never ask Ghazi the obvious follow-up questions.

Despite its intentional limitations, Believers is often an eye-opening cinematic dispatch from a deeply troubled nation. Clearly, Ghazi’s outfit is far better organized than the Pakistani government, which is depressing. Yet, the mere existence of Dr. Hoodbhoy and the hundreds of thousands of concerned Pakistanis who came out to protest the Peshawar Massacre is encouraging. It is one of the few documentaries chronicling contemporary Pakistan that does not leave us completely bereft of hope, but it still does not leave a lot of room to work with. Revealing but frustratingly passive, Among the Believers is worth a look anyway when it screens this Friday (6/19) and Sunday (6/21) at AFI Docs, following its premiere at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Tentacle 8: Microbudget Conspiracy Myth-Making

There is something uniquely tragic about conspiracy theory-mongers, who cannot understand why the world refuses to acknowledge the shadowy connections they see in the raft of coincidences they desperately cling to. Fictionalized treatments of their murky theories have the advantage of only requiring compelling narratives rather than bourgeoisie “proof.” Unfortunately, there is still not a lot of substance for us to process in John Chi’s microbudget paranoia trip, Tentacle 8 (trailer here), which opens this Thursday in New York.

Raymond Berry is a super-secret cryptographer and computer programmer, working undercover at a used bookstore, where he slips top secret correspondence to Tabitha Lloyd, a CIA field op, with whom he is secretly romantically linked. During the initial half hour of non-sequiturs, we also watch as tech start-up guru Rolland Towne is forced out of his company and the suits at the NSA go into full CYA mood when a data breach is discovered.

Soon, Berry is renditioned off to someplace more hush-hush than Guantanamo for some enhanced interrogation, until he is sprung by a mutual friend of the shadowy Mitchell, a long-vanished station chief who may or may not be involved with Tentacle 8, a fifth column organization buried within the intelligence establishment. Or something like that—who’s to say for sure?

To be fair, Chi will eventually lash these strands together in some fashion, but he takes several awkward narrative leaps to get there. Of course, the needlessly confusing flashback structure does not do any favors for narrative clarity either. To make matters even worse, he exploits the September 11^th terrorist atrocities in the rather baffling conclusion. Everyone has a right to hold their own conspiracy theories as articles of faith, but they should have the decency to respect other people’s tragedies.

Despite the narrative confusion (both deliberate and unintentional), T8’s ensemble is surprisingly professional. As a result, they often seem quite credible, while making ridiculous statements. In fact, as Berry and Lloyd, Brett Rickaby and Amy Motta (who both have an extensive list of television credits) are shockingly compelling in a number of key scenes together.

Running a tad past the two hour mark, T8 feels excessively long, yet it seems to be missing scores of establishing scenes. There is no question where the responsibility lays. Frankly, if Chi is worried about intrusive government surveillance and data mining (which are legitimate concerns), he should forgo further filmmaking and volunteer for Rand Paul (who really is the only candidate who will curtail such practices). Well-acted, but poorly constructed and ploddingly paced, Tentacle 8 is safely skippable when it opens this Thursday (6/18) at Anthology Film Archives. Why is it opening now when it is already available on DVD? It is all part of the master plan, which includes a VOD launch on the 25^th and availability on IndieFlix sometime in July.

The Tribe: Time to Brush on Your Ukrainian Sign Language

The industrial district of Kiev still known as “Stalinka” is so soulless and depressed, its nickname is probably more fitting than ever. It is here that Sergey will attend a state run boarding school for the deaf. He will learn the school’s lessons quickly, despite hardly attending any classes in Myroslav Slaboshpytkiy’s The Tribe (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday at Film Forum.

Perhaps more than any previous film, Slaboshpytkiy’s Tribe was conceived as means of putting the shoe on the other foot and forcing us to walk a while with it. Following a bold and already celebrated/notorious strategy, Slaboshpytkiy shot Tribe entirely in Ukrainian sign language, without offering any subtitles or narration to guide us through. Frankly, we will get lost from time to time (that’s sort of the point), but we can follow the broad strokes fairly well. After all, these kids are not exactly chatty.

Sergey soon learns the school is run by a very real high school mafia, led by King and “advised” by the shop teacher. Their primary illicit business involves pimping out classmates to drivers at the nearby truck-stop, like the apparently willing Anya and Svetka. After some initial hazing, Sergey quickly rises through the ranks, taking over the day-to-day operations following King’s jarring death by misadventure. However, he breaks the unspoken rule when he falls for Anya.

The overall effect of Slaboshpytkiy’s silent treatment is a mixed bag, but there are two scenes in Tribe that are so viscerally shocking, they will make you audibly gasp. A good deal of their power is indeed derived from the silence. They are also masterly blocked out by Slaboshpytkiy, causing us to wonder if his non-professional actors (who are also deaf in real life) walked away from their scenes unscathed, while underscoring the dangers of deafness in the wider, unaccommodating world. Of course, the school is supposed to be a shelter, but it is anything but.

Disturbingly, viewing The Tribe feels like watching a cold, violent documentary unfold. The young cast is so utterly convincing and free of mannerisms or artifice, they never seem to be performing. Still, it is worth noting the chemistry developed by Grigoriy Fesenko and Yana Novikova, as well as the gutsiness of their explicit but decidedly non-erotic sex scenes.

In a way, The Tribe is the anti-boarding school movie. Usually, the audience is invited to vicariously share the student camaraderie and sense of belonging, whereas Slaboshpytkiy deliberately keeps us on the outside looking in. Many times, we might actually wish we could join the pupils at Hogwarts or wherever, but in the case of The Tribe, no thanks. Yet, the self-contained nature of their environment makes it such an effective analog for the pre-revolutionary, Russian-backed Ukrainian regime.

Regardless, The Tribe’s vibe is totally distinctive and completely uncompromising. Timid patrons should be warned of its style, content, and pretty much everything else, but it is a truly immersive cinematic experience that edgier cineastes will appreciate. Recommended highly but selectively, The Tribe opens this Wednesday (6/17) in New York at Film Forum.

Deutschland ’83: Undercover in the West, On the Wrong Side of History

It must be a weird full circle experience for an East German defector like Sylvester Groth to now play a Stasi agent, but it is a role he would understand better than most. Groth’s Walter Schweppenstette is in fact the sort of spymaster who can dislodge poor Martin Rauch’s finger with perfect casualness. As a result, the shocked East German will now have an excuse for avoiding the piano while impersonating a West German General’s new aide-de-camp. Rauch did not ask for this assignment, but he will obey as best he can during the course of Deutschland ‘83 (promo here), which premieres this Wednesday on SundanceTV.

Rauch was a loyal Communist border guard serving on the Wall Pres. Reagan will soon challenge Gorbachev to tear down. His aunt Lenora is a high-ranking Stasi strategist, who is pretty freaked out by Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech and his decision to deploy Pershing missiles in West Germany. Rather cold-bloodedly, she picks her nephew to impersonate Moritz Stamm, an orphaned junior officer loner who will soon report for duty under Gen. Wolfgang Edel, a prominent NATO liaison. Of course, Rauch is reluctant to leave his almost-fiancée Annett and his ailing mother Ingrid, but Lenora promises to arrange a transplant for her if he agrees, not that he has a choice.

The first two episodes of D83 screened at the Berlin Film Festival and they hang together as an initial arc pretty well. We can see perhaps hints of doubt being sown when Rauch, the ardent Marxist first encounters a western supermarket. His superiors and colleagues are not exactly the reassuring types either, especially Aunt Lenora. However, it might be the freedom exercised by young West Germans that ultimately shakes Rauch’s convictions. After all, the peacenik chart-topper “99 Luftballoons” is a constant presence throughout the first two episodes.

As Lenora Rauch, Maria Schrader could well surpass Kevin Spacey’s Frank Underwood for stone cold Machiavellian villainy. Right from the start, she makes the show. Jonas Nay also shows promise as Rauch/Stamm, convincingly portraying his early overwhelmed naivety, while hinting at the resourcefulness and moral confliction to come. As Schweppenstette, Groth (best known for playing Goebbels not once, but twice in Inglorious Basterds and My Fuhrer) appropriately exudes malevolence and Ulrich Noethen quickly establishes Gen. Edel’s contradictory human dimensions. Unfortunately, Errol Trotman-Harewood seems to be trying for the cringiest ugly American stereotypes as blustery Gen. Arnold Jackson.

The period details of D83 are spot on, extending far beyond the music. Even in the early going, helmer Edward Berger keeps it tight and tense. The limited series also boasts a wealth of memorable performances from smaller but key supporting players, such as Lena Lauzemis as Rauch’s shadowy hotel contact. However, it is unclear how writer-co-creator Anna Winger will ultimately treat Pres. Reagan. There do seem to be indications we are supposed to sympathize with the resistance to his Pershing deployment. Still, there is no denying he shook things up.

Overall, Deutschland ’83 shows considerable potential judging from the first two episodes. It must be the first German programming to air directly in America since the History Channel broadcast Dresden so it is nice to see SundanceTV taking chances. Espionage fans should be advised, it commences this Wednesday (6/17) on SundanceTV.

Ai Weiwei in Shorts

The news cycle giveth and the news cycle taketh away. Just when Laura Poitras posted her latest piece of Edward Snowden brand management, news reports suggest he may have indeed done the one thing he absolutely, positively promised never to do: share sensitive intelligence with the Russian and Chinese governments. One wonders what Ai Weiwei would have to say about that? Regardless, it certainly casts his appearance in Poitras’s short in a different light. Freshly released as part of the New York Times Op-Doc series, Art of Dissent is one of two relatively recent short films available online, featuring Teacher Ai, the second being Jason Wishnow’s The Sand Storm, which can be found on Fandor.

Ai Weiwei’s Art of Dissent is one of his more conceptual works, conceived in collaboration with Wikileaks’ Jacob Appelbaum. As Poitras records the process, the artist and the activist replace the stuffing inside thirty plush pandas with shredded Snowden documents. Of course, Appelbaum points out the choicer passages, but there is no word whether information on Chinese dissidents like himself are included—and certainly not whether they were turned over to his Communist tormentors.

Poitras does indeed include descriptions of Ai’s punishing period of captivity, but Andreas Johnsen’s Ai Weiwei: the Fake Case is a far better source for insight on this period. Although Ai emerges as a principally consistent critic of intrusive government, he may later feel uncomfortable embracing Snowden and wikileaks. Unfortunately, it is easier to assume the worst about Snowden now, because Poitras refused to ask hard questions of him when she had the chance, like what does he think of the human rights records of his host countries and what role if any did the FSB play in bringing his girlfriend to Russia? By sticking to softballs, she did Snowden a grave disservice.

Wishnow’s The Sand Storm is also somewhat topical, since it depicts Ai as a Chinese water-smuggling Mad Max. Frankly, Wishnow’s film looks so much like a proof-of-concept short, it ought to end by saying: “to be continued with your money.” Regardless, Teacher Ai brings a quiet mischievousness to the proceedings as the dystopian lone wolf, while Bai Yao is absolutely terrific as the betrayed wife he takes under his wing. It would be great to see more of her and Ai in this world, but one wonders if his schedule (or the authorities) would permit feature-length shoots.

Highly recommended, The Sand Storm is a very cool way to kill ten minutes online at Fandor. More problematic, The Art if Dissent is still notable as part of the ever challenging Ai Weiwei oeuvre.

LAFF ’15: In Football We Trust

This is not the Utah we know from coming to Park City for Sundance, Slamdance or maybe skiing. This is Salt Lake City, home to the nation’s largest Polynesian immigrant community. Yes, many of them are Mormon, why do you ask?  Their faith is with the Latter Day Saints, but their hopes and passion are in football all the way. Tony Vainuku (the first Tongan filmmaker accepted at Sundance) & Erika Cohn follow four top high school seniors throughout In Football We Trust (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 Los Angeles Film Festival.

According to Trust, Polynesian prospects are twenty-eight times more likely to make the NFL than any other demographic group. The film also acknowledges the same is not true for Ivy League medical and law schools. This is a problem, but Vainuku & Cohn will primarily focus on other issues, like religion and crime. The former is clearly a positive force for the families profiled in the film, often credited for providing direct assistance, as well as a social network and structure. The latter is never a good thing, but the intrusion of gang violence could well jeopardize at least one player’s future.

For obvious reasons, the filmmakers spend a great deal of time with the brothers Bloomfeld, Leva and Vita, whose reformed father was one of the founders of the Baby Regulators, a notorious Polynesian street gang. Their father might be out of the life, but the life will still come looking for at least one of the brothers.

In intriguing ways, Trust confirms some of our possible preconceptions, while contradicting others. All four POV players seem to be reasonable well accepted in high school (they are jocks after all) and at one least has a popular apparently Anglo girlfriend. It also seems like the Mormon mission call can be a rather handy escape hatch during challenging times.

Unfortunately, through Fihi Kaufusi’s experiences, Trust also raises timely issues of football safety. Kaufusi actually played on both sides of the ball, which is a practice many would have assumed went the way of leather helmets. He will suffer an injury that the team doctor “under-diagnoses,” so you can probably guess what happens next.

There is only so much Vainuku & Cohn can coherently address in a film of reason length. As it is, Trust is like a tighter, more disciplined Hoop Dreams, featuring more proactive, self-aware subjects. Yet, football fans will not shake the feeling the ghost of Junior Seau hovers over the film. The NFL’s inability to deal with concussions and brain trauma becomes especially problematic when we consider how many Polynesian families look to football as their means of economic advancement. Still, these high school players’ ambitions are real and compelling. Recommended for fans of beyond-the-field sports reporting, In Football We Trust screens this Wednesday (6/17) as part of LAFF ’15.

HRWFF ’15: No Land’s Song

In Iran, the more things change cosmetically, the more they stay the same—or get worse. Since the 1979 revolution, women have been prohibited from publicly performing as vocal soloists. Nevertheless, composer Sara Najafi was determined to stage a concert celebrating women’s voices. Her filmmaker brother Ayat secretly documented the process, capturing her Kafkaesque encounters with the state bureaucracy and religious authorities in No Man’s Land (clip here), which screens during the 2015 Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York.

The prevailing orthodoxy had accepted women as background singers but not soloists for reasons so strained and misogynistic, it is impossible to coherently summarize them. Seriously, it somehow involves Adam’s Rib. This is what Najafi is facing. Her concept for a cross-cultural concert exchange with French musicians is especially unnerving to the apparatchiks with the 2013 election looming. Memories of the Green Movement and the crackdown during the stolen election of 2009 still loomed large. In fact, Najafi conceived the program partly as a tribute to the Green protestors, but she was shrewdly cagey on those details when dealing with the various ministries.

Time and again, we hear bureaucrats dissembling and buck-passing. Clearly, nobody wanted to sign off on Najafi’s program, for fear of reprisals, but they were also reluctant to own up to their decisions. Of course, we can only hear these exchanges, because cameras were strictly prohibited in government offices, but those regime mandated hijabs certainly make it easy to conceal a audio recording device.

Essentially, there are two components to NLS, the expose of Iran’s Orwellian ruling apparatus and the musical performances, which eventually do come to fruition, through an improbably fortuitous chain of events. Frankly, they are equally compelling and speak to each other in many ways. Presumably for the sake of their supporters and his sister’s fellow musicians, Najafi is rather circumspect and diplomatic when presenting the backstage events surrounding the concert. Based on his interview with The Guardian, it sounds like it was a much tenser atmosphere than the film suggests.

Regardless, the music was worth the trouble and frustration. Najafi made the most of the opportunity with an awe-inspiringly bold set list. For instance, the lyrics of Emel Mathlouthi’s Tunisian protest song “Kelmti Horra,” performed by the songwriter, do not require listeners to read much into them. The rebellious, free-thinking spirit of Najafi’s program is admirable, but the music is also quite beautiful, often in an almost hypnotic way. Frankly, the short term future of women vocalists in Iran is grimly uncertain. No Land’s Song may not materially advance their cause to any appreciable extent, but Najafi put together a dynamite night of music, which is a worthy accomplishment in itself.

Ayat Najafi’s film is definitely eye-opening stuff. It gives you an immediate sense of what life is like for Iranian musicians, especially women, while also paying tribute to Qamar-ol-Moluk Vaziri, the first Iranian woman to sing in front of mixed audiences with an uncovered head, back in the 1920s. Unfortunately, it does not instill much optimism for the future, but the music is still quite stirring. Highly recommended, No Land’s Song screens tonight (6/13) at the Walter Reade and tomorrow (6/14) and Thursday (6/18) at the IFC Center, as part of this year’s HRWFF in New York.