Slamdance ’16: If There’s a Hell Below

Driving through wide open and apparently endless highways and rural routes can make you feel disconcertingly exposed. The notion that the government might be monitoring and tracking average people without probable cause is also somewhat disturbing. Even though the latter is a red hot button issue, a Chicago journalist’s misadventures are far more successful conveying the unease of the former. Regardless, he will find himself well out of his depth in Nathan Williams’ If There’s a Hell Below, which screens during the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival.

Abe has arranged to meet “Debra” out in the middle of nowhere, because she claims to have some sort of explosive information regarding an NSA-ish government agency. Even her first name is more personal information than she wants Abe to have, if it really is her name, which it probably isn’t. She is a senior mid-level data cruncher of some sort, but at her level, even her gender would be a meaningful tell.

Debra is certainly better at the cloak-and-dagger stuff than Abe. He will try to win her trust and calm her raging paranoia, but that obsessive fear and suspicion is not misplaced. Events will happen, but at a slow boil that allows for enough ambiguity to fill the Great Plains.

The teasingly oblique manner in which Williams’ advances the narrative could have fallen flat, but he manages keep the audience focused like a laser-beam. Frankly, the entire film feels like an homage to North By Northwest, in which Roger Thornhill is constantly looking over his shoulder, wondering if that crop-duster really means business. Of course, nothing is as it really seems, but Williams’ third act reversals are almost too much for their own good.

Still, Conner Marx and Carol Roscoe put on a veritable master class playing off each other as the earnest Abe and the skittish Debra. Mark Carr also delivers and fascinating and deceptively out-of-left field monologue as a character whose identity we never really verify.

There is no question If There’s a Hell is the sort of film you have to work with. Yet, the layers of mystery Williams bakes in make it quite distinctive. The importance of Chris Messina’s cinematography cannot be over-emphasized. He vividly captures a sense of vulnerability one feels on isolated stretches of empty road. Ironically, the film is so enigmatic, we lose sight of the very policies it seeks to critique, but that is not such a bad thing. Recommended for adventurous viewers with adult attention spans, If There’s a Hell Below screens again tomorrow (1/27), as part of this year’s Slamdance in Park City, Utah.

Slamdance ’16: Under the Sun (short)

Don’t get involved. No good deed goes unpunished. Those seem to be the takeaways from this unfortunate story, set in the go-go city of Changzhou. The commercial hub is booming, but many have been left behind. This causes resentments that will complicate a rather simple everyday tragedy in screenwriter-director-editor Qiu Yang’s short film Under the Sun (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival.

While returning home on a late night bus, a teenager sees an elderly woman collapse. Being a Good Samaritan, he schleps her to the hospital, but as a reward for his service, the woman’s grown daughter threatens to sue his family, accusing him of tripping her mother. It seems perversely unfair, because it will jeopardize the decent kid’s future plans. However, as we learn the daughter’s grim circumstances, we come to sympathize with her as well. Sadly but inevitably, tragedy will compound rather dramatically.

Judging from Sun (which shines very little), Qiu seems to be highly influenced by Tsai Ming-liang, both in terms of aesthetics and the street-level, socially-informed subject matter, with maybe a pinch of Ozu sprinkled in. It is a darkly humanistic film that offers empathy for nearly all its characters. Qiu captures some extreme emotions, but the visual strategy he and cinematographer Tarun Hansen apply, often framing scenes through doorways, at oblique angles, is initially somewhat distancing. Yet, it forces the audience to fill in some blanks during the grimly logical climax.

Whether Qiu’s stylistic approach could be sustained over a future length film is something we will just have to find out later. As an eighteen minute film, it is quite impressive. For those who are willing to work with it, Under the Sun packs quite a pop. Recommended for everyone interested in independent Chinese-language cinema, Under the Sun screens again this Thursday (1/28), as part of Narrative Shorts Block 1 at this year’s Slamdance.

In Park City ’16: ForEveryone.net

Sir Tim Berners-Lee did not invent the internet. That was sort of Vint Cert and Bob Kahn and kind of Xerox PARC. Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s often abbreviated “www.” More than anyone, he is responsible for making the net navigable and maintaining its orderly growth. Jessica Yu profiles the internet pioneer and solicits his take on the state of the web in the thirty-five minute documentary ForEveryone.net, which screened for invited guests and media during festival season in Park City.

Berners-Lee OM KBE FRS, etc is not a household name, but that is largely by design. He will do the periodic Ted Talk, but he is not a media attention seeker. As the child of computer scientists, it was apparently in his genes. Fortunately, he was at CERN, Europe’s largest internet juncture, just when people were starting to think about networking and hypertext in conjunction with each other. Berners-Lee really got it and envisioned the resulting user-friendly architecture.

Frankly, it is strange nobody has given Berners-Lee the documentary treatment sooner, because his enthusiasm is quite appealing on screen. His tribute during the London Olympics’ opening ceremony should have also intrigued potential viewers. He was there, driving some pretty critical scientific and sociological history. Yu could probably easily expand ForEveryone.net into a consistently engaging feature length documentary on the early development and adoption of the World Wide Web.

That is all well and good, but Yu allows Berners-Lee to give a lengthy pitch for so-called Net Neutrality, probably the most deliberately misrepresented and demagogued issue of the last ten years. Thanks to Net Neutrality, bit torrent pirates continue to hog ISP bandwidth, get the same speeds, and pay the same fees as the little old ladies who only use the web to post cat pictures on Facebook. Treating these two groups any differently is currently illegal.

Be that as it is, there are still a lot of interesting fascinating details in Yu’s film. Innovation should be exciting and she captures that spirit well. There is a slightly awkward irony of a film advocating universal web access holding a private screening, but maybe it will be free on the internet someday (surely on a bit torrent site, thanks to Net Neutrality). Recommended for fans of science documentaries like Particle Fever, ForEveryone.net is sure to have a lengthy festival life ahead of it.

Rabin, the Last Day—Investigating the Investigation

If they can turn the 9-11 Commission’s report into a graphic novel, there is no reason why the Shamgar Commission’s inquiry into the Rabin assassination could not credibly be adapted into a docudrama. Arguably, Amos Gitai is both the best and worst filmmaker for the job. Although he makes a point of expanding his scope beyond the Commission’s narrow jurisdiction, his governmental source material remains problematically evident throughout Rabin, the Last Day (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

On November 4, 1995, Yigal Amir gunned down Yitzhak Rabin on what was then known as Kings of Israel Square but would be renamed Rabin Square. Nobody was more surprised than Amir at the ease of his access. The Shamgar Commission was charged with investigating how the considerable state security detail failed so badly. In dramatic recreations, we watch the Commission hear testimony of government miscommunication and incompetence that shouldn’t really surprise anyone. They will also briefly touch on the heated and highly personalized rhetoric aimed at Rabin in the wake of the Oslo accords, but ultimately fell outside their carefully delineated jurisdiction.

Rabin himself only appears in limited archival segments. Bizarrely, the only historical figure given any dramatic space to breathe in the film is the unyielding extremist, Yigal, played with sad-eyed intensity by Yogev Yefet. For obvious reasons, this rather unbalances the film in a decidedly awkward way.

While Gitai’s stylistic approach is often drily clinical, it is never exactly subtle, as demonstrated by his frequent cutaways to scenes of soldiers forcibly evicting Gaza settlers. The demolishment of settlements and the Rabin assassination are linked to an extent (Yigal and his alleged Svengalis were most definitely against the disengagement policy), but they also muddy the waters somewhat.

The title might lead some viewers to expect a Yitzhak Rabin passion play, but Last Day is dispassionate and cerebral to a fault. It even undercuts its own conspiratorial inclinations at times (a case in point being the Attorney General who declined to charge a hardline rabbi for placing a curse on Rabin, basically because it was 1995, not the Dark Ages, and they were in Israel, not Iran). Still, it certainly offers another validation of Hoffer’s True Believer.

As despicable as the assassination was, the specter of subsequent events, such as Arafat’s betrayal of the peace process, the Second Intifada, and the utter and complete failure of the Palestinian Authority to demonstrate the smallest iota of self-governance hang over the film, like Shakespearean ghosts. Indeed, for a film advocating a wider focus of inquiry, Last Day’s feels conspicuously narrow. Recommended only for hardcore Likud critics, Rabin, the Last Day opens this Friday (1/29) in New York, at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema.

Sundance ’16: Green Room

They are the far-right, but if you ask them, they will admit they are really the ultra-left. At least they are self-aware. They also appreciate hardcore rock and punk. Playing a hate-rock palooza will give a hipster punk band enough gas money to get home, but all bets are off when they witness a murder in Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

Pat’s band the “Ain’t Rights” was booked by a college presenter right before he lost his regular programming night. To make it up to them, he arranges a spot on the bill at a backwoods Aryan club through his rather intense cousin. If they stick to their early stuff and avoid politics, the band should be fine. However, when they walk into a drug-related murder, they suddenly find themselves in a stand-off with the Neo-National Socialists.

Fortunately, the lead singer knows his mixed martial arts, but they are still woefully outgunned. They will also be outclassed in terms of tactics and strategy when the club’s mysterious owner Darcy Banker takes charge of the green room siege. The victim’s friend Amber is not much help either, at least at first. However, when the chips are really, really down, she just might have more fight in her than the punk rockers.

Although not quite as stylish and satisfying as his debut, Blue Ruin, Saulnier certainly does not shy away from carnage this time around. This is not a film for Hallmark Channel viewers, especially considering the explicit ways Banker’s Black Shirts use attack dogs as weapons. Saulnier creates a real claustrophobic sense of place in the skinhead club, stage-managing the successive attacks quite adroitly.

Anton Yelchin sure works a lot. He is fine as Pat the nebbish bassist, but it is not a showy or particularly memorable role. On the other hand, Alia Shawkat’s regular, standard issue sarcastic Daria-esque persona fits Sam the lead guitarist like a glove. To her credit, an unrecognizable Imogen Poots manages to scratch a bit of a character development arc as Amber. However, all the attention will be focused on Patrick Stewart’s spectacularly villainous turn as calmly ruthless Banker.

If you like hardcore punk and blood splatter than Green Room is the film for you. Somehow, Saulnier makes violence, hate groups, and the state of Oregon a good deal of fun. Recommended for fans of slyly subversive thrillers with high body counts, Green Room screens again today (1/25) and tomorrow (1/26) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance ’16: We Are X

You have to respect a documentary that comes with an audience warning. In the case of a new profile of the Japanese glam rock-heavy metal band X Japan, it is strobe effects. However, the band has collectively experienced far graver threats to their lives and well-being. Stephen Kijak profiles the immensely popular but deeply scarred group in We Are X (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

X’s androgynously Byronic frontman and drummer Yoshiki was always the member most at risk. When he was a sickly child, doctors gave him a minimal chance of living into adulthood, yet here he is. In this case, “here” means in considerable pain. Yoshiki never had a robust constitution, so his take-no-prisoners performance style often left him in a state of complete collapse. After years of stadium-style drumming turned up to eleven, he now must wear a neck brace throughout all X Japan concerts. Still, he is walking and breathing.

The same cannot be said of lead guitarist Hide, who died from an apparent suicide. Viewers might not be familiar with X Japan, but they have probably heard of the rash of copycat fan suicides that followed his death. This is that band. However, their most dramatic near tragedy had an especially Japanese flavor. Unbeknownst to the rest of X Japan, their vocalist Toshi fell under the sway of a mind-controlling cult. It was no joke. Hearing him relate his experiences is both creepy and cautionary.

Obviously, Yoshiki has a vested interest in maintaining his sensitive head-banger image, but Kijak gets him to open up somewhat, especially when discussing Hide’s sad demise. Kijak is a veteran music documentarian (the co-director of the first-rate Jaco) who draws on his experience to corral the deliberately out-there band. This time around, he incorporates some revealingly grueling concert footage (complete with strobe lights) and fully conveys a sense of the band as a social phenomenon in Japan.

There are enough tribulations and chaos in We Are X to fill a dozen music documentaries, but Kijak keeps it snappy while avoiding a gossipy tone. Recommended for fans and gawkers, We Are X screens again this Tuesday (1/26), Thursday (1/28), and Friday (1/29) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance ’16: Under the Shadow

The Iran-Iraq War is raging and evil Djinn spirits might just be real, but at least Iran’s Basij morality police is there to protect then society from uppity women who aren’t wearing their chadors. The repressive and misogynistic nature of the Islamist state compounds and in some ways facilitates the supernatural horrors that plague a young mother and her daughter in Iranian-born screenwriter-director Babak Anvari’s Under the Shadow (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

According to legend, Djinn are malevolent entities that travel on “the Winds.” Those would be the psychic residuals generated by humanity’s wrath, fear, and hatred—basically the dark side of the Force. With Tehran facing regular Iraqi bombings and missile attacks, the Winds are definitely swirling.

Shideh was studying to be a doctor like her husband Iraj, but she was expelled for political reasons. Of course, just being a woman did not help much either. While Iraj serves his annual medical duty at the front, their daughter Dorsa consoles herself with Kimia, the beloved doll he gave her. Unfortunately, when Kimia mysteriously disappears, Dorsa becomes very difficult to handle.

Simultaneously, Shideh starts having disturbingly realistic nightmares and even sees strange shadows out of the corner of her eye. According to the creepy orphaned kid staying with his aunt and uncle on the floor below, Djinn mark their victims forever by stealing their most prized possessions. Shideh does not believe in superstition, but eventually she has to face the uncanny facts.

Under the Shadow is the sort of horror film that really raises the bar and throws down the gauntlet for the genre. It is indeed massively creepy, so it more than fulfills its immediate requirements. However, Anvari also bakes in a considerable amount of social commentary, but he does so in a way that reinforces and amplifies the mounting dread rather than detracting from it. Between the nefarious Djinn, the suspicious Islamists Shideh must keep at bay, and the shells literally falling on her building, Anvari has no end of means to make us jumpy.

The Iranian-German Narges Rashidi might just give the best portrayal of a horror movie mom, maybe ever. Shideh is not just trying to save her daughter. She is brimming with pent-up anger and resentment for the injustice of her situation as well as the general narrowing of opportunities for women in Islamist Iran. Avin Manshadi also shows unusual range for a young thesp as Dorsa. Their difficult relationship brings to mind Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, but it is considerably more complex and believable.

As if that were not enough, Anvari and production designer Nasser Zoubi’s team vividly recreate the look and feel of 1980s Iran, down to Shideh’s bootleg Jane Fonda workout tape and the forbidden top-loading VCR. Kit Fraser’s cinematography is eerie and evocative, perfectly matching Anvari’s instinctive sense of how much (and how little) the film should show to maintain its sense of dark mystery. Very highly recommended, Under the Shadow screens again this Thursday (1/28) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance ’16: Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall

It was a bizarrely mellow song for a trashy exploitation film about killer rats, but “Ben,” the theme from Ben, played a critical role establishing Michael Jackson’s identity outside the Jackson 5. His early solo years are often overlooked by the media that prefers either the Motown Moppet or the Moonwalking glory years. Yet, hipper fans have a special fondness for his late 1970s music. Spike Lee returns to documentary filmmaking with the awkwardly titled Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival in advance of its early February premiere on Showtime.

In a way, these years are the missing link between the two indelible Michael Jacksons we have in our mind’s eye. There are transitional, but the music was confident. In fact, this is probably the Jackson we should try to remember. Regardless of his shifting appearance and unfortunate media kerfuffles, Jackson was more or less playing a persona after the runaway success of Thriller. However, he seems really real in the archival interviews segments Lee assembles.

It is also cool to hear Jackson pay tribute to the masters who came before him, such as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Sammy Davis, Jr., and even Duke Ellington. Quincy Jones also remembers their long and fruitful association, starting with their work on the film adaptation of The Wiz. Lee talks to a lot of the studio guys, who were part of the process, including Bobby Colomby (Jaco Patorius’s producer), arranger Greg Phillinganes, and engineer Bruce Swedien. Getting their perspective helps broaden our appreciation for Jackson as an artist and a professional. Appropriately, Berry Gordy is also afforded plenty of time to talk about their work together. Regardless what you think of the Motown founder, you just can’t tell the story without him.

As a documentary, MJ’s Journey is pretty conventional stuff, largely alternating between talking heads and performance clips. However, there are a few moments of editorial slyness, like Charleston Heston introducing Jackson’s performance of “Ben” at the Academy Awards. Frankly, the doc just doesn’t have enough clips of the rats.

Regardless, Lee has a good sense of pace and his informal interviewing style elicits some candid reminiscences. Even if you are not a fan, Journey is highly watchable. It is sort of like a better installment of the old Behind the Music series, except it ends with Jackson on the cusp of his greatest triumph. Yet, we leave feeling maybe things would have been better if he had simply maintained this level of popular yet relatively grounded success. Worth checking out, especially if you are a fan or have an interest in music production, Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall screens again today (1/25) and Friday (1/29) in Park City, Wednesday (1/27) in Sundance Mountain Resort, and Saturday (1/30) in Salt Lake, as part of this year’s Sundance.

Slamdance ’16: Million Dollar Duck

It has been called the Federal government’s most successful program ever. It is also maybe the most aesthetically pleasing. Frankly, the Federal Duck Stamp does not have much competition on either score, but it still deserves all due credit. For nature artists, the annual stamp art contest represents the brass ring as well. Brian Golden Davis follows several participating artists in Million Dollar Duck (trailer here), which screens at the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival.

Every waterfowl hunter has been required to buy a Duck Stamp for their license since 1934. Ninety-eight cents out of every dollar go to fund wetland preservation. Rather than resent the cost, hunters have embraced the conservation goal and the classical, Audubon-style art. The Feds do not actually cut the winners a million dollar check. In fact, there is no prize money involved, but the winning artist retains all licensing rights to their paintings, which can be considerable.

Winning the contest helped establish artist Adam Grimm early in his career, but now that he is married with three young children, he could really use another Duck Stamp boost. Yet, he and fellow artist Tim Taylor still work collaboratively to scout and photograph ducks in the early development stage. Like many wildlife artists, their friendship was forged during their time spent at the annual contest. Frankly, it can be a harsh process, incorporating elements not unlike the withering early rounds of American Idol. Yet, there is something to be said for making it so public and above-board.

Davis introduces us to several other contest regulars, including the Hautman Brothers, whose collective wins earn them comparison to the New York Yankees. There is also a decent blood feud running between the likable Taylor and the hipster-provocateur Rob McBroom. You can always recognize his submission. It will be the one with the glitter. Along the way, we also meet artist Dee Dee Murry and her blind painting dachshund Hallie (who sadly passed away before the film’s premiere), so MDD definitely covers its feel-good animal bases.

Believe it or not, the Duck Stamp competition, as documented by Davis, is enormously tense and shockingly cinematic. By the same token, seeing the artists’ passion for nature and the extended community they have built around the contest will give the audience all kinds of good vibes. There was a brief throwaway line about the Duck Stamp contest in the original Fargo film but Davis and screenwriter Martin J. Smith (partially adapting his book The Wild Duck Chase) give it the full treatment it deserves.

In recent years, the war on hunters has cut into Duck Stamp sales, ironically hurting their waterfowl prey, so it is worth noting you do not have to be a hunter to buy a Duck Stamp. They are available to any and all collectors. Million Dollar Duck could drive some business their way. It is highly informative, but also rather warm and fuzzy. Recommended conservationists and those who appreciate a handsome duck portrait, Million Dollar Duck screens again tomorrow (1/26), as part of this year’s Slamdance.

Trapero’s The Clan

This film was made possible by Margaret Thatcher. By standing firm against Argentine aggression in the Falklands, she fatally undermined the despised military regime. You might think progressives would give credit where itis due, but obviously not. Regardless, the fall of the junta left former intelligence services employee Arquímedes Puccio unemployed. With the winking protection of colleagues still in the military, Puccio put his very particular set of skills to work as the head of his own family kidnapping racket. The rise and fall of the Puccios is dramatized in Pablo Trapero’s The Clan (trailer here), Argentina’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which opens this Friday in New York.

Puccio looks like a mild mannered sort, but he maintains a profoundly unhealthy hold over his eldest son Alejandro/Alex. Alejandro is popular within his social circle. He is a star member of the national rugby team and has just opened an aquatic sporting goods store below their flat. However, the patriarch will not let him leave the family business. His two younger brothers simply aren’t nearly as reliable during the abduction process.

Poor Alejandro also feels rather bad about setting up their first victim, Ricardo Manoukian, a classmate from a wealthy family. Unfortunately, Alejandro did not understand his father’s M.O. will be to collect the ransom money and then make the hostage disappear to eliminate any possible witnesses. Of course, their final kidnapping will not work out so well, as we can tell from the in media res opening and the periodic flashforwards.

Clan is more like a series of high quality true crime re-enactment than a sweeping crime saga in the Godfather tradition. It becomes quite an object of fascination, but is never truly engrossing. Although plenty of time is devoted to the toxic Puccio father-and-son relationship, Trapero and co-screenwriters Esteban Student and Julian Loyola never really get inside anyone’s head. Stylistically, it is not so very different from Cédric Jimenez’s The Connection, but it does not have the same sweep as the French film or the extensive law & order POV characters.

Playing at least a decade beyond his years, Guillermo Francella is pretty darned riveting as Old Man Puccio. He is like a veritable black hole of parental dysfunction. Unfortunately, just as Alejandro is no match for the manipulative Arquímedes, Peter Lanzani wilts next to Francella. Much like Johnny Depp in Black Mass, Francella dominates and elevates what would otherwise be a very routine crime drama.

Thanks to Francella, the design team’s spot on period details, and makeup/stylist Araceli Farace’s transforming work, The Clan is a good, solid film, but not a great one. Of course, some weeks good is pretty great. Recommended for those intrigued by the notorious case, The Clan opens this Friday (1/29) in New York.

Slamdance ’16: Art of the Prank

Prankster Joey Skaggs must be real—he has his own wikipedia page. Even though we are trained to be skeptical of what we see on the internet, many still tend to accept what they are served-up in documentaries and the old media at face-value. Skaggs has done his best to undercut the media’s credibility and authority with his politically charged pranks. The journalists and talking heads who fall for his hoaxes really ought to know better, but they are too lazy to do their due diligence. Skaggs revisits his greatest hits and reveals his latest extended gag in Andrea Marini’s as-true-as-you-know documentary, Art of the Prank (trailer here), which screens at the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival.

It will not surprise anyone when Jack Cafferty shows up several times in Prank with journalistic egg on his face. Skaggs punked some of biggest media outlets, but apparently Cafferty was an easy target. You might think after one such embarrassment, the media establishment would be on-guard against his antics, but they have taken his bait, time after time. Marini shows vintage footage of the Cathouse for Dogs, the Celebrity Sperm Bank, the Cockroach Vitamin Pill, the “Portofess” portable confessional, and the Fat Squad plenty of producers and anchors would prefer to forget.

Sometimes you just have to shake your head and wonder who could be so gullible. On the other hand, some of Skaggs’ operations have been so elaborate, it is harder to blame his marks. For most of us, seeing would be believing in the case of a cathouse for dogs. However, his latest prank might have unintended consequences. Skaggs and his merry band of co-conspirators produced Pandora’s Hope, a phony short documentary (ostensibly directed by Kit Farrell) about the purported dangers of GMOs that also included completely bogus footage of Skaggs’ character getting genetic shark implants to regrow his lost teeth. It actually screened at a few festivals, including the Big Apple and Moondance fests, where the social conscious audiences bought it all, hook, line and sinker. Yet, you have to wonder if people will start to doubt the rest of its GMO alarmism when they realize the genetic shark grafts are a joke.

Frankly, greater skepticism regarding documentaries would probably be healthy for the body politic. Take for instance, Örn Marino Arnarson & Thorkell S. Hardarson’s Feathered Cocaine, which screened at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival. Half the film is a rather interesting expose of the dubious practices of Middle East falconers, but the second half claims their intrepid focal bird trainer discovered Bin Laden was living in Iran, as a guest of the very Shia regime, by tracking the unique transponders on his falcons. Furthermore, the filmmakers clearly imply the Bush Administration was protecting Bin Laden, because they refused to act on this prime intel. Of course, unless the Obama Administration faked the Seal Team Six raid in Pakistan, these claims turned out to be complete garbage. Yet, it seems neither the filmmakers nor the festivals that screened Feathered Cocaine have issued any retractions or apologies.

Okay, so that is a wee bit of a tangent, but it supports Skaggs’ general contention that we cannot simply assume everything presented in a documentary, or a news report, is one hundred percent factual. So yes, Prank offers a valuable lesson in informed media consumption. Unfortunately, as a revealing work of film, it falls far shorter. Marini never really gets inside Skaggs head, instead settling for his sea story reminiscences and his warmed over hippy New Left ideology. She never challenges any of Skaggs’ pronouncements and he certainly never re-examines any of his assumptions.

Frankly, Prank becomes more than a little self-congratulatory. Still, it is quite amusing to watch Skaggs’ career highlights—unless you are Jack Cafferty. Diverting but disappointingly shallow, Art of the Prank screens again this Wednesday (1/27), as part of this year’s Slamdance.

Sundance ’16: The Lovers and the Despot

Shin Sang-ok produced the 3 Ninjas franchise in Hollywood and some of Kim Jong-il’s most ambitious propaganda films. Like his ex-wife, actress Choi Eun-hee, Shin had to live with many decisions that were outside his control. Kidnapped by the North Korean Communist regime, Shin and Choi renewed their romance as they bided their time, waiting for an opportunity to escape. Their absolutely incredible story is chronicled in Rob Cannan & Ross Adam’s documentary, The Lovers and the Despot, which screens during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, Shin and Choi were the power couple of South Korean prestige cinema. They were the toast of the international festival circuit and popular at home. Unfortunately, Shin was a poor businessman and a flawed husband. At a time when his production company was drowning in red ink, Shin started an affair with a younger actress. After giving him the boot, Choi left for Hong Kong to explore a lucrative movie offer. Unfortunately, it was a set-up to facilitate her abduction, on Kim Jong-il’s orders. Hoping to find his alarmed son and daughter’s missing mother, Shin followed her trail in Hong Kong, exactly as the North Koreans hoped.

Kim hoped to “convince” Choi and Shin to elevate clunky DPRK movie-making into the equal of the vastly superior South Korean film industry they knew so well. Bizarrely, it took Kim five years to implement his plan. In the interim, Shin was held in a prison camp, while Kim essentially kept Choi on display, like an orchid in his private greenhouse. Of course, when he finally asked, they duly agreed, because what choice did they have.

Yet, Shin and Choi were always reluctant participants in Kim’s productions. Hoping to escape one day, they secretly recorded exculpatory conversations with the exalted royal dictator. Rather incredibly, their micro-cassettes represent some of the only recordings of Kim II’s voice. Eventually, they would be vindicated, but for years, South Koreans assumed they had sold out to the North.

This is one of the most remarkable stranger-than-fiction episodes of the Twentieth Century. It has more suspense and intrigue than the collected George Smiley series, but it is also an incredible love story. Cannan & Adam have a particular affinity for the romantic aspect of the tale, as does Choi herself, whose frequent presence enriches the film tremendously.

Lovers also happens to be a super-well put together documentary, shoehorning in plenty of historical context and conveying a colorful sense of the titular lovers’ films, without slowing the pace or interrupting the narrative flow. Just when you think it can’t get any weirder, Choi reveals another twist. It is a truly fascinating story that will leave viewers eager for a comprehensive retrospective of their work (including Shin’s Pulgasari, North Korea’s first kaiju movie). Very highly recommended, The Lovers and the Despot screens again this Tuesday (1/26) in Salt Lake, and Thursday (1/28) and Friday (1/29) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance ’16: The Eyes of My Mother

Francisca is sort of like the protagonists in Oprah Book Club picks. Having suffered a childhood trauma, she is now perpetuating the cycle of violence. However, her thing for sewing eyes shut isn’t very Wally Lamb. Francisca will duly apply all the lessons she learned in Nicolas Pesce’s The Eyes of My Mother, which screens during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

People will try to tell you differently, but Eyes is absolutely, positively a horror film. Even at a young age, Francisca knew how to cut, thanks to her lessons with her retired surgeon mother. Unfortunately, the mother daughter bonding will be cut short when “Charlie” the serial killer fast talks his way into their home. Francisca’s grizzled old father returns in time to save her, but not her mother. The experience will deeply scar the young girl’s psyche. However, it safe to say Charlie does not make a clean getaway either.

As Francisca grows into adulthood, her issues compound and fester. Clearly, living alone does not help her social development—make that mostly alone. Periodically, she will seek ways to alleviate her loneliness, but these only lead to further horrors.

There are parts of Eyes that are tough to watch—like significant audience walkouts at the Library Theater tough. Yet, it is also one of the most visually stylish films you can ever hope to see. Zach Kuperstein’s black-and-white cinematographer is truly arresting, evoking the tone of early David Lynch. Pesce’s command of the audience is also remarkably dexterous. He will leave a good twenty-five percent of the house absolutely mortified, yet he shows very little actual on-screen violence. Instead, he and co-editor Connor Sullivan typically cut away at the moment of impact to a dramatic scene of the aftermath that really drives home the gruesome implications.

Kiki Magalhaes is pretty terrifying as Francisca, but she always conveys a sense of her as a lost, little girl, mired in a state of arrested development. Paul Nazak is also so convincingly grizzled and leathery, we can totally believe he spent his entire life on hardscrabble farms. However, Clara Wong might just become the face of the film as Kimiko, one of Francisca’s starter victims. (Honestly, I probably took her death harder than any other horror movie killing since I first saw Duane Jones get shot in the closing seconds of Night of the Living Dead.)

The problem is Pesce takes things way too far. He crosses lines that are simply no fun to violate (you will know when he gets there by the people voting with their feet). Despite the lack of technical gore (give or take a few sewn-up eye sockets), there are scenes that approach torture porn for the sheer pain inflicted therein.

Still, there is no denying the talent that produced Eyes. In many ways, it compares to Jaunfer Andrés & Esteban Roel’s Shrew’s Nest (both of which feature delicate-looking psycho-matrons), but Pesce’s execution is tighter, tenser, and more stylish. It I a film genre connoisseurs have to respect, even while getting bludgeoned by it. Recommended for adventurous horror fans (because it is seriously a horror film), The Eyes of My Mother screens again this Tuesday (1/26) in Salt Lake and Thursday (1/28) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance.

Sundance ’16: Snowtime!

War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing, except maybe a little exercise, socialization, and the chance to develop self-esteem. For the kids of this snowy French Canadian small town, war becomes all that and more, until the inevitable lesson rears its ugly head. Snowball wars shouldn’t be fun, but they certainly look like they are during most of Jean-François Pouliot & François Brisson’s Snowtime! (trailer here), which screens (en Englais) during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. (FYI, there is a spoiler at the end for parents.)

Luke’s bugle is more than just a horn. It is his chief remembrance of his father, a soldier fallen in an unnamed battle. His proficiency also impresses his classmates enough to be appointed general of one of the teams in the proposed snowball war. Unfortunately, his crushy clumsiness around Sophie, the attractive new girl in town, inadvertently pushes her into becoming the opposing general. Although Luke’s army has superior numbers, Sophie’s side has all the advantages. She has aligned herself with the mild-mannered Piers, his egghead best friend Frankie (a.k.a. Four-Eyes), and his big, slobbery St. Bernard Cleo. She also has her bratty little sister Lucy, whether she wants her or not.

Thanks to Frankie’s remarkable design, Team Sophie builds a nearly impenetrable snow fort. However, Sophie and Luke’s mutually-denied mutual attraction will create divided loyalties. As the war rages on, escalation becomes dangerously inevitable, as those who have seen the French Canadian live action, anti-war catch-phrase-inspiring source film La Guerre des Tuques will know full well. Granted, Pouliot & Brisson maintain the same tragic conclusion, but war sure seems like a jolly good time up until then. Frankly, the tone of the film is mostly like Tom Sawyer or The Great Brain, which is not a bad thing at all. Far from it, in fact.

The stereoscopic animation, blessedly presented in 2D, is rather charming and the figures are really quite expressive. However, Luke and Piers look bizarrely similar, which makes things confusing until viewers train themselves to look for the bugle. Most importantly, Cleo is definitely all kinds of cute. For their part, the Françoises keep it rolling along at a good clip and do not let the message become insultingly didactic. Plus, Marie-Mai performs the lovely title song, “I Am the Wind.” (She’s big in Quebec.)

Slamdance ’16: How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town

What else are you going to do in a quaint little Canadian burg that still only has dial-up? Watch hockey or read Anne of Green Gables? Actually, the good townsfolk of Beaver’s Ridge are more partial to the virtuous YA novels of local luminary Maureen Cranston. Make that the late Maureen Cranston. Her black sheep sex columnist daughter has returned for her funeral, getting an even more awkward reception than expected in Jeremy Lalonde’s How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival.

Back in the waning days of high school, Cassie Cranston decided to seal the deal with her boyfriend Adam Mitchell during a party. However, he wasn’t quite ready. Through an unfortunate chain of events, Cranston was forced to do a near naked walk of shame through town, while Mitchell curled up in the fetal position on the bathroom floor. That was kind of it for Cranston and Beaver Ridge. She moved to the big city and unloaded on the town’s prudery in her first Carrie Bradshaw-esque column. They still remember that one.

In fact, the town’s paragon of Puritanism, Heather Mitchell, Adam’s wife and Cranston’s old nemesis, sort of over-compensates. She tries to enlist Cranston’s help organizing an old fashioned Marin-county orgy. Cranston is incredulous and slightly appalled, but she agrees anyway. She happens to be in a bit of a fix. She is due to deliver her book to her publisher, but she hasn’t written a word. Honestly, she is a bit of a fraud. Despite some research in sex clubs and what have you, Cranston is still technically a virgin. If nothing else, a Beaver Ridge orgy should be good material.

Of course, there are about half a dozen colorful characters who agree to participate in the swinging bash for their own reasons, including her trampy bestie Alice Solomon, Solomon’s ED-afflicted ex, Bruce Buck, his suave new realty partner Spencer Goode, and the ill-matched Mitchells. Some look good in various states of undress, others not so much. Generally, the on-screen action is mostly somewhat frank rom-com stuff, but that title is not metaphorical.

Plan is generally amusing, but it is nowhere near as clever as last year’s Canadian underdog, Big News from Grand Rock. Stargate: Atlantis’s Jewel Staite is an engaging screen presence, who finds just the right attitude for Cranston. Katharine Isabelle certainly will not jeopardize her growing cult popularity with her vampy work as Solomon and Lauren Lee Smith is rather spectacularly prim and shrewish as Heather Mitchell. However, Ennis Esmer, who was terrific in Grand Rock, underwhelms as her doormat-like husband. Likewise, the realtors and the other assorted orgiers are not so subtly drawn or nuanced.

Go broad and slightly naughty was clearly Lalonde’s strategy. In general, it works okay and he earns bonus points for not chickening out down the stretch, but it doesn’t have much staying power, so to speak. For those who are looking for something easy with no emotional entanglements, How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town screens again this Wednesday (1/27), as part of this year’s Slamdance in Park City.

Slamdance ’16: The Lesson

Mr. Gale would probably blame Rousseau for what he is about to do, because his advocacy of a child-centered education eventually facilitated the rise of hellions like Fin and his pals. Their humiliated teacher will also cite the Hobbes’ argument regarding the nasty and brutish requiring a strong hand. Somehow Nietzsche gets off scot-free, but Fin is in for a whole lot of painful karma in Ruth Platt’s The Lesson (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival.

Fin is a rotten kid, but it is easy to understand why. Since his sainted mother passed away and his abusive father took some high-paying international construction job, Fin now lives with his loutish brother and his Eastern European girlfriend. The brother is no prize either. Fin silently resents the way he psychologically dominates Mia, but getting involved is not his thing. He certainly does not interfere when his pondscum mate Joel demeans Mr. Gale in class. However, the last time Joel does that really will be the last time. Fed up with their delinquency and ignorance, Mr. Gale violently abducts the two lads to subject them to a lesson from Hostel U.

Setting up class in some sort of workshop, Mr. Gale commences lecturing on Rousseau, Hobbes, Blake, and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies with the aid of a nail gun. Being in better shape than the badly battered Joel, Fin will get the full benefit of Mr. Gale’s instruction. You had better believe he is listening now, especially since he knows there will be a test later.

The Lesson might sound like run-of-the-mill torture porn, but it is way smarter and more complex than that. Frankly, Platt has more than a little sympathy for Mr. Gale—and more than a little criticism for the soulless nihilism of Fin’s social circle. The fact that only Mia realizes and cares that he is missing is glaringly significant.

Mr. Gale’s high stakes lectures are also razor-sharply written. Although Gale is most definitely talking down to his captives, Platt never dumbs-down the dialogue. As a result, we get capsule introductions to Rousseau and Hobbes, as well as a close reading of Blake (although Platt sort of lets him off the hook too. Frankly, his tendency to objectify the very proles he made such a show championing could have contributed to Gale’s unhinged remedial instruction). Regardless, the audience is only too keenly aware Fin and Joel sort of have it coming.

Robert Hands is pretty terrific as Mr. Gale, somehow making him massively scary and acutely tragic, all at the same time. Michaela Prchlová is also a major discovery as the self-esteem-challenged Mia. Her character has a development arc that is quite remarkable for a horror movie (to use the genre label loosely). Evan Bendall is also solid as Fin, but oddly, the film is not such a great showcase for him. Platt has him mostly sneering and jeering in the first act and then turns loose Mr. Gale to open up a can on him for the rest of the film.

The Lesson is indeed a smart genre film, but it is still plenty bloody. Think of it as To Sir, with Pain. Platt holds a Hobbesian mirror up to nature, keeping viewers locked in her vice-like grip. Taut and rather daring, The Lesson is enthusiastically recommended for horror fans when it screens again this Tuesday (1/26) as part of this year’s Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

Slamdance ’16: Disco Inferno (short)

This cat burglar will steal all the style and atmosphere that isn’t nailed down. Narrative does not interest her so much, but it hardly matters. Prepare to get your Irma Vep on with Alice Waddington’s short film Disco Inferno (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival.

A woman in a skin tight body suit slinks into a mansion that vaguely brings to mind Last Year at Marienbad. As she skulks about some pagan rituals appears to be underway. It is a scene not unlike Eyes Wide Shut, but with more goat heads. Any and all cinematic allusions we might suspect are probably intentional. After all, Waddington (somewhat sheepishly) dedicates the film to Georges Franju.

Initially, Disco Inferno looks like a stylistic mash-up of Bruce Weber and Louis Feuillade until it takes an overtly and explicitly satanic turn. It seems the grand dame of the ball is Satan herself and the Vepish figure is a responsible minion come to drag her back to her sulfuric duties. Then it gets weird.

Does Disco make sense? Sure, kind of. More importantly, it looks fabulous and when it crescendos, it gets unsettlingly creepy (before totally letting us off the hook). Waddington serves as her own costumer and she certainly gets her money’s worth. Everything about the film looks rich, particularly Antonio J. García’s lush, fashion-influenced black-and-white cinematography.

While not a thespy sort of film, Ana Rujas shimmies quite effectively as the cat-suit woman. Regardless, it is more of a showcase for Waddington’s chops and the talent of her design team. If you want a quick WTF, it hits the spot. Worthy of mention for its sleek, ultra-chicness, Disco Inferno screens again this Tuesday (1/26) as part of the Anarchy Shorts Program at this year’s Slamdance.

Sundance ’16: The Lure

Silver is a mermaid, not so very different from Disney’s Ariel. She likes to sing songs with her sister Golden and frolic in the sea. She will also be tempted to permanently adopt human form when she falls in love. That will be a big deal, because the mermaids typical eat men, after ensnaring them with their siren songs. Love is wet and painful in Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s The Lure, which screens during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

Golden will regret not eating Mietek the bass player when she and Silver had the chance. Instead, they were rather quite taken with his playing, so they start singing with his family’s trio, Figs and Dates. Their sleazy impresario recognizes the novelty value of two naked singing mermaids, so he starts promoting them aggressively. Soon, they are the toast of Warsaw’s retro-1980s “dancings” scene, but there is trouble brewing.

The long stretches out of water are not good for the mermaids, particularly Silver, who has sworn off human flesh in deference to Mietek (but Golden, not so much). Despite her obvious torch-carrying, Mietek remains oblivious to her ardor—perhaps even willfully so. However, this holds some pretty heavy implications for mermaids.

Isn’t it great to have a splashy new water-based musical? It is like Ethel Merman swims and sings again. The Lure is strangely impressive when judged solely on movie musical terms, but what really makes the film distinctive is the way Smoczyńska and screenwriter Robert Bolesto update and deepen the mermaid mythos for a generation of urban fantasy readers and dancings scenesters.

Marta Mazurek and Michalina Olszanska sell it perfectly as the relatively innocent Silver and the vampy Golden. Yet, Kinga Preis nearly out-divas Olszanska as the vocalist-mother of Figs and Dates. It all has a suitably eccentric look of indefinable vintage thanks to the work of production designer Joanna Macha and her team.

The Lure is sort of like love itself. It can be dark and sinister, but you miss it when its over. This is a wonderfully weird fairy tale that could be considered the flip side of Károly Ujj Mészáros’s warm and humanistic Liza, the Fox-Fairy. Highly recommended for mature genre and musical fans, The Lure screens again tomorrow (1/24), Tuesday (1/26), Thursday (1/28), and Saturday (1/30) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance.

Sundance ’16: Hooligan Sparrow

You might not know Ye Haiyan’s name, but if you attended the Ai Weiwei retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, you might recognize all her worldly possessions. When Ye and her young daughter were summarily evicted as part of the Communist government’s relentless harassment campaign, a picture of their meager belongings dumped by the side of the road went viral. Being one of her social media followers, Teacher Ai recreated the photo in a dramatic installation. However, Ye is not the only target of the CCP’s orchestrated thuggery. Her lawyer and her documentarian were also followed, intimidated, and in one case arrested without charge. Nanfu Wang shows guts worthy of her subject throughout Hooligan Sparrow, which screens during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

Ye Haiyan (a.k.a. Sparrow) first came to prominence as advocate for sex worker rights. Always one to walk the walk, Ye went to work in the very brothels she protested, becoming an underground media sensation when she offered free sex for migrant workers. In 2013, Ye, human rights attorney Wang Yu, and a group of equally outraged women protested a Hainan grade school principal who abducted, pimped-out, and a raped six of his appallingly young students. Although he and a local government official were caught dead-to-rights, the state declined to prosecute, claiming insufficient evidence. Ye and her fellow activists launched a public protest against the principal and his protectors, earning the full wrath of the state.

What follows is even more intense and galling than viewers will expect, even if they binge watch Ai Weiwei documentaries every weekend. We watch as Ye is attacked by a gang of home-invading ruffians and then arrested for assault when she defends herself. She and Wang are constantly followed and frequently accosted by mobs on the street. At one point, Ye is held incommunicado for days as Wang Yu vainly struggled to visit her client.

You might think you have heard a lot about the state of human rights in China, or more precisely the lack there of, but the viciousness of the campaign against Ye is lower than you can possibly imagine. Obviously, the political implications of Ye’s story are absolutely radioactive. However, this is a deeply personal film that viscerally captures the fear and moral outrage of its subjects. There are times Ye and Wang are afraid for their lives, with very good reason.

As if that were not enough, Wang also structures the film quite adroitly. Using footage of the original protest, she dramatically brings it all full circle. This is independent filmmaking at its most courageous. By keeping faith with her subjects, she put herself at risk, which is beyond admirable. Frankly, the preening, self-congratulatory “Yes Men” should die of shame if they ever see Hooligan Sparrow. (Wouldn’t you like to see them try their stunts in a country that does not respect the rule of law? That’s never going to happen, because they are cowards.)

Sadly, Ye Haiyan was not able to attend the Sundance premiere, because the government confiscated her passport. Lawyer Wang was also missing from the post-screening Q&A, because she has been in prison since last July. Of all the everyday heroes in Sparrow, she might just be the most idealistic and dedicated, so her current state is deeply disturbing (#freewangyu). Unfortunately, this timely film keeps getting timelier.

This is the film at Sundance that most deserves film-lovers’ support. It is an extraordinary debut from Wang that would be an incredible white-knuckle thriller, if it were not so frighteningly real. Very, very highly recommended, Hooligan Sparrow screens today (1/23) in Salt Lake, this Sunday (1/24), Wednesday (1/27), and Friday (1/29) in Park City, and this Thursday (1/28) in Sundance Mountain Resort.