Sundance '19: Shooting the Mafia---at Criminal Element

The Mafia's assassination of two crusading judges was not well-covered in the drive-by media (big surprise), but photographer Letizia Battaglia witnessed and documented those tumultuous times in Sicily first-hand. She lived to tell the tale in the documentary Shooting the Mafia. Exclusive Criminal Element review now up here.

Sundance ’19: The Hole in the Ground

Sinkholes naturally occur when the earth below the surface is eroded away by water. Essentially, the ground becomes corrupted and collapses. Perhaps that makes the phenomenon an apt metaphor for Sarah O’Neill, who is seeking a fresh start with her young son after leaving his abusive father (or not). Unfortunately, she will trade a conventional horror for a supernatural one in Lee Cronin’s The Hole in the Ground (trailer here), which screened during the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

O’Neill was largely successful shielding her precocious son Chris from her violent husband, but she carries the physical scars of his abuse. They have moved to a sleepy provincial village, where nobody knows them—exactly the sort of place you find in horror movies. O’Neill has become a relentlessly overprotective mother, but Chris still manages to slip away into the woods, where an ominous looking sinkhole sets off all her internal danger alarms.

Shortly thereafter, the borderline catatonic wife of their nearest neighbor suddenly snaps to, telling O’Neill her son is not really her son. Unfortunately, she will start to suspect that herself when Chris’s behavior starts to change. Most distressingly, he has apparently lost all memory of the secret game they share. Horrifyingly, O’Neill comes to suspect her son has been replaced by a doppelganger, but she is deeply confused and conflicted regarding how she should treat him.

Hole is another horror movie that offers a revisionist take a parenthood, just like Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook. In this case, O’Neill’s formerly beloved son turns into a little monster. It is also a fine example to Irish horror, which generally seems to be distinguished by moody atmospherics as well as an often sinister view of rural life and the natural environment (as exemplified by Don’t Leave Home, Without Name, The Hallow, and The Canal).

As O’Neill, Seána Kerslake convincingly implodes into a puddle of paranoia, while James Quinn Markey is quite chilling as the supernaturally altered bad seed boy. Their scenes together are all kinds of tense and awkward. It is almost a two-hander, but James Cosmo adds some grizzled humanity in his brief but memorable supporting turn as their neighbor, Des Brady.

Granted, Hole is not outrageously original. Any fan could rattle off a list of films sharing a similar premise, but Cronin’s execution should still keep their attention focused. This is definitely a prime example of well-produced horror, especially with respects to Tom Comerford’s evocative cinematography and Jeroen Truijens’ subtly eerie sound design. Recommended for discerning horror consumers, The Hole in the Ground screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, ahead of its distribution via A24 and DirecTV.

Sundanc '19: Relive--at Criminal Element

It might just be Blumhouse that truly breaks out David Oyelowo as a box-office-opening movie-star. Exclusive Criminal Element Sundance review of Relive now up here.

Sundance ’19: Count Your Curses & End (shorts)

In one of the shorts that screened at this year’s Sundance, average people take their encounters with the supernatural in stride. In another, not so much. Usually, such incidents are extraordinary, but they are common place in Lorène Yavo’s wickedly droll animated short, Count Your Curses, which screened during the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Rather ominously, Sophie wakes to find their house spirit has been mauled to death it again. It is not just a pet. It is supposed to protect her and her roommate Charles from the ghosts and mythological beasts haunting the nearby field. They try to buy a new house spirit from the spirit store, but the proprietor refuses to sell to them anymore. Instead, he refers them to a sorceress, who might be able to diagnose the supernatural phenomenon at work.

Curses somewhat resembles the MTV show Daria, in terms of its blocky visual style and deadpan humor. Yavo’s dialogue is quite amusing, in a drily arch way. Plus, there is also humor in the characters’ blasé acceptance of some outlandish situations.

On the other hand, there is nothing funny about Yimit Ramírez’s End. The bad news is Juan is dead. He will get the chance to relive an episode from his life, but it turns out this is not good news either. The personification of death gets to chose when and it opts for the worst moment of his life. He does not handle the experience well.

End is a remarkably dark film with some real bite, but the budget constraints show in the scenes of the void of purgatory. Nevertheless, it is nice just to know Ramírez was able to complete this film, considering his past film reportedly ran afoul of the Cuban censors. His feature I Want to Make a Movie did not even criticize the royal Castro family. Instead, one character of dubious credibility goes off on José Martí, who has been dead for over one-hundred twenty years.

Both Count Your Curses and End are clearly the work of talented filmmakers, who must have some distinctive films ahead of them. Curses is the sort of highly rewatchable film that could go viral if it were a Vimeo Staff pick. Sadly, Ramírez will also have to navigate politics and bureaucracy (indeed, it is difficult to resist reading allegorical meanings into the Hellish vision of the afterlife presented in End). Each film is recommended for festival programmers, following their screenings at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance '19: The Inventor--at Criminal Element

Good news, Alex Gibney's latest documentary-of-the-week is one of his best. Exclusive Criminal Element review of The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, which screened at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, is now up here.

Sundance ’19: Sister (short)

If you have a solid grounding in recent history and global politics, you should be able to guess the devastating twist that comes at the end of this stop-motion animated short film. A grown man looks back on his childhood, growing up with the little sister who was born four years after him in China, during the early 1990s. If you don’t get it by now, you certainly will be the end of Siqi Song’s beautifully rendered Sister, which screened during the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

It is only eight minutes long, but it packs quite an emotional wallop. There is no question Sister is a highly personal statement from the Chinese-born, Los Angeles-based Song, who is credited as director, producer, screenwriter, animator, cinematographer, editor, and art director. Still, she did not do it alone. Her collaborators include Bingyang Liu, who performed the sensitive voice-over narration and Karen Tanaka, who composed the classy score.

As the film opens, the narrator fondly remembers his bratty little sister, who often brought their parents wrath down on him with her own mischief. Yet, something seems a little off with this picture. Eventually, all will be revealed—and it will be a painful revelation—even for viewers who were expected it. (As a final hint, Nanfu Wang’s documentary at this year’s Sundance also addresses the same topic.)

Ultimately, Sister does indeed indict the Chinese government’s recent policies, but it is still essentially a deeply humanistic family drama. Song’s animation is quite skillful and her visuals are sometimes surprisingly fanciful, but that does not dilute the power of her message. Very highly recommended, Sister screened during this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance ’19: Paradise Hills

It is a dystopian finishing school, where they finish the heck out of difficult young women. Sure, it is creepy, but at least the amenities are super-luxurious and the views are postcard-worthy. Uma, the cash-poor heiress refuses to be seduced by such trappings in Alice Waddington’s Paradise Hills, which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Uma is the picture of a perfectly subservient bride, but she was not always like this. Cue flashback. Initially, she had no intention of marrying her slimy groom, because she rather resented the role Son played in her father’s economic ruin and subsequent suicide. Her mercenary mother is all for the match, but Uma rather crassly still carries a grudge.

It will be the job of Paradise Hills, under the direction of the regal Duchess, to mold her into a more reasonable young woman. She is not there by choice and she cannot leave of her own accord. However, she makes fast friends with her roommates. Yu is a former prole, who must learn to behave in a manner befitting the upper class now that she has been sent to live with her Beijing relatives. Chloe has been shipped away to shed the pounds her family finds so undesirable.

Probably the hardest case currently in residence at Paradise Hills (technically an island, perhaps in the Mediterranean) would be Amarna, a pop starlet, who wants to chart a more Melissa Etheridge course for her career (and private life), much to the horror of her management. There is definitely an ambiguous something going on between her and Uma, until Amarna is suddenly discharged and acting like a bubblegum idol in the media.

The art direction and frilly costuming of Paradise are to die for, but it blends fantasy and science fiction in ways that do not conform to any consistent internal system of logic. Frankly, it is a bit surprising the screenplay was co-written by mad genre master Nacho Vigalondo (along with Brian DeLeeuw, writer of Curvature and Some Kind of Hate), because it really looks like the film started with its feminist message and built its narrative structure out from there.

Emma Roberts is so dull and vanilla as Uma, it is hard to fathom why the villainous Son would be so preoccupied with her. In contrast, Eiza Gonzalez smirks and smolders with electric intensity as Amarna and Mila Jovovich chews the scenery with devilish delight as the ab fab Duchess. Danielle Macdonald has some poignant moments as Chloe, but Awkwafina never really elevates compulsively earphone-wearing Yu above stock character levels. Of course, all the guys in Hills are either pigs or dogs.

Waddington is a gifted stylist, whose ultra-chic, darkly sinister short film Disco Inferno played at Slamdance in 2016 (proving the cross-pollination between the two fests). Josu Inchaustegui’s cinematography perfectly evokes a fantastical vibe, filtered through a high-end fashion magazine layout. It is the sort of film we want to admire, but it never fully lands. Still, it proves Waddington still has loads of potential to make distinctive genre films. Sort of half-recommended, Paradise Hills is certain to have a robust life on the festival circuit, following its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance '19: Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile--at Criminal Element

Zac Efron is surprisingly good as Ted Bundy, but the film will really make people all kinds of uncomfortable. Exclusive 2019 Sundance Film Festival review of Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile now up at Criminal Element here.

Sundance ’19: Late Night

Let’s face it, late night talk show hosts are much more entertaining when they are mired in rivalries and scandal (as in Letterman vs. Leno and Leno vs. Team Coco). After years of hosting her show on auto-pilot, Katherine Newbury is about to become interesting again—maybe too interesting. The show may not necessarily go on in Nisha Ganatra’s Late Night, which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Apparently, Newbury’s show debuted in the early 1990s, which would make her the second woman to host a national late night talk show, after Joan Rivers, but screenwriter Mindy Kaling gives Newbury credit as the first. In recent years, Newbury has been content to lob softball questions to guests she admires, like Sen. Diane Feinstein. Big surprise, ratings are down.

Viewership has fallen to such a low level, the new network president is ready to replace Newbury with someone younger and more popular. However, Newbury might just put up a fight, but first she has her long-suffering producer hire a woman writer to defuse some negative press. Molly Patel is the only applicant who fits the bill, so the underdog chemical plant employee gets the gig. It will be highly debatable whether this constitutes good or bad luck for Patel, but at least she will spur her prickly boss to start addressing more political topics, because most Americans’ idea of fun is a political lecture from someone who think they are more virtuous than they are. Regardless, Newbury’s ratings rebound, until a personal scandal threatens to end her career.

A lot of the behind-the-scenes chaos in Late Night is amusing, but the film is little more than an extended episode of Murphy Brown. Emma Thompson scores some big laughs as the witheringly acerbic, borderline-abusive talk show host, but she never looks comfortable in her stand-up scenes. That might sound like a minor quibble, but it makes it difficult to believe her character could reach this position in the first place.

Probably, the sharpest, most consistently funny performance comes from Denis O’Hare as Newbury’s long-suffering producer. Kaling is relatively likable as Patel, at least when she is not giving us lectures on social issues. By far, her best scenes involve her evolving relationships with Newbury show staffers, including O’Hare, Max Casella, and Paul Walter Hauser. However, the best performance comes from John Lithgow, who is achingly dignified as Newbury’s ailing husband, an NYU professor emeritus.

There is really nothing in Late Night you haven’t seen before, but Amazon paid $13 million for it anyway. Perhaps they intend to turn it into a sitcom, which is really the level Kaling is pitching her material. Mostly harmless but sometimes insufferably smug, Late Night is wildly overrated. Just an okay time-killer, Late Night screens again tonight (2/3) in Salt Lake, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance ’19: The Lodge

Step-parenting is always a tricky proposition, but it is especially so for Grace. As the sole survivor of a suicidal death cult, she has sort of already lost one “family.” Her prospective stepson and stepdaughter are less than thrilled to welcome her into their family. It is hard to form a conclusive judge about them or her in Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala’s The Lodge, which screens during the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Grace’s father was the charismatic leader of an apocalyptic Christian cult that committed mass-suicide Hale-Bopp-style. She was left behind to tell their tale, like the characters left standing at the end of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Should that make us trust her more or less?

Regardless, Richard fell for her hard while writing a retrospective piece on the cult. Aidan and Mia were already seriously unhappy with his decision to take up with Grace, but when their mother Laura is suddenly ushered out of the movie, Grace becomes the focus of their hard feelings. Hoping to bring peace to their awkward family unit, Richard books a getaway vacation at an isolated mountain lodge. Right, what could go wrong—aside from Richard getting called back to work just before a severe storm cuts off Grace and the two resentful children from the outside world?

Maybe Grace is a victim in all this, or maybe not, but either way, her cult backstory is massively creepy. Franz & Fiala frequently return to images of the mass suicide, which are especially disturbing, because they deliberately emulate news footage of the Heaven’s Gate cult. It is arguably exploitative, but undeniably effective.

In fact, The Lodge is consistently unsettling because of its uncertainties, starting first and foremost with the true nature of Grace’s character. Riley Keough’s subtle, ambiguous performance gives viewer plenty to support any interpretation. Likewise, as Aidan and Mia, Jaeden Lieberher and Lia McHugh make two of the most suspicious and intense kids to appear on film since the off-the-rails twins in Franz & Fiala’s Goodnight Mother.

If you want to get technical, there are probably some serious logical issues within The Lodge, but Franz & Fiala’s command of mood and atmosphere is so strong, we don’t even notice in the moment. The chills are further heightened by Thimios Bakatakis’s appropriately icy cinematography. However, the recurring use of a dollhouse motif is probably a mistake, because it automatically brings to mind comparisons to Ari Aster’s Hereditary. Recommended for fans of high-end horror, The Lodge screens again today (2/2), as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance ’19: The Witch Hunters

Milica is not necessarily wrong to suspect her father’s new girlfriend Svetlana is a witch, because the strange woman’s apartment is filled with all sorts of weird New Age organic remedies that can’t possibly work according to science. She has enlisted her school friend Jovan the dispel the witch’s mojo, but at least they don’t intend to burn her at the stake in Rasko Milijkovic’s The Witch Hunters, which screens during the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Jovan is shy and standoffish in school, because he is insecure about his physical condition. However, Milica, the brash new girl, looks past all that. At first, Jovan is aghast when she starts inviting herself over, but he eventually starts to appreciate her tomboy attitude and self-assurance. Soon, Milica confides in Jovan she suspects Svetlana has cast an enchantment on her hapless father. It turns out, a video-game playing expert on all things super-hero like Jovan is just the ally she needs to take on Svetlana, assuming he can work up the confidence to take the bus by himself to carry out phases of their mission.

Frankly, the key-art for Witch Hunter looks much more genre than the film really is. Basically, it uses fantastical elements in much the same way Ian Fitzgibbon’s Death of a Superhero did, but it takes the audience to a far happier place. Marko Manojlovic & Milos Kreckovic’s screenplay is achingly well-intentioned, but it skews considerably younger than a family film like the nifty ghost story, Room 213.

Regardless, Mihajlo Milavic and Silma Mahmuti are enormously sincere and appear quite genuine on-screen as Jovan and Milica, respectively. They have a nice, believable rapport together. Most of the adults a well-meaning dunderheads or cold figures of scorn, but Jelena Jovanova shows some screen presence as Svetlana.

Nice is definitely the word for Witch Hunters, with everything it implies, good and bad. There are some nice messages about inclusion here, but nothing you couldn’t find elsewhere. Mostly pleasant, but certainly not essential, The Witch Hunters screens again today (2/2) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance ’19: Abe

If only they had more fusion cuisine at Taba, maybe then there would be peace in the Middle East. Or perhaps not. A thirteen-year-old aspiring chef in Brooklyn tries to bring his mixed Israeli-Palestinian family together with food, but their divisions might be too deep for his culinary efforts to heal, despite some help from Brazil in Fernando Grostein Andrade’s Abe, which screens during the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Abe prefers “Abe,” but his family calls him Abraham, Avraham, Avi, or Ibrahim, depending on which side is doing the talking. His mother and her parents are Jewish Israeli, his paternal grandparents are Palestinian Muslims, and his father is a “plague on both your houses” atheist. As you might guess, family gatherings are super awkward. Frankly, they bicker so much, they never enjoy Abe’s cooking.

For a thirteen-year-old, Abe is pretty good at the basics (or so he thinks), but he needs a bit of coaching when it comes to more ambitious creations. Chico Catuaba is the chef he has in mind to mentor him. The Bahia native once had his own restaurant, but now sells his unique brand of Brazilian-Jamaican fusion cuisine in his pop-up kitchens throughout Brooklyn. Initially, Catuaba is suspicious of Abe and the potential child labor legal problems he might bring, but the young teen’s sincerity wins him over. However, he will make sure Abe pays his dues first, before giving him real kitchen responsibilities.

Andrade’s film boasts a lithe and lively Brazilian soundtrack, featuring co-star Seu Jorge on two tracks (“Imigrantes” and Veloso’s “Meia Lua Inteira”), Tulipa Ruiz on “Sal E Amor,” and musical supervisor Jaques Morelenbaum’s solo cello arrangements of Jobim’s “Brigas Numcas Mais” and “Samba de Uma Noto So.” It sounds fantastic and the food looks delicious, so it is easy to forgive the formulaic aspects of Lameece Issaq & Jacob Kader’s screenplay. In fact, Andrade executes the culinary coming-of-age tale with a light touch, dialing down the obvious clichés and potentially fraught politics as much as possible. Instead, he focuses on the diverse, likable ensemble of characters.

Noah Schnapp from Stranger Things is appealingly energetic and earnest as Abe. However, the perfectly cast Seu Jorge frequently steals the show as Catuaba. Anyone who has seen him perform knows he has serious charisma and a voice that could take work away from James Earl Jones, but he also wields a kitchen knife with authority. As Abe’s parents, Dagmara Dominczyk and Arian Moayed also convincingly look and sound like a loving couple, whose relationship is under strain and stress. As a bonus, the great character actor Mark Margolis adds some crusty flair as Abe’s Jewish grandfather, Benjamin.

Abe is a very nice little movie with a terrific soundtrack. The notion of refracting the Middle Eastern conflict through the microcosm of a Brooklyn family might sound like a ham-fisted, finger-wagging cinematic lecture, but Andrade mostly makes it work, by not forcing it too hard. Recommended for fans of foodie movies and Seu Jorge, Abe screens again today (2/2) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance '19: Stieg Larsson--The Man Who Played with Fire--on Criminal Element

Exclusive Criminal Element coverage of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival fittingly kicks off with the documentary Stieg Larsson: The Man Who Played with Fire here. It's hybrid-ish and fully stocked with intrigue and paranoia. 

Sundance ’19: Seu Jorge at the ASCAP Music Café

He was Pelé dos Santos, the Bowie singing crew-member in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, the vengeful Knockout Ned in City of God, and Pelé’s dad in Pelé, but Seu Jorge is first and foremost a major MPB star. If you have him in your movie, you ought to take advantage of his chops, like Fernando Grostein Andrade did in his Sundance-selected film Abe. Not only did Seu Jorge play a major supporting role, he is also featured on the soundtrack and played an intimate 45-minute set at the ASCAP Music Café on Wednesday (as part of the programming of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival), backed only by the film’s music supervisor, Jaques Morelenbaum, on cello.

Technically, Jorge’s program of music from-and-inspired-by-the-movie Abe will not sound so familiar to anyone who just saw the film, but his fans recognized nearly every tune. For Brazilians, there were a handful of his old school hits, given a distinctly samba vibe from Jorge’s guitar and Morelenbaum’s cello. They also played a lightly swinging and downright jazz-like rendition of Gershwin’s “’S Wonderful” (the only English language performance of the set).

However, the centerpiece of the set was a trio of Jorge’s Bowie songs translated into Portuguese for Life Aquatic, which was a shrewd strategy, considering the Sundance audience’s likely familiarity with the Wes Anderson film. The stripped-down arrangement of “Rebel Rebel” is an absolute knockout that perfectly suits his deep baritone voice. “Life on Mars” sounded similarly haunting, in a way that is perfectly in keeping its Bowie roots. The same was generally true of “Ziggy Stardust,” but the slower tempo does not suit the melody as well.

Throughout the set, Morelenbaum’s accompaniment was tasteful and classy. The combination of guitar and cello was evocative of samba, as well as the coffeehouse and chamber music traditions. Even though Morelenbaum was definitely there in a supportive role, the standing-room-only crowd could hear the simpatico between the two artists.

The music on Abe is really quite different, but also very distinctive, including Jorge’s vocals on "Imigrantes" and Caetano Veloso’s “Meia Lua Inteira,” as well as Morelenbaum’s solo cello arrangements of Jobim’s “Brigas Numcas Mais” and “Samba de Uma Noto So.” All of the music associated (even distantly) with Abe is highly recommended and the movie is quite nice too (review to come). One thing is certain—Jorge’s ASCAP Music Café accomplished its mission, because it surely generated buzz and interest for the film.

(Photo: Erik Philbrook)

Sundance ’19: American Factory

It is sort of like the Ron Howard movie Gung Ho, but the new management is Chinese instead of Japanese. That leads to even greater culture clashes with their American workforce. Arguably, both sides have legitimate points, but it is hard for them to find common ground. Documentarians Steven Bognar & Julia Reichart observe the growing tensions in American Factory, which screens during the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Until the late 2000s, the GM plant supplied hundreds of good paying jobs to Dayton area workers. In 2014, Chinese auto glass manufacturer Fuyao announced their intention to refit and reopen the shuttered factory, but it was difficult right from the start. Blame Sen. Sherrod Brown. At the ribbon cutting ceremony, he offered an unsolicited declaration of support for unionization of the factory, immediately making Fuyao executives, especially billionaire founder Cao Dewang, suspicious and defensive.

With productivity lagging behind Chinese standards, all the American executives of Fuyao USA are axed a few month later. Attitudes become entrenched, with the Chinese resenting American workers aversion to overtime and the Americans growing increasingly concerned about comparatively lax safety measures.

The frustrating thing about American Factory is the legitimacy of the concerns of both parties and their mutual unwillingness to look at issues from the other side. Frankly, Bognar and Reichart really bury their lede and then pave it over with concrete when concerned workers discuss the factory’s practice of illegally dumping chemicals. That goes beyond the scope of regular workplace grievances. It puts the company in huge risk of regulatory fines and sanctions.

In fact, the American Factory doc could be used a case study to illustrate the respective strengths and weaknesses of the American and Chinese models of labor relations and industrial organization. It is frustrating Bognar and Reichart never think to compare and contrast worker productivity, economic growth, workplace safety, and pollution figures in each country, because the numbers would be telling. There could have been some constructive policy recommendations coming out of the film, aside from never inviting Sherrod Brown to a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Throughout American Factory, it is clear what happens at the Fuyao plant will have serious repercussions on the lives of the American workers and the very junior Chinese executives tasked with making it work. By and large, they are all decent people, which is why it is so depressing there is nobody in a position to effectively mediate between them.

American Factory captures a lot of drama, but we wish it had delved further into the really fundamental issues involved. It is compelling in its own terms, but it is too limited in scope to offer any kind of firm conclusions. Recommended for MBA candidates studying US-Chinese co-ventures, American Factory screens again today (2/1) in Park City, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance ’19: Sonja—the White Swan

If you visit Sun Valley, you can easily enjoy vintage performances from Sonja Henie, Glenn Miller, Dorothy Dandridge, and the Nicholas Brothers, because the 1941 Hollywood musical Sun Valley Serenade plays 24-hours on a local resort TV station. Unfortunately, you might not want to see that much of Henie after watching her new bio-pic. There is nothing flattering about the portrait of Henie that emerges in Anne Sewitsky’s Sonja: The White Swan, which screens during the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Henie was a record-breaking world and Olympic champion, who certainly never lacked for confidence. She basically talked and skated her way into a contract at 20^th Century Fox and then proceeded to save the cash-strapped studio with her rom-com hits. She was the Ethel Merman of frozen water, but she wasn’t very nice to be around.

According to Mette Marit Bølstad & Andrea Markusson’s screenplay, the early years in Hollywood are a non-stop party for Henie, but career setbacks, family squabbles, and financial problems make the 1950s much less fun. However, in just about every instance, Henie is to blame.

Rarely has a film ever shown such unbridled hostility to its subject. As portrayed in White Swan, Henie is not merely a shallow, selfish, self-centered prima donna. She is also a Nazi-namedropper, who projects an unsettling Lolita-esque sexual persona, while carrying on a decidedly unhealthy love-hate relationship with her brother Leif. Arguably, the film lets her off somewhat easy for the way she sweet talked Goebbels into approving German distribution for her films. On the other hand, in White Swan she never seems to understand why her connection to the National Socialists is problematic, whereas in real-life she appeared in the anti-Nazi film Everything Happens at Night and supported the American war effort and the “Little Norway” military training base for Norwegian refugees, so maybe she wasn’t as bad as the film suggests.

Regardless, Ine Marie Wilmann’s lead performance is just a jaw-dropping spectacle of hot mess antics and meltdowns. She makes Henie look like an absolutely horrible person, but her commitment is beyond question. She goes all-in, all the time. It is exhausting to watch, but it is undeniably impressive.

On the other end of the spectrum, Eldar Skar is relentlessly whiny as the emasculated Leif Henie. At one point, Henie calls Connie, her fictionalized secretary/punching bag, “mousy”—and boy, is that ever true of Valene Kane’s portrayal. Basically, her job is to look on woefully as her boss engages in yet more scandalous behavior. Arguably, Pål Sverre Hagen fares the best as Niels Onstad, her childhood friend and eventual third husband, who is the only one who ever gives Henie a good talking to.

With its heavy-synth-electro-ambient soundtrack, White Swan chucks away verisimilitude, reaching for some kind of Baz Luhrmann-Gatsby effect, but it never quite pulls it off. Instead, the film only really succeeds in turning the audience against Henie, but it leaves the mind boggled and baffled as to why she and her cast and crew would expend so much effort to do so. A real head-scratcher, Sonja: The White Swan screens again this morning (2/1) in Park City and tomorrow (2/2) in Salt Lake, as part of the Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance ’19: Miles Davis—Birth of the Cool

There are plenty of good reasons why Miles Davis remains one of the most influential jazz musicians of all time. He led the jazz parade for nearly every new style developed since Bebop, including Cool Jazz, modal Hard Bop, Fusion, and what you might call 1980s commercialism. If he didn’t do it, one of his famous former sidemen probably did. Rather impressively, Stanley Nelson manages to condense his remarkable career into a nearly two-hour documentary without any glaring omissions. The beauty of his music and the irascible nature of his personality come through clear as day in Nelson’s Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, which screens during the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Miles Davis never had the pyrotechnic chops of a Dizzy Gillespie or a Clifford Brown, but he made a virtue of his limitations by developing his own muted, lyrical sound earlier in his career. As his reputation grew, he formed one of the most acclaimed ensembles in jazz history, featuring a then-little-known John Coltrane on tenor. Yet, Davis was only getting started.

Together with his friend and soul-mate-arranger Gil Evans (who gets his due credit in the doc), Davis led the Birth of the Cool sessions, which had a formative influence on West Coast Cool Jazz; recorded Kind of Blue, one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time and a trail-blazing example of modal improvisation; formed his even more exploratory “Second Great Quintet;” kick-started the fusion revolution; and disappeared and then re-emerged with some of his most commercial work ever. Nelson covers all these major turning points, getting all the important stuff right.

Nelson interviewed many who knew Davis well, but the most notable by far is the late Frances Taylor Davis, the musician’s first wife, who is widely considered Davis’s great love and most significant muse, based on published comments. She rarely discussed her celebrated husband after their divorce, so her participation is a real coup. Close friend and frequent cover artist Cortez McCoy also contributes highly personal memories of Davis. Plus, we hear from jazz giants Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, Jimmy Cobb, Lenny White, Mike Stern, Marcus Miller, and Jimmy “Little Bird” Heath.

It is dashed ironic Nelson’s film took its title from the 1949 and 1950 sessions collected on the Birth of the Cool album, because it represents a rather short-lived period in his career and helped inspire the Cool style, which Davis frequently dismissed with contempt. Of course, the Cool school was largely associated with white musicians, like Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan (who played on all the Birth sessions), whose success rankled Beboppers and Hard Boppers, like Davis. Still, it has the ring of something fresh and grand and historically significant, so here it is.

Regardless, Nelson packs quite a bit into the film. The soundtrack incorporates so many Davis recordings, even hardcore fans will lose track of whether or not their favorites were included. Nelson can’t cram in everything (we have always been partial to his soundtrack and acting work in the film Dingo), but editor Lewis Erskine shoehorns in all the milestones, while maintaining clarity and a brisk pace. Very highly recommended, Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool screens again tomorrow (2/1) in Park City and Saturday (2/2) in Salt Lake, as part of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance ’19: Light from Light

Ordinarily, psychics and “paranormal investigators” are con artists by definition, because obviously. However, Sheila is different. For one thing, she does not accept any fees for her services. Furthermore, she readily admits she is not even sure she has any psychic abilities. Nevertheless, she will try to help a grieving widower find some closure, perhaps by contacting his deceased wife’s ghost in Paul Harrill’s Light from Light, which screens during the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Sheila’s real job is working behind the counter of an airport car rental agency. She has some experience investigating hauntings, but all the gear belonged to her very ex-boyfriend. Nevertheless, she agrees to get back into the game when asked by the kindly Father Martin. He heard her on the radio discussing the possibly predictive dreams she had during childhood and concluded she might be able to help the recently widowed Richard.

After begging and borrowing sensors and cameras, Sheila presses her son Owen into duty as her assistant, but she gets his not-quite-girlfriend Lucy as a bonus volunteer. Together they wire up Richard’s converted country house on edge of the Smoky Mountains, where odd things have been afoot, like flickering lights and objects moving of their own accord. The three not-really-Ghostbusters genuinely hope they can help the earnest fishery warden, but the initial findings will be ambiguous—and complicated.

Frankly, Light is not exactly a supernatural genre film, at least not in a conventional sense, but the ghostly plot points ultimately give it a powerful, bittersweet kick. Yet, minute-by-minute and scene-for-scene, Harrill’s main focus are the fleeting connections humans manage to forge. Every flesh-and-blood character in Light is a good person, whom we come to care about quite a bit. That very definitely includes Father Martin, possibly the most sympathetic man of the cloth to appear on-screen in years. Harrill also penned one of the most touching, yet realistic and grounded mother-son relationships you will see on film in many a blood moon.

Marin Ireland invests the working-class Sheila with genuine grace and dignity. She forges ambiguously poignant chemistry with Richard, played by Jim Gaffigan in what might be his career-best work. It is a quiet and restrained performance, but he makes the widower’s pain and confusion immediately palpable. Atheena Frizzell is shockingly touching as lovesick Lucy, while David Cale gives it all a tinge of compassionate gravitas as Father Martin.

Light is a big, muddy river of a film. It is quiet, but it runs deep. It also looks terrific, thanks to Greta Zozula’s striking cinematography, which captures the mysterious lushness of the Smokies. It is sort of like a rural Personal Shopper, but it is subtler and more humanistic. Very highly recommended, Light from Light screens again this afternoon (1/31) and tomorrow (2/1) in Park City and Saturday (2/2) in Salt Lake, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance ’19: Velvet Buzzsaw

The oeuvre of late, undiscovered outsider artist Ventril Dease could be considered the Necronomicon of oil paintings. They have a rather odd effect on those who view them. It is even worse for those who try to profit from them. The exploitative sharks of the fine art world are in for some EC Comics-style karma in Dan Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw, which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Ventril Dease is dead and nobody really noticed, until it was time to clear out the hundreds of tormented paintings he left behind. Then they came to the attention of his neighbor, Josephine, an aspiring gallerist, who immediately recognizes the collection as a potential blockbuster. Around that time, she conveniently starts sleeping with pompous art critic Morf Vandewalt, who is even more struck by Dease’s twisted vision. Soon, the entire art world is desperate to get their hands on Dease’s work, especially Josephine’s former boss (and Vandewalt’s bestie), Rhodora Haze, who once played in a punk band called “Velvet Buzzsaw” during her wild youth, thereby explaining the cryptic title, as well as her fiercest rival, Ricky Blaine.

Of course, the various grasping players start dropping like flies, under decidedly sinister circumstances. Vandewalt, who negotiated himself gigs as Dease’s official biographer and author of the exhibit catalogue, starts having weird visions worthy of a twisted Dease painting. Although his paranoia is definitely galloping unfettered, the critic is not necessarily wrong when he warns the paintings are exerting a malevolent, uncanny influence on their beholders.

Arguably, Buzzsaw is a contemporary cousin to Roger Corman’s classic Bucket of Blood, chronicling the rise and fall of artist Walter Paisley, whose sculptures look so realistic, because he embeds dead people inside them. Surprisingly, Buzzsaw is nearly as campy. It also has a roughly comparable body count.

It is not exactly what we would have expected from the director and two leads of Nightcrawler, but it is still fun the watch the game, scenery-chewing cast preen about the Miami Beach Art Basel. This is a case of beautiful people absolutely skewering beautiful people of an even more rarified strata.

Of course, when it comes to acidic snark, nobody can top Toni Collette as Gretchen, a spectacularly ruthless museum agent. Jake Gyllenhaal’s Vandewalt is an utterly un-self-aware uber-twit who puts Bertie Wooster to shame. He is a self-important dolt, but he has his principles, which makes him strangely interesting. Rene Russo is flamboyantly charismatic as Haze, the cynical game-player. John Malkovich adds his usual sly élan as Piers, a superstar artist, but this time around, he can’t match Collette’s caustic energy.

Buzzsaw is a minor work of cinema, but it is undeniably fun. Let’s be honest, any film that leads us to invoke Corman’s Bucket of Blood cannot be all bad. Recommended as a goofy, slightly horror-ish distraction after a frustrating day at work, Velvet Buzzsaw screens again this Saturday (2/2) in Park City and Sunday (2/3) in Salt Lake, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Sundance ’19: Wounds

Being a bartender in New Orleans, Will has seen a thing or two in his day, but even by his standards, things are about to get ridiculous. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of Cajun or Creole recipes for cockroach, because his troubles start with an infestation issues and mushroom from there in director-screenwriter Babak Anvari’s Wounds, which screens during the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Will enjoys being a perennially-buzzed under-achiever, even though it is starting to lose its charm for his current girlfriend, Carrie, just like it did for Alicia, the one before her, whom he is still hung up on. One rowdy night at the bar, a group of creepy Millennials leaves behind a cell phone that starts displaying some alarming text messages. When Will cracks the code, he finds some disturbingly violent images inside. He tries to shrug it off, but the mysterious black car following him really amps up his paranoia. It also seems to be somehow related to the cockroaches increasingly swarming in the bar or his apartment (or so we assume, Anvari never really closes the narrative loop on the roaches).

In some ways, Wounds would make a fitting companion film with Guadagnino’s reconceived/remade/reconfigured Suspiria, for reasons beyond Dakota Johnson’s appearance in both. Ostensibly, the two films blend body horror with some mysterious form of ancient occult evil, but they are really more interesting in smearing outrageously over-the-top lunacy all over the screen.

You just have to either accept Wounds’ madness or call it a day, but it arguably works on its own level, thanks to the game work of Armie Hammer, Zazie Beetz, and Karl Glusman. They keep it all barreling along with their energy as Will, Alicia, and her new boyfriend, Jeffrey. Plus, Brad William Henke is a spectacular mess playing Eric, Will’s beer-muscled, meathead customer.

Wounds is distinctive in its way, but it is bound to disappoint fans of his first film, Under the Shadow, because it lacks similar depth and emotional complexity. Yet, he still manages to maintain an eerie atmosphere of foreboding, at least for most of the time. To Anvari’s credit, he also conveys a decent sense of the city of New Orleans (at one point, Will buys what we assume is a muffuletta to eat down by the river—and of course, Dixie is his beer of choice).

Wounds is the sort of film you keep watching if only to see if it can keep the nuttiness going, which it does. Nobody can make a steady diet of that flavor of cinema, but if you enjoyed debating Suspiria (and to a lesser extent, Hereditary) than Wounds should be on your dance card. You know who you are. Recommended accordingly, Wounds screens again today (1/30) and Saturday (2/2) in Park City and Friday (2/1) in Salt Lake, as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.