Tribeca Film Festival 2012 Review: Alex Karpovsky's "Rubberneck"

Rubberneck. 2012. Directed by Alex Karpovsky. Written by Alex Karpovsky and Garth Donovan. Produced by Garth Donovan, Michael Bowes, and Adam Roffman. Cinematography by Beecher Cotton. Edited by Garth Donovan and Alex Karpovsky. Music by James Lavino. Production design by Lindsay Degen. Sound by Charlie Anderson and Will Lautzenheiser.

Cast: Alex Karpovsky (Paul Harris), Jamie Ray Newman (Danielle Jenkins), Amanda Good Hennessey (Linda Harris), Dennis Staroselsky (Chris Burke), Dakota Shepard (Kathy), Sean Sullivan (Detective Timmons), Richard Forbes (Detective Ford), Mariana Basham (Marsha Burke), Gabriel Kuttner (Ken).

(Note: this review has been cross-posted on Twitch.)

Actor and director Alex Karpovsky has been a fixture in the past few years in low-budget American indies, many of which have fallen under the rubric (though I hate the term) of “mumblecore.”  In many of these films, both directed by himself and by others, he is an affable and sardonic presence, who has drawn comparisons in many quarters to Woody Allen.  Often in the characters he plays, a darker undercurrent is revealed that lies underneath the friendly façade presented to the world.  Up until now, at least in what I have seen so far of his work, this all existed more or less solidly in the realm of comedy.  However, Rubberneck, his latest film as director and lead actor, takes him into very different territory; it is a moody and atmospheric piece, full of creeping dread, an emotional reflection of its tortured protagonist.  It is essentially a stalker tale, in the mode of such films as Psycho and Peeping Tom; as a result, the narrative trajectory goes pretty much the way one would expect once the obsessive nature of its main character becomes fully established.  But as the cliché goes, it’s about the journey, not the destination, and Karpovsky delivers a compelling and skillfully rendered trip through his character’s trauma-scarred psyche.

Paul Harris (Karpovsky), Rubberneck’s central character, is a scientist at a research laboratory in suburban Boston, a starkly antiseptic environment that fits the mask of logicality and normalcy that Paul wears, and which gradually slips away as the film progresses.  This unmasking is set into motion in the aftermath of one weekend Paul spends having a sexual tryst with his co-worker Danielle (Jaime Ray Newman).  Danielle considers this a one-time thing, to the dismay of Paul, who eight months later, is still unable to let go, and spends his days in tortured awkwardness at still being in Danielle’s presence daily at work.  Even though he applies for work at other labs, he can’t quite bring himself to leave his job, perhaps in the hope of rekindling, or rather, beginning a relationship with Danielle.  His only solace during his longing is the time he spends with his sister Linda (Amanda Good Hennessey) and her son, as well as satisfying his sexual desires with Kathy (Dakota Shepard), a paid escort he frequents.  Whatever faint hopes Paul harbors of getting anywhere with Danielle are dashed when she begins seeing Chris (Dennis Staroselsky), a new employee at the lab.  This unleashes the desperation, anger, and violent impulses that Paul heretofore has very carefully hidden from others, leading to extreme and irreversible consequences.

Rubberneck, written by Karpovsky and Garth Donovan, impresses less with the explanations behind Paul’s pathologies than it does with the use of its suburban settings and eerily stark interiors that surround the protagonist and immerse the viewers fully in his headspace.  Also impressive is Karpovsky’s performance, rendering with chilly intensity this withdrawn and often opaque character who in many scenes in the film is silently lurking and watching.  Incidentally, this year’s festival offered viewers a chance to get a sense of Karpovsky’s range as an actor, and to compare his work in Rubberneck with his more comedic role in Daniel Schechter's film Supporting Characters (which I also highly recommend).  Both films mark the continuing emergence of a remarkable talent both in front of and behind the camera.

Tribeca Film Festival 2012 Review: Lynn Shelton's "Your Sister's Sister"

Your Sister's Sister. 2011. Written and directed by Lynn Shelton. Produced by Steven Schardt. Cinematography by Benjamin Kasulke. Edited by Nat Sanders. Original music and sound by Vinny Smith. Production design by John Lavin.

Cast: Mark Duplass (Jack), Emily Blunt (Iris), Rosemarie DeWitt (Hannah), Mike Birbiglia (Al), Mike Harring (Tom, in photos).

(Note: this review has been cross-posted on Twitch.)

There are many pleasures to be had in watching Your Sister’s Sister, the fourth feature by writer/director Lynn Shelton (We Go Way Back, My Effortless Brilliance, Humpday), one of the great highlights of Tribeca 2012.  For example, there is the nuanced and lived-in feel of the performances; the way each scene is meticulously mined for maximum comic/dramatic value; and the burnished cinematography that makes great use of the overcast atmosphere of the Pacific Northwest to envelop everything we see in its moody embrace.  But beyond all this, there is the great pleasure of seeing Shelton so beautifully build and expand on her already impressive achievements, delivering (as always) the laughs that come from her characters being placed in rather uncomfortable situations, but adding an emotional weight that enhances both the comedic and serious moments to brilliant effect.

Shelton’s two previous films My Effortless Brilliance and Humpday focused on male friendship and rivalry, and how this can often descend into a mano-a-mano battle of wills, each side loath to back down from whatever emotional position they choose to assume.  Such a rivalry forms the backbone of Your Sister’s Sister, but there are two significant differences.  First, the relationship is between that of brothers, which serves to intensify this sort of rivalry even further, due to the emotional and familial bond that comes into play.  But most importantly, this relationship has already occurred offscreen before the film begins, and is already at an end.  This is because one of the brothers had been dead for a year as the action commences; we are first introduced to the surviving sibling, Jack (Mark Duplass), brooding in a corner as a death anniversary gathering is happening, where the participants share their memories of Jack’s brother Tom.  After Al (Mike Birbiglia) shares a fond memory of a night at the movies with Tom watching Hotel Rwanda, an inebriated and agitated Jack dumps cold water on the proceedings by giving a toast suggesting that Tom wasn’t quite the saintly figure eulogized by his friends.  As one can imagine, this act effectively ends the celebration, bringing Tom’s friends down to Jack’s own depressed level.

This proves to be one breach of decorum too many for Iris (Emily Blunt), Jack’s best friend and an ex-girlfriend of Tom’s.  She stages an intervention with Jack after the party, prescribing a period of exile at her family’s cabin on an island in the Pacific Northwest.  Iris conceives this isolation for Jack as emotional rehab, to shake him out the aimless, depressive slackerdom he has indulged in during the year following his brother’s death.  With literally nothing else better to do, Jack accedes to Iris’ demands, biking out to the cabin.  However, this planned solitude is not to be, as Jack unexpectedly comes upon Iris’ sister Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt) taking up residence there. (Even a simple set-up such as this plays out in a hilariously awkward and nicely staged scene; Shelton misses few opportunities to humorously reveal character.)  Hannah is also using the cabin as a refuge from her own emotional turmoil, having just ended a seven-year lesbian relationship, drowning her sorrows that night in a bottle of tequila.  That tequila is the catalyst for an ill-advised (and also hilariously awkward) sexual encounter between the two, and a complicated situation that becomes even more so when Iris decides to join Jack at the cabin, unaware that her sister is also there.  This sets into motion a chain of consequences that reveals connections between the three (as well as their links to the deceased Tom), in which hidden motives and desires, long suppressed, rise to the surface.

Shelton’s usual method of making her films involves extensive work with the actors in which they fully collaborate with the director in creating their characters, inventing backstories, and using on-set improvisation to flesh out interactions between them, resulting in often startling and unexpected moments.  One great example is one scene in which Hanna tells an embarrassing “bush story” about Iris. (To clarify, the particular bush involved is not the horticultural kind.)  Iris gets revenge on Hannah for telling this story in front of Jack by rather cruelly causing Hannah to unwittingly breach her vegan diet.  As can be expected, all this results in a lot of talk, and definitely much of this film, similarly to her others, is very dialog-driven.  But that is not all there is to it, although there is great dialog here; Shelton doesn’t neglect dynamic staging, and she clearly has thought much more about composition and showing the relationship between her characters and their setting.  I’ve already mentioned the cinematography, and again I’d like to highlight the great contribution of cameraman Benjamin Kasulke, whom Shelton has worked with on two other films, who provides rich visual texture here.

The performance work by all three principal actors is stellar.  Mark Duplass (no slouch as a director himself, along with his brother Jay) has played similar characters in other films, but here he lends a sense of melancholy that is bubbling just under the surface, which leads to an outpouring of emotion at the end of the film that is quite emotionally moving.  Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt are never less than convincing as the siblings who form a female counterpart, perhaps, to the brothers who have been separated by death.  Their emotional trajectory eventually takes center stage, pushing the film out of its light comedic territory into something weightier, though never humorless or overly ponderous.

Review: Joe Swanberg's "Art History"

Art History. 2011. Produced, directed and edited by Joe Swanberg. Written by Joe Swanberg, Josephine Decker, Kent Osborne, Adam Wingard, and Kris Swanberg. Photographed by Adam Wingard and Joe Swanberg.

Cast: Josephine Decker (Juliette), Joe Swanberg (Sam), Kent Osborne (Eric), Adam Wingard (Bill), Kris Swanberg (Hillary).

(Note: this review has been cross-posted on Twitch.)

The filming of a sex scene proves to be no simple process (if indeed it ever is) in Joe Swanberg’s Art History, a complex and unsettling examination of the creative process and the materials involved, both human and mechanical, in the making of art, as well as the psychological pressures that go along with it.  Film director Sam (Swanberg) is shooting a sex scene that presumably occurs during a couple’s one night stand.  The film opens both in medias res and in flagrante delicto, with a very explicit depiction of the characters having sex, with full frontal nudity by both participants.  We immediately know that this is not “real,” as we hear Sam’s off-screen instructions to his actors during the scene.  The film within the film has a very different visual style than the one that surrounds it; the film Sam is making is rough-hewn and handheld, not unlike the real Swanberg’s early films.  Art History itself takes the opposite stylistic tack, shot almost entirely with long, static takes, and much more meticulously framed and composed, with many scenes resembling iris shots, the image in the center surrounded by a ring of darkness.  There are a couple of shots that are strikingly lovely, especially one of a shimmering pool with patterns of sunlight that wouldn’t be out of place in an avant-garde film.

Art History invites us to read it as a self-critique of the film director, or as the title indicates, the creative artist generally, as a sort of vampire who preys on the intimate details of those who are used as the objects of this art.  Swanberg himself says as much in his director’s statement, where he writes: “This film is an apology to anyone I have hurt because of the way I work or because of my own emotional recklessness. As the title suggests, I hope all of these instances are in the past.”  The atmosphere of Art History is hermetic and claustrophobic; the film takes place entirely in the single location of the house where the film within the film is being made.  The only acknowledgement of a world outside the film set is the sound of an airplane that intrudes at one point on the scene. 

Juliette (Josephine Decker) and Eric (Kent Osborne), the actors in the scene, are told by Sam to improvise their dialog, during which they reveal details of their personal relationships during their sex scene.  Sam is mostly unconcerned with the specific details of this dialog, concentrating instead on the technical details of lighting, sound, and the physical actions of his two actors.  The intimacy of the scene bleeds into the “real life” outside the film, as Juliette and Eric explore their real attraction to one another, having actual sex off camera during the shoot.  A simultaneously humorous and disturbing moment occurs when Sam turns his attention from checking footage he has shot to peer in on Juliette and Eric as they have sex.  The film shoot runs into a major complication when it becomes clear that Sam and Juliette seem to have some sort of an off-camera relationship as well, forming an inchoate and somewhat confusing love triangle.  This sex act seems to upset the delicate balance of the shoot, as Sam’s jealousy of Juliette and Eric’s relationship gradually becomes more apparent.

Swanberg has come a long way artistically from earlier films such as Kissing on the Mouth, LOL, and Hannah Takes the Stairs; as interesting as those films were, one still got the sense that Swanberg was working out his stylistics, and that framing and composition were very much secondary concerns.  However, Swanberg right now is in the midst of a creatively fecund and boldly experimental phase of his career, and has been incredibly prolific in the past year.  Swanberg premiered three films at two major festivals within a month of each other this year: Uncle Kent at Sundance, and Art History and Silver Bullets at Berlin.  Another film, Autoerotic (co-directed with Adam Wingard), recently opened in New York, and two more films are set to be released later this year.  Art History so far is the only one of these films I’ve been able to see, but if this is any indication of the quality of his other recent work, I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing the rest of them.

Art History is now playing at the reRun Gastropub Theater through September 29.  For screening times and to purchase tickets, visit reRun’s website. The film is also included as part of film distributor Factory 25’s box set “Joe Swanberg: Collected Films 2011,” a limited-edition subscription in which buyers will receive four films over the course of a year: Silver Bullets, Art History, and the upcoming films The Zone and Privacy Setting.  This release includes bonus materials for each film, including vinyl soundtracks and set photography booklets.  For more information, and to order the set, visit Factory 25’s website.

Review: Gregg Araki's "Kaboom"

Kaboom. 2010. Written and directed by Gregg Araki. Produced by Gregg Araki and Andrea Sperling. Cinematography by Sandra Valde-Hansen. Music by Ulrich Schnauss, Mark Peters, Vivek Maddala, and Robin Guthrie. Production design by Todd Fjelsted. Costume design by Tracye Gigi Field.

Cast: Thomas Dekker (Smith), Haley Bennett (Stella), Chris Zylka (Thor), Roxane Mesquida (Lorelei), Juno Temple (London), Andy Fischer-Price (Rex), Nicole LaLiberte (Red-Haired Girl), Jason Olive (Hunter), James Duval (The Messiah), Brennan Mejia (Oliver), Kelly Lynch (Nicole).


Kaboom, the latest film by Gregg Araki, is billed as “The Gregg Araki Movie.”  This strongly indicates that Kaboom can be seen as a sort of career summing-up, marrying the anarchic, subversive, go-for-broke sensibility of early films such as The Living End and Totally F***ed Up with the more sophisticated filmmaking techniques of Mysterious Skin and Smiley Face.  Araki’s last film Smiley Face was a pot-fueled comedy, and Kaboom unfolds as a kind of stoner’s conspiracy-theory fantasy. 

Kaboom opens with a mysterious recurring dream of the protagonist, Smith (Thomas Dekker), a college student who, by his own description is “18 and perpetually horny.”  Although he is attracted to men, he refuses to identify himself as gay, being far more fluid in his sexual identity, having had sex with women as well, including his best friend and classmate Stella (Haley Bennett).  Smith is driven to distraction by his blonde, lunkheaded surfer roommate (Chris Zylka), named Thor (“like the comic”), whom Smith suspects may have homosexual tendencies.  “He’s too into his body,” Smith tells Stella; more suspiciously, Thor has a closet full of color-coordinated flip-flops.  Stella, meanwhile, pursues an ill-fated relationship with Lorelei (Roxane Mesquida), who turns out to be a witch with supernatural powers.  This is far from the only strange thing that happens.  Smith begins getting cryptic notes shoved under his door, such as “You Are The Chosen Son.”  But the craziness truly begins at a party during which Smith eats hallucinogen-laced cookies, hooks up with London (Juno Temple), a wild, free-spirited woman, and meets a red-haired woman (Nicole LaLiberte) he first encountered in his dream.  After the party, Smith is involved in a bizarre incident in which he and the red-haired woman are chased an attacked by men wearing animal masks.  Throughout most of the film, it is unclear whether these episodes are real, or a figment of Smith’s hyperactive, over-sexed imagination.  The story threads eventually come together to form a vast, global conspiracy that is hilariously explained breathlessly by one of the characters late in the film, in which everything we have seen before is revealed to be not what they appear.  This late-film explanation is reminiscent of the latter minutes of a typical Scooby-Doo episode, as villains become unmasked.

Kaboom rides at a brisk pace, continually topping itself with outrageous, hilarious, WTF moments.  Araki’s digital palette is full of lights and bright colors, appropriate to the phantasmagoric, psychedelic nature of the proceedings.  Kaboom is far more fun and far less tedious than Gaspar Noe’s wildly overpraised Enter the Void, another film that attempts to convey the experience of being under the influence of hallucinogenic substances.  Kaboom is also steeped in a polysexual eroticism that challenges the orthodoxies of identifying exclusively with heterosexuality or homosexuality.  This free-wheeling fluidity extends to Kaboom’s narrative, which expands outward from its college campus to implicate the entire world, the last shot illustrating the film’s title.

Kaboom opens today in New York at IFC Center.  Gregg Araki and Thomas Dekker will appear in person Friday and Saturday at the 8:10 and 10:10 shows.  Click here for ticket info. 

Review: David Kaplan's "Today's Special"

Today's Special. 2009. Directed by David Kaplan. Written by Aasif Mandvi and Jonathan Bines, based on the play "Sakina's Restaurant" by Aasif Mandvi. Produced by Nimitt V. Mankad and Lillian LaSalle. Cinematography by David Tumblety. Edited by Chris Houghton. Production designed by Darcy C. Scanlin. Music by Stephane Wrembel. Songs by Siddharta Khosla. Costumes by Theresa Squire.

Cast: Aasif Mandvi (Samir), Naseeruddin Shah (Akbar), Jess Weixler (Carrie), Madhur Jaffrey (Farrida), Harish Patel (Hakim), Dean Winters (Chef Steve), Kevin Corrigan (Stanton).

What can I say about Today’s Special, opening in theaters today?  Should I start with the good news or the bad news?  I guess I’ll start with the positives.  This film has in its favor a very good cast, starting with its star, Aasif Mandvi of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  Mandvi co-wrote the script with Jonathan Bines, based on Mandvi’s off-Broadway play Sakina’s Restaurant.  In the film version, he plays Samir, an aspiring French haute cuisine chef who has to take over the family Indian restaurant after his father suffers a near-fatal heart attack.  Mandvi is not exactly a rival to Olivier, but he performs capably alongside the two veteran Indian actors who are his costars: Madhur Jaffrey as his mother; and Naseeruddin Shah as a cab driver/master chef who is best described as the “Masala Whisperer.”  Kevin Corrigan, the stalwart indie film go-to guy, is amusing as usual as Samir’s coworker.  Mandvi is a very funny and brilliant guy on the Daily Show, so I was very much looking forward to seeing how this would translate to film. 

And now, alas, is the part where, as they say in politics, I have to go negative.  In the hands of director David Kaplan, this potentially interesting material is flattened out into the blandest sort of predictability.  I could tell where this was all going to lead from the first frame, and the film does not deviate from this a single iota.  I suspect that this was probably better as a play; the live setting most likely lent some sparks that are utterly missing from the filmed version.  In this context, it is the height of irony that Samir’s main weakness as a cook is that he follows recipes to the letter, rather than allowing his intuitive feel for the ingredients guide how he puts them together.  So much a pity that the film he is in fails to heed this lesson, making it yet another example of a frustratingly underachieving American indie.  It is enough to make one wish that Mandvi had directed the film himself.  Not that this would have necessarily resulted in a significantly better film, but it may have at least have exhibited some sort of a human personality, instead of seeming like a computer program set to “Heart-warming Festival Indie Movie.”  The food looks nice, though; see this film on an empty stomach at your peril. 

Review: Jeff Mizushima's "Etienne!"

Etienne! 2009. Written, directed and edited by Jeff Mizushima. Produced by Giacun Caduff, Joel David Moore, Jeremy Boreing, and Kurt Schemper. Cinematography by Tim van der Linden, Eric Kim, and Jeff Mizushima. Original score by Mark Bachle. Sound design by Katsuyuki Ueno.

Cast: Richard Vallejo (Richard), Megan Harvey (Elodie), Molly Livingston (Molly), Matt Garron (Matt), Caveh Zahedi (Man in Coat), Thibault Debaveye (Backpacker), Marisa Pedroso (Marion), Vittorio E. Razi (Vittorio), Rachel Stolte (Rachel), Solon Bixler (Solon).

The premise of Jeff Mizushima’s debut feature Etienne! at first blush seems almost toxically quirky: Richard (Richard Vallejos), a shy, pudgy introvert, finds out his beloved hamster companion, named Etienne, has cancer. He decides to take the hamster out on a road trip to show him the world (or at least San Francisco) in the week he supposedly has left to live. This scenario seems ripe for the sort of winking, supercilious irony that has infected far too many American independent productions. However, Mizushima refuses to take such an easy route, and instead has crafted a genuinely heartfelt and endearingly earnest film that is as generous to all its characters as Richard is to the beloved pet he dotes on. This, plus a canny evocation of 1970’s cinema in its credits design and visuals, makes Etienne! a uniquely delightful film.


At the outset, Richard has just gotten a job as a maintenance man at a hotel after a decidedly odd job interview and first-day orientation. Richard is a genial, soft-spoken man sporting a distinctive handlebar mustache who talks to and interacts with others, but who clearly is much more comfortable around his constant companion Etienne. In the grand tradition of Benji, Lassie, and Milo and Otis, Etienne (played by multiple hamsters, all named in the end credits) is as instantly memorable a character as the humans in the story, making Richard’s devotion to this creature immediately believable and ultimately very moving.

Although the film’s focus is squarely on Richard, room is made for several other characters, as expertly drawn as the protagonist. One is Richard’s roommate Matt (Matt Garron), as gregarious as Richard is introverted, who spends his time laying down screeching vocals on thrash-rock tracks, and regales his girlfriend with stories about battling ninjas. Richard meets other people during his road trip with Etienne, most notably a French backpacker-scientist (Thibault Debaveye), a despondent man searching for his lost poodle (Vittorio E. Razi), and a traveling musician couple (indie-rock duo Great Northern, who contribute a lovely song dedicated to the hamster). The person Richard meets on his trip who gets the most screen time is Elodie (Megan Harvey), who embarks on a road trip of her own, taking a break from her college studies, and fleeing a failed relationship. Her sadness forms a corollary to Richard’s grief over his dying hamster; the film floats the possibility of the two of them having a more significant encounter beyond the narrative. Another significant character is a pinhole cameraman (Caveh Zahedi, writer/director/star of I Am a Sex Addict), who separately employs both Richard and Elodie to be in his photographs. The sequences with the photographer are the occasion for some strikingly beautiful passages of nature. The photographer opines on how randomness is part of the process in creating his photos; and Etienne! adopts this philosophy as its narrative strategy, showing us how random encounters with others often prove to be life-altering.

Etienne! will play a week-long engagement from September 3-9 at the reRun Gastropub Theater, a wonderful space in Brooklyn that forms the ideal setting for this immensely charming and intimately scaled film. To purchase tickets, visit the theater’s website. 

Wes Anderson, "Fantastic Mr. Fox" -- Q&A at MOMA, 12/7/09

Wes Anderson spoke recently at the Museum of Modern Art following a screening of his latest film Fantastic Mr. Fox, his wonderful, beautifully crafted stop-motion animated version of Roald Dahl's classic book, the first film by Anderson that I've loved since Rushmore. Animation was a logical step for him, since his live-action films are already rather cartoonish. Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of my favorite films of the year -- watch this space for the rest of them.

Review: Leslie Cockburn's "American Casino"

American Casino. 2009. Directed by Leslie Cockburn. Written and produced by Leslie Cockburn and Andrew Cockburn. Cinematography by Phil Geyelin, Gregory Andracke, Bill Cassara, Bob Goldsborough, and Sam Painter. Edited by Peter Eliscu. Music supervised by Susan Jacobs. Sound by Daniel Brooks, Tom Craca, Michael Karas, Erik Knox, Charlie Macarone, Lupe Mejia, David Mitlyng, Mark Wilson, and Everett Wong.

Just in time for the one year anniversary of the global economic collapse comes Leslie Cockburn's powerful and timely documentary American Casino, which opens tomorrow at Film Forum for a two-week run. Below is what I wrote on this film when it screened at this year's Tribeca Film Festival.

The title of Leslie Cockburn’s nothing-if-not-timely documentary American Casino says it all, an apt description of the world created by the reckless Wall Street financiers who have brought the U.S. economy (as well as the rest of the world’s) to its present sorry state. Much like Charles Ferguson’s Iraq War documentary No End in Sight, Cockburn employs a straightforward, just-the-facts approach to her devastating play-by-play indictment of the barely legal shenanigans that led to our current mess. From the initial stock market free-fall and the attendant billions in government bailouts to Jon Stewart’s recent mano a mano with Jim Cramer, none of this is new information for anyone who has at least been semi-sentient for the past year or so. But what makes Cockburn’s film an especially valuable addition to the burgeoning collection of economic crisis postmortems is that she goes beyond the facts and figures to show us the human faces behind the numbers. Cockburn offers specific, poignant examples of people who existed as simply a line on a brokerage firm’s computer screen, reminding us that these were not simply irresponsible and naïve would-be homeowners, but people with lives of value that are real, and in some cases, tragic. Cockburn also details the aftereffects of the spreading cancer of mass foreclosures and how they led to depressed neighborhood property values, crime, and disease. Class and race were very much a part of the picture also, as Cockburn persuasively demonstrates: the deregulated toxic sub-prime loans that were, and remain, a major part of this crisis were deliberately targeted towards minorities and low-income homeowners, many of whom actually qualified for prime loans. These were the chips that were the currency of the “American Casino,” since through derivatives, credit-default swaps, and other such unregulated financial products, bets would essentially be made on which consumers would default on loans made to them, and billions were made on both sides of the equation. Cockburn’s briskly paced yet sobering documentary makes its case powerfully, and is a humanist work in the best sense, always keeping the individual victims of Wall Street’s games as its central focus.

American Casino is scheduled to run at Film Forum from Sept. 2 through Sept. 15. Click here to purchase tickets.

Review: Ronald Bronstein's "Frownland"

Frownland. 2007. Written, directed and edited by Ronald Bronstein. Produced by Marc Raybin. Cinematography by Sean Price Williams. Music by Paul Grimstad.

Cast: Dore Mann (Keith), Paul Grimstad (Charles), David Sandholm (Sandy), Carmine Marino (Carmine), Mary Wall (Laura), Paul Grant (Exam-man).

Whether you love or hate Ronald Bronstein’s debut feature, the unclassifiable and astonishing slice of New York miserablism known as Frownland, one thing is irrefutable: there has never been a film quite like this one. There are some discernible strands evident in Frownland’s cinematic DNA. This film has been associated with so-called “mumblecore,” referring to a loose confederation of recent American independent filmmakers, many of whom make their features with close friends and other collaborators, working outside the mainstream industry, and whose films boast a lo-fi aesthetic and an off-the-cuff, improvisational feel. Comparisons can also be made with the kitchen-sink dramatics of John Cassavetes – the pathologically inarticulate protagonist could be a much more extreme male counterpart to Gena Rowlands' troubled character in A Woman Under the Influence. There are also excerpts within the film of a Buster Keaton film, which highlights the fact that much of Frownland has no dialogue, as well as the wickedly deadpan humor that sits cheek-by-jowl with the misery on display. The film’s eerie electronic score and its grotesqueries of human behavior also bring to mind David Lynch’s Eraserhead. However, such comparisons in this case can take you only so far. Bronstein’s film, more than anything else, is as pure and uncompromised an artistic vision as any I’ve ever seen. The viewer is pulled into the grubby world of its singularly maladroit and unpleasant main character and the other people in his orbit, and is forced to relate to the work on its own terms, take it or leave it.

The term “sad sack” doesn’t even begin to describe our (anti)hero, Keith (Dore Mann), a man as deferential and easy-to-please as he is off-putting and annoying. At the film’s outset, he is interrupted from a blissful night of watching a monster movie while eating popcorn off an open oven door by a frantic phone call from his sometime girlfriend Laura (Mary Wall, Bronstein’s wife). The next scene establishes Keith’s method of communicating, or more accurately, mis-communicating with others: instead of complete sentences or thoughts, what emerges from Keith’s mouth are half-formed syllables and painfully extended pauses, as he physically struggles to get words to come out. This is extremely exasperating to those with the misfortune to have to speak with him in the film, as well as some viewers in the audience. Laura is no less inarticulate, her violent, snot-laden crying jags precluding any sort of coherent speech on her part. She bolts from the car in disgust, and Keith does something very bizarre and, at first, inexplicable: he pulls his eyes open and makes groaning noises for what feels like an interminably long time. Soon it becomes apparent that he is doing this to induce fake tears, to impress Laura with his supposed sensitivity to her distress. This scene is a great example of the humor that exists in abundance in this film, an aspect of Frownland that gets criminally short shrift in most reviews of this film. Much more than the miserably depressive work it has been made out to be, Bronstein brilliantly balances hilarity and pain in a uniquely beautiful way.

Keith has what is probably one of the most unrewarding professions possible: door-to-door solicitation for a dubious charity supposedly benefiting multiple sclerosis. He recites the same script to each prospect about a (probably fictional) brother who suffers from this disease. He is perpetually on the verge of being fired by his ever-exasperated boss Carmine (Carmine Marino). His home life offers no respite from the misery: his roommate Charles (Paul Grimstad, who also composed the film’s score) is an imperious aspiring musician who spends his nights composing cheesy electronic music, and barely tolerates Keith’s presence in the house, this despite the fact that he is unemployed and not keeping up with his share of the rent and utility payments. Keith, ever afraid to give offense, delays broaching the subject. This leads to a hilarious scene in which by all rights Keith, as the aggrieved party, should have the upper hand, but instead is subjected to a wicked role reversal by Charles, who rather than being the least bit apologetic, unleashes a vicious round of invective on his hapless, squirming victim.

Keith has what passes for a best friend in Sandy (David Sandholm), who treats him as little more than a nuisance to be rid of as soon as humanly possible. In a very telling scene, Keith worms his way into Sandy’s apartment one night after coming there to retrieve a name tag he left behind and asks to watch a Buster Keaton film with him. Keith promptly falls asleep, and Sandy takes advantage of this to fast forward through the tape to the end, after which he wakes Keith up and sends him home. Keith: “Can I call you later?” Sandy: “I’ll be asleep for a really long time.”

Having neither a plot nor a resolution and structured as a connected series of tragicomic vignettes, Frownland is most remarkable in the way it continually keeps us off balance by not allowing us to be complacent in any sense, in characterizations or atmosphere. As unpleasant as these characters are, and as few redeeming qualities they may have, it is possible to have at least some sympathy for them. Much of the humor in the film, as well as the despair, stems from their unsuccessful attempts to communicate with others and make sense of the world around them. Shot in raw, textured 16-millimeter film, subsequently blown up to 35-millimeter, which emphasizes the grain, giving the images a nearly tactile quality, Frownland is framed mostly in uncomfortably intimate close-ups, a potent representation of how literally in-your-face this film is. Cinematographer Sean Price Williams’ background is in documentaries, and he brings this aesthetic to Frownland with exhilaratingly inventive results, following the film’s unhinged protagonist, as well as its other characters, with a chaotic intensity that matches their troubled psyches. A deeply personal (and largely autobiographical) labor of love shot piecemeal over five years by Bronstein, a NYC-area freelance projectionist, Frownland is as singular and unforgettable an experience as you will ever have at the movies. It is a bold, bloody, spit and snot-covered middle finger to the hordes of faux-quirky Juno and Little Miss Sunshine clones that are laughingly described as “independent.” It’s not for everyone, by any means, but for those that are sufficiently open-minded and adventurous, Frownland reaps rich artistic rewards.

Frownland will screen again at 7:30 this Saturday at the Museum of Modern Art (where Bronstein works as a projectionist – did he project his own film at the screening I attended this afternoon?), as part of the series, “Recent Film Acquisitions: Continuum.” It will also be released on DVD September 29, on Factory 25, a new music and DVD label.

Frownland [trailer]

Frownland [excerpt]

BAMcinemaFEST Review: Bradley Rust Gray's "The Exploding Girl"

The Exploding Girl. 2009. Written and directed by Bradley Rust Gray. Produced by So Yong Kim, Karin Chien, Ben Howe, and Bradley Rust Gray. Cinematography by Eric Lin. Edited by So Yong Kim and Bradley Rust Gray. Sound by Michael Sterkin.

Cast: Zoe Kazan (Ivy), Mark Rendall (Al), Franklin Pipp (Greg), Maryann Urbano (Mom).

Bradley Rust Gray's lovely second feature The Exploding Girl will screen as part of "BAMcinemaFEST," a film festival showcasing recent American independent films that will be at BAM Rose Cinemas from June 18 through 27. This festival will replace the "Sundance at BAM" series that ran at this time for the past three years, which, according to a Sundance spokesperson, is "taking a break" this year. Nevertheless, it looks like a pretty strong line-up, with at least a few films I'm looking forward to seeing, such as Tze Chun's Children of Invention, Ry Russo-Young's You Won't Miss Me, Robert Siegel's Big Fan, Lynn Shelton's Humpday, Andrew Bujalski's Beeswax, and Nicolas Winding Refn's Bronson. The festival also includes short films, live music performances, and selections from BAM's repertory film program, with director Arnaud Desplechin present for screenings of Francois Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid and Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums.

Here is what I wrote on The Exploding Girl when it screened at this year's Tribeca Film Festival:

The précis of Bradley Rust Gray’s film The Exploding Girl sounds like boilerplate mumblecore: vacationing college girl Ivy (Zoe Kazan, in a riveting, affecting performance), battling an epileptic condition, has halting, increasingly awkward conversations with the boyfriend she anxiously plays phone tag with, while her platonic buddy Al (Mark Rendall) inches ever closer to becoming something more than a friend. But in the masterful hands of Gray, this becomes a delicate and gorgeous slice of New York life, brilliantly observed and brimming with emotion. Much like his wife and filmmaking collaborator So Yong Kim (director of Treeless Mountain and In Between Days, who also co-edited and co-produced this film), Gray has a visual preference for sustained, intimate long takes, very often shot from middle and long distance, with physical obstructions such as doorways, windows, and crowds on the street often inserting themselves between the characters and the camera, as well as breathtakingly beautiful cutaways to sky and trees (a late rooftop sunset shot of Ivy and Al accompanied by pigeons flying in formation is a particularly exquisite one). These elements provide a depth that manifests itself in every gesture, every emotionally fraught pause in conversation that is captured here.

One of the great charms of The Exploding Girl is how evocatively and accurately it conveys the particularly slow, lazy feel of a New York summer. There are many nice passages of Ivy wandering the streets and lounging at parties, taking needed pauses from the drama of much of her life, not the least of which is her epilepsy, kept at bay by medication, but always threatening to overtake her. The title of the film, which also doubles as a neat metaphor for her condition as well as her emotional turmoil, actually comes from a song by The Cure (which happens to be the flipside of the Cure single "In Between Days,” the namesake of his wife’s debut feature). The Exploding Girl, again like Kim’s films, derives much of its power from a sensitive and magnetic central performance, in this case by the instantly winning Zoe Kazan (granddaughter of director Elia Kazan and daughter of Hollywood screenwriters Nicholas Kazan and Robin Swicord), who in every movement and expression lends this film an uncommon grace. Kazan last appeared in a key role in Sam Mendes’ film Revolutionary Road, but here she proves immensely capable of being the main attraction. As impressive as all the film’s other collaborators are, Kazan shines as the true emotional center and makes The Exploding Girl much more than just a pretty object. And when the dreaded explosion finally occurs, an event we have been anticipating throughout the film, it leads to a quiet yet intense catharsis, both for Ivy and for us watching, that is a soul-satisfying conclusion to one of the year’s loveliest films.

The Exploding Girl screens on June 25 at 6:30. Click here to purchase tickets.

Additional reading: an multimedia article on So Yong Kim and Bradley Rust Gray on the site FLYP, where you can view clips from their films.

DVD Review: Wayne Wang's "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers"

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. 2007. Directed by Wayne Wang. Written by Yiyun Li, based on her short story. Produced by Yukie Kito, Rich Cowan, and Wayne Wang. Cinematography by Patrick Lindenmaier. Edited by Deirdre Slevin. Production design by Vincent De Felice. Music by Lesley Barber.

Cast: Faye Yu (Yilan), Henry O (Mr. Shi), Vida Ghahremani (Madam), Pasha Lychnikoff (Boris).

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, based on a short story by Yiyun Li, is one half of a diptych conceived by Wayne Wang as a return to his indie-film roots after a long sojourn making Hollywood studio films. The other film is The Princess of Nebraska, also based on one of Li’s stories. Of the two, Thousand Years is the far more accomplished and satisfying work. Unlike the self-consciously arty strenuousness of Nebraska, Thousand Years derives its affecting quality from its simplicity, economy of storytelling, and a quietly powerful central performance by Henry O as Mr. Shi, an elderly man invited by his daughter Yilan (Faye Yu, also quiet and compelling) for a visit and a tour of the U.S., after twelve years apart from each other. Mr. Shi, a self-described “true believer” in Communism, his posture held aloft by a back brace, comes to live with his daughter in a bland and eerily anonymous suburban community. They have quiet dinners each evening, Mr. Shi clearly wanting more information about how his daughter is doing, and making valiant attempts to reconnect her after his long absence from her life. Yiyun, however, keeps her personal life a firmly closed book, and she seems increasingly annoyed at his intrusiveness. Bored, and with little to do around the home, Mr. Shi wanders around the neighborhood, which leads to a few dryly comic encounters, most notably with a sunbather who eagerly tells him about her passion for forensic science, and an odd visit by a pair of Mormon proselytizers. Mr. Shi tries to reduce the language barrier by jotting down English words and phrases in his book, and in his conversations with others, he freely mixes his native Mandarin with halting English. Mr. Shi soon meets an Iranian woman (Vida Ghahremani), and they begin having daily conversations on a park bench, and even though they speak Mandarin and Farsi with one another, with some English mixed in, they are able to reveal intimate details with their lives that they can with no one else. Mr. Shi eventually confesses to the woman, “I no good father.” As a rocket scientist back in China (a fact he loves to mention to any American he meets), he was wrapped up in his work, and was mostly absent to his own family. The latent resentment of his daughter towards him has clearly never been resolved. In the film’s closing passages, the weight of the secrets and lies told on both sides finally take their toll on the father and daughter, resulting in a cascading rush of revealed (and painful) truth.

This film is a model of elegant simplicity, both in its narrative and visual design. The soullessness and emptiness of the environment depicted in the film, where Mr. Shi, with the weight of personal and national history evident in every gesture and line on his face, is so clearly out of place, is paralleled by the years of silence between father and daughter. The silence and secrets are intertwined with the legacy of the Cultural Revolution in China, a major theme of Yiyun Li’s fiction. The sharp cinematography (by Patrick Lindenmaier) and editing (by Deirdre Slevin) serve to highlight the appealing concision with which Li’s story is rendered (she also penned the screenplay). Henry O, a veteran actor in China and the U.S. whose lengthy resume includes Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, is a remarkable presence, adept at both deadpan comedy and poignant, rueful reflection. (The DVD contains a fascinating interview with Henry O in which he relates his personal experiences and early struggles as an actor during the Cultural Revolution.) Faye Yu (who previously worked with Wang in The Joy Luck Club) is also excellent, conveying Yilan’s sadness in a role that often requires her to express this without dialogue, a task at which she succeeds enormously.

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers can be purchased from Amazon. Yiyun Li's original short story can be found in the collection of the same name, also available from Amazon.

New Directors/New Films 2009 Review: So Yong Kim's "Treeless Mountain"

Treeless Mountain. 2008. Written and directed by So Yong Kim. Produced by Bradley Rust Grey, Ben Howe, Lars Knudsen, Jay Van Hoy, and So Yong Kim. Cinematography by Anne Misawa. Edited by So Yong Kim and Bradley Rust Grey. Music by Asobi Seksu. Production design by See Hee Kim.

Cast: Hee Yeon Kim (Jin), Song Hee Kim (Bin), Soo Ah Lee (Mom), Mi Hyang Kim (Big Aunt), Boon Tak Park (Grandma).

So Yong Kim's ineffably lovely second feature Treeless Mountain, having already screened at the Toronto, Pusan and Berlin film festivals, is one of the major must-sees of this year's New Directors/New Films. Beginning from an autobiographical place in much the same manner as her auspicious debut In Between Days, Treeless Mountain focuses in almost microscopic detail on two sisters, 7-year old Jin (Hee Yeon Kim) and her younger sister Bin (Song Hee Kim), and their increasingly precarious existence after their mother (Soo Ah Lee) suddenly decides to search for the girls’ absent father. She leaves them in the care of Big Aunt (Mi Hyang Kim) while she is away. Big Aunt, a boozy and neglectful guardian, reluctantly takes them in and afterward can barely be bothered to look after them, leaving the girls mostly to their own devices. When Big Aunt finally tires of having the girls around, she sends them to the countryside to live on the farm tended by their grandmother (Boon Tak Park). That’s the story of the film in a nutshell, as simple as can be. But this description doesn’t begin to convey the magic Kim works with her materials. Alternating close shots of the girls playing, fighting, and roasting grasshoppers with startlingly lovely static shots of the sky, trees, and other natural phenomena, as well as a stunning landscape that concludes the film (all testaments to the skilled cinematography provided by Anne Misawa), Kim allows everything to unfold with an uncommonly patient subtlety that yields rich rewards. The film is so subtle, in fact, that it took me a second viewing (I first saw the film in Pusan) to fully appreciate its gifts, proving that it often pays to revisit films. The first time I saw Treeless Mountain, I did appreciate its visual beauty, but I felt somewhat emotionally distanced from what was happening on screen. During my second screening, that distance dissolved as I got more in tune with the intensely intimate nature of this film, and as I began to understand that Kim was making evocative use of a fairy tale structure to inform the girls’ journey. Abandoned children are a perennial fairy tale motif, Hansel and Gretel coming immediately to mind. What brought me to this reading was the detail of the piggy bank that the girls’ mother gives to them just before she leaves them, telling them that if they listen to Big Aunt, they will receive a coin for the bank. When the bank is full, their mother promises to return to them. This piggy becomes a magical object that the girls invest all their hope and faith in. One of the film’s loveliest and most humorous sequences occurs when they discover that one large coin can be exchanged for much smaller ones, after which they rush from store to store to exchange their money. When the piggy bank is bursting, they rush to a large pile of dirt and rocks (the “treeless mountain” of the film’s title) to await their mothers’ return. What occurs afterward becomes the poignant aftermath of lost illusions, especially for Jin, forced to grow beyond her years as a surrogate mother to her sister Bin (whose beloved “princess” dress reinforces the fairy tale theme).

So Yong Kim proves to be not only a master of mise-en-scène, but a wonderful director of actors, of both nonprofessionals and veterans. Hee Yeon Kim and Song Hee Kim as the sisters are mesmerizing to watch, every gesture drawing the viewer further into their world, filled with as much humor and joy as sadness. (The two girls aren’t related in real life, despite a shared surname.) Song Hee is especially memorable, with her twinkling eyes and pixie smile. The fact that she is an abandoned child herself (So Yong Kim found her in an orphanage located in suburban Seoul) only makes her performance all the more remarkable. The adult actors impress as well. Soo Ah Lee, a veteran actress returning to films after a long absence, interprets her character with such bold strokes that she remains a strong presence in the film, even though we see her in very few scenes. Mi Hyang Kim skillfully conveys the delicate nuances of a character who is not simplistically evil despite her benign neglect towards her charges. The contrasts between the film’s two locales, Seoul City and Heunghae (Kim’s hometown), are rendered in vivid detail, making the film’s exquisite pastoral conclusion all the more moving.

Treeless Mountain screens at New Directors/New Films on March 27 and 29 and opens in New York on April 22 at Film Forum, and nationally soon after.

Interview with So Yong Kim on Treeless Mountain:

Treeless Mountain trailer:

TREELESS MOUNTAIN: Movie Trailer - Watch today’s top amazing videos here

The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Oscar Micheaux, "The Exile" (1931)

The Exile. 1931. Directed by Oscar Micheaux and Leonard Harper. Written by Oscar Micheaux. Produced by Oscar Micheaux and Frank Schiffman. Cinematography by Lester Lang and Walter Strenge. Original music by Donald Heywood.

Cast: Eunice Brooks (Edith Duval), Stanley Morrell (Jean Baptiste), Celeste Cole (A Singer), Kathleen Noisette (Madge), Charles R. Moore (Jack Stewart), Nora Newsome (Agnes Stewart), George Randol (Bill Prescott).

The Exile will screen on February 14 at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center's retrospective, “Faded Glory: Oscar Micheaux and Black Pre-War Cinema,” highlighting work of independent black filmmakers from the first half of the 20th century. As indicated by the title of this retrospective, the films of Oscar Micheaux are a major focus. This former South Dakota homesteader turned novelist went into filmmaking almost on a whim, and became one of the most influential pioneers of the early decades of cinema. One of his earliest efforts, 1920’s Within Our Gates (screening Feb. 19), was a direct response to, and repudiation of, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), providing a much needed corrective to the latter film’s depiction of the Ku Klux Klan as heroic figures. Micheaux in his novels and his films (many of which were adaptations of his own novels) restaged autobiographical details in their scenarios, and this can clearly be seen in his 1931 feature The Exile, Micheaux’s first sound film.

The Exile fascinates not only with its vivid snapshot of black experience in America at that time, but also with its eccentricities of narrative and visuals. The now-scratchy sound of the film (which sometimes renders dialog inaudible) makes it seem like an archaeological find, which is the case of many of the films in this series – it is a miracle that any of them now exist at all. In The Exile, as in many of his other films, Micheaux used this medium to work out personal and social issues concerning race and the complex matrix that existed within black communities. The film’s protagonist, Jean Baptiste (Stanley Morrell) is a morally upstanding man about to marry Edith Duval (Eunice Brooks), who has just inherited a cavernous mansion, which she plans to turn into a decadent nightclub, which causes Jean to break off the engagement and travel to South Dakota and become a homesteader. While there, he meets Agnes Stewart (Nora Newsome), a woman from Scotland who has moved nearby with her father Jack (Charles R. Moore). After one of Micheaux’s time-traversing ellipses, they are declaring their love for one another, exchanging a passionate kiss. Since Agnes is initially identified as a white woman, this scene at first reads as a shocking (for its time) breaching of the taboo against miscegenation, which at that time was legally punishable. Jean, in fact, returns to Chicago soon afterward, telling her in a letter that he cannot in good conscience subject them both to the ostracism they will experience because of their relationship. Unbeknownst to him, Agnes’ father reveals to her that her mother was of “Abyssinian” (Ethiopian) extraction, making her black as well. Jean seems by all appearances to be of mixed race as well, and when a white friend asks him about it, he tells him in a key line of the film, “It’s all the same, you’re considered all colored.”

After Jean returns to Chicago, he falls back in with the old crowd, although it is clear that he doesn’t truly belong. He lives up to his nickname of “the exile,” and longs to return to South Dakota. He tries to bring Edith back with him, but she is murdered by a jealous, darker-skinned rival, and Jean is at first accused of the crime. Agnes hears about it and rushes to Chicago to rescue him, but in the sort of deus ex machina dénouement that Micheaux was quite fond of, the actual murderer is discovered and Jean is cleared. Agnes meets Jean soon after, and after another ellipsis, the last scene shows them together on a train back to South Dakota, where they will live together happily, since they can now live together freely, since their relationship does not in fact break color taboos.

Micheaux’s filmmaking style leads to some rather eccentric techniques of framing and editing, most notably in a scene where after Edith’s murder, her murder goes out the door followed by Jean going up to the door and knocking on it, all in the same shot. Also, major plot elements, such as Jean and Agnes falling in love and Agnes’ revelation that she is in fact of African descent, are hidden behind offstage ellipses. Many of Micheaux’s films often revealed color differences within the black community. Darker skinned characters were often the villains, such as Jango, the Ethiopian who murders Edith. The protagonists were light-skinned characters such as Jean who are thrown off track by a woman who leads him into temptation. However, there was some nuance to these characterizations; Edith, a light-skinned character, isn’t exactly angelic, since she initially drives Jean away by her insistence on making money off vices such as gambling and drinking. Even the murderer Jango was a studious man with great ambition who was diverted from his path through his relationship with Edith. Micheaux restaged autobiographical details of his life in all his films, often featuring protagonists who move back and forth from the city (usually Chicago) to the rural West, highlighting the contrast between the decadent city and the wholesome Western farmlands.

Nobody Knows Anything

Happy New Year! And now on to my first review of 2009.



Burn After Reading. 2008. Written, produced and directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen. Cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki. Edited by Roderick Jaynes. Music by Carter Burwell. Production designed by Jess Gonchor. Costume design by Mary Zophres.

Cast: George Clooney (Harry Pfarrer), Frances McDormand (Linda Litzke), John Malkovich (Osborne Cox), Tilda Swinton (Katie Cox), Brad Pitt (Chad Feldheimer), Richard Jenkins (Ted), Elizabeth Marvel (Sandy Pfarrer), David Rasche (CIA Officer), JK Simmons (CIA Superior), Jeffrey DeMunn (Cosmetic Surgeon), Olek Krupa (Krapotkin).

After their Cormac McCarthy adaptation No Country for Old Men, and its attendant raft of rapturous critical notices and multiple Oscars, the Coen Brothers return to high farcical mode with Burn After Reading, an arch send-up of post-9/11 intelligence that spins a convoluted tale involving cheating spouses, dim-witted gym enthusiasts, revolving around a floating CD of “secret CIA shit,” that beloved MacGuffin of espionage thrillers. Everyone in the film holds a piece of the puzzle, and base all their knowledge of the situation on the particular part of the proverbial elephant they happen to be staring at, which leads to ever more ridiculous complications. The film begins and ends on a global satellite surveillance camera that zooms in at the start and zooms out at the end, centering on an office in CIA headquarters where veteran analyst Osborne Cox (a perpetually exploding John Malkovich) is downsized because of his apparent drinking problem. He storms out of the meeting after the first of many expletive-laden tirades that he will give in the course of the film, and decides to write an explosive tell-all memoir. Meanwhile, Osborne’s wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) is carrying on an affair with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a federal marshal and paranoid running enthusiast who spends hours of his free time building a particularly inventive piece of sexually useful furniture. Katie plans to divorce Osborne and does some surveillance of her own, gathering his financial records on a CD. A copy of this CD somehow finds its way into the hands of Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), employees at local gym HardBodies, who, convinced the disc holds all sorts of sensitive state secrets, demand ransom from Osborne for the CD in order to pay for the numerous plastic surgeries Linda wants. After Osborne refuses to pay, threatening Chad with a “shitstorm of consequences” if they continue with their plan, Linda attempts to sell the disc to the Russians, attempting to negotiate with amused Russian embassy agent Karapotkin (Olek Krupa). In one of the film’s many bold contrivances, Linda hooks up with Harry through an Internet dating site, making this already knotty scenario even more deliriously complicated.

The Coens wrote Burn After Reading while shooting No Country for Old Men, and in a way their latest film is a funhouse-mirror variation on their previous one. Their patented brand of misanthropy comes through in just about every character here, all parts of a live-action cartoon in which everyone makes their frenetic motions in the Coens’ carefully constructed fishbowl. But in the end, it’s hard to see what the purpose of it all is. The film is bracketed by scenes with a CIA man (David Rasche) and his superior (JK Simmons) who periodically meet for debriefing sessions, the boss with a wave of his hands directing all inconveniences to be swept under the rug, including two dead bodies. But if there’s some particular political point to be made beyond the obvious satire of the cluelessness and bumbling of intelligence organizations, I fail to find one. The tone is so scattershot and catch-as-catch-can that it never really finds a footing, and it seems that the Coens are simply amusing themselves, trying to see how far they can push the outrageousness and absurdity of their scenario before everything completely implodes in on itself. All the film’s actors, including several Coen regulars, are extremely spirited and game, doing as much as they can with the one-dimensional personages, consisting of a single character trait repeated incessantly, they have been made to embody. Malkovich especially stands out as the perpetually pissed-off ex-agent railing against the “league of morons” that has ruined his life. The casual cruelty and jokiness becomes wearying as the film goes on, resulting in a purported comedy that isn’t especially funny. And after the twisted plot they have created, the Coen resolve it with by taking a sword to their Gordian knot, concluding the story in a viciously abrupt fashion, taking care of all the surviving characters off-screen in a brief ending scene, after which the camera returns to its impassive, God’s (or devil’s) eye, staring down on the certifiably insane inhabitants below.





Burn After Reading can be purchased from Amazon.

The Bourne Cinema Filmography: Martin Scorsese, "Who's That Knocking at My Door" (1967)

Who's That Knocking at My Door (aka I Call First). 1967. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Written by Martin Scorsese and Betzi Manoogian. Produced by Haig Manoogian, Betzi Manoogian, and Joseph Weill. Cinematography by Richard H. Coll and Michael Wadleigh. Edited by Thelma Schoonmaker. Sound by John Binder and F. James Datri Jr.

Cast: Zina Bethune (Girl), Harvey Keitel (J.R.), Lennard Kuras (Joey), Michael Scala (Sally Gaga), Anne Collette, Tsuai Yu-lan, Saskia Holleman (Girls in dream fantasy), Harry Northrup (Harry), Bill Minkin (Iggy), Catherine Scorsese (Mother).

The opening moments of Scorsese’s first feature encapsulate the iconography/obsessions that would inform the rest of his career. Over sharp booming sounds that reverberate like the hand of God, these images occur: a set of Catholic figures adorning a mantle; a mother (Scorsese’s own mother Catherine, of course) bakes and serves food to her children; and over a burst of 60’s pop music, a gang fight is shot with a restless camera. The associative, free-form editing, derived from the French New Wave that broke just a few years before, binds these images in an iron bond. The mother figure, which doesn’t appear again until a brief shot at the end of the film, exists outside of time – it is unclear whether this is a flashback or present scene – and becomes a vision of ideal, pure womanhood, which in the mind of the film’s protagonist J.R. (a baby-faced Harvey Keitel), is unattainable for any other mortal woman, including to his disappointment his girlfriend (Zina Bethune, standing in for the Hitchcock blonde epitomized most memorably by Kim Novak), known here as simply “The Girl.” That the main female character isn’t even given a name epitomizes the film’s sexual politics in a nutshell, a rather crude Madonna/whore dichotomy that would resurface again and again in Scorsese’s subsequent films. Arguably, he’s never fully transcended this rubric; he’s simply dressed it up in ever more sophisticated cinematic technique.

The film’s original title was I Call First, referencing a scene in which J.R. and his pals argue over who will be the next to bed two women they have lured to an apartment. J.R.’s childish and unsophisticated relationships with women make him a very distasteful character and keep us at a distance from him, most disturbingly in the way he reacts to The Girl’s tale of rape, first blaming her for it, then obsessively replaying it in his mind, and finally, after telling her “I forgive you, and I’ll marry you anyway,” and after she rebuffs him, calling her a whore. All of which is to say that such details will hardly please feminists. But beyond this, the film exhibits an infectious energy that retains its freshness, which its stylistic lapses (including an awkwardly inserted sex scene included at the behest of the film’s distributor) only serve to enhance. The roving camera, as it would do so often in Scorsese’s other films, is a prominent co-star, and the film contains rehearsals of movement that would culminate in such later celebrated set pieces as Ray Liotta’s nightclub trip in Goodfellas and the camera literally following the money in Casino. The movie-madness of Scorsese is also in full force: J.R. and the Girl meet-cute in a lengthy scene of dialogue while waiting for the Staten Island ferry, which includes J.R. excitedly discussing John Wayne and The Searchers; later he takes her to see Rio Bravo. Of course, it is no accident that these are both films revered by the famous gang of Cahiers du Cinema critics-turned-filmmakers. As Roger Ebert famously foresaw, Who’s That Knocking at My Door was not only a significant film in its own right, but a harbinger of greater things to come.

Who’s That Knocking at My Door is part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Scorsese Classics,” which runs until December 31. The film screens again on Dec. 29 at 7:15.

Here is the film's most impressive sequence, a party scene set to Ray Baretto's "El Watusi," the camera circling the room in languorous slow motion with overlapping dissolves as the scene descends into violent chaos. The end of this scene culminates in a brilliant bit of editing (one of many great ones by Scorsese's editor Thelma Schoonmaker) which leads from John Wayne and Dean Martin to Junior Walker and the All-Stars' "Shotgun" (although that last bit is missing from this clip).

J.R.'s dream, set to the Doors' "The End" (also famously used in Coppola's "Apocalypse Now"):

"Uneasy Lies The Head That Wears A Crown"

W. (2008). Directed by Oliver Stone. Written by Stanley Weiser. Produced by Bill Block, Moritz Borman, Eric Kopeloff, and Paul Hanson. Cinematography by Phedon Papamichael. Edited by Julie Monroe. Music by Paul Cantelon. Production design by Derek Hill. Costume design by Michael Dennison. Sound by John Pritchett.

Cast: Josh Brolin (George W. Bush), Elizabeth Banks (Laura Bush), Ellen Burstyn (Barbara Bush), James Cromwell (George H.W. Bush), Richard Dreyfuss (Dick Cheney), Scott Glenn (Donald Rumsfeld), Toby Jones (Karl Rove), Stacy Keach (Earle Hudd), Bruce McGill (George Tenet), Thandie Newton (Condoleezza Rice), Jeffrey Wright (Colin Powell), Ioan Gruffudd (Tony Blair), Noah Wyle (Don Evans), Dennis Boutsikaris (Paul Wolfowitz), Michael Gaston (General Tommy Franks), Brent Sexton (Joe O'Neill), Paul Rae (Kent Hance), Rob Corddry (Ari Fleischer), Marley Shelton (Fran), Colin Hanks (Speechwriter #1), Jason Ritter (Jeb Bush), Sayed Badreya (Saddam Hussein).

How many thousands of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee
And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,
And lull'd with sound of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile
In loathsome beds, and leavest the kingly couch
A watch-case or a common 'larum-bell?
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them
With deafening clamour in the slippery clouds,
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II, Act III, Scene 1

In a late scene in Oliver Stone’s W., the latest in Stone’s presidential portraits (having some interesting parallels, but more contrasts, with his previous biopic Nixon), George W. Bush (Josh Brolin), lies in bed with his wife Laura (Elizabeth Banks), and laments to her about how no one can understand the sacrifices and pressures he must contend with daily. Not too long after his triumphant “Mission Accomplished” media show has been snowed under by the intensifying debacle of the war in Iraq, he recalls the advice of his father, George H.W. Bush (James Cromwell) that he should have “stayed out of the barrel,” that is, not take on matters and responsibilities beyond his ability. But as Stone’s film argues incessantly, such a thing is impossible for its protagonist. The most interesting aspect of W.’s approach to its subject is how it views Bush as a character out of classical Greek tragedy (with allusions, of course, to the Prince Hal/King Henry of Shakespeare’s plays), who as much as he tries, is unable to escape his preordained destiny. The succession of the young Bush’s failed exploits – the construction job, owning the Texas Rangers, etc. – as well as the drinking and debauchery he indulges in, is no more and no less than a desperate desire to avoid the family business of power, influence, and authority that dogs his every step, but is as impossible to shake as his own shadow.

With W., Oliver Stone has created a work that will probably anger people at all points of the political spectrum, as well as confuse and confound most audiences, who will go in expecting one kind of film and be presented with quite another. Neither an outraged j’accuse that will please the Michael Moore crowd nor the sort of flag-waving hagiographic study akin to Stone’s World Trade Center (a film so timidly reverent it may as well have been a Republican Party commercial), W. is instead a surprisingly rich and complex psychological portrait that puts the tortured father-son relationship of W. and H.W. front and center, positing it as the Rosetta Stone with which one can understand the source of the disaster that was (and is) the Bush administration. By no means a perfect or even entirely coherent film – there is a palpable tension between presenting a rounded human portrait and the caricature that creeps in almost despite itself – W. nevertheless is never less than fascinating, containing two great performances at its core: Josh Brolin as the junior Bush and James Cromwell as the senior.

Brolin, especially, is quite mesmerizing, navigating what must have been a rather daunting tightrope walk of a performance nearly flawlessly. His Bush is a creature of nervous energy, always in motion, like a shark that will die if it stops moving. In many scenes, he is either eating or drinking something, feeding an emptiness at his core that can never be fulfilled. He lacks introspection in the extreme, a character trait that reaches its logical climax in the long painful pauses, hesitations, and stalling that constitutes his response to a reporter’s query about mistakes he has made. And even though the script too often calls on him to repeat the most mocked of Bush’s famous malapropisms and coinages – “I’m the decider!”, “misunderestimate”, “Is our children learning?”, “Fool me once … you won’t get fooled again” – Brolin deftly weaves all these elements in a portrayal that gains poignancy as it progresses. He admirably avoids Saturday Night Live-style parody to render key moments of Bush’s biography (most notably his born-again Christian conversion) with astute sensitivity.

In sharp contrast to the phantasmagoric near-surrealism of Nixon, Oliver Stone in W. presents his material with an almost fastidious conventionality, structuring his film in the tried-and-true present/flashback/present biopic style. However, this proves to be a smart approach, allowing Stone to (mostly) stay out of his own way. Of course, as Stone is not exactly the most subtle of filmmakers, he sometimes can’t help underlining certain points, just in case we don’t quite get it – for example, the playing of the “Robin Hood” theme on the soundtrack as Bush begins his great misadventure in Iraq; and a rather ill-advised dream sequence late in the film, in which the Iraq quagmire becomes, much like his drunken crashing of cars in his youth, yet another example of Junior screwing things up yet again. But Stone more or less adheres closely to a straightforward style, which brings into vivid relief Bush’s quest to get through to his cold, distant father, a conflict and rivalry that eventually pulls the entire world into this Oedipal drama. And while its value as a historically accurate work is dubious at best (it credits W., instead of Lee Atwater, with the blatantly racist Willie Horton ad that helped his father ride into the White House, while the 2000 election and Hurricane Katrina rates nary a mention), as a dramatic evocation of the concentration (and corruption) of power in the hands of a few, it is extremely credible and compelling, and more than a little disturbing. The film ends on a great metaphor representing where Bush has taken himself and the country (and by extension, the world), made crystal clear by the current dire state of our economic system. We’re all waiting for that pitch that will probably never come.

W. trailer:

Audio clip #1: Oliver Stone's interview on The Leonard Lopate Show, Oct. 9, 2008.

Audio clip #2: Josh Brolin's interview with Dave Davies on NPR's Fresh Air, Oct. 13, 2008.