Homages to those crazy grindhouse films of the seventies, even when done well, usually don’t impress me. The exception to the rule is the Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino double feature, Grindhouse. But 2010′s Machete left me feeling a bit bored. What director Jason Eisner has done in Hobo With A Shotgun deserves to be taken notice of. Although I’m still unsure of whether that attention should be of a positive or negative nature.
Hobo With A Shotgun is the second fake trailer that accompanied the Rodriguez/Tarantino project that’s been made into a feature film. As would be expected, the story follows a hobo played by Rutger Hauer. The unnamed transient rode the rails into a Canadian town full of pure insanity. It’s run by two brothers who are real sadistic freaks. The two murder anyone they please in twisted ways rivaling the creativity of the Saw films, or Hostel. So our hobo, with the help of a hooker with a heart of gold, and of course, a shotgun, decide to serve up the town a steaming plate of justice.
On May 12th, 2008, the largest earthquake in China’s history hit, it devastated the Wenchuan region. It killed around 68,000, and dramatically affected the lives of five million people. Director Tao Gu visited the crumbling city shortly after and interviewed his parents, who survived when the majority of their friends and neighbors died. The words of their interviews are backdropped by some stunning images and cinematography. Gu’s ability to frame, and capture a elegant piece of the tragedy is frequently breathtaking.
In the wake of having his film picked up by IFC, Matthew Chapman, the director of The Ledge chatted with us for a while about religion and politics, his film, and a bit about his great, great grandfather, Charles Darwin. The Ledge is his newest film, now playing at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
The Woman is written, directed, and portrayed with a heavy hand. When everything is done with speakers blasting, and not just the soundtrack, then it is hard to have any moment of surprise without blowing an eardrum. I can’t say people won’t like the film, because I heard chuckles in the audience. And even I jumped a few times at the wild, dirty grimaces that flashed on the screen. But the whole bloody mess felt like just that: a bloody mess. Is The Woman a horror film? Is it a dark comedy? I don’t think it can be both, or at least director Lucky McKee struck out trying to do it here.
McKee is talented, and I felt there were glimpses of real suspense throughout the film, but it was all lost by the end. Violence has become so saturated in film these days that it can purposefully be made comical. But the psychological, physical, sexual, and emotional domestic violence portrayed in the film is just not something that can be laughed at, no matter how deep the social commentary one can read between the lines.
One of the shortest feature films at Sundance this year, and certainly the most family friendly among the films of Park City at Midnight, is Madeleine Olnek’s film Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same. Along with Hobo with a Shotgun, Codependent has one of the most descriptive titles at the festival.
The Sundance Film Festival is coming to a close, and Bellflower is still standing out in my mind as one of my favorites, certainly one of the most unforgettable. Evan Glodell the film’s director, writer, star, producer and editor, was kind enough to answer a bunch of questions for us.
Homework is a disappointingly bland, coming-of-age tale about malcontent teenagers, placed in a world so ridiculous, the film simply begs not to be taken seriously. Sundance should be ashamed of bringing this film into a year where the lineup is particularly strong. And director Gavin Wiesen should have skipped the independent film step all together and gone immediately to direct Sandra Bullock films where he’ll consistently make plenty of money, and plenty of Golden Razzies.
The cast is led by Freddie Highmore, the actor who broke as the adorably depressed orphan in Finding Neverland. Since then, he’s consistently chosen mediocre projects that actually seem to be a good fit for him. He plays George, a fatalistic teenager who’s about to graduate a private high school in New York, despite having never turned in a single assignment for the last year. He’s really meant to be depressed, but Highmore just doesn’t have the skills to make anyone believe it. He doesn’t seem to be able to do anything without a half smile and a glint in his eye. If we can’t believe he’s depressed, we must believe he’s just lazy. And what is interesting or new about a lazy, unmotivated teenager unsatisfied with what is actually a pretty good life?
Of all the films creating buzz at Sundance this year, Matthew Chapman’s film The Ledge is getting some of the loudest. There’s no doubt that its celebrity cast is helping as it stars Liv Tyler, Patrick Wilson, and Terrance Howard. That is a cast that can draw attention. But while there are some great performances, The Ledge doesn’t seem to stand out among all the great Sundance films this year.
To the Chapman’s credit, he admits that he decided he would write the exact type of script he wanted to, quite certain it would never be made. How it actually came to be a feature film will be explored further in an interview with the director (coming soon). The story begins a bit romantically, with a man, standing on a ledge, readying himself to make the jump. This man is named Gavin and he’s played by the British actor Charlie Hunnam. Howards plays Hollis, the officer in charge of talking him down. And Tyler and Wilson play a married fundamentalist Christian couple, Shauna and Joe. Gavin’s been givin’ to Shauna on the regular, and his pending suicide has something to do with Joe’s discovery of the affair. It all unfolds slowly, as Gavin tells it to Hollis on the ledge.
Jess + Moss is the first experimental film I’ve seen at Sundance this year that has really stretched the definition of filmmaking. With this disclaimer, it’s not really necessary to say it, but I will. Jess + Moss is not a conventional narrative. It will probably test the patience of most of its viewers. And there is not, by any means, any sort of closure offered to comfort those that sit through the duration of its eighty two minutes.
What director Clay Jeter was more interested in is the exploration of memories, and how we relate to them. It looks at ideas and emotions that run through our heads without being coherent, but in the same rite, are still violently influential and relevant to our psyches. What he’s created here is more of an epic poem, than a feature film. A modern Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner which takes place on a farm in rural Kentucky. Two characters take up ninety nine percent of the film’s screen time. They are the titular characters Jess, and Moss. They’re epic characters in the sense they can represent so much to so many people, without an exact definition of who the are and what they really stand for. They’re aptly placed in dreamlike surrounding of staggeringly beautiful colors. The two act and react to each other for what seems like a portion of the summer, judging by the size of the crops they play around.
Gregg Araki had a lot to say about his film Kaboom when introducing it at yesterday’s screening. It’s his tenth feature film, his eighth to screen at Sundance, and the first one to go to Cannes. He called it his ‘most overtly Lynchian’ film and his most beautiful and autobiographical movie, whatever the hell that means. If I’m reading the film right, it means he slept with a lot of people in a college, filled with cult members, witches with special powers and all the students there score a nearly perfect three on the Kinsey scale.
He gave the film the tagline ‘a bisexual Twin Peaks that takes place in college’. When asked about his decision to place the story in college, he explained he found that point in people’s life extremely interesting, a time when you really discover who you are, what your sexuality is, and what you’ll be doing for the rest of your life. All of this, mind you, was the introduction. He didn’t stick around for a Q&A.
