‘A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But A Sandwich’ DVD review

Alice Childress took it upon herself to write the screenplay for the 1978 cinematic adaptation of her 1973 young adult novel, and it’s easy to understand why. That book, of course, inculcated thousands of white, suburban high schoolers with the notion that their urban black peers were doomed to lives of drug-addicted ghetto-dwelling; despite the best efforts of well-meaning lit teachers, the book’s astonishingly judgment-free look at the trials of smart-ass Benjie could easily be mistaken for tacit approval of his teenage junk habit. Of course, it wasn’t, although it could be said that Childress’ use of nuance and subtle character-building — not to mention her lack of an appropriately uplifting resolution — may have easily gone over the heads of many in her intended audience. No such nuance was employed in the film version. Benjie clearly is painted as a victim of circumstance here, the oppressive and poverty-stricken setting of early ’70s Harlem beating him into submission as the earnest but quixotic efforts of his mom (Cicely Tyson) and stepdad (Paul Winfield) barely keeping the young man afloat. As in the book, the most provocative character here is the Black Power-spouting teacher Nigeria Greene (Glynn Turman). Although Ben Nelson’s flat and linear direction doesn’t do justice to the refined morality of Childress’ streamlined screenplay, the power of the story and some notable performances keep Herofrom turning into an afterschool special.

First appeared Feb. 18, 2009 in Detroit Metrotimes.

‘Taxi Blues’ DVD review (Detroit Metrotimes)

 

Although it’s just now seeing its first DVD release, Taxi Blues was, at the time of its 1990 cinematic release, something of a revelation. As Russia was emerging from the thaw of the Cold War, Western audiences grew increasingly interested in how the global political situation was playing out on the ground in cities like Moscow. Taxi Blues gave those audiences a close-up look at exactly that. Shlykov, a gruff and hardworking taxi driver, gets shafted on a fare by Lyosha, a struggling and shiftless Jewish saxophone player. Shlykov chases Lyosha down; of course, the two assume the worst about one another; of course, stereotypes and prejudices are overcome and the two become friends. After that, however, director Pavel Lungin pushes the film into some interesting territory, revealing the daily struggles encountered by workaday folk in this newly opened society, most notably the disorientation Shlykov experiences in his adjustment to a post-Soviet Russia; it’s very nearly heartbreaking when Lyosha gets a jazz gig in America and Shlykov is left with just his taxi. There’s a certain syrupy melodrama here, but Lungin avoids tugging obvious heartstrings. While the film’s visuals (and musical numbers) look quite dated at this point, it’s easy to understand why Taxi Bluesearned Lungin the Best Director award at Cannes in 1990; it’s harder to comprehend why it’s taken so long to arrive on DVD.

 

First appeared Jan. 29, 2009 in Detroit Metrotimes.

‘On Each Side’ DVD review (Detroit Metrotimes)

 

Metaphor is seldom more obvious or more heavily played than the one used by director Hugo Grosso in this 2006 film, his first non-documentary effort. Perhaps Grosso thought that without factual exposition to give viewers all the answers, we couldn’t figure out that the building of a bridge — again, the building of a bridge — was going to connect people who lead different lives. But again and again, Grosso hits us with images of Argentina’s under-construction Rosario-Victoria Bridge to underscore links between people with seemingly disparate stories. But it’s no big deal because what On Each Side lacks in subtlety, it more than makes up for in its facility with tightly focused storytelling. Perhaps due to his documentarian background, Grosso’s work finds dramatic arcs where many would see daily life. On Each Side brings us stories of small peoples’ lives — two frisky sisters, a curious photographer, one of the bridge’s engineers — and demonstrates the universal peculiarities that define people as individuals. The narrative is strong (with or without the symbolism) and funny, while Grosso’s visuals provide a strong sense of intimacy.

 

First appeared Jan. 28, 2009 in Detroit Metrotimes.

‘Takva: A Man’s Fear of God’ DVD review (Detroit Metrotimes)

Sometimes, a job promotion ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. In the case of the quiet and well-meaning Muharrem (played by Erkan Can), the revelations that await him when he’s chosen by his mullah to be a money collector for his mosque conspire to not only upend his deeply held religious beliefs, but also throw him into a modern world in which he is none too comfortable. It’s appropriate that this 2006 film hails from Turkey; just as Muharrem struggles with the reconciliation of tradition and modernity, of faith and finance, so to do the streets of Istanbul quiver from these same tensions. As Muharrem experiences more and more of the modern world — he never exactly fits into the suit and cell phone he’s given — and as he sees more and more of his mullah’s craven, un-spiritual financial dealings, his previously well-defined religious outlook gets disoriented. Director Ozer Kiziltan put all he had into this, his debut film, and Takva does occasionally heave from the weight of Kiziltan’s multiple subtexts. Still, Takva manages to be both an intimate and personal story with a considerably larger message about religious hypocrisy and the corrupting influence that money can have on even the most (outwardly) pious people.

First appeared Jan. 21, 2009 in Detroit Metrotimes.

Zack & Miri Make A Porno movie review (Baltimore Citypaper)

You know those triumphant moments when the forgotten and dismissed hero returns to the field of battle on which he used to dominate and–despite the fact that nobody expects him to even be able to hold his own against the newcomers now running the show–completely schools the whippersnappers and the unsuspecting crowd? With Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Kevin Smith has become that aged champion who is once again victorious. Stepping into the raunchy rom-com category that everyone now thinks was invented by Judd Apatow, Smith deftly incorporates and amplifies the raunch, romance, and comedy–and adds his own patented brand of cynical sweetness.

This is not new territory for Smith, but it’s clear that by casting Seth Rogen in the lead he was eager to show Apatow and company how it’s done. While the first quarter-hour is largely wasted on exposition–that recalibrates your ears to Smith’s penchant for voluminous profanity–once the movie moves into full screwball territory, it’s a juggernaut of laughs and, yes, romance. Zack (Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) are lifelong friends, bonded by history and shared loserdom, and they’re also so irresponsible and insolvent that they wind up with no water and no power in the middle of a Pennsylvania winter. After a particularly debasing experience at their 10-year high-school reunion, they decide there’s nothing left to lose, so they’ll make a porno so they can get rich.

While Smith doesn’t shy away from the nudity and sexuality that’s, well, part of pornography, neither does he hesitate to point out the mundane ridiculousness of it all. (Traci Lords’ role is nearly as depressing as it is hilarious.) Of course, the whole scenario is there to ratchet up sexual tension between the protagonists, an effect that only heightens the impact of the comedic elements. It’s truly remarkable just how many zingers Smith has jammed into Zack and Miri, and even more remarkable how few of them issue from the stars’ mouths. Rogen is perhaps the least funny of the entire cast, being continually shown up by the likes of Justin Long and the always-hilarious Craig Robinson. Long plays the gay porn-starring lover of Miri’s high-school crush–Brandon “Superman” Routh, of all people–with deep-throated, cocktail-swilling savoir-faire, while Robinson’s character is half black-power stridency and half pussy-whipped husband. An abundance of cringe-inducing physical humor accentuates the script’s crackling comic timing, and, when combined with surprisingly believable acting from Rogen and Banks, Zack and Miri comes together to redeem Smith for both Clerks II and Jersey Girl.

First appeared Oct. 29, 2008 in Baltimore Citypaper.

‘Icons of Adventure’ DVD review (Detroit Metrotimes)

Fans of matinee B-movies have suffered through most of the DVD area. While many genre films are available on disc, the tangled nature of licensing and public domain issues — not to mention the relatively small audience for these films — has meant that far too many of the action and adventure films of the ’50s have made their way into dollar bins on low-quality DVDs marred by subpar transfer and reproduction technology. Someone over at Sony, however, seems to actually care about the massive library the corporate media monolith owns. This two-DVD collection still provides plenty of bargain bang for the buck — four movies and three shorts for a list price under $25 — but the quality of the transfers is simply astounding. All four of the films — The Pirates of Blood River, The Devil-Ship Pirates, The Stranglers of Bombay, The Terror of the Tongs — are Hammer Studios productions, but none of them are the horror films for which the British studio was best known. Instead, these pulpy actioners are about pirates, Fu Manchu, and an Indian death cult, and, despite the comparatively primitive production values, hold up rather well in this era of Captain Jack and Indiana Jones. In fact, it could be argued that all four of these flicks (three of which feature Christopher Lee) are actually better than today’s summer blockbusters; after all, it’s these breezy, workmanlike adventures that Verbinski and Lucas-Spielberg were desperately attempting to emulate with their multimillion-dollar budgets.

First appeared Sept. 17, 2008 in Detroit Metrotimes.

‘Making Of’ DVD review (Detroit Metro Times)

Nouri Bouzid’s 2006 film Making Of took home two awards from the Tribeca Film Festival; one for Best Actor, and the other a special mention for Best Screenplay. Though the winning performance by young Lofti Abdelli as Bahta, the carefree-kid-turned-dazed-terrorist is doubtlessly noteworthy, it’s Bouzid’s nuanced script that goes the furthest to give this Tunisian film its undeniable impact. Opening with a group of lively and typical teenage boys — talking trash, flirting with delinquency via graffiti — it’s hard to imagine that Making Of will devolve into a harrowing look at the mind of a young man who will soon strap sticks of dynamite to his chest. Yet, as beautifully as Bouzid and cinematographer Michel Baudour present the landscape of seaside Tunis, they paint in equally vivid strokes the hardscrabble poverty that affects so many families in the north Africa. As Bahta’s run-ins with the law escalate in intensity, his relationship with his father disintegrates and his options dwindle (the kid just wants to be a break dancer, which isn’t an admired, or particularly lucrative, occupation in Tunisia), it still seems extraordinarily unlikely that he’s destined to become a deluded pawn in an extremist game. But Bouzid delicately and empathetically puts him there in a way that’s as emotionally deflating for the viewer as it is haunting.

First appeared August 6, 2008 in Detroit Metro Times.

Buy this DVD at Amazon.com.

‘Summer ’04′ DVD review (Detroit Metro Times)

Think of the worst summer vacation you ever had. Even if it went beyond National Lampoon’s Vacation awfulness, it’s still unlikely that it was bad as the holiday the grumpy 15-year-old boy in Summer ’04 had. Not only does he have to deal with the realization that his 13-year-old girlfriend is kind of a slut, but also that the older man she falls for ends up shtupping the boy’s mom. Yeah, that’s pretty bad, right? This German film dives gleefully into its mission of discomforting morality-smashing, summed up beautifully when Dad mutters, “Who are we to judge?” The creepy, sexualized teenagers are only the beginning of the spine-chilling weirdness at play here, as director Stefan Krohmer plunges mom Miriam (played to disaffected perfection by Martina Gedeck) into a traumatic bit of adultery that has her ping-ponging between maternal responsibility, wifely devotion and Teutonically hot sex. Krohmer — just like his near-namesake Eric Rohmer — has produced a morality play with decidedly vague morals. The director infuses all of Miriam’s relationships with a sublime balance of sweetness, romance and loyalty, so the viewer winds up as torn as she is when it comes to deciding exactly what the right thing to do is. While the tension builds up within the family unit, poor 15-year-old Nils’ vacation just keeps getting worse and worse, but hey, who are we to judge?

First appeared July 31, 2008 in Detroit Metro Times.

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‘Wall•E’ movie review (Baltimore Citypaper)

Mike Judge’s 2006 Idiocracy pictures a world in which garbage is stacked to the skies, the Earth is polluted beyond repair, and humans have morphed into brainless, TV-addicted lardasses who depend on machines to assist them in everything from mobility to bowel evacuation. Amazingly, this is the exact same world in which Disney/Pixar’s new WALL-E is set. The high-level horror depicted in WALL-E–in which a Wal-Mart-like megacorp has convinced the world’s population to buy buy buy itself into obedient numbness, creating a waste-disposal dilemma so enormous that people have fled into outer space, leaving robots behind to clean up the mess–is stunning in both its apocalyptic harshness and its anti-consumerist import. The dark milieu, however, allows the movie’s titular star to be that much more adorable. All the other clean-up bots have been overworked into disrepair and now, some several centuries after humans decamped to the outer reaches of the galaxy, WALL-E is the only one left, dutifully going about the Sisyphean task of compacting trash and piling it into miles-high edifices. Over the years, the little guy has developed a personality from repeated viewings of Hello, Dolly!, so when a feminized exploration bot lands nearby, the rusty little garbage collector gets predictably enamored. Adventures–both on earth and in outer space–ensue. The highly physical comedy at work in WALL-E combines with the wide-eyed “humanity” of the little machine for genuine laughs and character-driven empathy. That this is achieved during a largely wordless first half is a testament to Pixar’s highly skilled animators. That it’s achieved in a setting even more terrifying and dismal than the one Judge envisioned for Idiocracy is a testament to the fact that WALL-E is smarter, funnier, and sweeter than any recent Pixar production.

First appeared July 2, 2008 in Baltimore Citypaper.

Heavy Metal in Baghdad movie review (Baltimore Citypaper)

Acrassicauda is a fairly typical heavy metal band: four middle-class guys with a bleak outlook on life who find the aggression and release provided by metal to be a rather effective emotional salve. The band has trouble getting gigs. It also has trouble promoting those gigs. And when the shows do happen, they tend to be sparsely attended sausage parties. In fact, Acrassicauda is so similar to most metal bands that they even need to find a new practice space. Unlike most other bands, however, the reason it needs a new rehearsal spot is because its was decimated by a Scud missile.

Being the only heavy metal band in Iraq means that Acrassicauda is actually not all that typical after all. And for that reason, the folks at Vice magazine thought it would be a good idea to profile them. Vice’s relationship with the band started with an article written by Gideon Yago that appeared in the January 2004 issue. That article was as much a look-at-the-oddity-in-the-war-zone piece as it was a unique look at life on the ground in post-invasion Iraq. After the article appeared, the idea was hatched to do a short video profile of Acrassicauda, which quickly blossomed into a full-length documentary. Surprisingly, the same Vice people who brought you the “Bands That Suck” and “Anal Sex” issues may have delivered the most enlightening and emotionally resonant documentary about the Iraq war to date.

Filmmakers Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti do an exceptional job at threading together several disparate elements: the unique status of Acrassicauda as Iraqi metalheads, the members’ singular devotion to capital-M Metal, the devastation of their homeland, the psychological turmoil the civil war has engendered among everyone in Iraq, and, most notably, the massive refugee crisis spawned by the war, which is largely ignored by the U.S. media. Furthermore, the more subtle implication made by the movie–that Iraq is on the verge of becoming a failed state–is a strong statement that has yet to be fully grasped by either side involved in U.S. political discussion about the war.

What Alvi and Moretti don’t do so well is separate themselves from the process. Perhaps this is part and parcel of Vice’s generally self-indulgent methodology, but the movie’s entire midsection feels devoted to proving how brave and determined Alvi (Vice co-founder and the documentary’s narrator) and Moretti (the director) are for forging into Iraq.

Still, with so many movies attempting to put a “human face” on the civilian impact of the Iraq war, the hat trick that Heavy Metal in Baghdad pulls off is notable. By focusing on guys who look (and talk) like the heshers who practice in the basement next door, the movie forces viewers to relate to their struggles in a very real way. We know that Acrassicauda will never open for Metallica–hell, by the end of the documentary’s year-plus time span, the band has only played three gigs–but we’re not rooting for their success. We’re rooting for their survival, not least because these guys are likable, funny, and, like many struggling musicians, a bit delusional. “We’re not a political band, we are not System of a Down or anything,” drummer Marwan Hussain says, as if anyone would mistake the haphazard riffing of Acrassicauda for the work of stadium-filling professionals. “I don’t give a fuck about the news.”

These guys, however, are living the news every day, so when guitarist/vocalist Tony Aziz casually philosophizes about the vacuum left by the removal of Saddam Hussein–”They took Ali Baba and they left the 40 thieves.”–it’s an analysis that’s as astute as it is heartbreaking, as hopeless as it is defiant.

Statements like that combine with extensive video footage of the street-level destruction shot by the Vice team to make for a movie that, more than any other well-meaning, agenda-driven documentary, gives viewers a strong, personal sense of the devastation wrought by the war. And, surprisingly enough, it does it in a way that’s largely agenda-free–the Vice guys never make any declarative statements about the validity of the Iraqi invasion. They merely point out just how fucked up the country has become, and leave it to drummer Marwan to sum up the feelings of many of his countrymen regarding their newfound freedom. “Fuck this,” he says. “Fuck this democracy.”

First appeared June 12, 2008 in Baltimore Citypaper.

Buy the DVD at Amazon.com.