At the Cinema: Stake Land

Stake Land (Jim Mickle/2010) USA/96mins. *****

It's good to see a healthy, horrific return to proper vampire moviemaking after the big-screen hogging by the weak-limbed runts-of-the-vampire-film-litter, the Twilight movies. The haggard, grotesque collection of inexplicably-undead wanderers dredged up by director/writer Jim Mickle (Mulberry Street) and writer/star Nick Damici for independent horror Stake Land come as a much-needed breath of rotten air for the genre. Mister (Damici) and his orphaned sidekick Martin (Connor Paolo) wind their way across an abandoned, hopeless America staking bloodsucking pests and helping fellow stragglers (Kelly McGillis as a nun, Sean Nelson as an ex-marine and Danielle Harris as a pregnant folk singer chief among them) along the way. Its causal concerns adds night-dweller peril to the current crop of apoco-happy plot excuses and it plays out its genre traits accordingly: it covers The Road’s (nuclear devastation) father-son dynamic and grim tone; turns far sourer the wilderness wanderings of Carriers' quartet (viral infection); and replaces Zombieland’s (zombie epidemic) funhouse frolics with its grab bag of vampiric gore. But is the fundamentalist Christian right (headed by a maniacally hammy Michael Cerveris), intent on reshaping the landscape the their own ends, a worse foe than the undead marauders?

It's a gloriously gory throwback, sure (there are nods to the mainstays Romero and Carpenter), but it's not completely a resonant addition. Some of it – not much, but enough to be noticeable – creaks and didn't always convince with its intentions. There are often exciting bursts of tense action – mostly involving the stalk-and-dispatch of the vampires via efficient use of handmade weaponry – but these are occasionally followed by flat, aimless scenes wherein the survivors' plight becomes stalled; there doesn’t seem to be much urgency to their exploits apart from stumbling upon ways to reach the promised utopia of the ‘New Eden’ settlement. There’s an unfortunate, dubious overall lack of attention regarding the inclusion of the women who populate this wasteland, too. It’s not a new issue, and it’s more of a niggling aside here, but there is a degree of ignorance in how Stake Land portrays its female characters. Most of the vampires killed off are, inexplicably, lone females; McGillis' near-raped nun who Mister and Martin stumble across is thoughtlessly left (albeit temporarily) to a similarly degrading fate after a spell, for no valid narrative purpose; a moment of homely respite in a deserted house sees heroic leader Mister rest up with a newspaper whilst the pregnant Harris does some sewing! (because darning is essential when humanity is on its knees.) The instances are relatively minor, but they worryingly accrue in frequency.

Mickle and Damici expertly evoke an all-encompassing despairing mood through crisp and often surprising framing choices of their forever-lost America. Transitional insert shots render crumbling warehouses and dilapidated machinery of the “old world” in realistic fashion, all with a genuinely creative flair for a ravishingly gritty composition. The meagre budget is utilised creatively, but fresh ideas cost nothing; what succeeds in the visuals isn’t always echoed in the script, which falls foul of derivation from the start and goes nowhere ultimately interesting. Whilst an undoubted part of the fun of seeing post-apocalyptic landscapes is discovering how characters might manoeuvre their way through them, there is something to be said for departing from the shop-worn norm. Cinematic apocalypses deserve a shake-up as much as any (sub-)genre. Why the constant focus on pregnancy to signify salvation? Why is it always ‘across the border’ (or sometimes to the ocean’s edge) that our survivors have to reach? Why can’t our lead character be, say, a grey-haired nun instead of a macho hard case?...

Damici speaks in little more than one-sentence grumbles throughout (“I fuckin’ hate vamps!”) and Paolo’s introspective voiceover mumblings remain idly informative but uninspired; together they share many, maybe too many, stake-training montages. But we’re given little cause to truly care about them, Mister especially. Damici should’ve written himself a juicer role (he’s not quite a Rowdy Piper or Danny Trejo type to carry his role off with minimal input) or handed lead duties over to McGillis, the only character present who's remotely interesting and who solely moved me in several brief well-played scenes. I wanted to see her nameless nun swapped with Damici’s blank tough guy; he had no personality to speak of. We’ve seen hundreds of lone warriors or moody braggarts dominate survivalist cinema in the past – why not have a middle-aged woman of the cloth lead the desperate gang through bloody ordeal to eventual redemption? Her own beliefs (the film takes every opportunity to posit its human vs. vamp vs. God argument) and generally decent yet somewhat inscrutable demeanor, balanced with, and played off of, the evil perpetrated by the Christian right would’ve made for a more resolutely intriguing narrative exploration than the overused man-with-a-vengeance-mission restated here. There was further potential in her character for the filmmakers to investigate a fresher perspective on familiar territory. But perhaps it's nitpicking to ponder the what-ifs or bemoan its handful of deficiencies too thoroughly, especially when the things that Stake Land does gets right are conveyed with plenty enough grim heft and gruesome thrill.

Take Three @ TFE: Carla Gugino

This week my "Take Three" column (every Sunday, three write-ups on three performances in a supporting/character actor's career) over at The Film Experience features Carla Gugino in Snake Eyes, Sucker Punch and Elektra Luxx.

Take One: Snake Eyes (1998) Gugino was underused as the social worker in The Lookout, underdressed and all too briefly seen as the parole officer in Sin City, and under De Niro as a delectable detective in Righteous Kill. But one of her earlier roles as the mysterious ringside blonde in Brian De Palma’s Vegas boxing noir Snake Eyes gave her plenty of room to make an impact. There’s a killing about to happen at a big match, but is she in on the missile-based murder conspiracy? She’s certainly the focus of maniacally charged Nicolas Cage’s attention – and, by association, ours. Snake’s tricky structure and multiple viewpoints (especially the famous opening tracking shots) allow Gugino to play fast and loose with her character, Julia Costello, who ultimately, like all desperate women of noir, isn’t quite who we think she is...

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Take Three @ TFE: Boris Karloff

This week my "Take Three" column (every Sunday, three write-ups on three performances in a supporting/character actor's career) over at The Film Experience features Boris Karloff in The Mummy, Black Sabbath and Frankenstein & Bride of Frankenstein. (So, it's essentially a Take Four.)

Take One: The Mummy (1931) Always the consummate character actor, Karloff gave us the most splendidly memorable characters. Famously one of the world’s biggest and best horror icons (along with Lugosi, Chaney Jr., Price and Lee, the frightful five), he played his beasts, ghouls and undead wanderers in exemplary fashion. Take his Imhotep/Ardath Bey, the titular bandaged one in director-cinematographer Karl Freund’s 1931 classic The Mummy. Ten years after being awakened by a group of foolhardy archaeologists Imhotep intends to revive his ancient Egyptian love Princess Ankh-es-en-amon with the help of reluctant modern-day babe Zita Johann...

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Dark Eye Archive: Harmony gets his freak on for JULIEN DONKEY-BOY (1999)

Another post in this semi-regular series of randomly selected posts on older films (some quite old, some very old, some not that old) that I've written about previously elsewhere, or had sitting dormant in the 'unfinished' pile, but have added further/new thoughts on for the sake of reproducing them here. (In some cases some much-needed judicious editing has occurred, too.) I've called it Dark Eye Archive because it sounds about right - and it was marginally better than the pun-happy Archive Socket.

Harmony Korine is a funny guy. Funny peculiar and, to a lesser degree, funny ha-ha: his all-round generally odd-meets-jovial demeanor forms a large part of his outsider(ish) pride in all things peripheral, subversive. His second film, Julien Donkey-Boy, picks up on similar themes and characters which drifted through his 1998 debut, Gummo, and his side projects, particularly his scattershot fiction-in-bite-sized-entries book, 'A Crack Up at the Race Riots'. Awkward outcasts, illogical actions and unvarnished (the best word for it) camerawork - courtesy of the Dogme95 manifesto lent to Korine by von Trier and co. for this project - hemmed within often largely unseen and under-explored American environs are what he does best. It’s what he does full stop.

Korine’s characters always appear as if the given actor portraying them is channelling first a psychiatric patient, then a Vaudeville act. It’s most likely the effect of Korine’s particular instruction; his directorial style seems to be eternally inspired by, alternately, Charles Manson and Baby Jane Hudson. Beacons flash around the film suggesting that it's all simply a laugh riot, suggesting these misfit-types are ripe for ridicule – either by Korine himself, playfully and lovingly, or a particularly impatient or unforgiving audience, unsparingly – but the folks on show aren't treated like token freaks at any point; Korine appears to be firmly reiterating in the back of his mind Tod Browning’s Freaks gang's chant, “One of us! One of us!” Korine revels in their world too adoringly, too immersively for lazy mockery. By association or sheer indulgence he’s part of that world. He looks to his characters for ways to answer questions the world throws at him.

The family are shown with both tenderness and harshness – but they're always absurd. Illuminating tidbits arise almost spontaneously (a sign of the Dogme95 restrictions/freedoms working well?). Little ragged truths emerge in the briefest of moments and in the merest of details: a held glance, an instance of silent contemplation, or a cut-away to a part of the family's house, either to identify them in their surroundings or, perhaps, for no particular reason other than pure aesthetic value. But some things simply work; and other things seem outlandish for the sake of it. Maybe Korine felt that he needed to heighten the 'strange' quotient at opportune moments, for fear of not being regarded as subversive enough: Werner Herzog in a gas-mask, the younger brother's constant training up and down the stairway, the surreal party balloon acts and so on. Although these things, if taken as flip directorial tics, can feel like jarring immaterial flourishes, they also create a sense of imaginative yet filthy whimsy that nicely offsets other, more mundane moments elsewhere in the film.

There's one scene in particular, where Korine's raggedy filmmaking showmanship comes into its own; it's a moment when the absurd and the heartfelt collide. Ewen Bremner, as Julien, and Chloe Sevigny, as his sister Pearl, are having a telephone conversation in different rooms within the same house. Julien (possibly feigning insanity, probably believing in miracles) thinks that Pearl is actually their mother calling him from beyond the grave. Pearl plays along to placate him. It’s an emotionally cruel, but ultimately thoughtful, privately sweet-natured act on Pearl’s behalf. However the scene is intended, the strange blend of cringe-worthy desperation and tender affection on display is curiously memorable. These characters (thanks to unguarded, lopsided work from Bremner and Sevigny) appear to mean every baffling, aching word. Who knows what bizarre truths hide in the cracked hearts of other people?

Photos are from www.harmony-korine.com

Take Three @ TFE: Catherine Keener

This week my "Take Three" column (every Sunday, three write-ups on three performances in a supporting/character actor's career) over at The Film Experience features Catherine Keener in Being John Malkovich, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Please Give.

Take One: Being John Malkovich (1999)

Do you think it’s possible to admire an actress’ immense talent yet still be somewhat immune to her overall allure or effectiveness? Or perhaps it’s fair to acknowledge their greatness, but have issues with many of their performances? It’s been this way with me and Cathy K for eleven years. It was very likely Being John Malkovich that kick-started my general viewer/star incompatibility with Keener. I did, however, enjoy her sarcastically dry, bolshy, personality-destroying task master Maxine Lund in Spike Jonze’s breakthrough film a great deal. But in the film – and in many things since – she’s baffled, transfixed, annoyed and intrigued me in equal measure. Watching one of her films is a tug-of-war filled with both appreciation and irritation...

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Take Three @ TFE: Danny Glover

This week my "Take Three" column (every Sunday, three write-ups on three performances in a supporting/character actor's career) over at The Film Experience features Danny Glover in Be Kind Rewind, Lethal Weapon and To Sleep with Anger.

Take One: Be Kind Rewind (2008) The most recent role in which he’s perhaps been most memorable was as the ageing, single, Fats Waller-loving video-shop owner Mr. Fletcher in Michel Gondry’s 2008 comic throwback Be Kind Rewind. He starts out like a kind of reluctant, but good-hearted curmudgeon unwilling to embrace DVD, but he ends up an accidental impresario of both old-school values and new ventures by joining the ranks of the neighbourhood “sweders” to make a community doc on Fats Waller. He typifies both the film’s antiquated side (VHS), but also its embracing of new technologies (DVD, digital) and social connection (people + cinema = growth). The scenes of him trotting off to memorialise Fats and snoop on his rivals would make an endearing film of its own. If Danny Glover could “swede” a film of himself doing just that, I’d be happy...

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Dark Eye Archive: THE UNITED STATES OF LELAND (2003)

This is the first in a quite likely semi-regular series of randomly selected posts on older films (some quite old, some very old, some not that old) that I've written about previously elsewhere, or had sitting dormant in the 'unfinished review bank', but have added further/new thoughts on for the sake of reproducing them here. (In some cases some much-needed judicious editing has occurred, too.) I've called it Dark Eye Archive because it sounds about right - and it was marginally better than the pun-happy Archive Socket.

The weathered world in which the events of Matthew Ryan Hoge's  The United States of Leland take place is completely airless, hermetic. Every character uselessly ponders their own and others’ actions without the barest morsel of insight. The plot has teen Leland (Ryan Gosling) accused of murdering an autistic boy, so goes to juvenile detention; the reasons for the crime make up the bulk of the resulting narrative. It’s very much a film that dictates its characters blithely blunder into one another’s lives (but without significant reason to), and then feels content that they’re operating according to some kind of lived experience. It’s a depressive’s wish-fulfilment job – a film to gloomily wallow in. The kind of despondently-toned, ensemble drama all about (sub)urban angst and familial alienation were particularly rife in‘00s indie cinema. Some, in whole or in part, made a virtue out of grief control (Magnolia, Pieces of April, The Ice Storm); some induced a state of cheerless near somnambulism (The Safety of Objects, Garden State, The Chumscrubber). It’s a film that floats or sinks on the assembled cast’s successful transference of emotion. by that line of thought, The United States of Leland is the Bismarck.

Gosling, as Leland (giving his worst performance to date), is all puppy-eyes within hangdog expressions and inane mumbling. He aims for Holden Caulfield-style loner broodiness, but doesn’t even reach Donnie Darko moodiness; he conveys no such inner torment; Leland has the depth of a puddle. His performance is proof that great actors often require lesser transitional roles in which to practice their craft. The rest of the cast, bar two performers (Sherilyn Fenn, who in mere minutes of screen time inhabits a thinly-written and thanklessly peripheral character with subtlety; and Don Cheadle, who injects some much-needed sturdy compassion into his role), are given very little to do apart from vacantly react to each other in glacially fractured ways that almost always seem to be depicted in films such as this. Martin Donovan, Ann Magnuson, Kerry Washington, Chris Klein and Jena Malone are mostly wasted and Michelle Williams and Lena Olin have literally nothing to do. It’s also worth noting that Kevin Spacey (who produced) gave himself a crucial role. There's an air of awe that surrounds his character (Leland's father) but with little concrete reason; where he intends lofty stature, there is merely empty superiority.

Most of the characters act in such vapid and gutlessly unconvincing ways that the film oftens baffles when it should be holding our attention. Since when has complete inaction and dormant pondering qualified as proficient characterisation? Sometimes it takes a little bit more gumption, outwardly expressive emotion and, yes, believable effort to make a resounding impact: ‘Debilitative’ isn’t an acting style. Leland’s violent outburst, which bookends the narrative, is in no way the act of good-hearted selflessness that the film posits. It's a vacuous, selfish deed with no valid raison d’être (especially when you take into account exactly what was at stake). It’s the film's ending, though, which really reveals it to be a shallow exercise in manipulative storytelling. *SPOILERS* So, poor little Leland had to kill Becky (Malone) and Julie's (Williams) "retarded" brother Ryan (Michael Welch) because he ‘understood his sadness’? He thinks that a life of disability and difference isn't worth living? Ok. Right. But, doesn't his very act deprive Ryan of the chance to discover, for himself, otherwise? The film ultimately subscribes to a vastly flawed and hollow agenda, one that Hoge and co. were unfortunately hanging all their narrative's hopes on. *END SPOILERS* It ends as a monotonous, whimsically-played “life-affirming” drama with an inflated sense of self-importance and a waste basket full of misjudged liberalisms that it doesn't understand. There's nothing integral in the way of ideas about what it means to be a person who actually, in and of this world, truly gives a shit. It’s a terrifically bland exercise in faux emotionalism that depreciates as it plays. It has no real sense of the kind of human tragedy that it so willingly, yet fraudulently, wears on its sleeve.

Quiz Zabriskie

Today is Grace Zabriskie's 70th birthday. Many happy returns to one of the best actresses working today. Below are 12 memorable Zabriskie characters from some of the films over her career so far...

...Can anyone name all 12 films?

My Zabriskie birthday write-up from 2010

Take Three @ TFE: Barbara Hershey

This week my "Take Three" column (every Sunday, three write-ups on three performances in a supporting/character actor's career) over at The Film Experience features Barbara Hershey in Beaches, The Entity and Black Swan.

Barbara Hershey as pushy stage mother Erica Sayers in Black Swan (2010)

Take Three: Black Swan (2010) Hershey was entirely perfect casting in Black Swan. She’s the right age, has the exact look befitting an unusual ballet-horror movie, is seasoned enough to convey the exact tone of her character (Erica Sayers, pushy stage mother and ex-ballet star – I wouldn’t mention the term ‘has-been’ around her) and fits well within the overall dark timber of the piece. She inhabits the role with requisite poise and gives great face, either swelled with fury, sincerity or girlish glee. To say she lived vicariously through onscreen daughter Nina (Natalie Portman) is pointing out the obvious. It’s a given that Erica is clearly not living better through displaced ballet from the off; the queasy, mechanical dependency she displays for Portman’s successes, hidden behind the dimmed light of motherly tenderness, gives Black Swan a lot of its freakish charm. The technical aspects go a long way in creating an aura of unease, but Hershey is the living embodiment of all the on screen fear that really terrorises...

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At the Cinema: Priest

Priest (Scott Stewart/2011) USA/87mins. **

Priest fits in line with the likes of Underworld and Daybreakers – highly flashy, derivative entertainments which take vampire mythology and faddishly remodel it to fit multiplex expectations. In limp, uninvolving 3D it skips anything that might arouse intrigue or create tension (elements partially present in the above films) and just vaguely flings at us the necessary bits only; we get high concepts with low impact. To paraphrase Tom Waits: it’s got the bread, but not the butter. It’s a vampire clips package that feels cribbed from a better film that, sadly, doesn’t exist. There’s back story to be gleaned from the pre-opening titles animation, graphic novel series it’s based on and various snippets of terse, explanatory dialogue, but that’s pretty much where it starts and ends.

The main thrust of the narrative – Bettany’s ostracised Priest goes rogue to track down a pack of vamps that have maimed his brother (True Blood’s undead resident Stephen Moyer), kidnapped his niece and made a mockery of his faith – is too thinly conveyed and insubstantial, to the detriment of audience involvement. Had the filmmakers shown the source material any real affection they might have felt compelled to flesh out some of the more interesting concerns lurking on the periphery and incorporated them into the action. (Just how does the largely absent vampire queen command her army of eyeless blood-sucking beasts? What about the baffling, nagging mystery in Priest’s family background?) At only 87 minutes there’s limited time to get across anything other than the bare essentials. Its very hastiness suggests a studio squarely aiming for fast cash over myth- or franchise-making longevity.

Director Scott Stewart likes his compositions symmetrical and neat, as if he’s taking visual cues from the cross itself. He arranges most onscreen elements with bland preciseness, be they a uniform gathering of religious elders, four equally-spaced monolithic statues or the dominant locations (a vampire’s hive, the horizon line of a desert landscape). Whether it’s intended to enforce the notion that this bleak, unforgiving and largely anonymous world operates under a higher power (God is order!), or if it’s merely Stewart’s rote, uninspired approach to direction is open to interpretation. But the flat-pack visuals, with their overused trendy slow-motion build up (a device that’s becoming commonplace in cheap-thrill adaptations such as this – does every back flip require such close scrutiny?) collapse more than they hold up. Stewart delivers just shy of what is required to make it diverting.

The assembled cast is like a roll-call in genre heaven. Bettany growls like he’s aping Christian Bale’s Batman, but he copes just as well with being the designated lunatic figurehead as he did in his last cheap religi-tainment with Stewart, Legion. Good eggs Cam Gigandet (as a sheriff) and Karl Urban (as a fallen priest/vampire-human hybrid) plug away with rugged pluck in sidelined roles; and Brad Dourif and Christopher Plummer (seemingly playing the high priest of haughtiness), though both sadly underused, gamely provide good role play, as they both, thankfully, always do. But I’d offer up the suggestion that if you are to have Maggie Q in your film it’s advisable to give her at least 50% more martial arts action than is regulation. In a film with much good (genre) intentions but such vapid padding, the good stuff needs to be highlighted wherever possible.

Take Three @ TFE: Eddie Marsan

This week my "Take Three" column (every Sunday, three write-ups on three performances in a supporting/character actor's career) over at The Film Experience features Eddie Marsan in The Disappearance of Alice Creed, Heartless and Happy-Go-Lucky.

Martin Compston and Eddie Marsan (right) in The Disappearance of Alice Creed

Take One: The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2010) Marsan is elusive and perplexing as ex-con and current kidnapper Vic in J Blakeson’s British thriller The Disappearance of Alice Creed. It may be his best role to date. It’s certainly his most visible in terms of screen time and lasting impressions. Vic and Danny (Martin Compston) kidnap a girl called Alice (Gemma Arterton). We’re not initially certain why or what for, but surprising details emerge. It’s an intriguing, slow-burning three-hander, largely set in two rooms of one house, with a slippery plot that gets drip-fed to us with unsettling incremental unease. There’s a psychological and dramatic weight to Vic that Marsan smartly unearths. He utilises his familiar best attributes to expert effect, but twists them into something else. Vic spends much of the film in a desperate state. He gives orders to “assistant” Danny and threatens Alice. He’s in charge, but of what exactly is open to debate. But Marsan's expressive, layered acting style never lets caricature or over-indulgence creep in. Any more information will ruin the risk of ruining Alice Creed’s many wily turns; just know that both the film and Marsan are excellent.

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At the Cinema: A Screaming Man

A Screaming Man / Un homme qui crie (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun/2010) Chad, Belgium, France/92mins ****

I much admired Chad filmmaker Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's 2007 feature Daratt/Dry Season. (It took the no.4 spot in my year-end list that year.) He’s triumphed again with his fourth feature, A Screaming Man. Made in the same refined and frank vein as Daratt, this new film follows Adam (Youssouf Djaoro), a pool cleaner and former swimming champion who works at an exclusive N'Djamena hotel with the assistance of his son, Abdel (Diouc Koma). After a job reshuffle Adam loses his job to Abdel; he sinks into a depression, fuelled by anger and humiliation, and takes unexpected action; a questionable decision that threatens his family's personal stability just as the country's situation worsens when civil war breaks out and rebel armies infiltrate the area.

Much of the film’s drama is underplayed. Haroun’s camera focuses on Adam in a curious, contemplative manner, observing with deftness the way his livelihood and pride is slowly and slyly wrenched from him. Events major and minor are directed with crisp elegance, ensuring the plot never strays into falsity despite the tinge of melodrama inherent in it. One crucial shot, detailing a troubling decision Adam makes halfway in, tells us everything we need to know in a single, slow zoom into Adam’s face as he silently wallows in his demotion. Work is life for him; his job a necessity and cherished position, however lowly, which still holds for him the shine of his former swimming glories.

Djaoro (who also gave a fine performance as the baker in Daratt) conveys regret and selfishness with natural ease. The film and the camera tracks him with generosity and guile. That we care about him despite his permanently-furrowed demeanour and questionable ethics comes down to his strong performance. Music is used sparingly, and feels loaded with sombre emotion when it cuts in; it disrupts key moments unexpectedly to underline pertinent visual points. Laurent Brunet's vivid photography boldly highlights areas of respite within dim home interiors as much as it luxuriates in the expansive splendour of the hotel poolside. It's photography that visually arouses a lot emotionally with seemingly little effort. A Screaming Man details stunted, withheld lives – affected by social pressures and a fraught political climate – with a simple yet devastating awareness of the fragility of responsibility. It's another great work from a compelling filmmaker who's carving out an individual presence in world cinema.

Take Three @ TFE: Brooke Smith

This week my "Take Three" column (every Sunday, three write-ups on three performances in a supporting/character actor's career) over at The Film Experience features Brooke Smith in Series 7: The Contenders, Melinda and Melinda and The Silence of the Lambs.

Brooke Smith in Series 7: The Contenders

Take One: Series 7: The Contenders (2001) Smith's performance as Dawn “Bloody mama” Lagarto in Daniel Minahan’s Series 7: The Contenders is a goldmine of maternal aggression. Dawn is a risk-taking, self-serving, take-no-prisoners single pregnant woman with a gun and a hit list of new Contenders to wipe out. It's as far from life-affirming as it gets making Dawn the kind of caustically fantastic role that most A-list actresses would give their right arm... to steer clear of. Thank the gods of indie cinema that they gave us Brooke Smith, then. We first see her enter a convenience store to shoot an old guy in the back. “You got any bean dip?” she asks the cashier. The humour is black and she dishes it dry. In one of the film’s sickest/funniest TV-montage parodies we see Dawn slit someone’s throat in a lift, kick a guy downstairs, drown someone else in a toilet and strangle a woman in a car à la Halloween’s Michael Myers, all whilst with a bun in the oven. This is not a rom-com...

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Boxing Gym (Frederick Wiseman/2010)

Frederick Wiseman is as much a film artist as any fiction filmmaker. He's often quite rightly held up as such alongside many a fellow documentarian (Errol Morris, the Maysles bros for instance), especially for his no talking heads, no descriptive onscreen captions and - most pertinently - his judicious approach. As ever, his mastery of the form is present and apparent in his latest, Boxing Gym. The titular business in Austin, Texas is the focus of Wiseman’s measured gaze: its owner, Richard Lord, and various members (including lawyers, students, young mothers, doctors, soldiers) train, chat and generally box happily away whenever their often busy lives permit. All the while Wiseman, with acutely signature visual dexterity, captures key moments and exchanges - which reach far beyond mere commentary on the activity at hand - that reveal insights into the issues facing the gym members in a typically unintrusive, exploratory manner.

The aural rhythms of the gym are particularly notable for the extraordinary impression they arouse: the sound of rapid punches to speed bags, the constant buzz from the training timer, the white noise of friendly banter in the background and the bustle of lives lived as a series of light, breathy or grunted movements all commingle into an vividly energetic soundtrack. It’s a visually arresting film, too: light falling on the gym floor, frenetic, dance-like close-ups of nimble-footed boxers and still shots of the city in bright daylight all display Wiseman’s skill with crisp, easeful compositions. (It's remarkable, and revealing of his organic immersion in his subject matter, that Wiseman chose two projects in sequence - this and La Danse: The Paris Ballet Opera - that find strong visual form in elegant footwork.)

Of course, the telling snapshots of individual gym members resonate most, right from the start. I was immediately interested in each person’s lives, the fleeting ins and outs of their daily grind, within and away from the gym, and the collective effect all the members made on me in rotation. It's a portrait of defence and exercise within the confines of a specific microcosm and it paints a vibrant picture. These are all fascinating individuals. As ever with Wiseman, I could’ve happily spent many more hours with them. One image, briefly included late in the film, stands out: a boxer practising in the gym car park near a huge tree looming over him, swaying in the breeze; man and nature, the grand and the everyday, captured together, with zero fuss.

Boxing Gym and La Danse: The Paris Ballet Opera both featured in my Top Ten Films of 2010.

Take Three @ TFE: Jérémie Renier

This week my "Take Three" column (every Sunday, three write-ups on three performances in a supporting/character actor's career) over at The Film Experience features Jérémie Renier.

Yannick Renier (left) with this week's Take Three actor, Jérémie Renier (right) in Private Property/Nue propriété

Take One: Private Property/Nue propriété (2006) Joachim Lafosse’s beautifully-crafted French family drama Private Property, starred arthouse doyenne Isabelle Huppert alongside Renier and his brother Yannick (also an actor). They're just about getting on in a country house that non-identical twins Thierry (Jérémie) and François (Yannick) don’t want to sell, but Mater Dearest does; the live-away father/ex-husband backs the twins – and it’s his house. The drama is all about the to and fro of this looming possibility, the elephant smack bang in the front room and pregnant with the biggest pause imaginable. Lafosse curiously shapes his narrative with inharmonious tension between the three: it’s sometimes sexual, sometimes queasily thick, and most times unavoidable. Freud would’ve loved a visit with this Gallic clan...

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Notes on Jonas Mekas' Mini Circus

I like my circuses fast, heady and full of colour. It’s how they should be. The experience should be exciting. It should draw you us and spit us out exhausted and full of bold and bizarre images. This is, by filmic proxy, exactly what Jonas Mekas’ personal, ambitious and downright groovy three-hour 1969 film essay Notes, Sketches and Diaries (AKA Walden) does. In it there’s a section – Reel 2, or, more precisely, the first 12 mins of Reel 2 (the film is made up of six half-hour “reels”) – called ‘Notes on the Circus’. It comes at us very fast. As film representations of the circus experience go, this one’s a gift. It features some of my favourite movie imagery of the circus outside of the moving scenes of John Merrick in David Lynch's masterful The Elephant Man, Candace Hilligoss wondering dazed and confused around a pier of horrors in Carnival of Souls and Bill Murray and Geena Davis holding up a bank in Quick Change. Ok, so that last one has a rather tenuous circus link – but they are dressed as clowns.

But back to Mekas. In twelve of his super-fast, super-duper, super 16mm minutes (itself split into four numbered sections) there’s enough heart-stopping big top bop to last an entire film’s worth of treasured memories. He fires at us: rapidly running ringleaders, Unicyclists in blue costumes, unicyclists in red costumes, a dog scampering up a ladder, people darting through flaming hoops, trapeze artists swinging frenetically to and fro like sped-up human pendulums, acrobats spinning in quick succession, showgirls, horses, horsey showgirls (maybe even showy horse-girls for that matter - it's all so fast), lions and tigers, tigers riding horses (this bit of organic animal magic is wondrous), towers of people rising up and coming down, elephants circling the tent, and much more. Everyone and everything circles, spins, turns in this assault of the reel. It all comes at us in an abstracted, sequined swill of animals and bodies, pizzazz and performance. And in full-on flickering colour. It’s a carnivalesque art film segment containing all the glitter and uplift of a day and night at the circus for real. And all whilst music that sounds like a Bob Dylan protest song being played by a drunken clown on a mouth organ artfully attacks our ear sockets. Ah Jonas, you make me skip away from a screening with keen wonder. You should direct every circus-related film. You should direct every circus. I'd be there super fast.

Take Three @ TFE: Shelley Duvall

This week my "Take Three" column (every Sunday, three write-ups on three performances in a supporting/character actor's career) over at The Film Experience features Shelley Duvall.

Take One: 3 Women (1977) There aren’t very many characters like Millie Lammoreaux in the movies. Watching Robert Altman’s 1977 masterpiece 3 Women you can see why. Essentially there are two reasons: she’s a hard sell, commercially speaking, and Duvall has played her perfectly well here already; there’s no need for an imitation version from anyone else. Duvall made Millie so singularly and categorically her own. It’s her signature performance; the centrepiece on her C.V. As per the title, she shares the film with two other women: Sissy Spacek, as her new roommate and care-home co-worker Pinky Rose, and Janice Rule as Willie Hart, a local (to Millie’s apartment complex, the Purple Sage, where much of the film takes place) artist – the one who paints the mysterious swimming pool mural which seems so significant to these 3 Women, and (metaphorically?) permeates it with an uncommon atmosphere...

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Take Three @ TFE: Burgess Meredith

This week my "Take Three" column (every Sunday, three write-ups on three performances in a supporting/character actor's career) over at The Film Experience features Burgess Meredith.

Take One: The Sentinel (1977) Watching Michael Winner’s high-pitched horror The Sentinel has two great side effects: one, you get some great ‘70s New York apartment porn (with the bonus of having Ava Gardner as your guide); two, you’re treated to one of Meredith’s most under seen and relishable performances. It came a year after his Supporting Actor Oscar nod for his signature role as Mickey in Rocky. He plays Cristina Raines favourite new neighbour Charles Chazen, a dotty, slightly effete, amiable and – oh yeah – imaginary elderly resident in the suspiciously cheap waterside Brooklyn Brownstone. He lives happily with his parakeet, Mortimer (also imaginary), his cat Jezebel (the meows sound real), and a blind priest sentry guarding the apartment block from all the demons of hell. So, yes: he leads a simple, gentle life...

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Take Three @ TFE: Isabella Rossellini

This week my "Take Three" column (every Sunday, three write-ups on three performances in a supporting/character actor's career) over at The Film Experience features Isabella Rossellini.

Take One: Blue Velvet (1986) “She... Wore... Bluuuuuue Vel-vet.” Indeed she did: bluer than velvet was the night. Ladies and gentlemen, Rossellini was the Blue Lady, Miss Dorothy Vallens, in David Lynch’s mid-eighties masterpiece Blue Velvet. Vallens was a tortured torch singer, a gas-guzzling freakopath Frank Booth’s (Dennis Hopper) late-night inviter and pervy amateur detective Jeffrey Beaumont’s (Kyle MacLachlan) sexual initiation vixen. And yet, behind it all, lay a fretful wife and mother. Rossellini’s introductory scene in the film showed her as a midnight siren, a depressed blue dahlia who, once done with her sad, strange rendition of Bobby Vinton’s titular song, seems to dematerialise into a pair of Lynch’s signature red curtains...

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Happy Mother's Day (of Horror)

Happy Mother's Day to all the world's mothers, either real or fictional.

Pamela Voorhees (the wonderful Betsy Palmer) and "loving son" Jason 

(possibly Kane Hodder?) share a maternal moment on the set of one of the Friday the 13th films.