Snowpiercer (2014): The Faults in the System

Snowpiercer (2014)
dir: Bong Joon-Ho

The capitalist system has faults. It's a fact. Every pure ideological system has faults in it, especially when you take the human factor into account. The human urge for tribalism, as well as the human urge for natural selection both factor heavily into the capitalist system's faults.

As such, Snowpiercer isn't just an allegory for capitalism, so much as it is an allegory for every caste system that has ever been set up.

The set-up for Snowpiercer comes from modern times. There is an extremely long train that was built to continuously moves around a series of interconnected railways on an annual circuit around the Eurasian hemisphere. After it was built, the corporations decided to try to combat climate change by launching a chemical into the atmosphere, sending the Earth into an Ice Age, where the only thing that seems to have survived is this train.

The train is set up as a caste system. The rear of the train are the poor people, who have to eat protein bars that look like black Jell-O bricks. They live in squalor and tight quarters with bunk beds and poor lighting. The front of the train are the rich people, who are, according to the poor people, getting to eat steaks and live like kings. At the very front is the engine, where the leader rules the whole train from front to back.

The train runs on a perpetual motion engine, and so there is little to do but sit and wait. The poor people have sex and children, and wait around until the guards come in to give them their food. Now and then, the guards will take two children up front, and periodically scour the back for people to work with the front people. One such resident is a violinist, who is forcibly separated from his wife to live life in the front to play violin for the rich people. Two children are forcibly taken from their parents at the beginning of the film, for reasons not explained to anybody. When the poor start to revolt, the guards take one of the passengers and freezes his arm by setting it outside the window and then shattering it off.

Even though the poor don't work, and didn't pay to be on the train, the conditions are so insufferable that a revolt would always be bound to happen. Spurred on by Gilliam (John Hurt), Curtis (Chris Evans) and his side kick Edgar (Jamie Bell) lead a revolt to take over the engine, going through the various trains that get increasingly classier and more decadent as they get closer to the engine. Along the way, they fight guards and big bosses on several occasions, much like a video game.

Which brings us to the first problem of Snowpiercer. The fighting sequences are not that good. I know I've been a bit spoiled by The Raid, but the fighting sequences start out afflicted with shaky cam, and with an inability to discern who was fighting who, or where anybody was. Joon-Ho, who previously directed the suspenseful The Host, has very little grasp on how to direct a fighting sequence when there are too many people involved in the fight. The camera is all over the place, the editing is strange, and the people are indiscernible. Plus, the timing of the scenes are off. As the movie goes on, and there are fewer and fewer people to deal with, Joon-Ho's direction gets slightly better, but the initial rebellion, the axe sequence, and even a little bit of the classroom sequence are all fraught with problems that seem to dissipate by the sauna sequence.

The set-up for Snowpiercer isn't subtle in its intentions. Anybody paying attention to politics anywhere should be able to parse out Joon-Ho's political statements with a flinch of the eye. But, Snowpiercer is far more nuanced than one might give it credit for. It asks questions about food supply in closed systems. It asks questions about overpopulation, and slave labor. It asks questions about political indoctrination and obedience. Most of all, it asks questions about idealism and intent.

To say that Snowpiercer is a gung-ho radical "take over the system" movie is to deny it the whole final act it has been working towards. In the final act of Snowpiercer, Boon-Ho decimates all the ideology that he has been building up for the first 100 minutes of the film. For 100 minutes, Boon-Ho gives the microphone to the Occupy movement, essentially. The poor. The ones who have been oppressed. But, in the last 20, he gives it to the leader. The 1%. The owner of the train. The builder. And the controller of the engine. And in the final 3, he ends with the most radical note in an already very radical movie.

There are flaws in Snowpiercer. A lot of them, in fact. The fighting is the most major one, in my opinion. The score swings between not bad to HAAAAAANS ZIMMMMMER boring. The elements in the allegory don't always hold up to real world equivalents, or do so in much more minute/subtler ways. A simultaneous flaw and also benefit is that Snowpiercer doesn't answer all the questions it raises. The emotional climax is played too earnestly. And, there are a lot of weird techniques that seem to draw attention to themselves for illogical reasons.

Much like the ice formations that build on the tracks, the flaws in Snowpiercer present merely elements that jar the movie, but never completely derail it. The pacing and visuals of Snowpiercer outside the fight sequences are spectacular, the tension is top notch, and the acting is completely aces. Tilda Swinton practically steals the show with her imitation of Margaret Thatcher, and Evans is perfectly capable of most of the scenes in Snowpiercer, with one major exception towards the end.

Snowpiercer gives both action movie thrills, and intelligent fodder to chew on for days. Modern caste systems, constant rebellion, the justification on either side, and how it could be applicable or not to modern society are all topics that aren't left with answers, and the most dangerous answer is still in the movie, which ends with a note of hope and promise. The allegorical fodder makes Snowpiercer a Required Viewing, even though it has some deep flaws throughout the film.

Manuscripts Don't Burn (2014): Scathing on the Fly

Manuscripts Don't Burn (2014)
dir: Mohammad Rasoulof

SIFF 2014 Film #29

In 2011, Mohammad Rasolulof, an already accomplished director, was arrested and had a 20-year ban from making any films imposed on him by the Iranian government. In secret, Rasoulof broke that government-ban and made Manuscripts Don't Burn, a film which is an indictment of the Iranian government, and it's attempts at intellectual censorship. The end result is a harrowing indictment of not only censorship but also cultural manipulation and how the whole system is set up against everybody's best interest.

The main characters of Manuscripts are not the intellectuals, but a pair of Iranian government assassins who are chasing after a manuscript. The assassins aren't rich or even paid all that well, as one of the two assassins has a sick child who is trying to gain admission to a hospital, but he doesn't have the money to pay for the stay. The assassin is constantly calling their government bosses to try to get the finances transferred to his account so he can prove he can afford for his son to have whatever surgery is needed.

The manuscript is written by a wheelchair-bound intellectual poet who had written a book that was essentially an anti-government screed that had over 100 instances of censorship inflicted upon it. One of the major instances is a story about a group of poets on a bus trip to Armenia, which was supposed to be driven off a cliff in the middle of the night. They intervened and survived, but were warned to be silent about it. The uncensored manuscript is put to a small circle of intellectuals for safe keeping, and the Iranian government is trying to keep it repressed.

The saying of "Manuscripts don't burn" means, essentially, that while the government can censor all they want, they actually don't have the power to remove memories. Until they do. The assassins aren't just going to destroy the manuscripts, but destroy all of the memories of the manuscript from those who have read it, wrote it, and remember it. At this point in their career, murder and death are second nature to the assassins. They even delude themselves to the reasoning they kill, with the father of the sick child questioning whether he's actually doing a good service, or if he's just doing something more immoral.

While the general frame of Manuscripts Don't Burn is a traditional assassin story, the details and the government prescience adds a presence that otherwise would be absent in this rather slow and pondering execution of the usual story. The ponderings of religion and God, and the intersection of religion and government, duty and manipulation of the poor, plus the responsibilities of rebels to try to promote the truth in a lying government, makes Manuscripts more detailed and pointed than the usual generic stories we get.

Rasoulof filmed Manuscripts in secret, and even eliminated all names except his own from the credits. The cast and crew have gone unnamed in the movie in order to prevent them from legal action by the government. But, the secrecy shows. There are some questionable filming choices that seem more rudimentary than thought out, and the pacing is a little erratic even in its heavily plodding pace. However, given the circumstances, one can forgive those technical details over the thoughtful content within the film itself.

Manuscripts Don't Burn isn't an "enjoyable" experience. But, not all cinema should be enjoyable. They should be thought provoking, and Manuscripts Don't Burn has that in spades. Being an anti-government screed, Manuscripts is an important movie, even if it isn't technically amazing.

Creep (2014): Found Footage Done Creepy

Creep (2014)
dir: Patrick Brice

SIFF 2014 Film #27

This year's SIFF proves that Found Footage horror is still going strong. After the success of V/H/S, we're starting to see a revitalization of the genre (despite what the producers of Beneath discovered). Creep is the best of the ones I saw this year, which took the same approach to the rules of found footage as Willow Creek, but didn't resort to redoing a well-worn plot line. Instead, Creep is original and founded in modern day fears, like Catfish. In fact, much like Catfish and the earlier The Signal, Creep is asking what happens when you respond to a stranger.

Patrick Brice stars as Aaron, an amateur videographer who responds to an ad from Josef, a guy who wants to make a My Life style video for his kid. Josef's dying of cancer, and he has a kid on the way, but he only has a few months to live and doesn't believe that he will see the kid being born. But, Josef starts out the film disarmingly and disconcertingly positive and just gets creepier from there.

Did I mention that it's a black horror comedy? Mark Duplass as Josef just gets creepier and creepier with his broadly grinning mug, as Patrick Brice just keeps trusting way too much. From the first scene that Josef wants filmed, where he strips naked and gets in the tub to have "tubby time" with his not-yet-born son, you just want Aaron to get the fuck out of there. This guy is weird. But, at the same time, he could just be a really weird guy who doesn't know social norms. Is he a creeper? Will he kill Aaron? Drug him or other things? Or, is he just overly strange without knowing typical limits.

The number of times that Josef freaks Aaron out in the opening sequences as a joke puts the audience at unease from the get go, but at the same time he's hilarious and charming. And, it's Duplass' acting that sells the whole movie. Most of the audience has probably met the weirdo character that Josef is playing. Maybe he wants to sell a mattress. Maybe he asked you on a date on OK Cupid or Grindr or whatever. Maybe he works at your movie theater. Maybe he's a Steve Buscemi character. Creep plays on our trust that people are good at heart, even if they're creeping us the fuck out, as long as they don't hurt us. Without Duplass' winning grin, the movie would probably fall apart like so many houses of cards.

Duplass and Brice stripped the found footage genre to the barest minimum. All music is in scene. All sound it in scene. There is only the one video camera used (though, one shot does seem rather without cause, and it bugged the shit out of me). You may be annoyed at Aaron for going along with Josef as far as he does, but these characters aren't out to ANNOY you. Even Josef is a winning character who is just intended to creep you the fuck out.

With a bullet-train short running time of 82 minutes, Creep will hit you like a ton of bricks. This is a movie that constantly sets you on edge, even if you're laughing your way through it. It's completely playful approach to the horror genre makes Creep genuinely well...creepy. This is a blast of a movie, and I wish it well in it's journey. Because, it's an amazing ride.

Intramural (2014): Yet Another Sports Parody Film

Intramural (2014)
dir: Andrew Disney

SIFF 2014 Film #26

One of the hardest things about reviewing small ambitionless movies is trying to decide how to say that these small, tiny, independent movies which have no hard feelings towards anybody are not very good. Or, worse, that they're merely OK, but that the movie itself is well worn subject matter that has been tackled time and again.

And, so it is with Intramural, a movie that parodies sports movies and college movies in ways that you've seen 10 times already. In Intramural, Caleb Fuller is about to marry some rich daughter of a powerful law firm in order to shore up a job prospect. Suddenly, he has a crisis where he wants to make up an Intramural team one last time before he goes off to live his pre-determined life path. So, he has to get the band back together, run through the usual sports movie tropes, including the now requisite parody of sports movie tropes, to win the big game and get the other, better for him, girl.

We've seen it 100 times before, but, as with improv shows, where these movies are supposed to shine are in the freshness of the jokes. Unfortunately, Intramural isn't all that fresh either. Bradley Jackson's script for Intramural relies heavily on well-worn treads of having a jock fraternity, a ragtag team, and a well-meaning coach in a wheelchair straight out of Upright Citizens Brigade. Periodically, Intramural has some gem moments, such as the coach coming up with the nonsensical advice "You've got to shit on the ceiling," and then actually having the team help Caleb to shit on the ceiling. Or, a particularly clever sports movie parody montage. And, the two guys who hang around the bleachers being sub-ESPN sports announcers for the teams are particularly genius. But, beyond these few moments, much of Intramural is rather expected and dull, kind of like a Saturday Night Live episode. And, I'm not talking about the good ones.

I suspect that if you were drunk or stoned and particularly liked the sports movie parody genre, you could do worse than Intramural. People in the audience seemed to enjoy the easy going SNL-inspired humor of the genre. And, if you like late-era SNL, you may actually enjoy Intramural. But, really, the only truly original part of it was the gay stereotyped character who also wanted to be a magician. Despite the semi-stereotype (gay, goth magician), he wasn't the butt of any gay jokes, or even the butt of the stereotype jokes...which is something I guess. He was funny. Yay progress!

On the other hand, the women are reduced to 2 character, one being an annoying whiny rich bitch, and the other being the epitome of the trophy trope. And, yet again, there is a team of butch women who call themselves Manhaters and are the butch lesbian bull dyke stereotypes. All of which is, "Yawn." Seriously, guys? Move on...

All in all, though, Intramural is far too lazy of a movie to fully enjoy. It's probably best as one of those movies you'll pull up late night on a Friday or Saturday still drunk or high with a couple of your friends and you don't want to watch anything that will make you go, "Whoa!" It's silly enough to make you get the high giggles, and will otherwise entertain your easily entertained friends. But, watching it sober in the middle of the day is a chore.

The Babadook (2014): Motherhood is hard

The Babadook (2014)
dir: Jennifer Kent

SIFF 2014 Film #25

Raising a kid is hard. Raising a kid as a grief-stricken single mother is harder. Harder still is when your kid is going through a violently hyperactive strange phase and doesn't mesh well with the other kids, causing you to be isolated from all the social groups you used to belong to.

Such is the premise of the new Australian horror movie, The Babadook, a film about the things that go bump in the night in your head. The Babadook is a genuinely creepy horror movie from first-time director, Jennifer Kent, which completely takes you by surprise and can make you freak out yourself. The young guy behind me was crying and practically hyperventilating by the end of the movie, and the audience I saw it with was pretty much enraptured in the movie. The less you know about The Babadook, the better it is. It's not gory, and is one of those old-school horror movies with a slow burn like The Omen (attention Ti West, this is how it's actually done), and once you feel the film's icy grip wrap around you, it doesn't let go until it's almost over. It's not slick or even all that polished, but it works all the better for it. Stop Reading. Now. Go see it.

You've been warned.

Amelia is a single mother frequently plagued by nightmares of the car crash she was in on her way to the hospital which took the life of her husband. Now, her son's birthday is the same as the anniversary of her husband's death, thus ensuring that her son is a constant reminder of her dead husband. Seven years later, Amelia's son, Samuel, is guilty of being a hyperactive boy with an overactive imagination. He has nightmares about the things that goes bump in the night, creates weapons to protect him and his mother, has screaming temper tantrums, and otherwise acts out to test his boundaries. When his school needs to further isolate Sam from his peers due to a homemade weapon he brings to school, his mother has to pull him out of school and keep him at home, fighting to keep her job as a nurse at a nursing home.

Further complicating measures is Amelia's sister, Claire, who is increasingly tired of Claire's depression and inability to deal with the death of her husband. "It's been seven years," Claire semi-justly observes regarding Amelia's feelings. Claire's daughter had been born close enough to Samuel's birthday to have joint parties, but far enough to be distanced from the memory of Amelia's husband.

One night, at bedtime, Samuel discovers a book called Mister Babadook, which seems like a well drawn pop-up children's story in the vein of Edward Gorey. The Babadook is a dark figure which comes knocking at the door, then haunts whoever denies that it exists. Mister Babadook gives Sam nightmares, and he believes that The Babadook exists even talking to thin air when it's not around. Amelia tries destroying the book, but it keeps returning to haunt her and her son.

First-time director Jennifer Kent is wise enough to know that what scares us in the middle of the night isn't the scary things that go bump, but the things that run through our head. Whether its the death of a husband, the fear that we're not able to provide for our family, or that we're not good enough, smart enough, popular enough, rich enough, all of these things fully take hold in our subconscious as we lay ourselves to sleep. These are the fears which, if strong enough, can keep somebody up at night. By making a monster movie where the monster is a pure metaphorical manifestation of the character's insecurities and aggression, Kent has made a horror movie that resonates with everybody.

Kent has also taken the extra step of making Samuel as annoying as possible. He isn't lovable. He is as annoying as all of the people say he is. Amelia isn't delusional about Samuel. Neither is anybody else. He's a child that would drive anybody to their wits end. When Amelia starts lashing out at Samuel, the audience feels she's justified because of Samuel's terrible behavior. When she lashes out at anybody she interacts with, it's because they're acting rather badly themselves. The Babadook is able to put you in the isolated mindset of Amelia who has refused to deal with her grief by putting on a strong face and praying for the best. Better still, Samuel isn't just an annoying brat, he's somebody who is starting to realize the full weight of the absence of his father. He starts wanting to know who his father is, something that has been denied to him by Amelia because she still hasn't dealt with her own loss, and is unable to broach the subject without breaking down.

The best horror is rooted in real-life tragedy. The Babadook has that in spades. It's a brilliant, frightening, intelligent horror movie that should hopefully make it's mark in the horror landscape.

Wetlands (2014): Women can be vulgar too

Wetlands (2014)
(aka Feuchtgebiete)
dir: David Wnendt

SIFF 2014: Film #24

Wetlands is about to change a game. One of the major complaints is that there aren't enough (read, virtually any) female-driven gross out comedies. These comedies have generally been the realm of men, and delegated to phallo-centric film making. And, when women try to get in on the game, frequently they turn out either polarizing (Dirty Love), too sensitive (Bridesmaids), or too immoral (Bachelorette). Finally, I think the blend is just right for a completely unabashedly vulgar teen gross out sex comedy that's also female driven.

Wetlands, referring to a woman's vagina, centers on Helen, a just over teenage girl who also has hemorrhoids. How do we know she has hemorrhoids? She tells us in the opening scene as she's skateboarding barefoot. Then, she walks, barefoot, into the most disgusting public toilet in all of Germany, that's got 2" of standing water in it, where she proceeds to put hemorrhoid cream in her anus. After which, she spots a dry urine stain on the toilet rim, and we zoom into the public hair going into a microbial representation of the hair as the title credits play.

The most disgusting public toilet in Germany visually has a direct recollection of Trainspotting's most disgusting toilet, intentionally. The surreality of Trainspotting is a heavy influence in this film about a teenager trying to conquer her ass problems via surgery while also trying to pick up her hot male nurse and get her parents back together. Wetlands isn't linear, straight-forward, or polite, frequently covered in bodily fluids of all kinds, both male and female. Nothing is taboo in this call for Helen to fully embrace her body and her sexuality.

Wetlands sees the line it shouldn't cross, and gleefully runs past it at rocket speed and ends up about 20 miles away from it. Right from the start, it doesn't want to be polite, and it's punk girl aesthetic informs you that this isn't your "I'm going to be a polite, behaved woman" type comedy. Helen doesn't care about societal norms, and instead goes after what she wants. Indeed, the male nurse she unabashedly seduces is treated as a trophy that is torn between Helen and his kinda-ex-girlefriend Valery, a student doctor in the same hospital. Wetlands is a girl power film in the full sense of embracing a previously male-dominated genre.

While Wetlands is hilarious and crude, like the best gross out films, it actually has a heart to make you care about the story behind all the gross out gags. Not only does it show you a finger going into a butt, it makes you care about the person who possesses that butt. Helen comes off as a crude, slightly confused teenager who needs to figure things out, and needs somebody to love. Everything she says is meant to provoke a reaction in all of her audiences, on screen and off. Wnendt makes sure that we don't think that Helen is a completely immoral degenerate, but merely a girl who needs to provoke her way through to maturity.

I've been waiting for Wetlands for ages. I have been wanting a female-driven gross out that's hilarious, takes-no-prisoners, and doesn't care about being polite about anything. Helen never apologizes for being who she is, and neither does the film. Which is exactly the type of entitlement that is endearing in male gross out comedies. Helen is a perfect gross out character, and Wetlands is an exemplary insertion in this genre.

To Be Takei (2014): It's OK to be Takei's Autobiography

To Be Takei (2014)
dir: Bill Weber, Jennifer M Kroot

SIFF 2014 Film #23

George Takei is one of those stars who has known how to continually adapt and build his brand. He has changed several times over the years, and his brand has always seemed to be honest, which makes him one of the best, most ingenious, stars of our generation. To Be Takei commemorates George Takei in all his fabulous glory, and it's almost exactly what you'd expect from one of the biggest stars on Facebook.

Takei's life began as a kid in California, when at a very young age his whole family was sent to a Japanese internment camp during WWII. From those humble beginnings, Takei made his way into Hollywood, starred in a beloved tv series, became a politician, became a movie star, became an internet star, then became the producer and writer of a musical about the Japanese internment camp. To Be Takei tackles all of these subjects taking us behind the scenes of the brand of George Takei to give us a bit more of the personal than we usually get, just like in most of these commemorative films.

To Be Takei serves as a life chronicle, a career retrospective, a commercial for Takei's new musical Allegiance, a bit of life with George and Brad (George Takei's husband), and a call for gay rights. Crammed into 90 minutes, To Be Takei never really delves too deeply to penetrate much more than the surfaces of anything, including the Japanese internment (for that, you'll have to see Allegiance), but does pass the time aimably enough. Even the warts and all approach amounts to George ribbing everybody about their weight, and Brad semi-adorably worrying and kvetching about everything in order to keep the brand happy and rolling. Brad serves as George's manager as well as lover, and he seems happy about that.

It's hard to be disappointed in To Be Takei as it has so many topics to cover, and does it all entertainingly, but the surface-level lack of depth to any of the topics still disappoints, especially when it comes to either of the really tough topics: internment camps and coming out. Takei didn't publicly come out until after Prop 8 in 2008, but had been dating Brad since 1989(ish). Yet, he doesn't delve into how he stayed in the closet for so long, what he thought of that, and how it affected him. The gay rights topic gets about as much time as the Shatner "feud." The bulk of the film seems to be the internment camp, but much of it is as more informational than completely emotional. It's also separated out into sections as a recurring thread throughout the film, thus never breaking out into a full-on weepy section of depth.

If you really want to know what's on Takei's mind in what he wants to project to the world, To Be Takei is like an OK star-autobiography. Not that long, slightly self-effacing, no real dirt on anybody, and a good summary of a life, but not deep enough to truly get to know the subject (or, alternately, for the star to bury themselves in). It's crowd-pleasing and winning, just like Takei himself, but can I help it if I really wanted more?

The Circle (2014): The History of Gay, Swiss Edition

The Circle (2014)
(aka Der Kreis)
dir: Stefan Haupt

SIFF 2014 Film #20

I'm guilty of being America-centric when it comes to my knowledge of gay history. I know a lot about the history of being gay in America, including pre-Stonewall, and I know about Germany's infamous Paragraph 175 (which has a good documentary, btw). But, I had never heard about Der Kreis (The Circle), a magazine of gay fiction/erotica and photography that also served as a communication underground.

In Switzerland, being gay wasn't illegal. But, it was still frowned upon. Being outed as a homosexual could end your career, and also bring around harassment. But, still, one could distribute material in plain brown envelopes, as long as it passed the censors, and one could throw big gay balls that were seasonal gay megaparties.

To give the history of The Circle a human element, and also to demonstrate how this is not the complete story, Haupt infused the movie with a romance between two men, Rapp and Ostertag, who met at a ball one night, where Rapp was performing as a drag queen. They fell in love, and their relationship sustained the years as they're the characters telling the story in modern times.

Haupt made The Circle with a structure of blending docudrama recreations and actual modern day interviews of Rapp and Ostertag, filling in some of the holes with other interviews of journalists, family members and ex lovers of people who were part of The Circle. The recreations take up the bulk of the film, but the interviews are fascinating, especially since Rapp and Ostertag are two of the cutest 80-year-old gay men you could ever meet.

The Circle goes through the full story of The Circle, from how it was started all the way through how it was destroyed by constant harassment from the police after a series of murders rocked the gay community. While there is probably a certain amount of dramatic license taken, Haupt wisely uses the interviews to keep the maudlin dramatics grounded in reality. There are police beatings, and suicides, and harassment, all of which are representative of larger movements in the gay lifestyle at the time.

The balance between the modern talking heads and the maudlin dramatics really gives The Circle a freshness that few docudramas and period pieces have ever reached. The importance of The Circle is highlighted by the tale of survival of the two talking heads. The weight of the situation is balanced by the sweetness. But, really, the interview/re-enactment format is taken to new levels in The Circle, feeling like the an answer to the new dilemma of Fact/Fiction/Faction in the documentary genre.

Boys (2014): Yet Another Coming Of Age Gay Film

Note the shallow depth of field, and the out of focus trees.

Boys (2014)
(aka Jongens)
dir: Mischa Kamp

SIFF 2014 Film #19

I know I was just complaining about The Way He Looks for falling into the cliche traps of all the coming-of-age, coming-out gay teen movies, but Boys makes that movie seem like a masterpiece.

Boys is a new coming-out film from the Netherlands where the defining characteristic of the central boy is he's a track star. Sieger, the 15-year-old track star, gets promoted to the next level of track with his friend Stef. While competing on that level, he meets Marc, a boy who seems to be a little more free and is already accepting of his gay status. Marc and Sieger start a covert relationship, while Sieger struggles between his gay identity and his hetero identity, having a new girlfriend Jessica, whose friend Kim is dating Stef. Torn between Jessica and Marc, Sieger must confront his new found sexuality.

Since that's about enough of a plot for a 30 minute after school special, Boys adds in the extra complication of Eddy, Sieger's rebellious older brother. Eddy likes to ride a moped, though his father has forbidden it for some reason. Eddy also has problems at the lumber mill, and does all sorts of rebellious behaviors.

Mischa Kamp fills Boys wall to wall with dreamily out of focus shots, slow-motion, and super closeups to pad the running time. If you want to play a deadly drinking game with Boys it's drink every time there's an extreme close-up of anything, from a hand tugging at the leg of shorts, to a shoe to two lips kissing. Extra hardcore edition is when there's a super narrow depth of field and everything outside of the focus is blurry and stylish. This is the new status quo and I am now really tired of it. It kind of fits the overly sweet and shallow topic matter of Boys, but it's so overused here that it becomes ridiculous.

Not to mention, Eddy's story line makes absolutely no sense. The final scene with Eddy is completely dumb. And, this is the second movie with a scene which shows gay boys bonding by tandem riding bikes, standing one behind the other. The other one being The Way He Looks. No, I'm not making that up. It just shows how generic these two movies actually are.

There is absolutely no intentional humor in Boys. Unlike The Way He Looks, Boys doesn't regard being a teen as fun, but as a series of emotionally sweet scenes which are all out of a melodrama with no humor injected into them. These boys barely laugh in this film. It's all smiles and furtive looks. It's just such a serious drama.

As mentioned in the review for The Way He Looks, Boys utilizes the new trope of not actually telling the parents that you're gay. Which is more fucked up here than in The Way He Looks because Sieger actually pussyfoots his gay identity around his father and brother, and that coming out isn't regarded as important even though the father figures heavily into the film

Boys is a pretty but shallow film about another teenager discovering his sexuality. There is no best female friend in this movie (surprise!), and the boy seems overly normal and rather sporty. Which is nice for a change. But, it's just so dry and cliche that these new innovations pale in comparison to the downfalls of the rest of the movie. Skip it.

Beneath (2014): Losing Your Way

Beneath (2014)
dir: Ben Ketai

SIFF 2014 Film #17

The absolutely non-descript title of Beneath is the least of the problems for this low-rent rip-off of The Descent.

Beneath opens with a title card saying that this was inspired by a true story. It's not. It claims that this is what happened when a bunch of miners were trapped in a Colorado collapse. It's not. That's just crass capitalization on a national tragedy, which marks how Beneath is a crass capitalization on The Descent and other national fears.

The first scene of Beneath introduces us to Samantha Marsh, who is collecting video tributes to her father, George, after hours in a miner bar. George, played by the calmly intense Jeff Fahey, is going to retire from his long-term job, and Sam is back in town after getting a degree in environmental law, intent on taking on the dirty coal industry (among others) to make a cleaner way of life. At the bar, the guys challenge her to come do a day's hard labor before her dad retires and she returns to her white collar life.

The next day, Sam heads down with the guys, and the mine collapses. There are injuries abound. But, then things start to be heard and seen. Two of the other miners are missing, probably still trapped deeper in the mine, but while Sam and the rest of the guy are staying in a holding room, the sounds convince them that the two missing miners are around. Everybody goes exploring, and...yeah, you know where this is going.

There are a number of problems with Beneath, and many of them stem from the changes that the producers made to the original script. The original script had Sam being a journalist doing a report on the miners, and was originally in a found footage format. The original script was also completely supernatural in nature, being about hauntings and possessions. But, the final version reworks the script to be a movie about people possibly going crazy, but doesn't entirely drop the supernatural elements of the original script, balancing between the two. Which undercuts both elements. The supernatural begins to make no sense, and the insanity really begins to make no sense.

In fact, the changes also make Samantha become less of a capable heroine and more of just a crazy stupid out-of-control woman. The film focuses mainly on her experience, but she is either confronted by the supernatural (sane) or goes completely crazy for no reason other than a mere few hours in a holding cell with a bunch of dudes.

The large topics that Beneath brings up get dropped fairly quickly. That topics of blue-collar vs white-collar, male vs female, and environmentalist vs miner are all dropped in the first half and never addressed again. The movie could become a metaphor about the coal workers vs the enviornmentalists, but it would be a really really asshole metaphor.

Does Beneath work as a horror movie? That depends on who you are. I was whelmed by the stupidity of the lead character, and the insanity doesn't have a believable build up for me. But, the cinematograhy and the pacing is nice. The woman in front of me screamed at many of the jump scenes. Other people in my audience seemed to really like Beneath, but the guy next to me walked out on it and many others seemed not happy with it. If you're susceptible to claustrophobic horror, you'll probably like it. Because, Beneath looks fairly nice, but it's kind of really dumb.

The Internet's Own Boy (2014): Aaron Swartz, Internet icon

The Internet's Own Boy (2014)
dir: Brian Knappenberger

SIFF 2014 Film #16

Aaron Swartz, one of the rebel heroes of the internet. He's probably best known for being a co-founder of Reddit, and walking away from his job after Conde-Nast purchased it. But, he's so much more than just a co-founder of a very popular populist-seeming website.

The Internet's Own Boy, a new profile crossed with agitprop documentary, documents Swartz's life from his prodigy youth beginnings to his online blossoming to his later activism and the trial, ending with notes of hope about the influence that Swartz had on the internet and internet rebellion. Knappenberger, who previously directed We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists, created a vast documentary gaining the participation of Swartz's family, his friends, lovers, and collaborators. Being constructed in a year following Swartz's death, The Internet's Own Boy is surprisingly thorough and enjoyable.

Swartz started as a child prodigy in Highland Park, and worked on developing the base RSS code as a teenager. By 15 he had also found his way into the W3C and working on the Creative Commons programs. After working on Reddit, he would found Watchdog.net and then Demand Progress. Swartz also got in trouble for downloading a lot of JStor's academic journals from MIT, and was going to be the "example" by the US government who were throwing the book at him with 35 years in jail plus millions of dollars in fines. Swartz died by hanging in an apparent suicide in January 2013.

The interviews with Swartz's peers and family are enlightening, and knowing that Swartz will be dead by the end of the movie really brings out the suddenness of the death as he was still ongoing with some of his projects. The urgency of The Internet's Own Boy is told in the dates. Swartz died less than 18 months ago. As the dates start to come up 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012, and the names Daniel Issa and Elisabeth Warren pop up, and then SOPA comes through...the knowing audience begins to realize that this isn't a movie in the past. This is NOW. All this happened in the past decade and a half, essentially. This is, frankly, amazing.

Knappenberger isn't out to make a new form of documentary. But, using the traditional form of documentary, he really straightens out a lot of story lines into a straight-forward non-confusing narrative that keeps the praise focused on Swartz's accomplishments and the rage focused on the injustices he was fighting and faced with. There are many story lines that Knappenberger has to weave together while some of them were already ongoing before Swartz entered into their subsequent story, and he does it well.

It's worth seeing this film if only just to learn about the stuff that the internet is doing and why it is important and how it affects you. Swartz was an icon to a lot of people, being a figurehead to many people along the way. He's influential and possibly a bit polarizing. But, to ignore him would be stupid. He was a key person of the underground, and he will be sorely sorely missed.

Willow Creek (2014): Correcting The Blair Witch Project

Willow Creek (2014)
dir: Bobcat Goldthwait

SIFF 2014 Film #15

The found footage genre has a lot of inherent problems to it, 2/3 of them are related to "how did this shot even happen" and the other 1/3 are related to "Why did somebody edit this, nevertheless like this?" In reviewing V/H/S, Film Crit Hulk at Badass Digest wrote about these problems with some pretty intelligent reasoning to why these problems exist and what the problems actually are, and where they stem from. Bobcat Goldthwait seems to agree whole heartedly with Film Crit Hulk, and decided to fix all of the problems by attempting to make a closer-to-reality found footage movie. This time, centered around the search for Bigfoot.

Kelly and Jim are a young couple on the hunt for Bigfoot, intent on making a documentary about the Patterson-Gimlin film, a famous film with supposed sightings of Sasquatch. They travel to the town of Willow Creek, CA which is near the location of the filming of the footage and has made a name for themselves by capitalizing on the Bigfoot fame. They have Bigfoot motels and Bigfoot statues, and home of the Bigfoot burger. Willow Creek is a real town created for fans/believers of Bigfoot.

Kelly and Jim spend the first half of Willow Creek creating footage for their documentary by pointing out city signs, interviewing the locals, eating burgers, and listening to the locals state their opinions of the Bigfoot mythology. But, they're warned not to go to the site of the Bigfoot footage, yet they go there anyways. The second half of Willow Creek is a mini-recreation of The Blair Witch Project that runs through the gamut of found footage cliches.

Willow Creek runs a blessedly short 77 minutes, and is created like an actual found footage tape. The edits are all from the camera starting and stopping, with everything filmed in single takes. The sound is all completely diegetic. There is no art to the style of Willow Creek except that the no art style is exactly the purpose of Willow Creek, thus making it an art of its own. It plays like a home video.

But, it's only 77 minutes. Since we spend half of that time exploring the weird world of Willow Creek, CA, that only gives about 40 minutes to build the tension from 0, and ratchet it up to screaming. The too short running time keeps the tension from building as sufficiently as it should. Much of the built tension focuses on a central set piece that's actually far cornier than it should be, which builds into the question of whether this is satire or not.

Bobcat plays Willow Creek for keeps. The first half is all gentle humor and a bit of "I love these strange people living their life in Willow Creek, CA." But, the second half is all played as if it is genuine horror like The Blair Witch Project. If it doesn't entirely work as a horror movie unto itself, Willow Creek kind of works as a critique of The Blair Witch Project, and simultaneously points to how easy and how hard it is to make a sufficiently good horror movie.

I liked the movie as a mental exercise enough, but the borrowed plot points from The Blair Witch Project really kept me from enjoying it as a horror movie, plus the movie was too short to really pull me out of the distanced first half into the fully engaged second half. It's a miss, but it's a narrow miss that I can easily see would be polarizing between the "This was stupid and corny and pointless crowd" and the "this was genuinely scary" crowd.

Dead Snow 2: Red Vs Dead (2014): Nazi Zombies - Excessive Edition

Dead Snow 2: Red Vs Dead
dir: Tommy Wirkola

SIFF 2014 Film #14

Dead Snow 2: Red Vs Dead is the sequel to the Nazi zombie cabin-in-the-woods horror comedy out of Scandanavia. Dead Snow was a clever meta take on the genre, which poked loving fun at the cabin in the woods formulas as well as the zombie formula, all the while maximizing the horror, the comedy and the gore. Dead Snow was clever, hilarious, and witty, especially since it came before Cabin in the Woods (unlike Zombeavers).

Dead Snow 2: Red Vs Dead smartly abandons everything that made Dead Snow what it was. A straight continuation from the final moments of Dead Snow, Dead Snow 2 moves out of the mountains and into the lowlands. The lone survivor, Martin, now down one arm, is chased by the Nazi zombies who cling to his car. But, because he had a spare coin in his pocket, they come after him again. And, in a series of incidents, Herzog (the lead Nazi) also loses his right arm, before Martin's car goes flying off a cliff into the hinterlands.

The hospital that found Martin attached Herzog's arm to Martin, and Herzog attached Martin’s severed arm, thus forming the basis for the feud. With Herzog's zombie arm, Martin achieves zombie super strength, and both have the ability to resurrect dead people to form zombie armies. To further complicate matters, Martin is joined by the Zombie Squad, a group of adult geeks whose whole life is wrapped up in the zombie culture, and they desire to kill zombies.

Herzog had initially been on a task from Hitler to take over a town, now is going to finish up his mission and march on the town again. Stopping by a museum to grab a tank and some weapons, he continues on his march. Martin, however, also hit the museum, and decides to resurrect Russians to combat the Nazis, thus recreating WWII in zombie terms. You have the Americans, you have the Russians, the locals, and the Nazis.

The wit in Dead Snow 2 isn't in the reuse or meta parody of horror or horror comedy tropes. The wit stems from Dead Snow 2’s willingness to go as far as possible as frequently as possible. There are instances of comedic cruelty to zombies, and the violence and gore factor of Dead Snow 2 is constantly as far over the top as you can imagine. From dead kids to smashed heads to intestines a plenty, Dead Snow 2 never says no to a drop of blood in the film.

Coming in at 100 minutes, Dead Snow 2 doesn't feel bloated at all. Just about the time you’re wanting the final battle to kick in, the final battle does kick in. The developments and pacing come in swift, and Dead Snow 2 feels more like an ode to Peter Jackson originality than Sam Raimi parody. Dead Snow 2 has more in common with Dead Alive than with Evil Dead, even keeping the sardonic cruel wit that Peter Jackson brought to his early work.

Dead Snow 2 isn't a dumb movie. It’s smart and witty and trashy and just about the perfect midnight movie. It doesn't run too long. It doesn't let its pacing drag, keeping the audience from falling asleep. The violence and gore factor are over the top. It's quite brilliant in how clever it actually is.

Required Viewing.

The Way He Looks (2014): A Blind Coming Out Story

The Way He Looks (2014)

dir: Daniel Ribiero

SIFF 2014 Film #13

I am so fucking sick of coming-of-age LGBTQ films where nobody is really evil, and all the tension is from coming out of the closet and getting your first boyfriend. I realize that this is a legitimate genre, and needs to be updated for every generation that comes of age, but…goddammit, I am so fucking sick of it. It’s my problem, and it’s not the fault of any specific movie, but if I never see another teenager struggle for their freedom while also coming out of the closet, I’ll be a happy happy faggot.

The Way He Looks adds in the complication of the main teenager, Leo, being blind and thus giving him overprotective parents who seek to protect him given his disability. But, otherwise it runs through the usual gay teenage tropes. It gives him his teenage female best friend, who kind of has an unrequited crush on him. It gives him a new interloper best friend, whom he is intended to fall in love with. It gives him the bullies who make fun of him and call him gay before he even comes out. It gives him a desire to escape the town he lives in. It’s all so…done.

That being said, The Way He Looks isn’t BAD so much as it is TIRED. If you’ve seen the usual coming-of-age stories, then The Way He Looks will hold no surprises. The best scene is the mid-credits tag that has nothing to do with anything. The second best scene is Leo learning how to shave from his father, as his father talks with him about a student exchange program.

The Way He Looks isn’t poorly constructed either. It has the semi-soft, twee, limited-palette, limited focus dreamy look that so many indie movies have had in recent years. That look is fine, if you’re into that, but I’m starting to get tired of it after seeing so many many movies look so so similar. They’re all looking at sweet emotions that are just so touching.

Basically, The Way He Looks has come up too late in many of the tropes it puts out. It’s not bad, if you’re wanting another gay teenage coming of age story, only with no real rebellion. The worst thing that Leo does is sneak out at night to look at an eclipse. Or, maybe it’s drinking a whole bunch of vodka and then going swimming on a class camping trip. But, the rebellion isn’t really all that rebellious. The closest to an actual negative emotion you feel for any of the characters is frustration at their inability to communicate.

The Way He Looks has an interesting point of view in that neither Leo nor his object of affection are really conflicted about their sexuality, but more conflicted about the outside acceptance. Much of the tension comes over whether each of them wants to risk queering their friendship for the risk of dating each other, rather than "I can't <b>REALLY</b> be gay, can I?" and also rather than most of it coming from the bullies or the parents.

There is a new trope that is coming around in the coming out movie where the kid doesn't actually come out to his parents. In both this, and the 2014 Netherlands film <i>Boys</i>, the central figure comes out to maybe 2 friends, but never confronts his parents. There is no blessed acceptance, nor a fiery condemnation. That situation is never resolved in either film, creating the one new trope in modern gay film.

If you want an easy going non-descript coming-of-age story out of Portugal with skinny boys who get naked once or twice, then you’ll probably love The Way He Looks. It’s probably the perfect film during which you could make out (or more) with your boyfriend. But, if you’ve seen all of the coming of age stories, and are looking for a new twist on the genre, or something that maybe even reflects how the youth of today actually looks at the world, then skip it.

Lilting (2014): Posthumously Gay

Lilting (2014)
dir: Hong Khaou

SIFF 2014 Film #12

Chinese traditionalism meets English modernism in Lilting, a movie exploring death and homosexuality in the face of conservative parental figures.

Junn, the matriarchal figure of Lilting recently lost her son Kai. In the opening scene, she fantasizes having an ideal joyous conversation with Kai in the nursing home. She wishes she could live with Kai, except that she hates his “best friend,” Richard, whom she detests because she doesn’t understand how Richard and Kai fit together.

The complication of Lilting is that Junn never learned English. She speaks 6 separate dialects of Chinese-based language, but never picked up English. When Richard comes to visit Junn for the first time, they can’t communicate across the language barrier. Junn can only communicate with her new boyfriend, Alan, through intimate behaviors, and not through actual speaking. Richard, however, employs Vann in order to communicate.

Complicating matters further is that Kai had never come out to Junn. She was under the understanding that Richard was just a “friend” and not Kai’s long-term boyfriend. They lived together for years. They have a nice but small loft. When Junn had to move into a nursing home, she couldn’t understand why she couldn’t live with Kai, and resented Richard for the decisions.

Lilting is complicated, original, and tragic enough to move the heartstrings. When Richard struggles with Kai’s loss, but has to mask the depth of his loss to Kai’s mother while also trying to reach her across the void, it’s a genuinely moving emotion that isn’t played for the rafters, nor is it fine tuned to pull the heart strings. Sure, Lilting is suffering from shoegazing cinematic techniques, as it has an overuse of a bland color palette, soft focus, lens flares, and blurry imagery (just to name a few of its borrowed techniques), but the tender subject matter of debating whether or not to posthumously out your dead lover to his mother while also struggling with the desire to not leave her behind actually makes the whole film work.

Ben Wishaw (Richard), Pei-Pei Cheng (Junn) and Naomi Christie have a chemistry that emphasizes the complicated emotions and simmering tensions between the characters. Their work together fills the screen with complexity and raw emotion. But, the other triangle between Peter Bowles (Alan), Pei-Pei, and Naomi doesn’t work nearly as well, and it doesn’t resolve as neatly. The story feels almost as an emphasis for Junn’s stubbornness, and the difficulty that she has even with people she likes, though this could have been better communicated through more scenes with Junn and Kai.

The tragedy and sadness that permeates Lilting is what separates Lilting from all of the other LGBTQ films which are all celebrations of the lifestyle. Lilting is barely about the gay lifestyle, but instead about dealing with the closet as an adult. Its emphasis about conservative stances stemming from traditional behaviors, stubbornness, and a desire to keep everything as it was out of security. Lilting confronts the nature of the need for an adult closet, and how it obscures everything in life. Lilting is about marrying into family, even if they don’t like it. It's about all of these things and it hits all of its marks.

To Kill A Man (2014): Responsibility and Latin Masculinity

To Kill A Man (2014)
dir: Alejandro Fernandez Almendras

SIFF 2014 Film #10

The intersection of masculinity, violence, ego, and protection has been a topic covered for years in cinema. Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 classic Straw Dogs, for example, examines what happens when a wimpy rich guy moves with his wife into his wife’s family's old house in the country, and then is confronted by the countrymen who seek to challenge his masculinity to his breaking point. This was revisited in 2003’s Cold Creek Manor, and again in the remake of Straw Dogs.

Chile finally made its own edition of this formula, adding the Latin culture view of masculinity into the mix. To Kill A Man examines what happens when an educated but effete working man is incessantly harassed by a poor gangster living in the projects. Jorge, the working man, is a researcher in the Santa Julia Research Forest. He takes the bus to work, he is married with 2 teenage kids, a son and daughter, lives in a modest house. He is surviving, but isn't exactly rich. On his way home, after picking up a cake for Jorgeito's 18th birthday, he is harassed by a gang of low-level street hoodlums led by Kalule. When he goes back out to pick up some alcohol for the party, he’s essentially mugged by the group who even stoop to taking his diabetic kit!

This is just another step in an ongoing feud, but one that starts to have serious consequences as Jorgeito mans up and goes to confront Kalule. Kalule shoots Jorgeito. As a result of everything, Jorge’s wife demands a divorce, and when Kalule is released, he’s out for revenge.

To Kill a Man asks a more unique question than the previous films. To Kill A Man asks how far do things have to go before it is OK to take the law into your own hands. Unlike most of the films of this ilk, the police start on the side of Jorge. Jailing and imprisoning Kalule. But, when the feud heats back up, the police start to act more and more impotent, for some reason. Despite the family having a protective order, the police don't arrest Kalule for any of the harassing incidents that he perpetuates.  Marta, Jorge’s wife, berates Jorge for not being able to protect his family when their daughter ends up in the hospital. And, so…what does a man do?

Even though this move is full of clichés, it at least runs through them at a very clipping pace, running only a short 82 minutes. There’s little bloat here, instead leaving most of the movie to the main scenes and keeping the scene lengths to be long enough to hold the emotions of the movie. A longer movie would have dragged its ass to a sluggish pace, especially since the way through the movie is fairly well-trodden up until the final 15 minutes.

The final 15 minutes bring up a topic that isn't really addressed in any of the other movies: Responsibility. I’m not going to tell you what happens, but at what point is a person responsible for their actions? What is permissible, and how does conscience figure in? To Kill a Man does manage to ask these questions, even if it doesn't answer them for you personally. The sign of an interesting movie is that it asks you to think what you would do, but doesn't pass any of the moral judgments about your decisions, instead asking you to make them for the movie. It points you to various possibilities but doesn’t say which is right or wrong.

Holding To Kill a Man back from greatness or significance is a pedestrian style it thinks is a conscious choice. It feels like the post-Traffic Mexican films of the 00s, full of browns and greens without a full color palette, and full of seemingly boring cinematography. This is a shame because the movie itself is full of interesting ideas and acting, even if it runs though clichés. It’s a movie that deserves better than the visuals it is given.

3-Mile Limit (2014): Perpetuating the Baby Boomer Rebel Mythos

3-Mile Limit (2014)
dir: Craig Newland

SIFF 2014 Film #9

Stop me if you've heard this one. Some people want to push a new musical development. But, they face an oppressive dominant force who wants to use all their power to shut them down. They battle for the freedom to do what they want...and you can probably figure everything out.

3-Mile Limit is the latest to use this formula, placing Richard Davis in the leading role as a journalist who is determined to bring rock and roll to New Zealand, even though the New Zealand government refuses to play it. Davis is up against Minister Willis, who is a minister of both Radio and the oceans. Davis' idea is to get a boat and an illegal transmitter and broadcast off the coast of New Zealand, in international waters.

Yes, it's the New Zealand edition of Pirate Radio (aka The Boat That Rocked). But, this one is supposed to be based on the story of a real radio station, Radio Hauraki. That should be loosely based, because Richard Davis is a fictitious creations specifically for the movie, and the movie condenses what was originally a 2-year endeavor into what seems like a handful of months, especially because it is constantly an election year for Minister Willis.

The fictionalization of the Radio Hauraki story is really facile, obeying the usual formula to a T. There's even a few love interests that are inserted to have a female character that isn't just a secretary (this was 1966, after all). But, the love story feels too easy and completely fitting with the formula that we've followed before.

Craig Newland doesn't bring anything new to the table. The movie is lightly witty, lightly tense, and just plain pedestrian. It isn't visually interesting. It isn't paced in an original manner. It doesn't have any powerhouse performances or characters. It just sort of exists, like oatmeal. It's safe and easy.

What 3-Mile Limit really does is serve to pacify old people into believing that they were the original rebels for listening to rock n roll. OMG, it was completely against government! We were so bold! And, we forced the government to change to us! It really is the baby boomers completely filling themselves up with tales of their past rebelliousness, and saying they're justified in ruling the world because they rebelled so hard!

Which makes 3-Mile Limit tripe. Complete and utter FICTIONAL tripe.

The Signal (2014): Ideas Spurting Everywhere

No, this is not a Beekeeper's outfit. There are no
bees in this movie.

The Signal (2014)
dir: William Eubank

SIFF 2014 Film #7

William Eubank's 2011 film Love was a low-fi indie film that was a semi-hit on the festival circuits due to it's amazing visuals, but was ultimately hindered by its content, or lack thereof. The visuals were frequently stunning and gorgeous, especially on the gigantic screen at the Egyptian theater (a single house palace in Seattle), but it didn't hold up in terms of being bout anything or anything substantial. Still, it was an ambitious and accomplished first feature for a director in search of an idea.

Eubank's latest feature is The Signal, an ambitious film for which he ended up using 8x the budget of Love, costing about $4mil. The visuals are frequently stunning, again, this time delving into horror tropes then Gerry tropes and also the twee style of fuzzy focus and narrow depth of field close ups. It's the very in style right now. Eubanks' style is great in the moments, but as a whole it falls apart.

The Signal follows three geeks from MIT - Nic, Haley, and Jonah - as they move Haley to go to school at CalTech. Nic has a degenerative disease which has caused him to lose strength in his legs. No reason is given, just that he'll be continually crippled and eventually die. He is dating Haley, but breaks up with her rather early in the film.

There is also a plot about MIT being hacked by an outside hacker NOMAD, taking down servers, but the blame is laid upon Nic and Jonah. On the road, NOMAD reestablishes contact with them using the line Are You Agitated, and hacks into Haley's computer. They track the hack to an address in Arizona, and they find an abandoned house when all hell breaks loose.

I put the essentials of The Signal first because to discuss The Signal is to spoil The Signal. On the other hand, The Signal needs some serious unpacking that I'm telling you now that there are spoilers going forward. So, SPOILERS AHEAD, you've been warned, etc etc etc.

When Nic and Jonah are exploring an abandoned house in the middle of the night, one wonders why they didn't just wait until daylight. Other than, it's creepier this way. And, when the boys explore the house, you wonder why they're exploring late at night, and why they split up, and why they leave Haley in the car. When they hear Haley scream, they know something is up, and then...bam, she flies into the air and the screen goes black.

The rest of the movie follows Nic as he wakes up in a facility with no windows that seems like a government experiment. He's strapped in a wheelchair, and is asked strange questions like "What planet are you from" by Laurence Fishburne in a hazmat suit. The movie seems to be implying that Nic was abducted by space aliens, and then sent back to Earth.

He discovers that he has new mechanical legs, and has to learn how to walk with them. He discovers that Haley is in a coma. He grabs her and escapes, to find that he's in a bunker that was miles below the surface of a desert. He and Haley run into Jonah, who now has super arms, and they try to make their way out of what they believe to be Area 51, but in the final twist discovers that they are actually on a gigantic alien spaceship on a floor that has been designed to test them.

Eubank crams so many ideas into one film that nothing is developed. Is it a story about love and dealing with your own rejection? Not really...that story line is abandoned in the first act and barely pops up in the third. Is it a story about determination and willpower? Kind of, but mainly with the help of super limbs. Is it a superhero origin story? Kind of, but he doesn't do anything super with it. Is it a space alien story? Not really, because that's dropped for the most part.

The Signal is so ADD in it's intentions - it's Catfish, no it's Fire in the Sky, no it's Area 51, no it's a government superhero origin, no it's actually an alien film - that it never develops anything to any extent. The only idea that he develops is self preservation and will power. But, that's even kind of a pussy theme for this strange of a movie.

A really REALLY bad thing about The Signal is that the girl isn't given any superpowers. She has a chip of the material used to make the boys' limbs in her back, but she doesn't get to do anything with it. She just becomes The Princess in the Castle. Which is a completely lousy trope. They have a great female character, and she is reduced to being a trophy. At the Q&A, Eubank was called on it, and he sort of evaded saying "She COULD have super powers...maybe in the DVD Extras." Which...really?

Another is that Eubank hasn't really thought up the intentions of the aliens. Why abduct somebody and give them super powers, if you're just going to kill them? They give Jonah super arms, but they kill him in a big shootoff. Which...why?! Why abduct somebody, give them a power, then kill them? I guess to test them, but really? And, the intents of the aliens is never really discovered. Why test humans? Why develop human technology at all?

In any event, the individual scenes in The Signal are fantastic. When it is Catfish, it's amazingly moody, and the burn is perfect. When the movie is the government testing facility, Eubank is on point with having witty and direct dialogue, and creating intrigue both visually and with subject. When it's Area 51, or a superhero origin story, it's surprisingly good at all those too. But, it adds up to jack shit in the end. Even more than Love, the sum of the parts do not add up to the whole. That is the ultimate disappointment.

And, as a note to Eubank...if you're going to make a semi-decent female...fucking USE HER. Don't just make her out to be a trophy to be rescued. God fucking dammit, I'm so sick of that. She literally does nothing..and...ugh!!! So wrong.

The Foxy Merkins (2014): When Comedy Loses Heart

The Foxy Merkins (2014)
dir: Madeline Olnek

SIFF 2014 Film #5

According to Madeline Olnek, The Foxy Merkins has been in development, essentially, since Codependent Lesbian Space Aliens Seek Same was on the festival circuits in 2011. She teamed back up with Jackie Monahan and Lisa Haas to create a dry comedy about lesbian prostitutes who hook on the street. Not wanting a movie that deals with all the social stigmas and negative guilt feelings about prostitution, Olnek mainly set out to make a film that's just a series of sketches outlining a life of living on the street.

Lisa Haas stars as Margaret, a homeless lesbian who is trying to make it in New York as a new prostitute. Hampered by a timid demeanor, being of a large size, and shackled by thick rimmed glasses and allergies, Margaret finds it difficult to land a deal with even rich Janes who want to pay extra. She is befriended by Jo (Jackie Monahan), a rich hooker of experience, who takes Margaret under her wing to teach her the ropes of street hooking for lesbians, most of which includes hanging out in front of Talbot’s.

Margaret and Jo live in the bathroom of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, they drink toilet tequila, and see a bunch of strange clients, my favorite of which is an MFA Drama Student that they pick up outside a screening of the restoration of Lassie. The title comes from a trip to the graveyard to look for Margaret’s mom, and there’s a random guy selling merkins – fake pubic hair wigs – out of a trenchcoat.

Olnek’s intent is to make a movie that is hilarious, compared to a movie that is incisive. Their clients are normally rich married women who frequent Talbot’s, and they joke about past clients such as one who wants to stare at a woman’s bare breasts as she shouts “Flat Taxes!” At times, it almost seems like Olnek is going to tread into social commentary and then she bounces away from it. And, at other times, it almost seems like Olnek wants to develop the characters, but they’re only developed in the most shallow of ways. Jo is really a heterosexual and she ran away from her rich home. Margaret is actually border trailer trash. But, there isn’t much that dives deep into their characters.

The lack of depth in The Foxy Merkins is the most disappointing part of the movie. There isn’t much of a heart to The Foxy Merkins either, and the adventures into Jo and Margaret’s family life seem more like time filler than actual thought through plot developments. It isn’t substantial enough to make up for the lack of heart and empathy that Olnek had included in Codependent Space Aliens.

But, it’s still witty and funny and dry. Many of the individual scenes of The Foxy Merkins are hilarious on their own. And, I did find myself laughing my way through the film. But, the scenes didn’t add up to a great cohesive whole. In the end, I felt like this was a decent diversion, and entertaining. It’s funny and a good way to pass a lazy afternoon looking for some people doing strange things and being rather drily hilarious. But, don’t go out of your way to watch it on a big screen or anything.

Half of a Yellow Sun (2014): A movie not made for Americans

Half of a Yellow Sun (2014)
dir: Biyi Bandele

SIFF 2014: Film 1

For those of us who are under a certain age, the Nigerian civil war is almost culturally invisible. For me, personally, I only knew about one thing in my life that was even connected to the civil war, and I didn’t even know that significance: Jello Biafra. Biafra is a very short-lived state that was formed in Nigeria, which had been arbitrarily formed by the UK around a bunch of completely unrelated tribes.

You won’t learn much of that in this movie.

Half of a Yellow Sun is a soap opera romance about narcissistic people who push the sexual revolution, set against the backdrop of the Nigerian Civil War. The novel, I am to understand, is told in a fractured non-linear timeline where there are many climaxes that happen at once, and secrets are revealed in various orders. The film is a completely linear film which linearly tells a shallow-ass story, while negating everything interesting or important.

The central characters of Half of a Yellow Sun are two sisters, Olanna and Kainene, who have just returned to Nigeria from the UK where they received their education. They are rich as their parents seem to have ownerships of companies, or something. It’s kept kind of vague. Anyways, Kainene falls in love with Robert, a currently married white man, and pursues a career as a businesswoman. She all but falls out of the movie, actually.

The actual center of Half of a Yellow Sun is Olanna, who shacks up with a revolutionary professor, Odenigbo, who came from the tribal villages. Odenigbo’s mother doesn’t approve of Olanna, and gets him drunk to sleep with his betrothed. And, then Olanna finds out and sleeps around and it’s all one big soapy mess for the first half of the film, where we watch people travel around Nigeria to deal with their family and occasionally bullshit about politics that are foreign to Americans, but will become important in the second half of the movie.

The second half of the movie is marked by a bunch of military people coming into an airport and slaughtering anybody they deem is Igbo. Igbo, which isn’t explained in the film, are a tribal people who were persecuted by various militant groups, for some reason. That reason isn’t clear in the film, so when the military comes around, it’s a huge surprise. And the second half is the family running from the militant groups intent on killing everybody and taking over the country in an effort to reunite Biafra, which had been formed out of distress, with the rest of Nigeria.

Half of a Yellow Sun is not made for Americans. The novel is Nigerian. The movie is Nigerian. It is made for Nigerians. As an American, this movie is extremely rough unless you’re intimately familiar with the politics of Nigeria, and the history of the Nigerian Civil War. Bandele doesn’t care if you don’t know what’s going on. He doesn’t hold your hand. For example, the families move around Nigeria and reference cities in Nigeria, but only give a map of Nigeria during the first travel. But, then they travel and are given generic mapless points for the cities and general north/south/east/west arrows, but are otherwise not put on the map. Nigeria isn’t a large country smaller than Alaska but larger than Texas. So, when they put cities, if you’re a Nigerian, you probably know where they are in the country, but if you’re American, you’re lost.

To dismiss a film that is made for Nigerians because I didn’t know what the fuck is going on feels extremely nationalistic. If you’re going in to Half of a Yellow Sun to learn about Nigeria and the Nigerian Civil War, you’re going to be disappointed at best. If you just like historical drama and are familiar with the political history of Nigeria, you may enjoy this. Maybe. Perhaps there are political allegories or metaphors that I am missing because I don’t know everything. Perhaps the extremely soapy drama is some sort of deeper story that directly relates to Nigeria. I don’t know.

But, the soap opera seemed shallow and trite, the characters seemed boring, and, other than Thandie Newton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and John Boyega, the acting seemed passable at best. I was lost in the politics of the Civil War and not sure why I should be caring about these annoying people, one of whom kept being called a revolutionary. It’s because of my America-centric knowledge that I might not be appreciative of the film, but it wasn’t made for me. I feel inadequate to judge it. But, I didn’t like it.