Origin (2023)

Ava DuVernay's latest  is one part narrative about the life of Isabel WIlkerson and one part lecture based on Wilkerson's book Caste. It's a film that many people called one of the best of 2023 while others called it wildly uneven.

Put me into to the group calling it uneven. 

Containing some of DuVernay's best work,in the narrative sections the film falters when the film seeks to discuss how the classes, castes and illusionary divisions we sort people into are destroying society. The problem isn't what is being said rather DuVernay doesn't blend it into the narrative well and the material comes off as speechifying  and lecturing. I wasn't engaging in a conversation with the film but was being sternly talked to and I stopped caring.

A miss.

REAS (2024) Berlin 2024

This is a one of a kind film that you'll want to see.  

The film is the story of Yoseli who goes to prison and finds some people there with whom she forms a music group.

This is a film that is recreation of the stories of the people who are appearing in the film. Everyone in the film was in prison and helped put the film together as a result it is something truly unique.

When I started REAS I didn't know what to make of it. It didn't seem like anything special. It seemed a bit odd...and then as the film went on and things happened, and we met more people I found myself falling more and more in love with the film. There was something wonderful about all the people that made me lean in. I  wanted to spend more time with them and so I backed up the film and watched it a second time. 

I'm not going to lie and say the film is perfect. It's a bit uneven here and there and I like some of the songs better than others. But the unevenness gives it the sense of life. The film feels like it is what it is a work made with love and care.

This film is a gem. It's the sort of off the beaten path film that Unseen Films was started to highlight.

If you want something off Hollywood this film is for you. 

FLATHEAD (2024) IFFR Rotterdam

Cass Cumerford, a man in his 70’s, returns to his home town and contemplates his life.

This is one hell of a calling card for a first  film. It’s a hybrid mix of documentary and narrative that creates a wonderful look at life in small town Australia. If you can click with the films rhythms it’s going to move you deeply.

And you will have to click with the rhythm of the film because this film moves at the pace of life. Things unfold in a slowed down way. It takes time for things to happen. People talk about life. Stuff happens and over the course of the film, as Cass contemplates and revisits his old haunts, emotions build up and we are moved. Moments that didn’t seem like much early on take a resonance later on. Conversations gain more and more weight as we come to understand the whole weight of Cass‘s life. It took me a little while but somewhere along the way I suddenly found myself connected and invested in the best possible way. (I do want to warn anyone who doesn’t like “slow” films this isn’t for you. While this isn’t the slow for slow's sake that many filmmakers take, it is, as I said, moving at the speed of life.)

I really loved this film, so much so that I emailed several friends to have them put this on their list of films to see.

This is an absolute gem of a film. It’s a wonderful look at life, both that of Cass and of the place he is in. It is the sort of film that I started Unseen Films to highlight

DESIRE LINE (2024) Sundance 2024

DESIRE LINE is going to raise a lot of questions for pretty much anyone who sees it. The film is a look at who we are attracted to, specifically focusing on members of the trans community. It is a story of an Iranian American trans man on a quest to see what his sexual desires are.

I'm going to keep this piece short because the film raised a lot of things that I have to sort out. It also requires a lot of thinking in how I want to phrase my thoughts and with a short time to compose this piece during the flood of festival films I don't want the remarks to come off in correctly because I respect the film so much.

I really liked this film a great deal. If it wasn't already readily apparent I am going to need to do another pass by the film in order to full take in everything that is in it and to find the correct words to discuss it. There is a great deal here beyond the trans community and as such it made me think about who and what I want.

It should be noted, this film is not going to be for everyone. Those with a closed mind toward matters of sex and desire should not be seeing this film. If on the other hand you want a film that is going to open your mind, get into your heart and make you consider what you desire then this film is for you.  

THE WALK (2023) DOC NYC 2023

One part fantasia, one part documentary THE WALK is the story of a giant puppet named Amal who walked from Syria into Europe. He journey was made in order to bring attention to the plight of the countless refugees fleeing war and destruction. It’s a journey that Ama had repeated in other parts of the world as part of a program to educate as many people about what it’s like to be a refugee.

This film has haunted me since I saw it.  While I have been intrigued with Amal since I learned of her journey across Europe (and later New York), seeing this film record of the trip just made it more real. Such is the power of the movies. I have not stopped thinking about the film in the entire week between when I saw the film and when I sat down to write the film up. The images, the story and the blending of narrative and documentary have been pinging around in my brain.

What makes the film work is the same thing that makes the Muppets work, which is that the skill with which Asil is brought to life is so good we stop thinking of it as a puppet and see her as a 12 foot tall little girl. This is the reason that when one of the Muppets shows up, we remember the Muppet and not the person.

This is a film that needs to be seen. In a time of migrant troubles, a film like THE WALK is needed in order to make people understand, really understand what being a migrant means. I say this because frankly some times we need fictions, or 12 foot tall young girls to get people to act.

See THE WALK it will haunt you in the best possible way.

Blue Island (2022) opens Friday at the Metrograph

Tze Woon Chan's BLUE ISLAND will kick you in the knees and drop you to the floor. One part recreation, one part documentary and one part essay, the film is nominally a look at the protests in Hong Kong from 2019 and 2020, but the truth is the film is a mediation on the city and it's inhabitants and how both are being crushed by the Chinese government.

I am not certain where to start. Perhaps with the fact I was uncertain at the start. The film begins with a recreation of an escape from Mainland China to Hong Kong in 193 by a young couple. Its a recreation, as much of the film is, but it sets the tone for the long reach of the fetid finger of the Beijing going back decades. I wasn't sure what the film was doing with the recreation but I soon fell into the notion of the people being interviewed giving life to the past and the events that helped to shape them and their view of the world. Quickly my apprehension drifted away as I got lost in the talk of their lives, of their hopes and fears and the reality of life under an oppressive government.

To be honest I am having a hard time putting my thoughts in regard to the film into words. This was a film I felt on a visceral level more than an intellectual one. It's film where the the thoughts followed behind the feelings. 

The power of the film is best represented by the long sequence at the end where Chan reduced the tragedy of Hong Kong down to a level on one to one. Tragedy is best understood hen it's personal and one on one. Chan achieves this by showing us the faces of the people arrested and their charges brought by the government. Its simply close ups of the people we saw in the film looking at us. It left me misty. It was a reaction that was earned, and reaction that burned the level of injustice deeply into my heart. Yes I knew it was bad, but in every other iteration it was distant-even if it was only arms length. In this final sequence, one that was built up to by the previous hour and a half the distance closes and we face to the face with the injustice because we are essentially reaching out to touch the a friend who is in danger.

I was rocked. 

And sometime on I'm still processing, still trying to put words together to really express the power of this film.

In Brief: The Other Side (2015)

Roberto Minervini's THE OTHER SIDE opened this year's Art of the Real and it returns for a regular engagement this Friday. This documentary/fiction hybrid is infinitely more real than the vast majority of straight on documentaries. If you love the documentary form then you must see this.

Actually if you just want to see a good film you should see this.

THE OTHER SIDE is a slice of life look at a group of people living below the poverty line. Going through their daily routines, hanging out,firing guns  and doing what they have to to get by the people in the film reveal themselves to be exactly like everyone else.

I really like this film a great deal, I like that to my mind I can't really review the film or discuss it as if it were a wholly fictional work because in my mind this is life. All of this happened and how do you critique reality? Its not really possible- I mean I'm not going to show up at your house and go "You know what Ted, I give your life two and a half stars. I don't believe that you wouldn't go out with Barbara". You can't do it. And you can't do it here, this is life.

The highest praise possible is this is real life and if you want to get away from your own go see THE OTHER SIDE since it' the closest you'll get to living someone else's life short of virtual reality or a brain transplant.

Below Dreams (2014) Tribeca 2014

Three unconnected stories of three people returning to New Orleans after some time away. An ex-con comes back hoping to get his life in order, a man from New York chases after a girl and a young woman with multiple kids crashes at her mother's house in the hopes of regrouping and finding away of getting her man back.

A sort of hybrid documentary, drama, experimental film  that seems to blur the line of reality and fiction, this is going to split audiences who either are going to click with its vibe or run fleeing into the night. Several critics at the screening I attended walked out. Many more of us stayed to the end. I liked the documentary like nature of the film and I liked two of the three characters and wanted to see what happened to them.

Very much rambling and of the moment the film covers a period of several months in the lives of the characters, something you have to listen to the dialog to realize. We are dropped into various moments, memories and other things, we are left to surmise whats happening or will happen on our own, especially at the end when the film just stops.

As I said I like the film a great deal. I love the complexity of the film and it's construction with the multiple story lines and the the use of radio and TV broadcasts under the dialog, or in place of the dialog as a means of adding shading to events. The film isn't always successful in what it's doing but it's ballsy enough to at least to try and be different that every other small film- hell I love that the film just starts mid action with no opening titles of any kind- lights down boom we're in the film.

If the film has any flaws it's that  the story about the guy from New York goes nowhere. What is he doing in this film when he doesn't really do anything except remember New York? Yes his early scenes show promise but some where along the way it loses it's momentum. Its like a rocket that is fired suddenly running out of fuel and coasting to a stop.

While decidedly not for all tastes, for anyone wanting to go in a different direction Below Dreams is worth trying.

20,000 Days on Earth (2014) New Directors New Films 2014

I may be one of the few Nick Cave fans who doesn't particularly enjoy 20,000 Days on Earth. On its surface, I should enjoy this film by directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard since it's beautifully lensed and combines a number of elements I like: it's about music, it's about myth-making, it's about creative impulses, it's about its own construction, it's about the persona/person split, it's about songwriting and prose writing, it's about Nick Cave. And yet watching it, I felt alternating moments of hot and cold, getting hooked by some scenes while feeling distanced by others; in other words, I don't like the album 20,000 Days on Earth, but boy does it have some great tracks on it.

The film blends fiction and reality as it chronicles the 20,000th day in the life of Nick Cave, the legendary frontman of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and the earlier spastic post-punk outfit The Birthday Party. (It's multiple days on earth, not just in-real-life given the time required for production, but even in the-reality-of-the-film since Forsyth and Pollard use concert footage, studio footage, and rehearsal footage as flashbacks.) Nick Cave is both character and caricature; this is a profile about Nick Cave and the idea of Nick Cave. As David Foster Wallace wrote about John McCain in the piece “Up, Simba” (aka the book McCain's Promise), “profile” is a pretty good word for this: “one side, exterior, split and diffracted by so many lenses there's way more than one man to see.” There's the idea of the rock star life and also the guy in the studio who has to record the music, there's the serious writer at his typewriter and the pizza-lovin' family man with his pizza-lovin' kids, there's the thoughtful artist engaged in essential solitude and the demigod who pulls all attention to his being on the stage; and there's the interior life of Nick Cave (both person and persona) expressed in voiceover, covering his thoughts on the writing process, counterpoints in songcraft and lyrics, and the creation of fictional worlds and fictional people to populate them. The second shot in the entire film seems to encapsulate this notion of the multi-faceted individual: it's a recreation of a shot from The Man Who Fell to Earth in which David Bowie (on the note of the person/persona split) looks at himself in various bathroom mirrors.

When a song hits you, it hits you in ways that sometimes go beyond language, which is what happened at times with 20,000 Days on Earth. Seeing Nick Cave on stage commanding a crowd is great, with his little pomp and little strut, the badass persona in full effect. The same goes for a performance of “Higgs Boson Blues” with the rest of the Bad Seeds, in which something that feels organic and intuitive unfolds on screen as Cave prompts sudden surges in volume and intensity from his fellow musicians. Even chunks of Cave's narration early on when he's talking about his creative process hold an intriguing power to them, like when he's punching away at his typewriter and describing his method of storytelling, which serves as a kind of meta-commentary on the way the film presents its material.

The coldest parts of 20,000 Days on Earth are the ones that feel the most calculated. On his 20,000th day, Nick Cave drives to his therapist, who's actually a music journalist rather than a therapist. What Cave talks about is fascinating (an enduring early sexual memory, his dad), yet the presentation is less like therapy and more like an interview. Add to that the adoring smile on therapist's face, as if he's less a helper and more of a fan or hanger-on, and that whole section of the film feels like unintentional hagiography. The same goes for a trip to the fictional Nick Cave Archive, which is like a library special collection for the oddments of his career. It's a funny idea for a bit, but then it becomes hagiographic in a way I found grating, self-satisfied, and even self-absorbed (i.e., the Malkovich-in-his-own-head moment from Being John Malkovich). I'm pretty sure it was meant to be more amusing and playful. And then Nick Cave's voiceover becomes overbearing, stating the obvious or pretentious or overwrought rather than the profound; worse, it often states too much when the film says far more and says it much better without the text. This is particularly true of a sequence that closes the film. The experience of the music and the imagery is far more meaningful than the closing words (or any closing words).

I think my aversion to part of the film has a lot to do with what feels intuitive vs. what feels calculated. In her review of Carlos Saura's The Garden of Delights, Pauline Kael noted a distinction between “instinctive Surrealists” and “academic Surrealists.” Instinctive Surrealists present images from “the hidden and unadmitted” whereas academic Surrealists present images that are “impeccably planned to be 'surreal.'” Kael adds: “When [Saura] brings a pig into a house, it's not something dirty being released from the unconscious, it's an emblem and an homage. We are not shocked by Saura's academic surrealism, we 'appreciate' it.” In 20,000 Days on Earth, there seems to be an intuitive hybridity and an academic hybridity. I'm on fire for the intuitive hybridity (i.e., the scenes that are artificial but feel real) and icy about the academic hybridity (i.e., the scenes that are calculated and feel calculated through and through).

There are two sequences that exemplify this intuitive/academic split, and they're both about the same topic: Nina Simone's stage persona/stage presence. On the academic side, Nick Cave tells his fawning therapist about Nina Simone on stage. What he says is interesting, but how it's presented made me less intrigued. On the intuitive side, Nick Cave is having lunch with bandmate Warren Ellis, and Ellis describes exactly what Cave talked about. This scene with Ellis comes after the scene with the therapist, but even knowing the story, it feels more alive here, more organic, more like an intuitive bit of hybridity that reveals some essential and as-yet unseen facet of Nick Cave via Warren Ellis via a story about Nina Simone. Ellis then goes on to talk about Jerry Lee Lewis taking the stage, and the enthusiasm by both Ellis and Cave are barely contained. We watch them not like a studio audience, not like obvious cinematic voyeurs, but like flies on the wall or people who happened to pass by the kitchen and hung around the doorway because what we heard was fascinating. This is all such a jarring counterpoint to the staid and prim nature of the therapy scene.

I can appreciate what was attempted in those scenes of carefully planned artifice, and yet appreciation is not necessarily the same as enjoyment. It's me comprehending the thought process behind a conscious decision. But in lots of art, especially music and writing and film, it's the intuitive, spontaneous moments that grab me most--and which 20,000 Days on Earth does have--because they exist outside of being merely comprehended.

Behind the Camera: Why Mr. E Went to Hollywood (2012) plus Jury (2012) New York Asian Film Festival 2013

E J-Yong's BEHIND THE CAMERA... is one of the wildest films of the year. Its a weird hybrid of fact and fiction that is one of the best films about film ever made. If you love the movies you must see this- doubly so if you love Korean film.

The premise of the film is that E feels that with all of the technology today you could, in theory direct a film from somewhere other than the set. Seeking to prove the premise he brings in some of the best actors in Korean, sprinkles in some of his friends from behind the scenes (there are several big name directors hanging around and acting). When they are all assembled he springs it on the cast that he's in Hollywood and would be directing the film from there. And if things weren't weird enough the short film they are making, How to Fall in Love in Ten Minutes,  is about a director who is making a short film but decides to run off and direct the film from a distance.

What transpires is a mix of reality and fiction that was woven together from over 200 hours of footage. Its a film you fall into as the novel premise becomes compelling drama. Its the sort of thing where you start to watch it as a goof and then realize that way more than you can ever hope to have discovered is going on.  Its this brilliant look into the relationship between actors, directors, tech people and the rest of the filmmaking community.

Begun as promo short,the previously mentioned How to Fall in Love in Ten Minutes (which we only see in clips) E co-opted the short film and tuned it into a feature exercise. Samsung was thrilled at getting two movies for the the price of one. ME I'm thrilled at getting such a wonderful drama that doubles as a neat look at how movies are made and the camaraderie of filmmaking. It also kicks up lots of other things that I haven't sussed out yet...and did I mention its just a damn cool drama/comedy?

The easiest thing to say is put this on my list of favorite films of 2013.  Frankly I suspect I'll be coming back to this film to say more once I see it again because there is a great deal of wonderful stuff I only half remember.

After the film E came out and talked with Grady Hendrix. Grady did a great job to the point that when the time came for the audience to ask questions there really wasn't any left to ask. In discussing the film E said that the film was shot over three days instead of the two in the film. Shot with 11 cameras much of what happens is simply what happened. He had discussed the shooting and the characters with the actors and then simply turned them loose to see what happened. He said he really was in Hollywood during the shooting. He did say that this was an experiment that he wouldn't want to repeat. More was discussed but I can't really go into it since it relates to things that happen in the film and I don't want to give it away.

Before the film they screened JURY another sort of meta-fiction film.

The short concerns a group of actors, directors and British film critic at a short film festival in Busan.  They go off to try and decide what film to give the Grand Prix award to. What transpires is a clash of personalities that is truly funny. The conceit of the film is that all of the actors are playing themselves, and while I don't know how close any of them are to there real selves, but it shows them to at least have a god nature for being able to send themselves up plus it all makes for a funny time at the movies.

Easily the short is one of the best films of this years festival.

Grady said that the reason they are showing the film is that someone connected to the festival said that what happens,violence included , is what happens at the Busan film festival. (I know the press screening bits are dead on)

If you can get to see this pairing tomorrow, do so. If not hope for some sort of US release.