The Rainbow Experiment (2018) Slamdance 2018

Christina Kallas's THE RAINBOW EXPERIMENT follows the threads leap up to and out of a high school science experiment that goes wrong and injures one of the students. Told out of order and with jumbled perceptions the film asks us to ponder reality and how we know what we think we know.

Made with great skill and style THE RAINBOW EXPERIMENT is technical tour de force. director Kallas has mad a film whose technical virtuosity is a to be admired. Using various styles, tricks and shooting methods Kallas  has made a film that uses almost every cinematic trick that you can think of to make a film that leaves one in awe. It's a daringly made film forces you to sit up and take notice.

Unfortunately once you get past the technical mastery the film runs into some problems. The first being there is simply way too much going on for the film to deftly handle it all. Running an overlong 129 minutes the film has a huge cast of characters all with their own plot threads which connect up to the central thread. Its lot to take in and keep straight something that is complicated by Kallas's fragmented narrative and busy visual style. I lost my way a couple of times, or at least felt I did because I was constantly juggling all of the details. Give Kallas many points for realizing people can follow complex narratives, but take a few away for muddying the waters a bit too much.

To be perfectly honest I kind of gave up on a lot of it by the half hour mark and just let things wash over me.

The cast is uniformly excellent and they manage to make pretty much every role, no matter how small seem grounded. Unfortunately there is one problem with the casting and that almost everyone  in the cast seems to be roughly within ten years of age of each other. That would be fine except many of the adults don't seem to be old enough to have kids in high school;  nor would an entire school staff seem to be under 35. It becomes distracting.

I really love what the film is trying to do, and I love the technical prowess but I'm disappointed that it never quite pulls it all off

Worth a look for the adventurous, all others proceed with caution

Slamdance ’18: Fake Tattoos

Some stoners are actually sensitive kids. Believe it or not, it is not impossible for them to fall in love, under the right circumstances. This is even true in French Canada. When Théo meets Mag (short for Marguerite), the timing is either utterly awful or absolutely perfect. Regardless, their rapport develops at warp speed in Pascal Plante’s Fake Tattoos, which screens during the 2018 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

Initially, Mag and Théo meet awkwardly rather than cutely after a hardcore gig. She starts busting on him for sporting a temporary tattoo, but then admits his artistry with eye-liner is quite impressive. Aside from some comical guilty pleasures, they mostly have the same taste in music. They are also unhappy outsiders, so a bond quickly forms. Even a ragingly uncomfortable morning after cannot derail their mutual attraction. However, their affair must presumably be finite, because Théo’s mother is relocating them in two weeks, from Montreal to his grown sister’s provincial digs.

Tattoos is sort of like a grungy, slacker teen Éric Rohmer movie, mostly in the best ways. Plante takes time to develop his primary characters and gives them scrupulously realistic but consistently meaningful dialogue to chew on. Plante recreates the same breathlessly intimate vibe and uses music to devastating effect, but as is sometimes the case with some works from the master of the Seasons and the Moral Tales, it is debatable whether Tattoos adds up to much when it is all said and done.

Still, Anthony Therrien and Rose-Marie Perreault rather brilliantly keep us focused on the present moment, every second of the way. They are utterly unaffected and completely believable as the young nearly-lovers, but it would be a disservice to suggest they are just playing themselves. Most eighteen or nineteen-year-olds lack this kind of emotional maturity. Their chemistry is also quite real and potent.

On some level, most folks will easily identify with this tale of underdog outsider romance. It is a small film, but it gets its hooks into viewers, evoking memories of summer love and missed opportunities. Recommended as a nice sleeper, Fake Tattoos screens again this Thursday (1/25), as part of this year’s Slamdance.

Slamdance ’18: The Troubled Troubadour (short)

The troubadour movement flourished in Europe during the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, but the Black Plague put a real damper on things. Ever since then, itinerant musicians and Death have been constant companions. Just ask Robert Johnson about that. An aging Japanese musician traveling across the southern coast of Korea has a fateful appointment to keep, but he will do his best to finally level his karma along the way in Forest Ian Etsler & Sébastien Simon’s The Troubled Troubadour, which screens as part of Narrative Shorts Block 3 at the 2018 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

Somehow, the landscape the musician and his silent but still surly manservant travel is recognizably modern-day Korea, yet still exists outside of time. Essentially, it is a reflection of the Troubadour himself. Indeed, the pack of forest-dwelling children they encounter would not look out of place in A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Mistaking him for the Mountain God, they bring him to cure their ailing Princess. Fortunately, he has the power of music. However, he will have to travel deeper into his subconscious before he is ready to make his final journey.

Troubadour sounds ridiculously New Age, but it is actually weirdly grounded, especially due to the passive aggressive tension shared by the Musician and his “boatman” servant. The young kids also manage to be both mysterious and cute, but never cloying. Etsler and Simon have a keen eye for visuals and they hopscotch back and forth between the modern world and the inner dreamscape quite effectively. Plus, cinematographer makes it all look highly cinematic and big screen worthy.

Indeed, Troubadour is “spiritual” in a sophisticated and earthy kind of way, featuring a not inconsiderably degree of ribald humor. As the musician, accomplished ukulele player Hachi Kasuga looks like a troubadour worthy of an epic song and his music is wonderfully wistful (here he is covering Jobim). Very highly recommended, The Troubled Troubadour screens again on Wednesday (1/24) as part of this year’s Slamdance Film Festival.

The Troubled Troubadour (2016) Slamdance 2018

It begins with a musician traveling along a railway in a canoe on wheels encountering some children who think he is a mountain god and it goes into unexpected places from there.

Absolutely charming film derives it's power from a wonderful lyric tone and a continuous drive to surprise the audience is magical and unforeseen ways. This is both a straight forward tale and something more. Part tale of a musician the film shifts gear into some other, something greater as we see who everyone is.

Beautifully shot this film makes we want to find the location and take a trip down the same railway-though with a slightly different outcome.

The film also posses a wonderful music track that instantly sets the mood and draws us in. All films should handle the use of music this brilliantly.

I am not going to say any more since this is much too wonderful a film to spoil by my prattling on. Additionally this film is just small enough that it could potentially be ruined by my discussing it. My advice go and discover this gem on your own.

This is a film that makes a clear how many gems are being missed by those who refuse to watch shorts.

THE TROUBLED TROUBADOUR screens at Slamdance next @ Gallery Wednesday, January 24th at 3:15pm

Flatbush Misdemeanors (2017) Slamdance 2018

Dan Perlman & Kevin Iso's FLATBUSH MISDEMEANORS is a slow building smile producing shortfilm. It is the first of what we can only hope will be a long running series tat will lead to bigger and better things for the Perlman and Iso.

The plot of the film has Iso making a food delivery to some drug dealers and it going terribly wrong. With his life on the line he as to come up with some cash before the kill him. Meanwhile his buddy Perlman has his teaching career go sideways when an effort to bond with the students result in record low scores.

Dropping us into the action the film takes a couple of minutes to fully click. Perlman and Iso are not giving us your typical comedy characters, they are something a little more both comedically and realistically. These are not your typical leads with perfectly witty retorts at every turn but real guys who are fumbling their way through life. The mistakes they make and problems they face are situations that aren't that far from the real world (Why don't you call me daddy?)

Filmed in a "you are there" style I was kind of worried at the start that this was going feel much tto cluttered to be real. The film is shot hand held in small apartments and in many films filmmakers don't know how to handle it making everything feel much too claustrophobic. Instead once the film moved out of the first apartment and into the hallway to reveal what becomes a returning gag, I realized that Perlman and Iso are very aware of the spaces they are working in and as a result they turn closeness into realness.

I love that the laughter builds from start to finish. There is a lovely pacing to the madness whic gives us bigger laughs as the film progresses since instead of just giving us a series of gags we are given characters we can care for with the result the need for straight on jokes falls away and we get deeper laughs based on character.

I was absolutely delighted by this film with the result that the instant I finished screening it I emailed Dan Perlman to ask how many more of these gems will be coming (a second installment is finished and a third is on the way with more dependent upon the reaction).

Very recommended.

FLATBUSH MISDEMEANORS written & directed by Dan Perlman & Kevin Iso will be showing at Slamdance on  Wed, Jan 24th, 3:15 PM @ Gallery @ Treasure Mountain Inn (255 Main Street, Park City, UT 84060)

Slamdance ’18: Love After Time (short)

Taiwan is a democracy with the world’s fifteenth largest economy, but the UN and global diplomatic community wants to pretend it doesn’t exist. When nuclear disaster ravages the Other China, they just carry on ignoring, like business as usual. Radiation and isolation make things pretty dystopian, pretty quickly for the survivors, but life maybe has a way of hanging on in Henry Tsai Tsung-han’s short film Love After Time, which screens as part of the Anarchy shorts block at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

There is a new policy: only survivors with a clean health certificate are now eligible for emergency food relief. That does not sit well with the mystery woman. She sparks a riot and then shrewdly uses as a distraction to steal food. That doesn’t sit well with the officer overseeing the distribution. However, when he corners the thief in her makeshift shelter, he finds she has his number, in multiple ways. She happens to be surprisingly confident and seductive. She also realizes he is a mutant, just like her.

LAT might have the most bizarre sex scene you will see in Park City. Some survivors start growing organs in nontraditional places, if you get the picture. Eventually, we learn even the circumstances of reproduction have been affected. In some ways, LAT covers similar ground as Antonio Pandovan’s short film Eveless, but it has a more humanistic perspective. In fact, Tsai passes up many opportunities to gawk at the mutated deformities, preferring to focus on the evolving ways humans relate to each other—and whether such a term still applies to mutant survivors.

Nana Lee Chien-na also must be the spriteliest wasteland waif you will see in a month of apocalypses, but there is no denying her charisma. The Taiwanese pop idol-actress is an unusually big-name celebrity for a scruffy nuclear Armageddon short film, but good for her. Her courtship with Lee Hong-chi’s Army Officer is definitely intense and he looks pretty darned freaked and conflicted during the aftermath.

LAT directly addresses the question what does it mean to be human, which is a big theme for any film, of any length. Tsai creates a convincingly grubby dystopia that is worlds removed from his previous teen TV work. Highly recommended, Love After Time screens again tomorrow (1/22), along with Philippe McKie’s very cool Breaker, as part of the Anarchy shorts package at the 2018 Slamdance Film Festival.

Slamdance ’18: AniMal (short)

It is time for a little body horror, but at least it is for a good cause. A dissident desperate to escape will take on the appearance and characteristics of a bighorn ram. It is a crazy scheme, but it might work only too well in Bahman and Bahram Ark’s short film AniMal, which screens as part of the Anarchy shorts block at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

Making a break for the heavily patrolled chain-link border is a low percentage move, as viewers quickly see for themselves. It is worth noting in passing, this border wall is designed to retain freedom-seeking citizens imprisoned within, rather than keep outsiders out. Regardless, the well-armed guards mean business—and they seem to enjoy their work. However, the would-be immigrant has a plan to disguise himself as a ram, capitalizing on his hunting and taxidermy skills. To make it look convincing, he will binge-watch old nature documentaries on VHS. What could possibly go wrong?

The Arks are distinctive filmmakers, who have crafted a gritty and slightly macabre character study. Although we should be judicious in our political readings, the fact that they are Iranian is not insignificance, especially in light of the many recent Iranian films that address the challenges of (mostly legal) immigration, such as Goodbye and Melbourne. In this case, the man’s extreme circumstances force him to resort to extreme measures. It is a powerful sight to behold, but unfortunately, there are two rather obvious O. Henry-esque endings this story can take—and the Arks duly opt for one of them.

Nevertheless, you have to give all due credit to Davoud Nourpour’s performance as the “animal,” because it is truly fearless, in many ways. Thanks to his convincingly animalistic performance, some enterprising programmer ought to pair AniMal up with Rune Östlund’s The Square, featuring the ape-like Terry Notary.

AniMal is a film that just might hold equal appeal for art-house cineastes and unruly cult movie fans. Highly recommended, AniMal screens again tomorrow (1/22), as part of the Anarchy shorts package at the 2018 Slamdance Film Festival, which is having a really great year for short films.

Slamdance ’18: Manila Death Squad (short)

Rodrigo Duterte, the karaoke crooner, might not approve of the Flying Ipis’s punk rock “My Way” (although he should, because it is pretty awesome), but a lot of what goes on in this sleazy after-hours joint he would be perfectly fine with—allegedly. A Filipino-American journalist hopes to get the scope on vigilante killings from the horse’s mouth, but she might end up part of her own story in Dean Colin Marcial’s short film, Manila Death Squad, which screens as part of the Anarchy shorts block at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

The last person the death squad wants to talk to is a journalist, but she invites herself to join their party anyway. She knows who they are and she wants an exclusive from them. Their hardnosed leader tries to use drinking games to dissuade her, but she can think on her feet and hold her liquor. Ultimately, she wants an interview with their boss—and wouldn’t you like to know who that is. Maybe we will find out if MDS gets expanded into a feature.

There seems to be able room in this ripped-from-the-headlines world for a full feature treatment, but you have to wonder if Marcial can keep up the dizzyingly nervy breakneck energy for such an extended period. Even the subtitles in MDS are hip and stylishly noir, but the threat of violence is palpable and ever-present.

Somehow, Marcial also recruited a cast worthy of mainstream studio features, reuniting Annicka Dolonius and Sid Lucero from The Apocalypse Child, as the reporter and the death squad leader. Dolonius is totally on the money, playing the journalist tough, smart, and vulnerable. However, Lucero’s sinister fierceness is a bit of a pleasantly frightening surprise. They are both terrific playing off each other, plus the Flying Ipis totally rock the house.

Marcial also helmed the spooky Midnight Service webisode docs, so he clearly has a talent for making potent shorts. Manila Death Squad packs a mean punch, but its characters and circumstances would easily sustain a more extended film. Regardless, it represents some wildly impressive filmmaking. Very highly recommended, Manila Death Squad screens again tomorrow (1/22), as part of the Anarchy shorts package at the 2018 Slamdance Film Festival.

Man on Fire (2017) Slamdance 2018

I saw MAN ON FIRE away from the Slamdance screening , which is a good thing. The thought of following it with any additional film or frivolity would have wrecked what ever came next. I do not envy anyone who is seeing this at the festival and then has to follow it up with something else.

MAN ON FIRE is a look at Charles Moore a minister who set himself on fire in order to call attention to the racism in the town of Grand Saline Texas. A town that has never been welcoming to African Americans. It is a place that even today many avoid still because the town's history is so bad. The film looks a hard look at both Moore and the town and ponders what was it that drove a man to martyr himself in the name of social justice.

This quiet meditation on racism in America will drive you to your knees. No matter where you stand on notions of race this film is going to force you to reevaluate what you think and feel. Refusing to get loud or yell and scream the film worms it's way into your heart and soul in ways that many bigger budgeted and more well know explorations of race have.

It takes to task any and all notions and excuses for why the town has been home to so much hatred and finds them worthless. It is not content with just examining why people feel as they do, it also takes everyone to task for allowing it to happen by saying it's someone else's problem. By the time it's over it will remove any of the crutches you have that we use to make ourselves feel less racist.

This portrait of a nice town with nice people will leave you staring at the screen. Yes, some people are more racist than others but some where in the mix you are going to find someone who echoes yourself even if it's in the person who admits there is a problem that has to worked out.

Also hanging over the film is the person of Charles Moore. He was by all accounts a good man of God. While not perfect, his calling came before his family, he was still well loved even by the family. Moore's decision to die in such a public way rattled many people, more so since it was clear that he had been planning the act for two years.

As much as the question of small town racism is in focus in the film, so is the question of what would drive a man to make such a final statement? What was gained by it? Did he have to die in order to get his point across?

To say Moore was disturbed is, in a way, taking an easy way out. There is more to it than that, especially owing to his life of belief. Someone like Moore does not throw his life away on a statement that can be wished away by madness, there is something more, something almost Christ like in the self-sacrifice.

Somewhere past the halfway point I realized I was kind of broken. Whatever I thought I knew had been questioned. Notions of where I stood on the racism scale were no longer clear. Also my thoughts on the nature of belief were rattled since, more than almost any recent case, Moore was a true Christian martyr. What was the path to God that he chose to take? I didn't fully understand. I was moved to the point of being shattered.

MAN ON FIRE haunts me. As any truly great film it as broken my defenses and forced me to ponder what it means. For hours after seeing the film I was writing down thoughts and ideas on whatever I ad handy in the hope of piecing it all together in a review. I'm not sure I have down even a fraction of my thoughts.

This film demands to be seen, to be shared and discussed.

One of the best films at Slamdance 2018 and of the year as well.

Slamdance ’18: Circus Ecuador

They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Apparently, it also runs through the hardscrabble Wishi community in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Two novice filmmakers decided to document the construction of a much-needed school for the village, but instead, they witnessed chaos, confusion, and moments of sheer terror. Ashley Bishop & Jim Brassard are still not sure what exactly went down, but it was definitely a mess judging from the footage they assembled into the unintentionally gonzo doc, Circus Ecuador, which screens during the 2018 Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

Admittedly, Elizabeth Gray was a tireless fundraiser around Albany, convincing the entire community to invest in the Wishi Project. Bishop and Brassard were so impressed, they dropped out of grad school to chronicle her efforts, even though the did not speak Spanish (or Shuar, the indigenous language spoken in the Wishi community). Unfortunately, as soon as they arrived in-country, her leadership started to flag. After one meeting with some self-appointed community leaders, the filmmakers believed they were in grave danger of being abducted—and it was all downhill from there.

While Brassard and Bishop were fearing for their lives, Gray seemed content to play Lady Bountiful with her favorites in the village (not that you could really call it a village). Just when they think the project will finally have some adult supervision with the arrival of Greg Sheldon from Gray’s fiscal sponsor, he starts talking about UFOs and ancient civilizations. However, they start to get some lowdown from “Canada” and “CIA Chuck,” two local “business partners” suspected of representing the CSIS and CIA, respectively, at least until Chuck starts changing his story. Regardless, everyone seems to agree there is gold in the nearby river.

According to their voice-overs, it took Bishop and Brassard quite a bit of time to figure out what they should do with their footage. Obviously, this would not be the sunny, feel-good film they were envisioning. What they ended up with is frankly mind-blowing, combining the unvarnished expose of the human cost of unintended consequences found in Mark Grieco’s A River Below with a staggering lack of self-awareness, worthy of the docu-mocker, Kung Fu Elliot.

If nothing else, Circus acts as a withering corrective to the idea we can simply shower money on a struggling community and everything will be fine. There is no substitute for proper due diligence. For instance, we eventually start to question whether Wishi is really even a community, when evidence surfaces it might just be a semi-organized group of squatters, hoping to steal a claim on lawfully titled land.

By the time Bishop and Brassard run out of footage, we can only shake our heads at the massive folly of it all. Yet, the biggest punchline isn’t even in the film. According to the University of Albany’s website, Gray is now Assistant Dean of the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity. You have to wonder what the board will think of this film. At least Brassard and Bishop salvaged a film that holds great value, albeit of a cautionary variety. Very highly recommended for general audiences, Circus Ecuador screens again this Monday (1/22), as part of this year’s Slamdance.

Slamdance ’18: Whales (short)

This isn’t the sort of work the Private signed up for, assuming he had any choice in the matter, which is doubtful. Regardless, no soldier wants to be assigned duties within their own country, especially not as a body-fisherman. These are not immigrants, so do not jump to conclusions, but they do say something about their Iranian homeland in Behnam Abedi’s Whales, which screens as part of Narrative Shorts Block 1 at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

Seven bodies have washed up in the shallows, so it is the Private’s job to drag them ashore, while his commanding officer busts his chops. It is a bad business, even before he recognizes one of them. He cannot place where, but it still personalizes the grim proceedings. Frankly, most locals will be happy to hear the people in question are dead. Like the hunter who first called in the body sighting, they have their reasons. Nevertheless, the Private and the Officer will still find themselves in a moral dilemma.

Whales is not exactly a genre film per se, but it is loaded with eeriness and foreboding. As is often the case with many distinctive Iranian films, the ambiguity of Whales feels like a deliberate strategy. There is certainly space in the film to ask who wouldn’t be crazy living in an oppressive environment like that. Karma also plays a role in the film, in ways that are both obscure and pointed.

As the Private, Majid Norouzi is not just the film’s anchor. He really makes it what it is. More than merely a resentful subordinate (although he is definitely that too), Norouzi projects an existential confusion that expresses the essence of the film. Abedi is also a wildly impressive filmmaker, who uses a full, wide frame to artfully compose each shot. Admittedly, Whales demands the viewer’s full attention, but when granted, the film delivers some unsettling surprises. Very highly recommended, Whales screens again Monday (1/22), as part of Narrative Shorts Block 1 at the 2018 Slamdance Film Festival.

Slamdance ’18: Rock Steady Row

It is like The Road Warrior, but with bikes and paddles. The good news is if you survive four years and keep your grades up, you will leave Rock Steady University with a college degree, but that is a big “if.” The key to survival owning a bike. That allows you to have a puncher’s chance of pedaling through the crime-infested campus unmolested. As usual, this new Freshman has his bike stolen on his first day, but he is more resourceful than the typical victims in Trevor Stevens’ Rock Steady Row, which screens as part of this year’s Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

As the leader of the Kappa Brutus Omega frat, stealing bikes is Andrew Palmer’s thing. The Kappas control the bike trade on-campus, thanks to their regular kickbacks to the corrupt Dean of students. Their only rivals are The High Society, an upper-crust house led by the elitist Augustus Washington III.

Like Yojimbo, the Freshman will try to play the frats off each other, in hopes of breaking their hold on power and recovering his bike. He really liked that bike. Fortunately, his roommate Piper (Rock Steady is extremely coed) is an aspiring campus journalist, who can give him insight into how the crooked system works. She also has some embarrassing history with Palmer.

It is impossible to easily convey the tone of RSR. It is not really retro in the style of The Turbo Kid, despite all the Huffys and the Freshman’s mysterious old school Walkman. Nor is it a horror film, like Motorrad, but together those three films would be quite a bike-centric triple feature. It is nowhere near as mean-spirited as Hobo with a Shotgun either, but the world of Rock Steady functions in a very similar manner, with respect to logic and the causal acceptance of violence.

It is similarly tricky to pin down the Freshman. He is not exactly a hardnose or a slacker or sad sack or a sociopathic drifter, but he has elements of them all. Whatever that note is, Heston Horwin manages to hit it. Diamond White is terrific as the reasonably proactive Piper, while Logan Huffman is appropriately Skeet Ulrich-esque as the oily, psychotic Palmer. Plus, Isaac Alisma and the great Larry Miller really ham it up as Washington and the Dean, respectively.

I don’t know about you, but right now, I’m glad I went to a Lutheran school. There are no safe spaces at Rock Steady, that’s for sure, but it is what we’ve been asking for, by putting the barbarians in charge of higher education. Regardless, you won’t find any ideologically tinged satire in RSR. It is all about chaos, anarchy, and bikes. Despite their gleeful mania, Stevens and screenwriter Bomani Story create a weirdly self-contained and dramatically functional world. Enthusiastically recommended for cult movie fans, Rock Steady Row screens again this Monday (1/22), as part of the 2018 Slamdance Film Festival.