There's something about the zombie genre that's catnip to filmmakers, and it's not hard to see what: when your movie monster is an uncommunicative blank, any theme can be projected on to him, whether it's conformity, disease, or apathy. Bruce LaBruce didn't select just one of these themes for his film Otto; Or, Up with Dead People -- he selected them all, and then some. From scene to scene, titular zombie Otto (Jey Crisfar) represents something different and provocative; LaBruce is less concerned with establishing a consistent thematic throughline than making a cheeky point to ponder and then moving on. Well, that, and showcasing really cute boys in varying states of undress. A man's got to have priorities, after all.
Case in point: is young Otto truly undead, or is he simply dead to the world, indifferent to what it has to offer? He shuffles around Berlin with the posture (and hoodie) of an indie-rock slacker, barely even speaking until he's discovered by experimental filmmaker Medea Yarn (Katharina Klewinghaus, a hoot). Medea is completing work on her longtime pet project Up with Dead People -- a call to arms for gay zombies to receive equal rights -- and while she's cast human actors in the lead roles, Otto represents a tantalizing real thing. Meanwhile, Otto himself is periodically shaken by flashbacks to a human relationship he once had, as well as the dawning realization that his undead status might be the result of something most unexpected.
While LaBruce is noted for blurring the lines between independent film and pornography -- and there are definitely a few explicit scenes in Otto -- it's also a much more tender film than his fans might expect. What Otto wants principally is not just flesh but feeling, and for any gay man (zombie or not), the latter is always the hardest to come by. LaBruce is typically witty and playful (Medea's girlfriend -- the wonderfully named Hella Bent -- is shot like a silent film heroine, complete with title cards) but the ideas are richer and more resonant than ever before. For a zombie who rejects brains for ropy viscera, Otto's got a lot on his mind.
Bring Sunshine Cleaning up at Sundance and you're likely to hear the same thing, over and over, "It's no Little Miss Sunshine." I agree -- and thank God for that. While I found the overrated Little Miss Sunshine to be crushingly schematic and one-note, Sunshine Cleaning is human, messy, and lovely. Better yet, it hails the arrival of two major female talents (director Christine Jeffs and screenwriter Megan Holley) and confirms two others: surging star Amy Adams (Enchanted) and scene stealer Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada).
The two play sisters down on their luck in sun-baked Albuquerque, New Mexico; Rose (Adams) is a former cheerleading star who's fallen into a dead-end affair with local cop Mac (Steve Zahn), while Norah (Blunt) is a rebel who blows off her boyfriend for a tentative relationship with a local blood bank worker (Mary Lynn Rajskub -- their meet-cute is depicted above). Each sister is seriously poor -- their father (Alan Arkin), who's obsessed with get-rich-quick schemes, is of no help -- so plucky Rose decides to take Mac up on his advice and go into the lucrative business of cleaning up after crime scenes. It's not the kind of work that's going to impress Rose's snobby former friends, but she and Norah are good at it, and it allows both sisters to finally get out from under the thumb of their thwarted expectations.
Adams is a pure pleasure, deepening the perky persona she's perfected in both Enchanted and Junebug; Rose may be doggedly optimistic, but the cracks in her facade reveal something desperate and in dire need of love. Blunt has the supporting role, but that's a niche this actress has claimed as her own, as it allows her to give consistently intriguing performances that are unsympathetic but fascinating. Only Arkin struggles a bit, never totally divesting himself of the similar blowhard he played in Little Miss Sunshine. That character and the sunny title will make comparisons unavoidable when Sunshine Cleaning is eventually bought and released, but for a film about sidestepping expectations, there's no better challenge it's suited for.
In the last few lines of Michael Chabon's book The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, melancholy narrator Art Bechstein looks back at his just-concluded summer and notes (don't worry, it ain't a spoiler), "The people I loved were celebrities, surrounded by rumor and fanfare; the places I sat with them, movie lots and monuments. No doubt all of this is not true remembrance but the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past, and no doubt, as usual, I have exaggerated everything."
It's a terrific bit of writing and a passage that comes to mind repeatedly while watching Rawson Marshall Thurber's new film adaptation. Now, Art's lovers really are celebrities (Sienna Miller and Peter Sarsgaard), their hangouts not just movie lots but movie sets. And nostalgia? Why, it's something that's unavoidably invoked by this adaptation, since Thurber's script has jettisoned so much of the beloved book's plot and so many of its main characters. The result retains some of the novel's themes but little else -- enough so that the film adaptation, had it changed the names of some characters, could have gotten away with calling itself a wholly original work.
At least, to a point. Thurber's changes have made The Mysteries of Pittsburgh flatter, more generic, and more like umpteen Sundance films that have come before it. In the book, young Art is at a crossroads, and three people in his life represent a possible future: Phlox, his girlfriend, beckons Art toward tightly-wound domesticity; his gay friend Arthur embodies a tantalizing romantic path that could change Art's life; and small-time hood Cleveland reminds Art that life and death have a way of screwing up his best-laid plans. Thurber's adaptation excises Arthur entirely, demotes Phlox to a one-note supporting role, and beefs up Cleveland (newly bisexual) to serve as a substitute love interest for Art (Jon Foster). Worse, Thurber has replaced lively Phlox with Jane (Miller), a far blander creation. Where Phlox was maddening, intelligent, and exotic, Jane is merely compliant. It's the adaptation in a nutshell.
While the characters in the book delighted in language -- especially the witty Arthur, who's especially missed -- their revamped movie counterparts have little to say and even fewer places to go. Why ditch Chabon's lyrical curlicues for narration ("And that's when it happened") that was pedestrian even on The Wonder Years? And why retain the novel's bisexual themes only to cast two actors -- Foster and Sarsgaard -- that lack any sort of erotic heat together? Thurber no doubt had his reasons, but unfortunately for fans of the book, what they were remains a mystery.
To the audience of The Advocate, actress Lena Headey is perhaps best known for the romantic comedy Imagine Me & You, but she's quickly zoomed to more mainstream notice as the gun-strapped mom at the center of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. In that television show, she hunts down dangerous replicants on a weekly basis -- a talent that would serve Headey well in The Broken, her new Sundance entry directed by Sean Ellis. In the film's eerie, gloomy version of London, Headey plays Gina McVey, whose quietly humming life is jolted when she catches a glimpse of a woman who looks just like her. When Gina follows her doppleganger back to the woman's apartment, a terrible accident occurs which leaves Gina with strange visions -- and a sense that many of her loved ones, including her boyfriend (Time to Leave's Melvil Poupaud), have been replaced by uncanny, sinister doubles.
Ellis's first film was the little-seen Cashback, the story of a young man who uses his ability to manipulate time mainly to undress buxom women. That film was a strange, perhaps unconscious comment on the leering power a director wields, and it's one that Ellis exercises again in The Broken -- the actresses in this film take so many baths and showers that it's a wonder they have any time left to flee their pursuers. Ellis has definitely got chops, and the film manages to sustain its tension even when little is going on, but I wish he hadn't telegraphed some of his twists quite so early. It's admirable that Ellis tells us as little about these doubles as he does -- it leaves more room for the viewer's own subconscious to fill in the creepy details -- but some of the shocks involving them are revealed far too soon. As an actress, Headey projects so much intelligence that when the audience knows more than she does, it definitely feels like something's gone broken.
"It has snowed since you were here and your tracks are covered," says actress Tilda Swinton at the beginning of Derek, a documentary/love letter to filmmaker Derek Jarman. "Fortunately, you made them on hard ground." It's been almost fourteen years since Jarman passed away from an AIDS-related illness, and though he left us with some utterly unique, indispensable films like Sebastiane, Caravaggio, and Edward II, Swinton is right -- a lot of snow has fallen since then in the annals of queer cinema. Some of it has been fierce and independent, but much of it has been safe and middlebrow. To watch a film like Derek is to be reminded how much of the former we need -- and how rarely we get it.
The film is directed by Jarman's friend Isaac Julien (Young Soul Rebels) and draws much of its power from three indispensible sources: Swinton's narration (recorded from a "letter to Derek" she wrote for the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2002), a daylong interview with Colin MacCabe that shows Jarman to be cheeky and relaxed in the face of illness, and Jarman himself, who made countless short, experimental films at his Warhol-like Bankside Studio. Many of them are glimpsed for the first time in Derek, and so, too, do we get glimpses of the man and mind who produced some of these indisputably original works of art. To hear about his schooling -- which he dubs "a real crash course in Catholic brainwashing" -- or to learn about his strained relationship with his father will no doubt open up new footnotes in some of Jarman's most-used themes. But to get valuable face time with the filmmaker is to wonder what he'd make of today's film world -- and whether anyone now will make of it what he once did.
There's a certain type of story that Vanity Fair seems to specialize in: one involving a glamorous family, a decadent socialite, a hint of incest, and a terrible crime. At the heart of the affair is a juicy scandal, but the presentation is too literate (and the participants too rich) for the tale to be consigned to a mere beach read. So, too, is Tom Kalin's Savage Grace -- his first feature film since the New Queer Cinema landmark Swoon. This tale of rich people behaving badly nails its two most important components: the twin contradictions of trashy allure and aspirational longing. But while other filmmakers might be content to stop there, Kalin imbues the sordid affair with depth, metaphor, and real feeling.
Based on the true-crime story, Savage Grace follows Barbara Baekeland (Julianne Moore), the wealthy heir to the Bakelite fortune whose relationship with son Tony was too close for comfort. When we first meet Barbara, she's a new mother who refuses to let her brand-new baby -- or her disapproving husband (Stephen Dillane) -- get in the way of her ambitious social calendar. For Barbara, there's nothing more important than being talked about, and despite her incredible wealth and glamour, there's always more status to be coveted. Though Barbara is quick to remind people she was "almost a movie star," she's still an actress, and her intercontinental persona is a role she works hard at. For her son, though, it's all he knows -- and he grows up transfixed by it.
Soon enough, Tony has become a young man, an ex-pat polyglot who, while still in thrall to his mother, is beginning to test out his incipient homosexuality. In louche Europe, such experimentation is no big deal, but for Barbara, Tony's orientation is a threat. Her husband is leaving her, her status is drooping, and her sexual self-confidence needs shoring up. When Tony writes to his father and complains, "Taking care of Mommy has become my inheritance," it's a dramatic understatement -- Mommy intends to make Tony her de facto husband, marriage bed and all. Until then, both mother and son will attempt to manipulate and conquer the other, with a fatal prize looming for the winner.
If Savage Grace sometimes recalls Almodovar -- the colors, costumes, and European locales are too decadent not to -- it has a skilled performance at its center that rescues the material from teetering too far into camp. As Barbara, Moore is a preening animal, impeccably put together but with a savage countenance lurking just below. While Barbara is at her idealized best when chirping in French or placing a phone call to royalty, there is a deeper, darker voice that occasionally slips out, flat in inflection and full of implicit menace. Tony is her most perfect creation, and while Barbara will never be at rest, her son's easy comfort with wealth provokes her even further. For Barbara, there was no taboo greater than a loss of personal standing. That this film has given her such nefarious immortality would not faze her -- in Park City, she is being talked about, and that's all that matters.
For all the talk about putting a "human face" on the war in Iraq, there may be no better vehicle than The Recruiter, the devastating new documentary from director Edet Belzburg. Shot in Houma, Lousiana, over a period of nine months, the film follows Sergeant First Class Clay Usie -- a charismatic recruiter struggling in the face of nationwide opposition to the war -- as well as four of his teenage recruits. When the regretful father of one of those recruits notes that "old men start wars, young men fight them," he's only scratching at the surface of the dramatic inequality on display here. Though our Yale-educated, Connecticut-born president claims to be a man of the people, it's hard to imagine a single way he could relate to the poor, struggling residents of Houma, who see joining the military as their only way out of poverty.
Four, in particular, are profiled. Matt (a young Kevin Federline lookalike) wants to join the military to prove he'll never be like the alcoholic father who abandoned him, while David is an overweight teenager who can barely run two miles but, like Matt, idolizes Sgt. Usie -- the sort of encouraging father figure these boys never had. Meanwhile, honor student Bobby enters the military so overqualified that his recruiters can barely believe their luck, but Slipknot-loving lesbian Lauren bristles at her military-enforced makeover. For Lauren, the military is her only ticket to college, and this budding artist will do anything to get there -- until she runs up against the very real conflicts of "don't ask, don't tell."
To watch these young people of seventeen and eighteen grapple with the enormity of their decisions -- and their looming, inevitable stints in Iraq -- inspires dread, not patriotism. As Matt prepares to leave his single mom and Sgt. Usie behind to begin training, his placid face contorts, trying to hold back unfamiliar tears. These are teenagers who barely understand their own emotions, let alone the war they are being shipped off to fight and die for. When four Louisiana National Guardsmen perish in Iraq, Usie attends the funeral and begins to recruit the pre-teen brother of one of the dead. For Usie, who is fighting against record-low recruiting levels, there is no other choice. Sadly, for the young boy with no prospects in run-down Houma, there may be no other option, either.
If you were diagnosed with a terminal disease, what's the first thing you'd think of? Would it be your friends? Your family? Your Amazon.com wish list? If it's the latter, then The Guitar is the movie for you -- and only you. It's The Bucket List retooled for bourgeois bohemians, and despite its Sundance trappings (and pedigree -- director Amy Redford is Robert's daughter), it's every bit as phony.
Office drone Melody Wilder (Saffron Burrows) has just been hit with a whammy: she's got inoperable cancer, and only a month to live. For most people, that would be enough of a jolt, but in the next scene after her diagnosis, Melody is fired (wouldn't she have quit anyway?) and in the scene right after that, her drippy boyfriend breaks up with her. Poor ol' Mel is so unlucky that you half-expect her to be shipped out to Iraq next, but instead, she finally snaps and moves into a gorgeous loft, determined to live life to its fullest before she doesn't have any of it left to live anymore.
While Jack and Morgan's bucket list had generic tasks to cross off like "see the pyramids" and "laugh til I cry," mousy Melody is suddenly struck with the aspirations of an Orange County sorority girl. Wouldn't it be soooo shocking, she thinks, to bang the black delivery guy (Isaach De Bankolé) or kiss a girl (Paz de la Huerta)? Still, neither assignation fulfills Melody like maxing out her credit cards and embarking on a movie-long shopping spree (certainly the most morose, "I'm gonna die" shopping montage the film world has ever seen). According to Redford, there may be no better medicine than the Bed, Bath and Beyond catalog, nor any wound that can't be healed by a floor set from Jonathan Adler. Though others might spend their last days living, Melody spends hers spending -- and its the audience that's left with nothing to show for it but empty pockets.
It hasn't escaped my attention that, in a quirk of programming, Sundance officials have scheduled press screenings for nearly every black film in the festival on a single day: today. That today also happens to be the first day of press screenings -- as well as a day where most press and industry people are still flying into Park City -- might be grist for The Black List, a new documentary by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Elvis Mitchell. The film, a series of interviews with over twenty black luminaries (including Toni Morrison, Chris Rock, and Colin Powell), is an inspiring document that gets at the heart -- and conflict -- of being a minority. Many of its talking heads openly wish for a day when they'll be considered as a "person" instead of just a "black person," but at the same time, their distinct cultural identity is paramount. As minorities, can we have our cake and eat it too? Why, the film asks, shouldn't we try?
The presentation is bare-bones (the soothing music, clever edits, and monochromatic background sometimes suggest a Mac ad), but the discussion is meaty. The guitarist Slash discusses his mixed-race background and his discomfort with bandmate Axl Rose's bigoted line from Guns 'N' Roses' "One in a Million": "Immigrants and faggots/They make no sense to me." Louis Gossett Jr. rails against the Hollywood system that failed to reward him after his Academy Award win and the director who toned down a love scene he appeared in, claiming that the black actor was "all lips." It's a shame that only one LGBT figure was included -- with no mention of his sexuality -- but he's a significant figure that the film gives its final interview to: the acclaimed, Tony-winning dancer Bill T. Jones. Jones invokes early gay pioneers like James Baldwin (who he calls "eloquent and soft") and asks, "Authenticity, identity, love, faith -- what is identity?" In this smart, succinct film, that's a question that may never be answered -- but why shouldn't we try?
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