37th Five Films, 2007
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Loren Cass (Chris Fuller) as part of MoMA's Best Films Not Playing at a Theater Near You. This was pretty intense, but also funny here and there, maybe due to the emotional distance cultivated by all the static shots. It's a series of vignettes set among "at-risk youth" in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1997. Perhaps most memorable is the insertion of footage from R. Budd Dwyer's infamous last press conference before one of the less developed characters leaps from a bridge. Footage of civil rights protests, monologue readings over a black screen, and other techniques are used to set the mood and put the kids in context.
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Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Sidney Lumet) at BAM. This was kind of a disaster. I finally figured out that "Movies Start On Time" actually means that the opening credits roll at the time listed on the menu above the box office. It always seemed like one of those laughably pointless warnings, like "No outside food allowed," but apparently that is not the case. So I arrived eight minutes late--rather than two to seven minutes early--to find a packed theater. To make matters worse, the rows in theater 4 are just ridiculously wide (>25 seats with no center aisle) so it's just about impossible to find a reachable destination. I wound up having to walk out, down the stairs through the lobby, and around to the other side to sit on the end near the back, which was kind of a problem given the small screen for such a wide space. Also, the sound was not nearly as loud as it ought to be, especially since there was a pretty loud ventilation duct directly above me.
At any rate, it's been too long since I really enjoyed a Philip Seymour Hoffman role. This was worth the wait. It was actually most reminiscent in my opinion of his self-destructive widower in the little-seen Love Liza, though he self-destructs in a very different manner here. I was kind of surprised at the gasps from the audience during what I'll call the pizza party scene, where Andy attempts to take charge of the situation, particularly since we'd just seen very similar behavior a few minutes before.
Some reviewer made a point that this may be too dark and unrelenting for some tastes, but I was much more distracted by the visual style than the emotional tone. The near-Expressionist lighting got to me after about half an hour since it's used in every indoor scene. Outside the sunlight is scorchingly bright; everything looks brutal and unforgiving. I enjoyed the effect every once in a while, such as when Andy and his dad are sitting outside near the grill, looking almost completely gray and shadowy before a pretty distant background of verdant leaves. The colors are mostly blue, really cold. Perhaps it should have just been in black & white.
It's interesting the way family dynamics subtly overtake other concerns, so much so that the importance of relationships shifts almost completely from what we assume at the outset. I'll probably try to see this again on DVD.
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August the First (Lanre Olabisi) as part of MoMA's Best Films Not Playing at a Theater Near You. A Nigerian man causes a disturbance when he returns to the United States to visit his estranged American wife and kids for his youngest son's college graduation party, though ulterior motives are revealed. All handheld camerawork, mostly in close-up, the film feels claustrophobic as it seems the members of this family can't escape each other; it's all shot in and around the house where Olabisi grew up.
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Mississippi Chicken (John Fiege) as part of MoMA's Best Films Not Playing at a Theater Near You. While it was fascinating to listen to Fiege discuss the incomprehensible task of shooting an entire film on Super-8 (cameras breaking, frame rates undulating, audio out of sync) it's the content that holds your attention here. He follows Anita Grabowski, a grad student from Austin, Texas, as she helps start a center advocating for local poultry workers around Canton, Mississippi. Much of the action takes place in a trailer park, home to Guillermina and her daughter, Charo, recent Mexican immigrants. That's kind of the nexus for a lot poultry workers and other frequently illegal immigrants who experience quite a bit of mistreatment.
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Persona (Ingmar Bergman) with an intro by Jonathan Lethem and Bibi Andersson. Wow, the cutting here is just magnificent, giving much of the film the quality of a disintegrating memory. So obviously great that I got the same feeling I did with The Searchers earlier this year (another Lethem favorite), like such a fantastic movie doesn't even need an audience, it could just be showing to an empty room, like paintings in a museum overnight or something.
+ + +
Loren Cass (Chris Fuller) as part of MoMA's Best Films Not Playing at a Theater Near You. This was pretty intense, but also funny here and there, maybe due to the emotional distance cultivated by all the static shots. It's a series of vignettes set among "at-risk youth" in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1997. Perhaps most memorable is the insertion of footage from R. Budd Dwyer's infamous last press conference before one of the less developed characters leaps from a bridge. Footage of civil rights protests, monologue readings over a black screen, and other techniques are used to set the mood and put the kids in context.
+ +
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Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Sidney Lumet) at BAM. This was kind of a disaster. I finally figured out that "Movies Start On Time" actually means that the opening credits roll at the time listed on the menu above the box office. It always seemed like one of those laughably pointless warnings, like "No outside food allowed," but apparently that is not the case. So I arrived eight minutes late--rather than two to seven minutes early--to find a packed theater. To make matters worse, the rows in theater 4 are just ridiculously wide (>25 seats with no center aisle) so it's just about impossible to find a reachable destination. I wound up having to walk out, down the stairs through the lobby, and around to the other side to sit on the end near the back, which was kind of a problem given the small screen for such a wide space. Also, the sound was not nearly as loud as it ought to be, especially since there was a pretty loud ventilation duct directly above me.
At any rate, it's been too long since I really enjoyed a Philip Seymour Hoffman role. This was worth the wait. It was actually most reminiscent in my opinion of his self-destructive widower in the little-seen Love Liza, though he self-destructs in a very different manner here. I was kind of surprised at the gasps from the audience during what I'll call the pizza party scene, where Andy attempts to take charge of the situation, particularly since we'd just seen very similar behavior a few minutes before.
Some reviewer made a point that this may be too dark and unrelenting for some tastes, but I was much more distracted by the visual style than the emotional tone. The near-Expressionist lighting got to me after about half an hour since it's used in every indoor scene. Outside the sunlight is scorchingly bright; everything looks brutal and unforgiving. I enjoyed the effect every once in a while, such as when Andy and his dad are sitting outside near the grill, looking almost completely gray and shadowy before a pretty distant background of verdant leaves. The colors are mostly blue, really cold. Perhaps it should have just been in black & white.
It's interesting the way family dynamics subtly overtake other concerns, so much so that the importance of relationships shifts almost completely from what we assume at the outset. I'll probably try to see this again on DVD.
+ +
+ +
August the First (Lanre Olabisi) as part of MoMA's Best Films Not Playing at a Theater Near You. A Nigerian man causes a disturbance when he returns to the United States to visit his estranged American wife and kids for his youngest son's college graduation party, though ulterior motives are revealed. All handheld camerawork, mostly in close-up, the film feels claustrophobic as it seems the members of this family can't escape each other; it's all shot in and around the house where Olabisi grew up.
+ +
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Mississippi Chicken (John Fiege) as part of MoMA's Best Films Not Playing at a Theater Near You. While it was fascinating to listen to Fiege discuss the incomprehensible task of shooting an entire film on Super-8 (cameras breaking, frame rates undulating, audio out of sync) it's the content that holds your attention here. He follows Anita Grabowski, a grad student from Austin, Texas, as she helps start a center advocating for local poultry workers around Canton, Mississippi. Much of the action takes place in a trailer park, home to Guillermina and her daughter, Charo, recent Mexican immigrants. That's kind of the nexus for a lot poultry workers and other frequently illegal immigrants who experience quite a bit of mistreatment.
+ + +
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Persona (Ingmar Bergman) with an intro by Jonathan Lethem and Bibi Andersson. Wow, the cutting here is just magnificent, giving much of the film the quality of a disintegrating memory. So obviously great that I got the same feeling I did with The Searchers earlier this year (another Lethem favorite), like such a fantastic movie doesn't even need an audience, it could just be showing to an empty room, like paintings in a museum overnight or something.
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Posted on Tuesday, November 20, 2007
2 Comment(s):
Where was Persona showing at?
It was, in fact, the same theater at BAM where we saw Pierrot le fou.
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