FILM REVIEW: THE STRANGE COLOR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS

A scene from in The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears.

The man and the menses 

By John Esther

Dan Kristensen (Klaus Tange) has just returned to Brussels from a business trip abroad. After leaving several messages for his wife, Edwige (Ursula Bedena), without receiving response, Dan comes home to find the door is chained from the inside. When Edwige still does not answer Dan through the ajar door, Dan breaks the chain and enters his home. 

Edwige is missing. Rather than immediately call the cops, Dan goes on a drinking binge and then rings up his neighbors to see if they have seen his wife. One of his neighbors lets him into her home. A strange woman whose face remains shadowed in darkness, Dora (Birgin Yew), relays a ghastly story about the day her husband went missing in the ceiling after he tied her up and sedated her. (She wakes up later to help him, somehow eschewing or forgetting or forgiving her husband's horrific behavior.)

After this bizarre encounter with the elderly lady in black, Dan's journey becomes increasingly strange -- while one's patience diminshes. People appear and disappear. There are displaced bodies in the forms of simulacra, split screens, broken glass and sliced flesh. Side stories are started and stopped. Snuff recordings are played over the phone. Nightmares repeat themselves. Carnage becomes fetish. Razors are the choice of weapon, but any piercing object will do. Law enforcement is ephemeral.

Oh, as The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears never lets us forget, the male gaze is at work. Eye see you. Does it want to see female flesh or blood or both? Well, it is certainly obvious what is more thrilling to the filmmakers; and they are not going to break down the patriarchal visual paradigm a la Marguerite Duras, Toril Moi, Toni Morrison, Jane Campion or Robert Altman. 

Written and directed by the husband and wife team behind Amer, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, The Strange Color of Your Body's Eyes is intended (Italian artists audibly participate throughout) and advertised as a "homage to the Masters of Italian Giallo horror" -- an aspiration about as admirable as a novelist writing a homage to the novels of Danielle Steel or a cinephile's homage to pulp fiction -- and almost as reactionary and illogical in execution.

Stuck in a beautiful-turned-nightmarish Art Nouveau building where people hide and emerge from the walls and ceilings (are they ghosts?), the directors, plus the director of photographer, Manu Dacosse, are obsessed with the image at the risk of plot or sign, which in many cases displays a pornographic fear of female sexuality. As if reworking the work of George Bataille inside out or Jacques Lacan upside down, the Belgium filmmaking duo (whether they are familiar with those French authors or not) see sexuality not as an extension of one's self, but the murder of one's self -- metaphorically and literally. Continuity is obliterated in the name of discontinuity. Here, sex is horror without any redeeming pleasures. Man has vagina on the mind -- a bloody nightmare triggering subconscious memories of lost innocence. All because a little boy saw a trickle of blood. Menophobia. It also turns out that, indeed, some women do fantasize about being stalked, raped and murdered. Or is that Dan's dream? Golly gee, even Ingmar Bergman had a better sense of humor when it came to sex than this couple.

The film rarely maintains an image for more than a few seconds. Everything must be rapid, colorful and artsy, but it is an intellectual sham. At least Marquis de Sade and Jean Genet knew how to play both filthy and sensitive while simultaneously addressing violent sexual practices within and between the realms of power and the powerless. In The Strange Colors of Your Body's Tears, nothing enlightening goes beyond one of those "horror" films where a bunch of teenagers are stuck in the woods, getting killed off one by one because of the big, bad, old monster known as sex is after them.



 

 
















 

FILM REVIEW: THE TRIP TO ITALY

Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan in The Trip to Italy.

To life 

By John Esther

With gourmet Italian cuisine, humorous banter, lush scenery, marvelous hotels, hilarious impersonations of such folks as Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal and characters in The Dark Knight Rises, plus discussions about Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, Roman Holiday, Godard's Contempt and a host of other issues a trip through Italy can offer, what is there not to like about The Trip to Italy? Very little. 

On another hand, our dynamic duo are stuck with one excruciating CD to listen to in their rented Mini: Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill, which they play too frequently, and seem to enjoy on occasion. And our protagonists discussion about Frankenstein is rather irksome to those who know the story of its origins, author, intent, censorship, distribution, reception and history. 

The follow up to writer-director Michael Winterbottom's 2010 film, The Trip, the sequel reunites Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan once again to travel in style, work their improvisational brilliance, and remind us that maybe the true test of any relationship is traveling together -- all the while making the viewer hungry. Only this time the film is set in Italy not England. 

A smart, funny film about friendship, film, culture, literature, history, art, and coming to terms with what it means to mature, manifestly speaking, in show business (pretty much everything The Expendables 3 is not), watching The Trip to Italy is probably the most fun I have had at the movies so far this year.

FILM REVIEW: LIFE AFTER BETH

Zach (Dane Dehaan) and Beth (Aubrey Plaza) in Life After Beth.

The discreet disarm of the bourgeoisie 

By John Esther

Written and directed by Jeff Baena, Life After Beth tells the comedic-tragic teenage tale of a single child named Beth Slocum (Aubrey Plaza) who went hiking one day, was bitten by a snake and died. 

(Snakes and teenage girls is always a scary combination.) 

Naturally, at first, Beth's death causes great grief in her father, Maury (John C. Reily), her mother, Geenie (Molly Shannon) and her boyfriend, Zach Orfman (Dane DeHaan). Following the funeral, Zach begins to bond with Beth's parents, especially Maury. The two play chess together, talk about what they wished they had said to Beth when she was alive and they even share some wacky tobacky. Geenie gives Zach Beth's winter scarf, which he wears around his neck like a chain in the summertime. 

The bond with Maury seems to move Zach toward recovery more than the bond Zach shares with his lightheaded parents (Paul Reiser and Cheryl Hines) and dimwitted brother, Kyle (Matthew Gray Gubler). 

When the bond between Zach and Beth's parents soon fades, Zach becomes desperate. Zach cannot understand why the Slocums will not talk to him. So Zach does some, rather creepy, snooping around the Slocum house -- looking into their windows, banging on doors, yelling, etc. The Slocums are home but nobody answers. It seems they have a secret they do not want the neighbors to discover.

As it turns out, unnaturally, Beth has risen from the grave. Hooray for Mom, Dad and Zach! Or is it a cause for celebration? This seems inexplicable. Maybe Beth is a zombie? Oh well, Zach and Beth's parents now have a second chance with their beloved. 

Zach now says all the things he wished he had said to Beth and Beth responds the way teenage boys wished teenage girls responded to such sweet talk. But, like with most teenagers, the mind and body are constantly changing. For Beth they are changing in unimaginable ways...more so than the "normal" high school girl. As Beth becomes increasingly sweet, then aggressive (primarily with jealousy), Zach begins wondering if life would be better off if Beth were dead. The ideal girlfriend has become the psychotic bitc- ah, er, girlfriend.

To add to Zach's woes, suspicions and adolescent angst, it seems Beth is not the only one rising from the dead. Others around town have risen from the grave and they are hungry for some middle-class meat. 

A cheeky satire on numerous things, such as postmortem or eternal fairy tale romances, idealized teenage love, and the resilience of the bourgeoisie to overcome threats to its comforts and joys with very little awareness and effort, Baena (who co-wrote I Heart Huckabees) has a keen yet low-key observant eye and pen for suburbia. There is humor, dread, bitter love and lousy music in Baena's suburbia. Todd Solondz may have a cinematic comrade in Baena. 

(Writing of Solondz, Baena and Life After Beth, since the Slocums and Orfmans are Jewish, a look at this film through the prism of Jewish Studies may reveal another subtext to Life After Beth.)

With regard to the soundtrack used in Life After Beth, the film's metatrope that smooth jazz soothes zombies, in particular Chuck Mangione's "Feels So Good," is dead-on hilarious. Baena's potshots at the banal music of the Babbitt/Angstrom class rings true, soft and clear. Baena and music supervisor Bruce Gilbert (not the same Bruce Gilbert as the ex-member of Wire) have created one of the smartest soundtracks of the year. 

The film's one unfortunate soundtrack choice is the use of Brian Eno's politically charged, excellent song, "Needles in the Camel Eye" (which was better used in Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine) during Beth and Zach's sexual encounter in a public park. Although Eno's album, Here Come the Warm Jets, which is where "Needles in the Camel's Eye" hails from, has some sexually charged themes in it, "Needles in the Camel's Eye" could have been used elsewhere in the film to better effect. For the sex scene, if we are sticking to Eno, a more apropos choice would have been Eno's "Here He Comes," "Driving Me Backwards" or "Sky Saw."

The one other unsettling aspect of Life After Beth is the random violence of Kyle. His gunning down of two elderly people -- one alive and one undead (he kills many more offscreen) -- jolts the dark humor of the film into something far more sinister and very unfunny. Perhaps it is a musical narrative pivot to undermine, or underscore, the more dominant "smooth jazz" trope in the film?

At any rate, judging by the screening I saw with about 20 other critics, it seems I thought it was funnier than most, if not everyone else. Aye, the only thing more annoying at being at a film screening where there is just one person laughing is when you are that one person laughing. Jarring, subversive, and enjoyable, Life After Beth does not fit into easy categorization or consumption. The film will no doubt have many detractors in the mainstream press, but for those looking for something different -- a la Solondz, Robert Altman or Luis Bunuel -- Life After Beth rises above this somnambulistic summer of cinema.

FILM REVIEW: A WILL FOR THE WOODS

Clark Wang in A Will for the Woods. 

Back to nature

By John Esther

Faced with a terminal illness, Clark Wang decides to eschew America's typical burial methods and take the green way out and under. 

At most a slight deviation from the way most humans have been buried since time memorial, and continue to do so in much of the world, a green burial is the eco-friendly, formalized ritual where the deceased is laid to rest in a natural setting using biodegradable materials. There is no embalming or concrete involved. Often a simple stone is used as the marking spot. 

Not only does this ritual allow one to "return to the earth" in an environmentally responsible way, it also allows natural land to remain free from development since the land is now a burial site. 

While the "green burial movement" does play a notable role in A Will for the Woods, the documentary's other strength is how it captures Clark and his partner, Jane Ezzard, coming to grips with his impending death. Clark may not be very old, but this psychiatrist, musician, dancer, and overall very nice guy has been very sick for many years. We are here to witness Clark's last days

Credited with four film directors -- Amy Browne, Jeremy Kaplan, Tony Hale and Brian Wilson -- A Will for the Woods offers a unique and unflinching examination of how Clark lost the ultimate battle (as we all will) yet in the process won over many hearts and minds of those who came to know him both off and on screen (as only some will). Writing of which, A Will for the Woods is a worthy companion to Life Itself, Steve James' recent documentary on the late film writer, Roger Ebert. 

FILM REVIEW: AROUND THE BLOCK

Dino (Christina Ricci) in Around the Block.

Ab(out)original plays with the text

By John Esther

After a hiatus, American Dino Chalmers (Christina Ricci) has returned to Australia to be with her fiance, Simon (Daniel Henshall). A bright-eyed idealist, Dino takes a job at Redfern High School. Redfern High School is located in a particularly rough neighborhood in Sydney. 

In the first of the film's numerous too-convenient tropes, Dino notices one of the students, Liam (Hunter Page-Lochard), a teenager who she filmed in the streets the day before. He just happens to be in her class, too. 

Liam has troubles. He lives in a poor, violent neighborhood known as The Block. His Mum (Ursula Yovich) is unemployed; his father, Jack (Matt Nable), is in prison; and his older brother, Steve (Mark Coles Smith), plans to avenge his father's imprisonment and uncle's death. 

As the film points out in the beginning, Liam is headed down a similar path to that of his father and brother. However, Liam has a spark. If he can tap into his creative energies, Liam may just avoid a life of crime and despair (not that creativity does not often come with its own agents of despair).

This is where Dino comes in. She is the new drama teacher at Redfern and she wants the kids to learn and perform Shakespeare's Hamlet. Rather than instruct the old fashioned way of learning the world's most famous play by reciting the lines ad nauseum, Dino gets the kids to understand and appreciate Hamlet via comparing it to the lyrics of Tupac Shakur, examining the subtext, and how and why such an "old" English play could have relevance for the modern day immigrant living in Sydney.  

The existential themes of the play's protagonist strikes a chord in the heart of the Liam. To be or not to be in such a cruel world? Thanks to the former profession of Liam's deceased uncle, Liam was familiar with the words of Hamlet, but now he is beginning to understand something deeper.

Written and directed by Sarah Spillane, Around the Block may have its exasperating flaws, but it cannot be accused of not having its heart in the right place. Here is a film about a teacher who puts her energies into kids who society would soon just forget, even if it means giving up a comfortable bourgeois life with Simon. Meanwhile, the film lends an identity to those living in poverty and the dignity of struggle against it through art. 

Moreover, most of the cast is pretty good, especially Nable's subtle portrayal of a man who sees everything as he knows it disappearing. 

On the other hand, there are a few pretentious scenes involving standing on rooftops and incredulous "race baiting" over a meal at a restaurant. Was Dino just oblivious to the racism of Simon and his friends before she moved in with him?

Then there are the numerous, manipulative and insipid music selections that really grate on one's nerves. I realize the filmmakers are reaching for a younger audience here, but the songs are not only lousy, many of them are obvious attempts to manipulate the feelings and reactions of the audience. And the way Around the Block adapts and actually uses a cover of Mister Mister's "Broken Wings" is as banal and unwelcome as the original 1985 song (and video). 

Having written that, Around the Block is better fare geared for the youth than most movies out currently in theaters. At least Around the Block tries to address themes about adolescence, art and poverty. 

FILM REVIEW: PLANES FIRE & RESCUE

A scene from Planes: Fire & Rescue.

Newcomer on the job

By John Esther

Before the opening credits roll in director Bobs Gannaway's Planes: Fire & Rescue, Disney dedicates the movie "To the courageous firefighters throughout the world who risk their lives to save the lives of others." It is a nice, well deserved gesture and it tells you immediately where the heart of this film beats. 

The follow up to last year's Planes, this animated feature follows the highs and lows -- literally and metaphorically -- of Dusty Crophopper (voice by Dane Cook), a plane who is about to fly into the winds of change.

Having just won another aerial race, Dusty is out training for an upcoming local race when his health comes crashing down. Told that he can never race again, Dusty goes out at night and pushes himself to the point of collapse, not only causing more harm to himself, but damage to his community at large. (Was he drunk on oil?)

In order to redeem himself and save his community, Dusty must get certified as an aerial firefighter. 

Up until this point, audiences may wonder where in the world Planes: Fire & Rescue is taking place. There are no humans in the story. Only cars, trucks, trains, planes, and other vehicles (basically Disney merchandise to be purchased) living in a world free of smog, pollution or oil spills. And these vehicles, except one mentioned in a side-of-the-mouth quip, seem to run on gas. Of course, they do speak American English. 

This otherworldly notion is dispersed when Dusty heads across the land to Yosemite, Earth. It is here Dusty will train under the tutelage of Blade (voice by Ed Harris) and with the help of friendly co-firefighters, including a forward-thinking female, Lil' Dipper (voice by Julie Bowen), who, along with Blade, Windlifter (voice by West Studi), are the most entertaining character in Planes: Fire & Rescue. 

No sooner has Dusty arrived a fire alarm is set off, sending the firefighting crew deep into the forest. Immediately the team sets out with brilliant precision: planes swoop in, pick up water and drop it on the fire, while utility vehicles descend in parachutes to the ground where they will do their work with the precision of machines, but with the personalities of toys similar to the ones given to them by imaginative children. It is a heroic coordination with no time to lose.  

To get, or amp, adults in this firefighting scene, the filmmakers set it to AC/DC's "Thunderstruck." As rocking and rolling as "Thunderstruck" may be, lyrically speaking, "Thunderstruck" has just about much correlation to the action taking place in the movie as Kajagoogoo's "Too Shy," Gang of Four's "Better him than Me" or Beyonce Knowles' "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)." If someone asked me, Kansas' "Fighting Fire with Fire," Ultravox's "One Small Day" or Muse's "Knights of Cydonia" would have been more germane, but nobody asked. Actually, Leftfield's "Open Up" comes to mind when considering such pedestrian pandering. Anyway, it is an emotionally charged, intellectually lethargic musical choice. Unfortunately, it is the best song you will hear in Planes: Fire & Rescue. Plus, Mark Mancina's score is worse than the individual songs.

During his initial entry into firefighting it becomes clear Dusty has a lot to learn and to explain to the real firefighters. His ego and his poor health are both a detriment and a danger to himself and the team. Yet he is too arrogant to defer to his betters. Naturally, I mean formulaically, the protagonist will have to jump through hoops of fire before he can become a hero. 

Not only do the government-run, taxpayer-supporting firefighters have the burden of training Dusty, they now have a bigger problem with Cad Spinner (voice by John Michael Higgens), a park superintendent acting more like real estate developer than a ranger. Driven by ambition, Cad diverts firefighter funds to his new restoration project. The Grand Fusel Lodge is about to open and the ambitious, avarice and authoritarian Cad wants to impress the visiting Secretary of the Interior (voice by Fred Willard). And if the forest burns before his retreat, that is just the cost of doing business. 

Now, it does not take a Maru (voice by Curtis Armstrong), to figure out and fix the conclusion of the movie. Co-screenwriters Gannaway and Jeffrey M. Howard are not going to tail and spin this elementary narrative into a tragedy. 

Nonetheless, for a film geared toward smaller children -- the MPAA gave the film a PG rating for "Action and Some Peril" -- Planes: Fire & Rescue is rather intense for younger viewers. Some of the action is fast and there are several scenes where the smoke lingers on, not knowing if our products, I mean protagonists, of the movie, have survived. As one young kid said aloud at the all-Media screening, "What happened? I don't like this movie"; perhaps expressing the sentiments of others. There was adult laughter in response. 

Since Disney insists on trying to please both children and parents in these family-friendly ventures, there are obviously some jokes, not the token flatulence ones of course, that will mean nothing to the kids. Lil' Dipper's high-jinks are for those whose hormones have already kicked in. The hybrid car joke about "never heard it coming" will be a "zoom" for the typical kid. And the "CHoPs" metanarrative in the movie, a pastiche of the TV series, CHiPs -- both featuring Erik Estrada -- puzzled the many a kinder eyes and ears during the aforementioned screening. 

This is not to suggest that storytelling for different audience ages (or, at least maturity) is a bad thing. Family members may leave the theater talking to other family members about what he or she took from the movie, which may offer different perspectives on the same text. (Yes, it is extremely doubtful Disney has such intellectual intentions. So called "family films" are geared toward the maximum possible ticket buyers.)

However, there is one thing everyone should be able to take from the film: firefighters do some very important and dangerous work. Even though the characters in Planes: Fire & Rescue are made of metal, that is clear at the movie's most elementary level. 

Planes: Fire & Rescue is available in 3D. 

FILM REVIEW: CITIZEN KOCH

A scene from Citizen Koch.

To divide they spend

By John Esther

Since the birth of this nation, the rich have held great sway over our government. If it were not for the people participating in the democratic process, namely voting, there would be no stopping the rich from infiltrating every aspect of government – starting with the campaign process. 

However, that changed in 2010 with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens vs. United. A backhanded ruling engineered by the rich neoconservatives, the ruling essentially diluted the influence of working classes in the political process by equating unlimited and often undisclosed campaign contributions with free speech. 

Embolden by the new ruling, billionaires such as Charles and David Koch (AKA the Koch bros.) started this new weapon in class warfare against the working classes in Wisconsin with the 2010 election of Governor Scott Walker, a staunch Republican fixing to dismantle the unions in his state. As a result, a recall movement is born in 2011. People realize the importance of unions. 

Then the Americans for Prosperity from Virginia steps in, becoming Walker’s biggest donor while recruiting Teabagger dupes to back a policy clearly against their best self-interests. Meanwhile Republican members of public unions begin to question his and her longstanding beliefs regarding the GOP just like former Louisiana governor and US Congressman Buddy Roemer did as he ran a different kind of campaign during last year’s Republican primaries. 

Capturing this whirlwind of activity leading up to the historical failure in 2012 to recall Walker, co-directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin (Trouble the Water) cohesively illustrate what happens when the bad financial powers-that-be cannot be stopped. 

FILM REVIEW: A COFFEE IN BERLIN

Julika (Friederike Kempter) and Niko (Tom Schilling) in A Coffee in Berlin.

Dead man waking

By John Esther

Winner of six German Film Academy Awards, including Outstanding Feature Film, Best Director and Best Actor, Jan Ole Gerster's wry indie flick about the metamorphosis a young 20-something named Niko (32-year-old Tom Schilling) experiences -- without getting a damn cup of coffee -- is just as good as his country's men's soccer team. 

A college dropout without a job, Niko has been filling his life with aimlessness, lethargy and his share of citations for drinking and driving under the influence of alcohol. He just left his girlfriend, Elli (Katharina Schuttler) in Paris, his things are not unpacked in his Berlin apartment and his friends have to drag him out anywhere. Sometimes Niko makes an effort to get a cup of coffee, but that seems to be as impossible for him to achieve as anything Niko is not trying to do.

One day, through a series of events, Niko encounters various kinds of individuals -- some new, some familiar. Drug dealers, drunk teenage punks, an actor playing a Nazi in a film (Arnd Klawitter), a kind grandma (Lis Bottner) protecting her drug dealing grandson (Theo Trebs), a smarmy psychologist (Andreas Schroders), and an enraged father (Ulrich Noethen) who has just found out his son's actual matriculation status. These encounters reinforce Niko's sense of alienation and ennui. 

But perhaps his most significant encounter is with Julika (Friederike Kempter). 

At first Niko does not recognize Julika, but she sure remembers him. When they were younger, Niko used to make fun of Julie's appearance. Julika seems to have forgiven him, which only makes Niko feel worse. Her presence begins to instill a self-awareness in Niko, suggesting he is not a cool outsider, rebelling at the system by "spending his days thinking," but rather a childhood bully who has grown up to be an insignificant member of society.

To be fair and to the film's credit, Niko is a rather likable guy. He clearly has a conscience toward other outsiders, can feel the sensitivities of others, and is not afraid to get in between an aggressor and his friend. 

Indeed, it is one of the strengths of the Gerster's complex, touching and humorous screenplay that the protagonist is at once sympathetic, pathetic and maybe even a little heroic at times. Niko is the kind of guy we would like to help out, but it is probably better we did not. Niko needs to find his own identity, rejecting fatalism...or that worst of all F words. 

Impressively shot in black and white by Philipp Kirasmer, Berlin, Germany gets an updated look at the debris of its newest generation in terms of character, content, and concrete. History has been etched in stone, cement and Friedrich (Michael Gwisdek), a man who was there during the days when young, idle Germans like Niko were given something bloody awful to do. A fear of such a recurrence is alluded to more than once in A Coffee in Berlin (Oh Boy). 

FILM REVIEW: BICYCLING WITH MOLIERE

Serge (Fabrice Luchini) in Bicycling with Moliere. 

Circling the stage

By John Esther

A somewhat witty, certainly revealing, tale of clashing egos, the latest film by Philippe Le Guay – whose previous film was the lackluster The Woman on the 6^th Floor – two French actors get together to see it they can collaborate on Moliere’s The Misanthrope.

Gauthier (Lambert Wilson) is a successful actor with a wildly popular TV show about a surgeon who saves lives regardless of circumstances. Give the good doctor a plastic knife and he can save a young girl dying in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Already popular, rich and handsome Gauthier still wants a little more out of life. He wants something he can really sink his teeth into, like The Misanthrope, considered Moliere’s most demanding play for actors.

If he is going to pull it off, he will need the help of a fellow actor, Serge (Fabrice Luchini). For three years, Serge has led a hermetic life on the Ile de Ré, a posh area on France’s Atlantic Coast.

An expert on Moliere and a misanthrope in his own right, Serge would seem to be the perfect actor for the play’s protagonist, Alceste. But Gauthier wants to play Alceste, with Serge playing his Alceste's friend, Philinte, which is a smaller part.

Since Serge wants to play Alecste, too, the two of them agree to alternate rehearsing different roles. They may even do this for the play itself with the two alternating roles each week.

As the two rehearse over the next few days many conflicts arrive. Cellphones, bicycle accidents, a lover interest and bad plumbing interfere with the creative process. But what threatens any future production the most is the role of the egos of the actors. Every time progress is made, another setback comes along. On with the play, I say.

Certainly worth a view, Bicycling with Moliere has many charming warm moments about friendship, camaraderie and artistic and literary integrity in a world not to fond of that kind of thing; although France, in general, is significantly appreciative of great theater than the United States. You can bet far more French people, per capita, know a Moliere play more than Americans know one by Tennessee Williams or any American playwright for that matter. 

But the real strength of the play comes from watching the two experiencing the joys of working through a great piece of drama. How does one interpret a role, especially one from the 17^th century? How does one follow Moliere’s rhythm and still make it sound relevant to modern audiences...and other artistic/acting questions? While these can be great challenges to any actor, especially the more narcissistic ones, there are great joys to be found while playing with the play. Indeed, Bicycling with Moliere should not be missed by actors. 

FILM REVIEW: CESAR'S LAST FAST

A scene from Cesar's Last Fast.  Photo Credit: Robin Becker.

Starving for justice

By John Esther

For the second time in three weeks, a film about the life and times of the American human rights activist, Cesar Chavez, will receive a theatrical release. The first one was director Diego Luna’s Cesar Chavez, a hitherto underappreciated film – at least at the box office. Now we have Cesar’s Last Fast.

Inspired by both his Catholic upbringing and the teachings of Indian human rights activist,  Mahatma Gandhi, Chavez conducted several fasts throughout his life.

Hardly a diet scheme, Chavez’s fasting was a response to the injustices farm workers, primarily in Central Valley California, endured. Already subject to unfair labor practices, unlawful imprisonment and, in a few cases, murder, new farming procedures implemented in the 1980s were subjecting farmworkers to carcinogenic pesticides.  These pesticides affected children most of all.

In response, the 61-year-old Chavez adopted a water-only fast. The fasting protest attracted media attention, especially after it past the 30-day mark and Chavez was reaching the point of no return. By the way, his return was quite an event.

Unlike Luna’s Cesar Chavez, director Richard Ray Perez (Unprecedented) takes an irreproachable attitude toward his subject. Perez was able to gain access to Chavez’s family, his coworkers and some precious archival footage and amateur video from Chavez’s press secretary, Lorena Parlee (who died in 2006 from breast cancer). Was it cause and effect?

Picked up at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Cesar Chavez is an inspiring testimony to one of this nation’s heroes.

FILM REVIEW: ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE

Eve (Tilda Swinton) and Adam (Tom Hiddleston) in Only Lovers Left Alive. 

Oh so tragically hipster

By John Esther

The latest film by independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (Night on Earth; Dead Man and Broken Flowers), Only Lovers Left Alive tells the story of Adam (Tom Hiddleston), an eccentric musician living a life of exclusion in Detroit and his much older wife, Eve (Tilda Swinton), a world weary woman hanging out in Tangiers. When Eve discovers Adam is sad, she gets on the next overnight flight to the United States and the two lovers once again rejoice, make love, listen to music of a bygone era and consume human blood together. 

Yes, Adam and Eve are vampires. So is Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt), the real writer of William Shakespeare’s works. But they are not your typical vampires. They read, they feel, they create and they are too civilized to roam the streets searching for victims to sick their fangs into. Besides human blood today is too polluted. Adam and Eve remain in the last remnants of paradise by purchasing the purest blood money can buy.

Layered with nuance, feeling, memory and metaphor, Only Lovers Left Alive is a mediation on the futile persistence of immortality, that lovers and friends will always come and go and what it means, in terms of privilege and power, to be a pureblood. Or it could just be Jarmusch’s attempt to bring to life the coolest couple of cinema ever. My Radiohead, are these vampires not hipsters to the nth power?

FILM REVIEW: THE RAILWAY MAN

Eric Lomax (Colin Firth) in The Railway Man.

Getting there from here

By John Esther

In the early 1980s, Eric Lomax (Colin Firth) is a lonely, tormented man who continues to study Britain's railway system. He has always loved trains, despite the pain this love for trains brought him during WWII when he and his fellow British soldiers surrendered to Japanese soldiers in Singapore, 1942, and were brought to the Thai/Burma border and ordered to build the "Death Railway."

During another yet seemingly ordinary ride on the train, Lomax meets Canadian nurse Pattie Wallace (Nicole Kidman) and the two have such a remarkable conversation, Eric, at last, falls in love. The two get married.

However, it soon becomes very clear to Mrs. Lomax that her husband has psychological problems stemming from the great war. With the help of Finlay (Stellan Skarsgaard), a fellow POW of Eric's, Patti is determined to help her husband.

Based on Lomax's book, directed by Jonathan Teplitzky and the screenplay written by Andy Paterson and Frank Cottrell Boyce, the film deals with some of the uglier aspects of war, namely how torture can be justified by the upper echelons of government through twisted language that winds it way down the chain of command. Indeed, the use of language plays many roles in The Railway Man.

While in The Railway Man, the film deals with a British officer (Jeremy Irvine) and a Japanese-English translator Takeshi Nagase (Tanroh Ishida) who tortures the young Eric through such techniques as waterboarding, as an American, one can only anticipate the day when filmmakers illustrate (further) the torturous events at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and those who are and were on the wrong side of history.

In the meantime, The Railway Man is not only a germane warning to current U.S. policy, it is also one of the better films to come out so far this year.

"So many dead." "No, so many murdered."

 

FILM REVIEW: 10 RULES FOR SLEEPING AROUND

Vince (Jesse Bradford), Cameron (Virginia Williams), Kate (Tammin Sursok) and Ben (Chris Marquette) in 10 Rules for Sleeping Around. 

Screw comedy

By John Esther

Vagina voracious Vince (Jesse Bradford) and conspicuous consumer Cameron (Virginia Williams) have what they call an "open" marriage. This means they can have other sex partners as long as they follow the "10 Rules for Sleeping Around." (Deplorably, none of these 10 rules promote safe sex.)

Vince and Cameron's best friends, cautious Kate (Tammin Sursok) and bummer Ben (Chris Marquette), are not married yet, but sexy times have been a bit slow, so Cameron and Vince offer them advice. Vince suggests Ben ask Kate for a threesome with another woman and Cameron suggests Kate get a pole...vaulter from Kate's past. 

Thanks to a series of events, every one of these New Yorker's has her or his theories, desires and commitment put to the test out in the Hamptons during the biggest party of the year, held by "I F#cked Everybody" author, Jeffrey Fields (Michael Mckean). Let the mayhem ensue. 

Somewhere between Sex and the City's banality and Three's Company misunderstandings, writer-director Leslie Greif's 10 Rules for Sleeping Around comes off as really bad television. About 10 minutes into this 94-minute movie I wanted it to be over. The acting is almost always in overdrive, the writing is on par with the worst you would find in any TV situation comedy and the reactionary gender stereotypes are tedious and cliched. Apparently, repressed sexuality is really what young people want. 

Hopefully the actors were paid well. It must be difficult for an actor when your director says you have to go out of character to get laughs. However, hysterical behavior is not necessarily comical. Notably, Kate's "spanking" scene with her lifestyle coach, Owen (Bryan Callen), is downright embarrassing. 

As a result nearly everyone in the movie is unconvincing and very annoying, especially Hugh (Reid Ewing), a virgin who refers to women in their late 20s as cougars. For his part, Hugh gets to scream a lot, run around naked and have a dog lick his butt. For Christ's sakes! 

The only two likable characters in 10 Rules for Sleeping Around are Nikki (Jamie Renee Smith) and Jaymee (Molly McCook). The "Jersey Shore" duo may be a bit crass, but they are comfortable with their freedom, sexuality and themselves.  

Fortunately, not all was lost. I did laugh four times during 10 Rules for Sleeping Around. But that hardly makes up for the pain during the rest of the time. 

FILM REVIEW: CESAR CHAVEZ

A scene from Cesar Chavez.

Sí lo hicieron!

By John Esther

It has been a long time coming, but finally somebody has made a theatrical film about Cesar Chavez. And it is my favorite 2014 film, so far. 

Born March 31, 1927, in Yuma, Arizona, Chavez grew up knowing what it was like to be exploited. After the Chavez's lost their home during the Depression, they worked in the fields for very little compensation. As all hands were needed in the field, Chavez did not attend school past the 7th grade.

After serving two years in the Navy, Chavez returned to the fields. From there he quickly rose through the ranks of the American labor movement working for the CSO (Community Service Organization), a humans rights organization which encouraged Latinos to register to vote.

In the early 1960s Chavez started focusing on the farm workers of Central California. While the workers of the United States had gained considerable rights since the 1930s, the Latino (and Filipino) workers who mined the agricultural crops in Salinas, Fresno, etc., were left behind to toil in working conditions too similar to those found in the recent film, 12 Years a Slave -- which took place 100 years prior to the time of Cesar Chavez.

To any person with an ounce of tenderness, this was unacceptable. But anger and indignation were hardly enough to start an organized labor movement. The poor workers were scared and rightfully so. They could be fired, deported, beaten and, in a few cases, killed, without any legal recourse. Even if the workers were not afraid, white people, who were raised racist, were afraid of the Other. Any attempt to win over the hearts and minds of the dominant race had to be done through peaceful resistance. 

So in the early 1960s Cesar (Michael Peña) and Helen (America Ferrara) packed up their kids and drove toward the fields of Central Valley, California (in a scene which may be amusing to racists) and began to organize the men, women and children who were being exploited by unbridled capitalism. (If you want to see what the U.S. would look like without a federal minimum wage, see Cesar Chavez.)

Helen (America Ferrara) and Cesar (Michael Peña) in Cesar Chavez.

Fortunately, this is where the film begins. Rather than dwell on Cesar's childhood and other phenomena as to what motivated Cesar, his lack of education, his service in the Navy, etc., -- although we do get pieces of the puzzle along the way -- the film focuses on Cesar's brilliant non-violent organizing skills and the founding of the National Farm Workers Association, AKA the United Farm Workers (UFW). Moreover, to focus solely on Cesar's biography would betray the film's underlying message: Cesar could not have made the kind of history attributed to him without the help of countless others (see War and Peace).  

Rather than offer the typical Hollywood hagiography (see Noah) about how one man changes the course of history, director Diego Luna, along with co-writers Keir Pearson and Timothy J. Sexton, illustrate that great change comes from the multitude of players involved in any movement. 

Helen Chavez. A woman of fierce convictions, Helen was no stranger to radical protest and getting her hands good and dirty. She may have been the mother of eight children, but Helen was not going to submit to any Latino machismo ideas about taking a backseat -- domestically or politically. (Pardon me: The scene in Cesar Chavez where Helen deliberately gets arrested for defiantly yelling the banned word, "Huelga" or "Strike" may be the hottest scene of any woman in film this year. A woman who does not "know her place" is extremely attractive.) 

Cesar Chavez also takes the time and effort to illustrate the contributions of UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta (Rosario Dawson). Not only was she a force in working class solidarity, but sisterhood solidarity as well. The UFW would never have succeeded without the participation of so many brave women.

Then there was Gilbert Padilla (Yancy Arias), the UFW area director, who provided structure by establishing service centers where people could convene, organize and strategize. Then there was Cesar's younger brother, Richard Chavez (Jacob Vargas), who had his older brother's back and counseled wisely when Cesar's emotions got the better of him. They and others, from here to Europe, created the solidarity necessary for positive change.

Indeed, Luna and film editors Douglas Crise and Miguel Schverdfinger take the appropriate efforts to show the numerous faces of a movement. A movement by "an army of boycotters" that sparked a statewide, then nationwide, then worldwide boycott of table grapes. 

To the film's credit, it also reminds us what an extraordinary politician, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (Jack Holmes) was to the working class. Kennedy actually visited the epicenter of the strike and boycott, talking to the people and challenging the belligerent local authorities to read the U.S. Constitution. His behavior was a stark contrast to then-California Governor Ronald Reagan, who called the grape boycott "immoral" and the collaboration of then-U.S. President Richard Nixon (who was born in California), to get the military to subsidize the grape growers in order to break the proletarian defiance. 

Cesar may have been the auteur of the crew, but as any organizer or filmmaker knows, the ultimate vision of a successful movement, whether it is for the rights of the worker or a film, is the work of many visionaries, and not solely the performance of its spokesperson or director. 

The film also reminds us that whatever fruits Chavez enjoyed on a professional and personal level came at the cost of a parental one. As the eldest son of America's most reviled Mexican American, Fernando Chavez (Eli Vargas) was bullied at his predominately-white school while being ignored by a father too busy working outside the home. Fernando was too immature to understand the sacrifices his father was making for the good of the nation. Fernando needed a father, not a martyr. 

Ultimately, they both got what they wanted and lost what they had. 

Riveting, inspiring, agitating and fortifying, smartly directed, very well acted, and demonstrating a sophisticated attention to detail, Cesar Chavez is a film worthy of its subject. 

This Monday marks the 87th anniversary of Cesar's birthday, an official holiday in California, Colorado and Texas. If you want to honor the man and the movement by patronizing an excellent educational experience illustrating Latino-American history, organized labor history and California history, your opportunity has arrived.

FILM REVIEW: THE RAID 2

A scene from The Raid 2. 

Spray cans of whoop ass

By John Esther

Three years after the 2011 film, The Raid: Redemption, writer-director Gareth Evans returns with the highly anticipated, vehemently violent sequel, The Raid 2. 

Essentially commencing where The Raid: Redemption finished, the sequel finds the protagonist, Rama (Iko Uwais) going undercover to infiltrate a crime syndicate and bring everybody down, especially the crooked cops at the top. 

As Rama falls deeper and deeper into his undercover role, he begins to lose his senses of what is right and wrong, incrementally becoming more punitive toward his aggressors. Of course, in a society where cops and government officials are as crooked as the gangsters, who can tell what is right and wrong? The only thing to know for sure is how to survive and fight another day.

As gratuitously violent as any insane person would want it to be, The Raid 2 makes the balletic violence in 300: Rise of an Empire and the ejaculatory explosions in Need for Speed look like bloody adolescent-minded masturbation (even more so than before). Here in The Raid 2, faces are bludgeoned, legs are snapped, heads are smashed, arms are amputated, etc., via baseball bats to the head, hammers to the throat, knives to the chest, etc. There is also a lot of death-by-furniture. Only the insecure need a gun to fight here in Jakarta, Indonesia. 

For a while the martial arts choreography make the violence somewhat entertaining, or thrilling at least. Perhaps it is psychologically appealing? There is something deeply existential about seeing Rama trapped in a situation, facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles and then watch him think, or respond, using his mental and physical skills, his way out of the situation. Who does not wish he or she could master the environment like Rama?

However, after a while, the violence becomes a means unto itself in this 150-minute film. Each fight becomes prolonged and belligerent, thrusting the earlier thrills of the film into plotting mechanics as Rama must work his way through a game of death until all evildoers are vanquished. Ultimately, the martial artistic choreography becomes bloodthirsty pornography. 

FILM REVIEW: HAPPY CAMP

A scene from Happy Camp.

Sad stay

By John Esther

Sometime during the 75-minute film, Teddy (Teddy Gilmore) jokes, “What is does the local economy and Bigfoot have in common? There is no evidence either exists.” 

Well, thanks to director Josh Anthony’s ugly, deceiving “found footage” portrayal of Happy Camp, California, what do you expect? 

The film begins by declaring that over the past 25 years 627 people have gone missing in Happy Camp, the highest in the country. I could find no evidence to even remotely support that claim. 

(My wife and I actually drove through Happy Camp last year. We encountered wild horses on State Route 96.)

And that is just one of the film’s problems. Some of the writing is weak and the so-called payoff is cheesy -- and it would do nothing to promote tourism in Happy Camp. I will say Michael Barbuto’s performance as the character, Michael Tanner, the guy who returns to his hometown to uncover a childhood tragedy, is quite good and the other two male actors -- Gilmore and Anthony -- are pretty good, but that is about it. 

Happy Camp will be released on various non-theatrical platforms this Tuesday. 

FILM REVIEW: THE MISSING PICTURE

A scene from The Missing Picture.

Phnom Penh, mon amour

By John Esther

One of my favorite films of 2013, writer-director Rithy Pahn film is finally getting a proper release in the United States. 

On April 17, 1975, the 13-year-old Panh, his family and others were evacuated from Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, to the countryside where they could finally learn what it meant to be loyal to the Khmer Rouge. A pseudo-communist regime, the Khmer Rouge was anti-bourgeois in the extreme. While they shared a similar distaste for middle-class materialism that many left-wing groups did, they took it to the extreme and out of context. All comfort was anti-revolutionary. 

More importantly, as a peasant uprising run amok, the Khmer Rouge was horribly anti-intellectual. Learning beyond man as a tool for the agrarian socialist revolution was subversive and must be eliminated by any means necessary. According to the Khmer Rouge, and their leader Pol Pot, who was actually an educated person, people of culture, humanities, the arts, music, literature, etc., were better off dead. The supposed left had become extremely right. 

This would be one of the lessons Panh would learn over the next four years as nearly all of his family perished one way or another. And to his credit, he emphasizes how deadly a mistrust of the intellect existed in the country.

Since nearly everything was destroyed during those years, Pahn recreated his childhood memories through the use of figurines. A painstaking endeavor, Pahn uses hundreds of figurines set in elaborate dioramas to convey his characters and extras.

The result is a stunning mediation on loss and memory, with no shortage of anger to boost the narrative.

Paradoxically, this was Cambodia’s Oscar entry for this year’s Oscars in the Best Film in a Foreign Language category, but it lost to Italy’s much happier, bourgeois-friendly and inferior film, The Great Beauty.