LAFF 2013: LEVITATED MASS

A scene from Levitated Mass: The Story of Michael Heizer's Monolithic Sculpture.

Rock and road

By Miranda Inganni

Energetic and highly enjoyable, director Doug Pray’s Levitated Mass: The Story of Michael Heizer’s Monolithic Sculpture brings to life the 2012 journey of a giant piece of granite through darkened city streets that caught the attention of mainstream media and sleepy communities alike.

In the late 1960s artist Michael Heizer envisioned the idea for “Levitated Mass,” a hulking rock balanced on top a long walkway. Decades later, Heizer received a call from his friends at Stone Valley Quarry in Riverside, CA saying that they had found Heizer his rock. Blasted out of the ground, the enormous mass sat where it was until a suitable location was found and the money raised to attempt to move it. No small feat, indeed. Step in Los Angeles County Museum of Art director Michael Govan and the art-loving donors who helped fund the $10 million transportation project.

Pray’s film does not try to explain Heizer’s vision, though Pray includes many clips from previously recorded interviews and shows a number of Heizer’s other installations and exhibits. And though it took over a year to figure out the engineering and logistics, the rock only traveled for 11 nights. Along the way, something seemingly magical happened, wherever the rock went, people followed. The public’s response was overwhelming. Some folks were bewildered, others saw a conspiracy, but mostly people were impressed at the largesse of it all.

With cinematography by Christopher Chomyn, Edwin Stevens and Pray that expertly captures the scale of the rock and the undertaking and a score by Akron/Family which highlights the drama and suspense (literal and figurative) of the film, Levitated Mass is a movie that will be sure to get audiences discussing the meaning of art and the amazing feats that humans continue to accomplish.

 

LAFF 2013: DORMANT BEAUTY

Maria (Alba Rohrwacher) in Dormant Beauty.

Death panelists

By Ed Rampell

Marco Bellocchio rocketed to fame in 1965 with Fists in the Pocket, a riveting look at epileptics, and 1967’s China is Near, which daringly dealt with Maoism when this was a strictly taboo topic. The Italian director’s leftist bent was also evident in 2009’s Vincere, about the son of Mussolini and his mistress. Bellocchio is still pushing the proverbial envelope -- his latest offering, Dormant Beauty, sort of combines the searing look at sickness and hard hitting politics of his first two features with yet another forbidden subject.

 

The topical Dormant Beauty is about -- depending on your point of view -- the right to die, or perhaps, rather, the right to life. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy is torn apart by warring factions who oppose state sanctioned and administered deaths, in particular, for people in comas. Bellocchio skillfully interweaves news footage about an actual 2008 court battle involving Eluana Englaro -- a woman who had been in a vegetative state for 17 years and is about to be removed from life support -- with several private stories that are variations on the same theme, proving once again that the political is also personal.

 

Tony Servillo (2008’s Il Divo, 2010’s Gorbaciof) stars as an Italian senator, Uliano Beffardi, who decides to go against party discipline and do that odd thing in bourgeois electoral politics: take a principled stand in favor of the right to die and deciding to end one’s own life. In the process the senator ends his own political life. (At one point a protester mocks him for turning his back on socialism.) Previously, the senator’s own wife was dying in the hospital and now Beffardi’s daughter, Maria (Alba Rohrwacher), has joined the religious zealots who vociferously oppose the right to die. She has one of Dormant Beauty’s two “cute meets”, as she romances Roberto (Michele Riondino), whom she encounters through demonstrations regarding the fate of the comatose woman. Although they are on opposite sides of the issue, the couple provide the movie’s nude scene. Roberto’s brother, Pipino (Fabrizio Falco), is a right-to-die fanatic as angry and disturbed as any of the characters in Fists in the Pocket.

The sensuous Italian-Iranian actress Maya Sansa plays a suicidal thief and addict who has the movie’s other cute meet, with the compassionate Dr. Pallido (the director’s son, Pier Giorgio Bellocchio). Playing true to type, the great French actress Isabelle Huppert (1974’s Going Places, 1980’s Heaven’s Gate, 1982’s Godard’s Passion, 2012’s Amour) portrays a thespian called Divina Madre, whose own daughter hovers between life and death in a coma.

It’s an odd thing that (especially in this country) the so-called right to life movement fanatically opposes abortion and assisted suicides, but often the very same leaders and rank-and-file true believers are gung ho when it comes to capital punishment and going to war. I guess matters of life and death are like comedy -- it’s all in the timing.

Be that as it may, this Italian writer-director remains in good form and renders a trenchant, poignant, thoughtful look at this controversial issue.

 

 

 

LAFF 2013: AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY

Grace Lee Boggs in American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs.

Lee winding road

By Ed Rampell

American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggsis engagingly, wittily directed by Grace Lee. No relation to her documentary’s subject, Lee first stumbled upon Boggs a decade ago while making another nonfiction film, 2005’s The Grace Lee Project.

The director appears onscreen in American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee, but the focus remains fixed on Boggs. Lee has a good film sense and her techniques run the gamut, from naturalistic talking heads footage -- including of Bill Moyers, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis and Danny Glover -- to the imaginatively cinematic. For example, in sharp contrast to most longwinded leftwing intellectuals, Lee humorously sums up Hegel and Marx in 30 second montages, and creatively uses reverse motion historical news clips to represent going back in time for this biopic about Boggs.

Boggs attended the LAFF screenings in her wheelchair, took part in Q&As with Lee and appeared on Tavis Smiley’s PBS talk show on June 21. An inspiration on- and offscreen, this radical icon remains full of grace -- bogged down she’s not, as she remains ready for the revolution -- whatever form it may take.

 

 

LAFF 2013: OUR NIXON

Richard M. Nixon in Our Nixon.

In your ears and in your eyes

By Ed Rampell

Our Nixonis a compilation film by Penny Lane about the only U.S. President (so far!) who resigned and had to leave that office is disgrace. The documentary is largely composed of and culled from 500 hours of never-before-publicly-seen Super 8 home movies shot by three Nixon aides that were seized by the FBI during the Watergate investigation, then filed away and forgotten -- until the intrepid (and obstreperous) Lane unearthed and rescued this cinematic treasure trove for posterity. She has shaped out of the raw material of this footage an eye-opening insider’s glimpse of President Richard Milhous Nixon and his benighted administration.

Lane painstakingly matches sound and wry musical choices to the silent chronicles and adds archival video from network news vaults. From a film form point of view this is a fascinating exercise in cinema verite. The fly-on-the-wall Nixon remix includes celluloid shot by advisor John Ehrlichman, Chief of Staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman and special assistant Dwight Chapin. The documentary reminds us how young this regime’s hacks and hatchet men were -- Ehrlichman was 43, Haldeman 34 and Chapin a mere 27. But boy were they ever on the wrong side of the 1960s/1970s generational divide!

Chapin, the youngest, went to college with dirty trickster Donald Segretti, whose Nixonian specialty was “ratfucking,” (pardon my French, but the Nixon administration was known for its “expletives deleted”) the Democrats, such as that phony “Canuck” letter to presidential candidate Sen. Edmund Muskie that supposedly caused him to cry and appear weak; tossing marbles on the ground at a Democratic rally, and other pranks gone beserk. The film discloses that “Segretti” translates, appropriately, from the Italian to “secrets” in English. This is who Nixon’s henchmen hobnobbed with: Verily, ye shall know them by the company they keep!

Our Nixon contains great behind-the-scenes footage of historic events, such as Tricky Dick’s 1972 breakthrough Beijing trip, where the veteran anti-communist met with Mao and applauded a performance of the revolutionary ballet The Red Detachment of Women. The documentary also has surprises, such as: Did you know that the right’s idiot savant, William F. Buckley, was on Nixon’s China trip? And Tricky Dick’s comments on Henry Kissinger (the National Security Advisor’s sex life is far more offensive to Nixon than his mass murders), eavesdropping, approval ratings, etc., are eyebrow- and hair-raising.

The documentary’s most jaw-dropping moment took place not behind closed doors in the Oval Office but in the White House’s East Room on Jan. 28, 1972 when Nixon -- presiding over a dinner marking the 50^th anniversary of Reader’s Digest -- introduced the decidedly unhip Ray Conniff Singers by defiantly snarling: “And if the music is square, it’s because I like it square.” But then, one of the singers did something cool enough to give Nixon indigestion. Canadian alto Carole Feraci pulled a Medea Benjamin, held up a banner saying, “Stop the Killing” and proclaimed to the astonished crowd that included aviator Charles Lindbergh, astronaut Frank Borman and Alice Roosevelt Longworth: “President Nixon, stop bombing human beings… You go to church on Sundays and pray to Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ were here tonight, you would not dare to drop another bomb.” As the bandleader tried to snatch Feraci’s banner the 30-year-old held onto it and added: “Bless the Berrigans and bless Daniel Ellsberg.”

Lane is the perfect name for someone who compiles documentaries out of archival footage -- after all, the Beatles song entitled “Penny Lane” is all about a trip down, well, memory lane. After the LAFF screening, Penny Lane did a Q&A and buttons declaring “Hi. I’m an effete, impudent intellectual snob,” were handed out to viewers.

Our Nixon is a pointed reminder about the U.S. surveillance state run amok as America grapples with another presidential Big Brother snooping scandal. 

 

 

LAFF 2013: FOREV

A scene from Forev.

Too early to be securely

By Don Simpson

Sophia (Noël Wells) is the type of girl who drunkenly brings random guys home to her apartment with the naïve hope that it will be the beginning of a beautiful long-term relationship. Her neighbor, Pete (Matt Mider), is a socially awkward computer support technician who works from home, therefore he rarely leaves his apartment. Hence he is hopelessly single.

Nonetheless, Sophia and Pete spontaneously find themselves engaged to be married. (Nope, she isn’t even preggers!) They go on a road trip across the Southwest to pick up Pete’s sister (Amanda Bauer) from college. Mayhem ensues, as the trip puts their (non-)relationship to the test.

Forev is a somewhat typical, yet smartly written, rom-com that quickly evolves into a quirky road movie which contemplates the meaning and significance of marriage in our modern world and whether or not dating (or sex, for that matter) should be a required precursor. Not all that long ago, Sophia and Pete’s rapid-fire engagement would not be all that surprising. Nowadays, they seem a bit nuts; yet within the cinematic universe of Forev, Sophia and Pete are given ample motivation to justify their sense of desperation.

At Sophia and Pete’s age, everything seems like an eternity. They are stuck in a purgatory between college graduation and settling down into family life, and they are both growing increasingly impatient with the pace of their lives. They have been waiting forever (in the figurative sense) to take the next step in life — in this case, marriage — yet it never comes. Of course, if and when they do get married, that means being with their significant other forever -- if they take their vows seriously. That is a lot of forever for two people in their 20s.


Forev screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival, tonight, 9:50 p.m., Regal Cinemas. For more information: Forev at LAFF 2013.

LAFF 2013: FOUR DOGS

Oliver (Oliver Cooper) in Four Dogs.

Encino Man

By Don Simpson

Oliver (Oliver Cooper) is a struggling actor who lives with his aunt (Rebecca Goldstein) in Encino, California. Actually, Oliver is taking a break from acting, spending his days smoking weed in his aunt’s house while she flies around the world as an airline attendant. It seems as though the only way he legitimizes his free room and board is by taking care of his aunt’s four dogs while she is away. Otherwise, Oliver is just a lazy, 20-something slacker, caste in the mold of Jonah Hill.

Lonely and secluded in suburbia, Oliver creates a strange array of characters to entertain himself, essentially developing his own invisible friends. Oliver’s only real friend, Dan (Dan Bakkedahl), is twice his age. They met a while ago in acting school, though neither one of them seems to understand why they are friends. Misery loves company, I guess; or maybe misery just enjoys having a miserable friend with a car to shuttle him around. Both men — or, rather, man childs — do share a certain kinship in their desperation for female attention. Oliver quickly develops an obsession with the soon-to-be-divorced Diane (Kathleen McNearney), while Dan is fixated on an acting partner from school.

Writer-director Joe Burke’s Four Dogs focuses on the averageness of Oliver and Dan’s existence as well as the averageness of cookie-cutter life in Encino. There is nothing glitzy or glamorous about life in this Los Angeles suburb, nor is there any grit or sleaze.


Four Dogs screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival June 22, 9:40 p.m., Regal Cinemas. For more information: FD at LAFF 2013.

LAFF 2013: IN A WORLD...

Carol (Lake Bell) in In a World...

Hear me roar (sort of)

By Don Simpson

In a world where men — such as Carol’s father, Sam (Fred Melamed) – are worshipped for their booming bass voices that accompany the trailers for Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters, Carol (writer-director Lake Bell) works as a lowly speech and accent coach for actors. Luckily for Carol, a new wave of female-centric blockbusters has begun, thus opening the possibility for Hollywood’s first female voiceover artist.

Bell’s In a World... reveals the chauvinistic and incestuous tendencies of Hollywood, showcasing just how ridiculous it is to have the same male voices attached to every movie trailer. She might not be any better than her male counterparts, but Carol is incredibly unique because she is a woman. Now that Hollywood action films have finally opened their arms to female heroes, it only makes sense that they retain that strong female voice in the trailers to those films. It seems logical, but not necessarily in a man’s world.

In a World also speaks directly about the female voice as Carol works with women to correct the way in which they speak. Often, women are judged by the sound of their voice. If a woman speaks in a high-pitched Valley Girl tone with a lot of filler sounds, she is typically not taken seriously by men. Even Carol conforms as much as possible to the voiceover industry standard by lowering the frequency of her own voice whenever she is on the microphone. In other words, to break into a man’s world, you must play by their rules and abide by their standards with the hope of eventually making changes from the inside.

Female writer-directors are unfortunately a rare breed in Hollywood, so we need women like Bell to bring their voices to the forefront. As In a World... suggests, this is not an easy proposition. It is one met with ridiculous resistance from the old guard of Hollywood. In the end, the decision will have to be made by fans. If films with powerful women sell tickets at the box office and do well in home video sales, then Hollywood will have no choice. In a World... is a worthy crossover comedy that seems independent but has enough star power to hold its own in the box office.

LAFF 2013: INEQUALITY FOR ALL

A scene from Inequality for All.

Freedom to monopolize

By John Esther

Thanks to theReaganite fiscal policies over the past 30 years, the economic disparity between rich Americans and the rest of America’s people has increased monumentally. The middle class is disappearing into the poor while the rich get richer. This is not good news for Americans, even the rich. Our economy thrives on consumption and when the middle class are not doing their dutiful duties by consuming, we all suffer.

At least that is what Robert Reich says.

A United States Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton, Reich is now a teacher at UC Berkeley who occasionally goes on the airwaves to present the neo-liberal economic policy point of view.

With a great amount, -- perhaps a little too much -- of reverence for his subject, director Jacob Kornbluth traces Reich’s roots before and during his Clinton years as well as capture Reich’s academic life today where he can pack a large classroom of students while increasingly being ignored by mainstream media. 

Since trickle down economics/austerity fiscal planning has been refuted by every legitimate economist (and the poor quality of reality itself), the contents of Inequality for All are hardly revolutionary, but the documentary is an amusing piece of non-fiction.

Equaling the paying field, The Los Angeles Film Festival is screening Inequality for All for free.


Inequality for All will screen at the Los Angeles Film Festival June 22, 8:30 p.m., at California Plaza. For more information: IFA at LAFF 2013.

LAFF 2013: POLLYWOGS

Sarah (Kate Lyn Sheil) and Dylan (Karl Jacob) in Pollywogs.

Minne me

By Don Simpson

Recovering from yet another failed relationship, Dylan (co-director Karl Jacob) retreats back to his rural Minnesota hometown for a family reunion. In cinema and literature, an urban protagonist often returns to their rural hometown out of necessity, and they do so with apprehension and fear. These characters are stereotypical patronizing urban elitists, who are eventually forced to learn that the town they left behind is not all that bad. In the case of Pollywogs, however, Dylan has returned home to reboot his life, to get back on track again. While he may not be able to work in a lucrative career here, this quaint Minnesota lake community serves as a magical respite from his not-so-happy adult life.

Upon arrival, idyllic memories of Sarah — Dylan’s first love at age ten — rush straight to his head; then, as fate would have it, Sarah (Kate Lyn Sheil) appears at Dylan’s family reunion. They have not seen each other for 18 years, yet they both have held onto idealized fantasies about what it would be like to reunite. That is a heck of a lot of pressure for two single people who may or may not be wanting to fall back in love.

Dylan and Sarah form a cute foursome with Dylan’s cousin, Julie (Jennifer Prediger), and her husband, Bo (Larry Mitchell), which temporarily eases the romantic pressure. Luckily, they have plenty of booze and weed to calm their nerves and a sauna to steam things up. The drastic juxtaposition of sweating in the hot sauna and shivering in the frigid lake seems like a perfect metaphor for the fluctuating hot and cold feelings between Dylan and Sarah.

They are obviously confused and who can blame them? They were once so close, but that was so long ago. Dylan and Sarah barely know each other any more. Eighteen years have passed. Dylan is now a full-fledged New Yorker, while Sarah seems temporarily content with taking care of her ailing grandmother in Minnesota. As their pasts begin to inform their present, Dylan finds himself desperately pawing at Sarah because he is the type of person who anxiously jumps from one relationship to the next, but Sarah immediately regrets reciprocating his affections and begins to cower away. Having once been forced by her parents into living on a Branch Davidian commune in Colorado, Sarah is wary of doing anything that she does not want to do. David may be primed to jump off the (literal and figurative) cliff, but Sarah pauses and eventually chickens out.

Co-directors Jacob and T. Arthur Cottam approached this project with story points, then developed the characters and dialogue during a six month rehearsal process. The result is a foursome of fully realized characters whose actions are all backed up by motivations. That is not to say that the script is saturated with expository dialogue, because whenever characters are interrogated about their feelings or past, it is done so with the utmost level of naturalism.

The emotional honesty of Pollywogs is much too powerful for this story not to be rooted in some sense of reality. While we might not all have romantic crushes from age ten to fondly look back upon, most of us have some sort of idealized notion from our past that we would like to somehow reinstate into our present lives. The problem is that our ten-year-old selves are hopefully nothing like our fully-matured selves, so something that enraptured us back then will probably not have the same effect on us now. That is why the resolution of Pollywogs is so important. Jacob and Cottam could have very easily chosen to go with an overtly saccharine Hollywood ending, but they opt to conclude the film in a manner much more true to real life.

LAFF 2013: FORTY YEARS FROM YESTERDAY

Bruce (Bruce Graham) in Forty Years from Yesterday.

When the eclipse arrives

By Don Simpson

When Bruce (Bruce Graham) returns home from his morning jogging regimen, the very last thing that he expects to see is his wife, Suzette (Suzette Graham), dead on their bedroom floor. Considering the shock that weighs heavily upon Bruce’s face, we can only assume that Suzette’s death was totally unexpected. Being that the film begins with Suzette’s death, we never get to experience the two characters interacting with each other; and instead of relying upon flashbacks to explain Bruce and Suzette’s past, Forty Years from Yesterday allows Bruce’s intense state of grief to speak for itself. Barely able to pick his feet up off the floor as he walks, this version of Bruce is drastically different than the one who was jogging at the onset of the film. As we watch Bruce mope aimlessly around the quiet house, we begin to imagine just how much this man loved his wife.

All the while, we also observe as Robert (Robert Eddington) and his two assistants — Lowell (Matt Valdez) and Lawson (Wyatt Eddington) — extract Suzette from Bruce’s home and prepare her for the funeral. Everything they do is calculated and regimented, reminding us of the professional side of death. Dealing with death, day after day, Robert’s detached and emotionless persona is a necessary protection for his career. So whereas Bruce’s half of the narrative is dripping with raw emotion, Robert’s half of the narrative is coldly clinical.

Forty Years from Yesterdayis a gorgeously minimalist meditation on the moods and tones experienced shortly after a loved one’s death. We observe the characters — all of whom are non-actors — as if they are subjects of a cinema verite documentary. Since Bruce internalizes most of his feelings and reactions, conversation is kept to a bare minimum. Alexander Sablow’s camera allows every line and pore on Bruce’s face to function as a roadmap for his feelings as well as his personal history. Graham handles with surprising skill and fortitude the burden of having to carry much of the narrative solely with his face.

Bruce’s house plays just as major of a dramatic role as the people who walk within it. Just prior to Suzette’s death, the house appears to be a living and breathing organism; the blowing curtains of the bedroom give shape to the air (and life) as it passes in and out of the house. Then, as we acclimate to the interiors of the house, it begins to function (quite subtly, I might add) as a museum of memories, filled with reminders of Suzette’s life in that space.

Forty Years from Yesterdayoperates in sharp opposition to Hollywood films about death; there is no soundtrack to trigger our emotions, nothing is over-explained or over-sentimentalized. Directors Robert Machoian and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck have quite purposefully made a film that may not be enjoyable in the traditional sense, there is no comedy or light-heartedness to ease the heartache, but that is only because they are striving to achieve a greater level of realism. Regardless, Forty Years from Yesterday is a transcendental experience that plays to the inherent — yet, woefully underused — strengths of the cinematic medium.


Forty Years from Yesterday screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival, June 22, 7:30, Regal Cinemas. For more information: FYFY at LAFF 2013.

LAFF 2013: ALL TOGETHER NOW

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A scene from All Together Now.

Into the woods they go

By Miranda Inganni

All Together Now narrates roughly 24 hours at a noise-rock concert in the woods (with a parking lot), where the teens and young adults have gathered to navigate through their aspirations, sexual inclinations and lots of libations.

Co-written and directed by Alexander Mirecki, All Together Now intertwines the tales of numerous attendees at this decidedly indie event that Ron (Lou Taylor Pucci) has cobbled together. Underage, gothy Ashley (Hannah Sullivan) and her friends are dropped off by her dad, Bruce (Hal Dion). Before heading to the parking lot to wait for his daughter and aliens, Bruce leaves Ashley (who is documenting the scene with her phone) with his trusty employee, Richard (Will Watkins), and his girlfriend, Tegan (Monika Jolly), to keep an eye on the youngsters.

Meanwhile, Michelle (Lindsey Garrett) muses about what she wants to be when she grows up while falling for Ron. Additionally, young Gulliver (Jerry Phillips) screams along to his father’s instrumentation as the first performers of the evening. When his father, George (James C. Burns), tries to kill the soundman, and is himself subsequently subdued, Gulliver is taken under the wings of two attractive twenty-something year old groupies to party the night away. Anon (Luke Stratte-McClure) hitches in -- looking out of place in his clean suit – until he is confronted by Able (Tucker Bryan), who doesn’t seem to know when to quit. Most excitingly, however, Ron’s overwhelmingly enthusiastic friend, Zeke (James Duval), has shown up with two anvils and enough gun powder to send one of them flying into the night sky. (What could possibly go wrong?)

Shot by Zoran Popovic in gritty super 16, the film feels like footage from a makeshift outdoor concert, and the lighting leaves a lot to be desired. (Who is the mysterious third person holding the flashlight on Anon and Able as they walk away from the show?). Mirecki does a good job of weaving the music in and out of the story -- the audience never spends too much time in the corrugated tin shack in which the bands actually perform, but there are too many moments of meandering in the film.


All Together Now screens at Los Angeles Film Festival June 20, 7:10 p.m., Regal Cinemas; June 22, 9:50 p.m., Regal Cinemas. For more information: ATN at LAFF 2013.

LAFF 2013: PURGATORIO

A scene from Purgatorio.

Over theirs

By John Esther

Two men stand outside a large fence waiting for the right time to climb over, leaving a family behind. Another man leaves water for those who have made it over the fence while another man goes around picking up what he thinks are clues for people who have crossed the border unannounced. Others are imprisoned by drugs, violence and vengeful fantasies. Borders as large prisons.  

Bullets litter automobiles, kill three policemen, and a local drug dealer. Deadly currency. Automobiles, planes and buildings rust in the dessert sun. Scrapyards of paradise lost. (Forever?)

Drug gangs rule the land, abandoned dogs roam the land while others just run to wreck it. To be sure, a few good men and women remain, but the ugly weight of a divine comedy has turned into a human tragedy. It is hard to strive when one can barely survive.

These are ideas, attitudes and illustrations of Rodrigo Reyes' Purgatorio: A Journey Into the Heart of the Border. An intellectually impressive and refreshingly angry documentary -- which also happens to be the best thing I have seen at LAFF 2013 hitherto -- Reyes moves around an undisclosed part of the Mexican-U.S. border casting his eyes toward unnamed men and women beaten by the system while lending his ears to people who have not been beaten by the system, yet.

Between the interviews, Justin Chin's cinematography captures the haunting landscape where our "hero" shakes his tongue, trying to find salvation in a cold and indifferent universe. If this is purgatory, how can the inferno be worse?

Highly recommended.


Purgatorio screens at the Los Angeles Festival June 20, 7 p.m., Regal Cinemas. For more information: Purgatorio at LAFF 2013.

LAFF 2013: CONCUSSION

Abby (Robyn Weigert) in Concussion.

Homo superior

By Don Simpson 

Sure, some of the situations in Stacie Passon’s Concussionmay seem a bit ridiculous at times, but Robin Weigert is always convincing as Abby. Consistently intense with intent, Weigert’s Abby is a woman on a mission. Passon thankfully never sexualizes Abby; instead, she develops Abby into a complex and thought-provoking character. Despite the tangled web of a secret life that Abby weaves, she remains empathetic. We feel for Abby, we want her to have a happy sex life; all the while, Abby wants to help make other women happy as well. This is precisely Passon’s true genius — her ability to portray prostitution as a social service. Abby is neither skanky nor sleazy, poor nor desperate; she is an intelligent, talented and successful woman who just so happens to rediscover her love of sex by way of prostitution. If she can teach other women how to have healthy and happy sex lives — and make some decent cash while doing so — why the heck not? What other choice does she have? Would it be better for her to never experience sexual pleasure with another woman?

 

We have watched plenty of films over the decades in which a husband strays from a sexless heterosexual marriage to enjoy sex with prostitutes. When a man does that to a woman that is bad, right? At least that is what the history of cinema has taught us. That is what I find most interesting about Concussion, because Abby seems to be in the right. So, why is Abby so different than her male predecessors in cinema? Is it because she is a woman? Is it because she is having sex with other women? Or, is it simply because Passon adequately justifies Abby’s actions?

 

 

Concussion screens at LAFF 2013: June 19, 7:30 p.m., Regal Cinemas; June 21, 4:30 p.m. Regal Cinemas. For more information: Concussion at LAFF 2013.

LAFF 2013: MY SISTER'S QUINCEANERA

Silas (Silas Garcia) in My Sister's Quinceanera.

Slow summer days

By Miranda Inganni

Set in a small town in Iowa, writer-director-producer Aaron Douglas Johnston's My Sister’s Quinceaneradetails the daily life of one Mexican-American family. Johnston uses the real-life Garcia family (non-professional actors) in this film that mixes fiction with reality.

Big brother Silas (Silas Garcia) is the de facto man of the house, but dreams of escaping the dreary life of his home town. Helping his single mom, Becky (Becky Garcia), with the cooking and care of his younger siblings, Silas is a considerate and compassionate older brother. The film focuses on his especially close relationship with younger sister, Samantha (Samantha Rae Garcia), as the whole family prepares for his sister Elizabeth’s (Elizabeth Agapito) big birthday.

While the movie is a work of fiction, the casting of the family makes it feel almost like a documentary told in a narrative format. Some could argue that the movie is a soft-spoken meditation, simply taking a glance at the Garcias as they go about their lives. But nothing really happens in the film. Silas wants to leave town and go to college, but one senses that this will never happen, and he and his buddy (Tanner McCulley) seem way too old to get into the teenage-like mischief they do around town. Samantha, while young and silly, is exceptionally bratty toward her older sister, who in turn, like many a moody teen, is completely self-absorbed.

Boring and trite, this is vulgar naturalism. Who cares for or about any of these people? They are not interesting enough to warrant our attention. Moreover, I would imagine that My Sister’s Quinceanera might make a lot of kids believe they should have movies made about them, too. It is not enough to just turn on cameras and record the banal.

As my "teachy" said, "Of course the director and writer is also the producer. You could not sell this script to somebody else."


My Sister's Quinceaneara screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival, June 18, 7:50 p.m., Regal Cinemas. For more information: MSQ at LAFF 2013.

 

 

LAFF 2013: CAPITAL

A scene from Capital.

You cannot bank on it

By Ed Rampell

Costa-Gavras, arguably the greatest living progressive filmmaker still shooting political pictures, is back with a new thriller about the banking industry, Capital. This behind-the-scenes expose of the banksters and their nefarious high finance manipulations and machinations is a fictional, highly entertaining counterpart to Charles Ferguson’s Oscar winning 2010 documentary, Inside Job, about Wall Street’s massive defrauding of the people -- at taxpayer expense. Capital is in French with some English, with Gabriel Byrne co-starring as an American-style banker seeking to impose U.S. policies on a European-based bank headed by Moroccan-born actor Gad Elmaleh, who has a penchant for quoting, of all people, Chairman Mao. “Let 1,000 flowers bloom,” and all that. Ethiopian supermodel Liya Kebede plays an elusive runway beauty -- the stuff that capitalist fantasies are made of.

Prior to the 8:00 p.m. June 17 screening of Capital Costa-Gavras will be interviewed by the screenwriter of the rightwing agitprop Zero Dark Thirty, which glorifies the CIA and justifies torture, as well as of the Iraq War movie The Hurt Locker. In 1969 Costa-Gavras’s classic Z -- about the assassination of Greece’s peace candidate and the overthrow of the government by the Greek colonels -- was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and won the Oscars for Best Foreign Film and Best Editing. Costa-Gavras went on to make many leftist films, such as 1972’s State of Siege, about South American urban guerrillas, and 1982’s Missing, with Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek, about the aftermath of the U.S.-backed coup against Chile’s democratically elected socialist President, Salvador Allende. Sparks may fly as the filmmakers at the opposite ends of the ideological spectrum encounter one another at the LA Film Festival extravaganza. “And in this corner…!”

In any case, the stylish, briskly paced Capital shows that at the age of 80, Costa-Gavras remains a master of political cinema and is at the top of his game.

“An Evening with Costa-Gavras,” followed by Capital, begins tonight, 8:00 p.m., June 17, Regal Cinemas.

 

 

 

LAFF 2013: ALL OF ME

A scene from All of Me.

The weight of the girls

By Miranda Inganni

Director-producer Alexandra Lescaze’s documentary film, All of Me, chronicles the trials and tribulations of a group of friends as they struggle with weight loss. But this is no small feat – the majority of the women in this film are morbidly obese.

Zsalynn, Judy and Dawn and the rest of the “Girls” rely on their Austin, Texas-based group of BBW, or Big Beautiful Women, for support and friendship. Most of the women have tried traditional diets, pills and other measures to reduce their sizes, yet to no avail. While some of the gals are comfortable with their size and appearance, they are all tired of the stigma and “fat shaming.” The obese women in All of Me want to find “normal” men to date and hopefully marry, only to end up with men who fetishize obese women. And, most importantly, the women want to live long, healthy lives. That is when some of them turn to surgery. Be it gastric bypass or gastric-band surgery, the ladies strive to lose hundreds of pounds. But there is no quick fix and surgery, when available as an option, is not a guarantee. With the failures and successes come some unexpected psychological ramifications. While some of the women may gain confidence as they lose weight, confidences are broken as the group’s numbers dwindle.

Over 200,000 Americans have weight loss surgery every year often at a great financial and psychological cost. All of Me does not try to tackle why so many Americans are overweight, nor does it delve into the mental anguish with which this group of women all seemingly struggle. While it touches on some of the ladies’ backgrounds on why they are obese, it mostly reports the weight loss surgeries that Judy and Dawn go through and Zsalynn’s effort to find the balance between what she wants and what is attainable. All of Me sensitively shines the light on one group of overweight women and how they try to adjust not only their bodies, but their self-images as well.


All of Me screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival, today, 4:40 p.m., Regal Cinemas. For more information: All of Me at LAFF 2013.

LAFF 2013: THE CRASH REEL

A scene from The Crash Reel.

Head games

By Don Simpson

Director Lucy Walker’s amazing documentary is studiously compiled from hundreds of hours of archival footage shot by snowboarder Kevin Pearce’s family and friends – luckily Pearce is from a generation that dutifully records anything and everything that they do and say. Walker also fully immersed herself into the Pearce family, recording incredibly intimate moments and conversations. Not only do they seem incredibly comfortable around Walker and her production crew, but they seem to be totally unaffected by the presence of the camera. This allows Walker to provide us with an unfiltered window into their hearts and souls; so, we are able to observe the Pearce family as they experience one of the most harrowing events that will probably ever happen to them. As they are put through the emotional wringer, we are too – especially those of us with little to no memory of Kevin Pearce’s recent past.

The Crash Reel is not just a documentary about a family that bonds together during a recovery process, but it also serves as a condemnation of extreme sports. Walker observes athletes who are addicted to high risk activities, who are willing to put their lives at stake in order to feel a rush of adrenaline. These athletes are revealed to be incredibly selfish, not thinking about the effect that their risky hobbies or careers may have on their families and friends. The blame does not all rest upon the athletes though; society is also to blame. Sports continue to become bigger, faster and more dangerous because the audience demands it.


The Crash Reel screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival: June 16, 4:30 p.m., Regal Cinemas; June 17, 7:10 p.m., Regal Cinemas. For more information: The Crash Reel at LAFF 2013

LAFF 2013: I'M SO EXCITED

A scene from I'm So Excited.

Flying over windmills

By John Esther

When a writer-director of Spain’s Pedro Almodóvar’s stature titles his film after a banal, albeit apropos, American pop song from the 1980s, you know he is aiming for his lowest common denominator.

The opening night film for Los Angeles Film Festival 2012, I’m So Excited commences with León (Antonio Banderas) and Jessica (Penelope Cruz) working on an airport runway. After a minor accident, León learns that Jessica is pregnant with their child. He is so excited he forgets his job and thus puts all the passengers on the plane in serious jeopardy.

While in flight 10,000 feet above terra firma, the plane suffers a malfunction and needs to make an emergency landing. As it searches for a possible landing spot it repeatedly flies in circles. The lower classes are knocked out by a concoction made by the airline stewardesses. Their fate will never be in their hands.

Meanwhile, the first class passengers – a “drug mule” (Miguel Ángel Silvestre), his comatose bride (Laya Martí), a professional assassin (José Luis Torrijo), a man with a string of mentally unstable girlfriends (Guillermo Toledo), a virgin psychic (Lola Dueñas) plus a few other kooky characters -- along with the hysterical flight crew respond to the dire situation with sex, drugs and The Pointer Sisters.

Filled with frank jokes, remarks and marks about sex, especially gay sex, there are some very funny moments, dialogue, etc., that makes I’m So Excited barely bearable – and a de-light-headed choice to open LAFF 2013. Yet the film has its share of very low moments, especially when some of the crew perform the titular song. Ouch.

I’m So Excited screens Opening Night at Los Angeles Film Festival 2013, June 13, 7 p.m., Regal Theaters. For more information: www.lafilmfest.com