All posts by Larry Christopher

Indie film directors, indie films

Frances Ha: Woody Allen For the New Generation?

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Frances Ha (2012)
Director: Noah Baumbach

Frances Ha, the latest film from director Noah Baumbach, whose earlier films include Kicking and Screaming, The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding and Greenberg, can be seen as a revisiting of territory made familiar by Woody Allen decades ago.

The fact that Frances Ha was shot in black and white and explores the lives of young and artsy New Yorkers makes the Woody Allen comparison inevitable. Yet this and other Baumbach films also show other influences, such as Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan and even perhaps Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise. The latter might seem a stretch, but in that iconic indie film from 1983, Jarmusch portrays aimless pre-hipsters in Brooklyn who, among other things, engage in cryptic conversations and have the tendency to take pointless journeys. Stranger Than Paradise was also a black and white film, and even has a character who wears the kind of hat common in today’s hipsters (who no doubt all saw that film).

None of this is meant to imply that Frances Ha is merely a derivative work or one that simply retreads familiar territory. Like Quentin Tarrantino (a very different sort of filmmaker overall), Baumbach has the gift of being able to present familiar themes in a manner that is completely refreshing and entertaining. Frances Ha is no exception. This film was co-written by Baumbach and star Greta Gerwig, who plays Frances.

It’s a little difficult to describe the plot of Frances Ha, as it’s mainly a series of scenes and montages. Some have identified it as a look at close female friendships, and how they can almost border on romance. At one point, Frances says to her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner), “We’re like an old lesbian couple that doesn’t have sex.” While the relationship between the two twenty-something women takes up a lot of screen time, the film is really broader in scope. It’s an exploration of a contemporary bohemian lifestyle that must come to terms with economic hardships.

Frances, unlike some of her friends and roommates, is struggling to support herself as a dancer. At one point she moves in with a pair of well-off kids who say things like, “We’re thinking of hiring a maid; it only costs $400 a month.” Yet, even though she has trouble paying her rent, she stubbornly refuses to take a receptionist job at the dance studio where she teaches part time because it’s not in line with her creative aspirations.

Frances Ha will annoy some people, because there is no effort to make the protagonist or her friends universally likable or accessible. In fact, if you are not young, hip, educated and/or urban, you may find these characters as alien as members of a tribe on a continent you’ve only seen on the Discovery Channel. In this manner, Baumbach follows in the footsteps of Woody Allen, whose Upper East Side elitist professionals were never meant to be representative of America at large.

I have thoroughly enjoyed all of Baumbach’s films, and Frances Ha is no exception. They are driven by characters who, while not always rational or likable, are complex enough to be believable. While some of the dialogue seems slightly over-the-top in its self-consciousness (you might catch a whiff of Portlandia here as well), some people actually do talk this way. Frances herself, however, does not come across as pretentious or overly hip; she is more the product of a certain milieu that compels certain ways of talking and thinking.

Unlike many other indie films that wallow in quirkiness, Frances Ha does not go overboard trying to convince you that its characters are adorable. If you end up liking Frances, its because you accept her as a person who somehow transcends stereotypes.

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    Documentary

    Radio Unnameable: The Singular Career of Bob Fass

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    Note: This review has recently been re-published on Devtome.

    Radio Unnameable (2012)
    Directors: Paul Lovelace, Jessica Wolfson

    This is a documentary about Bob Fass, an underground celebrity not widely known outside of certain circles. I must confess that his name was only vaguely familiar to me prior to seeing the film. This was a good thing in a way, as it allowed me to learn all about the subject from the ground up. Fass is the kind of character who, even if you’ve never heard of him, you have certainly heard of many people and events where he played a central role.

    The name Bob Fass will be familiar mainly to New Yorkers who tune their dial to the independent radio station, WBAI, which is owned by Pacifica Foundation. WBAI’s slogan, according to their website, is Free Speech Radio, and they have traditionally featured many controversial and offbeat programs, such a Democracy Now!

    Pacifica has had its share of controversy in recent years as it has undergone various changes in leadership and faced financial hardship. Currently, there are rumors that Pacifica is about to sell out (literally!) to corporate radio giant Clear Channel.

    Fass, whose program was called Radio Unnameable, was the creator of free form radio. As the name suggests, this meant that his program was a completely open-ended affair where guests and callers could discuss anything under the sun. These often ended up being radical and controversial topics, but they were just as often random and personal stories.

    Part of the uniqueness of Radio Unnameable was its time slot -the wee hours from midnight to 5 a.m. This fact alone tended to skew his listener base to the unconventional. There is something about the late night hours that makes people drop their usual filters.

    Fass was at the hub of many iconic countercultural events of the 1960s. Arlo Guthrie’s famous Alice’s Restaurant was introduced on Fass’s show in 1967. Other guests included Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Allen Ginsberg, Judy Collins and Abbie Hoffman.

    All of this and more is captured in this quite thorough documentary, which is sure to appeal to Fass’s fan base as well as those not yet familiar with him. Many of the events portrayed in Radio Unnameable are long forgotten by most people (those who knew about them in the first place). For example, Fass helped to organize a “Yip-in” at Grand Central Terminal which started off like an exuberant party but degenerated into police-instigated violence.

    Watching this, we are reminded that in the pre-Internet days, radio played a pivotal role in keeping people informed and connected. Parallels are drawn to Twitter, as several of the events portrayed are analogous to the type of flash mobs that now rely on social media for their momentum.

    The amazing thing about this man is that he began broadcasting in 1963 and is still at it today. After being thrown off the air for several years, he was reinstated by WBAI, albeit on a part time basis –the current WBAI schedule lists his show on Friday from 12 to 3 AM.

    The young documentarians Lovelace and Wolfson provide a healthy sense of perspective to Fass and his story. While they obviously admire him, they also don’t fall into the trap of relegating all of this to a bygone era. They are aware of how internet activists and the Occupy Movement, for example, use similar tactics. This places Fass in a contemporary context as well as an historic one, which is certainly where he deserves to be.

    For more information about this film, see: Radio Unnameable

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      Western

      Good For Nothing: Deadpan Western Spoof

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      Note: This review has been re-published on Devtome.

      Good For Nothing (2011)
      Directed by Mike Wallis

      Good For Nothing is an unusual Western -one that veers back and forth between seriousness and deadpan comedy. Judging by some of the reviews on Netflix, the comedy part went right over the heads of many viewers.

      I’m not sure how this was possible, as having a tough gunfighter with a case of erectile dysfunction would seem to be a clue that this movie isn’t exactly a straightforward Western. Perhaps it’s true that Americans have no sense of irony?

      Good For Nothing was filmed in New Zealand, though many of the scenes looked like they could have been from Colorado or Wyoming. It stars Cohen Holloway as the ruthless, steely eyed outlaw whose name is never mentioned –obviously a reference to Clint Eastwood films such as High Plains Drifter (Holloway does a pretty decent Eastwood impression with his perpetual squint as well).

      Inge Rademeyer plays Isabella, a prim and proper Englishwoman who arrives in the wild west to visit an uncle’s ranch. No sooner does she set foot in a saloon than a gunfight erupts and she is abducted by the savage and mostly silent gunfighter.

      The rest of the film revisits the usual cliches of Westerns. When the man kills a sheriff, a posse of misfits sets out to kill him. The towns in Good For Nothing are like ones you’ve seen a hundred times before (assuming you’ve seen that many Westerns, that is), only more so. Everyone is staggering around drunk, firing a gun or glaring menacingly around the room.

      The unlikely couple never exactly bond, but their relationship turns somewhat symbiotic. At some point, Isabella recognizes that she has nowhere to run, and the posse is out to kill her as well as the outlaw. While on the run, he seeks a cure for his embarrassing condition, first from a Chinese doctor and then from an Indian medicine man with less than stellar results.

      Good For Nothing was not created to be a crowd pleaser. It’s too slow paced to satisfy action fans. The humor is extremely dry and subtle — one exception is a scene where two inept gunfighters fire and miss at each other until one is finally killed. It is definitely not, however, Blazing Saddles.

      The panoramic scenes of the wide open country and the occasionally graphic violence prevent it from being an out and out comedy. It also isn’t going to win any points for political correctness. The casually brutal way that the man treats his captive for most of the film is likely to offend many viewers, especially since he is portrayed as at least borderline sympathetic by the end.

      Overall, Good For Nothing is a well acted, often interesting and offbeat but ultimately not very memorable entry in an ever popular genre.

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        Film Festivals

        Tribeca Film Festival 2013

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        The Tribeca Film Festival, which began in 2002, is running from April 17-28 in 2013. This year, as usual, there is a wide assortment of offerings, including a few fascinating documentaries.

        There are now so many film festivals that it’s hard to keep up with them all, but Tribeca films a definite need. While most film festivals are in small towns that come alive strictly during the film festival, this one is right in the heart of New York City.

        So what’s on the agenda this year? Here are just a few of the selections:

        The Motivation, a documentary by Adam Bhala Lough on the world of street skating.

        Lenny Cooke, directed by Josh and Benny Safdie, is a documentary about a young basketball player who doesn’t make it into the NBA.

        Adult World -directed by Scott Coffey, is about a poet who works in a sex shop.

        The Acrobat, directed by Gerardo Herrero, is a Spanish documentary that looks at the phenomenon of suicide.

        AB, directed by Daniel Klein, is about a man who has an accident in a remote area in the middle of winter.

        Lil Bub & Friendz, directed by Juliette Eisner and Andy Capper, is a documentary that focuses on celebrity cats on the internet.

        Mistaken For Strangers -directed by Tom Berninger, follows the rock group The National on a big tour.

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          indie comedies, indie films

          The Comedy: Parodying Hipsters

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          The Comedy (2012)
          Directed by Rick Alverson

          The Comedy, the ironic title to a relentlessly ironic film, may appeal to fans of Borat. Yet this film goes beyond the mockumentary style of that film, asking us to believe that a series of sketches is a depiction of real life. The Comedy is an example of how a movie can be clever and well acted and still be fundamentally lacking in authenticity.

          The antihero of the movie is a slacker/hipster named Swanson (Tim Heidecker), a bearded, pot-bellied character whose entire life is devoted to being obnoxious. He lives on a houseboat and cavorts with a group of male friends who share his taste for psychological pranks.

          In the opening scene, we are privy to a bacchanal where these guys drunkenly dance around naked and grope at each other simulating sexual acts. Aside from the fact they are all in their mid-30s or older, the scene could have been shot at a frat party.

          The rest of the movie follows these decidedly uncharming guys around as they engage in non-violent but not quite harmless pranks at the expense of taxi drivers, gardeners and other hapless victims (at least as they are portrayed here).

          The underlying premise of The Comedy, to the extent that it can be said to have one, is that Swanson and his friends are wealthy or at least relatively affluent. They don’t have to work at 9-5 jobs, though Swanson takes on a dishwashing job for no apparent reason (except to harass his co-workers, of course).

          The Comedy can be seen as an expose of the excesses of hipster culture. Yet I’m not sure that the subculture depicted here actually exists. They are perhaps meant to be a 21st Century version of the ne’er do well playboys or cads of much older films. Yet those type of characters took great pride in their personal appearance and cultivated a charming, debonaire aura. Even today’s hipsters usually try to look, well, hip. Swanson and his crew flaunt their lack of style and personal hygiene.

          These are more like refugees from the 1978 film Animal House -if those characters aged but didn’t mature and had enough disposable income to avoid regular employment. They don’t seem to have the usual hipster fetishes for art openings, gourmet foods, alternative rock or the other activities you might see on Portlandia (if you’re not lucky/unlucky enough to live near real hipsters). They do, however, live in a state of perpetual irony -mocking everything and everyone at all times, including each other.

          What I found most annoying about The Comedy is that many of the scenes simply didn’t ring true. At least in a scenario like the show Punk’d (and its predecessor Candid Camera), or Borat, it’s understood that we are watching scenes that are set up for an audience.

          As drama or comedy, scenes require a certain sense of truth if they are to be accepted. The Comedy doesn’t really deliver on this count. For example, we watch as Swanson, a soft looking white guy, goes into a bar full of black men and proceeds to fearlessly make racially charged comments to everyone in the room. How likely is this?

          Similarly, women seem to find Swanson attractive no matter how unappealingly he behaves. At his dishwashing job, he begins his seduction of a waitress by making blatantly offensive comments to her. This would more likely lead to his immediately losing his job than to her ultimately falling for his (non-existent) charms and eventually sleeping with him.

          If The Comedy is saying anything at all (a dubious proposition), it’s that this is what you get when you take hipsterism too far. A bunch of completely unlikable, borderline sociopaths who go through life in a soulless haze of perpetual irony.

          Yet it doesn’t even really say this much. It hedges, making Swanson borderline human towards the end -for no apparent reason, except because it’s a rule of cinema (even indie cinema, it seems) that characters are supposed to change over the course of the 90 or so minutes we get to spend with them.

          Swanson and his friends are never established as bona fide people with motivations that make sense. Perhaps we could believe that one person, such as Swanson, might have a personality disorder that leads him to act as he does. But a whole cadre of friends who share these characteristics? Who are they and how did they get this way? Who supports their idle lifestyle? Swanson has a wealthy father who is about to die, but the others have no back story whatsoever.

          The Comedy is, despite its basic emptiness, funny at times, in a similar way that a mindless action movie can provide moments of excitement. Yet it ultimately leads nowhere. Though, I suppose, that might be the whole point.


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            Bindlestiffs: Using the Homeless as Props

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            Bindlestiffs (2012)
            Director/Writer: Andrew Edison
            Starring John Karna, Luke Loftin, Andrew Edison

            The title of this film comes from an old word meaning hobo. The main distinction of this film is that it was “presented” by Kevin Smith. Other than this, it’s an extremely low budget and rather amateurish indie film that is part comedy, part drama and part random weirdness.

            As someone who mainly watches indie films, often obscure ones, I am usually fairly tolerant of offbeat stories without a linear plot. Nor am I a reviewer who is a stickler for political correctness. This one, however, left a bad taste in my mouth, mainly for the way it portrays a homeless person as a faceless, purely symbolic entity who exists solely as a prop in the lives of a group of suburban teens.

            Bindlestiffs is about three teenagers (Karna, Loftin and writer/director Edison) who are suspended from high school when they protest the banning of The Catcher in the Rye. This book has long been a symbol of teenage angst and rebellion and, more recently, associated with mass murderers (a fact that becomes relevant to the story).

            The three friends embark on a trip to the big city where they intend to experience as much as possible, sex included of course. This is extremely familiar movie territory, but Bindlestiffs is no typical Hollywood teen movie. Unfortunately, it ends up being even more inane and less coherent than the average entry in this genre.

            Things get really weird when one of the kids has a sexual encounter with a homeless woman, who then apparently dies. The three drag her body around but before they can dispose of it, she comes back to life. Yet she has no lines, and we never see her face -only a tangled mess of gray hair. For the rest of the film, they carry and drive her around as though she was a mannequin. Even if you do find this amusing, the joke would start to wear thin after an hour or so of this.

            There are other scenes involving a hooker and one of the teens smoking crack. Yet none of it seems real. It’s more like a series of disjointed fantasy sequences, dreamed up by a group of sheltered teens with little experience beyond the suburbs.

            Another ill formed character is the high school security guard, who plays the stereotype gung ho military type. He is actually funny at first, but gradually devolves into a silly parody. He comes up with a paranoid idea that the kids are planning a school shooting. This could have led to some dark humor, but this is a thread that gets forgotten as the film reaches its pointless conclusion.

            I seldom actively dislike low budget indie films, but this one really annoyed me for a few reasons. The dehumanizing of the “hobo” was one factor, and then there were the constant references to The Catcher in the Rye -as if merely mentioning this book could somehow prop up the film and give it depth and meaning.

            If you want lightweight teenage rebellion, stick with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which may not be profound but is at least entertaining.

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              indie comedies, indie films, Quirky comedies

              Safety Not Guaranteed -Indie Style Time Travel

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              Note: an edited version of this review has recently been published on Devtome.

              Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)
              Director: Colin Trevorrow
              Writer: Derek Connolly
              Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass, Jake Johnson, Karan Soni

              Safety Not Guaranteed is the latest in a series of highly original and entertaining indie films by producers Jay and Mark Duplass (the latter also stars in this one). Some of their previous efforts include The Puffy Chair and Jeff Who Lives at Home.

              All of these are unmistakably indie films, unlike many contemporary movies (say, by Quentin Tarantino or the more recent Steven Soderbergh movies) that lurk on the increasingly murky line that divides indie from mainstream. No one could confuse Safety Not Guaranteed, for instance, with a Hollywood romantic comedy, even though it has some of the same elements.

              This is what makes a film like this such a pleasure to see. If you’ve watched enough movies over the years, your mind has become so accustomed to movie cliches that you have certain expectations. In a film such as this, however, cliches are not so much turned on their heads as gently transmuted into something less definable yet infinitely more satisfying.

              The hero (or perhaps antihero) of Safety Not Guaranteed is Kevin (Duplass), a possibly delusional inventor who claims to have discovered the secret to time travel. Kevin, who lives in a small town in Washington, places an unusual ad in the classifieds -he’s looking for a time travel partner whose “safety is not guaranteed.”

              He is pursued by a team of journalists desperate for an offbeat and funny story. When one of them, a young intern named Darius (Plaza) becomes at first fascinated and then attracted to Kevin, things get quite complicated. A pair of government types are also following him around.

              Despite the interesting story, this is primarily a character driven film. In a conventional movie (or novel, for that matter), it’s a rule that the leading characters must develop or evolve in some way. This usually results in some hackneyed event where a lesson is dutifully learnt. Here, the characters don’t develop as much as reveal increasing layers of complexity.

              Is Kevin a delusional loser with paranoid tendencies? You might be tempted to conclude this, but then you also see that he’s sensitive, sincere and brilliant. Is Darius’ boss (Johnson) a superficial and cynical manipulator? Yes, but he also reveals a whole different side.

              Safety Not Guaranteed does have a geeky, sci fi side to it, but that is secondary to the characters, dialogue and relationships. Yet the time travel element remains significant throughout, so the film has some appeal for fans of this genre -as long as you’re not expecting aliens, spaceships or laser shootouts.

              To recite the plot of Safety Not Guaranteed would make it sound like a typical cute, quirky indie film. Like the characters I just described, this film does fall loosely into that category, but it also transcends it by being truly moving and original.


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                indie comedies, movie reviews

                About Fifty: Midlife Crisis and Lots of Golf

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                About Fifty (2011)
                Directed by Thomas Johnston

                About Fifty covers familiar cinematic territory -middle-aged guys having a midlife crisis and trying to recapture their youth. In this case, the pair are recently separated Adam (Martin Grey) and longtime bachelor Jon (Drew Pillsbury).

                Although this film is categorized as a comedy on Netflix (it received little attention elsewhere), it is more of a drama. In fact, a lot of it is quite depressing. It is also full of cliches of this genre. The men deal with prostate exams, senile parents, fight off desperate cougar-type women in a bar, obsess about golf scores and experience career and marriage malaise.

                For About Fifty to have really worked, it would have had to go in one of two directions. Either a goofy comedy or a drama that breaks new ground. Instead it waffles between mild comedy and cliched melodrama.

                I should also confess having a prejudice against movies where golf takes up more than a few seconds of screen time. In About Fifty, this incredibly dull sport dominates at least three scenes.

                About Fifty on IMDB

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                  indie films

                  Guns, Girls and Gambling: Pulp Fiction Redux

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                  Guns, Girls and Gambling (2011)
                  Directed by Michael Winnick

                  After the success of Pulp Fiction, there was a whole slew of Tarantino inspired spin-offs, similar to the endless parade of mafia flicks that followed The Godfather in the 1970s. Most of these were quite forgettable, but some were okay. While this trend faded away as even Quentin Tarantino moved in other directions, it’s back with a vengeance in Guns, Girls and Gambling.

                  From the opening sequence to the complex shifts in time, this film tries its best, with modest success, to be a present day Pulp Fiction. Even the cast, which includes Christian Slater and Gary Oldman is reminiscent of early Tarantino (both were in True Romance which QT wrote but did not direct).

                  The film also borrows from another 90s Tarantinoesque film, The Usual Suspects, most famous for its line, “Who is Keyser Soze?” One of the characters in Guns, Girls and Gambling turns out to be a similar mastermind of a whole string of unlikely events.

                  A movie that is derivative in so many ways is not destined for greatness, but Guns, Girls and Gambling still manages to be mostly entertaining. At least it doesn’t take itself at all seriously. I enjoyed it despite recognizing all the gimmicks that were unfolding scene after scene.

                  The plot is way too complex to summarize coherently, but it’s basically about a group of Elvis impersonators who compete (often violently) to find a Native American mask that was stolen from a casino. Christian Slater plays a man known as John Smith who gets beaten up in practically every scene.

                  The movie introduces so many freaky characters that it’s almost a parody of a Tarantino film. Considering that Tarantino’s work itself is blatantly derivative, by the time you start parodying him you’re on rather thin ice creatively speaking. It’s kind of like a painter copying Andy Warhol.

                  The most absurd character is probably a tall blond assassin who looks like a model. She walks around wearing two holstered guns and quotes Edgar Allen Poe before blowing her victims away. Remember the Daryl Hannah character in Kill Bill?

                  If you’re bored and a fan of Tarantino circa 1990s, you will probably enjoy Guns, Girls and Gambling despite your better judgement. Unlike Pulp Fiction, however, which fans can watch over and over again, watching this one more than once would be rather tedious.


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                    Red State -Sex, Religion and Politics

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                    Red State (2011) -Written and Directed by Kevin Smith

                    As the credits roll at the end of Red State, the film is divided into 3 sections -“Sex,” “Religion” and “Politics.” Viewers should be warned that this film takes a rather dim view of all three, at least as they are practiced in the 21st Century.

                    Red State is a film that’s hard to categorize because it mixes genres in a way that is alternately confusing and thought provoking. It starts out with a typical Texas Chainsaw Massacre type setup, with a bunch of teenagers heading out to a remote rural location where mayhem inevitably waits.

                    Kevin Smith’s film, however, is not a simple slasher film. Far from it. It is also about religious fanaticism and government cover-ups. Ultimately, this leads to a movie that is not only hard to pigeonhole, but one where it’s hard to sympathize with anyone. The teenagers are the least loathsome of the lot. They are the usual dumb but basically harmless group -in this case, answering an internet ad for sex with an anonymous woman. This turns out to be a trap, however, as they end up being held prisoner at a compound run by right-wing Christian fanatics.

                    Red State references several actual people and movements. The religious group is clearly meant to evoke the Westboro Baptist Church, which is militantly anti-gay. This real group and its leader Fred Phelps is mentioned in the film to acknowledge this, though the group in the movie is even crazier.

                    Later, as federal agents surround the compound, we are reminded of Waco and the rather compelling conspiracy theories around that event (where the government killed everyone in the compound run by cult leader David Koresh). Still another reference that was thrown in was in the name of the reverend who runs the church -Cooper. William Cooper was an actual militia leader who was killed by the government in 2001. I suppose the name could have been chosen randomly by Kevin Smith, but I doubt it.

                    Red State does raise some legitimate issues about religion, cults and the abuse of government power. Michael Parks as Cooper does a good job at playing a fanatic who is both wild-eyed and soft spoken. His followers nod their heads mindlessly as he works them into a murderous rage. The scene where the teenagers are about to be killed for their attempted sins is an effective illustration of how blind fanaticism can lead to heinous actions.

                    The government is scarcely any better in its response. The local sheriff turns out to be a closet gay who is afraid to expose Cooper for fear that he will be outed. When the ATF gets involved, it becomes clear that the only thing that matters is that nothing unseemly is publicly reported -even if that means innocent people (including children) have to die. Sadly, recent history shows that all of this is completely plausible.

                    Red State is a violent, chaotic hybrid of a movie that is worth seeing if you approach it with an open mind and don’t expect it to follow a straight line.

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