Birdemic: Shock and Terror (Saturday, July 31, 2010) (86)

Birdemic is one of the worst movies ever made. It might be the worst movie I've ever seen in my life. Everything about it is terrible from the story and the script, to the acting, the editing, the sound and the special effects. There is no reason in the world to watch this film, and yet it was one of the most enjoyable movie-watching experiences I can remember in a long time.

In a recent piece in Harper's, Tom Bissell wrote about the film The Room as what he called a "post-camp cult film." That's the best description of Birdemic I can find. "It's so bad that it's good" is the general force at work here. Bissell beautifully explains the film as the "movie that an alien who has never seen a movie might make after having had movies thoroughly explained to him."

To describe the story that director James Nguyen wrote and directed is sorta silly, but I feel formally obliged to do it here. Rod works for an Internet sales company and one day bumps into hottie Nathalie in a diner at lunch. He asks her out and she says yes. They go out and fall in love.

At some point, totally unrelated to the romance, a flock of killer eagles begins attacking people in the Bay Area and killing them. Rod and Nathalie have to escape the terror from above and kill as many of the birds as they can in the process. Not to ruin anything (not that it matters if you know), but the birds ultimately give up and fly away for no reason. There's really no shock or terror in this at all.

The film is basically a re-hash of M. Night Shyamalan's terrible work from 2008, The Happening. In that, there was something weird where nature was killing people with wind and trees. In this, it seems nature is mad a humans for being bad to the environment, so it sends mad eagles to get the people. (By the way, if there was ever evidence that Shyamalan was a terrible writer and director it is that this movie - which is totally ridiculous - borrows the entire story, including small details, and it comes out totally silly.)

It it hard to explain how terrible every aspect of this film is. Aside from the silly story, every other technical aspect of the film is bad. The acting is beyond wooden (I'm guessing these are non-actors and maybe just Nguyen's friends), the editing is terrible, frequently cutting scenes off before they are finished. The sound is even horrible, cutting in an out as actors are speaking and leaving gaps of silence between visual cuts.

Maybe what makes the film so deliciously horrible is the special effect birds we see throughout the film. They look like birds you might have seen on a computer screen saver from around 1989. They don't move much and seem to hover in the air flapping their wings slowly, like giant, slow humming birds. Some of them are able to hang in the air without moving their wings, as if they were soaring, but also remain still as they do it. They are totally ridiculous and over-the-top.

It seems that this film, which was released in New York this past March, is already a cult hit. I saw it at a midnight screening where the audience was there to see something horrible and knew what they were getting (some of them might have seen it before, as they seemed to be laughing in advance of terrible things happening).

I'm not sure this would play well watching soberly in one's home. It's a bit like a really bad Rocky Horror Picture Show (there's even an amazing musical scene in a bar with a guy singing solo - though he apparently has invisible back-up singers and band). It looks like Nguyen is already working on a sequel to this film (The Resurrection). I look forward to that.

Stars: 0 of 4 (or alternatively "A Billion Stars")

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (Tuesday, July 27, 2010) (85)

The opening sequence of The Radiant Child shows a few title cards where director Tamra Davis explains how the film got started. She writes that she was a friend of Jean-Michel Basquiat in the early- and mid-1980s, and interviewed him in 1986. After the interview she put the footage aside for awhile not knowing what to do with it. When he died of a drug overdose in 1988, she decided to put the interview away and not use it. Recently she came back to the footage deciding she could do something with it now.

In this introduction, Davis leads us to believe that this film would be based on her interview with Basquiat, maybe leading us to new insights from the never-before-seen reels. What we get though is really nothing of the sort; this is a pure bio-doc, and a very good one at that. Through interviews with contemporaries, ex-girlfriends, art critics, downtown scenesters and friends, not to mention the 1986 interview, we see a very thorough and clear picture of this brilliant, troubled artist.

I am interested by the fact that in all the years I studied art history and have admired Basquiat's work - and felt very viscerally affected by it - I have always felt the need to "understand" it better. The mystery in the layers and layers of paint, images and text always bemused me; I wanted to get to a deeper level with the works, always feeling left somewhat on the outside. This film, in explaining who he was and how he worked, showed me that there is no real "deeper" understanding of this work. His work is almost purely emotional with touch points of (sometimes obscure) cultural literacy and identity peppered throughout.

At one point in the interview he speaks about how when he goes to paint, he turns on the television "for source material". This is totally revelatory to me. What might seem like a trite or cute line by a young artist working today, totally encapsulates how I would understand his work now. Yes, there are many levels to his work, but like with a television, there's a lot of stuff that is there that you don't need to worry about. His work is a cypher for the cultural world.

Davies employs a great soundtrack in the film, much of it being the artists and musicians who were in the same downtown scene that Basquiat was in (Blondie, the Velvet Underground), some being music of the era that might not have been downtown per se (early hip hop from the Bronx), and lots of be-bop, which Basquiat listened to constantly. The use of the bop here really underlines how much his paintings have in common with that style. That Charlie Parker or Dizzie Gillespie could improvise and chop up standards into smaller interesting bits is very similar to the technical and aesthetic qualities of Basquiat's work.

The film is really wonderfully directed. It moves along very smoothly and seems to tell his whole life story, getting into his psychology relating to his complicated relationship with his parents, showing how he came on the scene with tons of talent and no access and became a millionaire looking to become friends with the cool kids (Andy Warhol). Davis cuts the film beautifully, especially the montages showing his paintings and still photographs of him working in the studio.

I don't know why she started the film with this suggestion that it would use her '86 interview so much, because we really only get about 10 or 15 minutes of it at most (and most of it is not very interesting as he's clearly rolling on heroin during it). This documentary really is a great work of biography and is illuminating, even for an art lover like myself.

Stars: 3 of 4

Mugabe and the White African (Saturday, July 24, 2010) (84)

The White African in this film is Mike Campbell, a farmer in Zimbabwe who grows mango on his large plot of land. He is fighting to keep his farm and trying to withstand the attacks and threats from local thugs who have been encouraged by the government to kick him and his family out. Campbell is fighting Mugabe in court in order to keep his land from seizure.


As part of Robert Mugabe's land redistribution program that began several years ago, white farmers are being rushed off their land in Zimbabwe so it can ostensibly be given to the poor peasants who live in the area. In actual fact, the white farmers are being beaten and terrorized in order to get them off their land. Once gone, their land ends up in the hands of local ministers, Mugabe supporters, judges, members of parliament and their families and associates. Because these people are not farmers, but just corrupt bureaucrats, they don't know how to grow anything on the land, further killing jobs in the already miserable economy.


There are actually two white Africans in the story. The other is Campbell's son-in-law, Ben Freeth, an equally tough young man who doesn't see how Mugabe's plans are fair or good in the slightest. Mike and Ben travel several times to Windhoek, Namibia for their trial at the Southern African Development Community's high court. Each time they go there, the Zimbabwean government postpones the case, and ultimately walks out of the court without presenting their side.


It is clear that Mugabe's land plan is illegal and racially bigoted and that if he wanted the white farmers out of his country he could have gone about it in a less violent and destructive way. It is also clear that Mugabe does not have a legal leg to stand on and that he cannot just void the land sales to the whites from years before merely on a whim.


The film is rather simplistic, however and somewhat disappointing. It relies on our emotional instincts, rather than explaining things to us with historical facts. It is much easier to show how scary the armed thugs are who constantly show up on Mike's farm, but it doesn't really explain why these particular guys are there. Throughout the film, I constantly wanted more information and more detail, and what I always got was more emotional heart-twisting.


For instance, Mike's lawyers explain that he bought the farm "after independence" (by which I gather they mean after 1965), though they do punt on the question of who he bought the farm from. If he bought the farm from another white person, it's not unreasonable to see that the blacks in the area might be upset by that. What we do see a lot is the bloody aftermath of white farmers getting beaten up by gangs of thugs. Of course this translates to us -but it is a rather cheap way of telling the story.


I don't mean to take the side of the thugs at all, but some more analysis of the situation would have been nice. Clearly the fact that Mike is providing jobs to hundreds of locals wheres the thugs who would take his farm would not is a compelling reason by itself to keep him around (aside from the human rights issues involved).


This is a good movie, but not a great movie. It does generally tell an effective and compelling chronological story. I just wanted a bit more here that I didn't get.


Stars: 2 of 4

Salt (Saturday, July 24, 2010) (83)

Salt is a totally ridiculous, recycled and dumb summer action blockbuster. There is absolutely nothing fresh about this film- I've seen it a hundred times before.


Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is a CIA agent who one day interviews an ex-KGB general who says that she herself is a Russian sleeper agent who is going to kill the Russian president the next day in New York. Surprise, surprise, she escapes her D.C. office and runs up to New York by Bolt Bus (I'm not kidding... I wonder if she used the free wi-fi on board). There she seems to kill the Russian president and triggers a series of events that nearly lead to nuclear war (omigod - yes! Nuclear was with Russia is totally something that is going to happen tomorrow).


Her boss and main buddy in the CIA is Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) who doesn't believe she is a Russian spy and tries to defend her to all their spy buddies. At some point he has no choice but to admit that she probably is a spook, but then she gets away again and gets into the White House for a meeting with the President because she's dressed like a drag king (again- I'm serious). Now the question is will she start the nuclear war, will she kill the Prez or will she stay loyal to the United States.


It seems to me the only reason you would cast Jolie is because she's hot and gets you that vavavavoom t&a scene where she strips off her clothes or gets nekkid with some hot foreign dude. But for no reason, there is no sex to speak of in this whole film. And the film comes in at under 100 minutes, so it's not like they had to cut the sex scenes. I don't get that. Maybe director Phillip Noyce and writer Kurt Wimmer thought that would have been too cliche to put in. Instead they went with a movie about nuclear war with the Russians... in 2010.


The writing and direction in this film is so terrible it's surprising it was released at all. At one point when there is a gunman shooting at people in the White House (because, of course, you can attack the President inside the White House) a short bald man turns to the assailant and says, "don't kill me, I'm just the National Security Advisor." Really?! That passes for good dialogue in Hollywood these days? That's a joke of a parody of action movie dialogue. If you were making a movie making fun of dumb action movies, that line might be too silly to include.


Beside this, the action scenes are terribly done and totally unbelievable. For a moment I'll forget that one of the big action scenes takes place inside the White House where the secret service agents around the President are basically stuffed suits, no better at fighting than ninja movie bad guys (one karate chop to the neck and they out cold). One of the big chases is in New York, after Salt has apparently killed the Russian president and after she escaped the CIA in D.C. the day before. The NYPD (why they're involved is beyond me) take her in a police cruiser across the 59th Street Bridge for some unknown reason - but then get caught in traffic on the bridge, giving our heroine enough time to break some windows and escape. Again - really?! That would happen? That's even hard to believe in the world of dumb action flicks.


This film gave me nothing. The story is totally unoriginal with a few requisite dumb twists that are not all that surprising. The writing is terrible overall and the directing is laughable at best and horrible at worst. Who gives a crap about the acting? - it was lukewarm throughout (though why Schreiber has a southern accent in the film is bizarre and his execution is horrible). There is no reason to see this movie. It's not even stupid summer fun. It's terrible.


Stars: 0 of 4

Life During Wartime (Friday, July 23, 2010) (82)

This film is a follow-up to Todd Solondz's 1998 piece Happiness. I loved Happiness. I think it's fresh, hysterical and biting. This film has none of the power of the first and just feels like more stuff that was not good enough to make it into the earlier work. It is basically totally not funny and most of the jokes just come out as dull lines you'd say to somebody to gross them out.


Trish (Allison Janney), now-ex-wife of pedophile Bill Maplewood (Ciaran Hinds), is raising their three kids in Florida. Trish's loser sister, Joy (Shirley Henderson), is still not having any luck with men. Apparently she married Allan (who was played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the last one, but is now Michael K. Williams - Omar from The Wire), though she wishes she married Andy (Jon Lovitz in the last, but Paul Reubens in this). Fancy sister Helen (Ally Sheedy) lives in a world of money, sex and coldness, and doesn't really have her stuff together either. All the characters deal with how to move on from their painful pasts and have happy futures.


In one scene, Trish comes back from a date and talks to her 12-year-old son Timmy about how great she feels and how when the guy touched her arm "it made [her] wet". He then asks, "are you still wet, mommy?" This is totally not funny and overdone. It has has the general cadence of Happiness, with none of the elegance. (I am reminded of the scene when Bill talks to his son Billy about his sick obsessions and his son asks him, "did you ever fuck me in the ass, dad?" and he answers, "No, with you son, I just masturbated.") The dialogue in this film mostly feels like a lines for cheap laughs, but nothing more interesting.


The film is not really a satire - because it doesn't really take aim at anything in particular. So what that everyone has pain and everyone is trying to deal with it? That is not really a jokey thing to laugh at - it's just a state of life. Besides, these people deal with their pain by ignoring it - by forgetting it generally. Undermining the whole point of the film. It's not about people struggling with forgiving or forgetting - it's about people who have forgotten pretending they still have an internal struggle... which they don't have at all.


Every scene seems to take five minutes longer than it should. Sometimes actors talk back and forth with one another and you forget what they're talking about because it's so dull and unimportant. The writing is really bad throughout.


I'm sure it's hard to cast actors in roles that the audience identifies with other actors, but I still feel like the actors here are just not as good - or not as good in their roles - as the actors in Happiness. Dylan Baker is much more sympathetic than Ciaran Hinds as Bill - and that is an interesting element in the first film (that you like Bill even though he's a monster). Jane Adams will always be Joy for me (in basically anything she does), so Shirley Henderson really doesn't have a shot here.


Mostly I feel that this film is just extra stuff that was left out of Happiness, for good reason, and cut together here to try to *say something*. What it says, though, is not really that interesting and doesn't make me really think more about the human condition or anything the way good satire can do well. It's just a bunch of bad jokes with no particular narrative.


Stars: .5 of 4

Farewell (Friday, July 23, 2010) (81)

Farewell was the codename the French intelligence service gave to a Frenchman living in Moscow in the early 1980s. This guy made contact with a disillusioned KGB general (Gregoriev)who felt that his country was headed in the wrong direction. Gregoriev began giving Farewell documents about the KGB spy apparatus in the West, who in turn passed them on the the CIA. At some point it became clear that Farewell and Gregoriev and their families were in some amount of danger. As an electrical engineer by trade, Farewell was never trained in proper protocols of espionage, so he made several mistakes.

I generally think that French filmmakers don't make good Hollywood-style action films and this doesn't do much to change my mind about that feeling. It is interesting that it's based on a true story (something that I had never heard of), but it is rather dull and slow-moving, as if it was a typical French drama.

Gregoriev is played by the great Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica. I know that he has acted before in things I've seen, but I don't think he's ever had such a big role. I think he's great. He's totally believable as a Russian communist who did believe in the Bolshevik dream, but now sees how repressive and counterproductive the Soviet regime is. He drinks, he screws, he has a loving family and adores his thoroughly modern teenage son. For me, Kusturica is one of the best things about the film. He lights up the screen and is a total natural (I hope he continues to act more).

The story is rather typical, even if it is real. There's not all that much intrigue here. OK - so it's a spy movie, that there are people following you and tapping your phone is totally typical, not specifically interesting.

Director and writer/adapter Christian Carion does a good job with the material (the film is totally harmless and good), but doesn't stretch very much. I think Farewell and Gregoriev might have been super important people in world history, but I never really see here how what they did is more important than any other spies in the world. I am told throughout the film that what they did was very impactful, but I never get a real visceral sense of this. I trust what I am told, but I wish I could have *see* it specifically.

Stars: 2 of 4

Around a Small Mountain (Thursday, July 22, 2010) (80)

I have written before about how much I've liked some of the new work by great French New Wave directors. That Agnes Varda, Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette are still working in their 70s and 80 is amazing by itself. Around a Small Mountain, sadly is not a wonderful film and suggests to me that Rivette might be on the way to losing his chops. It's wildly elliptical, with such a dull story that even if the narrative was clearer, it wouldn't even be that interesting.

One day Jane Birkin, Kate, is stuck on the side of the road with her SUV not running. A rich Italian man, Vittorio, pulls his Porsche up next to her and silently fixes her engine. He then drives off without any comment. She is pulling a circus tent as she works for a small troupe of clowns, acrobats and strongmen that plays through the the South of France. The Italian falls in with the circus, befriending the players in an effort to win Kate's heart.

Throughout the film, Rivette cuts several times to weird Brechtian sequences where the actors speak directly to us in the audience or have these weird mini-plays (on a stage with dramatic lighting) explaining background secondary stories. All of these seem like a bit much, as the whole film is so small, a good percentage of it becomes these meta-stories. They just didn't work for me.

I guess the story is rather sweet, if totally banal. The Italian man is rather lost in life, we have to imagine (though we find out almost nothing about him, really), and he feels safe and at home in the circus with other lost souls. I think my main objection is that the story never really develops very much. None of the characters grow or change and the fact that the story focuses on these particular scenes and days comes off as rather random. There is no real sense of forward movement or any kind of inertia.

It is clear that Rivette is a master. The Brechtian bits alone are daring and interesting (and I give all sorts of credit to any filmmaker who breaks rules). I just wanted a bit more. More of a story, more analysis of the characters, more of a conclusion. The film sorta ends with a silly open question that doesn't really go anywhere and this is frustrating more than thought-provoking.

Stars: 1.5 of 4