God Bless America

Directed, written by Bobcat Goldthwait

With: Joel Murray, Tara Lynne Barr, Melinda Page Hamilton, and Mackenzie Brooke Smith


"God Bless America" takes on a wide spectrum of what's wrong with the U.S. of A. today:
bottom-feeding reality TV, vapid celebrity culture, hateful political commentators spreading disinformation, degenerating civility and other symptoms of what one character calls "a mighty empire starting to collapse."

But while it starts out well, Bobcat Goldthwait's black comedy struggles to maintain focus as it turns into a road trip of diminishing rewards in satirical and narrative terms. 
 
Forty-five-year-old Syracuse resident Frank (Joel Murray) is depressed, and no wonder: He's an insomniac and suffers from migraines; his ex-wife (Melinda Page Hamilton) is about to get happily remarried; and their only child, Ava (Mackenzie Brooke Smith), is a monster brat who refuses to see him.

His insufferable younger neighbors keep up a "constant cacophony of stupidity" heard
through thin walls, their endlessly squalling baby adding to the din. Pic starts amusingly with sleepless Frank waxing bilious on these and other torments in voiceover.

When he tries to tranquilize himself with some televised entertainment, he's barraged by what he likens to ancient Rome's bloodthirsty spectacles  --  freakshows pandering to the public's worst instincts. Among them are parodies of "Jackass," "American Idol," Fox TV-type right-wing hysterics (Regan Burns as pundit Michael Fuller), et al.

After delivering an extended rant about all this to a callow co-worker, Frank is fired from his job of 11 years and later learns he has probably terminal brain cancer. In despair, he plans suicide, but instead opts to first make a statement by offing Chloe (Maddie Hasson), a spoiled rich girl famous for a viral video depicting her tantrum upon receiving the wrong luxury car for her 16th birthday.

This assassination is witnessed by fellow teen Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr), who then forces herself on the initially reluctant Frank as Bonnie to his Clyde. "With so many people in the world who should be taking a big dirt nap, why stop now?" she urges him.

Goldthwait's outrage is earnest, his dialogue often funny, but too often "God Bless America" degenerates into simply using Frank and Roxy to mouth laundry lists of what's cool and what's not. One such rant against Diablo Cody fails to deflect the charge that Roxy is just like Ellen Page's Juno  --  an artificially hyper-precocious teenage smartmouth who's more annoying than helpful to the film's agenda.

Never finding a real narrative spine after its first act, and continuing to mock over-easy targets rather than refining its thesis that as a nation, "We've lost our soul," pic ends up a lightweight, poor man's version of ideas from "Natural Born Killers," "Network" and even "American Dreamz."

Its increasing aimlessness is underlined by an exceptionally slow credits crawl. Perfs are OK, colorful if modest presentation likewise in all tech and design departments.

Magnet's Toronto pickup could benefit from pushing the controversy button on the
talkshow circuit and elsewhere, though word of mouth is likely to be middling at
best.


Running time: 107 MIN.

Camera (color, HD), Bradley Stonesifer; editors, Jason Stewart, David Hopper; music, Matt Kollar; music supervisor, Linda Cohen; production designer, Natalie Sanfilippo; set decorator, Kirk Oberholtzer; costume designer, Sara de Sa Rego; sound (Dolby Digital), Arran Murphy; supervising sound editor/sound designer, Robert C. Jackson; assistant directors, Jim Goldthwait, Joe Moore; casting, Robert McGee, Ruth Lambert.
 
MORE cast: Rich McDonald, Maddie Hasson, Larry Miller, Travis Wester, Lauren Phillips, Aris Alvarado, and Regan Burns

A Magnet Releasing release of a Darko Entertainment presentation in association with
Jerkschool Prods. Produced by Sean McKittrick, Jeff Culotta. Executive producers, Edward H. Hamm Jr., Richard Kelly. Co-producers, Sarah de Sa Rego, Jim Goldthwait, Jason Stewart.

Reviewed By Dennis Harvey at Toronto Film Festival (Midnight Madness), Sept. 14, 2011.


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Last Call at the Oasis

(Docu)


Directed by Jessica Yu
 
With: Erin Brockovich, Peter Gleick, Jay Familgietti, Robert Glennon, and Jack Black


Whether the glass is half full or half empty isn't the point of the effervescent "Last Call at the Oasis": It's whether there'll be anything in the glass at all.

A sobering but somehow upbeat examination of the looming catastrophic global water shortage, Jessica Yu's latest docu can be seen as the final installment in Participant
Media's Crisis Quartet  --  "An Inconvenient Truth"  (climate), "Food, Inc."
(agriculture),  "Waiting for Superman" (education) and now, a look at the Earth's most precious, and perhaps most endangered, commodity. [water]

The film should fare as well as its predecessors: Everyone, after all, gets thirsty. As she has in the past, helmer Yu ("In the Realms of the Unreal," "Protagonist") proves she can make exhilarating cinema out of unfilmable subjects, in this case water  --  i.e. its pollution, scarcity and commercialization.

Although a considerable amount of time is, and must be, devoted to the interview subjects who provide so much of the pure information in the film (including Erin Brockovich, who revisits the water-poisoned town of Hinkley, Calif., made famous in the movie bearing her name), Yu also finds ways to make the subject visually engrossing: The opening credits sequence, a kind of aqueous ballet, is worth the trip to the theater.

Although "Last Call at the Oasis" fits into the standard template of cautionary eco-movies  --  stimulating opening, litany of woe, optimistic what-you-can-do list  --  it makes wonderful visual use of all the deadly sins of water waste (car washes, lawn sprinkling, golf-course irrigation), especially as accompanied by Jeff Beals' original score and the often ironic choices made by music supervisor Margaret Yen, who puts mischievously upbeat songs under scenes of looming environmental disaster.

It doesn't dilute the impact of the story, and it's certainly fun. Still, much of the pic's data is disquieting. The information imparted by Yu's principal interviewees, who include Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute, author Robert Glennon ("Unquenchable") and the delightfully glum hydrologist Jay Famiglietti (his most memorable line: "We're screwed") certainly doesn't sugarcoat the topic, or our future.

At the rate the water behind the Hoover Dam is falling, it will stop producing electricity in four years. Las Vegas is in a virtual emergency state already. Australian livestock is dying or being killed for lack of water. And a deluge of pharmaceuticals  --  including one herbicide that can change the sex of frogs  --  is making its way into water systems
nationwide.

Behind the often spectacular landscape photography, and a parade of spectacularly intelligent people, is a crisis of biblical proportions. "Last Call at the Oasis" does ebb and flow: After a riveting first chapter, the movie slows when it heads to Australia and later becomes more focused on specific problems and subjects.

Brockovich, for instance, is given an inordinate amount of time, while more might have been afforded Tyrone Hayes, a U. of California, Berkeley, biologist who's studied the effects and pervasiveness of Atrazine, the frog-sex drug.

 Among those coming in for a hosing in the pic include former VP Dick Cheney, whose "Halliburton Loophole" allowed his favorite company to avoid reporting the chemicals used in water-driven "fracking," which splits rock to gain access to fossil fuels; the public clamor for bottled water; and the Environmental Protection Agency for its lack of regulation to foster clean drinking water.
 
The situation may be dire, but "Last Call at the Oasis" is not averse to being entertaining and funny to deliver its message, apocalyptic as it unmistakably is: If people are going to put their heads in the sand, there's going to be a lot of it around.

Production values are tops, notably the music, the editing by Kim Roberts and
the work of d.p. Jon Else.


 Running time: 105 MIN.
 
Camera (color), Jon Else; editor, Kim Roberts; music, Jeff Beal; music supervisor, Margaret Yen; sound (Dolby Digital), Matt Waters; associate producer, Sandra Keats.

Also featuring: Tyrone Hayes and Paul Rozin

A Participant Media presentation. (International sales: Submarine, New York.) Produced by Elise Pearlstein, Jessica Yu. Executive producers, Jeff Skoll, Diane Weyermann, Carol Baum, David Helpern.

Reviewed By John Anderson at Toronto Film Festival (Real to Reel), Sept. 9, 2011.



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Keyhole

(Canada)


Directed by Guy Maddin
 Screenplay, George Toles, Maddin

With: Jason Patric, Isabella Rossellini, Udo Kier, Brooke Palsson, and David Wontner


There hasn't been a haunted house in the history of movies quite like the one in "Keyhole," Guy Maddin's dark, demented and faintly disappointing ghost story.

Foregoing his usual mix of cheeky self-portrait and silent-movie pastiche, the one-of-a-kind Canadian filmmaker offers a hallucinatory romp through eerie new corridors of his imagination, teeming with Homeric allusions, spirits of cinema past and a creaky closetful of sexual kinks.

But Maddin's singular humor and fabulous black-and-white mise-en-scene can't sustain this fever dream beyond its initial fascination, making for an intriguing transitional work unlikely to broaden his audience in niche release.

The press notes for "Keyhole" describe it as Maddin's first attempt at "pure narrative filmmaking," a designation no more trustworthy than the film's gangster protagonist or his tenuous grip on reality.

A cinematic puzzle box with no rational solution, this head-spinning fantasia twists and doubles back on itself in a manner far trickier to follow than in such previous Maddin efforts as "My Winnipeg" and "Cowards Bend the Knee."

And if it lacks those films' overt autobiographical touches and silent-era flourishes, it's no less inventive or surreal in its engagement with the iconography of black-and-white movies.

Starting with a gangster-in-a-haunted-house template, Maddin and co-scribe Georges Toles could have pushed this in the direction of, say, the 1941 Abbott and Costello comedy "Hold That Ghost."
 
Instead, they add another layer by drawing loosely on a pair of literary sources: Homer's epic "The Odyssey" and "The Poetics of Space," Gaston Bachelard's 1958 study of the psychological impact produced by one's domestic environs.

 From these varied inspirations springs the exceedingly odd tale of Ulysses Pick (Patric), a hardened 1930s crook who returns home after a lengthy absence and begins a strange, protracted journey through his rotting mausoleum of a house in search of his estranged wife, Hyacinth (Maddin muse Isabella Rossellini).

Gravely ill, Hyacinth has locked herself away in her bedroom, from which her elderly father (Louis Negin) narrates much of the action, stark naked and in chains.

When Ulysses makes his shadowy first appearance, he has not only his fellow criminals but also two teenagers in tow: bound-and-gagged Manners (David Wontner), who turns out to be Ulysses' son; and sopping-wet Denny (Brooke Palsson), a drowning victim who somehow still walks, talks and breathes.
 
Indeed, viewers may have trouble keeping track of which characters are alive and which ones are dead, a distinction Maddin doesn't seem to consider especially significant to begin with. Jump-cutting and dissolving convulsively from one handheld shot to the next, editor John Gurdebeke whips together the denizens of this highly dysfunctional home so that past blurs into present and dream into waking reality.

 Over a soundtrack that never stops belching up atmospheric music or droning, dissonant noises apparently generated by the house itself, a voice continually booms, "Remember, Ulysses, remember." This urgent refrain is crucial to understanding "Keyhole" as a memory piece, predicated on Bachelard's notion that every individual sees his or her home as a precious repository of emotions and memories.

As each room and secret passage brings Ulysses closer to Hyacinth, he's forced to confront demons of a psychosexual nature, from an inexplicably riveting scene in which Manners, Denny and Hyacinth climb into a bathtub to a phallic wall fixture that occasions perhaps the first time a movie character has uttered the sentence, "The penis is dusty."

Ulysses' habit of peering through keyholes, which recall the naughty peepholes of "Cowards Bend the Knee," underscores the voyeuristic feel of a film not lacking in nudity.

Yet as agreeably unhinged as much of "Keyhole" is, the filmmaker doesn't seem to be as firmly in his creative groove as he has in his best work. Without the grounding of personal history, Maddin's flights of fancy here feel too abstruse to grasp fully. Without his masterful manipulation of silent filmmaking techniques, the convoluted storytelling begins to seem repetitive and his more out-there gags like shock tactics.

Though not exactly James Cagney, Patric carries the picture effectively enough, conveying the ruthless determination that keeps Ulysses on his psychological odyssey. Rossellini fits snugly into Maddin's universe as always, and the handsome Wontner becomes an increasingly compelling presence in a largely wordless role.

D.p. Benjamin Kasulke's monochrome lensing (achieved with 5D cameras rather than the usual Super 8 or Super 16) is rich in detail yet still retains the evocative, cloudy look of Maddin's earlier pictures.

A few garish splashes of color creep into brief scene transitions, perhaps foreshadowing the director's next project, which will reportedly be entirely in color; it suggests Maddin may yet reinvent himself as an artist, even if this particular entry implies a partial metamorphosis at best.


Running time: 94 MIN.  (English, French dialogue)

Camera (B&W/color, HD), Benjamin Kasulke; editor, John Gurdebeke; music, Jason Staczek; production designer, Richardo Alms; costume designer, Heather Neale; sound, Stan Mak; sound designer, Gurdebeke; re-recording mixer, Lou Solakofski.

MORE cast: Louis Negin, Kevin McDonald, Daniel Enright, Olivia Rameau, Tattiawna
Jones, and Johnny Chang

An Entertainment One presentation, commissioned by Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State U., with the participation of Telefilm Canada, Manitoba Film & Music, Astral's Harold Greenberg Fund. (International sales: Entertainment One, Toronto.) Produced by Jody Shapiro, Jean du Toit. Executive producer, Phyllis Laing.

Reviewed By Justin Chang at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 9, 2011.


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Headhunters
Hodejegerne

(Norway)


Directed by Morten Tyldum
 Screenplay, Ulf Ryberg, Lars Gudmestad
Source: based on Jo Nesbo's novel

 With: Aksel Hennie, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Synnove Macody Lund, and Julie Olgaard


A smooth, intriguing opening and a predictable but emotionally satisfying home stretch bookend helmer Morten Tyldum's otherwise by-the-numbers Norwegian thriller "Headhunters."

Based on Jo Nesbo's eponymous bestseller, the slickly assembled project stars local name thesp Aksel Hennie as the story's man on the run, an insecure but successful
recruitment specialist who moonlights as an art thief  --  until a big score goes awry.

Though unlikely to match international B.O. numbers of co-producer Yellowbird's "Millennium" films, "Hunters" should hit targets as a home-entertainment item. Pic already sold to several Euro territories and Magnolia in the U.S., which is eyeing a 2012 release.

Marketing a film filled with at times blackly comic violence might prove tricky in Norway, where it goes out Aug. 26, 2011, in the wake of recent tragic events. Elsewhere this should be straight-up Scandi genre fare, with enough graphic bloodshed, nudity and sex to ensure a hard "R" rating.

 In the sleekly filmed and edited opening sequence, a balaclava-wearing Roger Brown (Hennie) is seen slipping into an affluent home to steal a canvas while, in v.o., he explains the rules that guide any good art thief.

The film will actually turn into a feature-length demonstration of rule number five:
 
"Eventually, you'll either steal an artwork so expensive you never need to work again, or you'll get caught."
 
But before it sends Brown running, pic's nimble, half-hour intro convincingly sets up the protag's meek, overcompensating character and the neat way in which Brown's headhunter job dovetails with his second, more dangerous occupation. 

Though the adapted screenplay, credited to Ulf Ryberg ("The Girl Who Kicked the
Hornet's Nest") and Lars Gudmestad ("Liverpool Goalie"), uses pure pop psychology 101, Hennie's John Doe-like qualities and entertaining narration make it hard not to root for this slightly dorky Everyman with a plan.
 
Brown's big score involves a Rubens painting in the Oslo apartment of Dane Clas Grave (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), who also happens to be the perfect candidate for an executive post Brown needs to fill.

Almost disturbingly good-looking and suave, Grave is the polar opposite of Brown, so it's no surprise the mark is often one step ahead of the thief.

Midsection is basically one long, well-executed but hardly original chase through the wet and dirty Norwegian countryside. Tight focus on Brown and Grave highlights the narrative's cat-and-mouse nature but also barely leaves room for dead ends or red herrings  --  which could help keep auds guessing about where all this is headed; it's clear from early on that each supporting character onscreen will either almost immediately end up dead or live just long enough to provide crucial information later on.

 Nonetheless, Hennie generates enough interest in his character's plight to keep auds hooked. The thesp even manages to inject a note of utter loneliness and melancholy following an impressive car-crash sequence and a painful attempt to shave his head.

As his opponent, Coster-Waldau is efficient but more one-note, while Eivind Sander, as a sex-crazed accomplice of Brown, is the otherwise solid ensemble's standout.

As per the closing credits, the film's helicopter shots are actually from Yellowbird's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo."

The rest of the tech package is smooth.


Running time: 100 MIN  (Norwegian, English, Russian dialogue)
 
Camera (color, widescreen), John Andreas Andersen; editor, Vidar Flataukan; music, Trond Bjerknes, Jeppe Kaas; production designer, Nina Bjerch-Andresen; costume designer, Karen Fabritius Gram; sound (Dolby SRD), Tormod Ringnes; special effects supervisor, Koo Hummer Hojmark.

MORE cast: Eivind Sander and Daniel Bratterud.

A Magnolia Pictures (in U.S.)/Nordisk Filmdistribusjon (in Norway) release of Friland Film, Yellowbird Norge presentation and production, in association with ARD Degeto, Nordisk Film, with the participation of SVT, 2. (International sales: Trustnordisk, Hvidovre, 
Denmark.) Produced by Asle Vatn, Marianne Gray.

Reviewed By Boyd van Hoeij at Locarno Film Festival (Also in Toronto Film Festival), Aug. 3, 2011. .



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Beginners

Directed, written by Mike Mills

Oliver - Ewan McGregor
Hal - Christopher Plummer
Anna - Melanie Laurent


Coming out means starting over, whenever that self-realization should happen to occur. Mike Mills knows this firsthand, having watched his father reinvent his sexual identity at an advanced age.

Such observations fuel his deeply poignant and disarmingly  personal "Beginners," which blends autobiographical remembrances of that never-too-late transformation with a fictionalized account of attempting  to start a meaningful relationship of his own at 38.

A major leap forward from "Thumbsucker," the writer-director's assured second narrative feature  realizes the potential suggested by Mills' music-video and conceptual art  projects, sure to score with arthouse, hipster and fest auds (not just  gay ones, either).

In a style that warrants comparisons to Charlie  Kaufman, Michel Gondry and wife Miranda July (whose playful,  intimacy-oriented sensibility can be detected throughout), Mills breaks from  conventional story structure to present his father's startling decision, at age 75, to declare his homosexuality and make up for lost time. 

Through voiceover and contextualizing slideshows, Mills' alter ego, Oliver (Ewan McGregor) establishes the key dates in the story: the year his  parents were born, married, died and, in his father's case, declared his  true nature.

After years on the sidelines, the old man, played by  Christopher Plummer with liberating relish, suddenly emerges as a  character in Oliver's life, which had otherwise
been dominated by his affectionate but vaguely unstable mother (winningly played by Mary Page  Keller).

Trying to catch up on lost time, Plummer's Hal begins to  socialize with other gay men, flying the gay-pride colors, hosting  parties and dating a guy roughly his son's age (Goran Visnjic, in a completely  unglamorous perf) -- all of which confound Oliver, who's progressive  enough to accept homosexuality but bewildered to find it lying  unexpressed, until now, in someone so close.

While the director's  decision to cast McGregor as his onscreen surrogate might seem to imply vanity on Mills' part, he encourages the actor to lay bare Mills' own character  flaws, which include such 21st-century luxuries as idle melancholy and  fear of commitment.

For Mills, his father's butterfly-life emergence is  rendered painfully ironic by two things: First, Hal's bachelor son has never  been able to sustain a relationship of his own. And second, the old man  has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, which gives him only five  years to enjoy his newfound freedom.

Mills divides the narrative along  three parallel tracks, with Oliver dutifully caring for his strong-willed father  in the most affecting of these threads. Though his mother also  suffered a slow decline into frailty, he omits that painful chapter in favor of childhood memories that formed his melancholy way of looking at the world (reflected in a downer art project called "The History of Sadness," for which Oliver finds no takers). \

But most of the film unfolds in the present, after Hal's death, as a chance encounter at a Halloween party, where Oliver meets an alluring French actress ("Inglourious Basterds'" Melanie Laurent, effortlessly natural) rendered silent by laryngitis.

In another director's hands, this might have all come across as suffocatingly twee, from this semi-contrived meet-cute to the many self-conscious details presented throughout (including frequent glimpses  of the director's own artwork and a Jack Russell terrier who communicates via  subtitles).

But Mills isn't attempting to manipulate auds here; rather,  he lays himself bare, offering an open-book glimpse into the thorny  nature of contemporary relationships, which enjoy a certain luxury of complexity unshared by earlier generations.

"Our good fortune allowed us  to feel a sadness our parents didn't have time for," Oliver notes in  voiceover.

To whatever extent the film drags or doubles back on itself,  "Beginners" merely feels stronger and more honest for it, like the  cinematic equivalent of Dave Eggers' "A Heartbreaking Work of  Staggering  Genius."

Rarely do you find such self-plunging material beyond the realm of  documentary or far-fringe museum fare, and despite his background in  that arena, Mills sheds all preciosity in service of genuinely revealing  introspection.

"Beginners" also differs from comparable LGBT stories, since it comes from the perspective of a son still wrestling with his  father's enigmatic decisions, rather than the angle of a newly empowered  filmmaker trying to validate his own life choices.


Running time: 105  MIN.

Camera (color), Kasper Tuxen; editor, Olivier Bugge Coutte; music,  Roger Neill, David Palmer, Brian Reitzell; music supervisor, Robin  Urdang; production designer, Shane Valentino; set decorator, Coryander  Friend; costume designer, Jennifer Johnson; sound, Susumu Tokunow; sound designer/re-recording mixer, Leslie Shatz; stunt coordinator, Nash  Edgerton; visual effects, Oddball Animation, Wes Ball, Justin Barber,  Brad Hawkins, Ryland Jones; assistant director, Rod Smith; casting,  Courtney Bright, Nicole Daniels.

MORE cast:
Andy - Goran Visnjic
Elliot - Kai Lennox
Georgia - Mary Page Keller
Young Oliver - Keegan  Boos

An Olympus Pictures presentation in association with Parts &  Labor. (International sales: UTA, Los Angeles.) Produced by Leslie  Urdang, Dean Vanech, Miranda De Pencier, Jay Van Hoy, Lars Knudsen.  Executive producer, Joan Scheckel. Co-producers, Geoff Linville, Fran Giblin.

Reviewed By Peter Debruge at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 11,  2010.

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Elles
(France-Poland-Germany)


Directed by Malgoska Szumowska
Screenplay, Tine Byrckel, Szumowska.

 With: Juliette Binoche, Anais Demoustier, Joanna Kulig, and Louis-Do de Lencquesaing

A typically smart performance by Juliette Binoche isn't enough to keep "Elles" from drowning in pseudo-intellectual pretension and general banality. Featuring Binoche in a characteristic role as a stressed-out wife, mother and magazine journalist researching the lives of young Parisian whores, the fourth feature helmed by Malgoska Szumowska strains to suggest that a woman's work within middle-class family life has a thing or two in common with prostitution.

Kino Lorber's Stateside release of the French-Polish-German co-production could
benefit slightly from prurient interest in the pic's explicit sex scenes, but unaroused reviewers won't help "Elles" turn tricks at the box office.
 
While Szumowska and her co-writer, Tine Byrckel, hammer home their arguably
offensive theory that well-to-do femmes are acting as hookers in the kitchen and at the keyboard, they seem far less clear on what they want to say about actual harlotry.

Scenes of the journalist's collegiate interview subjects satisfying male clients to earn tuition money are lit and shot like perfume commercials, even as the sex in some cases turns disturbingly brutal. Perhaps the film's point is that liberation always comes at a cost; certainly the viewer pays a price in watching the more gruelingly lewd episodes here.
 
Burning the candle at both ends, Anne (Binoche) is introduced as being saddled with two sons  --  one (Francois Civil) addicted to marijuana, the other (Pablo Beugnet) to videogames  --  as well as a looming deadline on her student-prostitution piece for the monthly Elle.

Anne's husband (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) is rarely around to help maintain order in their chaotic apartment, and her elderly father (Jean-Marie Binoche) is in the hospital. A ridiculous scene of Anne dutifully rubbing lotion on Dad's old feet equates her form of servitude with that of her interview subjects, Charlotte (Anais Demoustier) and Alicja (Joanna Kulig).

 The questions Anne asks these young women are none too scintillating, maybe
because the journalist is distracted by domestic responsibilities that range from prepping a dinner for her husband's boss and, in the short term, struggling to close a jam-packed fridge.

Trying to stay away from alcohol while maintaining an objective distance from her subjects, Anne breaches protocol on both counts when she gets sloppily drunk on vodka with the Polish Alicja, the two of them giggling with mouths full of pasta before dancing the night away.
 
That the writer is being driven to explore her own sexuality becomes horribly obvious as Szumowska ("33 Scenes From Life") follows a scene of Charlotte being raped with images of Anne pleasuring herself.

Binoche, who exudes intelligence at every turn, may well be incapable of appearing ashamed on camera, although "Elles" challenges the actor's integrity  --  and the approval of her fans  --  to an unprecedented degree.
 
Tech credits are, like Anne's magazine, glossy.


Running time: 96 MIN. (French, Polish dialogue)

Camera (color, HD, widescreen), Michal Englert; editors, Francoise Tourmen, Jacek Drosio; music, Pawel Mykietyn; art director, Pauline Bourdon; costume designer Katarzyna Lewinska; sound (Dolby Digital), Andre Rigaut; assistant director, Nicolas Cambois; casting, Aurelie Guichard. 
 
MORE cast: Krystyna Janda, Andrzej Chyra, Ali Marhyar, Jean-Marie Binoche, 
Francois Civil, and Pablo Beugnet

A Kino Lorber (in U.S.) release of a Slot Machine production, in coproduction with Zentropa Intl. Poland, Zentropa Intl. Koln, Canal Plus Poland, ZDF Shot Szumowski, Liberator Prods., with the support of Polish Film Institute, Filmstiftung NRW, Deutscher Filmforderfonds, Programme Media de l'Union Europeenne, La Procirep,
L'Angoa-Agicoa, with participation of Haut et Court Distribution, Memento Films Intl., Potemkine et Agnes B. DVD, KinoSwiat, in association with Cofinova 7, Arte/Cofinova 6, la Sofica Soficinema 6. (International sales: Memento, Paris.) Produced by Marianne Slot. Executive producer, Olivier Guerbois. Co-producers, Agnieszka Kurzydo, Bettina Brokemper, Beata Ryczkowska, Reinhold Elschot, Daniel Blum, Malgoska Szumowska, Peter Aalbaek Jensen, Peter Garde.

Reviewed By Rob Nelson at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 13, 2011. 


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Damsels in Distress

Directed, written by Whit Stillman

 
Violet Wister  -  Greta Gerwig
 Charlie Walker  -  Adam Brody
Lily  -  Analeigh Tipton
Rose  -  Megalyn Echikunwoke
Heather  -  Carrie Maclemore
 Xavier  -  Hugo Becker
Frank  -  Ryan Metcalf
Thor  -  Billy Magnussen
Priss  -  Caitlin Fitzgerald


A film that raises laughs even with its end credits, Whit Stillman's whimsical campus comedy "Damsels in Distress" is an utter delight.

Making a welcome return to helming after a long sabbatical following 1998's "The Last Days of Disco," Stillman proves he still knows how to write crackling, articulate dialogue for quirky preppie characters whom he loves laughing at as much as with.

Pic's young cast, led by Greta Gerwig, features enough up-and-coming names on its roster to pull in a younger demographic to supplement Stillman's older fan base, which should rescue "Damsels" from the niche, upmarket margins.

Sweet-natured Violet (Gerwig, "Greenberg") and her coed coevals Rose (Megalyn
Echikunwoke, "24," "That '70s Show") and Heather (Carrie Maclemore, "Gossip Girl") are college students on a mission.

Dedicated to making Seven Oaks U., their alma mater, a more fragrant and pleasant place, they seek to combat the Neanderthal male populace's body-odor problem by promoting good hygiene, and stoically accept it's their lot in life to date frat boys far more stupid and less good-looking than themselves.

After all, as Violet says in one of the pic's many quotable lines, "The tendency, very widespread, to always seek someone 'cooler' than yourself (is) always a stretch, often a big stretch. Why not instead find someone who's frankly inferior?"
 
Among their other projects (Violet's lifelong ambition is to invent a new dance craze) and philanthropic enterprises, they run the suicide-prevention center on campus where the doughnuts are free, but only to anyone verifiably depressed.

Accompanied by Lily (Analeigh Tipton, "Crazy Stupid Love," "America's Next Top Model"), the newest addition to their clique, they're willing to rush to the aid of anyone in a tailspin after a recent break-up, their survival strategies usually revolving around the advisability of dating uglier, stupider men than oneself.

 Violet's help backfires on her when one student, Priss (Caitlin Fitzgerald), takes up with Violet's own intellectually challenged b.f., Frank (Ryan Metcalf), a frat boy so dim he literally doesn't even know the color of own eyes.

At least he can identify colors, though, unlike his buddy Thor (Billy Magnussen, superb),
who has been educationally handicapped by his pushy parents' insistence that he skip kindergarten. Later, Violet connects with Charlie (Adam Brody), one of Lily's beaus, who like Violet is not all he seems and has a gift for reinvention.

 Pic is chockfull of daft digressions and sweetly silly subplots, but the ensemble goes at it all with such deadpan rigor, it plays like vintage screwball comedy minus the pratfalls, apart from what must be one of the most uproariously funny suicide attempts in recent film history.

Positively boiling with sharp, almost casually dispensed zingers, repeated phrases (Rose is constantly on a suspicious vigil against "playboy or operator types"), and dialogue that might not be so funny when repeated in isolation but is hilarious in context,
Stillman's screenplay is a thing of beauty.
 
Helmer's comic timing is likewise right on the money, but in a largely self-effacing, quietly efficient way that recalls the old-school craftsmen of Hollywood's golden age, like Howard Hawks in a breezy mood.

Given the pic's retro feel, it's entirely appropriate that the climax tips its hat to Fred
Astaire with a dance scene modeled on the Astaire-Joan Fontaine rug-cut from "A
Damsel in Distress" (1937).

One can't help but wonder what Stillman would do with the budget for a full-on musical, but even though this unfolds in the same well-heeled milieu he's previously explored, there's a freshness here that suggests his 13-year hiatus from directing hasn't done him any harm.

Those inclined to dislike Stillman's work won't be persuaded otherwise by "Damsels,"
but fans will be more than satisfied.
 
Shot on HD, the pic doesn't have the same glossy, glassy prettiness of Stillman's earlier film-shot work like "Metropolitan," "Barcelona" and "The Last Days of Disco," but it's still executed with pro polish by lenser Doug Emmett. 

Extra credit is due costume designer Ciera Wells and "special fashions" by Krista Blomberg for kitting Violet and her friends out in just the right kind of prim but interesting A-line frocks and neat accessories that endow them with a pleasing mix of glamour and ladylike dowdiness.

 
Running time: 99 MIN.

Camera (color, HD), Doug Emmett; editor, Andrew Hafitz; music, Mark Suozzo, Adam Schlesinger; production designer, Elizabeth J. Jones; art director, Brian Goodwin; set decorator, Emmanuelle Hoessly; costume designer, Ciera Wells; sound, Mikhail Sterkin; re-recording mixer, Tom Paul; choreographer, Justin Cerne; special fashions, Krista Blomberg; stunt coordinator, Anthony Vincent; line producer, Jacob Jaffke; assistant director, Curtis Smith; casting, Kerry Barden, Paul Schnee, Amy Britt, Anya Colloff. 

MORE cast:
Jimbo  -  Jermaine Crawford 
Depressed Debbie  -  Aubrey Plaza
Rick Dewolfe  -  Zach Woods
Mad Madge  -  Alia Shawkat
"Freak" Astaire  -  Nick Blaemire
Alice -  Meredith Hagner

A Sony Pictures Classics release and presentation of a Westerly Films production in association with This-and-That. Produced by Whit Stillman, Martin Shafer, Liz Glotzer.
Co-producers, Charlie Dibe.

Reviewed By Leslie Felperin at Venice Film Festival (closer, noncompeting), Sept. 10, 2011. (Also in Toronto Film Festival  --  Special Presentations.)


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Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope
(Docu)

Directed by Morgan Spurlock
Written by Spurlock, Jeremy Chilnick

With: Holly Conrad, James Darling, Guillermo del Toro, Seth Green, and Stan Lee


Somewhere in Iowa, there lives a lonely geek deeply ashamed of his love for comicbooks, action figures and/or "Star Trek" re-runs. Morgan Spurlock's "Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope" is designed to convince that poor misfit he's not alone  --  that for four days
every July, there exists a place where he belongs.

Keeping himself off-camera while putting exec producers Joss Whedon, Stan Lee and Harry Knowles front-and-center alongside half a dozen extreme fans, Spurlock brings his usual good-humored approach to the subject, nicely balancing absurdity with genuine human interest. 

Before Spurlock, many have tried and failed to make a film that definitively captures the Hajj-to-Mecca-like experience of the 125,000-plus pop-culture aficionados who crowd the San Diego Convention Center each year for Comic-Con. 

Some come to meet their idols, others hope to be discovered, but most simply thrive in an environment where they can celebrate their favorite fictional characters. Remember, "fan" is short "fanatic"; these are not low-key personalities.

The logistical challenges alone make telling their collective story an undertaking even more complex than shooting a 3D Miley Cyrus concert movie, and one that required as many as 26 cameras rolling at any given time.

To simplify things, Spurlock solicited potential subjects online and chose six whose
personal narratives represented the range of experience the event delivers: a collector obsessed with buying a limited-edition toy, two aspiring illustrators, an amateur costume designer, a veteran comicbook dealer and a young man who met his soul-mate at Comic-Con one year earlier (their co-dependent relationship gives new meaning to the term "cling-on").
 
In what could prove to be the "Canterbury Tales" of our generation, had Chaucer enlisted the cathedral's most evangelical priests to underwrite a Catholic recruitment video, "Comic-Con" offers insight into the dreams and desperations of these six pilgrims.

--Will Chuck Rozanski, owner of Mile High Comics, find a buyer for the Holy Grail of Marvel comics, a near-mint copy of Red Raven No. 1?

--Can Holly Conrad and her team of Mass Effect fans overcome wardrobe malfunctions to win the masquerade ball?

--How many Storm Troopers can you squeeze into one photo op?

All these questions and more will be answered in what feels like an extended sizzle reel for the event (which bears little resemblance to the nerdy swap meet that began in 1970). By the end of Day Two, with another half-hour to go, the excitement is already beginning to wear thin.

Working with editors Tim K. Smith and Tova Goodman for nearly a year, Spurlock can't quite decide how to organize all that footage, projected at a low enough resolution he must have intended the project for home viewing, where it's easy enough to bundle the film with hours of bonus material.

 In addition to making this doc, Spurlock also published a coffee-table book featuring photos (in full costumed regalia) of "cosplay" groupies and their idols snapped against a plain white backdrop. Video interviews from these same sessions make their way into the film, which strains between cramming in as many famous faces as possible and finding anything meaningful to say.

 Spurlock is too busy hyping the film/TV/comicbook/vidgame industries' single biggest hype platform to get philosophical, though psychologists could have a field day with these characters (like Eric, whose parents met at a Star Trek convention).

For the casual film or TV admirer, the result has a vaguely unsettling feel that calls to mind the "Gooble gobble! One of us!" scene in Tod Browning's "Freaks." This isn't a vicarious tour of Comic-Con so much as an indoctrination. VOD and direct-sales seem the surest way to reach the Con-verted.


Running time: 86 MIN.

Camera (color, HDCAM), Daniel Marracino; editors, Tim K. Smith, Tova Goodman; music, Jingle Punks; sound, Michael Legum; supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer, Lewis Goldstein; associate producers, Shannon Gibson, Alba Tull; casting, Michael Sutton.

Also featuring: Se Young Kang, Harry Knowles, Frank Miller, Eli Roth, Chuck Rozanski, and Joss Whedon

A Thomas Tull and Warrior Poets presentation. (International sales: CAA, Los Angeles.) Produced by Jeremy Chilnick, Matthew Galkin, Harry Knowles, Thomas Tull. Executive producers, Gil Champion, Harry Knowles, Stan Lee, Jack Selby, Benjamin Statler, Joss Whedon.

Reviewed By Peter Debruge at Toronto Film Festival (Real to Reel), Sept. 11, 2011.

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Monsieur Lazhar
Bachir Lazhar (festival title)

(Canada)

Directed, written by Philippe Falardeau
Source: based on the play "Bashir Lazhar" by Evelyne de la Cheneliere

With: Fellag, Sophie Nelisse, Emilien Neron, Danielle Proulx, and Brigitte Poupart


An Algerian immigrant faces a steep learning curve when he's hired as a substitute teacher in Montreal in "Bachir Lazhar," the most polished and mainstream effort yet from Quebec scribe-helmer Philippe Falardeau ("Congorama").

Though set mainly indoors, this adaptation of Evelyne de la Cheneliere's eponymous monodrama is neatly opened up cinematically, with some of the primary-school kids and fellow educators skillfully fleshed out.

Quietly intelligent and respectable, much like its protag, pic has clear crowdpleaser
appeal in the arthouse arena, as evidenced by its recent Locarno audience award win. Sales prospects look healthy.
 
Though named after its protag, pic opens with a schoolyard sequence involving
impressionable pupil Simon (Emilien Neron) and his classmate Alice (Sophie Nelisse), who catch a glimpse of their teacher, who has just hanged herself in their classroom.

Fast forward to a couple of days later, when the prim school director (Danielle Proulx)  --  in a move that reeks as much of desperation as of common sense  --  hires Bachir Lazhar (Fellag), who has offered his services as a substitute teacher after reading about the tragedy in the papers.
 
A recent arrival from Algeria, Lazhar comes armed with a resume that includes years of experience teaching in Algiers. But clearly, the upright yet soft-spoken man has a lot of adjusting to do, as the kids are still shaken by the death of their teacher, and the curriculum and mores of Francophone Canada are different from those in the Maghreb.
 
While the film explores issues of immigration, integration, education, responsibility and the greater good, its own lessons are not entirely clear-cut. Though some auds might fault the pic for taking the easy way out, it's actually refreshing for a drama about education to look at different sides of an issue without necessarily imposing a moral high ground.

 Indeed, "Bachir Lazhar" is never as straightforward as it might at first appear, as suggested by d.p. Ronald Plante's ever-so-slightly unsteady widescreen images.

It's apparent Lazhar is a fish out of the water, as he's the school's only male teacher, speaks French but not Quebec French, and is not aware of the latest developments in North-American pedagogy.

It also emerges, in a plot strand that could have used some clearer parallels to amplify the drama, that Lazhar, too, is trying to get over a personal tragedy.
 
Little Simon has become withdrawn and sulky since his teacher's suicide and is occasionally pestered by Alice. Their personal crises, though not the main focus, are well developed in relatively little screentime, and gains dramatic heft from the fact Lazhar is directly responsible for the pupils' well-being. 

Treatment is typical of Falardeau's naturally flowing adaptation, much like the bigscreen version of "Incendies," also produced by Canuck outfit Microscope.
 
After working with young thesps in "It's Not Me, I Swear!," Falardeau again demonstrates a deft touch with child performers, while mono-monikered Algerian thesp Fellag ("Top Floor, Left Wing") turns in a dignified performance that nonetheless feels just a smidgen too safe.

Supporting cast is tip-top, while playwright de la Cheneliere makes a brief cameo appearance as Alice's mother.
 
Below-the-line contributions are also solid, with the work of editor (and occasional helmer) Stephane Lafleur especially praiseworthy for its subtle cumulative force.

English-language press kit refers to pic as "Monsieur Lazhar," though the
onscreen festival title was simply "Bachir Lazhar."


Running time: 94 MIN. (French, Arabic, English dialogue)

MORE cast: Louis Champagne, Jules Philip, Francine Ruel, Sophie Sanscartier, Seddik Benslimane, Marie-Eve Beauregard, Louis-David Leblanc, Vincent Millard, and
Evelyne de la Cheneliere.

Camera (color, widescreen, HD), Ronald Plante; editor, Stephane Lafleur; music, Martin Leon; production designer, Emmanuel Frechette; costume designer, Francesca Chamberland; sound (Dolby SRD), Pierre Bertrand, Mathieu Beaudin, Sylvain Bellemare, Bernard Gariepy Strobl; line producer, Claude Paiement; assistant director, Carole Doucet; casting, Nathalie Boutrie, Emanuelle Beaugrand-Champagne, Constance Demontoy.

Reviewed By Boyd van Hoeij at Locarno Film Festival (Piazza Grande), Aug. 7, 2011. (Also in Toronto Film Festival  --  Special Presentations.)

A Les Films Christal release and presentation of a Microscope production, in association with Seville Pictures.  (International sales: Films Distribution, Paris.) Produced by Luc Dery, Kim McCraw.

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Surviving Progress
(Documentary -- Canada)


Directed, written by Mathieu Roy, Harold Crooks
Source: based on the book "A Short History of Progress" by Ronald Wright

With: Ronald Wright, Mark Levine, Robert Wright, Marina Silva, Jane Goodall, and Stephen Hawking


Tying together problems of overpopulation, pollution, consumption, global warming, industrial development and more, "Surviving Progress" offers a cinematic wakeup call so cogent and non-didactic even Tea Partyers would be hard-pressed to shrug it off. (Not that they're likely to see it, of course.)

This fine globetrotting, Canadian-produced docu inspired by Ronald Wright's tome "A Short History of Progress" kicks off its U.S. theatrical release April 6, 2012 in New York, with other cities to follow.

Grassroots outreach to concerned citizen groups of various stripes would be a big help in accessing auds who might think themselves already oversaturated on environmental issues.

Wright's thesis is that the Industrial Revolution, enormously successful in creating First World pockets of great wealth and material comfort, is a failed experiment, and we're at the end of it.

And now that other nations like China and India want their own overdue turn at manufacturing prosperity and raised living standards, we're discovering that the past 200 years already used up much of the Earth's limited credit in what had seemed an infinite account of natural resources.

We've confused progress with more of the same, only to discover that now creates serious
problems. These include humans exhausting soil and other elements that effect life from the bottom up; the fact that "market fundamentalism" -- a belief that the unregulated market will solve all problems -- tends to encourage crippling debt rather than self-sufficiency among poorer countries; the reckless privatization of "public domain" properties like rainforests and oil deposits, which in turn forces residents to choose between joblessness and their own environmental well-being; science's dangerous attempts at "taking over evolution" via changing genetic codes; and much more.

"Progress" does a remarkable job weaving together these and many other big ideas in a crisp, coherent, easy-to-take fashion that somehow never becomes an informational overload. It's certainly helped in that regard by a stellar cast of articulate and authoritative interviewees who know how to make a sound bite count, including primatologist Jane Goodall (noting human beings as the only species capable of terminating its future by destroying its own habitat) and physicist Stephen Hawking, who puts things in a grand context, saying, "If we can avoid disaster in the next two
centuries, we should be safe."

The message is as simple on the surface as it is complex in detail: Less must be the new "more" if mankind is to survive. That requires a basic moral/systemic rewiring already fiercely opposed by many.

Helmers Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks (officially billed as co-director) take care not to distract from the docu's seriousness with too much conspicuous eye candy. But there's still a terrific diversity of illustrative materials here, from man-on-the-street interviews around the globe to footage from NASA as well as Werner Herzog's indelible Kuwaiti-oil-fires portrait "Lessons of Darkness."

Tech and design contributions are first-rate.


Running time: 86 MIN. (English, Portuguese dialogue)

Camera (color, HD), Mario Janelle, Jean-Pierre St. Louis, Dany Racine, Mark Achbar; editor, Louis-Martin Paradis; music, Patrick Watson, Michael Ramsey; sound (Dolby SR), Louis Piche, Claude Lahaye; Joao Godoy, Philippe Scultety, Marcel Chouinard; sound designer, Christian Rivest; re-recording mixer, Gavin Fernandes.

Also featuring: Kambale Musavuli, Vaclav Smil, Colin Beavan, Michael Hudson, Chen Ming, Chen Changnian, J. Craig Venter, Raquel Taitson-Queiroz, Gary Marcus, Daniel Povinelli, Margaret Atwood, Simon Johnson, Enio Beata, David Suzuki, and Jim Thomas

A First Run Features (in U.S.) release of a Cinemaginaire and Big Picture Media Corp. in association with the National Film Board of Canada presentation. (International sales: NFB, Quebec.) Produced by Gerry Flahive, Daniel Louis, Denise Robert. Executive producers, Martin Scorsese, Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Mark Achbar, Betsy Carson, Silva Basmajian.

Reviewed By Dennis Harvey at Santa Barbara Film Festival (Documentary), Feb. 1, 2012. (Also in 2011 Toronto film festival.)


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