The best films I saw in 2011 (so far)
December 30, 2011
OK, I hate giving up this list so early, but ’tis the season of lists and best of’s, so below you will find 10 of my favorite films that I caught in 2011 (so far). I’ve linked the titles to their Amazon pages. If you click through the links and purchase the movie (on blu-ray, which is the best way to see movies at home, for now), you will provide financial support to this blog. Here you go:
1. My Joy
2. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
3. Super 8 (I saw it three times!)
4. The Tree of Life
5. Meek’s Cutoff
6. Ten Thousand Waves (More a film installation than an actual movie, but here’s a link to the fancy art book)
7. Mysteries of Lisbon
8. Dogtooth
9. Project Nim
10. The Hedgehog
There. I will provide a much more comprehensive list that will also include a bottom 10 and summaries of sentiments in February to counter the Oscar craze around that time (the Oscars are so over-rated. It’s easier to pick winners based on studio campaigning than actual artistic merit! I like to provide my list of 20 as an antidote to all the hype of awards season and also allow for time to catch up on all those foreign films that take a little longer to hit US theaters).
All the films are diverse and one at least impossible to re-experience (Ten Thousand Waves was displayed on nine different screens that could be seen from different angles and no image was ever the same): 
But the decision of placing these films on this list came from something quite simple: Did I have a reaction in the gut while watching the film that was elusive and stirring? At least half these films saw review in this blog, so I can go a bit deeper than that, but that exciting feeling in the gut is clear, potent, undeniable and definitive enough.
Even with the invitations to preview screenings and screeners studios loaned me (the most for me ever in a year) there are still many films from 2011 I have yet to see and already have much buzz as greats of the year (The Mill and the Cross; A Dangerous Method; Moneyball; A Separation; Weekend; Leap Year; The Artist; Pina; The Kid With a Bike; Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy; Beginners; Rampart; Crazy, Stupid Love). Who knows, maybe the top 10 might even shift some, that’s how subjective these lists are.
‘Tyrannosaur’ offers unrelenting drama of misery
December 25, 2011
As the lukewarm reception for the just-released and much-hyped Angelina Jolie-directed In the Land of Blood and Honey has proved, it’s often not easy for an actor to turn director. Popular actors cum directors have made more critically successful transitions than Jolie (see Clint Eastwood) … but then there is also Ron Howard. Heck, Robert Redford has made a career of mixed-reviewed movies.
For someone like Paddy Considine, a name not normally bandied about in households, these comparisons are unfair, ultimately. Considine is probably best recognized in the US as a character actor cloaked in references like “that-guy-in-that-movie.” In his native UK, he is more recognizable. Still, in the end, the man at the helm of a movie like Tyrannosaur matters little. 
This film has so much life and vibrancy (albeit on the grimmer range of the spectrum), it outshines the personality who conceived it. Chalk up another stellar disappearing act by Considine, who does not even appear in front of the camera in the movie, though the nuance of a character actor certainly informs the film.
Considine’s debut feature as writer and director is a creature fueled by its own power, maybe not too different from Eastwood’s Gran Torino or Unforgiven. It focuses on a man haunted by regrets who finally decides to take action for something beyond wallowing in his own misery … at least a little bit. As represented by the film’s title (and poster art), these regrets are indeed buried deep below the surface, are quite large and definitive and prove impossible to excavate and turn around. This journey of futility proves a riveting and intense experience to watch in a cinema.
The film wastes no time establishing Joseph (Peter Mullan) as a time bomb. Staggering drunk after a visit to a pub,
angry over who knows what, he kicks his dog. The blow proves fatal for the poor beast. It sets the director up for the challenging task to humanize this old, mean drunk as someone the audience can sympathize with. During the first act of the film, one incident after another ratchets up the tension. Just as you think a confrontation involving Joseph is resolved without violence and he walks away, he pops back on screen to lay down the wrath. Soon enough a gripping sense of terror follows the man like a gloomy, sticky cloud.
But Considine’s agenda is more than instilling dread in the audience. A glimpse of Joseph’s humanity soon emerges when he hides in a charity shop and the store’s clerk, 
Hannah (Olivia Colman), offers to pray for him. After he tells her to “fuck off,” she says a prayer anyhow, asking God to forgive this man, and he breaks down in tears while hiding behind a rack of clothes. Still, Joseph’s issues are far from resolved. His nasty streak comes out soon after, probing Hannah for what pains her only to turn it back against her, this time leaving her in tears. It’s some twisted payback.
Despite this vicious cycle of cruelty and caring, the pair form a bond. Hannah is also a creature of rage. A victim of domestic abuse at the hands of her husband James (Eddie Marsan), 
it turns out her devout behavior offers her a front, a lifeline that she clings to in order to find some kind of hope. Reality trumps her spirituality, however, and things get awful real quick … on her part.
Tyrannosaur is an intense film with a tight and efficient storyteller at the helm. Considine does not waste a moment in this film. The roller coaster of emotions swing widely as the story shows bliss, whatever that elusive thing might, has no place in a world of desperate lives unraveling under the specter of not just gloom but death and killing. The film flows so smoothly, Considine wastes nary a frame. 
There are a few powerful jump cuts. One in particular is augmented by the sound and image of Joseph demolishing his shed with a sledgehammer, which resonates for reasons beyond the literal action in the scene.
Though the story and drama is quite down-to-earth, the pace of the film is riveting, and the performances are amazingly generous and intimate. All the performers, including a little neighborhood boy (Samuel Bottomley) who seems to care how Joseph feels day-in and day-out, bring stellar performances to back the story up. From one scene to the next, be it the unpredictable behavior of the characters or the powder keg situations of humans unwilling to get along, Tyrannosaur never relents the drama and surprises.
Tyrannosaur is Unrated, runs 91 min., and plays in South Florida for two nights only on Wednesday, Dec. 28 and Thursday, Dec. 29, at 8 p.m. at the Miami Beach Cinematheque, which loaned me to a screener DVD for the purposes of this review.
David Bowie’s ‘Heathen’ album to see vinyl reissue
December 19, 2011
Seeing as I was just celebrating the acquisition of some rare David Bowie records just yesterday, how appropriate is today’s news from BowieNet? It seems that the Music on Vinyl label is re-issuing David Bowie’s Heathen album on heavyweight 180 gram vinyl. The 2002 album was one of the rare late-era Bowie albums I never reviewed. Probably because I was so traumatized by the weakest album of that period, 1999′s …hours, which I gave a 2-and-half-star review for in “Goldmine” magazine (that “Goldmine” review was re-printed on the Bowie fansite Teenage Wildlife at the bottom of this post).
Heathen was Bowie’s second to last album before his unofficial retirement (is it actually real?), and one of my all-time favorite Bowie albums, post-Scary Monsters (1980). I’ve had the vinyl version on my Amazon wishlist for years and have not seen one appear for less than $90, so the current pe-order price of this new version for $38.43 is a welcome sight (Support the Independent Ethos, purchase on Amazon). I would hope dealers will soon appear offering it at lower prices, but if you cannot wait, this new version will ship on Dec. 27 from Amazon.
I’m also curious to wait and hear reviews regarding the sound quality, as I do not own any releases by this reissue label based in the Netherlands. But after some false starts regarding some classic Bowie albums last year (EMI/Capitol Vaults delays Bowie reissues… again), it’s nice to see a truly rare piece of Bowie vinyl get a reissue treatment that actually seems legit and around the corner. Here’s to hoping Bowie’s last album, Reality, will see a similar treatment (though it was never released on vinyl).
Up-date: A source at Music on Vinyl has written me an email stating: “We’ve used the same master as was used for the original LP.” This, tied with the fact the Bowie’s official website announced the news first about this vinyl reissue, offers positive hope for the sound quality of this record.
Record show finds and more music coverage to come in 2012
December 18, 2011
I try to balance this blog with an interest in both independent film and music. But lately movie reviews have certainly been favored… so much so that I do not feel I can fairly offer a truly objective list of top 10 albums of 2011 (though February will certainly see a list of 20 of the best films I saw this year, as usual). I do plan a year-end music review post, but it will be one of the most subjective year-end posts/articles I have ever written.
In the meantime, as the new year looms, what better time to make my resolution to bring more music coverage to this blog for 2012, starting today with a personal music-oriented excursion that proves I still have a strong interest in vinyl records.
Last weekend, I made by bi-annual visit to Fort Lauderdale, Florida’s Rodeway Inn, about an hour-long drive north of my home, for a small, regular Florida record show that just may be the only routine record collector’s meet in South Florida. The last time I went, about six months ago, I arrived late and came out with scant few offerings to boast about. This time I was going to pay the extra three bucks for early entry (the show has a $7 cover for early entry before 10 a.m. and $5 after that [$4 with the flyer I had]), and it paid off. Below are pictures of the haul with some notes on the records.
One of my early great finds resulted in some awesome David Bowie bootlegs offered at a steal of a price: $3 for vinyl bootlegs, including some of his most acclaimed: 
Slaughter in the Air, the Thin White Duke and Resurrection on 84th Street. The first was culled from a performance in 1978. I’ve heard that live material well enough on the official Stage live album, and it’s not the greatest period for Bowie in concert. The latter two are both from the 1976 Station to Station tour, the Resurrection set is one of Bowie’s most famous concerts, at the Nassau Coliseum in New York. That has since been reissued on both CD and vinyl by EMI Records, as noted in many of my most popular postings on this blog (Could ‘Station to Station’ be EMI’s final Bowie reissue?; David Bowie’s Station to Station to be reissued in fancy 9-disc package; U.S. release date announced for Bowie’s Station to Station reissue; Advance copies for Bowie’s Station to Station features DVD-A).
I was comfortable to be in the presence of those records but would not see myself playing them over enough, if at all. I was interested in some other Bowie boots that included this cheap, black and white covered version of Bowie’s live appearance on the Midnight Special in 1974, offering previews of music that would end up on Diamond Dogs and covering his earlier hits, entitled Dollars in Drag – The 1980 Floor Show.
Then there was this double LP boot entitled The Serious Moonlight Rehearsals.
It’s another live era that never did Bowie much justice but also saw him selling out stadiums, following the release of his hit 1983 album Let’s Dance. The titles of the tracks, like “I Really Meant to Say” and “Hinterland” intrigued, though those are probably made up titles by the bootlegger of popular Bowie cuts.
I expect “Hinterland” will turn out to be “Red Sails,” but I cannot ever recall hearing that song live from a 1983 performance recording, and the cover and vinyl looked to be in good enough condition to make it worth checking out. But the special icing on this cake of this boot is the fact that guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughn is advertised as having participated, and though he famously recorded guitar for Let’s Dance, giving the album quite a distinctive sound, he did not actually join the tour (Earl Slick came in for that), so this should make for an interesting spin on the record player.
Then there was this “Original Master Recording™” of The Rise and Fall and Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, one of the few essential Bowie albums missing from vinyl collection. Though the cover looked worn, the vinyl did not, and these Original Master Recording™s (yes, they earned the TM on that) from the Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs are no joke.
It’s rare to stumble across Bowie records at record shows, much less a whole stack at cheap prices. Eight bucks for three rare Bowie records. I made up for that early extra cost at that one booth, for sure.
Right next to that seller, another guy was looking to dump this excellent condition Donovan double album, A Gift From a Flower to a Garden, for $12:
All inserts (12 individually printed pages of lyrics for each song on the second LP in a folder) were there and the vinyl records looked great.
Plus, the box looked amazing with no tears or splits. The back cover had a photo of Donovan with the guru of Transcendental Meditation, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, attached to it (I would later learn, that this record indeed covered his feeling of initiation into TM).
I also went ahead and grabbed a great condition Mellow Yellow record from this dealer for $1. The cover looked worn, but, more importantly, as far as vinyl, I saw no scratches at all on the record.
I’ve recently been on a Donovan kick, as I have grown to realize his importance in bridging the gap between folk and psychedelic music in the late sixties. The music is phenomenal and resonates to this day on many contemporary acts. I like both Donovan and Belle and Sebastian for their mutual retro rock feel, though one is of the era and one is paying tribute to the era. Also, both Donovan and Belle and Sebastian frontman, Stuart Murdoch share a similar lilt to their voices, seeing as both hail from Scotland.
This find is a promo-only single for Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting”:
Though it has the same song on both sides, the vinyl looked immaculate and the cover, a still image from her music video for the same song, is just a gorgeous, very literal (if unscientific) expression of the song title. It screams steam-punk technology before the term “steam-punk” ever came around. Plus, the track is from my all-time favorite Kate Bush album, 1985’s the Hounds of Love. Heck, Hounds of Love is probably one of the greatest albums of that year, even.
That record was $2, and, for the same price, I also picked up OMD’s Dazzle Ships, from 1983, only because I’ve heard it hyped by some musician friends of mine. Trusting them…
It also looked to be in great condition. Though you never know what you’ll get when you put the need to the vinyl, I do try to avoid any easy-to-spot scratches on the vinyl.
Speaking of, some of the more expensive records I splurged on that day included a $15 Music for Films record by Brian Eno, which I bargained down from $20 for a couple of tiny scratches (the music on there is too subtle to mar with pops and surface noise).
At another dealer’s table, I found a record from Hans-Joachim Roedelius, one of the founders of those electronic Krautrock pioneers Cluster (the softer, piano-oriented member): a 1984 album on the EG label, entitled Geschenk des Augenblicks – Gift of the Moment. For a spot of dried, water damage on the record, which I hope to get off with a record cleaning solution, I got half off the $10 asking price.
That same dealer also had an amazing looking version of an original A&M Records release of the Sky’s Gone Out from Bauhaus, with the original inner picture sleeve of the boys in the band and lyrics for $15. With the seller going half on the Roedelius record, I felt this record was also worth going for.
All told, I spent just $67 and walked out with nine records, including a double album and box set. Not bad.
Maybe this will lead to some individual reviews down the road, as one of the great things about hearing albums on vinyl is the rediscovery of a recording that still holds up nicely to this day. I’ve already started putting together a list of older records I’ve found on-line or at local record stores dating from the nineties on back that I hold up as some of the best of all time or of their times. Next year, beyond the smattering of new music reviews and even profiles (I have one interview with a major musician from the upcoming Weezer cruise in the can), readers of this blog can expect the celebration of some nice vinyl records, including original pictures of the artifacts.
I do have an affection for period movies (see my review of Mozart’s Sister), but they need to offer something broader to say about today’s society to hold any interest (again, see my review of Mozart’s Sister). Or be as brilliantly entertaining as that other Mozart movie, Milos Foreman’s Amadeus from 1984.
Young Goethe in Love offers neither of those aspects. It follows Johann Goethe (Alexander Fehling), the late 18th century German writer who would gain fame ever-lasting for one of the greatest works about a man’s deal with the devil, Faust. But this young Goethe proves a tough subject to care about in his pre-fame career as a muck-about lawyer, as depicted in this movie. I do not know much about Goethe, having only read Faust as part of the required readings of a Romance and Language class during my undergrad studies, so anything I have learned of Goethe’s biography, I learned from Young Goethe in Love.
Prior to Faust, it seems Goethe suffered one rejection after another from publishers for his romantic poetry. Meanwhile, he flunked out of law school, but his well-connected father
(Henry Hübchen) found him a job working at a court in a small town, anyhow. It soon becomes apparent Goethe has not changed his ways, as he finds a drinking buddy in a co-worker (Volker Bruch). After both spend a night out on the town, they are found passed out in their quarters by their superior. During his night out, however, Goethe will meet Charlotte Buff (Miriam Stein), the love who will inspire his first great work, the Sorrows of Young Werther.
It takes a while for anything to happen in the film by Philipp Stölzl. There is dancing, drinking, horseback riding, skinny dipping, fencing and dueling. The design, including costume and sets, show a high production value. It’s all nice stuff that will keep many a period-movie fan interested. But despite Goethe’s conflict with his father and his superiors and the flirtation with Charlotte, t
he real drama of feeling something at stake for these characters does not happen until an hour into the movie, long after one should stop caring about the proceedings.
Charlotte, one of many girls in a huge family struggling to make ends meet, finally falls for Goethe once he recites his poetry to her. But, it turns out, her father (Burghart Klaußner) would prefer to see her marry the much more stable and well-established Albert Kestner (Moritz Bleibtreu), Goethe’s superior at the court. Though the drama picks up here, it is too little too late. About a half-hour later, the film’s all too neat and tidy resolution pops like the bubble of effervescent fizz that this movie feels like.
The acting is sincere, but it all feels as if one predictable dot is being attached to another, and everyone is following the motions. 
The film looks great, despite the drab color palette, but it will take more than a candlelit world of nice design to get the audience emotionally and curiously invested. That said, those looking for a nicely dressed piece of period filmmaking with a romantic story at its heart, who also do not mind the lack of deeper motivations, might find something in Young Goethe in Love to pass the time with.
It’s not like you go to a film entitled Young Goethe in Love, known in its native Germany simply as Goethe!, for insight into its titular author. 
This is as much a biopic as Shakespeare in Love was one on William Shakespeare. But there is an inherent problem of Goethe’s relevance to the English-speaking crowd as an icon of romance. This film does little, if any favors to make this romantic side of Goethe rise above the shadow of Faust, a work more synonymous with the name Goethe. A smarter labyrinth of a movie could have been brewed out of that, but it would have called on some immense skills from a director, who here is only concerned about a little love story that has been told many times over already.
Young Goethe in Love is unrated, runs 102 minutes, and opens today, Friday, Dec. 16, in South Florida exclusively at the Coral Gables Art Cinema. It is in German with English subtitles. See the cinema’s website for screening times, which vary by day. It expands to the Tower Theater in Miami on Dec. 30 and then, in Broward County, at the Cinema Paradiso, on Jan. 3. If you live outside South Florida, the film’s official website lists screening dates across the US (you can also download the full press notes and see the movie’s trailer).
‘Sleeping Beauty’ offers ominous exploration of the prostitution of the female form
December 13, 2011
The last film I can remember having left me feeling as puzzled and intrigued as Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty was Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. I would go on to see Eyes Wide Shut at least 10 times and write an in-depth seminar paper in grad school using the psycho-analytic theory of Jacques Lacan to illuminate the film’s message and finally gain an appreciation for it. I still have not grown tired of that film, which too many have simply brushed aside as Kubrick’s weakest. I’d call it a masterpiece.
But that’s another article, and though I would not consider Sleeping Beauty as existing on the same level as Eyes Wide Shut, I can understand why critics are so similarly divided on it as they were with Eyes Wide Shut when it came out. When Warner Bros. released Eyes Wide Shut in 1999, just before Kubrick’s death, the director had long achieved the status of one of the handful of true master filmmakers whose influence and regard was guaranteed to last throughout the history of cinema.
Sleeping Beauty, however, is Leigh’s first film, and though she proves her skill at handling mystery* in a story, which she also wrote, the film falls just short of the transcendentalism of Kubrick or another filmmaker well know for his mysterious quality, David Lynch. That said, Leigh still has much to offer in abstract, eerie atmosphere in this odd psycho-sexual tale of the darker corners of humanity, and, if she goes on to direct more films, I can see critics re-evaluating this movie more favorably in hindsight.
The film follows Lucy (Emily Browning) on a path into prostitution in order to makes ends meet. We first meet her in a laboratory as she volunteers to swallow a medical device on a long cable. She chokes it back centimeter by centimeter, fighting one gag reflex after another as a young man in a lab coat (Jamie Timony) assures her she is doing great.
It’s a twisted set up that brazenly foreshadows the clinical and sexual film that lies ahead. The film establishes that Lucy is studying at a university and cannot keep up with the rent while struggling at jobs in the copy room of an office and waiting tables at a cafe. She is probably taking part in a medical study for some extra cash too. Oh, and she also dabbles in sexual favors for money at a bar and abuses cocaine.
This is all quickly established in several, efficient, stagey scenes, with the camera mostly at a distance, fetishsizing props, like rows of stacked chairs on tables at the cafe during closing time and neat rows of tables in the lab, 
which has almost symmetrically equal equipment on each side of the screen. Lucy and the other characters stand mostly fully framed in the shots with distance between them, as they speak in curt sentences laden with shared history.
This odd pacing is always interesting, set among one dazzling staged backdrop after another. The surreal atmosphere grows more heightened when Lucy answers an ad for work as a “model.” Following a brief interview in a wood-paneled office with Clara (Rachael Blake) about Lucy’s sex and health, the woman that will be her madame orders her to strip. As a man (Eden Falk) examines her limbs, Clara assures her that in this job, “your vagina will not be penetrated. Your vagina is your temple.”
The distinctive, clinical but warm art direction, the film’s steady pacing, the slow and delicate zooms and pans of the camera and the mysterious dialogue between the characters are all elements Leigh seems to make her own and serve the ominous mood of the film well. A still image of the scene described above, indeed captures the meticulous quality of Leigh’s mise-en-scene:
From the actors in the foreground, their postures, faces, hairstyles, not to mention their dress, coupled with the dynamic contrasts of background, the image breathes forth an evocative quality typical of the movie. Throughout the film, as events grow more twisted, even the distant camera does not detract from the chilling action.
Leigh is a certain kind of storyteller, one who has immense faith in her audience, offering an almost abstract experience of story that invites viewers to bring their baggage to the proceedings. Before this movie, Leigh had already established herself as a novelist of high regard. Her debut novel, the Hunter (1999), did a heck of a job to put her on the literary map, bringing her praise and awards from across the world. The Australia-based writer only recently followed it up with the 2008 novella, Disquiet, a book I happened to have read over the course of a single weekend a couple of years ago. I can personally speak to an odd surreal quality and economic power to Leigh’s prose that is also on full display in this, her first movie.
If there are short comings in Sleeping Beauty, it comes when fleshed out characters fail to materialize, as those that populate the world of Sleeping Beauty seem to walk through it in a haze of mystery that overshadows any insight to their individual motivations. 
For some reason, Lucy chooses to burn her first hundred-dollar bill she earns. For someone set up as so desperate for money, the effort seems a costly over-symbolic move that contradicts her actions, including a moment when she pleads for more work from Clara. In conversation with Clara, one of the elderly men who sleeps with Lucy (Peter Carroll) gives a rambling monologue that does not seem to add much of anything to the film. The director seems more in tuned with the female characters than the men and would have done just as well to leave them alone as the tools they are in the machinations of the story.
These ambiguous scenes (and there can be more or less of them, depending on the viewer) can be a detriment for those searching for story, but I would posit something beyond story rises above these shortcomings. This is the stuff of female nightmares. Imagine taking a potion that puts you to sleep with no memory or even dreams, laying down naked in a bed, where you know men have paid to be in your presence to do anything they want so long as they do not leave a mark or penetrate you. 
That is the job Lucy has signed up for, and what happens in the various scenes with three different men varies, but all send shivers down the spine. In the interest of the power of imagination, I shall spare the details, for there is nothing like the shock of the unfolding proceedings as Lucy submits her nude body to the whims of these old, damaged men, one of the angriest of whom admits to Clara the only thing that can get him an erection nowadays anyway is if a woman used her fingers to penetrate him.
Browning deserves a special award for acting while limp. She never flinches while her character suffers extreme abuse by these men. No doubt as there are some who will be left disturbed, others might feel turned on. However, the innocuousness of the set design and the calm movements of the camera, be they slow zooms, pans or tilts— are all patient, gradual and pregnant with audience implication (or director’s) gaze. Any sexuality is couched in voyeurism. There are no thrusts when Lucy works, and, as Clara tells all the men who “sleep” with her girl, “no penetration.” This is not a film that celebrates or exploits the female body. It repels just as much as it titillates, recalling a similar statement film by another great surrealist director: David Cronenberg, the aptly titled A History of Violence.
Though the elusive quality of the film does seem to get in the way of an unshakably definitive statement, Leigh offers a strong reach that recalls Lynch without coming across as a blatant copier. The amount of Lynch imitators (not that she is one directly or consciously) often steer their train way off the tracks and brew up embarrassing stupidities of films (I guess many of which I have thankfully forgotten). 
The calm and control of Sleeping Beauty save it from becoming another one of those movies.
This elusive line where transcendence occurs in a film is difficult to define without close examination of a filmmaker’s technique. Kubrick, Lynch and Cronenberg are all master craftsmen with an almost superhuman insight into the human psyche, and rare is the film in their oeuvre that does not deliver. As for Sleeping Beauty, the moments of shock that arrive hit at a gut level, tapping deep into the unconscious, the source of nightmares. Though Leigh does not really hit the subtle note for true primal chills and a grand end statement, she comes close. But even without a powerful, final moment of transcendence (and the film tries for one), the techniques in story, pace, art direction, camera work and characterization shows Leigh has all the right moves. Sleeping Beauty maintains an ominous sense of abstract but riveting mystery reeking of sexuality that will keep the adventurous viewer hooked.
Sleeping Beauty is rated R, runs 101 min., and opens in South Florida Friday, Dec. 16, at 9 p.m. at the Miami Beach Cinematheque, which invited me to a preview screening for the purposes of this review, and the Cosford Cinema at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, on the same day and time.
Notes:
*As far as the word “mystery” in cinema, do not expect a whodunit type of film. Sleeping Beauty concerns itself with the darkest, most primal drives of sex.
‘Take Shelter’ offers powerful entry into film’s recent history of schizophrenic cinema
December 8, 2011
A film telling a story from the perspective of a schizophrenic personality makes for an interesting subject via the cinematic art form. It allows for wide-ranging amounts of mystery. But it can also be a harrowing experience, as one can never tell what lies around the corner from one scene to the next. Some film goers who prefer to know what is really happening might feel frustrated. You could even boil down the “action” from one frame to the next, as even the edits can be hard to trust in such a movie. I personally love to get lost in these kind of films, as they thrive on inherently unpredictable qualities.
There have been only a few such movies, but this year’s Take Shelter rises up among the best in recent times. Curtis (Michael Shannon) is growing more aware that either his sense of reality is falling apart or he has developed some sort of unique clairvoyance giving him visions of an impending epic storm. In a way, it recalls the original cut of 1999′s Donnie Darko. In that film, however, the imperfect mess in the story involving worm holes, a specter in a bunny suit that only the titular character (Jake Gyllenhaal) can see and hear coupled with an airplane crash that has yet to happen actually supported the notion that the protagonist may indeed be schizophrenic.*
Take Shelter is much more focused and character-driven. Despite some key awe-inducing scenes of special effects, the effects never overshadow the drama at the heart of the film. It also offers a brilliant “out” at the film’s conclusion that most will never see coming.
Curtis is the main bread-winner in a family of three living in a small Ohio town. He oversees a team of workers at what seems to be a rock quarry. The decision to not bother with the details of the job adds a nice layer of mystery. Beyond some conversation with his boss in an office, the viewer only sees Curtis at work with a co-worker, Dewart (Shea Whigham), using giant industrial equipment to drill into the ground, a dangerous job for a man in Curtis’ state. His wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain), in the meantime, occupies herself by putting her stitching skills to work, scraping together a few bucks for a trip to the beach. The couple have a deaf 6-year-old daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart) who is about to have surgery for an implanted hearing aid, thanks to Curtis’ health insurance from work. It is clear this family needs Curtis.
You follow Curtis as he gradually becomes aware of his hallucinations, which include visions of swelling storm clouds that no one else sees in the waking world.
Meanwhile, his subconscious begins to feel more real to him during dreams that leave him with phantom pain all day long. When his dog bites him in a dream, he feels compelled to move the animal out of the house and fence him in the yard. He later admits to Samantha that he could feel the bite on his arm long after the dream had occurred.
As Curtis seems to unravel, something indeed feels at stake throughout the movie. No wonder he wants to resist his visions, despite wetting the bed and the fact his mother had to go into assisted living due to her own mental illness, which overtook her at around the same age as Curtis.
As the days go by, Curtis grows more concerned, while the visions and dreams grow more violent. To say more would be to spoil the experience of seeing the movie. First-time director Jeff Nichols 
does a brilliant thing to make viewers feel as though they are seeing these things as Curtis. He never preempts a “dream” sequence with a set up of Curtis going to sleep. This, in turn, allows the viewer to sympathize with the visions in the waking world that no one else but Curtis seems to notice.
It does not hurt that the film features sensitive and sincere performances by all involved. Chastain won the Hollywood Breakthrough Award as “Actress of the Year” at the 2011 Hollywood Film Festival for her presence in several great films this year, which have also included the Tree of Life, the Help and the Debt (Here’s a nice image gallery from “Rolling Stone” highlighting her roles in 2011). As a result, Shannon does not have the same star power, but he has already established he can bring the crazy out of his characters. He breathed some insane, creepy warmth to the otherwise cold and dull Revolutionary Road for which he wound up earning a best supporting actor Oscar® nod in 2008.
In an inspired bit of programming, it is worth noting that capping the screening week of Take Shelter locally at the Miami Beach Cinematheque, that same theater will host a one-night only screening of Shannon’s star turn in 2006′s Bug. 
That film also happened to deal with the gray world of perceived mental illness. It was a labor of love film by director William Friedkin, who saw Shannon in the stage play that he would adapt for the screen with the same title. It confounded critics, audiences and the studio’s marketing department. Who were these down-in-the-dumps, messed up people portrayed by Shannon and Ashley Judd, who take a mutual mental roller coaster trip into the depths of private hell, fearing their bodies were nothing but producers of tiny bugs? Where are the monstrous creatures? Do they even exist? This is a movie by the director of the Exorcist, after all. Critics were divided and most audiences hated it.
What was even stranger about Bug is the question whether so-called “body bugs” actually exist or is indeed a mental illness. A local news station (full disclosure: I work there), did a series of investigative reports on the phenomena (read the scripts to the stories by 7News’ senior reporter Patrick Fraser in Part 1 and Part 2). All that baggage aside, this film indeed walks that disquieting line of mental breakdown as related to paranoid schizophrenia in that inspired, ambiguous way that might be upsetting to some viewers and thrilling for others.
At the heart is a tight story involving the dynamics of three stellar actors who also include a mean Harry Connick Jr.
Then there is the choice of some expressive lighting by Friedkin, who does know a thing or two about thrillers, be they horror (1973′s the Exorcist) or action (1971′s The French Connection). As an odd side note on Friedkin, he is also the director once in talks with Peter Gabriel of adapting a film version of the 1974 Genesis album, the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, about a New York street punk on a mythical journey of self-actualization via encounters with sex and death. Friedkin knows a mad experience, and he puts it on full intimate display in Bug.
Call me biased to these kinds of cryptic movies that both exploit the medium of cinema, defined by editing and special effects, playing tricks on the mind of a viewer, and offering a puzzle of a story that, by definition of its genre, can never offer pat conclusions. It celebrates both the inherent quality of the art of a movie and story.
Some of these movies wait until the end for a great big reveal that rationalizes the puzzle presented before it. It’s the easiest abuse of the schizophrenic character at the heart of such films, and movie goers looking for a true mystery might feel cheated. It’s akin to ending a story with “and then he woke up.” Some great directors have fallen back on this trope, like Martin Scorsese with Shutter Island and even David Cronenberg with Spider.
Though Spider did have an amazing mysterious mood throughout, Cronenberg would more powerfully capture the mood 
of schizophrenia with eXistenZ, though the film was about role-players or “gamers,” to use a more modern term, involved in fantasy worlds akin to taking on a persona in real-time games like World of Warcraft. However, in eXistenZ players tapped directly into a fleshy “game pod” with a plug that connects to a “port” implanted in the player’s spinal column and participated in games that only dealt in plots surrounding the creation of role-playing games that tap directly into a player’s spinal column, and on and on, from one alternate layer of existence to another, until reality becomes blurred and imperceptible. It is one of my all-time favorite movies, having the elements of a similar film that came out the same year, the Matrix, which I did not like at all. eXistenZ never tried to rationalize what was real with boring exposition that some might feel more satisfied or at peace with, as it explained what was reality and what was not. In my opinion, eXistenZ blew the Matrix out of the water as far as creating a true feeling of living in an alternate reality by never short-changing the mystery at the heart of the film, creating that sublime sense of helpless schizophrenia that is existence.
This year, you can also add one other movie along with Take Shelter that captures this similar theme: Martha Marcy May Marlene. I caught that movie at a multiplex only a few weeks ago. 
The film, also by a first-time feature director showing great promise (Sean Durkin), has had to rise above a stellar performance by the triple identity character within the title: Martha, Marcy May and Marlene, played by Elizabeth Olsen (the younger sister of the Olsen twins). While most everyone in the audience that day may have been drawn to the movie for the rising star at the center and the baggage her name carries, she compliments the film with a delicate performance that reveals her presence as but a cog in a twisted tale, told through a twisted knot of edits that continuously flashback to Martha’s life in a cult as Marcy May. She somehow escapes the cult, returning to the open arms of her sister (Sarah Paulson) and reclaiming her birth name Martha. However, she cannot seem to shake her past, which may or may not be catching up to her in real life. The film’s ambiguous ending did tremendous respect to this mixed up character. However, I was surrounded by a cantankerous crowd of people who thought the movie “terrible.” But I thought the director did the story a great, if risky, move, staying true to the feeling of helplessness of a person who cannot tell “reality”— whatever that is— from fantasy, imagination, hallucination, dreams, what have you.
To reveal the ending of Martha Marcy May Marlene would be to do the film an injustice. It comes as a surprise, as you certainly want resolution for the character, but it feels right, considering the confused character at the center of it. But even more tidy, if there can be a tidy schizoid movie, is Take Shelter.
I refuse to be specific for fear of spoiling the film for viewers, and some might think this concluding statement reveals too much, so read this last bit only if you do not care if some of the magic of this movie is spoiled before experiencing it for yourself: Some might say there is a big reveal at the end of the film, yet you cannot really trust where the filmmaker decides to place the final frame, as this is a story from the perspective of Curtis. It’s a nice (possibly) ambiguous ending.
Take Shelter is rated R, runs 120 min., and opens in South Florida Friday, Dec. 9, at 6:50 p.m. at the Miami Beach Cinematheque. It also opens that same day further north, in Broward County, at 9 p.m. and Cinema Paradiso in Fort Lauderdale. The Miami Beach Cinematheque has also programmed Bug (Rated R, 102 min.) for a one-night only screening during the theater’s on-going Cinephile’s Choice series, on Thursday, Dec. 15, at 8 p.m. MBC members get free admission to this special screening. All others will pay $10 ($9 for students and seniors).
Notes:
*The director of Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly, would later extend the film in a “director’s cut” with less ambiguity, which even saw re-release in theaters, as a cult following had grown around the DVD because of the film’s mysterious elements.
