2015

The Hateful Eight

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(USA 2015)

The trailers piqued my interest but didn’t totally sell me, so I wasn’t sure about The Hateful Eight. My apprehension was unfounded: it’s gotdamn motherfucking Quentin Tarantino, all the motherfucking way, motherfucker. If that last sentence sounds good to you—and you read it how Jules Winnfield might say it—well, you’re in for a treat. I said, goddamn, god damn!

Traveling through Wyoming on the way to Red Rock not long after the Civil War, bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) is caught in the mountains just as a blizzard is a-brewing. He stops a stagecoach that happens to be carrying another bounty hunter, John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell), and his captive, the lovely Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh)—who has blood on her face for nearly the entire film—and finagles a ride. Another guy, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), who claims to be en route to Red Rock to become sheriff, is thrown into the mix. The blizzard forces them to seek shelter at Minnie’s Haberdashery, where they join four strangers: “Mexican Bob” (Demian Bichir), smarmy Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), quiet cowboy Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), and “The General” (Bruce Dern), a frail former Confederate soldier. Niceties, banter, and then expletives are exchanged until characters are killed off, Ten Little Indians style but with twists—Agatha Christie never blew anyone’s nuts off. Then again, Tarantino’s way of telling a story is completely his own.

True to form, Tarantino jams The Hateful Eight with memorable miscreants, snappy dialogue, and impossibly crazy cutthroat situations. The action here is intense and suspenseful, unfolding gradually and teasingly. The timing is out of sequence—no shock there. The plot gets thicker with each character that falls off, leaving questions begging for answers. Best of all, not a single performance is subpar and not a single character—except maybe Minnie’s helper—is superfluous. Russell and Dern stand out, but Jackson is a master scene-stealer—his delivery is so strong that you simply cannot turn away when he speaks. Channing Tatum makes a surprise appearance and gives an even more surprisingly impressive performance.

Well, let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks quite yet. The story has a hole or two, and the gore is so over the top it loses its impact at points. There’s the use of the ‘n’ word like a mere conjunction. Jason Leigh sounds annoyingly like Roseanne Barr. Oh yeah—more than eight characters actually appear, which a couple of times—namely when everyone is in the same small room—requires extra concentration to follow along. All that said, though, none of it detracts from enjoying the film. Yes, it lacks the elegance and grace of Kill Bill, my personal favorite, but The Hateful Eight is toward the top of Tarantino’s resume. I loved every minute—which did not seem like three hours.

Side note: the overall experience was one I’ve never had at a movie theater. Truly a bona fide “event,” the atmosphere was like a rock concert: the screening was sold out ahead of time, and the crowd was abuzz with excited fans taking pictures and chattering about other Tarantino films. Some had on Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill tee shirts. The line to get in was all the way to the next block. Programs were provided. Shot on decadent 70-millimeter film, the Music Box showed The Hateful Eight on a brand spanking new screen it acquired for this special “roadshow engagement.” The price was double a normal ticket but oh so worth it.

The Hateful Eight ended my year of movies on a high note—I can’t think of a better director to release a new film to close out the year. To borrow from it, “Old Mary Todd is calling, so it must be time for bed.” Time will tell for sure, but I think this one belongs to the ages.

(Music Box) A+

http://thehatefuleight.com

 

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Meet the Patels

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(USA 2015)

Poking fun at cultural differences and the generation gap seems like an easy way to get a laugh, and maybe it is. Fortunately, it works in Meet the Patels, a genuinely funny documentary of one man’s search for love that becomes a family project. After breaking up with his Caucasian girlfriend of two years– a girlfriend he never mentioned to his immigrant parents– L.A. based comic Ravi Patel decides to try the traditional Indian system of hooking up: letting the parents arrange it. Why not? It worked for them, and his mother is known for her matchmaking skills.

Although we don’t see much of sister Geeta as she records everything, her presence is pervasive: she’s off-camera laughing mischievously, goading her brother and chiding him when he vacillates on dating matters. The real stars, however, are Patel’s parents, father Vasant and mother Champa, who fret endlessly over the fact that their children are approaching their thirties and are STILL single, as though this qualifies them as town lepers. Vasant goes so far as to declare, in all seriousness, that not getting married makes one “the biggest loser you can be.” They quickly put together Ravi’s “biodata,” which essentially is a dating resume, and forward biodatas of potential matches to him. They take him to weddings and give him pep talks. They send him all over the States to meet Indian girls. The results are amusing and illuminating. For example, I didn’t know “wheatish brown” is a thing to look for in a mate. I never heard that some skin tones and geographical areas are more desirable than others. I had no idea that many Patels prefer to marry other Patels.

Ravi’s deadpan “OMG” delivery is consistently fun, and animated bits interspersed throughout the film keep the mood light. In the end, it’s clear that no matter how disparate certain views may be, parents and their children can find a middle ground, adapt, and find happiness together. Meet the Patels is warm, relatable, and something pretty much anyone will find entertaining. I laughed a lot.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) B

http://www.meetthepatelsfilm.com

Christmas, Again

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(USA 2015)

Nothing puts me in the Christmas spirit like a gloomy holiday story. Noel (Kentucker Audley) sells Christmas trees on a makeshift lot on a sidewalk in Brooklyn. He works an all-night 12-hour shift. He constantly has to ride his worker, Nick (Jason Shelton), and Nick’s girlfriend (Oona Roche) to get anything done. He fields petty questions and solves petty holiday problems for petty, self-absorbed customers. He sleeps and eats—I wouldn’t call it living—in a trailer on the street, where he survives on a diet of energy pills and antidepressants stashed in an Advent calendar. He buys scratch-off lottery tickets for fun. Oh yeah, he broke up with his girlfriend sometime in the last year. Noel seems lonely. Or is he just someone who doesn’t need the company of others?

One night while working, Noel comes across a woman, Lydia (Hannah Gross), passed out on a bench in a park. Their paths—and her jittery boyfriend’s—cross a few times, and that’s it. 

Christmas, Again probably is not going to end up being anyone’s favorite Christmas movie anytime soon, but it works on quite a few levels. More a string of quiet events than a full story, its real achievement is the mood it sets. Dolorous and blue, the camera moves slowly and blurs the background leaving only hints of cold colors. The cinematography (Sean Price Williams) is beautiful, making the shots literally an opaque blue. I loved the old distorted Christmas music that sounds like it’s playing from an AM radio, the Christmas lights permanently out of focus in the background, and the uneasy, unnatural, and sometimes suspenseful interactions between Noel and Lydia, both of whom are easy on the eyes. There’s a palpable sense of despondency that comes through here.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) B

http://www.xmasagain.com

Janis: Little Girl Blue

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(USA 2015)

Of several celebrity biography documentaries I’ve seen this year, two stand out: Amy (as in Winehouse) and Janis: Little Girl Blue. Interestingly, both performers had similar personalities, made similar music, and traveled similar roads that ended early (at the same age, no less). Both biographies also present their subjects in an imperfect albeit human light.

Narrated by Cat Power, director Amy Berg lets Joplin tell her own story through letters she wrote to her family after leaving Texas for San Francisco in the early Sixties. Interviews with her sister, former band mates, and even Dick Cavett, who famously discussed Joplin’s upcoming ten-year high school reunion on his show less than two months before her death (and who curiously disclosed in his interview for this film that he “may or may not” have been intimate with her), round out her story. What emerges is an ambitious outcast searching for love and acceptance. Two anecdotes are particularly telling and disturbing: a fraternity voted Joplin “ugliest man on campus” during her short tenure at the University of Texas at Austin during the fall of 1962, and footage from her aforementioned ten-year reunion suggests that her old classmates ignored her when she showed up. Weird, considering she was already famous by then. Janis: Little Girl Blue shows a vulnerable side of Joplin that I didn’t know she had.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) A

http://www.jigsawprods.com/janis-little-girl-blue/

Gabo: the Creation of Gabriel García Márquez [Gabo, la creación de Gabriel García Márquez]

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(USA 2015)

Despite a misleading title that suggests TMZ-like journalism, Gabo is a decent biography of one of the greatest authors from the Twentieth Century—and probably the best-known Latin American writer, ever. Justin Webster does a thoughtful and thorough job covering García Márquez‘s impressive life from his humble beginnings in Colombia to his lean days in college and his careers as journalist and then Nobel Prize winning author. He touches on major works and even gets into García Márquez‘s politics. Comments from celebrities like Bill Clinton are nice, but the best stuff comes from García Márquez‘s siblings, Aída and Jaime, and his friends.

Warning: those expecting an in-depth discussion of García Márquez‘s literary works or his “magical realism” will be sorely disappointed; Gabo is very much a factual account of the man’s life. It’s not a biography that humanizes its subject, nor does it mirror his work.

(Gener Siskel Film Center) C+

http://www.icarusfilms.com/new2015/gabo.html

 

Don Verdean

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(USA 2015)

Some movies are hilarious and even endearing because of their silliness. Take, for example, Napoleon Dynamite by Jared and Jerusha Hess. Other movies are just plain stupid. Don Verdean, also written by Team Hess and directed by Jared, is the latter. Too bad, because the premise has potential: Verdean (Sam Rockwell) is a “biblical archeologist” hellbent on proving Christianity—apparently through science. When he accepts a patronage of sorts from aggressive Tony Lazarus (Danny McBride), founder of an evangelical church named after himself, Verdean is slowly sucked into a big fat lie that spirals out of control. He goes along with it for the purported not to mention dubious aim of “inspiring” faith. Needless to say, things get sticky.

There are some funny moments here, like an Israeli police officer (Yaniv Moyal) reading Verdean the riot act for digging in the desert without a permit; a cringeworthy date between Verdean’s assistant, Carol (Amy Ryan), and his Israeli guide, Boax (Jemaine Clement); and ex-hooker Mrs. Lazarus (Leslie Bibb) performing an outrageous ditty about not ending up like Lot’s wife. Ryan plays Carol with the right balance of sweetness and tragedy, and Will Forte as Pastor Fontaine, former Satan worshipper and Lazarus’s nemesis, is a breath of comic fresh air. Everything else– the story, the execution, even the acting– falls flat. Clement is a terrible Jew, and his weird French-sounding accent is fucking annoying. The jokes are not funny, the characters are tiresome, and the story gets old fast. Don Verdean feels like a lame ripoff of Christopher Guest (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show). Easter mass is more entertaining than this. Yawn.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) D

http://lionsgatepremiere.com/donverdean

Office [Huá Lì Shàng Bān Zú]

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(China/Hong Kong 2015)

Johnnie To has made a ton of movies—more than 80 in 35 years. Known mainly for gangster/crime action films, Office [华丽上班族], his adaptation of Sylvia Chang’s 2008 play Design for Living, is atypical To; his only other film even remotely similar is the ultra cool Sparrow, which introduced me to him.

Set at the flashy headquarters of fictional Hong Kong trading company Jones & Sunn on the verge of its poorly timed IPO that just so happens to coincide with the Wall Street financial crisis of 2008, Office is a visually stunning musical soap opera depicting the sordid lives and interactions of those who make up the firm, from brown-nosing go-getter intern Lee Xiang (Wang Ziyi) to chairman Ho Chung-ping (Chow Yun Fat) and MILFy CEO Cheung Wai (Chang). Some subplots and characters are more interesting than others—the storyline with Suen Keung (Cheung Siu-fai) and his embezzlement scheme stands out—but overall Office is fun and engaging, and you really do want to see what happens next. I haven’t seen anything quite like it.

The sets are amazing: big, bright spaces with lots of clean lines and curves, minimalist and modern and moving like a well-oiled piece of machinery—imagine an updated Mad Men amped up on steroids, and you’ve got the idea. It’s arty. An enormous clock straight out of Metropolis serves as a clever nod to what To might be getting at here. If there’s a moral to this story, it might be ‘capitalism has casualties’ or ‘to thine own self be true,’ as To examines things like class, hierarchy, ambition, upward mobility, work, ethics, and honor. I doubt it goes that deep, though. Office is hardly a complicated story and the songs are nothing special, but they don’t need to be: this film churns out enough energy to keep it going for its two-hour running time.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) B+

Tab Hunter Confidential

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(USA 2015)

Some may find it hard to imagine today, but it wasn’t long ago when being gay was not acceptable in America– not even in “Hollyweird,” as Tab Hunter’s autobiography demonstrates. Tab Hunter Confidential is an interesting and entertaining albeit innocuous slice of what life was once like.

Hunter (real name: Art Kelm) discusses with candor and good humor his rise, fall, and personal life in the closet. He is open but definitely guarded: he treads lightly, ostensibly in the interest of privacy. He’s rather gingerly, too: he doesn’t say he slept with anyone, he says he “went up to his room;” he doesn’t say he dated, he says “we were together.” You get the idea. Appearances from celebrities popular in his day– Debbie Reynolds, Connie Stevens, and Mother Superior Dolores Hart (yes, a starlet turned nun)– round out his story and convey how well-liked he was, and still is.

Co-produced by his partner of three decades, Allan Glaser, Tab Hunter Confidential is not exactly the tell-all the title implies. It shares some great anecdotes and Golden Age Hollywood gossip, but no bombshells. Those seeking salacious details will be disappointed. The many images of young Hunter, however, make up for the lack of sleaze.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) C+

http://www.tabhunterconfidential.com

Heart of a Dog

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(USA 2015)

At first blush, a film about a pet might sound funny, even stupid. Heart of a Dog, Laurie Anderson’s first feature-length in 29 years, is neither. The film’s center is Anderson’s rat terrier, Lolabelle, but don’t be fooled: there’s a lot more to this piece.

Focusing on “Lola”– who “fingerpainted,” “played” the keyboard, and apparently had a Facebook page– Anderson reflects on life, death, loss, grief, and love in an emotional yet restrained, objective way that probably only she can pull off. Drawing from her experiences growing up in the Midwest, life in Manhattan in the aftermath of 9/11, her dreams, and even topics she must have researched, she zigzags between personal anecdotes– both serious and goofy– and information and the topic of death. Death is clearly on her mind: she circles back to Lola, her mother, children in an intensive care burn unit where she was stuck for months as a child, and eventually her famous husband, whose presence hovers like a ghost in the love story she references– it’s fitting that he sings over the closing credits (“Turning Time Around”).

As one might (or should) expect, Heart of a Dog has strong visual and auditory sides. Visually, it’s a pastiche of drawings, paintings, animation, home movies, dramatizations, and natural scenes that blur and mix together. The soundtrack is cool, with bits and pieces of orchestrated sounds and Anderson’s soothing, robotic cadence. The effect is a dreamy, airy, semi stream of consciousness. In the end, it’s a touching elegy that struck a chord with me. Heart of a Dog is an art film that manages to be accessible without losing its impact.

(Music Box) B+

http://www.heartofadogfilm.com

70 Acres in Chicago

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(USA 2015)

The title refers to the area between North and Chicago Avenues and Halsted and Orleans Streets, where the (in)famous Cabrini-Green housing project once stood. I remember when the last building came down in 2011. 70 Acres in Chicago is both an oral history and an essay on the rise and fall of “the CG” or “the Soul Coast,” which one speaker describes as “one mile from Downtown, yet in a whole ‘nother economic dimension.” Long before Cabrini-Green was built, the area was a depository for the poor– until the late 1990s and early 2000s when developers saw potential for something else. Today, a “mixed income” approach exists, which as this film demonstrates has advantages but presents a different set of problems.

Ronit Bezalel is pretty clear about her views on gentrification, but she’s not heavy-handed about them. The historical perspective is a nice backdrop. The many personal stories of those who lived in Cabrini-Green make this film special; they run the gamut from funny to poignant. One thing I did not expect was the amount of nostalgia that came through. 70 Acres in Chicago suggests that maybe someday race will no longer be an issue in America, but class is another matter altogether.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) B-

http://70acresinchicago.com