American

Moonlight

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2016)

“At some point, you got to decide for yourself who you’re going to be. Can’t let nobody make that decision for you.”

—Juan

A few films impressed me this year, but so far none have moved me like Moonlight, screenwriter and director Barry Jenkins’s first project in eight years. Inspired by Tarell Alvin McCraney’s piece In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, Moonlight peers into three brief but pivotal intervals in the life of Chiron, a poor black kid in a Miami hood, as he grows up, struggling to connect to the world and find his place in it. This doesn’t sound revolutionary—I could say the same thing to summarize a handful of other movies—but Moonlight is different; it’s not merely Boyz N the Hood or Precious with a gay protagonist. Executed beautifully and flawlessly in three “acts,” it covers a lot of ground—blackness for sure, but also family relationships, sexuality, masculinity, and identity. I relate to so much about it even though my world is nothing like the one it depicts. Jenkins hits something universal, and I can’t imagine many people walking away from this film not feeling it.

WARNING: Potential spoilers ahead!

Act one: It’s clear from the outset that something is different about Chiron, who everyone calls “Little” (Alex Hibbert). He’s quiet and contemplative. A group of boys chases him into a dope hole, an abandoned apartment building or motel where junkies do drugs. Juan (Mahershala Ali), a dealer, finds him hiding out there. Chiron won’t talk even after Juan takes him to eat. He warms up a little when he meets Juan’s girlfriend, Teresa (Janelle Monáe), but he’s still guarded. Chiron’s mother (Naomie Harris), who has a difficult relationship with her son, knows he’s not like other boys.

When Chiron is kicked off the field during a game of something—soccer or football, I don’t remember—a classmate, Kevin (Jaden Piner), runs after him. He tells Chiron he’s “funny” before he picks a fake fight with him to get Chiron to show the other boys that he’s not “soft.” Apparently, they don’t buy it: “What’s a faggot? Am I a faggot? How do I know?” are some of the questions Chiron peppers Juan with not long afterward.

Act two: Chiron (Ashton Sanders), trying to shed “Little,” is a scrawny teenager. He’s still dodging bullies, particularly Terrel (Patrick Decile). He’s also still friendly with Kevin (Jharrel Jerome), who brags about his sexual exploits and smokes a lot of pot. Chiron has a thing for him. They share a surprise moment on the beach one night—it’s deep for Chiron. Too bad things go violently sideways when they’re back at school the next day.

Act three: Chiron, now “Black” (Trevante Rhodes)—incidentally, the name Kevin gives him in high school—is his 20s and living in Atlanta. He emulates Juan, and not just by following in his footsteps selling drugs. Kevin (André Holland) calls out of the blue. He’s a cook in Miami. He says that a guy played a song on the jukebox where he works that reminded him of Chiron, and he offers to make him dinner sometime. It’s a weird call that gets to Chiron, who still carries a torch for Kevin.

After visiting his mother at a treatment center, he heads down to Miami and finds Kevin at the restaurant where he works. They skirt around a bit, and Kevin plays the song: “Hello Stranger” by Barbara Lewis, a smooth ‘60s R&B track with lyrics like “I’m so glad you stopped by to say hello to me” and “If you’re not gonna stay please don’t treat me like you did before because I still love you so.” Kevin vaguely seems to come on to Chiron, who doesn’t understand why Kevin called him—though he seems glad he did.

The sum of Moonlight is greater than its parts, but its parts are still great. The plot is fluid, driven more by dialogue and little moments—like Juan teaching Chiron how to swim, Teresa making the bed for Chiron, and Kevin cooking him dinner—than building up to any single climax. Moonlight is voyeuristic, crammed with moments that are so personal it feels like we shouldn’t be watching. The third act is strange and even a bit slow, but it’s brilliant nonetheless. Chiron and Kevin’s meeting is suspenseful and confusing, percolating with an urgent and erotic undertone. Something about how they convey what they’re feeling with just their eyes makes you actually want to see them kiss. Kevin sums up what the film is all about in one question when he asks Chiron point blank, “Who is you?” The end is unresolved, but it’s perfect.

Moonlight is as close to poetry as a movie gets. James Laxton’s cinematography uses colors that are so lush that you can actually feel the humidity in the air. The night scenes, especially on the beach, are an odd mix of serene and ghostly.

Side note: Chiron’s mother is an interesting character. She seems overprotective at first, wearing scrubs and a name tag when we first see her rushing up to Chiron as Juan brings him home the next day. Upset with Chiron for not coming home, she revokes his TV privileges and tells him to find something to read. Sensible parenting, perhaps; but a lot here is not how it appears. It doesn’t take long to see that she’s a mess. Likewise, it doesn’t take long to see that Juan is not the thug he appears to be. Nothing about Moonlight is what its seems on the surface.

111 minutes
Rated R

(AMC River East) A+

http://moonlight.movie

Tower

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2016)

On August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman, an engineering student at the University of Texas, Austin, killed his mother and his wife before taking over the observation deck of the 30-story Main Building on campus (“The Tower”). Known as the infamous “Texas Tower Sniper,” he then shot random passers-by on the mall below, terrorizing the campus for over an hour and a half. When it was over, 17 victims including him were dead and dozens were wounded (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman). Quite possibly the first mass shooting on a school campus in the United States—and definitely the first of this magnitude—the event resonates nearly 50 years later.

Keith Maitland’s Tower is a sort of oral history of this tragic day, and it’s compelling from the outset. I may seem to be stating the obvious here—how could the story of such an event be anything but compelling? I haven’t mentioned that the whole thing is animated—as in, a cartoon. I must admit that I was skeptical. Turning a combination of archival footage and reenactments into rotoscopes that have an offbeat King of the Hill quality sounds dubiously unfitting for many reasons. Nonetheless, Tower works unsparingly well.

With barely a mention of Whitman—his name comes up toward the end, and only incidentally—Maitland chooses to focus on those caught in the confusion. He doesn’t say who is shooting or why, putting viewers into the thick of it. He let’s survivors, heroes, and witnesses narrate their ordeals: what they were doing, who was with them, and what happened to them. Claire Wilson (Violett Beane), a pregnant teenager who was the first one shot on campus, tells about seeing her boyfriend, Thomas Eckman, die right next to her and losing her baby while she lied in a pool of her blood on the hot concrete. She also talks about the woman, Rita Starpattern (Josephine McAdam), who played dead to stay with her and keep her conscious until help could get to her. Aleck Hernandez (Aldo Ordoñez) tells about being shot in the shoulder while delivering newspapers with his cousin riding on his bicyle with him. Allen Crum (Chris Doubek), a middleaged bookstore employee, tells about dodging bullets to help a victim on the ground and winding up on the observation deck while Whitman was still shooting. Austin police officers Houston McCoy (Blair Jackson) and Ramiro Martinez (Louie Arnette) talk separately about their roles in bringing down Whitman.

Each account is unflinchingly brutal with lots of personal detail. The animation is an odd but effective way to bring us close to the action in a way that otherwise wouldn’t happen. Considering how it’s presented, Tower is surprisingly emotional and personal. I haven’t seen a documentary like this before.

96 minutes
Not rated

(Music Box) B-

http://towerdocumentary.com

Hairspray

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1988)

“Mama, welcome to the Sixties.”

—Tracy Turnblad

Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake) is fucking fabulous, and all of Baltimore knows it! The humble hair-hopping heroine of the kitschy-sixties John Waters classic Hairspray is lower middle class and fat—or as she puts it, “pleasantly plump.” Her parents are clueless and preoccupied with their own drab lot in life: mother Edna (Divine) irons constantly and father Wilbur (Jerry Stiller) owns a joke shop below their dingy little apartment. Tracy’s best friend, Penny Pingleton (Leslie Ann Powers), is positively nerdy—not to mention permanently punished.

None of it stands in Tracy’s way of getting what she wants, whether it’s a slot as a regular on a teen dance program on local television, the hottest guy on the show (Michael St. Gerard), or racial integration. She’s a modern kind of girl—she’ll swim in an integrated pool and support the right of “colored” kids to have more screen time than just on designated “Negro Day” on the last Thursday of every month. Tracy is the height of teen fashion: all ratted up like a teenage Jezebel, no one rocks a sleeveless frock, a plaid skirt, or a pastel pink cockroach gown quite like she does. It should be no surprise that she’s got a modeling gig. And on top of it, the girl can move! Who wouldn’t want to be her?

Tracy’s self-assurance provokes the ire of teachers and mean girls alike, especially rival regular and stuck up little spastic Amber Von Tussle (Colleen Fitzpatrick) and her pageant winning mother, “Miss Soft Crab 1945” Velma (Debbie Harry). Tracy commands attention; when Amber gossips about her and sneers, “Tracy Turnblad is a whore,” she reveals the extent of her own intimidation. You know her, come on, rip her to shreds.

Hairspray has John Waters’s trademark demented sense of humor all over it, and stars regulars like Divine and Mink Stole. However, it marked a shift for Waters into mainstream territory (he started with Polyester, but that one is still a bit weird and definitely not as accessible). It’s no shock that it’s his biggest hit. Like his other leading ladies, Tracy is strong; what’s different, though, is that nothing about her despicable—a first for him. In fact, she’s probably the only lead in a Waters film who’s downright admirable. Her confidence is solid, and her heart is always in the right place. Hairspray makes being an outcast look glamorous and accomplished in a way none of his other films do.

I saw Hairspray the first time in a dorm room during my freshman year of college: we rented a copy on VHS tape, which honestly sounds more quaint now than The Corny Collins Show looked to me back then. I’ve seen Hairspray more times than I can count, and I never get tired of it. I’m apparently not the only one, as the multiple remakes and reboots demonstrate. None of them can touch the original. How could anything top Sonny Bono as a dad, or Pia Zadora as a beatnik chick going on about Odetta while Ric Ocasek paints behind her and utters his one-word line: “reefer!”

92 minutes
Rated PG

(Home via iTunes) B+

http://www.dreamlandnews.com/films/hairspray.shtml

Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2016)

Married duo Fisher Stevens and Alexis Bloom’s Bright Lights is very much like the best pop songs from the ’80s: it’s a fun and vibrant affair with an underlying note of sadness that lingers throughout. With Bright Lights, set to air on HBO in Spring 2017, they offer an up close and personal look into the lives of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, neither of whom needs an introduction.

The story is built around a nightclub show Reynolds is putting together as a sort of farewell. Fisher is ever present to offer support, advice, and constructive criticism to her mother, who clearly is growing frail. They have a great rapport and a seemingly normal relationship despite their eccentricities: Reynolds is a workaholic and Fisher is, well, not. They live in their own homes on the same property, separated only by one small Hollywood hill. They spend their days together and seem to have a lot of fun. Their interactions are often amusing and kind of crazy (and I mean that in a good way). Not surprisingly, Fisher is a lot more animated and cheekier than her mother: she has a great chat with pal Griffin Dunne on her bed, where they discuss his deflowering her back in the day. She also shows us a Princess Leia sex doll she has and doesn’t know how to use.

It’s not all fun and games, though. Stevens and Bloom touch on the infamous split between Reynolds and ex-husband Eddie Fisher, who left her for Elizabeth Taylor, and the impact it had on both Fisher and her brother, Todd, who also makes an appearance. Fisher briefly discusses growing up in her mother’s shadow. She gets into her drug use, mental problems, and past relationship with Paul Simon. There’s a segment about Eddie Fisher’s death. There’s also the heartbreaking story of Reynolds’s ill-fated attempt at curating a museum of Hollywood artifacts; she reluctantly aborted her plan and auctioned off her acquisitions when it started to drain her finances.

Even though it seems both are playing to the camera a bit, Bright Lights delivers on showing a pretty well adjusted familial relationship. What struck me most about this documentary, though, is that for both Reynolds and Fisher, their best days—along with Hollywood’s—are behind them. A lot of dead legends are referenced here. Many viewers probably will regard Reynolds’s show, like all farewell tours, as an act of desperation; the fact that the fans at the shows are almost exclusively senior citizens drives home the point that this is literally the last leg of an era. A scene at the end that depicts Reynolds accepting a Screen Actors’ Guild lifetime achievement award demonstrates how frail she has become, and it’s tough to watch. Fisher earns a living making appearances at comic and memorabilia festivals where fans pay to have their picture taken with her; for all her flip irreverence, she’s very careful not to demean any of them.

Whether the filmmakers intended it, the failed Hollywood museum illustrates the idea that all good things must come to an end: the lights, as bright as they may be, eventually will turn down. Let’s hope, to steal the title of one of those aforementioned ’80s pop songs, that there is always something there to remind me.

Screening followed by a live Q and A with director Fisher Stevens.

95 minutes
Not rated

(AMC River East) C

Chicago International Film Festival

Middle Man

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2016)

“No price is too high to pay for a good laugh.”

—Fatty Arbuckle

Lenny Freeman (Jim O’Heir) is a wussy ageing milksop who quits his job as an accountant to pursue a career in standup comedy after his mother (Barbo K. Adler) dies. The problems with his plan are numerous. For one, his idea of comedy comes from old radio greats of the 1930s and 1940s—hardly cutting edge or relevant stuff. Further, Lenny has led a sheltered life with his mother. He’s naive. He has no confidence. He isn’t funny. He isn’t particularly perceptive: he doesn’t quite get it when, say, he’s being insulted or threatened. To make matters worse, he’s never even performed for an audience.

Driving from Peoria, Illinois, to Las Vegas in his mother’s 1950s Olds, Lenny picks up a shady hitchhiker (Andrew J. West)— aptly and cornily named “Hitch”—who claims to manage comedians and offers to get Lenny on the very TV show for which he’s on his way to an audition. They make a contract, and Hitch takes Lenny to The Yuck Stop, a desert roadside club in fictitious Lamb Bone, Nevada, to test his material at open mic night. Spoiler alert: Lenny sucks, and the rough crowd is vicious.

Somehow, the corpse of the nastiest heckler (Danny Belrose) is inside Lenny’s trunk in the morning. Lenny thinks he killed him and spends all day in the desert unsuccessfully attempting to dump the body. Hitch pushes Lenny—unglued and soaked in sweat and blood—back onto the Yuck Stop stage, where he confesses to the murder. The crowd takes it as schtick, and this time loves Lenny. Thus begins a killing spree that benefits Lenny’s act more and more with each murder.

Screenwriter and first time director Ned Crowley is onto a good idea with Middle Man, an exploration of selling one’s soul for the spotlight. He references the Coen Brothers, David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, David Fincher’s Fight Club, and perhaps in a sense Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope. I particularly love sick jokes and dark humor, and Crowley liberally applies both throughout. The execution here is uneven, though. The dialogue really shines, but some characters are disproportionately more interesting than others. Hitch’s motive is probably ambiguous on purpose, but it nagged me and got in the way of fully enjoying the film. Most unfortunately, main character Lenny gets old after awhile. Watching his confidence soar in a romantic subplot with his rival standup’s girlfriend, Grail (Anne Dudek), starts out well enough but soon fizzles badly.

Middle Man takes a decidedly sinister turn about 20 minutes before its ending, which is predictable and not as weird or harrowing as Crowley might have intended. Overall, though, this is a respectable debut that doesn’t take itself too seriously—that’s the most refreshing thing about it.

Screening followed by a live discussion with director Ned Crowley and actor Jim O’Heir.

104 minutes
Not rated

(AMC River East) C+

Chicago International Film Festival

http://www.middlemanmovie.com

Christine

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2016)

“In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in ‘blood and guts’ and in living color, you are going to see another first—attempted suicide.”

—Christine Chubbuck

During the summer of 1974, local television reporter Christine Chubbuck shot herself in the head on the air while presenting a live news segment at a small station in Sarasota, Florida. I’m not spoiling anything by saying Christine leads up to this jarring moment, but screenwriter Craig Shilowich and director Antonio Campos apparently aim to demonstrate why it happened. A dispositive answer never comes—it could have been a number of reasons, as the film suggests—but that’s because no one but Chubbuck knows for sure. Christine isn’t really about this singular moment, anyway—it’s an intense, sometimes humorous but thoroughly wrenching character study of the solitary woman behind it.

The first time we see Chubbuck (Rebecca Hall) is, appropriately, on a TV monitor: she’s alone in a room interviewing an imaginary Richard Nixon, aggressively grilling him on Watergate. She watches herself, taking notes on how she looks and sounds. She asks a passing colleague about her performance, probing as to whether she comes off as warm and human. This scene succinctly sets up Chubbuck’s dilemma: she wants to be a real journalist going after important newsworthy stories, not the fluff pieces about chickens she usually covers. The problem is, she doesn’t come off quite right: she’s awkward, brusque, combative, and not particularly “feminine,” characteristics that she’s all too aware thwart her chances of improving her lot with a spot as an anchor in a larger market.

Chubbuck lives with her mother (J. Smith-Cameron) and pines for a colleague, anchorman George (Michael C. Hall). She’s an idealist who fights her toxic boss (Tracy Letts) as he pushes to sensationalize the news for the sake of higher ratings. She’s obsessed with her work, which is increasingly unfulfilling. She’s also privately coming undone, something crystal clear from her depressed tendencies, wild mood swings, and bitter resentments toward others she thinks have it better in one way or another than she does.

The cast is spectacular, but it’s no surprise that Hall (Rebecca, not Michael C.) carries Christine—she has to. Hall owns the role: her performance is flawlessly mesmerizing. Resembling a severe Olive Oyl crossed with Wednesday Addams, she deftly uses body language and posture to convey Chubbuck’s uneasy and awkward intensity. Hall slowly and deliberately brings Chubbuck’s frustrations—with her boss, her career, and herself—to a rolling boil. The tone here is clinically journalistic, with the facts of Chubbuck’s situation laid out one by one and offered into evidence for the viewer to make what he or she will of them.

As I watched, I expected Christine to make some profound statement—something about the integrity of “news” in America, gender equality, idealism versus reality, mental health, all of the above. It plants the seeds, but it doesn’t quite get there—it’s either noncommittal or too subtle, I can’t tell which. About halfway through, I realized I wasn’t catching a clear message or a moral. Maybe there isn’t one. A reference to The Mary Tyler Moore Show can be interpreted as irony or cynicism, and it exemplifies Christine‘s ambiguous motive. The film has the feint whiff of exploitation, yet it still tells a lot about Christine Chubbuck and what pushed her over the edge. Christine is respectful to who she was, depicting her as far more than her final moment: she was smart, her peers respected her, she volunteered as a performer at a children’s hospital, and she struggled with many demons. If the actual event played out the way it does in this film, it was a chillingly snarky, mean way to make a point. If nothing else, Christine shows what depression can do to a person.

115 minutes
Rated R

(AMC River East) B

Chicago International Film Festival

Eye of the Cat

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1969)

Ailurophobia, the irrational fear of felines, forms the basis for Eye of the Cat, a nifty little throwaway from the late Sixties. Despite what its trailer suggests, it’s not an outright horror film—it’s a suspense thriller that relies heavily on psychological tension, very much like Hitchcock did. This isn’t surprising: screenwriter Joseph Stefano previously penned Psycho. Those familiar with Hitchcock will notice a slight feel of Rope and The Birds. Plus, the external shots of San Francisco strongly recall Vertigo.

The plot rings familiar: cosmetologist Kassia Lancaster (Gayle Hunnicutt), whose name “sounds like a prison door slamming shut,” mysteriously and abruptly recruits philandering Wylie (big-eyed Michael Sarrazin) to help her execute a plot to get his rich and ailing stepmother, “Aunt” Danny (Eleanor Parker), to put him back in her will as her sole heir—and then kill her. Wylie’s brother, Luke (Tim Henry), lives with Aunt Danny and is getting in the way. There’s another problem: Wylie has a bad case of ailurophobia, and Aunt Danny’s house is loaded with cats.

Eye of the Cat‘s sum is greater than its parts, and overall I enjoyed this one quite a bit. The title and opening sequence are cool: the animated outline of a housecat slinks over scenes of San Francisco and gives way to split screens that start the story. Stefano and director David Lowell Rich are refreshingly frank and downright casual with their attitude toward and treatment of sex and drugs: nothing is merely implied here. In his first scene, Kassia yanks Wylie naked out of bed—away from the naked woman still next to him. There are references to having sex, they say “have sex,” and they actually do have sex in a few scenes. One unsettling scene between Wylie and Danny in the latter’s bed alludes to a past liason. Later, Wylie and Kassia go to a dope bar on a boat and smoke a joint. One of the patrons at the bar makes a joke about his own homosexuality, which may be one of the earliest openly gay characters I’ve seen.

All four actors, even Parker, possess an effortless and elegant allure. Sarrazin and Henry are hot, and they both have shirtless scenes. Hunnicutt is absolutely gorgeous in her smart skirts and big hair. Lowell Rich builds tension nicely, getting the actors to walk a very fine line between serious horror and camp, something most evident in a brilliant scene involving Danny on a hill in her wheelchair. Lalo Schifrin’s ominous score adds greatly to the mood here.

Except for a solitary orange tabby that clearly has Danny’s back, the cats—an overwhelming throng of them—curiously disappear after the story is set up, and don’t return until the climax. The film ends in a ridiculously horrific way—so bad, I laughed out loud with most of the audience. It’s a pity Eye of the Cat is not available for download or on DVD. It’s a fun movie.

102 minutes
Rated M

(Music Box) B-

Music Box of Horrors

Eyes of Fire

Posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1983)

I never heard of Eyes of Fire or anyone involved in it until it appeared on the roster for a local horror film festival. Featuring a team of inconsequentials—writer and director Avery Crounse completed two more projects I never heard of after this and most of the actors continued on to television roles—it’s a low budget fantasy/horror flick relegated to obscurity. It’s no wonder why.

Set in 1750 colonial America and told in flashback, Eyes of Fire follows vain and flighty missionary Will Smythe (Dennis Lipscomb), his small flock of devotees that includes his mistress, Eloise (Rebecca Stanley), and a ginger named Leah (Karlene Crockett) who everyone thinks is insane but is really a fairie, and Eloise’s estranged husband, Marion Dalton (Guy Boyd), as they stumble through the Eastern Woodlands looking for a safe haven. To escape attacking Shawnee natives, Dalton leads the group into a valley that Smythe takes to be “the promised land” and settles into the abandoned campsite there. Dalton is uneasy about staying. Leah also senses something amiss and starts seeing spirits—sometimes they’re clothed, sometimes they’re naked and covered in mud. They don’t look happy. An orphaned native girl (Rose Preston) appears on Smythe’s doorstep, and he takes her in to convert her to Christianity. Immediately, strange things start happening: Fanny (Sally Klein) disappears and is found in a coma, Meg (Erin Buchanan) is found hanging upside down from a tree, and a rotten skeleton pops up out of the dirt. !!! Leah figures out what’s going on: a devil-witch is trying to steal their souls and trap them all in the trees in the forest. Can she and Dalton stop the madness?

I’d be lying if I said Eyes of Fire isn’t silly. It takes itself so seriously, too. The story is easy to follow, but Crounse packs an awful lot into it: folklore, witchcraft, the supernatural, colonialism, ethnic superiority, religion, morality. Whatever points he makes are lost in cheesy special effects—lots of Tesla lightning, negative images, and distorted sounds. The trees have gruesome faces, and at one point they all puke bilge. The devil-witch looks like Captain Caveman made out of twigs. It all warrants a great big “whatever.” Even with its low-budget giveaways, though, I found this film weirdly fascinating—it plods along slowly but somehow kept me engaged. The simple stuff works best—the scene in the forest with white feathers covering the entrance to the valley (repeated later with pages torn out of Smythe’s books and spread all over the campsite) is beautifully ominous and visually arresting. Too bad there isn’t more of it.

86 minutes
Rated R

(Music Box) C-

Music Box of Horrors

Winter of the Witch

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1970)

I never heard of this nifty gem of a short until I saw it, but it’s apparently quite big with Gen X. I can see why: a precursor to Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and Scooby Doo with Bewitched and The Addams Family thrown in, it’s about a single mother (Anna Strasberg) who skips town (Manhattan) in her VW Bug with her young son, Nicky (Roger Morgan), and buys a dilapidated old Victorian mansion in the boonies for cheap. Real cheap: $400 cheap. Turns out, there’s a catch: the place is haunted by a gloomy and depressed 300-year old witch (Hermione Gingold) who’s given up on the world.

Adapted from the book Old Black Witch by Wende and Harry Devlin, screenwriter and director Gerald Herman turns in something unintentionally impressive. I can see why this is such a hit with members of my generation. Aside from a few nouveau social issues for the time (a single parent and a vaguely gay little boy) and the mysterious untold backstory of this mother-son team, Winter of the Witch is really fucking weird. What kid’s story mixes the occult and “magic pancakes” laced with something no one will identify? The damned pancakes make everyone who eats them happy, so… The quality of the film is cheap and eerie, adding to the mood. Plus, Burgess Meredith narrates.

Winter of the Witch is roughly the length of a sitcom episode, which makes me think it was a pilot that didn’t get picked up. Regardless, I love it! See for yourself below.

24 minutes
Not rated

(Music Box) B+

Music Box of Horrors

Are We Not Cats

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2016)

Focused on romance, pleasure, and pain, screenwriter and director Xander Robin’s feature length debut, Are We Not Cats, is a stylishly edgy, wry, and quirky delight. Eli (Michael Patrick Nicholson) is neither ambitious nor grounded. In the span of a few hours, he loses his girl (really his f-bud, but he didn’t quite get that), his job as a garbage collector, and his home when his Russian immigrant parents abruptly inform him that they sold their house and are moving to Arizona. “Visit us!” his mother chirps right after his father bribes him with a delivery truck to get out that night.

After moving into the back of the truck, crashing and showering wherever he can, and driving around aimlessly, Eli picks up a one-off job delivering a motor to a junkyard. There, he stumbles upon knitcapped Kyle (Michael Godere), who introduces him to a toxic elixir, a feral underground scene in a basement, and his impish feline girlfriend, Anya (Chelsea LJ Lopez). Eli is smitten. He stalks Anya, who doesn’t seem to mind. He discovers that they share a similar nervous habit: he pulls his hair out and she eats hair. Anya’s magnetism pulls Eli down a dark path he isn’t quite equipped to travel.

Are We Not Cats is uneven, but what it lacks in consistency and depth it makes up for in style. Robin has a wicked dark, offbeat sense of humor. His camerawork is sharp, nimble, and has a certain momentum to it. The locations—a junkyard, a disused barn, an empty diner—work beautifully with the bleak, snow covered landscapes to underscore Eli’s resigned state of mind. Robin contrasts this with colorfully vivid and cozy scenes with Anya, who possesses a flair for clutter. Matt Clegg’s druggy, dreamlike cinematography is flat where it should be, and brighter and more dimensional where it needs to be. The story sags a bit toward the end, but the film’s brevity mitigates this problem. Nicholson’s passive and forlorn take on his scruffy character is deftly balanced; somehow, he keeps Eli sympathetic despite the fact that his hapless demeanor, lack of social skills and boundaries, and sleepy purposelessness are turnoffs. The soundtrack, consisting almost entirely of old Seventies soul tunes, is as much a character as anyone; the music contributes its own warmth and personality that literally makes this film sing.

Screening followed by a live Q and A with Xander Robin and Michael Patrick Nicholson.

78 minutes
Not rated

(AMC River East) B-

Chicago International Film Festival

http://www.arewenotcats.com