true story

Sad Vacation: the Last Days of Sid and Nancy

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2016)

It doesn’t get more P.R. (“punk rock”) than the final days of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, the notorious and dysfunctional so-called “Romeo and Juliet of punk”—frankly, I’ve always viewed them as not too far off from John and Yoko, but I digress. Two messy heroin junkies, they bounced around for most of 1978 after the Sex Pistols disbanded. In September, they landed in Manhattan, where they rented a room at the Chelsea Hotel and Nancy appointed herself Sid’s manager. A month later, she ended up slumped next to the toilet in their room, dead from a stab wound to the abdomen (though she had multiple shallow stabs all over). Sid was arrested and allegedly confessed to her murder. While out of prison on bail, he died of a heroin overdose—some claim accidentally administered by his mother, others claim suicide—just four months later.

Danny Garcia’s Sad Vacation, a straight-to-video release coming out almost exactly 30 years after Alex Cox’s biopic Sid and Nancy, revisits these legendary rock and roll deaths. Interviewing many a soul who was there—Steve “Roadent” Conolly, Kenny “Stinker” Gordon, Hellin Killer, Walter Lure, Howie Pyro, Cynthia Ross, Gaye Black, Phyllis Stein, and Sylvain Sylvain to name a few—Garcia presents the facts, which are conflicting and not at all clear. Although Sad Vacation covers a little history of the punk movement, Malcolm McLaren, and the Sex Pistols, the focus is assiduously on what happened at the Chelsea. Narrated by Fun Lovin’ Criminals front man Huey Morgan, Sad Vacation takes on the tone of a crime documentary, laying out evidence and showing the holes in it. Not surprisingly, Garcia reveals some of the “eight thousand or so” conspiracy theories surrounding the murder, with those who knew the couple speculating on who really killed Nancy. Many point to Rockets Redglare, a drug dealer and bodyguard who worked for them. Redglare, who went on to appear in a number of films you’ve actually seen, died in 2001 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockets_Redglare).

Sad Vacation is not essential viewing; it doesn’t uncover anything new, raise any points that haven’t been raised before, or even pick a theory to endorse. It concludes that no one will ever know what happened. Big wow. That said, Garcia succeeds in showing that Sid and Nancy were kids—flawed ones, but still. After hearing words like “mess,” “dysfunctional,” and “destructive” to describe their relationship, it’s sweet to learn that his ashes were spread on her grave because they couldn’t be buried together. Now that’s P.R.

94 minutes
Not rated

(Home via iTunes) C

https://m.facebook.com/sadvacationdocumentary/

http://www.chipbakerfilms.com

King Cobra

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2016)

Well now, Justin Kelly’s King Cobra looks like a film with some serious bang: it depicts the salacious, sensational, and supposedly true story of tres popular real-life gay porn actor Sean Lockhart b/k/a Brent Corrigan’s messy entry into the porn industry. Packing loads of scandal and suspense, it comes with a denouncement of sorts from Lockhart himself (https://www.google.com/amp/www.gaystarnews.com/article/brent-corrigan-condemns-gay-drama-king-cobra-bastardising-story-life/amp/?client=safari). Oh, and the money shot: a wad of bona fide Hollywood stars all in on the action. Hot yet? Not so fast, Jack: if there’s one thing I’ve learned from many an opportunity to view gay porn, it’s that looks are deceiving and the movies rarely live up to their promise. Assessing King Cobra therefore demands some deeper probing to get to the bottom of it.

Taken from Andrew E. Stoner and Peter A. Conway’s true crime exposé Cobra Killer: Gay Porn, Murder, and the Manhunt to Bring the Killers to Justice, Kelly’s screenplay gets into the real 2007 murder of Bryan Kocis, the owner and operator of Cobra Video, a real gay porn production company. As such, it makes sense that Kelly doesn’t focus on Corrigan as much as he does on Stephen (Christian Slater), a thinly fictionalized version of Kocis. A forty-something professional photographer turned producer of twink skin flicks, Stephen “discovers” Lockhart (Garrett Clayton) and signs him to make videos in a room of his suburban home in Dallas Township, Pennsylvania. Lockhart becomes Brent Corrigan, a name he plucks from the phone book, and proves to be an internet superstar as a bareback bottom. Things are strained—Stephen is clearly smitten with Lockhart, who moves in with him and does menial chores like yard work and scrubbing toilets around the house shirtless when he’s not shooting porn. Plus, Stephen is doughy and creepy. Lockhart realizes he’s being exploited and sees his potential to make a lot more money on his own. The shit hits the fan when he walks away from his contract with Cobra only to find that he can’t use his porn name because Stephen trademarked it.

Enter psychotic couple Harlow (Keegan Allen), a porn actor and rent boy, and his intense, overbearing boyfriend, Joe Kerekes (James Franco), owner of Viper Boyz, a smaller porn production company. Kerekes is a half million dollars in debt thanks to their ridiculously expensive lifestyle, which is starting to disintegrate. He’s got an idea for a sure moneymaker: Harlow and Corrigan together in a porn. They meet Lockhart, who wants to work with them but can’t use his lucrative name. Desperate to make it happen, they come up with a way to solve Lockhart’s dilemma: get rid of Stephen.

Although I didn’t love it, King Cobra is not terrible. In fact, it’s a noticeable improvement over Kelly’s first film, last year’s I Am Michael (https://moviebloke.wordpress.com/2015/10/24/i-am-michael/). That said, it still suffers from the same deficiencies. If anything, it feels underdeveloped. The two subplots—the storyline with Stephen and Lockhart, and the one with Joe and Harlow—take too long to intersect; when they do, King Cobra devolves into a gay slasher flick. Ho hum. Molly Ringwald and Alicia Silverstone are okay in their roles as Stephen’s sister and Lockhart’s mother, respectively. However, their characters are superfluous and don’t fit into the story—it’s as though they’re dropped in just to give the actors a part in the film so their names can be included on the poster. Oh yeah: another film with Franco playing a gay guy, only this time he gets his butt plowed. Big wow. For a film about the gay porn industry, King Cobra is shy about nudity; it comes off as sanitized cable soft core lite. It’s not even the whole true story; Rolling Stone ran a story about the murder of Kocis in a September 2007 issue: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/death-of-a-porn-king-20070920. Kelly takes some generous artistic license, leaving out parts of what happened (and thus arousing the real Lockhart’s ire).

Kelly’s script is so overboard on gay clichés that it rings hollow. Just as he did in I Am Michael, he again gives superficial treatment to his characters here and doesn’t quite get into their heads, leaving them flat—though he does a better job with Stephen and to a somewhat lesser degree Lockhart. Kelly seems drawn to the dark side of the gays, and I won’t fault him for that. However, his way of portraying this dark side is amateurish and uninformed, recalling films like Cruising and Basic Instinct. Having seen the only two films he’s made, I have to wonder whether he knows any gay people.

I’ll end this on a positive note: Clayton is the real star of this picture. He plays Lockhart as a diva hustler, one with an agenda that no one is getting in the way of. He’s pouty, arrogant, bitchy, so stuck on himself, and unapologetic about it all. He’s brilliant! The scene where a makeup artist touches up his butt says it all.

92 minutes
Not rated

(Home via iTunes) C-

http://www.ifcfilms.com/films/king-cobra

http://gowatchit.com/microsite/4274?gwi_origin=tracking_link&gwi_origin_context=microsite#upcoming_theaters-11402

Coming Through the Rye

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2015)

Occasionally, I’m a real starstruck starfucker; I’ve met two of my own idols, and each time was a story in itself. I’m a fan of both The Catcher in the Rye and Nine Stories, too (though not so much Franny and Zooey).

So not surprisingly, I found the premise of Coming Through the Rye appealing and totally relatable: set in 1969, Jamie Schwartz (Alex Wolff), an angsty, unpopular, nerdy high school student at an all-boy boarding school in Pennsylvania, sets out to track down the reclusive J.D. Salinger (Chris Cooper). Like many a midcentury American boy, Jamie says Salinger’s Catcher changed his life; although he’s not as harsh, he identifies with Holden Caulfield because he sees himself isolated and surrounded by phonies. He seeks the author’s blessing on his senior project, a stage adaptation of Catcher (in which Jamie plays Caulfield, of course) to be performed at his school.

Anyone remotely familiar with Salinger knows that Jamie isn’t getting his wish, something at least two teachers let him know. The kid will not take no for an answer. After failing to reach Salinger both by letter and by dropping in on his agent in New York City, a series of unfortunate events at school prompts Jamie to take off and look for Salinger himself. Deedee (Stefania Owen), a local girl who likes him and fortunately for him has a car (a cool Rambler), picks him up and offers to drive. The two embark on a short odyssey through New England.

Equal parts road movie, romance, and coming of age story, there’s quite a bit to like here. Based on actual events from his own high school years, writer and director James Steven Sadwith crafts a straightforward, easygoing story that flows naturally. The many parallels between Jamie and Caulfield—right down to a red hunter’s cap and a disquieting older brother (Zephyr Benson)—are cute; the fact that Jamie is the only Jewish kid at a WASPy boarding school is a nice touch that underscores his status as an outsider. Sadwith does a fine job showing the loss of Jamie’s innocence through a number of small events. Wolff and Owen have a wonderfully guileless chemistry that works really well; a scene with milkweed blowing in the wind is downright beautiful. Jamie’s ultimate discoveries, however, aren’t so cute—this is what keeps Coming Through the Rye from turning into nostalgic drivel.

97 minutes
PG-13

(Gene Siskel Film Center) B

http://www.comingthroughtheryemovie.com

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

Fire at Sea [Fuocoammare]

Link posted on by moviebloke

(Italy 2016)

“It is the duty of every human, if you’re human, to help these people.”

—Dr. Pietro Bartolo

Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire at Sea is inconsistent. On the plus side, it’s a beautifully shot film that recalls Italian neorealism with its ordinary characters, setting, and action. He follows a few different narratives, including a doctor, Pietro Bartolo; a pubescent boy, Samuele Pucillo; an old lady; and throngs of refugees mostly from Africa and the Middle East who arrive by boat to the sleepy Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, where these fishing townsfolk live. Using a kind of day-in-the-life approach, Rosi contrasts the lives of those who have all one way or another ended up on this island. Dr. Bartolo’s job is to examine the refugees as they arrive, and his commentary on what he’s seen is sad. Pucillo is a fisherman’s kid who’s nursing a lazy eye. The old lady (who’s name I didn’t catch and I’m not going to find it now) listens to the radio in her kitchen and requests songs for her son, who’s away at sea. I think. The refugees are something else altogether, and a few get camera time to tell their stories. There’s a great scene where a bunch of them sing a haunting African chant/rap about their persecutors. There’s another where a group of men divides up to play soccer, and we get insight into their allegiances.

On the negative side, Fire at Sea meanders. A lot. Rosi doesn’t exactly connect the refugee crisis to the islanders, so Pucillo and the old lady seem superfluous; their stories actually interfere with what I was far more interested in: the refugees. It’s a pretty and non-judgmental film, but it doesn’t take a stand. I sense a point about loss in here somewhere, but it doesn’t quite get there. I was bored during most of it, I’m sorry to say.

114 minutes
Not rated

(AMC River East) C

Chicago International Film Festival

https://www.kinolorber.com/film/view/id/2363

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

https://youtu.be/E1EnDqhFU6I

Strike a Pose

Video posted on by moviebloke

(Belgium/Netherlands 2016)

It’s no secret that Madonna’s Truth or Dare occupies a special place in my heart (https://moviebloke.wordpress.com/2016/08/26/truth-or-dare-in-bed-with-madonna/ ). As ladies with an attitude or fellas that were in the mood, the dancers are a big reason why; all seven young guys proved to be more than incidental eye candy, each adding considerable spirit not just to the film but to the tour—and arguably Madonna’s persona. Strike a Pose shows where they are now, which isn’t necessarily pretty but certainly isn’t all that bad.

Directors Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan get into the past and even dig up a little dirt, like the lawsuits some of the dancers filed after Truth or Dare came out. Thankfully, they don’t spend a lot of time on either. Instead, they focus on what exactly working with Madonna during such a pivotal time in her career brought to each of their lives, for better or for worse. What each dancer ultimately ended up doing isn’t as interesting as the subtext, which suggests that it was all an illusion.

As one might expect, some of the dancers at least on the surface have done better than others. Salim “Slam” Gauwloos, Luis Camacho, and Kevin Stea are working choreographers (Stea also got into deejaying and recently even recorded an album). Carlton Wilborn, the only one who toured with Madonna again after Blond Ambition, published a biography and is now a life coach. Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza lives with his mother in her apartment in New York. Oliver Crumes is married and possibly disabled—it’s not entirely clear, but that’s what I deduced. Sadly, Gabriel Trupin died in 1995 (which I already knew). His mother, Sue, has a lot to say about his role in Truth or Dare.

As a huge Madonna fan, Strike a Pose did not reveal much that I didn’t already know. That said, one thing that blew me away was that three of the dancers knew they were HIV-positive during the tour, yet none of them said anything about it. I’m not judging—anyone who made it through the “crisis years” of AIDS understands why. Still, it’s sad that not even someone as big and unfazed as Madonna, who gave a poignant speech about Keith Haring and featured a gay kiss in her tour documentary, was capable of creating a safe space then. Things have changed.

It’s easy to write off Strike a Pose as a lame attempt by minor players to milk their 15 minutes of fame, but I didn’t find them to come off that way. Not at all. Each seems sincerely okay with where he is, which is great. None of them plug any current projects. If anything, the focus is on what one does after the lights dim. Each of them has faced demons—drugs, disease, career obstacles. In fact, Camacho suggests that they are all responsible in one way or another for forcing Madonna to back away from them.

None of the dancers are as fierce as they were 25 years ago; this didn’t bother me because frankly I’m not, either. Watching Strike a Pose feels like meeting up with some friends you haven’t seen in a long time. If there’s one thing I learned from this documentary, it’s that Truth or Dare touched a lot more people than I thought. The one thing that would’ve been nice: Madonna showing up.

Screening followed by a live Q and A with Carlton Wilborn.

83 minutes
Not rated

(AMC River East) B-

Chicago International Film Festival

http://www.strikeaposefilm.com

https://youtu.be/7Hqh7lwaNKw

Who’s Gonna Love Me Now? [Mi yohav otti akhshav?]

Link posted on by moviebloke

(Israel/UK 2016)

Barak and Tomer Heymann’s warm documentary, Who’s Gonna Love Me Now?, takes its title from the first thought that crossed subject Saar Maoz’s mind when he received his HIV diagnosis. A likable middle-aged gay guy (he turns 40 during the course of the film), Maoz relocated to London almost two decades ago after he was kicked out his kibbutz in Israel for being gay. It’s been a source of embarrassment for his religious family, whose respect Maoz seems to have lost. He sets out to change that, going back home and confronting his parents and his siblings. He has to get past their fears, their misconceptions about homosexuality and HIV, and worst of all their judgments of him.

Maoz, who sings in the London Gay Men’s Chorus, is oddly charismatic. Relatively unassuming, he leads a seemingly quiet life and doesn’t exactly stand out from the crowd; in fact, he blends in with the other men in virtually every scene with the Chorus (save for one—I won’t say what it’s about). He’s decent, honest, open, and has a good sense of humor with an imperfect past, all of which probably explain his charm. He could be anyone you know, including yourself. I must admit, I related to him on many levels here: his conflicted feelings about his religion, moving away from home and coming out, his sense of distance with some of his family, filling a void with partying in the early 2000s, being alone for a long period of time. He doesn’t come across as regretful or pitiable, just reflective and forward-focused. Filmed over the course of about five years, the best scenes are the ones with his mother, his father, and an argument in a restaurant with his brother. Who’s Gonna Love Me Now? is an often funny and sometimes heavy reminder that home is where you can be yourself, for better or for worse.

Screening followed by a live discussion with Saar Maoz

84 minutes
Not rated

(AMC River East) B-

Chicago International Film Festival

http://heymannfilms.com/film/whos-gonna-love-me-now/

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

Goat

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2016)

Son of Saul remains one of the more memorable films from last year, and it’s because of how it was done: it’s harrowing to watch because it shoves the viewer front and center into its violence—physical and psychological. Goat, the film adaptation of Brad Land’s memoir about his experience with fraternity hazing, deals with a different subject altogether but works the same way: it’s difficult to watch, and it makes its points exactly because it’s difficult to watch.

High school senior Brad (Ben Schnetzer) is sensitive, naive, and kind of aimless. After leaving a party at his older brother Brett’s (Nick Jonas) frat house because it’s “getting weird”—he wants no part in pounding booze, snorting blow, or watching a live sex show—Brad agrees to give a lift to a sketchy townie (Will Pullen) who approaches him as he’s walking alone to his car. It’s just up the street in a small college town, so what can happen? Sketchy townie has a friend (Jamar Jackson), and the encounter goes somewhere Brad wasn’t expecting: they make him pull off the road, beat the shit out of him, and run off with his ATM card and his car.

The investigating officer (Kevin Crowley) is skeptical when Brad reports the incident—he suspects Brad is not telling him the whole story. The experience doesn’t sit well. On the fence about college and feeling like a self-described “pussy,” Brad decides to enroll at the school where Brett goes—and pledge his fraternity, Phi Sigma Mu. The guys in the house talk a lot about brotherhood, but something is off. Brad goes forward with rush week, anyway—and even motivates his dorm roommate, Will (Danny Flaherty), to rush (a.k.a. pledge) along with him. They become “goats,” which we learn is another word for pledges. Led by their “master” Dixon (Jake Picking), things get increasingly degrading and barbaric for the goats as they move through “hell week.” What is Brad trying to prove, and to whom?

Goat is brutal. With the opening shot—a pack of shirtless college boys jumping up and down in slow motion, participating in some fraternity ritual and looking more like a troop of apes than a group of students—director Andrew Neel sets the tone and sticks to it all the way through. The hazing rituals involve a slew of nastiness: face slapping, mudwrestling, and cages are the least of it. James Franco, one of the film’s producers, makes an appearance as Mitch, an older Phi Sig alum who never left town. Amusing on the surface, it doesn’t take long to see that Mitch is pathetic. The best thing about the film is Brad and Brett’s relationship, which becomes strained once the latter sees the former going through hell week. The whole cast is impressive—particularly Jonas, who’s made some strides since his stint on last season’s Scream Queens.

Goat emits a whiff of Reefer Madness sensationalism—I was never in a frat so I’ve never gone through anything like hell week and can’t speak to it with any personal experience (though I have friends who were in fraternities, and most of them withdrew for one reason or another). Regardless, I found Goat provocative not so much for taking on hazing and asking why anyone would put up with it, but for raising questions about bigger and broader things like groupthink and pack mentality, societal permissiveness, what “brotherhood” means, masculinity, and how it all interacts with the primal instinct inside each of us. If nothing else, Goat serves as a springboard for discussing a number of topics after the show.

96 minutes
Rated R

(Music Box) B+