Oscar Animation shorts: croak in more ways than one

Dear Basketball, Kobe Bryant’s ode to his basketball career, appears an odds-on fave for the Oscar best animated film. It is a sweet serenade to the game, with ex-Disney artist Glen Keane as director (Bryant is a producer) doing the visual honors over five minutes. I’m not quite sure why it’s an odds-on favorite, other than to honor an obvious US sports megastar (well, duh!). Sure, the film is poetic but, in grayish watercolor type drawings, hardly the most inventive, let alone interesting, animation, on offer this year …... That would be the next film, Garden Party, from France (helmed by Florian Babiklan) closing in on seven minutes, though it seems delightfully longer, and which has already won almost 25 awards at various film festivals. In the film, frogs have taken over a sumptuous mansion and are having a grand old time, tumbling into a jar of macaroons or hoping on to the controls of a hi-tech entertainment system, blasting sound throughout. But the mansion is abandoned, its interior disheveled as if after a week-long debauchery…or something else. We finally find out what it is in the final scene, which is a grand play on an underworld crime stereotype. This film deserves to win because of its sheer juxtaposition of lovable amphibians against malevolent squalor. ….. Lou (David Mullins, United States, 7 mins), by a veteran Pixar animator, serves up an inventive story about a kind of ghost – Lou – who hangs out in a school yard lost and found box, and is really the kids’ best friend against the, well, school yard bully. Cute, enjoyable, but not the strongest flic in the roster…… Negative Space (Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata, France, 6 minutes) takes a peculiar obsession and builds a whole story around it. Yes, you all know of the experts who tell of the most efficient ways to pack your travel bags (roll those socks up!). In this film, the directors have fun with the concept to the nth degree. Sure, this short puts a smile on your face. But an award for such a trivial subject? ..... Revolting Rhymes (Jakob Schuh & Jan Lachauer, UK) is the lengthiest of the nominations at 29 minutes, basing its intertwining fairy tales on the spins that diabolical children’s author Roald Dahl had given them. This flic is certainly well made in its multidimensionality, with plenty of whim and chuckles as fairy tale characters come to bizarre and unseemly life. But it’s length is also its undoing – there’s just too much to chew on to maintain impact.

(Oscar nominations for Animation short films will again be screened this weekend at the Detroit Film Theatre at the Detroit Institute of Arts.)

Oscar Live Action: whimsy over message, please

This year’s offering of Oscar Short Live Action films suffers from one big word: four of the five are MESSAGE films. Whatever happened to comedy, whimsy or indeed straight narrative about someone or something, without the drift into moral statement? Methinks the crop of young filmmakers has grown up believing the only way to make films is with a message. Of course, I imagine few people (necessarily) dislike messages, but after a while, like anything else, the brain tunes out. Moreover, this year’s crop of films has messages with an obvious down or depressing quality.…. After the terrible Parkland Fla. school shooting last week one wonders if the first of these films, Reed Van Dyk’s Dekalb Elementary’s (USA, 20 mins), chances of winning will rise. The film is based on a true incident that took place in Atlanta. A youth with mental issues walks into the school carrying an assault rifle. The school secretary tries to calm him. No bullets are fired inside the school, but a few shots are directed at police. Yet there are a couple of scenes that don’t seem believable – when he leaves the office and the secretary doesn’t run for help, and the length of time it takes for police to reach the office after the attacker given up…….Kevin Wilson Jr.’s My Nephew Emmett (USA, 20 mins), tells the story of the well-known 1950s death of Emmett Till, the Chicago teen who is visiting his family in the South, flirts with a white woman, and pays the consequences by being murdered. The acting is good with slowly and subtly rising drama. The film also tells the “inside” story from Till’s family’s perspective. But this is a message movie in a year when the genre is overdone……The Eleven O’clock (Derin Seale, Australia, 13 mins, pictured) is my choice for Oscar. Why? Because it departs so refreshingly from the other entries. It’s not just a comedy but, in the best shorts tradition, deftly constructs a mind-bending plot twist that will make you rethink your previous judgements…..The Silent Child (Chris Overton, UK, 20 mins) is a very well-acted film that, while carrying a message, is heartfelt and broaches a subject that receives not enough attention – deaf children and how they should be properly educated, apparently as overwhelming form of neglect. Rachel Shenton, who wrote the screen play, is especially good as a caring but astute social worker……Finally, Watu Wote/All of Us (Katja Benrath, Germany & Kenya, 23 mins), is the most on-the-edge-of-your-seat drama of all the films. It depicts an almost day long bus ride through some of Kenya’s most remote and terrorist-infested areas. The story culminates in an event after which one of the passengers, skeptical of another religion, is protected by those religion’s adherents. Despite the film’s obvious acting and directing merits, the message is ultimately predictable.

(Oscar nominations for Short Live Action films will again be screened this weekend at the Detroit Film Theatre at the Detroit Institute of Arts.)

Now there's scientific proof

With the Detroit Pistons recently acquiring NBA all-star Blake Griffin, that might be reason alone to see another side of the Slam Dunk Champion’s skills – comedy acting. Because Griffin happens to star in The Female Brain (opening today at the AMC Star Southfield 20), a satirical look at, yes, male-female relationships, but from an utterly different point of view. Don’t be put off by the early didactic tones of our neurological professor (the versatile director Whitney Cummings, co-creator of 2 Broke Girls), who explains that centuries of study provide scientific clues as to why women and men act the way they do. When one of those “ah ha” moments in the interactions of the three couples portrayed in the film rear its head (women are “neurotic”, “seek consensus” or lack “spatial orientation”, or he’s a “cave man”, controlling, etc.) the frame freezes and there’s an overlaid visual effect that accurately describes what the brain is responding to and brief scientific description of why she – or he – predictably acts the way they do, laughingly reduced to current slang. The film is based on the book by Louann Brizendine. The film's three couples are composed of characters you may know from TV and film including Sofia Vergara (Modern Family), Beanie Feldstein (Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird) and Cecila Strong (SNL). Marlo Thomas also has a small role. And, of course, our NBA and Pistons champ, if he can only bring the team alive! They all have problems or issues and, yes, the female-male dynamic raises its head throughout, mostly in humorous ways. Griffin’s Greg must assert his domestic manliness as a bumbling do-it-yourselfer. Vergara’s Lisa can’t figure out why there’s not much emotional, let alone sexual, response, in her marriage. The film might be criticized for playing, ironically, on stereotypes, though the filmmakers would argue they’re all scientifically-based. But there are twists. James Marsden’s Adam hates the way GF Lexi (Lucy Punch) is trying to change him. And, delicious irony of all, Toby Kebbell’s Kevin wants to go slow with the straight-laced professor and part-narrator Julia (Cummings), a ball of scientific and feminist contradictions.

Hiatus for now, but

Hi folks, it's been a busy late fall - mainly as a result of travel and my "day job" as a freelance journalist - hence the reason for the dearth of recent posts. Unfortunately, more of the same will continue into January. I'm going to revisit my time allotment come the end of January, and if I can keep up the blog then, I will.

Meanwhile, a couple of takes on recent films: Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird is vastly overrated – an unbelievable rating of 99% at Rotten Tomatoes - huh!? Rather, it’s a competently-directed first effort by the acting It Girl of recent years, a fave of mine as well and methinks a sentimental favorite of the critics. But it tells a ho-hum story of a rebellious teen - very much modelled on Gerwig's own life – surprise! - that is no different from scores of other coming-of-age movies...And one film that hasn’t been mentioned much in terms of accolades, or mentioned at all, is Dan Gilroy’s Roman J. Israel (photo above) starring Denzel Washington. Washington plays a legal savant and a has been Sixties radical who still is fighting the good fight, even if he’s somewhat rough around the edges. This film, I must admit, brought tears to my eyes. When was the last time that happened?

WIFF 3: Pricking pretentiousness

(A note: some of the films screened at this year's Windsor International Film Festival are ones seen previously and have been reviewed in earlier posts; they won't be reviewed in  festival coverage.)

My final four films at this year’s festival were The Square, Integral Man, Loving Vincent and At Worst We Will Marry…..First, Ruben Östlund’s The Square (pictured left), which won top prize at Cannes, and follows on his powerful and morally disturbing 2014 Force Majeure. Morally disturbing is this as well, though done in a series of farcical set pieces, all fascinating, though the viewer might wonder what it all adds up to. The film breaks new ground in attacking the pretentiousness of the art world, a subject on which few in the cultural industry dare tread. But the movie is really based around a series of incidents afflicting an art museum director, Christian (Claes Bang), who at turns is robbed, accused of using his power to seduce women, and becomes a lightning rod over a gross publicity campaign. And there is the frightening hilarity of the 11-minute human ape scene…..Integral Man (Joseph Clement) is about Toronto professor James Stewart, who made a fortune writing mathematical textbooks – “the most published mathematician since Euclid” – and his 2009-built Integral House in Toronto’s Rosedale neighborhood. The film is a paean to the house’s intricate and breakthrough design, though a viewer, as I did, might find its atmosphere cold and austere and wonder what the fuss is about. Stewart, who lived only briefly to enjoy the house before dying of a rare form of cancer, also was a classical violinist, and the house remains a space for chamber concerts and philanthropic fundraisers……Loving Vincent (Hugh Welchman and Dorota Kobiela), thankfully, was not a regurgitation of the wonderfulness of one of the world’s best – and best loved - painters. Rather, it explores, in detective fashion, the premise (based on a 2011 book) that Vincent van Gogh did not kill himself but was the victim of an oafish prank by the town’s fool. For some reason, the artist claimed credit, perhaps for aesthetic nobility. Technically, the movie is a richer colored animation paint-over of filmed dramatic scenes than, say, Richard Linklater’s 2001 Waking Life; here 100 artists were involved. In fact, so realistic is it that it’s like watching an animated painting done by van Gogh himself……Finally, Quebec director Léa Pool’s At Worst, We Will Marry, also plays with murder and the heroic. In this case, 14-year-old Aïcha (Sophie Nélisse, an actor born in Windsor), a child of a broken home and sexually abused by her father, one day meets Baz, a man twice her age, and falls for him. He can’t dissuade her that there’s no future in their relationship, given the age difference. But, in a terrific and memorable performance as a very disturbed enfant terrible, she is incorrigible and haunts Baz, committing a crime for which he takes full credit. And that unlikely decision is the movie’s major flaw.

WIFF 2: Screams from the post-industrial landscape

(A note: some of the films screened at this year's Windsor International Film Festival are ones seen previously and have been reviewed in earlier posts; they won't be reviewed in this week's festival coverage.)

The great Cate (Blanchett, that is) serves up another tour de force (after her 2007 Todd Haynes’s directed I’m Not There) in German director Julian Rosenfeldt’s Manifesto (pictured left). Make that a dozen or so uber performances, as she dons eclectic personas, and surrealistic backdrops, to shout out a melange of some of the world’s greatest art and political manifestos. Breathtaking!....I have truly fallen in love with Diane Lane. Yes, she’s a beautiful woman but it’s her acting skills which are sublime. In Eleanor Coppola’s delightful Paris Can Wait, she’s the bored taken-for-granted wife of a Hollywood tycoon, but who finds pleasure in the wining and dining overtures of a stereotypical French romantic (Arnaud Viard). You can’t take your eyes off Lane’s subtle, understated performance…..After Love (Joachim Lafosse) is a superbly acted film about a couple (Bérénice Bejo and Cédric Kahn) divorcing but due to economic circumstances are still forced to live together. This film could be a textbook for theatrical students…..Ingrid Goes West is an hilarious romp of a film about a young woman (Aubrey Plaza as Ingrid), mentally disturbed, caught up in the semi-real world of social media. She becomes obsessed with a minor LA star (Elizabeth Olsen), eventually stalking and befriending her, in a movie that depicts social media’s toxic extremes……The Only Living Boy in New York has a stellar cast (Jeff Bridges, Pierce Brosnan, Kate Beckinsale and Cynthia Nixon) and has all the makings of a great film, at least in my book. The setting is New York, the principle character Thomas Webb (Callum Turner) is a young ambitious writer, there’s plenty of scenes among the Upper West Side literary set. But it gets bogged down by an improbable love triangle involving a father, son and the same woman. Moreover, other plot elements aren’t sufficiently explored, such as Webb’s writing talents or that of the gnarly hard drinking W. F. Gerald (Bridges). The film’s audio is also poor with much muffled dialogue…..Thomas Vinterberg’s The Commune is a predictable send-up of early 1970's communal living. Anna (Trine Dyrholm) exuberantly wants to push the envelope of life experiences and recruits a group of people to live together (and share the expensive rent). But when her husband’s lover Mona (Julie Agnele Vang) moves in, Anna’s seeming New Age welcome (it is the Seventies, after all) crumbles in the wake of a traditional broken heart…..What to make of Happy End, Austrian director Michael Haneke’s latest? Could it be subtitled “the family that is malevolent together stays together?” In a typical role, Isabelle Huppert as Anne Laurent is the matriarch of a construction company. Not only does she have to deal with a lawsuit arising from a workplace accident but that of the evil in the hearts of her own family. The great Jean-Louis Trintignant as her father is an irascible aged man and one can’t help feeling sad for the shocking declining physique of the famous real-life actor. The story borders on absurdity, and seems an Haneke throwaway…..A Bag of Marbles (Christian Duguay), based on an autobiographical novel, is a charming tale about two young French Jewish boys’ flight from the Nazis. While the film is sentimental its best features are its meticulously recreated scenes and sets, down to highly authentic newspapers and even splintered wood in nondescript objects like a drain pipe……Aurore (Blandine Lenoir) is a predictable feel good movie about a woman (Agnès Jaoui) entering middle age, with all the jokes about hot flashes, declining looks, and kissing frogs before meeting a prince. The movie’s a crowd-pleaser, especially among a certain demographic set (I counted two other men among the audience). 

WIFF 1: the ghosts have it

(A note: some of the films screened at this year's Windsor International Film Festival are ones seen previously and have been reviewed in earlier posts; they won't be reviewed in this week's festival coverage.)

The ghosts have it, appropriately enough, given the time of year, so far, at the Windsor International Film Festival. My favorite film in the first couple of days of the seven-day event – now in its 13th year and which ends Sunday - is City of Ghosts (Matthew Heineman), the portrait by a group of brave Syrian underground journalists – many of whom have been killed - under the name RBSS (Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently) who depicted the atrocities by ISIS in their then captured (now liberated) city…..This was followed by A Ghost Story (David Lowery) (picture above left), not so much a horror flick – though there are a few thrill moments – as a meditation on loss and life. The trailer – showing a “ghost” wearing the tell-tale sheet – looked almost laughable but I’m glad I saw the film because it transcends what, in a less competent director’s hands, could have seemed facile and unintentionally humorous…..Churchill (Jonathan Teplitzky) was a disappointment, not from a production or acting POV (Brian Cox as Winston Churchill is excellent) but from an historical narrative. The film makes Churchill, in the last year of the Second World War, out to be an incompetent boob, indeed a drunkard and a dotty old man. I’ve never heard of this description for someone considered perhaps the greatest figure of the 20th century. Indeed, one historian said the movie “gets everything wrong.” It left a bitter taste in my mouth…..Susanne Bartsch: On Top (Anthony Caronna) takes us behind the scenes with this generation’s Andy Warhol, eccentric model and avant-garde fashionista Susanne Bartsch. Why had I never heard of her before? In any case, Bartsch, in the 1980's, took up from where Warhol left off, throwing outrageous parties, celebrating over the top fashion as a way to transform the self as a creative, poetic act. “Life itself,” she says, “is an art form.” ….Heal the Living (Katell Quillévéré) is a well presented dramatic look at the issue of organ transplants. It just shows that even topics that usually are presented in dry didactic ways, if done right, can transcend rudimentary infomercials…..The Odyssey (Jerome Salle), is a biopic about Jacques Cousteau, the great underwater explorer and his “oceanauts.” We may think of Cousteau as a sterling transformative adventurer who opened the undersea world to the general public. But, like many great men, he had some warts – he was a serial cheater on his long-suffering wife, somewhat vain and overly ambitious, threatening financially his far-flung enterprises. ….Graduation (Cristian Mungiu) continues Mangiu’s depiction of Romanian corruption (pre-and post-war Communism). It’s surprising for Westerners to see the kind of greasing the wheel that goes on in some countries, but it’s shown here, where even doctors are offered cash incentives to expedite surgery. Some good, intense acting if a dismal story….Thelma (Joachim Trier) is a slick Danish film about a young woman who has supernatural powers, diagnosed in the film medically as psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, a real phenomenon. It’s unclear why these events take place but often profound things happen during her seizures: people are displaced, set on fire or disappear. It seems this is because Thelma (Eili Harboe) is rebelling against her strict Christian upbringing, an unfortunate cliché that mars an otherwise superb film.