ANY DAY NOW: KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY

Travis Fine's Any Day Now is a well-intentioned, 1970s period piece exploring a gay couple's fight to retain custody of a child with special needs.  Based on a true story, the film's aims are regrettably matched with an overly melodramatic, tin-eared script that isn't up to the task of breathing life into a scenario that really shouldn't require any punching up at all.  It's a film that never surprises, always embracing the safest, most oft-trod path to describing its characters and their conflict.  To make matters worse, actors Alan Cumming and Garret Dillahunt pour just about everything they've got into the portrayal of their characters.  Their efforts do rescue several scenes from the bland, go-nowhere tendencies of the script, but it's not enough to combat Fine's worst impulses, which continually drag the piece through one tired cliché after another.

Cumming plays Rudy.  He's living in a squalid, dump of an apartment building, barely making ends meet and putting up with the loud parties of the junkie (Jamie Anne Allman) who lives next door.  When Rudy discovers that his neighbor has left her young son, Marco (Isaac Leyva), without adult supervision, he tries to comfort the boy.  When he finds out that she's been arrested, he decides to take in this discarded child with Down Syndrome.  Somewhere in between all this, Rudy and Paul (Dillahunt) meet at the bar where Rudy performs as a lip-syncing drag queen.  Their attraction is immediate and they act on it.  And, whad'ya know, Rudy soon pulls Paul, who works as a lawyer in the district attorney's office, into his attempts to hang on to Marco.

I know what you're thinking.  All of this sounds compelling enough, but the film often feels like its trying to fulfill the time requirement to qualify as feature length.  It's only 97 minutes long, but, if you took out all the filler (like the parts about Rudy's desire to be a real singer, or Paul's struggle to remain in the closet at work), it might only clock in at barely over an hour.  Still, a more streamlined film that kept its focus on the couple's fight to retain custody in the face of rampant prejudice would have been a far more successful film, narrative-wise (witness the similarly-themed accomplishment that was last year's In the Family).  What we have here instead is a sad story relayed in a manner that is always sure to indicate when we're supposed to feel sad; cue melancholic music.  The cast and story deserved far better.

Any Day Now begins its run at Living Room Theaters on Friday, January 4th.  More info available here.


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UNIVERSAL 100TH ANNIVERSARY SERIES STARTS TOMORROW AT THE NW FILM CENTER

This coming Friday night, the Northwest Film Center begins their month-long cinema party for the newest centenarian on the block, Universal Pictures.  What that celebration translates to is the return of 17 films dating from between 1916 (Lois Weber & Phillips Smalley's rarely screened silent Where are My Children?) and 1989 (Spike Lee's career-best Do the Right Thing).

There's a whole lot of good running throughout the schedule, but, if I could only pick a few to see, I wouldn't miss Douglas Sirk's 1954 melodrama Magnificent Obsession, Erich von Stroheim's 1919 silent Blind Husbands, or Anthony Mann's 1950 western Winchester '73.  And, of course, you can never go wrong with Jaws or To Kill a Mockingbird.

Here's a blurb pertaining to the series from the UCLA Film and Television Archive that I swiped off the Film Center's site:

“The Universal Film Manufacturing Company incorporated in 1912, the result of a merger between a number of independent companies that had been battling Thomas Edison’s Motion Picture Patents Trust. Universal would go on to become the oldest continuously operating film producer and distributor in the United States. In an industry defined by change, Universal’s spinning globe logo has remained, along with its back lot and tour in Universal City, Calif. 

From its beginning under Carl Laemmle, there existed a tension between Universal’s need to produce low-budget ‘programmers’ and the ‘major minor’s’ desire to compete alongside better-capitalized studios—with their national theater chains—on the level of big-budget A pictures. Ironically, while several of Universal’s early ‘prestige’ titles are beloved classics today, including ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930), it remains the B pictures, including its iconic 1930s horror cycle (FRANKENSTEIN, DRACULA, THE MUMMY), that epitomize its contribution to film art and commerce. This irony informs Universal’s post-war emergence as a global entertainment power. After anti-trust actions leveled the playing field in the 1940s, Universal moved into the A-list with superlative mass entertainment that ennobled populist genres, including westerns (WINCHESTER ’73), thrillers (THE BIRDS), and sex farces (PILLOW TALK). Universal also innovated new industry practices, pioneering the ‘percentage deal’ and embracing television production. 

 It changed the game again with JAWS (1975), which established the ‘blockbuster’ formula that still dominates the industry today. Throughout its history, Universal has translated economic necessity into a uniquely American challenge to the distinctions between prestigious and popular entertainment.”

And here's an awesome video clip featuring all the various permutations of the Universal Pictures logo over the years:

 Now on to the trailers!!!

The Universal Pictures: Celebrating 100 Years series begins at the NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium (in the Portland Art Museum) on Friday, January 4th at 7pm.  More info available here.

 
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WOODY MANIA DESCENDS ON CINEMA 21, BUT STILL NO BANANAS

Cinema 21 extends their ongoing winning streak of retrospective 35mm programming with a series of five of Woody Allen's most loved films.  Entitled Yes, We Have No Bananas: Five Films By Woody Allen, their Woody mini-fest covers the basics for fans and newbies alike, gathering together his two unassailable masterpieces of the late 70s (Best Picture winner Annie Hall and the b&w beauty that is Manhattan), a pair of his best films of the 80s (Crimes and Misdemeanors & Hannah and Her Sisters), and a charmingly sturdy cult fave (The Purple Rose of Cairo) whose reputation has only grown with time.

While the title of the series singles out the absence of Allen's 1971 screwball film Bananas, I'm completely fine without it (sure, it's really funny, but I've always had a strong preference for Sleeper over any of the other films Allen made during his early, visual gag-oriented period).  Plus, it's hard to quibble over what's not there when looking at what is actually present in the line up.  Woody may have become notoriously hit or miss over the past couple of decades, but here's a chance to revisit a time when he was all hit and no miss.

Yes, We Have No Bananas: 5 Films by Woody Allen begins on Friday, January 4th.  More info available here.


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THE BEST OF 2012: THE RUNNERS UP

Well, there goes another twelve months.  Just like last year, I've put together a top 20 film list, but--yet again--that's not nearly enough space to fit in all the great films from last year (truth be told, I winnowed that list down from well over 40 films worthy of consideration), so here are, in no particular order, the runners up.

Some readers may point out that a few of the titles on this list AND the top 20 list were produced and/or released somewhere in 2011.  Here's the thing: this blog is being written in Portland, OR.  So, sure, some of these films toured the festival circuit in 2011 or had an Oscar qualifying run in NY or L.A. in final weeks that year, but, unless it opened in PDX before 2012, it's eligible for the best of 2012 list.  Yup.  Well, now that we've covered that minor detail, on with the show.


Bullhead (dir. Michaël R. Roskam):

Michaël R. Roskam's Bullhead subverts expectations surrounding how a mob film should play out, emphasizing the damage that lies in its protagonist's past over any of his present concerns, no matter how largely they may loom.  Matthias Schoenaerts portrayal of hormone addled mobster Jacky Vanmarsenille, as a lumbering giant with scars that will never heal, powers the film.  Bullhead dons the wardrobe of a crime thriller, but its concerns are that of a character-driven drama.

Read my review of Bullhead here.

Bullhead is available on DVD & Blu-ray and can be streamed via Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.


The Deep Blue Sea (dir. Terence Davies):

  
The level to which The Deep Blue Sea visually approximates the emotional distress of Rachel Weisz' Hester is both astounding and profoundly disturbing.  Terence Davies' camera spins frightfully fast down an ecstatic whirlpool as Hester falls deeper into an affair that threatens to be her undoing.  Elsewhere, all sense of time is frozen in amber as an unyielding depression overcomes her.  The Deep Blue Sea is romantic in the same way that Romeo and Juliet is, describing a feeling of love so intense that the suggestion of its denial is synonymous with one's own death.

Read my review of The Deep Blue Sea here.

The Deep Blue Sea is available on DVD & Blu-ray and can be streamed via Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.


Moonrise Kingdom (dir. Wes Anderson):

Wes Anderson's films tend to be overly designed, and that's at times both the major strength and weakness of his work.  His best films match the fussy visual organization with an equal amount of emotional heft, raising the material to awe-inspiring levels of storytelling.  Moonrise Kingdom offers a well-balanced recipe of both ingredients, resulting in Anderson's best film since The Royal Tenenbaums.

Moonrise Kingdom is available on DVD & Blu-ray and can be streamed via Amazon Instant Video and VUDU.


The Queen of Versailles (dir. Lauren Greenfield):

The nouveau riche have never looked so vulgar as they do in Lauren Greenfield's documentary The Queen of Versailles.  But the harsh truth is that the Siegel family is uniquely American in their desires.  The film ends up being a spot on (and oddly amusing) indictment of consumer drive flying in the face of bottom line truths, something that just about any post-recession American can relate to, even if the levels of excess on display here are particularly outsized in their grotesquery.

The Queen of Versailles is available on DVD & Blu-ray and can be streamed via Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.

  
Declaration of War (dir. Valérie Donzelli):

   
I've found it really difficult to convince people that they should give Valérie Donzelli's second feature a chance.  It's not because tons of viewer saw her first film as a director (2009's Queen of Hearts) and didn't like it.  Nope, it's due entirely to three little words: kid with cancer.  

Yeah, that's a scary prospect and a topic that most folks would rather not think about at all.  But Declaration of War does an amazing thing with the premise; it doesn't make it about the kid.  The entire film rests on the relationship of the adults dealing with this crisis and it's a refreshing, energetic, sometimes heartbreaking, but often funny turn away from the standard tropes employed in just about any film dealing with illness and terminal diseases.  Plainly put, this movie rocks.

Read my review of Declaration of War here. 

Declaration of War is available on DVD and can be streamed via Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.


The Imposter (dir. Bart Layton):

Bart Layton's non-fiction film The Imposter pissed more than a few people off last year.  Constructed out of reenactments matched with interviews, the film strategically discloses the details of its story in guarded chunks that only tell part of the story.  Layton uses this method of delaying information to pile up the twists in the plot and that's where he got into trouble with some audience members.  Personally, I found the technique perfectly matched to the material, so I didn't mind the manipulation at all.  In its finest moments, The Imposter resembles Errol Morris' Tabloid, even as it aspires to be a 21st century version of The Thin Blue Line.

Read my review of The Imposter here.

The Imposter will be released on DVD on January 22nd and can be streamed now via Amazon Instant Video.


We Need to Talk About Kevin (dir. Lynne Ramsay):

It had been nearly a decade since Lynne Ramsay released Movern Callar, only her second film after her 1999 debut with Ratcatcher.  I'm not really sure what other people expected of her third film, We Need to Talk About Kevin, but, while working my final months as a video store clerk, it became pretty apparent that many viewers were disappointed by the film.  

I found We Need to Talk About Kevin to be pitch perfect, as it traces not only the contours of the specific relationship being described here--a terrible proximity to an inexorable violent atrocity--but also captures a hint of what it is that we're all unable to come to grips with when facing down such tragedies.  It all plays out like an unending nightmare where time is rendered an ineffective healer and the unspeakable continually loops back into memory.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is available on DVD & Blu-ray and can be streamed via Amazon Instant Video.


The Color Wheel (dir. Alex Ross Perry):

Alex Ross Perry's The Color Wheel isn't just a harbinger of great things to come from its director.  It's a pretty damn perfect stab at the big time from all the way down in the mumblecore gutter.  Featuring sometimes brilliant, sometimes shaky performances from Perry and co-star/co-author Carlen Altman, it's the writing, sense of timing, and chemistry between the leads that launches the film beyond the limitations of its budget and the experience of its makers.  A very funny film that I've thought about often throughout the year.

Read my review of The Color Wheel here.

The Color Wheel is due out on DVD soon and can be streamed currently via Amazon Instant Video.


Love Free or Die (dir. Macky Alston):

Mediated events on the national and/or international scale are so often blown out of proportion that they lose all trace of the human element.  Macky Alston's Love Free or Die, about Gene Robinson's ordination as the first openly gay bishop of the Episcopal Church, rescues its story from the dehumanizing effects of the sound byte.  The tale of a everyday individual becoming something much more.

Read my review of Love Free or Die here. 

Love Free or Die is scheduled for release on DVD and VOD (video on demand) in 2013.


Snowtown (dir. Justin Kurzel):

Snowtown, or The Snowtown Murders, as it's been renamed for its release on home video, was probably the most disturbing film I watched during 2012.  It didn't help at all that I went into it with absolutely no idea that it was a serial killer flick (so, maybe, adding the word "murders" to the title is an appropriate move?) and that the only image I had to go on before the screening was a still from the film of kids eating ice cream on a street corner.  It was also undeniably well made, perfectly acted, and sported incredibly self-assured direction from first-timer Justin Kurzel. 

Read my review of Snowtown here. 

Snowtown is available on DVD & Blu-ray and can be streamed via Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.


Footnote (dir. Joseph Cedar):

Footnote locates a dark strain of comedy in the competitive (some might say spiteful) relationship between a father and son, Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik, both of whom are Talmudic scholars.  Eliezer, the elder Shkolnik, is a hardcore researcher whose life-long efforts were undone by a competitor having stumbled upon the fruits of his labor through happenstance.  His son, Uriel, despite being more of a pop philosopher in his academic aims, is the Shkolnik gathering accolades while his Eliezer's contributions are all but forgotten.  The already nasty strain of resentment between them gets kicked up a level when an award intended for the son is mistakenly promised to his father.

Footnote is hilarious and uncomfortable, often in the same moment.  It's a focused, well-orchestrated comedy with more than its share of twists and turns.  Director Joseph Cedar (Beaufort) knows when to play up the drama and when to slice through it with a lunge of sharp-edged humor.

Footnote is available on DVD & Blu-ray and can be streamed via Amazon Instant Video and VUDU.


The Cabin in the Woods (dir. Drew Goddard):

Joss Whedon's The Avengers might have kicked up some dust at the box office this summer, but The Cabin in the Woods was the best movie he was involved with in 2012.  Directed by Drew Goddard and scripted by Whedon, Cabin takes the conventions of the standard horror film and turns them upside down, injecting both new life and a whole lot of intelligence into the proceedings.  This is one film where it's best to go in without knowing a single, goddamn thing in advance; all the better to discover its pleasures as they unfold across the screen.

The Cabin in the Woods is available on DVD & Blu-ray and can be streamed via Amazon Instant Video and VUDU.

 
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RING IN THE NEW YEAR WITH THE GRINDHOUSE SECRET MOVIE MARATHON

What better way to soothe your post-New Year's Eve noggin' than with a round of exploitation, grindhouse, and kung fu shot straight into your visual cortex via the Hollywood Theatre's 35mm projector?  Co-presented by the Grindhouse Film Festival and Kung Fu Theatre (both the creation of Hollywood head programmer Dan Halsted), there's a mysterious trio of cinematic treats awaiting all who assemble within the Hollywood's large downstairs auditorium--the New Year's Day Grindhouse Secret Movie Marathon!  3 films, 6 hours, a ton of old trailers, and there's absolutely no word in advance of what will be screening tomorrow.  But the mystery is all part of the fun.  Trust me, local movie nerds will be talking about this for months.

Here's what up, according to the folks behind the event:

The Grindhouse Film Festival and Kung Fu Theater present the New Year’s Day Grindhouse Secret Movie Marathon! Come spend your hangover with a triple feature of mind-blowing 70's cinema! We’re not telling anyone what’s playing, but it will all be from extremely rare 35mm prints. 

We’ll give a couple of clues: First up will be a movie with giant monsters battling and tearing the planet apart! The second movie is a gritty crime film that is one of the most underrated movies of the 1970's. The last movie will be an extremely rare kung fu film. 

Plenty of 35mm exploitation trailers before each movie too (blaxploitation trailers, horror trailers, kung fu trailers and more). There will also be a giveaway for one free pass to all Grindhouse Film Festival and Kung Fu Theater screenings in 2013! In order to win, you must watch all three movies. Tickets are only $10 for all three movies. The movies start at 3:00, 5:00 and 7:15.

The six-hour long Grindhouse Secret Movie Marathon happens on New Year's Day at the Hollywood Theatre beginning at 3pm.  More info available here.

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NOW, FORAGER: THERE'S A FUNGUS AMONG US

Now, Forager doesn't go a lot of new places.  Yes, as the title hints, it's about a couple who forages for wild mushrooms as a means of meager support, and I can't recall seeing any films about mushroom hunters in the past (no, I did not see Shrooms, but I get the impression it's about something else entirely).  But, much like the characters in their film, directors Jason Cortlund and Julia Halperin seem intent on returning to familiar patches of fertile ground; in the case of the filmmakers, it's earth that's been well plowed by similarly contemplative indie directors like Kelly Reichardt, Carlos Reygadas, Pedro González-Rubio, and others working within what A.O. Scott has termed the neo-neo realism movement. 

Lucien (Cortlund) and Regina (Tiffany Esteb) are moving in different directions in their marriage.  She's begun to tire of the small rewards that mushroom hunting brings them and is considering taking on a regular job in a small restaurant.  Meanwhile, Lucien stubbornly deflects Regina's dissatisfaction, hatching plans to risk what little stability they enjoy on a road trip to forage in unknown territories.  Cortlund and Halperin avoid hinging the film on the drama between the characters, choosing instead to display the couple's incompatibility through slow observation rather than with outward displays of their anger over it.  Now, Forager allows us to see these characters together and alone, offering up access to both private and shared moments.

The long periods of time spent solely with Lucien or Regina yield a sense that the problems they have together are present in their individual struggles outside the relationship.  Lucien, it seems, just doesn't play well with others,  while Regina's flexibility only goes so far when working an out-of-state cooking gig.  In both cases, these divergences from what appears to be the main story thread--the slow dissolution of their relationship--enrich our understanding of what's not expressed through words.  For a film with only a few small degrees of plot development, it's surprisingly effective at wielding those micro-shifts in the dynamic between the characters, their environment, and each other.

In many ways, Now, Forager unfolds as a paint-by-numbers, quiet indie meditation on the reasons why some relationships just don't pan out.  As it borrows liberally from a wealth of contemporary, low budget influences, many viewers won't be able to shake the feeling that they've seen multiple versions of this film before, but an overfamiliarity with the patterns and modes at play here won't spoil the best parts of an earnest little film that steers clear of being overwhelmed by the indie cliches it so wholeheartedly embraces.  It's a worthy, if not entirely original, view.

Now, Forager begins its run at Living Room Theaters on Friday, December 28th.  More info available here.

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THIS IS 40: SMUGGLING IN THE SERIOUS WITH THE VULGAR

With his latest film, Judd Apatow veers away from bromance-informed genre that he helped create with films like The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, but no one is going to mistake This is 40 for the work of anyone else.  The identifiable touchstones of Apatow's oeuvre, including the way the actors all seem to be ad-libbing their way through much of this loosely structured film, are all in place, as is his usual ensemble cast of friends and family.  Surprisingly, even though This is 40 may be the least focused film that Apatow has directed, it's rarely boring.  On the contrary, it's downright funny and, if the success of a comedy is measured in laughs (which, obviously, it should be), Apatow is still capable of churning out a guffaw-inducing winner.

Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann reprise their roles as Pete and Debbie from Knocked Up.  The handful of people who didn't see that earlier feature won't be left out in the cold; This is 40 operates as a stand-alone piece and absolutely no prior knowledge of the characters is necessary to follow the action.  As the film opens, Debbie's turning 40.  No one in her family (or at her ob/gyn's office, for that matter) is allowed to acknowledge this rite of passage.  As far as she's concerned, she's turning 38.  At the same time, Pete's stubbornly holding on to a dream from his youth, running a music label, which, unfortunately for him, means running it into the ground.  All of this leads to some serious friction in the couple's relationship, each one denying their own part in the mess that their marriage has become.

Like in most relationship comedies, the bad is exacerbated by lying (about money, parenting, etc.) and unreasonable expectations while the good drifts further out of sight.  For a film laid out in comedic dressing, there's quite a lot of serious adult issues being bandied about here.  Peter Pan syndrome, the loss of sexual spark, and issues of abandonment and resentment all get an airing and there are several times when things are more "real" than straight up funny.  What keeps it all afloat is the palpable suggestion that, despite their problems, Pete and Debbie have more together than just shared history and a couple of kids.  Rudd and Mann are fascinating to watch together, even when the material and the running time feels a little stretched.  They're supported by winning performances from Albert Brooks, John Lithgow, Jason Segal, and, especially, Chris O'Dowd.

The film ends up being less about how to resuscitate your life from what it's become and more about gaining perspective on what you might have been taking for granted.  There aren't a lot of raunchy comedies being made in Hollywood about entering middle age, but This is 40 suggests that there's more than enough material worth mining there.  Neither overly romantic, nor completely flighty in its aims, Apatow smuggles in the serious with the vulgar, producing a mixture that's characteristically juvenile while forwarding a more mature model of what he's previously made.  It's not perfect, but This is 40 is far from nonessential, proving worthy of a look, especially where his fans are concerned.

This is 40 opens at the Portland area theaters on Friday, December 21st.  More info available here.

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