Some Not So Good Films and Some Indie Treasure Finds

"The Citizen"
starring: Agnes Bruckner, Khaled Nabawy, Rizwan Manji, Cary Elwes, William Atherton
written and directed by: Sam Kadi

Written and directed by the Syrian-born director, Sam Kadi, The Citizen sets out to highlight the hardships faced by Arab settlers in the US during the aftermath of 9/11.

The story follows one man's fight for equality as he simultaneously tries to become a U.S. citizen, and by the end, while on trial, he uses the Constitution against the country he wants to become a part of, in order to win his favor. 

After winning the green-card lottery, Lebanese immigrant, Ibrahim Jarrah (Nabawy), arrives in New York City on September 10, 2001.  Determined to leave his troubling past behind, he is ready to live the American Dream. But, exactly what those troubles are, we do not know- unless you are an educated film viewer and know the politics of Lebanon. A bit more back-story would have been great, especially if the filmmaker wants us (an American audience) to feel empathy/sympathy for him. 

Soon after arriving, Ibrahim checks into a Brooklyn motel where he finds himself saving a young woman from an abusive boyfriend. The girl in question is Diane (Bruckner); a pretty, young waitress who is instantly taken by the soft-spoken stranger and offers him a tour of the city as a way of saying thank you. The pair is quick to bond, but the next morning, their worlds change forever. Their friendship is quite unbelievable and unfortunately anchors much of the film's heart. 

Almost immediately after the tragic events, Ibrahim is apprehended by US government officials and is held for questioning - for a total of six months - about his ties and connections to a mysterious cousin he mentioned on his arrival. However, with no substantial evidence, he is set free, only to face prejudices at every corner.

Painted with a soulful and a sorrowing mettle, Egyptian actor, Nabawy, proves to be a fairly likable lead.  Quiet, courageous and mannerly, Ibrahim's character is easy to connect to as a gutsy underdog who is putting everything on the line to better himself. And although his execution lacks bite and passion at times, he still manages to sustain the geniality of his character throughout. 

The real issue with The Citizen, however, is that it plays out like shoddy TV-movie, especially in terms of aesthetics. The plot moves along with a sense of urgency, but is never really fleshed out and is dramatically uneven. Though the central character's rocky road is one that any empathetic person should engage with, the audience is told how to feel and is never given the chance to recognize the wider issue of immigration and equality. Its ready-packaged message is delivered in the most inorganic of ways and ends up being conventional in its sentiments. Definitely a miss for me. 

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"The Countess"
starring: Julie Delpy, Daniel Bruhl, William Hurt, Anamaria Marinca
written and directed by: Julie Delpy

Bathory is sometimes dubbed “the Blood Countess” on account of her fame (or infamy) for bathing in virgins’ blood to retain her youth (she comes off as a crazy mess). The pic tries to revels in the gothic horror aspects of the story but also suggests that the countess might have been the victim of a conspiracy. And as in that film, the psychology of the title character is the pic’s biggest victim, but that is really never looked into much and I think it would have made for a much better film.  After an opening heavy on exposition, the plot finally springs into motion when the husband of Countess Bathory (Delpy) dies. Attending a dance as a widow, she meets the young Istvan Thurzo (Daniel Bruehl), and a love affair develops. But the scheming Count Thurzo (William Hurt) sends his son abroad to get married there, and Bathory remains behind, heartbroken, not knowing why Istvan abandoned her. Already revealed to have a cruel streak and convinced that the age difference might have something to do with Istvan’s departure, Bathory starts applying the blood of young virgins to her face in the belief it will keep her from aging. Delpy’s screenplay lacks psychological connective tissue. It never becomes clear why a powerful and intelligent woman was brought to her knees by a cute kid, only to turn murderous and possibly insane when deprived of her object of affection. This film just missed the mark and was not intriguing at all. Maybe I expect too much from Julie Delpy, because of her writing credits thanks to "Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight" trilogy, as well as her directing credits. 

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"Irreversible"
starring: Vincent Cassel, Monica Bellucci, Albert Dupontel
written and directed by: Gaspar Noe

The polarizing notoriety of this controversial French import has largely obscured a more reasoned and subdued analysis of the movie’s worth. Any review of Irréversible must be prefaced with a caveat emptor: It contains two scenes of prolonged and graphic violence – one, in the opening moments of the movie, in which the film’s leading man savagely and repeatedly crushes a victim’s skull to literal pulp using a fire extinguisher as his weapon, and the other, the film’s centerpiece, in which international sex-symbol Monica Bellucci in a nearly 10-minute-long take endures a vicious anal rape only to be further brutalized and kicked in the head by her rapist as further punishment for her survival. Furthermore, viewers who last through these two scenes had best not be epileptically inclined since the film’s closing credits are accompanied by flashing strobe effects that are said to be potential fit-inducers, as well as the way the director swirls and twirls the camera around and around and around to separate each chapter/scene as the story is told in reverse. 

Obviously, director Noé’s goal is to shock and disturb. But there is more to Irréversible than its shock value. "Time destroys all things" is the phrase invoked at the beginning and end of this movie. Underscoring this point is the movie’s reverse structure. Irréversible begins with the final credits crawling backwards across the screen. The Memento-like gimmick moves on to the head-smashing sequence, which we learn as the movie progresses, is retribution against the rapist. (Whether his vengeance is wrought on the correct perpetrator is another question entirely, which you will see if you can make it through the rest of the film.) The movie’s camerawork is wild, dark, and jerky at the beginning, echoing the film’s out-of-control mood. But as it progresses, the camerawork becomes steadier and filled with light ’til the story reaches its final transcendent moment of bliss. 

It's interesting, to me, that real-life couple Bellucci and Cassell play the boyfriend and girlfriend. The scenes at the end of the film, in their apartment/home, come off very natural. I wonder how Cassel felt, if he was even around, during the filming of perhaps the most uncomfortable rape scenes I have ever watched in a film (the other one being from the remake of "The Hills Have Eyes"). It's not like I'm saying watching a women get raped in a film should be easier to watch, some more than others, or what-have-you. It's just that this particular scene carries on for 10 long minutes and is relentless. The camera is almost simply placed on the ground, in a voyeuristic nature (making the viewer quite uncomfortable, like they shouldn't be watching this happen, like they should be doing something to stop it- in fact, I even noticed at one point, during the rape, in the background, there appears a man in the underpass, but perhaps afraid to confront, he simply sees what is happening, turns around, and walks away). 

Noé is clearly trying to tell us something about the nature of humanity, about how we are all animals in the final analysis, capable of all kinds of savagery. His technique is fascinating – worthy of notice at the very least – but his philosophical perspective is not as advanced as his mechanical skills. 

And in an interesting devil's advocate and uninvited, I'm sure, opinion on the other side of the rape argument, is one that is heard perhaps way way too often: the idea that Bellucci's character Alex was asking for it. Additionally, Bellucci’s flimsy attire and presence in an underground walkway make it seem almost as if Noé were suggesting that the victim invited the rape. 

Viewers should be warned that Irréversible means what it says: Your experience of this movie can not be forgotten once the die is cast.
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"Happy Christmas"
starring: Anna Kendrick, Lena Dunham, Joe Swanberg, Melanie Lynskey, Mark Webber
written and directed by: Joe Swanberg

Mumblecore. At its finest. In the disguise of a Christmas movie (of sorts). Joe Swanberg's films are concerned with the failure of communication. The director's acutely aware of our bodies as potential prisons of pent-up emotion, and he has a particular eye for how the insecure can feel paradoxically invisible and exposed at once. In this light, a holiday family film, which is often driven by private and public resentments, seems inevitable for Swanberg, though he weirdly, bracingly plays Christmas down in Happy Christmas, limiting the influence to visual shorthand such as colored decorations and packages sprinkled here and there within the frame. The feeling of living just slightly out of joint with the rest of society, is the real subject of the movie.

Jenny (Anna Kendrick, in one of her best/better roles- I like these indie films I find her in) is that contemporary American specialty: the self-consciously directionless late-20s flounder. After a breakup, she decides that she might want to live in Chicago, and so she crashes in the city with her brother, Jeff (Swanberg), and his wife, Kelly (Melanie Lynskey, almost unrecognizable from her stint on "Two and a Half Men" as Rose), and their two-year-old son, Jade (Jade Swanberg). We are initially primed to assume that Jeff's the hero (I mean, it is Swanberg's film), and that this might be a story of his navigating murky domestic waters that are disrupted by a familial wild card. But Happy Christmas has something more interesting and poignant in mind (perhaps the sign of a great filmmaker, one who knows to step aside): Jeff largely recedes from the story, allowing us to see how Jenny, Kelly, and Jenny's friend, Carson (Lena Dunham), play off one another. Initially, they wrestle with the typical insecurities of their respective stations in life: Jenny feels like a failure in the presence of the stable and poised Kelly, who herself feels like she's been reduced to the role of asexual "mom," particularly while talking to what she sees as two blissfully unhampered younger women.

This dynamic leads to a specific kind of moment that arises in all of Swanberg's films. He trains his camera on his most important characters and keeps them in front of us, wallowing in their confusion, until they reach out and allow themselves to directly speak their mind. Often moving, this gambit illuminates the purity of expression that's painfully near the characters' reach. For the first example: Jenny, Kelly, and Carson are downstairs in Kelly's house, at the tiki bar that was left over from the previous owner, when Carson casually tells Kelly that she's beautiful. Dunham's delivery is just right, poised between self-conscious daring and legitimate awe. The expression on Lynskey's face is intensely revealing, as she allows you to see Kelly attempting to cover her real response of stunned flattery with something more politely canned, and failing. It's an exhilarating moment that also serves a pragmatic narrative purpose: Jenny and Kelly recognize a mutual longing.

Swanberg's films have grown into a reliable relief from the competitive, dehumanizing freneticism of much of American culture, marked as they are by an affirming and understated sense of decency. In a typical underachiever comedy, the middle class might be vilified so as to flatter a disenfranchised notion of unearned rebellion, but in Happy Christmas you see that Jeff and Kelly are prone to the same doubts as Jenny. Similarly, Jeff isn't exaggerated as a self-absorbed cave man in order to land reductive points in favor of the women. He supports Kelly, and he clearly loves Jenny, which is never more obvious than when the two smoke a little dope downstairs in the basement where Jenny's crashing. 

The filmmaker deftly lands his unusually optimistic ending, in which Jenny and Kelly find themselves in the last variation of that characteristic Swanberg moment: Rather than collapsing into a morass of non-communication, the characters take a step forward, grasping at what they want, understanding, finally, that they're permitted to happiness.

This is easily one of my favorite films of the year. 

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"Brightest Star"
starring: Chris Lowell, Rose McIver, Jessica Szohr, Alex Kaluzhsky
written and directed by: Maggie Kiley

"Brightest Star's" unnamed male protagonist (Chris Lowell) bounces around life after getting dumped by his pert blonde girlfriend, Charlotte (Rose McIver). He spends the film trying to woo her back while figuring out what he wants to do with himself, flitting between lifestyles and jobs in the consequence-free manner that only the truly privileged can get away with, and of course disregarding the brunette he's clearly meant to be with. But, you are actually glad he doesn't stay with the brunette, because he clearly doesn't deserve her goodness. The blonde, Charlotte and Chris Lowell's character, simply named The Boy (does it get any more vague and uninteresting than that, I mean, when you don't even bother to name the protagonist, it simply comes off as phoning it in, like we are supposed to sympathize with someone who doesn't even have a name- and then add to that, the fact that he cheats on his brunette rebound/friend-turned-girlfriend).  

"Brightest Star" feels like a poem from Kiley's notebook without actually being poetic, and it's either much smarter and more profound than it's letting on, or it doesn't add up to anything at all. Or maybe both — it's all relative. The astronomy piece that was added into the film is completely unnecessary and I feel bad for seeing Alison Janney put her acting skills to such a poorly constructed cameo. 
Avoid this film because it certainly is not the brightest star in the sky. 
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"Rapture-Palooza"
starring: Anna Kendrick, Craig Robinson, John Francis Daley, Rob Corddry, Ana Gasteyer, Ken Jeong
directed by: Paul Middleditch
written by: Chris Matheson

This is the lesser seen, apocalyptic film of the summer of 2013 (the bigger one being "This is the End" which also had Craig Ferguson). It stars Anna Kendrick, one of my most recent favorite young actresses of these years. And hey, it helps that she's from Portland!

The film follows Lindsay (Anna Kendrick) and Ben (John Francis Daley), a young couple unfortunately left behind after God's children ascend to heaven. In this end-of-days scenario, if you can learn to live with the swarms of foul-mouthed locusts and occasional bloody downpour, life isn't so bad. Keen to leave their parents' house and strike out on their own, prototypical millennials Lindsay and Ben start their own business selling sandwiches out of a little food cart. But their dreams are cut short after an errant meteorite destroys their enterprise. Reluctantly, they take a job on the boorish Anti-Christ's (Craig Robinson) compound so they can continue to make and save money, but the devil has more than employment in mind after laying eyes on Lindsay, calling into question Ben's moral fiber and general manhood. 

The movie largely seems comprised of scenarios built on unfinished jokes being told by stoned college students. In one early scene, Lindsey informs us that her mother is the only person known to have been rejected from heaven after being raptured. Okay, there's a fun premise: what could this poor middle-aged mom have possibly done to merit such a drastic measure? The movie doesn't seem to know or care. Another scene starts listing the many obnoxious plagues humanity is forced to deal with. First, we see some angry locusts, then it starts raining blood and then…well, then the movie just kinda forgets about the whole "plague" element. How did the Anti-Christ come to power? We're told that he was a politician, and that he killed a whole bunch of more powerful politicians, and then…eh, who cares about the details, he's the Anti-Christ now. Almost every aspect of Rapture-Palooza feels similarly half-baked, as if the filmmakers were convinced that simply gathering a group of funny people together and throwing them into a wacky scenario would be enough. Craig T. Robinson is a very likable and funny guy, but there's only so much he can do with a screenplay that mostly has him ranting ceaselessly about how much he'd like to have anal sex with Kendrick's character. The movie is clearly trying hard to be subversive, but it's hard to be shocking when your movie can't even bother to provide a decent entrance or exit for its most "controversial" bits. A third-act appearance from none other than God himself (a typically overeager Ken Jeong) ought to be a big moment, but it's an underwhelming, poorly-written sequence that leads to a thoroughly bland climax. When a movie involving the Anti-Christ scheming to shoot Jesus out of the sky with a giant laser beam feels boring, you're doing something wrong.

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"White Reindeer"
starring: Anna Margaret Hollyman, Laura Lemar-Goldsborough, Lydia Hyslop, Joe Swanberg
written and directed by: Zach Clark

"White Reindeer" is another indie film that flew under the radar last year. It's a Christmas-time centered film, but is actually rather dark in contrast perhaps to the happiness that is supposed to be attached to the holiday season. This is a great indie film and I'm glad I found it on Netflix, especially after seeing Anna Margaret Hollyman in another great role in an indie gem from my film project a mere two years ago "Small, Beautifully Moving Parts."

The suburban sprawl of Northern Virginia functions alternately as purgatory and hell in Zach Clark's White Reindeer, a pitch-black "holiday movie" quite unlike any other holiday movie in recent memory. Following Suzanne Barrington (Anna Margaret Hollyman), a real estate agent whose life is thrown into complete disarray when her husband is murdered in a burglary gone wrong, the film is a sly and nasty one-woman odyssey set amid strip malls and suburban homes. While many lesser filmmakers would condescend to this environment by presenting narratives of grand self-actualization or discovering "deeper" meaning, Clark refuses such a didactic approach. His film charts a journey into the extremes of human emotion and behavior, going to much darker and weirder places than you might expect, while also grounding that journey in the rhythms of daily life. As a result, what's dark and weird about White Reindeer is also what's tangible, authentic, and wise about it.

When Suzanne learns of a fling her husband had earlier that year with a stripper, Autumn (Laura Lemar-Goldsborough), she tracks down and reaches out to the girl, and the two develop a strange and tenuous friendship. Autumn's real name is Fantasia, but Suzanne doesn't discover that until after the pair have embarked on an all-night cocaine-infused bender that's straight out of Twin Peaks, which wouldn't seem fitting for Suzanne's character, except for the fact that she has set herself on a self-discovery journey. Shoplifting sprees, swinger parties, and even a stint in jail are soon to follow, and though none provide any lasting relief, they help Suzanne waste away the days leading up to Christmas, which looms portentously over her grieving process as a reminder of the life she once led and will never lead again. Suzanne's transition from numb, emotionally vacated suburbanite to substance-abusing thrill-seeker is a bit hard to swallow on paper, but Hollyman is a nuanced, resourceful performer, and ably telegraphs the confusion and desperation behind Suzanne's new try-anything-once attitude. 

Comedy springs organically from the inherent absurdity of Suzanne's trajectory, and so does poignancy: One of White Reindeer's most powerful moments arrives when it's least expected, in the middle of Suzanne's bewildered introduction to the swinger set. When several participants reach the conclusion of their play and congregate around the kitchen, still in various states of undress, they begin to discuss their children, tenderly relaying stories and swapping parenting advice. It's a shattering, completely surprising moment, and a perfect crystallization of why White Reindeer works. Here, as in the rest of the film, the lines between the shocking, funny, mundane, and compelling are so blurred as to be indistinguishable, giving Suzanne room to grow and heal at her own unusual pace.

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"The One I Love"
starring: Mark Duplass, Elisabeth Moss, Ted Dansen
directed by: Charlie McDowell
written by: Justin Lader

Okay. Full disclosure, in this movie in particular, with the haircut, hair color, Elisabeth Moss looks just like my ex-girlfriend (whom I have quite a story connected with) and it made the film a little hard to watch, but it is actually a great film. It's a rather inventive indie film.

Ethan (Mark Duplass) and Sophie (Elisabeth Moss) are trying to salvage their marriage, though all the talk just seems to be making things worse. Then their therapist (Ted Danson) sends them to an idyllic retreat in Ojai, where the grounds are gorgeous, the weather is sunny, and Sophie and Ethan have a beautiful main house and a guest house all to themselves. At first, the place seems to be rejuvenating their relationship, but they soon realize that all the fun they thought they were having together actually wasn't with one another; it was with two other people who look and act almost exactly like they do, only a little better. It's very "Twilight Zone." 

After realizing what's going on, the two decide to keep up what Ethan calls their "sessions" with the doppelgangers. Ethan, who goes along with the situation for Sophie's sake, sees it as a mystery to be solved, but Sophie just wants to see how it plays out. She's enjoying her time with the new Ethan, who's as funny and undefensive and attentive as old Ethan used to be. In fact, she's falling in love all over again. It's an inventive way to surface issues like how romance tends to lose its spark and people tend to get set in their ways in long-term relationships, becoming less attentive and appreciative of one another—and how the bad feelings let in by a breach of faith can harden into an impassible barrier. 

Ethan's growing dismay at being outmaneuvered by what amounts to his own best self is poignant as well as funny, but the film gets too caught up in the semi-farcical comings and goings of the two Sophies and Ethans to explore any of the issues it raises about relationships very deeply. Ethan and Sophie's doppelgangers might have functioned more as a way to think about how we love and less as mere rivals for the couple's affections.