Indie Films
"Miss Stevens"
starring: Lily Rabe, Timothee Chalamet, Lili Reinhart, Anthony Quintal, Oscar Nunez, Rob Huebel, Larry Bam Hall
written and directed by: Julia Hart
When the premise of a film focuses on a seemingly young, blonde, naive (in some ways), new(ish) high school English teacher who accompanies 3 of her students (one being a rule-following girl, one being a flamboyantly gay boy, and the other being a bad-boy type who thumbs his nose at conventions) as their chaperon on a weekend trip for a drama/theatre competition, you will understandably assume that something is going to happen between the young teacher and the bad boy. That's where the tension falls, after all, in a very uncomfortable sense. We've all seen it before, in fact I reviewed an excellent movie called "A Teacher" a couple of years ago. But, you will be pleasantly surprised that this movie sees that road and decides to take the road less traveled. Instead, the teacher has sex with another teacher (a married man) and attempts to have another tryst with him, in a way to get her tensions out, but he denies her the pleasure a second time.
Lily Rabe (perhaps most famous for her changing roles in American Horror Story) plays the titular character, Miss Stevens, a 29 year old teacher, stunted and arrested in her emotional development, which perhaps allows her to connect with her 18 year old students, in and out of the classroom. She seems to lack an emotional mature and the filmmaker, Hart, decides to show us that through small interactions with the students, particularly Margot (Lili Reinhardt) and Billy (Timothee Chalamet), two very different personalities, contrasting in fact, which make them perfect for Miss Stevens at different moments in the film.
Early on, while packed into a car with her trio of students, Miss Stevens hits something on the road and launches into obscenities, prompting one student, Sam (Anthony Quintal), to observe that she curses a lot. She fires back, “We're not at school,” to which Margot demurs, “But, like, we are.” The scene amuses for its play with logical certainty, but it also recalls the teacher's opening lecture about school as an institution for learning, and that its information comes from a place of cultural stability and traditional values; after all, the students are reading The Great Gatsby in Miss Stevens's English class.
Side note: The Great Gatsby is my all-time favorite novel, which I also read in high school, and several times afterwards, too.
If it's Miss Stevens's job to breed consciousness and a certain sensibility in her students, then Miss Stevens finds a comparable role for the filmmaker to provide the materials for discussion without directing the viewer toward a particular solution or easy answer.
And these are the types of films I enjoy, for that exact purpose. Movies should make you think, not just simply entertain you. That's why I gravitate towards indie films, because they present life as more real, even though it's on the screen.
.......................................................................................
"13 Cameras"
starring: Neville Archambault, Sarah Baldwin, Sean Carrigan, Jim Cummings, PJ McCabe, Brianne Moncrief, Heidi Neidermeyer
written and directed by: Victor Zarcoff
This is a film about the dangers of technology and slumlords, and that all isn't what it seems. It's an interesting take on a problem that's been around for ages, sketchy landlords, but now there's the added twist of technology being readily available and when in the hands of the wrong person, it can lead to some very dangerous and scary stuff, like peeping tom stuff and torture.
Married couple and very pregnant, Claire and Ryan, along with their dog Baron, move into a new apartment/condo. Claire has a gut feeling about their landlord Gerald and instantly takes a disliking to him, solely based on his unappealing appearance and stench. The guy just looks horrible, like right out of a horror movie. Gerald is played by Neville Archambault, and he manages to play him both menacingly and disgusting.
And so, Gerald has set up surveillance cameras (13!) throughout the apartment and begins watching Claire and Ryan as they go about their daily lives. It's like his own personal reality show, but a creepier version of it, because you totally get the sense of their privacy being violated. Hell, there's even one in the toilet!
Seemingly content to purely be a voyeur, it isn’t until the addition of the third component of the couple’s relationship, Hannah, Ryan’s mistress, that Gerald’s actions become more intrusive. He starts to make secret visits to the house whilst his tenants are away, making friends with the dog in the process before giving into temptation and crossing lines. The sequences with Gerald in the house whilst Claire and Ryan are not will send a chill down the spine of anyone out there who is a renter.
And then, shit starts getting real scary fast. I won't say too much because it's definitely worth watching for yourself. It's a great modern-day horror film, with a new touch on what it means to be watched.
.......................................................................................
"Sister Cities"
starring: Jacki Weaver, Jess Weixler, Stana Katic, Troian Bellisario, Patrick Davis, Michelle Trachtenberg, Tom Everett Scott, Amy Smart
written by: Colette Freedman
directed by: Sean Hanish
Unbeknownst to me, "Sister Cities" actually originally aired on Lifetime, and now knowing that, I can definitely see why that station was the vehicle with which the film came out. It's definitely a film about women, made by women, for women. But, with that being said, don't let it deter you from watching it, as it grapples with a heavy subject matter such as the familial bond between sisters (and their mother) as well as suicide/assisted suicide. The film plays itself out like it could definitely pass for a stage play, even though there are a handful of flashbacks (especially between one sister and the mother).
In the film, the four sisters gather together after the suicide of their mother (played, in flashbacks, by both Amy Smart and Jacki Weaver). The sisters all have their own distinct personalities and, for some reason, three of them are named after cities.
For instance, the youngest sister is named Baltimore (Troian Bellisario). She’s a free-spirit who does what she wants. Now, my boyfriend is from Baltimore. I have friends who live in Baltimore. I’ve visited Baltimore and I loved it. But I would not name my daughter Baltimore because Baltimore is a great name for a city but it’s a terribly clunky one for a human being. If I was going to pick a city to name my daughter after, I’d probably go with Savannah or maybe Charlotte. Or, for that matter, maybe Ardglass. But not Baltimore.
Then there’s Dallas (Michelle Trachtenberg), who is the super organized and neat sister. She’s the one who gets taunted for always wearing matching underwear but seriously, what’s wrong with that? At least Dallas gets a pretty name.
Austin (Jess Wexler) has a pretty name too. We’re told that she’s a successful writer. We never believe it for a second. Austin lived with her mother and she’s the one who called the other sisters back home. Austin is as close as the film comes to having a central character.
And then there’s Carolina (Stana Katic), who is the oldest. She’s a lawyer and she’s angry because her mother named her after one of the Carolinas but never clarified which one.
Given, these four sisters/women are all exaggerated versions of the "real" thing, even the mom is an exaggerated type, but they are that way in order to make a point.
For a film trying to make a point, though, it sure does attempt to get there very slowly and with lots of heady dialogue and diatribes about what is right and what is wrong. It fails to be insightful when that's exactly the point it's trying to make and no one really comes away with a conclusion of what the right/wrong thing to do for the mother suffering with ALS is.
.......................................................................................
"Phantom Halo"
starring: Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Rebecca Romijn, Luke Kleintank, Tobin Bell, Sebastian Roche, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Clare Grant, Susan Park, Ashley Hamilton
written and directed by: Antonia Bogdanovich
The trouble with a first-time filmmaker is that sometimes they go for broke on their first film and it gets bogged down with ideas, words, style, and just trying to be everything to everyone, to meet the needs of the variety of audiences out there who could potentially see the film. "Phantom Halo" suffers from its own fate here in trying to be too much of everything.
In contemporary Los Angeles, a down-and-out Shakespearean actor and his two sons turn to a life of crime to pay their debts to several gangsters and loan sharks. It's a trivial fantasy of working-class artists struggling to survive in the lower depths of urban America that perpetually strains for credibility. While Samuel (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) earns money by reciting Shakespeare to mildly interested audiences at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, his older brother, Beckett (Luke Kleintank), steals the onlookers' wallets.
To escape his troubles, Samuel reads comic books about a superhero called the Phantom Halo, whose cartoonish heroics start to bleed into Samuel's violent world, which takes on an increasingly caricatured quality.
Characters repeatedly get up from vicious bludgeonings and go about their business as if nothing had happened. The silliness of the film's incessant violence is particularly grating because it has no consequences, undermining any sympathy the audience might have for the characters' tribulations.
This film tries to be a thriller, a comic book movie, and a suspenseful film noir, but fails on all accounts.
......................................................................................................
"Zoom"
starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Alison Pill, Jason Priestley, Tyler Labine, Don McKellar, Michael Eklund, Jennifer Irwin, Claudia Ohana, Mariana Ximenes
written by: Matt Hansen
directed by: Pedro Morelli
Graphic novelist Emma (the always excellent Alison Pill) works in a sex doll factory by day while drawing a new story at night. The story she’s drawing is about Edward (Gael Garcia Bernal), a famous action movie director trying to make a serious art film. The film he’s making is about Michelle (Mariana Ximenes), a model and aspiring novelist who drops everything to fly to Brazil so she can finish her novel about a graphic novelist named Emma who works in a sex doll factory. Brazilian director Pedro Morelli takes this closed loop of a narrative and throws in as many stylistic quirks and format changes as he can.
But the film’s attempts to comment on the creative process get drowned out by Morelli making sure everything stays busy, and gimmicks like making Edward’s story entirely animated (remember, he’s in a graphic novel) look neat but feel superfluous. Bernal’s charm makes Edward’s rather bland story about wounded masculinity passable but Ximenes winds up with the short straw here, as her story winds up being a little too accurate in its attempt to be a bad art film.
This is quite an interesting approach to filmmaking, for sure, and sort of brings to mind "American Splendor" and the newer animated-in-ways-that-make-you-question-if-it's-real, but the blend of real-life acting and the graphic novel animation kind of make the film get lost within itself as it's trying way too hard.
It definitely keeps your attention, but for the wrong reasons, because you almost feel obligated to pay attention.
starring: Lily Rabe, Timothee Chalamet, Lili Reinhart, Anthony Quintal, Oscar Nunez, Rob Huebel, Larry Bam Hall
written and directed by: Julia Hart
When the premise of a film focuses on a seemingly young, blonde, naive (in some ways), new(ish) high school English teacher who accompanies 3 of her students (one being a rule-following girl, one being a flamboyantly gay boy, and the other being a bad-boy type who thumbs his nose at conventions) as their chaperon on a weekend trip for a drama/theatre competition, you will understandably assume that something is going to happen between the young teacher and the bad boy. That's where the tension falls, after all, in a very uncomfortable sense. We've all seen it before, in fact I reviewed an excellent movie called "A Teacher" a couple of years ago. But, you will be pleasantly surprised that this movie sees that road and decides to take the road less traveled. Instead, the teacher has sex with another teacher (a married man) and attempts to have another tryst with him, in a way to get her tensions out, but he denies her the pleasure a second time.
Lily Rabe (perhaps most famous for her changing roles in American Horror Story) plays the titular character, Miss Stevens, a 29 year old teacher, stunted and arrested in her emotional development, which perhaps allows her to connect with her 18 year old students, in and out of the classroom. She seems to lack an emotional mature and the filmmaker, Hart, decides to show us that through small interactions with the students, particularly Margot (Lili Reinhardt) and Billy (Timothee Chalamet), two very different personalities, contrasting in fact, which make them perfect for Miss Stevens at different moments in the film.
Early on, while packed into a car with her trio of students, Miss Stevens hits something on the road and launches into obscenities, prompting one student, Sam (Anthony Quintal), to observe that she curses a lot. She fires back, “We're not at school,” to which Margot demurs, “But, like, we are.” The scene amuses for its play with logical certainty, but it also recalls the teacher's opening lecture about school as an institution for learning, and that its information comes from a place of cultural stability and traditional values; after all, the students are reading The Great Gatsby in Miss Stevens's English class.
Side note: The Great Gatsby is my all-time favorite novel, which I also read in high school, and several times afterwards, too.
If it's Miss Stevens's job to breed consciousness and a certain sensibility in her students, then Miss Stevens finds a comparable role for the filmmaker to provide the materials for discussion without directing the viewer toward a particular solution or easy answer.
And these are the types of films I enjoy, for that exact purpose. Movies should make you think, not just simply entertain you. That's why I gravitate towards indie films, because they present life as more real, even though it's on the screen.
.......................................................................................
"13 Cameras"
starring: Neville Archambault, Sarah Baldwin, Sean Carrigan, Jim Cummings, PJ McCabe, Brianne Moncrief, Heidi Neidermeyer
written and directed by: Victor Zarcoff
This is a film about the dangers of technology and slumlords, and that all isn't what it seems. It's an interesting take on a problem that's been around for ages, sketchy landlords, but now there's the added twist of technology being readily available and when in the hands of the wrong person, it can lead to some very dangerous and scary stuff, like peeping tom stuff and torture.
Married couple and very pregnant, Claire and Ryan, along with their dog Baron, move into a new apartment/condo. Claire has a gut feeling about their landlord Gerald and instantly takes a disliking to him, solely based on his unappealing appearance and stench. The guy just looks horrible, like right out of a horror movie. Gerald is played by Neville Archambault, and he manages to play him both menacingly and disgusting.
And so, Gerald has set up surveillance cameras (13!) throughout the apartment and begins watching Claire and Ryan as they go about their daily lives. It's like his own personal reality show, but a creepier version of it, because you totally get the sense of their privacy being violated. Hell, there's even one in the toilet!
Seemingly content to purely be a voyeur, it isn’t until the addition of the third component of the couple’s relationship, Hannah, Ryan’s mistress, that Gerald’s actions become more intrusive. He starts to make secret visits to the house whilst his tenants are away, making friends with the dog in the process before giving into temptation and crossing lines. The sequences with Gerald in the house whilst Claire and Ryan are not will send a chill down the spine of anyone out there who is a renter.
And then, shit starts getting real scary fast. I won't say too much because it's definitely worth watching for yourself. It's a great modern-day horror film, with a new touch on what it means to be watched.
.......................................................................................
"Sister Cities"
starring: Jacki Weaver, Jess Weixler, Stana Katic, Troian Bellisario, Patrick Davis, Michelle Trachtenberg, Tom Everett Scott, Amy Smart
written by: Colette Freedman
directed by: Sean Hanish
Unbeknownst to me, "Sister Cities" actually originally aired on Lifetime, and now knowing that, I can definitely see why that station was the vehicle with which the film came out. It's definitely a film about women, made by women, for women. But, with that being said, don't let it deter you from watching it, as it grapples with a heavy subject matter such as the familial bond between sisters (and their mother) as well as suicide/assisted suicide. The film plays itself out like it could definitely pass for a stage play, even though there are a handful of flashbacks (especially between one sister and the mother).
In the film, the four sisters gather together after the suicide of their mother (played, in flashbacks, by both Amy Smart and Jacki Weaver). The sisters all have their own distinct personalities and, for some reason, three of them are named after cities.
For instance, the youngest sister is named Baltimore (Troian Bellisario). She’s a free-spirit who does what she wants. Now, my boyfriend is from Baltimore. I have friends who live in Baltimore. I’ve visited Baltimore and I loved it. But I would not name my daughter Baltimore because Baltimore is a great name for a city but it’s a terribly clunky one for a human being. If I was going to pick a city to name my daughter after, I’d probably go with Savannah or maybe Charlotte. Or, for that matter, maybe Ardglass. But not Baltimore.
Then there’s Dallas (Michelle Trachtenberg), who is the super organized and neat sister. She’s the one who gets taunted for always wearing matching underwear but seriously, what’s wrong with that? At least Dallas gets a pretty name.
Austin (Jess Wexler) has a pretty name too. We’re told that she’s a successful writer. We never believe it for a second. Austin lived with her mother and she’s the one who called the other sisters back home. Austin is as close as the film comes to having a central character.
And then there’s Carolina (Stana Katic), who is the oldest. She’s a lawyer and she’s angry because her mother named her after one of the Carolinas but never clarified which one.
Given, these four sisters/women are all exaggerated versions of the "real" thing, even the mom is an exaggerated type, but they are that way in order to make a point.
For a film trying to make a point, though, it sure does attempt to get there very slowly and with lots of heady dialogue and diatribes about what is right and what is wrong. It fails to be insightful when that's exactly the point it's trying to make and no one really comes away with a conclusion of what the right/wrong thing to do for the mother suffering with ALS is.
.......................................................................................
"Phantom Halo"
starring: Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Rebecca Romijn, Luke Kleintank, Tobin Bell, Sebastian Roche, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Clare Grant, Susan Park, Ashley Hamilton
written and directed by: Antonia Bogdanovich
The trouble with a first-time filmmaker is that sometimes they go for broke on their first film and it gets bogged down with ideas, words, style, and just trying to be everything to everyone, to meet the needs of the variety of audiences out there who could potentially see the film. "Phantom Halo" suffers from its own fate here in trying to be too much of everything.
In contemporary Los Angeles, a down-and-out Shakespearean actor and his two sons turn to a life of crime to pay their debts to several gangsters and loan sharks. It's a trivial fantasy of working-class artists struggling to survive in the lower depths of urban America that perpetually strains for credibility. While Samuel (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) earns money by reciting Shakespeare to mildly interested audiences at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, his older brother, Beckett (Luke Kleintank), steals the onlookers' wallets.
To escape his troubles, Samuel reads comic books about a superhero called the Phantom Halo, whose cartoonish heroics start to bleed into Samuel's violent world, which takes on an increasingly caricatured quality.
Characters repeatedly get up from vicious bludgeonings and go about their business as if nothing had happened. The silliness of the film's incessant violence is particularly grating because it has no consequences, undermining any sympathy the audience might have for the characters' tribulations.
This film tries to be a thriller, a comic book movie, and a suspenseful film noir, but fails on all accounts.
......................................................................................................
"Zoom"
starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Alison Pill, Jason Priestley, Tyler Labine, Don McKellar, Michael Eklund, Jennifer Irwin, Claudia Ohana, Mariana Ximenes
written by: Matt Hansen
directed by: Pedro Morelli
Graphic novelist Emma (the always excellent Alison Pill) works in a sex doll factory by day while drawing a new story at night. The story she’s drawing is about Edward (Gael Garcia Bernal), a famous action movie director trying to make a serious art film. The film he’s making is about Michelle (Mariana Ximenes), a model and aspiring novelist who drops everything to fly to Brazil so she can finish her novel about a graphic novelist named Emma who works in a sex doll factory. Brazilian director Pedro Morelli takes this closed loop of a narrative and throws in as many stylistic quirks and format changes as he can.
But the film’s attempts to comment on the creative process get drowned out by Morelli making sure everything stays busy, and gimmicks like making Edward’s story entirely animated (remember, he’s in a graphic novel) look neat but feel superfluous. Bernal’s charm makes Edward’s rather bland story about wounded masculinity passable but Ximenes winds up with the short straw here, as her story winds up being a little too accurate in its attempt to be a bad art film.
This is quite an interesting approach to filmmaking, for sure, and sort of brings to mind "American Splendor" and the newer animated-in-ways-that-make-you-question-if-it's-real, but the blend of real-life acting and the graphic novel animation kind of make the film get lost within itself as it's trying way too hard.
It definitely keeps your attention, but for the wrong reasons, because you almost feel obligated to pay attention.
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