Meet the Patels (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Meet the Patels

"Meet the Patels" by Geeta Patel and her brother Ravi, an actor, is a buoyant and charming documentary about the quest for romantic harmony.

Ravi Patel is a self deprecating Indian American. He seems happily enamored with his girlfriend Audrey. All seems bliss but in their second year, Ravi gets cold feet. Audrey is not Indian and as he has kept the romance secret. Fearing his parents' disaproval and probable wrath, Ravi breaks off the relationship.

He agrees to go with his parents to India for holiday. During the vacation his father and mother begin to question him about marriage. They needle him and he reluctantly agrees to accept advice. Ravi's mother is a matchmaker for clients and friends. Ravi's single status is an embarrassment.

His quest takes him out of L.A. across the country and beyond to Ontario. He likes one girl, but she doesn't call back. His father Vasant sends him profiles of ladies that are as cold as resumes. He joins Match.com, all the while thinking of Audrey. Guilt weighs upon him.

Ravi's parents are as lively as any family in a Woody Allen comedy. They constantly invade his sense of privacy. At times the henpecking very nearly reaches hysteria. Ravi is used to sweating it out under a mother's prodding.

What can Ravi do? For the most part he is cool under some paternal screws. Exhaustingly, it is revealed that Amor is a dizzying process of first impressions and intent. The profiles are handed out to scores upon scores of relatives: uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, neices, neighbors and grand-uncles. Then there are the parties, conventions, events and weddings.

Tons of eligible ladies float by in glitter-breasted saris. The parents insist on a traditional Indian wedding, which in their mind means an arranged marriage to an Indian girl. But Ravi is unmoved.

The camerawork by Ravi's sister Geeta is quirky and feels intentionally askew, but unlike "The Blair Witch Project" or  TV's The Office, the wave like motions echo the humor of Ravi Patel and compliment his charm.

Refreshingly, there are some tense moments. In one scene, Ravi talks haltingly in a phone call to his ex girlfriend. The scene is full of uncomfortable pauses, hesitance and teasing sarcasm. It is a singularly vivid and striking episode.

One gets the sense that this tightly knit and far reaching Patel family is composed of Gujarati Godfathers, though considerably warmer and more benevolent than The Corleones.

There are some comical animated sequences that off-set the tensions, reminicent of the film "American Splendor" in  effervescent black and white.

Geeta Patel's touch is skillful, having the ability to give the camera its verve and highlighting the drama while remaining ghostly and unobtrusive. Her shared plight of singlehood is only revealed on the periphery and breathlessly we can only think that another round of maternal clawing awaits.

The tone of "Meet the Patels" is funny and exuberant with an abundance of carbonation. But it also has a palpable sense of claustrophobia within a family web.

Along with a mother's light bemusement is an iron hand of judgment, just as quick to give withering cuts to her son, as dispense Cupid's arrow.

Write Ian at ianfree1@yahoo.com

99 Homes (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

99 Homes

Director Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart) puts us dead center (with the emphasis on dead) in the foreclosure business with his new film "99 Homes". The film is a gritty and authentic look at the financial crisis in Florida.

Andrew Garfield (Spiderman) is Dennis, a struggling construction worker and single father in Orlando just trying to keep his equilibrium. Dennis lives with his mom (Laura Dern) in the family home. He has a young son Connor (Noah Lomax).

One day, Richard Carver (Michael Shannon ) a granite-faced realtor, knocks on the door accompanied by the cops. Dennis and his family are served an eviction notice by the bank and ordered to leave. Dennis is stupefied; the judge had told him that he had a thirty day window to appeal foreclosure and he interpreted that as a small reprieve.

Carver is terse and unmoved, his body a stone wall. Under hysterics, the three hastily pack under the aloof eyes of the officers. All other belongings are kicked to the curb. The trio move into a sparse day glo motel with no hint of a future. Family tensions rise.

Michael Shannon is at his monstrous best but he is no cartoon villain, only a hard human capitalist at his worst. There is the barest sliver of a heart here, better to call it a sickle.

The primal faced Carver with his sunken brow, toys with Dennis' good nature in a sly manipulation. Who knows what awaits this average guarded man who slopes along with uneven shoulders, a man who still believes in the unshakeble order of right and wrong. Suffice to say, this is similar territory from the dog eat dog realm of "Glengarry Glen Ross." The symbolism of Orlando homes crowded together as matchbooks over a blue sky as Carver grinds his teeth like a nurse shark in beige slacks is right on target. His menace doesn't come with fins but rather the slickness of a sable Infiniti.

Garfield too, is totally realized in his role of an Everyman who is hit--a human tuning fork quivering past any sane frequency.

The film has a deft touch in showing the connection between greed, money and sexual lust. In one scene, during a preamble to oral sex, Carver gyrates and roars like a werewolf on Viagra. The moment is selfishly savage, comical, and even a bit sad.

Melodrama aside, the bite of "99 Homes" is very real and it all points to the most base in ourselves. To see Michael Shannon is to witness a face creased in monetary War for its own sake.

Bahrani expresses his story with well formed anxiety and danger. The first rate acting by Garfield and Shannon, in particular, contain all of the surprise that is necessary. More directly, such voltage is most likely, all that we can humanly handle.

Write Ian at inafree1@yahoo.com

The Walk (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

The Walk

Joseph Gordon-Levitt gives an immersive preformance in Robert Zemeckis' film "The Walk," detailing a formative quest of the famed wire walker, Philippe Petit. The film is richly told, helped in no small measure by the breathless and wonderful 3D showing a living New York City.

Petit's beginnings are theatrical indeed. As a youngster in Paris, he was a street performer doing a kind a mime where he drew a circle around himself and remained silent within the orb. He would not tolerate any one to enter his realm, often stepping upon others.

One day with his wire act, he meets the vivacious Annie (Charlotte Le Bon.) Romance blooms.

During a performance, Petit cracks a tooth. After he is treated brusquely by a man in the waiting room, he sees the World Trade Center, then under construction, in a magazine. His tooth pain vanishes.

Like a muralist in seeing a masterwork upon a white wall, Petit sees a single line between two high points wherever he goes. In the Trade Center, the artist discovered his muse. He yearns to walk on a wire between the two buildings over one thousand feet from the city below.

The film does an excellent job portraying Philippe Petit as a more than subversive artist of the body, using balance, equilibrium and the power of the unexpected as his tools. There is also more than a sprig of Surrealism in his soul.

The film's first highlights are its Chaplinesque tones, showing the daredevil as a bohemian trickster, bumping and rolling, startling children and catching others off guard. The city of Paris in 1972 mirrors this carnival sense as well: motley people loiter in the street, folk singers strum Leonard Cohen on guitars and the police are hated.

Ben Kingsley appears as Papa Rudy, a master acrobat who advises him in his dream that Petit calls a "coup". No one except his girlfriend Annie thinks he can do such a thing.

The marvel of "The Walk" is that it expresses Petit's act as it was intended: a walk upon a wire that was interpreted as both entertainment and an act of civil disobedience. It can also be seen as a yearning to be one with Nature, a very literal journey to become a part of inner and outer space. In a few scenes, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is shown as a black asterisk against the sky, scoring a revolution of human Will. The virtuosic perspective, dizzying and very nearly shocking, puts you within one heartbeat of Petit on his tread.

But that is not all. The last piece de resistance is a shot of the Trade Center as a shining compass that is singed at the edges as if burnt by the sun. Poignantly, Petit says in a voiceover that his pass to the observation deck of the building is meant to last forever.

Write Ian at ianfree1@yahoo.com

Week of October 9 - 15 (Rhoades)

Tropic Overview

Tightrope Walkers, Educational Crusaders, and Computer Nerds

Lead a Parade of Interesting Characters at the Tropic

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Film Critic, Key West Citizen

“The Walk” is a breathtaking 3D biopic based on Philippe Petit’s 1974 high-wire walk between the
twin towers of the World Trade Center. Playing Petit, likeable Joseph Gordon-Levitt demonstrates his newly acquired French and tightrope-walking skill. “This is the kind of unbelievable true story that you couldn’t make up if you tried,” says Bullz-Eye.com. And Indie London promises, “It won’t fail to impress.”

“He Named Me Malala” is a documentary about Malala Yousafzai, the Pakastani girl who got shot by the Taliban simply for attending school. That set her off on a global crusade that led to a Nobel Peace
Prize. Boston Globe says, “The film forces us to think about the prices paid by our unexpected heroes.” And Toronto Star notes, “It’s impossible not to feel affection for and protective of this young woman.”

In “99 Homes” a conscience-tormented guy helps a sleazy realtor foreclose on people’s homes. New Yorker calls it “a simplistic but stirring morality play centered on the pressure point of the savings-and-loan crisis.” And Toronto Star tells us, “Michael Shannon and Andrew Garfield make for an incendiary combo, as a predatory realtor and his desperate protégé.”

“Meet the Patels” is the true story of Ravi Patel’s quest to come up with a wife. Seattle Times calls it “a touching, funny documentary about family and cultural forces putting pressure on a first-generation Indian-American man to do what should come naturally: find love and a life partner.” And Detroit News says it’s “just plain fun to watch.”

“Phoenix” is a postwar mystery about a concentration-camp survivor who isn’t recognized by her husband when she returns to Berlin. Salt Lake City Weekly observes: “Hitchcock’s Vertigo has been invoked repeatedly as a comparison for Christian Petzold’s mesmerizing drama, but while he’s adapting a French novel that has already been turned into a film once before, absolutely nothing here feels second-hand.” And Advocate sees it as “a deftly executed, suspenseful drama.”

“Steve Jobs: The Man In the Machine” is an award-winning documentary that demonstrates the genius of the creator of Apple computers as well as recognizing his personal flaws. Philadelphia Inquirer opines that it “brings home the complexities and contradictions of the man.” And TheWrap calls the film “wholly engrossing.”

Fascinating people, fascinating stories.
srhoades@aol.com

The Walk (Rhoades)

Front Row at the Movies

Joseph-Gordon-Levitt Takes “The Walk”

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Back in February I met Philippe Petite, the high-wire artist who walked between the twin towers of the World Trade Center one misty August morning in 1974. We were discussing “Man On Wire,” the documentary about his amazing feat. Being French he calls it “le coup.”

At the time he told me about a feature film in the works, a 3D epic by Robert Zemeckis (“Forrest Gump”) that would dramatize the event. Simply titled “The Walk,” it would star Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“The Dark Knight Rises”) as Philippe.

Now “The Walk” is showing at the Tropic Cinema.

Although Philippe Petit owns a hideaway in upstate New York, he spends a lot of time in Key West. But he took some time off to help with the film’s technical aspects ... like teaching the young actor how to walk the tightrope. “After two weeks, we put a wire up 6-feet high, 30-feet long, and he did a single crossing by himself,” Philippe says like a proud papa. “He actually was very good.”

For the role, Joseph Gordon-Levitt also had to perfect a Parisian accent. That’s because Philippe started off as a street performer in Paris, working as a juggler and magician before mastering the tightrope. Gordon-Levitt’s French Canadian co-star Charlotte Le Bon (“The Hundred-Foot Journey”) helped him with nuances of the language, being that she makes her home in Paris.

“The Walk” unfolds like a heist film. Philippe Petit and his cohorts break into the World Trade Center with the help of an inside man, a flamboyant mustachioed insurance executive named Barry Greenhouse (played by Steve Valentine).

At the time Greenhouse was working on the 82nd floor of the South Tower, the highest occupied level in the WTC. He’d met Philippe Petit in Paris. “This kid comes along with a top hat and a unicycle, then slings a rope between a couple of trees,” he recalls the encounter. “I think he not only walked on it, he rode the unicycle. Is that possible?”

Greenhouse provided the fake identification, equipment storage, and access to the towers. “I didn’t think it through too much,” he admits. “Philippe sucks you in.”

Petit and one of his accomplices -- a guy who is afraid of heights --hid for hours on the top floor of the World Trade Center under a tarp to elude watchmen. Then after a number of heart-stopping mishaps, he walks onto the 7/8”-thick wire he’d strung between the two 110-story-high towers.

Voila!

Why would you want to see “The Walk” if you’ve already seen the masterful Oscar-winning documentary, “Man On Wire”? Simply for the thrills.

The use of 3D and green screens will make you think you’re up there a quarter-mile above the street on a razor-thin wire with Philippe Petit.

While the narration by Joseph Gordon-Levitt sitting atop the Statue of Liberty may be a bit over the top, his performance -- like the elfin redhead he’s portraying -- is charming. And his high-wire artistry shows skill.

“He has a talent for it,” says Philippe Petit. “He became me.”
srhoades@aol.com

He Named Me Malala (Rhoades)

Front Row at the Movies

“He Named Me Malala” Profiles Pakistani Heroine

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Who hasn’t heard of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who was shot for attending school?

Born in Mingora, a town in the Swat District of northwest Pakistan, her father named her after Afghani folk hero Malalai of Malwand.

An outspoken opponent of the Taliban’s efforts to restrict education for females, Malala’s father ran a school adjacent to the family’s home.

The Taliban had banned television and music. Women were not allowed to go shopping. And they warned Ziauddin Yousafzai to close his schools. The terrorist group had already blown up more than a hundred girls’ schools.

Under a pseudonym his daughter was writing a blog for the BBC Urdu service, detailing her life under Taliban occupation in Swat. In 2011, she received Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize and was nominated by Archbishop Desmond Tutu for the International Children’s Peace Prize. After she was revealed as the author of the BBC blog, Taliban leaders vowed to kill her.

On October 9, 2012, a masked gunman climbed aboard her school bus, asked for Malala by name, and shot her in the head. Critically wounded, she was transported to a hospital in the United Kingdom that specializes in military injuries. As we know, she survived.

The Taliban’s attempt to kill Malala received worldwide condemnation and led to Pakistan’s Right To Free and Compulsory Education Bill.

Starting the Malala Fund, she became a global advocate for “the millions of girls being denied a formal education because of social, economic, legal and political factors.” And she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Like her namesake, Malala became a heroine.

Davis Guggenheim’s documentary “He Named Me Malala” tells her story. It’s currently playing at the Tropic Cinema.

The film’s tagline is a quote from Malala: “One child, one teacher, one book & one pen can change the world.” Despite the admonition, she seems intent on doing that single-handedly. Her advocacy has grown into an international movement.

“I don’t want to be thought of as the girl who was shot by the Taliban but the girl who fought for education,” she says. “This is the cause to which I want to devote my life.”

Guggenheim’s credits include such feature films as “Training Day” and TV programs like “Alias,” “24,” “ER,” and “Deadwood.” He is the only filmmaker to have three different documentaries that rank among the top 100 highest-grossing documentaries of all time (“An Inconvenient Truth,” “It Might Get Loud,” and “Waiting for ‘Superman’”).

Malala has been called “the most famous teenager in the world.” She’s been awarded about a zillion honors. Time Magazine has featured her on multiple occasions as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. She’s becoming something of an Islamic version of Mother Teresa.

“He Named Me Malala” is an interesting profile. But she might just be misnamed. The word Malala means “grief-stricken.” With her positive message for young women, she seems anything but that.

srhoades@aol.com

Steve Jobs: The Man In the Machine (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Steve Jobs: The Man In the Machine

An Apple computer was part of my childhood during the mid seventies and throughout my high school years. Like many others, I remember playing those bright and primitive games, similar to Atari on my Apple II. I typed my first stories on it even though I had no gift for computers or science. Typing was not a chore, creativity felt liquid and the act of pushing the keyboard was simply fun to do.

Because I liked Apple so much, I thought about the founders Steve Jobs and Wozniak as homegrown creators, making computers in their home garage. I did not think of Apple as a company in the corporate sense, only as two friends making something as mad scientists. As naive as this was, perhaps there is a shred of truth here. After all, the early Apples were not boxy, they had rounded edges. And because they were so easy to use, they seemed almost like a friend, or at least a machine with a semblance of sympathy. 

"Steve Jobs: The Man In the Machine"  a documentary by Alex Gibney is about Jobs, the premier creator of Apple Computer.

The initial scenes are filmed from 2011, at Jobs' passing from cancer. Lines of people hurl white roses at Apple stores around the world and take out their iPhones to display a candle. Hoards of people are moved to tears. His mourning was akin to the Beatles. Was Jobs, a techno John Lennon of sorts?

The answer is a resounding no, but he did have an artist's eye in making computers easy to use and live with.

Jobs started as a counterculture boy with an interest in buddhism and literature. He met Wozniak at Hewlett Packard and they made their own simple blue square devices capable of mimicking phone calls and filching from AT&T. 

Afterwords, Jobs went to Atari and constructed the paddle game, Breakout. He had the idea that computers could be intimate and personal, either a tool or perhaps a companion.

Despite his tech verve, Jobs felt a kind of outlier. He went to India. Back in California he met with Kobun, a monk, who said he was too smart. 

Apple, the company, was born. The film traces Jobs' early days and his rise. Gradually, he gets more and more rigid and powerful. He loses Apple and then returns to it ten years later, saving it from dissolution. 

Jarring it is to learn of Jobs' harsh and icy selfishness. When he learns of being a father, he storms out and takes his girlfriend Chrisann to court, relenting only after a paternity test. Having no interest in fatherhood, he names his new computer Lisa, after his daughter.

Decades later, enamored of the Sony Walkman, Jobs has the idea for a small music machine.

The iPod arrives, then the iPhone. Both are small very personal machines that at times seem to carress the hand.

Sadly, in the film, Jobs is vengeful and authoritarian, without mercy. During the chance accident of a iPhone left behind, a factory worker in China kills himself in shame and a tech reporter is threatened by the inventor when he discovers a lost prototype of the iPhone 4 in a bar. Sent by Apple, a security force invades the writer's home.

One gets the feeling that Jobs immerses himself in the universe of the electronic device for security. 

In life, Steve Jobs took the cold neutrality of zen to the extreme. He eschewed the public and the human, in his pursuit of making the perfect tech machine, a prosthetic bridge between art design and digital utility. Indeed as Alex Gibney intones in a voiceover, it is no mistake that when one first spies an iPhone, there is a black reflective surface. 

We face ourselves.

Difficult to watch, but strikingly compelling and seductive like Job's own products, "The Man In the Machine" might prove as toxic as a computer virus to die hard fans, but it makes a vivid study, as poetic in detail as it is darkly bitten with humor in showing this inventor with a charisma as purposefully imagined as his cupid-like and  infectious devices.

Write Ian at ianfree1@yahoo.com