Chimpanzee (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Chimpanzee

For the Chimpaholics among us, we can all breathe easy once more with the generically-titled "Chimpanzee" directed by Alistair Fothergill and Mark Linfield. It is the most recent film in a series released by Disneynature. 

"Chimpanzee" has a startling immediacy  with a unique painterly appeal. From the very start, the jungle of The Ivory Coast serenely faces us with all the  magnificence of a Chinese Landscape: black peaks of India ink are surrounded by smoky blue vapors. Then it is day. Our calligraphic vista merges into an aerial shot showing bountiful trees as big blossoming heads of green broccoli. After all,this is Disney where life is always in technicolor and seldom mean.

We are introduced to Oscar, an adorable baby chimp who would charm The Grinch. Oscar tags along with his mother Eesha on various food gathering errands and such. Oscar almost invariably gives beseeching melting eyed looks and barely anything other than Baby Oscar needs to be on-screen. To watch him is a singular joy. The narration by Tim Allen, never overly sweet or cloying is reminiscent of the legendary Disney narrator Rex Allen, no relation to Tim.

But things are not all green and rosy in  Mickey's Jungle. 

A rival family of chimps threaten Oscar's family, not to mention the prized nut groves that Eesha and her group depend on. A feud soon rages that rivals "The Sopranos" in all its domestic anxiety and peer-pressure paranoia, albeit without guns or graphic violence. Thank Goodness. The head villain is a simian Brando and his nickname is Scar. Perhaps I'm being too picky here, but couldn't the writers call him something else? Scar has already been used in "The Lion King". 

Just in case Tim Allen's folksy and fatherly narration wears on you just a little, keep in mind that this film is meant for kids. It is less edgy than the anxious "Project Nim", but then again I can't take anything away from it. The cinematography is first-rate, showing a  bouncing, brimming and rocking terrain that is at once rich in harmony, but also phosphorescent in nocturnal apprehension.

"Chimpanzee" will ultimately entertain and dazzle your eyes, and while it will spare you the punchiness of its earlier celebrity primate, it shows a world as it is, before any sapien or simian misunderstandings. 

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

The Salt of Life (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

The Salt of Life

"The Salt of Life", the second film from Gianni de Gregorio makes a pleasing barzelletta, or joke, if not a completely satiating outing. This is a kind of light comedy with bright colors and mild quirky characters  that parade about like James Thurber illustrations. It doesn't make waves but it is as smooth and easy as a San Pellegrino in the sun and no doubt it will give you a few buoyant chuckles.

Gianni de Gregorio, the director, treads the familiar ground that he began in his debut film "Mid-August Lunch" Once again, Gianni plays a side of himself: a semi-passive man who is dreamy and wanting more but who is nonetheless happy with himself. Gianni goes through his suburban Italian environment shuffling his feet with a wistful contentment. Wherever he goes, he seems tickled by exclusive types of especially luscious grocery produce juxtaposed by the sight of golden breasts. At times, the film seems a slightly sexist travelogue or fairy tale. 

Throughout the film, Gianni stops and gives various summery girls the once over, but it is without any carnal malice or confrontation. For a few seconds, I wondered why. But what emerges is an Italian Idyll that mellows the heart, not quite real, but nevertheless authentic. 
Gianni is kind of a flirty Jacques Tati. He also is a bit like Robert De Niro, if De Niro's features were a bit smoothed out by Ativan and put in retrograde--both actors have a similar sly twinkle in the eye. (Remember that Gianni co-wrote  the masterful Italian gangster film "Gomorrah"). 
In this outing, Gianni again keeps an eye on his dominant mother (Valeria De Franciscis Bendoni). And he is near invisible to everyone including his vacant wife (Elizabetta Piccolomini) and his real life daughter (Teresa De Gregorio). Like a lusty Walter Mitty Gianni appears spaced out, drifting with his own predilections. 

The trouble is there just isn't much for Gianni to do here. After the first few goes around,the sight of him being stuck with a man and his poodle when he wants to roam as a paramour isn't as funny as it should be, nor is he a laugh riot being drunk or trippy and splashing about in a fountain. We've seen such foolery in "Arthur". And I don't really find being high all that funny on camera.

But for all the tepid comedy, the film works best if you take it in stride, as if you were seeing a friendly neighbor across the street and saying, "Oh there he goes again!"

The best part of "The Salt of Life" occurs near the end, as a kind of Zen meditation as dreamt by Benny Hill. It ends all too abruptly. I just wish I could get a finger or two more of Fellini, or an added sip of this aperitif.

Despite this criticism, fans of Gianni De Gregorio's work will not be disapointed. These characters warm the eyes like beloved friends.

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

Mirror Mirror (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Mirror Mirror

Now at The Tropic in a snap, is "Mirror Mirror" the latest adaptation of Snow White directed by a virtuoso of visuals, Tarsem. Tarsem, the director of "The Cell" is fond of surreal elegance. Born in India, Tarsem uses chiaroscuro to great effect and seems to shade everything he portrays in the colors of Bollywood. In "The Cell" he illustrated the world of a serial killer using as inspiration what looked like a cross between Maxfield Parrish and Yves Tanguy . It proved a dark delight for the senses if not a coherent narrative story.  

In "Mirror Mirror",  Tarsem deliberately wields the camera like a magic wand of silver buttercreme and once again he does not let us down. Indeed, I would argue that the singular reason to see this film is for the visuals alone which put H.R. Giger, Liberace and Jean Paul Gaultier to shame. Every interior is either avian inspired or nautilus in shape. Walls and alcoves fold upon each other in great billowing swirls, more gold than gold. This visual sweep is further enhanced by the costumes of Eiko Ishioka who sadly passed away this year, at age 73. 
Julia Roberts is the main headliner as The Queen. Roberts is a total hoot here and all you would expect as a vain, superficial status cougar-queen with lips and nails that are as sharp as quills. And, as a dominatrix inked from a Sharpie Extra Fine, she also has the best lines, pertaining of course to status and beauty.

Let us not forget the dashing Armie Hammer as Prince Alcott. He is as generic as toothpaste and as bland as a Ken doll but that is his character after all, and he plays it well. 

We also have newcomer Lily Collins as Ms. White. Her performance is rather traditional, but in all her fairness,sable hair and rosebud lips like the bee-stung hibiscus, she cuts quite a Fairy Tale presence. If I have to be critical--and I fear I must--I admit that the dwarfs are the weakest component. They just don't seem to do all that much. We mainly see them just bop and bang about and hit each other. Cloaked in predominant browns and beiges, these faceless clowns seem more like Larry, Moe and Curly as imagined by Pieter Bruegel. Whatever sparks they share is mostly due to their underground home: part oversize slipper part gigantic tree. These Seven spend an inordinate amount of time on screen bickering, shouting and hitting each other. And for me, at least, their maudlin antics wore a bit thin. I missed their original predecessors.

Still, there is enough here to make the kid in all of us grow a few inches taller. We have the irrepressible Nathan Lane who uses his annoying hyperactivity to great satisfying effect as Brighton, a sycophantic foot-soldier to the queen. Brighton's quips are without compare and they succeed so well because they make no sense whatsoever.

On the whole, this story is rather conventional and almost hi-ho-ho-hum- but the kaleidoscopic bravado coupled with Roberts' irreverent vanity ala Joan Rivers, remains the charmed glue that holds this story together. 

New adaptations and twists begone! You will not go away disappointed by Disney: the apple scene will have your heart beating like it is 1937 once more.

And please, remember to suspend yourself in your seat beyond the credits for some musical pyrotechnics that will pop in your ears.  It is the final arresting dash  of Kesar atop this somewhat pedestrian, yet ultimately glorious Gulab Jamun of a film known as "Mirror Mirror".

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

Footnote (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Footnote 

Here is a film for all those who love their comedies to have an existential twist. I'm speaking of "Footnote", the Oscar nominated film by Joseph Cedar. The film is both madcap and meditative, not to mention fraught with folly and familial angst. "Footnote" is an odd sneak of a film, a bit like Kubrick and the Coen Brothers mashed together.

The film concerns a near genius researcher, Eliezer (Shlomo Bar Aba) who endlessly pores over The Talmud in search of its origins. Eliezer has spent his life in study. After some forty years, on the eve of finding  The Original Talmud, a rival professor beats him to it, and he is reduced to accepting a second rate mention in a old tome, in place of fame. Again and again, he is rejected by his peers for the coveted Israel Prize. Nevertheless, he takes a stern Gallows Humor in his non-status and takes the same route to the National Library each day. 

Bar Aba plays his part wonderfully. He is part Harvey Pekar (The late cartoonist from "American Splendor") and part Kafka. But, far from pity, he never gives up.

There are some wonderfully surreal touches here worthy of the work of Terry Gilliam, namely the stacks and stacks of paper that encroach around him wherever he goes creating a war zone of shredded paper and Talmudic symbology. There is also a crowded closet space that becomes a smoky beehive of interrogation with no room to move in. Not to mention the freestyle  Stomp band that arrives without warning. And finally, an awards conference that looks very much like a space station in "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Selfish urges and stubbornness are central to the film which are embodied in a bitter rival, Grossman (Micah Lewensohn) and Elizar's controlling son (Lior Ashkenazi). Nothing is as it seems; even Eliezer doubts the discipline in his son's writings and labels him as one of the young and phony ones.

Old Eliezer is constantly misunderstood accosted and semi-criminalized throughout the film. The placement and movement of books, a mistimed footstep or even a chance word might bring abandonment or even death. As Eliezer walks his unwavering  route he often sees a memorial sign for a scholar who was murdered on his walk. His family waft in and out of his study like rukhes and Eliezer scarcely speaks.

The motley score of the film that slips in subtle piano haunts as well as melodramatic crescendos is like a hybrid of Bernard Hermann and a circus calliope. As quirky as it is, the music sets just the right random, yet hyperactive tone. This eccentric score is a character by itself. 
If you are in the mood for a kooky tale of twice-tossed Talmuds and family unrest, altogether twisted, do not walk away from this film. Its mania never detracts from its meaning. "Footnote" contains a richness in character reminiscent of Isaac Bashevis Singer that merges with a gothicism akin to David Fincher's dark-tinted fonts and displaced emotion. There is a lot here to take in, and also, to take apart in any way you wish.

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

Mirror Mirror (Rhoades)

 “Mirror Mirror” Offers

Fractured Fairy Tale

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

My late friend Dr. Bruno Bettelheim wrote in “The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales” that “only on repeated hearing of a fairy tale … is a child able to profit fully from what the story has to offer him in regard to understanding himself and his experience of the world.”

So director Tarsem Singh (“Immortals,” “The Cell”) is going to tell you the Snow White story again, this time in a movie called “Mirror Mirror.”

This cinematic version is currently enchanting audiences at the Tropic Cinema.

You know how it goes – kinda. A wicked sorceress schemes to steal the throne from a raven-haired beauty known as Snow White. Banished to the forest, the young girl falls in with a rebellious band of little people (the Seven Dwarves) who transform her into a battle-ready princess capable of winning back the kingdom from the conniving queen. And along the way she meets a handsome prince.

Oscar-winner Julia Roberts (“Erin Brockovich”) portrays Queen Clementianna as being more insecure than evil. Lily Collins (“The Blind Side”) – she’s the daughter of musician Phil Collins – plays Snow White. And chisel-chin Army Hammer (“J. Edgar”) joins them as the prince.

In addition to the prerequisite seven diminutive actors, Nathan Lane, Sean Bean, and Mare Winningham round out cast.

Don’t confuse this movie with the forthcoming “Snow White and the Huntsman,” starring Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, and Chris Hemsworth. Fairy tales are all the rage. Remember last year’s “Red Riding Hood” with Amanda Seyfried. And those recent TV shows, “Once Upon A Time” and “Grimm.”

Austrian-born child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim believed that fairy tales are essential for the mental health of children. Later on, Persian-born psychiatrist-neurologist Nossrat Peseschkian applied the same criteria to adults. Peseschkian points out how a story holds up a mirror to you. You observe the characters of the story objectively from a safe distance, able to recognize traits that apply to yourself.

“Mirror Mirror,” as the movie’s title says.

Bettelheim postulated that fairy tales function similarly to dreams. “As we wake up refreshed from our dream, better able to meet the tasks of reality, so the fairy story ends with the hero returning, or being returned to the real world, much better able to master life,” he wrote.

Movies serve a similar purpose in my estimation, a dreamlike storytelling medium that allows us to work through the unconscious pressures of our lives.

When my wife and I worked in the pressure-cooker publishing world in New York, we found that a good action movie on Friday night allowed us to clear our heads, put our tough workweek behind us, and escape to a flickering world where heroes survived and bad guys got their due. Thus we didn’t have to go to work on Monday morning with automatic weapons. Or poison apples.

srhoades@aol.com

Chimpanzee (Rhoades)

“Chimpanzee” Isn’t

About Monkeyshines

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

As a kid I used to love those Disney wildlife films, often narrated by former cowboy star Rex Allen. They told me about the desert and the ocean and faraway jungles.

Today we have Disneynature, a more sophisticated filmmaking unit of the house Mickey Mouse built. An independent film label of The Walt Disney Company, it was founded in 2008 specifically to release nature documentaries.

So far, it has given us “Earth,” “Oceans,” “African Cats” and a couple of other notable wildlife excursions.

This time out, Disneynature has teamed up with the Jane Goodall Institute to bring us a real-life story about a chimpanzee in the tropical jungles of Uganda.

Christophe Boesch, head of the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation, served as the film’s principal consultant. Former BBC Natural History Unit staffers Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield co-directed.

We follow Oscar, a young chimp who has been abandoned, tracking his survival until he is adopted by another ape. Anthropomorphism is a word for ascribing human characteristics to animals. I’d suggest that chimpanzees share these traits with us, no “humanizing” necessary to relate to Oscar and the other chimps we meet in this excellent documentary.

“Chimpanzee” is playing at the Tropic Cinema. And thanks to a generous patron who partially funded the showing, children will be admitted at a substantial ticket discount during the first week.

srhoades@aol.com

The Salt of Life (Rhoades)

“Salt” Adds

Spice to Life

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

While I like to describe myself as semi-retired, it’s hard to live up to that claim. Writing film reviews, consulting with publishing clients, producing films, I seem to be busier than when I had a real job.

Many retiree friends have trouble adjusting.

That’s the theme of “The Salt of Life” (or “Gianni e le donne”), the follow-up film to Gianni Di Gregorio’s “Mid-August Lunch.” This salty look at early retirement is currently on view at the Tropic Cinema on Eaton Street.

Typically, the Italian filmmaker stars in his own story about a man who “might as well be invisible” after retiring in middle age. His wife ignores him, his mother is running out of control, and his daughter (played by Di Gregorio’s own daughter Teresa) has an irritating slacker boyfriend. Our randy retiree would like to be fawned over by younger women, but his attractive neighbor sees him merely as a dog walker.

“I just happened to notice that at a certain point, around the age of sixty, women just don’t look at you in the same way any more, which causes panic,” Di Gregorio says with a grin. “I think with this film my tendency was to make a joke of it.”

The cobblestone streets of Trastevere make a warm and wonderful backdrop. Di Gregorio grew up in Rome where he formed a love affair with the city. And with movies.

As a youngster, he spent his mornings at school and his afternoons in local movie houses, sometimes watching as many as three films a day.

Later on, while working in the theater, he saw Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets,” a film that made such an impression on him that he quit his job and found work as an assistant director on a film. 2010’s “Mid-August Lunch” was his own directorial debut.

As for the autobiographical nature of Di Gregorio’s films, he shrugs at the foibles of mid-life. “I’m not saying, by the way, that in a year or two I won’t buy a motor scooter and start dying my hair and running around again. But for now I hope I’ve exorcized it.”

srhoades@aol.com