Keep the Lights On (Brockway)

Tropics Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Keep the Lights On

"Keep the Lights On" has the rare distinction of being so authentic it is almost beyond reproach. Like life, it builds slowly in subtle motions and the rise and fall of its characters revolve around each other as satellites, both soft and desperate.

The film concerns a shiftless documentary filmmaker, Erik (Thure Lindhardt) and his co-dependent relationship with the anal and self-absorbed Paul (Zachary Booth). When we first meet Erik in the late 1990s, he is at an artists' retreat, using the phone for anonymous sex. His face is sleepy but wired. He wears loose and baggy clothes.  Erik is part Van Gogh and part predator which makes him all bohemian wolf, without direction except for the nocturnal. 

One night Erik's telephone leads him to the dark apartment of the boyish and delicate-faced Paul, who reminds one of a young Anthony Perkins. He is halting and tentative, but on the other hand he can be curt, severe, and just a bit deadly. Erik soon falls hard for the rigid Paul, who takes the heaps of Erik's affection with a stoic passivity. Paul is in the closet and hetero appearances mean everything to him. Paul reminds one  of an unbending business pen that never strays from its linear path. Paul is also addicted to crack and cannot let go intimately without being high.

A push me-pull you love soon develops. The story is clearly told from Erik's perspective who outwardly strives to keep his passion and worry at bay, but his nonchalant detachment gives way to a volatile cacophony within his spirit.  When nervous, Erik frequently makes retching noises and practices hitting himself with metal kitchenware. 

Loving Paul is toxic but giving him up is unthinkable.

Erik goes into a scarlet land of limbo, walking the streets and clubs in search of sensual pacification. He meets various characters along the way including the formidable narcissistic body-worshipper Russ (Sebastian La Cause) and a dedicated painter Igor (Miguel del Toro). We feel for Erik as his heart is tortured and tugged upon and he is as familiar as a friend.
In style and content, given its claustrophobic wanderings on urban streets, the film echoes the equally excellent "Weekend" which played at The Tropic last year. 

In its bright palette, "Keep the Lights On" registers upon our emotional chakras: when a room is bathed in warm yellows, we know Erik is safe, but a dark gray tone signals the return of Paul's crack addiction. The film smartly recognizes that the world of the flesh is a painterly one. During the opening credits, a bestiary of male nudes done by the artist Boris Torres spins across our eyes. Like the documentary on the Mapplethorpian photographer Avery Willard that Erik works on, flesh is both a vision and a vexation that Erik hopes to reach. Lost in an abstract millennium, gay life in the 1990s is a nostalgic concept filled with bygone  leather and quaint exuberant raves, becoming a long ago Holiday.

But when Erik crosses the street, he is fully part of the present.
"Keep the Lights On" is organic and moving. It is a lively portrait  that chronicles want and aversion, flesh and frisson and ultimately poses a caution regarding our muscle-driven, visually based culture.

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

The Paperboy (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

"The Paperboy"

Here is "The Paperboy", the latest effort by Lee Daniels who directed the earthy and very affecting "Precious",  which was  deservedly the Indie hit of 2009. In this outing, Daniels, strives to capture the essence of The Southern Gothic with an adaptation of Pete Dexter's novel. The cinematography is as immediate and visceral as the previous "Precious". It has a prismatic sense of direction, complete with a few Saul Bass style titles and DePalma-era split screens with some startling images, including eviscerated alligators and mealy-mouthed killers running about on swamp-seeped legs. All this set in the 1960s where racism was at a sickening peak but also thankfully, near its last gasp in the Mainstream. This is presented with virtuosic fade-ins, double images and overexposures that give an eccentric and jarring flavor, the visual roux that is unique to Daniels. In watching the film, we are both part of history and removed from it, at an isolated distance, given that the images are grainy as in a 1970s exploitation flick.

Now for the story. 

Baby Blue Dreamboat Zac Efron (I'm not kidding, but I wish I was) plays Jack. Jack tags along with Ward, his amphibious-looking older brother played by Matthew McConaughey. McConaughey who has a trademark with such shifty Southern roles is just not all that interesting or inspired here. If you are familiar with his roster you may  already predict what smarmy things might come from his twice scarred mouth. Ward is a journalist but more often than not , he drunkenly sways and caterwauls about some article. He flirts and cajoles and does neither very well. Ward is trying to get a killer out of jail, striving to get at the truth, but his role is too thin.
Then "The Bombshell" Charlotte enters (Nicole Kidman). She is tall, chromium and Barbie-infused. Charlotte is in love with the killer but God knows why. He certainly is a smooth talker. 
Kidman does do her best with the role,but her character is so shallow, I admit I didn't care. Invariably , she pouts and preens with little sense of growth or development.

And although Macy Gray as the street smart- maid, gives a bit of gusto with her quick and facile one-liners, she infuses her role with such an overdone narcotic aura and slurred speech (whether intentional or not)  that she loses impact and turns annoying.

The melodrama is so over-the-top that I found it little more than an arty creep-show, ala Stephen King. John Cusack plays Hillary, a really dumb psycho with a face like a pizza who  just might have one of the most unconvincing roles of the year. And McConaughey has a fate straight out of "Deliverance" or a Sam Peckinpah film.

The racial tension scenes together with the romantic frustrations of Jack  could have been compelling, but the film is way too pulp, too fast. The swamp episodes alone make it into a "Cape Fear" /"Texas Chainsaw Massacre" hybrid that lacks power. Is there really a need to see Charlotte pee on Jack, or Ward beaten into feta cheese and trussed up like a pig? Cusack's character was so repulsive as to seem ridiculous and I couldn't suspend my disbelief, a vital quality for engagement within a story.

The entire film turned a brown shade of depression and all at once, it felt too sour on a sudden moment, vinegar-gone in its viciousness with no trace of humor to lighten its coarse camp load.
I wonder. Is "The Paperboy" a conceptual exercise with its 70s Drive-In  presentation? 
I do not know. All I can tell you is that the camera's artful dodges lead to seedy stuff and none of it all that inspired or provocative by film's end.

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

The Paperboy (Rhoades)

“The Paperboy”

By Shirrel Rhoades

Before Pete Dexter was a celebrated novelist, he was a newspaperman. He worked at such papers as The Sacramento Bee, Philadelphia Daily News, and The Palm Beach Post. His syndicated columns were collected into a book called “Paper Trails” and his “Paris Trout” won a National Book Award.

So why should anyone be surprised that he’d write a novel called “The Paperboy.” It won a PEN Center Literary Award.

“The Paperboy” has been turned into a hard-hitting movie of the same name, directed by Lee Daniels (“Precious,” “Monster’s Ball”). It’s currently playing at the Tropic Cinema.

Like the book, it’s the story of a couple of news guys from a Miami paper out to win a Pulitzer Prize at any cost.

Matthew McConaughey stars as an ambitious reporter named Ward Jansen. Jansen along with his younger brother Jack (Zac Efron) and a colleague named Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo) set out to free a man on death row. Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack) was convicted of murdering a shady lawman and many supporters, including a sexy jailhouse groupie named Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman), believe Wetter to be innocent.

How far will Ward Jansen go to win his Pulitzer? And at what cost to others? That’s the nub of this thought-provoking film.

Some blog sites like /Film have declared this “The Year of Matthew McConaughey.” We’ve seen him recently in “Magic Mike” and “Killer Joe.” The one-time star of “Failure to Launch” has certainly overcome that trait, earning high marks for his appearance in this lurid Southern Gothic tale.

Even more than McConaughey’s acting turn, you will want to check out Nicole Kidman, almost unrecognizable as the loud, trashy girlfriend of the accused killer. Her transformation from the elegant actress we know so well to this toxic lowlife is amazing, an applause-worthy performance.

Director Lee Daniels says, “What I loved about that film is they were all lost, little, fragile birds, with several of whom on a death wish. I think Nicole Kidman‘s character and Matthew McConaughey‘s character had death wishes. I mean, wow, what interesting people, huh?”

Some critics have loved “The Paperboy” while others have hated it. “An unmitigated disaster” said the AV Club’s Mike D’Angelo. But the Atlantic’s Jon French called it “pulpy, sweaty, outrageously entertaining.”

Film blogger Angle Han opines, “’The Paperboy’ seems worth checking out for the performances alone.” I agree.

Daniels shrugs. “I think you will love it or hate it. There’s no grey area. You’ll either understand the world I created and go for it, or you’ll resist and say, “What the (blank)?”

Pete Dexter who wrote the screenplay based on his book didn’t like the film. “Everything would be all right if I’d had a chance to take my name off that screenplay credit,” he says. “Essentially, it’s the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever been associated with.”

Lee Daniels doesn’t care. “Look, my own mother doesn’t like my movies. I’m okay with it, because you’re entitled to your own opinion.”

Dexter got his wish. The film’s credits now attribute the screenplay to Lee Daniels. “I never try to make a film for the masses,’ Daniels says. “I just try to tell my story.”

srhoades@aol.com

Keep the Lights On (Rhoades)

“Keep the Lights On”

Tries to Keep

Romance Burning

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

A movie’s title sequences sometimes foretell the film’s theme. For example, “Keep the Lights On” opens with a series of paintings depicting nude male bodies, often intertwined. Early in the film that gives way to actual bodies intertwined as this love story plays out.

Set in 1993 New York City, we meet Erik, a gay documentary filmmaker from Denmark who is trying to raise money for his next film, arguing with his sister over his career, dealing with his doctor about HIV test results, and looking for a relationship. Erik hooks up with Paul, a lawyer at Random House. Paul’s still in the closet. “The people in the publishing business like to gossip,” Paul explains his secrecy.

Erik likes him. “He’s like nice, very nice,” the blond filmmaker describes his “first American American boyfriend.”

They smoke dope. They go to art museums.

They eventually move in together.

There’s lots of graphic sex along the way.

Like any dysfunctional romance there are bumps to overcome. Erik struggles to be true to himself while involved with an addictive partner.

Danish-born Thure Lindhardt is winning as the thirtysomething filmmaker. He’s played it straight (opposite Laetitia Casta in “The Island”) and gay (with David Dencik in “Brotherhood”). You’ve also seen him in “Angels and Demons” and “Into the Wild.”

American actor Zachary Booth is both lean and handsome as the young lawyer. You’ve seen Booth on TV’s “Damages” and with Mel Gibson in “The Beaver.”

“Keep the Lights On” is current playing at the Tropic Cinema.

Directed and co-written by Ira Sachs, the film is based on Sach’s previous relationship with Bill Clegg, a literary agent whose own memoir is called “Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man.”

“Keep the Lights On” won a 2012 Teddy Award, an international recognition at The Berlin International Film Festival for films with LGTB topics.

srhoades@aol.com

Frankenweenie 3D (Rhoades)

“Frankenweenie”

Comes Alive in Time

For Halloween

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Years ago I had a running joke with my friends that I had created a Dead Pet Club. To belong, you needed to have a dead pet (my cat had recently died). If you didn’t have a dead pet, I’d tell them, you can buy one cheap at the pet shop.

I extolled the virtues of having a dead pet: They follow commands like “Stay!” and “Play dead!” They don’t have to be walked. And you don’t need to buy a lot of pet food.

Sick humor? Yes, but a way of dealing with my cat’s demise.

Director Tim Burton has a dead pet too. Well, more specifically, he has a movie about one, a remake of a short animated film he did back in 1984.

Called “Frankenweenie,” it’s like a kid’s version of that old “Frankenstein” movie. Shot in somber black-and-white, it tells the story of young Victor who uses his science-class skills to bring his beloved pooch Sparky back to life after he’s hit by a speeding car.

Uh-oh. You just can’t expect a stitched-together electrified weenie dog (a bull terrier, I think) to be quite the same after that kind of jumpstart. And, needless to say, the neighbors are not amused by this bolt-through-the-neck monster dog.

Back when Burton made that first “Frankenweenie” film, he was paying his dues as an animator at the Disney Studios. Ironically, Disney fired him after the film was completed claiming he’d wasted company resources on the project and that it was too scary for young audiences. Thus, the 29-minute film was shelved, never to be released theatrically in the US.

(Psst! – I still have a bootleg VHS tape of the original “Frankenweenie.”)

Now, 28 years later, Tim Burton has remade that long-lost short, turning it into an 87-minute feature film. Still in grisly black-and-white. And the characters look pretty much the same. But we have new voice stars and the story has been (forgive the term) fleshed out. Plus it’s in 3D.

Daniel Stern and Shelly Duvall lent their voices as Mr. and Mrs. Frankenstein in that first film. This time around we hear the voices of Martin Short and Catherine O’Hara. You will remember Short from Saturday Night Live and such silly movies like “Clifford” and “Three Amigos.” And O’Hara is an alumna of Second City TV, but best remembered as the forgetful mom in “Home Alone” as well as spots in all those Christopher Guest farces.

Charlie Tahan provides the voice for their son Victor, the precocious kid who refuses to say goodbye to his pet. You may remember Charlie from “Nights in Rodanthe,” “Charlie McCloud,” or the “Blue Bloods” TV series.

Winona Rider does the voice of the little girl next door. Atticus Shaffer is E-Gore, a takeoff on the old hunchbacked Igor character. And doing a thick Eastern European accent, Martin Landau is great as the science teacher who encourages young Victor to try this wayward science experiment.

The stop-motion animation process took two years. That’s with more than 30 different animators working simultaneously with 200 puppets to film different scenes at the same time. Swiss watchmakers helped assemble the intricate mechanisms that allow the puppets to be positioned in (ahem) lifelike ways. The dog alone had over 300 moving parts.

“Frankenweenie” is currently showing at the Tropic Cinema. If you’re a fan of Burton’s other two stop-motion treats, “Corpse Bride” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” you’ll love this spooky little movie too.

Now, guess which studio is releasing this remake?

Yep, Disney – the same company that fired Burton for making the first film.

srhoades@aol.com

Week of October 12 to October 18 (Mann)

What’s on at the Tropic
by Phil Mann

The plot thickens this week. While THE MASTER and THE IMPOSTER are held over to work their enigmatic ways, LOOPER now weighs in to really befuddle us.

Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a “Looper,” a hit-man with an odd role. He kills people teleported back, via a time travel device, from 30 years in the future. It’s a modern method of disposing of bodies, a big step up from Tony Soprano’s cement boots three miles offshore. But then Joe’s future self (Bruce Willis) shows up in his sights. If young Joe doesn’t kill old Joe, his bosses will kill him, so he’s ready to do the deed and get himself thirty more years of life. Old Joe is in a bit of a dilemma defending himself – even though he’s Bruce Fucking Willis – because knocking off his nemesis would mean knocking off himself. Also, to complicate the plot, there’s a five-year-old with the ability to cause earthquakes and levitate people and furniture. Old Joe wants to kill him because he thinks the kid’s gang murdered his wife in the future, but Young Joe wants to save him, because he’s got a soft spot for the kid’s mother (Emily Blunt).

 “Pounding action, elegant style, steady-state suspense, marvelous acting and, despite that droll pooh-poohing every now and then, haunting explorations of youth, age and personal destiny. It's a lot to claim for a sci-fi thriller, but I was blown away by Rian Johnson's Looper.” (Joe Morgenstern, Wall St. Journal) If this appeals to you, you know what to do.

 You may not ever face a situation where you have to kill your alter ego, but most of us have all had to face situations where we are uncomfortable with things that duty calls upon us to do. COMPLIANCE is based on an actual reported case, or more correctly, a series of cases in which a manager of a fast food restaurant was tricked into doing repulsive things to an employee by a villainous prank caller.

In the movie, Sandra (Ann Dowd) is the manager of ChickWich. On a busy Friday night, she gets a call from the police telling her that one of her clerks is suspected of a theft. You’ll watch with growing discomfort and even horror as things progress on from a strip search, as Sandra complies with the instructions of the caller.

“With a slow, relentless buildup focused on sexual humiliation, Compliance intensifies the requests put on Sandra, and eventually other employees, to behave immorally in the name of cooperation.” (Lisa Schwartzbaum, Entertainment Weekly) “Provides insight into large and frightening events, like the voluntary participation of civilians in the terrible crimes of the last century.” (David Denby, The New Yorker)

In RUBY SPARKS, the blocked young writer Calvin (Paul Dano – There Will Be Blood, Little Miss Sunshine) finds that the character in his new novel Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan – It’s Complicated, Revolutionary Road) has come to life in his kitchen. All writers will tell you that they become enamored of their characters, and that these typescript people grow as they are written and often guide the writer in unanticipated directions. When asked by a reader a question like “Why did Marjorie do that?” a writer often responds more in the vein of “Because she wanted to,” than “because that’s what I decided to have her do.”

The multi-talented Ms. Kazan, who is also a playwright and screenwriter, has taken that notion and breathed life into it, via a script and a wonderful performance, made all the more real because Dano is also her real-life partner. Author Calvin struggles with the joys and dilemmas of having a girlfriend whom he can shape and define, while character Ruby struggles to define herself.

“A sleek, beautifully written and acted romantic comedy that glides down to earth in a gently satisfying soft landing.” (Stephen Holden, New York Times)

“Hits that sweet emotional spot much in the same way Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind does. While you are at once charmed by the whimsy and romance, there’s still a gut punch of emotional rawness….” (Katie Walsh, The Playlist)

For lighter fare, the Pixar classic FINDING NEMO is now back in 3D. The fish are coming right at you, glub, glub. “A genuinely funny and touching film that, in less than a decade, has established itself as a timeless classic.” (Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger)

Extra treat this week is the Monday Movie Classic, HOUSE OF WAX, the grim tale of Vincent Price’s macabre trumping of Madame Tussauds. (no 3D, I’m sorry to say)

On Thursday, Reef Relief returns with another installment of its WILD AND SCENIC FILM FESTIVAL, this time with the theme Climate of Change.       

Finding Nemo 3D (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets
 by Ian Brockway

 Finding Nemo 3D

The 3D version of "Finding Nemo" has arrived at The Tropic and it seems like Christmas in October. Nemo (Alexander Gould) has never looked better; he's just as orange and glowing as you would expect. And he has been given a new crystal clear life, courtesy of Pixar's virtuosic 3D effects. "Finding Nemo" is nothing less than a smile on the water and with its diverse and lively characters that roll across your eyes like music, the story unfolds like an aquatic "West Side Story".

 Other than Nemo, the inimitable Ellen DeGeneres is here as Dory, an angelfish with ADD. Not to mention Albert Brooks as Nemo's neurotic and fussy clownfish father. And who can forget the scheming aquarium fish Gill, voiced by Willem Dafoe who comes across as a New York cabbie. The action and laughs are non-stop and the visuals have such a painterly yet sharper than sharp quality, that we actually feel we are deep under the water. Objects rise up in liquid ferocity, while others recede in a wavy chiaroscuro. This is nothing less than a maritime Dali painting overlaid with transparencies by Disney. Never has human anthropomorphism---a usually annoying convention--- been so unabashedly earnest or as classy.

"Nemo" makes the sentimental sophisticated. Nemo is lost, helpless under the sway of human intervention and ignorance and his father vows to find him. The jokes are at least at a rate of one a minute and they are frequently irreverent and always on point with frequent jabs at the lack of human interest regarding conservation. My favorite segments are the dentist office scenes. Both the inhabitants of the aquarium and the pelicans seem to have more knowledge of dentistry and a cosmopolitan grasp of events than the bourgeois dentist.

One by one, species by species, the fish and birds relate the story of the clownfish father looking for his son. Each creature makes their own Homeric story and you get the feeling that it is these creatures and not the shallow humans who matter in this world. This revelation is the film's most iconoclastic and honest gift and it deserves praise. Please delve into "Finding Nemo" if you haven't already seen it once before. As a complete film experience it rivals the pop culture of the Beatles' film "Yellow Submarine" and Disney's epic "Fantasia". Associations aside, it is also simple swimming fun. Write

Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com