Hunky Dory (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Hunky Dory

"Hunky Dory" is director Marc Evans' (The House America)  touch on his 1970s school life in Wales. The cinematography is first rate with crisp golds and greens, honey dappled yellows, rich umbers and vivid oranges, all in affectionate and correct keeping with the primitive space-age decade that was the 1970's.  The camera is a character in the film itself as it zooms from student to student on amyl nitrate casters, nimbly capturing something of what it might have been like to have been a drama student overcome with the glitz of Glam rock. The film does this well, mostly through its use of rousing musical numbers featuring David Bowie and ELO.

The faltering step in the dance, though is that the plot is all too thinly sketched in with a grease pencil.

Vivienne (Minnie Driver) plays a self deprecating and hassled drama teacher driven to try something new with her band of students, all of them with some kind of struggle. Vivienne settles on a Acid-Glam version of  The Tempest. This sounds more exciting than it actually is.

We have a host of mild misfits and trouble-makers here that could make for some playful melodrama, but the characters feel adumbrated and half-fleshed in interest. There is Davey (Aneurin Barnard) who looks like a young Lord Byron, the self-outed Hoople who idolizes Ziggy Stardust (Kristian Gwilliam)  and the violent but sensitive Kenny (Darren Evans). It is Kenny alone who is the most fully formed here and indeed he is singular catalyst, or harbinger for the tension in the film. Kenny is an outsider (as is Caliban) and awkward with girls. The initial force of the narrative concerns Kenny's delinquent behavior and his identification with Skinheads. Vivienne befriends him, and by doing so becomes newly inspired.

There are some dramatic things that happen with Vivienne having a row with the administration (of course)  notably with one witchy and bitchy Ms. Valentine (Haydn Gwynne), but the other characters are so light and airy with only a few minutes between them that there is scarcely little substance. We really don't know what drives Kenny or Hoople, other than violence and glitter-rock, and what about Stella (Danielle Branch) or Vicki (Kimberly Nixon) who both appear tepid and slight in character?

Even the final scene which features an outdoor Tempest has Minnie Driver looking wistfully back at her students in the manner of many other teacher films as they sing to her, but specifically  "The Man Without a Face" (1993) comes to mind.

On the whole, "Hunky Dory" does remind me of the original British Tv show "Skins" which depicted quirky teens battling numerous conditions and bonding throughout with no end to theatrics and violence.

The action is fluid enough,  yet the  sparkle punk period of the 1970s with all of its fierce and colorful questioning and ambivalence for a  Futureworld deserves a more punchy treatment than this wisp of a film, especially given its edgy history.

Despite its chiffon texture, I will admit that the musical numbers are very lively and they remain the preserver  of this film. The eccentric interpretive score (with handmade instruments)  combined with the quaint and charmed look of the film with the dwellings resembling sugar-cubed boxes right out of The Beatles' Penny Lane, make "Hunky Dory" a bouncy, itty bitty Bowie bagatelle.

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

The House I Live in (Rhoades)

“The House I Live In” Takes You Behind Bars with Melinda Shopsin

Interview by Shirrel Rhoades

Melinda Shopsin recently went to prison. In fact, she went more than 25 times. No, she’s not a criminal; she was a filmmaker producing a documentary about people unjustly serving prisons sentences for drug use.

This Tuesday evening Melinda Shopsin will be at the Tropic Cinema to tell you about her experiences making a film behind bars.

“The House I Live In” is the fourth installment in the “4 Nights 4 Justices” series brought to you by the Tropic in association with the Michael Dively Social Justice and Diversity Endowment at the Community Foundation of the Florida Key.

Never having been to Key West before, Melinda Shopsin chatted with us on the phone about her upcoming visit. She chuckled at hearing the story how we became known as the Conch Republic. She was fascinated by stories about smuggling and fishing for Square Grouper.

But when talking about “The House I Live In,” her voice turned more serious. “The drug policies are just not working,” she says. “We wanted to show the inside of this machine. Even the people running it thinks it has gone off the rail.”

The filmmakers had unprecedented access to many prisons. “We were surrounded by barbed wire, guys with guns. Yet prisons aren’t as secure as you might think. There are drugs to be found inside them. Dogs are trained to sniff out cell phones.”

Shopsin often found herself in dicey situations, alone with harden criminals. “I’d be on a basketball court surrounded by a hundred prisoners. I’d ask what they were in for. Guys would say, ‘Oh, I’m in for murder’ or ‘I’m in for rape.’

Frightening? “No, I’m a pretty tough girl,” she says. “I’m from New York City.”

Being alone with prisoners, no guards around, she walked away with very open interviews. “We wanted to show an honest view of what goes on inside prisons. I got to be a fly on the wall.”

She continues, “Prisons are different all across the country. They’re not the sensationalized thing you see on TV, lock downs and all that. But there’s a difference between long-term and short-term facilities. Prisoners in a long-term facility settle in, develop a life behind bars. Others -- like Rikers Island, where people are only incarcerated for up to a year -- can be more rambunctious.”

“The House I Live In” doesn’t just focus on inmates. “We follow a number of people -- prison guards, judges, relatives -- to try to portray people affected by these drug laws. There are more than 30 million family members involved.”

She sighs. “We met people serving life terms for drugs, while murders were getting out in six years, rapists in five years. The disparity is hard to ignore.”

Shopsin's biggest surprise? “We expected to meet people very passionate about the drug laws that put abusers behind bars. It was completely the opposite. The biggest shock was discovering that many judges and police officers share a sense of frustration, acknowledging that communities aren’t getting safer due to these draconian sentences.”

There’s no easy answer. But Shopsin advocates a public health approach to addiction instead of vilifying a user.

Ironically, things are slowly changing, not because of thoughtful policy shifts, but because of money. “We are spending more on prisons than on schools,” she points out. “It cost $28,000 or more per year to incarcerate a prisoner. Some communities simply can’t afford that.”

So why make a documentary about the affects of unfair drug laws? “Do you inhale?” we teased.

“No,” she laughed at the question. “I don’t use drugs. I barely drink. Maybe an occasional beer. Once in a while I drink coffee.”

Then why? “Me, I’m a data-driven person. There are 2.3 million people incarcerated in American prisons, more than half of them on drug charges. I wanted to examine how they got there, look at the policies and the collateral consequences.”

It was more personal to the director. Eugene Jarecki is an Emmy and Peabody award-winning director who has twice won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, first in 2005 for “Why We Fight” and again in 2012 for “The House I live In.” He has been named a Soros Justice Fellow at the Open Society Institute and a Senior Fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies.

As Variety says, “Often motivated by his outrage at areas of corruption, exploitation, or injustice in contemporary life, Jarecki's films elegantly combine compassion with rigorous inquiry.”

Shopsin worked with Eugene Jarecki on “Why We Fight. And she shares his passion for justice.

“I come at filmmaking from a very politically activist way,” she says. “I’m excited about the power of documentaries. I think it’s important to get inside a prison, get inside a squad car, get inside a community … and show that.”

She plans to devote the next year to showing the film in high schools and churches … and theaters like the Tropic. “I believe a documentary can empower its viewers,” she explains.

How would she describe “The House I Live In”? Melinda Shopsin pauses to consider the question. “A wake up call,” she says.

# # #

Beyond the Hills (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Beyond the Hills

A new film based on the Orthodox-themed nonfiction novels by Tatiana Niculescu Bran and directed by the acclaimed Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days)  confronts the issues of mental illness, the attachments of love and yes, the ritual of exorcism in the church. Two girls, Voichita (Cosmina Stratan) and Alina (Cristina Flutur) are best friends in a Romanian orphanage. As fate has it, they separate, only to cross paths again. As the film's start, Alina is moved to tears upon meeting Voichita at her new calling, a convent nun. It is evident right away that Alina is an emotional  and turbulent young woman. Indeed , she embraces Voichita in a death-grip hello greeting.

While a willing visiting resident at first, Alina begins to get possessive of her soulmate and we suspect that Alina is in love with Voichita, though not explicitly stated in sexual terms. There is a tense massage scene, but when Alina's breasts spill like apples, Voichita counters with chaste and stern  eyes, with all the razor-sharpness of a Vermeer under a dark habit.

Alina starts to challenge her friend, coercing Voichita to leave the monastery and asking with blunt frankness if Voichita is having sex with the stentorian priest (Valeriu Andriuta).

Voichita is appalled by the suggestion, but decides to shrug it off. Alina again pressures her to join her in Germany for a short stay. Voichita tentatively agrees.

With the passing of a few days, Voichita gets cold feet and rejects the plan. Her path is with God, the monastery and the priest, known by her as "Papa". Initially all seems rosy, but during a Mass, Alina violently interrupts the service and goes into a rage. She curses and endures  convulsions and it is thought by the sisters that she has epilepsy. The doctor does what he can  and gives medicine. Although it is unclear, Alina hears voices and the general consensus is that Alina, at least is experiencing some form of schizophrenia. The sisters push the hospital to allow Alina to stay for a prolonged stay, but there are no beds available. The priest also asserts that he  has no room in the monastery.

A Kafkaesque condition plays out where Alina is perceived as the one not welcome.

One day, a resident nun runs for her life in fright as black crosses are seen burned within the tree trunks and the hens become sterile.

Despite its subject, "Beyond the Hills" is no horror film. Alina's condition seems increasingly to be that of a spurned lover and the priest himself resists supernatural explanations. Throughout the film there is the philosophic question that both the priest and the medical establishment are concerned with healing the sick: one is of the body of science, the other the spirit of Faith. Whether you want medicine or faith to be your medicine, depends on you. This film is dispassionately shaded and holds no agenda.

Yet though "Beyond the Hills" has sparsely little horror film shape, one quick shot in particular almost gave me a jolt of inexorable fright: Voichita peers through the window at Alina's chained body. Her face is pale, tinged gray and bloated and her breath is visible through her mouth and nose which rises like accursed steam.  And though I tried my damned best not to, I did think of "The Exorcist" and how much it holds me immobile with an ataxic and personal fear, seemingly relevant only to me. I averted my eyes and waited. The moment passed.

"Beyond the Hills" has a beautiful painterly quality with some forbidding black-habited nuns going forth as deliberate cawing crows on fields of blinding white snow, while its distant and matter-of- fact tone recalls the deftly expert film on Bruegel, Majewski's "The Mill and the Cross"

The end, featuring an atheist female doctor is the final piece de resistance of the film, as is the addition of an avalanche of mud sweeping  across a police caravan as the priest duly waits within. Miles away, a respected monastery may be fraught with supernal blights and celestial struggles, but on the secular highway of cause and effect, life wheels on in neutral.

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

Mud (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Mud

From the punchy director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter) comes a riveting man-on the-run tale that combines the hard bitten grit of "Winter's Bone" with the adolescent bonding of Huckleberry Finn or Rob Reiner's "Stand By Me" (1986).

"Mud" is the story of Arkansas River boys Ellis, earthily played by Tye Sheridan (Tree of Life) and Neckbone, expressed by Jacob Lofland in a debut performance, who stumble upon an enigmatic stranger named Mud (Matthew McConaughey). The kids are driven by romantic escapism and spy a boat on an island. Little do they know the boat is inhabited by a grungy scofflaw resembling a blonde rattlesnake with a dissipating smile.

Ellis, troubled by the threat of his parents divorce, latches onto Mud, who embodies a freedom and self reliance. Squinty-eyed Neckbone doesn't trust the guy but is intrigued by his spirit, plus the kids want the boat. They proceed to make a deal with Mud to exchange the boat for food.

Back at home Ellis' father is foul tempered and fuming battling against wife and mother (Sarah Paulson). After one bit of domestic strife, the father (Ray McKinnon) tells Ellis  that love never works. While Mud confesses that he is a lover in exile, driven to solitude by trying to protect his lost love, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon). Mud admits that he did kill a man, but that it was essentially a matter of honor and self protection, given that the shadowy man was something of "Old Scratch" (i.e. the devil). As his family crumbles, Ellis  idealizes the concept of love. Near a shopping center he sees a girl being violently harassed and socks the belligerent senior in the face.

As he does these acts, he feels a sense of righteousness combined with an identification with Mud, with all of his intense vocabulary of luck charms, devils, snakes and worlds reformed by kisses.

Although Ellis is a mere child, he has something of Scorcese's Travis Bickle in him. At the sight of a woman under threat, a button is pushed, and off he goes. While watching Juniper being hit by the heavy Carver (Paul Sparks) Ellis again gets socked in the nose. More closely, though, Ellis is a kind of voyeur and has a bit in common with the snooping Jeffrey in "Blue Velvet". Like Jeffrey, Ellis is intrigued by danger and identifies with the archetype of the woman (or man) in trouble, confined by a hermetic community.

Elements of this story have been done before, of young ones bewitched by the spell of the strange man or outlaw, but McConaughey is so twitchy and sly here, (complete with a cheesecloth shirt that he sheds like snakeskin)  that he never bores. Fortunately he is also loon-hearted with a soul full of slugs and his role never drifts into the sinkhole of cliche cartoons. The iconic actor has a real texture in this film that he lacks in so many other roles.

The climax alone has real anxiety that recalls all the heart-stopping seconds of films like "True Grit" or "Unforgiven".

For those who want a kind of Southern Gothic Mark Twain yarn with some old Western trappings of revenge---all bound up and tied in adolescence, the understatedly-titled film "Mud" more than delivers.

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

Week of May 3 to May 9 (Rhoades)

Tropic Cinema Fills Its Screens with Enticing Variety

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Film Critic, Cooke Communications

Here’s Mud in your eye. That is, “Mud,” the new Matthew McConaughey movie that opened this week at the Tropic Cinema. It’s one of three new entries that join two other terrific films on Tropic’s screens.

“Mud” is a modern-day Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer adventure on the Mississippi, but in this film from writer-director Jeff Nichols (“Take Shelter”) the two boys are known as Neckbone and Ellis. And you can think of Mud, the fugitive played by McConaughey, as Jim. No, it not exactly the same story, but its cultural underpinnings are clear.

Also new this week is “Hunky Dory,” a gleeful musical set in a high school in Wales, where a drama teacher (Minnie Driver) is determined to put on a musical based on Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” -- a rock ‘n roll version with numbers that will have you dancing in the aisle. The students, led by newcomer Aneurin Barnard, perform songs by David Bowie, ELO, Beach Boys, and other ’70s icons.

Another new film is “Beyond the Hills,” a Romanian drama about two young women in a convent who must deal with an exorcism. No, despite the locale and theme, this is not a vampire tale or a horror flick. Sight & Sound listed it as the 8^th best film on 2012. And writer-director Cristian Mungiu won Best Screenplay at Cannes, and amazingly his two stars shared the award for Best Actress.

Still playing is the new Robert Redford thriller, “The Company You Keep.” With a stellar cast -- Julie Christie, Shia LaBeouf, Susan Sarandon, Chris Cooper, Nick Nolte, to name a handful -- this is the story of ‘60s radicals still on the run. Based so closely on real events, you’ll think you remember reading about them in the newspaper.

 Also holding over is “The Place Beyond the Pines,” a generational story about a bank robber and an ambitious cop (Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper) … and their sons. You won’t stop talking about it.

Coming of age, ‘70s music, exorcisms, aging Weather Underground members, cops and robbers -- what an enticing variety of films at the Tropic Cinema.

srhoades@aol.com

Mud (Rhoades)

“Mud” Meanders Like

The Mighty Mississippi

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Funny that for a successful actor like Matthew McConaughey, his latest film is being called a “breakthrough role.” But I know what the Hollywood wags mean. This a performance that many say will define his acting career. And this, like his recent roles (“The Paperboy,” “Killer Joe”), successfully breaks him away from a legacy of mindless rom-coms (“Fool’s Gold,” “How to Loose a Guy in 10 Days”).

While the new film’s title bears McConaughey’s character’s nomenclature -- “Mud” -- he acts more as a catalyst than a star in this coming-of-age story about two young Arkansas boys who encounter a fugitive hiding out on an overgrown island in the Mississippi River.

While his role as a mysterious drifter drives the film (in the way the search for a dead boy drove “Stand By Me”), he has a little more to do than the aforementioned corpse. You see, Mud wants to reunite with his true love, played by Reese Witherspoon. And he needs the two boys’ help since he’s a gun-toting criminal trying to dodge an influx of bounty hunters led by Joe Don Baker.

One of the boys is drawn to assist Mud because he sees the man as a kindred soul, a stand-in for the distant fisherman father who’s at odds with his mother. The other rapscallion helps in trade for the pistol that is at the heart of Mud’s troubles.

Writer-director Jeff Nichols (“Take Shelter”) pictured McConaughey in the title role from the very beginning, back when he began penning the script while still in high school.

Growing up in Arkansas, Nichols set the story there. “I wanted to capture a point in my life in high school when I had crushes on girls and it totally broke my heart and it was devastating,” he says. “I wanted to try and bottle that excitement and that pain and that intensity of being in love and being a teenager.”

Over 2,000 kids audited for the role of Neckbone, with Nichols settling on 15-year-old Jacob Lofland from Yell County, Arkansas. The role of Ellis went to Tye Sheridan, a Texas kid who’d appeared in “Tree of Life.”

Nichols clearly had Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in mind as he crafted the story, on one level a chase film about a murderer, but on another about that mysterious transition from boy to man.

As Mud tells them, “You gotta watch yourself.”

This longish, slow-paced drama -- currently showing at the Tropic Cinema -- meanders along like the muddy Mississippi itself. But even hard-hearted film critics love the heartwarming story, rating it 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. And audiences are wallowing in this nostalgic ode to growing up in a small town, a lyrical film that makes you reflect on friendship, unrequited love, and the lingering innocence of youth.

It’s as if Mark Twain became a filmmaker. And cast Matthew McConaughey as a modern-day leathery-skinned Jim fighting for his freedom with the help of two not-quite runaway boys.

srhoades@aol.com

Hunky Dory (Rhoades)

“Hunky Dory” Is

An Okay Musical

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Think of it like “Glee” set in a Welsh high school during the sweltering summer of 1976. Here, Viv (Minnie Driver) is an energetic drama teacher who decides to shake students out of their malaise by putting on a play. Not just any play, but a rock ‘n roll musical based on Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”

This gives the students plenty of opportunity to entertain us with the upbeat music of David Bowie, Pink Floyd, 10CC, The Who, Beach Boys, and the Electric Light Orchestra.

The film -- “Hunky Dory” -- takes its name from one of Bowie’s albums. And like its name, everything’s okay here. It’s currently making music at the Tropic Cinema.

Lovable Minnie Driver handles her role well, a free-spirited teacher who clashes with her more staid colleagues, but engages beautifully with the students. Here are all the subplot clichés, from broken homes to gay students, but it’s the musical performances you’ve come to see. Talented young Aneurin Barnard, as troubled student Davey, is backed by a terrific cast of relatively unknown young actors.

Sure, you’ve seen it all before in “Dazed and Confused,” “High School Musical,” and “School of Rock. But who cares. Tap your feet. Dance in the aisle. Hum along with the young performers who did their own music live on set in front of the camera. It’s a feel-good movie.

If you expect more than that you’ll be disappointed.

Welsh-born Mark Howell (editor of Solares Hill) will enjoy the “orange and glowing” picture postcard of Swansea in the blistering summer of 1976. But for a few years difference, he could have been one of these rock-inspired students. And that would have been hunky dory with him.

srhoades@aol.com