Week of February 25 to March 3 (Mann)

What’s on at the Tropic
by Phil Mann

Until this week, the Tropic had managed to show all ten of this year’s Best Picture nominees, except one. That omission is now corrected.

The last film is 127 HOURS, the harrowing true story of Aron Ralston, who was trapped in a crevice with his arm wedged under a rock and lived to tell the tale. You know the outlines of the story -- man cuts off arm to save life -- which certainly isn’t the best marketing tag line ever devised. But if you allow yourself to be put off by this gristly aspect, you’ll be doing yourself, and Aron Ralston, a great injustice.

In a world of whiners and downers, it’s a hurricane of fresh air to meet a man who is upbeat in the worst of circumstances. And who is self-reliant enough to figure his way out of it. He got himself into the problem, by going off into the remote Utah wilderness without telling anyone where or when he's heading, so there’s no hope of rescue. On top of that, he rushed off so fast he forgot to bring his best multi-tool, instead having only a crappy giveaway knockoff with a dull cutting edge.

From these basic elements, director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire), with his writing partner Simon Beaufoy (Best Adapted Screenplay nomination) and actor James Franco (Best Actor nominee), have crafted a compelling and uplifting dramatic story. There’s no getting around the fact that most of the screen time is just two characters, Ralston and the boulder (which morphs from 800 lbs. to a ton, depending on the story you read). But there’s an opening sequence of him with a couple of attractive female hikers that’s just plain fun, and there are enough flashbacks, visions and external events such as a flash thunderstorm, to keep the story moving. 

When the moment of truth comes, the filmmakers don’t flinch but they don’t overwhelm us with it.

127 Hours is “entertaining” and “compulsively watchable” (Roger Ebert). “It pins you down, shakes you up and leaves you glad to be alive.” (New York Times).

An ancient Greek named Hegesistratus cut off part of his foot to escape when he was shackled by the Spartans, but he knew he was going to be tortured anyhow so his act spared him even more pain. Yet Herodotus calls it “the most courageous deed upon record.” Ralston did even more, just to avoid going quietly into the night. If you like movies that make you think and inspire you, here’s one not to be missed.

BIUTIFUL (Best Foreign Language Film nominee) is also a story of a man faced with death, and how he deals with it. In all other respects, the situation is completely different from 127 Hours. Uxbal (Javier Bardem, Best Actor Nominee) has a terminal illness; he’s a lowlife criminal using illegal immigrant workers in the slums of Barcelona to make knockoff Gucci bags and pirate DVDs. But he wants to do right by his two children, who are in his care; by his estranged, mentally-ill, drug-addicted wife; and even by his exploited workers. The director here is Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel) who knows how to take us to the seamy side of life, and does so again with this “gorgeous, melancholy tone poem about love, fatherhood and guilt.” (Hollywood Reporter)

On Sunday night all this nominee talk comes to an end with the Academy Award ceremonies. It’ll all be on the big screen at the Tropic, accompanied by a pick-the-winners contest that can get you the prize of a full year of free movies. Get your ballots in advance at the Box Office.

And on Wednesday there’ll be the Florida Premiere of MY NEW LIFE introduced by writer-director Kevin Rhoades, son of our esteemed local film critic Sherril. Check out www.mynewlifemovie.com for more information.

Comments, please, to pmann99@gmail.com.

Biutiful (Rhoades)

“Biutiful” Is Beautiful
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Orthography is the spelling of a word according to how it sounds in a language. That’s why the word beautiful is spelled “Biutiful” in the title of the Spanish-language movie that has been nominated as Best Foreign Language Film in tonight’s Academy Awards competition.

“Biutiful” tells the story of Uxbal, a man struggling to put his life right before he succumbs to cancer. Set amid the underworld of Barcelona, this single father attempts to reconcile his failures as a parent, the guilt of his criminal past, and his mortality.

Spanish-born actor Javier Bardem (“No Country for Old Men,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”) takes on this dramatic portrayal, giving a performance that has also earned him an Academy Awards nomination as Best Actor.

Bardem describes his character as “very complex.” He says, “There were so many layers to convey that I knew it was going to be a hard task and a rewarding one.”

He adds, “Death, for Uxbal, is not the same for someone else. For Uxbal, it’s a wake-up call for him to realize and re-evaluate his life.”

As for the plot, Bardem says, “It’s not an easy movie to say it’s about this, and then you take home this other thing. It’s more deep than that. You have to see it and really have the courage to make the journey. If you take the journey, you’re going to bring back with you a lot of good things. But, if I name them, that will downsize the journey itself.”

This Spanish-Mexican co-production is the fourth film by director Alejandro González Iñárritu. His debut production was “Amorres perros,” but his better-known films are “21 grams,” starring Sean Penn, and “Babel,” with Brad Pitt.

Javier Bardem and his wife Penelope Cruz recently had a baby, a son named Leo, born only days before Bardem received his Oscar nomination.

He says of his nomination, “It’s great fun. It’s a great honor. It’s something that you never dream of. And then, it happens and you are there, and you try to share it with all the people that are so meaningful to you.”

srhoades@aol.com
[from Solares Hill]

Biutiful (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Biutiful

Director Alejandro Inarritu ("Babel") knows how to bring out the film noir in everyday life. The Oscar nominated "Biutiful" stars the inimitable Javier Bardem as Uxbal, a small time boss dealing in counterfeit brand-names, while moonlighting as a telepathic spirit guide. Uxbal broods like a handsome Minotaur and is down on his luck. But it is not a slug from a mother-of pearl revolver that threatens to bring him down but rather the slow grinding of life.

From the start, "Biutiful" has a claustrophobia in regard to religion that rivals William Friedkin's "The Exorcist" . Uxbal goes to a viewing. Boys are lined up in coffins immaculately dressed, their faces seemingly dusted in sugar as if for a Day of the Dead celebration. Moreover, Uxbal frequently sees the dead crawl on the ceiling, but instead of echoing a Linda Blair head-turner, these effects are portrayed as a matter of course. Everything is cast in a green grey light. The room is more like a hospital closet than a viewing room. Uxbal pushes his face right up against the deceased child, as if this debonair bull is about to steal his still breath. He experiences a vision of the boy sitting next to him and he receives a high-pitched jangle of communication. Is this a message from beyond or a con-man's conjuring trick?

It is up to us to decide.

During an exam, Uxbal is diagnosed with prostate cancer. He vows to beat it and carry on his counterfeit operations which exploit Chinese workers in hazardous conditions. When he notices that one of his men is selling drugs and hawking pirated items on the wrong side of the street, he tries to intercede but his hands are tied. His diplomacy comes to nothing. And the man is brutally beaten.

Day after day Uxbal is surrounded by consumerism, underhandedness and confusion. He is alone in caring for his two kids as his separated wife struggles with bipolar mania. She is frequently manic and talks nonstop. Communication is impossible.

One day he awakes in his cluttered and water-stained room and strives to make things right. He vows to give his workers better ventilation. Arriving at the warehouse, he discovers to his horror that the workers have all been asphyxiated.

At every turn, Uxbal arrives just seconds too late to make a difference.

Even though the film is predominately naturalistic, there are some surreal touches that stand out like velveteen exclamation points and highlight Uxbal's struggle. In one scene, he goes to a disco. Uxbal is overcome with noise and grief and cannot talk. Abruptly he sees a stripper wearing a huge latex head shaped like a breast. These highly sexualized plasticine monsters seem to mock his non-sexual plight, under siege by cancer.
Uxbal's Mexico City is as much as a projection of his mind, his past and present, as it is a physical place. When dreaming of the Pyrenees, the monochrome squalor of his room confines him and when he goes to work he is surrounded by petty salesmen and sideways-smiling hucksters.

A trip to the Pyrenees becomes a snow-capped incantation, a Ratso Rizzo shangrilla of a wish that he can only hope to reach.

Telepathy becomes a means of transport---away from criminal blame, away from his dishonest sex-crazed brother and his absent father. The Pyrenees is both a mythic thread in Uxbal's earthly wake and a whisper of his last liberation.

Write to Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

127 Hours (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway
127 Hours

"127 Hours" the new film by Danny Boyle, recalls "Into the Wild", Sean Penn's docudrama about Christopher McCandless' vow to live in Alaska and shun modern society. Like Emile Hirsch in the role of McCandless, James Franco portrays Aron Ralston as a handsome, cocky (but not arrogant) free spirit who wants to dive right into Nature and climb the huge arcing canyon of Blue John in Utah. Ralston doesn't destroy his credit cards and social security number like McCandless, but there is something a bit odd. Ralston told no one of his trek. His mother calls the day before and he ignores the call. Instead he gets in his truck and drives to Utah. Ralston is part Knievel, part Lance Armstrong with a hint of Johnny Knoxville thrown in. Ralston crashes his bike, hits the base of a rock with a crack and giggles raucously. He takes a picture with his camera. Perhaps, as we later learn, there is a clue to be found in Ralston's childhood. It is shown that he is raised in a suburban neighborhood in Colorado. His parents are just a bit withdrawn. Might there be something in the control of suburbia that leads one to explore the savage sensuality of the wild?

Ralston walks faster and faster through hard rocky canyons. His iPod is as organic to him as his legs and he is seen as a kind of   sonic explorer, racing through serpentine paths as he surfs through tunes.  The film's musical score by Bollywood Maestro A.R. Rahman is as raucous and frenetic as James Franco's immersion into the West. The canyons also have their own sound.

When Ralston starts his trip, all is fun and flirtation. He could almost be an adventurous college kid on an Eco-vacation. He meets two young girls, Megan and Kristi who are lost, played by Amber Tamblyn and Kate Mara. There is just a bit of sexual tension in the air. ("I'm not a serial killer," Ralston says, "only on weekdays").  After a free wheeling splurge in a lagoon, with the girls,  Ralston takes his handsome leave and jogs into the sun. Suddenly, there is a silence. Vast empty space. A largish boulder. This might be the first horror film custom made for The Sierra Club. The crevice, deep in the winding canyon has as much fearful personality as the shark in "Jaws". Instead of sharp teeth there is a splitting crack. Within seconds Ralston's arm is encased in rock. At first, he turns into a driven man, hurling his shoulder against the rock with commando ferocity but to no avail. He is stuck. The hours pass. Ralston's lays his  meager wares on the rock with the precision of a doctor. Again his music is of primary importance. What follows is a Survivalist Rave with eye-popping colorful visuals and hyper-driving music.

This is a canyon-bound Bollywood. If he wasn't trapped, Franco just might Disco--his mind certainly does. Never has a bottle of Gatorade been so sound-quenching or delicious. Even the ants here have a drive for conspiracy or sinister boogie.

 The Canyon becomes Ralston's reflective Bodhi tree, and he takes us on his inner travels thru his parental detachment, his breakup with a girlfriend and his desire for romance. Sexual temptations beam from some flirtatious video left in his recorder. Time is short. After a cracking storm, he drinks the last of his water. The water bottle resembles the barrel of a gun. Ralston drinks his urine. Under director Danny Boyle this unseemly act seems space age and futuristic. Even exciting in its surreal disgust.

Then he goes to work on his arm with a pliers.

Danny Boyle makes the confined canyon sensual, interactive, filled with sound and motion. By using a variety of film influences: The hijinx of Bollywood, the apprehension of a horror film and the snap of an Spielberg cliffhanger, Boyle gives an insect-eyed tribute to Ralston's unthinkable ordeal.

Animated Shorts - 2011 (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

The Oscar Nominated Shorts: Animation / 2011

Collaged safaris and painted travels are abundant in this year's group of animated short films. 

First, there is Bastien Dubois' "Madagascar" that utilizes the director's own watercolor sketches made during his actual sojourn to Africa. The film has a tactile painterly quality that echoes Paul Gauguin. The narrative  unfolds in an interactive series of postcards turning each and every one of us into a pedestrian tourist sunk deep in the cosmopolitan cafe world of this African island. The film highlights a funereal "turning of bones" ceremony and the trek is as rich as a Paul
Bowles story. One can almost hear the call of a Believer within this fast paced flickering voyage of man and beast.

Next "Let's Pollute" (USA) is a satirical look at Western society and the cycle of waste abuse that we have all heaped upon the planet. The film takes as its model educational films from the 1950s. The sarcasm and pointed ridicule rivals Stephen Colbert. For anyone who would have liked "the Inconvenient truth" to be narrated by John Waters, this short subject is for you. 

Australian made "The Gruffalo" bears a similarity to "Ice Age". The film illustrates the survivalist adventures of a small mouse on the quest for a nut. It is perhaps the most child-friendly of the bunch, but its eccentric voiceovers by Jon Hurt and  Tom Wilkinson make this film highly watchable and sure to please. An added draw is the  irreverent anthropomorphic whimsy that pervades throughout.

The Disney produced "Day & Night" is a lighthearted plea for altruism and sharing between two opposite creatures. This giggle in miniature is rich and colorful as only a Disney film can be, recalling some of the golden spirit of "Who Framed Roger rabbit?" in its free association and its depiction of a realm all its own for us to explore.

A favorite of mine is the post- industrial, Gilliam-like vignette "The Lost Thing" which takes us to a hybrid world of organic creatures and mechanistic beings, where Artificial Intelligence appears absent. This universe is peopled with human drones and slogans like "tomorrow is the tomorrow you wanted yesterday" and "the truth is overrated". Vacant buildings stand in De Chirico solitude and the machines alone emote the most human of joys. The spirit of  Samuel Beckett is clearly visible  with a kind of amphibian  that walks with a reel to reel tape recorder. Amnesia and the eventual forgetting of oral stories is pervasive. This selection is a must see.

Special Commendation has been given to the existentially bleak but nonetheless masterly "Urs", (Germany) and the heartfelt and idiosyncratic "The Cow Who Wanted to be a Hamburger" by comic genius Bill Plympton. Never has the crusade for vegetarianism been so wittily or colorfully handled. 

In watching these films you will travel far and wide, exploring as many countries of opinion as there are colors in a spectrum. 

Write to Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

Live Action Shorts 2011 (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

The Short films: Live Action/ 2011

Miniature moral pitfalls  and apprehensive apéritifs  abound in this year's Oscar considerations in the Short Film: Live Action category. One can feel an existential sigh cloaking every entry like a vapor. From the UK, there is the "The Confession". With echoes of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and a suburban "Lord of the Flies", who knew that children could be so darkly minded under the cowl of Catholicism or so yearning of a priest's absolution? After all, according to this tale, a nightly dinner provides no cozy comforts. A silently sipped soup and a cold glass of milk, it seems, is all an elementary level child can hope for. Never has Catholicism seemed at once so sinister, yet so inadequate at the same time.

This entry gives Stephen King a run for his money. Also, from the UK, is "Wish 143" a twist on a sensual coming-of-age tale, about a young  boy who schemes to escape from his terminal condition. Part fantasy, part suspense story with a touch of David Cronenberg , this vignette illustrates the life of an adventurous boy, trapped by circumstance in a hospital. Yet the story gives the place a picaresque feeling and is not a downer. We learn that the young man despite his limits, has given himself a host of possibilities.


In Belgium's "Na Wewe" a  bus breaks down in the middle of a tribal war in Burundi   regarding the Tutsis and Hutus. One can feel the tension onscreen like a boiling yellow sun. The humidity of fear remains till the very end.


Ireland's offering,"The Crush", is a Highsmithian idyll full of poignancy and pathos that becomes nearly homicidal. The story concerns a young boy who has a crush on his teacher and assumes the role of  her bodyguard. The young boy is quite the  little Romeo mixed with a bit of Travis Bickle. Scarily so, but that's part of the fun. This pint-sized movie  skillfully weaves the cute with the creepiness of the possessive child and the last thing we are left with is a taut surprise.


"God of Love" from the USA, is a  valentine spoof of desire and mischance. Filmed in black and white with echoes of Jim Jarmusch, "God of Love" is a playful bon-bon compared to the richer more existentially laced treats that are now on display, for your consideration at The Tropic.

Write to Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

Week of February 18 to February 24 (Mann)

What’s on at the Tropic
by Phil Mann

The academy awards are almost upon us, coming up a week from Sunday (February 27). As usual, the Tropic will be broadcasting the full show on its big screen, from the first red carpet moment to the final best picture envelope, so if you want a proper film venue for film's big day, you know where to go. Only $15 for Tropic members and $25 for nonmembers. Not yet a member? Join that night and save $10 toward a membership.

They're also running their own pick-the-winners contest, with a Producer membership worth $600 as the top prize -- free movies for two for a year! Pick up your ballots at the box office, as many as you'd like, for $5 each. You don’t have to attend the Tropic’s Oscar show to participate. Just drop your completed ballot(s) off before things get rolling on Sunday night. Both the Oscar show and the contest are a benefit for the theatre, and I don’t have to tell you what a worthy cause that is.

If you’d like to enhance your chances of winning, catch the full package of BEST LIVE ACTION and BEST ANIMATED SHORTS, which will be showing all this week. These are always great little films. Read summaries of all of them at TropicCinema.com, or just jump in. Hey, if you don’t like one, wait a few minutes and you’ll see another.

Of course there doesn't seem to be much doubt about what's going to win best picture this year. THE KING’S SPEECH has already won the top prize given by the Producers Guild, the Directors Guild, and the Screen Actors Guild. Who do you think make up the membership of the Academy that chooses the Oscar, duh.

King’s Speech is a worthy picture, no doubt, and is immensely popular, already the highest grossing movie in the history of the Tropic and still going strong. With an uplifting theme (king needs a helping hand from a commoner and together they triumph), pageantry (a coronation, no less), and great performances, it’s good old-fashioned movie making, comfort food for the cinema soul.

 I can't help rooting, however, for one of the more unusual nominees. The Social Network is extraordinary for its ability to craft a compelling film out of a story with no production values -- no glorious crowd scenes, no CGI, no car chases, no sex -- just a nerd and his nattering. It surely has my vote for best screenplay. It won the Writer's Guild award for best adaptation and is most likely to pick up that Oscar.

My personal favorite among the nominees, as I’ve said before, is Winter’s Bone, an ultra-low-budget indie starring Jennifer Lawrence, a previously undiscovered young woman destined for stardom. The movie is a gritty story of a family struggling against meth dealers in the Ozarks. It may lack the glamour of Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey, but the human drama is, to my mind, more compelling.

Meanwhile, the hottest film of last summer, Inception, has all but faded from contention. It did pick up the Writer's Guild best original script award and the Cinematographers top prize, but this doesn’t seem to be the year for special effects movies. Last year we had all the buzz about Avatar and how its spellbinding effects and 3D heralded a new era in filmmaking. A year later, who cares. Thank God, we're back to story and character. The cream always rises.

[from Key West the newspaper - www.kwtn.com]