Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway
Jaws (1975)
Jaws. The very sound of the title evokes so many images. Most potently, I am brought back to when I was little Ian at ten years old, going to Cape May and loving the water, making castles with a metal pail. Even my own frail body seemingly made of beach sand.
I had heard about the film and I had to see it. I was sitting between my dad's two girlfriends in a Volkswagen bug. They giggled and tickled me with wild abandon.
I didn't know what I was getting into.
I recall the dark and moody first scene. The hyper-realism of the gun-metal gray ocean and the horrible, wrenching and frightening death of Chrissie (Susan Backlinie) as she is swept under darkness with great violence---a parallel to Marion Crane's murder in "Psycho".
Like Hitchcock, this initial scene is quite scary, having its own motion and poetry almost like ballet.
In a later scene Sheriff Brody (Roy Scheider) spins his wife (Lorraine Gary) around in saying goodbye as if to mimic the previous tragic scene. What was unimaginable just moments before, has now turned to erotic foreplay.
The iconic characters are present on the big screen once more in a digitally restored version of the 1975 classic.
The mealy mouthed Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) is as always, the one you love to hate (or feel pathetic about), his comically garish anchor jacket eerie, offensive and ludicrous under the grim circumstances of Something under the water eating residents.
The toothy terror strikes irrationally without mercy or reason very much like the diabolical attack of cute tiny Regan in "The Exorcist". This was after all, the era of Watergate and Vietnam. Both 70s films attempt to address those inexplicable and sudden tragedies.
The salty and physical Quint (Robert Shaw) is brought in as a kind of healer/ killer to exorcise the resort town of a primordial Evil. The shark is drawn on a chalkboard in the manner of a veve, or religious fetish, jagged and primitive.
Director Steven Spielberg accomplishes all these angles with great speed and grace, despite the perils of working with a mechanical shark on the open water of an often inclement Martha's Vineyard.
"Jaws" is both a social commentary on the ills of tourism run rampant and a tingling thriller that points to "E.T." and "Raiders of the Lost Ark," given its leaps of flourishing music by John Williams and its striking closeups of shocking gore which remind one of the frequent skulls and snakes of the Indiana Jones films.
Spielberg is a young master at portraying this resort town in red, white and blue and illustrating the fear in every person. Many of the shots zoom in on sunburned legs and fat white bellies giving some grim gallows humor as to what might become a human "smorgasbord."
This is a town literally coming undone at its flag-seams, where tourists arrive in droves, munching ice cream and chattering, and sometimes even oblivious to a shark seen at the next beach. Perhaps "Jaws" is even a commentary on the permissiveness of the hippies. The early victims are shown nonchalantly dismembering a lobster and smoking pot.
Eat and be eaten.
The biologist Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) although helpful, frequently hyperventilates and becomes ineffectual. He rambles, going on tangents almost reminiscent of early Woody Allen. At times, Hooper's staccato boomings are comical and kitsch in retrospect (This is no boat accident...this isn't Jack the Ripper...it's a shark!) but this is all to the better.
The next day after seeing the film for the first time, with those frightful images of a severed goggle-eyed head still in mind, I somehow kicked my skinny, hook-like feet in a shallow Jersey Shore sea.
Now after 39 years, I can jumpily report that "Jaws" still has all its teeth.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Sunday, June 29, 2014
The Fault In Our Stars (Brockway)
Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway
The Fault in Our Stars
In what could be a conceptual exercise in how to make a teen romance by pulling out all the "Awws!" and "Oh Nos!" and still manage a solid and mostly believable story, here is a star-crossed tale that is compelling with heart, energy and intrigue.
"The Fault in Our Stars", based on the novel by John Green, highlights the chemistry between Hazel (Shailene Woodley) and Augustus (Ansel Elgort) as two lovers.
Hazel (but of course) is direct, secretly spunky and sensitive. Augustus is bold, full of fun, reckless and almost Byronic with his sienna curls and alabaster skin. His muscled body speaks of the athlete, but not the overbearing jock.
There is a wrench in these works however.
They both have cancer.
The pulse of the film is that despite this obstacle between them, the disease is not a melodramatic curse that stands alone, but instead an incidental happenstance that pulls them together. Nor is cancer a malignance or a poison, but only a mere hinderance, a troublesome and meddling glue that they both share.
Augustus and Hazel meet in a support group known for its larger-than-life Jesus carpet and soon they are both at it, sharing irreverence with a kindred twinkle in the eye.
Augustus is the initiator, driving with abandon and carrying an unlit cigarette between his teeth. With his sweet sugary smirk that would be arrogant, were he not so adorable and forthright in his Hardy Boys era hijinks. (I strip this cigarette of its power to kill me, he says.) Augustus is kind of a Kiddie Kerouac--- he's a bad boy without really Being Bad.
The aura is all that matters.
Hazel is precocious, pensive and spiritually wild. She knows literature, quantum physics and the surrealist Rene Magritte. One gets the feeling that her oxygen tank is full of quotations and esoteric studies.
Hazel is starstruck by the offhand brawn and devil-may-care sparkle of her paramour. Of course, we know right away that she'll use up a little more of her tank than usual in no time.
The complementary valentines can do no wrong, seeming to exist in a coloring book suburbia where there is no discontent, no domestic tension, or any iconoclastic drawing outside the lines.
Augustus and Hazel experience very little parental tension. Ever.
Despite this eerie weirdness that Wes Craven has made a horror career out of, the turmoil never ceases to lose its easy, almost charmed compulsion.
Of course, there are those last surprises that we can see coming a mile away, as if on cue : The Romantic Dinner, an "edgy" picnic along a skeleton-shaped park, and last but not least, the glib and sarcastic sidekick, Isaac (played well by Nat Wolff known for his troubled and annoying character roles) .
But it is the smooth acting that pulls it all together making the obvious heart strings pulled almost secondary to charisma.
The ubiquitous Willem Dafoe does predictably well as a sour-drunk author Van Houten, who is not all that sour in the end. Even if we can sense the adolescent Albee in him well before he swigs, Dafoe and Woodley have enough emotive juice to make it almost new between them.
The final leap of "The Fault in Our Stars is that it does its story with such deliberation in spirit and character that we cease to count the cliches. These are characters almost without the haunt of Sickness, in keeping with smartphones and a well informed cellular knowledge of the body.
As a 21st century "A Little Romance", "The Fault in Our Stars" beguiles in spite of itself and its moments of gasping convention make a creative experiment that both catalogs and pays tribute to those cinematic loves of the past.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
The Fault in Our Stars
In what could be a conceptual exercise in how to make a teen romance by pulling out all the "Awws!" and "Oh Nos!" and still manage a solid and mostly believable story, here is a star-crossed tale that is compelling with heart, energy and intrigue.
"The Fault in Our Stars", based on the novel by John Green, highlights the chemistry between Hazel (Shailene Woodley) and Augustus (Ansel Elgort) as two lovers.
Hazel (but of course) is direct, secretly spunky and sensitive. Augustus is bold, full of fun, reckless and almost Byronic with his sienna curls and alabaster skin. His muscled body speaks of the athlete, but not the overbearing jock.
There is a wrench in these works however.
They both have cancer.
The pulse of the film is that despite this obstacle between them, the disease is not a melodramatic curse that stands alone, but instead an incidental happenstance that pulls them together. Nor is cancer a malignance or a poison, but only a mere hinderance, a troublesome and meddling glue that they both share.
Augustus and Hazel meet in a support group known for its larger-than-life Jesus carpet and soon they are both at it, sharing irreverence with a kindred twinkle in the eye.
Augustus is the initiator, driving with abandon and carrying an unlit cigarette between his teeth. With his sweet sugary smirk that would be arrogant, were he not so adorable and forthright in his Hardy Boys era hijinks. (I strip this cigarette of its power to kill me, he says.) Augustus is kind of a Kiddie Kerouac--- he's a bad boy without really Being Bad.
The aura is all that matters.
Hazel is precocious, pensive and spiritually wild. She knows literature, quantum physics and the surrealist Rene Magritte. One gets the feeling that her oxygen tank is full of quotations and esoteric studies.
Hazel is starstruck by the offhand brawn and devil-may-care sparkle of her paramour. Of course, we know right away that she'll use up a little more of her tank than usual in no time.
The complementary valentines can do no wrong, seeming to exist in a coloring book suburbia where there is no discontent, no domestic tension, or any iconoclastic drawing outside the lines.
Augustus and Hazel experience very little parental tension. Ever.
Despite this eerie weirdness that Wes Craven has made a horror career out of, the turmoil never ceases to lose its easy, almost charmed compulsion.
Of course, there are those last surprises that we can see coming a mile away, as if on cue : The Romantic Dinner, an "edgy" picnic along a skeleton-shaped park, and last but not least, the glib and sarcastic sidekick, Isaac (played well by Nat Wolff known for his troubled and annoying character roles) .
But it is the smooth acting that pulls it all together making the obvious heart strings pulled almost secondary to charisma.
The ubiquitous Willem Dafoe does predictably well as a sour-drunk author Van Houten, who is not all that sour in the end. Even if we can sense the adolescent Albee in him well before he swigs, Dafoe and Woodley have enough emotive juice to make it almost new between them.
The final leap of "The Fault in Our Stars is that it does its story with such deliberation in spirit and character that we cease to count the cliches. These are characters almost without the haunt of Sickness, in keeping with smartphones and a well informed cellular knowledge of the body.
As a 21st century "A Little Romance", "The Fault in Our Stars" beguiles in spite of itself and its moments of gasping convention make a creative experiment that both catalogs and pays tribute to those cinematic loves of the past.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
Saturday, June 28, 2014
X-Men: Days of Future Past (Brockway)
Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway
X-Men: Days of Future Past
The latest installment of "X-Men" is fresh and lively with a tongue in cheek verve. Here again are Professor Charles Xavier, (James McAvoy) Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and the hirsute and Broadway-handsome Wolverine (Hugh Jackman).
Kitty Pride (Ellen Page) is getting a mental-fusing vibe that The Mutants are under attack by a band of silver "Terminator" machines known as sentinels. The cobalt blue siren Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) has set out to assassinate a creepy bureaucrat Trask (Peter Dinklage) who, armed with Mutant DNA will start an all out war between the different ones and humans for (what else?) world power.
The now elder magicians of time and space: X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellan) join forces, reasoning that if Mystique's attempt occurs, a darker fate awaits.
But time travel is very dangerous to the constitution, mutant, angry or otherwise, so they send Wolverine on the cerebral travel table.
After all, the man with the lycanthropic lamb-chops is virtually indestructible.
A nail less-knucked Logan wakes up in 1973 in the company of a seductive sleeper and the music of Roberta Flack. Paisley and lava lamps abound.
Although a bit reminiscent of the kitschy nostalgia found in Tim Burton's "Dark Shadows", the fun is in seeing this furry one in culture shock and he hardly ever looses his cool.
Wolverine lopes from neighborhood to neighborhood convincing the somewhat psychedelic clan that he actually is from the future, sent to set things right.
A younger Shelleyan Xavier is hobbled and addicted to drugs. And a grim Erik (the future Magneto) is in solitary confinement charged with the Kennedy Assassination when in reality he was trying to save him.
Both men are at odds with the woman in blue between them, even though this was a before they are both green with Envy.
The appeal of this film (as with the entire series) is that these numinous folks stand on their own two feet as real beings with heart and not transient or ephemeral CGI freaks. What binds them together in parallel with the often more mutant mortals is passion, love, equilibrium and a desire to keep cruel chance at bay.
In a daring move, writers Simon Kinberg and Matthew Vaughn have set this during the turbulence of the Civil Rights movement thereby blurring the line between man, bland cyborg and monster in the most genuine sense.
There is a gleeful alternate history to ponder with two blue beasties here (Nicholas Hoult and Jennifer Lawrence) who pull some acrobatic strings in the lavender-smoking palm fronds of a turbulent Vietnam.
There is something comforting in watching a militaristic 1960s come unglued by these iconoclastically striped persons.
In a final madcap dash of social commentary, watch for Raven cloaking herself as President "Tricky Dick" Nixon.
The terrific phantasmagoric element of this story is that the men and women depicted originate from exclusive fauna, each coming into their own to make a heartfelt and hairy string of shape-shifting hippies with a very convincing ability to change the world from beyond the shadows.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
X-Men: Days of Future Past
The latest installment of "X-Men" is fresh and lively with a tongue in cheek verve. Here again are Professor Charles Xavier, (James McAvoy) Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and the hirsute and Broadway-handsome Wolverine (Hugh Jackman).
Kitty Pride (Ellen Page) is getting a mental-fusing vibe that The Mutants are under attack by a band of silver "Terminator" machines known as sentinels. The cobalt blue siren Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) has set out to assassinate a creepy bureaucrat Trask (Peter Dinklage) who, armed with Mutant DNA will start an all out war between the different ones and humans for (what else?) world power.
The now elder magicians of time and space: X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellan) join forces, reasoning that if Mystique's attempt occurs, a darker fate awaits.
But time travel is very dangerous to the constitution, mutant, angry or otherwise, so they send Wolverine on the cerebral travel table.
After all, the man with the lycanthropic lamb-chops is virtually indestructible.
A nail less-knucked Logan wakes up in 1973 in the company of a seductive sleeper and the music of Roberta Flack. Paisley and lava lamps abound.
Although a bit reminiscent of the kitschy nostalgia found in Tim Burton's "Dark Shadows", the fun is in seeing this furry one in culture shock and he hardly ever looses his cool.
Wolverine lopes from neighborhood to neighborhood convincing the somewhat psychedelic clan that he actually is from the future, sent to set things right.
A younger Shelleyan Xavier is hobbled and addicted to drugs. And a grim Erik (the future Magneto) is in solitary confinement charged with the Kennedy Assassination when in reality he was trying to save him.
Both men are at odds with the woman in blue between them, even though this was a before they are both green with Envy.
The appeal of this film (as with the entire series) is that these numinous folks stand on their own two feet as real beings with heart and not transient or ephemeral CGI freaks. What binds them together in parallel with the often more mutant mortals is passion, love, equilibrium and a desire to keep cruel chance at bay.
In a daring move, writers Simon Kinberg and Matthew Vaughn have set this during the turbulence of the Civil Rights movement thereby blurring the line between man, bland cyborg and monster in the most genuine sense.
There is a gleeful alternate history to ponder with two blue beasties here (Nicholas Hoult and Jennifer Lawrence) who pull some acrobatic strings in the lavender-smoking palm fronds of a turbulent Vietnam.
There is something comforting in watching a militaristic 1960s come unglued by these iconoclastically striped persons.
In a final madcap dash of social commentary, watch for Raven cloaking herself as President "Tricky Dick" Nixon.
The terrific phantasmagoric element of this story is that the men and women depicted originate from exclusive fauna, each coming into their own to make a heartfelt and hairy string of shape-shifting hippies with a very convincing ability to change the world from beyond the shadows.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Week of June 6/27 to July 3 (Rhoades)
Tropic Overview
Tropic Cinema Awash with Romantic Comedies … and Adventure!
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Film Critic, Cooke Communications
Rom-coms headline this week at the Tropic Cinema -- one embracing controversy, another an intellectual exercise, and the third is a weeper. But all are about finding love.
“Obvious Child” is both funny and daunting. Sometimes called “the abortion movie,” it’s the story of a would-be stand-up comedian who gets pregnant from a one-night stand. But can she find the man of her dreams in a guy she hardly knows? Newcity exclaims, “Jenny Slate? Here comes a great comedy star in a smart, conversational, bluntly funny, certainly subversive rom-com.” And Toronto Star opines, “Director Gillian Robespierre and company deserve high praise for tackling a story with such a difficult subject at its heart, with a combination of grace, humor and courage.”
Meanwhile, “Words and Pictures” is a showcase for Clive Owen as a writing professor and Juliette Binoche as an art instructor who clash over their chosen fields. But is the argument about words and pictures, or about their burgeoning relationship? Fresno Bee says the film “resonates with a clever and endearing energy that harkens back to the days when Doris Day and Rock Hudson dominated the box office.” And Boston Herald concludes, “The glorious leads make this work.”
Incoming is “The Fault in Our Stars,” the story of two teenagers (Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort) who meet and fall in love at a cancer support group. Contactmusic.dom says, “Based on the beloved novel by John Green, this film is so squarely slanted toward teen girls that it is likely to annoy everyone else.” Little White Lies counters, “Suck up the saccharine, let it into your heart, and deal with it.”
Still playing is “Chef,” a comedy about renewed romance … and food. Jon Favreau wrote, directed, and stars in this tale of a fancy chef who offends a food critic. The Daily Star says, “This generous, big-hearted, funny and touching little film goes down a treat.” And Minneapolis Star Tribune observes, “It’s a refreshing change of pace from typical summer fare, a story not framed around the skeleton of an old TV series or designed as a tie-in to Hasbro toys.”
Held over is “Ida,” a visually stark Polish film about a woman’s lost identity. About to enter the convent, Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) discovers that she’s really named Ida, the daughter of Jewish parents executed by the Nazis. Detroit News says, “In the end, Ida has to confront where she’s come from, decide who she is and who she wants to be. Then again, don’t we all?” And Looking Closer adds, “Anna’s journey will leave her deeply conflicted about what she has seen, just as I feel conflicted about this film. It’s been three weeks, and I can’t stop thinking about her.”
And offering some mind-clearing action is “X-Men: Days of Future Past.” In this story based on a Marvel comic book series, adamantium-clawed Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent into the past to affect events that have led to a war between mutants and robots. Dark Horizons calls it “ambitious and epic in scale and intimate in execution.” And Cinema Crazed declares it to be “a perfectly fine reboot for a series in dire need of one, as well as a very good and exciting X-Men film all around.”
Love, adventure, cancer, unexpected pregnancy, Nazis, and food … it’s all here on the screens at the Tropic.
srhoades@aol.com
Tropic Cinema Awash with Romantic Comedies … and Adventure!
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Film Critic, Cooke Communications
Rom-coms headline this week at the Tropic Cinema -- one embracing controversy, another an intellectual exercise, and the third is a weeper. But all are about finding love.
“Obvious Child” is both funny and daunting. Sometimes called “the abortion movie,” it’s the story of a would-be stand-up comedian who gets pregnant from a one-night stand. But can she find the man of her dreams in a guy she hardly knows? Newcity exclaims, “Jenny Slate? Here comes a great comedy star in a smart, conversational, bluntly funny, certainly subversive rom-com.” And Toronto Star opines, “Director Gillian Robespierre and company deserve high praise for tackling a story with such a difficult subject at its heart, with a combination of grace, humor and courage.”
Meanwhile, “Words and Pictures” is a showcase for Clive Owen as a writing professor and Juliette Binoche as an art instructor who clash over their chosen fields. But is the argument about words and pictures, or about their burgeoning relationship? Fresno Bee says the film “resonates with a clever and endearing energy that harkens back to the days when Doris Day and Rock Hudson dominated the box office.” And Boston Herald concludes, “The glorious leads make this work.”
Incoming is “The Fault in Our Stars,” the story of two teenagers (Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort) who meet and fall in love at a cancer support group. Contactmusic.dom says, “Based on the beloved novel by John Green, this film is so squarely slanted toward teen girls that it is likely to annoy everyone else.” Little White Lies counters, “Suck up the saccharine, let it into your heart, and deal with it.”
Still playing is “Chef,” a comedy about renewed romance … and food. Jon Favreau wrote, directed, and stars in this tale of a fancy chef who offends a food critic. The Daily Star says, “This generous, big-hearted, funny and touching little film goes down a treat.” And Minneapolis Star Tribune observes, “It’s a refreshing change of pace from typical summer fare, a story not framed around the skeleton of an old TV series or designed as a tie-in to Hasbro toys.”
Held over is “Ida,” a visually stark Polish film about a woman’s lost identity. About to enter the convent, Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) discovers that she’s really named Ida, the daughter of Jewish parents executed by the Nazis. Detroit News says, “In the end, Ida has to confront where she’s come from, decide who she is and who she wants to be. Then again, don’t we all?” And Looking Closer adds, “Anna’s journey will leave her deeply conflicted about what she has seen, just as I feel conflicted about this film. It’s been three weeks, and I can’t stop thinking about her.”
And offering some mind-clearing action is “X-Men: Days of Future Past.” In this story based on a Marvel comic book series, adamantium-clawed Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent into the past to affect events that have led to a war between mutants and robots. Dark Horizons calls it “ambitious and epic in scale and intimate in execution.” And Cinema Crazed declares it to be “a perfectly fine reboot for a series in dire need of one, as well as a very good and exciting X-Men film all around.”
Love, adventure, cancer, unexpected pregnancy, Nazis, and food … it’s all here on the screens at the Tropic.
srhoades@aol.com
Obvious Child (Rhoades)
Front Row at the Movies
“Obvious Child”
Is Not So Obvious
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Hey, how about a funny, uplifting romantic comedy about … abortion?
Now that’s a showstopper.
It’s a topic that’s usually only broached in movies (think: “Juno”), never carried out.
However, Gillian Robespierre is not your everyday filmmaker. Sure, this is her first feature film, but she knows how to turn a cliché inside out as surely as a practiced comic delivering a punchline.
Robespierre’s “Obvious Child” -- now playing at Tropic Cinema -- is not what you might expect. The obvious child of the title isn’t the fetus in question; rather it’s the young woman who isn’t ready to be a mother.
Donna Stern (Jenny Slate) is a twentysomething bookstore clerk who’s trying to make it as a standup comic. She plays small clubs in Brooklyn, making fun of her Jewish looks, telling flatulence jokes, and finding humor in her sex life. She sees her own life as subject matter for her act.
But everybody doesn’t laugh. Tired of being the target of her comedy jibes, her boyfriend (Paul Briganti) dumps her. And she gets fired. Well, downsized.
Donna reacts by wallowing in her sorrow. Stalking her old beau. Drinking too much. Her roommate (Gaby Hoffmann) is worried about her. And with good reason. Acting out, Donna engages in a one-night stand with a nice-guy stranger (Jake Lacy).
Oops.
The pregnancy test glows pink.
There’s never any question that Donna is not ready to become a mom. So the abortion option is the way she chooses to go. And when she finally breaks the news to the straight-laced dude who knocked her up, he agrees it’s her choice.
Unlike Judd Apatow’s “Knocked Up,” there’s no child to circle the wagons around. So will Donna and Max, two polar opposites, come together? Well, it is a rom-com. Right?
Real-life comedienne Jenny Slate, who takes the lead as Donna, will win you over. Slate will be forever remembered as the new Saturday Night Live cast member who said the F-bomb on live TV.
Here, Gillian Robespierre uses the A-bomb. But unlike Slate’s unintentional faux pas, clever, break-the-mold Robespierre is doing it quite deliberately. “Obvious child” is based on a 2009 short film that she made as a trial balloon.
“Calling the movie ‘Obvious Child’ wasn’t an accident,” Robespierre tells us. “We titled it. It felt perfect, because it had a sort of ambiguity to how people were going to see that title. Is Donna an obvious child? Is it just the Paul Simon song in the movie? It’s one of those things where I hate to overanalyze it, but people seem to love to overanalyze it, and I really like that.”
Variety reports that both “pro-choice and pro-life groups are claiming the movie as either an important feminist statement or a dangerous piece of propaganda.”
Yes, “Obvious Child” is controversial. It’s crass; it’s funny; it’s disturbing. But above all it’s a film told with painful honesty from a woman’s point of view.
srhoades@aol.com
“Obvious Child”
Is Not So Obvious
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Hey, how about a funny, uplifting romantic comedy about … abortion?
Now that’s a showstopper.
It’s a topic that’s usually only broached in movies (think: “Juno”), never carried out.
However, Gillian Robespierre is not your everyday filmmaker. Sure, this is her first feature film, but she knows how to turn a cliché inside out as surely as a practiced comic delivering a punchline.
Robespierre’s “Obvious Child” -- now playing at Tropic Cinema -- is not what you might expect. The obvious child of the title isn’t the fetus in question; rather it’s the young woman who isn’t ready to be a mother.
Donna Stern (Jenny Slate) is a twentysomething bookstore clerk who’s trying to make it as a standup comic. She plays small clubs in Brooklyn, making fun of her Jewish looks, telling flatulence jokes, and finding humor in her sex life. She sees her own life as subject matter for her act.
But everybody doesn’t laugh. Tired of being the target of her comedy jibes, her boyfriend (Paul Briganti) dumps her. And she gets fired. Well, downsized.
Donna reacts by wallowing in her sorrow. Stalking her old beau. Drinking too much. Her roommate (Gaby Hoffmann) is worried about her. And with good reason. Acting out, Donna engages in a one-night stand with a nice-guy stranger (Jake Lacy).
Oops.
The pregnancy test glows pink.
There’s never any question that Donna is not ready to become a mom. So the abortion option is the way she chooses to go. And when she finally breaks the news to the straight-laced dude who knocked her up, he agrees it’s her choice.
Unlike Judd Apatow’s “Knocked Up,” there’s no child to circle the wagons around. So will Donna and Max, two polar opposites, come together? Well, it is a rom-com. Right?
Real-life comedienne Jenny Slate, who takes the lead as Donna, will win you over. Slate will be forever remembered as the new Saturday Night Live cast member who said the F-bomb on live TV.
Here, Gillian Robespierre uses the A-bomb. But unlike Slate’s unintentional faux pas, clever, break-the-mold Robespierre is doing it quite deliberately. “Obvious child” is based on a 2009 short film that she made as a trial balloon.
“Calling the movie ‘Obvious Child’ wasn’t an accident,” Robespierre tells us. “We titled it. It felt perfect, because it had a sort of ambiguity to how people were going to see that title. Is Donna an obvious child? Is it just the Paul Simon song in the movie? It’s one of those things where I hate to overanalyze it, but people seem to love to overanalyze it, and I really like that.”
Variety reports that both “pro-choice and pro-life groups are claiming the movie as either an important feminist statement or a dangerous piece of propaganda.”
Yes, “Obvious Child” is controversial. It’s crass; it’s funny; it’s disturbing. But above all it’s a film told with painful honesty from a woman’s point of view.
srhoades@aol.com
X-Men: Days of Future Past (Rhoades)
Front Row at the Movies
Wolverine Goes
Time Traveling In
New “X-Men” Film
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Here I go again, reviewing another superhero movie. But it’s not because I used to be publisher of Marvel Comics. It’s because Marvel is cranking out new blockbusters faster than comic books fly off a spinner rack.
This week we have “X-Men: Days of Future Past.” As it happens, this is based on a comic book storyline by Chris Claremont and John Bryne. I recruited Chris back to Marvel’s bullpen in the late ’90s. That was about the same time we were publishing the “Heroes Return” titles, welcoming back our errant characters.
“Days of Future Past” appeared in The Uncanny X-Men #141-142. Its plot deals with a dystopian future where mutants are being hunted down. One of them travels back in time to warn the present-day X-Men about a fatal moment in history that will trigger anti-mutant hysteria if it isn’t altered.
In this new movie version -- currently showing at the Tropic Cinema-- it’s Wolverine who travels back in time, but his tripping is facilitated by Kitty Pryde’s phasing ability.
Directed by Brian Singer (“The Usual Suspects,” “X-Men”), this is a sequel to “X-Men: First Class.” Aside from the time travel theme, what makes this movie particularly interesting is the two X-Men casts, young and old. One set from the original series, another from the more recent reboot.
Professor X is played by both Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy. Magneto is both Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender. Kelsey Grammer and Nicholas Hoult are Beast. Jennifer Lawrence returns as the blue-skinned shapeshifter Mystique. Halle Berry is back as the electrifying Storm. Anna Paquin again gives us Rogue. Ellen Page is Kitty Pryde. And, of course, Hugh Jackman provides the lynchpin role of Wolverine, the self-healing mutant with retractable claws and an invincible Adamantium skeleton.
You haven’t seen this many superheroes in a movie since “Marvel’s The Avengers.” But then, the comic book company has over 5,000 trademarked characters to draw on.
Now owned by Disney, Marvel is pulling out all the stops on rolling out its multiple movie franchises. Lately, eyes have been focused on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (“Iron Man,” “Thor,” “Captain America”), but all the while the X-Men movies have been steadily rebuilding their creds.
This one will prove to be a fanboy favorite.
srhoades@aol.com
Wolverine Goes
Time Traveling In
New “X-Men” Film
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Here I go again, reviewing another superhero movie. But it’s not because I used to be publisher of Marvel Comics. It’s because Marvel is cranking out new blockbusters faster than comic books fly off a spinner rack.
This week we have “X-Men: Days of Future Past.” As it happens, this is based on a comic book storyline by Chris Claremont and John Bryne. I recruited Chris back to Marvel’s bullpen in the late ’90s. That was about the same time we were publishing the “Heroes Return” titles, welcoming back our errant characters.
“Days of Future Past” appeared in The Uncanny X-Men #141-142. Its plot deals with a dystopian future where mutants are being hunted down. One of them travels back in time to warn the present-day X-Men about a fatal moment in history that will trigger anti-mutant hysteria if it isn’t altered.
In this new movie version -- currently showing at the Tropic Cinema-- it’s Wolverine who travels back in time, but his tripping is facilitated by Kitty Pryde’s phasing ability.
Directed by Brian Singer (“The Usual Suspects,” “X-Men”), this is a sequel to “X-Men: First Class.” Aside from the time travel theme, what makes this movie particularly interesting is the two X-Men casts, young and old. One set from the original series, another from the more recent reboot.
Professor X is played by both Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy. Magneto is both Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender. Kelsey Grammer and Nicholas Hoult are Beast. Jennifer Lawrence returns as the blue-skinned shapeshifter Mystique. Halle Berry is back as the electrifying Storm. Anna Paquin again gives us Rogue. Ellen Page is Kitty Pryde. And, of course, Hugh Jackman provides the lynchpin role of Wolverine, the self-healing mutant with retractable claws and an invincible Adamantium skeleton.
You haven’t seen this many superheroes in a movie since “Marvel’s The Avengers.” But then, the comic book company has over 5,000 trademarked characters to draw on.
Now owned by Disney, Marvel is pulling out all the stops on rolling out its multiple movie franchises. Lately, eyes have been focused on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (“Iron Man,” “Thor,” “Captain America”), but all the while the X-Men movies have been steadily rebuilding their creds.
This one will prove to be a fanboy favorite.
srhoades@aol.com
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Ida (Brockway)
Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway
Ida
Filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski's latest foray into fiction with "Ida" is a gothic character study rife with atmosphere and a matter-of-fact passivity. Filmed in black and white, the trees stand as sable sentinels unable to comment on this deadpan yet tragic drama.
Ida (Agata Trzebuchowska) is a young novice in a Polish convent who immerses herself in martyred parchment. Despite being a young girl, she pathologically submits to her prioress, knocking and twisting herself into messianic positions, she presses on the floor, becoming a human cross, an ecce homo of rigor mortis, just shy of becoming a sainted bas-relief, an organic coin.
Ida is well on her way to being a monochrome pawn on a chessboard of submission.
In order to complete her vows, she is told she must visit her family. On one gray and bitter day that would make David Lynch get out his camera, Ida sets out, trudging expressionlessly. The snow is thick and heavy.
Ida meets her Aunt Wanda who is harsh and pale, resembling a figure from painter Egon Schiele. She tells Ida of her mysterious history, mainly that her parents were murdered during the war. The young and reticent Ida resolves to find the murderer and locate her parents' burial.
The camera moves masterfully through space and the cinematography is first rate. Gradually throughout, Ida is little more than a shadow composed of ceramic, her ambulatory gait making all right angles, full of hesitancy and hunch. As ephemeral as Ida becomes, Wanda is more debauched, her Sharpie-black hair sopped in vodka. Wanda embodies the form of a broken puppet in paper mâché while Ida alternates form as an ivory chess piece or a firefly trapped in glass.
With just a few expressionist touches of black and ivory gray, the director hints at rather than explicitly reveals these scenes that are both foreboding and spacey and appear to hover before us.
The modernization of the cars as they move through a blank and desolate Poland mock Ida's asceticism. She meets a young sax player (Dawid Ogrodnik) and the Byronic curl of his hair teases her with a sensual materialism.
After many hinderances and fits of indecision, the pair meet a bedridden Szymon (Jerzy Trela) but he is frustratingly laconic. By a vague clue, they confront his morose and granite-eyed son (Adam Szyszkowski) who ensconces himself in a hole of soil, sinister and bottomless.
Ida genuflects and walks on.
Midway in the film, the novice sheds her habit, taking on the slutty guise of Wanda and consorting with the musician. Ida's face and voice change into that of a dominatrix. The jolting feeling echoes Roman Polanski's "The Tenant".
While the uncompromising silence and minimalism given with force in "Ida" is surely not for everyone, (with spare dialogue that almost makes for a silent film) Pawlikowski's sorcery by suggestion is akin to hypnotism. Her images rival oil paintings, a series of clerical still lifes, both mystical and phantasmagoric that border the eerie.
When Ida plods away on her own dark road, her face once again blank with a papal polish, is she actively engaged or a mere automaton?
The final gray streak brings a chill, recalling Bergmann and a frosty spritz of Lars von Trier for good measure.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
Ida
Filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski's latest foray into fiction with "Ida" is a gothic character study rife with atmosphere and a matter-of-fact passivity. Filmed in black and white, the trees stand as sable sentinels unable to comment on this deadpan yet tragic drama.
Ida (Agata Trzebuchowska) is a young novice in a Polish convent who immerses herself in martyred parchment. Despite being a young girl, she pathologically submits to her prioress, knocking and twisting herself into messianic positions, she presses on the floor, becoming a human cross, an ecce homo of rigor mortis, just shy of becoming a sainted bas-relief, an organic coin.
Ida is well on her way to being a monochrome pawn on a chessboard of submission.
In order to complete her vows, she is told she must visit her family. On one gray and bitter day that would make David Lynch get out his camera, Ida sets out, trudging expressionlessly. The snow is thick and heavy.
Ida meets her Aunt Wanda who is harsh and pale, resembling a figure from painter Egon Schiele. She tells Ida of her mysterious history, mainly that her parents were murdered during the war. The young and reticent Ida resolves to find the murderer and locate her parents' burial.
The camera moves masterfully through space and the cinematography is first rate. Gradually throughout, Ida is little more than a shadow composed of ceramic, her ambulatory gait making all right angles, full of hesitancy and hunch. As ephemeral as Ida becomes, Wanda is more debauched, her Sharpie-black hair sopped in vodka. Wanda embodies the form of a broken puppet in paper mâché while Ida alternates form as an ivory chess piece or a firefly trapped in glass.
With just a few expressionist touches of black and ivory gray, the director hints at rather than explicitly reveals these scenes that are both foreboding and spacey and appear to hover before us.
The modernization of the cars as they move through a blank and desolate Poland mock Ida's asceticism. She meets a young sax player (Dawid Ogrodnik) and the Byronic curl of his hair teases her with a sensual materialism.
After many hinderances and fits of indecision, the pair meet a bedridden Szymon (Jerzy Trela) but he is frustratingly laconic. By a vague clue, they confront his morose and granite-eyed son (Adam Szyszkowski) who ensconces himself in a hole of soil, sinister and bottomless.
Ida genuflects and walks on.
Midway in the film, the novice sheds her habit, taking on the slutty guise of Wanda and consorting with the musician. Ida's face and voice change into that of a dominatrix. The jolting feeling echoes Roman Polanski's "The Tenant".
While the uncompromising silence and minimalism given with force in "Ida" is surely not for everyone, (with spare dialogue that almost makes for a silent film) Pawlikowski's sorcery by suggestion is akin to hypnotism. Her images rival oil paintings, a series of clerical still lifes, both mystical and phantasmagoric that border the eerie.
When Ida plods away on her own dark road, her face once again blank with a papal polish, is she actively engaged or a mere automaton?
The final gray streak brings a chill, recalling Bergmann and a frosty spritz of Lars von Trier for good measure.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
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