Culture Surfing

THE HORSE BOY: Rupert Isaacson (from left), Rowan and Ghoste in Mongolia

Medical narratives often depict ordinary people who turn to alternative healing methods when traditional Western health care fails. Seldom can you find families that go to the lengths of Rupert Isaacson and Kristen Neff, who traveled from Austin, Texas, to the steppes of Mongolia with the hopes of improving their son Rowan’s autistic condition.

Narrating the documentary The Horse Boy, Isaacson justifies the trip early in the film. At his worst, 5-year-old Rowan’s cognitive problems make him the equivalent of “a giant 18-month-old” with poor social skills, incomplete toilet training, and seemingly endless, inexplicable tantrums. Isaacson’s research into shamanism and Rowan’s affinity for animals, especially horses, inspire the father to see if the two in combination could have therapeutic value. He discovers that Mongolia combines shamanic traditions with horsemanship, so he, Neff and Rowan embark on a journey a world away.

Continue reading “Family goes to extremes to alleviate autism in The Horse Boy” »

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SPORTS AUTHORITY: Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock, right) coaches Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron)

The prologue to the warm-n-fuzzy sports story The Blind Side plays so well, it’s like seeing a team return an opening kickoff to score a touchdown. A Southern-accented Sandra Bullock narrates an insider’s perspective on the five fateful seconds that cost the Washington Redskins’ Joe Theismann his career. Michael Lewis’ book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game provides the film with tasty tidbits about football machinations on and off the field, but director John Lee Hancock fumbles the rags-to-riches story of Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron).

The film’s early scenes find mountainous Michael adrift in the impoverished corners of Memphis with a crack-addicted mother and no real home. When a Christian school bends the rules to enroll him, Michael attracts the notice of Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock), the take-charge socialite wife of a fast-food mogul (Tim McGraw). Leigh Anne whisks Michael to the family McMansion and offers him clothes, a Thanksgiving invitation, and even a strategy for success on the gridiron.

Continue Reading “Sandra Bullock Blind Sides Atlanta”

(Photo Courtesy Ralph Nelson/Warner Bros. Picture)

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BURN BABY BURN: Lily Morgan (left) and John Cusack

GENRE: Disaster movie on a planetary scale

THE PITCH: Technobabble about solar flares plus mumbo-jumbo about Mayan predictions equals catastrophes that could destroy all life on Earth, even movie stars. A White House science advisor (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a novelist/limo driver (John Cusack), his ex-wife (Amanda Peet), and a shaggy conspiracy theorist (Woody Harrelson) all try to keep ahead of the fireballs and falling skyscrapers.

MONEY SHOTS: Director Roland Emmerich remains the John Holmes of disaster porn. Highlights include the heroes out-driving a Los Angeles earthquake; a volcanic eruption at Yellowstone; a tidal wave crashing over a Tibetan mountain range; and the Sistine Chapel ceiling cracking between God and Adam’s fingers. (Oh, burn!) A tsunami flattens the White House with the John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier, proving what you’ve always suspected: Bad weather has a sense of irony.

Continue Reading “Hollywood Product: 2012“

(Photo Courtesy 2009 Columbia TriStar Marketing Group, Inc.)

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BLAZE OF GLORY: Murder becomes reality-TV fodder in Five Minutes of Heaven.

Even if you’ve never heard the name Oliver Hirschbiegel, there’s a strong chance you’ve seen his work. The German filmmaker directed Downfall, the superb 2004 drama about the Third Reich’s final days. Last year, a clip of Bruno Ganz’s Hitler chewing out his underlings became a YouTube hit when an online prankster rewrote the subtitles so the scene depicted then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton raging against her campaign staff. Now you can find dozens of remixes that show Adolf hating on, say, the Avatar trailer.

Hirschbiegel can’t claim credit or blame for the pop appropriation of Downfall, but the original scene’s dramatic power no doubt supports its viral following. Downfall’s depiction of the besieged Nazis combined epic battle scenes with more soft-spoken moments that illuminated Hitler’s historical legacy, such as Frau Goebbels quietly killing her own children rather than have them see an Allied victory. Hirschbiegel’s latest film, Five Minutes of Heaven, treats a confrontation between two men as another kind of microcosm for a historic event: the violence in Northern Ireland.

Continue Reading “Five Minutes of Heaven goes mano a mano with Northern Ireland conflict”

(Photo Courtesy Reconciliation Limited 2009/An IFC Films release)

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THE FOURTH KIND: Dr. Abigail Tyler (Milla Jovovich) recalls in detail her alien abduction experience under hypnosis.

GENRE: Supernatural docudrama

THE PITCH: Director Olatunde Osunsanmi reenacts a mysterious tale of alien abduction told by Dr. Abigail Tyler through interviews and recorded footage of close encounters in Nome, Alaska. Shot as a hybrid between a documentary and a feature film, viewers follow Tyler’s (Milla Jovovich) desperate search to uncover the truth about strange coincidences occurring to her family and the residents of Nome.

MONEY SHOTS: Dr. Tyler and her colleague Dr. Campos (Elias Koteas) reluctantly hypnotize her patient Scott Stracinsky (Enzo Cilenti) again in his bedroom after he starts to exhibit abnormal behavior. As he begins to retrace what happened to him, he springs forward, sitting straight up before hovering over the bed and speaking in ancient Sumerian.

Continue Reading “Hollywood Product: The Fourth Kind“

(Photo Courtesy of Universal Pictures)

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HUMBUG DEEZ: Ghost of Christmas Present (from left, performed by Jim Carrey) chides his charge Ebenezer Scrooge (also performed by Carrey) in A Christmas Carol.

GENRE: CGI holiday drama

THE PITCH: Disney gives Charles Dickens’ classic holiday tale an animated makeover. Miserly Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey) is visited by ghosts who show him glimpses of his past, present and future in efforts to save his soul before Christmas.

MONEY SHOTS: It’s hard to pull away from the visual effects each of the ghosts utilize to show Scrooge various moments in time. Ghost of Christmas Past (Carrey) uses slingshot-ish flight sequences to take Scrooge to parts of his past. Ghost of Christmas Present (Carrey, again) hurls luminescent golden beads that turn the floor and walls translucent for he and Scrooge to spy on the present. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come (yup, you guessed it … Carrey) uses ebon shadows to transport and frighten Scrooge back on to a righteous path.

Continue Reading “Hollywood Product: A Christmas Carol“

(Photo Courtesy Walt Disney Pictures)

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TRANCE-PARENT STORYTELLING: Lyn Cassady (George Clooney, from left), Mahmud Daash (Waleed Zuaiter) and Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) in The Men Who Stare at Goats

The Men Who Stare at Goats begins with a wonderful disclaimer: “More of this is true than you would believe.” Most films use phrases like “Based on a true story” or “Inspired by actual events” as a fig leaf for outrageous liberties with little connection to reality. The real incidents behind The Men Who Stare at Goats indeed seem stranger than fiction, but the demands of formulaic three-act screenwriting sabotage the film’s mission.

Based on the book of the same name by Welsh journalist and documentarian Jon Ronson, the film completely reimagines Ronson as Michigan reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor). Personal crises inspire Wilton to attempt to cover the 2002 invasion of Iraq. While languishing in Kuwait City and envying the embedded war correspondents, Wilton meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney). Cassady turns out to be a veteran of the U.S. Army’s First Earth Battalion, which attempted to train psychic soldiers.

Continue Reading “Too baaad Goats falls flat”

(Photo Courtesy Laura Macgruder/Westgate Film Services, LLC.)

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FAMILY JEWEL: Precious (Gabourey Sidibe, from left) and her oppressive mother Mary (Mo'Nique)

Though only 17 years old, Clareece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) suffers enough misfortunes for several Greek tragedies remounted in 1987 Harlem. Precious’ title character endures obesity, illiteracy, a baby with Down syndrome and a sociopathically hostile, selfish mother (Mo’Nique) — and those are just the preliminaries. When Precious gets warmed up, it becomes almost unbearably grim, but its passionate performances raise it above contemporary motivational melodrama clichés.

Though she can barely read, Precious exhibits a talent for math. When she becomes pregnant for the second time, a kindly teacher secures Precious a chance to enroll in an alternative school called Each One, Teach One. Under the tough but kindly tutelage of crusading Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), Precious bonds with her boisterous female classmates and begins to respect herself.

Continue Reading “Grim Precious treasures passionate actresses”

(Photo Courtesy Lionsgate)

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LEARNING CURVES: Jenny (Carey Mulligan, from left) and David (Peter Sarsgaard) in An Education

The establishment seems more firmly established in England than anywhere else. Two terrific new British films depict prodigiously intelligent characters who challenge entrenched English institutions and nearly outsmart themselves along the way. The protagonists of the soccer movie The Damned United and the coming-of-age romance An Education fit in the rebellious, angry young man tradition of English drama — although Michael Sheen’s Brian Clough isn’t exactly young, and Carey Mulligan’s Jenny is most definitely not a man. Both learn the lesson that pride goeth before a fall.

The Damned United ostensibly recounts the David-and-Goliath rivalry between soccer division cellar-dwellers Derby County and England’s crowning team, Leeds United. Rather than focus on triumph-of-the-underdog clichés, screenwriter Peter Morgan cuts back and forth between Clough (Derby’s manager) leading the team from obscurity to soccer glory beginning in 1968, to Clough, flush with victory, taking over as Leeds’ manager in 1974. Morgan wrote The Queen and Frost/Nixon (which also starred Sheen) and ignores biopic stereotypes in lieu of small but telling historical tipping points.

Continue Reading “Damned United and An Education pit youthful smarts against English establishment”

(Photo Courtesy Kerry Brown/Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)

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THE PAINS OF BEING RAW AT HEART: Willem Dafoe as He (from left) and Charlotte Gainsbourg as She in Antichrist

I can’t truly say I enjoyed watching a man nail his penis to a wooden board in the 1997 documentary Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist. I can’t even truly say I saw more than brief glimpses before I averted my eyes, as if confronted by a solar eclipse. Nevertheless, the close-up atrocity summed up the obsessions and life experiences of a self-punishing performance artist with a fatal case of cystic fibrosis and a surprisingly tender marriage.

Lars von Trier’s Antichrist eventually reveals how unguarded genitalia hold up against carpentry utensils, but without the justification of Sick’s humanism or thematic clarity. An instantly notorious award-winner at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Antichrist proves to be an alternately draggy, repellant and opaque cinematic experience, while clearly representing devoted efforts from several master screen artists. Were Antichrist a piece of hackwork, so to speak, it’d be easy to dismiss.

Continue Reading “Antichrist canonizes genital mutilation”

(Photo Courtesy Trust Nordisk ApS/An IFC Films release)

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Zombies have become so popular that the corridors of our pop culture resound with ravenous moans for “Braaaiinns!” White Zombie, screening Saturday at the Plaza Theatre’s Silver Scream Spook Show, offers a kitschy reminder that the living dead weren’t always the decomposing cannibals of George Romero.

Follow the trail of body parts back a few decades, and you’ll find the origins of zombies in Haitian folklore. White Zombie shouldn’t be mistaken for a documentary about voodoo traditions, though. Filmed in 1932 to ride the horror trend established by Frankenstein and Dracula, White Zombie fudges the detail as to whether zombies are walking corpses or living people enthralled by drugs and hypnotism.

Victor Halperin’s film begins with a painfully white engaged couple, Neil and Madeline (John Harron and Madge Bellamy), stumbling across a burial ceremony shortly after their arrival in Haiti. They plan to marry as soon as possible at the estate of their new, wealthy friend Charles Beaumont (Robert W. Frazer), having forgotten the old adage, “Don’t talk to strangers because they might try to zombify your fiancée and raid her coffin.” Desperate to steal Madeline for himself, Charles enlists the aid of a sinister plantation owner with the nefarious name of Murder Legendre (Bela Lugosi, of course). Though Madeline seems to die on her wedding night, she’s actually become enthralled by Legendre.

Continue Reading “Campy White Zombie harks back to pre-Romero living dead”

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THE PEOPLE VS. LEO FRANK: Leo Frank (Will Janowitz) is sentenced to jail following his conviction for the murder of Mary Phagan.

By David Lee Simmons

The Leo Frank case has been examined and re-examined over the years. It’s been the subject of four film works and numerous books, the most recent of which put into even clearer perspective the trial that eventually re-energized the Ku Klux Klan and emboldened the Anti-Defamation League.

So it’s a pleasant surprise that The People vs. Leo Frank — writer/director Ben Loeterman’s half documentary, half re-enactment — still feels fresh in its depiction of Georgia’s most infamous murder trial.

Part of it is the timing: The movie comes more than 20 years after the last film work, the Emmy-winning mini-series starring Jack Lemmon and then-unknowns Peter Gallagher, Kevin Spacey and Cynthia Nixon. It also comes on the heels of Emory film studies chair Matthew Bernstein’s book about all four film works, Screening a Lynching.

Continue Reading “Ben Loeterman appeals The People vs. Leo Frank“

(Photo Courtesy BLPI Inc.)

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SQUASHING POLLUTION: Colin (from left) and Isabella Beavan at a farmer's market

Why in the world would someone call themselves “No Impact Man”? Writer Colin Beavan embarked on a yearlong eco-experiment to make himself a good example, but the name suggests he aimed low as an effective role model. Why not High Impact Man? Impactful Man? More Impact Than He Knows What to Do with Man?

Of course, “no impact” describes Beavan’s environmental goal, not his self-promotional one. The documentary No Impact Man describes the New Yorker’s attempt to spend a year reducing his family’s carbon footprint to a mere whisper on the earth. Instead of riding gas-guzzling vehicles and other public transportation, Beavan and his wife will walk or bicycle. Instead of dining at restaurants or purchasing packaged foods, they’ll cook only locally grown items, which means, among other things, no coffee. They compost, reduce their garbage to zero, shut off their electricity, give away their television, even eliminate toilet paper and disposable diapers for their toddler daughter, Isabella.

Continue Reading “No Impact Man depicts a planet — and a marriage — under strain”

(Photo Courtesy Oscilloscope Pictures)

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AMELIA: Hilary Swank as the early 20th-century aviatrix

It’s difficult to imagine that Amelia would exist if Hilary Swank didn’t already have two Best Actress Oscars and a striking resemblance to the toothy, tomboyish Amelia Earhart. Director Mira Nair offers a sleek but perfunctory biopic of the famed aviatrix that seems driven more by an ambition for Academy Awards than any real interest in Earhart’s accomplishments.

Rarely does a film that so clearly admires its subject also make her look so bad. Nair mostly seems intrigued by Earhart as a 1930s feminist role model and celebrity. Thanks to her publisher, promoter, and eventual husband George Putman (Richard Gere), Earhart parlays her fame as “Lady Lindy” into speaking engagements and advertising deals. Amelia nearly suggests that Earhart was little more than a show horse with modest aviation talent. The film emphasizes her missteps more than her achievements. For instance, Earhart commanded her first transatlantic flight, but didn’t actually fly the plane. There’s an unintentionally hilarious moment during the journey when the aircraft hits some turbulence and Earhart almost falls through an unlocked door.

Continue Reading “Amelia stalls out on the runway as a Hilary Swank vehicle”

(Photo Courtesy Ken Woroner)

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