Continue reading »]]> A key passage in Tom Wolfe’s blistering architectural critique, From Bauhaus to Our House, recounts a tumultuous public meeting attended by the residents St. Louis’ Pruitt-Igoe housing project, called by the city to get input on how to salvage the seriously deteriorating facility and notable for ending with the assembled tenants joining in on the chant, “Blow it… up! Blow it… up! Blow it… up!”

Wolfe’s description of the event is vivid (no surprise), but barely gets into the morass of Utopian ideals, modernist design, flawed social engineering, and unintended racism that, over two decades, doomed a project meant to raise the city’s poorest out of their poverty. Using extensive research, archival footage, and interviews with the people who lived and grew up in Pruitt-Igoe (some of whom still harbor fond memories of the place), filmmaker Chad Freidrichs fills in the blanks in his incisive documentary, THE PRUITT-IGOE MYTH: AN URBAN HISTORY, which opens at New York’s IFC Center on January 20th.

Check out the trailer below.

Continue reading »]]> In the spirit of international cooperation comes INTRUDERS, a new film that kicks it old school in its tale about two children — a boy and a girl — in two, different countries who find themselves menaced by… ssssssomething… that visits them in the middle of the night with intentions that extend well beyond just tucking them in.

Clive Owen and Carice Van Houten star as the girl’s parents, Pilar Lopez De Ayala as the boy’s, and the project was helmed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, whose previous efforts include the well-regarded zombie sequel 28 WEEKS LATER. Hey, we’re just glad this isn’t another entry in the well-worn “found footage” genre — we’re so sick of wildly shaking cameras that we’ve started popping Dramamine before entering the theater.

The film’s opening in UK on the 27th and will be getting to the US in April. Meantime, get your creep on with the trailer below.

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Dream Come True: Emily Browning enters a strange world of erotic desire in SLEEPING BEAUTY.

Award-winning novelist Julia Leigh makes a hell of a directorial debut with her quiet fantasia, SLEEPING BEAUTY, the story of a young college student (Emily Browning) who becomes immersed in a strange world of desire when she signs on as employee of a service that drugs women and allows men — frequently much older — to do whatever they wish with the inert bodies (with the strict proviso that there be no penetration or damage).

Dark, provocative, erotic, the film inspires a multitude of responses, frequently within the same second of footage. And once you get past the tale’s elegant mise en scene and sensuous atmosphere, don’t be surprised to discover Leigh has posed some intriguing questions on love, death, and all the impulses that drive our species. Sex is 99% brain, after all.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Leigh.

SLEEPING BEAUTY
Trailer

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Official Website:
www.ifcfilms.com/films/sleeping-beauty

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Nowhere Near a Gilded Cage: Mikhail Khodorkovsky in custody in KHODORKOVSKY.

“World’s richest political prisoner,” now there’s a term you don’t hear much. And while OWS can make a case that there are select representatives of the 1% that deserve to see the inside of jail cell, in the case of Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, now serving time in his home country for charges of tax evasion and embezzlement (both trumped-up, in the opinion of many), the argument is not so clear.

In the new documentary, KHODORKOVSKY, filmmaker Cyril Tuschi incorporates interviews, stark, stylized animation, and his own personal journey to explore the story of a man who went from committed socialist to successful capitalist to political pariah. In the process, the film explores the paradoxes not just of Khodorkovsky’s own rise — a narrative that incorporates canny leveraging of a still-nascent financial system, a high-profile flaunting of his good fortune, and an ill-advised face-off with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin — but of a financial system that, in transitioning from communist to capitalist, wound up a Frankensteinian combination of both.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Tuschi.

KHODORKOVSKY
Trailer

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Official Website:
kinolorber.com/khodorkovsky

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A double agent was pivotal in the success of D-Day in GARBO THE SPY

Of all the film clips director Edmon Roch uses to compose his WW II documentary, GARBO THE SPY — and they include such eclectic sources as documentaries, dramas, both Allied and Nazi propaganda, and cartoons — the ones that he seems to rely on most come from Carol Reed’s OUR MAN IN HAVANA, the film where Alec Guinness snookers the British Secret Service by fabricating a network of Cuban-based spies under his control. Turns out that the story’s original author, Graham Greene, didn’t come up with that idea from whole cloth — during the war, a mysterious Spaniard operating in Great Britain was able to convince the Nazis that the D-day landing at Normandy was just a diversion for the actual invasion, all thanks to information provided by his own network of equally fictional informants.

GARBO THE SPY explores both the history of that spy, Juan Pujol Garcia — known to the Germans as Alaric, “Man of Trust,” and to the British as Garbo for his skill at assuming a convincing role — and how the story of his pivotal role in the war was uncovered by a group of journalists, writers, and scholars. Roch brings a wry outlook to the story — fitting, given Pujol’s rather unusual background — that turns this into an entertaining tale of high-stakes deception.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Roch.

GARBO THE SPY
Trailer

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OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
firstrunfeatures.com/garbothespy

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Cloudy with a Chance of Impending Doom: Michael Shannon tries to weather the storm in TAKE SHELTER.

Roland Emmerich can bite me. The guy’s been making disaster films since time can remember, yet for all his besetting humans with floods, fires, and earthquakes (and the occasional alien invasion), he’s never managed to make something as resonant, affecting, and powerful as TAKE SHELTER. A film that skirts the line between vivid fantasy and straight drama, it tells the tale of a loving, working-class husband and father (Michael Shannon) suddenly overwhelmed by visions of impending doom and torn between the compulsion to protect his wife (Jessica Chastain) and deaf daughter (Tova Stewart) from the onslaught and the fear that a family history of schizophrenia may be making itself manifest. This is director Jeff Nichols second feature (and his second with Shannon), and in weaving a scenario that balances vivid imagery with nuanced observation — and is highlighted by moving, vulnerable performances from Shannon and Chastain, among others –  the film speaks compellingly not only to the power of familial love, but to a sense of creeping helplessness that’s overtaking American society.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Nichols.

TAKE SHELTER
Trailer
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OFFICIAL WEBSITE
takeshelterfilm.com

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Ryan Gosling (right) in DRIVE.

Somehow, it seems like it was only a matter of time before director Nicolas Winding Refn hitched his camera to a hurtling piece of American metal and did a full-on car chase film. In DRIVE, Ryan Gosling plays a guy named… wait for it… Driver, a stunt man with a freelance career in piloting getaway cars and dreams of breaking into the racing world. That is, if his dedicated agent (Bryan Cranston) can swing the breaks, and he isn’t waylaid by gangsters Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks or distracted by his beautiful next-door neighbor (Carey Mulligan) and her young son. It’s Refn, so moral ambiguities will abound, not to mention some incredibly mounted chases and unrestrained violence. Sum total: Action goodness with both brains and balls. Fine, fine stuff.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Refn.

DRIVE
Trailer

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OFFICIAL WEBSITE: drive-movie.com

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Justice Does Not Sleep: The brutal crimes commited in 1982 are avenged in Pamela Yates' GRANITO: HOW TO NAIL A DICTATOR

Listen, there’s nothing particularly wrong with a documentary about the war between two Donkey Kong champions; it’s very good, actually (it’s KING OF KONG, in fact). It’s just that you have to admit that there’s a considerable span between that and a film that has a tangible effect in seeing a man responsible for genocide called to justice.

The one thing Pamela Yates knew while filming WHEN THE MOUNTAINS TREMBLE in 1982 was that she wanted to see the Guatemalan generals in charge of the slaughter of Mayan villagers punished for their crimes. It took over two decades, but when the legal team preparing the case against former dictator General Rios Montt were preparing their case for the international court, they turned to Yates and her hours of out-takes for evidence. GRANITO: HOW TO NAIL A DICTATOR is not only about Yates’ quest for the incriminating footage, but a personal recollection of her time shooting MOUNTAINS in 1982 and, ultimately, an examination of justice can only be served through the courage and determination of many hands. It may not give you insight into how to make it to the 22nd level, but it’s a heartening testament to the notion that, if people will it, monsters can ultimately be vanquished.

GRANITO: HOW TO NAIL A DICTATOR
Trailer

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OFFICIAL WEBSITE

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Steve James (with camera), Alex Kotlowitz (to James' right), and Zak Piper (with microphone) capture "violence interrupter" Ameena Matthews on the job for THE INTERRUPTERS.

In the movies, one man and one gun is all it takes to keep the peace. In reality, when you’re talking about the fear, anger, and frustration generated from poverty and exacerbated by drugs, territorial conflict, and just plain ego, a more empathetic approach is probably better.

In the new documentary, THE INTERRUPTERS, director Steve James (director, HOOP DREAMS) and producer Alex Kotlowitz (author, There are No Children Here) follow several members of CeaseFire — an organization that mobilizes “violence interrupters” to the streets of Chicago — as they attempt to defuse conflicts before they occur. With the intermediaries coming from the neighborhood streets themselves — and in some cases having served time for their own violent pasts — what James and Kotlowitz manage to capture is a powerful portrait of a populace struggling to rise to its better self through the mediums of reason and community.

Click on the player to hear my interview with James and Kotlowitz.

THE INTERRUPTERS
Trailer

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interrupters.kartemquin.com

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Hearts and Minds are the First Casualties: Joel Torre at the hands of the invading forces in AMIGO.

Director John Sayles is delving into history again, and this time it’s a little bit of American adventurism in the early twentieth century that’s frequently glossed over in the history books: the Philippine-American War. In AMIGO, Filipino actor Joel Torre plays Rafael, the mayor of a small village who’s forced to accommodate a troop of American soldiers, an act that puts him into deadly opposition with his brother (Ronnie Lazaro), the leader of a local guerrilla group fighting the invasion. As the Americans – prime amongst them an open-minded lieutenant (Garret Dillahunt) and a gung-ho colonel (Chris Cooper) – struggle both to attain tactical advantage in their battles while winning the civilian population over to their side, there are no few parallels to recent U.S. overseas history. In this case, though, we get to see the conflict through the eyes of the invaded, and learn how people trying just to live their lives can wind up in the center of a no-win situation.

Click on the player to hear my interview with John Sayles.

AMIGO
Trailer

amigomovie.com