SFF Selections 2015: "Little Men"

Little Men * * * *



     No one writes dialogue like Ira Sachs. A master of understanding the intricacies of human speech, his films observe conversations as though heard from life. Absent of exposition and theatricality, pregnant with sub-text, and brimming over with sentiments unsaid: his words are mine, yours, human. "My parents are married, they just don't live together." says a buoyantly authentic Brooklyn teen. "I don't understand..." responds his sensitive and artistic friend. And "neither do I." comes his pointed and vulnerable reply. These words ring so true because they honestly convey how kids, nay how people speak when un-masked and genuine before one other. The people who speak them are Jake and Tony, the simplistically and earnestly genuine titular Little Men of Sach's latest exploration of interaction in a world filled with those who scheme and posture behind complex defensive facades.

SFF Selections 2015: "Time Out Of Mind"

Time Out Of Mind * * ½

     Time Out Of Mind (Oscar-nominated writer/director Oren Moverman's third feature) doesn't tell a character's story, but instead simply watches one. The story Moverman observes isn't made up of a plot per say, but rather of little episodes that anyone could go out and see any day -which when strung together, form the chronology of a man's life. That man's name is George, and he is homeless. Observed through windows and reflections, in the midst of crowds and often not central to the camera's focus, George isn't even easily identified as primary through much of his onscreen placement during the film. As though apart of a moving game of "Where's Waldo?" played out on the tapestry of lives that is New York City: his conversations are obstructed by the sounds of others, pedestrians encroach on the audience's view of him, and the honks of horns and sirens of the city never cease to interrupt the words he speaks.

Oscars 2015 Winner's Profile: "GLORY"

BEST ORIGINAL SONG WINNER:
 *the song's title links to its YouTube video

   Glory -Selma

     Rarely does a film contain social truths and human insights that transcend the four corners of the cinema's frame to speak to the lives of all who bear witness to the events there within contained. Selma is such a film, and even more so a rarity in that it doesn't speak, but sings to its witnesses.

Golden Globes 2014: A Happy Globes! -Commentary & Predictions (Original Score)

     Tonight at 8 PM EST, NBC will air the HFPA's 72nd Golden Globe Awards! After skipping out on publishing anything over the course of last year's awards season, Rodney&Roger's annual Globes' prognostications make their triumphant return with this post. Per usual, this post's intent is not to list what or whom I think should have been nominated, but rather to provide commentary on what films and individuals have indeed been nominated and to pronounce what should win out of the existing pool.

SFF Selections 2014: "Lies I Told My Little Sister"

Lies I Told My Little Sister * ½

      Imagine Tracy Lett's Pulitzer-prize winning August, Osage County as produced by the "Lifetime" network. Imagine Violet Weston's cancer being over-sentimentalized with sap lines like, "Anything could happen to anybody at any moment...", "She wasn't cast iron, no one's cast iron!", and the classic, "Every heart has its graveyard." Imagine Violet and Barbara's wrestling match taking place in the sand at a beach (looking like the actresses were in fear of harming one another) and ending in one straddling the other as they giggle. Imagine a romance cropping up mid-way to ultimately provide the story's emotional climax and conclusive resolution after grief, family reconciliation, and personal growth had been established as the plot's core themes. Imagine all these things and you will have a pretty clear picture of what sitting through Lies I Told My Little Sister is like.

SFF Selections 2014: Richard Ayoade's "The Double"

The Double * * * ½

     IT Crowd actor turned film-maker Richard Ayoade turns in his second directorial effort on the heels of official SFF selection Submarine's success with his deadpan Dostoevsky-inspired The Double. Jesse Eisenberg's Simon is easily the least noticed man on the planet. Working at quite possibly the worst-lit office of all time doing nondescript clerical work (either Tim Burton or a '40s-era private-eye seem primed to pop out of a cubicle at any given moment), in one scene he looks at a photograph of company-head "The Colonel" and it's notable that there's actually a reflection in the frame's glass. His own mother can't even pick him out in a television ad for his company, asking, "Which one was you?" Befuddled at how to reply, Simon bumbles, "I'm me!"

SFF Selections 2014: "The Congress"

The Congress * * * ½

     Having meticulously replicated the Wright-brothers' flying machines, real actress Robin Wright's fictitious son of The Congress brags, "I build in the world of jet planes and space ships." He is a living master in a dying field. Less a master of her own skill-set due to the "lousy choices" her agent incessantly references, the Robin Wright of The Congress is also in a dying field: acting. In the first of two scenes in which Wright's agent Al addresses her with a monologue -the camera transfixed as her face reacts (like in Birth's timeless long take or the newly minted classic shot of Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years A Slave), Wright's eyes silently expel tears as Al (a world-weary Harvey Keitel) says that the studio has only one more last chance to offer. This last chance is "scanning": the studio systems assumption that all actors are driven by money rather than artistry.

SFF Selections 2014: "Mood Indigo" -All Style, No Substance

     Friday the 4th, Rory Kennedy's doc Last Days In Vietnam opened 2014's Sarasota Film Festival. Having skipped this year's opening night film, my interaction with this year's fest began last night at 6:00PM with the first of the 31 films/events that make up my itinerary. Up until this post's publishing, Rodney&Roger devotees may have noticed the blog's longest hiatus from regular postings in years...

From Wordy to Wordless, J.C. Chandor's Minimalist "All Is Lost"

All Is Lost * * *

     All Is Lost is a singular story, simple, told well, and in the present. It compounds a series of losses, all disastrous in their immediacy but salvage-able in their wake. As the poet Bishop wrote, "The art of losing isn't hard to master." Spare words and a plot transpiring entirely in the now characterize the film's every moment beyond the "8 days earlier" title screen that follows it's inconsistent antithetical out-of-sequence opening where Robert Redford's voice is heard reading a letter to his loved ones. Then the inciting incident where a cargo crate's rough corner slices open a hole in Redford's sailing vessel plays out in real time. He calmly anchors the crate to pry it out of the boat, deftly maneuvers the boat to lift its gouge above water, and expertly begins repairs with a glue compound and a paintbrush.

SFF Selections 2013: "Red Velvet" Review & My Interview With Director Aude Cuenod

Red Velvet * * * *

   

     With the popularity of film's like Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive or Christopher Nolan's... well anything, the "film-noir" is cinematically in vogue. A staple of all great noir conspicuously absent from many "neo-noirs" of late is the femme fatal: the beautiful, mysterious, powerful woman who lets noir's men think they hold a good set of cards when she in fact holds the whole deck. With DePalma-esque eroticism, Aude Cuenod's masterful genre short Red Velvet not only finds noir's seemingly lost femme fatale, but its small cast of essentially three is almost entirely made up of women (subverting the genre's archaic gender dynamics in much the same way the Wachowski's Bound did).

SFF Selections 2013: My Interview With Chloe Domont, The "Joyful Girl"

     Sunday sadly concluded the 15th annual Sarasota Film Festival; I watched 31 films, attended 32 screenings, and basked in the numerically immeasurable joy of cinema over the course of its 9 days. Perhaps it was just due to my personal schedule of films, but this year's festival screenings seemed to bring with them more film-makers than ever before. I had the privilege to hear from and even meet multiple directors, producers, writers, actors, and even composers after many film's screenings. Shamelessly promoting this blog, I handed each and every film-maker whose work I admired Rodney&Roger's business card in hopes of procuring interviews. Tonight, before posting my Day 3 Pt. 3 review of Still Mine, I'd like to share the first of said procured interviews (there are plenty more to come!) that I had the privilege to conduct through email with the short film Joyful Girl's writer/director, Chloe Domont:

Joyful Girl * * * ½

SFF 2013 Day 3 Pt. 2: "Nothing Without You"

Nothing Without You * * *

     Director Xackery Irving's suspenseful Nothing Without You transfuses an amalgamation of genre archetypes together to make something new and fresh. Charged with the erotic tension of Fatal Attraction and Wicker Park, seen through the inconsistent perspective of an unstable narrator such as those in neo-noirs like Memento or Shutter Island, and with a pace like Following's that never quits, Nothing Without You is an independently made thriller that bests many of its Hollywood contemporaries.

SFF 2013 Day 3 Pt. 1: Period Pieces and the Problems of Pacing and Passion -"In The Fog" & "Therese Desqueyroux"

     On Sunday, Day 3 of the festival, I saw four different films. My busiest day to date, I was especially looking forward to its last two movies. Period pieces with good production values, they each seemed ripe contenders to be some of the best films of the festival. But my first two ended up surprising me -both turning out to be rather good (and after introducing myself, I slipped Nothing Without You's award-winning director my card... so hopefully my posting of an email interview will be forthcoming). Unfortunately my final two disappointed though. They communally suffered from problems of pacing and a lack of passion (I thankfully got my "period film" fix though with last night's superb Renoir) . The first of the final two (In The Fog) was so slow in fact that after it ended I turned to my friend Jillian and joked, "I can't keep up with these fast paced action thrillers!" to which she retorted, "It was like Mission Impossible in [Russia]!". This morning I'll post my reviews on Sunday's back two, but keep an eye out for the soon-to-come reviews of my earlier Day 3 films: Nothing Without You and Still Mine.

In The Fog * *

SFF 2013 Day 2 Pt.2: "Reality"

Reality * * * ½

     When Sidney Lumet's Network 
was released in 1976, it was an indictment on how television had abandoned any notion of integrity in favor of panning to the masses. Thirty-seven years later, Matteo Garrone's Reality depicts a man panning to television. In Garrone's film, man's wants don't determine what's on TV, TV determines what man wants. The opening aerial shot slowly descends to the tune of Reality's whimsical score, transforming into a surreal tracking shot of a horse-drawn carriage in modern-day Italy as it enters through palatial gates to arrive at an obscene wedding, where, in the same continuous and unbroken take, the audience is given a tour through a bizarrely beautiful cotton-candy-colored dream of sights, sounds, and characters. This long-shot where the camera seemingly wanders through the party to establish the film's characters is reminiscent of scenes from I Am Love, The Leopard, and even Coppola's The Godfather. In the camera's initial descent, it sees cars on the road before it sees the carriage -establishing a modern setting that is confused by the inclusion of horses and Victorian attire, causing the audience to wonder on the film's title: What defines "reality"? Time? Attire? Signs of the familiar?

SFF 2013 Day 2 Pt. 1: How Not To Make A Documentary -"Which Way Is The Front Line From Here" & "More Than Honey"

     And so the waiting in line has begun! Today marked the first full day of programming at this year's Sarasota Film Festival and along with the movies, it brought with it one of my favorite aspects of the festival: the great conversations that spring up while waiting in line. This year I got proactive in the proselytization of this blog and actually had business cards printed (they seemed a better option than last year's habit of constantly scribbling down the URL on scrap paper for anyone I talked to). In fact if you are reading this now, then there is a great chance I handed you one of these in line.

Rodney&Roger's Official Business Card

SFF 2013 Day 1: Opening Night, "Blackfish", In The Shadow of Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert 1942-2013

     Yesterday the sun rose over a day that would open the 2013 Sarasota Film Festival and the first in 70 years that wouldn't greet Roger Ebert. As many of you know, Roger passed Thursday afternoon. He announced two days prior (on the 46th anniversary of his hire date as the film-critic for the Chicago Sun-Times) that the fracture which had caused him problems since before Christmas was revealed to be a cancer. He left this world with the love of his life, Chaz, right by his side. Her beautiful words can be read HERE. Blog-readers, I was truly heartbroken by the news.

Rodney's 2012 Oscar Wishlist (Part IV) -Music & All The Rest...

     Attentive blog-readers may have noticed a difference in blog-output between this February and last. Where last year's Oscar Wishlist was paced out through the whole month and culminated in my final post for Best Picture on the day of the Oscars, this year's list has been back-loaded and slower to role out for one primary reason: The Oscar Nominated Shorts. After seeing them, I knew I wanted to review them and include them in the Wishlist. And although I'm proud of my comprehensive reviews for each short... they took too much time away from the rest of the Wishlist. So what now?

     Not to worry blog-readers! Though I don't and won't have time for my usual commentary and spattering of photos for each of my Wishlist nominees, today I'll post my Oscar Wishlists for all of the remaining categories. Just as I posted last year, remember "The appropriate amount of nominees will not necessarily be listed for each category. This post isn't my way of filling out my own awards ballot, but rather my way of listing what each category is incomplete without.". Also, there are a multitude of awards-worthy potential nominees that didn't make Oscar's list and I won't include on mine as "must-haves", but that doesn't negate their quality. So just because something doesn't make the list does not necessarily mean that I didn't see it as "awards-worthy" or "quality". And with all that said, here is the remainder of Rodney's 2012 Oscar Wishlist and happy Oscar-watching everyone (ABC at 7:00 PM EST)!

ORIGINAL SONG:

   *Each song's title is linked to its YouTube Video.

       Freedom -Django Unchained
       Who Did That To You -Django Unchained
       Suddenly -Les Miserables
       Pi's Lullaby -Life of Pi
       Skyfall -Skyfall

 

WINNER: Skyfall -Skyfall

Rodney's 2012 Oscar Wishlist (Part III) -The Tech. & Other Miscellaneous Categories

     It was recently mentioned to me by a blog-reader that last year's Oscar Wishlist, although it included all of the major categories, was not comprehensive in that it left out my picks for the technical awards and a few of the miscellaneous categories. So this year I will make my list exhaustive and give my choices for the winners (commentary-free and sans a full nominee list) in ALL categories. And so I give you all my picks (not influenced by and untethered from the constraints of any of the actual nominees) before I post my full nominee wishlists in the writing, music, acting, directing, and finally the Best Picture categories!:

Rodney's 2012 Oscar Wishlist (Part II) -The Oscar Nominated Shorts (Live Action)

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT:

     Asad

     Children made to work, fight, or commit atrocities have been the topic of multiple films of late(Blood Diamond for example). Somalian pirates have been the stuff of recent headlines and news stories around the world. Asad capitalizes on these news and film trends with its story of Asad, a young Somalian boy who lacks no interest in the sea, but rather skill for fishing its depths.

Rodney's 2012 Oscar Wishlist (Part I) -The Oscar Nominated Shorts (Animation)

     Good day faithful blog-readers, you are reading Post #1 of my Second Annual Oscar Wishlist. As those of you who read last year’s list know: most individuals have some sort of Christmas Wishlist (of what they would get in an ideal world where they could have anything they wanted) or even a Fantasy Football Wishlist (made up of all their favorite players regardless of team affiliation), but not I; I have an Oscar Wishlist –a list of who and what should be nominated based solely on the truth  and caliber of the work, a list uninterested in Hollywood’s awards' season politics, a list of the lineup of nominees that Seth McFarlane and Emma Stone should have announced that early Thursday morning, and a list of the names and films that should be called the night of the 24th (Oscar night) in the Kodak theater. This year has marked a return to epic, brave, and daring (albeit not always 100% successful) studio film-making, and thus this year’s list includes a greater number of studio-generated films than last year’s indie-heavy selection. Also this year’s Wishlist includes a higher percentage of actual nominees than it did last year (the Academy got a lot more right in 2013 than in 2012).