Tuesday, April 11, 2017
Friday, May 15, 2015
FILM REVIEW: GOOD KILL
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Major Tom Egan (Ethan Hawke) in Good Kill. |
By Ed Rampell
In 2013 this reporter interviewed CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin, author of Drone Warfare, Killing by Remote Control, who asserted: “There were between 46 and 52 drone strikes under the Bush administration. And now there are over 400 -- that’s not counting Afghanistan.
Now a feature film has been made with major Hollywood talents dramatizing the dubious Unmanned Aerial Vehicle program and the controversies surrounding it. New Zealand writer-director-producer Andrew Niccol’s Good Kill is a hard hitting, thought provoking movie exposing and opposing drone warfare in Afghanistan and Yemen. Fresh from his Oscar-nominated role in Boyhood, Ethan Hawke portrays pilot Major Tom Egan, who, after repeat combat tours flying over the Iraq and Afghan theaters of conflict, is now stationed outside of Las Vegas, where he is deeply conflicted by his role in the UAV liquidation-by-remote-control project.
From the relative comfort of an air conditioned trailer in a military base at the Nevada desert the droners wreak Hellfire havoc on targets in deserts half a world away. The fetching if kvetching Zoe Kravitz (Mad Max: Fury Road, Insurgent, X Men: First Class), daughter of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet, plays fiery Vera Suarez, a Latina Air Force officer who has qualms after she joins the UAV team at the Nevada air base.
What Suarez bellyaches about are the moral implications (or lack of) of droning, which according to the movie (and Medea) is an imprecise method of murder which inevitably results in “collateral damage” -- including the deaths of unarmed civilians, among them, alas, children, women and the aged. According to the film, this killing of casualties, whose only crimes are being at the wrong places at the wrong times, is acceptable to the CIA. You know, that U.S. organization (your tax dollars at work, my Fellow Americans!) that LBJ called “Murder Incorporated” (hey, it takes one mass murderer to know another!), which has overthrown democratically-elected governments from Iran to Guatemala to Chile, etc., tortured more dissidents than the Spanish Inquisition, and so on.
Suarez denounces the CIA-directed droning of non-combatants, as U.S. "terrorism" and a "factory creating terrorists," because of the widespread anger and blowback these killings provoke and spread. During one testy trailer exchange with her commanding officer, Lt. Colonel Jack Johns (Bruce Greenwood) Suarez cheekily asks: “Was that a war crime, Sir?” To which Johns replies: “Shut the fuck up, Suarez!”
His conscience troubled, Major Egan can no longer “keep compartmentalizing,” as Lt. Colonel Johns advises. He has a drinking problem and his marriage to Molly (January Jones) is, like his liquor, on the rocks. Like Jeremy Renner’s lead character in 2010’s Best Picture Oscar winner, The Hurt Locker (co-produced by Nicolas Chartier and Zev Forman, who also co-produced the far superior war film, Good Kill), Egan has difficulty making the transition from the combat zone to the home front, although he is still at war, “taking potshots” at people across the globe being surveilled by remotely piloted aircraft with their lethal payloads.
But unlike The Hurt Locker’s PTSD-ed, traumatized psychopath, Egan finds a path back to his sanity. It’s a similar route blazed by veterans such as the courageous Ron Kovic, whom Tom Cruise depicted in Oliver Stone’s 1989 anti-war classic, Born on the Fourth of July: Taking a stand against orders to shoot Hellfire missiles from a drone at civilians.
Meanwhile, the gung ho Specialist Zimmer (Jake Abel) is the troop’s trailer trash, who represents the jingoistic dregs of military madness. Zim derides Suarez as “Jane Fonda” and quips about putting “warheads on foreheads.”
Perhaps Zim is one of the “gamers” whom the Pentagon recruits for its UAV program, which appears to play out like a videogame (albeit one with extraordinarily high stakes involving life and death). The Las Vegas vibe and backdrop enhances the sense of the inherently risky nature of drone warfare. Good Kill’s aerial footage, apparently shot in Morocco, has the look and feel of a videogame as it simulates what the Nevada-based airmen-turned-chairmen see on their computer screens as these not-so-Big Brothers watch Afghans and Yemenis from seats in their air conned trailer. This cinematic technique has a Brechtian alienation feel, as it distances film viewers from the actions, and Good Kill’s combat isn’t as viscerally exciting as that depicted in more conventional, pro-war flicks, like American Sniper or John Wayne’s Sands of Iwo Jima.
But that’s because Good Kill is an anti-war work of art that wants audiences to use logic and reason, not just emotion, when assessing the story onscreen.
Monday, May 4, 2015
SEEFEST 2015: OPENING NIGHT WITH JAPANESE DOG
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| Costache (Victor Rebengiuc) in Japanese Dog. |
By Ed Rampell
From April 30 through May 7, the 10th annual South East European Film Festival is putting features, shorts, animation and documentaries that are primarily shot and/or set in Southeastern Europe in the limelight. As such, SEEFest provides a beachhead for cinema from this part of the world, giving foreign films entrée to moviedom’s world capital, Hollywood. It also presents avid filmgoers undaunted by subtitles with the opportunity to view works they may not otherwise get the opportunity to see, especially on the big screen. In addition to screenings at several L.A. venues , SEEFest co-presented its 7th Annual Business of Film Conference, “Connecting South East Europe and Hollywood,” on May 2 at the Goethe-Institut, which, among other things, dealt with the complex issue of distribution in the lucrative, if insular, U.S. marketplace, followed by a networking luncheon.
The April 30th gala at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills was well-attended by filmmakers, moviegoers and dignitaries, such as a representative of the L.A. City Council and the Swiss Consul-General, Jean-Francois Lichtenstern. The office of L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and L.A. City Council presented proclamations expressing appreciation to SEEFest and its artistic director, Vera Mijojlic, plus to actor-dancer George Chakiris, who scored a Best Actor Oscar for 1961’s West Side Story. Mijojlic also presented Chakiris, who is of Greek ancestry, with SEEFest’s inaugural Legacy Award. 82-year-old Romanian actor Victor Rebengiuc was given SEEFest’s inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award in absentia.
However, Tudor Cristian Jurgiu flew to L.A. for SEEFest, accepting the award on behalf of Rebengiuc. Their film, the oddly named The Japanese Dog, then kicked off the Festival’s screenings, followed by a Q&A with Jurgiu conducted on the stage of the Writers Guild Theater by Mijojlic, along with questions from the audience, which then enjoyed a feast of Eastern European cuisine in the lobby festooned with posters of classic movies, many of them with texts in various languages.
No Reservoir Dogs, The Japanese Dog could also be entitled “The Anti-Avengers Film.” Typical Tinseltown escapist mass entertainment equates drama with action -- the more violent, the more “dramatic”, rendered through head spinning rapid cutting by no talent, harebrained sociopathic dimwits like Michael Bay appears to be. Of course, this is an expression of a sick society suffused with and suffocating in violence, where youths get their necks broken for the new thought crime of “looking while black”; the national pastime is a sport causing concussions, brain damage, etc.; and far away countries get shocked, awed, droned and attacked at the drop of a hat. Hollywood’s over-reliance on violence to peddle tickets is also a reflection of extremely bad writing by screenwriters incapable of subtlety and expressing conflict without bombardments, AK-47s, vehicular homicide, ad nauseam.
These screenwriters, directors, producers, et al, are unable to express deep human truths, whereas films such as the enigmatically named The Japanese Dog do, represent the drama of everyday life -- all without a single, solitary screeching car chase, explosion, shooting and the like. (There is, however, a sort of robot -- so maybe there’s hope for transforming Bay after all?)
The protagonist of The Japanese Dog is the antithesis of the Hollywood hero -- 80-year-old widower Costache (Rebengiuc) lives alone in a flood ravaged, dirt poor Romanian village. Costache’s estranged son, Ticu (Serban Pavlu), who has emigrated overseas, returns to Romania, along with his foreign wife, Hiroku (Kana Hashimoto), and their young son, Koji (Toma Hashimoto).
Costache and Ticu are faced with the conflict of resolving their estrangement and reestablishing that Turgenev-ian relationship between fathers and sons. And Costache must decide whether familial or national bonds are more important to him.
By La-La-Land escapist standards, Romania's latest Oscar-entry for Best Film in a Foreign Language (it did not make the cut) is excruciatingly slow moving (a pejorative in Hollywood), thoughtful and always deeply human, with heartfelt acting by an Eastern European master and the supporting cast. But Jurgiu’s 85-minute directorial debut feature has more humanity than all those dreadful Transformers movies put together. And The Japanese Dog does it without firing a single shot. Imagine that!
As for why this Romanian movie is mysteriously named The Japanese Dog -- well, you’ll just have to see it yourself, Dear Reader. And thanks to SEEFest, American audiences got that opportunity -- as well as a shot at breaking into the American movie market. It may not be as action-packed as Marvel’s The Avengers, but The Japanese Dog is marvelous in its own way.
The 2015 South East European Film Festival takes place through May 7 with works from Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Moldova, Montenegro, Turkey, Kosovo, Georgia, Germany, Macedonia, Spain, Albania, France, USA, Denmark, Italy, Bosnia Herzegovina, Belgium, Greece, Azerbaijan, etc. These screenings mark the North American and/or West Coast premieres for many of the works. For more info see: seefilmla.org.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
LAAPFF 2015: MARGARITA, WITH A STRAW
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| Laila (Kalki Koechlin) in Margarita, With a Straw. |
Drink up at LAAPFF Closing Night
By Miranda Inganni
It’s not often that a movie depicts a female protagonist exploring her love the way she wants to and learning what she wants from life. We do not usually see women in charge of their own love agency portrayed in a positive manner. Fortunately, that just what happens in director Shonali Bose’s film, Margarita, With a Straw.
Laila (Kalki Koechlin) loves her friends at Delhi University and the band for which she writes lyrics and composes. Sadly, she loves the lead singer, Nima (Tenzing Dalha), more than he loves her. When her feelings are rebuffed, the shame of rejection is too much for her to return to classes. Fortunately, a scholarship and acceptance letter from New York University arrives and she soon has other plans for her higher education.
Leaving her middle class Delhi neighborhood, Laila and her mother (Revathi) head to New York where Laila goes about settling into her new collegiate life, under her mother’s watchful, but trusting eye. Laila’s broken heart is soon mended, or at least distracted, when she meets Jared (William Moseley), a blond Brit assigned to help her with her classwork. She also meets activist Khanum (Sayani Gupta), who happens to be blind, at a local protest and the two become fast friends. The two young woman quickly become more than friends and explore their new home city -- and each other’s bodies -- with cautious excitement.
Did I mention that Laila is wheelchair-bound due to her Cerebral Palsy? If not, it is because Laila does not allow herself to be restricted. She does not see herself as someone “less” than an able-bodied person, and rightfully so. Unfortunately, not everyone else feels the same way.
The color palate utilized in Margarita, With a Straw heightens both the sensuality and the sweetness of the movie and the acting is fantastic. The family dynamic between Laila and her mother is wonderfully touching. Though the ending feels a bit rushed (especially considering the pacing of the first act), Bose does a lovely job hitting the right notes and not pandering to stereotypes or social “norms.” Laila falters and fumbles through her love awakening, just like every other young woman learning to love herself.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
NBFF 2015: ART HOUSE
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The Wharton Esherick House in Art House. |
By Miranda Inganni
Many artists strive to construct a safe and stimulating space in which they can freely create. Director Don Freeman captures nearly a dozen of such places in his film, Art House.
Based on the book Artist’s Handmade Houses by Michael Gotkin, Freeman travels through the US -- and through the past 100 or so years -- documenting places like Byrdclife Arts Colony in New York (the oldest arts colony in the States), to Eliphante, Michael Khan and Leda Livant’s home built over the course of nearly 30 years in Cornville, Arizona. Some of these residences have been lovingly preserved and/or are still being used as workshops. Meanwhile others, like the Wharton Esherick Museum in Pensylvania with its seemingly living staircase, have been converted into museums. Whether open to the public or gifted with National Historic Landmark status, Art Housegives viewers a glimpse into these infrequently-viewed locales.
Freeman uses vintage photographs throughout, as well as interviews with surviving relatives or disciples of the artists and commentary by writer Alastair Gordon. So many of these artists were looking to bring other artists back to nature and to integrate nature into everyday life. And so many of their abodes seem to do just that very successfully!
Unfortunately, the music is a distraction to the images more often than not, and the cross fades from one still shot to the next happen too quickly for the viewer to fully realize what object or scene she or he is seeing.
As Gordon states in the beginning of the film, “It’s about making a perfect life.” Exploring these eleven dwellings all in one film, despite its distractions, allows one to imagine for a moment that perfection each of the designers were trying to create.
Art House screens at the Newport Beach Film Festival April 29, 5 p.m., Edwards Big Newport. For more information: Art House.
Monday, April 27, 2015
FILM REVIEW: TALES OF THE GRIM SLEEPER
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Lonnie David Franklin Jr. in Tales of the Grim Sleeper. |
By John Esther
In the latest documentary by Nick Broomfield (Kurt & Courtney; Biggie & Tupac; the Aileen Wuornos docs), grave injustices against poor African-American women of South Los Angeles -- from within the community and those sworn to protect them -- are revealed in depth.
Between 1985-2007 at least 10 African-American females between the ages of 15-36 were murdered. Arrested in 2010 and yet to see trial, their alleged killer is Lonnie David Franklin Jr., of 81st Street, Los Angeles. Most of them, if not all of them, were likely raped and tortured before their deaths. A repeated felon, Franklin never supplied his DNA so there was no way to link him to the victims.
Beyond waiting for the matching data "and the murder weapon to come walking into a police precinct" the LAPD and Sheriff's office barely lifted an investigative finger to catch a serial killer. There were opportunites to catch the man. Instead the murders continued.
Perhaps because the victims were "NHI" poor, black women, the local law enforcement did not see serial killing in the community as an urgency. It certainly was not a priority for over two decades. If people of the community suspected anything (even the ones violently victimized) they did not see informing the authorities as a viable option (certainly not a pleasent one).
The disconnect between the LAPD and the poor black community of South Los Angeles is a staggering disgrace to the city.
In fact, law enforcement never really paid attention to the multiple murders until Christine Pelisek broke the story in the LA Weekly. Members of the community had formed the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders back in the 1980s to address these crimes yet their pleas fell on indifferent ears in law enforcement and in the media.
(Law enforcement even borrowed the moniker "Grim Sleeper" from the LA Weekly article, thus displaying their decades-long indifference.)
Some of the family's victims did not find out about the fate of their loved ones until years later.
It also does not help matters when too many male members of the community who take the serial killing anything less than dead serious. At least three of Franklin's aquaintances get a chuckle out of Franklin's alleged crimes. There was also this photo exchanging business going on where women are used as photo props -- a sort of simulcrum of possession.
By going into the community and talking to family, friends, foes, victims and advocates of Franklin, Broomfield's excellent documentary reveals how violence toward poor black women works in collusion between the personal and the political silence of members in the community who see the degradation of women as acceptable and the law enforcement and city hall officials who act as if it were permissible.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
LAAPFF 2015: HOW TO WIN CHECKERS (EVERY TIME)
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Oat (Ingkarat Damrongsakkul) and Ek (Thira Chutikul) in How to Win Checkers (Every Time). |
By Miranda Inganni
Oat (Ingkarat Damrongsakkul), an 11-year-old living in poverty, idolizes his older brother, Ek (Thira Chutikul), in the coming-of-age morality tale, How to Win at Checkers (Every Time), from director Josh Kim.Having lost both parents, Oat and Ek have an especially close relationship, which is threatened when Ek must participate in the Thai military conscription lottery. Ek’s boyfriend, Jai (Arthur Navarat), must also take his chances with the lottery. But as Oat will eventually discover, having a wealthy family gives Jai the unfair advantage of bribing his way out of having to serve his country. Wanting to secure his brother’s safety and keep him at the modest home they share with their Aunt (Vatanya Thamdee) where Ek is the primary breadwinner, Oat turns to crime.
After Oat finally outsmarts his big bro at a game of checkers, Ek decides it time to take Oat out. Heading to Café Lovely, where Ek works as an escort, Oat is finally exposed to Ek’s seedier side, including prostitution and a nasty drug habit. Oat learns quickly that this is not the path he wants to take and begins taking whatever measures are necessary to ensure that he will not follow in his brother’s footsteps.
Based on short stories by Rattawut Lapcharoeensap and set in the outskirts of Bangkok, the moral of How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) seems to be that one should do whatever it takes to win, even if it means someone else has to lose.
The sweet relationship between Oat and his brother -- and that between Ek and Jai -- lends the film a familiarity and sweetness in this otherwise grim and gritty feature.
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