LAAPFF 2015: MARGARITA, WITH A STRAW By: Faiz No comments

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.

NBFF 2015: ART HOUSE By: Faiz No comments

The Wharton Esherick House in Art House.

Space by de/sign

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.

 

 

 

NBFF 2015: REPARATION By: Faiz No comments

 

Bob (Marc Menchaca) and Lucy (Virginia Newcomb) in Reparation.

Charlotte sometimes dreams

By Miranda Inganni

Bob (Marc Menchaca) has recently found his way out of a military mental hospital, partially thanks to a young boy, Ralph (Brody Behr), his imaginary friend and initially constant companion. Having forgotten the last three years of his life, Bob wanders through farms and vales. During his first job, he meets Lucy (Virginia Newcomb), a free-spirited gal whose favorite treatment for anything uncomfortable and/or unfamiliar is to yell at the problem and then quickly hush it away. Suppression at its best!

Speaking of suppressed, Bob and Lucy hit it off, but not without completely ignoring the fact that they never bother to share any personal information about themselves to each other. Eventually, they settle down in a quaint farming town where they raise their daughter, Charlotte (Dale Dye Thomas). Their idyllic life is irreparably interrupted when Jerome (John Huertas) shows up claiming to be Bob’s best friend from their Air Force days where they were Security Police. This unexpected and uninvited guest throws the family off-kilter. Bob’s forgotten memories begin to appear in Charlotte’s nightmares. Charlotte in turn expertly sketches the images which jolt Bob’s amnesia.

So, is it better or healthier to sometimes let sleeping dogs lie? Should one risk physical and/or mental trauma from recalling what one’s own brain has blocked one from remembering out of self-preservation? While the concept of daughter assuming father’s horrific memories utilized in Reparation is an interesting one, the movie never attempts to ask why Charlotte might be the receptacle for Bob’s repressed thoughts. What DNA trickery is this?

Although the dialogue could be stronger in certain places, Reparation does a nice job of building suspense and the script, co-written by director Kyle Ham and Steve Timm, includes a few refreshingly unexpected twists and turns, albeit not necessarily coming to a satisfying conclusion.


Reparation screens at the Newport Beach Film Festival April 30, 8 p.m., Regency South Coast Village. For more information: Reparation.

LAAPFF 2015: THE CHINESE MAYOR By: Faiz No comments

A scene from The Chinese Mayor.

A different cultural revolution

By Miranda Inganni

Geng Yanbo, the newly-elected mayor of Datong, China wants to transform the city into a tourist-attracting cultural center. Datong, the most polluted city in China, thanks to its coal mining history, has a massive ancient city wall that Geng envisions containing museums and meeting spaces. The problem is that at least 30 percent of the residents of Datong, many of them poor and their housing illegal, live around that city wall. These residents must be relocated and their dwellings demolished in order for Geng’s reconstruction of the city to take place.

Despite the fact that demolition and construction are very slow and behind schedule, the government wants the residents out. But there is no place for many of them to go. People who cannot afford to move are told that they can apply for low-rent housing, but they know the reality is that there is a long waiting period. Some residents protest by simply not leaving their abodes or by blocking the heavy machinery. A few residents who refuse to move face forcible demolition and threaten suicide.

We follow Geng, in Zhou Hao’s The Chinese Mayor, as he inspects the progress of destruction and construction throughout the city, as he attends meetings in his official capacity, and as he is scolded by his wife who thinks he is working himself to death. He appears tough when he deals with contractors who have put in sub-par paving, taken other shortcuts or are not performing their jobs to his satisfaction. But when the affected residents appeal directly to Geng, he is sympathetic and tries to right the wrongs -- helping folks find housing, ensuring the children of rural residents who gave up their farmland for development have access to the city schools, and even trying to move a woman from her 6^th floor apartment to one on the ground floor as she can no longer walk up the stairs (what the hell happened to the elevator anyway?).

Geng wants to leave the reinvented and revitalized Datong as his legacy. Will he be able to oversee all of the construction through to completion before his mayoral term is up? Is he simply a megalomaniac bankrupting a city for his own status? Director Zhou does a masterful job of not getting in the way of the story. Clearly the residents are the one’s suffering in this scenario, but Geng is not without sympathetic sensibilities. He believes so strongly in “cultural industry” that even if he cannot bring his vision to fruition in Datong, the viewer gets the sense that that will not stop him. He will give this city, or any other, his masterful cultural makeover. Even if it kills him.

The Chinese Mayor screens at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival April 26, 4 p.m., CGV Cinemas. For more information: Mayor.

 

SXSW 2015: CREATIVE CONTROL By: Faiz No comments

David (Benjamin Dickinson) in Creative Control.

I see hipster doom

By Miranda Inganni

Director Benjamin Dickinson’s slickly styled Creative Control is, at its heart, an old fashioned love story set in the near future Brooklyn, New York; but it is also a cautionary tale about our dependence on technology.

Ad exec David (Dickinson) has been given the chance to play around with a new high-tech product, Augmenta. It’s a virtual reality platform that his company is trying to figure out how best to sell to the masses. David must perform! Added to the pressure David is experiencing at work, he is also going through a rough patch with his live-in girlfriend, Juliette (Nora Zehetner). David finds inspiration in the form of Sophie (Alexia Rasmussen), the girlfriend of his best pal, Wim (Dan Gill). As he spends more and more time with “Sophie,” thanks to the technology of the Augmenta glasses, David withdraws from the rest of his life.

Creative Controlis quite impressive to watch. It is beautifully shot by Adam Newport-Berra in black and white, with just a hint of color here and there. The technology depicted in the film is believable and the special effects are never a distraction. And there is an excellent vomit scene.

However, the four lead characters come across as somewhat boring hipsters for whom it is hard to care. David is bored in the bedroom, so he crushes on another woman. Juliette is frustrated with David, so she practices yoga with another man (Paul Manza). Wim is a self-absorbed philanderer, who only decides to commit to Sophie when he thinks he might lose her. Sophie…well, Sophie is just kind of dull. She is very pretty and stylish, but she doesn’t really do anything.

Winner of the Visual Excellence Award at SXSW, Creative Control is a pleasure to watch and a decent story (co-written by Dickinson and Micah Bloomberg). While mine may not be the popular opinion, I find the characters not quite fleshed out enough. This is apt considering David’s retreat to spend time with his virtual reality love toy. When the people around you don’t feel fully formed, perhaps all you can do is create your own special friend.

SXSW 2015: BIKES VS. CARS By: Faiz No comments

A scene from Bikes vs. Cars.

Roads to ruin or rejection

By Miranda Inganni

Director Fredrik Gertten’s latest documentary, Bikes vs Cars, travels to various cities around the world to examine the issues and some of the causes surrounding the titular feud. In Sao Paulo, Brazil we meet Aline Cavalcante, a bike activist, who wonders why the city’s public transportation is so expensive and terrible, and if the city really has the worst traffic jams in the world. Another city vying for that unfortunate award is Los Angeles, CA, where Dan Koeppel is trying to make a difference for bike riders, while delving into the city’s history and exposing the ugly truth about the ever expanding freeway system.

These two cities used to have fantastic infrastructure for bicycling enthusiasts, but now they stink (literally and figuratively) thanks to the oil, construction and auto industries. The car-centric cultures that these industries have created, have stripped away bikes lanes, increasing the risks bicyclist face each time they ride.

The facts are terrifying. From how often bicyclists are killed in various cities, to the amount of people suffering from air pollution around the world, to the expected increase in automobile sales in the next five years (double what it is today). But people love their cars. There is, of course, the socioeconomic status that car ownership bestows upon the driver. But why cannot the same be afforded to lovers of the environmentally friendly bicycle? And beyond the bourgeois status of car ownership, what is the point of being able to buy a car if all you can do is sit in traffic?

However, there is some good news beyond the smog. As exemplified in Copenhagen, Denmark and The Netherlands, biking in a big city can work! And everyone breathes a little better because of it.

A call to action, Bikes vs. Cars is not so much about two wheels vs. four wheels, per se, the real battle here is between the status quo versus the possibility of a better future.

SXSW 2015: A WOMAN LIKE ME By: Faiz 1 comment

A scene from A Woman Like Me.

Alternative reality

By Miranda Inganni

In 2011 director Alex Sichel (All Over Me) was informed she had a terminal disease. As a way of facing her fears and processing the information, she, along with A Woman Like Me co-director Elizabeth Giamatti, decided to make a film about a woman who is given the same prognosis. She also decided to direct a documentary about her life post-diagnosis, including the making of the movie. It’s not exactly a movie-within-a-movie, or a movie about a movie, but rather a hybrid thereof.

As Sichel described it when she got her diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer, she felt like she was watching a movie about a woman with cancer. And so she set about making that movie with (the fantastic) Lili Taylor playing the lead role of Anna Seashell in hopes that Anna’s reactions would be more optimistic that Sichel’s real life ones. The movie gives Sichel the chance to control the outcome: direct the disease or redo “scenes” that she thought she should have performed differently in real life. Sichel practices her reactions to the grim news (even her own death scene) and gets a chance to recreate chapters from her life via Anna. But both the fictionalized character’s life and the life Sichel presents in the documentary are manipulated by Sichel and at times A Woman Like Me feels selfish. But it also feels tender.  (I cannot imagine making a movie, let alone while undergoing cancer treatments and reconciling one’s own end of life.

Sichel’s life in A Woman Like Me is hectic with her family. Erich, her husband, and Anastasia, her daughter, are both featured heavily, as are other family members. She undergoes holistic treatments and explores non-Western ways of dealing with the disease, exploring a “Buddhist experience of cancer.”  She coaches Taylor through scenes and rehearsals. Faced with a death that she knows will come too soon, Sichel often presents a surprisingly upbeat persona in A Woman Like Me, her legacy.

FILM REVIEW: THE LIFE AND MIND OF MARK DEFRIEST By: Faiz No comments

A scene from The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest.

The thin screwed line

By Miranda Inganni

When Mark DeFriest was on the verge of adulthood, his father unexpectedly died. In response, DeFriest ran off with his father's tools (which his dad had willed him) while the will was still in probate and his stepmother called the cops and pressed charges against DeFriest. He was sentenced to four years in prison for theft. A lifetime later, DeFriest still sits in prison.

While he initially was sent to jail for taking his father's tools, DeFriest's ability to escape has kept him there for a long time. Stating that, "Nobody here has a sense of humor," DeFriest breaks out (the first of many times) of the first prison in which he is serving time. However, his survival skills combined with raw ingenuity and hotwiring ability allow him to elude the cops for only so long.

Back in prison, this time he is given a psychological evaluation and deemed incompetent. DeFriest is sent to Florida State Hospital's mental ward.

After an initial unsuccessful escape attempt from the hospital involving spiking the staff's coffee with hallucinogens (told with comedic effect), DeFriest manages to break free. Again, he is caught and sent to Bay County Jail. Undettered, each time DeFriest is imprisoned he reacts with an almost animalistic urge to escape.

These repeated escapes anger authorities. In response, DeFriest is locked in solitary confinement and tortured. In order to get out of "that hellhole" DeFriest pleads guilty to a third felony that includes a life sentence.

Mark is sent to the notorious Florida State Prison.

Over the years, DeFriest has racked up a long list of disciplinary write-ups and escaped seven times. But his wiliness and inventiveness -- this extremely resourceful man is clearly endowed with a level of intelligence -- has worked to his detriment. Additionally, it is unclear if DeFriest suffers from mental illness. DeFriest admits that he "made [the people who work in the system] look like idiots."

Gabriel London's documentary delves into Defriest's story, highlighting many of the injustices he has faced in prison and the broken system that has kept him there for so long. Using a wide range of interviews and gothic animation (plus an unfortunate score and soundtrack) The Life and Mind of Mark Defriest paints quite a horroric life, which could and should have turned out so much better (at least to those who know DeFriest best).  

DeFriest is portrayed as a bit of a loner, but one who is a mechanical prodigy. From rewiring phones, to dismantling and reassembling clocks, to being taught the world of warfare and survival skills by his dad (an ex-Marine rabidly scared of "the reds") at a young age, he was always able to create something out of seemingly nothing. This skill both helps and hurts DeFriest, who can (and does) escape like a modern-day criminal Houdini.

The primry point here is that although he certainly played a part in being bad, DeFriest is excessively punished -- unlike the "goon squad" at Floriday State Prison. For over 40 years DeFriest has endured numerous horrors of abuse, rape and torture. Fortunately, somebody came along and cared enough to tell his story.

Having made changes to the film's ending, based on events that happened after filming on the movie wrapped, The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest clearly illustrates what influence this documentary has had on DeFriest's life and those who perceive DeFriest has some rabid criminal unworthy of sympathy.

Here's hoping that more documentarians can shine a light on the US's troubled prison system and how society and the "justice"system deals with mental health issues.

FILM REVIEW: BELOVED SISTERS By: Faiz No comments

A scene from Beloved Sisters.

Sibling ribaldry

By Miranda Inganni

Charlotte von Lengefeld (Henriette Confurius) and her equally attractive older (and married) sister, Caroline (Hannah Herzsprung), have an agreement to share everything they have with each other.  Enter the German poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller (Florian Stetter), a man who both women desire and, subsequently, share.

While there is an undeniable bond between sisters (and often their mother as well), this bond is difficult to accept at facade value – even if this episode is based on a potentially true story. What we do know is that in real life, Charlotte became Schiller’s wife and Caroline his biographer. But in this version, they clearly mean a lot more to each other than categories can imply.

Written and directed by Dominik Graf, German's Oscar entry for Best Foreign Film, Beloved Sisters is period porn – lush and brightly hued. It is like a PBS miniseries (and might be better suited for such a platform). All three leading ladies (Confurius, Herzsprung and Claudia Messner as their mother) turn in lovely, nuanced performances as the three ladies that steer the ship of Schiller’s life. Stetter is charming as the flawed Schiller and there is chemistry betwixt the three. The soundtrack (Sven Rossenbach and Florian van Volxem) is annoying drivel, but the costumes (Barnara Grupp) and production design (Claus Jürgen Pfeiffer) are fantastic.

FILM REVIEW: PIONEER By: Faiz No comments

Mike (Wes Bentley) and Knut (André Eriksen) in Pioneer.

You can go Norway

By Miranda Inganni

After a deadly accident on the sea bed, a Norwegian diver intent on completing his risky deep sea mission encounters intrigue and subterfuge in Erik Skoldbjærg’s latest release, Pioneer.

In the early 1980s, scientists discover a huge oil field in the North Sea off the coast of Norway. The only trick is figuring out how to build the pipelines deep below. Enter the Americans, who have much greater experience and resources when it comes to such matters. The governments of both countries know there is the potential to make a great sum of money. But at what cost?

Petter (Aksel Hennie) and his brother, Knut (André Eriksen), are sent on a test dive down to 360 meters below the ocean’s surface with anther crew member, Jørgen (David A. Jørgensen). Tragedy strikes and one of them is killed. Petter is convinced that his breathing gas line was cut, causing him to briefly blackout and ultimately do the damage that killed his fellow diver. But how can he prove it when it becomes clear that there is a coverup?

Both the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate and the American company, Deep Sea Diving (who they are working alongside, but not necessarily with), try to deflect the investigation. There is huge money to be made and neither company wants their name to be sullied nor to be found at fault.

As Petter tries to discover the truth about what happened at the bottom of the sea, dead bodies keep piling up. Will Petter discover the truth and try to right some of the wrongs, or will he be drowned by the greedy corporations and their minions?

Co-starring Wes Bentley (recently seen in The Hunger Games), Stephen Lang, and Jonathan LaPaglia as the American team; and Jørgen Langhelle, Ane Dahl Torp and Stephanie Sigman helping to round out the Norwegian players, Pioneer features some great acting. Additionally, cinematographer Jallo Faber captures the claustrophobia and bleak hopefulness  of deep sea diving (the penultimate shot is fantastic).

 

However, I could have done with a lot less of the Darth Vader-esque underwater breathing. We get it. Petter is isolated, cold, and completely dependent on artificial apparatus to stay alive., but the score by Air is annoyingly (but successfully!) complementary.

 

Lastly, the organization who winds up with the oil at the film is particularly, politically telling, considering Norway's current status as one of the best places, if not the best, place in the world to live. (Thanks to Norway's "welfare state" of high taxes Norwegians have the second-highest level of satisfaction with their standards of living. It also has the largest government surplus in the world. Norway's per capita GDP is $57,000 a year. It is ranked number one in the world for the best place to grow old. It also has the highest gender equality in the economy. And, perhaps most importantly, Norway now has the highest Human Development Index.)

FILM REVIEW: BESIDE STILL WATERS By: Faiz No comments

A "Whiskey Slap" scene in Beside Still Waters.

Drunk slap love

By Miranda Inganni

A group of friends gather for a final weekend at Daniel's (Ryan Eggold) recently departed parents' lake house in Chris Lowell's flick, Beside Still Waters. Drunken revelry ensues.

Despite having been close as kids, the clique has not convened since high school, not even for Daniels's parents' funeral. Self-pitying Daniel, who insists that he is fine with his parents' accidental (potentially violent) deaths, reunites the whole (easily categorized) gang: Tom (Beck Bennett), the class clown -- gay, drunk joker recently fired from his dad's law firm; Martin (Will Brill) and Abby (Erin Darke), the high school sweethearts -- unhappily married couple who are not having sex; Charley (Jessy Hodges), the bohemian --  fun-loving, free spirited, "anything goes" hippie chick; James (Brett Dalton), mister popular -- the Porsche-driving star of a crappy "reality" show; and Olivia (Britt Lower), the object of Daniel's unrequited love, and her fiancé, Henry (Reid Scott).

Using Henry as the fall guy (obviously he is a bad person, as he stole Daniel's true love and must be punished and stopped!), the gang gets extremely wasted, playing a terrible sounding and violent "game" called whiskey slaps, capturing the moments on Super 8 film, skinny dipping, etc. How they do not all end up drowned or in the hospital I do not know. Old flames are rekindled and crushes re-explored. Feelings are hurt. Relationships are damaged. But like most mainstream ensemble buddy movies, it all works out in the end.

Look, the acting is fine, the writing (by Lowell and Mohit Narang) is commendable in parts (I admit I chuckled here and there), namely the genuinely cleverly written/edited scene recollecting the previous night's adventures. But there are some oversights too. After Olivia yells at Daniel to stop acting like a child, he goes out and follows in his father's footsteps, or, more accurately, car tracks. Not exactly a mature way to handle his emotions. It would have been nice (and responsible!) if some mention had been made about alcoholism (a disease that, according to the NCAAD, affects over 17 million Americans) and the effects it can have. I am not asking for some preachy conversion conversation, but it goes completely unrecognized.

OUTFEST 2014: SARAH PREFERS TO RUN By: Faiz No comments

Sarah (Sophie Desmarais) in Sophie Prefers to Run.

That running and loneliness thing

By Miranda Inganni

Sarah (Sophie Desmarais) doesn’t just prefer to run, the 20-year-old lives to run in director Chloe Robichaud’s feature film debut, Sarah Prefers to Run.

Sarah’s mother (Hélène Florent) opposes her daughter’s plans on moving to Montreal to run at McGill University, pointing out that running will not pay the bills. Fortunately for Sarah, her coworker, Antoine (Jean-Sébastien Courchesne), has enough money to get both of them to Montreal and into an apartment. However, once there Antoine suggests they marry to take advantage of government grants. Affable Antoine gets more domestic and comfortable with his roommate/wife, but Sarah seems oblivious and continues to focus on running. 

One of her teammates, Zoey (Geneviève Boivin-Roussy), catches Sarah’s eye and a slightly awkward friendship begins. Once Sarah begins to explore, or at least acknowledge, her sexuality, it becomes clear that she is not running toward anything, but rather away from herself. Things are further complicated when Sarah develops a heart condition, but will it stop her from running?

Desmarais does an exceptional job portraying the titular character in all of her youthful innocence cum lack of mindfulness. Sarah seems so removed from everything other than running. She is obsessively focused, even to the potential detriment to her health. 

Robichaud creates an ambiance of dullness for Sarah to live in, replete with a beige- gray color scheme and little dialogue. Sarah Prefers to Run is more of a character study than a typical dramatic narrative, but Sarah (well acted by Desmarais) is an interesting enough character to take a close look at as she follows the course of her life.

OUTFEST 2014: BFFS By: Faiz No comments

A scene from BFFs. 

Friends and lovers

By Miranda Inganni

When Kat (Tara Karsian) receives an all-expense paid trip to a retreat entitled Closer to Closeness, Kat and her best friend Samantha (Andrea Grano) cannot pass up the offer. The only catch is that it is a couples retreat and both ladies are single.  Or are they?

Posing as a lesbian couple at the retreat, Kat and Samantha work through various group sessions – performing trust and communication exercises with the rest of the couples – in order to take advantage of the beautiful scenery, fabulous food and fun of this free weekend getaway. But somewhere between the ropes course and an exercise in self-expression, the two friends realize that they might have more than a friendship. 

Of course, this is not that surprising. How often do we hear of someone describing their partner as their “best friend?” The difference being that usually those couples already know about their sexual orientation.

BFFs stars Karsian and Grano co-wrote and produced this exceptionally well written and acted film. Directed by Andrew Putschoegl, and with help from an excellent supporting cast -- including Jenny O’Hara, Pat Carroll, Richard Moll, Sigrid Thornton, Sean Maher, among many others --  BBFs explores the answers to pesky questions such as what is important in a friendship and how is that different in a romantic relationship? Karsian and Grano have exceptional chemistry with each other. Between that, the witty writing and massive talent of the supporting cast, BFFs is a sharp-tonged, slyly subversive exploration of love.

OUTFEST 2014: LIFE PARTNERS By: Faiz No comments

A scene from Life Partners.

Single out

By Miranda Inganni

The opening night film at this year's Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival, Life Partnerstells the somewhat typical story of the trials and tribulations of two best friends when love comes between them. The main difference between this and any other Rom-Com with a similar premise is that one of the friends is a lesbian.

Uptight Paige (Gillian Jacobs) is an environmental lawyer, who is best friends with free spirited Sasha (Leighton Meester). The girls have great times gallivanting about Pride parades and sharing cocktails with their eclectic group of gal pals. That is until handsome and successful Doctor Tim (Adam Brody, Meester's husband off screen) enters the picture.

Hold up. Here’s where I have a slight problem. I just referred to the two leads as girls. The characters are both 29 years old, not little girls, but they often act so childish that it is hard to believe that Paige owns a home or that either is capable of being a fully formed woman. But perhaps that is part of the story.

It is often a tricky transition for young women to go from having best girl-friends to having serious romantic relationships. Figuring out how to divide one’s time between a new lover and an old friend can be challenging. Is there a “correct” way to mature? Does it mean following one’s dreams or a preconceived notion of what exactly mature life is supposed to be? Paige and Sasha tackle these issues from opposite ends of the spectrum. As Paige slides into domestic comfortability with Tim, Sasha finds herself falling for increasingly immature women (who all still live at home). No longer can Paige and Sasha spend the night at the other’s house on a whim (usually because they are too tipsy to drive to their own abode). And gone are the weekly sessions of watching Top Modelwhile drinking wine and quipping at the TV.

But both characters come to a kind of maturity during the course of Life Partners and realize the strength of what their friendship meant to them.

Co-written by Joni Lefkowitz and Susana Fogel, Life Partners is Fogels’ feature directorial debut. The film is an adaptation of a play the two wrote with the same name based on their friendship. The entire cast is chock full of talent --with excellently written and acted supporting characters played by the likes of Gabourey Sidibe, Greer Grammer, Kate McKinnon, Beth Dover and Abby Elliott, among others. It’s also interesting to see real life husband and wife duo of Brody and Meester play against eachother.

LAFF 2014: RECOMMENDED BY ENRIQUE By: Faiz No comments

The Star (Sarah Swinwood) in Recommended by Enrique.

Demons and such

By Miranda Inganni

Two individuals with their own agendas find themselves biding their time in Del Rio, Texas, in this quirky, enigmatic film "based on actual events."

An aspiring actress (Sarah Swinwood) comes to town to shoot a no-budget horror film, which she believes will be her big break into Hollywood stardom. Despite being told each day that the director is stuck in meetings in Los Angeles, she and the teenaged cast and crew continue to make the film. Meanwhile, a cowboy with a secret (Lino Verela) is held up in town awaiting a colleague. He is there to ostensibly deliver some plants and is bored out of his mind with the small, dusty town. Both the starlet and the cowboy pass the time in their own distinct way – the starlet swims with the local kids and sticks to the shooting schedule; the cowboy drinks himself to sleep at night, desperately missing his dead wife. When their projects are complete, both cowboy and actress move on.

Based on another film that was never completed, there is a quietness to Recommended by Enrique, written and directed by Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia. Both lead characters spend much time in solitude, despite (or in spite of) merriment around them. They each have their own inner monologues, with the cowboy’s acting as a narration and the actress’s manifesting itself in her video blog entries. Though they are staying a couple of rooms away from each other in the same small motel, they never interact.  

Newcomers Swinwood and Verela both give excellent performances in this film hinting at mystery and nuance.

LAFF 2014: LAKE LOS ANGELES By: Faiz No comments

Cecilia (Johanna Trujillo) in Lake Los Angeles.

Dusts in the wind

By Miranda Inganni

Set in the desolate high desert of California’s Antelope Valley, Lake Los Angeles is a story of struggle and survival for two incongruous, but quietly complementary characters.

Francisco (Roberto Sanchez) is a Cuban immigrant long since distanced from his wife and family. When he is not doing various day labor jobs and writing poetic love letters to his wife, he uses his house as a temporary holding place for immigrants crossing into the US from Mexico. One such person is young Cecilia (Johanna Trujillo) whose mother has purchased her passage with a promise that her father will collect her upon her arrival.

Things do not go according to plan on these vast arid plains pricked with Joshua trees and littered with abandoned houses.

Francisco and Cecilia both came to this land in search, or with a promise, of something better, only to face disappointment. Cecilia’s promised life with a father who she has never met is turned topsy-turvy when she, in a sudden act of self-preservation, runs off into the expansive desert. To keep herself occupied and comforted, she whispers stories, legends she has heard, to an imaginary friend as she wanders in search of her father, any father – a little girl lost in an expanse of grit.

Directed by Mike Ott and written by Ott and Atsuko Okatsuka, Lake Los Angeles uses the location almost as another character. The area drives the actors to various actions. It elicits a practically palpable, desperate dryness that gets into everything and sets the tone carried throughout the enjoyable film.

LAFF 2014: EVOLUTION OF A CRIMINAL By: Faiz No comments

Darius Clark Monroe in Evolution of a Criminal.

Easy come, difficulties grow

By Miranda Inganni

When he was 16, Darius Clark Monroe and two of his classmates decided to rob a bank at gunpoint. Ten years later, Monroe’s film, Evolution of a Criminal, depicts this criminal episode of his life, what lead up to the robbery and how it affected him, his family and the victims of his crime.

Growing up in the outskirts of Houston, TX, Monroe was a good student and loving child. Unfortunately, he learned a little too much about his parents’ financial woes. He heard too often his mother complain about their mounting credit card debt and the struggles of living from paycheck to paycheck. Trying to be a good son, Monroe got a job at a local big box store and kept his nose to the high school grindstone. After a frightening home break-in, in which all of the family’s valuables -- most notably the VCRs, a gun and his stepfather’s full paycheck -- were stolen, something changed for Monroe. 

The brazen thieves had kicked in the basement door, climbed through the attic and busted a hole in Monroe’s bedroom ceiling to gain entry to the house. Monroe reasoned that he could simply replace the stolen VCRs with some from the store at which he worked and easily made that happen. Shortly thereafter, Monroe and his friends came up with the plan to rob a small, local branch of a bank. Armed with a shotgun, Monroe and his friend stormed the bank, while their other buddy waited in the getaway car.

Due to the severity of the crime, in which they stole about $140,000 and held a number of people at gunpoint, Monroe was tried as an adult and found guilty. He was incarcerated. 

But that is not where the story ends. Rather than become a criminal for life, Monroe had more creative plans. 

Evolution of a Criminal combines home movies, interviews with family members, former teachers and some of the victims, plus some reenactments to explore what happened and what it lead to Monroe's criminal enterprise. 

One of the many documentaries offered at Los Angeles Film Festival 2014, Evolution of a Criminal offers a sobering exploration of what can (and all too often does) go wrong for young men trying to better their lives through “easy” means.

SFIFF 2014: PELO MALO By: Faiz No comments

Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano)in Pelo Malo.

Hairs looking at you, kid

By Miranda Inganni

To what lengths will a young boy go to get the attention and love he so desires from his mother? In Mariana Rondón’s film Pelo Malo (Bad Hair) the more appropriate question might be, just how short is he willing to shear?

Nine-year-old Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano) is fixated on straightening his hair for his school photo. You could say Junior sways to his own music. Sadly, his single mother is more concerned about her son’s perceived sexual orientation, which causes her great consternation.

In desperate need for child care, the mom of two young boys, and a recently unemployed security guard, Marta (Samantha Castillo) turns to her former mother-in-law, Carmen (Nelly Ramos) for help. Carmen allows Junior all the freedom he thinks he wants to straighten his hair and dance around all day. Unfortunately, tough Marta strongly dislikes her son’s pursuits of song, dance and comfort and takes matters into her own rough hands. Junior cannot win -- it is always a battle of wills with his mother. He constantly falls into the traditional binary of being too feminine or too masculine for Marta’s taste, but never just his mother’s loved little boy. Marta fears that her son is gay because she never touches him, and yet she never reaches out to him. Quite to the contrary, Marta pulls away from her son frequently -- at home, on the bus, walking through the neighborhood. She is so removed from him yet is constantly trying to teach him lesson; sadly, usually in the worst kind of way.

Set in the gritty, overcrowded high rise apartment blocks in Caracas, Venezuela, Rondón (Postcards from Leningrad) tells the story without an overbearing sense of judgment. All the actors perform wonderfully, with young Zambrano turning in a heartbreaking performance and Castillo embodying his tough-as-nails mom. Rondón puts a twist on what many perceive as the traditional masculine and feminine rolls in this touching film.

SFIFF 2014: MARY IS HAPPY MARY IS HAPPY By: Faiz No comments

Suri (Chonnikan Netjui) and Mary (Patcha Poonpiriya) in Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy.

Tongue Thai-ed 

By Miranda Inganni

 
Finding inspiration in 410 consecutive tweets by a teenager, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit's Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy fuses social media and filmmaking in this wonderfully whimsical movie.

Deftly intertwining the tweets (originally posted by Mary Malony) with the drama, we follow moody Mary (Patcha Poonpiriya) and her more evenly keeled best friend Suri (Chonnikan Netjui) as they navigate their way through their final year of high school. Mary is impulsive  -- ordering a jellyfish in the mail, booking a quick trip to Paris which she subsequently sleeps through because of jet lag -- and a frustrated creative  -- forever chasing the “magic hour” in which to take her pictures. But mostly she is a mercurial, seemingly hopelessly romantic, teenager.

Mary and Suri are in charge of creating the school’s yearbook, which provides for many distractions and obstacles that they must overcome to complete the book.
 
Accident prone Mary traipses through her days, despite her cell phone blowing up repeatedly, getting poisoned by mushrooms while on a quick camping trip and even a terrible tragedy. All the while, she pines for M(Vasuphon Kriangprapakit, a young man she meets near a pancake cark next to the train tracks.
 
While Mary goes through what is for so many the awkward transition into adulthood, Thamrongrattanarit capitalizes on the limitations -- and lack thereof -- of the original tweets allowing Mary to mature in the face of adversity during the course of the film.
 
As director Thamrongrattanarit creates the story line around the tweets, plot points can seem eclectic. But the feature has a groove that flows smoothly once you suspend all reality and give in to the film's playfulness. It's got to be hard for a grown man to create a story out of a bunch of tweets written by a teenaged girl. But Thamrongrattanarit pulls it off with aplomb.

FILM REVIEW: GMO OMG By: Faiz No comments

A scene from GMO OMG.

Corn-you-and-dystopia

By Miranda Inganni

From the director of DIVE!, Living Off of America’s Waste, Jeremy Seifert’s latest documentary, GMO OMG, delves into the subject of GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, and how they are affecting our planet, our bodies and our culture.

Available science has made “conventional” farmers (i.e. non-organic farmers) in the US comfortable in their choice to use pesticides and herbicides to make a “safe and abundant” food supply. (Safe and abundant in this context means a food supply that would reduce hunger around the world, but that is obviously not the case.) The companies producing the pesticides and herbicides are the same companies that are producing the GMO seeds: Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, DuPont, etc.  The corn or soy that grows from these seeds becomes, in and of itself, a pesticide. Subsequently, lack of regulation allows these pesticides to be food, or get into our food. 85 percent of all US grown corn is GMO corn, which means that consumers are ingesting a lot of these chemicals.

The impact of GMO farming on small farmers cannot be overlooked, either. If an organic farmer is growing corn, for example, next to a GMO corn field and some of the pollen or seeds from the GMO farm cross-pollinates, or seeds itself, the organic farmer can be sued by the GMO farm due to the fact that the GMO plant had a patent. Sadly this happens far too often. Yet another way that huge corporations can keep independent businesses down.

Additionally, much like how antibiotics have helped to create the superbugs that now exist as a threat to humans and animals, GMOs are assisting in the creation and/or production of super weeds and super insects that are resistant to herbicides and pesticides. To combat these problems, farmers have to use these chemicals in greater abundance. And so the cycle continues ad infinitum.

While the physical effects of GMO products have not been definitively proven to be harmful or not (the companies supporting the research stating that GMOs are not harmful just so happen to be the companies making the GMOs and will not release the raw data for peer review), we do know that these chemicals are in our bodies, our food source and our water system.

Seifert clearly believes strongly that GMOs need to be brought to the public’s attention, but the way he goes about it in GMO OMG feels a bit off. While his family is very photogenic (even if I really did want to reach through the screen and brush the hair out of those boys’ eyes!), they are too much of the focus of the film. The scare tactics he uses – like making his kids don hazmat suits and breathing masks before running through a corn field -- feels like exploitation. And while he may care what cattle on a farm are being fed, he does not seem to care about the condition the cattle are in. When Seifert learns that his beloved mountain fishing ponds are being stocked with fish from fisheries that were being fed pellets made with GMOs, his concern seems to be more about the loss of his pastime than the fish’s health. If Seifert is going to get up in arms about his family eating healthfully and being concerned about the future of the worlds’ agriculture, he might start thinking about sustainable farming, among other things. (And, hey, try vegetarianism!)

Nonetheless, there is a lot of frightening information about GMOs in Seifert’s film and this is an important subject demanding discussion.