Chloe

There are all kinds of ways to make a movie and Chloe resembles an odd amalgamation of the select pulse of Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan and the 1970s Japanese "roman porno" movement. Chloe is a movie about an upper class Toronto couple with typical marital problems; he's distant and aloof and she's convinced he's having an affair.
Julianne Moore, playing a gynecologist with a penchant for high heels, hires young prostie Amanda Seyfried to seduce her husband, Liam Neeson (quite professorial lecturing on opera). As events unfold Moore and Seyfried have more of a thing going that Seyfried and Neeson. The thing about girl on girl titillation is that it has an undeniable place in cinema when used within other genres. Such plot turns work in Bound (crime noir fu) and The Hunger (vampire fu) or Mulholland Drive (horror fu) and even Wild Things although I'm not sure what kind of fu that's supposed to be, By the third act Seyfriend is revealed to be a kind of stalker and the family, or the audience depending on your patience, may be in peril.
Egoyan has never been a mainstream director and his films only received a boost in viewership above his cult audience with a handful of 90s movies that were distributed and cleverly marketed by Miramax or Fine Line (Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter). Chloe's certainly easy to watch but dissolves from memory soon after unwinding. If you want to witness Egoyan in full tilt mode you should see his 2005 Where the Truth Lies. Chloe, playing exclusively at the downtown Angelika, just doesn't have the conviction to sustain its melodrama.

Formosa Betrayed

Formosa Betrayed, opening exclusively at the Studio 30 in Houston this weekend, shows a total lack of conviction even while spinning a fairly intriguing tale of political and governmental skullduggery. Set in the 1980s the film revolves around the Chinese manipulation of Taiwan. Occasionally FB evokes stock footage of Ho Chi Minh or Nixon and Mao to illustrate previous history.
James Van Der Beek plays a FBI agent investigating the murder of a professor that leads him to Taiwan. Supporting turn as agents from Wendy Crewson and John Heard are convincing.
On the up side FB director Adam Kane shows a good eye for large scale set pieces, like a Taipei demonstration that begins peacefully and ends in violence as well as an airport showdown. Kane demonstrates discerning camera angles and editing choices.
On the down side why does Van Der Beek go through the entire film with a three-day stubble of beard like an extra from Miami Vice? No FBI agent in the 80s did that, nor in the 90s (compare Silence of the Lambs), and certainly not now. You may see FBI agents in casual attire but they always shave. It may be a small point but then why make Van Der Beek a fed when he could have been investigating the same crime, with the same supporting cast, as a journalist with a permanent 5 O'clock shadow?

How To Train Your Dragon

How To Train Your Dragon does have a cool noirish look throughout, but yeah it's a cartoon where everyone in the film's period Viking village speak with Scottish accents (get it, the Scots descended from the Vikings) except for the lead kid who has a regular American accent. All the dragons, and there's a bunch, have cute cat or dog expressions. The film this reminded me of most was the recent Beowulf, but only due to the similarity of the setting. HTTYD unrolls with similar situations and results as most kid oriented animation. The dragons pretty much behave like the tame beasts they eventually become.
The voice cast consists of the latest young talent (Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, America Ferrera) with the adults modulated by real Scots like Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson and David Tennant. The film's crowning glory are the dark hues of night exteriors, a no-brainer with Roger Deakins assistance as lighting consultant.
Just for the record my favorite non-Pixar cartoon movies of the last ten years would be BOLT! and Lilo & Stich. HTTYD (the 3D was nifty.) for me falls between films like Kung-Fu Panda and Shrek 2. Animated movies like Fantastic Mr. Fox or Coraline are in a league of their own. If your little tykes become fans of dragons get them copies of the live action Dragonslayer (early-80s) and Dragonheart (mid-90s).

A Prophet

by Michael Bergeron

A few weeks ago when the Oscars were being announced I was as surprised as anyone when a film from Argentina won best foreign film. This must be one heck of a film because the two films in that category that I'd actually seen, The White Ribbon and A Prophet (Un prophète), were among the best foreign films that have unreeled domestically in recent memory.
A Prophet takes place in the confines of a French prison and the brutality witnessed is only matched by the depth of our understanding the motives of the protag, Tahar Rahim as Malik El Djebena.
Director Jacques Audiard will be familiar to regular viewers of foreign fare from his previous films The Beat That My Heart Skipped (a remake of James Toback's Fingers) and Read My Lips. Audiard has a deft method of revealing character traits often leading the audience down a dark path before exposing the light at the end of the trail.
Malik - it's not important what his crime is so much as the fact that he's incarcerated as another nameless face - finds his loyalty to his Arab roots challenged when he's approached by the prison's ruling clique of Corsican mobsters. Malik is unceremoniously informed that he must kill a Turkish prisoner or the Corsican's will kill him. When he tries to go up the chain of command and report this to the warden Malik finds that the guards are in cahoots with the Corsicans.


A Prophet chronicles Malik's time behind bars and at times you want to squirm in your seat. When he gets released for 12 hours at a time on a day pass Malik runs errands for the mob while secretly starting his own drug running operation. Eventually Malik pulls a power play that involves subterfuge and manipulation of the now dwindling-in-numbers Corsicans as well as imprisoned Muslims who themselves form an orderly clique.
Throughout his sentence Malik has dreams that help guide him to safety at crucial times. There's also the ghost of the man Malik killed earlier on, at one point puffing a cig while the smoke ventilates through the slit in his throat with which Malik ended his life. A Prophet is currently playing at the River Oaks Three.

SXSW wrap

There were lines aplenty but I never had a problem getting into a seminar or screening, albeit I did arrive in a timely manner for either. The recently wrapped South By SouthWest Film Festival and Conference once again provided enough cinema fuel to power anybody’s film mojo from now until the end of the year. Another columnist was heard saying that SXSW is the new media clusterfuck of the next decade. As the entire convention overlaps film , internet and music venues that statement doesn’t fall too far off the mark.
Certainly realize that SXSW isn’t the only film festival in the state of Texas. This month sees the 43rd annual Houston Worldfest unwinding April 9-18 (http://www.worldfest.org) at the AMC Studio 30, a.k.a. the Studio Drive-by 30 and next month the Marfa Film Festival (http://www.marfafilmfestival.org) unreels at select screens in harmonic West Texas from May 5 though 9. Winners and favorites of this year’s SXSW can be found at: http://sxsw.com/film
SXSW Film divides its selections into categories that include films that will soon be playing at a megaplex near you. This year kicked off with the comic book parody Kick Ass (opening wide April 16) . Teen rejects find their inner elf by coming out as super heroes. Nicholas Cage in a supporting role himself dons a superhero costume. Here, Cage is channeling the Adam West Batman. Cage is too good for an Oscar in this role, I would suggest a Nobel Prize. On a smaller scale the crime thriller The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo had an Austin showing. This Swedish film opens at the Landmark River Oaks in early April and has already stirred Hollywood interest in a remake. In a way that’s good and bad. After all this 2008 serial killer mystery already has three films, based on the novels,
in worldwide release so why don’t they just release all three existing movies with subtitles. Duh? On the other hand the remake is currently attached to David Fincher, not exactly a slouch when it comes to cinematic mayhem.
On a lost weekend of magical proportions I saw the following films. Hubble 3D was an absolute showstopper. While just a 43-minute IMAX 3D documentary this film takes the viewer on a fly-through of our universe based on imagery obtained from the Hubble telescope. This isn’t CGI, but rather data that is rearranged in a way that allows the viewer to zoom though our Solar System at warp speed until we’re hovering on the edge of a black hole or a birthing star in the Orion Nebula. Locally this amazing production is currently playing at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Hubble 3D also include stupendous views of Shuttle launches. True as opposed to faux IMAX 3D is the wave of the future.
Music docus included The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights a film that follows Jack and Meg on a tour of Canada. The film wisely allows ignorant American viewers to understand the different provinces of Canada. The White Stripes played throughout Canada and would always include a free show (think Cactus Records) during this tour. The charm of the film means that it’s not about being an in your face study of the performers so much as it captures the moment. Years ago when I saw Magnetic Fields at Numbers nightclub I wondered why Stephin Merritt was such a douche bag to the audience. The docu Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields explains the matter in full detail.
Lovers of Hate offered up a cool Polanski vibe a la Cul de Sac about a romantic triangle but I really prefer director Bryan Poyser’s debut film Dear Pillow. A NY Thing was a thoughtful sex farce set amongst big apple slackers. American: The Bill Hicks Story plays like a labor of love regarding the late influential comedian. There are multiple references to his Houston origins.
The two best films I caught at SXSW were Mars and American Grindhouse. The former weaves a fictional account of a trip to Mars and uses roptoscoped live action although in a different style than the Waking Life style of that type of animation. American Grindhouse covers the waterfront. The film offers coherent facts about exploitation films from the beginning of film history to the present. Freaks, Mom and Dad, the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis, Hitchcock and Wes Craven, women in prison and even Jesus versus Nazi genre films are mentioned in detail. If there’s any justice in the cinematic universe by the end of the year every film fan on the planet will have the chance to see these two films. SXSW is just a shot away.

Gentlemen Broncos

It’s unbelievable that a film as totally bizarre yet accessible as Gentlemen Broncos never played theatrically in Houston yet was made under the auspices of a major studio distributorship (Fox Searchlight) and found its way to DVD last month. I mean, for the sake of the Cosmic Muffin, Fox Searchlight dumped this film late last year yet they released Amelia like it was a champ. FS can market the shit out of a film, witness The Wrestler or more currently Crazy Heart. All they had to do was advertise “from the director of Napoleon Dynamite.”
Gentlemen Broncos revolves around science fiction foo, and plagiarism foo and dysfunctional nuclear unit foo. A young lad (Michael Angarano) shows his first draft of a sci-fi novel called Yeast Lords to a lecturing artist (Flight of the Conchords’ Jermaine Clement) who steals the idea verbatim and publishes same to great success. Director Jared Hess intercuts versions of Yeast Lords, starring a hysterically funny Sam Rockwell as well as his pet lynx, with Angarano’s rite of passage from Oedipal boy to man adding heft to the story. DVD commentary from Hess and wife and co-scripter Jerusha Hess puts puzzle pieces into place. Best ever use of the Zager and Evans song “In the Year 2525.”

Greenberg

by Michael Bergeron

You remember in the movie Swingers how Vince Vaughn tells Jon Favreau he doesn’t want to be the PG guy that everything turns out okay for, he needs to be the R-rated guy that you don’t know if you really like, you don’t know how he’s going to end up. Well, Ben Stiller as Greenberg is that guy. There’s not much to like about the misanthropic character played by Stiller yet it’s Noah Baumbach’s easiest to like film, perhaps not an odd accomplishment considering the nihilism and sarcasm dripping from the populace of his two most recent films The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding. Baumbach also collaborates with Wes Anderson but those films, particularly Fantastic Mr. Fox, are infused with Anderson’s own special brand of altruism.
In Greenberg, Stiller playing a guy that’s a kind of dick, attaches himself to people with esteem issues; he goes out on a date with his brother’s personal assistant and 15 minutes into the date he’s eating her pussy. Greenberg’s not so much of a womanizer as he’s a sort of psychic vampire, sucking talent and inspiration away from those around him. This becomes readily apparent as the movie progresses and we meet the members of Greenberg’s former band that he abandoned on the eve of signing with a major label.
Stiller has stepped up to the serious movie acting plate in the past (Permanent Midnight, Zero Effect, Royal Tennenbaums, Your Friends & Neighbors) and much of the appeal of Greenberg rests on your, well, not liking his character. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself recognizing in Greenberg’s solipsism parts of yourself you’d rather keep submerged.