The Middle Men

The Middle Men is an R-rated movie that feels like it doesn't want to push past PG-13 boundaries. I'm sure guys will flock to this thinking there is going to be nudity, hot sex, and raunchy situations, but it is mostly a morality tale. This is supposed to be a based-on-true-story movie about the people who first used the internet as a commerce tool by breaking into selling online porn.

The main character is played by Luke Wilson. Jack Harris is a family man. He and his wife are a cute all-American couple living in Texas. Soon a friend in L.A. needs help solving some business problems (I was never sure really what Jack's profession was) as Jack is known to be a good problem solver. He gets his friend's business back in line and is asked to solve more problems, eventually by oily lawyer Jerry Haggerty (James Caan). Haggerty's clients, Wayne and Buck (Giovanni Ribisi and Gabriel Macht) are borderline idiots (although the film shows us that Buck was once a rocket scientist waylaid by drug abuse), but have  come up with an idea to use the then-fledgling internet as a sales portal, to sell porn.  Buck, the mathematically inclined one, writes a program that will receive credit cards for payment (a new concept) and online shopping is born. There are humorous moments as we see the guys gleeful over making money for so little input, so they get greedy and decide to offer new content by filming dancers at a club belonging to a Russian mobster Nikita (Rade Serbedzija). But the two yokels are often high and forget to send Nikita his share of the profits, and so that is why Haggerty has called Jack in to help.

Jack does kind of help them, and even becomes their business partner, but there is a deadly mishap. Jack also is away from home too much solving everyone else's problems, eventually tempted by a porn star (Laura Ramsey), and so he and his wife separate. The porn situation escalates until the FBI (Kevin Pollock) is investigating them all.

Past seven days

Looks like it was International Week with the continuing Chicago Latino Film Festival, a Japanese monster flick, a film taking place in Africa, and a couple of American movies with Chinese themes.  Unfortunately the Latino film Maydays was sold out!  I guess that is a good sign, hopefully it will come out on DVD or will play elsewhere later in the year.

Appropriate Adult
Combination Platter
Did You Score?
The East
In the Middle of Heaven
The Joneses
Mary and Martha
Route of the Moon
Three Marys
Unmade in China
White Elephant
The X From Outer Space

The Horseman

Viewers be warned!  This is an Australian revenge film, so prepared for some pretty graphic violence.

The film starts in the middle of the story, where one man (Peter Marshall) is beating another to find some information. Pretty soon, we discover Christian is in search of some answers about the death of his daughter; he thinks she fell into the wrong crowd and they got her mixed up in drugs and other seedy behaviors. He believes she has been soiled by these men so goes after them one by one, torturing them for information as well as hurting them for hurting his daughter.

Christian’s search takes him around the country and he picks up a runaway, Alice (Caroline Marohasy), who claims she is just hitch-hiking to visit a friend. He gives her a ride, perhaps seeing a vulnerability in her that he instinctively wants to protect as it coincides with his current grief. Neither gives the other much detail of who they really are and where they come from and for most of the film Alice is oblivious to what Christian has been doing.

Circumstances separate them and bring them together again, until the people Christian is hunting down come after him.

Chicago Latino Film Festival

The Chicago Latino Film Festival began last week and I've already caught four films in the lineup.  So far my lineup has been strong, and despite films coming from different countries, there are some common themes among them.  Here's my list, and barring any work commitments, I hope to catch the entire lineup:

7 Boxes

This film focuses on the street kid Victor, as he shuffles around seven boxes filled with mysterious but coveted merchandise.  He tries to escape a rival, the police, and other people after the merchandise, while trying to make a living in Mercado 4 helping the market shoppers tote their purchases around.

Anima Buenos Aires

Four short animated stories from Buenos Aires are compiled into one screening, with different animation styles.

From Tuesday to Tuesday

As the title suggests, this story takes place over a week.  The main character appears to be a silent factory worker and body builder who takes advantage of a tragedy to benefit himself.

Garifuna in Peril

Based on real social events, a man works to preserve the Garifuna language and culture.  Garifuna is a South American culture near to Honduras, whose language is slowly dying out as new generations are learning English and Spanish instead.  This real life fight to save the language is depicted fictionally.

In the Middle of Heaven

A female ad exec locks herself and a maintenance man out of their office building, and bond as they wait for someone to let them back in.

Maydays

A local Chicago-made story of students observing and participating in the issue of employment rights of immigrants, focusing on two teen characters.

Peru Sabe: Cuisine as an Agent of Social Change

This film uses food to relate to aspects of Peru and its future.

Route of the Moon

A man and his father, two different personalities, have to travel together, picking up a hitchhiker on the way.

Sanandrenista

A small time corrupt cop finds he has to do some real work when he is accused of murder.

Speechless

A Chinese immigrant is helped by a hardware store employee/aspiring artist.

Three Marys

The stories of three women named Maria are examined as events of one night are told through their individual perspectives.

White Elephant

Two priests with opposing views are stuck in a drug war.

Other films I was interested in and could not fit into my schedule:

Man From the Future

A sort of "Back to the Future" story, a man returns 20 years into the past to change a moment in his life, hoping to improve it, only to return to current day to find it is worse.

Sofia and the Stubborn Man
Carmen Maura stars as Sofia, who is tired of her husband's treatment of her.  She takes an impromptu vacation away from him, leaving him to fend for himself.

Free event: The Island President

Upcoming films in the Independent Lens series of documentaries at the Cultural Center include The Island President. The President of the Maldives islands fights global warming.

The Island President
Saturday, April 20, 2013
2:00 p.m.
Cultural Center
Claudia Cassidy Theatre
77 E. Randolph Street

Past seven days

The Chicago Latino Film Festival started this week and I was already able to catch a few films, a strong  start with the choices I made so far.

7 Boxes
Beeswax
The Case of Howard Phillips Lovecraft
From Tuesday to Tuesday
Garifuna in Peril
Sanandrenisto
True Adolescents

All the Pretty Horses

Despite a pretty good cast and crew, All the Pretty Horses is kind of derivative. Matt Damon stars as a rancher's hand leaving to strike out on his own around the 1950s. Directed by Billy Bob Thornton from a book by Cormac McCarthy.

Damon plays John Cole, a ranch hand who leaves his home in Texas with his friend Lacey Rawlins (Henry Thomas). The death of Cole's father means his estranged mother has taken control of the ranch, leaving Cole pretty penniless. From Texas they head for Mexico to find work, and on the way they meet young runaway Jimmy Blevins (Lucas Black) whose braggadocio leads them to believe his horse is stolen. They want nothing of him and leave him behind, but he comes along anyway, and his horse is lost in a storm. Blevins sees the horse in a Mexican town and aims to steal it back, splitting up the group, and this begins some serious trouble for all the guys.

Cole and Rawlins do find some work on the ranch of a rich Mexican (Ruben Blades), with Cole catching the eye of his lovely daughter Alejandra (Penelope Cruz). Although Cole impresses the father, her aunt frowns on their relationship, doing what she can to warn him off as well as trying to reason with him to leave Alejandra's reputation unsoiled, especially by a manual laborer such as himself. The two guys get arrested later as accomplices to murder and horse thieving with Blevins. Cole does his utmost to defend himself as well as the others, while trying to stay alive in the seedy and bleak prison setting.

Free event: William Friedkin: The Friedkin Connection

Chicago's Harold Washington Library Center ends their short program celebrating director William Friedman. Previously this month they screened The French Connection and The Exorcist, two classic and influential films.

This event sounds like a talk with some Q&A and is hosted by Filmspotting's Adam Kempenaar. Friedkin's book The Friedkin Connection will also be available for purchase and signing.

I also encourage you to check out Filmspotting, a locally produced film podcast, which broadcasts on local NPR station, WBEZ, and also available online.

William Friedkin: The Friedkin Connection
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
6:00 p.m.
Harold Washington Library Center
Cindy Pritzker Auditorium
400 S. State Street

Free event: The Manchurian Candidate

Back to Frank Sinatra films at the Northbrook Public Library. For a change of pace, a serious film, The Manchurian Candidate. A Korean War POW is brainwashed to become an assassin.

The Manchurian Candidate
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
1:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Northbrook Public Library
1201 Cedar Lane
Northbrook, IL 60062

Free event: Amour

The Northbrook Public Library takes a break from their run of Frank Sinatra films to present something totally different--recent award winner Amour. The plight of an elderly couple is portrayed after one of them has a stroke.

Amour
Saturday, April 13, 2013
2:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Northbrook Public Library
1201 Cedar Lane
Northbrook, IL 60062

Whisky Romeo Zulu

Watch this film, if only for the news footage shown during the end credits.

A pilot, only called "T" in the film, is known for his attention to safety, so much so that he annoys his employers. They tell him to bypass warning alarms, ignore guidelines in the tech manual, and fly with non-working instruments. Other employees are passed to pilot status even though they fail simulation training. As this happens more and more frequently, leading to him being grounded, T gets more and more frustrated.

He hooks up with an old school friend, a girl he had a serious crush on, and who is now a PR contact for the airline. Their relationship is strained when she defends the airline. There are other employees who are too scared to do anything, but ask T to be the whistleblower.

In a separate storyline, an investigator is looking into the airline regarding violations; he gets some pretty serious anonymous threats to back off on his investigation.

These threads converge horribly when there is an accident.

The American Friend

Suspense author Patricia Highsmith's character of Tom Ripley has been played by several actors in several films, even in a French movie.  In this version, Dennis Hopper is Ripley, in Germany pretending to be an art expert and selling paintings of a dead artist that are in fact forgeries he had created. He befriends an artists' framer Zimmerman (Bruno Ganz) and uses the man's illness to convince him to commit some killings.

He dupes Zimmerman that his illness is terminal, and allows him to accept the hits for money to provide for his wife and son after he dies. At first Zimmerman is nervous, and although he becomes more bold, he still is depressed about his fate and botches his second hit, causing an innocent man to be killed. When suspicions arise over this last crime, he and Ripley wait in a country house for the men who will be coming after them.

Whatever You Say

I believe this is one of the first films directed by Guillaume Canet (Tell No One) at a time when he was married to its lead actress, Diane Kruger. Canet is Bastien, a peon who works at a television production company. He hopes to advance his own creative ideas but barring his way up the corporate ladder is the boorish host of a trash talk show whom he is assistant to. Bastien is not tough enough to tell the host like it is and is passive aggressive, but manages to catch the attention of the owner of the company, Mr. Broustal (Francois Berleand). Broustal asks for his opinions and invites him to his country home for the weekend with his young wife Clara (Kruger). Bastien gets a little full of himself and thinks Broustal sees his so-called talents that have yet to be recognized by anyone else.

What Bastien doesn't expect is how eccentric Broustal and his wife are. During this weekend Bastien finds himself feeding Broustal's pet vultures, dressing up as a rabbit, and potentially burying a dead body among many other weird behaviors which the Broustals don't think are strange at all. Throughout it all Bastien tries to bring things back to reality in hopes of pitching his ideas but is usurped time and again as the Broustals expect him pretty much to be a jester to entertain the very bored, rich couple. He contiues to allow himself to be manipulated in worse and worse ways in order to hopefully get something in return, but we see that is not going to happen.

Meet: Niche film production companies

It seems almost every niche audience has an equally niche media entity making movies to serve their interests.  Here are a few that I’ve noticed as I’ve watched more and more movies over the years. Their brand is stamped on many of their projects, although in this day and age very few films are able to be made without the cooperation and finances of many production companies.  Some may even be owned by big entertainment conglomerates.


Like Marvel Enterprises (below) Dark Horse Entertainment focuses on comic book characters but unlike Marvel, their characters are more cult figures, many whom are not 100% good guys.  Hellboy, The Mask, Timecop, and even the goofy Mystery Men are among the offbeat characters that have been made into films. I’m looking forward to the upcoming R.I.P.D. starring Ryan Reynolds.

The easily recognizable Marvel Entertainment logo on a movie guarantees you a superhero experience. Its earliest movie projects were Blade, X-Men, and Spider-Man, all of which spawned their own sequels (and reboots of sequels).  Other hit or miss projects included the popular Ghost Rider franchise starring Nicolas Cage (hit), and the less popular Elektra (miss), one of the few superhero movies to have starred a female character.  Newer hits include the continually lucrative characters Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman).  This company has managed to take a very niche audience and translate their tastes into a lot of big budget movies.

MTV Films might have been the first non-film studio company whose logo I saw on a movie many years ago. Their motto is "Taking the M in MTV and Extending it to Films" but I don't see much of an obvious music component in their film content.  While their c.v. includes stuff like the crude Jackass and Beavis and Butt-head movies, their films have a big range, such as Election starring Reese Witherspoon, Orange County, Napoleon Dynamite, Freedom Writers, and Stop-Loss, as well as a healthy amount of films targeting an African-American audience such as Hustle and Flow, The Original Kings of Comedy, The Fighting Temptations, Tupac: Resurrection, and How She Move.  The last few years though seem to consist of less challenging fare such as Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters and a nod to MTV's music roots with the concert film Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, which seems to show they are slowly moving away from independent film and less of an MTV identity.  Perhaps that is because they are now owned by Viacom/Paramount, and doesn't seem to have its own website anymore.

Nickelodeon Movies, too, was one of the first non-studio companies to break out and produce their own movies. Many of their film projects are as you would assume--big screen treatments of their kid-oriented tv characters such as the Rugrats and Spongebob. Although not my typical choice of movie content, over the years I have watched Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Kung Fu Panda, Megamind, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, the delightfully realized Rango, and the recent animated feature The Adventures of Tintin.  Nickelodeon Movies is also owned by Viacom, but since they continue to catch the lucrative eyeballs of young audiences who will grow up into ticket-paying parents, it has its own page under the Nick.com umbrella of websites.

Pantelion is a new entity formed by established media companies Lionsgate Entertainment and Grupo Televisa.  As a result, the artistic merging of these two talents created a film company targeting the increasing population of the Latino market, especially here in the United States.  Many of their films are subtitled, including the goofy Casa de mi Padre starring Will Ferrell.  Although right now they have a small roster of films, titles include Girl in Progress, Saving Private Perez, and From Prada to Nada.  Next up for them is Hecho in Mexico, a documentary about the arts in Mexico, with several musicians as well as actor Diego Luna.

WWE Studios is, I believe, a subsidiary of World Wrestling Entertainment and one of the newer logos I've seen, although they've been around a while. They started their career co-producing The Scorpion King, starring wrestler-turned-actor The Rock aka Dwayne Johnson, and continued with other wrestler-turned-actor vehicles (which they continue to produce).  Their current lineup is almost all in the action genre and can star some big acting names, wrestlers or not.  One of their new films, No One Lives, is even appearing at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival.  Two recently-produced films are Dead Man Down, starring Colin Farrell, and The Call with Halle Berry. Can’t imagine them in the wrestling ring!

Past seven days

Getting ready for the Chicago Latino Film Festibal which begins later this week.  In the meantime, other movies I've watched during the past seven days:

3
42
Case de Mi Padre
Defendor
DriverX4: The Lost and Found Films of Sara Driver
Grave of the Fireflies
Sleepwalk With Me
Something Wild (1972)
Trance
Zift

Free event: Robin and the 7 Hoods

The Northbrook Public Library continues their film screenings with a run of Frank Sinatra films. Next on the list during April is Robin and the 7 Hoods. Along with his Rat Pack group of singers/actors friends like Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra plays a gangster in the Prohibition era. It is a swinging re-telling of the Robin Hood legend!

Robin and the 7 Hoods
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
1:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Northbrook Public Library
1201 Cedar Lane
Northbrook, IL 60062

Free event: The Exorcist

April continues to be a good month for free screenings. Chicago's Harold Washington Library Center is hosting another film directed by William Friedkin. The Exorcist was the first movie that really scared me, to the point that I couldn't sleep! And this was the tv version which was probably cut down somewhat for broadcast, although I am not sure if back then the tv channels would cut out all the graphic visuals like they would do nowadays for broadcast, non-cable tv. You can't deny that many modern day horror movies owe something if not a lot to The Exorcist and how horror was visually depicted in the movies.

The last event in this series takes place on April 16, when Mr. Friedkin speaks and will sign his new book. Mark your calendars!

The Exorcist
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
6:00 p.m.
Harold Washington Library Center
Cindy Pritzker Auditorium
400 S. State Street

Free event: Cosmonaut

The Italian Institute of Chicago continues with a couple of screenings this month. The next one, Cosmonaut, depicts the life of a young communist during the space race era. Although the event is free you need to register here. 

Cosmonaut
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
6:00 p.m.
Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Chicago
500 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 1450

R.I.P. Roger Ebert

Berberian Sound Studio

I thought this was an entirely Italian film but it is U.K.-made and stars Toby Jones.  The synopsis of the movie made it sound very similar to Blow Out, the movie that starred John Travolta as a movie sound effects guy who discovers something sinister. For some reason I thought Berberian was a remake of that movie (although it is not).

It is a period film taking place in the 60s or 70s, when there was a popular Italian film genre called "giallo," where horror is mixed with sex and demonic themes. (Although giallo movies are B-movies many of them are cult classics now here in the U.S.) The film that the people in the movie are working on, seemingly about a girl's school which sits on an ancient witch's coven, has already been made, and the actors are redubbing their voices and sound effects and music are being put in. Gilderoy (Jones) a famed English sound mixer, has been hired to mix the sound elements of this movie.

The film is at first about Gilderoy not "getting" the Italian way of doing things, and then his sanity being tested. It juxtaposes his uptight English manner with the loose and more immoral ways of the Italians.  The actresses are treated as sex objects by the male director and producers. The director brings his dog to the studio, ruining recording sessions. Most of the other staff would rather party. The sound director wants things done his way--loud and crude--rather than making an effort for a more artistic product like Gilderoy and one of the actresses want. Very few of them seem to take this seriously and are just intent on cranking it out.

A lot in the film is suggested and brought up but not explained for the audience and the film ends with a lot of unanswered questions. For instance, the film Gilderoy is working on, Equestrian Vortex, is never seen by us the audience except for a garish title sequence. We are told what is happening in Vortex as one of the characters of Berberian describes the upcoming scene for the sound artists so they can get in the mood to do their work, so we can tell if a demon is in the scene or if one of the schoolgirls are being ravished. Gilderoy also makes his own sound effects, like using a blender to mimic a chainsaw, which plants the seed in our heads that things are not always what they appear to be. Dialogue in Berberian allude to the fact that Gilderoy seems to be pretty well-regarded in the industry, yet he is working on this B-movie--why? The film also plants some ideas about some dark secret in Gilderoy's past which forced him to escape to Italy. Was he involved in a crime? His mother writes him cheery letters about finding a bird's nest and later about these birds being killed. I started to wonder if these were old letters and Gilderoy had been living in Italy for a long time and perhaps the mother was dead, even killed (the letters are not dated).

Gilderoy also begins having lucid nightmares or hallucinations, then about two thirds into the film, Gilderoy seems to be in the movie itself. He is dubbed in Italian, watching himself on screen reacting to the same events he is living. Is he a real person, or is he a character in the movie? Is he mad?

Past seven days

1 for 1 this week, seven days, seven movies.

Evil Dead (2013)
Fat City
The Imposter
The Killing Room
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
Magic Mike
Track of the Cat

Meet: Tribeca Flashpoint Academy

Recently I attended a movie screening where I chatted with the young man sitting next to me.  He said he was studying filmmaking at Tribeca Flashpoint Academy, located in Chicago's Loop area.

From the website:

Tribeca Flashpoint Academy is one of the industry’s most well-known and respected media arts schools—providing intensive, direct-to-industry associate degree programs that propel graduates into “the business” in a way few other institutions can

A venture with Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Enterprises, Tribeca Flashpoint Academy offers a progressive training model that erases the boundaries between education and the professional world by exposing students to real-world, industry experiences and state-of-the-art software and equipment beginning their first semester on campus.

Part college, part industry apprenticeship, TFA equips graduates with the up-to-the minute technical skills, robust resume of real-world experiences, and powerful industry know-how they need to launch their careers in the digital media arts.

He told me that student filmmakers there learn by doing--short films are produced with all the expected roles filled by the students--director, producer, sound, etc.   Projects don't just include the typical short films or documentaries, but also video games, interactive media, graphic design and animation effects.  The films are produced via funding procured through the website IndieGoGo.

This student and I had a nice time talking about movies as we waited for the movie to begin, which due to technical difficulties ended up being an hour later than planned.  If you get a chance to visit Tribeca Flashpoint, be sure to check out their funky art exhibit that is in the lobby space.

Free event: The French Connection

April looks like a good month for free screenings.  Another good pick this month is being hosted by Chicago's Harold Washington Library Center. The French Connection, starring Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider, is part of a program celebrating director William Friedman. The story is a police action/thriller based on a true story.

Related events include a screening of The Exorcist on April 9, and the director himself speaks at the library on April 16. Mark your calendars!

The French Connection.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
6:00 p.m.
Harold Washington Library Center
Cindy Pritzker Auditorium
400 S. State Street

Free event: Pal Joey

The Northbrook Public Library continues their film screenings with a run of Frank Sinatra films. First up for April is Pal Joey, where a night club singer has to choose between two women--a chorus girl or a rich widow. I will leave it up to you to guess which of the two costars, Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak, play which role.  The film also includes a song made pretty famous by Sinatra, The Lady is a Tramp.

Pal Joey
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
1:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Northbrook Public Library
1201 Cedar Lane
Northbrook, IL 60062