Breaking the Line

Keyhole's Guy Maddin on Sucker Punch, The Phantom of the Paradise and Watching Movies With Luis Buñuel

As you might imagine, an interview with Guy Maddin can cover a lot of ground, and so it was when we sat down for the A.V. Club on the occasion of his new film, Keyhole. We dutifully covered the new release, of course, but before long he was off and running (with a little help from me), covering subjects ranging from the new Mission Impossible movie — he likes it, and is pretty sure Luis Buñuel would, too — to The Odyssey. If you're at all familiar with films like The Saddest Music in the World and Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary, you've got a sense of Maddin's unique wit, but it's quite something to see at it work in its natural state. 

From the archives: Our 2003 interview on the occasion of Dracula's Philadelphia release.

Willem Dafoe: On John Carter, the "Good Mask" of Boondock Saints and Getting Axed from Heaven's Gate

A career as rich as Willem Dafoe's puts the "random" in the A.V. Club's Random Roles feature, but I touched on as many high (and low) points as time would allow in an interview on the occasion of two new movies: Abel Ferrara's 4:44 Last Day on Earth and the upcoming The Hunter. More from Dafoe, including lots on Antichrist and a bit on Spider-Man, in our previous interview.

UPDATE: Forgot I talked to Dafoe in 2001, for Shadow of the Vampire. That's here.

 

Bully: Doing Wrong by the Victims, and the Perpetrators

The A.V. Club let me go long on Bully, a not enormously interesting documentary that touches on a lot of important issues. Harvey Weinstein has, as is his habit, done a magnificent job of turning the film into a cause celèbre by focusing attention on the MPAA's decision to slap it with an R rating due to the use of profanity, a comical (if characteristic) act given that the 16-year-olds who aren't allowed to see it without a guardian's say-so indubitably hear more foul language at school every day. Much as I dlslike the MPAA and its apparent inability to differentiate "I will fucking end you" from "Let's go fuck," whipping up controversy to sell a mediocre movie leaves a bad taste in my mouth, as do the journalists who've paraphrased Weinstein's press releases in their news stories, which is why I didn't address that angle in my review. I did, however, talk about why the film's attempt to paint its subjects as uncomplicated victims ultimately does them, and the complex and nettlesome subject of bullying, a disservice. More, including comments from a (purported) former MPAA employee, in the comments.

UPDATE: I instinctively felt that Hirsch's decision to omit the information that two of the movie's subject, including a 17-year-old who committed suicide, had been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. Slate's Emily Bazelon backs up that feeling with some damning reporting, including words from a suicide-prevention specialist, here.

L.M. Kit Carson: From David Holzman to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Philadelphia Screening on Feb. 17

Just got word that L.M. Kit Carson, best known as the star of Jim McBride's landmark faux-doc David Holzman's Diary, will be in Philadelphia for a Temple Cinematheque screening Friday afternoon. Carson has one of the most fascinatingly peripatetic careers in the biz, ranging from co-writing Paris, Texas to exec-producing Bottle Rocket, not to mention writing the script for the tongue-in-cheek sequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I talked to Carson for the A.V. Club last year, on the occasion of David Holzman's long-overdue U.S. DVD debut, with a especially intriguing detour into The American Dreamer, the documentary he shot on the set of Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie. As for the film itself, I've written about it several times, most recently for Time Out Chicago. If you're in or near Philadelphia and can knock off work early on Friday, Carson's visit is not something you want to miss.

Sundance 2012: Power, Corruption and Lies

In the better late than never category, here's my overview of this year's Sundance Film Festival, published in the Philadelphia City Paper. Within, I take a bit of a slap at the buzzed-out about prizewinner Beasts of the Southern Wild (pictured), laud Craig Zobel's nervy Compliance and cover the latest addition to the saga of the West Memphis Three, Amy Berg's West of Memphis. Also on the docket: Joe Berlinger's Under African Skies, which covers the making of Paul Simon's Graceland and its attendant controversy, as well as Searching for Sugar Man, the audience award-winning doc about an obscure Detroit musician named Rodriguez whose albums became a touchstone of the South African freedom movement. (Those two make for a fascinating trilogy with Lionel Rogosin's recently rereleased Come Back Africa, which I reviewed for Time Out New York.) Touched briefly on Ira Sachs' Keep the Lights On and Ava Duvernay's Middle of Nowhere, both excellent character dramas of the kind Sundance was created to support and too rarely does. No room for the highly enjoyable Shut Up and Play the Hits, the chronicle of LCD Soundsystem's final show, but I'll get to writing about that one of these days.

Previously in Sundance coverage: features on Mark Webber's The End of Love and Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie, with a skosh of Rick Alverson's The Comedy.

Alexander Payne on "The Descendants," Westerns and Why Comedy Directors Make the Best Dramas

My last awards-season piece for the Los Angeles Times is a Q&A with director Alexander Payne, pictured above in Western-appropriate Cinemascope. Payne's comment that he'd like to make Westerns, "or at least a Western, for Christ's sake," was a passing thing, so it's a little odd to see it headlining the Times piece; my first instinct, for some reason, was to brace for an irritated phone call, although it's not like he has my number. But hell, it's late in the day and the movie's been talked up a bunch, so why not highlight the part he hasn't said a thousand times already? More, including why he thinks comedy directors make the best dramas, here, and a few quotes on the subject of star George Clooney here. And, from way back when, my City Paper review of the film.

The Innkeepers: Slow-Burn Horror From a Rising Star

My short review of Ti West's The Innkeepers will be up at the City Paper's site whenever they get around to updating it, but until then, here's my longer take from its screening last summer, which has, to paraphrase the Firesign Theater, vanished mysteriously. (NB: That's Pat Healy above, who also starred in the Sundance buzzmaker Compliance, about which more next week.)

Unless you’re a diehard horror fan, you probably haven’t heard Ti West’s name, but it’s only a matter of time. Over the last six years, the Wilmington, DE native has been gnawing at the boundaries of the genre, setting out in a different direction with each of his five features: The Roost is a rural siege thriller, in which vampire bats attack a group of wayward travelers who take shelter in an abandoned barn; Trigger Man is art-horror, rough-hewn account of hunting buddies who become the target of an unseen sniper. Last year’s The House of the Devil was a deliberate throwback to the “Satanic panic” (and goofy hairstyles) of the 1980s, with an unsuspecting babysitter drawn into the plans of a demonic cabal. It also featured one of the greatest deaths in recent memory, which even now I’m loath to spoil.

Essentially a chamber piece in which two desk clerks ride out the last weekend in a mammoth New England hotel, The Innkeepers is West’s most assured film yet, a slow-burning creeper that pays off in spades. With only a handful of guests and one of the Yankee Pedlar’s floors already stripped bare, pixie-cut Claire (Sara Paxton) and hipster goof Luke (Pat Healy) have ample time to play amateur ghost hunter, seeking out the spirit of a suicidal woman whose body was hidden in the basement by the inn’s press-shy owners. 

It takes a while for even these bare facts to emerge, and longer still before the spirit’s presence is more than a faint whisper on the pair’s sound recorder. But West, unlike most whammy-driven horror filmmakers, isn’t afraid to take his time, building character and mood before pulling back the curtain. As if to placate, or razz, those expecting early jolts, West front-loads the movie with jump scares. Luke demonstrates one early on, planting Claire in front of his laptop to watch a moody, black-and-white clip of a solitary rocking chair. “Watch closely,” he tells her, as she strains to see evidence of the paranormal, perhaps a hint of movement or a wisp of white. The camera pushes in and the sound goes quiet as we hold our breath, and then WHAM! a pale-faced child jumps, snarling, at the lens, and the audience’s collective heartbeat doubles.

If that dark-eyed child resembles the exsanguinated J-horror tots who were all the rage a few years back, it’s no accident. West is acutely aware of the way his chosen genre is trending, and just as determined to head in the opposite direction. If the film’s pregnant wide shots, which crank up the suspense by not cueing us where to look, share something in common with The Strangers and Paranormal Activity 2, West’s insistence on fleshing out his characters, even at the (temporary) expense of tightening the screws, is very much his own. The scene where Claire steps out to grab coffee from an oversharing diner waitress (Tiny Furniture’s Lena Dunham) has nothing to do with ghosts or the supernatural, but it makes Claire more than a pawn proceeding towards a foreordained death, Final Destination-style. Ditto Claire’s talks with Leanne Reese-Jones (Kelly McGillis), a former TV star turned crystal-toting New Age healer; their back-and-forth reveals more about Claire’s lingering insecurities than Leanne’s vague pronouncements do about the inn’s incorporeal guests.

As in The House of the Devil, West builds up more than he can pay off. Once they come out from under the bed, the movie’s monsters turn out not to be so scary after all. But then again, perhaps it’s a good thing the movie slacks off at the end. Otherwise the audience would be up all night.

Mark Webber and "The End of Love": A Father Mourns His Marriage and Celebrates His Son

And in genuinely new stuff, here's my second Sundance dispatch, on Mark Webber's second film as a director, The End of Love. Philadelphians are well aware of Webber's backstory, how he was raised, at times on the street, by local welfare-rights activist Cheri Honkala, and rose from roles in shoestring productions like Todd Solondz's Storytelling to minor movie stardom. (The applause as he took the stage in Park City was as enthusiastic as that greeting any of indie film's biggest stars.) In The End of Love, Webber starts opposite his then two-year-old son, Isaac, as a struggling actor mourning the death of his wife and faltering under the weight of single parenthood. It occurred to me midway through watching the film that you almost never see children that age on screen, for the simple reason that they're too young to act and too old to just lie there like a cute lump of flesh. As the father of a child who's almost exactly the same age as the one in the film, I'm perhaps not entirely objective, but I'm also extremely qualified to report on how accurately Webber captures that particular stage of life. (The most resonant moment for me is when Webber counsels his son to chew his food more thoroughly before eating, then picks up the leftover food when his son abandons it, only to have the boy repeat his father's advice back at him, word for word. That happens in my house at least once a day.) Much more on the pleasures and dangers of shooting with your own toddler in my Inquirer feature.

A Separation: From Domestic Discord to Social X-Ray

Since its rapturous reception at the Toronto Film Festival in September, Asghar Farhadi's A Separation was a shoo-in for a foreign-film nomination (assuming his home country of Iran could be persuaded to submit the film, which they were). But Farhadi also picked up a surprise nod for the film's screenplay, which likely has less to do with recognizing the (substantial) quality of his writing than that category's status as a kind of also-ran best picture slot. I'm not quite as over the moon for the film, which expands a middle-class Tehran couple's domestic discord into a portrait of Iranian society at large, as some of my colleagues, but it's pretty astonishing nonetheless. And Farhadi? Talked to him, too.

Albert Nobbs: Glenn Close's Passion Project Burns With a Low Flame

Sundance hangover and temporary single dad duties kept me from posting last week's reviews, but here's my take on Albert Nobbs, with Glenn Close reprising the role she first played on stage in 1982 and spent 15 years developing as a film. Did I interview her, and her likewise Oscar-nommed costar, Janet McTeer? I sure did.