Category: 4. Joe Bendel

By Joe Bendel. You could possibly liken lycanthropy to puberty – because they both involve dramatic physical transformation. It is a dubious comparison, but evidently it was enough for writer-director Bradley Gray Rust to build a film around. As a result, love is rather messy in several ways for two young women in Jack & Diane (trailer here), which was supposed to open yesterday in New York.

Diane dresses like Goldie Hawn on Laugh-In. Tomboyish Jack dresses like Tim Allen on Home Improvement. However, when the two hipsters see each other, it is love at first gawk. Lost in Manhattan not far from Evacuation Zone A, the visiting Diane accepts Jack’s offer of hospitality. The British Diane seems to exist in a state of arrested development, but it evidently works for the tough-on-the-outside-needy-on-the-inside Jack. Yet, just as their whirlwind romance begins, miscommunication and Diane’s meddling aunt threaten to tear it asunder.

Coming between these kids might be dangerous, though. In moments of extreme emotional agitation Diane transforms into a werewolf—but, not really. For the most part, the lycanthropy is metaphorical, with only occasional hints that these trippy interludes have real consequences. At least they look distinctive, animated by the celebrated Quay Brothers in a style that is better described as macabre than frightening.

Frankly, it is a wonder Rust has not been picketed by the Hollywood thought police, considering J&D essentially equates its characters’ lesbianism with something explicitly monstrous. However, he handles their relationship with keen sensitivity and reasonably good taste. Indeed, J&D is being touted as the lesbian werewolf movie, but it is likely to disappoint fanboys hoping for either sort of exploitation.

Instead, J&D is your basic downtown indie. It is not mumblecore, but you can see it from here. Still, the earnest sincerity co-leads Juno Temple and an unrecognizable Riley Keough (Elvis’s granddaughter) bring to their characters shines through strikingly. Unfortunately, they are not well served by some overripe dialogue and the rather laborious pace.

If you were wondering, the Mellencamp song never appears on the J&D soundtrack and the ex-Johnny Cougar is reportedly not thrilled by the association. Be that as it may, the film itself is not terrible, but it is far from a cohesive whole. The Quays and particularly Keough did some fine work, but the concept remains only half-developed. Fans of the animators should find it worth checking out, but they can safely wait for Netflix and the like. For the curious, Jack & Diane is now playing at the Sundance Cinema in West Hollywood.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on November 3rd, 2012 at 12:17pm.

By Joe Bendel. He was the one with the pipe. Graham Chapman could be as silly as any of the Pythons, but only he had the noble bearing to portray King Arthur, the would-be messiah Brian Cohen, and a battalion of aristocratic British military officers. He also played the title role in Yellowbeard – but nobody’s perfect. Indeed, that could be the mantra of Bill Jones, Jeff Simpson & Ben Timlett’s A Liar’s Autobiography: the Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman (trailer here), a hyperkinetic kitchen sink of an animated biography, which opens in 3D this Friday, day-and-date with its 2D premiere on Epix.

Viewers of Jones (son of Terry) & Timlett’s Monty Python: Almost the Truth will know Chapman was the tragic Python, who struggled with substance and sex addictions, before succumbing to cancer at the terribly early age of forty-eight. Chapman was also perfectly open, if rather ambivalent, about his sexuality. Such a dramatic life offers plenty of grist for a biopic treatment, and it’s all in Liar’s Autobiography—somewhere.

Fourteen different animation houses using seventeen different animation styles illustrate the events of Chapman’s life, as narrated by the subject himself from the memoir that would inspire the film. Given the relative brevity and rapid succession of each constituent episode, it is hard to keep them all straight. At least they proceed in a somewhat orderly narrative fashion, depicting Chapman as a rather macabre baby (not unlike Seth Macfarlane’s Stewie), a precocious student, and as one of the gaggle of monkeys co-founding Monty Python.

The thread is easier to follow in his early years, though Autobiography is still prone to distraction – even dramatizing one of the Biggles war stories (strikingly rendered by Made Visual Studio) that captivated young Chapman. However, by the time Autobiography reaches Treat Studios’ Space Pods, the connection to reality has been gleefully severed.

The greatest irony of Autobiography is that its biggest laughs and greatest emotional payoff comes from the real-life-honest-to-gosh video of John Cleese’s eulogy for Chapman, in which he promises to avoid “mindless good taste.” Most of the Pythons are represented in Autobiography, playing themselves as well as other co-conspirators and innocent bystanders. Fans will be delighted to hear honorary Python Carol Cleveland turns up for old time’s sake, too. Bizarrely, Cameron Diaz, who also used to be famous once, supplies the voice of Freud. However, Eric Idle is MIA, though his song “Sit on My Face” gets the full “Blame Canada” Busby Berkley treatment.

You don’t walk out of Autobiography, you stagger. While the 3D is characteristically hit or miss, the film[s] bombards the audience with wacky, tripped-out imagery. At times it is almost too much, but at least it scrupulously observes Chapman’s wishes regarding gratuitous good taste. You have to give its spirit proper due. Recommended more for the fanatical Python fan than the causal viewer (quick, what is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?), A Liar’s Autobiography will be the first 3D release to play at the Angelika Film Center when it opens this Friday (11/2) in New York, simultaneous with its 2D broadcast on Epix.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on October 30th, 2012 at 1:15pm.

By Joe Bendel. They are known as Yakshis in southern India, but we would think of them as succubi. Every culture has their equivalent, but one architect fears he married one. Yet, his perception of reality may or may not be so reliable in Shalini Usha Nair’s Akam (Palas in Bloom; trailer here), which screened at the 2012 South Asian International Film Festival in New York.

Srinivas seemed to have his life laid out perfectly, until an accident left the young architect visibly disfigured. Abandoned by his girlfriend, he descends into a deep existential depression. It is only the chance late night meeting with a mysterious woman that snaps him out of his lethargy. Just what Ragini was doing at his construction site at that hour is a question that will bother Srinivas in months to come, but it concerns him little during their brief courtship.

For a while everything is great, and then just as suddenly things are terrible again. Srinivas finds himself besieged by minor misfortunes and ailments that he is convinced Ragini has caused. He is convinced she is a Yakshi, who seduced him in order to torment and eventually murder him, because that is what Yakshis do.

If Ragini is a Yakshi, Nair isn’t telling. There is evidence in the film to support either conclusion, but none of it is trustworthy, because of the manner in which Srinivas’s obviously warped POV skews the film’s narrative. Indeed, Akam’s open-endedness clearly gave some SAIFF patrons fits, just as Nair intended.

Loosely based on Malayattoor Ramakrishnan’s novel Yakshi, Akam could have featured a spot of gore here and there, but Nair elected to keep it off-screen – which will further frustrate genre fans. That simply is not the tradition the film flows out of. However, there are enough hat-tips to Vertigo to inspire an angry missive from Kim Novak. Present day Kerala might seem worlds and centuries removed from Puritan New England, but Srinivas could almost be considered a Malayalam Hawthorne character, whose outward disfigurement corresponds to a spiritual disfigurement. The real horror of his story is the uncertainty over whether he is the victim or the tormentor, much like a Goodman Brown.

As Srinivas, Fahadh Faasil vividly portrays a man plagued by inner demons and insecurities, while Anumol K’s Ragini certainly suggests a woman with closely guarded secrets. Freed from traditional genre demands, Nair’s pacing is decidedly patient. Unfortunately, the frequent flashbacks are not well delineated from the present day, often causing viewer confusion. Yet, her sparing use of sound, and the film’s overwhelming sense of darkness and stillness are unusually effective. Akam has a genuinely foreboding atmosphere that makes the ambiguous gamesmanship possible.

This is definitely not Bollywood. Technically it is Mollywood, but do not expect any Malayalam musical numbers. While the austerity of Nair’s style is demanding at times, the overall vibe really gets under your skin. Though not perfect, this is a film more festival programmers ought to consider. Recommended for cineastes who have a taste for the macabre but prefer mood over mayhem, Akam is set to have a limited Indian release this November.

LFM GRADE: B

Posted on October 29th, 2012 at 1:36pm.