By Author – Page 425 – LFM: Libertas Film Magazine

LFM Mini-Review: Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D

revil — Ali Larter & Milla Jovovich in "Resident Evil: Afterlife."

By Jason Apuzzo. THE PITCH: Post-apocalyptic zombie-fighter Milla Jovovich takes her quest for survivors of an apocalyptic viral outbreak to Tokyo, Alaska and ultimately Los Angeles … as she squares off against zombies, and the occasional henchman of the Umbrella Corporation. Extreme 3D mayhem ensues.

THE SKINNY: Surprisingly satisfying genre entertainment from director Paul W. S. Anderson (hubby of Jovovich, btw), who may be working at his best here.

WHAT WORKS:

• Milla Jovovich’s high cheekbones, full lips, and ability to unleash extreme mayhem while sprinting through slow-motion raindrops in a black catsuit.

hollywoodsign — Arriving in post-apocalyptic Hollywood.

• Setting the film in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles – and populating the city with thousands of drooling, shambling, flesh-eating zombies. Rarely have I seen a more realistic depiction of what this city is actually like.

• Having one of the film’s primary villains be a former movie executive. Laughed out loud at that one.

• One particular 10-foot tall mega-zombie, who wields a 300 pound axe. The guy comes across a bit like Xerxes from 300. The fight scene involving this dude and Jovovich was easily the best fight scene of any film this summer.

• The 3D in this film looked immersive and natural – because the movie was shot natively in 3D, rather than retrofitted in post-production. My understanding is that this is the first major film since Avatar to be shot 3D-native.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK:

• Having yet another corporation as the villain – although one gets the sense that the film might actually be a big, coded metaphor for the horrors of working at Sony. More on that below.

• The lame, Agent Smith-style villain – who goes by the name ‘Albert Wesker.’ The guy was a total bore, as was his Matrix-style, ‘bullet time’ fight scene at the end of the film. Strictly ho-hum.

• The TV-level casting. Outside of Jovovich, the cast lacks personality.

Milla Jovovich is probably the only serious contender Angelina Jolie has to the title of Queen of the Action Film, with Kate Beckensdale a distant third. Jolie’s appeal in these films is that she always comes across as a bit crazy, a bit insane – which gives her action scenes a cracked sort of credibility. Jovovich, on the other hand, seems to be more of a natural. Originally a Kiev girl, born in the old Soviet Union, Jovovich apparently has a colorful family history of military commanders and Cossacks in her past – and she looks it. You just get the feeling looking at those imperious, high Ukranian cheekbones of hers that her ancestors probably sacked a few Polish villages in their time. That gives her a lot of credibiilty as she’s mowing down zombies, or anybody else in her way. Acting-wise, I don’t think she has Jolie’s depth – but since this is a post-apocalyptic zombie picture, that’s not much of a concern here.

One funny thing about Resident Evil: Afterlife is that the film is constantly taking little pot-shots at Los Angeles and the entertainment industry in general. Although a Big Evil Corporation is the villain here, it’s interesting that its headquarters at the outset of the film is in Tokyo, underneath the Ginza. So one gets the impression that when Jovovich shows up and starts doing her Aeon Flux-routine – absolutely laying waste to the place with guns, ninja stars and samurai swords – that she’s exacting some kind of bizarre, personal vendetta against the Sony Corporation. Plus, one of the film’s main villains is a former movie producer – who is depicted as being the most conniving, sniveling creature imaginable.

My favorite little dig, though, comes when Jovovich initially flies into Los Angeles – right over the Hollywood sign – and looks down on post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. The city is burning, smashed to pieces, and crowded with hordes of shambling, flesh-eating zombies. “Los Angeles,” Milla says, “no signs of life here.” The audience in my theater laughed out loud at that one.

I haven’t really been following the Resident Evil franchise, but this film now has me interested. I know that Paul W.S. Anderson has taken a lot of heat for films like Alien vs. Predator and the Death Race remake, but this film works quite well. The only serious disappointment I had was with the scene in which Milla starts to disrobe, and is about to take a shower … in 3D … when the zombies show up and start another fight, interrupting everything. [Sigh.]

Piranha 3D would not have flinched on that one. 🙂

Posted on September 10th, 2010 3:55pm.

The Reagan Movie in Theaters Right Now

fredreagan — Fred Ward as Ronald Reagan in "Farewell."

By Jason Apuzzo. Mark Joseph’s planned Reagan biopic, Reagan, is getting a lot of attention right now. James Brolin, who played Reagan in the Showtime miniseries The Reagans, is suddenly claiming that he loves Reagan (don’t tell Babs that); Mark Joseph is also telling Fox News that his film will deal with Reagan’s “plan to defeat the Soviets” (which certainly jibes with what he’s told me); and the film’s screenwriter talks today to the Wall Street Journal about the transformation of his own attitude toward Reagan.

I think all this discussion is great, and I very much wish the best for this film project – but I just want to caution everybody that Reagan has thus far not secured its financing yet, or a cast, or a director, or distribution. What this means, practically, is that this film is a long way from hitting theaters. I’m assuming that announcements about financing and cast/crew are imminent, but until then it’s hard to judge all this properly.

The irony here is that there’s actually quite a good film in theaters right now featuring Reagan called Farewell (starring Fred Ward as Reagan, and featuring Willem Dafoe, David Soul and others) – that depicts Reagan respectfully and intelligently – during one of the most decisive moments of his Presidency. Farewell deals with the famous Cold War spy case ‘L’Affaire Farewell,’ an episode which Reagan himself called “one of the most important espionage cases of the 20th century.”

We really liked Farewell here at Libertas, including its depiction of Reagan (see Joe Bendel’s LFM review here), and we encourage Libertas readers to go see it since it’s still being rolled out nationwide. The realities of the business are that the better a film like Farewell does, the more likely Reagan will actually get made – and receive the distribution it deserves.

As LFM’s Joe Bendel said about Farewell, “[I]t is an engrossing film. It also might be the fairest shake Pres. Reagan has gotten on screen since his inauguration in 1981 …” So go check it out. I’ve put the trailer below.

Posted on September 9th, 2010 at 3:33pm.

Four Lions Gets Distribution!

By Jason Apuzzo. I am very pleased to report that a movie we loved here at Libertas – Chris Morris’ Islamic terror satire Four Lions – has just picked up U.S. distribution. We’ve been covering the progress of this film for months, and we’re so happy that Alamo Drafthouse – a great cult movie distribution outfit (for DVDs) that will now be entering theatrical distribution under the banner of Drafthouse Films – has selected Four Lions as its first theatrical venture. Four Lions will apparently be kicking off a 10 city promotional screening tour with Chris Morris in mid-October, and the film is otherwise slated for release this fall in New York, Los Angeles and Austin – with other cities in following weeks. This is great news.

We got a chance to see Four Lions at the LA Film Festival a few months ago, and we thought it was fantastic. [Read my review of Four Lions here.] We also had fun meeting actor Kayvan Novak, who plays the clueless ‘Waj’ in the film. After Four Lions’ big debut at Sundance, the film closed the South by Southwest Film Festival, won the Independent Camera Award at Karlovy Vary – and was voted Best Narrative Feature by audiences at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

Having been at one of those LA Film Fest screenings, I can tell you that the place rocked. Why? Because Four Lions breaks all the rules and says things that need to be said about contemporary Islamic terror … but are never allowed to be said in current Hollywood cinema.

As we’ve been reporting here for months, Four Lions is part of a recent wave of narrative films that are finally starting to look honestly at the phenomenon of Islamic terror … and doing so through the subversive medium of humor. Joining Four Lions in this new wave are Omid Djalili’s absolutely hilarious new film The Infidel (see our review of it here), the popular British web series “Living with the Infidels” (see our review of that here), and … am I allowed to mention this? … my own film Kalifornistan, which will be opening the Free Thinking Film Festival on November 12th.

The most obvious thing to say about this phenomenon is that all of these are indie projects. Studios still won’t touch this subject. Frankly, I don’t expect that to change. My sense is that Hollywood feels the War on Terror winding down, and is simply going to sit it out on the sidelines and let the indies take care of this stuff.

That’s fine by me. We don’t need the studio people ruining our fun.

[UPDATE: You can read a great interview with Drafthouse’s CEO Tim League here. His outfit will be distributing Four Lions here in the U.S.]

Posted on September 9th, 2010 at 12:26pm.

New Voices in Russian Cinema: The 2010 CEC Short Film Program

By Joe Bendel. Nearly every great Russian writer, including the likes of Chekhov, Bunin, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Babel, excelled under the rigorous self-imposed discipline of the short story format. Decades later, short forms seem to hold a similar appeal for emerging Russian directors. In cooperation with the Telluride Film Festival, CEC Artslink presents an evening of four short films by their independent filmmakers-in-residence tonight at the Tribeca Cinemas in lower Manhattan.

The first selection is also the longest and happily the best of the program. In many ways, Mikhail Zheleznikov’s For Home Viewing is an antidote to ideology. An autobiographical video essay, Zheleznikov tells his story of coming of age during the Brezhnev era and starting a family under Perestroika. In the process, he largely eschews the macro-ideological clashes of time, aside from a gently cynical skepticism of all things political, which seems distinctly Russian.

Throughout Viewing, Zheleznikov demonstrates a keen visual sense. In addition to memorable vintage film and stills, he incorporates some clever animation techniques, but never to the point of distraction. His imagery is often simple but evocative, like a sequence involving an old scrapbook he assembled with his high school friends’ leftover passport photos.

For Polina and her boyfriend Klim, life is too beautiful to worry about current events in Tatiana Kevorkova’s Spring. Having stretched their date into the early spring morning, they appear ready to break into song. Once she returns to her flat, the film evolves into a pleasant enough situation comedy. However, the light and frothy Spring is quite well crafted. Kevorkova has a fine eye for composition, particularly during her early street scenes, where cinematographer Sergey Komarov makes their picturesque neighborhood sparkle.

While Viewing and Spring suggest life and love continue more or less oblivious to outside forces, Konstantin Smirnov’s Kolyan is far less sanguine. The title character might euphemistically be called a disaffected youth. With his troubled home life and menial employment, he is ripe for recruitment by the local hate group. Yet he still feels more than just the stirrings of attraction for the Chechen girl in his neighborhood. At approximately fifteen minutes, Kolyan makes its point quite effectively, without getting melodramatic. It is also features some sensitive chemistry between its would-be romantic interests, which is really why the film works so well.

A Russian film titled Seagulls might be expected to evoke Chekhov, but Irina Volkova’s concluding short initially suggests more the spirit of Beckett. As two newlyweds stroll across a bleak winter beach, he supposedly decides to stay there permanently. After some absurdist back-and-forth, she more-or-less calls his bluff. Frankly, who would blame her for leaving him there? Still, Maria Shalaeva has some strong moments as the woman, most notably when she double-dares her hubby to tuck into one of the dead gulls littering the beach.

Quite a strong program overall, CEC’s 2010 short film evening boasts one of the best short documentaries of the year in Zheleznikov’s Viewing. A perfect (though arguably superior) companion film to Robin Hessman’s My Perestroika (see the LFM review of My Perestroika here), it should thoroughly charm Russophiles and provoke nostalgia for Russian expatriates. By contrast, Kolyan will probably make the latter happy to have left, but it remains a strong short nonetheless. The CEC Russian short film program has two screenings tonight (9/9) in New York at the Tribeca Cinemas, continuing on to DC for a special screening at the Russian Federation embassy the following Monday (9/13).

Posted on September 9th, 2010 at 12:24pm.

Mad Men Season Four, Episode 7: “The Suitcase”

By Jennifer Baldwin. “Somebody very important to me died … the only person in the world who really knew me.” — Don Draper

This is it. The best episode of the season. Perhaps the best episode in two seasons. Certainly the best hour of television I’ve seen in awhile. Everybody is talking about this week’s episode of Mad Men and throwing superlatives at it like so much confetti at an office New Year’s party, and who am I to disagree? It was brilliant. It was the greatest. All the praise, all the accolades, the Emmy wins, everything: if you need a reason to explain the Mad Men phenomenon, this episode is it.

Which is funny, because I was all prepared to suffer for forty-two minutes when I realized this episode was focusing on a character I’ve never really grooved to: Peggy Olson. I know that she’s a fan favorite, but her career woman ambitions, her sexual escapades, her seeming rejection of religion, her experimentation with drugs, her bohemian friends – it always struck me as nothing more than immature adolescent rebellion. And worst of all, the show seems to hold her up at times as the height of enlightenment, putting the sexist, repressed men in their places, and showing the stodgy world of middle class morality and religion that she’s not gonna play by their rules and don’t you try and make her! Woo hoo, feminism! Ugh. Peggy has a tendency to be smug, but the writers expect us to be a chorus of “You go girl!” in her favor. No thanks.

But then what does Matt Weiner do? What does this wizard of complex characterizations and masterful storytelling achieve in this week’s episode of Mad Men? I’ll tell you what: Peggy Olson is my new favorite character. I realized with mixes of horror and heartbreak and strange consolation that I am, in so many ways, Peggy Olson. Her crises and confusions this episode are mine as well at this moment in my life. Suddenly, I knew her. I knew Peggy Olson and I understood.

This is an episode about knowing, about what it means to really know someone. It’s about whether people are capable of knowing each other, deep down inside. It’s about what it means to truly understand someone, about knowing the secret yearnings and the secret pains and the secret flaws. It’s about how the people who should know us – our family, our significant others, our friends – don’t always really know us at all.

This episode hit close to home for me. I think this idea of “knowing” and being “known” is something that hits close to home for a lot of us – for anybody who has ever felt like the proverbial square peg. I think that’s why the episode is garnering such praise. Mad Men can always be counted on to deliver sharp, witty writing and strong, multi-layered themes. But this episode struck a nerve because it was about something that so many of us struggle with and worry about in our own lives: Do the people in my life, the people close to me, do they really know me? Who can I open myself up to, who will get me on a deep-down level? Is there anyone who can really know me? These are troubling questions and they’re questions that both Don and Peggy face in this episode.

And the beauty of it is, the strange, sad cosmic beauty, is that Peggy and Don answer those questions for each other, in the middle of the night, working late at the office. They don’t have to be alone — they know each other.

When Don tells Peggy that recently deceased Anna was “the only person who really knew me,” Peggy’s response is the response we all hope to hear someday: “That’s not true.” Peggy knows Don, even if she doesn’t know all the secrets and the history that Anna knew about him. What Peggy knows are the things that even a friend or a wife or a relative might not know; she knows a little bit of Don’s soul.

The suitcase is the perfect metaphor: The hard shell that no one can crack, but what’s inside? We can drop it off a building, we can have an elephant stomp it, but the casing around our inner selves won’t bust. We want someone to bust it open, to see inside us and know us, but we’re like a Samsonite – our outer shells are tough.

The obvious parallel being set up at the beginning is that Don and Peggy are like Clay and Liston. Like two pugilists trading punches, Don and Peggy go at each other over the Samsonite account and Don’s ruthless work demands. They start off fighting just like Clay and Liston, but the difference is that in the case of Don and Peggy, they both end up knocked out.

I love when Mad Men gets subjective and we enter the memory/dreamspace inside Don’s head (or is it just a drunken stupor? Does it matter?). That last ethereal vision of Anna that Don sees– a spirit or a dream or a desperate wish – is one of the most haunting images from the show. It transcends the narrative and the characters and becomes a piece of pure cinema: movement and light, human beauty in motion, glimpsed for one sustained moment before fading into nothing. And she’s holding a suitcase.

Other notes from the episode:

• I love that Joan gave Don “exactly what he needed,” by assigning Miss Blankenship as his secretary. Also: Miss Blankenship, Queen of Perversions!

• Speaking of which, Roger’s recording of his memoirs is just about the funniest thing this show has ever done. From Bert Cooper’s testicle removal, to the Blankenship revelations, to the secret of Dr. Lyle Evans, I was screaming with laughter. John Slattery’s delivery in the recording is pitch-perfect.

• Cassius Clay was – as the show mentions – by this time now calling himself Mohammad Ali. I’m always fascinated by the way Don seems to be on the wrong side of history when it comes to these famous personages. First he was a Nixon man in the 1960 election, suspicious of Kennedy’s pedigree and wealth. Now he’s all in for Liston at the fight, calling Ali/Clay out as an arrogant loudmouth who hasn’t proven himself. And he doesn’t like Joe Namath! As much as Don is a creative genius in advertising, he’s paradoxically suspicious of “The New” when it comes to stuff like politics and pop culture.

• Also interesting: Don bet on Liston, Roger bet on Clay. Hmm…

• I appreciated Peggy’s “Queen for a Day” paper crown for her birthday.

• Also: Pete said, “Pray tell.” I love Pete.

Finally, the closing credits song? “Bleecker Street” by Simon and Garfunkel.

Posted on September 9th, 2010 at 9:45am.

Kalifornistan to Open Free Thinking Film Festival on November 12th

By Jason Apuzzo. Today we bring some special news to Libertas readers. Kalifornistan, a film starring LFM Co-Editor Govindini Murty, and which I wrote and directed, will be opening the Free Thinking Film Festival in Ottawa, Canada this November 12th.

The Free Thinking Film Festival is designed by its founder Fred Litwin to celebrate “limited government, free market economics, and the dignity of the individual.” We’re very honored that Kalifornistan was chosen to open the festival for its Opening Night Gala, an event which will also serve as a fundraiser for the Military Family Resource Centre – which helps military families in Canada. Tickets for this event are available here.

Other films in the festival include: Cyrus Nowrasteh’s The Stoning of Soraya M (Closing Night Gala, with Cyrus attending), Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others, Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn, HBO’s documentary For Neda (which we showed in its entirety here at Libertas) and a multitude of interesting documentaries including: Crossing the Line, Outside the Great Wall, Decryptage, The Cartel, Generation Zero, Do As I Say, Mine Your Own Business and others.

The full festival line-up is available here.

We want to thank Fred Litwin and his team for choosing Kalifornistan to open the festival. We’re very honored to have Kalifornistan in the company of the many exceptional films and filmmakers being gathered together for this exciting event. I’ve put the trailer for Kalifornistan above, and you can visit Kalifornistan’s website here.

I also want to congratulate Fred for putting on this festival to begin with. Freedom of thought within the film world is something that needs to be promoted at every opportunity; it is, indeed, the very basis for our having started The Liberty Film Festival back in 2004 and Libertas back in 2005, and for bringing Libertas back in its current form earlier this year. It isn’t sufficient to simply complain about the state of free speech in the film world; action and activity are required to foster and encourage emerging voices. So we applaud Fred for putting this event on, and encourage everyone to attend. Having done the Liberty Film Festival ourselves, we know how challenging these events can be – and also how necessary they are, given the current state of our film culture.

Here’s a description of Kalifornistan from the Free Thinking Film Festival website:

In the shadowy Port of Los Angeles, an insane terrorist stalks a beautiful dancer … while plotting the nuclear apocalypse he hopes will make him a celebrity. KALIFORNISTAN is a darkly comic satire on terrorism made by Canadian actress and filmmaker Govindini Murty and American filmmaker Jason Apuzzo. KALIFORNISTAN follows the deranged leader of a terror cell called ‘Glorious Jihad of Kalifornistan’ as he plots to destroy Los Angeles with a nuclear bomb – while being distracted by a sultry exotic dancer. KALIFORNISTAN fuses film, video, documentary and surveillance footage into a cutting-edge narrative on the violence, narcissism and delusional fantasies that fuel contemporary Islamic terrorism. KALIFORNISTAN takes viewers on a twisted journey of the post-9/11 world from Gitmo to Iran, from the dark corners of LA harbour into the mind of a terrorist too deranged even for Al Qaeda.

Human Events says of KALIFORNISTAN: “The film clicks as strong, effective satire … Kalifornistan … dares to see the average terrorist for what he truly is — a laughably warped soul with a world view shaped by Islamic radicalism — and too many extremist blogs … and once you meet the terrorist at the heart of the film you’ll wonder why more filmmakers haven’t taken this approach before.” LA’s Daily Breeze says that “Kalifornistan may be the South Bay’s 21st century cinematic equivalent of Gone in 60 Seconds, the 1974 cult classic.” Online journal Rational Review says that KALIFORNISTAN “is beautifully shot” and “it’s Fellini meets Kubrick.”

GovindiniMurty — Govindini Murty of "Kalifornistan."

We had a lot of fun making Kalifornistan. And I’d like to think that Kalifornistan is imbued with the same kind of spirit that we bring here to Libertas every day: a spirit of fun, good humor, edginess, a completely uncompromising look at very controversial subjects … and really sexy women. 🙂 Kalifornistan is basically an art-house/cult film on a subject that most people in Hollywood are too afraid to touch: the sexual fantasies that fuel many young Islamic terrorists. You can check out an extensive interview I did about the film here.

Our ‘Libertas pin-up’ in Kalifornistan is Govindini, of course – although she provides a great deal more than just eye candy in this film … not that that isn’t important, by the way. But I’m also quite proud of her performance in the film – which required her to be believable not only as an exotic dancer, but as someone who can realistically confront a terrorist. [Of course, as anybody who knows Govindini will tell you, it’s not hard to imagine her doing that.]

Govindini was also the film’s executive producer, story editor, and was invaluable in the final shaping of the film’s retro-‘documentary realist’ style – a style which she and I are both quite passionate about. She was a vital force behind this film, and there’s quite simply no way I could’ve made it without her.

One other note: LFM Contributer Steve Greaves wrote and performed the cool, retro-60s music score in Kalifornistan, which you hear in the trailer above. Steve did a great job on Kalifornistan’s soundtrack, on a very tight deadline, and I’m looking forward to working with him again in the near future.

Even though Kalifornistan was shot on a modest budget, the film has a lot of personality – which, in my opinion, is what an indie film always needs to have. If you haven’t had the chance to see Kalifornistan, we encourage you to pick up a copy here.

Of course, if you think Kalifornistan has a lot of personality, wait till you see the next film we’re doing …

Again, our thanks to Fred Litwin and the Free Thinking Film Festival, and we encourage everyone to get their tickets for this great event today. We expect tickets for this event to go fast. The Free Thinking Film Festival will be taking place at the National Archives – adjacent to Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Canada. Incidentally, Govindini is a proud Ottawa native, and is delighted that free thinking films are coming to the fine citizens of Canada’s capitol.

Posted on September 8th, 2010 at 11:23am.