Category: Trailers

By Joe Bendel. Remember Sir Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon in William Wyler’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s romantic classic? If you do, you had best forget them now. Andrea Arnold radically reconceptualizes the familiar story in her mud and thatch version of Wuthering Heights (trailer above), which screens at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

The basic elements are still here. Heathclliff is a sullen young waif adopted by Earnshaw, a stern but charitable farmer of property. The lad forges a deep bond with his sort-of sister Catherine, but earns the enmity of Earnshaw’s son Linton, for usurping his father’s affections. When the devout farmer dies, Linton inherits the farm, stripping Heathcliff of his family standing. Now a lowly servant, Heathcliff nurses his resentments, which will lead to tragedy.

However, Arnold’s take on Brontë strips away the high costume drama romanticism, tacking an earthy, naturalistic course. Her casting of Afro-Caribbean actors as Heathcliff has garnered much attention, but that is really the least unconventional aspect of her approach. This is a highly impressionistic and ruminative film that revels in closely observed nature studies (masterfully lensed by Robbie Ryan) and relies on ambient noise rather than complimentary music and even dialogue. Set amid a harsh, unsentimentalized environment, Earnshaw’s home, Wuthering Heights, is simply a working farm, with all the muck and mire one should expect. Even Thrushcross Grange is cut down to size, nowhere near as imposing as Highclere Castle (a.k.a. Downton Abbey).

That is not to say it is not effective. As young Heathcliff and Catherine, Solomon Glave and Shannon Beer forcefully portray their characters’ animalism and instinctive defiance. Glave is a particularly electric screen presence, who largely carries the quiet film on his shoulders. By contrast, James Howson is far less dynamic as the older Heathcliff, lacking the charismatic malevolence the role demands. Frankly, he hardly looks much older than Glave.

Indeed, Arnold’s Heights is at its best during Heathcliff and Catherine’s formative years. Like most adaptations, the late chapters concerning their grown children are omitted. Since the film proceeds without a narrator, Mr. Lockwood also gets the boat. However, Heathcliff’s relationship with Isabella is shoehorned in rather awkwardly, perhaps to placate the faithful.

Heights’ spartan brutality is truly haunting. However, it is doomed to collect decidedly negative online feedback. People who go to Brontë films do not want to see something new and different. They want the “Oh, Heathcliff” scene on the moors. This is not that kind of film. It viscerally expresses a host of tactile sensations, de-emphasizing melodramatic plot turns. Despite a comparatively weaker third act, it is a bold work that really stays with you after viewing – but due to its nature, it is only recommended for adventurous, fully informed audiences. It screens again during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival today (1/28) in Salt Lake.

SUNDANCE GRADE: B

Posted on January 28th, 2012 at 3:19pm.

By Joe Bendel. Southeast Asia really is not the wisest place to go on a drug and booze-fueled bender, particularly if you are parents and even more so if you are pregnant. Nonetheless, the Flannerys decides you only live once in Kieran Darcy-Smith’s cautionary tale, Wish You Were Here, which screens as part of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Dave and Alice Flannery have two kids, with a third on the way. Despite her advancing pregnancy they cannot say no when her sister Steph McKinney’s new boyfriend offers to treat them all to a vacation in Cambodia. A sketchy import-exporter, the fast-talking Jeremy King claims he can deduct it all. Evidently Australia must have quite an indulgent tax code. At first, the quartet has a blast, as the audience can plainly see from the long opening montage. However, only three of them came back. Somewhere along the way, they lost King.

Actually, quite a bit went down in Cambodia that threatens to break their family ties. Since they all assume King’s disappearance involved his stash of XTC, they have trouble deciding just what they should tell the Australian authorities. Needless to say, there are probably lingering dangers from that fateful night they should also worry about.

At times, the Flannerys can just be hair-pullingly dumb. An iota of communication would have spared them so much grief. Still, the slow reveal of King’s fate is rather effective (though the resolution of the mystery is somewhat underwhelming). The Cambodian locales are also quite cinematically exotic and seedy. Yet throughout Wish, it is impossible to shake the notion the Flannerys got off easy. Haven’t they seen Midnight Express? Drug use in a less than transparent country is usually a distinctly bad idea.

Poised to succeed Russell Crowe as Hollywood’s favorite square-jawed Australian, Joel Edgerton definitely has the right intense screen presence and everyman quality for Dave Flannery. Granted, it is a stressful set of circumstances, but Felicity Price’s Alice Flannery often comes across as somewhat overwrought and irrational. In contrast, even though he draws the short straw, Anthony Starr is rather memorably dynamic as the ill-fated King.

Wish is a serviceable thriller-slash-family drama, but it holds no real surprises in store for viewers. It probably will not do much for Cambodian tourism either, even though the beaches look inviting. Not a special priority, Wish screens this coming Wednesday (1/25) and Friday (1/27) in Park City, as this year’s Sundance swings into high gear.

SUNDANCE GRADE: C+

Posted on January 22nd, 2012 at 11:10am.

By Joe Bendel. Isolated and picturesque, the Lebanese village of Taybeh offered the perfect locations for the country’s official submission for this year’s best foreign language Academy Award. The church and mosque built side by side will be particularly significant in Nadine Labaki’s stylized musical, Where Do We Go Now?, which screens during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Accessible only by an impossibly torturous bridge, the Christian and Muslim inhabitants live in peace, or at least the women do. The men are uneasy in their truce as news of fresh violence in the outside world vaguely drifts in. Tired of their perpetual mourning, Amale, the Christian widow who operates the town café, organizes the women like a Lebanese Lysistrata. They sabotage the television and radios, while doing their best to distract the restive men. When all else fails, they bring in a troupe of Ukrainian strippers, in a bit of a departure from the film’s classical Greek forerunner.

In a bit of a twist, the women’s few real male allies include the village’s priest and imam, whom the film presents as friendly colleagues rather than hateful zealots. Of course, Labaki and co-writers Jihad Hojeily, and Rodney Al Haddad strenuously avoid taking sides. Indeed, the whole crux of the film is the interchangeability of the two faiths.

The occasional musical number certainly helps liven-up the proceedings. Some are rather somber, like the funeral procession taking a slight Fosse-esque detour. However, Amale’s fantasy dance with Rabih, her Muslim handyman, is pretty hot stuff. As Amale, Labaki is also rather alluring, but her smart and sophisticated presence seems at odds with the rest of the largely matronly townswomen. Indeed, she seems distinctly out of place in this town full of stock characters.

Still, the choreography is striking and Christophe Offenstein’s cinematography is often quite arresting, soaking up all the scarred beauty of the weathered village and the rugged surrounding landscape. Though well meaning, Where remains a minor film that ultimately lacks the gravitas it presumes to have by virtue of its subject matter. Pleasant for those who enjoy an unconventional movie musical, but hardly a priority at Sundance, it screens this Saturday (1/21), Wednesday (1/25), and the following Saturday (1/28) in Park City, as well as this Sunday (1/22) in Salt Lake.

SUNDANCE GRADE: B-

Posted on January 21st, 2012 at 10:06am.

By Joe Bendel. They are sort of like the Swiss Family Robinson, except more archetypal. They also must learn to share their bizarre new world with fantastical insectoid creatures in Tibor Banoczki & Sarolta Szabo’s unusually ambitious, genre-defying animated short film The Conquerors, which screens during this year’s Sundance Film Festival in Park City.

Amidst a roiling sea, a man and a woman become castaways on a forbidding island. Since she is pregnant, their situation is particularly dire. Yet, after some initial days of hunger, the man learns how to tame the smaller beetle-like creatures and hunt the larger ones. The woman safely delivers her baby and several more follow. Eventually, their family becomes a small community. For the most part, they live in harmony with their macabre environment, but danger is ever present. Then outsiders arrive and everything changes.

Rendered in a distinctive photorealistic style of animation, Conquerors has a striking look truly unique unto itself. Its evocative black-and-white images suggest the influence of both German expressionism and 1930’s adventure serials in equal measure, while the strange world owes more to the surrealists. Yet, in terms of tone, its closest comparison might be René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet, for its bold use of Biblical motifs and brutally naturalistic representation of the rule of the jungle.

Conquerors screens as part of the short program in Sundance’s New Frontiers track, which is sort of a catch-all for work that is experimental or tech-driven. While its animation might be cutting edge, it is still perfectly accessible from a narrative standpoint. In fact, Banoczki and Szabo tell quite an epic tale in an economic twelve minutes.

So richly detailed and loaded with allegorical significance, Conquerors is definitely the sort of film that rewards multiple viewings. Visually, it is absolutely absorbing, even when depicting unsettling events. A co-production of the National Film Board of Canada, it would be a highlight of most any short film program. Highly recommended, it screens during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontiers shorts block this coming Monday (1/23), Wednesday (1/25), and next Saturday (1/28) in Park City and this coming Tuesday (1/24) in Salt Lake.

Posted on January 21st, 2012 at 10:04am.