Can you remember 1992? I certainly can, and what I remember is that trash TV — and to some extent, even the mainstream media — was filled with stories about Kurt Cobain and his bride, Courtney Love. They had been married in Hawaii in February of that year, and already there were lurid tales of addiction, arrest, and marital discord. In the midst of it all a daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, was born in August.
A lot of the stories questioned Cobain’s “health,” by which they meant drug addiction, but there were also rumors that Nirvana might be breaking up. It didn’t help things when the band decided not to undertake another U.S. tour to promote their major label debut, Nevermind, instead opting for select dates here and there. The reason given at the time was “exhaustion,” and everyone knew, or thought they knew, what that meant.
The band’s answer to all the rumors came at England’s legendary Reading Festival on August 30, 1992. Nirvana had played Reading the previous year, but at that time, they were halfway down the bill. When they returned in 1992, it was as the headliners. That night Nirvana played what Kerrang magazine called one #1 of the “100 Gigs That Shook the World,” and Nirvana fans voted the show “Nirvana’s #1 Greatest Moment” in a NME poll. (more…)
An Audience of One (2009, Indiepix)
Purchase this DVD from Amazon or from Indiepix
At age 40, Richard Gozawsky, a San Francisco Pentecostal pastor at one of those houses of worship where the members are encouraged to speak in tongues and prayers become shouting matches with the devil, saw his first movie ever. Soon thereafter he received a message from God: Richard was to form a production company and make the greatest, biggest motion picture of all time. It was to be called Gravity: In the Shadow of Joseph, and this cross between Star Wars and The Ten Commandments was going to change the world.
Sounds like the makings of a high concept, studio-budgeted comedy from the Bruce Almighty playbook, doesn’t it? Think again, my friends, because Gazowsky and his journey are the subject of An Audience of One, a documentary from director Michael Jacobs. The film, originally released in 2007 and the recipient of many festival awards, has come to DVD through Indiepix. If you’re tired of documentary filmmakers injecting their beliefs and themselves into their movies, or if you simply enjoy well-made, dramatic movies with humor and eccentric characters, then the nonjudgmental An Audience of One is a film you should see.
Jacob’s film opens as preproduction of Gravity is underway. The volunteer members of the church are making costumes, running the finances, and planning a company move from California to Alberobello, Italy, where they plan to shoot their movie. Having never directed a movie in his life and having never produced anything of this capacity before, Gazowsky is able to raise enough money to put the film into production. His “how hard can it be” attitude about film making and his undying faith that God will guide him have convinced people that he will make this movie. As spiritual leader of his entire production staff, no one questions his actions; no one thinks he’s going to fail. As for the professionals hired to light and work on the camera crew, well, a gig is a gig as long as you get paid, even if the director of the film is delusional. (more…)
Sandra Bullock is at the top of her game and Ryan Reynolds gives one of his best performances to date in the romantic comedy The Proposal. This funny, sweet and beautifully shot film is released today on DVD and Blue-Ray.
Reynolds plays Andrew, a degraded executive assistant at a publishing company working for bitch on heels, Margaret (Bullock). Although it’s a lowly job, Andrew understands that if he can survive his tenure with the reviled Margaret, he’ll eventually be promoted to book editor. As the film opens, Margaret has a huge dilemma: Through a visa violation she’s about to be deported back to her native Canada, and she’ll losing her job and reputation. In a moment of desperation, she lies to her bosses and U.S. Immigration that she and Andrew are actually engaged, thus meaning she can stay in the U.S. Andrew only goes along with her plan on the condition he gets his promotion. However, the government expects her to prove their engagement is real. To further perpetuate the scam, Margaret must accompany Andrew back to his home state of Alaska for his grandmother’s 90th birthday. From there, Peter Chiarelli’s script becomes a fun fish out of water story as Margaret the ice queen’s heart slowly melts.
Once they arrive in Andrew’s small Alaskan hometown, Margaret quickly learns that Andrew isn’t the man she thought he was and gains new respect for him.  She gets to see the loving relationship he has with his mother, Grace (the always adorable Mary Steenburgen) and his rambunctious grandma (a riotous Betty White). Besides the tension created by Andrew and Margaret lying about their relationship, there is the strained relationship Andrew has with his father, Joe (an excellent Craig T. Nelson). Joe looks at Andrew’s literary pursuits as a whim and is impatiently waiting for his son to return home and take over the family business empire. (more…)
When you’re presented with the opportunity to see a film deemed “too unbearable to release,” you have to check it out, don’t you? That’s how I wound up with a copy of the 2008 horror movie Deadgirl, in my mailbox. I’ve seen my share of slasher movies and torture porn films like Saw and Hostel, so I felt like I was prepared for anything. Deadgirl definitely has its disturbing moments. But I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it’s just as much a story about friendship, young love and loneliness as it a movie about sex with a zombie.
Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez) and JT (Noah Segan) are best friends, a couple of high school outcasts who cut class one afternoon to go pound beers and vandalize the boarded up remains of an abandoned mental hospital. As they explore the halls of the empty hospital, they venture down into the dank basement and make a gruesome discovery: a naked woman chained to a table with a plastic bag over her head. Who is she? Where did she come from? And what happened to her? These questions are never answered, creating a creeping case of ambiguity that lurks in thee dark shadows of the movie.
One of the guys pokes the “dead” girl and she opens her eyes. Holy shit! She’s alive! Rickie immediately wants to go tell the police, but the sicker, hornier JT has other plans for the chained up woman. Now before you start thinking that the film is going to get exploitative, I hate to disappoint. Although there are some glimpses of nudity and a couple of well done blood-splattering scenes, everything disturbing about Dead Girl is what’s implied. The fact that we know that JT is going to screw the chained up woman made me squirm enough that I didn’t have to see it. It’s what happens next that really makes the movie twisted. (more…)
Matt Aselton’s film Gigantic is a quirky little movie with a great deal of charm and plenty of heart. Eccentric would be a good adjective to describe this film co-written by Aselton and Adam Nagata. There are plenty of reasons to check out this independent film, in particular the splendid cast and the entrancing cinematography by Peter Donahue, who shot on film instead of the indie trend of HD, adding to the movie’s appeal.
Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine, There Will be Blood) stars as Brian, a mattress salesman from a large family who is in the process of adopting a child from China. Quiet, reserved, and intellectual, Brian also has a demon pursuing him around the streets of New York in the form of Zach Galifianakis, who appears randomly throughout the film in different guises, trying to beat up or even kill Brian. One afternoon, Al Lolly, a boisterous, rich man (John Goodman) comes to purchase a mattress. After some great back and forth between Brian and Al, a mattress is chosen and Al tells Brian he will send his daughter down to pay for it. Enter Zooey Deschanel, the reigning queen of indie pics, as Happy. She’s a bit misguided and off course in life. When she arrives to make the payment, she promptly falls asleep on the mattress for several hours. Brian is immediately smitten. Slowly, a relationship builds and the two characters begin to fall in love. (more…)
Push (2009, Summit Entertainment)
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It’s obvious that the makers of the film Push thought they had a winner on their hands because, with an ending that left several loose ends, they set up everything for a sequel. Alas, writer David Bourla and director Paul McGuigan got ahead of themselves and failed to make sure their film was good enough to merit a follow-up. Moreover, by blatantly catering to a younger crowd, they actually dumbed down what could have been a fun thrill ride of a movie. Push has a cool premise, some gnarly effects, memorable images of screaming Chinese mutants, and some pretty actors to look at — but it’s lacking in many aspects: its dialogue, the direction of the actors, and a little discretion in how Dakota Fanning was filmed, to name a few. When all is said and done, despite the merits of the film, Push just isn’t a great movie.
Chris Evans (the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movies) is a part of new breed of human beings. The film doesn’t come right out and say mutants because I’m sure they didn’t want to draw comparisons to the X-Men, but that’s what these people are. Evans’s “Nick” is a “mover,” meaning he has the ability to move objects with his mind. He’s living as an expatriate in Hong Kong, trying to stay out of the clutches of a shadowy U.S. government branch called “Division.” Division kidnaps these special humans and is injecting them with a serum they hope will augment their powers to make them a superhuman weapon. No one has survived, except one. Her name is Kira (Camille Belle) and she is a Pusher. (more…)
Knowing (2009, Summit Entertainment)
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Alex Proyas, the gifted director behind The Crow, I, Robot and the cult classicDarkCity, really knows how to creep you out. Throughout his latest film, the sci-fi end of time action thriller Knowing, there is always a foreboding sense of doom that keeps the story propelling forward. Whether it’s a well-placed close-up of his actors’ worried expressions, or a niftily constructed shot with beautifully arranged extras silhouetted in long, flowing trenchcoats, Knowing has all of the elements of a great genre film…until it reaches the end, at which point it becomes a mess of new age hokum.
An opening prologue shows Lucinda, a troubled little girl in the 1950s scrawling a series of random numbers on a sheet of paper in her grade school classroom. The children in her class are writing notes for a time capsule the school is burying that will be opened 50 years later. The teacher takes Lucinda’s paper and it is placed in the time capsule. Later, Lucinda is found locked in a janitor closet with bloodied fingers and complaining that she hears voices in her head. Great stuff, so far. Proyas does an excellent job of setting up the eerie mood of the film. (more…)
Phoebe in Wonderland (2009, Image) purchase from Amazon:DVD
Elle Fanning gives one of the most touching and heart breaking performances you will see this year in writer/director Daniel Barnz’s Phoebe in Wonderland. This little seen gem that received a limited theatrical release is now available on DVD. With a thought provoking story, exemplary performances by Fanning, Felicity Huffman and Patricia Clarkson, and imaginative, beautiful cinematography by Bobby Bukowski, Phoebe in Wonderland is a movie you’ll be thinking about weeks after watching it for the first time.
Fanning is Phoebe Lichten, the precocious daughter of two writers, Hillary (Huffman) and Peter (an understated Bill Pullman). Hillary is struggling to complete a book on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, while Peter has just learned that his new book is going to be published. This family of four also includes little sister, Olivia (Bailee Madison). As the film opens, Phoebe, a social outcast with seemingly one friend, has begun showing signs of obsessive compulsive disorder, in particular washing her hands until they’re raw, and having occasional outbursts in class. Rules bug Phoebe and she isn’t afraid to let her teachers know it. However, Barnz implies early on that there is something deeper going on with Phoebe and that this isn’t just some pre-teen rebelliousness. Thankfully, he takes his time in getting us to the answer, allowing the characters time to grow and the story to unfold at a pleasant pace. When an unconventional theater teacher (Clarkson) casts Phoebe as the lead in a production of Alice in Wonderland, Phoebe discovers that performing on stage allows her to calm down and escape her lonely childhood life. (more…)
Nobel Son, a new caper film on DVD, is a satisfying time if you happen to enjoy films with unexpected twists and turns. The film, written by Jody Savin and directed by Randall Miller (actually completed before his sleeper hit, Bottle Shock) stars Bryan Greenberg (of ABC’s October Road) as a Barkley Michaelson, a twenty-something grad student struggling to finish his PHD thesis on cannibalism. Barkley has had to live his entire life in the shadow of his father, world famous chemist, Eli Michaelson. As portrayed by the eternally entertaining Alan Rickman, Eli is… well, Eli is the world’s biggest asshole. Not only does Eli belittle his only son, but for years he’s been cheating on his lovely wife, Sarah, a forensic psychiatrist. Sarah is played by Academy Award winner Mary Steenburgen, who brings a grace and strength to each role she inhabits. I wish she wasn’t relegated to mostly “mother” roles (as in last years Four Christmases and the current The Proposal). However, in Nobel Son she gets to show some teeth and really makes the character interesting.
On the eve of Eli winning the Nobel Prize, Barkley has a one-night fling with a spacey poet named City Hall. Eliza Dushku (Fox’s Dollhouse) is game for the part and shows some flair in her otherwise small role. Berkeley wakes up the next morning, misses the family flight to Sweden for the award ceremony, and is then clocked over the head with a baseball bat and kidnapped by the deranged Thaddeus James (Shawn Hatosy- we don’t see enough of him these days). Thaddeus has a major grudge with Eli and he demands $2 million of the Nobel prize money. From there, Nobel Son begins throwing the kind of curveballs you only see with a whiffle ball and a plot of betrayal, lust and ultimately revenge play out. Along the way, there are some fancy flashbacks, a nifty car chase through a shopping mall that includes a great bait and switch gag, and some really fine music by Mark Adler and Paul Oakenfold that keeps the action propelling along, never letting up until the credits finally roll. (more…)
S. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale (2009, Fox)
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From the “unnecessary sequels to films that don’t need a sequel” department comes S. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale, a follow up to Richard Kelly’s 2001 Donnie Darko, a film about a teenage boy whose life changes when an airplane engine crashes into his bedroom and disrupts the space time continuum. Donnie Darko was not only imaginative and haunting, but featured touching performances by Jake Gyllenhaal (as Donnie), Mary McDonnell and Jena Malone. This new film, released exclusively on DVD and Blu-ray, picks up seven years after the end of Donnie Darko and follows Donnie’s little sister, Samantha, as she experiences her own mind-bending trip somewhere in the desert.
Having left her home and family back in Virginia, Samantha (Daveigh Chase, reprising the role she originated in Donnie Darko) is on the way to California with her free spirited friend, Corey (Briana Evigan). Fleeing her bizarre and tragic past (the events laid out in Donnie Darko), Samantha is depressed and lost. When the girls’ car breaks down in some remote desert town, they are helped by a pensive, chain-smoking hipster named Randy, played by Gossip Girl star, Ed Westwick, who seems to be channeling Joaquin Phoenix. Randy leads them into town and through his acquaintance the girls easily fall in with the locals. Their first night there, they witness a meteorite crash to earth, and that’s when the weirdness and the similarities to the original film begin. (more…)
Can you remember 1992? I certainly can, and what I remember is that trash TV — and to some extent, even the mainstream media — was filled with stories about Kurt Cobain and his bride, Courtney Love. They had been married in Hawaii in February of that year, and already there were lurid tales of addiction, arrest, and marital discord. In the midst of it all a daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, was born in August.
An Audience of One (2009, Indiepix)
The Proposal (2009, Touchstone)
When you’re presented with the opportunity to see a film deemed “too unbearable to release,” you have to check it out, don’t you? That’s how I wound up with a copy of the 2008 horror movie 
Gigantic (2009, Vivendi Entertainment)
Push (2009, Summit Entertainment)
Knowing (2009, Summit Entertainment)
Phoebe in Wonderland (2009, Image)
Nobel Son (2009, Fox)
S. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale (2009, Fox)