Kurt's Film Blog

KBT Presents: Smiley Face

2009-06-04T20:42:00.003-04:00

One of the films from 2007, a particular strong year in film, that sort of slipped under the radar was the asinine yet thoroughly endearing Smiley Face. A meandering script with a barely finished quality becomes a work of art due to the acting talent on Anna Faris. While I can take or leave the Scary Movie parodies, her small role as a ditzy starlet (rumored to be a parody of Cameron Diaz) in Lost in Translation made a big impression, as did her tiny part as a leggy blonde uber-bitch, in Lucky McKee’s May.

In Smiley Face she is not shuffled to a supporting role but rather gets to anchor the entire film, as Jane F., a dimunitive and frumpy stoner with eyes far-off and ponderously crinkled brow. The movie is unsympathetic, framed in such a way for the audience to laugh at her, not with her. Jane is high for the duration of the movie, about a day in 'real time.' Starting off a full on pot bender at 9:00am, (bong, Joints, cupcakes) she is barely on earth. This is shown wonderfully by her voice-over narration, her flash-backs and even her waking dream sequences. The 'plot' of the film is her attempting to complete her 'to do list' of mundane objectives: Pay her bills, go to an audition, etc. which become staggering quests (with plenty of tangential meanderings) due to her reduced capacity to, well, much of anything. Director Gregg Araki exploits her state of mind with all sorts of the structural goofiness and the film starts to blend together in a series of hazy short-circuits (a particular strength of the movie that plays with the stoner mind-set, and why Smiley Face has been hailed as one of the better flicks to offer subjective-experience of being baked).

The epitome of which is this scene while Jane is waiting for the wife of an ex-professor to hand her the original manuscript of Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto (don’t asked it is easier to watch the movie to find out how it gets there). While waiting on the couch, she sees a photo of a cob of corn and manages to make some interesting cognitive connections to how best to express her love of lasagna. This is done in pantomime with the help of voice over, and you can just see the bubbly enthusiasm on Faris’ face. The fact that she is like this for the entire film (with the occasional paranoid outburst) is a feat all in itself. The performance is pretty fearless. You love her as you laugh at her and you want to hug her even though you’d probably react like many of the other characters if you met Jane F. in real life - that is with annoyance or outright disdain. Despite its low budget, happy-shiny aesthetic, it flirts with going to pretty dark places (many of Gregg Araki’s other films which explicitly go there, the flirting with it here is more satisfying). Oddball and unexpected acting, particularly a woman in this type of role, endear me to watching movies and continually seeking out gems like this one.

KBT Presents: SITA SINGS THE BLUES

2009-03-19T00:01:00.004-04:00

For over 75 years, Disney has been the dominant force in animation in the United States. To the point where the animated film is generally understood to be made for children (or occasionally for the whole family) and they come off the assembly line tick, tick tick, with animal side kicks and princesses and musical soliloquies. Occasionally slightly more subversive animators such as Ralph Bakshi or Don Bluth manage to get a film off the ground at a different Movie Studio, but rare is the animated film that is not aimed at the younger set. Sure all the big studios turn out computer generated blockbusters with an army of digital artists, but rare is the feature length feature that is hand-crafted by a single individual. I can think of maybe half a dozen at most, and nearly all of them made in the past 15 years. They end up looking alien and fragile compared to the monster-sized blockbusters from Pixar and Dreamworks.

And that brings us to 2008's Sita Sings The Blues. Unusual does not even begin to encompass it.

Director Nina Paley has morphed a classic piece of Hindu mythology, The Ramayana, into a cunningly crafted and offbeat chick-flick. A chick-flick with blood, war, treachery and monkey warriors. It tells the story of Rama and his exile at his father's request (via a scheming step-mother, natch) and the troubles of living with his wife in exile. A kidnapping by a neighboring King complicates matters further by instigating a blood bath where nobody gets out unscathed.

The narrative alternates three parallel 'stories' to form the gist of the Hindu tale: A scratchy hand drawn autobiography of the director's crumbling long distance relationship as she futilely attempts to stick by her man despite his indifference; a water-cooler styled conversation between three Indian thirty-somethings chatting casually about the myths specific details with Monty Python 'moving cardboard' collages; and gorgeous musical numbers set to music of obscure 1930s jazz-pop vocalist Annette Hanshaw which are accompanied by graphics rendered in Macromedia flash animation. While all the threads are woven in a complicated yet effective manner (plugging some holes and tightening the scope of a piece of massive Indian mythology), it is Ms. Hanshaw's fantastic voice that becomes the take-away memory of the piece.

Sita is a one of a kind experience that has the inspiration to fuse together things that aren't obvious fits. Like chocolate and peanut-butter, clam and tomato juice, or cola and ice-cream, you'll walk away buzzing pleasantly with the combination.

Come out Thrusday, March 19th @ 8pm for cocktails and chat prior to an 8:30pm showtime. Sita runs a lean 81 minutes, so expect plenty of off-the-wall trailers in front of the show.

KBT Presents: THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE

2009-02-26T12:05:00.006-05:00

Folks that spend too much time watching and thinking about movies are often the first to complain (well, more like moan) about the onslaught of remakes of classic films that has been more intense in the past decade. However, if one looks for the positive effect on this phenomenon (which is not necessarily new and has in fact been going on since the early 'silent' period when filmmaking was still new) it is that a bad remake can still call attention to a good classic film that may have been highly influential but is more or less fogotten by the culture at large. Case in point: Joseph Sargent's heist caper The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three. It is due in 2009 for a big budget hollywood remake with Tony Scott directing and Denzel Washington, John Travolta and James Gandolfini (and glossy lit big effects and stunts).

But let us consider the 1974 original film (itself based on a popular pulp novel at the time). Four men in costumes with colours for names (Mr. Blue, Mr. Grey, Mr. Green, etc.) walk into the New York Subway system and hijack a train, all to place some pretty big ransom demands on the transit authority and the city and walk out with some big time moohah. But the question remains as the movie plays: How will they get out of this situation? Is there something larger at stake going on? If this sounds familiar to you reading this, it is because Quentin Tarantino borrowed the Colour names for his debut picture, 1991's Reservoir Dogs and John McTiernan borrowed the set-up and overall style for his 1988 mega-blockbuster Die Hard. Despite Pelham's popularity at the time and the influence it had on other films, the film has not been given the status of 'classic' crime pictures like The French Connection or Dog Day Afternoon (the latter came out one year after Pelham). Modern pictures like Spike Lee's wonderfully entertaining The Inside Man, or Bill Murray's comic Quick Change are still plucking tidbits from this classic heist/ransom flick.

Perhaps it was the casting of Walter Matthau in the lead that made this one mainly disappear into the ether. Hardly the testosterone powder keg of Al Pacino, or the sly manliness of Bruce Willis, yet Matthau imbues Pelham with a wry wit, a self-deprecating competence, and yet after 35 years of hindsight, he is the gruffy, scruffy reason why the film has aged exceedingly well despite the slew of people who went with its newly found formula. The no-nonsense storytelling (clues and hints are seemlessly integrated without being overbearing) with a realistic on-location subway shoot and authentic sounding dialogue should be a lesson in how many things have changed from the 1970s to he 2000s. It is an interesting window people talked and how 'blockbuster' movies when that term meant something quite different: No special effects, solid character acting, good dialogue, fun storytelling and as a bonus - one kick ass theme song. And it is a damn good time at the movies.

KBT Presents: KING OF THE HILL (El Rey de la Montaña)

2009-01-29T00:01:00.002-05:00

KBT returns after a 5 month hiatus! And with a gorgeous Spanish thriller that is at times intriguing, confounding and rewarding (and about in that order). It is a mystery that is heavy on thrills which involves an urban man very much out of his element. He is hung out to dry in the wilderness in a way that recalls John Boorman's Deliverance as much as it does Gus Van Sant's Gerry. Yet it is shot with the visual splendour of a grainy 16mm ode to House of Flying Daggers. King of the Hill (not to be at all confused with the animated TV show) is a heady cocktail of familiar and upsetting elements that uses a very simple hook, one that is familiar enough to filmgoers: folks hunted by unknown assailents; although it is nowhere near the horror/stalker variety (albeit some might find a tangential link to Michael Haneke's Funny Games. To reveal more is to detract from the films very purpose. Suffice it to say that morality, enginuity, trust and resolve are key ingredients juggled in the air by the few characters being stalked and eventually the stalkers. Visceral and cerebral (and eventually fueled by a strange form of 21st century hysteria) in equal parts rarely mixed in a genre film, I find it difficult to believe that Hollywood will ever get the brass cojones to attempt a remake.

For fans of the existential thriller Intacto (whose director went on to make the fabulous 28 Weeks Later), this is another chance to watch intense and charismatic leading man Leonardo Sbaraglia run through gorgeous through the dangerous and beautiful Spanish wilderness; not in the 'test your luck' sense, but more in a feral survival mode. I'm wondering if talented and envelope pushing director Gonzalo López-Gallego will do the same.

Hopefully I've sold you on King of the Hill without really telling you anything. To walk into this type of film blind is necessary for it to weave its determined spell. Do not go onto the internets looking for a trailer (or god forbid a review that drops a bomb of a spoiler). Come out Thursday, January 29th for this sly suckerpunch from Spain.

KBT Presents: HEAVENLY CREATURES

2008-08-07T00:00:00.000-04:00

In the period in between his splatter-comedy beginnings and his mega-special effects blockbusters, including the much feted Lord of the Rings trilogy and somewhat overlooked The Frighteners , Kiwi director Peter Jackson made a poignant and haunting film examining two of New Zealand's most notorious murderers. This crime, committed in the 1950s, was significant for the fact that it was two women who did the deed; moreso that they were both under 17 at the time. The victim was Pauline's Mom. No I'm not spoiling the film for those of you out there, this is made reasonable clear in a chilling early scene with the terrified girls running blood -soaked through the woods, a scene which Jackson has yet to top in his career to date. Needless to say, the trial of Pauline Parker and Juliet Hume was big news in its day.

Rather than recreate the trial and the hubbub for the film, Jackson and co-writer Fran Walsh instead opt to tell the story of the budding friendship of Parker and Hume while in school in Christchurch gleaned through passages the real Pauline Parker's diary, which serve as the voice-over narration in the film. The film focuses on the creative and positive energy of the girls imagination, which results their creation of a fantasy world, which is constructed and inhabited through the birth of the Weta-Digital effects house, clearly one reason why Jackson was entrusted with umpteen millions of dollars to later create J.R.R. Tolkien's world on film. Despite containing some elements of a fantasy film, Heavenly Creatures is a rather dark look at how children's worlds are viewed (and manipulated) by society and parents, and how a deep and intimate friendship can turn sour from the anxieties and fears imprinted there-on.

The confident 'ring-leader' Juliet Hume was notably Kate Winslet's feature debut and is a compelling and bold performance which not surprisingly launched a celebrated and diverse career. While not going on to as great of heights as her co-star, the shy but perhaps stronger Pauline Parker, is played with equal conviction by Melanie Lynskey.

Rich with period detail (including a scene involving Orson Welles and the sewer chase from 1949's The Third Man is stunning stuff), compelling visuals and intimate storytelling, Heavenly Creatures is an encaptivating piece of cinema. I'd love to see Peter Jackson drop with the big blockbusters (that being said, I'm a big fan of his version of King Kong as well) and return to this type of intimate filmmaking, which may just be the case with his next film, The Lovely Bones.

KBT Presents: SHOW ME LOVE (aka Fucking Åmål)

2008-07-24T00:01:00.003-04:00

Swedish director Lukas Moodysson's feature debut was lauded with many awards during its film festival run in 1998-1999. And rightfully so, he takes the small town teenage drama to interesting new places. First by making significant events (first kiss or losing virginity) mundane, and second by making smaller events (a spat between siblings or a casual conversation about mobile phones) positively cataclysmic. At one point a father tells his lonely and troubled daughter that all the high-school relationship politics aren't going to matter a lick in a few years time; her response: "I want to be happy NOW." Such is the out-of-proportion sensibility of many a young teenager.

The story defies any sort of cliché about teen melodrama (or rather the teen addiction to their own melodramas), yet some how manages to hit (or subvert) a lot of the familiar notes: Sexual discovery, running away from home, suicide, popularity, etc, while being a very effective love story on top of everything else. The secret of its success is making each of the characters (and for once, the parents too) complex and, well, real. Visually, the film has the look of extraordinary high grain (blown up from 16mm) which gives a free-floating surreal vibe to the proceedings, like memories or dreams. At a crisp 83 minutes Show Me Love (or its more misleading original Swedish title F**king Åmål - a refrain uttered by young Elin because she is sick of being stuck in the boring small town of Åmål, - a place where nothing happens) is a brilliant success.

KBT Presents: THE RUNDOWN

2008-07-10T00:01:00.000-04:00

On one level, I feel a bit guilty about recommending the latest Will Smith independence day holiday film Hancock, simply because I'm not a fan of the Will Smith independence day genre (seriously, there are half a dozen of these at this point). But Hancock actually has a lot to chew on between the Special Effects Blockbuster framework, and the acting is very good, and it has a little something that qualifies the picture as a guilty pleasure.

So why not echo the sentiment, turn the brain off, crank the air-conditioning in the KBT headquarters and throw on another Peter Berg directed joyful puff of an action picture. This movie didn't make much of a splash back in 2003 when it was released; even if it was envisioned to be the hand-off of the large-pecs action genre from Schwarzenegger and company to The Rock (Who now is credited as Dwayne Johnson). The movie should be just another Indiana Jones knock-off jungle-romp, but there are many elements in the thing that endear the film to me. Rosario Dawson as the love interest and bleeding heart guerrilla fighter, Sean William Scott with his 'goof-ball' setting cranked to 11 (Or at least imitating Owen Wilson very, very well) and Christopher Walken doing what Walken does best these days - steal scenes in a small role. Furthermore that Berg and crew tried to graft a social message onto this should feel offensive, but they actually take it pretty far and somehow it never interferes with the movie or is pushed into the background. Strange, but it kinda, sorta works.

And Dwayne Johnson is a pretty endearing actor, massive screen wattage and curiously meterosexual mulit-racial posturing makes a scene where he goes from talking about gourmet cooking to pulverizing an entire bar of football players into pulp seem natural. Kudos to that.

Yes, folks, I like THE RUNDOWN a fair bit, and it is time to share.

KBT Presents: MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS

2008-06-26T00:01:00.000-04:00

Chinese director Wong Kar Wai has made a superb reputation and career off of romantic tales that range from kinetic (Chungking Express) to ethereal (Days of Being Wild) to downright melancholic (In the Mood For Love). The man knows how to make his actors look like movie stars, put together a classy and effective soundtrack out of pop tunes, how to make the images sear into the brain (it never hurts that he has always had ace cinematographers) and how to achieve a finer vintage of melodrama. You may or may not know just how many Hollywood movies, TV commercials and Music Videos have borrowed his step-printing ('watercolour slow motion') technique. He has been highly influential, although not really known outside of arty film circles.

His latest film, the first full length feature in English, My Blueberry Nights, was raked over the coals critically. The critical community found it too repetitive of his previous films (but really, as an auteur, he has been making the same film (in a way) over and over, so I do not buy this criticism, and for that matter, I didn't buy it with the slamming of Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited either) or didn't buy the wistful 'only in the movies' actions and decisions. You know, how folks used to behave in the old MGM musicals or films in the 1940s. It's their loss though. Quite simply this was the best theatrical experience I've had in the cinema thus far in 2008. It is curious that a film with such a high profile cast would only play for couple weeks on one screen in Toronto. C'est La Vie. I guess it's just how it goes

The film's lead performance however is pop-jazz singer Norah Jones, who is the passive witness to the trials and tribulations of the other characters as she treks across most of America, to as she puts it, 'merely cross a certain street in New York'.

The movie wears its metaphors and symbols as thickly as Wong Kar Wai's other films, in fact much of the criticisms leveled at the movie should have been put to rest with the Norah Jones song used in the film. "The Story" gives the directors intent clear as the many neon signs that caress the frame of Darius Khondji's stunning digital cinematography.

"I don't know how to begin
Cause the story
Has been told before
I will sing
Along I suppose
I guess
It's just how it goes"

This type of story may have been told (by wkw and others) many times before, but man it is a sumptuous treat this time around nonetheless. The opening shots of blueberry pie and vanilla ice-cream in closeups almost to the point of a petri dish set the stage to the kind of sugary confection on display. And it is meant to be enjoyed that way, not as a revelation, but as a comforting hug on a rainy night.

"But I don't know how
It will end
With all those
Records playin'
I guess
It's just how it goes"

The ending isn't as important as the journey. And this film, spanning iconic USA locations (New York, Memphis, Las Vegas) through the unique vision of a foreigner; savouring its charming dialogue readings from Jude Law (in stellar form), its angry-melancholy from academy award winner and nominees Rachel Weisz and David Strathairn (respectively) and its sass and showboating (and the best performance in a while) from Natalie Portman, makes the journey (the sights and sounds and texture more than the actual discoveries) more than worth the trip.

"I guess it's just how it goes"

KBT Presents: C.R.A.Z.Y.

2008-05-20T00:01:00.003-04:00

From Patsy Cline to David Bowie from the Sixties to the Eighties, C.R.A.Z.Y. follows the Beaulieu family in suburban Quebec across two and a half decades. Told from the point of view of Zac, who is the fourth of five boys, whose mother babies him a perhaps a bit too much for her fathers tastes. She believes that he has been touched by Christ and has the power to take the pain away from her families physical bumps and scratches by Zac merely thinking about the injured person. Zac really wants to play mother to the new baby, avoid being beat up by his older siblings (the rebel, the jock, the nerd) and browse through his construction worker father's extensive record collection. He has been bitten by the bug of rock 'n roll and fantasizes the church choir belting out The Rolling Stones Sympathy for the Devil. As the years pass, and the boys begin to grow up, clashes with the parents are offset by the magnetic pull of of the family unit. The film is brilliant scored with rock tunes across the era and has a lively and engrossing visual wit that never falls into the too far into trap of oversimplifying the characters, particular the dad who, looking a bit like 1990s era Kevin Spacey is macho and has ideas of what his sons should or shouldn't be, yet croons Patsy Cline tunes with the best of them. His clashes with Zac embody many human frailties and complexities of family friction over the years. The film effortless juggles a large collection of characters and situations with an energetic style and wit not often seen in Canadian cinema (well, the English side of things, anyway).

C.R.A.Z.Y. won just about every major Canadian film award in 2005, yet remains ridiculously underseen (particularly south of the border, it's probably the French subtitles). These types of universally accessible entertainments should be giving Canadian movies a higher profile than they typically have.

KBT Presents: ROBOCOP

2008-05-06T00:01:00.004-04:00

With Ironman currently tearing up the box-office as the summer kick off movie, I'd like to offer a little counter-programming to the watered down and derivative paint-by-numbers affair. Outside of an always entertaining Robert Downey Jr. performance (which is practically a guarantee in just about anything he does regardless) there are a ridiculous number of elements in the Ironman film that feel like a PG version Hard-R (still to this day) Robocop. The man-in-suit cyborg, the corporatization of war, and Judas in a pinstripe suit for starters, the latest summer blockbuster borrows half a dozen or more visual aspects of the action sequences as well.

If you've never seen Paul Verhoeven's satirical anti-Regan superhero blockbuster, then you are missing one of the big-budget gems of the 1980s. The spoofing of the dumbed down media predates Fox News by a decade, the privatization of necessary city services predates Enron by even more than that. And the Omni Computer Products corporation is Halliburton as the snake eating its own tail insofar as it launches a corporate war on Detroit city. But enough of the satirical tidbits of the film, it is a pretty solid superhero tale of a dad, Office Murphy played in and out of the suit with flair by Peter Weller, that just wants to impress his son with his police officer job before nearly meeting his end at a band of psychotic criminals and being reassembled in a research project to become as the tagline of the film suggests: Part man. Part machine. All cop. I love how screenwriter Edward Neumeier (who also wrote the equally delightful Starship Troopers) makes commentary on the nature of fascism by making an over-the-top love-letter to fascism.

To say that Robocop set the gold standard for violence in a mainstream blockbuster film is perhaps understating things. One needs only to witness the passion play execution of Murphy, a sequence that remains undiminished in brutality after even 20 years, to understand exactly what Verhoeven got away with when putting together this film. One critic labeled the film p0rn0-violent (note many of the modern horror films have a similar label, T0rture P0rn), yet the film also plays out as pure satire, in a way that often only science fiction can get away with. It is a revenge film of sorts made smack dab in the me-decade for which that type of film belonged in the 1970s before resurfacing in the mid-to-late 1990s and resurging fully in the 21st century. As Robocop hunts down the arbiters of his own execution, he attempts to find his own ghost (soul) in the machine. Amidst the brutality there is a brain and a heart beating that is all too often lacking in the modern blockbuster.

KBT Presents: KISS ME, DEADLY

2008-04-22T00:01:00.000-04:00

Connoisseurs of silver screen cinema, particlularly of the old-time westerns, screwball comedies and noir crime pictures often use the phrase 'they just do not make 'em like they used to,' when describing a certain style that has faded into history. Well in the case of Robert Aldrich's 1955 Mike Hammer film Kiss Me, Deadly the phrase, 'they never made them this way' is probably more appropriate. One of the earliest genre mashing stories that is that is part noir, boiled right down to the ether, part cold war commentary and well ending not with a whimper, but with a bang (and and then whimper), it set an unusual standard for many genre and art-house filmmakers to come. Any film which visually inspired such diverse fair as Raiders of the Lost Ark , Pulp Fiction , Repo Man and Lost Highway is all good in my book. And something tells me that on top of all that, David Mamet might just get a charge out of this film for its level of machismo dialed up to 11 and set to grapple the societal conditionings of the human animal.

Mike Hammer, badass PI and all around misanthrope gets way in over his head when he picks up a mysterious woman half-naked on the side of the road. An investigation involving a rogues gallery of characters along with stupidity, greed and hamfisted blunders. The film goes places that Mickey_Spillane's novel (which the film is really only loosely based on) never went.

KBT Presents: THE ICE STORM

2008-04-08T00:01:00.000-04:00

Director Ang Lee is a master a painting a mature and sophisticated tableau of a time and place. From the just outside the city family life in Eat Drink Man Woman, to the grasslands and towns of Wyoming in Brokeback Mountain. His films often involve characters making difficult choices over the course of their lives, but the choices they make never seem to be in service of the plot or narrative, but rather seem to come from well realized human beings that do their best (often unsuccessfully) to avoid mistakes, while fulfilling their desires.

But my favourite film of his wide oeuvre (which also includes the fantastical ballet of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and historical romantic thriller Lust, Caution) is his adaptation of Rick Moody's novel The Ice Storm. Set over a thanksgiving weekend in the early 1970s (right in the middle of the Watergate scandal, rising feminism, and swinging 'key parties') the film follows an upscale suburban neighborhood and the confused intertwining of two families. The father of the Hood family (Kevin Kline, rarely better than he is here) is having an affair with the mother of the Carver family (angular and sexy Sigourney Weaver), whilst the teenage Wendy Hood (Christina Ricci, angry and vulnerable) is sexually exploring with both of the Carver boys (the youngest of which being a pre-Frodo Elijah Wood.) Elena Hood (Joan Allen at her most delicate) suspects her husband, but is going through a bit of her own identity crisis, seeing herself mirrored in her growing, yet still innocent daughter. Furthermore, it follows college aged Paul Hood (Tobey Maguire) on a trip to New York with the goal of seducing a sexy and smart classmate (Katie Holmes in possibly her only good performance, ever).

The framing narration involving The Fantastic Four featuring loving pans across the three colour pulp comics is perhaps better than all the comic book movies made over the past 10 years, and it is very curious that most of the young cast ended up headlining in these modern comic book films, not to mention the director following up by making one. Ang Lee succeeded in making one of the few upscale and mature comic book movies, of all subject, the big green raging fellow Hulk.

If this makes the movie sound dense, Lee carries the host of characters and situations with a graceful ease spanning melancholy, anger, frustration, pathos, confusion, sexuality and a wicked sense of humour. Christina Ricci giving her highly politicized Thanksgiving Grace, or Elijah Wood waxing philosophically on the nature of molecules, is funny every single time. In fact, for me, this film is exactly why I watch movies, it has it all without needing to be showy, predictable or pandering to the audience, yet it arrives at many basic human truths and reflects them emotionally and visually. Like the layer of moisture which exists precariously between states in the titular storm, The Ice Storm chronicles a critical yet transient moment in peoples lives that nevertheless defines them, minute by minute, even as it changes them. A case could certainly be made that this is the best film of the 1990s.

KBT Presents: KING OF KONG - A FISTFUL OF QUARTERS

2008-03-11T00:01:00.002-04:00

Now, at one point last week, I was considering screening the interesting and compelling Great World Of Sound which combines fictional story and verité footage into a scathing comment on contemporary salesmanship, scheisterism and somewhat desperate attempts at something resembling fame in 21st century America. Indeed, that film is, of sorts, a mini-Glengarry Glen Ross or Death of A Salesmen. It is more than a bit of a downer of a film though, and not a good way to combat the winter blues we've got around these parts. But wait. Something happened: There was a second 2007 film which captured at least parts of those elements, except instead of a fictional film with 'real' elements, it is a highly stylized and factual-massaged documentary that may just possibly have been the most purely entertaining film of last year.

And it is set in the glamorous world of competitive classic arcade gaming. Yes, there are a very small group of people who still compete for high scores on the first generation of video games that people played in restaurants, bars and video-arcades - Centipede, Pac Man, Q-Bert and the subject of this film: Donkey Kong.

Now you may ask yourself why you would spend 90+ minutes in the world of competitive classic arcade gaming. The answer would be that this slice of get-a-life is spun into a competitive tale of epic proportions with heroes, villains and supportive behind the scenes folks, rigid institutions, cronies, traitors, and just about everything you've come to expect from the great dramas, comedies and tragedies at the dawn of literature and theatre.

The mini-epic documentary may have set lovers of geek-chic on fire last year, but I'm here to tell you that you could put this film on for any audience and they'd be instantly engulfed in this strange little world.

It turns out that the world of Donkey Kong had some long standing high-score records which stood the test of time for nearly 2 decades before the equivalent of the four minute mile (A million point score) was achieved. The previous long standing holder is so-called 'Gamer of the Century,' a fellow named Billy Mitchell who comes across in TV interviews as more than a little arrogant and self-involved (you could even say a god-complex). That is until family man and west-coast high-school math teacher (and all around humble and nice guy) Steve Weibe (that's pronounced "wee-bee") video tapes himself blasting away that score. The organization who keeps the official records, Twin Galaxies is suspicious of this achievement and sends folks out to Steve's house to investigate his machine, going so far to take it apart and photograph the board to look for tampering. Meanwhile, Billy, himself one of the official referee's do not acknowledge the score, calling for Steve to prove his ability in a 'live venue' - an arcade halfway across the country. Thus begins Steve's odyssey to get the official score, against the questionable tactics of Billy and Twin Galaxies. There are victories, set-backs, tears, joy and frustration all scored to a wonderful series of non ironically used 80's tunes. It's impressive how producer Ed Cunningham and director Seth Gordon have captured so much of the spectrum of the human condition with such an unusual subject matter. If this is the modern direction that the continuing metamorphosis of the documentary form, well, bring it on!

Christopher Guest and his troupe would have trouble coming up with all the comic gold on offer in this material, whilst still keeping the empathy and emotion real. At one point in the film someone remarks, "It's not even about Donkey Kong anymore..." and it is one of the most un-intentionally funny moments of the film. Duh. It never was.

KBT Presents: TROPA DE ELITE

2008-02-26T00:01:00.001-05:00

"So hard-boiled it's practically cast in iron, Brazilian crime saga Elite Squad makes even the toughest recent US cop dramas look like Hilary Duff romcoms. Hyper-macho, with a steely ring of well-researched realism, the first fiction venture ... is pitched somewhere between the full-on flash of Brazilian hit City Of God and the narrative complexity of TV's The Wire." (Screen International review of Tropa De Elite)

Over the history of the KBT screening series (which is at #113 by the way) there have only been three 'blind' screenings of films. The first was Roman Polanski's vampire comedy The Fearless Vampire Killers or Pardon Me But You're Teeth are in My Neck which admittedly was not that funny, and one of Polanski's worst films in his extensive filmography. The second was martial arts spectacular and the sequel to Thailand's fabulous action export Ong Bak, namely Tom Yum Goong which also starred wunderkind Tony Jaa, but it was plagued with narrative problems to the point where it was painful to watch if folks weren't getting pulverized by Jaa's elbows and knees. The third was Russian fantasy epic (the most expensive movie ever to come out of the Motherland) Wolfhound. It was watchable in an 1980s cheesy throwback sort of way, but I'd be very hesitant to call it a classic, or even put it in the category of quality with other Russian blockbusters The Nightwatch and The Daywatch.

The long preamble is because I'm blind screening Brazil's recent Berlinale (one of the most prestigious film festivals worldwide) winner, Tropa De Elite. I had been meaning to screen José Padilha's first feature, Bus 174, the gripping documentary on a bus hijacking in Rio De Janeiro which uses this as a jumping point to examine the entire systematic failure of the cities social structure. I just do not own the film, so it hasn't been at easy grasp. Well, I've got a fan-subbed DVD of his latest film and I'm thinking that this ought to break the blind-screening mediocrity evidenced in the above 3 films. The film is already notorious, a household name long before it was even released in theatres here and has been ridiculously profitable in Brazil. Not bad for another analysis of social complexities of Brazilian urban culture (although keep in mind that the audience there (and abroad) has been well primed by the success of Bus 174 and even moreso, City of God (which has a sequel of sorts coming out in North America later this year, and there is a Brazilian TV show on top of that). South America seems to be hotbed of great cinema that blends entertainment and message together so well (see also Nine Queens for a great metaphor on the Argentinian economic collapse cloaked as a con-artist genre flick).

I'm rambling a bit with this description of the film because, well I've not seen it beyond a preview of the disc. So below, I'll just put a few clips from English language reviews of the film (It has no release schedule in North America at the moment that I'm aware of, and has only really screened outside of Brazil in Berlin a two weeks ago):

Wikipedia: "The movie, set in 1997, depicts the story of Captain Nascimento, a BOPE captain, who with the imminent birth of his first child, is determined to leave the battalion and find a safer position for the sake of his family, but first he must find a suitable replacement for him. At the same time, the movie focuses on two childhood friends, Matias and Neto, who become cadets in the military police, but become dismayed at the corruption surrounding them. Eventually, both Nascimento and the cadets' paths intersect, when the captain hopes that one of the two may become the substitute he is eager to find, as both decide to join the BOPE."

Screen International: (see above)

Variety: “Elite Squad” is an honest picture of violence in the favelas, or slums, of Rio de Janeiro, and the rampant official corruption that sustains it.

Beyond Hollywood: Overall, this is a thoughtful, insightful and frequently darkly funny film, but the impact of its social commentary is very real.

Come out TUESDAY, February 26th for this special international treat, an early look at the film if you are not from Brazil and do not speak Portugese. In the spirit of things, we'll crack a bottle of port alongside with some spicy meat and roughage. Wine and Animal at 8pm. Trailers and Showtime at 8:30.

KBT Presents: ROMANCE & CIGARETTES

2008-02-19T00:01:00.004-05:00

John Turturro is one of those great actors known the to the casual film goer as "Hey! It's that crazy guy!" Whether he is a foulmouthed purple jumpsuit bowler named Jesus, a hillbilly goofball, a career gambler, a paranoid night-watchman, a racist pizzeria employee, an irate quiz-show contestant, Adam Sandler's butler, or being peed upon by a giant robot (!) in last years summer blockbuster, this strange mix of odd independent films and crass bottom-common-denominator studio stuff has to instill a strange outlook.

While Turturro's initial pair directing efforts have not greatly interested me, this film (which has a two year tortured history before being self-distributed out of the directors own funds before a dumping on DVD) certainly did. In particular, the casting call is about unusual as it comes: James "Tony Soprano" Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Christopher Walken, Steve Buscemi, Elaine Stritch, British cross-dressing stand-up comedian Eddie Izzard and singer/starlet Mandy Moore. Taking a page out of the Dennis Potter style-guide and mixing domestic drama with bold and fantastical musical interludes, the resulting film, Romance & Cigarettes is a shaggy and lumbering beast with the number of genius moments equaling the number of embarrassing ones. It lies somewhere in the no-mans-land between Moulin Rouge and Dancer in the Dark; territory most definitely undeserving of the indifference it received.

The story follows bridge maintenance worker (Gandolfini) and adulterer as he is caught by his wife, asked of marriage by his mistress, shunned by his daughters and preached to by his friend and co-worker. Of course, the story itself it almost besides the point, as a number of actors are allowed indulge in the familiar (Walken is zanier than ever belting out Tom Jones' Delilah) and the unfamiliar (Winslet gets to trash it up Helena Bonham Carter-style with bouncing bosom and raunchy phone sex (in all fairness, those familiar with Kate Winslet's guest-starring part in Brit-Com Extras with find her just as delightful here; with the added bonus of post-coital consumption of greasy fried chicken (a self-deprecating scene of equal joy to Kurt Russell munching a plate of nachos in Death Proof) and an 'under-water musical number' of a Nick Cave tune).

While the opening of the film is undeniably off putting and uneven, things get smoother and sweeter as things progress. A little patience may be required early on, but the finale of the film is a rewarding one. There are many, many small pleasures along the way, not unlike the acting career of the director in charge.

Come Out Tuesday, February 19th for this off-the wall slice of singing cinema. The actors involved here let it all hang out, humiliating or no, and shoot for the moon. Drinks at 8pm. Showtime at 8:30.

KBT Presents: THE ALZHEIMER CASE

2008-02-05T00:01:00.000-05:00

After three weeks of repair and refitting, we're back with a bang with this highly stylized cop's and killers flick from Belgium!

Director Erik Van Looy can only be described as the Belgian Michael Mann. This glossy, slick thriller seems to be cut from similar cloth as Heat or Collateral, albeit with a tidbit of manly humour and Tony Scott editing thrown in for good measure.

An ultra-professional assassin, Angelo Ledda, is hired to eliminate the political rivals of a rich and powerful Baron. Angelo is getting on in his years and struggling with Alzheimer's disease. This allows for some stylistic photography to simulate his mental state, which is often disoriented and confused. He finds out on his second mark that the target is a 12 year-old girl. He refuses, citing professional ethics. The Baron then puts out a hit on the very assassin he hired, leading to a complete reversal of sides. Meanwhile the police are investigating the case of one the first assassination and get confused when the bodies start to pile up on both sides.

The Alzheimer Case a gripping and tight motion picture. This is due in no small part to the performance of Jan Decleir (the hard working icon of Belgium Cinema, the man has been involved in 24 projects since this films production in 2005) which is superbly nuanced and avoids the trap of the Alzheimer conceit from ever feeling like a gimmick. Angelo is a hard and direct man who is now having trouble with reality and dealing with the loss of his professional competence; for him this is his entire life. The movie isn’t afraid to slow down develop Angelo either, it’s his show , often in spite of the plot. His gruff moral code will be familiar to North American audiences even as the movie exudes a welcome European flavour (particularly one sequence involving a prostitute and her treatment by both a potential client and later the Angelo himself). Personally, I'd love to put Angelo Ledda up against No Country for Old Men's Anton Chigurh, just to see what would happen.

There is the requisite police banter and interdepartmental politics amoungst the cops, their superiors and politicians (see also Infernal Affairs) which are not particularly noteworthy other than to explain the actions of some of the plot. The film shines however with the banter between the one highly competent police investigator (who is reminiscent of an number of secondary characters in Mr. Mann's films) and Angelo. There is a nice parallel between the pair. Both exude professionalism despite being on different sides of the law. For most the movie they are working on the same side, but the cop is using law enforcement procedure, and the Angelo using vigilante techniques. The film climaxes in a way that is both tense and well conceived (even if you can see a ‘surprise’ or two coming long before they are revealed).

The Alzheimer Case will not revolutionize or reinvent the genre, but does belong on the top shelf of slick, modern, testosterone seasoned thrillers.

I’m not a fan of the North American title ("Memory of a Killer") of the film which is just a bit gauche and possibly misleading as well. I was however, a big fan of the film when it played at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2005. Come and check it out on the newly revamped KBT computer, Tuesday February 5th. Drinks at 8pm. Showtime at 8:30pm.

No KBT This Week - Processor Melt #2

2008-01-15T00:01:00.000-05:00

KBT is currently on hold until the host theatre computer can rise from the ashes. It seems things got a little hot in the closet over Christmas and the computers chipset and processor decided to melt. When the phoenix is lighting up the darkened theatre once again, KBT will resume on a new regular TUESDAY Night time slot. Thank-you for your patience

KBT Presents: FUNNY GAMES

2008-01-10T00:01:00.000-05:00

A fresh year, a fresh start for KBT screenings. Why not start off with something cold, analytical and bleak? Hey, it's January.

While 2008 (thankfully) does not promise to be as loaded down with 'threequels' and remakes as 2007, one of the stranger remakes (and one I'm quite interested in) is Funny Games. Austrian director Michael Haneke is remaking his own 1997 film (which was in German and French) in English with reasonably high profile actors (Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt). Is this a response to the success that he enjoyed with the successful reception of Caché back in 2006? Is this some sort of intellectual prank (something that I would not put beyond this director who takes particular delight in not delivering what his films suggest)?

Here is your chance to see the original 1997 version before the (apparently) shot-by-shot remake. Now the title suggests one thing, but the premise quickly demonstrates that the title is aiming for subversive over descriptive. The premise of the film is incredibly simple: Two psychotic young men take a mother, father, and son hostage in their vacation cabin and force them to play sadistic "games" with one another for their own amusement. Oh, but the devil is in the details. One one hand the performances are compelling and completely convincing, and emotionally the film is out to take no prisoners. On the other hand, the director is making a pretty loud and bold query on what people go to the movies to get out of them. Particularly violent movies. A key moment midway through the film is certainly a conversation starter, and typically is the make or break point on whether one actually 'likes' this film (enjoy is not exactly the proper word in the context of watching this one.) An argument could perhaps be made that Haneke made a compelling answer to the torture porn phenomenon exemplified by the Saw and Hostel films 10 half a decade before the phenomenon actually started. Or maybe that is the reason for the remake that is coming out this March. You be the judge. This is fairly challenging cinema to process.

Come out Thursday January 10th for a bit of the old Ultraviolence, much like Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, the film condemns it as it glorifies it. While this screening will take place this Thursday, the remaining screenings in 2008 will be moving towards Tuesdays to mix things up a bit. Drinks at 8pm. Trailers and Showtime at 8:30pm.

KBT Presents: OUT OF SIGHT

2007-12-06T00:01:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure if it is fair to call 1998's Out of Sight an 'overlooked' film, but it was not seen by too many back when it played in the theatres despite it being one of the great examples of pure movie entertainment in the 1990s. It capped off a superior run of 3 Elmore Leonard adaptations over 3 years (The other two being Get Shorty and Jackie Brown), catapulted the career of George Clooney from TV's ER to A-List Superstar (somehow even overcoming the putrid wreak of his turn as Batman) and not only revived the stalling career of director Steven Soderbergh , but launched his glossy high-budget phase of quality adult entertainment. There are some who jokingly refer to Out of Sight as Oceans 10. This is largely due to George Clooney exuding such easy confidence and grace under fire (Clooney remains one of the few of a rare breed of true movie stars), but also the fluid visual style that Soderbergh brings to this picture. A washed out orangey Miami, and cool blue-gray Detroit blanketed in snow are offset by warm low-lit interiors that ooze sexy. This is combined with hand-held intimate camera work that give the illusion that you are peaking in on the lives of these cops and robbers. This was before the hand-held approach was co-opted for driving action pictures like The Bourne franchise and horror films like 28 Weeks Later.

The story involves a heist, a romance and a prison break. But really it's all there to set up an opposites attraction relationship between two of the most unlikely characters. A snippet of dialogue says it best, "It's like seeing someone for the first time, and you look at each other for a few seconds, and there's this kind of recognition like you both know something. Next moment the person's gone, and it's too late to do anything about it."

Here are three reasons to sit back and enjoy a movie like this again and again. The rewatch value for this is higher than any of Soderbergh's other films (including the equally superb The Limey):

1. Chemistry. That elusive thing that makes actors sizzle or fizzle on screen. There is a magnetism between George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez that is rare even when these type of of films were at their heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. What's more, this may just be the only good performance the world will ever see from Jennifer Lopez. She gives a perfect blend of on screen sexiness, competence, vulnerability and toughness without a trace of the tabloid trash that would bury her over the next decade.

2. The gigantic supporting cast of players. Great character actors are coming out of the woodwork here, every scene has actors that have gone on to bigger and better things since this film. Dennis Farina turns in a fabulous performance as Lopez's Dad, a man who buys her a hand gun for her birthday, yet is fiercely protective of her feelings. The grilling he gives her boyfriend (a brilliant crossover FBI agent character (from Jackie Brown) played by Michael Keaton is a great scene. Then there is the wonderful Steve Zahn as a fumbling small time criminal in way over his head. Catherine Keener and Luis Guzmán have a knock out little scene where even while being arrested forcefully, Guzmán wants to know the secret of the saw-the-lady-in-half magic trick. Albert Brooks gives his best performance in years and Ving Rhames plays the dependable side-kick to Clooney's bank robber in a role than could not be further from Pulp Fiction's Marsellus Wallace.

3. Possibly the single best sex scene ever filmed in the history of cinema. He's a bank robber, she's a US Marshall. Fantasy and desire and the danger of the whole thing cause them to flirt with the idea of a sexual time-out. Scenes of flirtation in a bar are intercut with foreplay in hotel room while the camera in in closeup with little gestures and body language. Snow falls outside a warmly lit hotel room. Structurally this scene is incredibly ambitious (apparently it owes an inspiration to the nearly pornographic scene in Don't Look Now, a dark and moody thriller that couldn't be further from this, and here the scene is glossy and slick and even tasteful, yet hardly gratuitous (a claim often made in Don't Look Now)). Why would you want a sex scene tasteful and glossy? Well, you'll understand after you see this scene just what can be done with the right editing rhythm, lighting and angles. It's a knock out.

I'll close with this excellent line of dialogue from the film. The films psychotic criminal (played to the nines by Don Cheadle) says this at one point to rattle George Clooney: "You know, in a situation like this, there's a high potentiality for the common motherfucker to bitch out. " There isn't anything common about Out of Sight. It's all cool under fire.

KBT Presents: PAPRIKA

2007-11-29T00:01:00.000-05:00

Forget Disney. Forget Pixar. Forget Sailor Moon or other pre-conceptions you may or may not have about Anime. Japanese maestro Satoshi Kon has over the course of four feature films set out to redefine the boundaries of what an animated film can do. If Hayao Miyazaki is the Steven Spielberg of the anime world, then Satoshi Kon is Stanley Kubrick. All of Kon's features are aimed squarely at adults and aim for characters and story over moralizing and action. Paprika is a celebration of life, passion, and ultimately the joy of going to the movies. A celebration taken so far the that joy actually becomes something terrifying in its own way. Take for instance, one of the key images of the film, that of a parade consisting of a hodgepodge of, well, everything (from frogs playing musical instruments to the Statue of Liberty to walking street signs). The way the images dominate the screen and march inexorably and happily onward is one of the most gorgeous things done with the animated medium, but it's also pretty intimidating and scary. The film jumps off the screen with these images, as well as a host of different film genres all contained within a sociological and science-fiction framework. It's a lot to take in on one viewing, but your brain will sizzle and pop merrily along the way.

The story involves a small team of psychiatrists and electrical engineers who have designed a machine which they call the D.C. Mini. It's a handy little device that lets one person enter into the dreams of another and interact with the dreamer. The idea is that the doctor can better understand the problems of the patient if they can operate in the virtual reality of the patient's subconscious. The lead character, a cold and frigid psychologist is allowed to exist in alter-ego as free spirit in others dreams. A hardboiled detective is having trouble sleeping and plagued by guilt, but gets to be Tarzan swinging on vines in an endless jungles. Of course the wrong people get their hands on this little device and threaten to commit crime or make a run for power. But forget the story (and struggle through some of the early exposition in the film) and let the images seep into your being, it speaks to the core.

If the collective dream of humanity has been science (a landmark being a man landing on the moon) and technology, and the first artform born of science is the motion picture. What better film to reaffirm the joys of simply going to the movies.

KBT Presents: THE VANISHING (Spoorloos)

2007-11-08T00:01:00.000-05:00

The device of having a loved one (or a person you are counting on for one reason or another) disappear mysteriously is a device that has been used in many films over the years; most recently with both the classy Spanish horror film The Orphanage and stylish French melodrama A Very Long Engagement. In the 1980s there was Roman Polanski's Frantic (an underrated Harrison Ford film if there ever was one) and the 1970s Australian film Picnic at Hanging Rock is a personal favorite (and a previous KBT screening). If you go back the 1940s there is Carol Reed's The Third Man. And one of the earliest and best examples is all the way back to 1938 with Alfred Hitchcock's classic The Lady Vanishes. The conceit works time and again because disappointment and loss are two things that we as human beings try to avoid at all costs (while knowing deep down that it is inevitable). If this happens suddenly and (here is the dramatic kicker) without any sort of explanation, well, you generally get peoples attention. We just like closure.

When considering the examples given above, I don't know of any filmmaker who spun this particular concept every which way (until finally pulling it through itself) quite like the 1988 French-Belgian thriller The Vanishing. The film is set in mundane and unromantic French locales, such as highway rest stops and urban cafes and takes place almost entirely during the day. When Rex and Saskia, a young normal couple, are stop at a gas station along the highway en route to a vacation destination, Saskia disappears. Nobody saw anything. No signs or clues are anywhere. Did Saskia leave the relationship impulsively? Was she kidnapped? These questions (and other possible scenarios) haunt Rex for a long time after. There is nothing or nowhere to investigate. There is no sign of closure. Time passes, but Rex cannot move on. He will do anything for an explanation of just what happened. And because this is a film, the opportunity arises. It's not what you think.

George Sluizer's boundary busting thriller turned a lot of heads (for such a tiny film) for its very non-standard thriller structure. It's bright and sunny and mundane and deliberately paced. Little happens because there is little to happen. Nonetheless it has a very effective way of getting under the skin as any difficult mystery (especially when there are high emotional stakes, such as the loss of a loved one) niggles deep into the brain preventing a return to normalcy and sabotaging any attempt to move on with life. This is great cinema.

KBT Presents: A LITTLE TRIP TO HEAVEN

2007-11-01T00:01:00.000-04:00

“Why is God in Heaven and The Devil underneath the ground?” is a question posed by A Little Trip to Heaven, a small scale, noirish mix of drama and thriller set in early 1980s Minnesota. “Because it is easier to just to lay down than to it is to fly” is the answer.

The film opens with three unusually staged vehicular crashes, which couldn’t be further from Michael Bay styled mayhem. These accidents are filmed with stark beauty and the weight of crunching metal and glass. Arriving on the scene of one of these accidents, involving a city bus, is insurance investigator Holt (Forest Whitaker). He gives a speech to the passengers, some of whom may have climbed on after the accident looking to get in on a possible lawsuit against the city. With the speech Holt plays both good cop and bad cop, sounding more like a David Mamet style grift, than an insurance adjustor's dry duty. Nearly all the passengers shuffle off the bus because of it. His boss (Peter Coyote) quickly drops an assignment to investigate the death of a petty scam-artist in remote and crumbling North Hastings, Minnesota. It seems that Kelvin Anderson died after ramming his tan coloured Malibu into a tunnel wall and his body was burned to a crisp . The local police are convinced it is an open and shut case, as Kevin’s drivers license is found, the plates on the car match, and on the other side of the tunnel lives his sister Isold.

Holt is of course immediately suspicious because the charred body is conveniently unidentifiable and Isold (Julia Stiles), the beneficiary of the $1 Million dollar policy, is skittish, nervous and wasn’t even suspecting her brothers visit. Then there is Isold’s husband Fred who is ominously cheerful and nearly all of his body-language is vaguely threatening. This guy has wife-beater written all over him. Holt’s investigation digs up a number of dirty little secrets, as he attempts to get to the bottom of the things. At the same time, he begins to sympathize with the plight of crushing poverty, which defines the lives of Isold, Fred and her 6 year-old son.

Icelandic Director Baltasar Kormákur gives us a Minnesota that is much, much different than say the similarly set neo-noir, Fargo. A Little Trip to Heaven is stylized, decaying, alienating, and lacking almost completely in that down home cheery warmth that characterized the Coen Brother’s masterpiece. The look of the film is all driving rain, wet, slushy snow, barren landscapes of rusty power-lines, spongy permafrost and broken down buildings. It is filmed mainly at night or in grey, desaturated daylight. There is a delightfully odd, twangy soundtrack, which plays counterpoint to the otherworldly feel of the rest of the film.

The film wants to re-define the modern noir structure, and it is partly successful at that. It jettisons the femme fatale, and recasts the role as a vulnerable, damaged, perpetually on-edge woman who is never in control. Our hard boiled investigator is anything but that. Forest Whitaker essays a stand-offish and awkward man who is sharp and competent but is beginning to get a distaste for the nature of his work. He is crying out for scarred Isold and her lot in life, but still has his job to do.

Ambiguous morality weighs heavily on every character in A Little Trip to Heaven. Holt is not above lying, impersonating police, or breaking and entering to do his investigation but he is a generally likable guy. Insurance adjusting is cast in a viscously negative light, perfectly tuned to the Regan-era setting. The Quality Life Insurance Company runs banal, fear driven commercials are laced with a paternal sense of comfort if you come into their fold. The company is several times compared to a casino, where the house always wins. This is captured no better than Peter Coyote’s false sympathy towards a policy holder whom he convinces to sign on the dotted line for a only a paltry fraction of their rightfully allowed amount. Halfway through his canned explanation to the widow, he is passing her the Kleenex. Surely this is just as evil as a man willing to commit arson or murder for money? Lives are wrecked in both cases.

KBT Presents: NEAR DARK

2007-10-25T00:01:00.000-04:00

There are not too many women making testosterone loaded genre pictures, but one out there is James Cameron's ex-wife and former producer Katherine Bigelow. She has a spotty resume at best. There was that failed Harrison Ford submarine movie, K-19: The Widowmaker or the almost but not quite good Strange Days, a drug addiction murder mystery that was driven on pre-millenium tension. The boys behind Hot Fuzz certainly brought out the love for the glorious dunderheaded Point Break earlier this year. Near Dark, Bigelow's debut film from 1987 is definitely Katherine Bigelow's and one of my personal favorite vampire flicks. It is gritty and shocking and gloriously organic.

When a good ole country-boy tries to pick up a strange and exotic woman at the local bar, he gets pulled into a weird surrogate family of vampires. They drive around in stolen vehicles with the windows spray-painted dark and prey on out-of-the-way places in Oklahoma and the neighboring States. The new country-boy vampire has trouble with killing, and things are complicated when his real family, his dad and his little sister, set off to track him down.

What sets this take on the vampire mythos apart is the following. The dusty-dry states of the American South-West with it's anonymous and mundane urban landscapes (think trucker depots and blinkering neon) is very different from the aging velvet look to most of the classic vampire films out there. The run-down look of the vampire clan is more of that of junkies than the cliched suave aristocrat. The playful eroticism of the many european takes is replaced by raw, shamless need. Exposure to sunlight for these vampires causes their skin to smoke before catching fire in a way that is both organic and odorous. You can nearly smell the charred flesh coming off the screen. Then there is the famous scene where the clan takes down an isolated bar in a orgy of menace, violence and gore.

Cameron favorite Bill Paxton takes his jock Marine character from Aliens to a whole new level. This is probably his most showy, but also his best role on film and he gets to act along side his old co-stars here the husband wife team of Lance Henrikson (superb as ever) and Jenette Goldstein.

Curiously, it is the love of the Father (Beloved B-character actor Tim Thomerson in a straight and well acted role) for the lost son that glues the film together. Themes of family run thoughout the picture if you look past the carnage and the set-pieces. All in all it's a film that has aged very, very well in the now 20 years since its original release, and certainly worth visiting in the days leading up to All Hallows Eve.

No KBT, but some Shaw Brothers Goodness?

2007-10-11T00:01:00.000-04:00

Suffering from a bit of flight-malaise to have a KBT film today. But if we all ask really nice, maybe Glenn will bring over his nice new DVD copy of 36th Chamber of Shaolin for those who want a little Old School Shaw Brothers Kung Fu action. For the uninitiated, the film stars Kill Bill's wizened sensei Gordon Liu). And fret not if you show up and Glenn doesn't -- I'll show my favorite Shaw Brothers flick, Come Drink with Me (starring the lovely goddess Cheng Pei Pei).

This bout of pseudo-programming is timed too - because studio founder Run Run Shaw turned 100 (!) this month.

KBT Presents: FAST FOOD NATION

2007-10-04T00:01:00.000-04:00

At some point you have probably seen a film by Richard Linklater. He tends to make quite static very talky films that are as much centered on people or culture rather than story. They are tableaus of a time and place told almost entirely through conversation as opposed to conventional story telling and action. Perhaps most famously Before Sunrise is a romantic drama which consists entirely of two characters who meet randomly on a train and get to know one another walking around Vienna over the next few hours. In Dazed and Confused a portrait of the late 1970s is painted via suburban high-school on the last day of school. In his animated pictures, things are even less plot driven, particularly Waking Life, which is a philosophy survey meshed with dream logic (and lots more talking), which mirrors his debut film Slacker which used the novel structure of the camera following someone into a conversation and following the other participant out in an endless linking of random encounters in Austin, Texas.
I go through a brief survey of many of Linklater's films to illustrate how appropriate of a choice he was in the strange enterprise of translating Eric Schlosser's non-fiction book of investigative journalism and agitprop muckraking on the fast food industry, Fast Food Nation. Because the novel linked many aspects of American culture and disparate institutions into the machine of selling the soul of that nation back to itself in re-constituted parts, so too does the film. However, it does it in a non-documentary format, using Linklater's signature style of connecting a disparate collection of individuals through chance encounter and loads of conversation and ideas.
Now, this film was savaged pretty hard by the mainstream critics. Slagged as too obvious, too boring, not fun, not witty. I think that was entirely by design. Take for instance the Fast Food Marketing exec played by Greg Kinnear. for much of the film, he is sort of the moral center, slowly understanding the spiral of 'efficiencies' in running a business that gradually grinds the human element out of the equation. The film sharply mirrors this, in one of the most cutting scenes where he is broken of his idealism and just walks right out of the picture. Other threads, which mirror the talking points in the book, involve immigrant labour in the meat packaging plant (which supplies the burger patties for the fictional fast food company in the film), the fast food employees and dead-end nature of the McJob are filled either with fresh young faces or the occassional cameo of a known face. The attraction to this film however, is watching how Linklater and Schlosser's mourning for what America may have been at one time, and how painful it is to watch it wither away. Fast Food Nation is as much a lament for roads not traveled in American Society as it is about the compassion-less corporation. It may seem obvious, but the relentlessness with which the film is delivered was still ignored by the nation at large.

I guess the choir will have to do for now.

Come out Thursday Evening at 8pm for a cocktail and a nibble. Trailers and Showtime are at 8:30.

KBT Presents: DEATH PROOF

2007-09-27T00:01:00.000-04:00

Death Proof may just be the 'ultimate' Quentin Tarantino film. I say this not because it is necessarily his best film (that would be 1997's Jackie Brown), but merely because it is the comfort zone that Q.T. seems to want to reside in artistically and cinematically. In the media's rush to label Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction as a breath of fresh air blowing from somewhere in between art house and genre subversion (a la the many of the early French New Wave directors films), they forgot to look at the script work for From Dusk Till Dawn and Natural Born Killers. Certainly the frenzy that was Kill Bill made it quite clear that playing on the trash side of cinema for the sake of being fun and nasty is his idiom.

The concept of the Grindhouse experiment reigned in the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach taken with Kill Bill and let Tarantino focus on blending three types of films with Death Proof: The Women-Out-Of-Control style exploitation (Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!), the slasher flick (Halloween) and the muscle car potboiler (Vanishing Point, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, both explicitly referenced in the dialogue here). As a side note, Robert Rodriguez who had the opening feature in the Grindhouse double bill went the pile on route with Planet Terror which has about 10 films vying to escape from his flasher parody of 80's style Golan Globus films - but the commercial failure of Grindhouse has split the two features into separate films (and Planet Terror is the weaker of the two).

Death Proof is really a 'hanging out' kind of movie. Barely interested in getting to its plot or even the big 'money shots' (of which there are several). The film is more interested in hanging out and listening two groups of girls talk (and talk, and talk). Fortunately, Q.T. has a gift for writing smooth flowing dialogue. If there isn't the showy one-liners of his other features on display here, the movies strength is how it flows smoothly along, utilizing a ripping soundtrack (usually contained in the film via car radios or jukeboxes around the Austin venues the first set of girls hang out. The other strength that the director is famous for is bringing out the best performances from actors which have been (more or less) cast in the dustbin. Here it is Kurt Russell, fabulously introduced in the unglamorous close-ups of him inhaling a plate of nachos and cheese, the camera lingering on greasy fingers and smacking lips, before tilting up to see Russell's weathered face sporting a wicked scar over his right eye. A bit of a power-junkie and a bit of a dork, Russell attempts to impress the locals with the shows he worked on before realizing that the young Austin crowd hasn't really heard any of these 70's action TV relics. Instead he flirts with the shyest of the girls before going into stalking mode (a transition Tarantino winks to the camera with the flourish of having Russell flash one of the most joy-filled grins right to the audience.

The second half promises to be a repeat of the first, yet the next group of girls is a little less slutty (certainly Q.T. is adhering to convention with this aspect of the movie) and a little more aggressive. Stuntman Mike is dealing with Stuntwoman Zoe and cohorts, who aren't going to take his shit and show him a little Girl-Power in a muscle car show down.

The key to enjoying Death Proof is an ear for texture and detail. It's not the broad strokes character building, plot, action where the film shines, but rather the small observations in the girls personalities - vanity, ego, or in the case of Rosario Dawson's Abby, discovering just what you are capable of if your friends are there to show you the way. As talented actresses go, Dawson makes the most with a fairly small role, she is a joy to watch. As is Uma Thurman's Stunt Double, Zoe Bell, here playing herself in front of the camera, and clearly loving every minute of it. Bell may not be the actress that Dawson is, but her enthusiasm is so winning that watching her character strut her stuff is one of the drawing pleasures of the film.

I don't know if I've sold the movie or not to anyone reading this, as I have been on the defending side of this film from a lot of folks who think all the time spent with these girls is wasted and this ramble may reflect that defensive posture. But like Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket, Spike Lee's 25th Hour and The Coen Brothers The Big Lebowski (note all three of those have been past KBT screenings), Death Proof is a film that gets better with subsequent viewings that allow anyone willing to go along for the ride to feel the texture of what is really accomplished here. It may not be what the audience for Grindhouse actually thought they might be getting. The result is actually something better.

TIFF07 - Wrap Up: Film Capsules and Links to My Reviews

2007-09-22T10:05:00.000-04:00

This was probably my most intense go around at TIFF in the nine years I've been attending. I met a lot of fascinating individuals and managed to catch 40+ films besides. Considering the massive size (275 features) of TIFF, there is always a 'perfect' festival buried in the deluge of cinema on offer over the too-short 10 days, the trick is to find the good ones. Easier said than done though, often film selection amounts to a pulling the level on a slot machine and hoping for the best.

This year I opted for more mainstream stuff. In previous festivals, my strategy was to see films that would never ever make it to any sort of commercial cinema release. This year, due to so many interesting quasi-mainstream films, I went the other way. A mixture of expectation and anticipation may have caused the feeling that film-wise this was not the best TIFF by a long shot. There was no PERFECT, want to rave about, 10 out of 10 film this year (Last year had Pan's Labyrinth, The Fountain, and Little Children - curiously the mainstream choices. Strange.) However, there was a lot of great films on offer and I'll give the barest of comments on each of the films. Live links will go to the coverage I did for Twitch this year, I managed a bakers-dozen of reviews, which I think is pretty good considering the insanity of the festival coupled with daily commutes into Toronto.

Here they are in no particular order.

Weirdsville – 6/10 – veering wildly between too stylish and too goofy. Alan Moyle's low-key but densely plotted stoner flick involving murder, drugs and Satanists is more quiet smiley moments than laugh-out-loud funny ones.

My Winnipeg - 9/10 – Guy Maddin's loopy tribute to his home town and varied nooks and crannies of his own psyche is the auteurs most accessible film to date and also the funniest – plus it contains one of creepy images I've seen all year – Frozen Horse Heads.

Lust, Caution – 6/10 – Perfect in every technical category except completely lacking a soul. The tension is muted and the sex just sits there, preventing any deeper reading other than scrutinizing Tony Leung's scrotum.

The Substitute – 5/10 – Top shelf visuals and a deliciously screen-chewing Paprika Steen performance are marred by a rushed (and sometimes baffling) conclusion. It felt like the film was missing a reel!

Jar City – 7/10 – Intellectual, grotesque and well executed crime procedural film from Iceland which morphs into a much more interesting drama with more than one memorable image.

The Orphanage – 8/10 – Featuring the best Jump Scare of the past few years, a predictable, but solid story, and a central performance worthy of Nicole Kidman from The Others. A Spanish ghost-story that comes close to the work of Guillermo del Toro's Spanish language films.

Mother of Tears – 4/10 – Sure it is entertaining in a loopy-funny sort of way. But I want something that crawls up into my brain and lays eggs from Dario Argento, not knee-slapping parody.

The Banishment – 7/10 – As austere as his debut feature, Andrey Zvyagintsev's follow-up to The Return has a much longer run-time, and relies on a few convenient plot points, but it's a knock-out in the dark, deliberate style department.

Juno – 7/10 – Sure it is Ghost World lite and obviously the product of a writer over 30 (see also Veronica Mars) but the acting and visual style of the film make it a crowd-pleaser and laughs abound if you like quirky with a side-order of snark.

Deuxieme Souffle – 7/10 – A stylish colour-noir experiment benefits from hardboiled dialogue, a great collection of actors and bursts of vibrant violence. It is a little long, and Monica Bellucci as a blonde is a tad flat.

Silent Resident – 1/10 – Yawner of a Sci-Fi picture and paranoia parable. It thinks it is too smart and too edgy for its own good. I liked it better when it was called The Lost Highway.

Diary of the Dead – 7/10 – George A. Romero is back with a goofy, funny, and gory new Dead film. It's no classic, but nevertheless hits the entertainment spot, especially with an Amish fellow called Samuel.

Frontiere(s) – 4/10 – Technically virtuoso in the same way as Aja's High Tension. But story-wise, it is derivate to all hell (excluding a batshit crazy Nazi dude). It is too long and the lead actress is more than a little spotty at times.

Mongol – 7/10 – As big an epic as you are going to get on screen this year. Light on action, but getting into the headspace of a young Genghis Khan was a real surprise.

No Country For Old Men – 9/10 – The Coens darkest picture to date by a long shot. No musical score and a whopper of a psycho from Javier Bardem give it a novel mood. Tommy Lee Jones is the soul of the story and he delivers resigned defeat in spades.

They Wait – 3/10 – Too earnest and too derivate Canadian horror flick that look great, but had little else going for it.

Vexille – 4/10 – A text book case of trying to solve acting/script problems with very loud music. In this case, the great techno from Paul Oakenfold was like oil to Vexille's water. Great Ideas, great animation, but hollow and empty story-wise.

Chrysalis – 6/10 – A spectacular technical demo of both set design and camera savvy. Vicious fights and iconic images are not enough to sustain a film not as full of ideas as it would like to be. Looking forward to see what LeClercq does next though.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age – 3/10 – Wow. A bombastic mess of a film with some of the worst musical cues heard in ages. Cate Blanchette and Clive Owen are great in the bodice ripper aspects of the film and there is a spectacular image or two in there, but otherwise a complete fiasco!

Dr. Plonk – 5/10 – Great concept, great execution, but Dr. Plonk could have been more if the gags were escalated rather than endlessly repeated. It's a movie of diminishing returns when it should have been building up to something on the level of Keaton or Tati's best work.

Terra – 2/10 – The folks behind this CGI feature have the visual chops, but slice and dice a plot out of Star Wars and sci-fi clichés without adding a single thing to the mix. The concept of human invasion of peaceful aliens is totally wasted here.

Romulus, My Father – 3/10 – Gorgeously shot, but relentless depressing. Romulus is a shot of cough medicine for high-school students in Australia. A feel bad childhood memoir for the ages, it is guilty of wasting Franka Potente and Eric Bana, somehow Marton Csokas shines through the misery though.

The Exodus – 5/10 - A conspiracy of women murdering men they do not approve of? This absurdist noir piece defies expectations. There is something sly going on under its calm exterior and a second viewing is in order. The opening tracking shot is fantastic.

Sukiyaki Western Django – 7/10 - Cultural appropriation is on the menu of Takashi Miike's overstuffed eastern-western. This is a film that can occupy your brain or melt your eyes depending on your mood. Better experienced in a crowd environment, but will remain a lasting cult curio for years.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead – 9/10 - A noir-ish crime-gone-horribly-bad film with the catch that everything is contained within a single family. Sidney Lumet still has it, as this film delivers drama, suspense and a compelling collection of despicable characters caught in a web of their own weaving.

M – 9/10 - Lee Myung-Se's avant garde visualization of how fear, anxiety and regret alter perception of both the past and the present. Shot with his usual bold style which in this case is perfectly married to the material. Its and intellectual and emotional puzzle-box where getting lost in it is more important than actually solving it.

Mad Detective – 7/10 - Compared to Election or Exiled, this is lesser To. However an intense Lau Ching-wan performance and wacky sense of humour of the film make it a winner. The closing set-piece seals the deal as To lays on the eye-candy in a masterful scene involving split personalities and mirrors.

Reservation Road – 5/10 - Fine performances cannot save this over-wrought and and co-incidence. Any emotional truths or character revelations are overshadowed by both pandering to and manipulating the audience in an obvious attempt to bait a golden statuette.

The Devil's Chair – 0/10 - Irredeemable trash. Smug. Ugly. Sadly lacking in entertainment value, and after the 1999 slew of twist-y ending flicks, this one feels warmed over.

Stuck – 6/10 - Deliberately small scale, yet engrossing tale of a man stuck in a windshield and the girl who wants the problem to just go away. Taking a real story but re-spinning it as a black comedy with more than a little gore as the cherrry on top.

Walk All Over Me – 6/10 - A feel-good S&M crime story does not quite all glue together, but entertains in fits and starts. Gary Burns-lite, sure, but a nice enough start from young director Robert Cuffley and a fine performance from Leelee Sobieski.

Flash Point – 7/10 - This would be an easy 10/10 if the story was not so painfully conventional and the action nearly all in the last 25 minutes. With the incorporation Mix Martial Arts into contemporary guns and fist HK cinema, the bar has been set so high that it will be fun just to see if anyone can reach it again, let alone raise it!

The Tracy Fragments – 8/10 - Avant garde editing, often involving dozens of splitscreens, meets the raw style of Bruce MacDonalds previous road pictures. A full on performance from rising star Ellen Page seals the deal that Canadian Cinema is still willing to push boundries.

Madame Tutli-Putli – 9/10 - If Salvadore Dali was giving David Lynch a shiatsu massage during an overnight train ride between Calgary and Vancouver, then this might be the film that takes place in his head. Stop Motion animation has never looked this good.

Son of Rambow – 7/10 - Feel good nostalgia piece involving two young kids, a VHS camera and Stallone's First Blood. Meshing a plethora of (amped up) memories from growing up early 1980s with some fine child-actor performances and more than a little heart make this a fun way to spend a rainy day.

The Passage – 5/10 - A stylish set piece late in the film involving a tunnel and a flash-bulb coupled with a great lead actress and exotic location shooting is unable to save this film from falling face first onto the 'derivative' pile. It is a shame because the message of the film is a relevant one. Watch Frears' Dirty Pretty Things to see how this is done right.

Dia Nipponjin – 7/10 - Deadpan has never been done as accomplished and deliberate as what is on display here. As the absurdities mount, it becomes clear that there is no way to end this movie properly, and that is the only stumbling point of an otherwise pitch-perfect cult item.

Nothing is Private – 2/10 - No movie at this years festival pissed me off more than this one. In its attempts to be transgressive, it comes of as laughable, which undermines the few interesting tidbits along the way. While white kittens are run over and pregnant ladies fall on their stomach, many of the actors look either uncomfortable or embarrassed to exist in an up-the-ante and bombastic display of American Beauty hubris.

Ex Drummer – 6/10 - If American Psycho was lensed from inside Trainspotting's 'worst toilet in Scotland' you might end up with this picture which makes Man Bites Dog look like Lady and the Tramp. Not for the squeamish.

A L'Interieur – 9/10 - Wow! Simply wow. The perfect merging of body horror, hitchcock and the slasher aesthetic to make something that simply transcend the horror genre in ways that one can only hope for. Definitely not for anyone expecting a baby, or those who like to feel superior to the genre. This is a nasty little ride that offers a curious ennui after everything is done with. Let the red stuff fly.

Nearly all of these films (and many more!) have full reviews over at Twitch's MASSIVE coverage of the festival this year, probably the most review-heavy coverage on the internet outside of the trade-rags Variety, Hollywood Reporter and Screen.

And thus the waiting begins to 2008's festival.

KBT Presents: INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978)

2007-08-16T00:01:00.000-04:00

With the much delayed 2007 version of Invasion of The Body Snatchers on its way to the cinema this weekend, I thought it might be the right time to do a little 3 part series here at KBT. (What can I say, I'm in an urban apocalypse state of mind at the moment.) It has been 51 years since the release of Don Siegel's film version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers which was itself and adaptation of the 1955 magazine serial novel from Jack Finney. When that original film version came out, the number of spins and theories on what people being replaced with emotionless pods could mean were wide and varied. This may have been the earliest indication that a something universal was buried in this particular story. Since then there have been 3 'official' remakes. The first was in 1978 by Philip Kaufman, another by Abel Ferrara in 1993 (with the truncated title of Body Snatchers) and recently one by Oliver Hirschbiegel titled (and equally truncated) The Invasion. The recent version was to have come out in 2006 but due to the studio pod--er--executives thinking that Hirschbiegel's version didn't have enough action sequences in it, other writers and directors were brought in to redo half the movie. An easy joke or truly meta-style film-making? ("They're here already! You're next! You're next, You're next... ")

The reason why remaking this film every 15 years or so is interesting is that the subtext of the 'fear' changes to reflect something gnawing away at America at that moment. Many point out that the Red-Scare is the buried metaphor for the 1956 version; that deterioration of social fabric and conspiracy theories (a la Watergate) is contained in the 1978 version; The destruction of the nuclear family is dealt with in the 1993 version and apparently, the recent version focus on disease pandemics and religious cults. The fact that the story is that malleable is what makes the science fiction and horror genres (or in this case, the fusion of the two) so great. A case could be made that the entire Zombie subgenre of horror (a personal favorite of mine) starting from George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, which came out 12 years after the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers and going right up to this years 28 Weeks Later. (People are with you one moment and after you the next, told to the tune of modern day anxiety.)

Many folks in my generation hold the 1978 version dear to their hearts (or is that fear to their hearts?) mainly because it was a late night TV staple all through the 1980s although partly because it is openly terrifying at times. The 1956 version, for all its influence, has actually been somewhat difficult to find and even now is surprisingly, somewhat of a chore to find on DVD. This is a shame (I may be showing a VHS copy next week: Oi! The nostalgia!). Since the powers that be have released the 1978 version in a nice remastered package, this will be the first to screen.

There are so many great visuals (and sound cues) in the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. My favorite is that Donald Sutherland's character drives around in a car with half the windshield glass smashed in a spiderweb of stress lines so dense that it is actually quite difficult to see properly what lies ahead. At a certain point he sees a character from the original version of the film run down in the street and mobbed by the poddies. How perfect is that?

KBT Presents: RIGHT AT YOUR DOOR

2007-08-09T00:01:00.000-04:00

Relationships between family, friends or a significant other are typically done poorly (or completely ignored) in those big money blockbusters featuring an apocalypse of one kind or another which destroys swathes of urban infrastructure to the tune of millions of dollars of computer graphics. While the recent (and mighty fine) 28 Weeks Later took great pains to integrate ‘the family relationship’ into the gears of its thematic gristmill, some of those elements were overpowered in the stylistic brouhaha of that film. Perhaps it is a slight irony that an art director of lush, visual films such as Fight Club and The Hudsucker Proxy would be the one to take a sparse, tight and emotional approach to the genre. Sure, it is more likely the tiny budget played more of a factor here, but that does not change the fact that Right at Your Door is damn effective at what it does.

The story is simple. After making coffee for his girlfriend Lexi and sending her off to her office job, Brad, an out-of-work musician listens to the news to discover that several bombs have been dropped on downtown LA. A quick look out his window confirms that this is no hoax. After an abortive attempt to get through the chaotic streets and find Lexi, Brad returns home and follows the media recommendation of sealing up the house. The ‘dirty’ bombs are believed to have toxic chemicals and such and the ash-cloud from the urban detonation is not far away. A handyman (who works for the neighbors) helps Brad seal up the vents, windows and door frames with plastic and duct tape. Because he is unable to get across town to his family, he stays. Things get complicated when Lexi returns back to the house coughing up a storm while wading through the ash cloud. The media warns again and again that anyone exposed to the falling ash is contagious and should be quarantined until medical professionals arrive. Brad makes the very difficult decision (it should be noted the opposite decision of the Nostromo crew and kids of 28 Weeks Later) to maintain the quarantine and keeps his wife on the other side of the plastic. Police, military and rescue workers roam the environment as confused and vaguely menacing specters while Lexi and Brad deal with the very real possibility that Lexi is going to die of toxic exposure.

Right at Your Door is both a description of the film and a glove tossing challenge to the viewer. The dangers are a stew of modern disasters which have affected millions including 9/11, the big blackout in 2004 and the SARS scare. Everyone has seen the CNN coverage of these events and how the panic of the unknown spreads faster than the truth. There is a significant screenplay decision from Chris Gorak to have Brad and Lexi just moving into their LA bungalow on the outskirts of downtown. This allows for the cable not to be hooked up yet. It keeps the films focus on character communication and does not have them sitting and watching TV (which most people would be doing in that situation). Recurring shots of tinned goods, bottled water, plastic wrap and duct tape are apt enough metaphors for what Homeland Security means by the time it is filtered down to the individual trapped in their home. And individual clearly have no power to do a damn thing (other than look out for their own as best they can) in these situations. A visually effective scene of a character giving himself a fear induced bleach baptism cries out as angrily a welcome as any to the culture of fear of the new millennium.

The title is clever in that it is a literal description of the situation, but serves up the question of “What would you do?” Likely while watching the film many will be mentally playing their own version of how one would handle the situation. It makes the film cut even sharper because in a way, it is very much an interactive film. A conversation stimulator (it is a great date film for those who are spoiling for a relationship argument afterwards), Brad and Lexi’s decisions (and whether or not you agree with them) will likely make or break the whether the audience finds the film entertaining. Controversial decision making at the most individual (or couple) level is at the heart of Right at Your Door in a way that echoes Anthony Edwards plight in the under seen 80s cold-war shaped paranoid thriller Miracle Mile. Consider this the post-911 update while subtracting the sugary love story and adding much more real couples dialogue. Although 70 years on, North America is a lot more media savvy, but there is a strain of paranoia which taps the same vein as Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcasts. The performances from Rory Cochrane and Mary McCormack, combined with level realistic dialogue, go a long way cover over qualms about how ‘real’ or how ‘movie’ the situation unfolds. Other than some opening scenes, the film is in essence a ‘one room’ film which emphasizes character and situation over thrill-ride. There has certainly been a spate of these types of pictures this year including Vacancy and Bug and 1408. Right at Your Door is best of show for giving the screen real people instead of dramatic devices.

There is a second layer to the film, the constant babble of reportage going on in the background. From the panicked opening strains of a disaster unfolding in real time and confusing reporters checking in via cellular phone to the elasticized and mundane point three days where there just is not enough information or news to justify constant updates and the chatter devolves into buzzing white noise. This background element feels authentic in a way that it is simply there, not satirical or paranoid or showy. It adds to the tension of the film in a way that the distracting techno score struggles to do at times. That and a thematically sound yet too abrupt ending are slightly weaknesses to an otherwise masterful piece of duck-and-cover cinema.

Right at Your Door is clear proof of how to make a gripping and visceral experience. A good screenplay, savvy close-up cinematography and top shelf performances from all involved (including the many actors only heard via the radio broadcasts) add up to a decidedly rich and offbeat disaster movie. The urban apocalypse film is rapidly amassing enough entries to construct a tidy sub-genre and Chris Gorak’s directorial debut deserves to be sitting near the top of the pile.

KBT Presents: CASHBACK

2007-08-02T00:01:00.000-04:00

Wow. Welcome to the 100th screening of 'Kurt's Basement Theatre (aka KBT)! Alas, there is no big celebration or anything, but rather a presentation of this British romantic dramedy, Cashback, which focuses on the same early 20s transition-from-school-to-'real life' in the as Kevin Smith's original Clerks or Daniel Clowes' and Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World. It goes about itself in a low-key, even downbeat manner even compared to those two films. High Fidelity for the tweener set.

What makes this one stand out is how it treats the subject with a visual wit as accomplished as modern visual stylists Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Danny Boyle and David Fincher. The resulting film is the nice blend of high and low culture (Don Carlos to Coldplay if you will) to yield a feel-good film which earns its romantic elements. It is a rare film which chooses not to angrily condemn plastic suburban culture in the western world, but look hard and find small beautiful things amongst the banal. There is a detached joy at work in the film which slowly sheds the former and finds the latter. It is a hopeful movie for those looking to find their way in life, even as it simultaneously exists as a wish fulfillment fantasy. Director Sean Ellis loves to celebrate things as even more beautiful when there is a flaw or two.

The film opens with a close-up on a girls face as she angrily breaks up with Art-school freshman Ben. This is done is slow motion, her perfect lips fluttering in curse words that Ben explains are a tad hard on his fragile ego. The breakup has such an effect that Ben begins to suffer from massive insomnia and detachment from everyday life. Because he is up all night, he takes a McJob at the local gigantic supermarket to make some money with all of his depressing spare time. Once in this job, he does not engage in the juvenile practical jokes of his co-workers or try to avoid looking at the clock (which makes time move slower). No, his technique of making the endless empty activity of the supermarket job pass by is a strange one. Ben gains the ability to stop time and walk around the store looking at the various patrons, frozen now in ‘still life,’ he draws portraits of the woman he unclothes while frozen. A form of visual and thematic time travel worthy of Chris Marker’s La Jetée - this is where the film is quite magical. The act of disrobing and sketching is done simply and without fuss or muss (more importantly, without any sort of leering quality). There is very full nudity, but it is more erotic than lusty, and all the more fascinating with the bright fluorescent lights of the supermarket; hundreds of packaged goods in the background. These women are the fashion magazine goddesses, flawless examples of perfection, who are engaged in mundane, not-typically-sexy positions. This sort of natural eroticism ends up being sublimely effective. It was no surprise to find out that the director was a fashion photographer for his day job.

Another pursuit Ben has at the supermarket is one of the check-out girls. Sharon is also quite serious compared to the rest of the night shift employees. When her and Ben begin to go on dates (as idealized as they are), the actors carry it off with a very natural rhythm of dialogue. You believe it and have faith that young folks can be so mature in their interaction, and trusting to share their dreams.

Cashback has a breezy chapter structure. The picture was obviously as rigorously planned as the perfect special effects, but it flows effortlessly between vignettes of Ben's childhood discoveries of sexuality, to art school classes the supermarket to a footy match between grocery franchises. The humor is clever (Ben's explanation of the double meaning of the word ‘crush’ comes to mind) and physical.

The film is a heck of a lot better than similar themed Garden State. It may not aim to find the long dark night of the soul, or address many of the other more complex challenges of that time in many peoples lives, but as Rom-Coms go, Cashback is a gem waiting to be discovered.

KBT Presents: PRAG

2007-07-26T00:01:00.000-04:00

I'll be quite brief on this as it has been a busy month. After a six week hiatus, I'm itching to get KBT back up and running; particularly because I have a lot of offbeat and interesting films to project onto the screen in the small dark room. Not the least of which is a recent Danish drama which premiered at TIFF last year. Prag follows a middle aged couple in the midst of a crumbling relationship from Copenhagen to Prague with the goal of picking up the body of a dead relative. Cold and stony Christoffer is played by the bogglingly talented Mads Mikkelsen (Last seen crying blood tears and playing Texas Hold 'Em in Casino Royale , but much better in other KBT favorites Adams Apples and The Pusher Trilogy), who has been estranged from his dad for more than a decade and is working on alienating his wife (she has already taken the liberty of having an affair). Picking up the last earthly remains of his father is more a civic duty than a sense of emotional closure. As the couple gets a bit of the Lost in Translation vibe from the foreign Czech Republic culture, they try to quietly hash out their differences while completing the bureaucracy to obtain the body.

What makes Prag an exceptional film is that the story telling strategy employed by director Ole Christian Madsen involves filming facial expression and body language more than plot points and dialogue. Anyone who has at some time or another been involved in a crumbling relationship is sure to recognize the signs on display; even as the performances from both leads are models of subtlety and restraint. Some light and dark comedic touches keep the film from any sort of bogging down that often plagues films such as this, say French talkies. The gorgeous backgrounds of Prague provide an ironic romantic backdrop to the proceedings. That much of the Danish cinema that I've encountered over the past few years (it has certainly been a fun national cinema to watch) is either over-the-top black comedy or gritty and bloody violence, Prag's quiet and detached nature is a breezy change.

KBT Presents: THE PAGE TURNER

2007-06-07T00:01:00.000-04:00

After showing the rich warm and often fuzzy compilation film Paris, je t'aime last week, this week promises an equally French, but much chillier film. The Page Turner is a thriller with no action, but always the threat of something bad happening. Opening shots of a young girl furiously practicing on her piano are intercut with her parents (who are butchers) chopping and handling raw meat. You know things are not going to go well.

The film adds a menacing layer to the simple act of trusting someone. It underscores the need for acceptance and praise from peers and teachers. Furthermore, how it takes so many people to do even the simplest of things, and if one chooses not to play their role, the entire social fabric can easily unravel. Things could have easily degenerated into trash like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle or Ricochet, but director Denis Dercourt instead choses to highlight the body language of two fantastic and subtle actresses, young and well groomed Déborah François and elder and dignified Catherine Frot. One character has a reason to hate the other, but you are never sure whether or not that hatred will be acted upon. Watch the hands and the eyes of these two women and you will see the film.

Come out Thursday night for this subtle and fantastic little gem. If you liked Hard Candy or Swimming Pool, this film will be your cup of tea. Drinks at 8. Trailers and Showtime at 8:30pm.

KBT Presents: PARIS JE T'AIME

2007-05-31T00:01:00.000-04:00

Ahh, the compilation film. Usually they entertain in spurts but rarely reach the masterpiece level. This is due to the combination of many different styles/visions at play, a shorter time-span devoted to each part, and the very basic human need to spend more times comparing the parts than delving into them separately. Or perhaps we delve into them by comparison.

Usually, these compilations are in the horror genre and are usually content to break things into 3 or 4 stories such as Three...Extremes and Twilight Zone: The Movie. Often like-minded directors band together to try to blend a story together such as Four Rooms or Triangle. Even an auto company got into the act unifying half a dozen directors around Clive Owen and the BMW line of vehicles with a strange intersection of art and commerce in The Hire films.

Along comes Paris Je T'aime which is the juggernaut of compilations films. 18 short films based with each one set a different area (district) of Paris. Obviously the intent was to craft cinematic love letters in 8 minutes or less and there is some real talent involved from The Coen Brothers to Gus Van Sant; Alfonso Cuarón to Vincenzo Natali. A fair number of French Directors are also involved, notably master animator Sylvain Chomet (Whose Triplettes de Belleville is a personal favorite of mine) and Olivier Assayas (whose Irma Vep I also adore).

I have nothing really to say about the film yet because I just got the DVD from Singapore (the only place its out with English subtitles) in the mail this afternoon. I imagine one cannot get bored in a film that shifts gears every few minutes or so. Then again, I don't expect any profound revelations for the same reason. That being said, KBT regular Glenn Loucks thought it was his favorite film at the 2006 entry of the Toronto Film Festival.

Come out and enjoy a dozen and a half odes to a city that inspires romantic notions throughout the world. White Wine, Raspberries and chocolate at 8pm. Trailers and Showtime at 8:30pm.

KBT Presents: THE PROPOSITION

2007-05-24T00:01:00.000-04:00

The Proposition is a film of transient men (both physically and morally) that is liberally peppered with sweat and fly feces. It is a western that is as far away from the American West as Sergio Leone was when making his epic films in Italy and Spain. The Australians have always used their harsh open spaces to depict fear and lurking evil - from Picnic at Hanging Rock to the recent Jindabyne. Director John Hillcoat photographs the landscape in harsh yellows and reds, but shows the struggle between three men is far nastier than the hot sun or crawling insects.

The film opens with an outpost lawman (the always excellent Ray Winstone) having captured two of the three brothers responsible for the rape and murder of one of the homestead families in his jurisdiction. Knowing that the one that he does not have in custody is the worst of the bunch, he offers the titular proposition to the next most competent brother (Guy Pearce): To save his weak and simple brother from hanging, he has to kill his older sibling who is hiding in the wilderness before Christmas which is a mere nine days away. The plot is as simple as a just being a tracker film. Although those elements are present and they are fine enough; more compelling is the tentative hold of civilization in the outback represented by the lawman's wife (a subtle and radiant Emily Watson), whose rosebushes cling disparately to the outback soil while tended by a local aborigine. The film asks if civilization even belongs here at all, for better or for worse. Even so called civilized men fall pray to the savageness intrinsic in the hot soil. The desert brings out the worst in men, and is especially hard on those who attempt to tame it. The aborigines in town (including a nice cameo from David Gulpilil) watch the drama from a distance and remain uninvolved and uninvited, occassional tools if necessary.

Featuring contradictory characters, often abruptly violent and operatic in the telling, The Proposition seems to have many of the trappings of the genre, but it is a wholly unique beast. More than worthwhile viewing for those with the stomach it.

Inland Empire - A Review

2007-05-09T21:00:00.000-04:00

I feel like I'm coming late to the party here, but Inland Empire finally opened in Toronto last weekend, and the lovely Royal Cinema had a sizable audience for a late showing of the film in all its mid-grade DV glory. As a further perquisite, the theatre was serving Mr. Lynch’s own brand of java to chemically augment the experience.

After experiencing Inland Empire (and that is the correct word) and struggling to think about how to actually write about it, one conclusion bubbled up to the surface. The films of David Lynch, darn near all of them, could get by entirely on mood alone. That is not to say that there are not many things worthy of parsing and mulling in his cinema, quite the contrary in fact (especially so with this one). For nearly 3 hours, dread and creeping uneasiness are sustained effortlessly, only punctuated on occasion with moments of absurdity or self-knowing humour. To call Inland Empire the best film of the year is not a stretch in the least. It oozes with primordial cinema matter, comments bitingly on Hollywood and is also a multi-nested loop of films-within-films. For those that obsess on all things Tinseltown, this film is (to borrow a Twin Peaks concept) the Black Lodge version (complete with red curtains).

The movie within a movie is not a terribly original concept. It is, however, more than a little refreshing to see the conceit taken to a dazzlingly new plateau. The identity Rubick's Cube, started with Lost Highway, and further coupled with the sinister traps and pitfalls of the Hollywood dream factory in Mulholland Dr. are taken further down the rabbit hole.

Those familiar with past David Lynch films will immediately be buoyed along by an amalgamation/extension of some of the elements and themes of his previous work into Inland Empire. Contrary to expectations (admittedly from reading far too many reviews over the months prior my own first viewing) it was surprising that the dense tangle of confusion does indeed feel like it could be assembled into order; perhaps even more so than Mulholland Dr. and definitely more so than Lost Highway. Not that one has to do the narrative re-assembly to enjoy the pleasures on offer. The dense wall of sound underscoring often cryptic dialogue-matter and the amplification of each individual moment to its own ambiguous significance is rewarding for those willing to play along. I’ve always scoffed a little when people make comparisons between David Lynch and Guy Maddin, but comparing both directors recent (and very personal) work – Inland Empire and Brand Upon the Brain! – the comparison finally makes sense to me (at this instance anyway). The word uncompromising springs to mind.

The obvious complexity of Inland Empire is that it is four (maybe even five or six) stories swirled into one. Nikki Grace, played by Laura Dern, is a star, presumably in decline, offered the lead part in an old-time melodrama by an optimistic and generous director (Jeremy Irons at his most scruffy) with the proclamation that this will be her great comeback. We soon learn that this film, like many in Hollywood these days, is a remake of a foreign film. However the original Polish film ("47") ended production when the two lead actors were murdered. Their murder does not stop the polish cast from entering the picture however and chunks of the Polish version are embedded as a concurrent story. The polish actress from the original film may possibly be acting as a Inland Empire's framing story: Inland Empire opens on a woman watching things happen on a TV (a delightful cameo from Lynch regular Grace Zabriskie as a polish gypsy channeling Robert Blake’s mystery man from Lost Highway is to be cherished). On High in Blue Tomorrows, the film currently being produced often intrudes into reel life. Nikki Grace's struggle to find here character Sarah Blue is successful to the point where she more or less becomes her, mentally struggles with her, and finally vomits her right out of her system in the presence of the prostitutes (some of them notably Grace’s actress friends from earlier in the film) and the destitute right on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine. (As an aside, I’d love to know whose star receives the blood vomit). It strikes me a little that Inland Empire has a few things in common with Steven Soderbergh’s criminally undervalued Full Frontal in spirit and a tad in execution (both use film-within-film-…) structures. That is, filmmakers that have been through the system making films about being abused by the system. If Full Frontal is a fair bit more coherent and by comparison sunnier, it may be because Soderbergh has found the balance of indie projects with studio projects, while Lynch has gone further and further from the mainstream with his recent work. Again, this is potentially rewarding for those who follow him.

Further attack on both Hollywood and the celebrity star system is achieved with close-ups (as in “All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up”). The DV look combined with extreme close ups do not paint a flattering portrait of anyone, but further augment dread. Laura Dern is the recipient of many of these and the effect is one of underscoring her as a bonafide movie star by satirizing the way a star is born and also catered to - most especially in silver screen cinema (“where stars make dreams and dreams make stars”). A more modern jab involves a gossip talk show hosted by Diane Ladd (Dern’s real life mom. I’m sure that isn’t an accident.) And Harry Dean Stanton shows up in a scene or two to poke a bit of fun at the role of the producer. David Lynch himself ‘shows up’ offscreen as a near deaf crew-member, a nod to Agent Gordon Cole, but notable for his character unconsciously thwarting the intentions of the filmmaker within the film.

At some point a character inquires “why instigate the need to suffer?” The cumulative effect of Inland Empire is that suffering is compelling on screen as much as a kiss or a bang (of which the film has little). Further dollops of tension dispelling meta include Dern issuing a line which also sums up the film and much of a film career, “...it's kinda laid a mind-fuck on me” she confesses to a private eye or a fortune teller or a shrink or a combination of all of the above. Audiences born and bred on hand-holding narratives if they accidentally happen upon this film are likely going be suffering indeed. Acting as the most inept Greek Chorus in the history of Greek Choruses are the bunny-people from David Lynch's website movies ("Rabbits"). Offering little to the overall thrust of the story (if it is not an oxymoron to use that phrase with this film), they add to the strangeness and underscore how easily the film sustains its tone, even in the face of the absurd. Those having trouble with the film will likely remember the bunnies over nearly everything else. Perhaps a shame, as they feel lobbed into the film more than organically infused.

In the end, Inland Empire does what great cinema should do. It talks to you without talking at you. Even if yesterday is tomorrow and tomorrow is yesterday and characters overlap in and out of the film within the film and the whole thing navel gazes in the way films so often are made about making films - if there is a case for narcissism being a good thing, then David Lynch has made it quite convincingly.

(On a final technical note, the DV cinematography contrary to popular opinion, is fantastic here. What they are able to get out of 'non-cinema' digital video cameras is nothing short of remarkable. That the film-making style is in tune with the subject matter of the film is even better (note the film within the film is being shot on 35mm) Using equipment that was not 'meant' to be blown up for the big screen, and then creating a feeling that seeing Inland Empire on the big screen is the ONLY way to see the film is an accomplishment in itself.)

Cross published at www.twitchfilm.net

KBT Presents: WOLFHOUND

2007-05-03T00:01:00.001-04:00

OK, after screening one of the great American films of the current decade, KBT is going to backslide to pure cheeseball fun. This week we have the big budget Russian version of either The Beast Master or Krull. The opening sequence which sees a boy child in an idyllic village witness the slaughter of said village before growing up to a warrior will more likely than not rekindle that 80's nostalgia for B-Fantasy films. When our hero sets out for revenge and what appears to be a pet fruitbat with a young lady (and obligatory breast shot) and a blind old man who can see the future. Well you will know from these few words whether or not you are going to like this film.

I'll go on to say that the film does not exist anywhere (to my knowledge) with English subtitles, but I've got well produced Russian DVD with and a very good subtitle track downloaded off the internet from some kind soul fluent in English and Russian.

Come out for a bit of mayhem and silliness that doesn't take itself too serious, but isn't a parody either. Just an offbeat fun time. Drinks at 8pm. Showtime at 8:30pm.

KBT Presents: LITTLE CHILDREN

2007-04-26T00:01:00.000-04:00

Little Children is a tightly wound time bomb of a movie. It is full of ticking clocks, tense or nervous conversations, ill conceived actions and judgmental glances (welcome to the United States of the last 5 years). The film is an artfully structured satirical melodrama - and who really makes those - now or ever? It feels like an intimate hybrid of Todd Solondz ’s Happiness and Lars von Trier ’s Dogville and comes complete with droll voice-over narration.

It follows a cross-section of suburban dwellers in an anonymous upscale, likely gated, community. It follows two couples. First is stay at home mom and English Literature graduate (Kate Winslet), and her too-much-time-at-the-office husband who has a mild obsession for internet pornography. They have a temperamental five year old daughter who will not listen her mother, especially if it involves getting into a car seat or stroller. There is a stay at home dad (Patrick Wilson, who after Hard Candy is on the verge of being typecast in the role of sexy emasculated men) who is studying to pass his law exam, but is easily distracted by something as simple of teenage skateboards who hang outside the library, and his gorgeous, documentary filmmaker wife (Jennifer Connelly) who undoubtedly wears the pants in the family. They have a son who seems not to respect his dad, and sleeps every night in his parent’s bed. The film features a gallery of side characters including a released sex offender (Jackie Earle Haley) whose face is plastered all over town by an ex cop (Noah Emmerich) who was pushed out of the force due to accidentally shooting a mall rat waving a fake gun around, but still needs to patrol the neighborhood. He mainly parks outside the sex offenders mothers house (her son recently moved back in after jail) honking his horn or issuing threats from a megaphone. And then there is the gallery of stay at home mothers who go to the park to more or less get a break from their children and gawk at Patrick Wilson, or pass judgment on various parenting choices.

The film revolves mainly around the affair started between the Wilson and Kate Winslet characters, Brad and Sarah, who have some trouble fitting into the neighborhood and too much free time on their hands. Sarah tries to hang out with the local women, who choose to surreptitiously glance and fantasize about Brad, dubbing him The Prom King, but do not want to put the effort to talk to him (“we would have to put on make up or be concerned about our clothes, that is too much work”). Sarah also finds their conservative and judging attitudes off putting, to the point where she feels the need to play devils advocate and be ultra liberal. The flirty kiss with The Prom King, executed in front of those women as an amusing way to get a rise out of them, starts those trains from the trailer (and constantly heard in the background in the film) rolling. As the affair begin to swirl with tension, secrets and lies the narrative thread involving the home life of the sex offender begins to get more developed. His mother is trying to get him out dating (to help him control those urges and be a good boy – he is 40ish), all the while scrubbing the hate graffiti painted on the sidewalk in front of their house, presumably by the ex-cop.

Little Children tries very hard to give you perspective on things while looking at how other characters in the film, which clearly lack perspective, make quick judgments based on few facts and their own hang-ups. It is also a thinly veiled parable of the current climate in the United States. One particularly scathing comment on the culture of fear is the reaction of the community moms when the sex offender decides to talk a dip in the public pool. The full on panic of the mothers, complete with children who do not understand what is going on, but can taste the fear in the air nonetheless is almost shot for shot the crowded beach sequence in Jaws. Not just content to attack the ‘moral majority’ right, there are many darts thrown in the direction of the ‘bleeding heart’ left. Todd Field's In the Bedroom painted complicated emotions with liberal wish-fulfillment fantasy the second half negated the first half. Here he has eradicated that flaw and taken Little Children to the next level, and one of the best (and sadly mis-marketed) films of 2006.

Things are never simple in the film, which is elaborately structured to yield maximum provocation. It is designed to manipulate; allowing empathy for the various characters in some scenes and encouraging you to despise them in others. The two actual children are sort of beside the point in the film, with the focus on the adults who are actually the little children in the midst of identity crises.

KBT Presents: THE RETURN

2007-04-19T00:01:00.000-04:00

The Return is a visually sparse Russian coming-of-age story that is deceptively simple and subtly complex. The opening scene is a shot of several boys daring one another to jump off a high tower into the water below. He who does not jump will be branded a coward and a pig. The pressure of potential ostracization, even (or especially) from his own older brother, is enough to crack young Vanya. This bold opener signals a narrative which will plays with the fear and confusion of youth raw to the bone along the lines of François Truffaut's 400 Blows and not the warm leavened nostalgia of something like Stand by Me. The story of a father returning to his young sons (13 and 15) after a dozen years absence (mom and gran are the role-models and caregivers) is played with an air of mystery and bewilderment. Vanya runs excitedly up stairs to find the only picture they have just to make sure it is him. The reason for their fathers return is as unfathomable as the reason he left - from the point of view of the boys. Most assuredly, every moment of this film is from the point of view of the boys. At first there is awe and surprise. Especially when, within 24 hours of being home, he tells the boys that the three of them are going on a fishing trip. Excitement quickly morphs into anger and petulance from Vanya, and loyalty and willful blindness from his older brother Andrey who none-to-subtly just wants to have a father figure in his life. This is because a seemingly innocent fishing trip slowly shifts into a 'now-is-the-time-to-become-men' trial by fire from Father.

The bonding language between fathers and sons can often be one of silences and rage. And the bonding of brothers can often be a mix of support, night-time confiding and fisticuffs. The opposite reactions of the boys as their father returns adds an extra element of friction. To further complicate matters, the father may have yet another agenda for the trip involving many phone call and a remote (deserted) island. The Return is told with a disciplined attention to detail in both the filming of lots of open natural spaces (oceans, rivers, fields) and confined man made ones (Sheds, Boats, Tents and Cars) as well as the intense musical cues and the sparse natural silences. With the collision of the intimate and the distant, the film communicates quite poetically that even if we have familiarity, love and constant proximity for our parents we will never really know them.

So accomplished (and burrowing) is the filmmaking, that it is hard to believe that this was a first film from Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev. In fact the wise people at the Venice Film Festival gave The Return the top prize in 2003 and justly so, it was one of the best films (worldwide) of that year.

If you are fascinated about the emotional language (or non-language) of men, then The Return is an experience not to be missed. Come out at 8pm Thursday Night (April 19) for drinks. Trailers and Showtime at 8:30.

KBT Presents: PAN'S LABYRINTH

2007-04-12T00:01:00.000-04:00

Mexican fantasy horror maestro Guillermo del Toro has two careers. The first one is in English language features: smart mid-budget Hollywood blockbusters such as Hellboy, Blade II and even Mimic (which gets a bit of an undeserved bad rap, even from Del Toro himself). His second career yields dark, complex fantasy tales in Spanish which are not afraid to lay on a bit of gore, get under the skin, and tickle the brain. For Pan’s Labyrinth not only is he working with the latter hat on, he has done what I thought would be impossible. He has gone and made a feature even better than the sublime The Devil’s Backbone. It is possibly the most thematically complex, emotional, and stylish genre film you will see this year.

While many folks did manage to catch this Spanish language film theatrically, I recently got my DVD copy of the film in a pretty little set from (of all places) Korea. The film is not out in North America yet; and I've been itching to delve into the film once again to confirm whether or not the film is as good as I remember it, catching it in the heady blur of the 2006 Toronto Film Festival.
Set near the end of WWII, the film opens with Ofelia and her very pregnant mother traveling to an army outpost so that Ofelia’s stepfather can be present for the birth of their son. During a break in the travel, an innocent action from Ofelia reveals the presence of the faerie in the bright forested countryside. When they arrive at the outpost, crisply uniformed and neatly groomed fascist step-father awaits checking his pocket watch for timeliness. Captain Vidal is the epitome of European fascist warlord and is played by a perfectly cast Sergi López who perfected this sort of menace in Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things and the Hitchcockian thriller With A Friend Like Harry. Vidal hosts a sumptuous banquet as he discusses rationing of the locals food so any extra will not fall into the hands of the rebels. He casually shoots anyone who may or may not be helping the rebels. He only cares about his wife insofar as she is the vessel for the wellbeing of his unborn son. Vidal barely notices Ophelia who is left to freely wander the grounds which include a stone maze, and a particularly vaginal tree, as well as endless miles of beautiful Spanish forest. Ophelia is well read, and quickly picks up on who in the camp is helping the rebels and why, although still being a child, wanders innocently and seemingly powerlessly around in the world of adults. When the faerie visits Ophelia again one night, she follows it out into the stone maze and meets a spectacularly Gothic faun (the titular Pan) who tells Ophelia she is actually the princess of magical kingdom.

You will often seen Pan's Labyrinth far too labeled simply as a "Faerie tale for Adults." While that may look good on the marketing materials, the fantastic element of the film is less than a fifth of the running time. Often cited as a flaw in the film, I think this is exactly the right balance to maintain the sense of danger and tension. Too much fantasy would stomp on the films brutality. And there is nothing wrong with an audience left wanting a little more compared to being beaten over the head.

The films visuals take cues from decidedly non children sources such as Chinatown and The Shining. Fair warning that there are scenes of terrifyingly bloody childbirth and the film is fond of the phrase “sick with baby” to describe a mothers discomfort an impending childbirth. Pan’s Labyrinth is a film that you might want to hold back from friends who are expecting. And perhaps you should let the kiddies discover this film into their teenage years; even then a nightmare or two will likely follow. It is a bit of a shame that such a rich story of innocence and and Christian sensibility (with a fantasy bent) is perhaps a tad too horrifying for the younger set who will have to stick pretty pablum like the Harry Potter or whitewashed non-events such as the recent Chronicles of Narnia film. Since Pan's Labyrinth similar lines to the C.S. Lewis tale, Pan’s Labyrinth exposes the Disney/Walden production as the thin hollow display of pageantry it is. Pan's Labyrinth goes all the way to celebrate the imagination, focusing on innocence lost upon entering adulthood (or a country in an unjust war) is worth fighting to regain at all costs, even if in the end this can prove somewhat elusive.

Is it better if Dorothy stays in Oz rather than return to Kansas, just so that someone is keeping the home fires burning? Pan’s Labyrinth is not by any means a film of despair, flowers of hope bloom after the passing of darkness.
Come out Thursday April 12th for a unique film experience and my personal favorite film at the end of 2006. If you managed to catch it in the theatres, here is hoping the film is worth a second look. Drinks (and home-made pizza) @ 8pm. Trailers and Showtime at 8:30pm.

KBT Presents: THE SPANISH PRISONER

2007-03-22T00:01:00.000-04:00

I've always been a sucker for the films of David Mamet. And the phrasing of that sentence is intentional, as his films often involve the mechanics of the confidence artist. In the most literal sense in House of Games and Heist, as Hollywood in State and Main (and Wag the Dog), as salesmen in Glengarry Glen Ross as military homeland security in Spartan (and a re-write of Ronin) and as corporate business in The Spanish Prisoner.

For some reason the film I keep coming back to is The Spanish Prisoner. Perhaps it is the strangely off-kilter acting or the low-key aspects of the film (the artificiality is part of the point), or that I just like to see Campbell Scott starring in anything (note one of the very first KBT screenings - Roger Dodger). Steve Martin is in the film as well and is finely cast against type, with nary a smile or over-the-top slapstick gag in sight.

The story follows a mathematician, Joe Ross (Scott) who works for a large corporation. He has invented (but not yet patented or protected) a financial process that is going to make the corporation a lot of money. Mamet plays coy in that he never reveals what the process is, how it works, or even what function it will serve. Alfred Hitchcock used to call this a MacGuffin. It doesn't matter what it is, only that a lot of people want it. While celebrating its completion on a tropical island, Ross meets a mysterious millionaire (Martin). Over drinks, the millionaire plants the seed in Ross's head that the company is going to take both the process, and the credit, away from him. Once trust is lost in the company, all sorts of deceptions and double crosses take place. The movie is at once impossible to assemble, and jarringly obvious.

That professional magician Ricky Jay has a small role in the film is evidence that an illusion of the highest order is being crafted. The very title of the film is explained at one point, something that has lived on in the form of internet spam, with the Spaniard being replaced with a Nigerian. Of course the dialogue and delivery is artificial and electric in that special way only David Mamet is capable of. For those who want their brains to fire on all cylinders while watching a film more for the exercise of just thinking than anything else. The Spanish Prisoner provides an unusual workout.

KBT Presents: SECONDS

2007-03-15T00:01:00.000-04:00

I love a good paranoid thriller that goes no holds barred into the concepts of conformity, identity and the consequences of stepping outside ones own molded existence. An existence built one baby step at a time unknowingly and unplanned shaped by subtle external forces. I'm an unabashed lover of all three versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, 1978, and 1993). Throw in the evils of 'the government' or 'corporate interests' (or even better, both of 'em simultaneously!) and tell the story both subtly and aggressively and I'm in heaven. Yes, I put on Nineteen Eighty-Four or The Trial for fun. In the literary world the go-too guys are Kafka, Poe and Phillip K. Dick. In the film world would movies like Pi, Fight Club, Cube, Primer and even lesser efforts like Cypher and The Clonus Horror exist without standing on the shoulders of John Frankenheimer's Seconds? Maybe. Maybe not.

The story of Seconds is simple and Frankenheimer takes his time setting up the tone in such a way to turn the film on its head more than once. Arthur Hamilton lives a comfortable if dreary, upper middle class existence. He did the 'right' things to get where he is, but pines for something more. What went wrong with his life? When offered a chance to be re-born by a secretive company that erases his previous existence for a chosen new one complete with complicated plastic surgery and a jet-set bohemian life style, what choice do you think he makes. And the company works hard to make this happen. The questions is: How many people can live this 'dream' without eventually thinking back to the previous existence and the safety net of the 'real' identity vs. the very different new lifestyle.

I like to think of Seconds as the proto-type for the mind bending science fiction thriller where someone goes after the Faustian (EULA-ian?) bargain and may or may not pay the heavy dues. Of course, Frankenheimer made a career of the paranoid thriller from 1962's The Manuchrian Candidate, which is much more well known (and it got a remake a couple years ago with, um, you guessed it, an evil corporation) all the way up to 1998's Ronin, but he went much deeper and darker with Seconds which came out in 1966. Like nearly all good science fiction films, it flopped hard at the box office.

The film features flat out fantastic camera work, a tone in perpetual flux (a wine-stomping orgy has to be seen in light of the rest of the movie just to understand how wild things can shift), and harnessing great performances from John Randolph (before), Rock Hudson (after) and Will Geer as the benignly creepy company handler. Some may argue the film is depressing, but Seconds gets points for going all the way with its titular concept. The film has aged exceptionally well.

KBT Presents: STARSHIP TROOPERS

2007-03-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers is a film that had people tearing their hair out back in 1997. Either it was the lovers of Robert Heinlein's book that loathed the creative liberties taken by the screenwriter and director or it was the fans of pulpy science fiction films who expected big action and could not look past the soapy Melrose Place elements of the film and the inferior acting. The movie was a big expensive blockbuster which barely made half of its near-100 million dollar budget back; and this was years before you could cut your losses with DVD sales.

But there were a few of us that saw the movie as one of the great genre mash-ups of the 1990s. The film is part war film (complete with requisite training camp, a la Full Metal Jacket), part shoot 'em up science fiction (taking cues from James Cameron's Aliens), part teen melodrama (in the vein of several Aaron Spelling TV shows popular at the time) thrown into a cinematic gumbo with a healthy dose of social and political satire as the key spice.

The story is set in a future fascist state of a single world government where humanity is at perpetual war with a race of gigantic bugs. It follows three high-school friends as they join the army as fresh faced cadets. Johnny Rico (cinemas walking Ken Doll, Casper Van Dien), whose path the film follows more than anyone else, is an athletic but not too bright rich kid who enlists into the marines to spite his parents. His girlfriend, Carmen (fittingly, cinemas walking Barbie Doll, Denise Richards) gets a position with the space fleet and his best friend and telepathic genius, Carl (somehow even more fittingly, TV's Doogie Howser) signs up for the Schutzstaffel-esque secret ops branch of the military. With these three threads on the go, Starship Troopers functions as war-time cultural potpourri from the slaughter house of the front lines to the ludicrously stuffy and incompetent military command to the woefully misinformed home front.

Taking cues from heavy handed World War II brainwashing of both the axis and the allies, Verhoeven has re-imagined those war-time newsreels as a sort of television-internet hybrid. He uses the same deft satirical touch as he did with the local-news broadcasts scattered throughout his previous (and similar) sci-fi satire RoboCop . Here we have a movie that revels in showing extreme violence and dismemberment of the soldiers in the media footage contained within, but puts a large black censorship box over the killing of a cow. The kids at home are encouraged to step on the local bugs to "Fight Back" against the enemy space-bugs. In a very eerie premonition of 9/11, the reaction of humanity to the bugs destroying Buenos Aires in Starship Troopers was not unlike the New York attack. A distinct call for immediate retribution ('I'm from Buenos Aires, and I say kill 'em all! ') and loads of concessions to military might at the cost of personal freedoms resonates in the obvious ways. In the future of the film, democracy has failed and the only way to vote (and be a 'citizen') is to do military service.

The film also spends a fair bit of time in Rico's basic training which focus on turning the fresh-faced recruits into the very mindless, conforming bugs that humanity fights. It throws out the jingo-ism with a catchy glee that makes the film a heck of a lot more fun that one might think though. The brilliance in casting Clancy Brown (Yes, the Kurgan from Highlander) as a wacko drill instructor and Canadian creepy guy, Michael Ironside, as the one-armed high-school teacher turned grizzled lieutenant allow for great line readings like "Something given has no basis in value. When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force my friends is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived."

I am quite convinced that Verhoeven wanted the cherry blossom performances out of the lead actors. He takes an unusual path of turning fresh innocent faces into over confident drones, ripe for the slaughter of a government that just doesn't know when to pull out and cut its losses. Humanity here has bought into the bunk it has been force feeding its own innocent youth for so long that it is to the point where there is no choice but to go on recruiting younger and younger kids as the supply of grunt fodder is steadily diminished. Starship Troopers is not as depressing as that last sentence, it means to mock that last sentence with its every frame, often at the expense of character, but certainly to the delight of those who love a good satire. The eye-candy special effects and ridiculous levels of gore and violence make for a movie that is not for everyone, but the number of folks that praise this movie these days has been steadily growing over the past decade.

Come out Thursday Night and enjoy this epic satire that is not afraid to lay on the old ultra-violence in between Beverly Hills 90210 antics and Tour of Duty cliches. Drinks at 8:00pm. Trailers and Showtime at 8:30pm.

Would You Like to Know More?
ESSAY #1: The Provocateur Auteur
ESSAY #2: Heinlein, Verhoeven, and the problem of the Real

KBT Presents: REAR WINDOW

2007-02-22T00:01:00.000-05:00

How many films feature a conversation in a restaurant, in a hotel lobby, a night club of two people flirting by painting fictional back-stories onto others observed in a single context? It is sexy and cool to be detached; observing and casually passing judgment on the world around you. Be it with wit or be it with sarcasm.

Rear Window, from its first tracking shot around a large courtyard in Manhattan invites you to spy on the lives of those in the courtyard as you spy on Jimmy Stewart spying. It is really the perfect film about watching movies. What is a film other than a voyeuristic trip into other people’s private lives? Of course it being an Alfred Hitchcock film there is a murder to be witnessed, solved, and broken-down into little pieces for evaluation and sorting. And there is Grace Kelly before she became the Princes of Monaco doing a wonderful fusion of Holly Golightly (before that character existed) and Nancy Drew. A slew of other supporting characters go about their lives about the courtyard neighborhood and a few others come in and out of L. B. Jefferies’ (Stewart) apartment to get caught up in the show.

It is a testament to any piece of entertainment that can sustain not only interest, but emotion, a wee bit of philosophizing ('Rear Window Ethics') and most importantly, thrill, when the film takes in a single tiny apartment. The fact that the entire film is shot from the point of view of only one location and so engrossing is Alfred Hitchcock at the peak of his abilities. A scene where a character looks directly into the camera for the first time is enough to make the little hairs rise on the back of your neck. There is also no musical score (modern films seem to rely heavily on the score telling you how to feel at nearly all times). Rear Window relies on ambient sound; either a neighbor playing their piano or turntable has to suffice. When Hitchcock is referred to as the ‘master of suspense’, Rear Window is the essence of that statement.

There is something about films that have a single location and just observe their characters react and behave in that place (most recently Deepa Mehta's Water, but also Kevin Smith's Clerks. , Vincenzo Natali's Cube, and Joe Dante's The 'burbs. In fact, Dante was definitely operating in the spirit of gentle parody and homage with that 1989 comedy which brilliantly cast the modern equivalent of Jimmy Stewart in the lead of that underrated film, Tom Hanks. That is film is a big favorite of mine, and the right way to do a remake, switch genres and play with conventions, but I digress.

Rear Window has been remade more than once and has been referenced in more facets of popular culture that I care to mention (OK, a few recent ones as diverse as horror (The Ring), animated TV (The Simpsons) and coming of age drama/satire (Ghost World)).

What is probably the wrong reason for revisiting Rear Window again, but there is a crass, over-wrought looking knock-off aimed at teenagers coming out very soon called Disturbia. The trailer got me angry just watching and I started lamenting the death of studio cinema seeing how Rear Window was the entertainment of its day, and we get this today! (After calming down, I fully acknowledge that it is a false sentiment (a snap reaction in fact) in a year (2006) that had Children of Men , The Queen and The Fountain as studio pictures).

Nonetheless, Hitchcock's film has held up well, very well. The acting, characters and situations do not have that ‘old movie’ feel to them, these feel like real people. The sound-stage set is a bit on the artificial looking side, but it does not detract from the film, rather gives it a timeless feel, much like the Technicolor process.

Do yourself a favour and come out Thrusday Night to revisit (or visit for the first time!) a bonafide classic of cinema, both art and entertainment. Drinks at 8pm. Trailers and Showtime at 8:30pm.

KBT Presents: WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? (aka ¿Quién puede matar a un niño?)

2007-02-08T00:01:00.000-05:00

Spanish filmmaker Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s Who Can Kill A Child? (1976) has a certain grace not often encountered in horror films. Italy's horror maestro, Dario Argento often hits the mark. Robin Hardy’s 1962 classic The Wicker Man definitely has it. Alfred Hitchcock nailed it with The Birds, as did Steven Spielberg in both Duel and the early half of Jaws . -It- is something primal that gnaws away at the irrational part of your brain and taps a (sort of) G-Spot...er...H-Spot.

This 'daylight horror' film starts off a tad on the exploitive side (fair warning to the meek, film is also not recommended for pregnant ladies). The film is often lumped into the 'exploitation' subgenre of horror, but is a much better film that category ever sees. The opening minutes may make or break viewing the film and an argument could perhaps be made (I’m not making it, however) that it is unnecessary. This is perhaps why this film has never really made it to North America. A version of the film was released with this whole sequence excised amongst other things, called “Island of the Damned,” clumsily referencing John Wyndham. Documentary footage over the lengthy opening credits unflinchingly shows horrors visited upon innocent children during WWII, Vietnam, and widespread famine in Asia and Africa. Serrador may be dropping a karmic note as to what will follow plot-wise, or perhaps he is going for generating horror, sympathy and outrage prior to the first opening image of European tourists and locals frolicking on the beach.

A body washes up on the shore, and while folks look on (in that special way people do when there is a car accident on the side of the road) an ambulance picks up the corpse and carries it away. Instead of following this unexplained event, the camera follows the ambulance until it passes a tourist bus heading back into town. It is a bit long winded, but the film decides to follow an upper middle class white couple on their vacation to the south of Spain.

Tom and Evelyn (apparently from Britain, but speak in Spanish even in private – an artifact of Spanish and Italian style filmmaking (those folks do a fair bit of dubbing in post-production)) want to get some time away from their kids, while Evelyn is in the middle of her third pregnancy. Finding the Spanish port too crowded during a summer festival (fireworks and piñatas everywhere), they rent a boat in and head for a tiny island Tom knows of where things are peaceful and quiet. When they arrive at this island, a few children help them tie up their boat, but gaze at them more than a little odd-like.

Arriving at the town square, the sun is sweltering and the tall white-washed adobe buildings are completely empty. Forbiddingly empty. It is here that the film kicks into high gear by actually doing nothing. Tom and Evelyn are left to wander the emptiness, first trying to make the best of things, feebly convincing themselves that the residents must be on the other side of the island at a festival or something. Evelyn, while taking a load-off in the deserted cantina, has another strange encounter with a young girl. Soon afterwards she and Tom witness an event which is both casually off-kilter and horrific that it borders on sublime.

While I’m being a bit coy on plot details, the titular question offers more than a little clue. The effectiveness of Who Can Kill A Child? is in the slowly building tension on the island, which lets the sun and the architecture breathe along with the characters. The concept of daylight horror seems strange as most it is commonly accepted that chilling things go bump in the night. Much scarier, I think, are when things are horribly askew in broad daylight. Surprisingly, few directors attempt this type of horror. There was mention of The Wicker Man (previously shown at KBT) and Duel above, as well as Peter Weir’s one-two punch of Picnic at Hanging Rock (also previously shown at KBT) and The Last Wave come immediately to mind. This film clearly belongs in that master-class and more is the pity that it is so damn obscure. There is a scene in the film where a man encountered by the confused couple is simply convinced to walk to and accept his own annihilation which he clearly knows will be of the worst sort. It is horrific in a way that by the films logic is weirdly plausible. Another scene involving Evelyn and her pregnancy surely rivals Roman Polanski’s horror of the same type. Furthermore, I can only guess that a key moment (it is on the poster, no less) from Kátia Lund & Fernando Meirelles’ City of God was cribbed directly from Who Can Kill A Child?, just as Serrador borrows effortlessly from George Romero. Why this film isn’t woven properly into the tapestry of great horror films is a tragic, I'm lucky enough to have a copy of Alfa Digital’s 2004 release. After all, if you are only going to see even the tiniest fraction of horror films made worldwide, this should be one of them.

Come out Thursday for a lost classic horror film that is bonafide scary. Drinks at 8:15pm. Trailers and Showtime at 8:40pm.

KBT Presents: JESUS CAMP

2007-02-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

2006 was not a particularly strong year for horror films. The best flat-out horror film to play in the multiplex, Neil Marshall's spelunking creature-feature - The Descent, was actually a 2005 UK hold-over. Perhaps the real top horror film was Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady's Jesus Camp, a documentary which covers a particularly hard-core brand of Evangelism in the United States. Any subject which has an enthusiastic following (from dog show folks to Star Trek fans) has an extreme branch so focused, the members come off a little bit crazy. Well, Christianity, or any religion for that matter, is no exception and the lady-pastor Becky Fisher and three of her key pupils that Jesus Camp follows may, in her own words, make you 'quake in your boots.'

I've tried to make the below description avoid any sort of soapbox. You be the judge if I was successful or not. Oh and I apologize for using the phrase 'hard-core' far too many times.

From Missouri to North Dakota and I'm sure in most of the 50 states, there is an collection of Evangelical churches and organizations that have one of their key missions to break down the barrier between church and state. A sizable chunk of these folks get out and vote, enough of them to push President Bush into a second term; or protest in Washington against homosexuality or abortion. Jesus Camp brushes these topics by pointing the camera at the "Kids on Fire" summer-camp in (no joke) Devil's Lake, North Dakota. This is not a fun getaway, but hard-core indoctrination to form an Army of God. Pastor Becky Fisher rationalizes that if the extremist Muslims can train their kids to become suicide bombers, surely Christians can muster up a similar discipline for their spiritual (and political) causes. Thus, upon entering the camp, she makes sure that nearly all things secular are thrown out the window. The program is all Jesus all the time. Fisher is indeed hard-core, telling the 10 year olds that there are no fakers in this camp you are 100% or nothing. She believes Harry Potter should be burned at the stake, and all the kids little child-sins must be purged or confronted. This is done mainly through the young ones crying tears of shame or speaking in tongues.

Fisher and the parents of the three principle children, Levi, Tory and Rachel, have expressed publicly that they are all happy with the documentary and how they are captured on film. This I find quite strange, but it illustrates that you bring your own beliefs in how you interpret what is up on screen, they see white, I see black. The camera lets them push their message of creationism = good, science = bad and shows the fever and the ecstasy of the camp kids, in between these same children obviously spewing the evangelical rhetoric which they may or may not understand. However, the documentary also uses odd camera angles and a creepy score that for me personally, make it much more akin to a scary movie than a propaganda piece. And although it is a tad clunky, the doc constantly cross cuts to a liberal Air-America talk radio host, which (I'm pretty sure) give the filmmakers talking-points. Though many critics seem to label Jesus Camp unbiased, I believe that the filmmakers have an agenda (also, which I think in a doc is a very good thing). They are (rightfully so) quite terrified that the land of the free is treading toward the land of the intolerant and in the most ironic of twists the leaders of the path are the ones who fall under the banner of a man who preached kindness and tolerance way back just shy of 2000 years ago.

Ultimately, Jesus Camp is at its best showing the goal/agenda driven camp, and the thin line between teaching children and indoctrinating them; how kids learn is as much driven by social climate as it is by the information itself.

Come out Thursday night and check out the first time KBT presents a documentary. Drinks at 8pm, Trailers and Showtime at 8:30pm. The film runs 84 minutes and that leaves some time for perhaps an interesting post-screening conversation.

KBT Presents: THE 25TH HOUR

2007-01-25T00:01:00.000-05:00

Spike Lee's 2002 film was one of the first to dive head-first into artistic post 9/11 fray. It is aspect of American cinema area which is as crowded and diverse indeed (2006 alone drips with it: Apocalypto, The Departed, Little Children, Miami Vice, Children of Men, Babel and of course United 93 all deal with it implicitly or explicitly.) I still believe that Spike Lee actually made the definitive statement (if not the most subtle) on the subject in a film released a mere 15 months after the towers fell. How is that for 'too soon'? Perhaps this is why the film seemed to be completely ignored or written off at the time of its release as a bit of a curio: A Spike Lee Joint starring mainly white people (not to underestimate Rosario Dawson's massive presence here) that takes place over a single day.

Monty Brogan (Edward Norton) is out on bail for his very last day before being sentenced possibly to a lifetime in prison for dealing narcotics in his New York neighborhood. He doesn't know how he was set up or who did it, but is more or less resigned to his impending fate, even if it is thickly shaded with anxiety: His future is simultaneously known (prison) and unknown (how will his skinny young frame be abused during institution).

Biting back the fear, he instead rounds up all of his friends for one last party on the town before he is to be sent off. His friends are deeply upset for Monty, but are also caught up in their own problems, Jacob (Philip Seymour Hoffman) lives a shabby and lonely existence, and harbors an attraction for one of his students (Anna Paquin). Frank (Barry Pepper) hides behind the veneer of his stock-broker existence and a comforting machismo. Naturelle (Rosario Dawson), Monty's girlfriend, deals with the notion that Monty may be blaming her for his predicament while knowing she will lose him to prison shortly. And Monty's ex-firefighter dad (Brian Cox) wants to spend as much time with his son as possible and maybe offer him a piece of advice or two. The cast here is really all in peak form, many of them

The story centers around the lead up to a night in an upscale New York Club, the party in the club and the aftermath of the party, with each of the characters going through a tough journey, mainly through David Benioff's stellar dialogue, adapted from his own novel. With Lee refracting the story overtly through Americas 21st century tragedy, to the point of having a pivotal scene filmed in a high-rise overlooking the actual WTC ground-zero clean up operation. His typical stew of racial tensions in the Big Apple dovetail nicely into the story, and give Norton a knock-out of a melt-down scene at one point in the film.

The unusual conclusion to the story is certainly reflective of how collective America will have to come to terms with the 'new version of the world' post 9/11. It is a remarkable achievement accomplished so soon after the events. The fact that you can watch this film 10 times and take 10 completely different things away from it is a testament of why this film should be re-evaluated. I believe it is one of those overlooked classics that will be canonized 10 years or more from now.

Whether or not you've seen this film, it bears a 2nd or 3rd or 4th look. Come out Thursday January 25th for one of the great films of the young new millennium. Drinks at 8pm. Showtime at 8:30pm.

KBT Presents: A Case for Alien3

2007-01-18T00:01:00.000-05:00

The Alien films have always been showcase films for directors of emerging talent. Ridley Scott became an A-list director based on the first films success. James Cameron may have made some big waves with The Terminator, but he cemented his name with Aliens. His film (which has aged a bit poorer than the original) decisively proved that a sequel, written and directed by a different team than the original does not have to be a step down (just a step different). David Fincher went from directing music videos to film director with his much-maligned third entry in the series. His film suffered both from the studio taking the film away from him, and the fans of the action-packed second film crying foul (very, very loudly). He probably redeemed himself with those very same fans with by making 1999's Fight Club. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who was sort of the French Terry Gilliam at the time, and had already made the dark whimsical tales of Delicatessen and City of Lost Children. He was given a script from Joss Whedon of all folks, who was somewhere in between Buffy and Toy Story. Even though the casting of the film is quite good, and Jeunet would go on to make Amelie and A Very Long Engagement, both cross-over successes from France to North America, I'm not a fan of the forth entry. And the less said about Alien Vs. Predator the better. That disaster is more fan wishmongernig (and bad pandering) than an actual film. Even though most fans of the series would rather that the powers that be had stopped after James Cameron's Aliens, I'm here to argue that Alien3 should be re-evaluated.

If you like your genres mashed together, you really cannot do worse than the Alien films. The first one perfectly blends the horror film with science fiction. The second one is a whopper of a action film with sprinkles of science fiction and lots of soldier of fortune posturing. This brings us to the third film, a film which really, well...alienated fans of the second film.

Gone is the machismo of the marines or the corporate slime of Paul Reiser's company man, or the maternal angled drama intercut between explosive action set-pieces. Instead, in the opening credits, Newt, the little girl Lt. Ripley worked so hard to save, along with very likable Corporeal Hicks, are both killed in a crash landing of the escape pod on Fury 191. Ripley is alone once more until her unconscious form is picked up by the local residents.

This is where Alien3 is actually very juicy. The script was story was conceived by New Zealand director Vincent Ward who likes to deal with apocalypse and spirituality in his films (See his haunting 1988 time travel film The Navigator or his the sugar-laced maudlin failure What Dreams May Come to see what I mean). Here Ward creates a prison planet where the residents worship some kind of Christian apocalyptic fundamentalism to keep level. It's a precarious balance maintained by a pragmatic doctor (Charles Dance) and bad-ass holy leader (Charles S. Dutton). The movie excels when placing pressure on this ticking time bomb, first with Ripley being the first woman seen in the colony in 20 years. Being that Ripley is pretty stubborn and pretty tough, she has no problem wandering freely through the prison to figure out what is going on. Ripley first gets her head shaved (lice problems in the prison) making her feminine form look like a lanky young boy. She then asks the doctor to perform an autopsy on the little girl to confirm that she didn't get impregnated by any left-over alien face-huggers. This autopsy is grim, and the colony hearkens back to sooty, damp interiors of the Nostromo in the first film. It is like Ward wanted to continually spit in the face of the audience friendly emotions generated in Aliens and I can only guess both he and David Fincher knew they were not going to achieve the perfect balance (not to mention surprise factor) of Alien. So the aim for the grim inevitability your time alive will come to an end. Grim material for a horror film, here the horror is loneliness, regret and inevitable hopelessness. That is actually the strength of Alien3. It deliciously drags out the first act, not unlike the first film, but it does so with the knowledge that the audience this time around knows whats coming. Visual treats abound, such as a cross cut a sombre funeral of an innocent, with the aggressively destructive birth of the alien, this time from a carcass of an Ox.

Hmmm. At this point if you have already visited Alien3, even if it was 15 years ago, you are probably thinking: An Ox? I thought it was from one of the prisoners dogs. You would be right. In the theatrical release, the film was edited all to hell by the studio who booted David Fincher from the film when execs were getting frustrated with how the film was going. Don't get me wrong, there was brilliance in the film that shone through the 'hacked' version which played on the big screens in 1992, even if the Aliens fan-boys cried otherwise. But in 2003, the original editor of the film, Terry Rawlings, reassembled what he believed was the work-print of the film that got David Fincher fired. This is what the film should have been. (Fincher has long since given up on the film, but didn't stand in the way of this 'assembly cut' of the film). Here, the many prisoners of Fury 191 are much more fleshed out. This time around the shaved-headed bunch are not a collection of faceless alien-fodder, but actual characters. The plot plays out quite differently in this version, particularly with the brain addled Golic (Paul McGann) who for no apparent reason just disappears in the theatrical cut. This version is nearly 30 minutes longer, and the atmosphere is more developed. Things flow so much smoother. The turn of the screw is much more tight.

Alien3 has always been terribly underrated as a film, and this 2003 version shows just how damn good the film actually is. Sure it lacks the surprise of the original or the steroids of the second one, but it has a look and feel all its own, with a very different take on the xenomorph creature and how Ripley (and the others) have to deal with it. I mean as much psychologically as the fact that there are no conventional weapons lying around. The religion aspects of the film round things out nicely, as religion was completely absent from its predecessors. Alien3 is an immersive experience (with directorial vision) that should be ranked along those that came before it, rather than be pushed off to the side and ignored.

Take another chance on this film and you will (hopefully) see things that you did not before. Come out Thursday January 17th for cocktails at 8pm. Trailers and Showtime at 8:30pm.

KBT Presents: EXILED

2007-01-11T00:01:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the 2007 year and KBT Screening #81. Look a little further down the blog for my favorite films of 2006, most of them from other countries, and many of which had KBT screenings. I will admit that my interesting in foreign cinema started back in the early 1990s when discovering the hyper-violent gunplay cinema of Ringo Lam and John Woo. These movies were all about male-bonding melodrama (at times with Woo, bordering on the operatic) with tough guy bon mots to spare; but they always had a juicy tender centre. But, wait a minute... Perhaps even earlier, I was exposed to those Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef starring spaghetti westerns with my father on VHS in the 1980s. Again the macho-melodrama, this time with seriously cool long takes, tight close-ups and epic posturing against rugged back-drops.
So imagine my surprise to find these two types of film brilliantly combined into an instant-classic Hong Kong crime movies from Johnny To. You see, while John Woo and Ringo Lam wanked around with Hollywood budgets (and Jean-Claude Van Damme) from the mid-1990s onward, only occasionally turning out an fun actioner (Hard Target, Face/Off), To was building a serious gangsters and cops resume spiced with humour (PTU) and serious art-house ambitions (Election). With Exiled he has served up a robust meal of machismo spiced with humour, visual wit, and the niggling poser of how to properly deal with multiple loyalties. Ubiquitous character actor Anthony Wong, looking carries himself like a blend of Humphrey Bogart, Alain Delon and Clint Eastwood, standing out even as several black-bag carrying heavies converge on a whitewashed apartment. A woman with a baby tells the several times that the man they are looking for does not live there. There is to be a hit take place, and the stage is set with a twangy soundtrack and long meaningful glances between the various participants as a battered moving truck winds its way up the narrow streets.
To go further into Exiled it to shed the film of its many delights, needless to say, there is a gangland war about to go down with the Chinese Triads stepping into Macau (The film is set on that island in 1999, just days before Macau reverts back from Portugal to China), but also strangely enough, a heist of sorts, and a big final show-down worthy of the (Italians rendering of the) Wild West. There is even a Japanese Ronin vibe going on during Exiled, but perhaps this is not surprising, as Kurosawa's Yojimbo was itself remade as Sergio Leone's A Fistfull of Dollars.
The Hong Kong shooter film has had its ups and downs since the golden days of the late 1980s to early 1990s, but Exiled is certainly one of the jewels in the crown of the new millennium, even if it occasionally winks a bit slyly at its predecessors.

Come Out Thursday, January 11th and enjoy the film I had more pure fun watching than anything in 2006. Drinks at 8pm. Showtime 8:30pm.

Podcasting Over At MoviePatron.com

2007-01-01T23:40:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note, I've started appearing regularly over at Movie Patron.com's Podcast. Direct downloads of the Weekly Podcast (usually Monday or Tuesday Evenings) are usually available directly from the main page, or from the sites archives.

My Favorite Films of 2006 (or What To Do on A Lazy New Years Afternoon? Post the Millionth Top 10 list on the Interweb)

2007-01-01T13:26:00.000-05:00

The waning days of December leading up to New Years eve sees traditional media and bloggers bombarding their respective media spaces with top 10s for everything. Amusingly (or not), The Reeler even has a top 10 list of top 10 movie lists. Perhaps even more interesting is the LA Times with a survey of how many of the American studio power players as well as the more common folk interact with the glut of media out there. David Hudson over at GreenCineDaily also looks at things from an online perspective. So do you dip into the mainstream pool or follow the long tail? I tend to do a fair bit of both.

The bulk of my Twitch-related content (the non-KBT screenings stuff has all moved over to Twitchfilm.net) tends to be viewed on imported DVD (If you want to wear the film-geek badge proudly, you better have an all region DVD player, and it cannot hurt to have DVDBeaver near the top of your FireFox bookmarks). Curiously, all but one of the films on the list below was actually watched in the cinema, proving (in its own small way) there is life in the old darkened house yet - in spite of endless commercials, electronic devices emitting rings, bleeps and back-light-pollution, not to mention the teenage skewed multiplex programming. Adieu 2006.

10. El Aura (Argentina) – A mature fusion of noir stylings, heist structure and a just a wee bit of mysticism, Fabián Bielinsky’s sophomore film was a movie that had so many individual scenes stick with me upon importing the DVD. Multiple viewings are in order to soak up just exactly what was accomplished here. The death of Robert Altman was certainly the most talked about film-wise in 2006, and with good reason considering just a fantastic career, but Bielinskys passing a such a young age (he was 47) so early into a promising career is more tragic. It is sad to think of the many great films that are not to be.

9 The Host (S. Korea) – Could we give any more coverage to a single film in 2006? What movie can withstand the weight of such high expectation? Joon-ho Bong’s blockbuster monster movie devoured the Korean Box Office (and screen counts). It is the film that War of the Worlds should have been (Spielberg toasts things in the end, Bong most certainly does not). The Host and Memories of Murder are required viewing on how to change tone and genre both effortlessly and gracefully.

8 Exiled (HK/China) – Easily the most fun I had in a cinema in 2006, Johnny To’s Exiled is a 180 degree flip from his tense and gritty Election films. Continuing to show the world what the phrase tour-de-force directing is all about To manages to splice macho gangster tropes and Spaghetti Western mise-en-scene into something very special. On top of all this he manages to poke a little fun at the HK guns and triads genre while still crafting one of the best entries. Anthony Wong, who is always top-notch, is a nothing short of a deity here.

7 Little Children (US) – I must admit that In The Bedroom left me more than a little cold for much of its run time. But Todd Field’s choice of adapting a Tom Perotta novel and taking the bombastic Lars Von Trier approach of moral fable-izing America is a winner. Black humour and across-the-board fantastic performances almost render the line between satire and drama moot.

6 King and the Clown (S. Korea) – I liked the other Korean Box-Office monster as well. A lot. I cannot think of a movie as relentlessly entertaining as this one all year. I think I watched the entire film with a grin from ear to ear. Shakespeare has never been brought to the big screen like this, and the world is a better place for it.

5 Prague (Denmark) – Can a story be told entirely through body language? Prague makes a bold and successful attempt to do just that. While he may have been a bit soggy as the Bond villain, Mads Mikkelsen is all presence and subtlety in Ole Christian Madsen’s tale of a crumbling relationship on foreign soil.

4 Brand Upon the Brain! (Canada) – Guy Maddin’s giddily insane self-portrait set in Iceland and featuring (of all things) brain-fluid harvesting would have been Number 1 on this list if it was not so similar to his previous film Cowards Bend the Knee. Despite not necessarily breaking new ground, Maddin pushes the exhibition art-form by screening the film with a live Orchestra, Narrator, Foley Artists and Castrato. The most unique theatrical experience for sure.

3 The New World (US) – OK, so technically this is a 2005 release, but most of us regular film-goers had to wait for the ‘cut’ version to expand outside of major US cities. Even missing 15 minutes Terrance Mallick’s epic and intimate retelling of the Pocahontas legend is sublime. I wish there was more of this big-budget arthouse fare at the multiplex, oh wait a minute…see #2.

2 The Fountain (US) – Unfairly savaged both critically and commercially, Darren Aronofsky’s often delayed film was a heady fusion of poetry and grand science fiction, religion and science, love and death. Was there a film that split its audience more than this one all year? I have little doubt that this film will be highly regarded 20 years from now much like certain other science fiction masterpieces which were met with questioning looks back in their day.

1 Pan's Labyrinth (Mexico) – Guillermo del Toro’s movie, for me, felt as hyped as The Host, with its bow in Competition at Cannes and when I caught up with it many moths later in Toronto, it fully met and exceeded expectations. Simple and straightforward as any children’s story, powerful and harrowing visually, and ultimately it packed a powerful closing punch, both emotionally and in dry consideration of faith. While 2005’s Chronicles of Narnia was offensive insofar as it was about as bland as bleached flour, El Laberinto del Fauno was sort of the Spanish re-imaging that got everything right.

--

I'll leave you with a grab-bag of other films from 2006 which did not make the list...Links go to Twitch Reviews where available.

Honorable Mention: A Prairie Home Companion, Children of Men, Miami Vice, Behind The Mask, The Departed, The Banquet, Brick, The Descent, Cashback

Curiosities: Curse of the Golden Flower (spectacle) Blood Tea & Red String (feminine whimsy), Apocalypto (fetishistic gory period actioner), Naboer & Hard Candy (both stylish psychological thrillers), Fido (Zombie Comedy), Borat (gleefully pushes the envelope of tastelessness), Severance (confident horror-comedy), Un Crime (Noir), Funky Forest (?), Special (alt-comicbook comedy), Idiocracy (Blunt Satire), Princess (challenging anti-whimsy, violence and pornography), Shortbus (it's feel-good hardcore sex drama!).

Animated - A Scanner Darkly.

Sequel/Remake - Clerks II, The Departed

Sad I missed - Marie Antoinette, When the Levees Broke, Paris Je T'aime, War of Flowers, A Dirty Carnival, The Queen, Taxidermia, Inland Empire, Volver, 4, CSA: Confederate States of America, Letters From Iwo Jima.

Some messes I would have rather avoided - Mission Impossible III, Macbeth. Invisible Waves has to be the biggest disappointment of the year - a total misfire of all that talent!)

A few 'Top-10-ish' films caught in 2005, but were released wider in 2006, in case you are wondering. - The Pusher Trilogy, Mindgame, El Metodo, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, The Proposition.

KBT Presents: DIE HARD

2006-12-14T00:01:00.000-05:00

"Now I have a Machine Gun. Ho. Ho. Ho."

KBT plans to bring on the yuletide spirit with balding Bruce beating up the baddies as John "Yippee-ki-yay" McClane. Die Hard is without a doubt one of the key action pictures of the most testosterone-action fueled decade of cinema. It started the entire "Die Hard on a ..." sub-genre of action pictures. And it not only made Bruce Willis a star, but somehow catapulted him into the holy trinity of eighties action heroes along with Arnie and Sly (guys so tough they had to go into the restaurant business which proved more formidable than eastern European or Middle-Eastern terrorists). The film is set during a huge Christmas party at a Japanese owned corporate tower in Los Angeles and features some vintage Run DMC Christmas music. Where it lacks in string lights, it more than makes up with C4 explosions.

But really, the linchpin of Die Hard is the villain, Alan Rickman, who for those born in the 1970s may still be known for playing Hans Gruber over any of his more 'actor-ly' roles in film or on stage. It is Rickman that gets to deliver the calm confident speeches about Alexander the Great which eventually turn into incredulous disbelief as McClane goes army-of-one and develops the original 'Die Hard Situation.'

Wry humour, working-man-cop-bonding, making up with the ex, and defeating highly organized terrorists are all in a days work. 'Tis the Season.

KBT Presents: NABOER (Next Door)

2006-12-07T00:01:00.000-05:00

If there is one director who can turn the intersection between sex and violence into visual poetry it is David Lynch. Even if his films do not always make sense on a conscious or literal level, they have a way of burrowing under your skin, like ants making fleshy tunnels from the heart to the brain. An equally visual, but coming from a more subjective POV is director Darren Aronofsky. His first two films (Pi, Requiem for a Dream) are function like vices around the skull squeezing you into the characters' central nervous systems and making the overall experience more than a little queasy.

Norwegian director Pål Sletaune straddles the middle ground of these two distinct styles of filmmaking and melds some pretty edgy cinema (Folks, *this is your warning* - I mean it, while also desiring to remain vague as to why) with cinematography beautiful enough to be worthy of superstar cinematographer Christopher Doyle (2046, Hero, Dumplings) or Steven Soderbergh. The moving camera is a character unto itself as it stalks the halls of Jon's apartment building and peaks around corners and into the neighbors labyrinth of darkly painted walls. Voyeuristic in the extreme, the camera is determined not to look away from more than a few dark places.

You will see that I'm aiming to describe mood here rather than story, which is best left unspoiled. Basically, while Jon is dealing with his girlfriend cheating on him, then dumping him for another man, he is seduced by his two attractive next door neighbors. Jon is working out issues of frustration and obsession and trying to keep a lid on his emotions by creating pocket of isolation in his apartment.

Obsession is a fascinating subject to explore (Just ask Edgar Allen Poe) and Naboer covers ground from Roman Polanski's Death and the Maiden to David Lynch's Blue Velvet to Nicolas Winding Refn's Fear X. Those films and this one are worthy pieces of cinema, even if they occassionally make you wish to cover your eyes, or psychologically duck and cover.

KBT Presents: THE BANQUET

2006-11-30T00:01:00.000-05:00

Not to be confused with The King and the Clown, The Banquet is a quite different Asian take on the Bard's Hamlet which happens to also feature a fair number of masks. The style here however is an art-wuxia film in the vein of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The film feels like Feng Xiaogang, one of the bigger directors in mainland China, felt the need to one-up the other two big mainland Chinese directors: Zhang Yimou who has Hero and House of Flying Daggers already under his belt with Curse of the Golden Flower on the way and Chen Kaige who made The Promise last year. All of these films are heavy on the melodrama and rich in colour palette and nearly all of them (including The Banquet) the young star global superstar Zhang Ziyi.

The Banquet throws the play into the blender with a fair number of twists and turns to keep those familiar with the play on their toes. For me, the familiar and the completely unexpected enhanced the tension of the film. First off, everything is from 'Gertrude's' (Wan, Zhang Ziyi) point of view. Second, 'Hamlet' (Wu Luan) and Wan are not son and mother, but rather the same age, and potential lovers. However the Emperor, Wu Luan's father claims her as his bride sending Wu Luan into self-imposed exile. Meanwhile the Emperor's Brother murders the monarch and the marries Empress Wan. Wu Luan comes out of exile at the news of his fathers murder from Wu Luan's current lover, one of the Empress's ladies-in-waiting. A night banquet and elaborate players show culminate the tale of revenge and unfulfilled love in some unexpected ways.

Folks may be getting fatigued with both pretty arty martial arts films and various offbeat takes on Hamlet; but what makes The Banquet stand out is the blend of dance-based martial arts and exceptionally bloodsoaked fighting scenes designed no doubt to play to the 'yard' (the pit where ruffians took in the show in old Elizabethan theatre). Combine that with a sumptuous, vaguely melancholic eroticism and perhaps Feng Xioagang has an interesting grasp of what makes Shakespeare timeless. The only thing missing is the bawdy humour and insight to what makes humans tick. Pshaw, I say!

KBT Presents: HARD CANDY

2006-11-16T00:01:00.000-05:00

Hard Candy is an overlooked thriller which skirts the line between a mainstream thriller and an exploitation film. It is slick and thoroughly gripping from a combination of rich dialogue and good acting (from future A-lister Patrick Wilson (see also Little Children) and up and coming Canadian young actress Ellen Page).

The film plays out the story of a young girl lured by an internet stalker via a chatroom. While this sounds like a melodramatic movie of the week, Hard Candy is nothing of the sort. To avoid heading into spoiler territory, I'll describe the experience of watching the film rather than details of the film itself. Music video director David Slade structures things first to lull the observative viewer along a familiar path (although this film does not seem to have many obvious precedents other than Roman Polanski's Death and the Maiden or perhaps the overlooked Kiefer Sutherland and Reese Witherspoon starring contemporary take on Little Red Riding Hood, Freeway).

This lead-on is done both narratively as well as empathically. Over the course of the drama, viewer loyalty shifts more than once. Suspension of disbelief may be required upon reflection. But during the film the claustrophobic cinematography and compelling interplay between the leads keep things very tightly wound. It is the winding of both expecations and tension that is the chief pleasure of the film. Even if in the end of the experience a moral clense may be required. Hard Candy poses to the question of what is more terrifying, being victimized by someone in the grips of a need which is objectionable to society, or being helpless to the actions of someone who is both righteous and naïve in equal measure.

KBT Presents: THE KING AND THE CLOWN

2006-11-09T00:01:00.000-05:00

This weeks film is all about entertainment. Comedy. Drama. Tragedy. The King and the Clown is a South Korean riff on William Shakespeare's Hamlet, but only in the loosest of fashion. It is a fusion of bold storytelling, Korean history and traditional theatre wrapped in a taboo busting modern package which captures the essence of the dangerous thrill (and resulting joy) of performing art.

The story follows two actors who leave their tight-rope/comedy troupe because the leader of their band is more interested in selling the younger of the two, a fellow so smooth-skinned and effeminate as to be quite easily mistaken for the opposite gender, to rich noblemen for sexual favours. They make their way to Seoul to start their own troupe, and make a name for themselves by turning the gossip of the King and his ex-prostitute consort into satire of the monarchy. This leads to notice by a key minister of the King and gets the players caught up in the in political (and sexual) intrigues of one of Korea's long lasting Joseon Dynasty.

The tightrope is a fitting visual metaphor seen constantly in the movie as the players, as they do in the 'play within the play' in Hamlet, wield power of a sort by confronting the court with things that no member of the aristocracy or monarchy could say outright. The King and the Clown spends a fair bit of time going into the consequences on giving the 'common people' so much power without the protections of station. They suffer for that power, and the effect of their art. When given the choice however, each player indicates that they would do it all again for the euphoria of performing.

If this movie were made in English and a Hollywood studio film (not that I'm suggesting a remake, the film is universal in its appeal, but Korean at its core) it would likely get an Academy Award nomination for best picture. In fact The King and the Clown has been submitted for the Best Foreign Language Award; and up until recently it was the highest grossing domestic film in South Korea. This is even more impressive in that the director and principle actors were basically unknowns when the film was released.

KBT Presents: THE WOODS

2006-10-26T00:01:00.000-04:00

Lucky McKee, despite his name, seems to have bad luck. He makes good films, which flirt with the mainstream, while quitely subverting it, and never seemed to get a proper release. Probably the most exposed work he has done was the (apparently substandard) 1 hour telefilm for the Masters of Horror series called "Sick Girl." The title could actually apply to both of his films, the 2002 modern riff on the creation of Frankenstein, if the good doctor was an alienated and sexually frustrated teenage girl, which got such a very limited theatrical and subsequently quiet DVD release. May has become a sort of secret handshake between discriminating horror fans in the same vein as Canadas feminist werewolf movie Ginger Snaps. His most recent film, which didn't even get a theatrical release, despite starring academy award nominated actress Patricia Clarkson and B-Film legend Bruce Campbell was unceremoniously dumped onto DVD a couple weeks ago. The Woods is very restrained horror/drama set in a remote girls 'finishing' school in the 1960s. A young girl (Agnes Bruckner is practically abandoned by her parents due to her lack of discipline at home, the latest incident being almost burning down said home. This school has a reputation of turning out smart disciplined ladies. Our heroine, appropriate named Heather (referencing the surrounding forest as much as the viscious teen dark comedy from 1989) indeed soon find out rough social order at the school imposed by some of her classmates and the tough (but strange) school mistress that her initiation is indeed going to be a trial by fire.

The pacing in the film is much more of a drama than a horror, in a similar way to Dario Argento's "Suspiria" Guillermo del Toro's "The Devil's Backbone" or Peter Weir's "Picnic at Hanging Rock." Notably all three of films push pass the conventions of horror films and are co-incidently set in remote schools. Other fleeting echos of similarity I felt while watching were to the Stephen King movies "Firestarter" and "Misery" (the Agnes Bruckner/Patricia Clarkson battle of wills resonated a bit as a James Caan/Kathy Bates for me anyway). The film is somewhere in between all of these things, (although not quite up to the standards of any of them, it gives its premise a good stylish whirl) its deliberate pace is likely to throw off genre fans (despite a couple tips of the hat to Evil Deads Ash, Campbell is quite restrained here. Put yourself in a slow-burn frame of mind to best enjoy the experience. Special mention is warrented for the superb sound design which featured creaking limbs and groan house/school structural moaning throughout the film giving an aural nod to underlying adolescent stresses on the lead character from the school and her classmates.

KBT Presents: THE HITCHER

2006-10-19T00:01:00.000-04:00

Well it seems to be Rutger Hauer month for KBT screenings. After his highly intelligent, slightly psychotic (justifiably) turn as Replicant in Blade Runner, here he is as an intelligent, very psychotic (not so justifiably) hitchhiker who torments C. Thomas Howell (Wither are you now?) and a young Jennifer Jason Leigh. Yes boys and girls, it is that often overlooked white knuckler from the eighties, The Hitcher. A film that is soon to be remade, much like every other slightly overlooked horror film from the past 3 decades. I have to admit that a no small portion of KBT Screenings (Infernal Affairs, The Wicker Man, King Kong, Black Christmas and Nine Queens) have the purpose of ‘catch the original before the remake’ raison d’etre; besides, of course, that all of the above are highly original and entertaining cinema.

Because I’ve not managed to rewatch The Hitcher in nearly a decade and to go into narrative detail would be to spoil the movie anyway, I’ll just say that whether or not the plot logic, or character motivation hold, The Hitcher gets full points for blending suspense and brutality without one outweighing the other. Taking the best aspects of Steven Spielberg’s early 1970s made for TV movie Duel and adding a stalker/slasher element (which was very popular at the time due to John Carpenter and Wes Craven, director Robert Harmon never went on to make anything particularly memorable after this. Nonetheless several minor horror/thrillers such as 1997’s Breakdown, 2002’s Joy Ride and the first 45 minutes of 2001’s Jeepers Creepers owe no small debt to this bloody diamond in the rough.

KBT Presents: BLADE RUNNER

2006-10-12T00:01:00.000-04:00

Ridley Scott's iconic film Blade Runner was the perfect film at the perfect time and place, even if that time and place was not ready for it. Coming out approximately at the same time as William Gibson 's novel Neuromancer which is widely credited with creating the entire cyberpunk movement, the movie had its share of troubles and growing pains - a rumoured 12 re-writes on the screenplay- and with the exception of really only one scene ("Is this testing whether I'm a replicant or a lesbian, Mr. Deckard?") barely resembles the original novel by Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?).

The story is simple; the year is 2019. Rick Deckard, a detective specializing in tracking down and 'retiring' rogue replicants (genetically engineered humans) is recruited to do just that for several of the latest-models who escaped from the offworld colonies and are hiding out on a dilapitated urbanized section of earth (Los Angeles). Over the course of this investigation, Deckards career, his beliefs (or prejudices) and even his humanity are put to the test, both from his prey and the replicant corporations rich owner and his mysterious daughter.

Like most great science fiction films, it was misunderstood at the time of original release, but that did not stop the film from re-defining the visual aesthetic of sci-fi film moving from a crisp clean positive future where everything is minimal (see THX 1138 , 2001: A Space Odyssey , Logan's Run, etc.) to a mismashed chaotic urban sprawl where nothing is clean, planned or makes sense, including the language. It is as if technology and society just grew from the 20th century without purpose, a guiding morality, and certainly for the worse. Without Blade Runner there would be no The Matrix or Serenity, at least not visually. The other major innovation here (although not 100% new, Jean-Luc Godard did it first with Alphaville) is the blend of film noir conventions with sci-fi elements. Rick Dekkard is the classic hard-boiled detective loner who straddles the high and low and ostracized of society while working the investigation. Rachel is the epitome of femme fatale, complete with cigarette, a 1940s coiffure, a mysterious air and some serious issues.

Through a combination of all the actors giving top-shelf performances (including a host of great character actors in small parts) to wonderful score from synth-rock outfit Vangelis, to the pulpy execution blended with one part Dick-ian paranoia, one part Jung-ian philosophy, Blade Runner has survived several theatrical versions, directors cuts and the like to become one of the true canonical science fiction films.

Come out Thursday October 12 to enjoy the 1992 Directors Cut version of Blade Runner, recently remastered. It is truly one of those films which suffers on a small screen, and while I'm no full blown Cinema, this should be a fine hold-over until the re-release this in theatres. Drinks at 8pm. Trailers and Showtime at 8:30pm.

KBT Presents: VITAL

2006-10-05T00:01:00.000-04:00

When we are young and do crazy things, do we flirt with death because we do not understand it, or are we just wired that way?

Japanese auteur Shinya Tsukamoto delicately tells the story of a man who recovers from an difficult personal tragedy by literally dissecting his girlfriend. Before you lock in a mental picture of the previous sentence, know that the film is not an exploitation piece. It is in fact a film which wishes to probe the idea of the human body as a document. Can dead flesh be a record of who that person was? Stretching beyond the physical towards the spiritual, the end results it is actually quite respectful of the flesh. (Anatomical pencil sketchs shown throughout the picture display a haunting type of beauty.)

Vital is not a horror film or even science fiction in any conventional sense. The basic narrative, when a description is attempted, actually sounds like a collection of bad movie clichés requiring co-incidences of the highest order to make sense: A man wakes up with amnesia. He is told by his father that he was in a car accident with his girlfriend (who died). He enrolls in medical school and years later when he gets to his anatomy lab, gets his girlfriend as the cadaver. He does not know this at first. But has he does the hands-on-course work his memories of life with her begin to flood back. He is able to move on with his life because he has done this.

The movie does not even attempt to exist in the 'real world,' opting to explore the concept through metaphor much like the bodies of work of Antonioni, Tarkovsky or even Vincent Ward. Spiritual questions posed are probed through visuals more than dialogue. Yes, Tsukamoto knows the medium he is working in. It is difficult enough to address these questions with words. It is a treat to watch such a morbid yet beautiful film work so well. As memory returns in 'flashbacks, 'the lead character, played by Tadanobu Asano, is not just reliving the moments with his girlfriend, but also existing outside the moment, as if memory and nostalgia for the past give him a new way to interact with her. She is prescient and omniscient in those dreams. This is illustrated through a couple tour-de-force dance sequences against some stunning cinematography. Emotional, intellectual and even sexual engagement (no, there is no necrophilia for those of you with dirty minds) of the movie is unsurpassed this year for me. The film references Blade Runner (which for that, will put any movie at least on my curiously list) several times - from memory as tears in rain, to the belching smokestacks which open both films. While most known for his guerilla fusions of tissue, tendons and technology explored his own Tetsuo films, here Tsukamoto explores the flesh as the soul.

TIFF Wrap-Up in Short.

2006-09-22T20:52:00.000-04:00

Probably the best TIFF festival in the past 5 years for me, perhaps since I've been going even...Pub nights were fun. And for some reason I bumped into this couple from Knoxville, TN at what seemed like over a third of the films I was at. Good Q&As from the cast from For Your Consideration, as well as Chris Smith a the Midnight Severance Screening. Also the Del Toro Q&A was one of the most intelligent and passionate ones I've been at since, uh, well the Devil's Backbone Q&A.

Here are all my films, a rating out of 10, and a brief comment. Live links on film titles in the below list go to full reviews I've written. If you are interested in anything that I've not written on, nearly all the below films has been written about by the twitchfilm.net staff in the sites alphabetical review archives.

Abandoned, The 4 Atmosphere to spare and a winning metaphor, but too repetitive. Would have been a nearly perfect 45 minute film.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane 3 A few points for portraying teens as confused and desperate for attention. The actual film construction leaves a lot to be desired.

Banquet, The 9 Completely recontextualizing Hamlet as a story of unfulfilled love and desire, and told from Gertudes point of view. Perfect Martial Arts scenes complement the epic material. Masterful.

Black Sheep 6 Owes just a little too much to Peter Jacksons Dead Alive, but has almost note perfect comic timing and some great set-pieces.

Brand Upon the Brain! 10 A once-in-a-lifetime experience with Live Orchestra, narrator and foley artists. Still Maddins latest is him at top form, and a worthy 'sequel' to Cowards Bend the Knee.

Cashback 8 Biggest out of the blue surprise for me at the festival this year, early 20's confusion filtered through a realization of the possibilities in the world. A romantic feel good movie for guys.

Crime, Un 8 Here is a film which fully trusts its audience to follow along with an intelligent and complex story with some dark corners and darker emotions. Best of Breed for modern noir.

Election 6 Arch and experimental, the film gets a bit muddled in the middle, but is perhaps the most ambitious HK effort since the 1990s. The opening and closing segments of the film are masterfully brutal and uncompromising.

Election 2 8 Keeping the ambitions of the first one, and having the background out of the way, lets Election 2 flourish. This sequel is more focused and richer.

End of the Line 4 Great opening jump-scare. A muddled plot and inconsistent tone and overall flat aesthetic don't capitalize on the great premise.

Everything's Gone Green 7 A very nice ode to both Vancouver and Canada. A smooth and excellent transition of aspects of Douglas Coupland's novels into a winning screenplay

Exiled 10 Johnny To's action and comedy finest hour. The most fun I had at a festival screening this year

Fido 7 Setting this Zombie Comedy in the 1950s and casting good actors made Fido a surprise of the festival, and Canadian genre cinema.

For Your Consideration 7 Christopher Guests weakest film, but probably still the funniest movie you will see all year. Impressivley, it is 85% improvised.

Fountain, The 9 A movie much simpler than the critics would have you believe. It is emotionally honest and big spectacle of grand ideas. An instant classic worthy of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

HANA 6 For its gentle tone and serious subject matter, the film does run on a bit long. But it is beautiful, intelligent and warm.

Host, The 8 Expectations were high and mostly met. The ability to switch tone and style within the film are signs of a master at work.

Invisible Waves 4 After Last Life in the Universe, this film feels like a retread, and a bad one at that (although it is not without moments of humour and interest). Even Doyle's cinematography is lacking.

Jade Warrior 5 A victim of my own expectations. A smart story which failed to live up to its promise.

King and the Clown 9 A delightful blend of Korean History, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and even shades of a gay melodrama. It perfectly captures the joy of performing is a smart and slickly entertaining way.

Little Children 8 Complex, darkly funny, and timely satire on the current culture in America. Its only flaw is talking down to the audience on occasion.

Macbeth 2 Conceptually interesting, but failed attempt to merge Shakespeare's Macbeth with Aussie crime culture.

Pan's Labyrinth 10 Sublime fairy tale for adults is stylish, smart, and earns every ounce of its emotional (and theologically honest) punch.

Prague 10 As perfect as a crumbling relationship drama can ever be. Flawless direction, brilliant acting, and perfect screenplay.

Princess 7 A film designed to provoke and alienate its core audience. Not necessarily a bad thing, but still hard to watch. You cannot always having things both ways, but this film certainly tries.

Renaissance 5 Gorgeous sci-fi noir is technically flawless, but emotionally inert.

Rescue Dawn 6 Powerful and well acted, but curiously long-winded in parts and stands in the shadow of Aguirre: Wrath of God.

Severance 8 About as perfect as this type of movie can ever get. It plays with horror conventions and slyly pushes the envelope on social commentary inbetween big laughs and gory violence.

Sheitan 6 Loopy and hilariously fun to watch. Vincent Cassel is as whacked out as everything else on display here. Oh, and this has to be the most politically incorrect film at this years festival.

Shortbus 7 A bit obvious in the scripting, but is the first 9/11 hard-core sex feel good movie ever made. And there is something to be said for that.

Slumming 7 A great metaphysical character study with some sublime moments.

Ten Canoes 6 Overly long and slightly redundant (between the subtitles and voice-over narration), this aboriginal cultural document is surprisingly funny and pleasantly vulgar. People are people, regardless of culture.

Time 7 A movie designed to provoke, similar to Little Children or anything by Von Trier, it is as technically and aesthetically skillful as its characters are unlikable.

Wake, The 5 A nice story telling style and script are done in by some pacing issues and curious lack of tension. I still don't know what went wrong with this film.

Woman on the Beach 8 An intelligent and intimate look at how people become attracted and distracted with one another.

TIFF Review: Woman on the Beach

2006-09-21T20:36:00.000-04:00

I’ll confess up front that I’m not overly familiar with Hong Sang-Soo’s body of work. Last years A Tale of Cinema was a bit off putting due to the story structure being a tad esoteric. Paradoxically, it was intimate and fascinating and I was thinking about it for several days after seeing it; as good an indication as any that things were swirling just out of my reach on a single viewing. Woman on the Beach is much more accessible, and happily, is a satisfyingly complex work as well. With the veneer of an occasionally humorous relationship drama, it takes one particular aspect of human nature and examines it from as many sides as he can within the two hour timeframe.
Anyone who has watched two children in a roomful of toys argue and fight over one seemingly random toy - just because one or the other happens to have possession of it - will immediately understand where the film is coming from. And things are so much more complicated with adults, whose egos and defense mechanisms are much more developed.
The story follows a film director, Joong-Rae, who is working on the script to his latest film. Because he is experiencing a bit of a block in getting from concept to screenplay, he decides to head out for a change in scenery from the city to a beach resort which is more or less deserted in its off season. On a whim, he invites one of his crew, Chang-Wook, to join him on his trip and Chang-Wook brings his girlfriend Moon-Sook. Joong-Rae is immediately attracted to Moon-Sook, likely (to some degree) due to fact that his friend is quite average looking and she is most definitely not. Joong-Rae’s casual self confidence and high-profile as a director cause an immediate attraction from Moon-Sook, despite (or because of) his dismissal of her singing abilities (she is a music composer for films who is writing and singing on her debut pop music album.) Over dinner and lots of Soju, the new ‘couple’ find a way to dump Chang-Wook, making love in an abandoned hotel room. The next morning, Joong-Rae is more interested in working on his screenplay, and brushes Moon-Sook off. Not long after, he meets up with a two other women, one of whom looks like Moon-Sook, and Joong-Rae begins to pursue her. It’s not just the resemblance that attracts him, but also a subtle intimacy between the two women.
Woman on the Beach cleverly explores how we paint one image on a person based on our awareness that someone else favours them. Like the old expression that the most attractive men are the ones with wedding rings on their fingers. The film asks the question how much of human attraction is based on either what we cannot (or should not) have, as well as exploring the way a certain bit of recklessness (what the French call l’amour fou) enhances things until the next morning you often. All of this is done in carefully composed and well observed scenes taking place over walks through town or countryside, and many lunches and dinners involving alcohol.
After describing the outline of his movie, which revolves around a man getting to the bottom of a peculiar coincidence of the same thing happening three times in a single day, Joong-Rae comments that an audience will not believe the film because people tend to only believe in things they understand. Maybe he is right. However, people do clearly bounce around from one attraction to the next following on the least logical grounds. In many cases, logic is clearly the enemy.
Naturally, the number three factors heavily (literally and symbolically) in the film as each chapter involves a threesome which wants to shed a person to get to a couple. Hong Sang-Soo does these transitions from situation to situation in a very natural way so that the manipulation does not feel forced in the slightest, and each time examines his central exploration from a different angle. The opening scene involving a phone call and a coincidence and the closing shot involving two men getting a character unstuck out of the sand on the beach mesh perfectly into the story, and also sum up things an elegant way. Woman on the Beach is certainly worth the journey.

Even More TIFF Reviews

2006-09-14T09:59:00.000-04:00

OK, I'm falling behind writing about the all of the films that I've seen. That number is about 20 as of this morning. Over 10 to go in the next three days. Somehow I managed to schedule 6 films on Saturday to close the festival.

Reviews:

End of the Line (Maurice Deveraux)
Little Children (Todd Field)
Pan's Labyrinth (Guellermo Del Toro)

More TIFF Reviews

2006-09-12T18:09:00.000-04:00

I've been trying to successfully juggle watching the maximum amount of movies, with finding enough sleep, writing those movies up, and trying to kiss my wife and kids as well. Sleep seems to be the big sacrifice, and thankfully LJ is keeping the home-fires buring and the kids occupied!

Here are some more TIFF reviews, with links going to twitchfilm.net until I can properly post them here.

Un Crime
Shortbus
Everything's Gone Green
Cashback
Renaissance

Enjoy.

First Round of TIFF Reviews

2006-09-10T19:31:00.000-04:00

This entry is just shorthand linking until I can properly update the site (admittedly this may not happen until after the festival is over!). Below are links to the twitchfilm.net entries for TIFF films. Because I'm posting these while waiting in line, and the limited sit-down time I have between screenings, there may be a fair number of grammer errors, if you point them out to me by email, it would be much appreciated.

Enjoy:

Slumming (Michael Glawogger)
Brand Upon The Brain! (Guy Maddin)
Fido (Andrew Currie)
Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog)
Jade Warrior (Antti-Jussi Annila)

KBT on Hold for TIFF 2006

2006-09-04T23:32:00.000-04:00

There will be no KBT screenings for the month of September, as my time will be occupied watching over 35 films and hopefully reviewing two thirds of that number during the Toronto International Film Festival (September 8-16). Reviews will first be posted to Twitchfilm, but they will end up on this blog eventually - with more hyperlinks. Also, a best-of list for this years TIFF films (that I've seen anyway) will show up around Sunday September 17th. The theme for this years is 'Slumming' as I am seeing almost all genre-type films and leaving most of the arty stuff alone. There are a few notable exceptions: The new Guy Maddin film (if I'm lucky enough to get a ticket between now and Friday. Brand Upon the Brain! is a hot ticket to get due to the live orchestra component (the film is silent) making it only a single screening), the new Werner Herzog film, the new Hong Sang-soo film, John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus and Ki-duk Kim's Time.

Below is the list of films I am aiming to see at this years festival (links go to TIFF catalogue page):

Friday September 8,
Slumming
Brand Upon the Brain!
The Host

Saturday September 9,
Ten Canoes
King and the Clown
Fido
Rescue Dawn
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

Sunday September 10,
Jade Warrior
Shortbus
Black Sheep

Monday September 11,
For Your Consideration
End of the Line
Un Crime
The Abandoned

Tuesday September 12,
Everything's Gone Green
Cashback
The Half Life of Timofey Berezin
Trapped Ashes

Wednesday September 13,
Pan's Labyrinth
The Last Winter
Election
Election 2

Thursday September 14,
Prague
The Fountain
Exiled
Severance

Friday September 15, 2006
Time
Princess

Saturday September 16, 2006
The Wake
The Banquet
Invisible Waves
Woman on the Beach
Macbeth
Sheitan

Happy 2nd Birthday to Kurt's Film Blog!

2006-09-02T00:01:00.000-04:00

The blog was started to cover the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival and has morphed into the archive for KBT screenings. There have been a whopping 72 KBT screenings and next week will mark the 3rd TIFF festival to be captured to this blog.

I hope somebody out there is reading!

KBT Presents: PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK

2006-08-24T00:01:00.000-04:00

Peter Weir has always been on of those fascinating directors who seem to be able to make art films in the mainstream, usually cast with big stars. He has used Richard Chamberlain, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Robbin Williams, Jim Carrey and Russell Crowe to name a few. Even if you are not familiar with Weir's name, and do not typically bother with arthouse cinema, you have probably caught at least one of his films in the past 20 years: Master & Commander, The Truman Show, Fearless, Dead Poets Society, The Mosquito Coast or Witness. It is particularly challenging to make a broadly appealing film that often features an ambiguous ending and is full of philosophical and ethical musing. Weir walks this line better than any filmmaker currently alive. (on a side note: I am anxious to see what he does with William Gibson's information-thriller novel Pattern Recognition)

Before Weir moved to America, he made several films in his homeland of Australia. In the mid 1970s, in particular, his films featured the supernatural. Far from typical horror fare, these films would be better described as "uncanny" than horrific; a creeping sense of the unease of not knowing why things are happening is the driving force of these film, and the effects on the confused characters serve as the horror element.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is the best of these films (for the record, The Last Wave and The Cars That Ate Paris are the other two). Set at the turn of the 20th century, the theme is one common in Australian cinema: the 'civilized world' bumping up against the immense mysteries of the large unexplored wilderness Down Under. During a Valentine's Day picnic outing of an all girls school, several of the girls mysteriously disappear. The community and the remaining girls react differently to a mystery which does not seem offer a substantial solution. Some of the reactions are quite shocking. The quiet pacing at the beginning of the film have the effect to lull the viewer and leave them unprepared for some of the shocks in the second half. Indeed, while clothed in white petticoats, open sunshine, and gorgeous cinematography, Picnic at Hanging Rock still offers horrors of the kind that dig deep into the soul.

Come out and enjoy my favorite Peter Weir film on Thursday August 24th. 8pm for cocktails. 8:30 for trailers and showtime.

KBT Presents: DEAR WENDY

2006-08-17T00:01:00.001-04:00

This movie could have been titled "Dead Poet's Society in Dogville", but I'm oversimplifying. Combining the character driven directing of Thomas Vinterberg with the sledgehammer allegory of screenwriter Lars Von Trier, Dear Wendy is a heady cocktail of commentary on hot button American issues such as youth violence, gun control and racism. Both the director and screenwriter have said several times that the film is not to be read as a allegory. Yea. Right.

Dear Wendy is told with a dry after-the-fact voice-over narration, by the superb Jamie Bell (remember Billy Elliot? he followed up his debut with the acclaimed Undertow and a small role in King Kong). The story follows a down and out boy in a small US mining town. Rather than face the prospect of a dreary life working in the mines, he forms a club with a few kids the same age (late teens) around town. What does the club do? Why obsess over the tiniest detail of firearms, shoot at targets in abandoned parts of the mine and view footage of what a bullet can do to a human body. Nicknamed "The Dandies," They dress up in frilly 'wild-west crossed with 1960s swinging-British' fashion and listen to old Zombies tunes (the soundtrack on this film is divine, by the way). All is fine an nice and kept underwraps, until a new kid joins and escalates the MO of the club.

While the ending of the film may be seen coming quite early, it is the joy of getting there, combined with the black humour and over the top nature of the film which make it a winner for entertainment. After all, you often see a pacifist film abhor and condemn violence, Dear Wendy offers one that sort of relishes the thought of the storm coming. It is reasonable to say that this is Natural Born Killers done the right way. There are some top notch performances, including Bill Pullman (an under appreciated actor if there ever was one) as the local sheriff, and Alison Pill (an actress who usually does TV shows) are stellar, but Jamie Bell is just bloody fantastic.

If you like your allegorical dramedy black as pitch. Come out and enjoy this slice of Americana written by a fellow who has never set foot on US soil. Drinks at 8pm. Trailers and Showtime at 8:30.

KBT Presents: BRICK

2006-08-10T00:01:00.000-04:00

Noir. A genre of films which most folks my age (early 30s) are aware of, like say, the Western. I think that many of my generation know the tropes of the genre more than the individual titles, most of which were made between 1940 and 1958. While the bulk of the films involved urban crime and hard-boiled detectives (The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep and Double Indemnity) the genre was malleable enough to include things like The Treasure of Sierra Madre, a film which probes down into the dark side of humanity with of the corruption of a basically good man. During the 1960s the genre was adopted by several French directors who molded many of stylistic elements during the 1960s in films such as Le Samouraï, Breathless or Alphaville (the proto-sci-fi noir which is now a genre unto itself). Chinatown in the 1970s was a bold period throwback which did the genre proud and is one of noirs most iconic films despite missing the era by over 25 years. The 1980s brought Ridley Scott's Sci-fi noir Blade Runner which movied the genre into the blockbuster era, David Lynch's surreal Blue Velvet and The Coen Brothers (big lovers of noir which form the basis over nearly half of their films) Blood Simple. The 1990s stylized things even more with the complicated film structures of Reservoir Dogs, The Usual Suspects and Memento or unabashed love such as the Coen's Miller's Crossing and Fargo. The 21st century has taken the genre in two distinct directions. The graphic novel noirs of Road to Perdition, Sin City and A History of Violence and something completely new: The Teen Noir.

Perhaps this is too long an introduction for Rian Johnson's elaborate debut film Brick. Here is a film which maps the urban high and low social circles the loner anti-hero of typical noir cinema has to navigate onto high-school cliques. This was done quite well a year before with the TV show Veronica Mars, but Johnson takes the language, an aspect of the genre almost as important as the stark lighting, to a level that has only previously been explored by the Coen Brothers. It is a strange thing to hear modern California teenagers talk such sharp crisp antiquated modes of speech. The convoluted plot, the femme fatale, and all encompassing cynicism is all there too. It is a neat package which is a breath of fresh (smokey) air. It layers on complex emotional and moral problems on its young cast. While at first this may seem disingenuous, these are well off suburban white kids in their teens, how 'beaten-down-by-life' can they be. But what better way to reflect the youthful alienation and re-invetion of self image in a narcissistic culture than to make these teens the centre of their own universe? One which can only exist in the movies.

Come out for this unusual little sides-step of the genre, Thursday night 8pm for cocktails, 8:30pm for trailers and showtime.

KBT Presents: A COCK AND BULL STORY

2006-08-03T01:01:00.000-04:00

Who is the most consistently funny nation on this chaotic planet? Despite humour being as subjective as it is, it is safe to say that the

is near or at the top of the pile. And one of their best recent films is born out of some of countries top TV comedy talent combined with one of their most innovative and diverse filmmakers.

The Life and Opinion’s of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman an 18^th century novel which was published in 9 volumes over a period of as many years (and at the end of the story, the lead character has yet to be born). It has not been read my many (myself included), but it here and there it is regarded as a minor literary classic, perhaps as much for its vaunted length as its meta-leanings (post-‘modern’ before there was a ‘modern’). Considering the difficulty the writers seem to have in adopting a relatively lean Harry Potter novel (#'s 1 and 2), one of the best jokes of the film is that anyone would even try to make a film out of this novel (what’s next Finnegans Wake?). Thus the movie becomes less about the film of Tristram Shandy and more of a study of making the film about Tristram Shandy, with all the personality, ego, frustration, attention to detail and just plain waiting involved in the creative process of making a film (which is also, maybe, an allegory for creating good comedy). The banter between the leads, played by two top-shelf comedians, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon is brilliant, as are the fine (and diverse) collection of supporting players, from Jeremy Northam and Gillian Anderson to Naomi Harris (currently seen in two current summer blockbusters Pirates of the Caribbean and Miami Vice ) and UK TV comedians: Dylan Moran , David Walliams and Ashley Jensen.

Fancifully titled A Cock and Bull story, Michael Winterbottom’s film thrives on letting the actors breathe, as the director switches effortlessly between the film-within-the-film and the story of making the film, with lots of little asides along the way. Not many comedies have as much brains and bravado as this one. Come for the Al Pacino impression stay for the British showmanship (cock and bull included).

KBT Presents: EL AURA

2006-07-27T00:01:00.000-04:00

It is always a pleasure to see A-level noir cinema coming from somewhere outside of the United States or the French New Wave. And who would have expected the dark moody pleasures on offer from El Aura? After all, it is the follow up to Fabián Bielinsky’s whirlwind bubblegum con-artist flick, Nine Queens (Nueve reinas) that had Ricardo Darín talk, run and dance to the rhythms of the grift as a parable for Argentinas economic woes. While there is a moment or two of that breathless energy on display here, Bielinsky has stepped up his ambitions and taken them in the complete opposite direction for his follow-up film. The result is driving and subtle. There is no sophomore slump here.

Esteban Espinosa (Darín) is a drab figure in plain rumpled clothes first shown mysteriously sprawled on the floor of an ATM vestibule, unconscious. He wakes up disoriented, composes himself, then casually pulls his paper receipt out of the machine and walks out. Over the opening credits we see him efficiently restoring a fox skin to its former skeleton. He finishes by pasting on the glass eyes. While waiting in line to get paid for his taxidermy he spins a fantasy to his coworker about how easy it would be to rob the Buenos Aires Natural History museum. They both work there, and know the layout and if it was planned down to the smallest detail it could go off without a hitch. While impressed with his almost photographic memory for fine detail, his coworker invites him instead to go on a hunting trip down in the southern Argentinean forests. Through a convoluted series of events best left discovered at the deliciously languid pace set by the film, Espinosa gets his fantasy of pulling off a robbery while on that hunting trip. However, instead of it being meticulous and clean, it is full of hard, scarred secondary characters and muddy outcomes.

El Auras construction is anything but muddy. It is crafted with such attention to detail that the narrative threatens (but fortunately does not succeed) to drown out the key central performance. Like most good noir ‘heroes’, Espinosa is lonely, ordinary, lacking history or ties, and far craftier than he looks. Ricardo Darín has almost no dialogue to work with, but is in practically every frame. He gets unbelievable mileage out of his handsome weather-beaten visage which is capable of portraying fear, detachment, guile and sympathy within a single scene. Like the Ed the Barber in the Coen Brothers' The Man Who Wasn't There, he is both a detached onlooker and the central player. This is underscored beautifully in two wildly contrasting scenes. The first, where Espinosa has a deer in his rifles sight and his finger trembles at the dilemma of pulling the trigger. This followed by a sudden unexpected burst of action and outcome. The second is a real knockout of mise-en-scene involving him standing across the road from a factory while several men shoot the place up behind the closed gates, gunshots echoing from the distance. It is surprisingly similar to the quiet forest and the factory workers scatter like frightened animals. The camera takes in the south Argentine landscapes, dark forests with tall brooding trees and sparse impoverished rural vistas to hide secrets, bodies and greed of desperate men.

El Aura riffs on Antonioni’s The Passenger and Nolan’s Memento (sans backward narrative) with liberal dashes of Lynch’s Twin Peaks for good measure (a somewhat metaphysical dog serves well as Peaks Owls). The film has class and visual panache, even if it occasionally is lacking the soul that John Huston managed to wring out from his urban jungles. Bielinsky is so much in love with the lush density of the scenery and his own narrative complexity that he misses the opportunity to capitalize on the relationship between Espinosa and the fiery wallflower, Diana Deitrich (can you get a more 1940s sounding name?) She runs the remote cabins where he stays and smolders at the edge of the frame but rarely is allowed to fully enter the story. A pair of thugs, one hotheaded, the other cold as ice, who wander in the picture to pull Espinosa’s strings and end up reluctantly following his lead are also a tad clichéd. These are minor gripes however for a picture which runs over two hours and skillfully maintains (through pure atmosphere) a wholly existential tension down to the last shot. It is a shot which may in fact re-contextualize the entire film and demands for El Aura to be watched immediately a second time. Perhaps things are not so different from Nine Queens after all.

On a sad note, Director Fabián Bielinsky died on June 30, 2006 (at age 47). Here was one of South Americas leading lights of cinema extinguished far too early. Come out and enjoy his last film; it is a strange eulogy (the movie centers on fulfilling desires) for the man.

Thursday July 27 - Drinks at 8:00pm. Trailers and Showtime at 8:30pm.

KBT Presents: PORCO ROSSO

2006-07-11T00:01:00.000-04:00

It is the era of the sea plane, sky pirates and the slow rise of fascism in Italy. Marco Porcellino, aka The Crimson Pig, roams the skies over the Adriatic Sea in between the two world wars. A former military pilot turned bounty hunter (between wars), he works to avoid the authorities, fend off the pirates (for a fee) and keep his plane in one piece. He lays low in a pilot-bar ran by the girlfriend of a slain companion, or nestles his beloved plane in a hidden cove where he can read cinema magazines and sip fine wine under an umbrella.

Director/Animator Hayao Miyazaki weaves his love of aviation with the stylish European romance of the 1930s and the magical realism (I'm struggling for a better phrase, but not finding it) he does so well. Think Casablanca , the Errol Flynn Robin Hood, Howard Hughes'
Hell's Angels and The Frog Prince all rolled into one, and well, that doesn't even begin to address the subplot of a 17 year old girl re-designing his plane to be built by elder Italian matrons, and later lecturing the 'hive of scum and villianry' on the subject self-respect.

There is an subtle, but even blend of comedy and pathos embodied in the lead character, who mysteriously was turned into a walking talking pig when his squadron was shot down. Yes, The Crimson Pig is quite literal, and yes pigs do fly, occassionally. Marco is like Humphrey Bogart 's Rick Blaine, an outsider respected by those around him, but divorced from the world whose problems he doesn't care about. The film has an utmost seriousness about this fact. It works well for many of the dramatic scenes with both the young girl as well as the lady barkeep who loves him dearly (regardless of his porcine nature) but is afraid to love another pilot after losing one in the past.

Female empowerment, a common theme in Miyazaki 's work and nostalgia for a lost period of aviation history and a warm sense of fun are all at work in on of Studio Ghibli's oddest (in theat it resembles Silver Screen era Hollywood) little films. Porco Rosso keeps bringing a smile to my face and a wistful tear to my eye, every time I watch it.

Come out and enjoy the high seas adventure. Tuesday July 11, 2006. Drinks at 8:00pm. Trailers & Showtimes at 8:30pm.

KBT Presents: PUSHER

2006-06-27T00:00:00.000-04:00

Where to begin with Nicholas Winding Refn's crime drama, Pusher? Made in the age of the dizzyingly slick stylizations of Michael Mann's Heat and Luc Besson's Leon: The Professional; Pusher stands out as being a rolling in the gutter, mad-dog of a film. One week in the lives of mid-level criminals Frank and his not-too-bright partner Tonny spans the gamut from kings of the street to the most desperate of beggars.

Frank has been steadily contributing to his rolled wad of cash by building a diverse list of clients in the Copenhagen underworld. He buys his drugs from a dangerously calm and friendly Serbian drug-lord who runs a restaurant on the side. He has a semi-permanent relationship with one of his stash-girls, a high class 'champagne girl' named Vic. When an opportunity to move a serious amount of heroin (a deal which is perhaps out of his league) comes along, his tale becomes a cautionary one in just how edge-of-the-knife the existence of 'middle-man' for his line of work can be.

With an emphasis on the criminal day-to-day life, Pusher has a ring of authenticity that is paradoxically enhanced by the in-your-face handheld camera work and pounding industrial soundtrack. That the film is unafraid to go places most films of the type shy away from, not just to the desperate and violent corners of the criminal existence, but also the dysfunctional sense of intimacy that living on the edge gives to its central characters. A scene where Frank’s world is spiraling out of control, but he still stops to by Vic a present and takes her to a party is contrasted starkly by how he deals with her thanks for the gift. Going this deep into Franks personal life, while turning up the fire at his feet imparts a rare sense of pathos and pity for such a thoroughly unlikable thug. A scene with Frank visiting his mother in suburbia somehow takes things even further. All the while, Refn never lets the screws stop tightening on Franks spiral of diminishing hopes and growing debt.

Pusher ultimately becomes cinema at its most masochistic: The audience is punished in the form of inventive genre cinema at its transcendent peak. This is a whopper of a debut film from a director who was under 30 at the time. Or perhaps I gush because the along with the two sequels, the Pusher trilogy creates a crime milieu with astonishing depth and human resonance.

Expect the other two films to follow as screenings in the future (which I assure you, will eradicate any impulses to take of a life of crime, no films have shattered the false glamour better than these). Come out Tuesday night for this harrowing and punishing crime drama. Drinks at 8. Trailers and Showtime at 8:30pm.

KBT Presents: KISS KISS BANG BANG

2006-06-13T00:01:00.000-04:00

Probably the most famous critic on film before Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel introduced their thumbs to the world on TV was Pauline Kael. This film derives its title from one of her famous quotes on movies: "The words "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies. This appeal is what attracts us, and ultimately what makes us despair when we begin to understand how seldom movies are more than this."

Here is a movie that is smart, funny, glossy should have been a big hit. Was it the lack of a major star? The October release on only a few screens? The fact that other than a small niche, there is no interest in noir these days? (A fabulous little film which has been dubbed teen-noir, Brick, was similarly ignored in theatres a couple months ago.)

Taking its chapter titles from Ramond Chandler novels, and its title from film Pauline Kael, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a screen writers movie. But you can ignore all that, this film has two fabulous lead performances doing pitch perfect action buddy comedy schtick: Robert Downey Jr. doing what he does best, playing it big, loud, and full of snark and Val Kilmer playing to his strengths, namely a charismatic, stylish, deadpan tough guy. But here is that 2005 spin, he is gay. He is a private Eye nicknamed Gay Perry who is hired to coach petty criminal turned actor, Harry Lockhart (Downey Jr.).

Bodies show up, as do a couple of femme fatales, a string of clever and witty quips (many of these featuring the narrator casually conversing with the audience, to the point of pointing important bits out, critiquing other films, or even rewinding the movie on occasion) all pepper the fast paced narrative. It all adds up to nothing, but it is damn entertaining getting there. The movie is smart-alecky, wise ass, and needy all at the same time. It wants to be loved, even as it throws out wild tonal shifts (comedy to violence) and grotesque situations in all directions. And there is nothing wrong with that, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is not even a year old and is already considered a vastly underrated comedy gem.

No fuss, no muss. Come out Tuesday and enjoy this dressed up, but deep down, pure and simple entertainment. No Subtitles, no 'establishing mood,' no subtext. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD-folks welcome. Beers & Cocktails at 8pm. Trailers & Showtime at 8:30.

KBT Presents: EL METODO

2006-06-06T00:01:00.000-04:00

Being that the date is 6/6/6, it is strongly tempting to do a horror picture for this weeks KBT. But I have a DVD that just arrived in the mail Monday that is too good to pass up: The Spanish/Argentinean corporate thriller El Método.

Seven applicants arrive at the gigantic tower of the headquarters for Dexia, a multinational corporation. They are all there to apply for the same position, some high-level executive job within the company. The first clue that something is not quite the right and the usual protocol is not being followed is that typically companies bring in applicants separately for interviews whereas here they are letting the applicants mingle. The candidates are as suspicious of this aberration as Dean Keaton and company were in The Usual Suspects. The second clue is that the company makes them all redo their applications in the front office in front of each other. You can feel the competitive juices begin to flow as each candidate sizes one another up. They are brought into a large conference room near the top of the building and told that the company has a new method for recruiting for senior positions. They all are going to have to go through a bunch of tests against one another (in each other presence and at the mercy of each others judgements) until it is last man or woman standing.

This is the latest and greatest corporate recruiting system: The Grönholm Method. If you have ever done job interviews or businmeetings which employ consultant designed systems (from Six Sigma to Myers-Briggs) you will quake in fear from this unholy incarnation. For example, one of the tests involves simply selecting a ‘leader’ for the group. Considering that all of these people are power-players, just the act manoeuvring for, or around, this position is fascinating. Another test poses the hypothetical situation of the earth being ravaged by some disaster and there is bunker that will hold a number, which is one less than then the number of candidates. Each has to justify their worth to the society within this bunker, using only what is on their resume, and vote would be the most expendable. Much like a certain successful reality-based TV show, when the person is voted off, they are out of the interview process. Several of the candidates are even on to this, immediately expecting one of their fellow interviewees as a company planted mole. The psychology, power struggles, and scheming is taken about as far as one can take it as office politics are played on dizzying level which includes humiliation and cruelty so savage, you might even accept that these executive wannabes might kill one another for the position.

The seven characters are all types, but are so well written and distinct that they manage to go beyond two dimensional cut-outs. This is helped by the solid acting across the board which make the film as perfect as this type of pure dialogue film can ever get. The dialogue is razor sharp, insightful and always crackling, but in a way distinct from say the ratta-tat-tat of David Mamet.

There is not a weak note in the entire film, which manages to sustain the mystery and ‘what is going to happen’ nature of the film right to the very last, sublime minute. The tension and black humour are exceedingly well crafted and directed with a nice audio-visual palette: Impersonal blue-dye wool, crisp white shirts, sparse hardwood conference rooms and brushed metal executive bathrooms are scored to that harmless musak, because, ironically, anything else may be offensive to someone. There is also the bleak irony of a globalization demonstration going on at the base of the skyscraper, as the battle the very power that is being condemned goes on in the Ivory Tower well above the rabble.

El Método brings to mind the best elements of Glengarry Glen Ross, Neil LaBute’s In the Company of Men, Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men and fellow Argentinian director Fabián Bielinsky’s top-shelf grift flick (a previous KBT), Nine Queens. The mask that is put on in the guise of a pin-striped ‘power’ suit for the dance of worst aspects of business: The pitch, the con, the betrayal is pulled off, put on, and switched (sometimes quite literally) across the applicants. The folks at Dexia aren’t working for a win-win situation. They are playing a zero sum game, and the human resource department have clearly spent a lot of time reading William Poundstone’s explanation of game theory, The Prisoner's Dilemma. Wordplay and structure suggest that El Método may have been based on a play, much like all of the films mentioned above are. There is even a warped corporate team-building version of the tennis-match from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.

If you like films that deal with the art of the con, El Método will make your year. In fact, I’m so impressed with director Marcelo Piñeyro’s film that I don’t think Mamet need bother heading into this territory as this is already the definitive film in this area.

Come out Tuesday Night at 8:00pm for drinks (sorry, no pie this week!). Trailers and Showtime at 8:30pm.

KBT Presents: THE HUDSUCKER PROXY

2006-05-29T20:10:00.000-04:00

Here is a film that got very little love upon its initial release in 1994. It is a bit of a shame and something I am more than happy to correct, if only in a very small way. A little history. The Coen Brothers, known for thier love of neglected film genres (the gangster flick, the noir etc.) came onto the scene in the late 1980s with the modern noir, Blood Simple. They enjoyed continued moderate success with the screwball kidnapping comedy Raising Arizona. But they moved into arthouse territory with the one-two punch of stylized gangster drama, Miller's Crossing, and critically lauded, existential hollywood satire Barton Fink. Coming off two incredibly well received artfilms, the wildly stylish feel-good fable that is The Hudsucker Proxy, was met with question marks above many folks foreheads. Here is a movie that wears its heart on its sleeve and draws all of its characters in broad lines, using conventions and cliches from classic 1940's comedies. Style over substance? Perhaps. But there is so much to love about this film, it has gotten a bad shake.
The film has a plucky and naive fellow looking for work who gets caught up in a large corporation, Hudsucker Industries, reeling from the suicide of its founder. The board of directors have a scam to run the stock in the ground by elevating a patsy to president. When the stock is the lowest, the fat-cats would buy as much as they can, and the recover the company, blame the patsy, and get even richer. But our plucky protagonist has an idea, a diagram of a circle ("You know, for kids!") and by fluke, drives the company well into the black. Naivete begins to turn into soulless fat-cat. Enter a tough talking dame and intrepid reporter (Jennifer Jason Leigh at her absolute best) to expose the shennigans at Hudsucker and restore the sheen on our previously plucky hero. All this is overseen by the mystical black man/narrator who runs the massive clock in the gloriously art deco Hudsucker Industries skyscraper.
The Hudsucker Proxy is a joy to watch. It is the precursor of Coen Brothers visual spectacles of lunacy to come, namely The Big Lebowski and O Brother Where Art Thou? It is also a modern ode to the classic 1940's screwball comedys from Preson Sturges and Howard Hawks. wish a pinch of Frank Capra-style magical realism.

Come out Tuesday Night at for drinks and Lemon Meringue Pie at 8pm. Trailers and Showtime at 8:30pm.

KBT Presents: DNEVNOY DOZOR (aka THE DAY WATCH)

2006-05-23T00:01:00.000-04:00

I have not really figured out what part of me takes such delight in the messy mulch that is Timur Bekmambetov's "Watch" trilogy. Perhaps it is the inherent 'Russian-ness' of the whole thing which gives it an aftertaste more palatable than the typical SFX-laden American blockbuster. (Yes kids, it's the dirty-Euro version of Underworld!) The first installment of the
trilogy, Nochnoy Dozor (aka The Night Watch) aimed for epic, introduced a lot of mythology and characters (many seemingly at random), and basically set up the stage to be paid off in the sequels.
Well, here at part two, a lot of charcters continue to be developed, but a lot more thrown into the mix to the point where you just go along with it, narrative be damned. For the first 80 or so minutes there is a lot of sound and fury, featuring the rogues gallery of warlocks, witches, shapeshifters and warlocks (some good, some bad and some in between) running around Moscow and Mongolia searching for, of all things, a piece of chalk (perhaps an even more innocuous item than a ring, further cementing the nickname of the trilogy as the 'Russian Lord of the Rings'). In the last half hour of the film, the narrative gets back on track with the first films prophecy/conflict and things begin to cohere. Of course, at this point, things are set up for the final chapter.

While there is bound to be confusion if you have not caught the first chapter, I would suggest that it really does not matter, you are either willing to go along with the unexplained character motivations and plot points or you are not. The Day Watch is a spectacular visual hodgepodge that may very well be the emperor's new clothes, but hey, the emperor is Russian, and thats good enough for me.

Come out and watch the music-video-esque CGI-enhanced mayhem Tuesday May 23. 8pm drinks. 8:30pm trailers and showtime.

KBT Presents: THE NEW WORLD

2006-05-16T00:01:00.000-04:00

If there is one type of film that is dying a slow death, it is the Studio Funded Big Budget Art Film. Terrence Malick's The New World is a grand feast for the eyes. It is a difficult film to describe however, focusing on mood over dialogue, image over narrative. It was shot almost entirely on location in a miraculously unspoiled part of Virginia and also in several British Locales. European settlers are dwarfed (and at times, consumed) by nature, while the native people gingerly rise up out of the flowing grass. Captain John Smith and native princess Pocahontas form a tentative relationship while the settlers settle and the natives watch. Nature figures prominently. The relationship is surreal, innocent, playful and occasionally ominous. The tone of the film is not quite what one would expect for this type of story, and the narrative structure is occasionally fragmented, but the mood of the first half of the film is a feeling of simply 'not knowing.' The future of the continent, and two very different peoples is a blank slate and nature encompasses everything.

For the second half of the film, the story takes some unusal turns (well, if you are not familiar with the history), with Pocahontas marrying and ending up in the British Isles. Her and her native escorts as dwarfed (and at times, consumed) in civilization as the settlers were in the Americas. There is dignity in the films conclusion, and complexity in Q'Orianka Kilcher's peformance and a wealth of lingering images. Yes, the film is in keeping with its reclusive filmmaker who has only made three movies since 1978. But they are worth the wait; The New World is quite possibly the best film of 2005. The Studio Art Film is Dead. Long Live the Studio Art Film.

For those who didn't catch this in the multiplex (and there applies to just about everyone (I saw it by myself in a large empty theatre!). The New World arrived with a wide release and went out of those same theatres in the blink of an eye. It just never found an audience) come out at 8:00pm for drinks. Trailers and showtime at 8:30pm.

Presented in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio is the Wide Release American Theatrical Cut which runs 2h15m, There was a limited release cut which ran 2h30m and a rumoured 4 hour version of the film which have yet to show up on DVD.

KBT Presents: FEARLESS

2006-05-02T00:01:00.000-04:00

Let us get this out of the way first. The only difference between a 'Based on a True Story' film and a completely fictional film is the fact that the final disclaimer at the end of the credits ("The character and events in this motion picture bear no resemblance...") is not present in the former. With that out of the way, we come to Fearless, a highly fictionalized account of early 20th century martial artist Huo Yuanjia. The man was a key figure in restoring national pride in China by winning a series of competitions against fighters from other parts of the world. He did this at a time when China was being occupied/influenced to a large degree by three imperial western powers (Russia, France and Britain) and also by Japan.

History lesson aside, director Ronny Yu is very much interested in delivering a mightily fueled martial arts spectacle with some great (and vintage Chinese) melodramatic moments. Jet Li trumpeted this as his last Wushu film, in favour of doing other project in the future, and on evidence here is an improvement in acting which showed promise in (of all places) Danny the Dog (aka Unleashed). He turns in a fine performance of a man finding spirituality to match his particular skill (with several tragedies precipitating the self-awareness). Besides the fine central performance, on display within the film is some very handsome production design and several stellar martial arts set-pieces.

All in all, Fearless adds up to some seriously fine entertainment with no small amount of class. Despite some serious liberties taken with the truth, the message of restoring ones nation by achieving a state of self-respect is one worth listening to. (This is never more apparent than in Li's Chinese/HK films vs. his American ones.)

Come out tonite @ 8pm and sample the 'just-in-time-for-summer' beer selection. Trailers (some really nice new ones!) and Showtime @ 8:30pm.

KBT Presents: CUBE

2006-04-18T00:01:00.000-04:00

Coming up on its 10th Anniversary, Vincenzo Natali's Cube is a fine piece of Canadian science fiction. Part puzzlebox film (literally), part character-type melodrama, nightmare, it runs at a crisp (for the genre) 90 minutes and plays a nice balancing act between the puzzle-solving of the cube, the puzzle solving of purpose of each character, and the tensions of making up a 'team' of different personality types in a particularly dire situation. After a spectacularly visual opening scene involving great canadian character actor Julian Richings, the characters are introduced in one of the rooms of the cube. They do not remember how they got there, and they do not know why, where (or even when) they are there. However, they do know that many of the rooms of the cube are rigged with booby traps.

There is not much else to say without getting into pretty heavey spoiler territory. What will have to suffice is that there is the leader-conservative, the paranoid-liberal, the nihilist, the genius, the mentally handicapped and the techincal expert. The interaction between these folks (including their skill-sets) is somewhat of a microcosm of human interaction, and over the course of the film bits and pieces of common sci-fi questions emerge: "Why are we here?" "Who is in control?" and "How did public works, morality, and technology come to this?" (OK, the last question is more out of the school of Douglas Adams -- or --Terry Gilliam's Brazil --, but of course they would put it in a much wittier way than I am capable of!) Come to think of it, the film bears a bit of a resemblence to a previous KBT presentation, Primer; which also made the most of its zero-budget by doing a lot with a little and making the picture about ideas over spectacle.

Come out tonite @ 8pm and eat our kids Easter Chocolate with a cocktail or beer. Trailers & Showtime @ 8:30pm.

KBT Presents: SHINOBI

2006-04-11T00:01:00.000-04:00

To my western-eyes, Shinobi is a cinematic blown-glass bauble mixed with the ingredients of Zhang Yimou's Hero, Bryan Singer's X-Men, and The Bard's Romeo and Juliet. The film sets its sights at being purely an entertaining genre flick, and then goes about it with a melancholy grimness. This is nicely at odds with with its own nature, but works here for the most part anyway.

The Iga and Kouga clans have been training magical Shinobi warriors for centuries, and have been the centerpieces of rising and falling kingdoms. They have warred with each other as much as for their Shogun, and there is no shortage of vendettas between the two clans. After an age of war, a Lord of Lords unites Japan under one leader and brings peace to the land. Understanding the power the Shinobi have, he first places the two clans under a forced truce. Still afraid of the enigmatic magician-warriors, and not having any purpose for them anymore, he hatches a plan to have both clans wipe each other out. Meanwhile, Gennosuke, the grandson of the Kouga leader and Oboro, the granddaughter of the Iga leader have secretly fallen in love with one another and married. They have the desire, but no clue how, to bring about true peace despite the centuries of bad blood between the clans. The Lord of Lords' plan is to have each of the clans pick their best 5 warriors and head to the capital to fight to the death for demonstration to his Majesty. Gennosuke and Oboro are the leaders chosen for each side. Two pacifists in love with each other are leading 8 blood-thirsty warriors to self-destruction. A fact made more frustrating because both are aware how much the warriors want to fulfill their purpose, even if that purpose as no use or meaning.

Shinobi has some very colourful cinematography and more 'majestic-bird-of-prey' shots than The Beastmaster. It also has a comic book sensibility mixed with a healthy dose of Kierkegaard. You know, when a warrior has no purpose in the world, well, what then? Having a softspot for this type of 'End of the Shogunate' era (nineteenth century) Chambara picture, you find the theme is a common one. Here however, instead of a stately, restrained film, it is an explosion of fantasty CGI involving poisonous mists, shapeshifting, clothing that kills, and other mystical acoutrements. This visual style sets it clearly apart from Akira Kurosawa or Toshiya Fujita: Realism is not the aim here, just slick visuals which move the story along conterpoint to the melodramatic love story. It suffers perhaps from too many supporting characters (which the director feels the need to flash a text label for each at the beginning of the film). Many of the warriors do not get much chance to strut their stuff, but too much Higlander-esque one-on-one dueling would get tiresome after a while, and Shinobi flits along that line quite well.

The computer problems have been taken care of! (Huge thanks for Dave's time and expertise!) Come out and enjoy the Ninja-melodrama. Cocktails at 8. Trailers and Showtime at 8:30pm.