Helvetica *
Gary Hustwit, 2007
US
@ IFC Center

My melatonin levels must skyrocket at about 6:15 pm because invariably when I see a movie after work I'm tempted to catnap for about ten minutes at roughly that time, popping awake afterward and feeling wide awake until 1 am or whenever I fall asleep. I had a particularly acute case of this last Monday when I saw Helvetica, which is really too bad because I liked it quite a bit. Specifically I liked the feeling I had upon leaving the theater, of my senses being a little sharper for the time spent gaining insight into the design of the world around me.

Note: I've managed for some reason to see each of the three films Gary Hustwit has released theatrically as a producer or director, including as well the Wilco documentary, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, and Moog. It just strikes me as an interesting coincidence.

See also: IMDb

Eastern Promises ***
David Cronenberg, 2007
UK/Canada/US
@ Lincoln Square

Having seen this immediately after Great World of Sound, I arrived during the first trailer and the place was utterly packed. I thought I was going to have to sit directly underneath the screen, but realized even standing at the back would be better. I eventually headed up to the balcony to sit pretty far to the right.

At least on first viewing, this was my favorite Cronenberg movie. I suppose some knowledge of what to expect helped during the gruesome violence, which was not out of place for a director so focused on the body--and its deformation. Appropriate then that the story centers around the infant child (viewed at a very early, gooey stage) of a dead mother and a graphically bloody birth.

I like how Cronenberg leaves so much unfinished here; it's makes for a very rich experience to walk away with so many mysteries unsolved, still running around in your head.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

Great World of Sound ***
Craig Zobel, 2007
US
@ Lincoln Plaza

Stylus Review

The documentaries have been with us for at least a couple years now, but this fall we’re finally being barraged by a wave of fiction films dealing with the war in Iraq. In its own way, Craig Zobel’s film feels like a response to Bush’s policies, which here have left the same group of working class people who’ve gotten dragged overseas into an incomprehensible conflict open to the depredations of predatory, immoral businesses at home. The mood is not dissimilar to Robert Altman in the 1970’s—the obsessed gamblers in California Split, for example—both in terms of acting and technical details like sound design and pervasive zoom.

Martin (Pat Healy), our luckless protagonist, begins the movie in a parking lot preparing for a job interview. Soon an information session follows and in a couple days he’s hired to as a record producer audition new talent for Great World of Sound, an outfit run by a smooth-talking executive named Shank (John Baker). As he guides the initiates through the ins and outs of getting a potential client to sign a contract, Shank lets the shady particulars of the process slip through here and there, attempting to overshadow the underhanded nature of the business with a crooked smile and the projection of an image of success that could only excite the sort of person down and out enough to wind up at Great World of Sound in the first place.

The dialogue is ripe with humor throughout, though the laughs are increasingly dark and mirthless as the salesmen follow the seemingly endless downward spiral. Martin and his partner, Clarence (Kene Holliday), move from awkwardness through companionship to eventual hostility. Zobel broaches thorny issues of class and race—Martin is white and Clarence black—but in a way germane to the story rather than setting them up to poke out as important issues to be discussed in study groups after the credits roll.

While many viewers will probably be attracted to the film by what seems to be a depiction of the sleazier side of the music industry, it’s painfully clear by the end that this alleged record company has absolutely nothing to do with music whatsoever. Instead, the film is ultimately about the depredations of corrupt profiteers with no regard for those beneath them. Even at the very beginning, with the opening shot of someone creating a “gold” record followed by Martin’s resourceful solution to his wardrobe malfunction, the prominence of false appearances is apparent. Zobel forces us to finally join his characters in the loneliness of destitution, all the more painful when caused by a heartless pyramid scheme, one in which Martin invested so much of himself financially and emotionally.

As with any unwitting participant in a corrupt system, particularly when that system seems to be the only available option, Martin can hardly shoulder much of the blame for the disaster his life becomes. He’s just looking for a job, not even a career or opportunity for advancement, just something to pay the bills until his girlfriend’s artwork starts to earn some money. It’s simply his strong desire to succeed (or, perhaps, desperation not to continue a long string of failure), reluctance to abandon a comrade, and willful naiveté that lead him to betray those he is supposedly serving, until ultimately he’s stranded by an organization that has gone looking for its next scapegoat. He could just as easily be a recently enlisted private far from home, obeying increasingly inhumane orders until he finds himself imprisoned for torture, but instead Martin is granted a less exotic fate, ruining the lives of young musicians, as well as his own, here on the home front.

3:10 to Yuma ***
James Mangold, 2007
US
@ Regal Union Square (w/ Charles)

A strong western that brings out a lot of what I like about the genre: attention to scenery; reluctant, conflicted characters; a well-choreographed shootout. Mangold avoids getting bogged down in a lot of detail about "what the West was really like," choosing a straightforward story over one that sets about debunking the classic myths. Still waiting for someone to make a light-hearted western, but who knows if/when that'll happen?

Russell Crowe plays his role well, though I'm not still not much of a fan. I generally enjoy Christian Bale more, but even so, I could envision a possibly better movie, or at least one specifically tailored toward me, with other stars.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic

Frownland **
Ronald Bronstein, 2007
US
@ IFC Center

This would have made for an awesome double bill with Quietly on By. Perhaps that's what they were thinking when programming these on consecutive nights. Not part of The New Talkies, this was nonetheless another intimate, low budget film about awkward young people. I found the characters to be a bit less sympathetic than in Ross's film, and thus it was easier to watch them get belittled. The humor all has a dark, mean edge to it, and no one wins.

Bronstein said this was based on the negative experiences and feelings he remembers from being new to the city and very lonely. Keith (Dore Mann) is obviously something of a caricature, but his misadventures still resonate. He lives somewhere around Greenwich Village or maybe the Lower East Side and sells coupons door to door in Staten Island. He has a ferocious stuttering problem and minimal social skills. His roommate is a complete and total jerk. The film ends on a sour note, but no more sour than the constant tenor of the rest of the picture.

Unlike most screenings I attend, this felt like THE PLACE TO BE. Even though the theater was small, it was jammed, with a number of the mumblecore directors and some others standing in the aisles. There is no DVD available and no future screenings planned. Hopefully that'll change.

See also: Official website

I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With *
Jeff Garlin, 2007
US
@ IFC Center

Stylus Review

In support of his debut feature film, Jeff Garlin gave a rather verbose interview a couple weeks ago on Elvis Mitchell's "The Treatment," broadcast on KCRW, an installment in which Mitchell speaks far less than in any of the dozen or so I've heard. Over the course of what essentially becomes a half-hour monologue, the garrulous guest cites various directorial influences (Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges, Ernst Lubitsch), complains that many contemporary comedies are bloated with inessential elements to please various demographic segments of the audience, then said comedies are too long, the actors and actresses are too cool and good-looking—he specifically contrasts Katherine Heigl from Knocked Up (though he's bullish on Judd Apatow in general) with Jean Arthur in, say, Wilder's A Foreign Affair or Capra's You Can't Take It With You, as a very nice-looking actress who's also able to play a believable misfit.

The film, then—a modest comedy conspicuously set in Chicago and populated by interesting, everyday characters—is probably a success by his standards. Garlin plays James Aaron, a less-than-famous 38-year-old comedian/actor whose main characteristics seem to be a taste for rice pudding, a nonexistent love life, and a weight problem. Amidst canceled auditions and other professional disappointments, he conducts a short and baffling affair with an apparently sweet but ultimately diabolical young woman played by Sarah Silverman. During an outing in the park early in their acquaintance, she and James agree on the movie's titular request as they gaze at a pair of young lovers enjoying a small picnic on the lawn.

He also pals around with his best friend, Luca (David Pasquesi), a bit of an oddball who runs a retirement home and winds up introducing James to a sympathetic teacher, played by Bonnie Hunt, on career day in his second-grade daughter's classroom. When James runs into her again at a record store, where it turns out they're both searching for the same mildly obscure jazz album, and when James later picks up Luca's daughter after school, we observe a much more subtle but perhaps eventually fulfilling relationship taking root.

An apt point of comparison is Year of the Dog, by another first-time director, Mike White, but that film attempts some outsized character development that I felt unbalanced the picture overall. Though it plays like a small, slightly dark comedy, Molly Shannon's character goes through wrenching personal transformation, overwhelming the comic elements of the movie. Garlin's James Aaron, on the other hand, takes much smaller steps here. Probably due to his career as a comedian, stand-up and otherwise, he respects the humor in his film enough to allow it to take center stage. Sure, he's fat, and that's dealt with in a number of scenes, but always deftly and without ruining the mood. Personal development is restricted to some minor issues (finally moving out of his mom's apartment, pulling his parked Mercury Grand Marquis out of its prized spot next to Wrigley Field to find a more useful space). The acting is low-key (Garlin mentions Bill Murray in Rushmore as representative of a certain blank, deadpan style he admires), and the cast endearing, including, in addition to those already mentioned, Dan Castellaneta as a friendly clerk in James' local grocery store.

As already evident in the press, this sort of filmmaking leaves itself wide open to labels like "insufficient," "disappointing," or "rip-off." And if this turns out, for one reason or another, to be Jeff Garlin's one and only film, those could be accurate. But given that he's already shopping around a second script, and sounds enthusiastic about a long directing career, we'll probably get the chance to see him continue to mine these types of characters for a broad variety of stories. It's only fair to give the guy at least a decade or so before attempting to judge whether he has what we might take to be an artistic vision, or whether his films turn out to reinforce one another, whether their collective whole is indeed greater than the parts themselves, particularly given a first attempt at light and likeable as this.

Quietly on By **
Frank V. Ross, 2005
US
@ IFC Center

Ross directs Anthony Baker in another awesomely physical role. Baker plays Aaron, a twentysomething guy who lives at home, working hard and saving up money until there is a nervous breakdown (the point at which the film begins) and he just starts sitting around the house. Aaron is that guy who you hang out with but nobody really likes. He never has anything else to do, and as such always overstays his welcome, pushing people to the limit, even though he can't always see that's what he's doing. I was squirming in my seat much of the time, as it can be grueling to watch a mostly harmless guy constantly condescended to, and filled with so much self-loathing.

Ross, who's in Joe Swanberg's Young American Bodies, says he'll be starring in his next film, though he didn't reveal any details beyond that.

See also: Website