If you're not familiar with David Kaplan's work this is a good CliffsNotes on his talents, which caught our eye back in 1999 when we made him one of our 25 New Faces of Independent Film.

With the main focus put on his 1997 Sundance short, Little Red Riding Hood, a black and white-shot adaptation of The Story of Grandmother folk tale, the disc also includes two other shorts, Little Suck-a-Thumb (1992) and The Frog King (1994). Kaplan's Riding Hood telling is a mix between Tim Burton and Guy Maddin with a little toilet humor sprinkled in with narration voiced by Quentin Crisp and stars a then 16-year-old Christina Ricci as a not-so-innocent Red. Along with being a calling card of Kaplan's love for fairytales and his original cinematic eye, the film has turned into a cult classic, even being used as part of the curriculum at Harvard, Oxford and Columbia.

The forklore theme is prevalent in all three works (as well as his first feature, 2007's Year of the Fish, which is a modern-day telling of Cinderella), with Little Suck-a-Thumb playing off one of Heinrich Hoffmann's popular Cautionary Tales that's to prevent kids from sucking their thumbs and The Brothers Grimm's classic The Frog King about a princess who finds a frog who turns into a prince. Along with telling engaging stories, which have many more meanings than the ones described above, Kaplan also uses amazing music in all of the shorts, including "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun" in Riding Hood and "A Night on Bald Mountain" as well as "Ave Maria" in Little Suck-a-Thumb.

Mixing childhood curiosity with adult sensibilities, this is a must have for film lovers and filmmakers alike.

Disc includes a commentary by Kaplan and folklore scholar Jack Zipes. Buy the DVD here.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 6/15/2009 11:11:00 PM Comments (0)

Stacy Peralta uses his knack for dissecting counter-cultures to highlight the two most violent gangs in America with Crips and Bloods: Made in America.

Since his breakout Sundance hit Dogtown and Z-Boys, about the iconic skateboarders who revolutionized the sport (Peralta was one of the Z-Boys), Peralta has stayed in the alt-sport realm as his second doc, Riding Giants, looked at the history of surfing (it was also the opening film at 04's Sundance). Now Peralta leaves his comfort zone to look at a world he's not directly a part of.

In telling the story of the Crips and Bloods, Peralta goes back to the Watts riots of 1965 which let out the anger African-Americans were feeling at the time towards not only their status in America but the brutality the police put on them daily. Segueing to the popularity of black power organizations during the time, gangs in South Central L.A. were at an all time low. But gradually long prison sentences or death to most of the positive black leaders by the end of the civil rights movement leads to the creation of the Crips which quickly attracts the disconnected youth. The Bloods quickly followed as a rival gang leading to decades of a blue (Crips) and red (Bloods) turf war in South Central with little intervention from the state on how to clean it up.

Peralta examines the rise of the Crips and Bloods through interviewing former or current members of the gangs, showing moving still photos, ghastly archival footage of murder scenes and speaking to mothers who've lost their children to gang violence. But Made in America, narrated by Forest Whitaker, isn't so much an expose on gang life as it is an optimistic story of hope. Rather than shocking the audience with the access he can get with the gangs or document initiations or drive-bys, Peralta portrays gang life as not a choice but an all-consuming inevitability for young black males in South Central. The sliver lining in all of this is that it seems gang members who are now middle-aged have seen their errors and are trying to portray a better environment for today's youth, but has the gang mentality become too deep-seeded in the neighborhoods? Peralta doesn't have the answers or attempts to act like he does, he lays out the facts in the hope that change can come on the streets as well as making the audience better understand the reasoning behind joining a gang.

In stores this week through Docurama, the disc also includes a making of feature as well as deleted scenes and interviews with gang-friendly rappers Snoop Dogg and Lil Wayne.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 5/17/2009 11:10:00 PM Comments (0)

There comes a time in every star's career when he or she has to come to terms with the fact that they may not be relevant anymore. Most often actors don't have to come to this career roadblock as quickly as actresses because, frankly, it's a sad fact no one wants to write roles for a 30-plus women, though they have no trouble finding roles men that age -- except if they are action stars.

In the time Jean-Claude Van Damme was roundhouse kicking his way into the worshiping teens in the 90s he was as big a box office draw as Stallone, Schwarzenegger or Willis. But since then half of that quartet moved on (Willis to dramas like The Sixth Sense; Schwarzenegger to politics) while Stallone tried dramas (Copland) and failed which led to him to go back to the action thing (for better or worse) and resurrect his iconic characters Rocky and Rambo. Though for Van Damme drugs and personal problems dropped him off the Hollywood map and onto direct-to-DVD titles or films that only play in Europe or Asia, where he's still a draw.

This forces the now mid-40s Van Damme to assess his relevancy and what the Muscles from Brussels concludes is no one likes anything more than a star with a sense of humor.

Mabrouk El Mechri's JCVD is in no way a spoof on Van Damme's career, but instead a study on the world's obsession with celebrity -- those who want to be near it, and those who crave to have it. The film opens with Van Damme being, well, Van Damme. In a beautifully choreographed sequence, he punches, kicks and shoots his way out of insurmountable odds to save the girl. But when the scene is botched by a gaffe by the set department we see how much everyone really cares about being on a Van Damme film when even the director doesn't care what happened. Why does Van Damme go through this abuse? We jump cut to find out he's in a custody battle for his daughter. But his fate his sealed when his daughter takes the stand and says she doesn't want to stay with him because she wants the kids at school to stop making fun of her.

With an agent who doesn't take him seriously anymore and lawyer fees he can't pay, Van Damme returns to Brusels to clear his head and plan his next move. But when he's caught in the middle of a bank heist he's once again thrust into the spotlight.

The plot surrounding the heist and eventual standoff is contrived, but that doesn't really matter, it serves its purpose to thrust us into the mind of a former star still hungry to be back on top. Mechri sprinkles in funny one-liners and a running gag about Steven Seagal taking all Van Damme's roles throughout the film but it's Van Damme's touching performance that is the most memorable. The highlight is his monologue towards the end of the film. Sitting in a chair in a dazed state the camera follows him as he seems to float towards the ceiling and finally settles up in the rafters exposing the set lights. Looking directly at the camera he talks about the highs and lows in his career, breaking down into tears mid way through.

Like the film, it has to be seen to be believed.

DVD on sale this week through Peach Arch Home Entertainment.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 4/27/2009 05:18:00 PM Comments (0)

What most fascinated me about this adaptation of Philip Roth's short novel, The Dying Animal, is that it's directed by a woman, Spanish director Isabel Coixet. As Roth is known best for his semi-autobiographical male centered stories with promiscuous themes, Coixet puts a refreshing twist on the womanizing David Kepesh character -- who also appears in two other Roth novels, The Breast and The Professor of Desire.

Not as well recognized as Roth's other main protagonist, Nathan Zuckerman, Kepesh is a literature professor who has never had a problem attracting the opposite sex and often times is wooing more than one at a time. In Elegy (meaning a poem of mourning) Ben Kingsley plays Kepesh with equal stoic confidence and debilitating vulnerability.

A man who is going through the motions as a professor at Columbia as well as with his steady fling (Patricia Clarkson), when the beautiful Consuela (Penélope Cruz) enrolls in his class Kepesh is rejuvenated by her youthful (she's supposed to me in her 20s) curiosity of life while at the same time growing a pretty wicked obsession to her. (At one point he follows her and her date to the opera and hangs outside like a sad puppy dog. You get the impression Kepesh twenty years earlier would not have pulled a stunt like that.)

Coixet incorporates some beautiful shots in a film where there's not that much going on. If Kepesh and Consuela are not at his place having deep discussions (or sex), then Kepesh is with his married poet buddy George (Dennis Hopper in one of his better performances in recent memory) who eats up all his friend's juicy stories. There's also the subplot of Kepesh's troubling relationship with his son (Peter Sarsgaard). This here in lies the real man we're following -- one who wants to be young forever with no responsibilities; or any that he can't toss away at a moment's notice.

But who really holds the film together is Cruz. Though she deservedly won the Oscar for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, this is the film that gave her the greatest challenge this past year and is one of her best English speaking performance to date. In the scene following Kepesh's attempt to take the next step in their relationship and meet Consuela's family only to be paralyzed with fear and never show up, Consuela leaves a heart wrenching voicemail on Kepesh's machine. Only seeing his reaction to Consuela's voice on the machine, he crumbles before our eyes as Consuela's vocal daggers stick into him. This is certainly a scene Cruz would not have been confident to pull off a few years ago.

The film is on sale starting today through Sony Pictures, unfortunately special features are non-existent on the disk.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 3/17/2009 12:00:00 AM Comments (0)

Nominated for Best Foreign Film and Best Actress for Kristin Scott Thomas at this year's Golden Globes, Philippe Claudel's debut feature stars Scott Thomas as Juliette, who's recently been released from prison where she's spent the last 15 years for killing her son and now reluctantly begins to rebuild her relationship with her family after her younger sister, Léa (Elsa Zylberstein), volunteers to take her in.

A tender story about redemption and forgiveness, Scott Thomas delivers one of the best performances of her career as a woman jaded by her past but slowly finds that she can make up for it by being a good aunt to Léa's daughters. Lea also must come to terms with the reemergence of her sister, who her parents forced her to forget while growing up and has caused her with a fear of giving birth (her daughters are adopted).

Claudel keeps the camera still and lets the actors tell the story, especially Scott Thomas, who we see transform from a cold ex-convict to a middle-aged woman with hope of a new life through the people who care about her. Though on a sidenote, it is strange to hear Scott Thomas speak in French, seeing she's so well known in her native U.K.

Sony Pictures Classics releases the film on DVD today. Outside of deleted scenes there isn't much in the disc's special features.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 3/03/2009 09:50:00 PM Comments (0)

Unavailable for at least two decades, Eagle Pennell's landmark film has been lost in the conversation of influential American independent films. But with its low-budget filming, engaging yet hapless characters and Pennell's semi-doc handheld shooting of Central Texas, The Whole Shootin' Match is a precursor to almost any indie made today.

The film, shot on B&W 16mm, follows two slacker cowboys who spend their time chasing women and getting drunk while trying to cook up get-rich-quick schemes.

Legend has it when Pennell screened the film at the U.S. Film Festival in 1978, where it won the Audience Award, Robert Redford was so taken by what he saw he founded the Sundance Institute, which then took over the festival, renamed it and, well, you know the rest.

New Line Cinema distributed The Whole Shootin' Match, but unsurprisingly the film didn't do much business in 1979 and was soon forgotten while Pennell dug himself deeper into drugs and alcohol and eventually died penniless in 2002. But what Pennell left behind is a masterwork in low-budget, regional filmmaking. A good ol' boy version of Cassavetes, his influence can be found in films as varying as Return of the Secaucus Seven to Dazed and Confused and countless others.

Watchmaker Films has restored the film from one of the few existing prints in a beautiful package that includes a 48-page booklet with essays on the film and its creator, a bonus soundtrack disc of the film's twangy score by Eagle's brother, Chuck Pinnell, and a documentary on Eagle.

The DVD goes on sale Tuesday. It's certainly a must own.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 2/22/2009 12:23:00 AM Comments (0)

Oliver Stone is no stranger to mixing presidents and controversy, so his look at the 43rd president in his latest film, W., comes to no one as a surprise.

But unlike JFK or Nixon, decades have not passed in Stone's look at George W. Bush. As time has judged the actions and events depicted in those films long before Stone made them, the wealth of information on Bush's decisions in office and our addiction to have everything instantly has lead to the making of a film that was released while its subject was still in office, and is probably its biggest flaw.

W. is in no way as stylized or provoking as Stone's earlier work (neither have returned to his films since 1999's Any Given Sunday), but with a tour-de-force performance by Josh Brolin as Bush Jr., Stone has arguably created one of his most engaging characters. A study of an underachiever who through tenacity (and a little help from the family name) reaches the heights no one every thought he could achieve, Brolin gives Bush an every-man likability (he is either eating or drinking in almost every scene, showing him as a common man) as opposed to his portrayal in the public-eye as a bully. Brolin is also able to play him convincingly from college to president.

Stone hits all the major moments in Bush's presidency (even some small ones, like the pretzel incident) but what's most engaging is not the heated discussions leading up to the Iraq War -- where Stone portrays Jeffrey Wright's Colin Powell as the voice of reason and Richard Dreyfuss's Dick Cheney as the tyrannical war hawk out to stamp the U.S. as the lone superpower -- but Bush's alcohol-fulled past, that's filled with stints in lock up, falling in and out of jobs and his emotional conflict with his father.

Bush's obsession with his father (played by James Cromwell) is the main interest for Stone. Bush Sr. has his middle son, Jeb, primed for the presidency, leaving George, the black sheep in the family, bitter and determined to make something of his life. (Similar in some ways to the Kennedy family.) Stone surmises this as the reason for Bush's blind stubbornness to go to Iraq -- to win the war his father couldn't and to get the man (Saddam Hussein) his father didn't.

Though there is a filmmaker's research and annotations guide in the special features, in the director commentary Stone admits that some of the events depicted in the film didn't happen exactly the way they are shown. He also simplified and condensed many of the key scenes. Regardless of the poetic license (which isn't new to Stone), the director puts the film best in the commentary during the closing credits: "It's got a feel for Bush, it may not be the real George Bush -- who knows who he is -- but it feels like him."

The W. DVD hits stores today through Lionsgate.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 2/03/2009 10:07:00 PM Comments (0)

On Feb. 20, 2005 the grandfather of Gonzo journalism, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, was walking around his snow covered compound in Woody Creek, Colorado when he decided to point the gun he was carrying to his head and pull the trigger. For a man who lived his life with a glass of Wild Turkey in one hand and a hand gun in the other it was a fitting end. Now doc filmmaker Alex Gibney recounts Thompson's roller-coaster life and how his intoxicating prose changed journalism forever with Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.

Blessed with volumes of letters, photos, tape recordings and videos from the Thompson estate, Gibney holds nothing back as he pieces together Dr. Gonzo's life with the help of Johnny Depp's narration and colorful interviews from people who crossed Thompson's path like Jann Wenner, George McGovern, Jimmy Buffett and Tom Wolfe. Though some of the material covered is repetitive from earlier docs on Thompson's life, Gibney's attention to detail weaves a moving story that is as much enlightening as it is funny.

Some of the most entertaining and revealing footage is from a BBC doc that can be found in its entirety on the Criterion Collection's disc of Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Shot in the mid '70s at the height of Thompson's fame we find him tucked away at Woody Creek shooting and snorting. But at a moment of clarity Thompson reveals his disdain for what he's become: a journalist whose gone from covering the story to becoming it. A theme that Gibney weaves throughout the film.

With the success of Hell's Angeles, his expose on the world of the biker gang which ended with them jumping him, followed by his seminal book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where the drawings of Ralph Steadman heighten the bizarre "trip," Thompson becomes a star journalist and Gibney shows Thompson can't handle it as he has to live up to his alter ego from Fear and Loathing, Raoul Duke, ending many relationships, including his first marriage.

When Rolling Stone puts him on the '72 campaign trail he disassembles political coverage and puts in his gonzo traits by starting rumors that get picked up on the wire and becomes a fixture for the candidates interested in getting the youth vote. But by the time he goes out to cover the Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire in '74 he's lost the fire and hits rock bottom. Floating in a pool with no sense of reality during the climax of one of the greatest fights in history, he returns home with no story.

The third act of the film is Thompson's revival of sorts in the mainstream as a new generation discovers his work, but without that drive he had in the '70s the ride isn't that strange and wonderful anymore and he takes his own life. Gibney lets the facts tell the story and never tries to romanticize or put a poetic twist on it, in many ways Thompson has done that for him.

The good doctor states it best in Hell's Angles:

"The Edge... the only people who know where it is are the ones who've gone over."

On sale now through Magnolia Home Entertainment.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 11/30/2008 03:05:00 PM Comments (1)

An intimate portrait of a pair of friends' struggle to get by in a post-9/11 New York, Ilya Chaiken's sophomore effort (her previous feature was Margarita Happy Hour) has an authentic feel of urban life and an impressive story arch that surpasses its low-budget expectations.

The film opens with Derrick (Al Thompson) and Tico (Kareem Saviñon) working on Liberty Island during the day and partying up at night. Though Derrick is more goal oriented than Tico, they both are stuck in the same rut when the Towers come down as they lose their jobs and struggle to find work. Though Derrick continues to stay optimistic about his goal to get out of Brooklyn and go to college, cash is running out and having to provide for his twins he teams with Tico to deal drugs.

The petty drug dealing angle soon runs out and when they get involved in other shady schemes for money the two part ways when Derrick goes to war and Tico goes to prison.

This is often where films in the urban drama genre end, with a message of the streets eating its youth, but Chaiken goes a step further with a surprising third act where the focus is put on Tico, who tries to reunite with Derrick, now back from Iraq with a thousand yard stare and stern outlook on life.

With top notch performances by its leads, especially Thompson who is a raw talent that deserves a break, Chaiken creates a deeply poignant film that leaves a lasting impression.

Out this week on DVD by Kino, features include audio commentary by Chaiken, Thompson and Saviñon, deleted scenes and conversations with Iraq War vets.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 11/10/2008 07:49:00 PM Comments (0)