The Nation's News

NoA Review: The Swell Season

Elliot V. Kotek — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 20:59:23 GMT

"The Swell Season"

Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek for Paste Magazine

Directed by: Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins, Carlo Mirabella-Davis

Cinematographer: Chris Dapkins

Stars: Glen Hansard, Marketa Irglova, Hansard & Irgl families, Sam Beam

Anyone who's been knocked backwards by the movie/musical "Once" will once again be torn apart emotionally by "The Swell Season" documentary finding its way into U.S theaters this October.

Influenced, no doubt, by the pure ability of the original Sundance hit to strike at the heart strings, audience members will rejoice in the soul-burning effect that "The Swell Season" delivers. Filmed over three years, and mostly post their Oscars glory, the documentary follows Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova on tour, providing backstory to the album and film that made them famous, chronicling their struggles with the concept of fame, and simultaneously bearing (publicly) the intensifying-then-cooling of the embers of their own personal relationship.

With a deft hand that's as much a blessing as a potential point to critique, the documentary delves into this two-some as they come into and out of the camera's eye. While that offers us unique insight into the claustrophobia of their success, which has locked the duo together from the moment their music matched them up and through the requisite touring of an acclaimed album, the closeness with which they're captured distances the audience from the context of the world at large. "The Swell Season" is therefore removed from the happenings of their peers, separated from the news of the world, and bare of commentary from outside the life, love and lyrics of these two musicians in our goldfish bowl and their immediate surrounds.

Ultimately, the doc is as intimate a portrait of a band-slash-couple as any top notch biopic. With apt clarity, the film's three directors celebrate their subjects' story in crisp black & white, automatically rendering the piece as somehow timeless and somewhat classic, a fitting choice with which to tribute the deeply sincere, era-free storytelling nature of this music.

NoA Top Tip: Microcinema's Arts DVDs on Sale

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:46:24 GMT

One of the NoA's favorite purveyors of taste and culture, Microcinema International, has a slate of DVDs on sale.

Including titles about painter Alex Katz, video artist Mounir Fatmi, architect Jean Nouvel, and offering films covering the Chinese contemporary art scene and, separately, the art of printmaking, Microcinema (and its competitor, New Video Group) have carved out an identity as important curators of moving images about artists, as relevant and vital as publishers like Taschen are to the print-based record.

To check out the sale items, many up to 80% off, and with free shipping on U.S. orders over $100, CLICK HERE

NoA Exhibition: Sasha Krivtsov at Merry Karnowsky Gallery

Elliot V. Kotek — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 01:53:00 GMT

Searing in both scope and substance, Sasha Krivtsov's exhibition at Merry Karnowsky's gallery on La Brea Ave was a welcome surprise from the everyday melange of offerings that fail to wow on a weekly basis.

Entering the gallery, one couldn't help but be struck by how impressive the range of work, a retrospective of sorts, was poised to strike the viewer, engaging its audience with the blanketing sense that one had entered a dangerous place, a central confluence of mystery and myth. While the work seemed to be suggestive, at times, of key Spanish, Colombian and Eastern European influences, and in other moments indicative of the Italian mask-making traditions associated with Venice, Krivtsov's variety of canvas choices, and his contemporary utilization of marker pens alongside oils and acrylics, stamps the pieces with stern originality and drama.

More known for his work as a bass guitarist (for Cher, Kiss's Paul Stanley, and on a variety of television shows), Krivtsov's personal tale is the stuff of legend, having been sent off to an institution as a youngster in the then Soviet Union as punishment for expressing himself as an artist, only to learn music and excel in that discipline.

Many of the works have political undertones, including the use of red blindfolds, washes of blood-like inks, as well as the integration of religious and spiritual ideas posed stirringly as mathematical equations.

If there is a rhythm to the work it is that of a soft haunting, a quiet uprising. Named "Silent Dialogues," here's hoping the work's strength enables others to speak loudly on its behalf, and that it shows again soon so that the NoA audience can discover the artist's work in its full impression.

NoA Film Review: Touch

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:34:00 GMT

First printed at www.movingpicturesnetwork.com

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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(June 2011, screening at the 2011 Seattle International Film Festival)

Directed/Written by: Minh Duc Nguyen
Starring: Porter Lynn, John Ruby, Melinda Bennett and Long Nguyen

With a deft piece of editing, the opening montage of “Touch” delivers a promise that, despite a no-name cast and filmmaker, we’re in for something special about a very specific community.

A light comedy painted with brushstrokes of both drama and humor, the film’s core is constituted by Tam (Porter Lynn), a quiet nail technician who is a magician at bedazzling her client’s fingertips, and Brendan (John Ruby), a male mechanic embarrassed by his grease-stained hands who is seeking help with a condition that has become a point of consternation for his wife. From moment one of Brendan’s meeting Tam, it’s clear that Tam’s touch and attention, two things clearly missing from his relationship, enchant the first-timer.

With the exception of her work at the salon, Tam’s world is one without intimacy, her routine drowned in familial duties and responsibilities to her wheelchair-bound father. She’s committed to her family, a trait learned through (perhaps unnecessary) flashbacks. Brendan, too, is committed to his marriage and uses his interactions with Tam to glean information with which to pursue his wife despite an ambivalence that would end many a union.

Despite some over-the-top amateur acting in one or two tiny roles, director Minh Duc Nguyen carves out many moments of truth in the nail salon that provides the film’s meeting point. Almost as a Greek chorus, the Vietnamese workers comment on their clients’ stories in their presence, able to disguise their disinterest, disdain and disgust via a barrier of language that, through subtitles, brings the audience inside their community.

The salon and its workers create an environment of riches, a sense of family in which each unit has an individual voice, a trait so often missing at the independent level.

While a co-worker seeks to set Tam up with her nephew, that scenario serves to juxtapose a social awkwardness with the ease of communication developing between Tam and Brendan. The more Tam counsels Brendan on reigniting his marital relationship, the further she is drawn out of her soft-spoken shell.

At 1 hour 45 minutes, the film feels a little drawn out and could be helped by a better score. The music in the film is its weakest element, a strange combination of poppy Vietnamese songs and Spanish guitar instrumentals that hamper the film’s access and add a cheesiness that isn’t present in the leads’ performances.

The film’s cinematography is worthy of its own special credit. Shot with clarity in both lighting and framing, the lensing adds a ton of value to the filmmaker’s low-budget project and is representative of what can be achieved regardless of a film’s financial constraints.

While Ruby provides an honest performance, quiet and interesting in his role as Brendan, Lynn is a revelation as Tam, exuding a confidence and bravery that showcase her talent in a way that should be exploited for further successes. Director Nguyen has delivered a find worthy of the festival circuit and, with some minor adjustments in his pacing and music choices, should definitely be added to your “someone to watch” list.

Photo: John Ruby and Porter Lynn “Touch”; photo © A Gray Picture

NoA Film Review: Just Like Us

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:31:06 GMT

First printed at www.movingpicturesnetwork.com

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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(June 2011)

Directed by: Ahmed Ahmed
Starring: Ahmed Ahmed and the Ahmed Family, Omid Djalili, Khalid Khalifa, Peter Howarth-Lees, Lubna Hussein, Whitney Cummings, Tommy Davidson and Tom Papa

Exploring the image of Americans belonging to the Islamic faith, Ahmed Ahmed, an Egyptian-American comedian, utilizes the words of Barack Obama interspersed with person-on-the-street interviews to open his documentary before presenting us with his stand-up comedy tour of the Middle East.

Addressing issues of “Arab” vs. “Muslim,” the concept behind the film is that through comedy (mainly self-deprecating or self-aware commentary), comedians can enable others to laugh at the experiences proffered and through that laughter realize these Muslim comics, and Muslims generally, are “just like us.”

With one sweep, Ahmed and company provide evidence that indeed he and his contemporaries are much more like us than extremists, but at the same moment, their awareness of how privileged their position is, and how fragile and rare their tour is, is simultaneously prescient by extension, acknowledging somehow that the nonsecular, more religious and fundamentalist Muslims can not be said to be similarly accepting.

Based on the belief that “if we laugh at ourselves, the rest of the world will laugh with us,” Ahmed takes his brand of diplomacy on a loose tour of the Middle East. Beginning in Dubai, the comedians immediately censor swear words from their sets under the very real threat of being banned from performing, despite their presence in the most progressive part of the region.

In Beirut, another place where rules are broken and drinks run freely, the culture welcomes nightclubs and social media, and T-shirts echo the motto of Las Vegas. Despite the claims, the comedy is delivered in the midst of bombed-out buildings, tanks on the streets and other constant reminders of conflict and hostility.

Saudi Arabia follows, ironically a place without cinema but embracing this comedy performance, and then Egypt, reuniting Ahmed with members of his extended family.

“Just Like Us” certainly provides the right look at a region undergoing change. Of course, the people open to attending a comedy event in the Middle East are already committing to having a rare (or completely new) experience, and thus already represent the most open-minded individuals of the area. Could they have traveled to less receptive parts of the Middle Eastern map? Syria? Yemen? Libya? Iraq? What would have been the risks? What the rewards? What would the reception to their material have been like in Israel?

While questions beget more questions, the hope, like Ahmed’s mission, is that comedy and the public questioning of seriousness and ego that comedy enables becomes the norm rather than a rarity, and that the laughter breeds some levity in a location in which reality is often a little too “real.”

Photo: Ahmed Ahmed performs in Egypt in “Just Like Us’; photo courtesy Cross Cultural Productions

NoA Film Review: To Be Heard

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:28:47 GMT

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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(from the 2011 Seattle International Film Festival)

Directed by: Roland Legiardi-Laura, Edwin Martinez, Deborah Shaffer and Amy Sultan
Featuring: Anthony Pittman, Karina Sanchez, Pearl Quick, Roland Legiardi-Laura and Amy Sultan

“To Be Heard” introduces us to three high-school-age New York City poets battling adolescence and their societal situations, each of whom finds solace and strength in the spoken word taught by a program called Power Writers.

The South Bronx trio of teens — Karina, Anthony and Pearl — take the directors and their cameras into their neighborhoods, and into their loves and fears, resulting in a sharing of four years of their lives with the audience. “To Be Heard” amounts not only to an introduction into an important educational and experiential program, but to an experience in viewing at-risk youth graduate in close-up as they tackle their hopes and dreams, their realities and socio-economic confines.

Sometimes bearing witness to one’s own life as it continues to cultivate with the presence of a camera burdens the individual with the external pressures of having something to prove and a fictional someone to whom to prove it. However, in “To Be Heard,” it never seems that the filmmakers are challenging their subjects with the threat of the permanence of footage.

The filmmakers, though, are more than just filmmakers. Legiardi-Laura is one of the directors of a New York institution, The Nuyorican Poets Café, and runs the Power Writers program with co-director Amy Sultan. The devotion of these filmmakers, mentors in front of and behind the cameras, provides a ballast point with which the audience can find their own emotions cresting and coasting. Of the two other directors credited on the film, Shaffer has earned props over the years directing Cannes, Sundance and New York Film Festival documentary titles, and “To Be Heard” represents Martinez’s first feature-length documentary.

The verite style of the filmmaking refuses to massage the footage and over time reveals the subjects’ true realities, egos, compulsions and confidences. The considerable devotion of time to these talented children living on the fringes of surefootedness and fragility translates to the filmmakers capturing true moments of maddening uncertainty.

As we bear witness to three lives paused from progressing to their potential, then unleashed and bound and set free and conquered and vanquished and vindicated, our hearts, too, feel the power.

For more information on the film and the Power Writers Program, visit www.powerpoetry.org

Photo: Pearl Quick’s bedroom wall — quotes and fears — in “To Be Heard”; photo courtesy the Seattle International Film Festival

NoA Film Review: Hot Coffee

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:25:59 GMT

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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(from the 2011 Seattle International Film Festival)

Directed by: Susan Saladoff
Featuring: Jamie Leigh Jones, Connor Gourley, Colin Gourley, Al Franken and Oliver Diaz

Expertly edited by Cindy Lee with slick visuals by Brian Oakes, “Hot Coffee” is so good that it’s difficult to believe it was helmed by a first-time filmmaker. Executive producer Sheila Nevins and the HBO hierarchy usually have enough on their own production and development plates, but it’s no surprise that they picked up this provocative and potentially game-changing documentary; one would also not be surprised to see this film continue on its way into end-of-season awards discussions.

Like “GasLand,” “The Last Mountain” and “Inside Job,” “Hot Coffee” will knock you backward and change your perception of what you thought you knew. The film tackles the corporate demolition of this country’s civil rights system and the constitutional pretzel-twisting taking place to favor big business over those the system is supposed to protect.

Stepping off with a scene from that episode of “Seinfeld” in which Kramer spills hot coffee down his pants and sues for punitive damages, director Susan Saladoff uses the well-known but little understood case brought by Stella Liebeck against McDonald’s in 1994 and illuminates the marketing machine that followed, transforming that lawsuit into the definitive case cited as evidence of “jackpot justice” and “frivolous lawsuits.” Setting the record straight, Saladoff confronts our recollections of the case and ensures we understand the facts that transpired rather than the commonly referenced fictions we’ve accepted into lore.

Did you know, for instance, that there had been more than 700 other cases of burns from hot coffee reported to the restaurant? Did you ever see the pictures of the heinous burns the victim suffered and the skin grafts necessary to address the damage?

Despite the name of the film, Saladoff presents a series of clear cases that illustrate the dire state of affairs relating to the rights of civilians in their battle for fairness against global corporate entities for whom the rules seem no longer to apply.

Saladoff, a former attorney herself, also introduces us to the seemingly soulless corporate and political media masterminds whose efforts include spinning case details, lobbying for the appointment of commerce-friendly judges to the benches of state supreme courts and courts of appeal, and advocating for damages caps and “tort reform,” all of which affect true justice for longer than any case being litigated.

Once the pinnacle of a forum in which a lone individual was able to bring his or her case against the biggest entities on the planet, the system is now so heavily stacked against consumers and commoners at both the contract and court levels that our best hope seems tied to a documentary that could lead to a demand for change, a demand for transparency, a demand for regulation and responsibility.

Without wanting to give away too many of the specifics of what you’ll learn when you see this documentary, all we can do is implore you, conservatives and liberals alike, to approach the information being presented with a fair and open mind. “Hot Coffee” and its related subjects affect each and every one of us in the United States in both places where it hurts, our pockets and our hearts.

“Hot Coffee” is one of the most important documentaries you’ll ever see. It will change your day irreversibly.

“Hot Coffee” airs on HBO on June 27, 2011. For local screening times visit http://hotcoffeethemovie.com/

Photo courtesy the Seattle International Film Festival

NoA Film Review: The Yellow Sea (Los Angeles Film Festival)

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:10:45 GMT

First printed at www.movingpicturesnetwork.com

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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(June 2011, from the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival)

Directed/Written by: Na Hong-jin
Starring: Ha Jung-woo, Kim Yun-seok and Cho Seong-ha

“The Yellow Sea” is a seriously exciting film, a pulse-checking visceral experience that will have you questioning when, if ever, you saw car chases and butchering skills quite this inventive.

The title of the film doesn’t do the picture justice; despite its relevance — signifying the divide between China and Korea that must be crossed by many in hope of a Western-world future — the words themselves are suggestive of a quiet epic.

“The Yellow Sea” takes you by the hand into the life of Ha Jung-woo’s Gu-nam cab-driving character, a man who has lost his wife to the West, carelessly gambles away any chance of a decent existence and has delivered his future (in the form of his daughter) to a family member with whom he has little contact. His is a lonely world occupied by inner demons and a creative dream-state, and the helmer skillfully ushers you into his predicament, a strategy that serves him well when the plot ignites.

Gu-nam is offered freedom from his debts, a chance to start over, in exchange for passage to Korea where he is to assassinate an underworld figure and return with the victim’s finger. The incentive is two-fold: a new start and a chance to look for a wife he assumes has left him behind.

When another group of hit men become involved, a series of events unfolds that transforms the hunter into the hunted, and that’s where we’ll leave you to experience the significant plot twists for yourself. Save to say that the adrenaline rush is expertly balanced with enough moments of hope and sanity to enable the director to then plunge you back from whence you came.

If Ha’s Gu-nam is an unlikely hero, the smorgasbord of villains, too, is intriguing, with personalities worthy of their status and different enough from each other as to ensure the audience is kept on their toes. Kim Yun-seok as Myun is a fierce revelation.

The enemy of my enemy might be a friend for the sake of proverb, but in writer-director Na Hong-jin’s world of human trafficking and people-smuggling, no one can really ever be trusted. The exciting thing about “The Yellow Sea” is that for all its heart-stopping adrenaline, the director has ensured we have someone for whom we care, someone for whom, for a shade over two hours, we want to see survive. That in his second film a Korean director not only succeeds in delivering this multitude of layers within a big-budget action thriller but also gets Fox International to invest is evidence of the belief in his talents.

With a score that reverberates through your skin, “The Yellow Sea” inspired this reviewer to relive the rush experienced when he first saw Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Amores Perros” and, somehow, Jim Jarmusch’s “Night on Earth.” In the follow-up to his promising debut feature “The Chaser,” Na has graduated from promising to powerful.

NoA Film Review: Unraveled (Los Angeles Film Festival)

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:09:07 GMT

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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(June 2011, screening at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival)

Directed by: Marc H. Simon
Featuring: Mark S. Dreier, Gerald L. Shargel and Ross M. Kramer

While the media were busy dissecting the biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S. corporate history courtesy of Bernie Madoff, others around the country were also flouting (and allegedly flouting) the system and breaching (and allegedly breaching) their duties to their clients.

“Unraveled” reveals the lesser-known case against Mark Dreier, an attorney and “philanthropist” charged with wire fraud, money laundering and other charges. In what amounts to a fascinating study of greed and motivation told from within an intimate series of exchanges, director Marc Simon allows Dreier to share his account of the events that transpired.

Slick graphic-novel style animations introduce us to Dreier as a man in a position to deal in hundreds of millions of dollars, a man confident in his ability to deliver what would otherwise be life-changing sums of money from one hand to another and back again, and to question what we would do if we sat in a place that wielded and yielded that level of power and responsibility.

Accusing Dreier of masterminding a fraud involving hundreds of million of dollars by selling fake securities, prosecutors requested a sentence of 145 years in prison. Following his guilty plea, Simon filmed Dreier during the 60-day house-arrest period in which he awaited sentencing, offering indelible insight into the life and mind of this once-wealthy and seemingly successful individual.

Listening to Dreier’s admissions as he sits in an incredible loft apartment overlooking the city and seeing footage of his celebrating excess in a life alongside professional footballers while building a law firm with his name only on the door, the viewer is brought along on Dreier’s illicit, illegally fueled ride that ended in disaster.

Despite the inherent isolation of his house arrest, any empathy is decimated by the insight that his former employees might be without jobs still, that his son is still living large and able to rent a summer house in the Hamptons, and that his concerns extend to what he can and cannot eat in prison, whether his potential fellow inmates snore and to showing off his competence at “Jeopardy.”

While Dreier tries to explain the need he felt to perpetrate his actions, he also seems to suggest that he has done this thing to himself and, by omission, not to others — remorse for his actions doesn’t appear to be on the criminal’s agenda.

Madoff’s sentence of 150 years in prison is delivered during Dreier’s waiting game, and we are confronted with a sense of whether this individual is or was ever as bad. One thing we know for sure is that it won’t be Dreier’s name with which “Ponzi” will be forever associated.

That Simon provides a singular focus on the story without integrating interviews with any of the victims, case lawyers, employees or charities with whom Dreier had dealt, and without any input from Dreier’s family other than a son who feigns a lack of knowledge of the details of his father’s wrongdoings, the documentary must be considered one-dimensional. Still, the footage captured enables the viewer to listen to Dreier’s reasoning, to see him in a light other than side-by-side with the statistics for which he’s known, and to exact judgment and apportion opinion, all of which creates a compelling viewing experience.

Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Film Festival

NoA Film Review: The Destiny of Lesser Animals

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:06:29 GMT

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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(from the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival)

Directed by: Deron Albright
Written by: Yao B. Nunoo
Starring: Yao B. Nunoo, Fred Amugi, Abena Takyi and Sandy Arkhurst

Aaron Bowen’s cinematography and actor Yao B. Nunoo’s dramatic change in hairstyle immediately render in the audience the feeling of watching a dreamer lost. The film’s writer and star soulfully portrays Boniface, a member of Ghana’s police force who seeks to (but is denied the opportunity to) return to an America about which he’s fantasized since his youthful voyage there a decade earlier. As a result, this is a man compelled by circumstance to use his connections in law enforcement to acquire a fraudulent visa to his land of opportunity.

Within a minute, however, Boniface’s bag is stolen from him, its theft transforming the officer into a committed force for whom the lines of right and wrong are all but disappearing. Boniface’s Ghana is a picture of corruption, where one is forced to part with cash to incentivize adults and to dole out candy to extract information from children. Reminded by his uncle that “a leopard’s destiny is different from that of lesser animals,” Boniface is faced with contemplating his position in the world (his colleagues also refer to him as a mere “dog”).

From one city of Ghana to another, and from one group of disparate dwellings to a larger city swept up in forgeries of all manner, the screenwriter attributes to his terrain the corrupt bent with which the continent is often tainted. Still, the city of Accra isn’t portrayed in darkness; rather, the film invokes an honest sentiment by dealing with crime in the blinding light of day.

“Destiny” is burdened with, but not besieged by, some contrivances in the film’s plotline and dialogue but is otherwise blessed by its filming on location in Ghana free from the sterility of big-budget set dressing. Having an insider pen the script also bears fruit with more than one shared moment of political clarity.

Boniface is haunted by flashbacks to life as a cab driver in New York City, and the most interesting thematic conversation in the film is its concept of home. For many outside big cities, as for many outside Western countries, ambition means leaving one’s birthplace to explore the well-marketed opportunities elsewhere. For an individual to consider committing to a city run by, or overrun with, those of lesser aspirations, a battle must be waged.

Both Nunoo and first-time feature director Deron Albright reveal, with a thoughtful sensitivity, that freedom and peace are not just political constructs but personal ones also. “The Destiny of Lesser Animals” subtly and successfully suggests that we must consider where our real home lies.

Photo courtesy the Los Angeles Film Festival

NoA Film Review: Somewhere Between (Los Angeles Film Festival)

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:04:29 GMT

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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(June 2011, screening at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival)

Directed by: Linda Goldstein Knowlton
Featuring: Jenna Cook, Haley Butler, Ann Boccuti, Fang “Jenni” Lee, Run Yi Holle and Jeannie Butler

When groups of parents-to-be descend on a Chinese adoption center in Changsha, China, at center frame is an American couple “receiving” their 10-month-old infant Ruby.

Welcome to the filmmaker/mom’s new world.

For three years prior to welcoming Ruby into her family, Linda Goldstein Knowlton filmed four teenagers across the U.S. to find out how to imbue a sense of belonging, and a sense of heritage and past, to the Chinese baby she was about to adopt.

A few years ago, “The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins” delved into celebrity adoption, following a well-known artist as she descended on Africa and attempted to “rescue” a set of twins from their father and bring them to the U.S. And every other week we see images ofAngelina Jolie and Brad Pitt or Madonna and the multinational broods they’ve adopted from the corners of the earth.

But Goldstein Knowlton leads us down another pathway entirely, logically following China’s one-child policy through to the hundreds of thousands of baby girls discarded into the adoption system and the effect of that system on a few very real people who’ve been adopted into U.S. families, and American culture, across the country.

The girls that Goldstein Knowlton visits in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Tennessee and California each seem blessed with a loving family, a healthy passion for life and positive outlook on adoption. And that is, perhaps, the only problem inherent in this documentary — that it tracks the process when it’s had an outcome that’s worked. It would have provided an interesting dynamic had Goldstein Knowlton found less successful cases with which to contrast her core group of subjects.

“Somewhere Between” follows the adopted girls as they unite through groups such as Global Girls set up specifically for their social interaction, a support group of sorts with whom some of the girls search for their birth stories.

Despite whatever abandonment issues the children might address, and despite any sense that they were ever viewed as a mistake, Goldstein Knowlton has found a group of girls (and adoptive parents) with an indelible strength, including the strength to share honestly about their struggles and successes. “Somewhere Between” is overflowing with warmth and acceptance, its positivity a tear-inducing respite from the many gut-wrenching exposés inherent in the documentary landscape.

Educational in substance, and bearing tender emotional resonance, “Somewhere Between” will no doubt provide valuable insight to many currently experiencing or contemplating cross-border adoption.

Photo courtesy Los Angeles Film Festival

NoA Film Review: Cheonggyecheon Medley: A Dream of Iron (Los Angeles Film Festival)

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:01:35 GMT

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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(June 2011, screening at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival)

Directed by: Kelvin Kyung Kun Park

With the grind of metal and arbitrary piano keystrokes, we’re thrust into an experimental amalgam of sound and color to accompany the recollection of a dream that could easily be interpreted as a nightmare within Cronenberg’s “Crash.” From this esoteric opening, we’re off to the streets of Korea, escorted by weird sounds, industrial noise and classical violin, and with the medley of music and moving images, we come to realize the nature of the movie, a strange collection of transitioning parts, of daily motion and ritual, an artistic exploration of the mundane exigencies of daily life within Cheonggyecheon’s metal-working classes.

A poetic narration personalizes the piece, which is billed as a letter to director Kelvin Kyung Kun Park’s dead grandfather. What unfolds is a collection of unexplained references to the industrial history of the region and the philosophical and spiritual utility of iron (used, historically, in swords and other instruments). The maze of industrial buzz is contrasted with the stark technological and technical advancements that have led to the homogenization of family metal businesses, and it is this revelation of the morphing cultural and commercial landscape that protects the film’s oddities from dissolving into a mere artistic malaise about a city’s manufacturers.

The mix of images (shot in an outdated 4:3 format) — of people walking through narrow alleys, of workers belting and melting out a range of seemingly random products, of advertisements for iron-casting companies, and of spiritual ceremonies and a metal-eating Godzilla-esque bug — imbues the piece with the suitable aura of a strange karaoke video.

A poetic time capsule capturing the fading essence of an iron-fueled town, “Cheonggyecheon Medley” offers much upon which the viewer is able to chew, most of it tubular and not all of it digestible. Unlike “Manufactured Landscapes,” in which the aesthetic beauty of the repetitive strains of industry are presented as redefined horizons, in Park’s box of images that is “Cheonggyecheon Medley: A Dream of Iron,” we’re not sure what we’re watching and yet we can’t look away.

Photo courtesy the Los Angeles Film Festival

NoA Film Review: Unfinished Spaces (Los Angeles Film Festival)

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 07:59:09 GMT

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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(June 2011, screening at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival)

Directed by: Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray
Featuring: Ricardo Porro, Vittorio Garatti and Roberto Gottardi

Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray’s documentary deposits us into gently undulating art school buildings in Havana, Cuba, that have been abandoned, are desolate and overgrown, and are, most certainly, unfinished. Juxtaposing 1959 footage of Castro overthrowing Batista and other images of the passion and spirit of that revolution with interviews with Cuban artists, “Unfinished Spaces” measures the unrealized potential of the revolution on the art scene and, in particular, the art schools of Cuba.

Castro commissioned the schools with the goal of transforming what was once a bourgeois golf course into a collection of the best art buildings in the world. Given two months to finish the drafting, architects came together with students and unleashed unbridled enthusiasm into expressions of modernism and experimentation borne from necessity (given the embargo on importing materials). With Catalonian vaults and terracotta bricks, the schools inspired thousands to shelve the reservations of their former selves and embrace the buildings as well as the revolution’s early appetite for artistic expression (or internal revolution, perhaps, as one of the architects, Ricardo Porro, explains).

Within little time, however, terrorist outbursts and events such as the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis consumed a state trying to curry favors with its Soviet backers. The violence and the Soviet influences then forming the tenets under which Cuba was ruled were also accompanied by the prefabricated ugliness ordained by the Ministry of Construction and divided the practice of architecture along lines of elitism and aestheticism versus practicality and modesty.

The filmmakers comprehensively explore the various military and personal influences that led to discipline being instituted at the school, to gay students being expelled and, eventually, to the stoppage of any “nonproductive construction,” which mandated that the arts buildings be abandoned. As a documentary about a place and space, the directors do well to reveal the inner exigencies of life under the Cuban revolution’s famed and infamous leaders and present an inherently watchable insight into both the personalities and the changing politics of the region in the late 1950s and through the 1960s.

While the story may have ended with the abandonment of construction, the art schools have been picked up as a cause by a variety of advocates over the years, and while students returned in the 1980s and disregarded/accepted the dereliction, the collapse of the Soviet Empire sucked the support out of Cuba’s economy. Alternately used as places of education and squatters’ housing, and stripped for materials then restored and stripped again, the structures have integrated themselves into the region as works of art and architecture of note. That they could also be seen as being representative of the collective experiences of the Cuban populace over time is undeniable.

Despite the title, “Unfinished Spaces” is no doubt only a record of the initial chapters of this property’s life.

Photo courtesy Los Angeles Film Festival

NoA Film Review: An Ordinary Family (Los Angeles Film Festival)

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 07:57:23 GMT

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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(June 2011, screening at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival)

Directed by: Mike Akel
Written by: Mike Akel and Matt Patterson
Starring: Troy Schremmer, Greg Wise, Janelle Schremmer, Chad Miller, Steven Schaefer, Megan Minto and Lauire Coker

With the tagline “A week of vacation. A lifetime to unpack,” “An Ordinary Family” is shaken up when Seth (Greg Wise) decides that the family reunion is the time to introduce his boyfriend to his Christian family, the majority of whom not only don’t know about his significant other but are in some denial about his homosexuality. Portrayed with wonderful realism and shot with fly-on-the-wall measure, the vacation home provides physical confines within which each of the family members must accept or challenge their predispositions and prejudices.

While Chris (Steven Schaefer) and his wife (Seth’s sister) Sharon (Megan Minto) provide comic relief, Seth’s brother Thomas (Troy Schremmer) is defined by his position in the church — as a pastor, Thomas is protective of the manner and extent to which his brother’s relationship is represented to his children and is unsure of how to communicate with Seth. With Thomas’ wife Mattie (Janelle Schremmer) on the side of openness and affection, a stalwart mother who provides unconditional love to all via ordinary gestures, the brothers are forced to find each other on the other side of fear.

There’s prettiness to David Blue Garcia’s cinematography, especially when he moves the camera outside, that imbues the film with endearing warmth. And director Mike Akel’s pacing shows a confidence that refuses to push the story or the agenda ahead of its right time. As a result, “An Ordinary Family” has an undeniable beauty that should succeed in touching everyone with whom it comes into contact.

Photo courtesy Los Angeles Film Festival

NoA Film Review: Renée (Los Angeles Film Festival)

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 07:54:46 GMT

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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(June 2011, screening at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival)

Directed by: Eric Drath
Featuring: Renée Richards, Martina Navratilova, John McEnroe, Barbara Krohn, Nicholas Raskind, Bud Collins, Mary Carillo, Billie Jean King and Virginia Wade

For those familiar with the tennis legacy of Renée Richards (even if only as an answer to a Trivial Pursuit question), Eric Drath’s ESPN Films documentary serves up (no pun intended) an engrossing documentary. Richards’ efforts as a male, then as a professional female tennis player deserve to be more widely known, and the transsexual’s exploits on and off the court in the late 1970s must be considered in any assessment of public pioneers for the LGBT cause.

Born Richard Raskind in 1934, the Yale athlete and medical-school graduate seemed to have everything going for him as a surgeon and first-class amateur tennis player. That he felt compelled to embrace his calling to become Renée even after committing himself to a marriage that yielded a son is itself an interesting transformation. And his determination to play tennis at its highest level, as a female, under the intense public scrutiny to which professional sportspeople are subjected, is tantalizing — and fascinating regardless of personal opinion.

Former girlfriends, current friends and family members all contribute their recollections, adding a depth of perspective to the metamorphosis and its effect on the person and the sport of tennis. Richards’ own ability to contemplate, on camera, both her sexual status and compulsion, as well as her eventual position within society’s strata, is defined by a quiet, difficult dignity. The most significant insight into the cost of the choices made by Richards, however, is the open exploration of Richards’ tormented relationship with her son Nicholas, to whom her role as father figure and public persona would have been difficult enough even without the scrutiny of the media.

A significant percentage of sports- and trivia-minded individuals of a certain age will never forget Richards’ name and the reason for her fame/infamy, and many with that familiarity will be compelled to view Richards’ state of being today. While Drath seems to lack the charisma and conviction to make this documentary as gripping and personal as those of the master, Bud Greenspan, the lasting effect of “Renée” is undeniable, and the sharing of her story is not only earnest but salient and meaningful.

Photo courtesy Los Angeles Film Festival

NoA Film Review: Natural Selection (Los Angeles Film Festival)

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 07:52:35 GMT

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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(June 2011, screening at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival)

Directed/Written by: Robbie Pickering
Starring: Rachael Harris, Jon Gries, Matt O’Leary and John Diehl

A barren and horny housewife’s sex drive is thwarted by Abe (John Diehl), a husband more concerned with the Lord’s Prayer and His way, which includes refraining from sex if there’s no chance of conception. Of course, as is often the case (evidenced by the multitude of media produced for such reasons), he of much faith has his own ways of coping with his needs, including secret (yet regular) porn-induced deposits to a sperm bank for more than 20 years.

When a mid-masturbation stroke lands Abe in the emergency room, mumblings reveal the possibility that the serial sperm donor has fathered a son, information that prompts Linda (Rachael Harris) to leave the confines of her religion-lovin’ Texas for the drug-ridden and destitute Tampa, Fla., locale in which her husband’s son Raymond (Matt O’Leary) resides. On a mission to bring the barbaric and destructive son to Abe’s side, Linda’s cause is aided by Raymond’s need to flee his prison-break predicament. Immediately, the bleak sterility of Linda’s god-fearing hospital and home life is contrasted with the flat, wide-open landscapes of American road travel and Raymond’s capricious unpredictability.

With a score worthy of discovery on its own and a competence in cinematography that belies the film’s indie status, there is very little about which to nitpick in director Robbie Pickering’s debut feature effort. It comes as no surprise that accomplished filmmakers with innate and interesting sensibilities such as Nicole Holofcener, Jay Duplass, Rian Johnson,Miranda July, Jeff Blitz and David Gordon Green appear in the thank-you credits.

Many an unlikely duo has taken to the road for cinema’s benefit, many of whom begin at opposite ends of the spectrum of morality and eventually learn to appreciate the other. With an enviable depth to its central characters, “Natural Selection” sizzles from an instability (and a confident measure of insanity) that beckons for it to be compared to works by theCoen brothers and for Harris’ revelatory turn as Linda to be recognized officially later in the year.

Photo: Rachael Harris and Matt O’Leary star as unlikely road-trip companions in “Natural Selection”; courtesy Los Angeles Film Festival

NoA Film Review: How to Cheat (Los Angeles Film Festival)

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 07:50:16 GMT

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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(June 2011, screening at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival)

Directed/Written by: Amber Sealey
Starring: Kent Osborne, Amber Sealey, Amanda Street, Dan Ewen, V. Kim Blish and Gabriel Diamond

Watching an out-of-shape middle-ager bounce around his backyard wearing nothing but his (lack of) dignity is a rare beginning to a rare movie about a married limo driver who sketches raunchy stick figures on Post-it notes and for whom sex with his wife is something slotted between appointments for the purposes of conception. While traffic congestion is forever imminent, and L.A.’s concrete streets are represented with a poetic prettiness, the idiosyncrasies inherent in this union sit uncomfortably in the foreground of all decisions and actions to unfold.

Kent Osborne’s brand of real man was used to apt effect in Joe Swanberg’s “Hannah Takes the Stairs” and “Uncle Kent,” and Osborne again brings an empathetic funnyman to the role of Mark, imbuing the film with the troubled reality of a man wanting to do right by his wife and feeling trapped, wondering where the lust and love in his marriage has gone.

Bordering him in his car during the day and by his mindfulness at home, writer-director-star Amber Sealey captures the claustrophobia of Mark’s commitments so completely as to conjure empathy for his character even after he decides to cheat on his wife rather than opt for divorce. When Mark finds Louise (Amanda Street) with whom to engage in infrequent physical outbursts, the danger of his predicament is palpable, and his range of reactions appropriate to the risk and reality.

Bryan Poyser’s “Lovers of Hate” crossed similar plot paths last year but within a couple apart rather than a couple together, and Dana Adam Shapiro’s “Monogamy” meandered through a world of a questioning couple en route to the altar, and both those Spirit Award-nominated films found a unique pulse and formidable actors with whom to portray the perils of long-term relationships.

While the style of Sealey’s filmmaking necessitates a reference to the master John Cassavetes, “How to Cheat” seems more accessible to the everyman who exists now and seems more perilously possible on a day-to-day basis than the films mentioned above, therefore committing the viewer to the emotional rollercoaster of the characters in one of the most relevant and eloquent portraits of modern marriage to date.

Photo: Amber Sealey and Kent Osborne learn “How to Cheat”; photo courtesy Los Angeles Film Festival

NoA Review: The Yellow Sea (Los Angeles Film Festival)

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 07:48:01 GMT

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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(June 2011, from the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival)

Directed/Written by: Na Hong-jin
Starring: Ha Jung-woo, Kim Yun-seok and Cho Seong-ha

“The Yellow Sea” is a seriously exciting film, a pulse-checking visceral experience that will have you questioning when, if ever, you saw car chases and butchering skills quite this inventive.

NoA Review: Entrance (Los Angeles Film Festival)

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 07:45:53 GMT

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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(June 2011, screening at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival)

Directed by: Dallas Hallam and Patrick Horvath
Written by: Michelle Margolis, Karen Gorham, Dallas Hallam and Patrick Horvath
Starring: Suziey Block, Karen Baird, Karen Gorham and Joshua Grote

Handheld camerawork shot on the fly around Los Angeles by Dallas Hallam sets the tone for this collaboration among a half-dozen creatives.

Following Suziey as she gets by without a car, works at a coffee shop, gets her hair done and falls asleep to a horror movie, we’re unsure of anything story-related and know little other than that she looks good on camera. The lack of any detail upon which to hang our expectations is initially translated (by this audience member) as a confident start to a film that feels as if it’s going to deliver something artistically fulfilling.

One small thud and a series of footsteps later, our intrigue is piqued. Will this be another “Paranormal Activity”? An “Insidious”? Or is this just a pretty hipster girl hearing noises from a neighboring abode?

The nature of exactly what is unsettling during the setup of the film is that the instances suffered by Suziey are happenings that one could imagine would strike fear and unease into the daily lives of young women every day: a dark-windowed car slowly following her every step on the sidewalk, a group of boys walking toward her and turning as she passes, a dog that goes missing — all daily exigencies in the lives of millions. And then things get interesting.

Unfortunately, despite the uniquely simple and mostly quiet aspect of the majority of the film, the filmmakers undermine the stake they’ve given us in Suziey’s character by introducing one key scene of excess exposition with which the carefully crafted unease and urban paranoia is decimated, undoing many of the elements of the unknown that drove the audience’s interest earlier and thereby reducing the film’s final act to a one-note narrative that must be considered to be, unfortunately, of little merit.

Photo courtesy Los Angeles Film Festival

NoA Review: Small Town Murder Songs (Peter Stormare)

Elliot V. Kotek — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 07:43:35 GMT

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Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(from the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival)

Directed/Written by: Ed Gass-Donnelly
Starring: Martha Plimpton, Peter Stormare, Aaron Poole, Jill Hennessy, Ari Cohen, Jackie Burroughs and Steven Eric McIntyre

Shot with stunning simplicity by Brendan Steacy, “Small Town Murder Songs,” the sophomore feature effort of 33-year-old Toronto native Ed Gass-Donnelly, finds its footing in a Mennonite Christian community. When a girl turns up dead on the banks of the local “beach,” the town’s police chief Walter Ruden has issues from his past dredged to light. Like fellow Canadian David Cronenberg’s “History of Violence,” “Small Town Murder Songs” explores the issues of how deep one can bury what is innate within each of us and whether faith alone is truly enough to maintain strength.

With a detective at the helm, Chief Walter does the rounds, from the religious community leaders to old-school farmers and the nearby strip club, and it’s clear that small towns have their own way of doing things and of protecting their kin.

That the main suspect is dating the Chief’s former flame further complicates matters. But, while everyone has something, sometime, that they’d prefer stay secret, some secrets are mere lies.

Gass-Donnelly displays such consummate confidence with the pacing of the film and the first-class performances of his cast that we must keep watch for whatever the helmer delivers next. But unfortunately, despite the sweeping rural vistas, from the opening credit track screaming, “You can’t hide what you really are” to the final frame, the plot points don’t stray from a straight line and, consequently, the audience isn’t required to ask any questions of the happenings onscreen.

Additionally, the filmmaker uses title cards to introduce/interrupt the chapters of the film. Although a well-designed device with seemingly interesting intent, they serve as a simple reminder that a fiction is being told.

The shame in this simplicity is that the filmmaker takes care to introduce us to interesting characters , family, farmers, an old-school Mennonite, et cetera , any of whom would have provided points of interest if allowed to distract us from the story’s through-line. Without these alternative threads of narrative, we are left to view the film solely as a character study into the police chief. Thankfully, he is portrayed with mesmerizing beauty.

Photo: Peter Stormare in “Small Town Murder Songs”