Fog of War: Countdown to Zero and The Tillman Story

COUNTDOWN TO ZERO [***]  
(Lucy Walker, USA, 2010, 92 minutes) 

"How I Learned to Start Worrying and Fear the Bomb."-- Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian 

 ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** 

With a rigorous eye, Blindsight's Lucy Walker examines the arms race from the inception of the atomic bomb to the present, building her three-part structure around a speech from President Kennedy, in which he warned of "accident, miscalculation, and madness." If Kennedy serves as the film's conscience, physicist Robert Oppenheimer, who over- saw the Manhattan Project--only to regret the death and destruction it would engen- der--serves as its heart (ghostly images of the pale-eyed scientist are almost as eer- ie as his prophetic words). Even Oppenheimer, though, couldn't have predicted the ready availability of highly enriched uranium in the years after the Cold War, one of Walker's more chilling revelations. Aside from the deadly explosions in Oklahoma City, Madrid, and other urban centers, she looks at several near misses. As Kennedy concluded, "The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us," and she ends on a note of guarded optimism by speaking with F.W. de Klerk, who dismantl- ed South Africa's nuclear infrastructure during his administration. Most of her oth- er speakers agree: it's the right thing to do. Like Dr. Strangelove and Fog of War, Countdown to Zero marks an essential addition to the ranks of atomic cinema. Click here for full-length review.  

Show times: 6/2, 7pm, at Pacific Place; and 6/3, 9:15pm, at SIFF Cinema. Director in attendance. ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** THE TILLMAN STORY [****] (Amir Bar-Lev, US, 2010, 94 mins.) "A lot of politics is theatrical wrestling." -- Stan Goff, retired special-ops expert In My Kid Could Paint That, director Amir Bar-Lev took on an art world mystery. With The Tillman Story, one of the year's best documentaries, he takes on a military mystery. When NFL player Pat Tillman and his brother, Kevin, signed up to serve in Afghanistan, no one knew exactly why, but the move made national headlines and, against the deeply private young man's wishes, he became a symbol of pa- triotism in action. Then, on his second tour of duty, a bullet took Tillman's life. President Bush stated that 9/11 had galvanized the 27-year-old, though Tillman never said any such thing, while the Army claimed he died defending his fellow Rangers (they also acted against his wishes by staging a military funeral). Devas- tated, his parents knew the story didn't add up, so they pushed for the truth, despite massive resistance, and the Army finally admitted that their son had been the vic- tim of friendly fire or "fratricide," but resisted all attempts to find out exactly what happened. Consequently, it's a mystery that Bar-Lev, who edits his material togeth- er like a maestro, can't completely solve, but he sheds light on a shameful episode in American history while simultaneously paying tribute to a remarkable family.  

Show times: 6/4, 4pm, at SIFF Cinema; and 6/6, 7pm, at SIFF Cinema. Also recommended: Neil Jordan's flawed, but beautifully shot supernatural ro- mance Ondine (with a very good Colin Farrell): 6/4, 7pm, at the Kirkland Perfor- mance Center; 6/6, 9pm, at the Uptown; and 6/3, 11:30pm, at Pacific Place. Also, in case you missed the SIFF screenings, Seven Gables theaters will be showing the following well regarded films after the fest: Joan Rivers - A Piece of Work (6/18); Holy Rollers, I Am Love, and Winter's Bone (6/25); Cyrus (7/2); and Farewell (8/6). 

 

Endnote: As always, dates and times are subject to change. Please visit the official website for more information. Images from NPR and indieWIRE.

Family Ties: Nowhere Boy and The Concert

NOWHERE BOY [***1/2] (Sam Taylor-Wood, 2009, UK, 95 mins.) In "Mother," John Lennon sang, "You had me, but I never had you." Fine artist-turned-filmmaker Sam Taylor-Wood delves into the story behind those words, starting with a 15-year-old Lennon (Kick-Ass's Aaron Johnson), who lives in Liverpool with his Uncle George (David Threlfall) and Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas, all pin-curls and British reserve). George's death spurs Lennon to seek out Julia (Anne-Marie Duff), his birth mother, who turns out to be fun and flirtatious (their scenes together carry a subtle sexual tension). The mother of two, Julia enjoys reconnecting with her son, even if the man in her life (David Morrissey) doesn't share her enthusiasm. She introduces John to rock & roll and teaches him how to play the banjo, but she also suffers from mood swings. Torn between the mother who raised him and the one who gave him life, John funnels his frustrations into music, forming the Quarrymen, but then he meets Paul McCartney, and revamps the line-up to work in George Harrison and Stu Sutcliffe (whose story fueled Backbeat). If John's relationship with Julia didn't come to a happy end, she would have a profound effect on his life--and inspire this tenderhearted tribute. Click here for full-length review. Show times: 5/22, 7pm, and 5/23, 1:15pm, at the Neptune; and 5/27, 7pm, at the Admiral. THE CONCERT / Le Concert [**1/2] (Radu Mihaileanu, 2009, France, 119 mins.) A cynic might call The Concert sentimental, a curmudgeon might call it shame- less, but only a stone could fail to feel something by this crowd-pleasing comedy's emotional conclusion. It begins in Russia with former Bolshoi conductor Andreï (Alexei Guskov). In 1981, when Brezhnev ordered him to fire his Jewish players, he refused, lost his job, turned to the bottle, and now works as a janitor. His best friend, Sacha (Dmitri Nazaro), a cello player, has remained loyal to the Maestro ever since. When Andrei intercepts a fax meant for the head of the orchestra, Sacha goes along with his scheme to get the gang back together, pass themselves off as the Bolshoi, travel to Paris, and perform with Anne-Marie (Mélanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds). Andrei just happens to have a connection to her that the violinist's manager, Guylène (Miou-Miou), has kept secret for 29 years. After a series of slapstick misadventures, music and secrets come tumbling out. Radu Mihaileanu keeps things humming a- long--with an assist from Tchaikovsky--but offers few real surprises, so it's fortu- nate that his leads give such convincing performances, since most of the other characters (the unctuous official, the crafty gypsy) cross the line into caricature. Click here for full-length review. Show times: 5/21, 7pm, at the Egyptian; 5/23, 1:30pm, at the Egyptian; and 5/28, 7pm, at the Everett Performing Arts Center. First week recommendations: Fatih Akin's Soul Kitchen, Christian Carion's Farewell, and Mona Achache's The Hedgehog. Soul Kitchen: 5/21, 7pm, at the Uptown; and 5/23, 1pm, at the Uptown. Farewell: 5/29, 6:30pm, at the Egyptian; 5/31, 3pm, at the Everett Performing Arts Center; and 6/12, 6:30pm, at the Uptown. The Hedgehog: 5/28, 7pm, at the Uptown; and 5/30, 4pm, at the Uptown. Endnote: As always, dates and times are subject to change. Please visit the official website for more information. Images from Creative Boom and Art Act Magazine.

Cretin Hop, Part One: Suburbia

SUBURBIA: Collector's Edition
(Penelope Spheeris, US, 1983, 94 minutes)

"You'll love 'em or hate 'em."

Under the heading "Roger Corman's Cult Classics," Shout! Factory does punk fans a solid with this one-two punch: Penelope Spheeris's Suburbia and Allan Arkush's Rock 'n' Roll High School, both now available with a combination of old and new extras, including trailers for the next two films in the series: Piranha and Death Race 2000.

Spheeris, the director behind 1979's The Decline of Western Civilization (and the producer behind Real Life), opens her film exploitation-style as a suburban mother picks up teenage hitchhiker Sheila (Jennifer Clay, quite good). The next thing the mother knows, a Doberman has her young daughter in its clutches. It's unclear whether Sheila provoked the incident or not. Later, it transpires that wild dogs are roaming the streets of Orange County, and that Sheila, the victim of child abuse, wouldn't hurt a fly.

Presumably, the kids with whom she's about to cohabitate are like those dogs: rootless, hungry, eager to fuck shit up--or at least that's how the outside world sees them. (In her commentary, Spheeris says she took inspiration from the sudden closure of a guard-dog training center.)



After that disturbing prologue, she shifts her focus to the home life of a couple of other unhappy youngsters in the Southern California suburbs. Deciding that he can't take his booze-sozzled harpy of a mother anymore, Evan (Bill Coyne, one of the cast's few professional actors) runs away, though he'll soon return to collect his younger brother, Ethan (Andrew Pece).

On his first night alone, Evan ends up at a punk show where the discomforting exploits continue as D.I.'s Casey Royer sings, "Richard hung himself!" while Skinner (Timothy O'Brien) rips off a valley girl's dress to the overwhelmingly male crowd's delight. No one steps in to lend her a hand. The bass player for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, then billed as Mike B. the Flea, watches with his pet rat. Oh, and someone doses Evan's beer.

So far, the punk scene seems more creepy than cozy as the kids also take issue with homosexuals and the disabled. Charming. Then bleached blond Jack (Chris Pedersen) spots Evan crashed out in front of the club and lets him sleep in his beat-up car. Stepson of a cop, Jack commiserates. "Parents are so lame," he sighs. The next day he throws a beer bottle at a vehicle, because "I hate buses." Jack, in short, is an idiot, but at least he has a heart, and Evan moves into his roach-infested crash pad. Turns out his roomies, who call themselves The Rejected, are the same creeps who put last night's party girl in her place, but they have more respect for the women--and the one-legged guy--who populate their own tribe.



So, Evan gets a T.R. (for The Rejected) tattoo and a haircut. Just as he's found a new home, a couple of rednecks start taking out the dogs, indicating that the punks may face similar treatment in the days to come. Now Evan's life revolves around TV, Rodney on the ROQ, stealing food from the garages of unsuspecting suburbanites, and defacing property (at least the skinheads in Shane Meadows' This Is England targeted condemned buildings).

If the kids aren't initially sympathetic, Spheeris gives the the blue-collar guys and the cops, notably Jack's stepfather, Officer Rennard (Donald V. Allen), back stories of their own. The former, for instance, have just joined the ranks of the unemployed through factory layoffs. They're angry, too. Consequently, comparisons to Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider don't quite work.

Instead, Suburbia updates earlier entries about teenage misfits kicking against the pricks, like If..., A Clockwork Orange, and Over the Edge. And with their flat, but effective line readings, it comes as little surprise to find that most of the cast didn't go onto acting careers, but they add the verisimilitude for which Spheeris was looking. As she explains, "It was easier to turn a punk rocker into an actor than an actor into a punk rocker."

Her first feature also offers choice quotes. Here's Redneck #1 on the gang, "Mental rejects running wild on our streets!" Here's Skinner to Rennard, "If we didn't have each other, we wouldn't have anything." Then there's this pungent exchange: Redneck #2: "Where's the war?" Skinner: "Up your ass!"

As with Rock 'n' Roll High School and Jonathan Kaplan's Over the Edge, the film ends with a showdown between the outlaws and straight society. I won't say who wins, only that Spheeris captures the feel of an old Western as surely as John Carpenter did in Assault on Precinct 13. Extra features include a photo gallery, three original trailers (two of which refer to the film as Rebel Streets), and two commentary tracks; Spheeris on one and Spheeris, Clay, and mattress king-turned-producer Bert Dragin on the other.

Next: Rock 'n' Roll High School. Images from MovieMeter.

Italian Ladies Who Lunch: Mid-August Lunch

MID-AUGUST LUNCH / Pranzo di Ferragosto (Gianni Di Gregorio, 2009, Italy, 75 mins.)

Left: Mellowing the hours. 

Matteo Garrone, the man behind Gomorrah, presents a different side of Italy in co-writer Gianni Di Gregorio's Mid-August Lunch (this lend-a-brother-a-hand move recalls David Lynch's presentation of Herzog's My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?). 

Garrone's sprawling film was set in and around a Mob-infested housing complex, while Di Gregorio's gentle comedy takes place in a working-class condominium. The writer-turned-filmmaker plays Gianni, a Roman bachelor who looks after and reads to his 93-year-old mother (Valeria De Franciscis), an Alexandre Dumas enthusiast. When the building manager (Alfonso Santagata) offers to cut him a break if he'll take in his mother (Marina Cacciotti) for the weekend, Gianni has no choice but to agree. Short on cash, he can't afford the repairs the condo board wants him to make. 

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"Have a drink. It calms everything." 

Gianni's mother, frail but sharp, gives her assent and gets dolled up for the occasion. Without checking, Alfonso also brings his Aunt Maria (Maria Calì). So while he goes off on a trip to the country with his girlfriend, Gianni is stuck inside a condo with three old ladies in the midst of a heatwave. 

Things get off to a decent start. A sleepy-eyed gent in a plaid apron, Gianni cooks and cleans for the trio, but then his doctor (Marcello Ottolenghi) asks him to add his mother, Grazia (Grazia Cesarini Sforza), to the mix while he works the night shift, so three becomes four, including one who takes a different medication every few hours and gets violent headaches from dairy products (none of this, incidentally, plays out as farce). 

In short order, Valeria, who doesn't want to eat with the others, asks for her television back, and Maria pouts. The other ladies have their own not-unreasonable requests, and the selfless Gianni does his level best to address each one. During the night, though, one of the four disappears, and Gianni realizes that his responsibility to the ladies and to their neglectful relatives are at cross purposes. Basically, he's supposed to keep them in line, except each woman has a mind of her own. 

By the end, his perspective has changed. Fortunately, no one has to fall sick or drop dead for this shift to occur. Di Gregorio avoids easy tears and cheap laughs, which might make Mid-August Lunch too subtle for some viewers, but it's a welcome antidote to the parade of motion pictures that present old age with fear, distaste, or contempt.  

Mid-August Lunch opens at the Guild 45th (1303 NE 45th St.) on Fri., 4/30. For more information please call 206-633-5545 or click here. Image from OutNow! Update: The film has been held over through Thurs., 5/13.

The Audacity of Man in Werner Herzog's My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE (Werner Herzog, US, 2009, 35mm, 91 mins.) 

I want to see my mother's feet dancing her to heaven.-- Brad Macallum (Michael Shannon) 

The film takes place in Southern California, the story comes from an actual case, and the cast includes Willem Dafoe (Wild at Heart) and Grace Zabriskie (Inland Empire). It may sound like a David Lynch picture, except it isn't. 

Through his Absurda banner, Lynch served as producer, while Werner Herzog directed, though Michael Shannon and Brad Dourif also appeared in Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. If Bad Lieutenant was Herzog's swamp noir, the San Diego-set My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? is his desert noir. In another Lynchian touch, two cops (Dafoe and Michael Peña) provide our entry into the story. 

Called to the scene of a crime, they meet a bystander (Shannon) who looks at them and utters, "Razzle dazzle," the words printed on his coffee mug. They push past him to the lifeless body inside. The killer failed to cover his tracks, and a sword lies in full view of the victim (Zabriskie). Neighbor Mrs. Roberts (Irma Hall, another Bad Lieutenant vet) claims that her son, Shannon's Brad Macallam, had something to do with it. 

Just before Brad's fiancée, Ingrid (Chloë Sevigny), arrives, Herzog flashes back to his days in Peru. While Dafoe's Det. Havenhurst tries to get him to leave the house, to which he returned and where he claims to have taken two hostages, Herzog continues to rifle through the days before Mrs. Macallam's murder and to Brad's time in South America. 

From the way Ingrid describes things, it sounds as if the actor was turning into a schizophrenic, since he became convinced he should only listen to his "inner voice." The flashbacks, which lend the film the feel of a fifties melodrama, reveal other problems, like the fact that Brad and Ingrid lived with Mrs. Macallam, who looks like a warped version of Jane Wyman in All That Heaven Allows, in a flamingo-pink ranch house with flamingos in the backyard, and every manner of flamingo inside, from posters to lamps. There's a Twin Peaks vibe to these strangely-lit sequences. 

The flashbacks continue: Brad's visit to his Uncle Ted's ostrich farm, a trip to Tijuana with Ingrid and another to Toronto with his mother, and his casting in Sophocles' famously matricidal Oresteia (Dourif plays the uncle, Udo Kier plays the director). 

Combined with Ernst Reijseger's off-kilter score and Peter Zeitlinger's sun-bleached cinematography, it all exerts a certain queasy fascination, but My Son, My Son, much like those ostriches, never really takes flight. It's rarely as darkly humorous as Bad Lieutenant or as seductively suspenseful as one of Lynch's puzzle-box mysteries. 

Furthermore, the acting has an intentionally flat quality that recalls home movies and soap operas, despite the talent involved. It's as if Herzog cooked the whole thing up in one peyote-filled night and shot it the next week. 

If Nicolas Cage's loopy lieutenant was hilariously over-the-top, Shannon invests Brad with a more recessive quality, which gives his madman greater credibility--at the expense of entertainment value. And yet...there's a scene in the woods with Shannon, Dourif, and a midget in a tuxedo that offers the sort of what-the-fuck magic that makes even the lesser films of Herzog and Lynch more interesting than most. Fortunately, there are enough of those moments, especially towards the end, to make My Son, My Son worthwhile, though not enough to make it the messed-up masterpiece it might have been.    

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done opens at the Northwest Film Forum on Fri., 4/9. The NWFF is located at 1515 12th Ave. between Pike and Pine. For more information, please click here or call 206-829-7863. Images from the film talk and Absurda. Update: due to popular demand, the film has been held over for an additional week, 4/16-22 (7 and 9pm daily, except for Sat., on which it screens at 5pm).

Red Riding: Three of a Perfect Pair, Part Three

RED RIDING: 1983 

(Anand Tucker, UK, 2009, 100 minutes) 

Click here for Red Riding: 1980  

From the start, Red Riding: 1983 does something the other installments don't: it circles back to the past, with an introduction set in 1974 (and will continue to double back to that annus miserabilis). Characters who met their maker in the previous films come back to life, and the focus shifts to David Morrissey's DCS Jobson, a figure previously seen floating around the periphery; never defined, always a rough outline. Prodigal son Eddie Dunford and Manchester native Peter Hunter haven't yet entered the scene. The West Yorkshire P.D. is an insular, united entity. 

[red riding 1983]

In throwing their weight behind Sean Bean's John Dawson, they aim primarily to rebuild their economically-deprived community--not find missing girls or solve grisly murders.  Shooting with the Red One digital camera, Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie) then skips ahead to 1983 and to the search for 10-year-old Hazel Adkins. As before, the action centers on men looking for perpetrators, while the female victims are just a parade of names and faces, a common problem with procedurals: the police take precedence. Even Law & Order bests most movies in providing them with some personality, as each witness or suspect adds shading to our knowledge of the deceased. If Jobson looks familiar, disheveled solictor John Piggott (Mark Addy), a former Fitzwilliam resident, does not (Yorkshire's poorest end up in grubby Fitzwilliam). As 1974 opened, Dunford had just lost his father. In Piggot's case, it was his mother. Since then, the police have charged his mentally challenged neighbor, Michael Myshkin (Daniel Mays), with Clare's murder, but Piggot doesn't believe he did it. With Michael behind bars, he couldn't have killed Hazel. Same goes for Martin Laws' friend, Leonard (An Education's Cara Seymour plays his mother). In both cases, the police coerced confessions, but it's too convenient for the two friends to be guilty. 

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To the north, where we do what we want! 

--Bill Molloy (Warren Clarke) 

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Other characters also come into play, like rent boy B.J. (Robert Sheehan), who sees things everyday people tend to miss, and a medium who strikes Jobson's fancy (and vice versa). In 1974, B.J. supplied Eddie with information about one of the murders. When Jobson and Piggott, now representing the Fitzwilliam duo, finally meet, some progress seems inevitable, except progress is a relative term in the Red Riding Trilogy. Assuming they crack the case, the collateral damage could be considerable, but both go it alone until the end. Like Dunford and Hunter before them, the detective and the lawyer are loners, and loners don't tend to make out well in Peace's world. Piggott, who lives on takeout and old soul records, has less to lose than divorced dad Jobson. Addy, who wasted his Full Monty fame on a Flintstones movie and a forgettable sitcom, does some of his best work here as a compassionate slob. Grisoni's adaptation lends all four men a sense of tarnished dignity, providing parallels with the likes of Prime Suspect, Zodiac, Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher Trilogy, and James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet. The way certain characters ebb and flow throughout the series even recalls Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors Trilogy. Separately, the weaknesses of the films become most apparent, but collectively, they tell a harsh tale about the ways in which people in positions of power ("wolves") abuse their weakest citizens in an attempt to pave over a community's ugly past. Along the way, they perpetuate the cycle by creating new abusers. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but grippingly told. And it's not as if this sort of thing couldn't happen again. See it now before Ridley Scott's remake, scheduled for The Year of Our Lord: 2012.  

The Red Riding Trilogy plays the Northwest Film Forum from 2/26 - 3/4. Nineteen Eighty-Three screens Tues. and Wed. at 9pm and Thurs. at 9pm The NWFF is lo- cated at 1515 12th Ave. between Pike and Pine on Capitol Hill. For more infor- mation, please click here or call 206-829-7863. Image from IFC Films via The Austin Chronicle. 

Red Riding: Three of a Perfect Pair, Part Two

RED RIDING: 1980 

(James Marsh, UK, 2009, 93 minutes) 

Click here for Red Riding: 1974  

For the second film in the triptych, Oscar winner James Marsh (Man on Wire) opts for the greater clarity of 35mm, though screenwriter Tony Grisoni (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), a frequent Terry Gilliam collaborator, remains on board for all three entries. From girls, the story shifts to women. A doc-like credit sequence tells the tale: in the past six years, 13 have met their fate at the hands of the Yorkshire Ripper. Marsh then introduces a new character, Peter Hunter (a first-rate Paddy Considine), Assistant Chief Constable of the Manchester Police Force. Since 1974 presented the West Yorkshire P.D. as hopelessly corrupt, and since Hunter has a background in internal affairs, he seems unlikely to emerge from this inquiry unscathed.  

[red riding 1980]

As requested by James Fox's Phillip Evans, Hunter sets up shop in nearby Leeds with John Nolan (Tony Pitts), Bob Craven (Sean Harris), and Helen Marshall (Max- ine Peake), with whom he has a history (Leslie Sharp plays his pregnant wife). Craven, who gave Eddie such a hard time, does the same to Peter. Ginger-haired, rail-thin, and devoid of chin, Harris does menace well--and intensity, too, as exemp- lified by his portrayal of Joy Division front man Ian Curtis in 24 Hour Party People. Hunter meets Peter Mullan's Martin when the vicar offers him information. Their exchange encapsulates his conundrum: Hunter: "You don't like the police much, do you?" Laws: "No love lost, no." Hunter: "So when someone kicks down your front door, kills the dog, and rapes the wife, who you gonna call?" Laws: "Well it certainly wouldn't be the West Yorkshire Police--they'd already be in there, wouldn't they!" 

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How deep does the rot go? Who stops it? 

--Peter Hunter (Paddy Considine) 

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Later, he re-connects with David Morrissey's Jobson, who proves to be disappointingly unhelpful (in Jarrold's film, Jobson destroyed evidence for some unspecified reason). While Eddie tried to tie three murders together, Peter tries to take one out of the investigation, because it doesn't fit, leading to threats, arson, and more killings. As with Man on Wire, Marsh again borrows from a pre-existing music source, in this case Dickon Hinchliffe's score for Claire Denis's Trouble Every Day, another spot-on choice (Adrian Johnston and Barrington Pheloung scored the other telefilms). By the end of 1980, the killer has been caught and the case appears to be closed. Largely due to the indelible performances of Considine and Peake, a last-minute replacement, James Marsh offers the strongest entrant in this compelling series. 

Click here for Red Riding: 1983.  

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The Red Riding Trilogy continues at the Northwest Film Forum through 3/4. Nineteen Eighty screens Mon. at 9pm; Sat., Sun., and Thurs. at 7pm; Tues. and Wed. at 7pm. The NWFF is located at 1515 12th Ave. between Pike and Pine on Capitol Hill. For more information, please click here or call 206-829-7863. Image from IFC Films via Talk Film Society.