AMBIENT
We live in a great time, where the future knows no bounds. On one hand, this modern age, with its incredible technological advances, could, in fact, lead to a dystopian downfall, birthing self-aware sentinels with runaway artificial intelligence that would then threaten all of human existence as we know it.
On the other hand, these technological advances, more realistically appropriated, offer us the means and resources of connecting with people on the internet, reaching wide audiences to showcase new and exciting short films from artists and filmmakers with cinematic-level excellence about, well...self-aware sentinels with runaway artificial intelligence that would then threaten human existence as we know it.
In this day and age, where the distribution landscape has all but exploded, having fragmented off into endless channels that let the consumer decide where to spend their viewing energy, it can be said that the internet has truly democratized entertainment itself, giving the people an unmatched power over their tools for such control.
However, being in control of your tools isn't the case or story in the new digital series, Ambient, an originally scripted sci-fi episodic story about a self-aware computer virus that pushes mankind to the brink of extinction.
Ambient is a total of five episodes, ranging from five and a half to ten minutes each totaling the better part of a half-hour to watch in its entirety. They are an easy continuous watch, all to the great fun and entertainment of its story. Just hit the Auto-continuous play, sit back, and transport yourself to a world of true sci-fi invention, and impressive independent film-making vision. Written by Rob Kotecki and Gabe Michael (producer, Epic Rap Battles of History), and directed by Michael, the series is a full story, with no shortage of visual impress and great locations. While it may track along the more familiar notes of what we've seen of popular apocalyptic sci-fi survival, the story is fresh and certainly ambitious in scope. These guys know how to build tension through a combination of intriguingly laid out story and impressive sound design to achieve its fascinating vision.
The first episode, "The Noise," is about exactly that–and explains, in ominous voice-over narration similar to Terminator 2: Judgment Day's flashback seriousness, what this story's about. Opening with a computer log explaining, "Jeremiad," "a work lamenting the state of society and the prophesying of its downfall," and that technology, for all its wonder and power, if its global inter-connectivity were used for bad, then we'd all be in "deep, deep shit"; and that his brother and he would be the ones to blame.
The thing that dooms them all is a noise; more specifically, a frequency, sustained by an ear-splitting screech, like a cracked-out dial-up connection to hell. An early bar fight that sees a band of rag-tag survivors narrowly escape the clutches of another threatening bunch by punching up the sound as a weapon, we at first think the weapon is used by the two brothers mercilessly. But with the arrival of a rogue military unity hell-bent on capturing them the question soon enough arises: are these brothers the good guys or the bad? Are they merely survivors, or cyber terrorists? And if they're not the ones responsible for creating the Jeremiad virus–then who is?
Ambient is a savvy, smartly made, and excitingly suspenseful sci-fi tale of big ambition. And I'll say it: to have made the thing for a website alone that exchanges value-monetization for simply view watching, is damn incredible, and applause-worthy. It has the look and feel of some of today's hottest hits: strikingly, it has the fan familiarity of The Walking Dead's neo-grunge aesthetic and storytelling, which should satisfy audiences entertained by that. Every piece of new information discovered, every final moment in each episode, continually piques your interest in launching the viewer into the next part of the ever-evolving story and experience.
Although the dystopian future that Ambient imagines up is shown as a bad thing, it's great that we can watch such a unique and original story that's accessible on the internet, and for free (!). This binge-watching culture should find no problem supporting this new endeavor, and building loyal fans who will spread the word of mouth to develop and continue to find audiences over for even greater success. Although our Macbook Pro's might all take over the world someday, there's great fun had here to tide us over until then.
Watch the series on www.youtube.com/forgeapollo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTrVb1lobVs&list=PLcLSYAr5p6CFudLz3j39Q2zQxbRHQJuZw&index=1
Review: 'Maps to the Stars'
It's not so much news that Hollywood is full of secrets and seedy people, and director David Cronenberg scratches at this sentiment in the chilly but simple Maps to the Stars.
Cronenberg's cynical satire is a slow-brewed tale of modern day movie star obsession and paranoia that finds fever dream playfulness in having Hollywood's ghostly pasts literally haunt and taunt them in their 90210 mansions.
There are a few storylines here, including a troubled actress, a now-sober child-star, and a new mysterious L.A. transplant with facial burns, that ultimately connect to realize the same cosmic justice fate, of guilt and sins they just can't escape. Cronenberg, a man who sees monsters everywhere, shows the Entourage lifestyle as one of disgust, but he never makes it any more delicious of a tear-down, as it all plays in too-much a rhythmically mapped out story.
Much like an L.A. Star Maps tour itself, you might have a familiar idea of where you're headed in this dream theater staging, but Cronenberg the director knows a few interesting routes of how to take you there.
Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore), an A-list pill-popping mash-up of Sunset Blvd.'s Norma Desmond and an eventual Lindsay Lohan, is one of this town's troubled characters. A delusional mess who is up for the same part of a re-make that her also A-list mother once played (and whose ghost also torments her daughter with the reminder of once inappropriate behaviors), Segrand is every bit the caricature of the Hollywood type, to who Moore renders quite brilliantly here (for whom the actress won the Golden Globe Award for).
Incestuous storylines run deeper still in the arrival of a black-clad Agatha Weiss (Mia Wasikowska), young and beautiful with facial scars and arms-length gloves. Wasikowska plays the mysterious girl with fun and flair, and when her past and identity is revealed, punches in the darkness.
Much like an L.A. Star Maps tour itself, you might have a familiar idea of where you're headed in this dream theater staging, but Cronenberg the director knows a few interesting routes of how to take you there.
Maps to the Stars is in theaters now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwxmnyoofPs
Review: 'Deli Man'
Delicatessen restaurants, as we know and love them, are going extinct (Hell, even NPR wrote a story that says, as Linguists claim, New York accents are disappearing altogether). Diminishing returns in sales, health-conscious dieting, and a number of other factors play into the heartbreaking fact that most deli-diners are going the way of the dodo.
Fortunately, there are still enough passionate food lovers, and moreover, people of the Yiddish culture (however slowly homogenizing), that keep the savory meals and experience alive and well (and arguably, more spirited than ever). Deli Man, a documentary that dives into the food's earliest origins and historical surroundings up through its present-day state, is a passionately made film that examines every corner of this food's story and plate in telling this joyous tale.
The titular "Deli Man" and heart of this doc's underlying story is Ziggy Gruber, a New York transplant owning and operating his very own delicatessen, Kenny and Ziggy's– in Houston, Texas. The seemingly odd locale for the Yiddish-speaking deli-devout is only at first confusing, until the story is explained in its wider scope.
Deli Man celebrates the best of its subject with the utmost joy, leading this reviewer to re-affirm his own love for the food, a time gone-by, and the people who's passion for it all continue to satisfy our never-ending orders.
With familial origins rooted firmly in deli culture's World-War I-era history, we see Ziggy's story begin even before his birth. His grandfather and best friend, having owned the famous Rialto Delicatessen on Broadway (and where our portly protagonist began stuffing cabbages at the age of eight) inspires Ziggy's love and taking to culinary school, leading him to train in London before relocating to Houston, where it's shown that an unexpectedly large Jewish population live along the Southern states, and where delis are more scarce than ever. Ziggy himself is a hilarious character in his own story, channeling classic old-world Jewish cliches that make his loveable persona leap off the screen, into your heart.
As a documentary solely about the glory that is deli food, Deli Man will undoubtedly play best to its already passionate culture and audience– one already warmed to the savors of stacked-to-the-ceiling hot pastrami on rye, with the cool crunch of pickle to bring the "mmm's" home. There's certainly no shortage of foodie-loving footage, serving as the film's most savory and mouth-watering moments. But like the decked out and filled-to-capacity meals themselves, this documentary is also jam-packed with every angle of facts and footage surrounding pastrami and its culture, at once impressive, but also leaving for a bit of bloat that, at a solid hour and a half, makes for a filling experience.
Deli Man is charming, funny, and wonderfully entertaining in its impressive scope to tell this food's rich story, which works best when Ziggy and an array of famous deli eaters (including Larry King and Jerry Stiller) wax philosophic on how deli food is more than just that: it's a spirit, they say. A feeling, and something special in its nostalgia, significant and symbolic of this great immigrant nation, which falls further into the past with each passing day. Deli Man celebrates the best of its subject with the utmost joy, leading this reviewer to re-affirm his own love for the food, a time gone-by, and the people whose passion for it all continue to satisfy our never-ending orders.
Deli Man is in theaters this Friday
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf6-o61VfYk
Review: 'All the Wilderness'
It would be more appropriate if this fashion-blog feel-film held onto its original title–The Wilderness of James–if only to more properly appropriate the “wilderness” in this film subjective to our broody young hero. Because in All the Wilderness, there’s nothing uncontrolled or unrestrained, or even all-explored in an every-corner-of-the-world kind of way as it would suggest, resulting in a weightless artsy exercise that only goes but once to the well and back again.
Alternating between a half forestial, half night life Portland dreamscape, Wilderness is all aesthetically-minded, and an example of a film that prides its visuals over substance–which might not deter an audience of happy Tumblr hipsters satisfied with their movies being all attraction and attitude but vastly undercooked.
James (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is this story's deeply feeling hero, a quiet outsider who sketches dead insects and tells the kids around him when they are going to die. Smit-McPhee is never really captivating in his silent thoughtfulness, but its evident that his truer talents and charisma are hiding just under the surface of his shaggy hair and oversized sweaters. While James isn’t listening to the classical stylings of Chopin and caring for his hamster, he shuts himself off from the affections of his single mother (Virginia Madsen, always a delight) and sneaks out at night to escape from his days of therapy sessions (with book-ending cameos from Danny DeVito) and looming private school applications to steal a handle and get in innocent trouble with new-found friends, including hip donut-serving chick Val (Isabelle Fuhrman) who matches James in soulful-beyond-their-years experience of life.
Perhaps the film’s biggest problem stems from its perceived intention of wanting to outfit and dress up the shell to this story with a disregard of honoring any emotional truthfulness, which, not unlike like the self-torturing millennial mindset, is all surface-level feeling and philosophy from a distance.
It’s obvious that director Michael Johnson (and Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra) knows how to shoot and where to place the camera, as watching Wilderness is, visually, continually and wonderfully pleasing. The film knows when and how to mount and track the camera early on, but its run-and-gun effort throughout the remainder of the movie only heightens the emptiness of a story about kids being cool and being kids, or maybe its the other way around. Netting out at a generous eight-five minutes, we are given a final bit of information as to James’ inner-hurt from what is finally revealed about his out-of-the-picture father that somewhat validates his moody existence, and it comes right in time before we’re able to dismiss his self-aggrandizing as plain old immaturity.
Killer music selections from Sonic Youth, Elliot Smith, Ty Segall, and Jónsi soundtrack this coming-of-age story to rile the senses even more. But perhaps the film’s biggest problem stems from its perceived intention of wanting to outfit and dress up the shell to this story with a disregard of honoring any emotional truthfulness, which, not unlike like the self-torturing millennial mindset, is all surface-level feeling and philosophy from a distance. In the end, as James weaves in and out of the towering and magisterial backwoods forest, it would help if the trees just came right out and said: you can’t be understood if you don’t put in place much of anything for people to understand.
All the Wilderness is in theaters and on VOD today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjuDhvPiaVg
Review: 'Wild Tales'
In this most modern and civilized of times and worlds, society and its individuals have evolved to live so observantly in relation to institutions and others that we seem to have let our most primal and instinctual human responses take back-seat to formality, cordiality, and a sense of accepted teeth-clenching niceness, however dishonest. This is the idea that writer and director Damián Szifron explores and explodes in his new film Wild Tales, a satirical and darkly comical anthology of six short stories that see middle-class people letting loose and losing all control, and to our enormous pleasure.
Wild Tales (Relatos salvajes) provides gut-aimed laughs from mining the most hilarious, frustrating, and hilariously frustrating moments of daily human injustices, and sees them through to their most over-the-top (and bloody) ends. In the vignette-style stories, book-ended by fade ins and outs to black, each of the story's mundane or otherwise pathetic middle-class main characters are introduced in their entirely familiar and normal worlds that they live in: a meek waitress is stunned to serve a man from her past; a demolition worker's car is towed; a newly-wed learns a devastating secret of her husband– during her wedding party. As this reviewer notes, it would best serve the audience's fullest enjoyment to go into this thing with little to no foresight of where each story leads, as the pleasures stem from the unexpected inciting incidents that spark revenge-bent courses, making for the most delicious part of the film's enjoyment.
Wild Tales lets its audience have a bit of fun amongst the crowd of composed, "civilized" films, that it so joyfully pokes at until laughs (and blood) are shed.
It's not readily known from the start what lies ahead in each story, which is to the film's credit. For a movie that is about people going postal, it maintains its composure with tight film-making senses and relative normalcy, constructing serious tones that builds sizable tension. Szifron and his skilled ensemble of actors never slog or rush their way through any of the set-ups, or towards the fun of the "turn," and always keep the characters' motivations in check; that is, until it corkscrews into its most mad and absurd conclusions. The film has a good lightness to it that sees good fun implored here, but operating in a more elevated and high-minded head space.
The official Argentinian selection for Best Foreign Film in the 87th Academy Awards, Wild Tales also claims a number of other prestigious selections of 2014, including selections for Cannes, Telluride, and Toronto International Film Festival. While it won't knock off the likes of Poland's Ida, Russia's Leviathan, or Mauritania's Timbuktu this Sunday, Wild Tales lets its audience have a bit of fun amongst the crowd of composed, "civilized" films, that it so joyfully pokes at until laughs (and blood) are shed.
Wild Tales is in theaters this Friday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUnXv6R2HI8
Review: 'The Voices'
It may be an easy hit to make, but in The Voices, Ryan Reynolds, a nice but disturbed guy who listens to his demonic pets' demonic advice to kill people, should have listened to the voice in his head that might have better dissuaded him from putting himself in this dud of a comedy (and you should heed this voice’s warning too, whether or not you decide to go in). Jerry (Reynolds) is a hapless yet chipper packing and shipping worker at a fixtures factory (really, a toilet factory), resigned to a job and life that’s really (sigh,) in the crapper. He has a few early issues that would plague any young, awkward introvert: he yields a work-place love for the hot English worker in accounting, Fiona (Gemma Arterton), and when he gets home, unloads his day to his cat and dog. Past the point of merely talking to them, however, the pets converse back, with the opposing moral viewpoints that serve as angel-and-demon consciences that steer stupid Jerry this way and that through a series of calamitous, stupid, and dark decisions that bring him into the role of a killer. The Voices is dumb, base-level humor, that may have enough of an inherently entertaining premise, but will end up separating those who are entirely offended by its gross-out comedy intentions and those who are happy to bumble through its series of many crude offerings, and there may be a much more resounding number in the former camp.
Written by Michael R. Perry (Paranormal Activity 2) and directed by Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis), The Voices feels sufferable from the get-go. Jerry, upon given the opportunity to host the company picnic, finally finds his chance to connect with Fiona, and soon enough, musters the courage to ask her out; he relays this good news back to Mr. Whiskers, the nefariously-minded Irish cat and Bosco, the dopey but morally centered dog (both are voiced by Reynolds, and a handful of other animals, with the same mediocre voice-work). But during the pair’s drive to their date, he smashes into a crossing deer–blood and glass through his windshield and washing over them both. And don’t forget, Jerry can talk to animals, so the deer, in a painfully obscene gesture, begs Jerry to put him out of his misery. Jerry slices the fallen animal’s throat in blood-spurting fashion, leading Fiona to run away in shrieking terror. And stupid Jerry runs confused after her, with the knife, and mistakenly falls on to her, cueing a moment that is supposed to lend itself to humor, but results in an objectively WTF moment that sets the stage for the rest of the film. From here, Jerry racks up more voices in his head that all try to persuade him to kill, kill, kill, so he won’t feel alone, or something.
This schlock-comedy won’t get a pass for having an inexcusably and barely funny script or barely interesting story.
Another point of the movie’s oddness comes in seeing the familiar face Anna Kendrick as Lisa, a co-worker who holds a crush on the perceived to be nice guy Jerry. Her inclusion in the film as a second act love interest, which also introduces serious-meaning flashbacks of Jerry’s scarring childhood, where he is seen needing to talk to sock-puppets for emotional catharsis, shows just how misaligned the movie’s intentions of being all things ends up being. Jacki Weaver as Jerry’s psychiatrist makes for solid casting, but again, everything that isn’t all-out bonkers derails the already shaky premise from excelling at even that.
Stylistically, it’s made and chopped up with the intention of being a dark and cult movie; though this schlock-comedy won’t get a pass for having an inexcusably and barely funny script or barely interesting story. Much more deserving cult-comedies earn their spot nestled in amongst gross-out times with friends by pulling out all the stops and centering their entire philosophy behind the one absurd idea. The Voice's biggest crime here in this brutal outing is that, as a story about a guy who talks to his pets and the severed heads of his victims, it all the while attempts to hang on to a thread of somber back-story, of Jerry’s traumatizing childhood, that led him to be this way. And it’s still one heck of a seismically-stupid movie. It’s not even surprising when the final credits roll and the cast sings and dances directly into the camera as the movie's finale ending number, a self-aware nudge at the absurdity of the whole thing that only drives the final nail into this film’s coffin.
The Voices does not hold enough relevancy or fun times to warrant a watch, and it’d be assumed that Reynolds and company wouldn’t beg you to go out of your way to see it. Premiering at 2013’s Sundance Film Festival, the flick may have garnered early festival-high buzz, but its early February release should show that it’s back-burner material getting scraped off the slate. Unfortunately, Reynolds might have to suffer through more poor-project centered-reviews, if this even registers high enough on anyone’s radars before getting put to sleep.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fKu_NMbNKM
Review: 'Timbuktu'
Living in such modern times, one can sometimes feel the simultaneously-conflicting feelings of being at once incredibly connected to, as well as entirely disconnected from, our species as a whole. This global village reads headlines and news stories that clue us in, keep us updated on current affairs, tragic and otherwise. Timbuktu, an Academy-Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film (the official Mauritania entry) from director Abderrahmane Sissako, successfully brings the exotic landscape and culture of Jihadist occupied Timbuktu to incredible first-world relevancy, showing terror-born unrest through the eyes of everyday, dignified, Islamic people.
Timbuktu, at only a brisk ninety-seven minutes long, moves with a measured stillness, like specs of sand tumbling silently along through the film's vast desert landscapes, to achieve arresting viewing. In a small village, we see a small band of Jihadist rebels enter Timbuktu (shot in Mauritania, for safety purposes), and begin to impose their own self-rule amongst the people: cigarettes, football, even music are outlawed– not in shouting rage or wild caricature, but rather, with the sort of controlled, direct tone of truer fear and imposition.
Timbuktu is that rare film, an important film that, through thoughtful, insightful, and heartfelt film-making, humanizes a tragic story of this modern culture.
Outside of the small city and its imposed rule by the extremists, a local cattle herder Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed aka Pino) lives peacefully in the sand dunes with his wife Satima (Toulou Kiki), his daughter Toya (Layla Walet Mohamed), and Issan (Mehdi Ag Mohamed), their twelve-year-old shepherd. Kidane's pleasures consist of only seeing his family’s faces, especially that of his young daughter Toya, wide-eyed and beautiful. So when the loss of a calf at the hand of young Issan leads to a confrontation gone wrong with Kidane and an imposing fisherman, Kidane is removed from his family, leading to his fate being decided by the Islamic rebels who capture him in the city. A brilliantly woven storyline that organically merges to capture an entire landscape of oppressed life, we as the audience are treated with an experience of seeing first-hand the plight and oppression of these people, standing in direct contrast to the willful rebels that aim to rule them.
Of exceptional note is the confident directing on display. Life here in Timbuktu is shown as observed in the tradition and religious culture that dictates normal life, seen praying in mosques and praising Allah in respectful observance. The most successful aspect of the film, separate from the artistry, is with the dueling circumstances and practices of the Islamic people and the extremists who twist and bend religion to their will. In a scene, a rebel sits down with a local mother and daughter, and, with a translator (language barriers separate the rebels even further from the Islamic people and their philosophies) requests to marry her. When his offer is denied in a dignified manner, he assures in measured yet direct tone that the next time he asks, it will be in an aggressive way, to which she accepts with solemn grace. Sissako’s biggest achievement is giving back the humanity to a people and culture that, in headline news, can make us forget that we share collectively as a human race.
Timbuktu is that rare film, an important film that, through thoughtful, insightful, and heartfelt film-making, humanizes a tragic story of this modern culture. A beautifully made and haunting film (with gorgeous camerawork by Blue is the Warmest Color cinematographer Sofian El Fani) that is truly impactful, Timbuktu will stay in the minds of audiences to come.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CspcDYQ-SiY
Review: 'The Humbling'
The Humbling may allude to how former fictitious movie and stage actor Simon Axler (Al Pacino), on the other side of sixty, witnesses his own fall from grace during a theatrical run of King Lear, and that same sentiment is channeled and seeped into the movie itself; mostly. While Pacino hams it up in his own wide eyed despondence and delusion, the comedy and effort here, directed by Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Good Morning Vietnam) based on the novel from Philip Roth, makes for off-kilter entertainment that's as manic and varied as Pacino's persona himself (and audiences will receive or dismiss it based on that alone).
The film begins backstage in the mirror of a make-up counter, which sees Axler penciling in his grayed goatee while losing himself in Shakespeare ("All the world's a stage..."). The initial sequence sets up what is to be the focus of the movie, what every scene, shot, and performance choice is reaching for- hand outstretched towards the golden ring: the bruising story of a man coming to terms with his life, and how indistinguishable his life may be compared to his life of invent and make-pretend. It goes to the point that actors are apparently the most existentially conflicted with the most soul-torching of personal missions to sort out their life's meaning through art, which here, has become a worm-hole of self-reflexiveness that sees Axler attempt suicide, enter a self-help program, and begin an affair with a woman (further: lesbian) half his age (Greta Gerwig).
The initial sequence sets up what is to be the focus of the movie, what every scene, shot, and performance choice is reaching for- hand-outstretched towards the golden-ring: the bruising story of a man coming to terms with his life, and how indistinguishable his life may be compared to his life of invent and make-pretend.
The weightiness of such an emotionally taxing plot may sound boorish and clunky, which again, it kind of is. While it can be safely stated that it's become something of old-hat to see Pacino in a rabid-dog mania in his performances, his indulgence is leveraged in good spirits here. Although the film's go-to move is seeing a weathered Axler, sitting in some sort of chair (cushioned or otherwise), slumped over in inner-monologue soliloquy, the whole thing is composed with enough free-form composition that it at least never loses you in total abstraction, even when things get weird.
And weird things get. With Axler's spiral into solitary living in a reclusive mansion, with tele-video sessions with a therapist (Simon Baker), he is soon visited by an old friend–who is not old herself, but rather, a family friend's daughter, Pegreen, who once fostered a crush for her father's friend, but is now herself edging forty. Oh, and she's in a relationship with a woman, but it doesn't matter, apparently, because she soon enough throws herself on him, and the two begin a relationship that's depicted as more sincere then creepy. Gerwig is great here, giving her dose of pixie-girl next door sprinkling to the absurdity of it all. Oh, and there's a sub-plot about a woman that Axler meets, Sybil (Nina Arianda) in self-help that asks Axler to help kill her ex-husband. There are actually a few more sub-plots that fall flat and fast, but oddly enough add to the movie's frantic headspace.
While many reviews will mention the striking similarities between this and fellow dip-into-surrealism art-as-life story Birdman, it's to The Humbling's credit that it will be remembered for its own take on the subject matter; however out-there it might be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMBbt1JXCkQ