The Screengrab : bryan whitefield

"It's Great That My Friends Happen to Be Incredible Actors": Mark Webber Talks About Making "Explicit Ills"

Phil Nugent — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:30:00 GMT

The 28-year-old actor Mark Webber (Broken Flowers, Animal Factory, and the forthcoming Scott Pilgrim movie, which he describes as "Kill Bill meets Say Anything) made his debut as a writer-director last year with Explicit Ills, a semi-autobiographical, multi-character drama, with a cast that includes Rosario Dawson, Paul Dano, and Lou Taylor Pucci, in his hometown of Philadelphia. It showed at the 2008 SXSW Festival, where it won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature, as well as awards for its terrific cinematography by Patrice Lucien Cochet. The movie has just started popping up in theaters, and Nerve/Screengrab contributor Bryan Whitefield's recent discussion with Webber, before a live audience at the Apple Store in New York City, is available as a podcast.

Click here to listen to Webber discuss his influences, his impressions of his talented cast, and the importance of art as a vehicle for social change.

Screengrab Q&A: Mark Webber, director of Explicit Ills

Peter Smith — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:30:00 GMT

At twenty-eight, actor Mark Webber is already a recognizable veteran of the indie film-festival circuit. Using several years of valuable experience Webber took on a different role as the writer, director and producer of his first feature Explicit Ills. The semi-autobiographical film follows four interconnected stories within inner-city Philadelphia and focuses on some very relevant and timely social issues. It's been a big year for Webber. Aside from the release of his debut feature, he has been cast alongside Michael Cera in Edgar Wright's upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and also saw the birth of his first child. He spoke with us about the trials and tribulations of getting a movie from notebook to big screen as well as his muted optimism about America's current political landscape. — Bryan Whitefield

Obviously you've worked on a number of films as an actor and even a few as a producer, but how difficult was it to get your own film done from start to finish?
You know what? It's really hard [laughs]. I mean the turnaround from when I wrote the script to when we got it cast, then got financing, to up and shooting, actually happened in a matter of months. And even with editing and post it all came together within a year — which is really fast. But at the same time it's taken me almost twelve years to make this happen, in a way, because it's taken me working as an actor and meeting directors and learning from them as well as throughout that process establishing relationships with other talented, creative people. And because of that I was able to call Paul [Dano] and Rosario [Dawson] and [Jim] Jarmusch directly and get them to read my script, which for a lot of people starting out is the uphill battle that takes up a lot of your time and energy. So I was very fortunate in that way. Then the actual making of the film was just a series of constant highs and lows. We were working with a really small budget and not a lot of time and some really ambitious set-ups shooting-wise. Not to mention we were shooting on film and working with young kids in some not-so-great neighborhoods. But fortunately for me, the majority of the films that I've worked on have been shot in a similar way, so I was able to lean on some of that experience as a filmmaker myself.

Which directors do you feel like you learned the most about directing from? You already mentioned Jim Jarmusch, who was the executive producer on your film.
Jim is a big influence. His career as a filmmaker to me is awesome because he's just made the films he wanted to make the way he's wanted to make them. Ideally, that's how I feel all films should be crafted. Unfortunately, I've seen friends of mine essentially have films taken away from them and re-edited for the sake of making something that was more "commercial" — which is a really odd term to me, but one that permeates a lot of the talk outside of filmmaking. So Jim is really inspiring to me, and the fact that he was willing to be the Godfather to my first film was extremely helpful and beneficial.

I've done two films with Ethan Hawke now, and he's just a great person and an incredible actor, and has this really infectious spirit on set as a director that keeps everyone happy and willing to explore.

I also got to work with Todd Solondz on Storytelling and I was just blown away by the guy. In a way it was similar to when I worked with Thomas Vinterberg and Lars von Trier, where you're working with someone who you know is incredibly talented and you think they might have some trick up their sleeve, as if you're part of some experiment, but you want to be there. That's really cool to me.

One thing that really impressed me was the film's strong visual language. I know that you worked with Patrice Lucent Cochet, the cinematographer from the film you did with Steve Berra, The Good Life.
Thanks, and it was really cool that Patrice got that recognition at SXSW (Best Cinematography) for his work on the film. But having worked with him before, even just as an actor, went a really long way. I think it would have been difficult to have to develop a relationship with someone that important to the outcome of the film because there were so many other aspects that I was trying to manage.

On a side note, how disappointing is it when you make a quality film like The Good Life that for whatever reason never ends up getting into theaters? And on the flip side how satisfying is it when you do get to see a project through and get it out there?
It hurts. With The Good Life in particular, I was really proud of that film and the people who were fortunate enough to see it at Sundance that year seemed to really love the film. It got a DVD release, but it was made for theaters. So yeah, that one stung. But then to write and direct and produce a film and have it play at the Angelika? That's really a dream come true. It's just a crazy climate for independent film right now and you're really fortunate if your film gets seen at all, which is why film festivals are so crucial for a lot of these smaller movies. But I'm ecstatic that we're opening at the Angelika because I've seen a lot of incredible films there throughout the years, so it's a proud moment for me.

When did you decide to get an actor to essentially play the "Mark Webber" part?
[Laughs] Yeah, I had thought at one point that I would be in it, but I really wanted to feel what it was like to be a director on this film Then I saw Thumbsucker, and I had been hearing about Lou Pucci for awhile, partly because he was the young guy vying for some of the roles I might have been up for. And then I got a chance to meet him and talk about the project and we really got along. Part of it too was that Explicit was already so personal that I felt like I needed a little distance so I could retain perspective on it.

The film addresses some serious social issues. Do you feel more optimistic now with President Obama in office?
I feel like the very PC answer to that question is yes, but unfortunately I don't entirely feel that way. I think Obama is the first person in office in a really long time that actually feels like a real person and he has a good heart and he means well, but I'm still a believer in people coming together to change this world. I just don't think that it's possible for one man in a very corrupt system to be able to create real change. At the same time, I think President Obama is an eloquent speaker for change and an important catalyst for it even just in inspiring people and making them feel like they've elected someone who represents them. I just don't want people to lose the perspective and the faith in their own ability to create change and remain committed to actively trying to make this world a better place and not think it stops with electing someone. I am very happy that he got elected, but I'm also a little worried that it might take the wind out of people's sails. I don't want the empowerment that people felt in coming together and electing him to go away because he won. I want them to use that energy to help make their own lives better.

I know you already have some films lined up to act in, but will you write or direct again?
Definitely. That idea was cooking while I was shooting Explicit and then it just reached a fever pitch during post-production, because I always feel as soon you're done with something, all of a sudden you really know how to do it. Part of it is just accepting that idea and as an artist trying to learn from it for the next time. Making Explicit Ills was phenomenal for me because I love storytelling and filmmaking and the collective effort of making a movie, and now I feel like I could do it better. I've got some ideas that are just chicken scratch in a notebook right now, but I'm excited about starting this whole crazy process all over again.

DVD Digest for September 2, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week’s DVD Digest is highlighted by a bumper crop of new TV-on-DVD releases in conjunction with the upcoming fall season. In addition, a large number of Blu-Ray only releases and a crush of new indie films on DVD helps to smooth over the lack of a first-rate “DVD of the Week”-worthy release.

This week’s high-profile new releases on DVD include Ira Sachs’ acclaimed fifties-set drama Married Life (Sony, also Blu-Ray), the Norwegian import Reprise (Buena Vista) (click here for Bryan Whitefield’s interview with the filmmaker), and the animated direct-to-DVD Marvel feature Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray). Also, in a strange coincidence, this week also brings the release of four films I caught at Columbus’ Out@Wex series of GLBT films this past spring: Jacques Nolot’s Before I Forget (Strand), the coming-of-age drama Water Lilies (Koch), the gender politics comedy Itty Bitty Titty Committee (Wolfe Video), and Lagerfeld Confidential (Koch), a documentary about the fashion designer.

This week’s slate of classics coming to DVD is highlighted by three new Fox Noir releases: Elia Kazan’s Boomerang, Jean Gabin in Moontide, and Road House (no, not that one), which includes a commentary track from Screengrab favorite Kim Morgan. Somewhat less notable is MGM’s 20th Anniversary Edition of the unholy union of Michael J. Fox and Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City.

In the TV-on-DVD department, this week brings Desperate Housewives Season 4 (Disney), Eli Stone Season 1 (Disney), Ghost Whisperer Season 3 (Paramount), It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 3 (Fox), Life Season 1 (Universal) starring the ever-underrated Damian Lewis, Supernatural Season 2 (Warner), and The Office Season 4 (Universal).

Finally, this week’s action-heavy Blu-Ray only releases include: Jet Li in Black Mask (Lionsgate), Arnold Schwarzenegger in Eraser (Warner), the Clint Eastwood double feature Every Which Way But Loose (Warner) and The Gauntlet (Warner), Marvel’s animated The Invincible Iron Man (Lionsgate), the killer-virus thriller Outbreak (Warner), Michael Bay’s Transformers (Paramount), and Steven Seagal ridin’ the rails in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (Warner).

Indie Box Office Roundup: Weekend of May 16-18, 2008

Paul Clark — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Nearly a year ago, Screengrab’s Bryan Whitefield sang the praises of a little Norwegian stunner called Reprise (Miramax), calling it “modern filmmaking at its most inventive.” As it turns out, somebody was actually listening. Nearly $50,000 worth of somebodies, to be precise. Reprise, directed by Joachim Trier, effortlessly placed first in this weekend’s Indie Box Office, grossing a per-screen average of $16,353 in three venues, and nearly doubling the next-best contender. Expect good word of mouth to help the film’s box office as it expands its release to Chicago, DC, Boston and Minneapolis in the coming weeks.

Following at the heels of Reprise was a trio of documentaries jockeying for the second-place spot. Of the three, the highest-grossing was Christopher Zalla’s immigration-themed Sangre de Mi Sangre (IFC Films). It was followed closely by the Doug Pray’s eccentric surfer profile Surfwise (Magnolia), and America the Beautiful (Arenas Entertainment), a muckraker about the effects that the modeling and fashion industries have on the health of young women. Rounding out the top five was Tarsem’s dark fantasy The Fall (Roadside Attractions).

Also of note this week was the unstoppable Richard Jenkins juggernaut, which carried The Visitor into the top 10 overall for the first time since its release and took its overall grosses upwards of $3 million. Not bad for a sleeper about a bald (although admittedly awesome) character actor learning to play the drum. Could the deafening word of mouth for the film turn Jenkins into an awards-season contender? Stay tuned.

Top 10: Weekend of May 16-18, 2008:
1. Reprise [Miramax] ($16,353 per screen)
2. Sangre de Mi Sangre [IFC Films] ($8,385)
3. Surfwise [Magnolia Pictures] ($6,342)
4. America The Beautiful [Arenas Entertainment] ($6,169)
5. The Fall [Roadside Attractions] ($5,921)
6. Roman De Gare [IDP/Samuel Goldwyn Films] ($4,492)
7. Bloodline [Cinema Libre] ($4,292)
8. My Father My Lord [Kino International] ($4,016)
9. Yella [Cinema Guild] ($3,884)
10. Up the Yangtze [Zeitgeist] ($3,659)

Source: IndieWire.

Screengrab Q&A: Joachim Trier, Director of Reprise

Peter Smith — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Joachim Trier's debut film Reprise centers on a pair of twentysomething best friends who drop their debut novels into the same mailbox to varied results. It's taken the writer/director on a very interesting journey. The film won Trier a Discovery Award at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival; it debuted in the States at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, and was later the featured film in the 2007 New Directors/New Films series, where Manohla Dargis of the New York Times declared it "one of the most passionately and intellectually uninhibited works from a young director I've seen in ages." It also went on to win Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Film at the Amanda Awards in Norway (the equivalent of an Oscar) in 2007. But only after support from superproducer Scott Rudin and Miramax will the film get a general release in American theaters today. Reprise is vibrant, inventive and original in both its ideas and its form, and is sure to be at the top of my own year-end list. — Bryan Whitefield

Foreign-language films typically have a hard time in America, and I remember someone at the MoMA screening asking if you had considered writing an English language version of Reprise. . .
[laughs] I've had offers, actually. But to me Reprise is perfect as it is now in its cultural setting. I'm interested in detail, and not because I'm trying to hone in on one particular part of the audience. You try to see things as they are — these are people who are living like that and have shoes like that and listen to music like this and this is the world where they live. You work to create it and you don't ask questions. To recreate that somewhere else would be absurd. But at the same time, some people were telling me, "This film reminds me so much of people I know on the Lower East Side." I get this even in Turkey. There were people there that were coming up to me to say, "We have boys like that in Istanbul that listen to Joy Division and everything."

You use some interesting formal devices in the film, like skewing timelines or having scenes play where the dialogue track doesn't match the action. How much of that was in the script and how much was done afterwards?
The screenplay is a lot like the film as a finished piece, but along the way you have to create something else and then come back to it. We would write a very intertwined, intercut scene to give the financiers an idea of how it would look. But then I would re-write it, with my co-writer, as a long linear scene that we would then cut up and go back to the initial idea. Dirty formalism, I usually call it. It needs to be alive and chaotic, yet it's also quite particularly planned.

The film plays very loose, but at the same time feels very focused.
I think those are the kind of contrasts we are always looking for when we do movies. I think it's the same for the actors. They go on set and they learn their lines and practice and run them again and again, and then they go on set and kind of lose them.

You're also dealing with the contrast between light and dark; the film balances very serious scenes with very funny ones.
It's kind of like music. In order to [fit in both tones], you need almost musical transitions.

That is how people actually deal with unhappy experiences. If you're going to pick your best friend up out of the mental hospital, you make a joke to deal with it.
Otherwise you won't survive. Compensational dynamics in people are more interesting. When the two boys are closest to each other, they can throw a lot of shit and say bad things to each other, but when they drift apart, they don't have that glue anymore. They end up trying to be polite; they're just not sure what to say anymore.

You cast mostly non-professional actors.
We looked at musicians or friends of friends or stand-up comedians, all sorts of people. In fairness, some of them are trained actors, but the lead parts are all people who have done other things. Like the guy that plays Phillip is a doctor. He worked with young teenage schizophrenics as part of his education as a doctor, so he had great experience, and he knew that madness isn't always excessive and screamy. It can sometimes be very drawn in.

Were there filmmakers or artists in general who inspired you?
Alain Resnais and Chris Marker are people who have meant a lot to me, because they made films that deal with almost the ground substance of cinema — memory, representation, identity — things that I think give themselves as themes to films particularly. Also Woody Allen, with Annie Hall. A lot of that stuff is seen as comedy but it's actually really good drama. But there are millions of references — a lot of music actually. The guy that did the score has a band called The White Birch, and we were listening to that all the time when we were writing. It was great when he said he would do the score for us since he'd never done feature film scores before.

Was he a friend of yours?
Not at the time, but we had some common friends.You know, it's a little ironic since Reprise is kind of about people who fall apart as friends, but I've made a lot of new friends through this process.

[SEMI-SPOILER ALERT] I thought it was refreshing to have an, in a sense, uplifting, almost happy ending.
Not everybody has interpreted it like that.

I kept waiting for something really dark to happen and I thought the way you tied things up was very nice. Did you struggle with that decision?
People interpret the ending differently. Some people see it as quite bleak and others see it as optimistic. I was always, in my mind, cheering for the characters; I just hope that people are open to an open ending.

One of the hallmarks of American indies seems to be that if you have a happy ending, you secretly wanted to make a commercial film.
I remember hearing acquisitions people talking about the films at Sundance: "Was it hopeful? Was it uplifting?" Those were the two words I kept hearing, and it struck me as so odd. . . I mean, what the fuck is hopeful? It makes me hopeful sometimes if a filmmaker can make a film that's truly sad and makes me feel less alone. But this idea of hopefulness I found very funny.

Rep Report Addendum – Rendezvous with French Cinema

Peter Smith — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:30:00 GMT

Screengrab contributor Bryan Whitefield reports from the Film Society of Lincoln Center's annual Rendezvous with French Cinema program.

While this year's crop of films couldn't boast about anything as high profile as last year's opening night film La Vie En Rose, which featured the eventually Oscar-winning performance by Marion Cotillard as French icon Edith Piaf, this popular annual series presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center did include several notable films for cineastes and admirers of all things French.

French New Wave director Claude LeLouch (A Man and A Woman) opened this year's series with his latest film Roman de Gare, a thriller about a popular novelist whose life and fiction become intermingled. Another New Wave veteran, Claude Miller, screened his latest film, A Secret, which focuses on the French-Jewish community during World War II. This is one of two films that feature Mathieu Amalric, the star of Julian Schnabel's much-acclaimed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. The other, Nicolas Klotz's Heartbeat Detector/La Question Humaine, could be tagged as a French Michael Clayton with Amalric as an in-house psychologist for a giant chemical company who uncovers some serious big-business skeletons.

Perhaps the most easily digestible film in the series is Cédric Klapisch's Paris which features an ensemble cast led by the consistently excellent Romain Duris and Juliette Binoche. The film certainly has its flaws, and does rely on a multi-line narrative, a screenwriting tool that feels a little too easy at this point, but also gives a view of the city and its many landmarks that feels like a feature-length postcard of Paris itself, sure to invoke memories for those who have been there and further romanticizing it for those who have not.

The shining star of this year's series for me is also likely to be a hate-it-or-love-it film for many — Christophe Honoré's modern musical Love Songs, essentially about a girl-girl-guy threesome. Honoré, no stranger to controversy or mixed reviews, began his career with Ma Mere, a film about mother-son incest generally seen as either a first glimpse of genius or a loathsome pile of shit. His second film, last year's Dans Paris, was met with similar raves and reviles. Love Songs, written by Honoré from a shared personal experience with French songwriter Alex Beaupain, actually uses its beautiful little songs as a narrative trick that allows the characters to stand outside reality and express emotions that would have been lost in a more straight-forward drama. The filmmaking has a stylized yet in-the-moment feeling that evokes the best of the French New Wave. The gifted cast, including Louis Garrel, Ludovine Sagnier, Clotilde Hesme and Chiara Mastroianni, allows the songs to fold into the overall action, a big part of why so much of this film works as well as it does. My giving a "musical" a chance is pretty unusual, but this film's inventive storytelling and strong performances won me over immediately and it's certain to be on my year-end list.

Screengrab Review: City of Men

Peter Smith — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Review by Bryan Whitefield.

When City of God was released in 2002, it became an international sensation for its mix of stylized violence and gritty portrayal of life in the Brazilian favelas. It launched the career of director Fernando Mereilles, who used the same location and several of the non-professional actors from the film to create an episodic series for Brazilian TV called City of Men.

The show was much more light-hearted than the original film, following the day-to-day exploits of lovable teenagers Acerola and Laranjinha whose various schemes ranged from selling popsicles to losing their virginity. Capturing a more hopeful spirit while never turning a blind eye to violence and harsh conditions, the show also gave audiences a chance to watch the two boys literally grow up on camera. In many ways it covered similar territory to season four of HBO's The Wire — kids living under difficult circumstances with no guidance, failed by social institutions and finding an alternative in community-minded drug dealers who at least offer a path to money and mobility.

The film City of Men was written and directed by Paolo Morelli, who helmed several of the show's episodes, and maintains the show's looseness and vibrancy, highlighting the contradiction between Brazil's incredible beauty and nearly unimaginable poverty, crime and violence. Picking up where the show left off, we find the two friends forced to face an early adulthood. Acerola is now a father himself, while Laranjinha is consumed with uncovering the identity of the father he never knew. Because of the dire conditions that surround them, the story has a built-in drama and the characters are forced into difficult, even critical decisions. The movie plays more like a series finale than a stand-alone feature, but if it leads viewers back to the consistently excellent television series, it's valuable even just as an advertisement. — Bryan Whitefield

The Ten Best Cussing Scenes in Movies, Part 2

Phil Nugent — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:00:00 GMT

SCARFACE (1983)

Here’s something funny about Oliver Stone: he seems to have a lot more fun when he’s writing movies than when he’s directing them. While the movies where he’s behind the camera have become self-important bores, the movies where he’s behind the typewriter are highly enjoyable, if completely demented. Conan the Barbarian may have been the purest distillation of his bloodthirstily goofy aesthetic, but it was the screenplay for Brian DePalma’s Scarface a year later where he really let his freak flag fly. A perfect example of a movie that’s compulsively watchable without actually being very good, Scarface also proves that the one thing more enjoyable than a movie with non-stop vulgarity is a movie with non-stop vulgarity in an incredibly over-the-top quasi-Cuban accent. (A chainsaw execution can’t hurt, either.) Al Pacino’s Tony Montana isn’t an obscenity artist; he is but a humble craftsman, a busy businessman who relies on the word "fuck" because he hasn’t got the time to learn any other ones. For every cleverly crafted "Why don’t you try sticking your head up your ass? See if it fits," there’s a workmanlike get-over like "You know what? Fuck you! How about that?" How about that, indeed. It’s hard to know if Scarface would have been the deranged, hyperactive masterpiece that it is without Pacino’s constant Hispanic-causing-panic vulgarisms, but it surely wouldn’t have been as much fun. If you don’t believe us, try to imagine Paul Muni saying "This town is like a great big pussy just waiting to get fucked." Now that’s comedy!

GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS (1992)

David Mamet's ode to testosterone-soaked salesmen is a veritable symphony of profanity, with even legendary milquetoast Jack Lemmon attempting to wrap his mouth around words like "cocksucker." (Not to speak ill of the dead, but he's no Ian McShane.) Alec Baldwin is the soloist who takes home top honors, though his inspirational speech to the troops does not rely solely on foul language for its power. With his reptilian delivery, lines like "coffee is for closers" and "third prize is you're fired" sound nearly as venomous as the blunt rejoinder "Fuck you – that's my name!" Though he doesn't say it in so many words, Baldwin makes the point that the sales game is a dick-measuring contest and everybody but him is coming up short. Like all the best motivational speakers, he uses props. "It takes brass balls to sell real estate," he announces, brandishing a pair for effect. Don't try this in your own boardroom unless you have good lawyers.

SECRET HONOR (1984)

When the transcripts of the Nixon White House tapes started to come out, what shocked a lot of people wasn't the president's amorality so much as the language with which he expressed it. His obscene ramblings suggested a potty-mouthed genie bubbling and rumbling and thrashing beneath the surface of his carefully fostered image as the last defender of Middle America, subsisting on a diet of cottage cheese and Norman Rockwell illustrations. In Robert Altman's one-man show, Nixon (Philip Baker Hall), sealed in the wood-paneled tranquility of his study like William Hurt set to de-evolve in his isolation tank in Altered States, runs through his whole life and political career in a spastic monologue punctuated by sputtered out "shit!"s and "fuck!"s. It all builds to the moment when Nixon, having considered blowing his brains out as penance for his sins, decides that this would give too much satisfaction to the real monsters, the ones who "elected me, not once, not twice, but all my goddamn life," and signs off with an endless, Tourette's-like chant of "Fuck em! Fuck 'em!!" As he bellows out the same two words, again and again, Altman frames his wild face in the screens of the TV monitors that line the room. The genie has been isolated.

POETIC JUSTICE (1993)

John Singleton's Poetic Justice actually played against Tupac's ever-growing reputation as an out-of-control thug and notorious player. His character Lucky is a postman who gets dissed in the very first scene and then has to endure a road trip with the same girl that made him the butt of the joke. This is every guy's worst nightmare – confined space with a girl who shot you down. Unless you're counting her role on Good Times or Rhythm Nation 1814, this was essentially Janet Jackson's film debut, and even though she may have told us she was nasty, most people still assumed, looking at that angelic face, that she was probably very nice. This scene is so memorable because all of that is blown to pieces as she trades fuck yous with Mr. Thug Life himself. Although the scene can certainly stand on its own in terms of pure firepower, you might want to brush up on the back story – outlined in our previous Top 10 Offscreen Feuds list – to help you understand the uncanny authenticity of the venom being spit here.

NIL BY MOUTH (1997)

When it comes to vulgar language in movies, there is quality, and then there is quantity. Whether or not Gary Oldman’s directorial debut, Nil By Mouth, counts as a lodestone of quality obscenity, it is the all-time grand champion in terms of quantity. It’s actually a fine little film, and Oldman’s script about growing up in a dysfunctional working-class family in South London is quite compelling at times, but where it truly excels is in its non-stop barrage of obscenity. No less than the Guinness Book of World Records has certified it as the film containing the most iterations of "fuck": the word appears an astonishing 470 times, or almost four times a minute. It’s that sort of dedication that separates the pretenders from the true masters, and Oldman doesn’t stop there: he also favors us with the word "cunt" a whopping eighty-two times, or once every minute and a half. Most of the fucks and cunts issue from the lager-stained mouth of Ray Winstone, playing a character based on Oldman’s own father. (Oldman dedicates the film to his old man, which must have made him feel pretty good about himself.) Some films don’t even have as much punctuation as Nil By Mouth has "fuck"s; if its director grew up in an environment anything like the one portrayed here, it’s a wonder he can communicate at all. Other films may be more artful in their use of the f-word, and other films may save it for when it counts more instead of going for total sensory overload, but until someone manages to make a movie in which someone uses the word "fuck" in every frame, then Nil By Mouth will be the reigning king.

– Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Scott Von Doviak, Bryan Whitefield

Check out Part 1 here.

The Ten Worst Hairdos in Movie History, Part 2

Peter Smith — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Woody Harrelson and Bill Murray, KINGPIN (1996)

Bowling is enjoyed by millions of Americans of all ages, but in the Farrelly brothers' second film Kingpin, the professional bowling circuit is portrayed as being forever trapped in the seventies. Professional bowlers are seen as sleazeball would-be lounge lizards, dressing in garish clothes, doing cock-of-the-walk victory dances, and relentlessly chasing women when they're not bowling. But in Kingpin, the most telling remnant of their faded vocation is almost certainly the hairdos they sport. In the seventies, Harrelson's Roy Munson and Murray's Ernie "Big Ern" McCracken were well-coiffed slicksters. Two decades hence, they try, with varying degrees of success, to maintain their youthful appearance by engaging in that age-old solution practiced by creepy old men the world over — the comb over. True to their characters, Big Ern is better at maintaining the façade — his 'do looks like a woodland creature parked itself atop his pate, but at least it doesn't reflect the light. But once the rivals take to the lanes for the climactic showdown, Big Ern shows his true colors. Usually a cool customer, he lets the stress get the better of his hair, and it gradually begins to detach from his head, until it resembles the world's largest ripped seam. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kate Winslet's Clementine speaks of having mood hair, but we'd like to think that, as with so many great things in cinema, Bill Murray got there first.

The Leningrad Cowboys, LENINGRAD COWBOYS GO AMERICA

Rock'n'roll has a history of some pretty questionable hairdos, but none like those worn by the Leningrad Cowboys. Almost surely the most rockin' band to get their start north of the Arctic Circle, the Cowboys first entered the scene as the brainchild of director Aki Kaurismäki, who assembled some of his rocker pals for his 1989 stone-faced mockumentary, Leningrad Cowboys Go America. In the film, the Cowboys, tired of playing in Siberia, mount an American tour, despite their uncertain grasp of the English language. But if their songs mark them as foreigners, their hair is positively alien, with all members sporting uniform black pompadours, each with a large, unicorn-like forelock pointing out into the distance. As the film progresses, we discover that this hairdo is actually a congenital signifier of musical skill — the musically-challenged cousin who stalks the combo has but a tiny tuft to his name. Unfortunately for the Cowboys, the U.S. tour is mostly a washout, but they'd find more enduring success at home following the fall of the Iron Curtain. They appeared in two more features, Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses and the concert film Total Balalaika Show, in which they teamed up with the Alexandrov Red Army Chorus and Dance Ensemble, as well as over half a dozen music videos directed by Kaurismäki. Finally, the Cowboys made their triumphant return to the American stage for the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall. All the while, the band remained true to their roots, never touching so much as a strand of those terrible, awesome hairdos.

Demi Moore, STRIPTEASE

Some might think the obvious choice here would be G.I. Jane, but somehow even a number-one blade on a pair of clippers only revealed that Demi Moore had a perfectly shaped head, and didn't diminish her hotness in the least. The same cannot be said for the bangs-and-blow-dry look of Striptease. Yeah, we know she's supposed to be playing a stripper, but those are clearly hair extensions, and not very flattering ones at that. Most people at the time were probably distracted by the reveal of Moore's surgically enhanced breasts (we liked the originals just fine, thank you) and there are certainly many places the finger of blame can be pointed in this nuclear stinkbomb of a movie — but you shouldn't underestimate just how bad a haircut had to be back then to make Demi Moore look unattractive.

Kevin Costner, THE BODYGUARD (1992)

The story behind one of Sir Kevin's more laughable haircuts (and, if you've seen his mullet in Robin Hood, that's really saying something) is actually kinda touching: The interracial romance-thriller The Bodyguard was originally conceived as a vehicle for Diana Ross and Steve McQueen way back during the 1970s. When the film was finally made in 1992, starring Costner and Whitney Houston, the star decided to try and channel McQueen; to do so he adopted the legendary icon of cool's trademark close-cropped haircut, which looked fantastic on McQueen but downright surreal on Costner. That said, Costner did have the last laugh: The Bodyguard was one of his worst films, and a stain on screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan's career (it had been his first script — turns out he made up for it with The Empire Strikes Back), but it wound up being a huge hit. Indeed, we're not unconvinced that Costner's follicular follies in this film didn't lead indirectly to the George-Clooney-and-his-Caesar-haircut craze a couple of years later. There you go, folks — one more societal ill you can blame on Kevin Costner.

Nicolas Cage, NATIONAL TREASURE (2004)

Full disclosure: For weeks the spot for this entry stood empty on this list, with simply the words "Nicolas Cage, FILM TO BE DETERMINED LATER" holding its place. Because let's face it, any number of films starring Nicolas Cage from the past few years could go here — from the god-awful toupee he sported in Ghost Rider to the goofy balding curls he fretted over in Adaptation (of course, we don't hold that last one against him, not only because his bad hair was a plot point in that film, but also because we have this disturbing suspicion that, had nature been allowed to take its course, that's what Nicolas Cage's real hair might actually look like today). But we're going with National Treasure, for the simple fact that we spent the whole film staring at the slug-like patch of weave at the very tip of the actor's forehead. Seriously, this isn't hair, it's a lid. In these later years, Cage and Kevin Costner have switched places, but if you'd asked us fifteen years ago which of the two would allow himself to go bald gracefully while the other kept trying new ways to make himself look like he had something resembling a "full" "head" of "hair," the answer might have been different.

— Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Vern, Bryan Whitefield

Click here for Part 1!

The Ten Worst Hairdos In Movie History, Part 1

Peter Smith — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Yeah, we know, we know, that haircut soon-to-be-Oscar-winner Javier Bardem sports in the soon-to-be-Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men is pretty disturbing and awful. But that's not even the worst haircut of Javier Bardem's career. (Read on!) Indeed, thinking about No Country got us thinking about some of the other truly monstrous 'dos we've encountered over the years on the screen. Here's our list of the Ten Worst Hairdos in Movie History.

Mickey Rourke, YEAR OF THE DRAGON (1985)

In his shambling youth, Mickey Rourke had a tough veneer with a sensitive undertone. He might have become a major movie star (as opposed to an object of cult worship in France and some of your better dorm rooms) in the Hollywood Heartthrob, Good-Bad-but-Not-Evil division, if he'd found a few more roles like the Baltimore honeydripper he played in Diner. But he drove his career into a ditch in a misguided effort to show what a tough, hard-slugging badass he was. His performance in this descent into the Michael Cimino-Oliver Stone Thunderdome tells you everything about what went wrong, and much of it is concentrated on his hair. Twenty-eight years old when the film was shot, Rourke seemed a little young for the role of a much-decorated NYPD veteran who learned about the deviousness of the Asian criminal mind while serving in Vietnam, more than ten years earlier. So the decision was made to send him down to the high school and have the erasers clapped together over his head. His chalk-encrusted tresses here make his entrance a guaranteed laugh-getter, especially since he wears a hat that he must have borrowed from a flatfoot in a Bogart movie; when he plops it down onto his noggin, you expect a cloud of white dust to envelop the room. (In some scenes his hair darkens to a grayish tint and then goes white again, suggesting that the testosterone release of beating up Chinese punks and having sex with Dutch-Japanese-supermodel-slash-godawful-actress "Ariane" has youth-restoring benefits, but they wear off fast.)

Sean Penn, CARLITO'S WAY (1993)

Penn's performance as Al Pacino's fast-talking lawyer, who lusts after the bad-boy cred and sleazy thrills that his client has outgrown, is a beautiful comic turn, and the selflessness that makes it possible extends fully to his scalp. With a little mop of frizzy curlicues that suggest that he's had his pubic hair transplanted onto his head, he looks like Art Garfunkel, Superstar. (This effect was especially funny back in 1993, when it was possible to go from this movie to see Jennifer Lynch's Boxing Helena and see that the actual Art Garfunkel had turned into Larry Fine, C.P.A.) His red mop grows more excitable and unruly as his character grows ever more dangerously unhinged. At the end, we hear a gunshot that signals that his character has been put out of Carlito's misery, and it is a great disappointment that the camera cuts away without showing his hair scurrying away under its own power. Nobody in Hollywood knows how to set up a sequel anymore.

Javier Bardem, PERDITA DURANGO (1997)

You think his hair in No Country for Old Men is bad? Pfft. For some of us, our first impression of Javier Bardem was with another bad hair cut, the one he had in Alex de la Iglesia's Perdita Durango (aka Dance With the Devil). Playing a homicidal, kidnapping voodoo priest, Bardem sports an unholy mullet that could scar your eyeballs. It's a scary character, and the hair cut makes him scarier because you know he knows he can get away with it. And you fear what would happen if you accidentally made fun of it. Nobody's making "business in front, party in the back" jokes around him, we guarantee you.

Anne Bancroft in THE HINDENBURG (1975)

In 1937, a German passenger zeppelin caught fire and exploded as it was preparing to land in New Jersey. The catastrophe was captured on film by a newsreel cameraman, and in 1975, some master of taste and sensitivity got the inspiration of trying to tap into the mid-'70s "disaster movie" fad by making a period melodrama leading up to the horror. Looking to tone this idea up a little, the movie posits that the explosion was set off deliberately, as an act of anti-Nazi sabotage. An alternate theory is that the saboteur felt that it was necessary to wipe Anne Bancroft's hair off the face of the Earth, whatever the cost. Bancroft plays a German countess who is also a morphine addict, which must be pretty mild stuff compared to whatever the hell her hairdresser is on. Since this is the kind of movie that tries to impress you with the historical accuracy of its fashions and knick knacks, Bancroft's grisly coiffure must have been the result of intense research. But could the researchers not have kept it to themselves that the stylish German junkie of 1937 walked around looking, as Pauline Kael put it with baleful accuracy, as if she had "black potato chips stuck to her head"?

Keith Carradine in TROUBLE IN MIND (1986)

Every once in a while, the writer-director Alan Rudolph feels the need to make a movie so strange that all his other movies will consider reporting it to Homeland Security if it threatens to move into their neighborhood. At present, the holder of this title is probably his 1999 Kurt Vonnegut adaptation Breakfast of Champions, but Trouble in Mind, a sort-of-futuristic daydream set in "Rain City", a drizzly place where the local criminal kingpin is played by Divine, took on all comers for quite a while there. This is one of the few times Divine played a non-drag role, but he must have brought his make-up case with him, because it looks as if Carradine got into it and made a hell of a mess. He plays a dopey young punk from the sticks who falls in with the wrong crowd and becomes overly enamored of the decadent thrills that Rain City has to offer. The most garish of these are apparently dispensed at the local Supercuts, because he keeps disappearing for awhile and then returning with his hair drenched in sticky-looking glop and twisted into fun house shapes, with his face painted as if he'd gotten a job as David Bowie's stunt double on the cover of Aladdin Sane. All in all, this may have been Keith Carradine's unstudliest hour.

— Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Vern, Bryan Whitefield

Click here for Part 2!

Top 10 of 2007: Final Tally

Paul Clark — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Now that you've seen everyone's individual list, here's The Screengrab's list of the top 10 films of 2007:

1. No Country For Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen)
2. Zodiac (David Fincher)
3. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel)
4. I'm Not There (Todd Haynes)
5. Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck)
6. Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
7. The Host (Bong Joon-ho)
8. Knocked Up (Judd Apatow)
9. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Sidney Lumet)
10. The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnarsmarck)

Links to individual lists:

Paul Clark

Phil Nugent

Leonard Pierce

Scott Von Doviak

Bryan Whitefield

Top 10 of 2007: Bryan Whitefield

Paul Clark — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

While this was an undeniably good year for film, it was also a year in which smaller movies had a much harder time getting attention — or even into theaters at all. With big-name directors like Ang Lee, Sidney Lumet and Francis Ford Coppola clogging up art-house screens, there was less room this year for new names and faces. In fact, three movies (Reprise, Lost in Beijing and Never Forever) which played at various festivals throughout the year would have certainly made this list but were excluded only because they never got U.S. distribution, meaning only a handful of people were lucky enough to see them. That said, it’s hard to complain about a year that gave us such a high level of quality and creativity in such variety.

1. No Country For Old Men

Near perfection in every sense and far and away the best film I saw this year. The Coen Brothers cut down on the camera tricks and let the forward momentum of a chase thriller carry the difficult adaptation of a novel with almost zero description and in the process made what may very well be the best film of their heavyweight careers. The brothers also moved outside of their usual casting circles and used Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones to great effect. But it is Javier Bardem’s utterly creepy incarnation of Anton Chigurh that left a stamp on people’s psyche and will haunt their memories for years to come.

2. The Diving Bell and The Butterfly

It took someone with an imagination as big as Julian Schnabel to envision great cinema from a book written by a man who could only blink one eyelid. From start to finish this is a celebration of art, film and life itself and the answers Schnabel found to the challenges of presenting this story make it a notable and lasting achievement.

3. Gone Baby Gone

Probably the year’s biggest surprise for me was going into a movie directed by Ben Affleck with a whole lot of preconception and coming out blown away by the sure-handed guidance he showed in his directorial debut. There are good, even great performances and top tier writing but in the end the film’s real strength lies in the decisions made every step of the way in how to present this material. For my money this was a step above both The Departed and Mystic River because almost nothing here is easy or done for show and the questions it forces you to ask yourself lead to complex, blurry and ambiguous emotional ground.

4. The Lives of Others

Overall quality is what continues to set this film apart from the field in my mind. An airtight script, informed performances detail-heavy production design and measured yet artful filmmaking that was able to explore the most serious of political ideas while thankfully sidestepping a Spielberg-style, right-vs-wrong, happy ending in favor of a much subtler conclusion.

5. I’m Not There

Blew the biopic model to pieces and was without question the most original and inventive film I saw this year. The much discussed six actors play one singer concept is interesting even as an idea but on screen it is often breathtaking to see the genius level of insight and imagination Todd Haynes exhibits in moving from one to the other in building this composite picture of a man so well known and yet still very much a mystery. The pure pleasure of watching very talented actors set free from the constriction of straight imitation as well as Haynes’ mastery of so many different looks and styles of filmmaking should not be underestimated either.

6. Zodiac

Attention to detail was overseen with an expert’s eye and director David Fincher even held back on some of the camera magic that made him famous in favor of a more mature, straight-forward presentation that fit the tone of the film perfectly. Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. were clearly at the top of their game and while the movie did run long at 3 hours with a story arc that went too high, too soon the amount of thought and craft behind this film made it one that should continue to hold up in what is generally a disposable and easily dated genre.

7. The Darjeeling Limited

People level the same criticism at Wes Anderson every time one of his films is released – they all look the same. And while there is no denying that he has a signature style I think it is also fair to say that he is constantly working to perfect it. While he may never again reach the classic status achieved with The Royal Tenanbaums or Rushmore, this is certainly a major upgrade over The Life Aquatic and while it is stylish and funny and a pleasure to watch it is also infused with some real emotional depth with writing and performances that go well beyond montages set to obscure 60’s rock songs. The accompanying short The Hotel Chevalier is Anderson in a capsule and a near perfect vignette.

8. The Boss of it All

Lars Von Trier veered off the road of emotional devastation straight into a comedy that was the first feature to employ Automavision, a software program that chooses the film’s shots and framing at random. The technique is initially jarring but makes the story of a spineless executive who has been blaming the company’s direction on an invisible “boss” and now, wishing to sell the company for his own profit, has hired a clueless actor to pose as said boss so that he can cash out guilt-free, even funnier. Von Trier is actually able to infuse the film with a layer of depth and make a social, political and moral statement while still having his audience laughing throughout, even with jokes told in subtitles.

9. Manda Bala (Send A Bullet)

Errol Morris protégé Jason Kohn followed in the master’s footsteps in continuing to turn the documentary film format on its head. The beautifully constructed film, which cannot be shown in Brazil because it is considered too dangerous, moves at a rapid fire pace, contrasting the warm sunshine of Brazil and Brazilian music with talk of severe violence and circumstances including several intense, look-away scenes. Using first hand interviews, found footage and fictional reenactments that move from frog farms to political corruption, grisly kidnapping stories to reconstructive surgery footage Kohn showed a masterful management of the material especially in the way its visual and conceptual metaphors built to a grand crescendo.

10. Knocked Up

With so many jokey, costume driven, idiot time spoof comedies out there it was nice to finally see one that was both laugh out loud funny and actually about real people. Okay maybe it’s not every day that some unemployed, pot smoking schlub scores with a gorgeous tv host but ignoring that fact this film featured sharp, insightful writing about the absurdity of real situations that still had people cracking up without the use of any chest waxing gimmicks and to me that’s a step in the right direction and an achievement in itself.

Movies We Missed: Transformers (2007)

Peter Smith — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:00:00 GMT

Wait a second, you say, what the hell do you mean a movie "we" missed? With box office tallies swelling to over $700M worldwide (pre-DVD!) it's pretty obvious that this one didn't exactly fly under the radar. But admittedly being somewhat of a film snob and guessing that many Screengrab readers and writers may fit in the same category, I thought this might just fit the bill. Who knows, without a thirteen-hour flight to sit through, I may never have discovered this effects heavy, pleasant surprise of a mega-blockbuster myself.

Why we missed it:
Director Michael Bay's last attempt, The Island, was a waste of film, not to mention millions of dollars, and would probably make many people's Top 10 "I Want My Time and Money Back" lists.

As a child of the '80s, (and a proud fan of Clash of the Titans) these all-CGI-all-the-time movies can be more nuisance and nonsense than popcorn classics.

Why we should have known:
As a child of the '80s, I should have remembered one simple fact. Transformers = AWESOME!

Why we ended up kicking ourselves:
A well-cast group of actors, led by the likable Shia LaBeouf, who carries the movie with his manic chattering and off-track humor. For men, there's the jailbait vision of Megan Fox and the fresh face of Rachael Taylor. For women there are ebony-and-ivory hunks Tyrese and Josh Duhamel. And for fans of Kangaroo Jack, there's Anthony Anderson.

The big-budget effects work much better in a story about alien robots than they do for those centered around superheroes or snakes. The Transformers themselves actually manage to integrate well with actors and real settings making for some very satisfying action sequences.

The movie rests on a simple but effective formula that seems unearthed from an '80s blueprint itself. Think Back to the Future and/or any of the countless other movies where the social nobody/nice-guy fuck-up turns out to be a lovable hero who saves the world and gets the girl, by using nerd knowledge and inner strength that nobody knew he had in him. It still works because there are more Shia LaBeoufs than Will Smiths in the world.

Why we may have been better off without it:
Believe it or not, indie stalwart John Turturro is the film's weak link as an overzealous cop.

There is probably an age cap on this one. If you were an adult when kids were playing with the toys, you probably didn't get it then, and it's unlikely you'll feel much different now. But to the film's credit, it's able to bring a young generation of fans up to date with the franchise much better than the many other movie attempts at reviving old TV favorites. (Dukes of Hazzard anyone?)

— Bryan Whitefield

Movies We Missed: Va Savoir (Who Knows?) (2001)

Peter Smith — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 19:00:00 GMT

Va Savoir is the exact kind of film that I had in mind when I started writing this feature — the kind that, when you finally do find it, you feel like you’ve discovered a beautiful but rarely traveled island. These are the kind of films that inspire you to lead others to the hidden treasure, and tend to hold a more personal place in your viewing history.

Why we missed it: Although he was working consistently, it had been since 1991 with La Belle Noiseuse that people had paid attention to French master Jacques Rivette.

The cast may be familiar to foreign-film connoisseurs, but none of the actors would turn heads in the States.

Why we should have known: Was well-received at Cannes, with Rivette nominated for the Palme D'Or director’s award, and was also the New York Film Festival’s opening night selection in 2001. But other than that, there's no reason to feel guilty for missing this one.

Why we ended up kicking ourselves: What could very easily have looked like a Meg Ryan vehicle (French Kiss, anyone?) in the hands of a lesser director, is a perfect balance of comedy and drama with Rivette in charge.

The protagonists are all either actors, artists or intellectuals that take themselves inherently seriously, which makes it all the funnier when they find themselves repeatedly stuck in ridiculous situations.

It's light-hearted but not without weight; even at its most outrageous, the film always comes back to a measured story about love in real life.

Why we may have been better off without it: A little long at two-and-a-half hours, this should be viewed as a hard edit from a director whose Out 1 notoriously clocked in at thirteen.

Bound to make you wonder why gorgeous women aren’t working at your local library (it’s a movie!), and could possibly induce feelings of slight depression that your own love life isn’t written by an old-soul romantic out of the French New Wave. Again, it’s really just a movie. . .

— Bryan Whitefield

Movies We Missed: My Life Without Me (2003)

Peter Smith — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Mark Ruffalo has had an interesting career. He became an indie poster boy and critical darling overnight with the release of You Can Count On Me. He did his bank account a favor as the leading man in regrettable movies like 13 Going On 30 and Just Like Heaven. But he balanced those with ultra-indies like We Don’t Live Here Anymore and XX/XY. He’s also played detectives for big-name directors (Jane Campion, Michael Mann, David Fincher) to results varying from questionable to near perfect. As Ruffalo returns to the screen this week as a troubled father with a haunting secret in Terry George’s Reservation Road, we wanted to look back at one of his most honest and exposed performances, in the rarely seen My Life Without Me, where he plays a man who unknowingly falls in love with a terminally ill, married woman.

Why we missed it:

If it weren’t for the help of Pedro Almodovar, Isabel Coixet’s English language debut may never have been seen very far outside of Spain. Even with Almodovar’s name attached as a "presenter," the terminal-cancer plotline was a hard sell.

The cast of talented but little-known actors didn’t immediately draw attention.

Why we should have known:

Ruffalo's presence should have raised some eyebrows.

The trailer hints at the hopeful and inventive tone of the film.

Why we ended up kicking ourselves:

Sarah Polley and Ruffalo both give knockout performances without a single moment that feels forced or false. Together they convey the rush of discovering love, and the heartbreak of its eventual loss.Scott Speedman and Leonor Watling prove effortless in supporting roles.

The potentially heavy material is treated with skill and imagination. Coixet, working from a short story from author Nanci Kincaid, looks for the real.

Why we may have been better off without it:

There are unnecessary cameos (Debbie Harry) and an annoying co-worker (Amanda Plummer). But those are easily forgiven.

— Bryan Whitefield

No SNL Skit Required

Peter Smith — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Somehow we missed the October 18 release of Inside the Actor’s Studio host James Lipton’s scintillating new book, cleverly titled Inside Inside. Aside from his penchant for making famous people cry, Lipton has been immortalized by Will Ferrell in several SNL skits and interviewed in one of my personal favorite Ali G episodes, made all the more hilarious by just how hard Lipton tries to take the interview seriously amidst well placed questions like, "Have you ever interviewed Shakespeare?"

If you go over to Amazon.com, you will not only be able to order Lipton’s new book but also check out a short video intro to what you’ll find inside Inside Inside (I swear, I never get sick of hearing him say that). Besides his obvious credits as actor, screenwriter, director, producer and tv host, you may be surprised to find choreographer, equestrian and pilot listed. What this has to do with writing a book or kissing the asses of hundreds of actors, we’re not too sure, but now you know. Lipton is a master of false modesty, and after a brief disclaimer goes on to show off his thirteen Emmy nominations, a lifetime achievement award and his French medal of knighthood. Honestly, when you see him utter lines like, "Sharon Stone, Ben Stiller — heroes, heroes of my life," with a completely straight face. . . I just don’t think it goes any higher on the scale of unintentional comedy. We’re not actually planning on buying or reading his book but man, do we love this guy. — Bryan Whitefield

Rep Report Follow-Up: Recent Hong Kong Cinema at Lincoln Center

Peter Smith — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:00:00 GMT

As noted in our Rep Report last week, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is presenting a week-long series dedicated to recent Hong Kong Cinema. This is a diverse series as evidenced by the two films I was able to catch — Wong Kar-Wai’s criminally underseen Happy Together and Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Confession of Pain. Both feature Tony Leung in a lead role but are otherwise polar opposites.

Happy Together is an exploration of the dissolving relationship between two gay Chinese men who came to Buenos Aries as vacationers and now find themselves stranded without enough money to return home. The film is more raw and intimate than any of the master director’s other work, but explores similar themes of loneliness, displacement and the inability to find happiness. Christopher Doyle’s incredible camera work switches from black and white to pastels to faded color, and creates a sense of stylized reality that is not only beautiful but helps propel the film’s story with its immediacy. Throwing traditional narrative structure out the window, this film is unflinching in its honesty and craftsmanship.

Confession of Pain is an ultra-modern, big-budget thriller from the same creative team behind Infernal Affairs, the film from which The Departed was adapted. This is popcorn fare, simply too glossy to ever feel authentic. The story also goes through a predictable series of twists and turns. But where the audience for Happy Together is surely limited by both its subject matter and challenging presentation, Confession of Pain has a much broader appeal. Not un-tasty, but it's empty calories. — Bryan Whitefield

So Many Movies, So Little Time

Peter Smith — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:00:00 GMT

There were times this summer when I desperately scanned movie listings for something to lead me out of boredom and into air conditioning, only to find some very slim pickings. I thanked God for Netflix and moved on. But after spending the better part of this month trying to take advantage of all the New York Film Festival has had to offer, I suddenly find myself with an overwhelming backlog of must-see films.

I’ve yet to see Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited or Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution. The Assassination of Jesse James is surely not going to be the same movie on DVD as it is on film. Michael Clayton would normally be a solid contender for a trip to the movie theater. And how could I possibly pass on the black and white Ian Curtis biopic Control? I’m certainly curious about the Ryan Gosling vehicle Lars and the Real Girl, as well as Noah Baumbach’s sophomore effort, Margot at the Wedding. I was lucky enough to have seen an advance screening of Ben Affleck’s Gone Baby Gone, and you will not want to miss that sure-footed, tightly woven drama. But somebody is going to lose here, and the Times seems to agree with my sentiments.

I understand Oscar strategy, and the sad tale of the early-season release forgotten, but honestly, how does this make any sense? A couple of these films will likely still be in theaters a month from now, but a greater number will see their runs shortened by the surplus of other options. Not all of these scheduling decisions are based on awards positioning — some tie into film-festival premieres or distribution-company calendars — but if some had been released during the last few months, they would have had a much better chance of getting attention. For the moment I’ve got to determine which one of these movies I’m going to see first. — Bryan Whitefield

Movies We Missed: Flirting With Disaster (1996)

Peter Smith — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Americans will still pay to see Ben Stiller run his shtick into the ground, judging from the healthy box-office return for The Heartbreak Kid. But we have to look back over a decade to remember when we actually thought Ben Stiller was funny, and before we got a little sick of him playing another neurotic little guy in an impossible situation.

Why we missed it: Director David O. Russell wasn’t yet famous for films like Three Kings or for trying to set Lily Tomlin on fire verbally with a string of f-bombs.

Stiller himself had only achieved cult status for his short-lived sketch-comedy show and modest acclaim for his directorial debut, Reality Bites, when this film came out.

Why we should have known: A cast that included Patricia Arquette, Tea Leoni, Alan Alda, Josh Brolin and Mary Tyler Moore on a minimal budget should have given some indication that this was probably a good script.

The concept — an adopted and (surprise!) neurotic man’s quest to find his real parents accompanied by his pregnant wife, a sexy-but-incompetent case worker and a documentary-film crew — is a great one.

Why we ended up kicking ourselves: Stiller is clearly the right man for this role. Nobody has played a more believable well-meaning-but-ultimately-doomed Jewish guy since Woody Allen invented the role years earlier. His reactions, timing and ability to pull off physical comedy are all perfect here.

Patricia Arquette and Tea Leoni are both genuinely funny. Their half-hearted attempts to win Stiller’s affection create many funny moments and also give the film a little heart.

Russell’s script stays sharp, creative and original throughout the film.

The film’s final sequence involving a pair of gay, vacationing cops, Stiller’s wife, lover, birth parents, adopted parents, newfound brother and some heavy doses of LSD is unforgettable and absolutely hilarious.

Why we may have been better off without it: This role sparked a dozen just like it for Stiller, including real gems like Duplex, Along Came Polly and Meet the Fockers. Reviews that included the word 'genius' seem to be the only ones that David O. Russell read or believed in.

— Bryan Whitefield

Conglomerated Baddies: The 22 Most Evil Corporations in Movie History, Part 4

Peter Smith — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Hudsucker Industries, THE HUDSUCKER PROXY (1994)

The Coen brothers, being involved in the film industry, have gotten quite adept at portraying powerful and sinister men in high places. And they don’t get much more powerful (or higher — forty-four floors, or forty-five if you count the mezzanine) than Sidney Mussburger. Paul Newman’s cigar-chomping, calculating executive wants to assume control of Hudsucker Industries (best imagined as the Wham-O Corporation if it managed to take over the world), but he can’t do it unless the comically compliant board holds on to the majority of its shares. To ensure that happens, he needs a sap to take over the presidency of the company and run it into the ground, and finds one in the sincere-but-doltish Norville Barnes. Aside from the greediness of their board of directors, Hudsucker Industries’ evil nature is best portrayed in the ridiculously strict policies in their mailroom, their shady accounting practices (as seen in this clip), and the fact that they seem to employ Satan to repaint their office windows.

Initech, OFFICE SPACE (1999)

For the first brilliant hour of its runtime, before it gets sappy and turns into a fairly typical heist comedy, Mike Judge’s Office Space is perhaps the most perfect corporate satire ever made. It’s not that the data-processing outfit Initech is particularly iniquitous; they don’t despoil the environment, employ slave labor, exert unseemly influence over the government, or start wars. All they do is crush the souls of their employees on a daily basis. Office Space perfectly captures the thousand daily humiliations of cubicle life, from the pointless memos about adding a cover sheets to your TPS reports, to desperately trying to hang onto your dignity in the form of a red stapler. The beauty of Initech (and of Tchotchke’s its corporate dining partner) is that it scarcely needs to exaggerate anything, from the relentlessly ingratiating tone of manager Gary Cole to the inability of the efficiency experts to remember anyone’s name. Wherever you work, Judge says, this is your life — and short of totally rewiring your brain, there is no escape.

Connex, SYRIANA (2005)

It’s no great secret that greed fuels American interest in the Middle East, and that the same motivation helps shape U.S. government policy there (see "War, Iraq"). Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana helped us understand the domino-like cause-and-effect cycle that works over great distances in today’s international capitalist kleptocracy. In response to losing drilling rights to the Chinese, Connex, the film’s fictional oil conglomerate, uses bribes to enter into shady mergers with Kazakh oil barons and shows a general willingness to do anything that keeps a good face on their company and its significant financial holdings. When lawyer Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright), is sent to investigate them, they present him a mountain of paperwork and a stone-faced façade. Holiday manages to trace wire transfers back to a Connex employee, who's quickly scapegoated as a greedy free agent. But when this isn’t enough to satisfy the Department of Justice, Holiday receives inside information that places blame on his own boss’ involvement, absolving Connex and serving his own chances for advancement in the process. So much for the good guys. . . In the midst of contract talks and board room meetings we see sabotage, torture, political assassination, debilitating poverty, accidental death and suicide bombings, all of which trace back in one way or another to the oil giants and the decisions they make in the interest of massive profit.

Brown and Williamson, THE INSIDER (1999)

When Michael Mann told the real-life story of Jeffrey Wigand, the man who exposed cigarette giant Brown and Williamson, he created enough tension to make exciting a film that revolves around the possibility of an interview. He successfully casted Russell Crowe as a four-eyed nine-to-fiver. And he got the last restrained and respectable performance out of Al Pacino. Maybe he was inspired; it would be difficult to find a more devious or devilish corporate entity than Big Tobacco. As the film shows, in between Jeffrey Wigand’s firing and the first airdate of his infamous 60 Minutes interview he experienced verbal threats, legal threats, email threats and the not-so-subtle hint of a bullet left in his mailbox. Brown and Williamson doesn’t stop there, getting a restraining to prevent Wigand from testifying against them, threatening CBS with a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit and launching a 500-page-dossier smear campaign against Wigand. Mann does an excellent job of building the stress levels to portray just how alone this man is against a giant corporation with a very clear agenda.

The Umbrella Corporation, RESIDENT EVIL (2002)

It wasn’t enough for the Umbrella corporation to sell you your laptop and your antibiotics and your appointment at the clinic. Everyone knows real money doesn’t lie in honey-lemon lozenges. Real money lies in creating viral weaponry for the military. The problem is, you really have to do it in secret — like six floors underground. It’s also handy if nobody questions why your labs are under the city and why 500 people are now living underground, but such is the 21st century. With that kind of population, it’s best to run the whole place with a giant (evil) computer. That way it can impersonally trap everyone inside to die agonizing deaths if a deadly viral agent happens to leak out. Is it really the Umbrella Corporation’s fault that the T-Virus turned all those dead schmoes into zombies? C’mon. With a cute logo like that? Accidents happen. While we here at Screengrab endorse any role wherein Milla Jovovich kills zombies in a slip dress, and we whole-heartedly support roles where Michelle Rodriguez acts surly and carries guns, we hereby nominate the fictitious Umbrella Corporation as one sick mutated puppy.

Allcom, PAYCHECK (2003)

In Terminator 2, Joe Morton played a well-meaning scientist whose invention turned the world into a robot-run wasteland. In Paycheck, Morton played a well-meaning FBI agent tracking down a scientist (Ben Affleck) whose mercenary invention has the potential to turn the world into a nuclear wasteland. How Morton played the role without a gigantic deja-vu smirk on his face is a minor miracle. As evil corporations go, Allcom doesn't seem to have many employees besides smarmy Aaron Eckhart, notorious B-movie villain Colm Feore, and obvious love interest Uma Thurman. Nor does it seem to have a solid business plan: nuclear war would, presumably, put an end to the profits generated by the build-up itself. Two years later, Eckhart was hawking tobacco in Thank You For Smoking, a fair-enough lateral leap.

— Paul Clark, Pazit Cahlon, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Vadim Rizov, Bryan Whitefield

Conglomerated Baddies: The 22 Most Evil Corporations in Movie History, Part 3

Peter Smith — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Engulf & Devour, SILENT MOVIE (1976)

Mel Brooks's generically titled comedy stars Brooks as a movie director who plans to save the troubled Big Picture Studio with a star-studded silent picture. This makes him the target of Engulf & Devour, the monstrous corporation (whose motto is "Our Hands Are In Everything") planning to gobble up the studio. Their methods of sabotaging the film's success range from sending Bernadette Peters to vamp the director, a former drunk, and knock him off the wagon, to stealing the picture itself before its grand premiere. Weirdly, all this is said to have been partly inspired by the actual takeover of Paramount Pictures by Gulf & Western, which was probably a lot noisier.

Union Broadcasting System (UBS), NETWORK (1976)

In screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky's attack on television, new anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) is saved from cancellation and becomes a major star — "the mad prophet of the airwaves" — after he reacts to news of his firing by flipping out and promising to kill himself on the air, a spectacle that the mass audience finds entertaining. With Beale's ratings on the rise, the head of the entertainment division (Faye Dunaway) takes over the news department, a speculative joke that some thought came to fruition one year later when the ABC news division was handed to sports-broadcast head Roone Arledge. Unfortunately, Beale's diatribes against the loss of individuality and free will are regarded by Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty), the head of the company that owns the network, as a threat to corporate power, so he summons the prodigal newsman to his office for a lecture on "the primal forces of nature." ("There is no America; there is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.") Beale is so impressed with this wisdom that he agrees to "preach" Jensen's philosophy to the television audience, which finds it so demoralizing that they tune out in droves, which leads to Beale's on-camera assassination. In the years since Network came out it has become customary to salute Chayefesky for having been clairvoyant, though it's hard to think of an easier way of predicting the future accurately than guessing that TV is always going to keep getting worse.

The Phone Company, THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST (1967)

At one point in this spy spoof, a globe-trotting KGB agent observes that no matter where he goes, everyone he meets there hates the phone company. It turns out they have good reason. In a movie that features assassins of many lands picking each other off while trying to kill or kidnap the title character (James Coburn), the ultimate force of evil revealed at the climax is The Phone Company, whose android spokeman (William Redfield) unveils a diabolical plan to force all Americans to have a call-receiving device implanted in their heads. Of all the evil corporations in movie history, this one is almost certainly the funniest, though it must be conceded that the movie's depiction of the phone company as a sinister, monolithic force is dated in certain ways. For one thing, it turns out that most Americans today would probably be happy to sign up to have a chip put in their heads if it enabled them to download free movie trailers and video clips.

OMNI Consumer Products, ROBOCOP (1987)

Screenwriter Edward Neumeier was reportedly inspired to pen the script to Paul Verhoeven’s classic cyberpunk satire of American capitalism run amok after spending time on the set of Blade Runner. Like the Tyrell Corporation, OCP is a monolithic enterprise that virtually controls the police, and likewise has a run of bad luck with a series of robotic creations that do their jobs a bit too well. (If only Tyrell had the good sense to hire Miguel Ferrer.) Back in 1987, Omni Consumer Products’ stated intention to fully privatize organizations that had previously been thought of as the purview of government — "hospitals, prisons, space exploration. . . we practically are the military," says CEO Ronny Cox — seemed like absurdist comedy at best. Now, in the era of privately-run prisons, for-profit hospitals, billionaires in space, and Blackwater, the joke’s not quite so funny anymore.

Cyberdyne Systems, TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)

Most of the companies covered in this week’s list are up to no good — a little profiteering here, some inside trading there, maybe even endangering a few people’s health to turn a profit. But only Cyberdyne Systems, a second-tier Silicon Valley B2B manufacturer, brings about the destruction of the entire human race. Through convoluted events of the sort that only take place in movies involving time travel, Cyberdyne is responsible for the development of SkyNet, the nuclear defense computer network that eventually becomes self-aware and decides that we humans are too troublesome for our own good. From then on, it’s nuclear holocausts, killer robots, and grim, inevitable doomsday for everybody. We’re pretty sure that, despite their cunning manipulation of the situation and determination to put profit over safety, this isn’t the way that Cyberdyne’s managers would have wanted things to turn out; a global atomic extinction can’t have done much for their stock value.

The Tyrell Corporation, BLADE RUNNER (1982)

The very model of the 'megacorp' that constituted the primary villains in the cyberpunk fiction Blade Runner helped create, the Tyrell Corporation’s gigantic, pyramid-shaped arcology looms over a ruined polyglot Los Angeles. While the ‘little people’ are sold a steady diet of drugs, sex, cheap food and promises of off-world salvation, Tyrell (and its founder, the oleaginous Eldon Tyrell, brilliantly portrayed by Joe Turkel) controls the police, using them as hired goons to hunt down rogue replicants. These artificial life forms were created by the brilliant and unscrupulous Tyrell to serve as soldiers, sex slaves and workers in highly dangerous conditions, but he designed them too well; some achieved self-awareness and sought to eliminate the built-in expiration date that kept them from becoming too human. Tyrell’s desire to create the perfect being and then destroy them shapes this brilliant film's central conflict.

— Paul Clark, Pazit Cahlon, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Vadim Rizov, Bryan Whitefield

Conglomerated Baddies: The 22 Most Evil Corporations in Movie History, Part 2

Peter Smith — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 22:00:00 GMT

KDH Pharmaceutical, THE CONSTANT GARDENER (2005)

This Fernando Meirelles film, based on the novel by John le Carre, announced that the time had come for Big Pharma to join the familiar ranks of oil companies, nuclear power consortiums, and computers programmed to rule the world in the rogue's gallery of villainous movie businesses. KDH, the chief baddie here, has been running unethical drug trials on poor Africans, cynically using the continent's defenseless population as its own guinea pig ranch, and employing a collection of goons to use torture and murder to cover up after itself. Even worse in the eyes of the audience, it has left Ralph Fiennes bereft and inconsolable in the face of the murder of his wife, a whistleblower played by Rachel Weisz. Luckily for the movie, Fiennes and Weisz have real chemistry here, so that when Fiennes loses her and goes into his lonely-guy-with-nothing-left-to-live-for routine, even people who think that government-funded health insurance for sick orphans is a Commie plot want to see the KDH Board of Directors roasted over a slow fire.

Com-Teg: Communications Integrity Associates, THE KILLER ELITE (1975)

This lesser Sam Peckinpah movie stars James Caan and Robert Duvall as partners who work for the "security" firm Com-Teg, whose full name breaks down into an acronym that it shares with a major intelligence division of the United States government, a coincidence that must have shocked the bejesus out of the filmmakers if anyone ever pointed it out to them. (Um.) In the opening sequence, Duvall hands in his resignation by killing the man they're supposed to be guarding and then encourages Caan to take some time out to smell the roses by kneecapping him as he's coming out of the shower. Caan goes through a long, painful process of physical rehabilitation so that he can reclaim his job and see what his old buddy Duvall looks like with his head on backwards, but the suits at the top — cold-bloodedly represented by Gig Young and Arthur Hill, who have a spine-tingling scene together where Young won't let Hill go to the bathroom until they've finished their paperwork — sneer at him as a crippled has-been. This is one of those pictures in which Peckinpah seemed to be using the movie to vent his disgust at the people who'd hired him to make it, as in this speech delivered to Caan by his sidekick, Burt Young: "They're all tryin' to hurt you, Mike! All the goddam power systems! All the wheelers and dealers at the top with their gin and fizzes! They're all full of bullshit!" It's at moments like that, when you see just how many words Burt Young can remember at a stretch, that you know that movies are a miraculous medium.

Silver Shamrock Novelties, HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1982)

The third in the series (of eight, not counting the Rob Zombie remake) of Halloween films is easy to distinguish from the others because it's the only one that doesn't feature a knife-wielding, masked psycho named Michael Myers. Instead, its chief menace is an Irish toy magnate, Conal Cochran (played by Dan O'Herlihy, the same snowy-haired old bastard at the head of Omni Consumer Products in Robocop) who objects to the sugary commercialization of Halloween. He's a Celtic old-schooler who wants to restore the holiday's reputation as a time of serious mischief, and towards that goal, he's promoting a special brand of children's masks that will turn the wearers' heads into a puddle of snakes and insects. The movie was intended to kick off a new "anthology" cycle of films that would be made under the Halloween umbrella title but have no connection to the original film, an idea that did not survive this installment's disastrous box office reception. But its memory lives on in the hearts of devotees of corporate supervillains who for some reason have concocted master plans that will result in wiping out their market audience.

The Ventana Nuclear Power Plant, THE CHINA SYNDROME (1979)

One of the big social-problem melodramas of the late seventies, The China Syndrome summed up popular anxiety over the nuclear-power industry by piling every concern and urban myth about the subject onto the fictional Ventana plant, including the conspiracy theory that Karen Silkwood had been the victim of a murder arranged to look like a car accident. (One side effect of this is that when the biopic Silkwood came out four years later, the filmmakers, their thunder stolen, had no ending.) The bigwigs at Ventana, trying to keep reports of a near meltdown off the TV news, have no problem resorting to murder if it helps them cover up the fact that their safety standards would put the fear of God into Montgomery Burns. When the movie opened, George Will wrote a column in Newsweek denouncing the filmmakers who, driven by sheer greed, had slandered an important American institution so carefully managed that no serious power plant accident could ever, ever happen. Twelve days after the movie opened, and with the magazine containing Will's column still on newsstands, it was announced that the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island had experienced a "partial core meltdown." Perhaps the major accomplishment of the movie was to establish that God likes dull movies a lot more than he likes George Will.

The Energy Corporation, ROLLERBALL (1975)

This dystopian sci-fi movie is set in 2018, and its daring hypothesis is that Soylent Green got it all wrong. In the future, the world is controlled by an international group of corporations that cater to our every selfish need while stamping out any trace of individuality or nonconformist thought, but everyone does look well fed. To help keep everyone in contented-sheep mode, chaotic blood sports are used to siphon off the spectators' aggressive impulses. James Caan, the star member of the Houston Rollerball team, runs afoul of John Houseman, the head of the team's parent corporation, who wants him to retire because his exceptionalism poses a threat to the corporations' desire for an undifferentiated, faceless mass over which to rule. Caan balks at this — which must make his ex-girlfriend (Maud Adams) feel just great, because she was taken away from him to be "given" to a corporate executive, and he apparently didn't balk at that. Rollerball is a faded relic of a time when the media had nothing better to wring its hands over than violence in professional sports, but it is easier to take than the 2002 remake, which is set in modern Kazakhstan and dumps the whole global-corporate-mafia element in favor of Jean Reno in Eurotrash finery.

— Paul Clark, Pazit Cahlon, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Vadim Rizov, Bryan Whitefield

Check back tomorrow for Parts 3 and 4!

Conglomerated Baddies: The 22 Most Evil Corporations in Movie History, Part 1

Peter Smith — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 21:00:00 GMT

So everybody’s all a-twitter about the new Clooney flick Michael Clayton and how realistic and original it is. "Realistic" is a relative term, sure, but we’d like to note humbly that Clayton fits into a long line of movies about characters crusading against Evil Movie Corporations, some real, many fictional. The fact is, the Faceless Corporation is one of cinema’s easiest targets — cooking the books, offing all detractors, bribing officials, and usually killing its consumers. But maybe it’s about time we paid tribute to these parasitic, conglomerated baddies. They may not sneer like Lee Marvin, and they may not cackle like Gert Frobe, but without them, the annals of movie villainy would be a far more impoverished place. So here they are, The 22 Most Evil Corporations in Movie History.

The Soylent Corporation, SOYLENT GREEN (1973)

Charlton Heston went through some shit in the late 1960s and 1970s. He had to deal with earthquakes, runaway airplanes, post-apocalyptic albinos, and a planet full of damned dirty apes. He didn't always make it to the end of the movie in one piece, but give or take a hissy fit in front of the ruins of the Statue of Liberty, he usually managed to hang onto his stoic composure. The one time he cracked and had to be carried offstage screaming and frothing at the mouth, it came from a good look at the inner workings of the Soylent Corporation. In 2022, the teeming refuge of an overpopulated and underresourced planet depend on SoyCorp for their meager diet: synthetic crackers and buns that go by the names Soylent Red, Soylent Yellow, and the ever-popular Soylent Green, which is said to be made from plankton and which has a tangy zest with just a hint of Edward G. Robinson. For the benefit of extremely slow viewers, the terrible secret of Soylent Green is spelled out in Chuck's exit line, which has entered the camp lexicon and is beloved even, or maybe especially, by those who've never seen the movie.

The Parallax Corporation, THE PARALLAX VIEW (1974)

In Taxi Driver, arguably the greatest of all the seventies assassination movies, Travis Bickle, like Lee Harvey Oswald and Arthur Bremer before him, plans to kill one target and then shifts to another when things don't work out. What Travis lacks is a stabilizing figure to help him stay focused and channel his energies — just what the Parallax Corporation offers to the maladjusted social reject searching for the right career path. In this paranoid fantasy, both the "lone gunmen" accused of picking off the potential saviors of our nation, and the real assassins for whose crimes those patsies are framed, are the carefully sculpted products of a company that arranges the hits and shapes the way they're perceived by a gullible public. They're so good at it that reporter Joe Frady (Warren Beatty), the movie's hero, whom we expect to expose the conspiracy, instead winds up as the latest patsy. In the movie's most memorable sequence, Beatty and the audience are subjected to a lengthy film montage that's a regular part of the Parallax training process, a scene apparently based on the not-implausible notion that watching short student films could turn someone homicidal.

The Weyland-Yutani Corporation, ALIEN Saga

Most of our readership will surely have two thoughts when reading the above byline, the first being, "wait, Alien AGAIN???" and the second being, "Wait, the Company has a name?" Well, yes, they do, although we’d understand if you hadn’t noticed it. In Ridley Scott’s original film, Weyland-Yutani ran the show, but their presence in the film was almost subliminal — on computer monitors, on a beer bottle, and so forth. But as the series continued, their logo became more visible, especially in Aliens, where it appeared at several points emblazoned on the walls of the mostly-deserted colony where the film is set. But the Company’s ubiquity pales in comparison to its insidious presence in the Alien universe. From the time it tricked the Nostromo into embarking on an alternate, crew-expendable mission resulting in the death of all but one crew member, Weyland-Yutani consistently sent people into the path of the Alien, all in the name of bringing back a specimen for weapons research. Ash’s sentiments about the Alien — "a perfect organism. . . unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality" — could just as easily be applied to Weyland-Yutani. But as the saying goes, there’s always a bigger fish. In a scene deleted from Alien: Resurrection, it was announced that Weyland-Yutani had somewhere along the line been bought out by Wal-Mart. Not even a money-grubbing intergalactic juggernaut stood a chance against the Sam Walton empire.

Pacific Gas and Electric, ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000)

If you want a generic corporate name, "Pacific Gas and Electric" will do. And if you want a particularly evil-sounding chemical name, what’s better than hexavalent chromium? It’s got HEX in it and it sounds shiny. . . like the Terminator. And then if you really wanna rile people up, have the faceless corporation dump evil chemicals into something harmless and life-sustaining. . . like groundwater. Watch as PG & E (Profits! Greed! Eeeevil!) seems to snicker while the good townspeople get sicker and sicker from an act so innocent — simply drinking the water. If you made it up, they’d slap cliché (or Ibsen) on the script coverage. But if it happened to be a True Story with a 333 million dollar settlement at the end of a class-action lawsuit, then you’d have an Oscar-winning hit movie.

"The Company", SECONDS (1966)

John Frankenheimer's profoundly depressing horror movie deals with the machinations of a deep-pocketed organization that arranges for people unhappy with their lives — from the looks of things here, that would be everybody over the age of fourteen — to be "reborn" via plastic surgery and forged identities. Veteran character actor John Randolph plays the poor schlub who gets roped in and, because the Company uses entrapment and blackmail to make it "easier" for their clients to give up their old lives, is forced to become Rock Hudson. No one will be surprised to learn that this does not prove to be the automatic gateway to an exciting, more rewarding new existence. Unable to cope, Randolph/Rock finally demands that the Company give him a new new life, and soon discovers how they acquire the corpses they need to fake the deaths of new clients. The tough minded will say he brought it all on himself by not ducking out the nearest fire exit when he learned that the head of the Company was Will Geer, TV's Grandpa Walton. As any hardened moviegoer could have told him, anybody that folksy (see also "Brimley, Wilford" in The Firm) in a position of power has got to be up to no good.

— Paul Clark, Pazit Cahlon, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Vadim Rizov, Bryan Whitefield

Whitefield at NYFF: The Last Mistress

Peter Smith — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:00:00 GMT

On the surface, French provocateur Catherine Breillat’s latest film is nothing like the nine before it. Her first attempt at adapting material not her own is also a period piece, heavy with intricate costumes and poetic dialogue. Yet its spirit is unmistakably modern, and centers on the same amour fou or mad love that all of her films have dealt with in one way or another. Asia Argento plays Vellini, a Spanish woman of questionable nobility, who has stolen the heart of a young Parisian playboy and held it captive for some ten years. The story begins and ends in the present tense but breaks in the middle as the young man reveals the secrets of Vellini’s hold on him to the grandmother of his future bride.

Asia Argento is not necessarily beautiful by Hollywood standards, but she has an undeniable presence on screen, and she inhabits this character with an abandon that is completely believable. Breillat’s confidence as a director translates beautifully. With the help of the rich source material, she's made her most fulfilling film yet.

During the post-film Q&A Breillat said that she identified heavily with the male novelist on whose book the film is based, as he was heavily censored and she has always felt herself pushed to tell stories in their most raw form. She revealed that in order to achieve this raw feeling, everything in the film was kept real from jewelry to costumes to locations (no easy feat). When asked about the heavy role sex plays in her films she commented that she once observed, looking on the face of an actress, "something ecstatic and sacred at the same time when a woman is at the extremes of passion." She went on to talk about seeing this same effect in certain classic paintings, and used that idea as way to tell a timeless story of romantic consumption in the film’s nineteenth-century setting. — Bryan Whitefield

Whitefield at NYFF: Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead

Peter Smith — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 19:00:00 GMT

Let it not be said that I don’t respect Sidney Lumet. I read his book Making Movies and found it both practical and enlightening. I loved Dog Day Afternoon (who doesn’t?) and Running on Empty. But let’s face facts. Lumet is eighty-three. He made 12 Angry Men in 1957 — fifty years ago! When you receive a lifetime achievement award at the Oscars, you can probably read that as Hollywood’s polite way of saying, "It’s a wrap." Apparently Mr. Lumet is hard of hearing.

Though not nearly as bad as his last film, Find Me Guilty, Before The Devil Knows You're Dead turns out to be twice as frustrating, as it squanders an outstanding cast and a knockout script. Lumet chose to go the Tarantino/Babel route and skew the story’s narrative timeline, but by doing so he takes all the suspense out of what could have been huge dramatic windfalls by giving you three major (and I mean major) plot twists within the first fifteen minutes. As if that wasn’t crime enough, each time sequence change is signaled by the two frames locking into one another as opposing triangles in a square that click and spin into the next scene. This and the poor film quality make Before The Devil Knows You're Dead look like a made-for-tv movie circa 1991.

A dream cast of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney and a remarkably sexy Marisa Tomei do an admirable job of trying to prop this dog up on four legs, but in the end it’s just too much to ask. The film’s story spirals from tragic family drama of epic proportions into the realm of the absurd, with plot points that are increasingly unbelievable and distracting. The person I feel the worst for is first-time screenwriter Kelly Masterson, who probably thought her dream had come true when she heard Lumet would bring her script to life, only to find herself the victim of an outdated director. I can only imagine the kind of film someone like Rian Johnson (Brick) or Christopher Nolan would have made given the exact same elements. — Bryan Whitefield

Whitefield at NYFF: 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days

Peter Smith — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:00:00 GMT

If there is one thing you can say for 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, this year’s Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, it's that there's no debating the film’s effectiveness in recreating the living hell of obtaining an illegal abortion in late '80s Romania. Still up for debate, however, is why someone would feel compelled to make this film — and why an audience should force themselves to endure this truly disturbing piece of work. As bleak, anxiety-inducing and horrific as any movie I’ve ever seen, Cristian Mungiu’s grim procedural only adds tension with its interminable long shots, and doesn’t allow the viewer a single moment of relief. In a strange sense, that's a compliment, since tension is clearly the film’s intent. The performances, especially from Anamaria Marincaare, are admirable in their authenticity and complete disregard for vanity. But because of the desolation and utter joylessness at this film’s heart, I can’t remember feeling more relieved to see a credit sequence since Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. The last line of the film translates to, "This is what we're going to do: we're never going to talk about this again." I'm guessing there are more than a few audience members who feel exactly the same way. — Bryan Whitefield