The Screengrab : wesley morris

SXSW: The Final Roundup

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:30:00 GMT

The whirlwind of SXSW often takes on a life of its own, and that was certainly true this year for me and the rest of the Screengrab contingent. There are movies we fully intended to see and cover for you here, but fate decreed otherwise. (Winnebago Man proved particularly elusive for various reasons; my worst SXSW memory this year involves sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on 5th Street with no hope of finding a parking space before a screening began. In my anger, I cursed the Winnebago Man, but I now understand it wasn’t his fault.) There are also movies I saw and never found the time to review during the festival. And they are:

For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism . How does a film critic review a movie about film critics made by a film critic? It’s a tough question for me, which is probably why I kept putting off a review of Gerald Peary’s years-in-the-making documentary. With the help of interviewees ranging from the old guard (Andrew Sarris, Richard Schickel) to the increasingly endangered critics of today (Owen Gleiberman, Wesley Morris), Boston Phoenix mainstay Peary does an admirable (if a bit square and PBS-ready) job of tracing the history of film criticism and revealing the ways in which it mirrors the history of cinema itself. One thing I learned: most film critics were not meant to be seen in extreme close-up from the front row of the Alamo Ritz.

Modern Love is Automatic. Writer/director Zach Clark’s second feature has attitude to spare, but for the most part, it left me cold. It’s the story of two women who become roommates – nurse Lorraine (Melodie Sisk) and would-be model Adrian (Maggie Ross). The lovely but robotic Lorraine is so bored and jaded with everyone and everything that she launches a side business as a dominatrix, while deluded Adrian can only find work at a unique mattress store where the customers cuddle with the hired help. There’s no denying that Sisk makes the most of her leather bondage-wear, but her monotonous performance wore on me, as did the ‘80s MTV color scheme, jarring bursts of heavy metal on the soundtack, and a couple of dark developments that don’t really feel earned.

Monsters from the Id. Here we have another group of film buffs, although most of the ones featured in David Gargani’s documentary are actually professional scientists. They just happen to share a love of the sci-fi movies of the 1950s, which helped inspire them to pursue careers in their chosen field. The interview subjects, including Rocket Boys author and retired NASA engineer Homer Hickam and physics professor Dr. Leroy Dubeck, bemoan the loss of the scientist heroes of the golden age, worrying that the kids of today have no role models in the field, and therefore are not pursuing careers in science. Whether or not their fears are legitimate, the doc is worth seeing for the copious clips from ‘50s sci-fi classics both renowned and forgotten, which will have you racing home to your Netflix queue.

Related:
SXSW Review: Along Came Kinky
SXSW Review: The Slammin' Salmon

Slate's Movie Club Still Swinging

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Just when we think we’re completely burned out on year-end critic’s awards, list-making and assorted summations of What It All Means, along comes another installment of the Slate Movie Club to remind us how much fun it is to argue about this stuff. The annual roundtable of film pundits is always at its most entertaining when the gloves come off. The 2004 edition was particularly juicy, with original ringmaster David Edelstein and guests including A.O. Scott of the New York Times and Salon regular Stephanie Zacharek gleefully taking their shots at everyone’s favorite infuriating contrarian Armond White. (White’s style is accurately characterized by the Village Voice’s Dennis Lim as “entertainingly predicated on a bullying, unpredictable subjectivity.”)

The Movie Club’s heyday may have passed; Edelstein is long gone and big names like Scott, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Roger Ebert are absent from this year’s roster. Still, current Slate critic Dana Stevens and guests Scott Foundas (L.A. Weekly), Nathan Lee (Village Voice) and Wesley Morris (Boston Globe) manage to keep it lively, kicking around such water cooler topics as the ending of No Country for Old Men, the attitude towards abortion in Knocked Up and Juno, and whether Southland Tales will ultimately be regarded as a masterpiece or a mess.

Reexamining Tyler Perry

Peter Smith — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:00:00 GMT

When a small, perhaps technically ragged movie strikes gold, the way films as different as Chasing Amy and My Big Fat Greek Wedding did, it may be because there are a lot of people who think that it connects with their lives in a way that glossy Hollywood product never does. Sometimes, this can be confusing, and even disconcerting, to critics and studio people who aren't a part of that target audience, and who don't know what to make of the news that we're not yet all part of one, big totally homogeneous culture. But it's been clear for a long time now that black women don't see their fantasies or their real-life concerns reflected in most Hollywood movies, and that they feel that as a loss. Waiting to Exhale shocked critics by how thoroughly it cashed in with that audience; Dreamgirls got a toehold with them. But for the last couple of years, it's Tyler Perry who's really picked that ball up and run with it. And his audience, with many black women, has responded gratefully and loudly to having a one-man entertainment industry they can call their own. Perry's movies — he's written, directed, and co-produced two features this year, Daddy's Little Girls and the new Why Did I Get Married?, and co-stars in the latter — combine broad comedy with church-based moral lessons and sociological observations, in a way that his fans find uplifting. His studio, Lions Gate, has basically stopped screening them for critics, partly because they know that mainstream critics don't get it, but also because his real audience is so aware of who he is and what to expect from him that his movies are pre-sold without reviews.

The best thing about Perry, and the best reason for his success, is that he's one of the few filmmakers in this country now who's focused on showcasing women. In an industry with no shortage of talented black actresses and a significant shortage of interest roles for them, he's filling a gap. As Wesley Morris puts it in Slate, "Perry may not yet have mastered fluid dramatic structure or where to put the camera, but he knows how to get out of the way of good and determined women. In fact, although his movies draw men and women alike, what Perry is making are really women's pictures, the popular genre that reached its height in the 1940s, starred actors like Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell, and melodramatically saw women through all kinds of modern crises, from deceitful daughters to the career-vs.-stay-at-home dilemma. Perry uses the genre to deliver easily digestible hope." And given the chance to strut their stuff a little, beautiful, talented and underutilized actresses such as Gabrielle Union, Kimberly Elise, and Tracy Ellis Ross really come through for Perry; his latest features a breakout performance by the singer-actress Jill Scott that would be getting her Oscar-contender talk if it were in a critically accredited movie. Perry seems to be happy working his niche, though he does have ambitions: he recently told one reporter that he has a script he calls "the Oprah project" that he wants to make but will only make if Oprah Winfrey agrees to work with him on it. Without knowing anything about it, we can confidently say that she's probably done worse. — Phil Nugent