Bomber (Director: Paul Cotter): A well-edited trailer and an interesting premise drew me to this film, and I have to say up front that Bomber didn’t quite live up to expectations. It’s a film I wanted to like. Ross is an underemployed art school graduate with an extremely possessive girlfriend. To make things worse, he’s been dragged unwillingly along on a road trip with his parents. His father, Alistar, was a teenage bomber pilot for the Royal Air Force during the Second World War and wants to return to the small village in Germany he accidentally bombed in order to apologize. Director Cotter used only three actors and seven crew, picking the rest of his cast from among the local townspeople. So far, so good. There is actually a lot to like about Bomber: it’s beautifully shot in high-definition, there’s a wonderful soundtrack (especially the songs by Sweden’s Marching Band), and the performances are generally good. Where the film let me down was in its weak script. Hackneyed dialogue and crude attempts at humour didn’t bother most of the audience, but they did grate with this reviewer. The pacing could have been tightened up a bit too. The bits I enjoyed the most were actually the dialogue-free shots of the family van driving through the Dutch and German landscapes, accompanied by the excellent soundtrack music. Unfortunately, those shots could very well have occurred in a car commercial.
Most frustrating for me was the way son Ross progresses from a total emotional meltdown in one scene, trying to attack his parents from outside the van, to later giving them lectures filled with psychobabble like “you just have to express what you’re feeling.” Normally, comedies are full of characters this inconsistent, but the problem is that Bomber isn’t strictly a comedy, and when it went for any sort of emotional payoff, I was unmoved because these characters hadn’t really been developed beyond sketches.
I suspect that Cotter fell prey to the misconception that he needed to be an auteur, both writing and directing his first feature film. Though the idea germinated with him and his own family history (and in fact he has also written a radio play called Dropping Bombs essentially covering the same ground), I think the story would have been better served by bringing in a more experienced scriptwriter, who could have polished Bomber into a much better film.
Page for the film on the director’s web site
Trailer
(6/10)
Tagged as:
#sxsw09,
family,
fathers-and-sons,
germany,
road-movie,
uk,
worldwar2
Cactus (Director: Jasmine Yuen Carrucan): Questions abound in this low-budget road movie that takes place in the Australian outback. John Kelly (Travis McMahon) is in desperate need of some money so he takes a job which involves the kidnapping of a professional gambler, Eli Jones (David Lyons). John must deliver Eli to someone in the middle of the outback by following meticulous directions and instructions. Along the way a policeman (Bryan Bell) becomes involved and things get more confusing.
Very little back story is revealed which makes the film exciting yet frustrating. By the end of this journey your patience may wear thin. Like an episode of the TV show Lost, you’ll have more questions than answers.
Cactus is Carrucan’s first outing as a writer and director. With little to no budget, she has made a decent film. It’s beautifully shot and the acting is competent. Unfortunately she left me in the outback without a map and I’m still trying to figure out why the film is called Cactus.
Official site of the film
(5/10)
Tagged as:
australia,
road-movie
Bottle Rocket (Director: Wes Anderson): I’ve seen Wes Anderson’s feature debut three or maybe four times by now, but it’s a film I enjoy more and more with each viewing. My first exposure to Anderson was seeing Rushmore at the 1998 Toronto International Film Festival and it just knocked me out. When I sought out Bottle Rocket a few months later, I was underwhelmed. It was much more subtle than Rushmore, from the characterization to the art direction, but over the years my estimation of the film has risen considerably. Criterion’s recent release of the film on DVD gave me another opportunity to evaluate it, and it was great to see all of the Wes Anderson touches there, even at the beginning. Critics of Anderson’s work often point out that he hasn’t really changed much as a director, and that even with bigger budgets and larger canvases with which to work, he still ends up telling the same stories. Even as a huge fan of his work, I’d have to say that there’s a lot of truth in that criticism, especially after watching Bottle Rocket again.
The film begins with Anthony (Luke Wilson) being released from a mental hospital where he’d been treated for “exhaustion.” His friend Dignan (Owen Wilson) has come to “break him out,” not realizing that the hospital is voluntary, and that Anthony can leave anytime he wants. In the first of many examples, Anthony plays along with the ruse to make his friend feel better. Dignan is a hyperactive guy with big plans. Although he was fired from his landscaping job with local entrepreneur and smalltime hood Mr. Henry (James Caan), he’s eager to impress him and get his old job back. He recruits Anthony into his “gang” along with their rich friend Bob (Robert Musgrave), the only one who owns a car. The plan is to pull off a daring heist to impress Mr. Henry, thus gaining them entry into his criminal circle (which is fronted by his landscaping business, the Lawn Wranglers).
Their meticulously planned robbery, of a bookstore(!), goes well enough, but their plan calls for them to go “on the lam” so they drive out to the middle of nowhere to hide out in a motel. This middle section of the film is particularly charming, as Anthony falls completely head over heels for Inez, a Paraguayan housekeeper at the motel, in spite of the fact that she speaks no English and he can’t speak Spanish. Anthony seems so desperate to make a connection outside of his social class that this should feel creepy, but thanks to Luke Wilson’s winning performance, it actually manages to feel romantic. A family situation results in Bob taking off in the middle of the night with his car, leading to one of the film’s most memorable lines, from Dignan: “Bob’s gone. He stole his car!” The now-carless gang (Anthony and Dignan) try to keep their flight from the law going, but it soon turns sour and they end up returning home separately. Weeks go by, until Dignan turns up to invite Anthony (and more reluctantly, Bob) into a big score with Mr. Henry’s gang.
I won’t say anymore but I was delighted to discover that the film seems just as fresh as it did the first time I saw it, almost ten years ago now. I love Anderson’s by now trademark use of single-minded and eccentric protagonists, as well as his tendency to portray multi-cultural and multi-generational friendships. It’s a joy to see the debut of Owen Wilson, playing one of the more memorable characters in recent American cinema, and to see him acting with both of his brothers (older brother Andrew plays Bob’s bullying older brother, whom they oddly call “Future Man”.) The film has that feeling of being made by a small group of friends, or in this case, a family.
The only thing I was left wondering was what happened to Robert Musgrave, whose performance as Bob was excellent. In the “making of” included on the DVD, he appears wistful as he revisits some of the locations, some now torn down. I wonder if he ever feels like he was the only one left behind as the other players went on to fortune and fame, while his career has consisted of playing bit parts. Speaking of the “making of”, it was filmed in Spring 2008 and Luke Wilson doesn’t look good at all. Overweight and tired-looking, he really doesn’t come across as the man whom producer James L. Brooks insisted had to “deliver the romance.” I sincerely hope he’s okay.
Other treasures on this 2-disc set I’ve yet to explore include a commentary track with Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson, who wrote the film together, and the original 13-minute black and white short, made in 1992, on which the feature was based.
Note: This film always reminds me of another indie film that came out around the same time about a group of hapless wannabe crooks. Palookaville (1995), directed by Alan Taylor, and starring Vincent Gallo, William Forsythe and Adam Trese was another enjoyable and eccentric film about a gang of lovable losers who really weren’t cut out for the criminal lifestyle. I always wonder about the timing of these two films, and why director Alan Taylor never went on to any measure of cinematic success (though he has had a lot of success as a television director, winning an Emmy and working on acclaimed shows such as Mad Men, Lost, The Sopranos and Sex and the City). It’s a good little film and is underappreciated, I think. Try Bottle Rocket and Palookaville as a double feature sometime.
Buy Bottle Rocket from Amazon.com
(9/10)
Tagged as:
coming-of-age,
crime,
criterion,
road-movie,
wesanderson
Viva Cuba (Director: Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti, Cuba, 2005): Viva Cuba is a charming fairytale/road movie that submerges its political message in a very personal story of friendship and love. Jorgito and his tomboy friend Malu are on the cusp of adolescence, and their close friendship seems about to morph into something at once more serious and more frightening. It’s evident from the way they can be holding hands one minute and arguing violently the next. To make things worse, their families detest each other. Malu lives with her mother, a bitter woman whose family used to wield influence in the days before Castro’s revolution. Jorgito’s parents have moved to Havana from the countryside and are firm supporters of the government. Each mother admonishes her child for playing with an unsuitable playmate, but that only drives the pair closer together.
This Romeo and Juliet story really takes off when Malu’s mother decides to leave Cuba forever, to join her boyfriend in what we assume is America. In order to get permission to leave the country with Malu, she must get her estranged ex-husband to sign an exit authorization. Knowing this, Malu and Jorgito hatch a plan to appeal to his paternal love (or guilt) by traveling in person to see him. The problem is that Malu hasn’t seen her father since she was six, because he works as a lighthouse keeper at the other end of the country.
The two young protagonists hit the road by train, bus, and oxcart to reach their destination, but their constant squabbling threatens to ruin the plan. In the meantime, their worried families have seemingly reconciled in the desperate search for their missing children.
First and foremost, this is a beautifully-shot film, and the use of colour is often striking. The political message, such as it is, seems to ignore Castro completely; instead, it’s a shamelessly pro-Cuba film, highlighting both the island’s natural beauty as well as the fierce pride of its people in their cultural institutions. It’s not surprising that music plays a big part in the film.
It’s unclear whether the director was attempting to make a film aimed solely at children. There is certainly a sense of naïveté in the dialogue and the basic structure of the film, and there is never any real danger to these two kids on the run, but the ending seemed particularly grown-up and ambiguous, and made me reevaluate my initial impressions. Some critics have seen the film as an allegory depicting two sides to modern Cuban culture, but I don’t believe the intention was that obvious. I think the film gains resonance from refusing to be overt about its political opinions. Instead, it leaves the viewer to untangle his sympathies from the intersection of conflicting desires in a country that is changing, just not fast enough for some.
Note: Film Movement featured this film as their Year 5 Film 5.
(8/10)
Tagged as:
adolescence,
children,
cuba,
DVD,
DVD Clubs,
Film Movement,
road-movie
The Puffy Chair (Director: Jay Duplass, USA, 2005): The Puffy Chair was the recipient of significant buzz after it won the Audience Award at the South by Southwest film festival in 2005, and the fact that a film made for $15,000 can even get released on DVD is pretty impressive, so I was curious to see what all the fuss was about.
Created by the Duplass Brothers (Jay directs, while brother Mark plays the lead), the film is a road movie that traces the deterioration of twenty-something slacker couple Josh and Emily’s relationship. Josh has purchased the titular chair on eBay as a gift for his father’s upcoming birthday, and the plan is for him to drive from New York to his parents’ home in Atlanta, picking up the chair along the way. Circumstances conspire such that not only does Emily end up coming along, but Josh’s even-more-aimless and psychobabble-spouting brother Rhett joins them as well. The comedy is of the Curb Your Enthusiasm variety, with situations spiralling out of control for no good reason except one character or another’s refusal to back down or admit their mistake. I happen to love this kind of uncomfortable humour, and a scene near the beginning where Josh tries to rent a motel room for the group while pretending to be just one person is hilarious.
Other reviewers have pointed to the film’s strength in documenting the damaged relationship between Josh and Emily, and while I can agree intellectually, I guess I’m a little too far removed from my twenties to really feel it so strongly. Both of them are pretty manipulative and immature, and it took a while for me to warm to them. As film characters, I didn’t mind spending 90 minutes with them, but I’d really hate to have real friends like this. (Sorry, hipsters).
Technically, the film was as good as it could be based on the miniscule budget. I did find the incessant small zooms distracting, as well as the frequent loss of focus. But the script wasn’t bad, and some of the situations were genuinely funny. The chemistry between the actors was good as well, and by the end, despite what I said above, I was really hoping that somehow Josh and Emily could salvage things and maybe learn something from their strange journey. The film’s abrupt ending made me realize that I cared about these screwups more than I thought.
Official site for the film
(7/10)
Tagged as:
DVD,
independent,
mumblecore,
road-movie
