Snark, Critic and Pop!

The Back Alley Film Series in Charlotte continues this week with the Brazillian film ”Elite Squad – The Enemy Within“, directed by José Padilha.  The film will be showing on Thursday, February 9th at 7:30pm at Crownpoint Stadium 12.  Tickets are $5 for CFS members and $8 for the general public.  BAFS describes the film as:

After a prison riot, Captain Nascimiento, now a high ranking security officer in Rio de Janeiro, is swept into a bloody political dispute that involves government officials and paramilitary groups.

It’s nice to know Antonio Banderas is still alive and getting work, even if his latest flick, The Skin I Live In, is so disgusting it sent the French running from the theater sick to their stomachs.  Jo Piazza reports from the Cannes film festival:

(The Skin I Live In) focuses on a mad but brilliant surgeon (Banderas) who kidnaps a man who raped his daughter.

The doctor’s daughter killed herself from the grief and it drives him to take very drastic measures. This is where it gets complicated and disturbing. (continue reading…)

I ’twas going to attend the Charlotte Film Festival tonight to catch another off-beat, indie film (and a foreign film!) called Dogtooth. But, alas, general tiredness and some back pain convinced me to stay home. I just watched the trailer on Youtube, and now I am sooooo glad I stayed home.

Trailer follows, not for those who don’t like subtitles, the dweak of heart, or anyone with any modicum of sensitivity. In fact, please don’t watch it. I’m warning you. Don’t do it. You’ve been warned. Oh, well, I tried.

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Night Catches Us is the kind of independent film that can only thrive on the film festival circuit.

Technically, it’s very sound. The acting is strong. The directing by writer/director Tanya Hamilton shows much promise (some problems with pacing, I’d say) . The film, set in 1976 Philadelphia, looks and feels authentic. The streets, the decor, the fashion, the hair all put you in the right frame of mind. 

But man oh man is Night Catches Us dull.

The story is that Marcus (Anthony Mackie) has returned home to attend the funeral for his father after years of self-imposed exile including a stint in prison. Thugs believe that Marcus, prior to his exodus, was the rat who snitched on a Black Panther Neil who killed a cop and was ultimately gunned down by police. (continue reading…)

This film was viewed as part of the 2010 Charlotte Film Festival.  We are lucky enough to cover this event for the second consecutive year, our complete coverage of last years festival can be found here.

This years Charlotte Film Festival (the fifth annual) started off with a documentary called Soundtrack for a Revolution, which was written and directed by documentary film makers Bill Guttentag & Dan Sturman.  It tells the story of the civil rights movement in America through the protest songs that activists sang throughout the struggle.  Artists such as The Roots, Wyclef Jean, Joss Stone and John Legend (to name just a few) give warm, intimate performances of the songs which are interspersed which footage of the activists themselves telling the story of the movement and singing the songs.  People such as Harry Belafonte, John Lewis and Rev. Edwin King give first hand accounts of the horrors as well as the triumphs they witnessed firsthand.

Where the movie really excels is it’s ability to portray through the artists performances and the interviewees singing the beauty and power of the songs without taking away from the powerful story, and without minimizing the events of the movement.  (continue reading…)

Don’t forget, kids: The 2010 edition of the Charlotte Film Festival begins tonight.  Check out their web-site here for more details.  We had a lot of fun at the 2009 festival, and are looking forward to taking in as many of the films and events as we can.  The schedule of movies/events is as follows: (continue reading…)

Editor’s note: This is the review Daniel posted covering the 2009 Charlotte Film Festival from our old site Film.IsPwn.com last year.  For our full coverage of last years event click here.

Scary movies are not my favorite genre. It’s a matter of personal taste, of course. To me, fear isn’t an emotional response I want to plop down $10 at the theater in order to experience, especially when I can get it for free on the evening news.

I detest torture porn (the Saw franchise, Hostel, etc.) and I have no interest in slasher films (Halloween, Friday the 13th, etc.). The only kind of scary movie I actually get a kick out of is the spooky, Sixth Sensekind of movie, where the violence, if there is any, doesn’t exceed PG-13 caliber, and the terror is all in your mind as you wonder “What’s in the shadows?” (Yes, I know I’m a wuss, it’s something I’ve had to learn to live with ever since the “too scared to go on the Scooby Doo Rollercoaster” incident in my childhood.) (continue reading…)

Editor’s Note: This is a re-post from out old site Film Is Pwn covering the 2009 Charlotte Film Festival, as we look forward to the 2010 CFF later this month:

Bronson is the story of a man. A man completely detached from the realities of the world and what it means to be human. He’s not nice, good or really evil in the typical sense of the word. What he does is evil but to him it appears that it’s nothing more than a game, a foray into the woods rather than being the very real actions with tangible consequences that they are.

I don’t believe I’ve enjoyed watching a movie more in a very long time. It seems clear to me that Director Nicolas Winding Refn had a clear vision when he chose to venture into this film. He was determined and he pulled together an outstanding cast and crew to see it into fruition. Tom Hardy as “England’s most violent criminal” is spot-on. His performance is dark and menacing, without remorse and completely insane. Exactly the type of man I rather imagine Bronson to be. There is no sanity to this film. No character to stabilize you. You feel constantly at odds against the main character, much, I imagine, like the prison guards must have felt these thirty years. (continue reading…)

Editor’s Note: This is a re-post from out old site Film Is Pwn covering the 2009 Charlotte Film Festival, as we look forward to the 2010 CFF later this month:
Bronson. It’s an independent movie skillfully and artfully made. Tom Hardy, looking like a true Haberdasher, plays the titular Bronson — based on the real life story of Britain’s most notorious and expensive — and is brilliant. If someone were to talk Best Actor for Mr. Hardy, I couldn’t disagree; it’s a brave, bold, menacing performance.

The director makes some stylistic choices with Bronson, in his mind, putting on a campy stage show to an enraptured audience where he gets to explain his sick, perverse outlook on life. There are other more serious moments where Bronson speaks to the camera directly as if in a confessional, where the nutjob is about as lucid about his madness as possible. I thought they worked and were interesting.

And I utterly detested the movie. I can’t fathom why a talented group of men and women would willingly conspire to write, produce, cast, direct, and perform the material. I derived no entertainment value from the experience and I would strongly encourage any caring human being to keep clear of theaters screening Bronson with a 30 mile radius, just to make sure they don’t accidentally wander into one of the showings by mistake. If there is a scientist who intends to show Bronson to criminally, clinically insane lab rats to gauge their reaction, I would gladly stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those loons from PETA to protest cruelty to animals.
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Editor’s note: This is one of the reviews we posted last year covering the 2009 Charlotte Film Festival.

The Heart Is a Drum Machine is a documentary by Christopher Pomerenke which explores the question What is Music? To start off, the film was very enjoyable if only for the numerous musicians and actors who were interviewed. I was particularly excited to see musicians such as John Frusciante, Matt Sorum and the always entertaining Juliette Lewis. Also interesting was the fact that many of the most lucid explanations of what music is came from Bijou Phillips which was something in the order of “Music is a way of letting another person feel what you are feeling”. I think anyone who has ever given a mix tape (yes, I understand that phrase dates me) will understand that sentiment.

Although the film was interesting and full of great interviews, it have one flaw which was the editing. Cuts were jumpy and the pacing was not very good. The movie starts off with a (continue reading…)

Editor’s Note: With the 2010 Charlotte Film Festival nearly upon us, we’re re-posting this “classic” review from the 2009 CFF (originally posted on our previous Site Film Is Pwn last year):Walking into the theatre, press pass dangling around my neck and garnering stares and questioning glances, New York Lately was exactly the type of movie I hoped for and expected. Don’t take that to mean that it was good. This is a Film Festival, having never been to one, I sat in anticipation imagining what it would be like. I pondered my lack of skinny jeans and ironic t-shirts; both of which would no doubt be uniform for the event. Then I imagined the type of movie a person wearing skinny jeans and an ironic t-shirt would make.

I’m not making fun of this as much as it might seem. I wish I was cool enough to wear skinny jeans and clever enough to have ironic t-shirts, but instead I just wear normal jeans and a button down shirt. I wished I had shaved to have cool facial hair of some sort, but alas I had to just be me. Then as we arrived and looked around, I didn’t see a single pair of skinny jeans, and since most everyone was in a uniform for the festival the ironic t-shirts had been left in the closet. I was acceptable. (continue reading…)

Editor’s Note: With the 2010 Charlotte Film Festival nearly upon us, we’re re-posting this “classic” review from the 2009 CFF (originally posted on our previous Site Film Is Pwn last year):

I had a very different review of New York Lately planned in my head as the closing credits rolled. This was the first narrative film I’d seen at the Charlotte Film Festival, and I wasn’t impressed. It was a full length feature, a notch above student films, but much of the cast looked like they were film student buddies of the director or struggling actors who happened to be available that week and were willing to work for half a Subway sandwich. A couple performers stood above the rest (Mark DiConzo, Susan Cagle, and that’s the list), a couple scenes had some genuinely interesting moments, and I think I chuckled twice (this is a romantic-comedy-drama, or, as we with Press passes at film festivals say, a “rom-com-dram”.) (continue reading…)