My blog where I write about films I enjoy and post interviews I've done with actors and filmmakers. I am a sci-fi fan, an action film nerd, and into both arthouse films and B-movie schlock.
The Long Rail North is a play that
premiered at the Planet Connections Theatre Festivity this past week in New York City.
It was written by Michael Hagins, and directed by Emily DeSena. The play stars
Xavier Rodney, Morgan Patton, Michael Rehse, Natalie Ann Johnson, and Sam
Lopresti. The play is set during the Civil War, and is about the relationship
between an escaped black slave/AWOL Union soldier and a white daughter of a
plantation owner, and their struggle to survive while travelling North as
stowaways on a train.
Thomas
(Rodney) is an escaped black slave who also left his regiment in the Union army
due to finding that the North’s attitudes towards black people weren’t any
better than the South’s attitudes. The South’s attitudes are more blatant and
violent, whereas the North’s attitudes are more subtly insulting and
condescending. He has rescued a 12-year old white girl named Molly (Patton)
from the burning of her family plantation, in which her family and slaves were
killed in the ambush, and is trying his best to be patience with her ingrained
racist attitudes, all of which she had inherited from her father. Rodney
commands the scenes with an intelligence that makes Thomas the smartest person
in the room, on his own journey and trying to manage as a drifter and being
split between allegiances and not belonging anywhere.
Molly
frequently begins her sentences with “My daddy says that . . .” and often uses
the n-word to address Thomas because she doesn’t know any better about
addressing black people by their given names. Patton excels at playing a scared
and confused young girl who doesn’t know what to think when her racist
attitudes conflict with Thomas’s gentle actions, contradicting her father’s
ideas about black people. While Molly needs Thomas a lot more than he needs
her, he has dedicated himself to getting Molly to safety by hitching a ride on
a train car going North, the full reason for it being revealed in the third act.
Along the
way, they encounter a drifter/train robber named Cassie (Johnson), known as a
fugitive by the name of “Coal Car” Cassie. Johnson delivers a fun performance
full of charisma and adventurous spirit. Cassie stands up against the racist
attitudes of the day, both out of kinship with black people and out of having
nothing left to lose as a disenfranchised white woman.
The
three stowaways are being targeted by both Union and Confederate soldiers, played
with sinister relish by Sam Lopresti and Michael Rehse. They are both
predators, not only looking to capture Thomas, but also to capture the child
Molly as a “traitor” and to hang Cassie for her crimes.
The play is heavy subject matter, and given the
heightened recent media coverage of race relations and racially-motivated violence, it
is a perceptive drama, though it was written nearly two years ago.
DeSena’s direction and Hagins’ writing allows for the
scenes to unfold naturally and deliver introspective character development
without rushed exposition or filler moments. The five-person cast gives
captivating performances that deliver the heaviness of the situations at hand,
and transport the audience to an ugly time in history that has reared its head
since then in many different forms.
The play
will run through July 11th in the Planet Connections festival at the
Paradise Factory.
Advantageous is a 2015 dystopian sci-fi
drama directed and co-written by Jennifer Phang and starring Jacqueline Kim
(also co-writer), Freya Adams, James Urbaniak, Jennifer Ehle, Jennifer Ikeda,
Samantha Kim, and Ken Jeong. The film is a feature film expansion of Phang’s
short film, produced for the sci-fi short film anthology web series
FUTURESTATES. The film is a feminist sci-fi look at aging, identity, the female
place in modern society, and wealth in the late 21st century. It is a fascinating film about technology
and modern selfhood, especially as it comes to the price of using technology to
become a better person.
Gwen Koh (Jacqueline Kim) is a middle-aged single
mother who has been the public, yet underpaid, face of the seemingly innocent
corporation that she works for, until she is demoted on account of her age and
not being youthful or marketable enough for their faster technology-based
future. She is struggling to support herself and her daughter Jules (Samantha
Kim), and wants to send Jules to an elite prep school where a successful future
would be guaranteed for her.
Gwen hustles to come up with the money through
egg donation, job interviews, and checking her bank balances, but is at a
disadvantage in a society that celebrates youth and wealth. The class
differences are stark in this world, with examples such as stunning visuals of grand,
opulent city life contrasted with lonely poor neighbors crying in their
apartments and news reports on teen prostitution.
Gwen and
Jules share a vital relationship, especially with a single mother and only
child. They share a close and loving bond, and need each other for love,
family, and human connection in a tech-driven world. It is not only their
financial future that is important, but their loving bond that is crucial to
maintain as a family.
In order
to ensure a future for both herself and for Jules, Gwen decides to use herself
as a test subject for a new and experimental procedure developed by her company,
where her identity would be placed inside of a younger body, as a chance to
live life anew. The procedure would raise her advantage in the industry as a
youthful and valuable member of society, and would allow for her daughter to
have the best in society. Gwen justifies her procedure, saying, “I can’t let
her become one of these women so desperate that they would do anything.” It is
a risky move that Gwen takes in undergoing the procedure, and the third act of
the film is a heartbreaking twist, as the real cost of the procedure is
revealed, and is a sad and painful look at how women are valued in society
based on beauty and social worth.
Advantageous stands out as not only one
of the best science-fiction films of the year, but as one of the best films of
the year, period. The film has an inventive story that touches to the core of
human identity, aging, and mortality. The film won the Sundance Jury Prize for
Collaborative Vision in January, played to a sold-out audience at BAMcinemaFest
and is currently streaming on Netflix. I highly recommend this film.
I watched A History of Violence last week, and really liked it. It had a good slow, anticipatory pace to it, like violence was always simmering beneath the surface way before it happened. I loved seeing the build up to the diner scene, it set up everything in motion. And the way that Tom (Viggo Mortensen) kept laughing off accusations that he was a criminal made him look even more suspect.
I am a fan of David Cronenberg, so I figured I would like this film. And it made me like the Archer/Bob's Burgers scene even more, as it was very clever with Archer and Bob's individual histories and mirroring it from the movie:
I saw two movies at BAM yesterday as part of their film festival BAMCinemaFest. The first was Dope, directed by Rick Famuyiwa which, is showing in both indie and mainstream theaters. Dope centered on a teenage black male nerd named Malcolm (Shameik Moore) who was a 90's hip-hop head in present-day Inglewood, CA, and dressed like a cross between Dwayne Wayne and the Fresh Prince. He has nerdy friends and works to maintain his identity while mingling with local street folks. He gets involved in a drug-dealing scheme through a convoluted set of circumstances, and uses his nerdy image as a cover to avoid detection.
I was mixed on it, liking the characters and style, but not so much the story. I liked the throwback hip-hop soundtrack; the heroes being black nerds; the story being influenced by Superbad and Friday; an awesome shout-out to the underrated coming-of-age movie The Wood; a funny performance by model Chanel Iman as a cokehead rich girl; Zoe Kravitz' performance as a young woman studying for her G.E.D. and dealing with both her drug dealing friends and the nerd protagonist, caught between wanting to be seen as more than just a sexy hookup but not leaving her past behind; and the nerds gaming the drug dealing system through their tech and science skills. The characters were complex and I liked the depth that was given to their personalities and attitudes. However, I didn't like the slapstick, silly parts; the gratuitous female nudity, the heavy-handed, melodramatic final monologue that was an anvil spelling out everything that was already shown in the film earlier, and the hero becoming a drug dealer, even if he had clever ways of distributing it. It isn't a bad movie, but it felt shallow sometimes.
The other movie I saw was Breaking a Monster, directed by Luke Meyer, a documentary about three adolescent black boys from Brooklyn (Malcolm, Jarad, Alan) who were a metal band called Unlocking the Truth. They started out as street performers, got discovered and got a major Sony record deal, but kept struggling to understand the music business while being barely 13 years old themselves. They just want to play music, make an album, and get paid, while their manager is trying to handle the business end and get the boys to act more mature in meetings and showcases. The movie was really funny (often due to the boys' frank honesty and lack of a filter), and they are really talented, like guitar-shredding, drumming talents who have since opened for Metallica, Motorhead, Guns 'N' Roses, Queens of the Stone Age, and Marilyn Manson. There often was talk about the boys standing out as black kids playing metal, and being accused of being a gimmick or a token act. The kids have serious metal influences, and already so skilled at 13, they will likely just get better with more life experience and training. It was really cool to see.
The Prophecy is a 1995 fantasy-thriller film written and directed
by Gregory Widen, and featuring a stellar cast: Christopher Walken, Eric
Stoltz, Elias Koteas, Virginia Madsen, Adam Goldberg, Amanda Plummer, and Viggo
Mortensen. The film begins with a prologue of the First War between Heaven and
angels, where fallen angels who refused to accept God’s elevation of mankind
above all others were cast out and lost His love; the creation of Hell and
Lucifer’s fall from grace, and the angels who have remained loyal to God and
are protectors of mankind, and trying to be brothers again. It’s a fascinating
film about faith, Catholicism, and questioning God’s presence and love, as both
the angels and mankind have felt abandoned by His voice and feel lost and
confused without Him.
The film’s story begins with Thomas Dagget (Koteas),
who is about to be ordained as a priest, but receives horrifying visions of
angels warring with each other, and is traumatized. He loses his faith, and
several years later, has become a police detective with the LAPD. Meanwhile,
two angels have fallen to Earth. Simon (Stoltz), is an angel on mankind’s side,
and warns Dagget of coming events. The other angel, Uziel (Jeff Cadiente), is described
as having the “strength of God” and is a lower soldier angel and Lt. to the
archangel Gabriel (Walken).Uziel tries to kill Simon, but Simon overpower him
and destroys him. His body and death is investigated by Dagget, triggering his
memories of the Church and a missing passage from the Book of Revelations about
a second war Heaven by the fallen angels, and a prophecy involving the use of a
“dark soul” that will be used as a deadly weapon. The dark soul to be used is
the soul of a recently-deceased Korean War veteran named Hawthorne, who had a
dark and disturbing past from the war. Gabriel wants to use his soul to fulfill
the prophecy, but Simon has stolen it, and is determined to keep Gabriel from
reaching it, in any way he can.
Stoltz gives a great performance as Simon, portraying
as an angel who is good-hearted, but tired of fighting the battle constantly
with the fallen angels. He plays him more like an actual person than like an
ethereal figure, and combined with his long dark coat and shaggy hair, looks
more grunge than angelic. When he is injured and hiding in a school, he meets a
little girl who finds him while she’s playing with her friends. When he asks
her name and she states, “Mary,” he repeats her name to himself with a
sarcastic tone of voice to himself, as in, “Of course, out of all the girls in
this town, I meet the one with the same name as her.” It’s a wry and funny moment, and all coming from Stoltz’s
knowing delivery.
Christopher Walken plays Gabriel with a mix of menace
and dark humor. He is often impatient with people, and treats people like they
are gnats in the way of his course, through knocking humans out with a light
touch to the forehead or ripping out the hearts of angels trying to stop him.
His dark humor mostly comes from him teasing humans for being naïve, innocent,
or immature, and not worthy of the unconditional love that God has bestowed
upon them. He uses suicide victims (Goldberg and Plummer) as his human helpers,
keeping them in limbo between life and death, and a lot of dark and sick humor
comes from their interactions and the helpers being in obvious resentment of
this angel keeping him alive just to drive him around and do his errands.
In Gabriel’s
exchange with Simon during a battle scene, he speaks of the pain and anguish
that he has felt since God has cast him out, and wanting to return to paradise:
Simon: I’m so tired of this war.
Gabriel: Reject the lie, Simon. Join us! Help make it
like it was before the monkeys. You remember? We cast out Lucifer’s army, you
and I. We threw their rebel thrones from the wall.
Simon: They wanted to be gods.
Gabriel: I don’t want to be a god, Simon. I just
wanna make it like it was, before the lie. When he loved us best.
Although Gabriel has a cold demeanor about him, in
that moment, he does become a sympathetic character, a person who is devastated
about being banished and not hearing God’s voice anymore. Simon says to him, “Oh,
Gabriel. When was it that you lost your grace? I’d like to help you, but I’m
not sure who’s right or who’s wrong. It doesn’t matter. Sometimes you just have
to do what you’re told. That’s who you are.” It is a powerful scene full of
loss and regret of losing friends and the love of one’s creator, and Walken and
Stoltz play the scene magnificently.
Dagget has been struggling with his Catholic faith
and being abandoned by God on the day he needed him most, so his loss of faith
and confusion parallels with Gabriel’s need to reach Heaven and win back God’s
love. It is prevalent through the film, as he is emotionally exhausted, and
searching for answers. Koteas delivers an understated and heartfelt performance
in this film, as he often looks drained and worn-out in trying to understand
why he has been brought back into confronting his faith and overcoming his past
struggles to re-gain his faith. His faith is what makes him human, what makes
him have a soul. And at the same time, the angels have faith too, yet they do
not have souls like humans. Koteas doesn’t play the role like a macho hero, nor
is he jaded about life. He is just understandably confused about why God’s
voice wasn’t there for him, and why the angels need him now. There’s a great
moment where he is speaking with Katherine (Madsen) about the real purpose of
angels outside of their innocent and holy image:
“Did you ever notice how in the Bible, whenever God
needed to punish someone, or make an example, or whenever God needed a killing,
he sent an angel? Did you ever wonder what a creature like that must be like? A
whole existence spent praising your God, but always with one wing dipped in
blood. Would you ever want to really see an angel?”
It is a fascinating take on the stories of angels,
and seeing angels not as innocent guardians but as warriors sent to do God’s
bidding on missions that may involve punishment and murder. Dagget also states
that in a verse from St. Paul, there was one line that always stuck with him: “Even
now in Heaven there were angels carrying savage weapons.” It is a haunting line
that carries resonance with the film.
One of the best performances in the film belongs to
Viggo Mortensen, who appears late in the film, with only three scenes as
Lucifer, but delivers a scene-stealing and mesmerizing performance. He is calm,
collected, and captivating on-screen. He plays Lucifer like a beast, with
lowered, glowering eyes, predatory stances, and a low, intimidating purr in his
voice. Even him just plucking a flower while speaking shows an utter disrespect for life. He doesn’t give a damn about any of the humans, he is only getting
involved because Gabriel wants to turn Heaven into another Hell, and that is
Lucifer’s domain. Mortensen’s performance is brilliant, especially in
delivering lines like, “Humans – and how I love you talking monkeys for this –
know more about war and treachery than any angel,” or “God? God is love. I don’t
love you,” said with cold eyes and a hiss.
The film, while not well-remembered today, was a box
office success, earning twice its budget in revenue, and mixed reviews from
critics. It has a stellar cast, and is an interesting story about angels warring
with each other, and the humans that get caught up in the crossfire. I highly
recommend it.
