The opening scene of Andrew Neel’s (King Kelly) Goat leaves its audience completely breathless setting the harrowing tone for what’s to follow. Walking back to his car after leaving a frat party early, Brad (Ben Schnetzer) gets approached by a peculiar person asking for a ride. Reluctant at first, he eventually agrees after the stranger insists he’s just going down the road. The situation gets sketchier when the stranger summons another friend to hop in the car as well. Brad reasonably becomes suspicious at this. Then the two strangers admit they didn’t know the guy who threw the party. When they lead him to drive them to a remote field, Brad has no time even to react before the two men beat him to a pulpy mess, take his money, and drive off with his car.

According to his older brother Brett (an unexpectedly remarkable Nick Jonas), none of these horrid events would have transpired if Brad belonged to a fraternity, a brotherhood where his back would always be covered. So he decides to pledge. And the rest of Goat focuses on the bro culture machoism of a fraternity during pledge “Hell Week.” The appeal is obvious at first. Neel shows the glamorous side of partying with frat brothers—an endless supply of booze, girls willing to take off their clothes, and a random appearance by James Franco (who helped produce the film and owns the tiny role). But the fun and games end when the hazing begins.

Based on actual events, Goat is a disturbing look at what people will endure in order to feel accepted. The issue with Goat isn’t watching a bunch of bros force booze upon pledges while also urinating on them as they lay unclothed and tied up, it’s that the film doesn’t know when to stop. Over and over again, pledges are asked to complete asinine tasks, most of which cross the line in human shaming. Exploitation film, perhaps—or torture porn, depending on who you ask—by the end the film leaves its audience as battered as the pledges. Love it or hate it, the film leaves a lasting impression.

Rating:
7/10

Stephen King‘s highly anticipated “time-travel thriller” series has already cast James Franco as the show’s lead alongside several other actors. Now it seems Warner Brothers Television has found an additional performer to serve among Franco’s foils in the J.J. Abrams-directed series. Former Grey’s Anatomy star T.R. Knight has joined the Hulu event series 11/22/63 as Johnny Clayton, a salesman in 1960s Texas struggling to move past his estranged wife Sadie Dunhill (Sarah Gadon) despite her developing relationship with Franco’s Jake Epping. The character of Clayton will ultimately pose a threat to exposing Franco’s characters secrets.

11/22/63 is based on a bestseller of King’s from 2011 in which a high school English teacher discovers a portal that transports him back to September 9th, 1958. The teacher attempts to use the portal to stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy, while balancing love, and struggling against a course of historical events that does not want to be altered. The Hulu series is expected to premiere in 2016; Chris Cooper, Brooklyn Sudano, George MacKay, Leon Rippy, Lucy Fry and Daniel Webber have all been set for roles on the show.

There’s been a recent trend with documentaries to use the memoirs of the late and the famous as a primary information source. That trend involves celebrities reading the memoirs, diaries, and other writings of the famously departed. In 2013’s Love, Marilyn, actresses including Glenn Close, Viola Davis, Uma Thurman, and Marisa Tomei speak words written by the iconic Marilyn Monroe. From earlier this year, Listen to Me Marlon uses audio recordings of Marlon Brando—from the actor’s private collection—to offer a narrative as well as get a glimpse inside the legend’s mind.

Now, making its Toronto premiere at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, comes A Fuller Life, a documentary about the late writer/director Sam Fuller. The source for the doc is Fuller’s memoir, A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking. Conceived and directed by Fuller’s daughter, Samantha, the film gathers a collection of celebrities to read excerpts from that memoir.

The list of celebrity readers is an eclectic one. Some were chosen because of their work with Fuller, like the quartet of Robert Carradine, Mark Hamill, Perry Lang, and Kelly Ward, all of whom appeared in Fuller’s The Big Red One (1980). Others were chosen for their personal relationships with him, like longtime friend and actress Jennifer Beals. And others still had no direct connection to Fuller, but still seemed to “fit,” like James Franco who, according to Samantha Fuller, reminds her of “a young Samuel Fuller during his formative years.” Fifteen celebs in all contribute to telling Fuller’s story.

That story is, for the most part, a highlight reel of his life. Entries include tales of his youth in New York’s newspaper industry, where he went from being a paperboy to the youngest crime reporter in the city; his time as a spec screenwriter in Hollywood, where he cranked out gritty thrillers (like 1963’s Shock Corridor); and his experiences serving in the Army in World War II. (It’s noted by Samantha Fuller at the start of the film that Fuller is the only person to have stormed the beaches at Normandy AND made a film about that fateful day.)

As was the case with Love, Marilyn, the structure of this doc allows for varying degrees of quality and interpretation of material based on who is reading. I found Franco to be rather uninspired and Bill Duke (a terrific character actor whom I’ve always liked) overselling it somewhat. Everyone else is fine, with the exception of actor Tim Roth and director Wim Wenders, both of whom are remarkable. This is not simply because of their “performances,” but also because of the stories they read. Roth reads of Fuller’s military training (using live ammo) and the storming of Normandy, while Wenders follows immediately with a glorious tale of how Fuller met Marlene Dietrich at a USO show. Their delivery of these points in Fuller’s timeline are hypnotic.

It isn’t only the recitations that make A Fuller Life such a compelling watch. The dialogue is all Fuller’s, having been pulled straight from his memoirs, and every word of it crackles. The author of the hard-hitting novel The Dark Page never lost his literary flair, and it pays off huge here.

Also well-executed is Samantha Fuller’s direction. This film isn’t simply a collection of men and women reading from a book, of course. As those readers read, footage culled from 160 reels of Sam Fuller’s personal collection is shown. This footage adds great weight to what is being read. It is combined with what looks like b-roll, so sometimes it’s easy to forget what is Fuller’s footage and what isn’t, but the overall presentation is still quite good.

Samantha Fuller’s use of clips from films written for the screen by her father is also interesting. The clips directly correlate to the points in Fuller’s life being covered at the time of the doc. It’s fascinating to see how heavily Fuller’s screenplays were drawn from, or influenced by, his personal experiences in journalism and war and elsewhere. It’s so compelling, in fact, that a visit to Fuller’s filmography feels in order.

James Franco, ever the prolific actor, is easy to find on multiple screens at once fairly often. It’s especially interesting, however, to have just watched him in the memoir-adapted, true crime focused True Story when his most recent vehicle is also based on a memoir, also about a writer, and also involves a high-profile murder case. Whereas he is the suspected murderer in True Story, in Stephen Elliott’s adapted memoir The Adderall Diaries, Franco wears the writer’s shoes. The writer being Elliott, who, deep in a state of writer’s block, takes an interest in the public trial of an accused wife-murderer.

Pamela Romanowsky’s directorial debut has a few of the same old drug-fueled and frenzied elements one comes to expect in melt-down films. The cinematography of Bruce Thierry Cheung maxed out in color, angled sideways, and sometimes slowed down in a pretty, if not unexpected, way. The music of Michael Andrews fits well, pulsing when called for, though maybe not especially stirring at times.

Franco’s Elliott is propelled through life, and his writing career, by a zealous hatred and capitalization on his abusive relationship with his father. The reserves of his grudge-holding run deep. Thus far it’s proven lucrative for him, as his first auto-biographical novel is doing well and he’s gotten an advance from a publisher for his next. Except he can’t seem to write it. He sees the trial of Hans Reiser (Christian Slater) on television and, much to the dismay of his editor (Cynthia Nixon), decides to attempt an entirely different sort of novel. This will be his In Cold Blood, he claims.

At the trial he meets Lana (Amber Heard) and, with one look at his motorcycle, the two begin a relationship steeped in their mutual brokenness, hers involving an abusive step-father. It’s of course when Elliott’s life seems most together that things must coming crashing down. At a reading of his first book, wherein he’s depicted the death of his mother to cancer at an early age and the chain-reaction this had on his relationship with his father and his relationship with drugs, Elliott’s father Neil (Ed Harris) makes an appearance. Bad news is a key part of Elliott’s memoir revolves around the supposed death of his mentally abusive father. When Neil shows up, publicly decrying the lies present in Elliott’s memoir, his entire reputation and career are at stake.

The film’s source material is all about the inaccuracy of memory, the way we select and remember out of context in order to suit our feelings on our pasts. Romanowsky depicts this theme in multiple flashbacks, sometimes tweaking them to be slightly different, to add more context, as Elliott progresses. Elliott’s words also appear on the screen as he types, letting us in on his personal way of mis-remembering. Elliott as the unreliable narrator of his own life is interesting, sure, but, well, unreliable. By his own admittance. It’s hard to hope for his redemption when he doesn’t just push people away, he selfishly tries to drag them down into his dark pity party.

Franco and Harris are on point, while Slater is severely underused, his plot line of very little interest. And, I admit, there’s a certain amount of guilt one has in finding fault with a real person’s attempt to share their own difficult narrative, but somehow blaming mis-remembrance as an excuse for self-destructive behavior reeks of falsity. You can’t play the martyr if the cause never existed. Romanowsky never wins audience trust, and her film gets distracted by the lesser fleshed-out true crime story, something I’m assuming Elliott does better in his book. Added all up, The Adderall Diaries confuses itself somewhat when laying out all its many themes, and despite Franco’s masochistic charm, his protagonist remains lacking in finding his way toward empathy.

There’s always a level of filtration, or Hollywoodization, that happens in reality-based films. There’s no getting around it, really. It’s storytelling, and the truth can always be embellished and beautified, or uglied and undermined, depending on the writer/director’s whims. True Story is indeed a true story, but it isn’t the stranger-than-fiction elements of the narrative that detract from how good the film could have been. Instead what distracts from an essentially intriguing cat-and-mouse tale is the poor casting and obviously narcissistic angle the film is presented from. An ironic criticism, I know, in that a film based on a memoir (Michael Finkel’s True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa) would seem the most forgiven for a certain level of narcissism. But director Rupert Goold (known for his theatrical direction and making his film directorial debut) can’t seem to detach from Finkel’s egocentric intentions.

The true story of True Story lies in the tale of Michael Finkel (Jonah Hill), a high-rising and adventurous journalist with The New York Times Magazine, or at least up until 2001 when it came to light that Mike had fabricated the bulk of a cover article he wrote for the magazine, leading to his dismissal and being blacklisted in his industry. He’s deep in the throes of depression from this momentous career failure, retreating to his home in Montana with his girlfriend Jill (Felicity Jones), when he receives a call from a small-time reporter in rural Oregon. A man, Christian Longo (James Franco), has been taken in and accused of murdering his wife and three children. He had been traveling under the name Michael Finkel, claiming to be the journalist. Intrigued by anyone who would want to take on his identity, especially at a time when his name feels so entirely sullied, Mike reaches out to Longo. The two begin to meet and a friendship of sorts ignites.

Finkel is drawn to Longo’s resistance to be forthright with the truth, seeing him as a journalistic challenge. Longo finds Finkel to be inspiring and draws on his writing skills and insights as he navigates his path toward trial. Perhaps the two seek affirmation and possible redemption in one another? Finkel starts work on a book about Longo and their relationship, thinking that if he truly devotes himself to the pursuit of truth he can somehow find his way back to credibility. Longo continues to string Finkel on, eventually getting to trial where his side of the story finally comes out and inevitabilities are revealed.

Hill tries to imbue Finkel with a certain amount of innocence, which feels disingenuous based on the existence of Finkel’s memoir and this film. A competitive journalist doesn’t seem very likely to have been so taken in by a small-town sociopath, thus the performance just doesn’t quite add up. His ego may have blinded him in real life, but Hill’s portrayal implies it as more related to Finkel’s personal road to atonement.

Franco, who I’d normally call chameleonic with his ability to meld into most genres, is actually more unbelievable in this role than Hill is for the opposite reason. Whereas Hill puts too much innocence into Finkel, Franco could use a heavy dose of it for Longo, who he never plays as remotely virtuous—even falsely so—in a way that might garner the trust of the audience. This just makes us question further the believability of Mike holding any hope in the truth of what Longo tells him. It makes it hard not to expect Hill and Franco to jump into their usual on-screen fare and crack a few jokes just to see them do something together that makes more sense.

Felicity Jones makes up 75 percent of the reason to see the film. Her role is minimal but adds the only real hint of true emotion and genuine reaction in the film. She gets one scene face-to-face with Franco and somehow manages to steal the entire show with it. She’s an absolute wonder.

Goold seems to have fallen prey to the charms of Mr. Finkel, falling for the story rather than the facts. The story of a journalist uncovering the layers of an accused murderer while finding his own way back to what truth really is would be interesting. But that’s not what True Story is. It’s one man’s continued search for affirmation and attention, a man who ultimately meets someone just like himself who plays the same game, only against him. So he writes a book and gets the final word. It’s na-na-nah-boo-boo with adults. You can almost see Finkel put his thumbs in his ears, wave his fingers around and stick out his tongue mischievously.

So, what ultimately makes True Story an interesting watch is the viewer being allowed to pass detached judgement, not just on a murderer, but on a man egotistical enough to think that being taken advantage of makes him unique or entitles him to anything. A man entirely blind to his own hubris. There’s a certain satisfaction in passing judgement on someone who claims that “truth is always important,” when what he obviously means is “the story is always important.”

The film’s ending would suggest Finkel wasn’t altogether pleased with the way things played out—no one wants to be taken for a shmuck—but neither do audiences, and it’s not clear if Mr. Finkel understands that satisfaction from his memoir stems from seeing both he and Longo get the justice coming to them. And that’s why the movie isn’t a failure, and is even (maybe inadvertently) appealing. If Goold had thought to approach the self-serving subject matter with more awareness, the added layer may have made it so the film was in on the joke instead of being the punchline, but that’s the unpredictability of a true story, is it not?

In honor of Oscar season being fully upon us, we’ve created a new column that combines three of our favorite things: arguing about the Oscars, nostalgia, and passing judgment on others. Oscar Winners Revisited hopes to re-evaluate past Academy Awards results and see how well the winners and nominees held up versus the choices Way Too Indie Staff members would make today. We’ll be sticking to the big six categories: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress. Make sure to check back on Way Too Indie tomorrow for another year’s batch of Academy Award winners, revisited.

Best Supporting Actress

Who Won – Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Who Should’ve Won – Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

It’s hard to complain about Leo’s win for The Fighter, though her self-funded pleading for the award looks more desperate now than even then. Truthfully, her performance might be the year’s second Best Supporting Actress role, but her performance wasn’t the best in the category. As the lead of her film, True Grit’s Hailee Steinfeld carries a movie that also features major actors like Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin. The 13-year old’s steely reserve, and scrappy determination in the face of an overwhelming Wild West is captivating filtered through the Coen’s vision for True Grit, and aided by a script packed with Southern idioms Steinfeld is a delight in the role. This is the type of performance Hilary Swank would have won an Oscar for if Steinfeld were 10 years older, but her relative youth makes the part easier to ignore. 4 years later, it’s impossible to overlook Steinfeld’s captivating performance. [Zach]

Best Supporting Actor

Who Won – Christian Bale, The Fighter
Who Should’ve Won – John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone

The Academy loves when big name actors lose massive amounts of weight for their role, as if that’s the only way to show true dedication, and that’s exactly what Christian Bale did (for the second time in his career). Truth be told, Bale did a great job in David O. Russell’s The Fighter, it’s hard to imagine the film without him. But the best performance in this category goes to a different nominee who played a meth-addict; John Hawkes for Winter’s Bone. Here Hawkes makes the most of his limited screen time and perfectly counterbalancing the then little-known Jennifer Lawrence as her drugged up uncle. Hawkes embodies the part of the conflicted antihero with his natural scrappy grit, making him the perfect fit for the role. After picking up the win during the Independent Spirit Awards for this role, there were high hopes Hawkes would also win his first Oscar too. But to this day we’re still waiting for that to happen. [Dustin]

Best Actress

Who Won – Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Who Should’ve Won – Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

I can’t think of a more heartbreaking performance from 2010 than Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine, it’s one of the best lead actress performances of the decade so far and right up there with Anne Dorval (Mommy), Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine), Marion Cotillard (Two Days, One Night) and so many others. Natalie Portman who won this year for Black Swan was incredible in that film, arguably the best she’s ever been, and that certainly made the loss for Williams easier to understand. But still as great as Portman is and she is great, Williams is just on another level with a performance full of tragic and beautiful moments (sometimes seconds apart) as a woman caught in the dissolution of her marriage. [Ryan]

Best Actor

Who Won – Colin Firth, The King’s Speech
Who Should’ve Won – James Franco, 127 Hours

Are you serious? James Franco plays a man who literally gets trapped between a rock and a hard place for 127 hours in agonizing pain and resorts to an unthinkable escape, and yet the Award goes to the portrayal of a British King with a speech impediment? Franco spent the entire film by himself, in a single setting, and wasn’t even able to move, yet his relentless determination proves the power of the human condition, inspiring everyone who watched it. In doing so, Franco demonstrated his ability to perform in a more serious role and earned an Independent Spirit Award in the process. The King’s Speech is one of those films that people forget about several years later, and while Colin Firth’s performance was sufficient, Franco’s is one that sticks with you over the years. [Dustin]

Best Director

Who Won – Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech
Who Should’ve Won – David Fincher, The Social Network

The Social Network isn’t David Fincher’s best work, not by a long stretch, he’s at his best on films like Se7en and Zodiac. But still it’s impossible to call any of the other nominees this year more deserving than the calculated, precise and damn near perfect work on display from Fincher here; it’s almost insulting to award it to anyone else in fact. Still, Tom Hooper and The King’s Speech rode a wave of late-season awards success and pulled the rug right out from under Fincher. It’s not that Hooper’s a totally undeserving winner, although between The Damned United and The King’s Speech I began to sour on his style, it’s that he’s undeserving in 2011. Aaron Sorkin wrote a great script, Jesse Eisenberg gave a career-best performance, but it’s Fincher who is the true MVP of The Social Network bringing his procedural leanings, unique style and oddly strong sense of humor to this story about the beginnings of Facebook or what could just as accurately be called a story of friends, betrayals, and human nature. Fincher’s presence at the helm can’t be undersold and is the biggest reason why this film is or will be considered a masterpiece by many. [Ryan]

Best Picture

Who Won – The King’s Speech
Who Should’ve Won – The Social Network

The Academy Awards have a penchant for looking back at history with the films they awards their top honors. The King’s Speech fits that mold, an ostensibly feel-good project that depicts a bygone era through the experience of a King and his speech therapist. It’s a pleasant film that for one Weinstein-fueled reason or another turned into the foregone conclusion of 2011’s Best Picture race. In awarding The King’s Speech, the Academy snubbed several films that will be remembered as various auteurs’ defining works, notably David Fincher’s The Social Network. “The Facebook Movie,” as many people dubbed the movie, retains the cold precision of Fincher’s other works but fills its story with damaged egos and big money squabbling. The script from Aaron Sorkin (which won Best Adapted Screenplay this year) features dialog delivered at the pace of a screwball comedy, while somehow communicating the intricacies of computer programming and web strategy. The Social Network is a distinctly modern movie, and it captures the rebirth of America’s tech boom without the benefit of hindsight. But far beyond that it’s a compelling story about human behavior, and the value of relationship vs. power. [Zach]

The story of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet C.K. Williams, The Color of Time is told through a series of flashbacks, voiced over at times by the poet’s own works read aloud by James Franco, who also stars in the film. Walking us through various elements of Williams’ life in no particular order, the film attempts to slowly unravel his existence into a series of experiences that not only inspired his poetry, but combined to make his work a visceral reflection of life as he knew it. Yet problematically, the film fails to do so in a way that delves into who Williams was as an individual, instead allowing his story to blend into the commonly held, stereotypical understanding of troubled young men becoming troubled old poets.

Written and directed by twelve students from Franco’s class at NYU, The Color of Time is a film for students; its heavily filtered aesthetic and non-linear structure will appeal far more to the artistic undergraduate than the average cinema-goer. This is not merely the result of a film that is too intellectual or abstract to appeal to a mainstream audience, but rather a fundamental flaw in the established style that has been liberally applied to the entire piece. While on the one hand it is commendable that a film created by twelve individuals is so cohesive, on the other it could certainly be argued that this is simply a uniformity born of a lack of originality. Indeed, the film is clearly inspired by the picturesque beauty of Terrence Malick films, down to the sepia-toned fields of long grass. In allowing the film to be thus influenced to the point of detraction from its core subject, the filmmakers make sure that though it may be a beautiful imitation, it will never stand out. Rather than remaining honest to the needs of the story, the different aspects of Williams’ life have been manipulated to fit a stereotypical understanding of how such biopics tend to go.

Jessica Chastain also stars in the film, but appears to essentially be reprising her role from The Tree of Life; she performs admirably, but even this does not distract from the knowledge that we have seen this character before. There is only one point at which the film seems to truly break out of its self-imposed shell, and this comes through the portrayal of a drug-induced stupor that Franco, as a young Williams, finds himself in. It is, ironically, a breath of fresh air – a reminder that the film does in fact have some creative minds behind it. Yet just as we come to hope that the film might continue to break away in such a fashion, it snaps back to what the filmmakers have no doubt decided is the “tried and true” method.

The biggest problem with all of this, however, is not simply audience exasperation, but in fact the disservice it does to Williams’ poetry. Poetry as an art demands a personal reaction: an interpretation through which it can become a powerful force in our own lives. Few would expect that film could be the medium to reduce it to little more than a series of platitudes set to melancholic piano music. Perhaps the poignancy lies only in the poetry, and not in the film—an implication only made further apparent by the lingering feeling that The Color of Time should have been far more thought-provoking than it was. Though Franco seems to have attracted other stars to the project, including Mila Kunis as his wife, and Zach Braff, they are all evidently underused, functioning as fleeting moments in Williams’ life and with no real identities of their own.

Biopics, regardless of how artistic or loosely interpreted they are, are stories about people—namely, real people. The Color of Time is not a story about people, but a story about what we expect certain people to have been. Masquerading under the honesty of Williams’ poetry, it is a confirmation of our assumptions, and a pretense of profundity. By rejecting creativity in its vision, it becomes, at its core, a superficial film that–though visually appealing—does neither itself nor its subject justice.

Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto wades through the malaise of modern teen life as well as any movie has in years, reminding us of how dirty and distressing high school life can truly be. Based on a book of short stories by James Franco set in the semi-cushy California city he grew up in, the film depicts everyday-looking adolescents who make bad mistakes and reckon with them. It’s a deceptively truthful approach to the subgenre that few studio productions have the cajones to touch. Coppola does her family name proud and announces herself as an exciting new voice in the cinemasphere.

Coppola takes bits and pieces from Franco’s anthology and strings them together into a cohesive narrative, and the result gels pretty well, structurally. The group of well-off white kids sauntering through their suburban wasteland are all well-drawn and have unique, interesting trajectories. Emma Roberts plays April, a virgin who may or may not have a questionable budding relationship with her soccer coach (Franco), whose son she babysits on the weekends. She also has a bit of a crush on the more appropriately-aged Teddy (Jack Kilmer), a good-natured stoner kid who’s a bit of a screw-up, mostly due to the toxic influence of his reckless, sociopath friend Fred (Nat Wolff). In a sleeper role, Zoe Levin plays Emily, a misguided girl who wants love but doesn’t know how to attract others with anything but her body.

The film opens with Teddy and Fred sitting in a car in an empty parking lot at night, rambling about hypothetical, fantastical teenage boy nonsense because they have nothing else better to do. They accidentally ram the car into the wall in front of them, and with that Coppola has set the tone of the film perfectly. These lost souls are in limbo, too old to stay home all night, and too young to partake in the adult nightlife, so their only option is to shuffle around, drink, smoke, have parties, and break stuff, including themselves.

There isn’t a lot going on plot-wise, which is a good thing, as the film’s identity is more defined as a moving portrait of the modern, suburban teenager. Teddy and Fred are friends not because they’re good for each other (the opposite is true), but mostly because cutting down a tree with a chainsaw tickles them both in the same way. It’s better to be bored together than bored alone, at the very least. When Teddy gets a DUI while driving home from a party, he talks shit to the police officer, establishing again that he isn’t your typical teen movie protagonist, but a confused kid who makes mistakes often.

With a background in photography, Coppola keeps her composure visually, not working too hard to wow us with compositions or colors. As a result the film (which is, in fact, pretty) is tasteful in its imagistic flourishes, flirting with the surreal only at timely, pivotal moments in the characters’ misadventures. For example, when April has her first sexual experience, time seems to stop, and we’re transported to the deepest recesses of her mind as Coppola focuses on her face and heavy breathing, muting out the rest of the world. All of the melodrama that spoils modern teen movies is hushed to almost non-existence here; the film is as moody, dark, and accurately evokes the intensity of teenage bewilderment.

Kilmer and Roberts (both fantastic) are the central characters, but Wolff and Levin have an engaging storyline to navigate as well. The rude, in-your-face Fred finds the promiscuous Emily the perfect play thing for him to exploit and dominate, and their increasingly abusive meetings culminate in a stirring poolside moment that changes them both forever.

What’s significant about Palo Alto is that, even with Coppola’s expressionistic delivery, it’s as accurate a portrayal of today’s teenager you’ll find in movies. It’s an excellent time capsule for future generations. These kids are in limbo, not consumed by future plans like college or careers, but by the most present of issues, big and small. They look and feel real; Teddy plucks on his guitar in his messy room (which is Kilmer’s in real life), April shuts the door and bounces around to music when she gets home from school, and Fred dicks around at the local skatepark. It’s these small, quiet moments in life that Coppola captures so well, moments that seem insignificant at the time but later develop into our most vivid, cherished memories. A shining debut feature.

Originally published on 5/16/2014

Palo Alto trailer

Entering a stage of his career where he wields more freedom to pursue his interests than ever before, James Franco shows no hesitation in tackling challenging material. In just the last year he’s served a writer, director or both on projects tackling student-teacher relationships, gay S&M, and William Faulkner. In Franco’s latest adaptation of an author he openly reveres, the filmmaker tackles the challenging prose and subject matter of 1973 novel “Child of God.” The movie Child of God (read our review) tracks Lester Ballard (Scott Haze), a young, violent outcast from society. As Ballard descends further into madness, he resorts cave dwelling and necrophilia, amongst a slew of other despicable acts, to combat his loneliness in isolation.

Speaking about the film ahead of its upcoming August 1st video-on-Demand release, James Franco and Child of God’s lead actor Scott Haze had a roundtable chat about their mindsets when dealing with difficult subject material, filming in the wilderness, and if the film has made it’s way to Cormac McCarthy.

On adapting Cormac McCarthy’s prose and shocking the audience
James Franco: The book is in three sections. And what was really interesting is that in each section, Lester’s behavior kind of progresses, but they’re also told in different ways. There’s a shifting distance between the reader and Lester in each section. So in the first section of the book, there are these voices and these interstitial chapters that… they never really tell you where they’re taking place but it’s as if a group of guys are sitting in a bar, telling stories. And some of the stories are about Lester. And some of the stories aren’t. There’s a story about a guy boxing a gorilla at a state fair or something.

And so, in that section, it’s as if Lester is almost a legend. It’s almost the legend of Lester. And you’re close with him sometimes, but you’re then pulled back by these interstitial chapters. The second section, you’re very close to Lester. It’s the section where Lester discovers the teenagers in the back of the car, it’s where Lester makes his huge transformation into the wild, crazy man in the woods. But also, where he makes his kind of personal discovery of how to find intimacy. I really feel like, at least the way I directed the movie and I think [the way] Scott played it, you can read it as a guy seeking intimacy or a guy seeking love.

Those other voices disappear in the second section so you’re very close to Lester in the second section. And then by the third section, it kind of pulls back again. Lester is now a full-on murderer, but you’re not as close with him anymore so you don’t know how much he’s murdering until there’s this big reveal, of like, ‘Oh, he’s got a cavern full of bodies,’ but you don’t see him doing all that killing. I loved that shifting distance in the book and I tried to do a little bit of that in the movie. I didn’t do so much of the interstitial chapters but I did have voiceover early on in the movie to kind of give a sense that people are talking about Lester, the legend of Lester, and then you get close with them.

Even though Lester is so extreme and so horrible, I didn’t want to repel the audience. I wanted to shock the audience some times, but I didn’t want it to be a trasher or slasher film, where we’re banking on the murders. I didn’t want it to be a horror movie or anything like that, I wanted people to engage with Lester as a character. By being able to pull back and not see every single murder, it actually made him a more watchable character. Not necessarily sympathetic, but more watchable.

Explaining how the film received funding
Franco: We didn’t really pitch it around. Vince, my producing partner, deals with that [financial] stuff. I didn’t have to [laughs] go to anybody and say the world needs this necrophilia story… When I went to film school, I had been working in film as an actor for 12 or so years and I realized, ‘This is now the moment where I get to say, I’m going to make the movies I want to make.’

As an actor, I’ve been in the biggest blockbusters, I’ve been in critically acclaimed Oscar-nominated, Oscar-winning movies. I understand what that whole world is. I don’t need to make a movie to aim for commercial success, or even critical success, I can just make the movies that I want to make just for the sake of loving those projects. Because of that, I’ve learned to balance certain things.

This isn’t one of the main reasons I did Child of God, but certainly in the back of my mind I can look at Child of God, and say, ‘Ok, it’s a very tough subject. It’s night. It’s a period piece. It’s the 1950s. But, a lot of this takes place in the woods. And there’s not a ton of actors in this, so if we’re smart we can actually manage this, manage a great and dark piece of material like this, and it doesn’t have to cost what recreating Boardwalk Empire costs, or whatever. Because we’re just out in the woods and the trees look the same in the ‘50s as they do now.

To Scott Haze, on trepidations of playing a detestable character early in his career
Scott Haze: The way I look at this situation is a guy whose father commits suicide, whose land is taken from him, nobody’s showing him love, and he’s forced to live in the woods and find shelter. I don’t know, there’s times in my life where I felt lonely. In high school, I felt like I didn’t fit in… or I think this girl didn’t like me, there were times in my life where I felt like I didn’t fit in and I felt lonely and I think we’ve all felt those times in our lives where we felt lonely and this was the ultimate example of somebody [lonely]. Back in the ‘50s, you couldn’t hop on the Internet and find another person who likes…

A reporter chimes in “Necrophilia?”
Scott Haze: Necrophilia! [laughs] Or I like to live in caves, and hunt. I think there’s an obsessive thing that happens when Lester finds love, and then love’s taken from him when the cabin burns down. And he wants that feeling again by any means necessary, it’s like he can go out and just get another girlfriend. So I think it really plays on the idea of being loved and lonely, and what that kind of isolation can do to the heart. That’s what I connected to a lot, that’s what I tried to get across.

On the omission of a controversial scene from the book involving a mentally challenged child
Franco: I had it in the first draft, and I know myself. When I adapt these books that I love, I want to put everything in it, and inevitably what happens is… like, I did the first edit of the movie and it was way too long. And then Curtis Clayton helped me bring it down because it’s so hard for me to bring these down. It was so hard for me to cut that scene out of the script, partly it was budgetary, but what the budgetary restrictions sometimes make you realize is, ‘Well, do we need another murder? And if we have this additional murder of a woman and a child burned in a house will that serve the story that we’re telling?’

It’s one thing to put it in a book, it’s another thing to watch it in a movie. And in fact I thought, it’s fascinating in sort of a dark way this kind of scene, but I think ultimately the main thing that it would be doing is it would just be turning Lester into more of a monster, when I’m trying to put up a sort of a smokescreen so that people can emotionally connect to him while he’s still doing all these bad things. And if we put in such an explicit kind of explicitly horrible act, it’d be harder to keep people watching Lester as anything but just a complete monster.

Haze: That scene might have pushed it too far where you lose the audience.

Watching the book come to life during production
Franco: I had a really great production designer Kristen Adams who I work with and they went out and they built that little cabin for us to burn down, and when I saw it I was like, ‘that’s the cabin!’ And then they went and found these actual caves and it’s like, ‘I mean, this is it! This is Lester’s home!’ Even though we weren’t in Tennessee, we were in West Virginia, it was like, ‘This is it!’

The first time I saw Scott, I was like, ‘I’ll never see Lester another way.’ He just went off in that four-month kind of cocoon he was in and he got out of it and was like, basically the character I saw when I read the books. I think all along the way, for me it was a very blessed experience, seeing this whole thing come to life in front of my eyes.

To Haze, on preparing for the physicality of the role
Haze: Everything in the novel I worked on, whether it was chopping wood or crawling around caves, you know, everything. So I was completely prepared to do it. We filmed a lot of dangerous stuff, and it was an adventure being on the set of a mountain. There’s that one scene that actually made the movie where I slide down the mountain. It doesn’t look as steep when you watch the film, but I remember standing there thinking, ‘I’m going to get hurt? This time.’

I was pretty ready when we went there. There were a lot of times with sprinting all day where I was sore at night.

Franco: I’ll say this, Scott was almost always in character. I remember there was this one lunch maybe the second to last day where Scott would like, come into the catering tent and it was like, ‘Oh, there’s Scott!’ I hadn’t really seen much of Scott because he kept to himself, kept the accent going and everything. He was so in character that I sometimes felt like I had to protect him.

I pushed against my AD a couple times. We cut it out but there was this amazing rock quarry that we wanted to scramble through. My good friend [first assistant director] Caroline was yelling at Scott & I. So I did it first to show here I didn’t get hurt, and Scott did it. But then there was this opening of the cave, when he first goes to the cave… and he’s got the animals on his back, there’s a river that goes into the mouth of the cave that’s so gorgeous. That was my favorite day of filming and we didn’t use tons of it but it was all these scenes around the mouth of the cave.

It was winter, it was January, and Scott already was running around in that skimpy outfit. And I had to keep telling him, I was like, ‘Scott if you go in that water,’ I don’t know what I said. I said, ‘I’m not going to shoot you anymore today,’ or something like that, because he was going to go. Lester was going to just charge through the water, and it was so cold he was going to get sick. So I was like, ‘You are not allowed.’ I had to say stuff like that, I knew that he was so in character that he would just like, do it.

Describing trepidations in adapting the more shocking scenes
Franco: We shot what was my favorite scene from the book. Sometimes as a director you have like a scene, or a moment, or something in your head that is the kernel or the thing that just excites you about the project. For me, it was that scene where he discovers the teenagers. Not because I’m into necrophilia but because it was such a beautifully sculpted scene that showed character development through behavior, and I really love that as a director and an actor. And writer.

We shot that first. So the first day Scott did that scene where he discovered the bodies and did all that stuff. You tell your experience, Scott, but for me when you have people around you that you trust and you know on a certain level this is make believe. We’re not really harming anymore, we’re all friends together. I’ve also learned if I believe in something I have no inhibitions. I’ve done art projects with Paul McCarthy where his dirty ass in like, in my face, and like, it’s like, ‘Okay.’

I kind of feel like if I believe in something I’ll do anything, and so it didn’t feel hard to me at all.

Haze: I wrapped my head around [becoming the character] so much so where I would talk to people about the film, even after we got done filming and they would say, ‘Oh you raped those girls,’ [I would respond], ‘No, this is his girlfriend.’

So I had worked the whole situation out where a lot of the stuff people think is shocking, ‘Oh a guy lives in a cave,’ well, in times of war, that’s where people live. It’s not like he wants to live in a cave because he wants to be Batman. You know, that’s where you go for protection and safety.

If I was trapped in the woods for a long time and nobody was talking to me and I came across a beautiful girl who had just died, I don’t know [laughs]. I’m just saying I had worked it out all in my head where nothing was too shocking.

There’s that scene obviously where he goes into the bathroom in the woods. I was like, ‘Oh, he used a stick to wipe his ass.’

Franco: [laughs] That’s from the book.

Haze: That’s from the book, but it wasn’t too shocking for me… Here’s the thing, it was [shocking] when I first read the novel and that’s when I said I have to go to Tennessee, ‘cause I have no idea what these guys are like.

I guess my perspective changed after meeting these people who were living in that time and the elders who had that accent, and getting to experience, ‘That’s why you live in a cave. That’s why you would do these things.’ I guess it changed as I got deeper.

On whether or not Cormac McCarthy has seen the movie
Haze: He did see it.

Franco: Oh, he did? I don’t know.

Haze: He did see it, he didn’t have a DVD player. Cormac McCarthy didn’t have a DVD player so we had to send him a DVD player but he watched it.

Explaining the significance of the title Child of God
Haze: I think, “Child of God, much like yourself perhaps,” applies to a person who has not been shown love and has been banished from society, and is trying to connect to anything he can. Whether it’s his stuffed animals, or it’s the person he comes across who isn’t breathing anymore. When you’re sitting alone for a long time, you make up imaginary stories or you talk to yourself. That happened to me when I was isolated for that long.

And here is this beautiful girl and he’s always wanted to have a girlfriend. And I think that in the right circumstances, hopefully people are shown love and they’re not banished and cast out from society like Lester was. But the idea of a child of God, and if anybody’s a child of God, here’s one person. It’s examining one person’s life in these circumstances that deals with a lot of social issues that we all experience on a level, whether it’s loneliness or not feeling like you fit in. Or saying, ‘That person’s not cool, I’m not going to talk to that guy, that person can’t sit with me.’

Like that scene in Forrest Gump that scene that touches everybody’s heart. ‘You can’t sit here,’ and he keeps walking to the back of the bus, I think that was Lester… So I think it really examines that we all are, whatever you believe in, we all have hearts and we all have dreams and desires, and this is how this guy’s life turned out.

James Franco continues his efforts of adapting classic literature into films, first with William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and now Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God. This is not a surprising choice considering Franco has a PhD in English literature and seems to get a kick out of adapting “unfilmable” novels. Those familiar with McCarthy’s unapologetic story know what they’re getting into. But for others this graphic tale about a necrophile cave dweller who descends further and further into madness will be an eye-opener.

Child of God sets the cruel tone from the beginning when a belligerent outsider named Lester Ballard (Scott Haze) wails obscenities towards potential land buyers at an auction, claiming the land belongs to his family. The camera ferociously moves to catch up with the slouching outcast, imitating the blaring commotion caused by Lester. His speech is barely comprehensible, not because of a thick Tennessee accent, but because of his primal-like vocabulary and delivery.

At the heart of this disturbing story is Lester’s severe isolation and sexual perversity. With his property now gone, Lester wanders off into the deep-South wilderness, becoming more unhinged with each step he takes from society. His cruel crimes escalate from being accused of rape, to necrophilia, to eventually becoming a serial killer.

Child of God is an exhausting watch for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, the perverse themes and graphic imagery are not exactly easy to digest. No pun intended, but in one scene the main character takes a shit and wipes his ass with a stick, leaving nothing to the imagination. In another he masturbates outside of a vehicle while watching a couple having sex in it. Another reason the film will test your patience is that too often scenes have Lester screaming on a hill or struggling to move a lifeless body, occupying the screen for way longer than needed. There are probably more grunts and screams in the film than real words. Yes, that might fit the bill for a character who is more animal-like than human, but it doesn’t make it any less tiresome.

Without question the best part of the film is Scott Haze’s unflinching performance. His dedication to the role is on display in every frame. It’s safe to say that any role that requires on-camera defecation in the forest and having intercourse with a dead woman is a challenge. Haze tackles the brutal assignment with relative ease, earning the right for his name to appear on upcoming “Actors to Watch” lists.

Just like McCarthy’s novel, the film is structured into three segments, each shown on title cards along with excerpts from the book. Unfortunately, these choppy poetic proses–though beautifully written–don’t have the same impact when extracted and displayed onscreen. Another failed stylistic choice by Franco were the repeated fade-to-black transitions between scenes. They constantly serve as a reminder of how not to end a chapter in film.

All in all, the graphic themes and imagery found in Child of God are better left on paper than captured on camera. One must credit Franco’s ambitions to adapt these hard-to-film pieces of literature, though Child of God proves that literal adaptations are not his strongest suit. Instead of straight interpretations perhaps Franco should use his creative talent to re-imagine concepts or conceive new ones. I have little doubt that Franco is a talented filmmaker, I just wish he’d keep classic literature on his bookshelf.

The sheer ambition on display in Third Person, from Crash writer-director Paul Haggis, is staggering and admirable without question. It’s actually a very, very rare thing to behold, with Haggis carefully constructing an intricately woven ensemble love story set in three famous cities with just a hint of supernatural mystery blanketing the entire thing. Despite the film feeling earnest and being a clear labor of love, it also manages to feel absolutely wrong in so many ways that it’s quite painful to sit through. Haggis had a beautiful vision in mind, but the elements used to deliver it from his brain to ours are, frankly, unsightly.

Liam Neeson leads the ensemble of A-listers in the tri-story drama, starring as a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who’s struggling desperately with writer’s block while piecing together his latest novel in an extravagant hotel room in Paris. This battle with creation is one of the film’s two major themes, the other being the unmerciful nature of love and longing. Representing love’s viciousness for Neeson is Olivia Wilde, who plays his nutty mistress staying in a suite a couple floors below his.

Their story line consists of them alternating between them being comically cruel to each other and hysterically in love, having wild sex at the drop of a hat. Nothing about their relationship feels authentic, believable, or natural, with them pinball-ing from brutal to enamored way too quickly to take seriously. Yes, there are couples in real life who have similar up-and-down, abusive relationships, but Wilde and Neeson’s relationship is so hammy, desensitizing, and exhausting you’ll want to take a nap. They’re just not relatable enough to make investment in them worthwhile. The pair’s acting does have energy, however, and in isolated moments they’re quite magnetic.

More interesting is a second love story involving Adrien Brody, playing an American in Rome who’s so unimpressed with the city all he wants is a burger, which he waltzes into a pub called Bar Americano to find, but with no luck. Instead, he meets a beautiful gypsy (Moran Atias), the first thing he’s found in Rome he actually likes (though he claims the shot of limoncello they share to be the first as a pick-up line). His attraction to her is so strong that he’s compelled to help her when her daughter’s life is threatened and she must come up with ransom money somehow. This is easily the most enjoyable strand of the three stories, as it mixes elements of danger and betrayal with Brody and Atias’ potent chemistry. It also heavily recalls the work of Antonioni (one of Haggis’ favorites) in a good way.

Mila Kunis leads the third story as a hotel maid in New York entrenched in a custody battle over her son with a cold-hearted painter played by a vacant James Franco. Kunis’ character is positioned to be the film’s most sympathetic, with everyone in her life having zero belief in her, but again, the obtuse way in which her plight is presented derails it early on. The final showdown between she and Franco is as overblown and numbing as the climactic gunshot in Crash.

The supernatural element I mentioned earlier comes in the form of Haggis interconnecting the three stories when they couldn’t possibly be, as they take place thousands of miles apart. We see Kunis, who’s supposed to be in New York, clean up Neeson’s Paris hotel room, for instance. The revelation that makes sense of all this is clever and actually ties in to the film’s themes nicely, but by the time we get there we’re so depleted it barely leaves an impression.

Third Person trailer

Writer-director Paul Haggis (Crash, In the Valley of Elah) spoke with us in San Francisco about his new film, Third Person, which follows three interlocking stories of love, taking place in New York, Paris, and Rome. A labor of love, the script took two and a half years to complete, with Haggis writing and re-writing the intricately woven story incessantly. The film stars Liam Neeson, Mila Kunis, Adrien Brody, James Franco, Kim Basinger, Moran Atias, and Olivia Wilde.

In Part 1 of our video interview, Haggis speaks with us about the nature of love, his love for flawed characters, the selfishness of artists, the painful process of writing the script, the influence of Blow-Up, and more.

WATCH OUR PAUL HAGGIS INTERVIEW PART 2

In Seth Rogen‘s 2nd film as director, he and writing partner Evan Goldberg are taking the act to one of the least funny places in the world, North Korea. In The Interview, Rogen plays Aaron Rapoport, TV Producer of celebrity news show “Skylark Tonight” hosted by James Franco‘s Dave Skylark. Together, the pair are invited to the DPRK to interview one of their biggest fans Kim Jong-Un, when the CIA recruits the under-qualified pair to assassinate the North Korean dictator.

This likely won’t be quite the celebrity-filled affair that turned out be Rogen & Goldberg’s debut film This Is The End. Complete with CIA spy-tech, North Korean tanks, and throngs of applauding admirers of Kim Jon-Un, the stakes are bound to be high in The Interview when it comes out on October 10th. Watch the trailer below:

Official trailer for The Interview

Gia Coppola’s debut feature Palo Alto captures the struggles of modern teens better than any movie in memory. The film is based on a book of short stories by James Franco, who c0-stars in the film alongside young breakouts Jack Kilmer, Emma Roberts, Nat Wolff, and Zoe Levin. A series of interweaving tales of teens partying, getting into late-night trouble, and crushing on all the wrong people encapsulate serious themes of lust, confusion, ego, and young vulnerability.  Atmospheric, honest, and cinematic, the film marks an impressive inaugural artistic statement for the young filmmaker.

During the 57th annual San Francisco International Film Festival, Coppola spoke with us about the pressures of making her first film, representing teens authentically, begging Jack Kilmer to act for her, James Franco’s strengths as a mentor, bridging the generation gap, and more.

Now that you’re on the other side of making your first film, do you find you enjoy the process of promoting it, introducing it to the world?
Gia: Yes and no. It’s a very important part of the process to talk about your film and try to get it out there, especially because the industry right now is rapidly changing. It’s a very important element in making movies. I didn’t realize that that was a whole other side to it.

So that was a surprise!
Gia: Yeah! (laughs) Having to talk about the film is difficult for me because I feel like I’m so close to it. To think about it generally and try to articulate everything I’ve gone through is hard for me. I’m not good with words; I use pictures to articulate things. It’s fun when the cast is around because I can let them take over. (laughs)

A surprise for me in the film was how authentic the characters’ bedrooms looked. Teenage bedrooms that look fake always bug me in movies for some reason…
Gia: For Teddy’s bedroom we used Jack Kilmer’s real bedroom, and Emma’s bedroom was my old bedroom at my mom’s house when I was in high school. [Zoe Levin’s] bedroom, with all the stuffed animals, we dressed because it was an interesting dynamic to have this young woman who maybe a year ago was playing with stuffed animals, now has a boy in her room. It’s a weird juxtaposition.

I think your film is important in that it accurately represents what the modern teen is like for future generations. If they looked at most other high school movies they’d probably get a terribly wrong impression.
Gia: I feel like the emotions and dynamics surrounding teens haven’t changed over the years. I remember showing the movie to older relatives, and they said, “This is exactly what we went through.” I wanted to show something in an authentic way. Teens in movies today just don’t look real. They don’t smoke cigarettes, they don’t curse, everything’s perfect, the actors are older…using real teenagers was kind of a no-no.

I think you also capture that state of limbo teenagers find themselves in. They’re too old to stay home every night, but they’re too young to really do anything once they get out there, so all they can do is drink at house parties and sit in their cars in parking lots.
Gia: What I remember growing up is just sitting in parking lots, trying to figure out what to do. Those moments seemed so boring and lame at the time, but when you look back on it, those were the best moments.

Did your skills as a photographer translate well to directing film?
Gia: In a sense. I felt very comfortable in the cinematography aspect of things. Filmmaking is an extension of photography, but there’s so much more to incorporate. I was really nervous about working with actors. I’m shy, so that was hard. It’s a collaborative experience, and it was a first feature for all of us, so we were very enthusiastic. We became like a family, and it was really sad when it was over.

Your cast is very normal-looking, in the best way possible. They look like actual, awkward teenagers.
Gia: When I look at teenagers in the real world, they’re so interesting and they have great style. I was trying to reflect that. Because Jack and Nat [Wolff] were 17 at the time, we used their clothes and let them style themselves. It was so much more interesting that way.

You’ve known Jack for a long time.
Gia: I’ve known him since he was 4 years old.

Growing up, did he ever want to act?
Gia: No. I had to chase him down a little bit because, like me, I don’t think he wanted the pressure of what comes along with his background. All of that attention, you know? Now, he really appreciates having that bonding experience and being collaborative and creative with everyone, which I don’t think he was really getting with his friends as much. But no, he didn’t want to take it on at first…but I begged him and he was willing to do it for me. (laughs)

I feel like adults sometimes put too much pressure on their kids because they forget just how intense those teenage years can be. Do you think your film may help teens and parents understand each other a bit better?
Gia: I hope it bridges the gap and both demographics can understand each other a little bit. There’s that point in your life when you understand that parents are human beings, too, and you see them for how they’re just as flawed as you, trying to figure out their own lives. With movies today, teens are made fools of. They just want to get drunk, and there’s not much meaning behind why they do the things they do. It’s such an interesting time for a person. It’s a physical thing; our bodies are changing and you can’t help but feel awkward. James says that teenagers are good subjects for talking about emotions because everything’s on the surface and magnified, so it’s easier to talk about those emotions.

You’ve said that you wanted to stake your own claim as a filmmaker without much help from your family name. Instead, you adopted James as a mentor. What did he teach you?
Gia: He’s totally fearless, and that’s something to admire. His character is really challenging, and it was nice to have him there to teach me how to direct an actor of that caliber. He’s a director, so whenever I’d get stuck he’d help me with the blocking or whatever needed to be done. He has so many talents that he could help with anything I needed.

When James entrusted you with putting his stories to screen, what was your attitude? Were you ready to rise to the challenge, or were you nervous?
Gia: It was a little bit of both. I’d never considered making a feature length film; I was doing photography and had made one little short film. I really loved James’ book, and I was excited at the chance of working with him. He really set the tone, so I didn’t have to feel nervous about anything. I could just enjoy being collaborative with my peers. All of the pressure dropped off and I was just having a good time. We struggled with getting financing, and that was heartbreaking. When we finally started filming, I was in the state of mind of, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” I was so heartbroken that I didn’t want to string myself along anymore. On the first day of shooting I thought, “Oh my god…I’m not ready for this!” But there’s no way to really be ready for your first film. I think that was sort of to my advantage to not have a lot of time and not know what to expect.

It’s crazy to be here [in San Francisco] with the film because I thought it wasn’t going to be in theaters. I really didn’t know what was going to come of this small indie film.

Gia Coppola’s debut film Palo Alto, adapted from James Franco’s collection of short stories, opened last weekend in Los Angeles in New York. The film scored the second highest per screen average of the weekend (only behind the limited release of Jon Favreau’s Chef) and has been a hit with the critics.

Two new clips from the film have been released and can be seen below. Both clips involve the film’s star, Emma Roberts, interacting with two adult men in her life. Also, keep an eye out for our interview with Gia Copploa later today.

“I Think You Should Play Striker” Clip

In the first clip, April’s soccer coach Mr. B (James Franco) offers her a babysitting job. Though a brief and fairly innocuous scene, it is loaded with the subtext of their flirtatious relationship that follows through in the film. Roberts is fantastic here, playing up her shy and cute qualities, leading to the scene’s end moment where she holds a pretty complex expression that reads a million different ways.

“I Corrected Your Paper” Clip

The second clip shows April with a teacher (Val Kilmer). Though there isn’t exactly a lot going on in this clip, it does showcase Kilmer, whose character has an authoritative stoner vibe that could prove quite funny in the film.

James Franco and Kate Hudson star as an “ordinary couple” who stumble across a bag of stolen money in Good People. After they discover their tenant has died of mysterious causes, leaving behind a duffel bag full of 220,000 British pounds, the well-intentioned couple are caught up in a police investigation and pursued by the criminal who wants the cash.

The plot is well-worn and the trailer seems to show most of the obvious beats that come with similar films. Although, there is a touch of action promised from the trailer which is an interesting change for both Franco and Hudson. Neither of them have worked in a serious action thriller before, so they wouldn’t be your first choice for a project like this. But perhaps the most interesting casting choice in Good People is Omar Sy as the villain. Sy is most known for his breakthrough performance in the French buddy comedy The Intouchables, so a menacing bad guy will be a completely different role for him.

Good People is directed by Danish filmmaker Henrik Ruben Genz and also co-stars Tom Wilkinson. A release date has not yet been set.

Watch Good People trailer

SFFS Awards Night

On May 1st, right in the middle of the 57th annual San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF57), the San Francisco Film Society (SFFS) held and awards night gala, honoring some of the industry’s most vital filmmakers and contributors. It was a star-studded event, with Richard Linklater, John Lasseter, Jeremy Irons, screenwriter Stephen Gaghan, and more receiving awards presented by young stars including Zooey Deschanel, Josh Gad, and Parker Posey. Check out pics from the red carpet below:

The Skeleton Twins

On the same night, a few blocks away in Japantown, Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig were in attendance to introduce their dramedy (heavy on the drama) collaboration with director Craig Johnson, The Skeleton Twins. Hader, ever the entertainer, had fun with the press on the red carpet, pretending to cough to screw with photographers (I still managed to snap a couple good ones), and even conducting almost an entire interview in an Australian accent. Check out the hilarity below:

Palo Alto

Adding to the illustrious Coppola family legacy at SFIFF57 was Gia Coppola, niece of Sofia and granddaughter of Francis, with her gritty slice of teen life Palo Alto. Based on a book of short stories written by James Franco (who also acts in the film), it’s the best representation of modern day teens I’ve ever seen, an impressive outing for a first time filmmaker. Coppola and star Emma Roberts made an appearance on the red carpet at the Kabuki, both looking gorgeous as usual. (Photo credit: Adam Clay)

Last Weekend

Taking over the red carpet this past weekend were the directors and stars of Lake Tahoe-set family drama Last Weekend, which made its world premiere at the festival. Many of the ensemble cast were in attendance, including Patricia Clarkson, Joseph Cross, Chris Mulkey, Alexia Rasmussen, Devon Graye, and Fran Kranz. First time co-directors Tom Dolby and Tom Williams (lovingly referred to by the cast members as “Tom-Tom”) celebrated the film’s successful launch on the red carpet with their stars, as well as on a second carpet at the film’s after party. (Photo credit: Adam Clay)

A 3rd generation filmmaker of one of cinema’s most lauded families, Gia Coppola impresses in her debut feature, Palo Alto, an adaptation of a book by James Franco (who’s also in the movie) that captures the listless, limbo-like haze of high school through interweaving stories of several troubled teens. While the film technically falls into the “teen drama” column, its authentic, unapologetically filthy depiction of adolescence sets it apart.

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Photos Courtesy Adam Clay

Much of Palo Alto‘s authenticity stems from its cast, all appropriately aged (this is important) and all quite…normal looking. It’s a good thing, as most teen movies’ stars are too prettied up to be relatable. Jack Kilmer, son of Val (who makes a brief, comical appearance), and Emma Roberts lead the brilliant cast, who all convince as conflicted, bored, lustful youths partying, getting in trouble, and goofing around in parking lots. Coppola, a photographer whose work impressed Franco enough to entrust the stories of his hometown to her, has a natural eye for composition and color, capturing the intensity and urgency of teen life with her luscious, moody imagery. Each character is chaotically emotional and has a unique set of inner conflicts to reckon with. This is the best representation of modern teens in memory.

SFIFF57 offered up another debut feature, this time from co-directors Tom Dolby and Tom Williams with the world premier of the Lake Tahoe-set Last Weekend. A family drama about an affluent couple (Patricia Clarkson and Chris Mulkey) hosting their spoiled adult children and their significant others for a weekend in their home on the sparkling lake, the film has its moments but is hampered by a script that needs more sharpening. Watching entitled rich folk complain about everything while feasting in paradise is a joke that gets old quick.

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Photos Courtesy Adam Clay

The film, which has almost zero plot to speak of (not a knock), is completely fueled by the contentious family dynamics. The savvy young cast, which includes Zachary Booth, Alexia Rasmussen (Proxy), Joseph Cross (Milk), Devon Graye (Dexter), and Jayma Mays (Glee), all approaching their prime, embody their bratty roles tastefully, never going overboard or outshining each other. Clarkson and Mulkey guide them along, and the fresh faces keep up without a stutter. Cross and Clarkson share some particularly venomous scenes together, epic mother-son spats that steal the show. Fran Kranz (Cabin in the Woods) and Rutina Wesley (True Blood) play nothing roles that amount to a well-acted waste of time.

Tsai Ming-Liang made a Miyazaki-like announcement at the premiere of his new film Stray Dogs in Venice that the stunning film about an impoverished family would be his last, to the sadness of many arthouse aficionados. The lauded auteur is leaving the cinema world on a high note, however, as Stray Dogs is as gorgeous, boundary-pushing, and incomparable as his previous work (What Time is it There?, The Hole).

As has become his signature style, Tsai presents his tale in a series of fixed, ultra-long shots whose uncompromisingly elongated form reveals intricacies and shifting emotion unseeable by way of conventional quick cuts or even shots like Scorsese’s Copacabana classic. Spectacle is not the objective here, with the shot lengths surpassing the ten minute mark in some cases. Tsai paints a dark, stark portrait of a family living in squalor on the streets of Taipei. We see the children bathe in a dingy public restroom, the father hold up advertising signs at a busy intersection in the pouring rain. It’s a haunting, gut-wrenching film, and one whose beauty lies not just in Tsai’s immaculately composed shots, but in the 4th dimension of time itself. And you don’t even have to shell out an extra ten bucks for 4-D glasses!

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the festival so far has been Craig Johnson’s The Skeleton Twins, which from movie stills ostensibly appears to be a star vehicle for SNL all-stars Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig, but actually turns out to be an unexpectedly affecting sibling drama peppered with funny moments for the comedians to please loyalists. Hader and Wiig play the titular troubled siblings Milo and Maggie, each with self-destructive tendencies.

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After ten years of not speaking, Maggie invites her brother to stay with her after a suicide attempt. She’s in denial about her dissatisfaction with her marriage to the cheerful Lance (Luke Wilson) while Milo, an emotional wreck more aware of his fatal flaws, struggles to tie up loose ends in his past life while trying desperately to keep Maggie afloat in her failing marriage. It would be fair to categorize The Skeleton Twins as a dramedy, though the dramatic element is more intensified here than your average Apatow effort. It’s a dark movie, and Hader and Wiig’s comedic chops translate well to the emotional spectrum of acting (Wiig’s already proven this, but this is Hader’s first dramatic leading role). In fact, the laughs sometimes outstay their welcome, as the comedic scenes are egregiously tailored to the actors’ signature personas and distract from their better, dramatic character moments. This one’s definitely worth keeping on your radar.

Tomorrow night, the 57th annual San Francisco International Film Festival (April 24-May 8) kicks off its program of 168 films representing 56 countries. Seeing every film in that span of time is a veritable impossibility (though San Francisco is full of sun-depraved cine-maniacs ready to jump at the challenge), so we’re going to take a look at some of the highlights in the festival’s catalog for anyone planning on hopping over to the Bay Area and joining in on the fun.

Opening up the festival tomorrow night at the Castro Theater is Hossein Amini’s The Two Faces of January, a Greece-set suspense thriller starring Kirsten Dunst and Viggo Mortensen, an American couple on holiday who find themselves inextricably linked to a shifty tour guide (Oscar Isaac) after a fatal accident in a hotel room forces them to frantically find a way out of the country. Evoking Hitchcock’s touristic action-romance romps, the film should send the festival on its way nicely.

Speaking of being on holiday, Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip to Italy (pictured above) looks to walk on the lighter side of vacationing. A sequel to 2011’s The Trip, the film stars English funnymen Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing inflated versions of themselves as they, like in the first film, take a culinary tour of expensive restaurants, making each other chuckle along the way with improvised chatter and–of course–spot-on Michael Caine impressions.

On the darker side of traveling lies Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, about a sociopath Japanese office assistant who flies to Fargo, North Dakota in search of a buried treasure she glimpsed in the famous Coen Brothers movie. For some reason, she believes a suitcase full of money buried in the snow by Steve Buscemi in a fictional movie exists in real life…and that totally piques my interest for some reason…

The film that’s got me frothing in anticipation more than any other is Night Moves (pictured above), by ridiculously talented writer/director Kelly Reichardt (Meek’s Cutoff, Wendy and Lucy). It’s a safe bet that, like her previous films, we’ll be treated to a smorgasbord of deliciously cinematic imagery to support a wholly unique script (set, as in all her previous efforts, in Oregon). The political thriller stars Jesse Eisenberg and Dakota Fanning as environmentalist lovebirds who, with marine veteran Peter Sarsgaard, hatch a plan to blow up a dam. This one looks to be a less contemplative and more narrative-driven movie than we’re used to seeing from Reichardt, which excites me to no end.

The fest’s centerpiece presentation is the Bay Area-set teenage drama Palo Alto, directed by Gia Coppola and starring Emma Roberts, James Franco, and Jack Kilmer. Based on a book of short stories written by Franco about his experience growing up in the titular Bay Area community, the film aims to be a more authentic take on teenage life than your typical high school drama, casting appropriately-aged actors in all roles and eschewing tropes like stereotypical clique dynamics.

Richard Linklater is set to receive the Founder’s Directing Award at SFIFF, and he’s bringing Boyhood, his much buzzed-about coming-of-age movie, along with him. We’ve all heard by now that the film is pretty good and that it took  an unprecedented 12 years to make, which is reason enough to check out the film at the festival, but sweetening the deal is that a career highlight reel of the indie pioneer will also be shown, and Linklater will participate in an on-stage interview. Doesn’t get much cooler than that!

There are two films with the word “Summer” in the title playing at the festival, but seriously, they couldn’t be any more different. Stanley Nelson (Freedom Riders) chronicles the rise of the Civil Rights movement in his powerful documentary Freedom Summer, focusing on the significant, eruptive events in Mississippi in the summer of 1964. Director Michael Tully’s nostalgia comedy Ping Pong Summer (pictured above), set in a 1985 Maryland beach town, follows 13-year-old Rad Miracle (Marcello Conte) as a simple family vacation turns into one of the most memorable summers of his life.

Closing out the festival is actor-turned-director Chris Messina’s Alex of Venice, starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the titular workaholic attorney, whose negligence of her family drives her husband (Messina) to walk out of their lives. As Alex’s strictly organized life begins to spiral out of control, she scrambles to restore some semblance of order, in the process discovering what’s truly important to her. The film also stars Don Johnson as Winstead’s father in a standout role.

For more information and ticketing info, visit sffs.org

Today, the San Francisco Film Society (and its new executive director Noah Cowan) announced the full lineup for the 57th annual San Francisco International Film Festival, running from April 24-May 8. Consisting of 169 films from 56 countries, the festival looks to present a broad selection of both domestic and world cinema features. 200 filmmakers and special guests are expected to attend.

Opening up the festival will be Hossein Amini’s The Two Faces of January, a Greece-set suspense-thriller starring Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, and Oscar Isaac. Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto will serve as the fest’s Centerpiece Film, while actor Chris Messina’s directorial debut Alex of Venice, starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Don Johnson, will wrap up the festival’s 15-day run.

Receiving awards at this year’s festival will be Pixar’s John Lasseter (2014 George Gund Craft III of Cinema Award), Richard Linklater (Founders Directing Award), screenwriter Stephen Gaghan (Kanbar Award), and film historian David Thomson (Mel Novikoff Award), with more to be announced.

Some standouts: Kelly Reichardt’s (Meek’s Cutoff) environmental activist drama Night Moves starring Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, and Peter Sarsgaard, looks to be another excellent entry into the acclaimed indie filmmaker’s oeuvre;  The Skeleton Twins, a sibling drama starring SNL favorites Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, who will be in attendance at the fest; Young & Beautiful, a drama from Francois Ozon (Swimming Pool) billed as “a portrait in four seasons and four songs”; and Boyhood, Linklater’s unprecedented coming-of-age story filmed over 12 years.

For the full schedule, check out sffs.org

James Franco has been on an experimental film kick as of late with his rendition of the classic 1930 Faulkner novel As I Lay Dying and his upcoming project Child of God (another novel adaptation), so it really comes to no surprise that Franco (and Travis Mathews) have decided to exercise their creativity by reimagining a graphic gay sex segment that was cut from William Friedkin’s 1980 film Cruising. Though the way Interior. Leather Bar. actually plays out is more of a docudrama than a straight forward imagination of Friedkin’s scene. Whole experience ends up getting pretty meta in certain parts like when a camera is filming another camera which is filming the re-imagined footage. It becomes impossibly hard to tell what is actually unscripted and what is being presented as being unscripted, which at times is as intriguing as it is frustrating.

As I mentioned above, the source material for this film comes from the 1980 film Cruising, which William Friedkin famously had to cut a 40 minute scene in order to avoid getting the dreaded X rating from the MPAA. Cruising starred Al Pacino as an undercover police detective who is assigned to catch a serial killer in New York’s gay S&M and leather scene. At first Pacino’s is taken aback at what he sees, but curiosity eventually settles in. The scene that was cut had graphic depictions of gay sex and was titled Interior. Leather Bar. Considering even today we are not completely immune to such critical observation of gay sexuality (take Blue Is The Warmest Color for example), just try to imagine the level of taboo towards homosexuality thirty years ago.

An interesting part of Interior. Leather Bar. (as noted in our coverage during the Berlinale premiere) is how the extras justify their reasons for signing up to for the film. During interviews for their roles, a lot of the candidates openly admit that they are doing this project because of the prospect of working with James Franco. One person even mentions he hopes for the chance to see Franco naked. Most do agree that the subject matter is exciting enough to warrant interest. However, Val Lauren, the man depicted to play Pacino’s lead character of Steve Burns, says he is unsure about what this is hoping to accomplish, but that he simply trusts that Franco is onboard with the film. Although these motives are completely frank, they come off as a rather shallow reason to take on such a controversial role. The fact the film chooses not to edit these parts out is enough to raise the audience’s suspicions that there could be more to this than meets the eye.

The filmmakers admit in the early minutes of this film that trying to present the 40 minutes as if were the actual lost footage is the wrong way to approach it. Instead both Franco and Mathews chose to interpret the scene with artistic freedom as they see fit. Adding a layer of complexity to that, they frame the film as if it were a documentary about a leading straight man that has reservations about the homosexual acts he is about to witness. So when the films reveals itself to be more of a narrative, it almost becomes an interpretation of the actual film Cruising, rather than just a scene from it. But more importantly, it is an examination of how even today people have issues with gay sex in film.

Without question the most interesting part of Interior. Leather Bar. is not the actual recreation of the scene that was cut, but rather the “behind-the-scenes” of making the scene. However, due to the fact Interior. Leather Bar. ends up being somewhat fictionalized, certain components become less fascinating. For example, at first it is baffling that some of the people involved have supposedly never even seen Cruising, but then becomes much less absurd once it is realized it is scripted. It works best when the film is somewhat self-aware, because when attempts are made to completely disguise its actual intentions the film is essentially talking down to the audience. Thus, the way the film is presented slightly diminishes the meaningful purpose and powerful messages found within it. But only slightly.

There are films that, purely based on a pitch, pique my interest. An adaptation of a James Franco novel about suburban trouble-making teens handled by a first time director is not one. The trailer for Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto delivers as much of a pleasant surprise as a trailer can, though. The often (over)told tale of impressionable girl meets delinquent boy seems to at least be visually interesting in this turn. Emma Roberts stars as said girl opposite Jack Kilmer, son of co-star Val. Franco plays a “touchy, feely” soccer coach in the screen version of his Palo Alto Stories which rang a tad obnoxious, but he has proven a capable, if sometimes annoying, actor over the years, so I will give him a probationary pass here.

It will be interesting to see how yet another director from the Coppola family handles her first project when this makes its debut in Telluride and TIFF. Chances are she’s no Francis Ford or even a Sofia, but here’s hoping she is nothing like Nicolas.

Watch the trailer for Palo Alto:

Co-directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman bring the story of Linda Lovelace, a celebrity in the adult entertainment industry, to the very screen that brought her fame into mainstream culture from her seductive role in Deep Throat. Lovelace was made for half of the amount that Deep Throat was made for back in 1972 (not including adjustment for inflation) with seemingly a quarter of the amount of inspiration. The film attempts to produce laughs, chills, and entertainment, but fails to deliver any of those qualities.

One of the first things you are likely to notice about Lovelace are the aesthetics of the film; a high contrasting warm color palette shot on grainy film stock against a rocking soundtrack helps recreate the time period. Beginning in 1970, Linda Lovelace is (Amanda Seyfried) tanning and talking about her sex life (or more accurately the lack thereof) with her best friend Patsy (Juno Temple) in the backyard of her parents’ house. The Virgin Mary statue in the front yard serves as a symbol of her conservative upbringing and a nice contrast to what is about to unfold.

Linda is swept off her feet by an older man named Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard)—a topless bar owner who views Linda not only as girlfriend but a potential worker. The film skips ahead, something that happens quite frequently, to the two living together in New York, where Traynor’s abusive and manipulative side begins to show. One of the best scenes of the film is when Traynor decides to exploit her oral sex skills in an upcoming production of a pornography film aptly titled Deep Throat (which ends up being a massive box office hit). Linda’s naïve personality is put on display when a makeup artist discovers bruises on her legs that Linda passes off as just being clumsy—an obvious lie that fools nobody.

The closing credits inform us that Linda spent twenty years speaking out against domestic violence and the pornography industry—the film only captures the former while practically skipping the latter. Even though Lovelace does not glorify the porn industry, it does not exactly condemn it either. With all the attention on the domestic violence Linda endures, the adult-film industry is portrayed much tamer than one would think.

Inconsistency plagues the film more than anything else. While most of the scenes play out with so much exaggerated drama that it feels like it was made for the Lifetime Channel, others are chock-full of campy sex jokes that lighten the mood too much. This combination not only made the tone of the film unclear, but also much less effective when it attempts to have an emotional impact on the audience later on.

Despite setbacks in other areas of the film, the acting performances found in Lovelace are top notch; aside from the surprisingly unconvincing James Franco as Hugh Hefner. Amanda Seyfried takes on the daring role as wide-eyed innocent girl turned porn star in perfect stride. Peter Sarsgaard handles the duality required of the role flawlessly; going from charming in one scene to terrifying in the next. Even the smaller roles from Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick, and Bobby Cannavale are equally as good.

Lovelace is a story that is practically served on a silver platter considering it is a real-life story of an ordinary woman turned overnight adult-film star, who eventually speaks out against a brutal and abusive relationship with her manager and pornography industry, yet somehow this biopic manages to be both unexciting and unemotional. On top of that, Lovelace never ventures below the surface of the story that most people are vaguely familiar with already. Credit the cast for going well beyond the material they were given, without their performances the film would be a complete catastrophe.

Lovelace trailer:

Why on earth would this post-modern feminist put a crass, self-referential, bro-mantic apocalypse film in her top 5 of the year (thus far)? Because Seth Rogen and super side-kick Evan Goldberg (Superbad, Pineapple Express), hit it on the head with this film. Everything’s been done before. Stoner comedy. Check. Apocalyptic bromance. Check. Crazy amounts of cameos. Check. A healthy dose of celebrity voyeurism? Wait a second boys, I think you may be on to something.

From scene one in this film as Seth Rogen waits at the airport for his buddy from Canada, Jay Baruchel, to arrive for a visit, it’s apparent Seth is, well, real-life Seth. “Give us your trademark Seth Rogen laugh” an asshole with a camera at the airport chides. And he does, establishing that yep, he can turn it on and turn it up, and you’re going to eat it up. Seth takes Jay home and its established Jay isn’t a big fan of LA and it’s pompous Hollywood types. So the two stay home for gaming and smoking, until Seth throws out that maybe they pop over to James Franco‘s housewarming party. Jay is hesitant, they aren’t his crowd, and they represent Seth’s new Hollywood life.

They go anyway. Cameo after cameo of young Hollywood comedic actors pop up. Hello, Craig Robinson. Hello, Jonah Hill. Hello, Micheal Cera (busily casting off any semblance of George Michael Bluth by baring his ass while receiving “favors” from another party guest and blowing coke into peoples faces; not unlike a few of his other films coming out this year, ahem, Crystal Fairy and Magic Magic). Hello, Mindy Kaling. Hello, Aziz Ansari. Hello, Rihanna? Ok, who invited her?

Yes, it’s exaggerated, but it all just feels somewhat likely. For all we know these actors have weekly ragers at Franco’s house. Eventually Jay feels a bit stifled by Seth’s new group, and the two walk to the store for munchies. Queue the apocalypse, or as Jay will later devise, the Rapture, complete with blue light sucking the enlightened into heaven. Jay and Seth make it back to Franco’s house in time for most of the party to die via sinkhole in James’s front yard (or Cera by even more hilarious means) and Jay, Seth, James, Craig, and Jonah manage to survive and horde themselves into Franco’s house, immediately fortifying it with duck tape and barring the doors with Franco’s eclectic art collection as protection. Danny McBride shows up shortly thereafter, an oblivious and unwelcome member of the group.

The film is endlessly hilarious and it seems to manage this with the perfect amount of self-awareness. The actors trash talk each other in their tell-all room camera and we think, yeah, I bet Danny McBride is a pain in the ass. And when they sit around the dinner table describing just how difficult it is to be an actor because sometimes you have to pretend it’s hot, when it’s really freezing cold, it’s funny because as comedic actors (ironically, all who are now taking on much more serious roles, Jonah Hill is Oscar-nominated for Pete’s sake) we’d possibly expect them to be so shallow. One of the more hilarious bits is when Emma Watson shows up and the guys sabotage her stay by being overly sensitive to her role as a woman. In fact the lack of sexist jokes is worth noting.

In This is the End, during which I literally slapped my thigh and gasped for air at numerous times, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have created a film that maintains a steady comedic ride that never lets up. A feat I’d consider much more difficult than tugging at my heartstrings. As each of these actors recognizes they weren’t “good” enough to make it up to heaven and attempts to make up for that, we wonder in earnest about their fate. If living in sin is as funny as they make it out to be, could being good people possibly be as hilarious? It could. It can. It is.

Thus far I have been very fortunate to get into each screening that I have stepped in line for, even though not every film I stood in line for was worth the effort. This is mostly surprising considering the level of my press badge in festival which has several levels of higher priory. Granted, I completely skipped trying to see the Coen brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis because some helpful Twitter friends alerted me of the crazy high demand. So far that film seems to be the talk of the town, though it is one that will be playing all over in the States, therefore catching something more obscure makes the most sense. I can only imagine that similar demands for Only God Forgives will be in store when it premieres in the coming days.

Tonight at the premiere of his new film, James Franco was in attendence and took the stage to introduce the film. I was within arms reach, do not worry, I did not measure, but it did allow me to capture some decent photos.

James Franco at premiere of As I Lay Dying

Borgman

Borgman sets its strange tone from the very beginning when a man who somewhat resembles features that of Jesus, long-hair and long-beard, awakes from his underground hideout by the sound of a sharp spear piercing down from the ground above. Yet Borgman is far from being Jesus-like; he is actually the exact opposite. That might explain why it is a priest who is seeking to kill this man with his spear from above. But Borgman manages to escape through a complex tunnel system. As he is making his escape he warns other underground dwelling friends of the danger.

After fleeing the woods Borgman ends up at a very nice looking home on the countryside. The haggard looking man walks up to the door and asks if he is able to use their shower. The man answering the door politely declines. Not satisfied, he knocks again and pretends to know the man’s wife as a last ditch effort to be let in. From there the film ventures into a dark and twisted joy ride of murders and manipulations.

Borgman is the first film from the Netherlands’ that is In Competition for the Palme d’Or in nearly forty years – though it contains more of a Greek new wave sense of style. This is an unique film that is hard to make comparisons to, but if Dogtooth director Giorgos Lanthimos created his own take of the home invasion film Funny Games by Haneke, you would get something close to this. The first two acts of Borgman are magnificent but the final act straddles the line of mediocrocy – which is not the only straddling that occurs in the film (reference the photo above).

RATING: 7.6

As I Lay Dying

James Franco came on stage to introduce the film at its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and bluntly said, “This is a weird film.” Indeed it was. For better or worse, As I Lay Dying certainly felt like a literal interpretation of the novel, but as I mentioned before I have not read the book, therefore I cannot say that with absolute certainty. The acting in the film was very strong but the obvious standout is the film’s poetic and Malick like cinematography. Whether or not the film works may very well come down to one simple question, did you read the book beforehand?

RATING: 7

Read my full review of As I Lay Dying

At the very least, you must credit James Franco for even attempting to film what some consider to be a near impossible story to tell. William Faulkner’s classic 1930 novel, As I Lay Dying, features 15 different characters, each telling a part of the story in their point of view. Director James Franco does a marvelous job of recreating this by showing many parts of the film with a split screen that often shows one character speaking on one side and the reaction of the other character on the other side. Franco can now mark another tally under his growing collection of experimental films.

The overall plot of As I Lay Dying is a fairly simple one; a family travels on a journey to the town of Jefferson in order to fulfill the requests of recently deceased family member named Addie Bundren. The real story lies within all the details and burdens each character brings to the table. But the details are rather long-winded, which makes following what exactly is going on a bit challenging.

The biggest obstacle comes on the first day of their long-haul. The group must cross a river with their wagon that is carrying the coffin without the use of a bridge due to massive flooding. Their only option is to try crossing with the aid of an improvised ford, but it does end smoothly. One of the traveler’s leg gets badly injured during this mishap and requires some serious medical attention. I will spare some of the gruesome details that ensue when they attempt to treat the wound themselves.

I must confess that I did not read the novel before seeing the film and I think it was a real challenge because of that fact. There are indeed many films that you can get by just fine without having read the literature beforehand, however, I do not believe As I Lay Dying fits into that category. Not helping matters is a character named Anse (Tim Blake Nelson) who would give Bane (of The Dark Knight Rises) a run for his money at being more incomprehensible. The combination of his rotting teeth and extreme Southern drawl made it difficult to understand more than every tenth word he spoke. Even though As I Lay Dying is an English speaking film, the French speaking audience members at this screening likely better understood what was being said because they at least had subtitles to read.

James Franco came on stage to introduce the film at its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and bluntly said, “This is a weird film.” Indeed it was. For better or worse, As I Lay Dying certainly felt like a literal interpretation of the novel, but as I mentioned before I have not read the book, therefore I cannot say that with absolute certainty. The acting in the film was very strong but the obvious standout is the film’s poetic and Malick like cinematography. Whether or not the film works may very well come down to one simple question, did you read the book beforehand?

When the news came out that Harmony Korine, director of Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy and Trash Humpers, was making a movie about spring break involving James Franco and Disney starlets, the reactions ranged from shock to boundless excitement. Korine’s sudden thrust into the mainstream shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise given the subject matter; Spring break is one of the more socially accepted forms of depravity, and Korine, who’s well-known for his depraved films, seems like a perfect match for making a movie about the one time of the year college-aged kids go nuts for. Korine has seemingly found the perfect niche to get him into multiplexes, and it’s an ingenious move on his part. Spring Breakers may have its pulse on what’s popular today, but Korine’s vision is still uncompromising as ever.

Spring Breakers opens in a Midwestern town where four best friends are trying to find a way to Florida for spring break. Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson) and Cotty (Rachel Korine) are the hard partiers in the group, while Faith (Selena Gomez) is struggling between her desire to party and her Christian background. The four don’t have enough money to make the trip, prompting them to steal a car and use it to rob a restaurant. The robbery is the first of many great sequences, with Korine filming the girls from the getaway car outside as it circles the building. With their money raised up, the four hop on a bus and head for Florida.

Their plans for spring break are soon cut short when all of them get arrested, but within hours they’re bailed out by a local drug dealer and rapper named Alien (James Franco). Up to this point, Spring Breakers had little to no narrative outside the girls’ eagerness to experience spring break. With cinematographer Benoît Debie (known for working with Gaspar Noé) and editor Douglas Crise, Korine lets his film unfold like one long montage. The story periodically bubbles to the surface between moments of the characters either ambling about or partying it up. Franco, whose teaming up with Korine is a match made in heaven, suddenly snaps things into focus once he enters the picture.

Faith goes back home after the arrest and Alien’s lifestyle kills her desire to stick around, but the other three stay behind and join Alien as his partners in crime. This is when Spring Breakers finally lives up to the insanity of its premise, with a sequence involving Alien getting emasculated (in a way I won’t begin to describe here) followed by a montage with Britney Spears’ “Everytime” that’ll become one of the year’s most memorable scenes.

The high of those two scenes are never matched again, with a gang war involving another drug dealer (Gucci Mane) suddenly taking over the storyline. Spring Breakers’ liquid narrative starts to wear thin around this time as well, with Korine’s use of repetition and montage getting more frustrating as the structure coalesces into something more conventional. Despite the sluggish final act, Spring Breakers is already one of the best American films this year. Using the hyperstylized, neon-lit aesthetics associated with today’s MTV generation, Korine takes the “spring break forever” lifestyle and pushes it to the breaking point. If anything, Spring Breakers shows just how blurry the line is between the fun and horror of spring break.

I have some very unfortunate news; the general theater audience that I have been ranting and raving about over the past few posts has let me down. Let me clarify this. Remember the first time you saw Fonzie jump the shark, and then the episode ended with no one getting eaten? That is a comparable sense of disappointment that I experienced in the audience during my latest screening. I’m not sure where they came from, or if this was an anomaly of jerks that just happened to all attend the screening, or what, but it was a very telling moment; and this moment actually served to enhance my experience of the film I had just seen.

I attended a sort of double feature. Or more accurately put, a simultaneous screening of a long short and a short feature–the films being Chiralia and Die Wiedergänger respectively and both being German films. Chiralia only drew a few impatient grumbles, proving to be somewhat experimental, but beautifully shot telling a story that depicts the same event of a child nearly drowning three times, but in parallel universes and done such that you never know that the universes have changed. I only came to this conclusion after learning that the writer and director had a Ph.D in Physics. The film was certainly very difficult to decipher.

The second film was extremely experimental, narrating a story that didn’t even come close to matching the images presented. This is where everything went to hell in the theater. The film was only 60 minutes, but nearly half the theater emptied before the lights turned back on. People just couldn’t handle it. I’m ok with this, I suppose. If you are willing to pay full price for a ticket and then leave before the end that is your prerogative. What I was not ok with, was the behavior during the Q and A with the crew after the film. People boo’d. People accused the team of a lack of vision. One man had the audacity to actually tell the director that he wanted to take a poll to find out how many other people in the theater thought the film was “complete shit.”

I’ve expressed my own opinion during this coverage about experimental film. I do have a hard time with it, but I also seriously respect it as an art form and this response was uncalled for; not to mention completely rude. My end opinion? The audience behavior told me perhaps more about the people than all my travels to date. Though I hate to generalize the world on this one international audience, I think such a conclusion can be made; and it is in the audience reaction that I truly experienced something from the film. Many people, when confronted with something they do not understand, will simply turn and run away. Others will stand up and declare it “complete shit.” And many who may have the opposite opinion as the popular group will simply remain silent in their seats. As for me, I might not understand it, but I trust the artist and his personal vision. On the festival level, I trust my programmers when they select such a piece and deem it worthy of presentation. Die Wiedergänger ended up being a living piece of art, and I would like to urge people to take some time and have patience with what they do not understand.

Moving on…

Interior: Leather Bar.

On the topic of experimental film comes James Franco’s third project to be presented at Berlinale–though in one of the press conferences he couldn’t help but note he had submitted four, and one was “deemed not worthy.” I think we can all imagine his tone as he expressed this. Interior: Leather Bar is not what you expect it to be. Initially billed as a recreation of lost footage from the Al Pachino film Cruising, Interior: Leather Bar was assumed to be an artistic rendition of the scene, or of the creation of the scene, as well as a statement against censorship. Rather, what we have is more of a quasi-documentary/mocumentary/behind-the-scenes film about a personal project of Franco working on recreating the making of the scene. Essentially, it isn’t entirely clear what the approach is, since we do not know if Franco was honestly working to recreate the scene from Cruising, if the film we get is scripted, or if it just a display of the artistic process.

Interior: Leather Bar is extremely raw, and in this way makes a good stance against censorship. Be prepared to see a good amount of explicit sexual content, and if this makes you uncomfortable, I would say do your best to bear it because the film is exceptionally intriguing. For me, the most interesting part of the film was hearing the varying reasons the extras had to try and be in the footage Franco was supposedly working to recreate. Some were there to try and get an “in” with Franco, others were there just for the subject matter, and some truly believed in Franco’s project. The dialog between all characters in the film is very poignant. From Franco trying to come to terms with what it is he is trying to do, to the individuals “getting to know each other” a bit right before jumping into a scene of hardcore, leather clad sex.

The film for me was really a look at the artistic process, and the emotions and struggles we go through to bring our visions to life. There are moments of tremendous doubt, but Franco pulls through with the help of his friends who believe in him and what he is doing. It makes a statement about the need to surround ourselves with those who want the best for us, and will be the voice of support when we are ready to give up. Whatever Franco was trying to accomplish with this project, I would say he was successful. I really enjoyed it, and found myself really wishing it was longer than 60 minutes. The method of shooting the film interested me on a journalistic level, and this is certainly not your average film. The real reason behind how this film came together may always remain a mystery to me, but I am fine with that. I think it is best to not know sometimes and just trust the vision of the art.

RATING: 8.1

James Franco at a press conference for his film Interior: Leather Bar

COMING UP: With the festival coming to an end, I am enjoying the time I now have to relax a bit. I have seen nearly all of the bigger name films I was hoping to see, and am now branching out a little bit more–attending a few screenings at random just to get a look at some films that I may never have another chance to see. The awards will be occurring soon, and I am really anxious to see the jury’s impression of the films that have been screened throughout the week.

When attending a festival, the town in which it is hosted comes alive to match the draw of the event. All across Berlin, the presence of Berlinale is felt: shop windows are decorated with film reels and retro cameras, subway stations play the scores from Hollywood classics, and local bars and coffee venues host movie themed events. Sometimes it’s nice to get a break from the rush of the fest, and retreating to such venues can provide a lot of culture that you might not find next to the red carpet and hot press lights.

I came to the festival because I love movies. Obviously, the films that screen at Berlinale come from some of the most promising and talented individuals in the industry. As I mentioned at the beginning of my coverage, up until this point the majority of my festival experience comes from a much smaller, more localized scene. I enjoy these sorts of fests just as much as I have am enjoying my experience here in Berlin, and the reason is because there is nothing like seeing the raw and innovative ways the “little guy” comes up with to bring their vision to the screen. Sunday night I took the Subway across town to a little bar called Prince Charles, at 85 F Prinzensrtasse by way of the U8. Prince Charles, in conjunction with the Berlin Film Group, hosted an open mic screening–advertised via Facebook–inviting anyone and everyone in town to come with a film they had created to play for the audience in attendance. The event was a bit of a “stick it to Berlinale,” which is an unfortunate attitude to take, but it proved to be very fun and well attended with some surprisingly well produced short films.

What proved to be more alluring than the films themselves were the networking opportunities. I am not sure how many of the readers here at Way Too Indie are interested purely in viewing indie films and how many are interested in making them, but if you are an ambitions filmmaker looking to make it, such an event is a possible dream come true. Amateur cinematographers, producers, screenwriters, and actors were all in attendance, and all with the same goal of finding someone to collaborate with. If you have the opportunity to attend a festival of any size, and are interested in networking, keep an eye out for bulletin boards and pamphlet tables around the festival venues for smaller events like the one at Prince Charles. You may find the opportunities and experiences there are on par–if not greater–than what you may find on the festival grounds.

Maladies

James Franco was involved with a total of three projects in this year’s programming for Berlinale, and Maladies was the second to screen at the festival. The film brings together a powerful cast to tell a story of mental illness in a time when such a thing was still very misunderstood. The press screening was surprisingly empty for a film with such a high number of fairly mainstream actors involved, which shows how difficult it can be to balance the films we choose to see at a festival. Often screenings overlap by just enough to make it impossible to get everything in, or a press conference runs long. Luckily, all films offer multiple screenings, and I hope for the sake of the rest of the press they will find a way to see this film.

Maladies tells the tale of James (James Franco) and his struggles with mental illness in 1963. James’ specific illness is never stated, though he hears voices and fixates on minute details. It is alluded that James–who used to star on a soap opera–lost his job due to his inability to cope with his affliction, and he now spends his time working on a novel; the subject of which is never stated. Living in the same house as James is his sister, Patricia–who also has a mental illness–and his friend Catherine. The film takes us inside the mind of James as we hear the voice he hears and see the hallucinations James sees. The voice inside James’ head serves the role of a quasi-narrator for the film, which I found to be a very unique use of its presence. As James slips in and out of his spells, he is at times a very lucid character and at other times very grounded. He fixates on his book, while also making statements on the creative process. In all, Maladies uses mental illness to tell a universal story of allowing distractions to keep us from accomplishing our life’s ambitions. For James, he continuously finds reasons to delay finishing his novel, and his commentary about his reasoning behind the delay (often absurd because of his illness) parallels his struggles with the life of anyone chasing a goal or dream.

As a period piece, Maladies does a great job of setting the scene of a seaside town just outside of New York in the early sixties. The set design is perfect, and the look of the image does a fine job of putting us in the mindset of the era. The film almost always maintains a very shallow depth of field, as though to make our minds feel the the same short-sightedness as the characters. There are several dreamlike qualities to the film, but never to the point that we lose touch with reality, and we are always grounded once more by the harsh realities that surrounds the story. The film keeps a steady pace, and the chemistry between the actors is beautiful and engaging.

Because the topic of mental illness can be so foreign and confusing for a lot of people, much of the press I spoke with afterwards did not feel as engaged as I did. James Franco does an incredible job in this film, and the look and tone of the picture do a lot to really help you level with the experience of the age. The message is one that I feel applies to everyone, regardless of where your focuses lie.

RATING: 8.4

Coming out of the first weekend, Berlinale is in full swing. I have found my footing in navigating both the festival and the city, and I am really finding the enjoyment of the event outside of the cinemas. The folks who wait in line for hours in the cold hoping to get an autograph from someone leaving a press conference show the true dedication of a fan and movie goer. Outside the theaters, individuals not involved with the festival flock to the scene just to be part of the excitement, and the lights strung around the festival grounds give life and glamor to the square once the sun goes down.

COMING UP: Tomorrow comes a film I am very excited for called Computer Chess, a comedy about computer programming in the early 80’s; a German drama about the struggles of loss; and the third festival film from James Franco, this time as director, called Interior: Leather Bar.

I learned pretty quick the importance of showing up to the press screenings early. I’d heard this advice shortly after checking in and receiving my credentials; but, for my first screening of the festival–after arriving to the theater a good forty minutes before the film–I was told by the door manager that they probably wouldn’t open up until just before the show, and if I got in line five minutes before I would be fine. I half trusted her, went to grab a snack, and returned fifteen minutes before curtain time. The theater doors had already been opened, and nearly all of the seats were occupied. I managed to find a place in the front row, which was far from ideal, but at least it was a seat. Since then I have made a point of arriving a solid thirty minutes ahead.

Sometimes the press is let straight into the theater, but often there is a screening going on prior and we have to wait. Generally I’m not a fan of lines. I doubt if anyone is. However, in an international setting with so many people sharing a common interest in one place, I have yet to find the time spent in line at all terrible. Norwegian journalists specializing in American Pop Culture, German media students, and the occasional Canadian blogger are all just a shout away. Conversation isn’t difficult to initiate; simply turning around and asking where someone is from, if they were at this-or-that press conference, or if they are excited for the screening usually does the trick. The next thing you know you are discussing, debating, and critiquing film with someone from an entirely different corner of the world with a totally different outlook on cinema.

I have made a point of making my program selection as diverse as possible, while still attending the bigger film screenings. Because not everyone is as interested in the big name films from the US, it is typical for conversation to rapidly drift to the smaller, less known films in the festival line up. Coming from the US, I take as much as I can from films that depict a culture I am unfamiliar with, but having the opportunity to discuss the technique and story of a French drama with someone who is more than familiar with the director’s work and the social commentary surrounding a film brings about a whole new understanding and experience from what I initially left the theater with. This being said, if you ever have the opportunity to attend a large festival, pick a film or two that you might not typically watch, and take advantage of the other attendees, because there is always more than one way to experience a movie.

Lovelace

As I mentioned in the last post, the festival this year is presenting a surprising number of films that deal with issues of sex and pornography–more so than ever before, according to one of the festival programmers. Lovelace is one such film that takes a critical look at the porn industry by telling the story of the first real porn star, Linda Lovelace–star of the first real mainstream porn film, Deep Throat; portrayed by Amanda Seyfried. Lovelace takes place in the early and mid–seventies, when the porn industry was just beginning to really take off. The director of the film, Rob Epstein, commented in the press conference on the significance of the time period, stating it was a new age of sexual openness, but sometimes there are unintended consequences that can arise from this new openness.

The story is told twice from two perspectives. First is the story as seen from the outside, as Linda meets, falls in love with, and marries Chuck Traynor–who is responsible for getting her involved in the making of Deepthroat. The story is typical, and while moments might feel somewhat tense or uncomfortable for the characters, the world shown is full of glamour and success. It is an outsider’s view. The story then jumps ahead six years to Linda preparing for a polygraph test, per request of her publisher as she is about to release a book on her experiences. The story returns to the point right after she marries Traynor, and the glamour is replaced with scenes of abuse, domestic violence, and Linda’s struggle to escape the world she has been forced into.

Amanda Seyfried commented that the production of Lovelace was the most fun she has ever had on a set. While the film is serious in nature, it’s not hard to see how she came to this conclusion, as she totally breaks her typical character caste. The blonde, wholesome, heartthrob we typically see her as is replaced with a freckly, brunette, girl-next-door who is forced to function in extremely trying circumstances. The film brings out the full flair of the seventies, including high contrast, high grain film stock, great costumery and set direction, and a fantastic soundtrack. The film also stars a very dark Peter Sarsgaard and a cameo of James Franco as Hugh Hefner.

RATING: 8.7

Amanda Seyfried and James Franco

The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman

The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman is the feature debut of Fredrik Bond, who–before this point–has made a name for himself directing Heineken commercials. The film is fairly grandiose in production scale, and features a big name cast including Shia LeBeouf, Evan Rachel Wood, and a post-Harry Potter Rupert Grint.

Filmed on location in Romania, the film tells the tale of Charlie Countryman, who–after the death of his mother, and on the request of a drug-induced vision of her postmortem–takes off for Eastern Europe to find himself. After a passenger on his flight dies, Charlie decides to deliver a hat to the daughter of the deceased passenger and immediately falls in love. Unfortunately for Charlie, the now girl-of-his-dreams was once married to a dangerous killer, who recently returned to the country. In his adventure, Charlie faces death around nearly every corner, experiences a fancifully wild Eastern European party scene, and enjoys a crazy drug trip or two–all in the name of love, of course.

Charlie Countryman is a very typical love story–verging on the traditional chick-flick format, but set in an extreme, action adventure wonderland. Where a typical romance movie about new love might show a man concerning himself about simply losing the woman of his dreams, for Charlie it involves getting beaten to a pulp and possibly meeting a violent end. The film opens, closes, and in brief interlude features a faceless narrator who turns out to be not very reliable. The film works to creat many visual spectacles–usually drug induced–and makes use of typical hollywood action sequences we are used to seeing in contemporary films of this genre. In all, I found Charlie Countryman a bit over the top, unreliable, and had difficulty believing in the characters. However, if you are just looking to have a good time and enjoy a fast paced action adventure, it might be right up your alley.

RATING: 6.7

I ended my day by attending one of the five short film programs. I have always loved short films, and admire the ability to tell a solid story in a brief period of time. Unfortunately the shorts program I saw was very disappointing. I can appreciate a film as strictly an art piece, but if they too avant garde to tell a cohesive story I do not believe they belong on such a prestigious stage as Berlinale. During the festival’s Talent Campus–a lecture series featured throughout the festival–there is a presentation by the short film programmers, in which they discuss what they look for in a short film. I will make sure to attend this, as well as a few more short programs, and maybe they can explain their approach a bit better.

COMING UP: As for day three, Maladies with James Franco and Catherine Keener is on deck.

It seems like the word of the day was “delay.” After arriving at Toronto the line-up for picking up tickets took nearly an hour. That’s not a complaint though, anyone who has been to TIFF is fully aware that waiting in line is just part of the festival. Either way, gone were my hopes of rushing Imogene or Paradise: Love so off I went to Spring Breakers.

Unfortunately Spring Breakers ended up getting delayed by over a half hour, meaning that in order to catch my next screening I had to bail out on the film towards the end (I’m guessing there were 15-20 minutes left). I can’t give a proper review, but from what I did see it seemed like Harmony Korine hasn’t really changed for me. With his previous films like Mister Lonely and Trash Humpers, Korine was able to pull out some beautiful, amazing moments but couldn’t sustain that feeling throughout. Spring Breakers starts out strong with a montage of college kids partying which is the first of many montages peppered throughout. These were the best parts of the film, but as a collective whole the film became exhausting. I’d rather not get into too much detail since I haven’t seen the entire thing, but I do know one thing for sure. James Franco kills it in this. Believe the hype.

RATING: N/A

Spring Breakers

But of course, after Spring Breakers was the main event. I got in line for The Master and…ended up waiting some more due to an hour long delay. To add even more insult to injury, aside from a quick intro by Paul Thomas Anderson there was no sign of the cast and no Q&A. Considering the screening was charged at a premium because of a Q&A with the cast/director I’m guessing a lot of people weren’t too happy.

But on to the movie, which is sure to confuse many once it gets a wide(r) release. The film, which is simply about a mentally disturbed seaman (Joaquin Phoenix) becoming friends with the leader of a cult (Philip Seymour Hoffman) in 1950, has plenty of powerful moments. The use of 65mm film and feel of There Will Be Blood from the trailers might suggest a similarly epic story, but this is much more intimate than the insane bombast of Daniel Plainview. Phoenix wipes away his entire misstep with I’m Still Here in this, becoming so involved with his character that he’s unrecognizable at certain points. Hoffman is terrific as well, and the two of them getting Oscar nods is probably set in stone. My issue is that none of the great moments (and a shout out to the use of 65mm which was gorgeous) came together as a whole, which led to a very slow pace. I would need a rewatch to really settle in on how I feel about The Master, but my initial reaction is that it’s good. It’s just not the masterpiece that his last film was.

RATING: 7 (tentative)

The Master

COMING UP: I start to head into the Wavelengths direction with the half-silent Tabu, followed by Haneke’s Cannes winner Amour and the return of Ryuhei Kitamura with No One Lives.

Recap of some of my Tweets from today:

Follow @WayTooIndie for full coverage of the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival!

Went to pick up tickets, and now in my first of many lines for the fest. Can’t wait for SPRING BREAKERS and THE MASTER #TIFF12

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 7, 2012

Front of the spring breakers line is almost entirely young girls who are here for the cast. Poor souls have no clue what they’re in for.

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 7, 2012

From what I saw SPRING BREAKERS was a typical Korine movie for me. Hit and miss, with incredible highs and dull lows. #TIFF12

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 8, 2012

THE MASTER: going to take another watch before I get a better idea of what to think. Plenty of amazing stuff but it doesn’t come together

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 8, 2012

Film Independent Spirit Awards is arguably the most important film awards of the year, however, it is easy to be over-shadowed during the award season by the Oscars. This is especially true if it is held just one night before.

Black Swan took home the most awards this year with 4 including most of the big ones including; Best Picture, Best Director, Best Female Lead and Best Cinematography. I am glad that Black Swan was the leader of awards because I think it was the best film of the year. Winter’s Bone had the most nominations going in with seven but only walked away with 2 wins for Best Supporting Male and Best Supporting Female.

There were not a lot of huge surprises, with maybe the exception of John Hawkes winning over Mark Ruffalo, and I felt like everyone who won deserved to win. The Independent Spirit Awards ended up being a great watch thanks to the host Joel McHale and all of the presenters.

See the full list of nominations

Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan

Get Low, directed by Aaron Schneider; Producers: David Gundlach, Dean Zanuck

Daddy Longlegs

Stuart Blumberg, Lisa Cholodenko, The Kids Are All Right

Lena Dunham, Tiny Furniture

Natalie Portman, Black Swan

James Franco, 127 Hours

Dale Dickey, Winter’s Bone

John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone

Matthew Libatique, Black Swan

Exit Through The Gift Shop

The King’s Speech, Tom Hooper

Please Give
Director: Nicole Holofcener
Casting Director: Jeanne McCarthy
Ensemble Cast: Ann Guilbert, Rebecca Hall, Catherine Keener, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Lois Smith, Sara Steele

Anish Savjani, Meek’s Cutoff

Mike Ott, Littlerock

Jeff Malmberg, Marwencol

Marwencol

127 Hours is the motivational film of the year that proves nature is unforgiving and shows the powerful strength in human determination. Even with the storyline being very basic, it is still captivating enough to not only keep your attention but also make it memorable. James Franco gives it his all with his performance, setting off well deserved Oscar buzz.

Aron Ralston (James Franco) is an avid thrill seeker that decides to go hiking into the canyons of Utah. He briefly runs into a couple lost female hikers that are lost. He jokes with them and shows them some amazing swimming areas before departing with them. Little does he know, it is the last time he comes in contact with a person for the next 127 hours.

As he is climbing around the canyons, a large rock falls down and pins his arm between canyon walls. He has a very limited amount of supplies for survival including; a water bottle, a little food, rope and a multi-tool. He even had a video camera he brought with, although He immediately begins to try chipping away at the rock to free his arm, but with no success. To make matters worse, he realizes that he told no one where is was going, thus nobody will be looking for him.

It is impossible not to feel empathetic for him. Since he is trapped, he is forced to think about his mistakes he has made in the past. How he is sorry that he did not return his mom’s phone calls and how he wishes he would have brought more liquids to drink. He even creates a faux talk show with himself with the video camera, which is both comical and depressing.

Everything around him is draining; his battery in his camera, the water supply and most importantly his hope of survival. Even the movie poster is shaped like an hour glass as if it were a countdown to his likely death. At one point, he states that his whole life he was drawing him closer and closer to the rock that would eventually trap him in. After 5 days he decides the only way out is for him to cut his own arm off to free him from the large rock.

Undoubtedly, part of what makes 127 Hours so interesting is that it is a true story and how accurate the film is to was actually happened. The real footage of Aron Ralston stuck in the canyon has been restricted to close friends and family members, however, before shooting began, James Franco and Danny Boyle were allowed to watch the footage in order to portray the events in the film accurately.

The most difficult scene to watch in the film was when Ralston has to amputate his own arm. To summon the courage to do that, even in his situation, given the amount of excruciating pain to do so, I feel most people would be unable to do it. The special effects are incredibly realistic and detailed, making it almost hard to watch. Interestingly enough, the scene was done in one take using multiple cameras because they only created one prosthetic arm.

James Franco is simply amazing, working in a very tight space for nearly the entire film by himself. Since there were virtually no supporting roles, he is given the difficult task of carrying on a film alone and does it masterfully. There has not been a role since Tom Hanks in Castaway that done it better. It is a performance that will put him as a serious contender for an Oscar and should win Best Male Lead at the Independent Spirit Awards this year.

Because the film completely straightforward, to keep the audience engaged throughout is a task not easily achieved. Not only was the acting brilliant being is such a confined space with no supporting actors but Danny Boyle gets creative with the camera and special effects to keep it entertaining. 127 Hours is a powerful survival story that ends up being an inspirational statement about choosing to live through willpower.