“A little bird was the largest animal I ever killed before I killed my mother,” Brad Macallum (Michael Shannon) tells us in My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, released on DVD by Industrial Entertainment/First Look Studios on September 14, 2010. Being a poet myself and having encountered what in our society we call “crazies” in my lifetime, I know just how very difficult it is to convey both the eeriness and poeticism that falls out of the mouths of these wizened babes (e.g. when once working on a book of naive artists I was walking alongside one of them on the street at night when he suddenly accused me of walking behind him, and later in front of him, which I wasn’t doing – but the force of his statement made it appear to be true, implying that I was “watching” him in some way instead of being friendly towards him, and this man later attacked his six-month-old son in his cradle). Thus the little bird vs. the mother in the statement above would appear to be an even odder comparison, both originally and in this film. It is to his credit that Werner Herzog doesn’t try to “solve” statements like this one, but just presents them to us.

Werner Herzog was not only aware of casting the right person who could perform in this manner (we learn in the DVD Extra, Behind The Madness – The Making Of My Son, My Sone, What Have Ye Done?, which is basically an interview with Werner Herzog and co-writer Herbert Golder, but Herzog also chose a supporting cast that would create “the right texture” – Willem Dafoe, Chloe Sevigny, Udo Kier, Grace Zabriskie (because of her work in David Lynch films) and Brad Douriff, actors who could both complement each other and create tension in “a strange ambience.” Another particularly unusual element of this film is the use of unique locations – a small city in China inhabited by Muslims, older men with beards, where Michael Shannon was given a wooden breastplate and a wooden fake arm so that everyone would stare at him when he walked through a crowd, and part of the set of a vicious river in Peru where Herzog made his film Aquirre, Wrath of God, 38 years ago.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? follows Brad’s descent into madness as he tries to play the main role in an ancient Greek Orrestia play and then decides to live out its prophecy (killing his mother), but although this is based on the true story of then-student Mark Javorski (from whom Herzog had a distinct feeling of something not being right when he visited him in his trailer), it is re-invented in its story-line and poetry so as not to be just a recounting or a biographical documentary. Still, some of Mark’s real quotes stand out, like “Twitch your feet – I want to see my mother dancing to heaven” or “I’ve found the still point – the unwavering pivot of the world.” Why are the most insane of us given the gift of poetry? Perhaps because it’s where the rest of us don’t often dwell.

Brad, who has a fiancee, Ingrid (Chloe Sevigny) and a mother (played by Grace Zabriskie) to whom he’s been devoted since his father disappeared when he was nine, has a very strange day in which he’s visited the naval institution in San Diego where his father died, and the next day he follows his mother across the street to a neighbor’s house, where he runs his mother through with a sword before going back home to feed his two pet flamingos. Is he but a puppet of the tragedies of the ages? Detective Haversham (Willem Dafoe), hearing that Brad is holding two hostages in his home, arrives to deal with the situation.

I cannot think of a better cast for this film to show its many unusual visual aspects – e.g. prolonged moments of stillness at the dinner table or outdoors in the snow mimicing “the unwavering pivot of the world,” or a visit to an ostrich farm where an ostrich steals Lee Meyer’s (Udo Kier’s) glasses right out of his pocket in a flash and attempts to swallow them. Every actor’s rendition is definitely strong and always in character. Original experiment cello music by Ernst Rfijseger adds to a pervasive sense of tension and uneasiness.

Brad reveals to us a quote from the Bible about ostriches (Job 39:13, in which he seems to be talking about his mother): “For she leaneth over her eggs in the dust on the earth and warmeth them over…..When the time cometh she raises her voice on high and scorneth the horse and his rider.” Produced by David Lynch (who himself created the unique film Twin Peaks), I could not sing the praises of My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? more highly as a means for us to view those among us who are both simultaneously so much like us and so much unlike us. A must-see!

Grade: A
Total Running Time: 91 minutes 12 seconds
Directed by Werner Herzog
Written by Werner Herzog and Herbert Golder
Original music by Ernst Rfigseger
With Michael Shannon, Chloe Sevigny, Willem Dafoe, Udo Kier, Grace Zabriskie and Brad Douriff
Extras: Plastic Bag; Behind The Madness: The Making Of My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? DVD Review is a post from: Movie Room Reviews

A Call Girl, available on DVD by Film Movement on 9-7-2010, shows us a product of casual sex between a depressed rock band singer (her father, Edo, played by Peter Musevski) and, in her own words, a “greedy and ambitious” mother (Aljosa Kovacis) from another family whom she rarely sees, Aleksandra (Nina Ivanisin). Aleksandra decides to do some free-lance prostitution work in order to buy herself her own apartment but after a German member of the the European Parliament, Helmut Buder (Valic Ivogerdevic) dies in her presence during her “services,” Aleksandra is pursued by thugs who want her to work for them (and dangle her from a high balcony in an apartment building to prove it to her).

“Life is one disappointment after another,” says Aleksandra, and most of the people she knows concur (her father fearful that she has inherited his depression). Because her “work” interferes with her studies at the university, Aleksandra tries to persuade her professor (Ales Valic) into pitying her by saying she has had a brain tumor removed, while at the bank she attempts to convince the manager that her loans and mortgages are late because her father has a brain tumor. Eventually she just wants a normal (non-scared-to-death) life, although she eschews Greg (Uros Furst) who has divorced his wife for her, and she tells a childhood friend who is now lonely that “We are all lonely, in one way or another.”

Played very coldly and convincingly by Nina Ivanisin, Aleksandra endures “examinations” from customers with yellow rubber gloves and probably a vast amount of perversity from her clients, including an encounter with one of her father’s friends (Primoz Pimat). She still can’t get ahead financially and we identify with her wanting to advance herself as we see her carting around an expensive flowered lamp (the only good piece of furniture she can afford) on the subway. Certainly living an unfulfilled life, she has no example (definitely not one from her mother and father!) to show her that life can be happy with or without material objects, or, at the very least, less grim.

The winner of Best Actress at the Valencia Festival of Mediterranean Cinema, an official selection at the Potterdam International Film Festival, and many more prizes, A Call Girl is well-crafted by director Damjan Kosol, catching this female at a point in her life where she’s willing to take risks but isn’t yet entirely jaded. Great for a glimpse into another lifestyle which most of us know (unlike naive Aleksandra) can only come to self-destruction and dreadful harm. I recommend it!

Grade: A
Unrated foreign film, Slovenian with English Subtitles
Directed by Damjan Kosol
Music by Silence
With Nina Ivanisin, Peter Musevski, Primoz Pimat, Marusa Kink, and Uros Furst
With monthly Film Movement Short – Honored, a USA film, 19 minutes

A Call Girl DVD Review is a post from: Movie Room Reviews

During the late ‘90s Turner Network Television (TNT) broadcast The New Adventures of Robin Hood, another take on the Robin Hood mythos.  Season 1 is now available on DVD from Warner Brothers.  The four discs comprise 13 episodes with 600 total minutes of viewing time.

The program is set during the traditional time period of Robin Hood, around the 12th century A.D.  The evil King John is on the throne and Robin (Matthew Porretta) strives to right wrongs within the kingdom, as well as occasionally steal from the rich to give to the poor.  His main companions include Lady Marion Fitzwalter (Anna Galvin), Little John (Richard Ashton), and Friar Tuck (Martyn Ellis).

Robin Hood’s audience is clearly the Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules type of viewership. The show’s drama is light with its tongue firmly planted within one cheek. There is much heroic daring-do and each episode has a happy ending for the most part.  But while I saw only a few episodes of Xena and Hercules, I can definitively say that those productions far surpass this one.  This opinion doesn’t come from someone unwilling to suspend belief when it comes to TV shows involving fictional concepts and characters.  Some of the late 90s productions I enjoyed were Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lois & Clark, Quantum Leap and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

The difference with The New Adventures of Robin Hood is that whatever amount of quality was found within those other shows is severely lacking here.  The acting is hopelessly cheesy. The special effects were far below that decade’s standards.  Most of the cast used American accents, while others had English ones. The costuming was cartoonish, and the overly frequent fight scenes were repetitive and almost slapstick in nature.  Maid Marian was cast (and poorly costumed) almost as a Wonder Woman figure, albeit without heroic powers or imposing presence. The scripts were not very compelling and the villains were rather laughable.

As I watched each episode, I kept holding out hope that things would improve, despite the low-budget look of the series and its other deficiencies. The presence of Christopher Lee (Lord of the Rings’ Saruman) in several episodes fueled this hope in some part.  Surely this respected actor could elevate the material to some extent.  Lee did his best with his portion, but it wasn’t nearly enough.  Despite some very minor improvements in acting and special effects, the show remained outlandish through the end of the season.

Hood does have a few positive aspects.  The story lines were for the most part fairly innocent, almost to the point of it becoming a family show.  The sexual content, while present, could have been far more intense.  As it was, the adult content usually came in the form of many cleavage-bearing outfits for the women. As mentioned, the fight scenes were almost slapstick in nature, leaving behind blood and savagery that could have been used but wasn’t.

I cannot say that I would recommend The New Adventures of Robin Hood, but I believe there’s an audience for it.  One man’s waste of time is another’s fun diversion.  I can imagine there are viewers out there that would enjoy the very things that I described as drawbacks in the show.  In that regard, that audience has much to enjoy and laugh about within the 13 episodes of Season 1 of The New Adventures of Robin Hood.

Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: 600 minutes
DVD Release Date: July 23, 2010

Grade: C-

Directors: Fred Weintraub, Tom Kuhn
Starring: Matthew Poretta, Anna Galvin, Richard Ashton, Martyn Ellis

DVD Review by Laura Hartness of Movie Room Reviews

DVD Review – Season 1 of The New Adventures of Robin Hood is a post from: Movie Room Reviews

Welcome (released on DVD by Film Movement on August 10, 2010) is an ironic title for this film because its 17-year-old protagonist Bilal (newcomer Firat Ayverdi) is anything but welcome, in his own war-torn country of Iraq, in France, where he’s perceived as an illegal immigrant, and in London, England, where he is attempting to go to reunite with his girlfriend Mina (Derya Ayverdi). After three months of walking from Iraq to France (like many other refugees seeking England as a country in which to work in order to send money back to their families), he finds out that his only possible (illegal) passage to England is an expensive ride in a truck, during which he is caught and returned to France.

Next seen at a French swimming pool buying swimming lessons, Bilal meets swim instructor Simon (Vincent Lindon), who is having woman problems of his own: his wife Marion (Audrey Dana) wants a divorce while he can’t imagine living without her. Marion works at an outdoor soup kitchen that helps refugees, and thinking also to impress her Simon takes Bilal under his wing, only to learn that this activity is not merely discouraged but punished very harshly by the French police.

Welcome is about a dream: a love-conquers-all-dream, a larger-than-life-dream where sheer will power and passion make even physical impossiblities seem easily imaginable. Bilal decides to swim the English Channel, a ten-hour endeavor, to reach Mina, even though her father is about to marry her to a restaurant owner that she doesn’t even know and even though Bilal has only recently learned to swim. Simon tells Marion about Bilal’s plan, also commenting that “I couldn’t even cross the road to get you back.”

Yet in life many times incapacitating factors feel like they’re melting away, given the support of friends who truly care or just the force of an individual’s gumption and need. Does Bilal make it to England in time to stop Mina’s wedding? Master actor Vincent Lindon, playing swim instructor Simon (who turns out to have a surprising sports past of his own) holds this film together with his naturalistic reactions to every situation. It’s because of him that we find all the other actors believable (although their roles are also emotionally and capably played).

Welcome, under the sensitive directorship of Philippe Lioret (and having won prizes at the Berlin and Heartland Film Festivals), reminds us that there is more to life than routine or just keeping up with the status quo, and that risk-taking, even if it can have tragic results, is often more admirable than a cautious approach. Welcome makes us remember the feeling of invincibility espoused by the very young who are first experiencing life on their own in the world and to whom anything still seems entirely possible.

Grade: A
Running Time: 109 minutes
French foreign film in French, English and Kurdish/Arabic with English subtitles
Directed by Philippe Lioret
With Vincent Lindon, Firat Ayverdi, Audrey Dana and Derya Ayverdi
Bonus Feature: Film Movement’s short of the month, The Berlin Wall, directed by Paul Cotter (from Germany), 15 minutes

Welcome DVD Review is a post from: Movie Room Reviews

“What drives you to do this?” Palestinian Tarek Rama (Shredy Jabarin) is asked about suicide bombing mission in Tel Aviv, and he gives the terrorists the correct answer, “Since I was born I couldn’t even dream. And that won’t change until they are hurt,” but his real reason is to save his father, who got into trouble with the Tanzim terrorists. The DVD of For My Father is a Film Movement selection released on DVD on June 1, 2010 in Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles and tells us about a two-day romance that suddenly occurs between Tarek and Keren (Hill Yalon), a young kiosk seller with red streaks in her hair who’s abandoned the ways of her Orthodox Jewish family.

As Tarek is being instructed on how and when to press the button that will kill him and everyone around him at the Carmel Market in Tel Aviv, Keren is being threatened by a group of young Hassidic men who want her to stop “shaming” her family with how she dresses and acts, who ask her, “Is this what you want, with nothing beyond beauty and money, no family?” and proceed to imply violence in a few hours if she doesn’t comply. When Tarek’s bombing device switch malfunctions and fails he is forced to stay in Tel Aviv until a new one can be ordered and arrive in a few days, there he meets Keren and works fixing a leaky roof for the friendly Katz (Shlomo Vishinski) and Zipora (Rozina Kambus) and finds them to be human, very different from the people in the propaganda films that he’s been shown who murder children and beat up Palestinians.

Shredy Jabarin presents a very stern and serious Tarek who can also break into a smile with ease, while Hill Yalon’s Keren would be perceived as a normally rebellious teenager and young adult, fashion-wise, in the USA. We see breathtaking views of mountains and deserts between the lands of Palestine and Israel as we come to understand why Tarek wants to withdraw from his mission but is worried that the Tanzim will kill his father, as they’ve promised to do if he doesn’t comply with their demands.

Tarek was a soccer prodigy at a very young age and his father, a violinist, helped him with this endeavor by taking him to play professionally in the town of Nazareth. Director Dror Zahavi’s camera is always sympathetic to its protagonists and we feel as if we are actually there with Tarek, trying to help him resolve his moral (and practical) struggle. How many of us would even think of giving up our lives for our fathers?

Not for one moment was my attention drawn away from the screen while watching For My Father. The winner of many awards including being the winner of the Cinequest Film Festival, For My Father was nominated for seven Israeli Academy Awards. I’d recommend it to all foreign film buffs and, indeed, to everyone!

Grade: A
Runnning Time: 96 minutes
Israeli foreign film in Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles
Directed by Dror Zahavi
Music by Misha Segal
With Shredy Jabarin, Hill Yalon, Shlomo Vishinski, Haim Banal, and Rozina Kambus
Bonus Features: Film Movement’s short of the month, Ali And The Ball, directed by Paul Cotter

For My Father DVD Review is a post from: Movie Room Reviews