Category: Films, Reviews, and Complainings about the State of Media

Exactly what it says.

Hummus! The Movie (2015)

Hummus! The Movie (2015)

Everybody loves hummus. It’s tasty as hell, an original superfood, and massively popular around the world. It’s also the topic of some controversy among nations, peoples, and even religions. Where does hummus come from? Which country or people has a right to call it their own? Hummus! The Movie attempts to address some of these questions, including the biggest one: why can’t we all just agree that hummus is the best and not worry about where it comes from?

Hummus! The Movie primarily follows three hummus-makers, all different religions and ethnicities, from different parts of the world: Jalil Dabit, a Christian Arab from Ramle; Eliyahu Shmueli, a Hasidic Jew living near Galilee; and Suheila Al Hindi, the only female Muslim owner of a hummus restaurant in the Arab market in Acre. Each have unique stories about how they came to become hummus makers—Jalil and Suheila both come from hummus-making families and carry on different traditions, while Eliyahu arrived at his craft by a more circuitous route, eventually coming to identify it with his Jewishness. All three are successful chefs, and all three find meaning in the creation of the best hummus. Jalil sees the ubiquitous and multifaceted dish as a way of bridging cultures as well as carrying on his family tradition – he recognizes that hummus has been claimed by almost every nation and people in the Middle East and Mediterranean, and sees that as a common denominator to connect people through a mutual tradition. Suheila faces sexist criticism as an unmarried Muslim woman running her own business, while Eliyahu sees hummus as his vocation.

All the people featured here who are very passionate about their hummus and where it comes from. The filmmakers interview the Lebanese Minister of Culture, who claims that hummus is only Lebanese. Israeli, Greek, and Palestinian hummus-makers challenge this, and a forms the secondary plot in the film as a competition between nations over a Guinness Record for the largest serving of hummus heats up (at the time of the film’s completion, this goes to Lebanon, at over 20,000 pounds). But what Hummus! The Movie ultimately reinforces is that the fact that so many cultures, nations, and ethnicities can claim hummus as their own argues that it belongs no one, that it crosses arbitrary geographic and ethnographic boundaries.

Hummus! The Movie at times suffers from a lack of focus, with cuts between scenes and the overlapping stories of hummus makers that causes a bit of mental whiplash. It’s not always clear at what point in the story we’re picking up again, or why the focus has suddenly shifted. The lack of clear introductions to the main figures means that it can be difficult for the audience to locate themselves in time and place, especially as the people featured move from city to city. The film could have actually done with a longer runtime—it clocks in at an hour and ten minutes—and thus built its stories a bit more clearly, with more explanations or elucidations of some of its secondary tangents. For instance, how do we read the relationship between Eliyahu and Aluf Abir, a rapper who wrote a song about how hummus makes people stupid? How do we shift from Jalil wanting to create a space for musicians at his restaurant to his move to Berlin with his fiancée? And who is the mysterious man in the red hat who gives Eliyahu the best tahini ever?

Despite its occasional lack of focus, however, Hummus! The Movie is an entertaining, diverting documentary. It’s not over-serious about itself but recognizes that the people it profiles do take their work very seriously indeed, and strikes an excellent balance between the inherent humor of being so passionate about a single food, and the social, cultural, and religious implications of that food and who makes it. The correct way to make hummus, the relationship between chickpeas, tahini, oil, and other flavorings, the passion of the hummus-makers…for such an apparently simple food, it’s quite complex—as is Hummus! The Movie.

Hummus! The Movie is available on DVD and VOD, including iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, and Vudu.

A Boy Called Sailboat (2018)

A Boy Called Sailboat (2018)

Although there are one or two big names attached to indie comedy A Boy Called Sailboat, the true stars are a group of child actors led by Julian Atocani Sanchez, who plays Sailboat, a little boy with a little guitar who just wants to write a song for his Abuela. It’s a special kind of film that can rely on children to drive its story and maintain its charm, but A Boy Called Sailboat pulls it off, evading some of the pitfalls of the quirky indie comedy to deliver something truly wonderful.

Each character in the film is fueled by their own specific obsession and constructs their lives around it. Sailboat lives with his parents in a small house in the middle of the desert, somewhere along the Texas border. His father Jose (Noel Gugliemi) dreams of horses and six-shooters, but has to keep an eye on the Stick, a wooden prop painted the colors of the Mexican flag that stops their house from falling over. Sailboat’s mother Meyo (Elizabeth de Razzo) spends her days making meatballs, rarely leaving the house. His best friend Peeti (Keanu Wilson) teaches himself to play soccer, and classmate Mandy (Zeyah Peterson) wanders the halls of their school plugged into her portable Discman. Sailboat spends his days at school, at home, or traveling to the Oasis, a roadside car lot run by Ernest (J.K. Simmons), who recounts the brilliance of his three vehicles while Sailboat communes with his namesake – an old wooden boat parked on one side of the lot. One day, Sailboat discovers a little guitar in a pile of junk by the roadside, which he takes to carrying around. When he visits his Abuela (Rusalia Benavidez) in the hospital, she makes him promise to write her a song on his guitar, setting into motion a fable that will change the lives of the people who appear in it.

A Boy Called Sailboat is so self-consciously quirky that it would almost be annoying if it weren’t so sincere. It’s visually and thematically reminiscent of the Hesses’ Napoleon Dynamite or Nacho Libre, with its cast of odd characters and bright color palette. But rather than exploiting its characters for laughs, A Boy Called Sailboat begins to reveal the layers of their obsessions and the reasons behind them, told through the eyes of a boy with a strange name and strange family who doesn’t consider himself strange at all. Sailboat is a loving, accepting little boy, and those around him love and accept him in turn. As he writes his song, the world around him transforms, drawing on the power of music to elicit emotional response, even without our fully understanding why. The soundtrack is primarily composed of classic rock and folk songs – “My Bonnie,” “House of the Rising Sun,” and “La Bamba” among them– played without lyrics on guitar, a subtle tribute to the little guitar that so inspires the people who hear it.

Centering the narrative on a Mexican-American family provides an opportunity for some interesting undercurrents given the current national dialogue. The film could easily slip into a story about “magical” Latinx people, but evades that, instead drawing on magical realist traditions in an ambiguously American setting, effectively marrying cultural traditions without exploiting its central characters. There’s a deft sleight of hand going on here, and writer/director Cameron Nugent pulls it off with aplomb, turning A Boy Called Sailboat into a modern fable the moves and amuses without going too far over the edge in quirk. The performers, too, acquit themselves well—including Jake Busey, who plays Sailboat’s hypermasculine teacher, and a fantastic final act appearance from character actor Lew Temple. But the film really centers on Sailboat—yes, his name is explained—and Sanchez carries it all on his shoulders without ever slipping into the maudlin or the overly cutesy.

While A Boy Called Sailboat is not going to remake the world of indie comedy, it really doesn’t need to. It’s a sweet, uplifting film, telling a gentle story about a little boy, his family, his Abuela, and his little guitar. The film doesn’t need anything more or less than that.

A Boy Called Sailboat arrives on VOD, including Amazon, iTunes, and Google Play, on February 5.

Stay Human (2018)

Stay Human (2018)

What does it mean to stay human? In the face of public cynicism, physical and emotional violence, personal pain, and communal poverty, how do we as individuals and as a community retain our grasp on humanity? That’s what director/writer/musician Michael Franti asks in his documentary Stay Human, a deeply personal dive into the problems and the passions that bind us together as human beings.

Stay Human focuses on four stories about people with whom Franti has come into contact, whether from his experience of them as fans or in his travels and interests as a social activist musician. The film encapsulates social, cultural, environmental, and personal narratives that attempt to lay bare how to “stay human,” and what that even means. He opens with a general thesis about his project and his personal connection to this problem of maintaining humanity in the face of cynicism, then delves into the first narrative about Robin Lim, a midwife in the Philippines who established the Bumi Sehat Foundation for expectant and new mothers. Lim has since helped over nine thousand children into the world, but her foundation is about more than just maternity care. She helps with home births, keeps mothers and babies connected, and goes into areas devastated by natural disasters to ensure that children and mothers are cared for. Her project encapsulates Franti’s project of connectedness and maintain connection to our families, our communities, and the natural environment.

Stay Human doesn’t stop with the activities of foundations, however, looking into the personal as part of the communal. The Dezembers are fans of Franti’s, and they married not long after Steve Dezember’s ALS diagnosis. Arief Rabik, an Indonesian environmental scientist, explains his project for making bamboo an acceptable lumber alternative and helping to maintain work and sustainability in local communities; Sive Mazinyo and Busisiwwe Vazi are educated at “cradle to career” center in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and detail their reasons for getting an education, providing not only hope for themselves, but for others in their families and community. Interspersed with the stories are Franti’s own experiences as he deals with personal traumas, the place of music in his life, his family, and his work.

While this film could come off as an attempt to cash in on a social activist brand, there is a disarming earnestness in Franti’s on-screen persona and in the material of the film itself that pushes against the idea that it’s a cynical cash-grab. Franti is not attempting to solve all the world’s problems or argue that his music is the way to right social wrongs, but to take a personal look at what it means to be human in a world where we are consistently pushed away from our individual humanity, our connection to others, and our connection to the natural world. While each section of the narrative is designed to produce some feel-good vibes, one of the strengths of Stay Human is that it does not come off as pandering or, worse, showcasing these stories for cheap sentimentality. The narratives detail suffering and resilience without becoming poverty porn; they are about community and recognizing our humanity in the faces of other humans. Franti asks the Dezembers how they’ve dealt with Steve’s diagnosis financially, and they are open about how difficult it has been, and how much they’ve relied on the kindness of others. Lim explains that a large portion of the Filipino population are young, pregnant women, and that part of her project has been to pressure the government and aid workers to obtain needed supplies for an impoverished, often homeless population. Rabik shows the connection between creating sustainable resources and maintaining community, a marriage of the environment and the social system. Mazinyo and Vazi are empowered by their community, and they in turn give hope to the next generation by their examples.

The documentary sometimes falls back on the trappings of the social activist documentary, especially at the beginning, when it shows Franti buddying up to his fans, or shots of him walking, barefoot and in slow motion, through golden wheat. But there is an earnestness that comes through, even when the films threatens to become corny. It’s still being honest with itself and with its project, as though the film is challenging a viewer’s (or a critic’s) inherent cynicism and distrust.

Stay Human makes no bones about this being a passion project of Franti’s, and it relies heavily on his personal experiences, voice, and perspective. But because it sets him front and center, because it doesn’t claim to be objective but in fact revels in its very subjectivity, it allows the viewer to decide whether to accept Franti’s personal conclusions about humanness, or to reject them. There’s no chicanery here, no lies, and no sales pitch at the end. In a time when we are consistently barraged by hateful rhetoric, by distinctions that try to wrench us away from our common humanity, it’s refreshing and moving to see a film, however subjective, that asks us unironically to be good to one another, to maintain our humanity by seeing others as humans, too.

Stay Human is available on VOD (including iTunes and Amazon) on January 25, 2019.

The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974)

The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974)

Giallo horror tends to run the gamut from artistic to exploitative, and often just combines the two into an unholy union that is at once profoundly uncomfortable and deeply enjoyable. One of the stranger works in the wide range of giallo films is The Perfume of the Lady in Black (the greatest title ever), from director Francisco Barilli, starring Mimsy Farmer as a perfumier in Rome who begins to hallucinate (or does she?) images from her childhood that center around a lady in black.

Farmer is Silvia, a talented chemist who enjoys making perfume, going out with her boyfriend Roberto (Maurizio Bonuglio), and hanging out with his friends, including a professor (Jho Jenkins) with an interest in black magic and the occult. But things begin to get weird when she smells a new perfume and begins to hallucinate a woman, all dressed in black. As the hallucinations get more intense, recalling Silvia’s childhood, her deceased father, and her mother’s old lover, she also begins to believe that she’s being stalked by men in dark trench coats. At the behest of her friend Francesca (Donna Jordan), Silvia goes to a blind psychic, who brings up even more past memories, inspiring another flood of hallucinations. What’s real and what’s Silvia’s psychosis become more and more intertwined, exacerbated by the machinations of her strange neighbor, and the mysterious people who may or may not be following her.

Like many giallo horrors, the focus is more on the aesthetic than the actual plot, which telegraphs the solution to its mystery so clearly that it almost isn’t necessary. The garish seventies’ colors and weird character quirks – like a continuous emphasis on hippos that is just confounding – make for the entertainment value here. Rooms painted bright blue, yellow dresses that are just too yellow, pinks that conflict with purples, haunting music that dogs Silvia’s steps—these are the trappings of the weird. There are the usual elements of the occult and psychosis, as Silvia’s belief that she’s being bewitched co-mingles with her hallucinations, which are either repressed memories, are realities being perpetrated against her by some unknown assailant, or are the result of something more supernatural. What’s unnerving about the film is how difficult it is to completely understand what’s going on, or why. The ending is at once predictable and utterly shocking, and I doubt that a rewatch would be able to place it in proper context. It doesn’t make sense, which is half the fun.

In some ways, though, The Perfume of the Lady in Black needed to be more extreme, to indulge its tendencies to excess rather than attempt to tell a coherent story. What sets films by Bava, Argento, or Fulci off is the willingness to go all in on the aesthetics and overwhelm the viewer with imagery such that we almost forget there is a plot. This film doesn’t go far enough—there’s actually very little violence, and the most violent scene (of an attempted rape) comes off as too serious to be particularly enjoyable. The overlapping of reality and psychological horror is well done, but it could be emphasized more. I wanted more hallucinatory images in a film about hallucinations.

The Perfume of the Lady in Black is available to stream on Amazon Prime.

Child’s Play (1988)

Child’s Play (1988)

childs-play

Every year for my Halloween viewing, I attempt to fill some gaps in my horror knowledge. Is there a horror classic I have not seen? Is there an essential film I’ve avoided? I generally have a problem with horror franchises, often because the first film is often not the best and could easily be ignored, but I’m a completist and must watch it. Which is how I came so late to Child’s Play, Don Mancini and Tom Holland’s introduction to the Chucky franchise, about a doll possessed by the spirit of a serial killer.

Child’s Play opens with the death of Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif), a serial killer and black magic aficionado working on the South Side of Chicago. After being shot by police officer Mike Norris (Chris Sarandon), Ray survives just long enough to perform a ritual and commit his soul to a “Good Guy” doll. Not long after, Karen Barclay (Catherine Hicks), buys the doll as a birthday for her son Andy (Alex Vincent), who is obsessed with the Good Guy television show. Andy becomes convinced that “Chucky” is talking to him and, eventually, that Chucky is actually doing bad things, like committing pushing babysitters out windows. As the bodies pile up, Karen and Detective Norris must discover just what is going on, whether Andy has lost his mind or if Chucky really is responsible for the mayhem.

Like many slashers of the same type, Chucky the character has become better known than the film that spawned him, thanks to the development of the tongue-in-cheek humor only nascent in the original. But Child’s Play is good fun for what it is, thanks largely to the malevolent humor of Brad Dourif (vocally, at least) in the lead. The audience knows that Chucky is evil, but there’s a degree of glee to be had in watching what’s basically a Cabbage Patch doll run amok with a butcher knife, scrambling in and out of windows, threatening small children, attacking and biting grown men. There’s less blood here than one might expect, and the film does better with its tension up to Chucky’s attacks, which become overly comedic once they happen.

Child’s Play exploits a number of quintessential 80s horror tropes, setting itself in the slums and upper middle class neighborhoods of Chicago, playing with Western configurations of voodoo and Satanism, and wrapping it all up in a different kind of villain to undercut the whole idea of an “evil child” so popular in the 70s and 80s. Andy is an initially annoying little boy who becomes more sympathetic as the film goes on – he knows that Chucky is bad, but no one will believe that his doll is a walking, talking monster. Catherine Hicks and Chris Sarandon are likable as the adult leads facing a very bizarre and inherently funny situation. The scene where Chucky finally convinces Detective Norris that Andy’s not making it up is a combination of terrifying and hilarious, not least because it’s a grown man fighting off a child’s toy who keeps trying to stab him.

If Child’s Play is still very much a product of its time – this was the era when people were literally stomping each other to get Cabbage Patch Kids – it’s an enjoyable product of its time. Chucky will return again and again, most recently in Cult of Chucky, to wreak havoc on unsuspecting victims who would never believe that a little doll could be so nasty. And for that, we have Child’s Play to thank.

The House of the Devil (2009)

The House of the Devil (2009)

The 80s are a favorite period for many horror fans, producing as they did films as diverse and disturbing as A Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser, Child’s Play, and a whole range of brutal slasher films that indulged backlash male fears and, occasionally, a few feminist ones as well. The contemporary horror fan’s obsession with the 80s has some darkness to it as well, given the obsession with weaponized maniacs murdering bare-breasted women and prizing the Final Girl as the ultimate virginal fantasy. But there are times when 80s nostalgia produces something really unique, as is the case with Ti West’s The House of the Devil, a deliberate throwback to the decade that immerses its viewer in the chills and thrills of slow-burn violence.

Jocelin Donahue is Samantha, a sophomore at an upstate college who longs to move into a proper apartment. When she spots a flyer asking for a babysitter, she answers it, and heads out to a lonely house far from campus on the night of a full lunar eclipse. There she meets Mr. Ulman (Tom Noonan) and his wife (Mary Woronov), and learns that there are no children to look after – the couple just want someone to stay in the house for the evening in order to keep an eye on Mr. Ulman’s mother, a bed-bound old woman asleep upstairs. The whole setup is a bit creepy, but Samantha needs the money and agrees.

We all know where this is going, but The House of the Devil takes its sweet time in getting there. The opening act leading up to the arrival at the house takes up a good bit of runtime, but somehow the slow burn isn’t boring. This is a leisurely film that knows how to develop the tension, rather than getting straight to the violence. And that’s the film’s strength – rather than rushing into what’s ultimately a sparse and somewhat predictable narrative, there’s an inherent enjoyment of the development of the fear, as the audience waits for the killer, the cult, the ghost, or goblin to come into frame. Some viewers who demand more gore and less tension might find it dull, but the time that West takes to develop his story is time well-spent. There are momentary bursts of violence separated by long sections of Samantha ordering pizza, turning on the TV, investigating weird noises coming from the upstairs. As the narrative unfolds at its own pace, the viewer can only sit back and watch, secure in the knowledge that something is going to happen, held in thrall by not knowing when.

Donahue is a big part of what makes The House of the Devil work. She’s a throwback to the Final Girls of the 1980s, recalling Jamie Lee Curtis or Dee Wallace (who has a bit part as a landlady at the beginning of the film), innocent without being weak or even particularly naïve. Although the situation is creepy, the film takes care to develop reasons for staying at the house that are believable and that therefore don’t prompt the audience to dismiss her as stupid, or the film for concocting excuses to get to the scary bits. Given that Donahue has to spend most of her onscreen time alone, it’s a testament to her presence that The House of the Devil never bores, and that the audience can care about her character fairly quickly.

The House of the Devil won’t be for everyone. It’s very much an 80s film, even if made in 2009, with a self-seriousness that avoids any hint of the campy. As such, as it’s incredibly loving film, a movie that feels like an homage without attempting to be more knowing than the films it references, that tries and largely succeeds in approximating one of horror’s most famous periods. But it’s still slow, more interested in the creation of tension than in giving the viewer blood and guts. It works, thanks in no small measure to West’s use of old-school aesthetics in the creation of the house itself, and the occasional hints of what is actually going on just enough to the audience on their toes.

The House of the Devil is available to stream on Shudder.

The Devils (1971)

The Devils (1971)

Ken Russell’s The Devils is almost more notorious for its release history than it is for the film itself. It was rated X due to its violence and sexual content, banned in several countries, and never has seen a totally uncut release in any format. The rumors of its violence and sexuality seem to be more intense than the actual violence and sexuality contained in the film, especially exacerbated by the fact that it mostly involves priests and nuns and is photographed in the grotesque style that Russell became so well-known for. But beneath the controversy is a sharp, vicious commentary on religious and political fervor, a challenge to censorship and to the controls placed on sexuality by the powers that be, and an impassioned, introspective, and occasionally satirical investigation of the religious philosophy of the time period.

The film opens in Loudon, France, during the reign of Louis XIII, where Father Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed) has more or less taken over political control of the town following the death of its governor. Louis XIII (Graham Armitage) and Cardinal Richelieu (Christopher Logue) have agreed to begin destroying the fortifications of cities across France, ostensibly in an effort to prevent Protestant uprisings. Loudon is one of the last cities still standing with its fortifications, upheld by the power and popularity of Grandier. But Grandier has already fallen afoul of the local magistrate after impregnating Phillippe (Georgina Hale), the magistrate’s daughter, then abandoning her for the love of Madeleine (Gemma Jones). Meanwhile, in a nearby convent of Ursuline nuns, the abbess Sister Jeanne des Anges (Vanessa Redgrave) develops such lust for Grandier that she falls into jealousy when she learns he’s having a relationship with Madeleine. After Grandier declines to become the convent’s confessor, Sister Jeanne accuses the priest of demoniacally possessing her. When the rest of the nuns begin to fall prey to possession, the political and religious authorities unite to destroy Grandier.

As with pretty much any Ken Russell movie, the synopsis does not do justice to the combination of batshit insanity and vicious satire at the heart of this film. Russell’s imagery is mash of surrealism and anachronism, uniting a 1970s aesthetic of extremity with the undoubtedly bizarre nature of 17th Century France. But underneath it is a fascination with the forces, external and internal, centered on sexual expression and the repression of religion. The nuns are gripped by religious fervor and frustrated sexuality that erupts in mass hysteria after Sister Jeanne accuses Grandier of possessing them. The eruption feels less like women being crazy and more like a society that strictly controls sexual desire and expression finally breaking down under the weight of undirected sexual energy. The accusations of possession free the nuns from their repression and they are suddenly able to express all suppressed yearnings with the justification of demoniac possession. Orgies, nudity, perversion, fetishization, and the breakdown of the social order are the result of repressed needs, now deformed by strict religious and social requirements.

In the midst of the madness is an intelligent discussion about the nature of sex, desire, and religiosity. Grandier is far from innocent—he has impregnated one young woman and goes through a marriage ceremony with another—but he is no hypocrite. He claims that he is searching for God and meaning within his relationships to women, and there is a refreshing honesty in his behavior that bespeaks his kindness and his willingness to acknowledge himself as an imperfect sinner. But he also has that ability because he is a man and a priest allowed to exist in the outside world, not a cloistered nun or an aristocratic woman who must ultimately either deny sexuality, or pay the price for lust. Grandier’s tragedy is a fait accompli—he has come into conflict with Richelieu for standing up against the destruction of the walls of Loudon; he has defied both political and religious authority and shown himself to be too powerful for the powers that be. His destruction is necessary, and the Church uses the rapture of the nuns to justify it.

The Devils is often billed as a horror film, and there are certainly horrific elements to it, with a vague hint of the supernatural and more than a vague use of religious violence to achieve political ends. Russell’s style in itself gives the film a nightmarish quality, a sense that we are watching things that are larger, wilder than real life. All the actors are used brilliantly, but Reed and Redgrave display their considerable talents to the extreme. Redgrave finds sympathy and pathos in a nun warped by her society and her religion; Reed runs the gamut of emotions, but it is in Grandier’s quietest and most introspective moments that he finds the greatest depth and meaning. For all its notoriety, The Devils is an oddly serious and introspective film, grappling with deeper theological concepts than it is perhaps given credit for, in the midst of its apparent madness.

The Devils is available to stream on FilmStruck.

Hell House LLC (2015)

Hell House LLC (2015)

Found footage is a difficult subgenre to do right – at its best, it brings the viewer into a personal relationship with the horror, but when it’s bad, it becomes as boring and predictable as watching someone else’s home movies. Paranormal Activity, Ghostwatch, The Blair Witch Project, The Curse…these succeed in part because they establish a convincing framing narrative that (mostly) explains the constant presence of cameras, even past the point where most sane people would put them down. Contemporary filmmaking is even better suited to found footage horror than previous generations, given the ubiquity of smart phone cameras, CCTV, and automatic video uploads to YouTube and Facebook. But because viewers are more likely to question what a film shows them as “truth,” it’s a real pleasure to come across Hell House LLC, an entry into the found footage genre that does a great job at bringing the scares.

Hell House LLC tells the story of a group of New Yorkers who leave the city to head upstate (well, Rockland County) to create a haunted house venue at an abandoned hotel in Abaddon, New York. The framing narrative here involves a documentary film crew investigating what happened at the “Hell House” venue, when several tourists and workers were killed during the first tour of the Halloween season. The events are shrouded in mystery – the town, the police, and the officials won’t talk about what happened, and only one journalist actually got inside the hotel after the deaths. When Sara, one of the creators of Hell House, contacts the documentarians to tell her side of the story, she offers  footage taken by Hell House’s cameraman Paul, who documented the construction of Hell House for use on their website. This footage makes up the bulk of the narrative, only occasionally switching back to interviews with journalists, officials, and Sara herself.

The cleverness of the framing narrative goes beyond the documentary crew—early on, the viewer is shown a YouTube video uploaded by one of the tourists that documents the sudden breakdown of the Hell House tour. The later Hell House footage provides a lead up to the video, overlapping and then explaining, at least in part, what we see on the screen. The result constructs a visual mystery – how do we get from this abandoned hotel to the Hell House seen at the start? Who is going to survive? – that the film very gradually reveals. The film mostly avoids the use of the shaky camera as a mode of transferring horror or confusion to the viewer. While there are the usual tropes of heavy breathing, night-vision modes, and the camera being manipulated, dropped, and angled away from the horror, these are kept to a minimum prior to the denouement.

The most effective section of Hell House LLC is the simultaneous construction of the friendships among the crew, and the slow ramping up of tension that finally snaps during the final night. Alex, the founder of the Hell House concept, insists on carrying on in the haunted house construction, even when it becomes clear that there is something terribly wrong at the hotel. The film overlaps the “fake” scares of the haunted house with the “real” figures of the hotel, mixing together dummies, flashing lights, creepy noises, and the actual spirits that inhabit the hotel. It becomes difficult for either the viewer or the people within the film to decide what is a fake scare constructed for the haunted house and what is a “real” ghost. This also provides a meta-narrational commentary on the film itself – we are watching a fake documentary about the fake creation of a haunted house venue in a fake hotel, which asks the question about what the “real” scares are, and what are just the “fake” ones created by the characters. The effectiveness of the film depends on the viewer not always being certain what is really scary and what isn’t…or what’s supposed to be. It’s a smart little quirk thrown into the found footage concept, and for the most part works very well.

Hell House LLC also offers a very basic background on the haunting of the hotel and why the events of the evening have been concealed, giving just enough information to explain and tantalize, but not enough for the revelations of the hotel’s background to become silly. It’s an intelligent move—rather than attempting to offer clear explanations for the events, the film lets the footage do the exposition for itself, making excellent use of vague figures in the background, strange noises in the night, and one haunting piano riff that the viewer will hear in their nightmares.

Hell House LLC is part of a projected trilogy of films set in the Abaddon Hotel (more on that later in the month), and so sets itself up for a sequel while also rounding off the narrative within an hour and a half. While not all of its scares work perfectly, it’s a damn fine piece of found footage horror. It also has a creepy clown that puts Pennywise to shame

Hell House LLC is available to stream on Shudder.

Black KkKlansman (2018)

Black KkKlansman (2018)

With the release of Black KkKlansman, Spike Lee once again steps into his rightful place as a maker of bluntly provocative (and, incidentally, hilarious) films about race in America. The film follows the true story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), one of the first black police officers in Colorado Springs. Apparently on whim, Stallworth calls an advertised number for information on the KKK, posing as a white supremacist, and strikes up a rapport with the local chapter president Walter Breachway (Ryan Eggold). Stallworth eventually infiltrates the local chapter with the help of his sergeant and white detective Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), who acts as Stallworth in face to face meetings, eventually working his way all the way up to conversations with David Duke (Topher Grace) himself.

As with this year’s Sorry to Bother You, Black KkKlansman is very much about the nature of voice and the formation of identity out of voice. Ron speaks for himself – or rather, the white man he’s pretending to be – over the phone, while Flip has to speak for him in person. In one telling exchange, Ron and the police chief argue over Flip’s ability to sound like him, the chief implying that Ron’s voice must be far different from Flip’s simply because of his race. “Some speak the King’s English, some speak jive, and I happen to be fluent in both,” says Ron. But as a character, he’s not entirely comfortable in either milieu – he has difficulty matching the proper rhetoric in an initial meeting with a black student organization, and he ultimately has to teach Flip to sound more like him. The layers are multitudinous – Ron is performing as a white man, but he’s using his own voice; Flip, a white man, has to sound like a black man speaking “white.” Those separations of identity and how voice and identity coalesce is fundamental to the film – David Duke (Topher Grace) claims that he can tell simply by someone’s speech whether they are black or white. Ron is both cop and black man; not a “pig,” as his girlfriend Patrice (Laura Harrier) claims, but a cop, and also uncomfortable in his treatment at the hands of other white cops. Flip’s identity, in turn, is split between performing as Ron with the KKK, a world where he’s treated as a friend and brother, his identity as a Jewish man (which, until the job, he claims never formed much of an identity), and his personal, apparently non-racist beliefs.

Black KkKlansman situates itself where the real story occurred – in 1970s Colorado Springs. So often stories about racism in America occur either in inner cities or in the deep South; here, to a 2018 audience, we have a story in the “real America” of the Midwest, in a relatively safe liberal enclave, in which the KKK are the smiling next door neighbors. This is most clearly emphasized in the form of Connie Kendrickson (Ashlie Atkinson), the wife of a KKK member and a Midwest homemaker who becomes instrumental in the film’s final act. The result speaks clearly to white liberal America, that the people beneath the hoods are not others in some distant or backward past, but our friendly, innocuous neighbors.

Lee employs a blunt arc under which he conceals layers of characterization and complexity, drawing very clear parallels between the 1970s narrative and America in 2018. And the references he makes are not ahistorical – “America First” was indeed a rallying cry of white supremacists, and it has also been employed by Trump. David Duke himself has been a recent feature in American politics, endorsing Trump’s candidacy and speaking openly about the rise of white supremacy during the Nazi march in Charlottesville. The parallels between the contemporary moment and the events of the film are made explicit – a chilling speech by Ron’s sergeant hammers this home – but more than that, this is about the development of white supremacy in America. Posters of Richard Nixon are on the walls of a clubhouse during a KKK rally, a brief reminder that Nixon was the one to institute the “Southern strategy” and solidly identifying the formation of the modern GOP with support from white supremacists. David Duke wanted to make the KKK a viable political entity, and has done just that, normalizing that which should be abhorrent.

As with many of Lee’s works, media is as culpable in its representation of race as people themselves.  The movie opens with a sweeping Technicolor shot as a Confederate flag waves above fallen soldiers, and a pivotal scene includes the KKK chapter watching, and cheering on, Birth of a Nation, a film credited with giving new life to the KKK. David Duke references Gone with the Wind as support for his beliefs, and Ron and Patrice discuss the depiction of black people as cops and pimps in films like Shaft and Superfly. Blaxsploitation references abound in camera techniques and music. The importance of cinema and how it represents race and reinforces or comments on racial prejudice runs throughout the film, reminding us that film does indeed have power to reignite racial hatreds, and provide inspiration for revolution. Lee is giving his audience a film history lesson in American racism, in white supremacy and racial conflict, in the Black Panthers, and in the responsibility of media itself in the portrayal of both black people and the KKK.

Black KkKlansman speaks to people who already agree with its central point, which is both its strength and its weakness. It plays like a call to arms, to stand up against racism not in the abstract past but in the here and now, by emphasizing just how dangerous the KKK truly are. The white police officers and even Ron himself initially downplay the danger the KKK poses – Flip dismisses them at first as grandstanders, hicks with nothing better to do. But as the film proceeds, we see the reality of the “organization,” in the charismatic and horrifying presence of David Duke, in the KKK’s willingness to use violence and intimidation to achieve their ends, and in their complexities of racial biases, theories, and hatreds. “They aren’t The Beverly Hillbillies,” says Flip after his first meeting with the local Klan. The film runs the gamut, showing us both the stupid “hicks” and the charming, “respectable” men like Duke and the country club set. It even establishes some Klan members as apparently “normal” men, all of them with regular jobs, some of them military. The film represents the KKK as being more than just a bunch rednecks playing dress-up. They are a group of people hysterically dedicated to subjugating and then eradicating everyone they deem of a “lesser race” (here, the film avoids making this a solely black/white issue, and spends some time on depicting the Klan’s hatred of pretty much everyone not of white European descent).

Lee employs all of his considerable skill and filmmaking prowess, developing a narrative that is at once blunt and nuanced, horrifying and funny in the most unexpected ways. It shows the soul-eating nature of racism without asking us to sympathize with racists. There’s little joy to be found among the members of the Klan, all of whom seem to spend most of their free time talking about how much they hate everyone else. But Black KkKlansman pulls no punches, at one point cutting between a Klan inauguration celebration and the black student union listening to a talk by an elderly man who witnessed a friend mutilated, lynched, and burned. The images of the lynching are juxtaposed with the seething hatred of the Klan in its faux Christian pomp and circumstance, bringing home the reality of violence, the reality of hatred, the deep-seated racial divisions at the heart of America. It reminds us that, for all that they might seem ridiculous, the Klan is real and powerful and violent, a true danger, a true force for evil. And beneath those hoods are men and women that we stand next to in the grocery store, and that now sit in the White House.

Black KkKlansman opens nationwide today.

The Firemen’s Ball (1967)

The Firemen’s Ball (1967)

Milos Forman’s bizarre political comedy The Firemen’s Ball is as well-known for the controversy surrounding its release in 1967 as it is for its content. But the content shouldn’t be ignored—The Firemen’s Ball is a brilliant film, its understated comedy inherent in the events as a group of firemen throw a ball in their small town, where they plan to award their former chairman a ceremonial axe.

The Firemen’s Ball is about bureaucracy run amok, as the governing committee are unable to make such simple choices as what girls to put in a beauty contest or how to run a lottery without resorting to roundabout discussions and payola from concerned mothers, fathers, and boyfriends. As “the people” get drunker and rowdier, the committee breaks down—those tasked with guarding the lottery watch as more items disappear, while the discussions over who is to present what and when comes nearer to fisticuffs. The whole thing culminates in a ridiculous attempt at having a beauty contest in which all the contestants refuse to go onstage.

This is absurdism at its finest. The film is shot through with the darkest of Czech humor—everyone, from the committee to the people to the landscape itself is the butt of a joke, representative of petty rivalries, drunken idiocy, and smug leadership that cannot lead. Forman’s roaming camera captures faces young and old as they slowly devolve into drunkenness and competition, the disgust of young women for the group of old men trying to figure out how to judge their beauty, the palpable sense of the absurd. While the film never explicitly attacks the Communist party, it is self-evidently a condemnation of the bureaucracy, corruption, and squabbling within Czechoslovakia at the time.

The Firemen’s Ball plays like a documentary, with the camera catching the apparently unguarded moments of the crowd. Many of the actors are non-professional (most of the firemen are played by actual firemen from the town), and the humor of the film lies in even its extremity being believable—none of the slapstick elements are overplayed or come off as merely comic vignettes. As the ball breaks down into absurdity and chaos (including an actual fire), the underlying commentary lies in the ineptitude of the firemen to accomplish even the smallest tasks. The fact that it doesn’t purport to be a pure allegory (of Communism, of Czechoslovakia) means that the film extends itself to universality—it encompasses a petit bourgeois smugness and bureaucratic nonsense that would say as much about the United States or Soviet Russia as it does about Czechoslovakia.

After the release of The Firemen’s Ball, Forman left Czechoslovakia to discuss financing the film, and the Soviets invaded. The film was “banned forever,” Forman chose to remain outside the country, and The Firemen’s Ball was eventually nominated for a Best Foreign Language Oscar. With a scant running time of barely more than an hour, it stands up as one of the finest, funniest political allegories ever filmed and a seminal event in the Czech New Wave.

The Firemen’s Ball is available to stream on FilmStruck.