Worst-Ever Closeup Of Sigourney Weaver In Any Alien Movie ("Aliens", 1986) (video)

 

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Worst-Ever Closeup Of Sigourney Weaver In Any Alien Movie ("Aliens", 1986) (video)

LIFE OF SIGNIFICANT SOIL -- Movie Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 6/27/17

 

If you took GROUNDHOG DAY, removed the comedy, and replaced Bill Murray with a young couple whose relationship is on its last legs and in need of some serious revising, you'd have something like the romantic drama LIFE OF SIGNIFICANT SOIL (2016).

Charlotte Bydwell is Addison, an aspiring dancer whose aspirations have dissolved into the malaise that is her relationship with Conor (Alexis Mouyiaris), an irresponsible, self-centered manchild who takes her for granted.

Con wants the stability of his life with Add, while maintaining a steady sex life with Jackie (Anna Jack), a ditzy blonde who lives in the apartment downstairs and has a sad unrequited love for him.

The GROUNDHOG DAY premise kicks in when Con and Add start reliving the same day over and over again, beginning with their air-conditioner conking out every morning and Add finding out, via a home testing kit, that she's pregnant. 

Eventually they catch on to what's happening--even, in one of the more interesting scenes, visiting a doctor to find out if there's some medical cause--and, after accepting it as a fact, discover it to both accentuate the things that are wrong between them and also give them a chance to work them out.

Unfortunately, Con's irresponsibility and Add's dissatisfaction present seemingly insurmountable obstacles for their continued coexistence, with Add repeatedly trying to leave him while he begs her to stay. 

Regardless of what they do, however--including Add getting an illicit abortion and then waking up later to find Con missing and presumed in bed with Jackie again--everything resets itself in the morning (including her pregnancy) and the same day must be played out yet again with varying results.

 

Writer/director Michael Irish, in his feature debut, gives the direction and photography a sort of artsy hand-held casualness that fits the low-key material.  LIFE OF SIGNIFICANT SOIL isn't a comedy, although it has its sadly amusing aspects, nor does it veer into heavy drama, though sadly dramatic it often is. 

Instead, there's a sort of resigned existentialism and wistfully meta melancholy running through the story, during which the characters engage in much introspection and contemplation of their lot in life.  Add, especially, yearns for something more, yet is continually reticent to leave the dependant Con and venture into the unknown. 

All of this must sound like chick-flick hell to some, yet LIFE OF SIGNIFICANT SOIL is surprisingly watchable and engaging if you settle into it just right.  While the ending doesn't exactly blow the doors off the place, it's just oddly effective enough to leave me a bit wistful and contemplative myself.

LIFE OF SIGNIFICANT SOIL -- Movie Review by Porfle

SAVING BANKSY -- DVD Review by Porfle

An interesting thing about documentaries is that you can like a documentary and think it's a good one even if you don't buy its message.  Which is the exactly the case with me and SAVING BANKSY (Candy Factory Films, 2017).  I like it and I think it's really good, but I think the message it's trying to convey is pretty much a load of hooey.

Not that the film is too painfully one-sided in its portrayal of street art/graffiti as sort of a people's art form and Banksy, the mysterious, unknown maestro who reigns as its most celebrated purveyor, as a noble folk hero.  Yes, the cause is presented in a positive light and we're persuaded to sympathize with it, but the actual preaching is mostly left up to the other street artists who are interviewed and by various self-serving quotes attributed to Banksy himself.

These other artists discuss their medium and its messages for awhile, giving the uninitiated a crash course in the subject and laying the groundwork for the main gist of the film which is whether or not Banksy's work should be left to fade away as intended, be painted over by building owners or other "taggers", or somehow be preserved by art collectors and/or preservationists either for display to the public or sale to wealthy collectors.

The latter, of course, goes against the anti-establishment, anti-elitism, anti-capitalism spirit in which the art is created in the first place.  So amidst much handwringing by Banksy's peers we're presented the tale of an earnest art collector who removes a Banksy piece board by board from the side of a building in San Francisco so that it can be displayed free-of-charge to the public, and a somewhat mercenary art dealer who wants to buy it for half a million dollars so that he can make a profit from it.

For the other street artists, both prospects are an anathema.  They seem to fancy themselves as noble renegades, like comic book nerds playing superhero--the Spirit with a brush, the Phantom with a spray can, the Batman with a ladder and some stencils--but with enough artistic cred to have much of the public buy into the image. 

As for me, I say that if your canvas consists of public or private property then you don't have much of a say about the eventual fate of your work.  Nobody's "stealing" it since it doesn't physically belong to the artist anyway. 

 

Besides, if you leave something lying around in the street, or hanging on a wall somewhere--including your precious rebel artworks which, to be frank, amount to vandalism anyway--you have only yourself to blame if someone makes off with it to hang in a gallery or sell to the highest bidder.

Another point to consider is the fact that, during the time this documentary was filmed, there was a city ordinance in San Francisco that made the building owner responsible for eliminating any such "art" on their buildings under penalty of a fine--taking the matter into a whole new area of responsibility and consequence apart from whatever artistic concerns there may be, and underlining the fact that such graffiti qualifies as a public nuisance.

But why do they do it in the first place? According to such street artists as Banksy friend Ben Eine (among several others interviewed) it's for the adrenaline rush, the excitement of doing something illegal, and the desire to make political and social statements. 

Yet by virtue of their chosen medium they're hardly in a position to complain about how their illicit works end up, or if indeed whether their intended impermanence is thwarted by those seeking to preserve them.

It's interesting to hear these taggers complaining about Banksy's art itself being tagged, "defaced" as it were, as though the lower class of upstart graffiti artists have the nerve to disrespect the upper class of graffiti artists.

And of course, the earnest art collectors come under criticism for being so uncool as to want to preserve Banksy's art for others to appreciate over time rather than grooving over the profundity of how fleeting it is.

As for Banksy himself, he's clearly a talented artist with a wicked sense of humor, yet no more so, in my view, than a clip-art illustrator with an attitude. 

What sets his work apart from any other observational satirist is simply where, how, and under what conditions he chooses to display his work--the fact that it's illegal, and, yes, vandalism, is just as much a part of whatever statement he's making as the content itself.

The documentary, directed by Colin M. Day, is brisk, lean, concise, challenging, and very watchable regardless of one's view on the subject.  Best of all, it successfully presents both sides of it in a way that invites passionate response, as I myself have expressed.  Someone with an opposing viewpoint would, I'm sure, be just as inspired by this film to express theirs. 

Meanwhile, Banksy has gotten just what he wanted out of the whole thing--notoriety, disruption of the status quo, attention to his message, and controversy about things like art vs. commerce.

Rather than any kind of folk hero, as many choose to see him, he strikes me as a very industrious gadfly--perhaps even a mentally-deranged one, striving to satisfy some driving obsession that goes beyond politics or mere social commentary.  

Tech Specs
Color
69 minutes
Stereo
Aspect Ratio 1:77
Bonus: Behind-the-scenes featurette (17 min.)
Reversible cover art
SavingBanksy.com

SAVING BANKSY -- DVD Review by Porfle

GIRL IN WOODS -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 5/22/16

 

It looks like it's going to be one of those "predicament" stories like THE REEF or OPEN WATER, and more specifically like another go at Stephen King's "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" but with a grown-up girl lost in the woods this time instead of a little one.

But it isn't.  Hoo boy, is it not.

The aptly-titled GIRL IN WOODS (Candy Factory Films, 2016) is about Grace (Juliet Reeves, AUTOMATON TRANSFUSION, LAY THE FAVORITE), who probably doesn't even know who Tom Gordon is and wouldn't be out there in the first place if her boyfriend Jim (Reeves' real-life husband Jeremy London, MALLRATS, GODS AND GENERALS) hadn't invited her to his secluded cabin to pop the question.

The morning after their engagement Jim takes Grace on a hike deep into the woods and then, just when she's good and lost, manages to shoot himself in the head.  This puts Grace in an awkward position, one from which it will take the rest of the movie for her to extricate herself.  But does therein lie the entire plot?

Hardly.  GIRL IN WOODS is in no way your usual predicament thriller for one simple reason: Grace is a little nuts.  At first I thought there was something a tad "off" about Juliet Reeves' performance, because she was playing Grace in a strangely disaffected manner, as though the character weren't "all there." 

Then I gradually realized that Grace ISN'T all there. In fact, she's so far from "there" that in no time, the situation in which she finds herself quickly becomes a descent into one level of madness after another, with flashbacks from her troubled childhood (horrific images of Daddy committing suicide and boogeymen invading her bedroom at night) constantly assailing her along with a series of nightmarish hallucinations. 

This gives the story a whole new dimension beyond the usual survival theme, with Grace's ideas for survival proving not only unconventional but downright shocking. The story takes place not just in the woods but also largely in the dark depths of her warped mind, where the past keeps playing itself out in increasingly disturbing ways.

To make things worse, two distinct sides of her personality--the rational and the feral--begin to appear to her as separate entities (giving Reeves a chance to really prove her acting talent) and battle over whether or not she'll remain civilized or surrender to utter savagery. 

Writer-director Jeremy Benson keeps it all well-paced and scintillating enough to maintain our avid interest right up to the fadeout (stick around through the end credits for the newspaper headlines) with only a few slightly draggy spots here and there.  Mainly he does a fine job with a story that takes place in a forest and in the mind of a character who is usually alone on the screen.

Grace does get "visits" from a loving grandfather (John Still) who beckons her to join him (he's dead, by the way) and from her parents (Lee Perkins as "Dad" still sports his suicidal head shot).  The lovely Charisma Carpenter (THE EXPENDABLES, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer") is memorable as "Momma", whom we come to feel may not have been the most healthy influence on little Grace (Shaun Benson). 

Will Grace survive, and if so, what will be left of her?  Things don't totally come together until near the end, when all the stuff we're not supposed to know yet starts falling into place.  Then the plot twists come one after another and mess with your expectations in all sorts of ways, and GIRL IN WOODS turns out to be one of those intensely involving movies that make your imagination feel like it just had a full-body massage.

GIRL IN WOODS -- Movie Review by Porfle

BENDER -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 7/23/17

 

You might think a Western about America's first family of serial killers would be a hootin' and hollerin' free-for-all of frontier gore, played as much for laughs as for queasy thrills.

But first-time director and co-writer John Alexander had a more interesting vision for the fact-based BENDER (2016, Candy Factory Films), making it look like a series of stark Matthew Brady photographs brought to solemn, melancholy life with muted colors and even more muted mental and emotional turmoil seething below the surface of its severely odd characters.

The Kansas prairie of 1873 seems endless and capable of swallowing up the unwary traveller.  This appears to have happened to several patients and acquaintances of Dr. York (Jon Monastero), who sets out in search for them one day and ends up at the tiny Bender home in the middle of nowhere. 

While Alexander directs all his actors to speak with a stiff formality that makes them seem odd to begin with, there's something exceedingly wrong about the Benders despite their initial pretense of civility. 

Ma (Leslie Woodies) draws Dr. York in with the promise of a meal, but it's daughter Kate (Nicole Jellen), a strange, almost supernatural girl (she claims to be a "healer" and a "seer"), who intrigues the mild-mannered doctor with her ethereal beauty and knowing, almost seductive demeanor.

Kate's taciturn little brother is a peculiar enough little sprout himself, though nothing compared to the old man--Pa Bender is veteran actor James Karen (RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD) at his most gloriously unpleasant, giving a whole new meaning to the word "grizzled." It's one of his best roles ever, and he's obviously having a ball with it.

What happens next is shocking, with an otherwise normal scenario taking an abrupt turn into the utterly demented.  And still, BENDER doesn't descend into the expected exploitation fare, keeping its restrained Old West ambience in uneasy juxtaposition to the horrors occurring beyond the knowledge of an inquisitive sheriff (Buck Taylor playing another of his wonderfully authentic Western characters) and a concerned town mayor (Bruce Davison, WILLARD, DISPLACEMENT).

Even when a doozy of a plot twist rears its head late in the story, things continue along a slow, deliberate course that unhurriedly plays itself out until a curiously understated but satisfying ending caps the tale off in suitably morbid fashion.

The overall mood is a richly evocative sort of prairie Gothic with almost a hint of Lovecraft adding a dark undercurrent to the frontier trappings.  Even the scenes set in a nearby town, where longtime fave Linda Purl (MAID OF HONOR) plays one of Dr. York's clinging patients, betray a general sense of unease and emotional malady among its wary denizens.

Absorbing and ultimately rewarding for the patient viewer, the stylishly-photographed BENDER takes its familiar, atmospheric Old West setting and infuses it with the perverse and strange, showing us what goes on behind the closed doors of the "Little Abattoir on the Prairie." 


Tech Specs
Type: DVD/Digital/HD
Running time: 75 min.
Rating: N/A
Color
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audio: 5.1 surround
Closed captioned
Street date: Aug. 1, 2017

BENDER -- DVD Review by Porfle