Top 5 Indies

Today a new Blair Witch film opens. I know I never asked for a sequel, but the first The Blair Witch Project was such a huge sensation when it came out in 1999, I guess it was inevitable. Not only was Blair Witch one of the most successful indie films ever made, it popularized the "found footage" film style. Often unknown actors perform into a handheld camera, creating a modern verite feel that brings a sense of reality to everything from horror, to sci-fi, to comedy.

I'm not a fan. These movies usually make me seasick- and the sound design is so "real" I have to pull out my ear horn and listen really hard to figure out what is going on. But my opinion aside, Blair Witch gave a boost to the indie scene that is undeniable.


Indie films have always had an influence on mainstream films, so here are my picks for Top 5 Indie Films:

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

George Romero is the father of the modern zombie movie. No, really. He is.

With his 1968 horror classic Night of the Living Dead, Romero popularized the idea of zombies being dead cadavers that rise from the grave and stalk living humans for their flesh. Before this film, there were zombie movies- as early as White Zombie (1932), but the zombies tended to be the product of Caribbean voodoo. Witch doctors could turn someone into a mindless zombie who would do their master's evil bidding.

There are definitely variations on this theme- for instance aliens raise the dead to try and take over the world (or at least as much of Southern California as Tor Johnson and Maila Nurmi can manage) in Ed Wood's "worst movie ever" classic Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). But typically the zombies in movies were a product of an evil villain using otherworldly means to produce the terrifying- though slow-moving- undead.

What Romero does in NOLD that is so fascinating is that he turns the cause of zombie-ism from a personal to a social peril. In NOLD the dead rise en masse due to some sort of radioactive contamination. What's worse- is once someone has been bitten, they then become contaminated and transform into one of the flesh-eating creatures.

This contagion spreads quickly and soon your friends and neighbors (and in one horrifying scene your young daughter) are mindlessly turning against you. As the group of survivors that we are following cower in a farmhouse, they listen to the radio news reporting mass murder and cannibalism, the reanimated horde outside the door threatening to break-in and devour them. The only hope is of a military intervention with enough firepower to mow down this constantly advancing inhuman swarm.

It doesn't take a brilliant sociologist to see the fears of the 1960's in this movie. The Cold War; the nuclear bomb; the social upheaval of the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Liberation, and the Sexual Revolution- all of these cultural terrors are rolled-up into the seemingly unstoppable wave of chaos- an image of our culture literally devouring itself.

Of particular interest is Romero's choice of leading man Ben- African American actor Duane Jones. In a house full of white people, Ben is the only one who seems to know what to do and to have the courage to do it. It was a bold step forward for Black roles- nihilistic ending notwithstanding.

NOLD would go on to make beaucoup box office- unheard of at the time for a movie made outside of the studios and would spawn a host of movies and now television shows. So you can thank or blame George Romero for that.






Pink Flamingos (1972)

Everyone's favorite Pope of Trash John Waters was only 26 when he made the movie that would bring him to national attention. Before Pink Flamingos, Waters made wild shorts and one full length feature with his crew of Baltimore actors, drag queens, and garden variety wack-a-doos. His work was popular on college campuses and at underground screenings, but nothing could prepare the world for the popularity of the pure filth that was Pink Flamingos.

Babs Johnson (Divine being divine) is proud to be the filthiest woman alive, so when fashionable couple Connie and Raymond Marble (David Lochary and Mink Stole) challenge her by sending her a turd in a box- it's game on. The laundry list of mind-boggling images is without peer in film history:

Babs' son Crackers (Danny Mills) having sex with a woman and a chicken, Raymond flashing innocent victims in the park with a sausage tied to his sausage, a literal lipsynching asshole, Babs licking the Marbles' living room furniture so it will physically reject them all while making it with her son, and of course there is the famous dog-shit eating scene that ends the picture.

Waters loves to poke fun at the rules of our world. This movie is just one long game of cultural chicken. Waters wants to see how far he can push our limits before we- what? Get up and leave? Throw our popcorn at the screen? Ban his film? Or tell our friends all about the disgusting movie we just saw so they will go see it? Plenty of people were turned-off, but the film developed a cult following that has only grown over the years.

Waters is unique in that his culture-poking is all in good fun- clothed in cheap suburban glamour and kitsch. He doesn't seek to change cinema- he just wants to be allowed to operate on the outskirts of the Hollywood system where he can film an old lady sitting in a playpen eating eggs and not have to worry about it winding up on the cutting room floor. As his later work gained more mainstream acceptance, his sharp wit seemed to lose some of its edge- probably a victim of the very system he had sought to avoid. But we will always have Pink Flamingos to remind us what can happen when a director gets to play by his own rule-less rules.

Mean Streets (1973)

Today Martin Scorsese is one of the lords of film directing, able to make big budget bio-pics starring Leonardo DiCaprio in between shining his Oscar (only one???) and re-watching The Red Shoes (1948). But in 1972 he was just another NYU graduate with a film camera and a Mean dream.

Scorsese's breakout film was based in part on childhood stories he'd heard and seen on the streets of Little Italy in New York City. Mean Streets stars then newcomers Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel as a pair of American-Italian boys who are looking to get ahead any way they can. Charlie's (Keitel) goal to get in with the mafia is hindered by his unhinged friend Johnny (De Niro) whose big mouth and big gambling debts are a constant source of trouble. The film becomes a crisis of faith between an inborn Italian Catholicism and friendship, and the allure of the American dream achieved at any cost. It is a theme Scorsese has returned to many times.

The look of Mean Streets is no frills- much like the dimly-lit world it depicts. Scorsese mainly shoots with a handheld camera that brings the audience right into the film's action.

The poolhall fight scene is stunning- the camera swirling around the room as people punch and fight- dizzying us as the punches dizzy the fighters while the Marvelettes croon "Please Mr. Postman." It's an extraordinary melding of filming technique and story- a case study that modern handheld directors should watch more closely. The characters spew profanity amidst their natural-sounding dialogue immersing us further in what feels like a real place full of real people.

While many people love Scorsese's Goodfellas (1990), I feel Mean Streets' smaller production values lend themselves better to the grubby world of mafia wannabes. These are little men striving for a greatness that only exists through the pain and victimization of others. Triumph is always achieved on the backs of others and never lasts. Today's mafia king is tomorrow's crime scene.

Ultimately released by Warner Brothers, Mean Streets would be one of the last "little" movies Scorsese would make.

Blood Simple (1984)

Joel and Ethan Coen were really excited to write and direct their first movie, Blood Simple. But how could they raise the money necessary to make it happen? They came up with the idea of shooting a short two-minute trailer-like version starring themselves that they could take from living room to living room convincing potential donors to back the finished film- raising money like a couple of directorial Girl Scouts. Luckily for us- their plan worked!

Blood Simple is the Texas take on the modern noir. Mr. Marty (the perfectly grumpy Dan Hedaya) suspects his wife Abby (Frances McDormand in the first of many Coen Brothers roles) of having an affair with one of his bartenders, Ray (John Getz) and hires a private detective (M. Emmett Walsh) to get the goods on them. This starts in motion a succession of fuck-ups, double-crosses, and murders that result in a bodycount and a particularly gruesome incident involving a knife and a window sill.

The Coen's cinematic style is on full display here with the lighting strategy of shadows and neon applied to the backrooms of cheap Texas bars and seedy motels instead of the streets and alleys of urban America. The characters in a Coen noir usually aren't very competent and frequently make situations worse than we could have ever imagined- showing us that crime doesn't pay- not necessarily because justice intervenes- but because it's almost impossible to do correctly.

While not as laugh-out-loud funny as their next film Raising Arizona (1987), Blood Simple contains the dark comic elements that the Coen Boys have become famous for and is a blueprint of sorts for what they would achieve later with their Oscar-winning hit Fargo (1996).

Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)

There is one scene in Todd Solondz's Sundance Award-winning dark comedy Welcome to the Dollhouse that has always stuck with me. Dorky outcast Dawn "Weiner Dog" Weiner (the perfectly cast Heather Matarazzo) walks into her seventh grade lunchroom with her lunchtray and looks around for somewhere to sit. She is rejected at every turn, ultimately having to sit alone before being accosted by a group of cheerleaders questioning whether she's a lesbian.

My seventh grade Harrison Junior High PTSD kicks in every time I see Dawn and I viscerally understand what this poor girl is going through.

It's not just teen a-holes that make Dawn's life a living hell. Her parents don't get her and don't understand why she can't be as adorable as her younger sister Missy- who takes every possible opportunity to torture Dawn while whirling around in a tutu. Dawn's "boyfriend" starts their relationship by threatening to rape her- and afterwards only meets with her in secret. She is so desperate for any kind of attention, she complies.

But her heart belongs to dream-y older rock band boy Steve Rodgers (Eric Mabius) who is so far out of her league that not even a prayer shrine devoted to him can change the outcome of this doomed crush.

Dollhouse is full of moments where the despair and the over-imaginative hopes of a teen who doesn't belong come all-too-accurately to life. But unlike some of the films of the teen fish-out-of-water genre, Solondz doesn't go for the "it gets better" ending. There is no "nerd-y but lovable girl gets the cool guy who is more than his looks" moment for Dawn.

She is trapped in a suburban life that she will never really be part of. Her only hope is of someday escaping to another town- but if my reaction to this film is any indication, you never really escape.



So those are my favorite Indie films. What are yours?

Happy Birthday NYFF!

In 1962 Lincoln Center President William Schuman had the bright idea to ask film critic Richard Roud to program a film festival to be held in Lincoln Center that would highlight the best of American and international films. And on September 10th, 1963 Roud opened the very first New York Film Festival with Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel. That unique choice would start a trend for the festival to highlight films that appealed to the intellectual film set, focusing on new filmmakers and international and Avant-Garde fare. Ever since, the festival has been a high-water mark for cinema that highlights the work of top directors like Polanski, Tarantino, Altman, Demme, Jarmusch, the Coen Brothers and- oh hell. The list is too long. Just check it out here.

To honor NYFF's 53rd birthday, here are my Top 5 New York Film Festival films:

The Battle of Algiers (1966) 

In 1966 the first NYFF Selection Committee chose Gillo Pontecorvo's Italian neorealism war classic The Battle of Algiers as the opening film. The film takes place during the Algerian War of Independence in the mid-50's. Unlike conventional war movies, Pontecorvo shot Battle in a quasi-documentary style in black-and-white with non-professional actors. So on the one hand- it looks like it's real. On the other, it's not. It's the perfect sensibility for a story about a group of freedom fighters (or terrorists) fighting against a country's government (or French imperialist occupiers) where there are villains and heroes- justice and injustice on all sides. The film becomes the uncertain truth of the war it is depicting. Ennio Morricone supplies the score- which is always a plus. Battle would go on to earn three Oscar noms including Best Foreign Film.

Badlands (1973) 

Terrence Malick closed the 1973 NYFF with his feature film debut, Badlands. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek are a 1950's Bonnie and Clyde who hightail it out of their South Dakota home after Kit (Sheen) plugs Holly's (Spacek) father. It's the start of a crime spree that leaves several dead and Holly questioning her newfound soulmate.

Malick's first film is as clear an indicator of his future work as you're likely to see. His grasp of shooting the unfettered horizons of nature and man's communing with and fighting within it are clear visual and thematic motifs that he uses time and time again in his works. The cinematography of the prairie is breathtaking- although none of the three primary photographers on the film would work with Malick again. Sheen and Spacek are electric in their youth and their naturalness.

As with all Malick scripts, the focus is not on dialogue. What is used is spare and feels improvised creating a sense of a moment-to-moment existence for these two screwed-up kids. Malick was a student of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) director Arthur Penn- so some have drawn comparisons between the two films. For me, Malick's brutal and beautiful Badlands emerges as a unique cinematic image from B&C's shadow.

Chariots of Fire (1981) 

For most of 1981 you couldn't go anywhere without hearing the strains of Vangelis' Oscar-winning Theme to Chariots of Fire and picture guys running on a beach in slow motion. It was odd that a British movie about track would grab ahold of the American zeitgeist- but for that one year, it did.

Chariots tells the true story of two British athletes- Eric Liddell (Ian Charleston) a Scottish Christian and Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) an English Jew who are competing for gold in the 1924 Paris Olympics. It's 1924, so being Jewish meant harassment and outright antisemitism in the halls of Cambridge. And for Liddell, being a devout Christian meant he couldn't run a race on the Lord's Day.

So Chariots in a very British way pits two of the world's religion against each other in a race that ultimately becomes a team effort for the good of the country. The film wound-up raking in four Oscars, including Best Picture, but director Hugh Hudson stumbled in his following films and never regained his Oscar stride.

Chariots is the quintessential British movie. Not a lot happens. The tensions and turmoils burble under the surface until they can no longer be contained underneath a proper stiff upper lip. But that's what makes British cinema so interesting- looking for what lies beneath. I would have liked for the beach running scene to be shot sans shirts so I would be able to look beneath their tops- but maybe that's just me.

Bullets Over Broadway (1994) 

The argument over what is the funniest Woody Allen film is more violent than the opening of  Saving Private Ryan. But if I can dodge the shrapnel of Bananas (1971) and Annie Hall (1977), my vote lands squarely with Bullets Over Broadway.

This centerpiece of the 1994 NYFF is an all-star laughfest about playwright David Shayne (John Cusack playing Woody Allen- without the obvious character twitches) whose new play gets a Broadway run and all the selling-out that goes along with it. Shayne in his attempts to make his play more commercial discovers that the botchagaloop bodyguard (Chazz Palminteri) of moll/actress Olive (Jennifer Tilly at her finest) is an undiscovered genius writer whose ideas are even better than his. What's a neurotic New York writer to do?

Allen has always been good at including lively characters other than himself in his work- but Bullets really showcases other performers spectacularly. Oscar-winning Dianne Wiest is an absolute revelation as revered Broadway actress Helen Sinclair whose catchphrase, "Don't speak!" can still be heard whenever one wishes to silence someone. Palminteri received an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the mobster with the heart of Eugene O'Neill as did Tilly for her ridiculously funny stage-struck floozy.

The rest of the cast is a who's-who of character actors hitting their marks brilliantly: Tracey Ullman, Jim Broadbent, Rob Reiner, Mary-Louise Parker, Jack Warden, and Annie Joe Edwards who practically steals her scenes as sassy maid Venus. Allen was nominated for Best Director and Best Screenplay proving that he is a comedy master who doesn't have to be in a movie to make it funny.

Bad Education (2004) 

NYFF loves Pedro Almodovar. His films have been chosen for the festival seven times. And why shouldn't they? Almodovar has become the defacto face of modern Spanish cinema with his unique character-driven mixture of comedy and drama.

Much like Almodovar's thriller The Skin I Live In (2011), Bad Education (which was the Festival's centerpiece film in 2004) relies on some pretty substantial plot twists, so I'll not go into the plot too extensively so as not to become an Almodovar spoiler. But needless to say, the film is an intense exploration of same-sex first-love, transgenders, the Catholic Church sex abuse, drug use, and how our art exposes secrets from the past.

Almodovar has always been interested in sexual expressions outside the norm and the secrets and masks that come with being an outsider. Bad Education takes these questions one step further by questioning how art and artists communicate truths. Is the script that Ignacio (Gael Garcia Bernal) gives to Enrique (Fele Martinez) a true story hidden behind a movie? What are the truths in Bad Education hidden behind an Almodovar movie?

Bernal is fantastic, with that dangerous sexiness that makes you question whether you should trust him or not. That being said, I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating paella.




What NYFF films are your favorites?

Early Christmas Present Ideas

The first person who puts Marilyn's JFK Birthday dress  under my Christmas tree gets more than a kiss under the mistletoe.

The auction is November 17th, so you have time to come up with the dough.

Could it be... Madame Satan?!

One of my favorite things in life is to discover a cinematic gem that makes me ooh and aah and forget the popcorn in my lap. And courtesy of BAM's MGM Musical Festival, I was seduced by Madame Satan (1930).

Cecil B. DeMille is usually remembered for his biblical epics with lots of costumes, sets for days, and special effects that make the wrath of God plausible- and fun! So when I saw that he directed this very early sound musical romantic comedy, I was intrigued.

Madame Satan starts out like a lot of romantic comedy movies from the era. Angela (Kay Johnson) discovers her husband Bob (Reginald Denny) has a chippie named Trixie on the side (notorious I'll Cry Tomorrow songbird Lillian "Butterfingers" Roth). After Ang's maid sings her a song about fighting for love (I think that's what it was about. It was very hard to make it out through the sound snow of the old recording), she goes to Trix's sex-den to confront her.

The film becomes a clumsy bedroom farce of mistaken identities, locked doors, and women hidden under sheets. It was at this point that I thought, "Is this really a DeMille film? I haven't seen a single loincloth yet." There is none of the grandness that DeMille was legendary for- and the camerawork was basic static framing- with people literally walking into frame rather than the heavy sound camera moving. I was feeling duped. But the DeMilleness was about to begin.

Ang decides to battle for Bob's affections on Trixie's level and follows the couple to a masquerade ball being held on- wait for it- A ZEPPELIN! From this moment on, consider my mind blown. The party scene is one long bacchanal of over-the-topness.

From the decco design of the blimp, to the outlandish costumes, to the Denishawn-esque ode to electricity dance break, the rest of this movie creates a pre-Depression fantasy world that I was practically leaping from my seat to be part of.

The silly plot of Ang pretending to be a masked French seductress named Madame Satan to regain Bob's love is luckily overshadowed by the feathers, fans, and wigs of costume designer Adrian. The costumes are dreams made reality with whimsy fighting gravity at every turn. You have never seen costumes like this in your life- unless it is in another Adrian film.

DeMille's style arises with gliding tracking and point-of-view shots that make the dirigible feel like an entire world unto itself. When a thunderstorm strikes the airship the special effects are harrowing- turning what was a night of music and dancing into The Poseidon Adventure in the sky. The shots of the garishly dressed passengers leaping from the decks with parachutes are dreamlike and gorgeous with the double print technology teetering between reality and fantasy. Here is DeMille giving us the bang for our cinema buck.

There are probably lots of reasons for why this film's two parts are so disparate. Perhaps it is meant to support Ang/Madame Satan's duality and the two separate worlds of marriage and sexual freedom. Maybe DeMille was cleverly showing the limitations of the new sound film and its possibilities in the same movie. Or maybe it was just that it was only his second talkie. Whatever the reason, the second half of the film makes Madame Satan unforgettable.

BAM's tuneful festival continues this weekend with Vincente Minnelli's iconic musical Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). There's not a blimp- but there is a trolley.