The Land (now on video)

Let me put it this way: THE LAND, directed by Baldwin-Wallace graduate Steven Caple Jr. – and shot entirely and impressively in Cleveland - is technically superb  and put together in a highly attractive and lyrical manner.  Yet for Christmas I sent it to a friend (you might know her if I mentioned her name) who recently left the Cleveland area for a fresh start and marriage in New York state. My accompanying Christmas card hoped that the movie would provide her with even more reason for gratitude that she and her son got out of this vicinity safely.

That’s because THE LAND - which made it to Sundance, no less, and now has a video release via tony label IFC Films - is a street-crime melodrama, slickly shot in some of the shabbier parts of Cleveland. Which is really saying something, shabby-wise. Here are well-compose stages found in situ via our iron bridges, glittering night skyline, rooftops and old brick buildings testifying to a bygone era when industry boomed here, but set against a downbeat tale of slum desperation and young innocence lost.

I don’t think many Cleveland-hyping T-shirts were sold at Sundance, don’tchyaknow?

(Then again, the Cavs won later in the year, and that turned everything around, right?)

Delicatessen (December 10 at 9:20 p.m. and December 11 at 8 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

I was recently wondering what the year 1991 was good for (most of the early 90s, for that matter). Oh yes, I started with an interesting new movie-review publisher – who immediately went out of business. Later, I found out they had started up again and neglected to tell me. When I finally tracked them down and re-introduced myself, the reaction was more or less, “yes, you still work for us. We’ve been waiting to hear from you - what took so long?” Believe it or not, they weren’t even a Cleveland publisher, despite that management style, a bit too familiar in my flatlining career.

But 1991 also stands out, for many other moviegoers, for when the international release (pushed heavily by Terry Gilliam; I remember the Cleveland International Film Festival premiering it here) of the French science-fiction satire hit DELICATESSEN. It brought to wide attention the filmmaking duo of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, who went for some time simply by the tandem credit Jeaunet-Caro, with their Tim Burton-esque (or Gilliamesque) eye for grotesque fantasy, but in a mildly European fairy-tale/fantasy vein, mixing menace with whimsy and a hint of the unspeakable in a recipe that is all their own.

The Battle of Algiers (December 2 at 9:25 p.m. and December 3 at 6:35 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

That the 1966 Italian classic THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS is still even exhibitable right now (of course, nowhere near as widespread as DOCTOR STRANGE) shows the US still possesses admirable freedom of expression (R.I.P. Fidel Castro). In light of the alleged War on Terror it's a little like TRIUMPH OF THE WILL screening at a

cinema near you in 1944 - although that comparison does injustice

to Gillo Pontecorvo's film. While the director's sympathies were

anti-imperialist, his feature takes no obvious sides and has no

heroes or villains in the customary Hollywood/propaganda sense.

And the casualties and atrocities are never less than human.

Ostensibly THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS depicts the uprising of the Arab-based Algerian independence movement - the FLN - against 130 years of French-colonial occupation in North Africa. Lensed in newsprint-gritty B&W where it happened, the neo-realist feature looks exactly like a documentary (opening titles emphasize "No newsreel footage") and recreates the dire move- and counter-move

of an urban-guerilla war and terrorist bombing campaign against foreign occupiers.

Just Eat It (November 9 at 5:30 p.m. at the Cleveland Food Bank)

Finally, a food-stunt-marathon movie that Morgan Spurlock (SUPERSIZE ME) didn’t think of. And perhaps he should have.

In a headline-grabbing stunt that would be funny if it weren't so sobering, Canadian filmmaking couple Jen Rustemeyer and Grant Baldwin determine to live for six months off discards (with perhaps occasional handouts from family and friends). The impetus for this commitment to dumpster-diving and creative mooching comes from hearing that 40 percent of all food in North America goes to waste

The couple's docu-diary shows the progress of this unappetizing experiment, and guess what? (SPOILER ALERT) Far from starving, the couple take home more food than they can possibly consume. Even gourmet and “organic” premium-specialty food, thrown out behind markets by the truckload. Grant gains an unflattering amount of weight.

One-Eyed Jacks (November 4 at 8:30 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

The only directorial credit for Marlon Brando was this very adult western - still a pretty daring concept for 1961 - for which the mercurial and increasingly rebellious star Brando took over filmmaking chores after original helmer Stanley Kubrick withdrew because of (all together now) creative differences.

Now Stanley Kubrick, as we all know, was notorious for overshooting, exposing take after take until he figured he had perfection. Tyro director Brando took it even further, exposing more than a million of feet of celluloid and ballooning the budget thricefold, ultimately costing Paramount a then-astronomical $6 million. The producer claimed that Brando may well have shot literally more than a million feet, a world record. Maybe that’s hyperbole, but the resulting film was a box-office disappointment, needless to say. But it is still respected by many. Of course, it helps to be a Marlon fetishist.

Insomnia (October 8 at 7 and 9:30 p.m. at the CWRU Film Society, Strosacker Auditorium)

For reasons best known to themselves, the student film society at CWRU has chosen to revive perhaps the least known or hailed big-budget entry in the formidable filmography of Christopher Nolan (MEMENTO, BATMAN BEGINS, INCEPTION, INTERSTELLAR etc.) Perhaps sending a message to the fresh generation of young undergrads now fresh on campus: the economy is terrible, there are no jobs worth s*** waiting for you upon receiving that diploma, student-loan debt will crush you, and very soon everything you’re working on so hard right now will be forgotten. Like this movie.

At least that’s what I like to tell students. I consider it somewhat of an ethical civic duty.

INSOMNIA, from 2003, was Nolan’s rather needless remake of a superior 1997 Norwegian film noir of the same title from director Erik Skjoldbjaerg. The original even starred a Scandinavian thespian with international name value, Stellan Skarsgard. Still, here it was, the chilly material served re-heated a la Nolan.

Napoleon Dynamite (September 10 at 8 p.m. the Freiberger Field, on the CWRU campus)

Usually the CWRU Film Society makes overpriced college tuition a little bit closer to worthwhile with its semester-long season of film screenings, including new releases and classic revivals. Here they are planning to make those crushing student loan debts in the no-jobs economy a less painful memory, at least for an hour or two, with an outdoor, free exhibition of a hit comedy that brought a number of smiles to the Iraq invasion-stained year of 2004.

It was NAPOLEON DYNAMITE. Which, for those with minimal memories of the era except for Bush-supporter death threats against the Dixie Chicks, was a little PG-rated comedy, largely shot and acted by Mormons from Brigham Young University, and written and directed by 24-year-old Jared Hess with his wife Jerusha. Shot in Preston, Idaho, the filmmaker's hometown, NAPOLEON DYNAMITE was a surprise attraction at comedy festivals and got a high-profile, immensely profitable release masterminded by Fox, Paramount and MTV Films.

(Maybe if those same organizations partnered on the disastrous Iraq invasion and/or Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, the world would be a less lousier place right now. Well, no, probably not).

The movie itself is an easygoing, likeable farce that lived up to its hype by underplaying, in a drop-deadpan funny formula of awkward, uncharismatic teens rising above expectations in boondocks USA.

Probably anyone who ever went to school has known an enigmatic outsider like the one played by BYU student Jon Heder. He’s a gawky, afro-crowned cross between Mike Judge's Butt-head and Martin

Short's Ed Grimley. Much of the time he’s likely to stand in stunned, inarticulate silence at the weird hands life has dealt him.

Love Finds You in Valentine (now on video)

 There is lots of excitement right now about the prospect of NE Ohio shooting for the movie version of My Friend Dahmer, the excellent graphic memoir by local cartoonist John `Derf' Backderf about his real-life high-school comradeship in the 1970s with Bath Township resident and future Milwaukee serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Ohio badly needs a new economic base; serial killer nostalgia in movies may as well be it. Or does anyone doubt for a minute we’ll someday get a flick about the early years of “Buffalo Bill” from SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (a Columbus resident, as readers of the novel will remember)?

But is there a more genteel alternative? Quietly, without much hype (or mass-murderer trading cards), there’s another wave of film production taking place here, for the TV marketplace. And also adaptations of top-selling books. And no, not Thomas Harris ones.

LOVE FINDS YOU IN VALENTINE is the first one, based on novelist Irene Brand’s hit Love Finds You in Valentine, Nebraska, which became a frontrunner in a whole subgenre of regional romances promoted in association with the religious digest Guideposts. I doubt there are a lot of subscribers to Guideposts who have also read My Friend Dahmer, but trust me, the marketplace out there for faith-based romantic fiction is enormous.

And somehow the Cleveland Film Commission nabbed the Irene Brand property away from shooting in Nebraska (or that old fallback, Canada) to lens in Ohio after all. Maybe they promised the whole Guideposts staff would meet LeBron (or Machine Gun Kelly).

The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (August 20 at 10:10 p.m. and August 21 at 6:30 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

 

Director Penelope Spheeris came to prominence in 1981 with her punk-rockumentary THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION. In 1988 she encored with a second installment of rock-musical freak sideshow stuff. This one was shot on a visibly larger budget. And for this go-around it's a carnival of preening black-leather hedons and poseurs of the hair-metal decade, resplendent in lurid arena-rock excess in Los Angeles, onstage and in self-aggrandizing interviews.

The mullet-wearing interviewees render opinions of drugs (against), alcoholism (for! for!), selling out (for), satanism (for), exploiting women (you betcha!). "Rock and roll is basically music made by people who were thinking with their crotches," said Paul Stanley of KISS, cuddling in bed with three Stepford groupies.

Meanwhile future reality-TV dad Ozzy Osbourne states if weren't a rock star he'd be in prison (almost immediately gangsta rappers stole that line for themselves in practically all their hip-hopumentaries). On a similar note, a probation officer discusses "de-metaling" lawbreaking rock fans.

The New World (August 7 at 7:15 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

Filmmaker Terence Malick attempts numerous audacious and foolhardy things

in the lyrical, trance-like 2005 historical drama THE NEW WORLD, pulling off some of them beautifully. Among his victories is giving us tabloid-bait actor Colin Farrell as a character who would have to sign any motel register as "John Smith." And yet you don't giggle.

Yes indeed, it's Malick's impressionist retelling of the Pocahontas story and the settling of Jamestown, Virginia. It envisions the childhood of Anglo-America as an experience of first-love adolescent romance and heartbreak, the bittersweet deflowering of a virgin continent. With the canny casting of Farrell the feature manages the formidable achievement of reclaiming the Pocahontas legend from elementary-school pageants and the seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time Disney musical cartoon POCAHONTAS, with its chorus line of raccoons and singing Mel Gibson. In fact, the `P' word is never spoken here.

The Decline of Western Civilization (July 9 at 9:10 p.m. and July 10 at 6:30 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

 

In 1981, this famous look at the American west-coast punk-rock musical underground was an eye-opener in those halcyon, post-disco days of Olivia Newton-John and the Bee Gees. Fights broke out frequently at screenings (imagine that; today people would only be shot). Shock-rockers of later years may have raised the bar of ridiculous indulgence and post-adolescent nihilism (or, if you're a fan, heroic revolt against yuppie consumerism), but there's historical import here for those interested in the time period. Or the mere concept of musicians who don't seem to care about Billboard charts or Red Bull sponsorship.

Ron Reyes, the frontman of Black Flag before Henry Rollins came along, shows us the spray-painted closet where he lives for only $16 per month. Exene Cervenka, back when she was still dwelling in domestic bliss with fellow X member John Doe, displays her collection of fire-and-brimstone Christian evangelical tracts picked up off the streets of LA. Staff of the essential punk journal Slash assemble an issue, despite the typesetter complaining about all the cigarette burns on the pages (thanks to desktop PC publishing not a problem much anymore).

Notorious (July 2 at 5 p.m. and July 3 at 6:30 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

Yes, what the chances that most of the internet-educated kids who show up for this Alfred Hitchcock revival wind up rioting in the streets because they thought it was that rap movie about the Notorious B.I.G.? It’s okay; bottles being thrown and cars overturned will be good practice for the upcoming Notorious R.N.C.

 

As for this NOTORIOUS, know that it’s classic Alfred Hitchcock, a crackerjack spy thriller on the surface that hints at all sorts of perverse desire and undercurrents of psychological aberrations

beneath its glossy 1946 Hollywood surface.

Setting is the midst of WW2. Devlin (Cary Grant) is an Allied spy who gets close to Alicia (Ingrid Bergman), the “notorious” femme of the title. As the wealthy daughter of a known Nazi turncoat, she’s regarded by upper crust as an amoral, lascivious playgirl (in today’s terms, think “reality-TV star”). But she’s really a good girl at heart, Devlin learns.

The turning point in their relationship comes with a legendary steamy kissing scene, lasting a full three minutes. It shows nothing explicit, yet is somehow hotter than a lot of what goes on in R-rated movies. Hitchcock supposedly had a merry time getting that past the censors, chiefly by tweaking the script and dialogue to make it seem like all they’re doing is talking about chicken dinner.

Lost in Hong Kong (now on video)

I know you’re all celebrating the victory of the Cleveland basketball team right now, in bringing home the first major Cleveland sports trophy in 52 years (actually, if you count the Lake Erie Monsters hockey team winning a cup just months ago, it’s actually the second major Cleveland sports team to break “the curse”, but nobody is talking much about the Lake Erie Monsters’ achievement. Figures; that’s what happens when one stands up for cryptozoology)

I’ve been thinking, there actually are ways that the Cleveland Cavaliers could still lose at this point. Three most likely scenarios:

(1) LeBron’s announced SPACE JAM sequel will turn out unbearably horrible that the NBA will have to strike all LeBron James scores from the record books (like what happened with Joe Paterno). Thus the Cavs would retroactively lose Game Seven to the Golden State Warriors after all.

(2) It is announced that the Cavaliers organization failed to pay a special “incorporation renewal tax” imposed by Cuyahoga County Democrats in secret (because if anybody knew about it, the public might vote it down). When the team failed to file by the June 19 deadline, Cleveland Cavaliers ceased to exist as a legal corporate entity, and Golden State won the last game by default.

(3) Republicans, in a runup to having a “brokered” RNC convention in Cleveland to deny Donald Trump’s nomination, set a precedent by doing a “brokered” NBA final. The team with the most-monied lobbyists in Washington wins. At least the Cavs and Warriors both go down to defeat in this scenario; the championship will be handed either to a team of Islamic militants (backed by Saudi Arabia) or Chinese slave-factory workers.

Yes, China’s pretty much on the march this century, while Americans’ collective attentions, as always, are on other things, such as sports or whether certain Game of Thrones characters are alive or dead. Typical.

El Cid (screening June 18 at 7:30 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

A 1961 medieval epic from the old days, when roving “international co-productions” mean giant, on-location shoots in venues such as Italy or, in this case Spain, EL CID does fall in with all the era’s Biblical spectacles and torn-from-the-pages-of-history kitsch in which part of the goal was the movie industry trying to be ever bigger and bolder and brighter-colored than its nasty little cheap, B&W competitor, television. Given that, however, director Anthony Mann’s eye-filling costumer does have some pretty resonant elements for the present day.

Later NRA figurehead Charlton Heston, a guy able to do larger-than-life with no problem who practically became synonymous with oversized, super-sized and cutting-edge-of-widescreen narratives (lessee, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY, BEN HUR, A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, KHARTOUM, PLANET OF THE APES, EARTHQUAKE…sorry, liberals, the guy rocked) stars here. In war-torn 11th-century Spain, stalwart warrior-knight Rodrigo (Heston) runs afoul of the royal family again and again because of his inflexible Christian-based ethics and nobility.

Primary and Crisis (screening June 5 at 1:30 p.m. at the Cleveland Museum of Art Morley Lecture Hall)

In honor of the upcoming presidential elections (and likely fiery destruction of Cleveland during the Republican National Convention; all you people who just thought the city would kind of go out of business and fall apart through entropy, aren’t you feeling silly now?), the Art Museum is showing two classic political short-feature documentaries by Robert Drew, Toledo-born landmark figure in the "direct cinema" style of documentary filmmaking.

Even though his techniques and subject matter have been as varied as the contents of a newspaper, via his company Drew Associates, he and a team of journalistically-oriented filmmakers have done nonfiction features encompassing the arts, science, politics, exploration and music. All a logical extension of Drew's early career as a photo editor at the classic Life Magazine.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (May 21 at midnight at the Capitol Theatre)

The sequel to the hit Sylvester Stallone actioner FIRST BLOOD (based on a decent David Morrell novel; check it out sometime) was a far bigger, farrrr dumber and more financially successful action-blockbuster that opened in 1985 on a then-record number of movie screens. It couldn't help but make money with those odds, but in that era of Cold-War-bodybuilder-action-violence right-wing Aryan fantasies, it was a monster hit at the box office. Or "monstrous hit," depending on your political outlook.

John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) was a fairly human-sized outcast Vietnam vet vagrant, tormented and bullied by small-town cops in the first film. This outing finds the muscleman combat-hardened supercommando brought out of prison to earn a possible presidential pardon. Rambo has 36 hours to be air-dropped into communist Vietnam and seek evidence surviving American POWs are still being held captive. But his superiors - yuppie white-collar executive types only interested in a coverup - don't expect him to succeed.

When Rambo (being invincible) does indeed find an active POW camp that's held the poor G.I.s for 20 years, the treacherous American elites deliberately abandon our protag to evil Russian and Viet Cong forces, and Rambo has to fight his way free - mostly without his shirt, muscles gleaming like an oiled up bodybuilder, amidst giant fireball explosions.

Metropolis (May 21 at 9:35 p.m. and May 22 at 3:45 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque

I have to confess, I haven’t seen this particular “2002 restoration” of Fritz Lang’s classic METROPOLIS. For those of you smart enough to know that movies go all the way back to the 20th century, you may be aware that various editions of this 1926 German Expressionist science-fiction spectacle have circulated, some missing about a half-hour or more of footage.

The long, long film was typically cut to pieces by unscrupulous theater owners to more comfortably fit their timetables. Director Lang, fleeing the Nazis for a Hollywood career, didn’t exactly have the opportunity to pack all his reels in the luggage. When Berlin was bombed during WWII, copies of what would have been considered the “original” METROPOLIS all wound up destroyed. From time to time a new alleged restoration of the film would show up – a famous 1984 colorized one from composer Giorgia Moroder using still photos as storyboard bridges to fill in the gaps in the missing chapters.

But it was in the early 21st century that (in addition to all the jobs going to China, the middle class getting exterminated and the prospect of a good life being stolen from all but the top two percent of rich people (oh, happy graduation season, by the way (good luck paying those student loans with part-time minimum wage McJobs (if you’re even lucky enough to get one (being the son or daughter or niece or nephew of a company VP might help; I hoped you all planned that))) a copy of METROPOLIS more complete than any other extant surfaced in South America.

(Now, what are the chances that the late, great SF/fantasy buff David Massaro, Cleveland’s answer to Forrest J Ackerman, probably had a print of the authentic, complete METROPOLIS on one of his cluttered shelves – how well I remember his residence - all this time, but nobody paid attention to him about it. (typical Cleveland situation (just like nobody in the real world will pay attention to your resumes and employment applications, grads (or did I mention that already?))))

Far From Men (now on video)

All hail Viggo Mortenson as the American answer to Max Von Sydow, that is to say, a serious and thoughtful-seeming actor who can go from all-star escapism and fluff such as HIDALGO and the LORD OF THE RINGS films to way off-the-beaten-track foreign fare, personal projects and “art” films. Now watch, Mortenson will show up as a cartoon bad guy or cape-wearer in a Justice League movie, shaking his fist and saying “I’ll get you Wonder Woman!” and I will be begging Bob Ignizio to take down this posting. Or at least put his own by-line on it. I’m so sick of comic-book movies.

The multi-lingual Mortenson stars and co-produced (for iconic French studio Pathe) the French- and Arabic-language drama FAR FROM MEN, which represents director David Delhoffen’s decent expansion of the Albert Camus short story “The Guest,” on which generations of high-school students such as I had been weaned (to all my fellow former high-school French students, anyone found any jobs out there? I’m still looking).

Unlike similar attenuations of short-story material, this one doesn’t feel terribly padded, even if it does bring some sex and more violence into the tale than Camus did.

White Zombie (screens April 30 at 8:45 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

As of this writing, it appears that the next FAST AND THE FURIOUS sequel will be partially filmed in...Cleveland, in the next month or so. Those of you reading this in some far-future internet archive, say 80 years from now, may have to be reminded that 2016 was also the year that right around the same time, the Republican National Convention was held in Cleveland. Coincidence? I wonder if the car-chase action series isn't just hoping that political protestors will burn the whole city to the ground coincident with their shooting stunt sequences in the foreground. Thus, epic special f/x, absolutely free of charge! Only excuse I make for taking the franchise to Cleveland. It's a bad economy here in 2016, after all. You internet kids reading this archived in 2096 - most likely you are a race of superintelligent apes who overthrew mankind; I know how that goes - can probably just take your copy of the seventh or eighth FAST AND THE FURIOUS sequel off your antiques shelf and check out if I am correct or not.

Talk of the antiques shelf and movies from 80 years ago that are enigmas to the descendants of their first-night viewers brings us to WHITE ZOMBIE. 

Network (through April 7 at the Nightlight in Akron)

Sidney Lumet's scathing multiple Oscar nominee NETWORK is the movie that predicted the advent of `trash TV.' This being the 1970s, pre-AIRPLANE!, its satire is not a bellylaugh parody but rather a stern, grownup Swiftian broadside, shock-and-awe dialogue still capable of making the pulse quicken, even if some of the details are hardly farfetched anymore, in the 21st-century tubescape of voyeuristic `reality shows,' sleazycore gossip channels, news sensationalism and circus-freak daytime talk. Kids who come home from school to Jerry Springer might wonder a little bit what the fuss is all about. 

But NETWORK bristles with righteous anger, featuring especially caustic dialogue by magisterial writer Paddy Chayefsky, who was one of the great script authors of early television drama. By the mid-1970s he didn't like what he was seeing, and the narrative takes place in a post-Watergate atmosphere of darkest cynicism, homegrown terrorism, Third-World atrocities, oil shortages, inflation, recession, amorality and all-around bad news. Just about every character, even minor ones, gets to do angry oratory that could blister wallpaper. 

The network of the title here is a mythical, low-rated, fourth TV channel called Fox...no, just kidding, it's UBS, operated by a giant company called CCA. The order comes to lay off the aging UBS nightly-news anchorman Howard Beale (Peter Finch), newly widowed (sounds like it wasn't a happy marriage anyway; none of them here are). Beale reacts by announcing live on the air that he'll shoot himself on his farewell broadcast.