On Demand Weekly

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975 (IFC Films).

Click Here For On Demand Weekly's Exclusive Interview With Director Goran Hugo Olsson

THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975 With Music Composed By Questlove Now On Demand
By Chris Claro

As the 21st century plows on – it’s been a decade, folks – it becomes more and more evident that context is everything. If the Web has taught us anything, it’s that nothing is definitive anymore; the breadth of perspectives, opinions, biases, and slants is innumerable. The lens through which events are viewed is permeable, malleable, and constantly rotating. As a result, the source of perspectives has become as important as the perspectives themselves.

With THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975, director Goran Hugo Olsson mines the work of Swedish journalists who covered the US during the era referred to in the film’s title. Olsson juxtaposes the vintage – and well preserved – footage of such icons as Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver with contemporary commentary from a combination of people who were there, such as Angela Davis and Harry Belafonte, and others, who only have a distant connection to the era, like Erykah Badu. A conventional doc in the show-and-tell mode, THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1968-1975 is nonetheless ingenious in the way Olsson shows the international ripples that America’s unrest caused through the mid-70s.

Charting the tumult of the era, including the rise of Black consciousness, the assassinations of RFK and MLK, and the blunting impact of drugs on militancy and activism, MIXTAPE takes a linear approach, like a print annual, to show how these very American issues were viewed through the progressive, and decidedly liberal eyes of the Swedish press. One of the most effective sequences in the film highlights the umbrage of Nixon loyalist and TV Guide publisher Walter Annenberg at what he felt was the consistently negative portrayal of America by foreign journalists, particularly those from Scandinavia.

On Demand Weekly's VOD Spotlight highlights stories from the On Demand industry. Chris Claro interviews Swedish director Goran Hugo Olsson about THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1968-1975 (IFC Film). Read our review of the film too here.

What Does a Swedish Filmmaker Know About the US Black Power Movement Of The 60's & 70's?
On Demand Weekly’s Chris Claro talks to Swedish director Goran Hugo Olsson about a new film produced by Danny Glover and music by Questlove
 

ORIGINS
I was looking in the archives of the Swedish National Broadcasting company for some images from the 60s and 70s and I came across this treasure and I immediately identified that this can be a great film. Then I realized it’s my duty to put this out to an audience, it can’t be lying around here in this basement.

THE COMMENTATORS
I wanted to have some of the people from the time, like Angela Davis, commenting on her own images. And however great archive material can be, it also could be claustrophobic in a cinematic sense, if you kept it in this time and space. I wanted to add some fresh oxygen into that, so I wanted some contemporary voices to comment on the film and I also wanted to put the events in context. I was inspired by commentary tracks on DVD, when someone is talking about a film while watching it. I didn’t want to have any talking heads, looking back. I wanted to have a different flow to the film.

THE PRODUCTION PROCESS
Once I found the material, I think I got the idea pretty early on that the key events in the film, the speech with Stokely Carmichael and the interview with Angela Davis in jail. And I wanted to lay out the idea that we have this sparking black and white and everybody in sharp suits and it’s ’67. Then we have the 70s, and it’s color and the hairdos and everything. So there was a story between those two things. And once I got that, I did receive quite a bit of support from Sweden and then I realized I needed someone who knows this as a co-producer and I basically got to New York and knocked on the door of Danny Glover and Joslyn Barnes, my co-producer, and I showed them some footage. When they saw the material and we talked about it, they were in.

MEMORIES
I have memories of Angela Davis. She was on television in Sweden and I have images of the end of the Vietnam War. The turning point in my life, I was 11 or 12 and I got back from school and there was the Soweto uprising in Johannesburg. And we spent time every year collecting money for the ANC, which is closely connected to the Black Power movement.

 

REACTION OF THE SWEDISH PRESS

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: HOUSE OF PLEASURS (IFC Films).

HOUSE OF PLEASURES
When times get tough, liberal acceptance and tolerance take the first hit…
By Cynthia Kane

What is it that attracts us to the 19th century romanticist notion that whorehouses were more than just that… that they were houses of pleasure, houses of love, places where notorious acts of the flesh could, if only, turn into quixotic love?

In this gorgeously and sensuously photographed film directed by Bertrand Bonello, there’s honesty and brutality amidst the beauty of the women who live and work here… in this so-called “house of pleasure”. Yet there is no real pleasure for these women who are little more than slaves, no house of romantic notions except for the men who come incessantly to satisfy their needs from these young – and some barely pubescent - women. In the end it’s only a place that takes and takes and takes from these young prostitutes, from the men who come to be serviced and the madam who attempts to make her fortune.

HOUSE OF PLEASURES is a complex, a dreamlike journey descending into hell. A metaphor one thinks of the romantic dream of the 19th century turning into the genocidal, bloodthirsty and dehumanizing century of the 20th. It’s as if we’re sucked into a sumptuous, deliriously gorgeous nightmare from which we’ll only awaken 2 hours+ later, when the film thrusts us back into the Parisian streets of the 21st century. Thrust into cold contemporary reality only to be haunted by the previous images we’ve absorbed...

I wonder if this is closer to the film

Stanley Kubrick wanted to make

when he directed EYES WIDE SHUT?

Released by IFC FILMS in the U.S. as HOUSE OF PLEASURES (also known as HOUSE OF TOLERANCE in the UK and L’APOLLONIDE: SOUVENIRS DE LA MAISON CLOSE, its title in competition at Cannes), this is a film that will stay with you long after like a hallucinatory trip that we at once long to never escape and wish to God we’d never took. This is a director with much to say, but never directly. He’s an illusory poet leaving us to figure it out. He seems to want us to long for and repulse from all of it at once.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of movies on demand from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: SLEEPING BEAUTY (IFC Films).

SLEEPING BEAUTY - On Demand
By Amy Slotnick

Beautiful and broke, Lucy (Emily Browning) is a student looking for extra work to make ends meet. Like many before her, she finds the money made in sex work too great to resist. However, this work is atypical, even for a prostitute. The service she works for caters to a wealthy and senior clientele, white haired men who want to fondle her while she is drugged into a deep sleep. Penetration is forbidden, but abuse is not. When Lucy awakes, she remembers nothing, and it seems, at least initially, that she is able to avoid any emotional penetration as well.

The wide shots of Lucy’s slim, naked and limp body being groped by elderly men are soundless and long shots, making the dark urges being enacted seem even more disturbing. Lucy instinctively knows this is unhealthy for her, but her double life continues, while she wonders what is being done while she sleeps. It is the audience who knows more about the horrific details of her life than she does, and it is no fairy tale. We get glimpses of her life outside this job, but none of it is more fulfilling for her. She has a mysterious bond with an alcoholic she calls Birdman, but it is never clear what they mean to each other.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. SIDEWALLS (IFC Films).

SIDEWALLS
On the Look Out for Love
By Kris Scheifele

SIDEWALLS begins with a meditative montage of artfully framed shots of buildings against a bright blue sky; this is Beunos Aires. Male voice-over describes its overwhelming array of architectural styles, shapes, and sizes standing dissonantly side by side. For him, this lack of unity is the result of "bad planning"—or no planning—mirrored in the aimlessness of those living in the city's midst. Add to that the contraction and lightlessness of the average person's living quarters, and their confinement therein, and you've got a hotbed of neuroses and alienation. Architects and builders get the blame for these physical and emotional effects.

Our grim narrator is Martín, an insomniac shut-in limping through life with the help of the internet. He does alright as a web designer, but he's hopelessly out of rhythm ever since his girlfriend left him. Mariana, a stranger living one building over, is similarly heartbroken. She can track her relationship's denouement by the number of digital photos she has on her computer: 380 the first year,176 the second, 97 the third, and 4 the final year. She trashes them all in one fell swoop. If only she could dump her emotions as fast and efficiently as her computer. Unfortunately, Mariana is stuck. She's an architect, of all things, who hasn't made any buildings. Instead, she's more comfortable dressing shop windows—the in-between, transitional spaces which are neither inside nor outside, neither here nor there. It's a bit heavy-handed, but she's also afraid of riding elevators—read: her movement/her progress is restricted.

There are more funny facets of digital and urban life illuminated throughout the film. Among them are Martín's dating fiascos, first with a gloomy little hipster who'd rather text and listen to her MP3 player than talk to him (even though he's right next to her). His other date speaks eight languages and has umpteen million interests, but she can't live up to the promise of her online profile.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: ALBATROSS (IFC Films).

ALBATROSS
By Cynthia Kane

I was surprised to discover ALBATROSS is Niall MacCormack’s feature film debut; he’s done so much excellent television work in the UK (“Margaret Thatcher: A Long Walk from Finchley”, “Wallander: Firewall” with Kenneth Branagh) and well, I simply assumed he’d done plenty of UK indie features as well. Not so.

Filmed on the Isle of Man, ALBATROSS is then an assured first feature with a luminous cast including two young women whom I’m certain we will see much more of in the coming years. Jessica Brown Findlay – who’s already been seen this side of the pond as the young suffragette and lefty, Lady Sybil of “Downton Abbey” - plays Emelia Conan Doyle, a local girl, wanna-be writer, convinced that she’s related to Sir Arthur, and who lives with her elderly grandparents after her mother’s suicide.

At 17 and already out of school, she comes to work as a maid in Cliff House, a B&B overlooking the Irish Sea, where she meets Beth (Felicity Jones – CEMETERY JUNCTION, LIKE CRAZY, THE TEMPEST – directed by Julie Taymor with Helen Mirren), daughter of Cliff House’s owners, Jonathan and Joa. Despite the fact that Jonathan’s played by the brilliant German actor Sebastian Koch (THE LIVES OF OTHERS) and the imitable Julia Ormond (MY WEEK WITH MARILYN, THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON) who plays Joa, it’s the two teens that steal the show here.

It’s their story, their movie, despite all.

Jonathan’s a writer, or was… successful in writing one great book called Cliff House (and thus the family moved here) and Joa’s a frustrated actress, who’s all but given up her career and has become a kind of stage mother to their youngest daughter. Beth’s in her last year of secondary school, is conscientious and super-studious, overly serious and longing to leave the tense and frustrating world of Cliff House, make her way to Oxford … if she’s accepted. In walks Emelia into their lives one day and nothing is again the same. Beth is entranced, captivated by Emelia’s free spirit, Jonathan is seduced and stirred out of his writer’s block by her working class spunk and beauty, Joa’s immediately angst-ridden about the influence she could have on her daughter about to leave the nest and perhaps jealous of her own youth left behind. And Emelia’s, for once, the certain of attention and thrives on it. Yet the fun, naughtiness and attention don’t last, as what she’s really longing for is a friend, which she finds in Beth.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: LOOSIES (IFC).

LOOSIES

By Chris Claro

I’m not part of the TWILIGHT demo, so my exposure to Peter Facinelli has come mainly through seeing him as self-absorbed doctor Fitch Cooper on Showtime’s NURSE JACKIE. In LOOSIES, directed by Michael Corrente (OUTSIDE PROVIDENCE) and written by Facinelli, the actor uses his leading man looks and winning charm to tell the story of a New York hustler trying to stay ahead of the law.

Michael Corrente, Peter Facinelli

Facinelli’s Bobby spends his days cadging wallets from unsuspecting Wall Streeters, while paying attempting to pay off his deceased father’s debt to loan shark Jax (Vincent Gallo, THE BROWN BUNNY). Even as he dodges the cops on his tail, Fitch must contend with the reappearance of a one-night-stand who is pregnant with his baby.

If it sounds like a lot of traffic for a comedy, it is, but Corrente adeptly keeps LOOSIES jangling along with a sprightly rhythm, which makes up for some of the deficiencies of Facinelli’s dialogue: “I have problems with commitment.” – how did that line make it past the first draft? How did it even make it into the first draft?

Providence-based Corrente combines New York location footage with scenes shot in his hometown and cinematographer Sam Fleischman keeps the combination seamless. Using Canon 5D and 7D cameras, Fleischman achieves a truly filmic look that belies the movie’s digital roots.

LOOSIES also benefits from a surprisingly strong supporting cast that includes Joe Pantoliano (THE SPORANOS), William Forsythe (BOARDWALK EMPIRE), and Michael Madsen (RESERVOIR DOGS). For what is clearly a low-budget film, the presence of such familiar performers lends the film an added air of credibility and adds bulk to the slight story.

Michael Madsen

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: THE MOTH DIARIES (IFC Films).

THE MOTH DIARIES

By Sky McCarthy

Since the explosive success of vampire culture brought on by the TWILIGHT phenomenon, you may think you’ve seen it all. Vampires seem to be everywhere today but THE MOTH DIARIES explores a new side of the teen horror genre that is more subtle and perhaps more powerful than gnashing fangs and battles with werewolves. Director Mary Harron (AMERICAN PSYCHO) takes viewers into the world of an exclusive all-girls boarding school where the dynamics of adolescent female friendship are pushed to the brink of destruction.

Rebecca (Sarah Bolger) is returning to Brangwyn College after losing her father to a tragic suicide. While her depression is not evident in every scene, Rebecca is deeply consumed by the incident. Her best friend is Lucy (Sarah Gadon), an ethereally beautiful and athletic companion who represents the girl everyone wants to be. While Lucy and Rebecca share an intimate closeness, it is clear that Rebecca has developed a dependence on Lucy to fill the void left in the wake of her fractured family life.

The girls share a close circle of friends who gossip about boys and occasionally party after “lights-out” in their dorms. But when a dark and somewhat cryptic new classmate, Ernessa (Lily Cole), enrolls at Brangwyn, mysterious events threaten to crack even the closest relationships. At first sight, Ernessa takes an intense and obsessive liking to Lucy and, as they become closer, Rebecca feels cast aside.

As her worst insecurities come out, Rebecca begins to suspect that Ernessa is behind the strange new occurrences but friends cast her suspicions aside as jealousy. With clever storytelling ability, Harron taps into the audiences’ potential doubts as well. We know Ernessa is creepy but, like Rebecca, we are never witness to any of her evil doing. It is later revealed that Ernessa also lost her father to a suicide and the similarities in their lives continue to haunt Rebecca’s dreams. The line between reality and imagination become increasingly blurred as Rebecca’s obsession with catching her new enemy magnifies.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: WE HAVE A POPE (IFC Films).

WE HAVE A POPE
Pope of No Where Village
By Sidney Falco

WE HAVE A POPE is a film that should be a lot more than what it is: mild entertainment at best – never more and, at times, less. It does have moments of charm and light-hearted touches in the direction, with performances to match, yet the picture never goes beyond the surface. It’s Hollywood-Lite storytelling (and I mean that in the worst way), only in Italian.

The plot: The Pope dies and the Cardinals gather together to pick a new Pope. Cardinal Melville (Michael Piccoli) is chosen against his wishes (never the front runner, according to the Press), and just as he is about to make it official and announce himself to the crowd in St. Peter’s square, he has a breakdown and refuses the job. Uncertain of himself, a Psychiatrist is brought in to find a solution for him, yet the Cardinal does not want to be Pope. Through a series of events, he decides to escape the Vatican and find himself.

With two of Italy’s foremost talents behind the camera, director Nanni Moretti and co-writer Francesco Piccolo, one would hope that they would use humor in the film to probe the psychology of Cardinal Melville (there are not 1, but 2 Psychiatrist characters!). Unfortunately, and this is where the picture really fails, the questions asked in the film by the writers about religion, Cardinal Melville’s role as a leader of a religion, along with the humanity that goes with that, never goes deep enough to get to any sort of genuine truth. There is a missed opportunity to make a profound comment about the duality of man, in conjunction with the role of religion in today’s society. All discussions about faith, man’s relation to that faith and oneself, seems to be handled with safety gloves

The territory which the filmmakers decided to explore in their story is a tricky one – there is very little humor in religion – it’s an (accepted) belief, no matter what your faith is, regardless of fact. So the question I asked myself when it was over was: what is the point? The film never offends or restores faith; it never scratches the bone. It falls in the middle of nothingness, relying on mild comedy to sustain the drama.

It’s not all bad. There is some appeal in a few scenes in the film, most notably, every scene with the Psychiatrist brought into the Vatican to question the Pop, who just so happens to be played by Moretti. His character brings life into the story, at least for a little while, before the narrative takes over to Cardinal Melville’s journey through the streets of Rome

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: BRAKE (IFC Films).

BRAKE
By Joe Charnitski

In Hollywood parlance the “high concept” movie is a film driven by one big idea, a bold concept, as opposed to propelled by character or even plot. For example, the high concept of THE TRUMAN SHOW is “one man’s entire life is a reality tv show, but he doesn’t know it.” “A weatherman is reliving Groundhogs Day over and over again,” is another example of a high concept driving a picture.

There are three requirements for a successful high concept movie: 1) obviously, a strong concept. You need the kind of conceit that elicits “oh, what a great idea for a movie” as a response; 2) the concept has to build, take fresh turns and keep an audience intrigued. Some big ideas are excellent in the first 10 minutes, but if you don’t know where to take the story, you’ve got a big “who cares” on your hands; 3) the payoff, the climax, the big reveal - it’s got to be good, surprising yet satisfying. The high concept poses a question, the end needs to provide an answer.

The claustrophobic action flick BRAKE certainly has a high concept: a secret service agent is trapped in a plastic box in the trunk of a car by terrorists intent on killing the President. He has information they want. They have his wife. What should he do? So, the first requirement is met. Unfortunately, it’s less successful with the other two.

Stephen Dorff (SOMEWHERE, PUBLIC ENEMIES) stars as secret service agent Jeremy Reins. He’s the guy stuck in the trunk. He wakes up in this predicament and assumes he’s been placed there because of gambling debts. Soon he discovers the much darker truth. Not only are terrorists trying to use him to assassinate the President. Not only are they threatening his wife. They’ve kidnapped another man, placed him in a separate trunk and kidnapped his family, too. Jeremy can save the lives of all of these people. He only needs to break the most solemn oath he’s taken: to protect the President.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: CITIZEN GANGSTER (IFC Films).

CITIZEN GANGSTER
By Joe Charnitski

There’s good news and bad news about making a film that’s based on a true story. The bad news is that you are stuck with the events as they happened. Certainly artistic license can be used, but only to a degree. Ultimately, the story is what the story is.

Now, the good news is that, for the most part, you are free from worries about believability. Someone can’t say, “Aw, that would never happen” about a true story, truth being stranger than fiction and all that. It happened. It’s real. Deal with it.

CITIZEN GANGSTER, the debut feature film from Nathan Morlando, is based on the true story of Edwin Boyd, Toronto’s most famous post-World War II criminal (don’t ask me who their most famous pre-World War II criminal is). Boyd served his country in the war and came home to a menial job driving a bus. That job wasn’t going to be enough to feed his family, or, more importantly, Boyd’s insatiable desire for fame and adulation. Soon, he takes a bold move: he robs a bank. And off we go.

CITIZEN GANGSTER gets a lot of forgiveness because it’s based on a true story. For example, the film makes bank robbery appear to be the easiest profession in the world. You run into a bank, hop over the counter, smile at the girl who hands you a bag filled with money and you run, maybe after you deliver a one-liner. Also, Boyd (played by FELICITY alum Scott Speedman) sure takes to it very quickly. We don’t get the sense that he’s ever had anything resembling a criminal past, but he never has a doubt about robbing people for a living. But, I guess that how it happened, right?

Of course, the film is also stuck with the events as they occurred, and the way they decide to structure those events in the script doesn’t do the picture any favors. The repetition of heist, arrest, breakout, repeat doesn’t feel like a compelling commentary on the life of a crook. It doesn’t feel like much of anything really. Is Boyd’s wife really going to leave him? Will he reconcile with his father (Brian Cox as a retired cop)? Will Lorne Green offer him a part in his next tv show? All reasonable questions, I just didn’t care enough about the answers.