Tags archives: Marina Zogbi
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8 years ago
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“This is a love story, a mystery, a crime drama, a wake-up call and a farce,” begins Jon J. Whelan’s voiceover in his new documentary Stink! Though a fairly modest enterprise, the film does manage to incorporate all those elements into a cohesive package. Stink! is essentially an eye-opening exposé of the unregulated or under-regulated use of chemicals in cosmetics, household products and clothing in the U.S. Whelan, whose own personal tragedy led him to pursue the subject, figures prominently in the film; he's reminiscent of a low-key Morgan Spurlock or a more affable Michael Moore.
Stink!– and Whelan’s quest – starts when the widowed filmmaker orders pajamas for his young daughters from the popular tween-tailer Justice. His attempts to find out what makes the PJ’s smell bad are met with uncooperative ignorance on the part of the company, from customer service reps to its CEO; basically, chemicals used in the clothing cannot be divulged as it is “proprietary information.” That phrase soon becomes a loathsome mantra on the part of manufacturers and those representing the chemicals industry as a legal excuse to protect themselves. Whelan decides to send the offensive PJ’s to a lab for analysis…
Meanwhile, the movie gives us some pertinent history: A 2009 government report warned that environmental toxins are seriously underestimated. Flashback to President Nixon’s National Cancer Act of 1971 and the ensuing 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, which was supposed to regulate ne[...]
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9 years ago
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Hot Sugar’s Cold World, Adam Bhala Lough’s engaging new documentary, begins with the title musician/producer recording the sound of Pop Rocks candy dissolving in a young woman’s mouth. It’s as good an introduction to the iconoclastic Hot Sugar (Nick Koenig) as any: this New York-based musical alchemist creates highly atmospheric compositions out of myriad everyday sounds. His moody, multi-layered electronic music has become the main soundtrack for Comedy Central’s Broad City and has graced tracks by rappers Antwon and Heems, in addition to many other Koenig collaborators. (One of his first high-profile production credits was for the song “Sleep” from The Roots’ 2011 concept album undun.) The movie invites us to watch -- and ultimately marvel at -- Koenig's unorthodox, intensely personal process.
Something of a wunderkind, Koenig found his MO years ago as a young hip hop fan, when he realized that “everyone winds up using the same sounds,” so he decided to make his own. Hot Sugar's Cold World follows Koenig over several months as he creates his music in a variety of environments and cities; collaborates and hangs out with assorted luminaries including Jim Jarmusch, actor Martin Starr and Heems (Himanshu Kumar Suri); queries astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson about the nature of sound; and talks about his process and his life. At one point in the film, he breaks up with his girlfriend, Internet-famous rapper Kitty, seemingly due to conflicting touring schedules and the [...]
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9 years ago
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As its title implies, Alice Rohrwacher’s captivating new film The Wonders is infused with a sense of discovery and marvel. Set in the Tuscan countryside, this atmospheric, closely observed narrative centers around the hardscrabble life of a bee-keeping family, as experienced mainly through oldest daughter Gelsomina (Maria Alexandra Lungu). On the brink of adolescence, the girl is torn between the insular existence of her hard-headed father and the pull of the outside world. The latter appears in the form of a seductive reality show called Countryside Wonders and the arrival of a silent, troubled boy who is taken in by the family.
While the film isn’t autobiographical, Rohrwacher grew up in this part of Italy, worked in honey production, and is of Italian-German descent, like her onscreen family. Her familiarity with this milieu is obvious, especially in realistic scenes of bee handling – which include alarmingly dense swarms around real hives -- and honey-making. The apiary details of The Wonders are fascinating enough, but then there’s the roughly beautiful Tuscan countryside and the family itself: Idealistic, bad-tempered Wolfgang (Sam Louwyck) and exasperated, affectionate Angelica (Alba Rohrwacher, Alice’s sister) are the parents; sensitive, determined Gelsomina, comical but vulnerable Marinella (Agnese Graziani), and two uninhibited little girls who frolic half-naked like gleeful colts, are the kids. There’s also their longtime lodger Coco (Sabine Timoteo), a scra[...]
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9 years ago
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There are many different ways that people diagnosed with a terminal illness cope with the devastating situation. For filmmaker Alex Sichel, best known for 1997's All Over Me, the obvious response was to create a film about it. A Woman Like Me, directed by Sichel and Elizabeth Giamatti, is a hybrid documentary that includes scenes of Alex’s illness and exploration of various treatments, along with a fictional narrative that parallels her own story. This latter film-within-a-film stars a luminous Lili Taylor as a New York-based filmmaker named Anna who is also dealing with breast cancer, but whose upbeat attitude and positive outcome contrasts with Alex’s experience. A compelling composite, A Woman Like Me is an honest, moving portrayal of a vibrant personality managing a terrible health crisis with creativity, humor and grit.
Early in the film Alex tells us that making a movie “is my way of understanding what’s going on.” While she sometimes wonders if the stress of filmmaking is the best way to use her time (her mother is strongly against it), it’s clear that she has to do this. The goal for Alex, who identifies as Buddhist, is to face death without fear; making A Woman Like Me is part of her process to achieve that, while also holding on to some hope.
A Woman Like Me, unlike other “meta” films with complicated storylines, is fairly simple and chronological: We see Alex working on character development with the cast of her fictional movie in between visits to tradi[...]
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9 years ago
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It’s fair to say that most people – even those who came of age during the late 1960s and 1970s -- probably have no idea how influential National Lampoon magazine was (and still is) to American comedy. Douglas Tirola’s entertaining new documentary Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead is a sort of primer for anyone who equates the Lampoon name mainly with a disparate assortment of increasingly juvenile movies.
The fast-paced film uses lively animation and tons of vintage graphics, including iconic magazine covers, to illustrate the publication’s history, told via snippets of interviews with those who were involved with the magazine firsthand (Anne Beatts, P.J. O’Rourke) or consider it crucial to their development, comedic and otherwise (Judd Apatow, John Goodman, Billy Bob Thornton). The main focus is (understandably) National Lampoon’s heyday, from birth in the late 1960s through decline in the 1980s, with emphasis on the various characters who shaped it, especially founding editors Doug Kenney and Henry Beard, and chairman/CEO Matty Simmons.
In the mid-1960s, the satirical student-run Harvard Lampoon (first published in 1876) fell under the stewardship of charismatic, unstable Kenney and serious, organized Beard, the dynamic duo who would go on to co-found National Lampoon in 1970. Among the film’s many enlightening bits of information is the fact that a popular parody of Mademoiselle magazine was responsible for broadening the college Lampoon’s subscription base, enabling i[...]
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9 years ago
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The title of Morgan Matthews’ narrative film debut, A Brilliant Young Mind, immediately evokes Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind, and both films have in common a protagonist who is an exceptionally bright mathematician with mental challenges. Unlike John Forbes Nash, though, who suffered from schizophrenia, A Brilliant Young Mind’s Nathan Ellis is merely on the autism spectrum. And unlike Nash, he’s a fictional character, though the film is based on Matthews’ 2006 documentary Brilliant Young Minds, about British teens competing in the International Mathematics Olympiad.
Matthews, who has made several documentaries, does a solid job with his first fictional feature; the film is nicely paced and well-acted, with a lovely soundtrack and striking visuals. James Graham’s script is both sensitive and witty, including enough real math to be authentic without making the story incomprehensible to civilians.
Diagnosed with Asperger’s, nine-year-old Nathan (Edward Baker-Close) is told that he is unique by his dad, who explains, "You have special powers like a wizard and we’re just muggles.” One of Nathan’s “powers” is synesthesia, wherein he experiences one sense (sound) as another (color); he’s often distracted by lights and patterns. He's also a math wiz. His mom Julie (Sally Hawkins) tries but cannot connect with Nathan the way his dad does. When the latter dies in a car accident, Nathan sinks further into himself, until he meets Martin Humphreys (the excellent Rafe Spall), a r[...]
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9 years ago
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The latest feature from Brazilian filmmaker Anna Muylaert may take place in São Paulo, but its story could be transplanted to any country with a functioning class system. While class differences and tensions are at the heart of The Second Mother (Que Horas Ela Volta?), the film also tackles complicated family dynamics; the result is a multi-layered drama that is as entertaining as it is perceptive.
Val (Regina Casé) is the longtime housekeeper for an upper-class family consisting of laid-back Dr. Carlos (Lourenço Mutarelli), his driven, successful wife Bárbara (Karine Teles) and their teenage son Fabhino (Michel Joelsas), who Val has virtually raised from childhood. Casé is a physically and emotionally expressive actor and her character is a warm, forceful presence, whether interacting with the family or with other workers in the home, especially younger housemaid Edna. Val’s constantly in motion, serving or cleaning up after the family, comically miming her feelings to Edna or muttering to herself as she goes about her duties. She has an intensely affectionate relationship with Fabhino, a coddled kid she caresses and croons to like a baby; he clearly enjoys the attention. In one scene, Val eavesdrops as his parents question him about marijuana they found, then she helps him hide it; the two are totally in cahoots.
Val hasn’t seen her own daughter Jéssica (Camila Márdila) in 10 years, as the girl has been living up north with relatives while her mother works in São [...]
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9 years ago
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Even in a field of distinctive and cutting-edge animated films, Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet is unusual. Directed by Roger Allers (The Lion King), the long-gestating passion project of producer Salma Hayek features the work of eight international independent animators, in addition to Allers’ crew. Though constructed as a children’s tale, the film contains sophisticated animated segments inspired by chapters from Lebanese poet Gibran's much-quoted guide to philosophical and spiritual enlightenment. The framing story’s simplistic narrative and overly broad humor, presented in traditional (if not actually hand-drawn) animation style, is somewhat at odds with its dark political overtones, adding to the disconnect. Despite its flaws, however, The Prophet -- buoyed by a diversity of splendid animation -- becomes surprisingly poignant by its conclusion.
Very loosely based on its source and set in a vaguely Middle Eastern land, the narrative involves a rambunctious little girl whose mother (voiced by Hayek) cleans the rooms of a poet (Liam Neeson), imprisoned for seven years due to his inflammatory writing. One day he is told that he will be released to return to his own country, but the authorities -- autocratic bad guys (Alfred Molina, Frank Langella) -- aren’t exactly truthful. While young children might not understand the film’s themes of censorship, artistic freedom and tyrannical political regimes, older kids will probably be put off by the story’s naive presentation[...]
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9 years ago
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There are two different ways to write about The Amina Profile, Sophie Deraspe’s startling new documentary about Syrian activist Amina Abdallah Arraf, author of the blog A Gay Girl in Damascus. One way is to tell the story that has already been covered in the press but is not necessarily that widely known in this country. The other is to review the movie up to a point, leaving a big chunk of it vague for anyone who may not be familiar with the narrative (and doesn't conduct a Google search before finishing this paragraph). Maybe there’s a sort of middle ground?
The doc begins with texting between two young women who have connected on a social media site: Amina, a Syrian American living in Damascus; and Sandra, a French Canadian living in Montreal. It soon becomes flirtatious and sexual, mainly on the part of Amina, who seems starved for this kind of forbidden contact. The film shows Sandra recalling the genesis of this digital relationship and how she becomes intrigued by details of Amina's life as an activist circa 2011, at the dawn of the Arab Spring. She gets caught up in Amina’s daring new blog A Gay Girl in Damascus and the latter's reports of police harassment due to her outspoken views. At one point the mainstream press picks up on the post “My Father, My Hero,” in which Amina describes how her dad defended her against the police. She becomes a heroic figure in the blogging community, a sympathetic symbol of the Syrian revolt.
Punctuating this na[...]
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9 years ago
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Damian Marcano’s debut feature, God Loves the Fighter, is a raw, highly stylized film about life in the rough Laventille neighborhood of Trinidad and Tobago’s capital, Port of Spain. Replete with a cast of colorful characters (played by an all-Trinidadian cast), eye-popping visuals, and a strong soundtrack of music by Q Major and Freetown Collective, God Loves the Fighter is a loose, impressionistic film that makes up in grit and atmosphere what it lacks in cohesion. It’s also a rare depiction of the struggling inhabitants of a city that has one of the highest crime rates in the Caribbean.
The film is largely narrated by King Curtis (Lou Lyons, half of reggae/spoken word duo Freetown Collective), a charismatic street poet and vagrant who describes Port of Spain’s poor east side as “a dirty, nasty concrete jungle of fallen leaves.” Curtis introduces us to a variety of characters, filling us in on their often-bleak back stories. These include main protagonist Charlie (Muhammad Muwakil, Freetown Collective's other half), who is trying to find legitimate work; Dinah (Jamie Lee Phillips), a young prostitute who finds solace in a local church; Moses (Simon Junior John), a middle-aged taxi driver who runs drugs in order to make ends meet; and Putao Singh (Darren Cheewah), a sinister thug who spouts bad ethnic jokes as he commandeers a combination bar/brothel/cocaine ring that controls just about everyone in the film. These characters (there’s also a young boy and his grieving, ab[...]
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9 years ago
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Eran Riklis’s A Borrowed Identity starts out on a humorous note, as we see young Eyad (Razi Gabareen) attempting to improve his family’s TV reception by adjusting the roof antenna, while his father Salah (Ali Suliman) shouts instructions out the window. Though Eyad loses his footing, falls and is knocked unconscious, the generally blasé reaction of his family lets us know he’ll be OK. We learn that Eyad and his family – Salah, mother (Laëtitia Eïdo), grandmother (Marlene Bajali) and several brothers – are Arabs living in the Israeli town of Tira. Although the film, which is set in the 1980s and early 90s, retains moments of levity throughout, it soon becomes a serious coming-of-age story about a young man who is caught between two often clashing cultures.
According to a 2013 census, over 20% of Israel’s population are Arabs, citizens of Israel who consider themselves Palestinian by nationality. A Borrowed Identity is based on the semi-autobiographical novel Dancing Arabs by Sayed Kashua, who also wrote the screenplay. It’s a clear-eyed look at the difficult situation of people who are not full members of the society in which they live, as well as the well-intentioned attempts by those in power at bridging that gap. In one early, mordantly funny scene, young Eyad casually announces, “Mom, I brought home my Jew,” the result of a school program endeavoring to bring together Palestinian and Jewish children.
We learn that Eyad's father attended university as a youth, but[...]
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9 years ago
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Now in its 26th edition, the Human Rights Watch Film Festival will take place in New York City from June 11 to 21, with 16 films from around the world that celebrate the power of individuals and communities to create change. The festival, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and IFC Center, is organized around three themes: Art Versus Oppression, Changemakers and Justice and Peace. Special programs include a discussion on the ethics of image-making in documenting human rights abuses, a master class on international crisis reporting and digital storytelling, and a multimedia project on women activists of the Arab Spring.
The festival kicks off on June 11 with a fundraising Benefit Night for Human Rights Watch, which includes a screening of Matthew Heineman’s Cartel Land, which exposes two vigilante movements that have arisen from Mexico's drug war. Opening Night on June 12 features Marc Silver's 3½ Minutes, Ten Bullets, about the 2012 shooting of a black teenager, Jordan Davis, at a Florida gas station and the trial of his killer, Michael Dunn. On the festival's Closing Night, Stanley Nelson’s The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution will screen; the renowned documentarian's history of the Black Panther Party contains rare archival footage, from the party’s beginnings to its ultimate dissolution. The directors of these and other films will be on hand for post-screening discussions.
Other films to be shown include Ayat Najafi's No Land’s Song (Art [...]
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