Rooftop Films starts it's Summer Series of pairing cool movies with cool music tonight (5/11) at Open Road Rooftop on the LES, with a program titled "This Is What We Mean By Short Films Opening Night" and musical guest Crinkes. It's sold out already, but you can get tickets to the Saturday night's (5/12) screening of Bryan Wizemann's Think of Me with musical guest Bird Courage.
Kick 2012 movie
Friday, May 18No Escape (Short Films)Spooky folk tales, harrowing home movies, and daring documentaries about people (and creatures) caught in complex webs.Venue: On the pier at Solar One, E 23rd Street and the East River, New York, NY 10010
Friday, June 1This Ain't California (Marten Persiel)A hit at the 2012 Berlinale, This Ain't California takes a look at the transformation of Germany over the course of 40 years through the lens of three skateboarder friendsVenue: Open Road Rooftop (Lower East Side), 350 Grand Street, New York, NY 10002
Friday, July 13Clermont-Ferrand (Short Films)A collection of extraordinary new short films, all selected from the 2012 Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, the premier short film festival in the world.Venue: Dekalb Market (Downtown Brooklyn), 138 Willoughby St. at Flatbush Ave.
Jeremy Renner first appeared in 2011 film Thor. Although it was a small role he left an impression and suspense about the character in the mind of the audience. He then appeared in the 2012 movie The Avengers.
In 2012, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was at its peak, having meticulously constructed a cohesive narrative over the course of several films. The culmination of these efforts was the highly-anticipated ensemble film, The Avengers which brought together a plethora of iconic characters for the first time on the big screen. Although not one of the more prominent characters in the comics, Hawkeye had a notable presence in the MCU.
The revelation of The Kick is Jeeja Yanin. Freed from having to support the film all by herself as she did in Chocolate and Raging Phoenix, Jeeja blossoms in a more supporting role. Still as physically impressive in her stunt work, Jeeja reveals herself to be a surprisingly subtle actress, flirting with Ji-won Ye, but still prepared to kick him on to his ass when he disrespects her abilities.
The movie is named after Stevens' character, a large, masked psychopath who uses a cheaply made roulette wheel to determine which agonies his hostage, Carl (A. Michael Baldwin), will suffer next. After twenty minutes of extremely convincing fingernail-pulling, gasoline dousing, and sander-to-the-kneecaps action, I wondered if I could survive another hour-plus--and if I'd maybe gotten too old for torture porn.
Before watching Brutal, I'd considered "torture porn" to be an exaggeration, an easy phrase dreamt up by concerned-parents groups to write off the Saw and Hostel movies. Any honest person who takes the time to watch them should be able to distinguish between the Lady Bathory scene from Hostel 2 and, say, George Clooney's interrogation in Syriana: one is over-the-top horror that's not easily accomplished by average people; one is fetishistic in its intimacy, and simple enough to pull off with a rope, pliers, and an off-kilter brain.
Neither qualifies as torture porn, though, because they A) serve their respective films' stories and B) come and go quickly enough that no viewer could assume the overall intent is to showcase mutilation exclusively. Stevens pushes through that gray area, front-loading his movie nothing but graphic misery and sadness. It made me sick and depressed, and I wanted nothing more than to turn it the hell off.
Explaining why necessitates heading deep into spoiler country. The movie will have a limited DVD run in September, and may pop up at some festivals--so you're either going to have to trust me on this, or decide that you don't care either way and keep reading. If you have the stomach and the patience for it, I suggest watching Brutal and then checking back in for my thoughts on one of the most impressive debuts I've ever seen.
Besides a flashback montage and some police station cut-aways, the entire movie takes place in a basement. Carl wakes up handcuffed to a chair, with a sack over his head. Minutes later, he's joined by Richard "Brutal" Lachman, who tortures him almost wordlessly for forty minutes; as the roulette wheel spun by each avenue of pain, my stomach sank at the prospect of having to watch more household items do despicable things. I had the same reaction to one of Martyrs' closing scenes, in which a girl is beaten for days on end, which amounts to what must have been five or ten minutes of screen time; both films stretched the limits of my "No Walking Out" policy.
Clearly, Brutal's whole family has something personal against Carl. Having seen many of these kinds of movies, I figured Carl must have been a drunk driver who ran ran over Brutal's daughter or something, and was either released from prison early or got off completely. Still, taking a power saw to someone's face seems a bit extreme for a tragic moment of impaired judgment.
I prefer the last explanation. I'm not remotely religious (anymore), but it's fun to think of Brutal as an exorcism picture. We learn that Carl is an almost supernaturally terrific actor, playing the dumb, innocent victim roll to a "T". Once all the cards are on the table, his true colors bleed through in an admirable, darkly comic display of villainy. Much as horror movie priests spend hours coaxing demons from the bodies of young girls, Brutal endeavors to bring Carl's true self to the surface in order to defeat him. As often happens, the process of raising the Devil breaks Brutal's already fractured spirit, rendering him too weak to deal with what he's unleashed.
I don't know if Stevens or co-director Darla Rae had any of this in mind when putting their movie together. Like many great works of art, though, Brutal inspires interpretation while also standing tall on its own closed-loop narrative.
It's also very well made. That may sound like a no-brainer, considering the limited cast and locations, but there are so many little details that can derail independent films. The movie's first triumph is its practical makeup effects. Christina Kortumn, Mace Bracken, and Emie Otis make every scratch and gaping hole on Carl's body feel real--which is part of the reason the first forty minutes are such an endurance test. If Stevens and company keep making horror movies, I hope they stick with this talented crew and resist the allure of computer-generated splatter effects.
As for atmosphere, Stevens' DP, Gary Otte, and cameraman Ken Hendricks make Brutal's basement into a minimalist performance space. They focus on just the right things, making the whole production feel appropriately claustrophobic--until a key scene where the characters must appear small before an exaggerated wall showing home movies of Brutal's former life. Legendary composer Alan Howarth's score got under my skin, too, even as Carl's was torn off. Intense but rarely overdone, and interesting enough to carry scenes whose best quality is the music, Howarth contributes a number of great little mood pieces that are as surprising as the screenplay.
From left to right: Tilda Swinton, Kara Hayward, Jared Gilman, screenwriter Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, Bruce Willis, actor Bob Balaban, director Wes Anderson, Edward Norton and Bill Murray pose before the screening of their movie Moonrise Kingdom and the opening ceremony of the 65th Cannes film festival.
The 2012 Wisconsin Film Festival kicks off today, Wednesday, April 18th. The festival will run for five days (April 18-22), showing more than 150 films on nine screens spread throughout the city of Madison. Now in its fourteenth year, the WFF, which is the largest campus-based film festival in the United States, is co-presented by the Comm Arts department and the Arts Institute.
Battleship is a 2012 American military science fiction war film loosely inspired by the classic board game. The film was directed by Peter Berg and released by Universal Pictures. The film stars Taylor Kitsch, Liam Neeson, Alexander Skarsgård, Rihanna, John Tui, Brooklyn Decker and Tadanobu Asano.
The film was originally planned to be released in 2011, but was rescheduled to April 11, 2012, in the United Kingdom and May 18, 2012, in the United States. The film's world premiere was in Tokyo, Japan, on April 3, 2012. 2ff7e9595c
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