“Baghead”: The Big Chiller

Two years ago, a mere sliver of a movie slipped into theaters. And while “The Puffy Chair” snared a scant $194,000 at the box office, in Portland,  it camped out for months on end as the genuine, modest tale of a gently undulating road trip to deliver a birthday present LazyBoy persistently charmed with its unpretentious and heartfelt relationships.

The film became attached to the burgeoning Mumblecore movement yet, contrary to that name, it possessed clearly enunciated characters and had a wealth to say about familial interaction. The Duplass brothers, Jay and Mark, have returned this summer with “Baghead.” And while they’ve made a film distinctly different in plot as they have replaced a road trip movie with a slasher film satire, the meagerly budgeted “Baghead”  still contains real, relatable characters who hold our interest as they fumble through a mélange of predicaments.  Most of these dilemmas are distinctly small and human, while as the film unfolds they become ones faced universally by folks stranded in the woods at the whim of a homicidal spectre. “Baghead” could have been subtitled  “Nightmare on Emo Street.”

Four struggling actors venture to the woods with the hope that the getaway will inspire them to write a script for their own film.  Matt (Ross Partridge) and Catherine (Elise Muller) are an on-again, off-again late 30s couple trying to figure out if there’s something more to their “friends with benefits” arrangement.  Chad (Steve Zissis) is the portly, funny guy who pines for Michelle (Greta Gerwig), who appears to be channeling Chloe Sevigny as a sorority girl.

As the creative process blends into card games and bullshit sessions, they chat in realistic broken sentences, speaking over each other in a natural, conversational way.  There is a normality to the way they express their self-esteem doubts and qualms of self confidence.  The riffs are amusing and the humor emanates effortlessly.  Zissis is particularly notable for ensuring that his character isn’t a tired cliché. It’s no shtick and he illustrates terrific range.

When the film ventures into the slasher film elements, “Baghead” retains its shape.  Clearly, there’s less talk, more running.  But the video camerawork doesn’t become jarring. It’s active without being wonky. And if you suspend belief, the movie generates palpable suspense and legitimate thrills at the same time that it distracts from a deeper examination of the foursome’s rapport.

There’s little doubt that for some “Baghead” will feel quite slight.  Plainly, they won’t be able to get past the frayed-around-the-edges quality. There’s a pronounced buzz in the sound, the lighting can appear dim and the set design is essentially non-existent. And a snarky wit could say that not only is the film set over one long weekend, but “Baghead” appears to have been shot over that same one weekend. 

But in a movie-making world where a portly disaster such as “Evan Almighty” gorges on a $175 million budget, it is both heartening and dispiriting to remember that valuable films such as the $150,000 budgeted “Once,“ the equally modestly financed “Chop Shop,“ and the even more impecunious “Baghead“ are made for such infinitesimal amounts.  To put a dollar figure on art, with that Almighty total you could make at least 1,750 “Bagheads.”  Folks may agree to disagree on their overall quality, but small-budget films such as the enjoyable “Baghead,“ despite any imperfections, lend a crucial and clear voice to the screen.

“The Dark Knight”: Super Freaky

As summer blockbusters churn out a succession of candy floss confectionary seemingly best viewed through 3-D glasses, “The Dark Knight” is storytelling so obsidian theaters should hand out night vision goggles. 

Complex and enthralling, “Dark Knight” is a conundrum as it’s an action film which is most successful in its murkier, contemplative, quieter moments.   Blessed with an intelligent script from director Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan, the film delivers a challenging, engrossing story with a multitude of conflicted, complex characters.  “The Dark Knight” also feels more violent than it actually is because Nolan expertly generates the tension of anticipated violence. He masterly fills an audience with palpable expectation.

While the film is infused with an emotional potency, the action scenes are less than rousing.  Car chases are discombobulated and prone to excessive use of CGI.  The fight sequences are chaotic and hard to follow. Compared to the superlative choreography of the “Bourne” films, the hand-to-hand combat in “The Dark Knight” is clunky, frenzied yet underwhelming.

The casting is spot on and while the ensemble as a whole is commendable, any discussion of the cast begins with Heath Ledger’s titanic performance as The Joker.  While the buzz regarding his performance smelled like a promotional media blitz, the actuality is that Heath Ledger is damn good. He’s truly intimidating with both nuance and subtlety in abundance, especially in a sensational interrogation scene. He even makes the rudimentary phone call request both comic and desperate. It’s a staggering performance that is transfixing and further demonstrates that Jack Nicholson has been coasting for almost a quarter century.

The rest of the main cast is strong as well.  Christian Bale is a pillar as the titular character.  Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman lend gravitas to parts which they could have performed on cruise control. Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel, the sought-after love interest, provides ample evidence that Katie Holmes was a crucial misstep in “Batman Begins.“ Aaron Eckhart’s transformation from district attorney to villain is believable and strong.  It’s not only his jaw line which denotes leading man status.  And while you expect Gary Oldman to prick up his ears and go buck wild, he’s restrained and genuine instead of distracting and flowery.  The appearances of Eric Roberts, Anthony Michael Hall and Tiny Lister are fun, in a trivia-night sort of way.

Nolan has collected an impressive body of work during the past decade.  You sense he has the ability to develop the type of versatility of a director such as Ang Lee.  Perhaps Nolan could tackle a comedy, but given his penchant for darker tones it wouldn‘t be surprising if it was titled “Pineapple Depress.”

“The Dark Knight” is not rollicking fun like “Iron Man,” which could be coined, “Kitsch, Kitsch, Bam, Bam.”  But if one enjoys their comic-book noir etched with a graphite pen, then this “Batman” is an intelligent, moody blockbuster not readily available at the multiplex.

“The Counterfeiters”: Question Time

The story begins at an ending, of sorts.   

It’s post World War II Monte Carlo. And all of the penguin suits, baubles and baccarat tables can’t disguise the ambivalent, conflicted affect of the most successful man at the casino, a man who only months earlier was buried inside the Third Reich‘s nightmare.  

“The  Counterfeiters” centers on the plight of this Monaco gambler, Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch, who before the war was a notorious Berlin counterfeiter who enjoyed all of the intoxicating largesse associated with a successful entrepreneur. He also appears to live by a narcissistic ethic, arguably not necessarily a bad thing when circumstances dictate that one must rely on their survival instinct.  Played by the Austrian actor, Karl Markovics, who boasts an Easter Island face, Sally possesses a placid, blank visage which will serve him well as his life is unhinged.

The film moves abruptly from his arrest in 1936 to his internment in  a concentration camp in 1944.  It dispenses with obligatory court room scenes. Suddenly, bleakness envelopes “The Counterfeiters” as torture, murder and death  are commonplace. Yet, from the onset of his internment, his artistic talent matched with a certain moral complacency affords him a special status. As Sally paints bucolic family portraits for German commanders he noshes on meats and breads. He doesn’t appear to have difficulty digesting his complicity. 

But Sally’s criminal acumen makes him even more valuable to his captors and he is recruited to assist them in a devious matter requiring more than a lick of paint and a brushstroke. He is chosen to lead a team of prisoners who will manufacture a counterfeiting operation which the Nazis envision will become so immense that it unhinges the Allies’ economies. Sally appears only to be the only one of the rounded-up gang with a rap sheet as the others were wrenched from their law abiding professions when sent to the camps. 

And while the film is set in a concentration camp, the prisoners assigned to the operation are relatively coddled.  They are swaddled in comparative luxuriance: three daily squares; fresh linens on mattressed bunk beds; and well-appointed work stations.

From the onset of the operation, Sally is challenged by a young idealist, a fellow recruit named Burger (August Diehl), who becomes the conscience he must respond to or, at the very least, cannot ignore.  Our humanity, Burger compellingly implies, is not a solitary notion but a responsibility to the collective.  But is it?, Sally silently suggests.  “One adapts or dies” is a mantra he abides by.  What does Sally’s sentiment mean?   Is it an aphorism, a Darwinian truth, a cynical summation of the human experience, a truism under all totalitarian regimes? A struggle between group identity and individual autonomy grips the film.  What do we owe to a larger?  Even an atheist can believe in the concept of something bigger than themselves.  But do we have to? Does our very existence presuppose that we are joiners?  So Sally, the ultimate deal maker, the proficient moral relativist, is asked to contemplate visceral, crucial questions which never troubled him as he was immersed in his Berlin lifestyle.

And then in the moments when the war is over, once a common evil is vanquished, we are witnesses to our most unsettling, most harrowing scene at the camp. It’s a scene which is all the more powerful because of the relative ordinary episodic storytelling style of the preceding scenes.  And again unnerving questions are asked.  Once a common evil is removed, how do those who remain deal with their anger, their rage, their pain? Do we lash out at those who were just seconds before our comrades?

Director Stefan Ruzowitzky has crafted an absorbing movie though one which doesn‘t fully reach magisterial heights because of the straight-forward style.  So “The Counterfeiters,” which garnered the Best Foreign Language statuette earlier this year, is a film which doesn’t as much quicken the pulse as stimulates the cerebral.  It puts one in a contemplative mood, prompting questions and promoting debate. And in the end that feels like a beginning, of sorts.

“Chop Shop”: Darryl Strawberry Fields Forever

In one corner of Third World America, where pigeons are pets, a 12-year-old boy in Queens scrounges for chop shops purveyors in the shadow of the Flushing Line as constant flights from La Guardia glide across the Willets Point sky like unobtainable mirages. It’s a life teeming with transportation for people going nowhere.

And with this honest, visceral reality, director Ramin Bahrani has created the most potent political advertisement of 2008 with the instantaneously classic, neo-realist “Chop Shop.”  But he’s not didactic nor prone to exposition. There’s not a single soliloquy amongst the multinational chatter. This movie isn’t a crossword puzzle. There’s no time for reflection, even as every pothole retains water and harsh fluorescent streetlights buzz like cicadas. Bahrani, a native North Carolinian, shares a documentary-like style with Ken Loach but is less arch than the mercurial English genius. He reveals this raw world without overt polemics. “Chop Shop” isn’t an indictment; it’s simply the view from the trenches. It’s the lives of the uninsured, the underrepresented, the intolerated. If it makes an audience uneasy, well, that’s because Bahrani invokes a straight-forward but emotionally gripping tone that compels the viewer to experience these lives in the unflinching foreground.

The protagonist is Ale, the plucky, spindly slender young boy who lives in a bare room above a bay in a shop garage. When the metal grated door is locked, he lives with no direct sunlight, only a small, sliding window to open for a view of the bay. He sleeps on a modest twin bed next to an oscillating table fan which has lost its front cover. Dinner is microwaved popcorn. 

But amidst his meager existence, Ale is driven, and works his ass off.  He doesn’t attend school but he’s enrolled in an outsider’s vo-tech, stripping autos, buffing cars, and nicking hubcaps. He sells candy on the subway and Cds in the alley’s taqueria line.  He is a feral child with a ferocious appetite to succeed with the limited resources at his disposal.  Dilligently responsible, Ale is trusted by his employer to lock himself in at night.  He has plans for a future; in reality when its 4:57, his future is 4:58.  

We don’t know what led Ale to this point.  There’s no explanation for the absence of his parents. And we don’t know how he’s gained the trust of his employer. But Bahrani doesn’t have time to coddle us with these incidentals. Instead, he unearths a present with no past and invites us to react to the immediacy of Ale’s existence. Into this life, his sister arrives and soon her choices thrust Ale into an even murkier reality. His life is like his stash of money; even when it’s in a safe place it’s vulnerable.

Alejandro Polanco provides a stupendous performance. As his namesake, he is innocence and guile melded. His face broadcasts both wizened gravity and childlike wonder. There’s nothing precious in his performance or his presentation. Polanco may become a one-hit wonder, but it’s a knockout punch.

“Chop Shop” is an important film — especially timely as a national election affords a country a concrete opportunity to acknowledge and embrace working class issues — which ends ambivalently; dreams scuppered, hopes hopefully reignited. Yet, this isn’t an angry, berating story. The anthem for this picture is not “Oh, say can you seethe?”  It is a more subtle study than this.

Standing on an overlook outside Shea Stadium, Ale and his only child friend, Carlos, find a sliver of a view, a speck of diamond between second base and shortstop. If candidates do not address these marginalized lives they are either dangerously ignorant or oblivious cowards.  And the stumping platitudes that drip from their lips will be as remote to Third World America as flights skimming above the home base of the brave.