Disc Reviews

I absolutely love it when I go into a film blind, save for my expectations after looking at the cover, and leave with a surprisingly pleasant experience. A Christmas Horror Story provided me with that exact experience. The cover depicts Krampus, the evil Christmas beast of German folklore, battling Santa in a snowy, mountainous area. This particular battle does not surface until the final moments of the film: instead, we are treated to three separate horror tales that are connected by the various characters that occupy them. Each one of the tales does a good job of maintaining the Christmas theme in creative ways.

Each tale takes place in the city known as Bailey Downs, with the exception of one tale taking place at the North Pole.  First, there is a ghost story featuring a murder that took place at a school the year prior on Christmas Eve. Three teenagers decide to break into the school and film a documentary about it. They are able to break into the school with a set of stolen keys, provided by a friend who is forced to visit family rather than participate in the documentary. This family trip is interrupted by a visit from Krampus. The next tale involves the recovering police officer who worked the original Christmas Eve murder case: Still on leave, he is spending time with his son, who gets lost in the woods and is replaced with a changeling. Finally, carnage ensues at the North Pole, where Santa must battle his own elves who have been stricken with an odd form of vampirism.

Swim Little Fish Swim is, above all else, a very charming film. In fact, it may have been a little too charming for me. I appreciate character-driven dramas, but it is the drama in the film that keeps me engaged throughout. Swim Little Fish Swim introduces some really interesting conflicts into the story, and each conflict has a good variance of high and low stakes. However, the conflicts are either never quite resolved or resolved in a rather unsatisfying way. I did really enjoy the film, but it left me wanting more.

Co-directed and written by Ruben Amar and Lola Bessis (who also plays the starring role), the film explores the lives of artists Leeward (Dustin Guy Defa) and Lilas (Bessis) as their paths cross in New York’s Chinatown. Leeward is a starving artist who refuses to sell out to a commercial in order to support his wife Mary (Brooke Bloom) and his daughter Maggie/Rainbow (Olivia Durling Costello). Meanwhile, Mary works tirelessly as a nurse in order to make up for Leeward’s irresponsible tendencies. To complicate matters, Leeward is introduced to a French artist Lilas, who needs a place to stay until she is able to apply for her Visa. Lilas’s artistic spirit invigorates Leeward into making poor familial decisions in an effort to pursue his dream as an artist.

Dumb it Down turned out to be a bit of an indictment on the state of present hip-hop affairs. A group of experts was brought together, both past and present industry professionals who gave their opinion on how the art form has transformed from a way for a person to express their thoughts to apparently the new tactic in advertising.  As a fan of the genre, there is no denying that the music has changed from what it was originally. Admittedly, I find myself gravitating more towards songs with an actual message behind them rather than the club bangers (as they have come to be called). However, I have my doubts about the way this documentary is going to go over.

The overall question for this documentary is how it will be received by the audience. A scathing indictment of the industry by participants who knowingly admit that they took part in the dumbing down of the art form that they are now speaking out against. The hypocrisy of that admission, I imagine, is going to do a significant amount of damage with the audience. T-Pain came out and admitted that he dumbed down his own lyrics so that they would be better received with the listeners; however, he then turns around and talks about how doing such a thing is what wrong with hip-hop today. That contradiction weighed heavily with me as I watched the documentary, because how can you really speak out against something that you took part in? I understand that it is possible to have a change of heart, but that was not my first impression when I witnessed this admission. It seemed more like a “pass the puck of blame” scenario. There are plenty of others who speak out as well, but again I have to wonder how many of them participated in what they are now speaking out against.

Crumbs is a film that has many unique elements to offer. It is a mixed bag like most films. It is a small independent, post-apocalyptic science fiction set in Ethiopia whose main character is probably under four feet tall. Candy (Daniel Tadesse) is a scavenger in alternately desolate and overgrown landscape. Candy lives in an abandoned bowling alley with his beautiful partner, Birdy/Seyat (Selam Tesfaye). A giant spaceship has hung in the sky for decades, seemingly inoperable but starting to show new signs of activity. Candy finds artifacts which he barters for survival. These artifacts are silly remnants of pop culture like toys, sneakers, and record albums referencing forgotten icons like Justin Bieber, Michael Jordan, and Michael Jackson. There is chaos and confusion in this world but only in the most oblique ways. The message of this parable is slight and elusive. It is more an exploration of Ethiopia than it is anything else. There is a clear sense of allegory and metaphor, but only a sense. It is a short film of 68 minutes, because it really doesn’t have a lot to say. Its viewpoint can be summarized by saying that in a post-apocalyptic future our possessions will lose their meaning. Toys will seem like totems, and people will become symbols for a time we no longer understand or remember. Nazism and Santa Claus will have an equal weight in this desolate, arid, and depleted future. Writer/Director Miguel Llansa also includes two strange, avant-garde, Third World shorts that both run under 10 minutes. Chigger Ale takes place in the same bowling alley as Crumbs and a dingy dance club. It celebrates Ethiopian dance and fun, but its main character is a classic outsider not interested in fun. The diminutive Daniel Tadesse is an angry and silly man who wears Nazi uniform and phony Hitler mustache. He is eventually rescued by a sexy Nazi from outer space.

Night in the Garden takes place in a remote mountain cabin where a strange man in a white wig and novelty glasses takes to a somewhat disapproving and disembodied God voice.

“Los Angeles is a beautifully wrapped lie” 

Tangerine is a rather interesting comedy that is very reminiscent of Robert Altman’s ensemble comedies of the 1970’s. The film’s writing is especially intelligent given the contemporary issues it addresses, such as: transgendered women, prostitution, the entertainment industry and how it affects the lower class. Most of these issues are not directly addressed; they are represented in very minute but profound ways. While I really appreciated a lot of the concepts within the writing and a lot of the directorial choices, I did not enjoy this film as much as I had hoped to.

A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence is the title of a Swedish film that won the top award at Venice Film Festival. Many critics think it is one of the best movies of the year. It is also a movie that relatively few people will see. The main reason most people won't see it is because it is an extremely odd film. It could be called boring and fascinating in the same breath. The film is made up a series of master shots depicting events that have very little narrative clarity. Some characters show up periodically but with little sense that their actions have any potency or potential purpose. The title suggests an underlying philosophy of existential confusion. The pigeon is only depicted briefly twice in the film, but the idea is that a pigeon would have very little understanding of human behavior. The film also shows that human beings have very little understanding of human behavior. The various people who float through the movie all seem disconnected to anything that is happening to them. This is the final film in a trilogy by Roy Andersson including You, The Living (2007) and Songs From The Second Floor (2000). It is staged like a series of mini-plays with the characters barely moving in many instances, seemingly caught in some surreal dream. Many events don't seem to relate to others, but two hapless brothers are the most noticeable. They sell novelty items (vampire teeth with extra long fangs, laugh bags) because they want people to have fun. No one in this movie has any fun for even one second. The film is somewhat funny, depicting characters that are hopelessly grim and disconnected, but there are some moments that are bleakly horrifying while they are hallucinatory and confusing. The most obvious and chilling example is a group of slaves being led into a giant rotating drum that is sitting on top of a fire pit that has been set ablaze. It is done by soldiers for a group of finely dressed elderly people staring on dispassionately, totally unaffected by the horror. Another setting is a bar populated mostly by women who are suddenly besieged by the Swedish king and soldiers from two centuries earlier. They institute and implement edicts that long ago lost their relevance. The clear intent of the director is to confuse and alienate a modern audience with an uncomfortable pace and sense of unsettling illogic.

This is clearly a film that is only for seekers of unusual art. Some people will want to see it a few times to decipher the strange tableaux. There is a unique beauty to the crazy display of static boredom, but the average moviegoer will certainly walk away confused and alienated after the first viewing. The film is for sophisticated tastes, but is not easy to recommend to anyone. Intellectuals will respond to the droll absurdity that outlines a society that is dead but still attempting to exist in a zombie-like fashion. The message is subtle and open to interpretation, but it clearly shows modern life as hopelessly suffocating.