Billy, The Kid from Maine

"A good piece of entertainment is always hard to come by in high school."
- Billy the Kid

I just came from seeing one of the best films - regardless of genre - I've seen in years: Jennifer Venditti's feature-length documentary, Billy the Kid. It was Jennifer's first film, as well as Billy's, but both were made for it, I think. It's simply about a brief period of time (8 days, actually) in this teenage kid's life, Billy K. He's a little "off" in traditional terms, but a feast for the eyes and ears to anyone who'll watch or listen. First, because Billy and I grew up in the same area of rural Maine and went to the same high school, I thought I was pre-conditioned to like this film. But Venditti, as an outsider with a camera, could've gone in so many directions with it, including (worst case scenario) presenting Billy, her amazing subject, as a freak. Thankfully, she didn't. I loved it because she portrayed him honestly, but treated him with complete and total respect. These are two things that movies rarely do with subjects - real or fictionalized - from the lonely state of Maine. Typically, these depictions are tragic reports of incest and poverty or candy-coated tales of stoic, church-goin' folk living in quaint fishing villages called Pine Cone Harbor or Crabapple Cove. (And they never get that Downeast accent right! We're not British! Dang!! ) BTK is more accurate: neither Stephen King nor Frontline. When in pursuit of a girl, Billy's mom tells him, "Just be yourself, don't try so hard." That's what this film does. It's just great verite filmmaking - a brutal and tender and unpretentious doc about a very ordinary, but surprisingly unique kid who likes KISS and happens to live in a trailer park in Maine. If you're not hooked by the time he asks said girl to be his girlfriend, check your pulse... you may not be alive.

Il buono, il brutto & il cattivo (Movie Review #5)

The Good: While swimming in bouts of unbridled goofiness, Into the Wild is forgiven for its remaining moments of truth. While it's been done endless times, mostly by male media makers, it doesn't seem to get tired - ever. It's Kerouac's On the Road and Hopper's Easy Rider all over again, but from a 23 year-old's perspective circa 1992. Yes, always cliche - but this one is sweet and silly and sincere. While you want to kick the kid - "Alexander Supertramp" - in the head at times throughout the film, once in a while - if you're honest with yourself - you see a bit of you in him and his reckless, selfish actions. If you don't, you're a big liar. Either that or you simply wasted your youth. For all the bad "I'm the King of the World" scenes, there are almost as many wonderful ones. Moments where Alex is utterly alone in the Alaskan wilderness, witnessing immense beauty, but unable to share his joy with anyone else. The Bad: After seeing Vincent Gallo cut off our bus in LA with his GTO, I just had to give this film of his a chance. I was one of the few fans of Buffalo 66, so I recently rented Brown Bunny (oddly, a "long wait" on NetFlix). Yeah, yeah - I heard all the hype surrounding the BJ scene. No, no - I didn't rent it because of the BJ scene. It was actually the worst part of the film, sadly where it all finally came totally, unforgivably unraveled. While it was really a bland, uninspired movie, Gallo does have an eye for the beauty of everyday stuff: driving alone on the highway, people's ordinary features, mediocre American architecture, bad decisions, etc. Plus, I like that he ignores entertainment timing altogether. I'll give him that. The Ugly: I've already mentioned it, but the prize goes - claws down - to D-War. I still can't bring myself to illustrate its ugliness in any detail... but maybe in 10 years it will be funny. Maybe. (Did I mention its publicity budget matched the entire production and post budget combined: $30M?)

Il buono, il brutto & il cattivo (Movie Review #4)

Three movies watched out of boredom. The good: Knocked Up. (I could've selected Sicko or La Vie en Rose, but they're too obvious.) Seriously, it was quite entertaining and, at times, even hilarious. It was raining, our neighbors were being annoying, there was nothing else playing in the n'hood - and we weren't about to get on the subway on a weekend - so we begrudgingly stumbled into this seemingly lame flick. Yes, ample potty humor, but brutally honest at times. Highly recommended comedic relief! The bad: Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus. It actually has another subtitle: "A Love Story." Yikes. This movie had so much potential, but sucked so badly. First question: why make an "imaginary" movie about such an interesting historical figure? Arbus was a real person who died only recently - it's not like she made her mark during the French and Indian War when history was a bit murky. It was the 1970s. You couldn't ask for a better subject. Second, why not just make another, more engaging story with imaginary characters? All the right ingredients were there: love, loneliness, photography, freaks. The ugly: 1408. (Another all too obvious choice for this category: Spiderman 3, which, for me, has taken the place of Congo as the worse movie I have ever seen, ever.) I have no excuse for this one. We were already in Stinky Town proper, but found ourselves yearning for a movie without having bought tix in advance. Not good. It was the first theater we came across and this movie was playing in five minutes. "Hey, let's go - it'll be fun! Cusack and Jackson - how bad could it be?" It was awful. It was funny, too, but not intentionally. Wait for the (second of four) end scene when the hotel room floods. Classic cinema.

Il buono, il brutto & il cattivo (Movie Review #3)

The good: Notes on a Scandal is probably the best film I saw in 2006... at minimum, it holds the finest performance of the year (Judi Dench as the delightfully evil, aging high school teacher Barbara Covett). While most movies that use a character's narration to thread the film together have little effect, Covett's VO is crucial. You thought Dan was a Bummer? Just wait until you witness Dench's character slide from mere sarcasm into pure darkness. As good as watching Liz Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The bad: The Joy of Life, a documentary about suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge (no, not the one that documents poor souls taking the dreaded leap), starts out promising and then commits a sort of suicide of its own. Roughly in three acts, the first is a steady but long reading of a butch diary over beautiful, ghostly static shots of San Francisco. You sort of hanker down and settle into this running narration, mainly because you assume there's a pay-off in the end. It's foreign, terribly personal, and vulnerable, which is another reason you listen in. The second act is a VO film analysis. The third act is a report of the filmmaker's study of the bridge's history of attracting jumpers, told in a manner 180 degrees different than the opening narration - both in tone and content. This Sundance pic from '05 wasn't "ugly," just bad. I ended up feeling really ripped away from what what I was promised in the open. Not a great ride. The ugly: Children of Men. While based on an intriguing premise, the film version never really goes anywhere. A looooooong chase and many deaths throughout a bleak landscape (impressive art direction) of the not-so-distant future UK. There were a few nice touches: Clive Owen's un-masculine flip-flops, the un-American-ness of it all, and the odd jarring moments of action were nicely handled. Otherwise, save it for a rental.

Il buono, il brutto & il cattivo (Movie Review #2)

The good: two films, similar in style. One French, the other from Argentina. First, They Came Back: a sort-of zombie pic, but minus the grunting, bloodthirsty undead with rotting flesh. A collective knot in the community's stomach begins when 13,000 of their recently dead citizens walk out of the cemetery and proceed to find their loved ones and resume their previous jobs. Throughout, an understated creepiness resides in this film. Similar in pacing, The Aura - by Fabian Bielinsky, who died at the age of only 47 after the film was edited - is a mesmerizing portrait of an epileptic taxidermist who dreams of pulling off the perfect heist. Beautifully shot, acted and edited, Aura has it's own sense of timing and resolve. The bad: Hard Candy. How could a film start out so brilliant and fall apart so rapidly? The first half is amazing (like Lost Highway or Art School Confidential), but once the "procedure" is done... it all goes down the drain, literally. The ugly: As a huge fan of Christopher Guest films, I was overjoyed when I first saw the trailer for For Your Consideration. I watched it over and over, laughing hysterically. I made friends watch it. I made friends go see it with me and, to my horror, it was awful. All the good laughs are capsulized in the trailer... it's all you need... just consider it a short film and never mind the feature.

Il buono, il brutto & il cattivo (Movie Review)

Three flicks. One good, one bad and one ugly (or not entirely bad, but just sort of lame). The good movie this month, surprisingly, was Babel (a more obvious choice would've been Borat, but...) A sometimes fan of Alejandro González Iñárritu, this film was layered, subtle and as good as his second feature. The bad: Crispin "Hellion" Glover's What Is It? We saw this film, as well as Glover's Big Slide Show performance, at Anthology last week. While Glover compared himself to the likes of Bunuel and Herzog, he came across more like P.T. Barnum. Employing (I use that term loosely since I don't think he actually paid them) subjects with Down Syndrome and a range of other physical and mental abnormalities, Glover was really trying to be cutting edge, but the final product was just embarrassingly bad (sort of the same effect as changing one's middle name to Hellion... ahem). The ugly (or not great, just so-so) was, hesitantly, The Queen. Dame Helen Mirren was the only thing that carried this film along, as she always does. Not intending to see this film at the theater, we went because it got 98% on rottentomatoes. We got burned. Watching the royal family squirm in modern society was fun, but the fact that it only portrayed Elizabeth in a one-week glance was an odd script decision. This queen has seen so much in her lifetime as monarch. To center the entire film around Princess Di was... well, lame. Again, it wasn't a terrible film (it was Frears, after all), it just wasn't necessary to see it on the big screen - really more of a TV movie.