“PRESSURE COOKER”

By Jason Guerrasio

Gaining attention on the regional fest circuit after premiering at the Los Angeles Film Festival in 2008 (followed by a small theatrical release), Jennifer Grausman and Mark Becker’s look at a strong-willed culinary arts teacher in Philadelphia as she molds her students through a school year is both uplifting and a love letter to elective classes in high school that are quickly disappearing.

Wilma Stephenson, teaching for close to 40 years by the time the filmmakers shoot her class at Frankford High School, is known through Philly as teaching with an iron fist. The first day of class, she announces to her kids that most of them won’t be around by the end. She screams, she gets in your face, but aren’t those the teachers we remember the most and made the biggest impression on us?

As the school year goes on, the students quickly realize that the skills they’re learning in the kitchen can prove to be rewarding not only for their future but becoming better people. And that’s where we see Mrs. Stephenson’s true side — a loving, caring, enthusiastic teacher who wants nothing but the best for her students.

But Grausman and Becker also look at the stories of the students in the class. Living in impoverished Northeast Philly, over 40% of students don’t make it to their senior year at Frankford. But for three students highlighted in the class, excelling in culinary arts could be their only chance to leave their hometown after high school. Grausman and Becker flash back and forth from the classroom to the houses of the students to find the struggles they go through back home — ranging from struggling with academics to being a surrogate parent, to holding a job after school — which builds the drama for the film’s conclusion where the class takes part in a competition by the Careers Through Culinary Arts Program where the best are rewarded life-changing college scholarships.

Unfortunately, classes like Stephenson’s are fading away, especially in public schools like Frankford. Where inner-city kids only see their way out through becoming sport phenoms, the loss … Read the rest

“THE MISSING PERSON”

By Jason Guerrasio

It’s hard to go head first into film noir and not regurgitate the themes, styles, dialogue and characters from the past. But Noah Buschel in his latest cleverly dances around the genre to tell a story of a man who’s hit rock bottom and how he unknowingly redeems himself.

Set in the modern day, Michael Shannon gives one of his best performances in a budding career as a gifted character actor with his portrayal as sauced Chicago private eye John Rosow. When we meet Rosow he’s extremely hung over and gets a call to do a job tailing a guy with little information on why but for a lot of money. Given instructions by the attractive Miss Charley (Amy Ryan), Rosow is onboard a train to L.A. As his job continues he begins to learn more on why the guy he’s following is so important and why he’s the best man for the job.

Okay, that sounds like all the noirs you’ve ever seen in your life.

But instead of following Rosow as he stumbles upon clues and inevitably shows he’s a much better detective than the bad guys gave him credit for, Buschel keeps the plot at bay for most of the film, instead concentrating on the complex Rosow and exploring how he got to where he is now. And Shannon makes this exploration a joy to watch; grunting, slurring and cracking wise through most of the film, he makes Rosow out as a guy who’s seen it all and has had enough of the job but can’t think of anything better to do. Think of a much more disturbed Harry Caul from The Conversation.

The mood is also set by the top notch work by d.p. Ryan Samul, and the predominant jazz score. You can almost smell the stale cigarettes as the music comes in when Rosow enters a bar.

There really is no grand villain in The Missing Person or sultry femme fatale, we’re in a world “beyond right and wrong,” as Rosow puts it in the end. A place where getting by is the only … Read the rest

“AFGHAN STAR”

By Jason Guerrasio

If you thought you were crazy about American Idol, imagine if you grew up in an area of the world where singing and dancing were forbidden. Well, that’s what director Havana Marking highlights in her moving documentary which follows four contestants competing in the wildly popular TV show Afghan Star.

Since 1995 the Taliban have made it illegal to sing or dance in Afghanistan. But recently with the Taliban fleeing the country a freedom of expression has surfaced that’s unlike anything the country has seen in a brutal, war-torn 30 years. Starting in 2005 the TV network, Tolo TV, in Kabul capitalized on this liberation by creating the singing contest Afghan Star, which, like American Idol, travels the country searching for the best singers and then eliminates them until they get down to one. But unlike Idol the fandom over the singers is Beatlesesque, leading to the contestants having the loyal support from the regions they are from and dangers they had never contemplated.

Though Marking structures the film in the vein of popular competition docs like Spellbound or Wordplay — highlighting the trained musician (Hameed), controversial songstress (Setara), the heartthrob (Rafi) and the shy siren (Lema) — finding out who wins isn’t necessarily what keeps you in the film, it’s watching the rebirth of culture, the arts and the feel of community to a people who are climbing back to modernity.

When the film begins there are ten contestants left and favorites are beginning to emerge. Rafi often travels with an entourage as he walks the streets of his hometown, but is often cautious of doing interviews for the film in public or taking pictures with fans as the fear of the Taliban is still present, or just someone harming him who is against the “new Afghan.” Danger is also most evident to the two female contestants Marking highlights. Setara is a brash kid who has no fear on stage. This is highlighted when she’s eliminated from Afghan Star and while singing her final song takes off her headdress and begins dancing around the stage. … Read the rest

“FANTASTIC MR. FOX”

By Jason Guerrasio

Not often does a director with an indie pedigree seamlessly segue into subject matter like… children’s literature.

But in many ways Wes Anderson has been training for the moment to use his hyper-stylized, extremely detailed storytelling to make a film like Fantastic Mr. Fox. Based on the Roald Dohl classic, Anderson (and co-writer, Noah Baumbach) use the book’s premise of a sly fox who outwits his farmer neighbors to steal their food to create a film that dazzles children and adults alike with it’s Andersonesque storytelling and stop-motion animation.

When we meet Fox — voiced by George Clooney with motormouth charm (similar to his character Everett in O, Brother Where Art Thou?) — his life is about to change as he learns he’s going to become a father and swears to his wife (Meryl Streep) that he will give up robbing chickens from coops and other dangerous stunts, though it’s obvious he still has a love for it.

Years pass and Fox — dressed in an Anderson staple: a tweed jacket — is going through a mid-life crisis. Unsatisfied as a columnist for the local paper, he’s obsessed to live in the big tree on a hill and his itch to rob the local farmers, Boggis, Bunce and Bean is becoming unbearable.

With his loyal friend/superintendent Kyle (Wallace Wolodarsky), an opossum, by his side, the two head out to rob the farmers. While back home, Fox’s son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) has to deal with being less fantastic as his father, and it things get worse when his much more athletically gifted and better looking cousin Kristofferson (Eric Anderson) moves in with them. As Fox continues to have a blast robbing the farmers, things get serious when Boggis, Bunce and Bean set a trap to kill Fox, but are only able to shoot off his tale. Family squabbles are put aside as the Fox’s home gets destroyed by the farmers over the music of the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” and the Fox’s and their friends (including Bill Murry as their attorney Badger) dig to find safety, and plan … Read the rest

“BIGGER THAN LIFE”

By Jason Guerrasio

A maverick of the 1950s Hollywood system, with Johnny Guitar and Rebel Without a Cause already under his belt earlier in the decade, Nicholas Ray’s melodrama Bigger Than Life was perhaps his most structured work when it came out in 1956. Starring James Mason (who also produced) in a uncharacteristic — yet riveting — role, the film was virtually ignored by audiences when it opened, but with its look at American suburbia during the nuclear-era (and a precursor for highlighting the abuse of prescription drugs) it has since become a popular title of critics and cineastes alike.

The film opens with teacher Ed Avery (Mason) finishing up his last day of the school year before running off to work as a taxi dispatcher. Too proud to tell his wife what he’s doing, he’s also hiding debilitating chest pains. Finally overcome by the pain, he’s rushed to the hospital and learns he has a rare condition that may be cared for if he begins going on an experimental drug: Cortisone.

After an amazing montage of Ed tossing and turning in a hospital bed as he works through the pain while Ray inserting a graphic showing the increase of Cortisone and the decrease of pain until it finally settles at “No Pain,” Ed goes home good as new. Maybe too good. And before his wife (Barbara Rush) realizes, Ed has become hooked on the medication, with side affects that has made him a monster to her and their young son (who often wears a bright red James Dean-esque jacket).

What makes Bigger than Life ahead of its time is the way Ray uses not only medicine but the medical system to debilitate his protagonists. With the mountain of bills piling up because of Ed’s condition, Ray shows scenes where Ed or his wife could have contacted the doctor and questioned the treatment, but with fears of more bills they think otherwise. There’s also Ed’s second job and the family’s moderate lifestyle that proves this isn’t Leave it to Beaver.

And how can you not enjoy watching James Mason in a role … Read the rest

“FIX”

By Jason Guerrasio

If you’re craving the look and feel of an indie from the ’90s then Tao Ruspoli’s debut feature Fix may be the disc you’ll want to pop in.

Chronicling a wild one day journey around Greater Los Angeles, we follow Bella (Olivia Wilde) and Milo (Ruspoli) as they shoot a documentary on Milo’s brother, Leo (Shawn Andrews), who they pick him up from jail and attempt to drop off at rehab before 8pm. The catch: they have to raise the $5,000 needed to get Leo in the clinic or it’s back to jail.

With an impressive soundtrack leading the way, we follow the three as they steal cars, dog, expresso machine and anything else they can find to pawn off (oh, and they sell some weed).

Shot in a first-person, handheld style, with fast-paced editing, it’s part road trip movie part gritty faux-doc. Certainly not the most original concept, the acting keeps you involved as well as its commentary on the less glamorous areas of the city.

At the end of the day, Ruspoli creates a touching love letter to Los Angeles.

Fix goes on sale today through E1 Entertainment.

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Release date March 9, 2010.

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“THE STONING OF SORAYA M.”

By Jason Guerrasio

This powerful adaptation of a 1994 book by French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam of the same title exposes the inhuman practice of stoning women accused of adultery, which supposedly continues to this day.

Jim Caviezel stars as Sahebjam, who after his car breaks down is towed to a small Iranian village where he’s approached by Soraya’s aunt (Shohreh Aghdashloo), who reveals to him the village’s dark secret. The film then is told in a flashback as we follow Soraya (Mozhan Marno) as she attempts to provide for her two sons and two daughters though she receives no support from her husband, who spends most of his time away from them with another woman.

When she won’t give him a divorce, Soraya is offered to work for a neighbor who recently lost his wife in the hopes she’ll earn enough money to provide for her children after a divorce. But her husband can’t wait that long and devises a plot to peg false charges of infidelity against Soraya — unsympathetic that if charged, his wife will be dragged to the middle of town, buried waste deep in the ground and stoned to death by all the men in town (including her father and sons!).

From the producers of The Passion of the Christ, they once again show the atrocities done to their character in hard-to-watch graphic detail (though at the height of the drama an interruption happens that seems to be taken straight from a Fellini film).

Directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh (mini-series The Path to 9/11), the film has been banned in Iran, but has brought the attention of stoning to the UN, which late last year after the film was in theaters, condemned stoning and other human rights violations in Iran.

Aghdashloo gives a tour-de-force performance and Caviezel shines in the little screen time he has.

Released through Lionsgate, the DVD hits streets today.

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“THE COVE”

By Jason Guerrasio

“A dolphin’s smile is nature’s greatest deception.”

That’s a line given in the beginning of Louie Psihoyos’s gripping documentary, The Cove. And the man who says it, Ric O’Barry, is one of the most intriguing subjects in a doc you’ll see this year.

Ric O’Barry captured and trained the five female dolphins that played Flipper in the 1960s TV series. He lived twenty steps from them for close to ten years. But everything changed when Cathy, the lead Flipper, committed suicide in O’Barry’s arms. The next day he was arrested for trying to free a dolphin from a marina and has spent the last 35 years trying to destroy the industry that he helped create.

Japan has brought the greatest harm to dolphins and Taiji, Japan is its torture room. This small, unobtrusive town — that if you glance at it looks like the biggest fan of the mammal — is, as O’Barry puts it, “the little town with a really big secret.” In a tiny lagoon in the town dolphin slaughtering takes place daily.

Caught and dragged into the lagoon by fisherman, the dolphins are paraded for trainers looking for bottlenose dolphins — looking for Flipper. The ones who aren’t sold are killed for their meat. 23,000 dolphins are destroyed yearly for their meat, which in Japan is given out in schools, though they are incredibly high in mercury.

O’Barry has spent decades trying to expose what’s going on in Taiji. He’s brought out the BBC, London Times, Time Magazine and countless activists, but all have come away empty handed. Bullied and annoyed by fisherman until they are forced to leave, there is still no proof, only speculation of what goes on in the cove.

Psihoyos, who along with being a renowned photographer, created a nonprofit foundation, the Oceanic Preservation Society,met O’Barry and after hearing his story decided to take on the challenge of revealing what really goes on in Taiji. Enlisting a motley crew of thrill seekers and activists, Psihoyos and his team head off to Taiji to discover the truth. Using high tech gadgets, … Read the rest

“GOMORRAH”

By Rupert Chiarella

Matteo Garrone’s masterwork Gomorrah is notable for what it is not. There is no macho camaraderie amongst thugs in social clubs as seen on The Sopranos. And there is nothing romantic about ‘the life’ of mobsters. While American audiences have been accustomed to the portrayal of gangsters having facile access to money, power and women with seeming impunity, they will be treated to a coarser, realistic depiction of the Naples crime syndicate known as the Camorra. Based on the eponymously named novel by Roberto Saviano, Garrone’s film bears more than a passing resemblance to socio-economic and cultural milieu of Luis Bunuel’s Los Olvidados and Fernando Meirelles’s City of God, where squalor, death and hopelessness reign with no end in sight.

Five non-interrelated storylines take place in a colorless, prison-like Neapolitan housing project, itself a fiefdom of rival Camorra gangs. There is Pasquale, the fashion tailor (Salvatore Cantalupo), two young wannabes, Ciro and Marco (Ciro Petrone and Marco Macor), Franco, the waste management specialist (Toni Servillo), Don Ciro, the mob-bagman (Gianfelice Imparato) and Toto, the small associate (Salvatore Abruzzese). Each attempts to get on with their lives, knowing full well, there is no escaping from the tentacles of the Camorra, which influences every single one of their choices. None of the characters will have serendipitous encounters with each other and none can run to the government, which is noticeably absent, as is perhaps God in this part of the world. Each accepts as a fact of life, the Camorra as omnipresent and omnipotent. Either work with evil or be eliminated. Gomorrah focuses on the attempts of the victims to do what they must despite it all. Wider American audiences may not take to the lack of Hollywood flash in the film, but it will give them pause to think. They will think about the social conditions in which so many people live and shame the government into taking decisive action against organized crime.

The most fascinating of the DVD extras is the 60-minute segment entitled Five Stories, providing the behind scenes making of documentary for each of the … Read the rest

“THE NEW YEAR PARADE”

By Jason Guerrasio

For his debut feature Tom Quinn took the hours of footage he shot of family and friends talking about dealing with divorce for a psych class as inspiration to create a touching story that meshes domestic issues with the culture of his native South Philadelphia.

After placing 13th in Philadelphia’s Mummers Parade, which is held every New Year’s Day where local clubs in elaborate costumes compete for prizes and bragging rights, the South Philadelphia String Band are stuck in a rut as their losing ways have gone on for decades now. For Mike (Andrew Conway) and his son Jack (Greg Lyons) the pain doesn’t subside when they head home. Mike and his wife Lisa (MaryAnn McDonald) are separated and Jack and his younger sister Kat (Jennifer Welsh) are just starting to feel the tear in the family.

With a gritty handheld look, shot by Quinn, and great performances by Lyons and Welsh, the film follows a year in the life of the family as they struggle to stay together and Mike and Jack try to bring the string band back to its prominence. Quinn uses real Mummers and engrosses us in their community to create an authentic piece of regional filmmaking.

Along with directing and shooting, Quinn, a 25 New Faces alumni, also wrote the screenplay, edited, and produced the film (along with Steve Beal). Winner of the Grand Prize award at Slamdance in 2008, The New Year Parade was also nominated for our “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” award at the Gotham Independent Film Awards the same year.

Features include Quinn’s interviews he conduced of people who have gone through their parents getting divorced, a making-of piece, and a history of the South Philadelphia String Band and the Mummers.

Carnivalesque Films releases the DVD this week.

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Release date November 23, 2009.

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