Doc Corner: A Russian Master Returns at MIFF Plus Frank Zappa and More

Glenn here. Each Tuesday reviews n documentaries from theatres, festivals, and on demand. This week four more from MIFF following last week's round-up.

The Event

One of Russian/Ukrainian cinema’s contemporary masters, Sergei Loznitsa, has a career that has successfully juggles both documentary traditional narrative cinema. His latest is The Event, a rather exceptional example of the artform that at just 74 minutes long nonetheless has the aura of an epic. Utilizing only black and white 35mm archival footage recorded in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) over the three days of the attempted coup d’etat that failed and eventually brought about the end of the U.S.S.R., The Event is a key reminder that for many in the world dictatorships, revolutions, and social revolt are issues of genuine life and death and not just something to tweet about online.

The found footage is of a remarkable quality, having been stored away for decades seemingly never to be seen since. While the images shown are filmed far away from the crisis happening in Moscow, they are still nonetheless fascinating to watch. This isn’t a film of violent confrontations like Loznitsa’s Maidan, rather it is one of bewilderment. A sea of faces descending on the public spaces of Leningrad to hear speeches, huddle around transistor radios, and read mass-distributed pamphlets that breed fear. Some of them are concerned, but many of them look simply nonplussed. Still, on screen they are rivetting. In the film’s best scene, a massive crowd stands in silence their hands in the air with peace signs, while in another a Soviet flag is drawn down over Parliament and replaced by the imperial tri-color one that flies still today albeit its colors faded by the black and white, a likely powerful statement by the Ukrainian-born Loznitsa to suggest in hindsight that just because one horror might be ending, doesn't mean another won't follow. Of course, they’re just two moments of many that make The Event a special film and with an occasional musical score courtesy of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake”, a rousing and powerfully cinematic one, too.

An Australian gem, Frank Zappa, and lost videogames after the jump...

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A First Glimpse of Villeneuve's 'Arrival'

Chris here with a first look at one of the fall's big Oscar question marks. Last year, Denis Villeneuve's Sicario did quite well by Oscar standards if you consider its punishing bleakness and divisiveness even if it missed the major races. This year he's returning with the sci-fi Arrival, and we've been patiently waiting to see if this will raise his Oscar cache.

To go with the building buzz, here are our first looks...

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Q&A: I'm Not There. I'm Right Here With My Cat(s)

Your questions a few days back really got me going so you're getting two weeks of Q&As out of them. Here's the first episode with eight questions answered on Hamilton, I'm Not There style biopics, dinner with movie characters and more... 

IBIS: Cast This! The film version of Hamilton

NATHANIEL: Since they'll surely make us wait another 10 years for any movement on the film we'd have to suggest actors we've never heard of who maybe even haven't started acting yet so we can't think on this. I will say though that when everyone was so sad that the original cast was leaving the show I felt like hugging everyone and going "it'll be fine if you see replacements!" because the star of Hamilton is really the musical itself, if you ask me. Yes, the actors were great but it's one of those things that's so perfectly calibrated to be its best self, that the show is really the star. I swear to you. So please enjoy it when it goes on tour somewhere near you.

Plus the wait for a Hamilton movie gives Hollywood time to invest in some actors of color as future stars so that they don't panic when it's time to cast the movie and realize they don't know enough of them to fill this sprawling movie. 

my favorite western RED RIVER (1948)SONJA: What is your least favorite genre?

I try to love all genres since they're all capable of greatness. My answer to this when I was younger would have easily  been "westerns" or "horror" but I've seen enough classics now from each of those genres that I have newfound respect. I guess I will say "war films" in general. Yes, there are great ones... but too often it's just an excuse to indulge in manly violence for manly violence's sake, which is never really a thrill for me.

But if I can extend to television throw out that entire answer and just say "medical procedural". While watching TV the other night I saw a commercial for Chicago Med which I guess is a new show? And I was like REALLY? ANOTHER MEDICAL PROCEDURAL? AND ALSO: ANOTHER MEDICAL PROCEDURAL SET IN CHICAGO WHERE HALF OF THEM HAVE BEEN SET?!?" It actually made me angry. The showbiz community is sometimes just entirely allergic to trying new things... which is strange considering it's a profession which can only exist by harnessing creativity.

RYAN T: Since the Olympics is happening in Rio, do you have a favorite Brazilian film, actor, or filmmaker?

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A Real Life Gaston

Presented without commentary because what is there really to say other than "Do the whole musical!"

A video posted by Walt Disney Animation Studios (@disneyanimation) on Aug 7, 2016 at 9:07am PDT

Review: Ira Sach's "Little Men"

This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

Feeling fatigued by summer movie season's emphasis on loud and flashy but ultimately empty spectacles? You're in luck. Little Men, now playing in limited release, is the perfect antidote: quiet but insightful, memorable and substantive. It's not a spectacle by any means but you should still see it inside the movie theater because it's the kind of careful storytelling that benefits from being fully inside of it. Getting lost in a story is much easier to accomplish in the pages of a great novel or the dark of a movie theater than if you wait around to Netflix and chill. The movie comes to us from one of our best LGBT directors, Ira Sachs. The New York based writer/director made his feature debut 20 years ago with The Delta (1996) but recently he's been on quite a roll.

Little Men is not an adaptation of the Louisa May Alcott sequel to Little Women, but it does feel like a rich unexpected sequel to a more contemporary future classic. Ira Sach's last film was the moving gay seniors drama Love is Strange starring John Lithgow and Alfred Molina whose marriage at the beginning of the film sets off a surprising chain of events which leaves them homeless and at the mercy of friends and relatives. That beautiful movie ended, rather intuitively, with a wordless and narratively inconsequential scene in which we followed their young nephew on his skateboard down the streets of the city at magic hour. The image was rapturous and watery... or rather just rapturous; I was watching it through cascading tears was all. [More...]

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