Review: Elliot Tuttle’s “Blue Film” is a transfixing transgression

by Cláudio Alves

© Obscured Releasing

Every year, so-called provocateurs come out of the woodwork with films that promise to shock audiences, challenge norms and push boundaries, leaving behind broken taboos in their wake. And yet, true transgressions are few and far between. More often than not, viewers are met with the pretension of risk-taking on the part of artists too timorous to take any actual risk. When a picture comes about and honestly earns these descriptors, one should take note. So, please note Elliot Tuttle’s Blue Film. It’s the sordid yet simple story of the night spent between a gay camboy and the stranger who paid for his company. 

During those hours, perversity takes on another meaning as actors Kieron Moore and Reed Birney playact a scenario in which nothing feels more verboten than a show of affection, empathy extended toward those who would rightfully revolt us. Blue Film forms a lewd poem of broken hearts and sad monsters, a mural of cumstains and razor burns, topped by a secret song that you listen to while feeling like you shouldn’t, like you’re encroaching on something so private that to witness it is a violation. All throughout, there’s this pervading sense one is peeking into what ought to remain unseen…

Click to read more ...

Review: "The Devil Wears Prada 2" is a legacy sequel about how legacy is meaningless nowadays

by Cláudio Alves

Ideally, trailers and other promo are meant to sell a movie to their prospective audience, enticing and seducing butts into seats. Ideally, they'll build anticipation for a good time. Ideally, they don't make dread pool in the bellies of those who might have been excited about the project before they laid eyes on its ads. And yet, the trailers for The Devil Wears Prada 2 almost dared us to be optimistic in the face of an obvious nostalgia-drunk cash grab like so many others polluting the multiplex. Indeed, looking at the site's comment section was how I realized this predicament might be more generalized than I thought and that it wasn't just me cringing at what this sequel seemed to promise. 

So, there's bad news and good news. Starting with the negatives, there is a lot wrong with our second go-round with Andy Sachs, Miranda Priestley and the rest of the Runway magazine gang. Form-wise, even fashion-wise, the sequel's a total downgrade when it's not being a shoddy photocopy with printing errors galore, an echo on its way to becoming a structural pleonasm. However, some elements surprise, even delight, including stabs at thematic complexity nowhere to be found in the original flick, even some elegiac tones. Oh, also, Meryl Streep is in fine form, but you might have already guessed that. After all, she IS Meryl Streep…

Click to read more ...

Gotham Awards Revue: "Blue Sun Palace"

by Nick Taylor

The variations of melancholy on display in Blue Sun Palace, ranging from everyday stressors to self-recriminating shame, to the profoundly dull ache of existing in the shadow of life-shattering upheavals, are an exquisite feat. Director Constance Tsang’s penchant for choreographing scenes in one shot allows her to parse the emotional gradations and inflections with a fine-toothed comb. Sometimes, she distills her character’s moods in a single static shot. At others, she has her camera pan back and forth across a conversation, as if it’s a silent but active participant. Her directorial choices always feel deliberate without being show-offy, even when teeing up another self-consciously beautiful image or logistically challenging camera movement...

Click to read more ...

Gotham Awards Revue: "Eephus"

by Nick Taylor

While all five Breakthrough Director nominees have writer/director credits for their films, only Eephus' Carson Lund can boast additional duties as his own editor, composer, sound designer, and casting director. If he can make three more films in the next eighteen months, America might finally have an answer to South Korea's most multi-hyphenate auteur, Hong Sang-soo...

Click to read more ...

Gotham Awards Revue: "Urchin"

by Nick Taylor

As with Familiar Touch, I am very solidly impressed by the filmmaking debut on display in Urchin, but first I need to know how the leading turn at the center of this wasn’t nominated. Frank Dillane is magnetic as Mike, the unhoused addict trying to reintegrate into London society after his latest stint in prison. He gives a very extroverted, mannered performance of a strung-out young man rooted in an empathetic understanding of Mike’s decision-making and needs. He never showboats at the cost of the other cast members, instead showing himself to be a receptive, active scene partner. Dillane finds a man who isn’t particularly malicious even when he uses others. At no point does this character stand in for any social issue or personality type, even as the film posits his story as a parable of how an individual’s recovery and downfall are informed by the support they receive. Nothing affects Mike’s ability to take care of himself more than the government housing he receives and later loses...

Click to read more ...