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Mission Control

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Desert One

by Rachel Willis

It has been nearly 41 years since 52 American diplomats and citizens were taken hostage in Tehran, Iran. Coming on the heals of the Iranian revolution, in which the Ayatollah Khomeini took power from the U.S.-backed Shah, the hostage crisis was perhaps the single biggest catastrophe of the Carter presidency.

Five months after the hostages were taken prisoner, in April of 1980, President Carter authorized a rescue mission, the subject of director Barbara Kopple’s (Harlan County, USA) latest documentary, Desert One.

Drawing on previously unreleased audio recordings, extensive interviews with those involved in the operation, and archival footage, Kopple’s film is one of the most compelling you’ll see this year.

Viewers may not be aware of the details of the Iranian Hostage Crisis, so a brief but informative overview of the situation in Iran paints a vivid picture. What led to the crisis is laid-out in clear detail. Interviews with many of the diplomats who were later held hostage help the audience understand the mood in D.C. as Khomeini came to power. Interviews with Iranian citizens further develop the picture of their attitude toward U.S. policy.

The most remarkable aspect of Desert One is the sheer number of interviews conducted for the film. Kopple interviews hostages and hostage takers, Delta Force members, as well as former president, Jimmy Carter, and his vice president, Walter Mondale.

Though the film is heavily skewed toward the American perspective, there is an attempt at balance by allowing some of the Iranians involved to share their perspective on the situation. However, as with most of history, memories of the incident vary wildly – prisoners describe being tortured; translator Hossein Sheikholeslam describes friendly relationships with the hostages. Hostage taker Faizeh Moslehi says the hostages were treated with respect, yet revels in the memory of seeing Americans defeated in brutal ways.

Animations serve to emphasize the words of the interviews and as reenactments for events not recorded. However, the most effective aspects are the pictures and archival footage – at times, almost too gruesome to bear. It emphasizes the sheer tragedy of the situation, as well as the mounting pressure on the U.S. to resolve it.

Removed from the situation by nearly half a century, it is still a critical moment in American history and not one to be forgotten. Kopple ensures it will remain fresh in our minds a little longer with her riveting piece of filmmaking.   

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Tell and Tell

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Words on Bathroom Walls

by George Wolf

Look, I know Young Adult is not the only genre to lean on a familiar blueprint, but we’ve reached the point where finding any YA film without voiceover narration or an essay-reading finale is going to feel like gazing upon the golden wonders of Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase.

There’s little glow surrounding Words on Bathroom Walls.

To be fair, writer Nick Naveda’s take on Julia Walton’s novel does at least try to develop an organic thread for the narration, as high schooler Adam (Charlie Plummer) talks to an unseen therapist about his struggles with paranoid schizophrenia.

Director Thor Freudenthal (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) manifests those struggles onscreen via three distinct characters (AnnaSophia Robb, Devon Bostick and the gloriously named Lobo Sebastian) whose voices are always lurking inside Adam’s head. It’s an early clue that the film’s handling of teen mental health will be an opportunity largely missed.

After a serious episode during class injures another student, Adam is expelled from his high school in the middle of senior year. On the upside, he’s accepted into a trial for a new schizophrenia drug, and into a prestigious local Catholic school which promises to be discreet.

Adam’s future plan to attend culinary college hinges on a high school diploma, which means Adam must make sure he a) takes his new meds, b) keeps his grades up, and c) passes a big exam which consists only of math questions and…..wait for it….an essay.

The obligatory tortured romance is between Adam and his math tutor, a classmate named Maya (Taylor Russell) who also has some secrets she’d rather not reveal.

And as with so many of these YA adaptations, all the narration and essay reading means the film is more tell, less show and nothing earned. Again, we get an invitation for teens to wallow in the angst of an inexperienced worldview simply by telling them what we think they want to hear.

Adam’s “you don’t understand me” posturing with his mother (Molly Parker), her new boyfriend (Walton Goggins, wasted) and an easygoing priest (Andy Garcia) serve only the manipulative and convenient use of Adam’s condition. Both Plummer (All the Money in the World) and Russell (Waves) have impressed before, but they’re given little chance to develop their characters into anything real or resonant.

All the familiar YA parts are here, and Words on Bathroom Walls keeps them comfortably close. But like those sentence-building magnets on the refrigerator door, just moving them around seldom leads to anything that makes much sense.

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A Shot in the Dark

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Tesla

by Matt Weiner

Nikola Tesla is having a moment. Hot on the heels of 2019’s The Current War comes Tesla, another take on the inventor from writer and director Michael Almereyda. And while both treatments are anchored around Tesla’s rivalry with Thomas Edison over electrifying the country, Tesla is so far apart in style and tone that the subject could be a completely different person.

Almereyda has already shown that he can handle big sci-fi themes on a small budget. His adaptation of Marjorie Prime was moving and challenging. Tesla also has the rhythm of a stage play, one where characters and dialogue take precedence over strict history.

This is still a biopic though. The story begins as Tesla (Ethan Hawke) splits from Thomas Edison (Kyle MacLachlan), and follows through his partnership with George Westinghouse (Jim Gaffigan) and his ultimate victory in the war of the currents.

But as Tesla’s personal and professional lives unravel, Almereyda takes his film off the rails as well. From historical counterfactuals and modern-day interruptions to an arresting musical number, Tesla the movie surrenders all control over its title character—and does so gleefully. These big swings don’t always connect, but the attempts are always compelling.

In Almereyda’s version, Tesla is a cipher. Hawke trades in his usual charm for a portrayal that blends tortured genius and mad scientist, and despite his quiet demeanor he fills every scene with an intensely heavy presence.

It’s up to the supporting cast, especially MacLachlan’s flighty yet imperious Edison, to draw out whatever they can from the inscrutable Tesla. It’s an unusual effect for a biopic, but it works. Tesla is the rare adaptation that seems determined to obscure its subject rather than illuminate him.

This Tesla is a man not so much ahead of his time but completely outside of it. Almereyda suggests that the enduring appeal of Tesla can’t be neatly captured in the war of the currents against Edison. There’s Tesla the pioneering genius who lit up the Chicago World’s Fair, and there’s Tesla who died penniless in a hotel room dreaming of death rays. And somewhere in between, there’s a man who raises the curiosity of everyone he meets.

But in this telling, the closest we can come to unsolvable mysteries are a reflection here, a spark there. This Tesla is a brief light guiding us toward some greater understanding, one that vanishes just as quickly.

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Erotic City

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Love Express: The Disappearance of Walerian Borowczyk

by Darren Tilby

Walerian Borowczyk – a writer/director of unparalleled sensuality, unequalled in the 1970s for his work on sexual freedom, but later labelled an erotic filmmaker, had a short but undeniably impactful career. By interviewing long-time collaborators, peers and fans of his work, Kuba Mikurda offers rare insight into Borowczyk’s art, which poses questions on society’s relationship with love and hate and the boundaries of artistic freedom, in a celebration of Borowczyk’s enigmatic and often controversial career.

Unlike Borowczyk himself, Love Express follows a fairly conventional (documentary-film) formula: it’s constructed from archival footage of Borowczyk at work and in interview, as well as contemporary interviews from those who knew him or his work. It’s a safe choice, one that works well, but still, I feel more could have been done here to differentiate it a little.

Long-time collaborator Noël Véry – who acted as a camera operator in many of Borowczyk’s films and was one of the people closest to him – leads and stays with us throughout the movie, which, at only 70-minutes in length, flows nicely and never outstayed its welcome.

From Borowczyk’s time as an animator (an identity which he never truly shed) manipulating and fetishizing objects, to live-action director (now manipulating and fetishizing his actors as he once did his animations), to his unfortunate and eventual pigeonholing as a pornographer, Mikurda takes us through it all.

Throughout the film’s five chapters (each detailing particularly important years and movies) we hear from an eclectic mix of people, all with varying interests in Borowczyk’s work: Terry Gilliam, Bertrand Bonello, Neil Jordan, Andrzej Wajda and Patrice Leconte to name but a few.

The interviews themselves are incredibly well-conducted—informative, absorbing, well-shot and with excellent sound quality. Small, almost playful, visual flourishes serve to illustrate the voiced opinion, in addition to keeping the viewer entertained.

More importantly, the film’s entirely successful in bringing to light the unique and often misunderstood talent of one of cinema’s most infamous and enigmatic filmmakers. I knew very little about Borowczyk or his process going into this movie, having seen only a couple of his films. I left feeling enlightened and determined—determined to find his older works.

And in the end, isn’t that the point?

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So Random

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Random Acts of Violence

by Hope Madden

The last time I saw Jesse Williams get into a car on a road trip to horror, the journey delivered one of the most fun flicks of 2011, Cabin in the Woods.

He’s back on the road in co-writer/director/co-star Jay Baruchel’s graphic novel adaptation, Random Acts of Violence. Williams plays Todd, creator of the adult comic series Slasherman.

Though writer’s block is keeping him from finishing the final installment, Todd hits the road with his publisher Ezra (Baruchel), assistant Aurora (Niahm Wilson), and girlfriend Kathy, played by Jordana Brewster. (Brewster also starred in a road trip to hell—for character and viewer—with the 2006’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.)

Their goal is to visit the landmarks associated with the comic’s inspiration, the gruesome serial killer dubbed the I-90 killer who terrorized a stretch of highway from 1987 – 1991. Todd and Ezra hope to drum up some publicity for their comic con appearances. Kathy is researching her own related project, a nonfiction and victim-centric book about the same killer.

The film lands on ground fertile for horror examination. Most interesting and timely is the conversation around perspective. Are we beyond the point as a society where we make the serial killer our protagonist when we can instead take the point of view of the victim? (The popularity of the book and series I’ll Be Gone in the Dark suggests that we may be.)

Too bad the film relegates this conversation to a single argument: men create horror and women hate that; meanwhile, women create something more wholesome. (Counterpoint: much of the best horror of the last decade was made by women, and if it’s gruesome you want, please see Julia Ducournau’s fantastic 2016 rumination on adolescence and meat, Raw.)

The film does boast moments of provocative carnage, plus flashes of intriguing content. Rather than the traditional creepiness inspired by the Midwest rural route gas station—the isolated community somehow suggesting incest and cannibalism without every directly saying so—Baruchel conjures the far more realistic and modern blight of meth to achieve the same unhealthy atmosphere.

Never a particularly compelling presence, Williams lacks the gravitas to shoulder the suffering artist schtick and Brewster’s presence doesn’t elevate the tensions. Both Baruchel (an outstanding purveyor of nerdy support in any cast) and the tenderly engaging Wilson offset this lack of chemistry in their brief screen time, but it’s not enough.

Random Acts of Violence could have been an interesting indictment of the true crime phenomenon. It might have been an intriguing entry into the Writer’s Block Turns Horrific family (of which The Shining is patriarch). Instead, it’s a mainly competent but frequently lazy flick with gore to spare and some fun animations, but it could have been a lot more.

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Fright Club: Best Sound Design in Horror

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Aside from maybe the musical, there is no genre in film more dependent on sound for audience response. From the creaks, groans and jangling chains of old fashioned haunted house pics to the hiss and slither of modern monster movies, things can hardly go bump in the night if you can’t hear the bump. So George sat down and determined the best examples of sound design in horror.

That’s right, George is driving. Did Hope recommend any movies to consider when thinking through the best use of sound in horror? She did. Did any make the list?

They did not.

Well, turnabout is fair play and sound is definitely George’s jam. So here, friends and Fright Clubbers, are George’s picks for the best sound design in horrorl

5. It Follows (2014)

Like A Quiet Place and Us, It Follows is a perfect example of how modern filmmakers are molding the soundtrack with sound effects and even score to create the sound experience.

Writer/director David Robert Mitchell, working with Disasterpeace on a score that incorporated music, ambient sound and sound effects, develops an immersive, nightmarish environment for the imagination to flourish. The synths reflect the film’s difficult-to-pin-down time period, simultaneously reflecting a recent past as well as a currency. Meanwhile, creaky doors and blowing wind call to mind old fashioned scares.

The score almost doesn’t sound like a score, and the sound sets a different mood every time the different demon appears. Few films are this masterful in the way it brings together sound track and sound effects. Together they create an inescapable mood.

4. The Haunting (1963)

Director Robert Wise obviously knew the importance of sound coming into this film, sitting, as it does, between his two biggest efforts, West Side Story and The Sound of Music. But musicals are not the only films that really deserve close attention to sound. What you hear is even more important than what you see in a good old fashioned ghost story.

We wanted to make sure the list included at least one example of old school Foley-style sound. Wise worked with AW Watkins, 4-time Oscar nominee for sound design (Doctor Zhivago, Libel, Knights of the Round Table, Goodbye Mr. Chips).

This is a great example of old time Foley sound effects used to create the mood, making things you can’t see scary.

3. The Lighthouse (2019)

The atmosphere is thick and brisk as sea fog, immersing you early with Jarin Blasche’s chilly black and white cinematography and a Damian Volpe sound design echoing of loss and one persistent, ominous foghorn.

For everything Eggers brings to bear, from the Bergmanesque lighting and spiritual undertones to the haunting score to the scrupulous set design to images suitable for framing in a maritime museum – not to mention the script itself – The Lighthouse works because of two breathtaking performances.

But what a world Eggers and crew create for Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe.

2. Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Madman Peter Strickland (In Fabric) made an entire film about sound, and it gets so much right. Not just about sound—about the era, the equipment, giallo sensibilities and moviemaking.

Strickland, working with a sound department of 34, creates a psychological experience through sound almost exclusively. The amazing Toby Jones plays Gilderoy, flown in specifically to helm the sound in a horror movie.

“This isn’t a horror movie. This is a Santini movie!”

Gilderoy’s arc is profound, and sound is our only window into what is changing him. We don’t see what he sees, only his reaction to it and the sound of it that makes his psychological breakdown believable.

1. Alien (1979)

The great soundman Ben Burtt, with an impressive team and the direction of Ridley Scott, uses silence as another instrument in the terrifying sound design for this film.

Given the tag line, that powerful use of silence is more than evocative, it’s required. But layered in, Burtt offers plenty of aural evidence that this spaceship is not like those we were used to seeing onscreen. The Nostromo is no sleek vehicle. Creeks and chains, water leaks and thudding echoes depict a dilapidated bucket of bolts, giving Alien a creaky old house atmosphere.

From the chest bursting, Ash’s unattached vocal cord gurgling to the hissing sound the creature makes as he announces his presence, the sounds in this film have been copied and retooled as often as its storyline and look. But there is only one first time.

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Lonely Hearts Club

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We Die Alone

by Hope Madden

We Die Alone—writer/director Marc Cartwight’s award-winning short horror/thriller—prizes both character and story. It benefits from committed performances that develop textured characters you feel for.

Baker Chase Powell is effective as Aidan. Cripplingly anxious about women, Aidan is also far too handsome to believe his issues are insurmountable. Surely someone will fall for this dangerously isolated young man if given the chance, right?

Likewise, the tenderness and insecurity shining from Ashley Jones’s performance—along with just a handful of ostensibly throwaway lines from her co-stars—cement her as a believable lonely heart you hope can turn things around.

And of course, there is the catalyst for their developing storyline, Chelsea (a perfectly cynical Samantha Boscarino). The filmmaker brings together characters, makes you root for them, makes you anxious for their emotional wellbeing, and then delivers on a promise you didn’t realize he made.

Cartwright understands how story develops and uses this expertise to subvert expectations. His film plays with your preconceptions but never substitutes clever gimmick for story. The result is a sly, entirely satisfying journey into love, loneliness and how little we understand each other.

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Teen Titans

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Boys State

by George Wolf

Imagine what you get when you bring over a thousand 17 year-old boys together to play politics.

Fight Club with zits?

You get Boys State, an annual exercise into the “civil discourse” of state government. An American Legion program since 1935, Boys State (and its corresponding project for girls through the Legion Auxiliary) gives selected high school juniors the chance to build a representative government from the ground up.

From legislative sessions and deal-making to party platforms, elections and even a talent show, the kids are immersed in it all. In the Sundance Grand Jury prize-winning Boys State, directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss immerse us in it, too.

The result is an endlessly fascinating and thoroughly entertaining mixture of shock and awe.

Employing a predominantly verite approach, McBaine and Moss settle on four main boys to follow throughout the weeklong experience. We see glimpses of those who just came to play (“ban pineapple pizza!”), but our quartet means business. While Ben and Rene are elected opposing party chairmen, Robert and Steven are both after the big prize: Governor of Boys State Texas.

The boys’ different backgrounds (Rene: “I’ve never seen so many white people!”) create truly compelling characters who provide just one of narrative contrasts that draw you in, slowly deepening your investment until you’re hanging on every motion and debate.

As the party members draw their platforms with an eye toward victory… check that…I mean DOMINANCE in the general election, it’s equal parts horrific and inspirational.

Boys openly betray their principles for populism, jockey to acquire more power and gleefully pounce when they smell a negative campaign that might stick. They quickly learn the well-worn lessons of a fickle and often hurtful enterprise, either adapting or falling away.

The rampant testosterone can’t go unnoticed. Neither can multiple examples of how badly more women are needed in all levels of government.

And when all is said and done, one of our principles has to admit another is “a fantastic politician.”

Is that a compliment?

That may be a complex question, but only a few of these boys will watch this film again in 20 years and feel damn proud of who they were at 17.

Or maybe they all will. Boys State fuels both the cynicism and the hope required to make either road seem possible.

Your move, Girls State.

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Year of the Woman?

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Represent

by Hope Madden

We make up 50% of the earth’s population and 23% of the House (which is, disappointingly, an all-time high). Why is it so hard for women to take our statistically rightful place in representation?

Hilary Bachelder’s sly doc Represent eyeballs that struggle for three Midwestern women: Detroit’s indefatigable Myya Jones; Evanston, Illinois’s beleaguered Julia Cho; and Granville, Ohio’s very own Bryn Bird.

All three women are looking to make a difference in local politics. All three face more obstacles than simply their sex: Jones is only 23-years-old at the end of filming; Cho is a Republican in a highly Democratic area; Bird’s the only progressive ever to run in her township. And then there are the more obvious hurdles: Jones is a Black woman; Cho is Korean American.

It is fascinating to witness which of these particular concerns the voting populace feels most comfortable overtly reacting to and which require veiled swipes and sideways glances. When a woman at one of Cho’s stump speeches tells the politician that her children don’t mind Common Core because they are “Oriental, and all Orientals do well in school,” it’s hard not to gasp aloud.

Bechelder’s footage never glamorizes its leads. Their candor, idealism and even their missteps and shortcomings as politicians are on display, giving the film a transparency and authenticity.

Represent is most fascinating when it quietly unveils the final and most insurmountable obstacle, which is the candidates’ own parties. Is she the good kind of progressive? A real Republican? The right kind of Black woman?

And if you have to change who you are to be heard, do you really have anything left to say that’s worth hearing?

Cho, Jones and Bird are up for the battle.

“Democracy requires engagement,” Bird tells Bachelder. “We need people to fight for it.”

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?