Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with my final batch of reviews from this past SXSW film festival. Overall it was a good fest. I only saw a couple movies that were either shitty and/or pretentious crap and even those didn't make me want to put a bullet in my brain to escape the pain, which is pretty good for a film festival! Reviewed below are ROCK SCHOOL, a doco that got picked up at Sundance that chronicles a bunch of kids as they learn how to rock our fucking socks off by an unorthodox teacher, and CHILDSTAR, a flick about a bratty pre-teen idol and how fucked up his life is... but it's a comedy.
ROCK SCHOOL
This flick got great reviews out of Sundance, which surprised me, actually. I took one look at the description of the film and thought, "Oh, a guy teaches rock and roll to a bunch of kids. I wonder what movie this one's trying to cash in on?"
I like Linklater's SCHOOL OF ROCK, but, to quote MR. SHOW, ROCK SCHOOL makes SCHOOL OF ROCK look like a peanut. You instantly identify with the kids and are walking the same narrow path they are with this wild man named Paul Green leading the way. Paul Green's the teacher and is a touch crazy. One of the first things we see when we meet him in the doc is his imitation of Buffalo Bill from SILENCE OF THE LAMBS that he does for the kids (ages 9-17). "Put the fucking lotion in the basket! It puts the lotion in the basket! Aaahrrraharhrggaghhh!"
This guy is at once the coolest teacher ever and the meanest bastard teacher you'd pray you'd never get. He doesn't have any hesitation when it comes to telling a young kid how much he/she sucks or how shitty a job they're doing. Throughout the documentary you're taken with these kids through a rollercoaster ride of so many ups and downs that you can't anticipate where it's going next. One minute Green is teaching the kids Black Sabbath and Frank Zappa and commending them on their work and the next he's screaming and cursing at the top of his lungs at them, going to each individual and tearing them down specifically.
Yet somehow he's a really likable guy. Go figure.
This was one of the most entertaining flicks I saw at the festival this year and it has some amazing music. I got to meet some incredible children, most notably this kid C.J. My god, this 12/13 year old plays guitar like no one I have seen since the glory days of hard rock, tossing complicated riffs off like he was just doing Chopsticks on the piano, Of course everything he was doing in the doc was mimicry of a famous rock song, but if this kid starts writing his own stuff that smokes just as much as the Metallica and The Kinks stuff he was doing then he'll be huge.
Everyone of the kids has a unique view of the school and of Paul Green, from the cynical troubled outcast like Will, who was closer to the audience than most of the other kids, I think... I know I related to him a lot more than anyone else, to the girl who began singing Sheryl Crow and spent her free time hanging out with Quaker rappers (yes, they were as ridiculous as you'd think) and ended up pulling off Zappa and re-evaluating her ambitions in life.
You get so emotionally tied to these kids you just can't help but be afraid for them as they go to the big Zappa event in Germany at the end of the flick to perform for the most critical audience they could. Going into the last quarter of the film I was wanting a happy ending so bad I was getting tense and because this was a documentary I knew that happy ending wasn't a sure thing. Did I get it? Well... you'll have to see the film. It's coming out June 3rd from Newmarket films (limited release).
I certainly advocate seeing this flick. It's entertaining, involving and has some smokin' music. The film flies. And as someone who didn't really understand Frank Zappa (much to the chagrin of my Zappa loving girlfriend) before this film... I can say that I still don't understand him, but I have a lot more respect for the music he created. The originality of his work was amazing. This flick has me wanting to start exploring some Frank Zappa, which is something I didn't think would happen.
I arranged for an interview with the director Don Argott that went really well. It's a lot of fun and goes deep into the process of clearing all the great music in the film. Look for that one up soon!
CHILDSTAR
CHILDSTAR has the quirk of a Wes Anderson flick. It feels like it is happening in the same universe that Max Fischer occupies, spending his time trying to court the hot teacher, or in the same universe where Royal Tenenbaum keeps getting stabbed by Pagoda. It's that same kind of dry, unpredictable comedy.
In this case you have a struggling arty short film director (played by the actual writer/director of the film Don McKeller who is channeling Peter Sellers in this movie, by the way) who takes a job as a limi driver for a top preteen heart throb who's starring in a ridiculous movie called THE FIRST SON. In the film, the boy is a troublemaker, but has to take over his father's job as President of the United States after the President is kidnapped by terrorist. He also is the one that goes after the terrorists to rescue his father.
Anyway, this boy is a spoiled brat that delights in being a little shit. His mother, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh (who is still hot!) doesn't help the situation because she's too busy playing the stage mom to actually consider what's right for her son. Hell, out of convenience she even signs over custody of the boy to the aforementioned driver so she doesn't have to be onset all day.
So now he's part of the family... legally. The kid doesn't like that and threatens to tell his mom that the driver molested him. McKeller just snickers, not taking any shit from the brat and tells him that she won't believe the kid because he's fucking her (which he is). The kid loses the power he's used to and thus the rocky friendship between the two happen.
I know this sounds a little more serious, but it's played in that Wes Anderson vibe I was telling you about above. The kid, played by relative unknown Mark Rendall, is cast perfectly. He's got the look of a Culkin clone and the attitude you'd expect, but as an actor Rendell is able to give the character more than one dimension.
There are a lot of familiar faces that float by, like Eric Stoltz who plays the boy's estranged father... a rock n' roll wannabe whose band is produced by his son, and Dave Foley who plays the douche-bag producer of THE FIRST SON to perfection. I'd bet he was pulling on some real life scenarios for this role. It's just too right on.
I don't know if this film has a US release, but I had a lot of fun watching it at SXSW. It's not a movie that will change your life, but it's better than a lot of the cookie-cutter bullshit that passes as comedy from the big studios these days.
That's it from me on this schtuff. Now I gotta play big-big catch-up on those KONG reports, as well as my experiences watching the human resistance to those blasted tripods, not to mention two different interviews I gotta turn in and a DVD contest I must run! I'm a busy seaman! See you later, squirts!
-Quint
