Hey, folks. Capone in Chicago here, with a couple of films that are making their way into art houses around America this week or at least expanding to more theaters (maybe even taking up one whole screen at a multiplex near you). Enjoy…
THE DAMNED UNITED
This spirited film about a slice of UK sporting history that most Americans are probably completely unaware of is finally hitting our shores this week, and I couldn't be more exited or pleased with the results. Whenever a new screenplay by Peter Morgan gets turned into a movie, I'll be there to see it. And where Morgan is, actor Michael Sheen is sure to follow. The pair have worked on THE DEAL, THE QUEEN, FROST/NIXONi, and the upcoming third film with Sheen as Tony Blair, THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP. In THE DAMNED UNITED, Sheen plays football/soccer coach Brian Clough, who has the distinct displeasure of coaching the top-ranked Leeds United team for all of 44 days. For those not in the know, you might presume that Clough was simply a terrible coach, and you'd be dead wrong. Instead, he had the great misfortune of taking on the job vacated by the saint-like Don Revie (played with great pomp by Colm Meaney), who rallied his team to one of the most impressive records in football history. But Leeds often won by being the most aggressive bunch of thugs to ever play the game to that point, while Clough wanted to run the team as respectable gents. The clash in styles was instantaneous and severe.
Clough was brought in because he has taken the unremarkable Hartlepool and Derby County team and built it up to be great champions. His right-hand man Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall) was the heart and soul of the club and made up for Clough's lack of people skills with a great deal of aw-shucks charm. Taylor was especially useful in dealing with management (represented by the team's owner, played by Jim Broadbent). The two were unstoppable, but when they had a disagreement about where to go after they were fired for insubordination, they split up just before the move to Leeds United.
I have to give director Tom Hooper (the JOHN ADAMS miniseries, RED DUST, LONGFORD) for taking a subject I had very little knowledge or even interest in before this film and getting me completely wrapped up in the plights of everyone involved. He does a terrific job of jumping back and forth between Clough's early years and his short span with Leeds during the late '60s and early '70s. And Michael Sheen, an actor I can watch in just about anything, is shot out of a cannon and through a ring of fire for this role. For a time, you believe if the rest of the world would just listen to his clearly superior ideas, everyone will get what they want, but soon you realize that not all of his ideas are great and his overwhelming stubbornness is keeping him from seeing it. I loved watching him on his first day at Leeds United, as he prowls around the players as they stand around waiting for him. He refuses to meet them head on, so he barely makes eye contact. It's a wildly awkward and funny sequence. Even better are the scenes between Sheen and Spall, whether they're getting along or, even better, when they aren't. They so capture the way two men who used to be best friends would act around each other when they supposedly hate one another.
THE DAMNED UNITED wisely gives us glimpses of the real Clough, Taylor and Revie in news footage at the film's end. And the ultimate fates of all three men could never have been predicted or written because they seem as unbelievable as so much of this story. As with most of Peter Morgan's screenplays (this one was adapted from a book by David Peace), he peels back the layers of the story and lets us know exactly where the heart of the drama is. You certainly don't have to know much about British football to appreciate what it's like for a man to be hated on the job from day one. The moves full steam ahead, driven by stellar acting by some of the UK's finest thespians (please, if you put either Sheen, Broadbent or Spall in a film by themselves, I'd be there, so to have all three plus Colm Meany in the same film, come on!), and the result is a grand retelling of one of sport's lesser known (outside the British Isles) tales to woe and redemption. You're going to love it.
BLACK DYNAMITE
Word of this movie has been spreading since last year when all that existed of it was a fantastically funny trailer and a great idea for a movie. Since premiering at Sundance this year, I've been hearing mostly good things about BLACK DYNAMITE, based on an idea from star and co-writer Michael Jai White, best know for playing the title character in SPAWN and more recently in my favorite Tyler Perry film, WHY DID I GET MARRIED? (the sequel, WHY DID I GET MARRIED TOO is coming out early next year), as well as smaller roles in THE DARK KNIGHT and a great excised scene in KILL BILL. I'd been told in advance that BLACK DYNAMITE isn't as funny as some people wanted it to be, and I can see their point. But once you accept the film for what it is, the result is a hugely entertaining action movie with a few jokes peppered throughout. Seriously, you could tweak this movie ever so slightly and the result would be a kick-ass, straight-up action film set during the height of the 1970s Blaxploitation era.
Co-writers White, Byron Minns and director Scott Sanders are clearly huge worshippers of all things from this genre. They have studied the stories, the music, the conceit, the humor, the clothes, the sexuality, and the militancy on full display in films like SUPERFLY, SHAFT, DOLEMITE, HAMMER, THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR, TRUCK TURNER, and dozens of other films, most of which feature a black man versed to some degree in martial arts on a quest to find the killer of someone he cared about. His journey would take him through various parts of the black community, including housing projects, drug dens, swank clubs filled with pimps and prostitutes, and hideouts for Black Panther-like community activists. And that's pretty much exactly what Black Dynamite does when his brother is killed by the same motherfucker who has been pushing heroin to local orphanages and selling a tainted malt liquor on the streets that have a debilitating side effect on black men.
BLACK DYNAMITE has some solid performances, both dramatic and comedic. Sure, there are cameos from the likes of Tommy Davidson and Arsenio Hall (character names Cream Corn and Tasty Freeze, respectively), both on hand for some decent laughs, but we also get appearances from dramatic types such as Mykelti Williamson and Bokeem Woodbine. But the film is really an opportunity for White to cut loose as both an actor and a martial arts master. If there's one thing about BLACK DYNAMITE that is different from the films it's paying tribute to, it's that White moves with lightening speed and dexterity that, quite frankly, terrifies me. But it absolutely works for this film. What I also liked about the film is that it doesn't attempt to place this character in the modern world (a la Undercover Brother or the AUSTIN POWERS films). Director Sanders does everything in his power to evoke '70s grit--shooting on Super 16 film stock, great funky soul soundtrack, dialogue laced with the kind of awesome jive talk we'd expect from this bad mothas. And for the most part, the characters are playing it straight and not hamming it up for the sake of comedy, and that just makes it funnier.
BLACK DYNAMITE almost demands a sequel, and I'm dying to see it. I've also heard that an animated version of the character is under production for the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, and I'll be completely on board to watch that series. Without even realizing it until I saw this movie, I've been starved for high-profile Michael Jai White movies, and this fits the bill beautifully. The guy is a great actor, and the fact that he's also a trained fighter and can do most of his own stunts seems to make people take him less seriously, and that's a huge mistake. You don't need an extensive knowledge of Blaxploitation films to enjoy the hell out of BLACK DYNAMITE, but seeing a few could only enhance the experience. I think either way, you'll love this movie to death. Stay strong, brotha.
MORE THAN A GAME
The better-than-average sports documentary MORE THAN A GAME focuses on the high school basketball years of LeBron James and his four starting teammates that made up the St. Vincent, St. Mary's High School team in Ohio. I loved that, for most of the film, each player gets equal time as we find out about their individual hardship stories that led them to being a part of this team. We meet Sian Cotton, Willie McGee, Romeo Travis, and Dru Joyce ,who had the great misfortune of being the son of the team's coach, Dru Joyce III, who was the closest thing to a father many of these boys had. I was fascinated by how much of their young lives and games were so well documented, and recent interviews with James reveal a humble man who knows he's lucky to be where he is today with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Each player has a great deal of insight about their role on the team and why they team worked so well together.
Director Kristopher Belman loses a little of his focus when the film becomes more about LeBron's success while still in high school, and the local media targeted him for a good old-fashioned tearing down once it became clear that college and professional teams were looking to recruit him. The team's trip to the high school basketball championships came dangerously close to happening without James because he was accused to receiving a gift from a recruiter. It's hard to believe that such a young man was so scrutinized by the media, but he seems to have come out the other side stronger and more aware of his position as a role model and celebrity. James and his teammates are all extremely open and honest about their misspent youths, and it's refreshing to watch a sports figure of James' stature talk about childhood and his devotion to his mother and his friends. The film gets a little overly slick with quick editing and thumping music as all roads lead to the final game, but there's no denying the power and excitement of that final competition.
MORE THAN A GAME is a movie that lives up to its name. It doesn't gloss over its subjects' lives; it delves deep into some really painful stories and hardships, which makes their triumph as a team all the more spectacular. Getting updates on what each person is doing today is nearly as encouraging and rewarding as hearing about their time in the spotlight. I think everyone from the casual sports fan like me to the diehard is going to get something from this strong character study of five boys whose lives could have been tragic. Instead they turned their fates around with the help of basketball, and it worked for them. Theirs is a story I won't soon forget.
WE LIVE IN PUBLIC
As soon as I learned that a film entitled WE LIVE IN PUBLIC won the Grand Jury Prize Documentary prize earlier this year, I did everything in power to avoid learning anything about it. I assumed it would get released at some point, and I wanted to learned as little about the subject of this film, internet visionary Josh Harris, as I possibly could before seeing this movie. What little I knew about him going in was that if you'd even heard of the guy, you probably had an opinion on his methods, his philosophies, his experiments, and his forward-thinking brain. I'd been told he was one of the most intelligent freaks you were ever likely to hear about, and having seen this profile of his life from director and acquaintance of the subject, Ondi Timoner (DIG!), I can say with some authority that this description barely begins to cover this complicated antihero who foresaw many aspects of the online world except how it would ruin his life.
Harris was dreaming up ways to use the Internet before it even had a name. He amassed a great fortune as an analyst, rode the first wave of the dot-com business revolution thanks to his creation, Pseudo.com, an online television network that somehow thrived before broadband existed. He threw elaborate Warhol-esque parties in New York City, bringing together some of the most creative minds with sparkling personalities, all looking to get into business with him or become hosts on one of the many Pseudo channels. Like any temperamental artist, he grew bored with his self-sustaining entertainment avenues and turned his attentions to a habitation project called Quiet, in which he housed 100 well-screening individuals in an isolated community for 30 days leading up to the end of the millennium, with every detail of their lives filmed and watchable by anyone in the dwelling. To attempt to describe the Quiet living arrangement is almost impossible, but watching some of the collected video of people being brutally interrogated or shooting guns on a gun range or eating whenever and whatever they wanted or public sex acts or showering together or pretty much anything you could think of, you quickly get a sense that this life of no privacy was going to wear on these folks pretty fast. I'm not quite sure what Quiet proved, but I can't believe Harris hasn't sued the makers of "Big Brother" for stealing his idea.
One of the most fascinating projects Harris got involved in was also his most simple. He put dozens of cameras in his own home, which he shared with a girlfriend at the time. He took the Quiet idea and applied it just to his own life for six months, during which no action was left uncaptured, including their eventual ugly breakup. Although this idea may not seem all that innovative, you have to remember that Harris was doing this years before YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and all of the other networking options that people have to keep you abreast of their every movement and thought on a day-to-day basis. He anticipated a world in which people would voluntarily give up their privacy.
WE LIVE IN PUBLIC digs pretty deep into Harris' psychiatric history as well. His obsession with TV as a youngster, especially the show "Gilligan's Island." His relationship with his mother and father, and how his closeness with his mother fell apart when the rest of his world did. Even her deathbed pleas to see him one last time were met with bizarre, cold video messages from Harris but no visit. Perhaps the scariest aspect to Harris was his alter-ego Luvvy, who wore clown makeup and acted out in socially unacceptable ways even when Harris was needed to present himself at business gatherings with potential investors. However freaky I'm making this sound, trust me, I'm not doing this man justice.
Unfortunately, the dot-com bust and his spending his multimillion-dollar fortune on project that brought in no money left him broke and mentally unbalanced. Director Timoner tracks Harris to some pretty unusual places after he leaves New York, but I won't spoil that for you. But everyone who knows him still feels pretty certain he's gearing up for another comeback. I'm not quite as certain I'm buying that theory, but, boy, is it unbelievable watching his rise and fall up to this point. WE LIVE IN PUBLIC is, simply put, an incredible documentary about a man whose influence and ideas are still very much at play today even if he isn't. If he does make a return to public life, I might get a little scared for humanity. In the meantime, I'll continue contemplating the implications of what he left us with in his aftermath. This film is as riveting as it is frightening about where we're going as an online people.
-- Capone
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