Capone's Art-House Round-Up with THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL, PHOENIX, PEOPLE PLACES THINGS, FORT TILDEN, KAHLIL GIBRAN'S THE PROPHET, COP CAR and PRINCE!!!

Hey, folks. Capone in Chicago here, with a few films that are making their way into art houses or coming out in limited release around America this week (maybe even taking up one whole screen at a multiplex near you). Do your part to support these films, or at least the good ones…


THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL
It's unlikely that any other film in recent memory has captured the teenage girl experience better than this story set in mid-1970s San Francisco. Of course, there is no such thing as a singular such experience, but what makes THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL so compelling and unique is that it dares to tell a story about 15-year-old Minnie Goetze (Bel Powley) and her sexual and spiritual coming of age without demonizing the much older man ushering her into womanhood. In fact, first-time writer-director Marielle Heller (adapting Phoebe Gloeckner's novel, which Heller originally turned into a stage play) dares to not only present us with the scenario of a young girl sleeping with her mother's boyfriend (Alexander Skarsgård) but actually discovering she really enjoys sex.

Powley is a revelation, a young British actress largely unknown in the states, who manages to capture the awkward, sometimes childish aspects of Minnie, while eventually coming to realize that she is the most mature person in her world. There certainly isn't a great deal of competition, certainly not from her mother Charlotte (Kristen Wiig) or the handsome slacker boyfriend Monroe (Skarsgård), who Minnie throws herself at, and he's basically too lazy to resist when he should. The titular "diary" is actually a series of tape recordings that Minnie makes, detailing her sexual discovery that opens with, "Holy shit. I had sex today." The tapes double as a lively and explicit narration, but they also stand out as being a medium that someone will easily discover later in the film.

Minnie is such a richly drawn character that I actually started wondering things about her life that aren't even discussed in the film—questions about her taste in music and movies; her feelings on certain issues. I guess what I'm saying is that, if I was in high school, I'd be very interested in dating her. Director Heller uses animation sequences, a fantastic score and song choices, and a great deal of often dark humor to track Minnie's fluctuating and fickle emotions. She has sex with boys her own age, and in one quite telling sequence, allows one to give her a hickey just to see if Monroe (who always seems to be in a state of trying to end the relationship and never quite following through) will get jealous.

Even the inevitable discovery of the relationship by Minnie's mother doesn't unfold quite like one might imagine, and it's just one of the many reasons THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL works so spectacularly. It's not just about being provocative and shocking, although it may take you a few minutes to settle into the sexual frankness and inappropriateness of the goings on. The film's main objective is to be truthful, open and emotionally frank in a way that conveys the time and place of this specific story, and captures the universalities of many teenage girls everywhere. Minnie is an impressive young woman, and this film is something truly special.


PHOENIX
One of the most talked about films on the festival circuit since last year's Toronto Film Festival is the latest collaboration between writer-director Christian Petzold and actress Nina Hoss (who both previously worked on BARBARA and JERICHOW). But PHOENIX is an entirely different piece of magic and represents a truly brilliant bit of cinematic unfolding that will have your mind racing and expectations shattered by its jaw-dropping conclusion.

Hoss (who also starred in A MOST WANTED MAN) portrays Nelly, a German-Jewish nightclub singer circa 1945 Berlin. She somehow survived her long stay in a concentration camp, but was badly disfigured when she was shot in the face by her captors as the war was ending. Undergoing extensive reconstructive surgery, he is effectively reborn with an altered face and a new life, with most of her family having been killed. Under the care of Lene (Nina Kunzendorf), the two women plan an eventual migration to Palestine, but Nelly isn't quite prepared for such a move until she finds out for sure if her husband and piano accompanist Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld) is alive or dead.

In a twist worthy of Hitchcock himself, Nelly does find Johnny, but he doesn't recognize her as his wife, whom he believes is dead. But he sees enough similarities in this woman to attempt a scam involving her pretending to be Nelly to collect her inheritance and split it with him. Nelly is so in love with this man that she goes along with pretending to be this stranger pretending to be his dead wife. Before long, Nelly begins to suspect what others have told her is true—that Johnny, a non-Jew, turned her over to the Nazis to save his own skin. It's both a heart-crushing realization but also something that is wildly freeing, and Nelly goes along with Johnny's plan, almost as a dare to herself—or perhaps to wait for an opportunity to exact a very surgical means of revenge.

PHOENIX was adapted by Petzold with his longtime collaborator Harun Farocki from a 1961 novel “Le Retour des cendres” by Hubert Monteilhet (it was previously made into the 1965 film RETURN FROM THE ASHES), and it packs a substantial, sustained wallop. None of the characters, nor their motivations, are cut and dry. Johnny is the closest thing we get to a "bad guy," but he seems notably torn about his calculated decision, both during the war and in the present. For much of the film, Nelly is in denial about his role in her time in the camp, but her behavior isn't altered as much as her mental state. The film plays out like a psychological thriller, since we're never quite sure when or if or how Nelly is going to crack. It's a fascinating examination of how lives and the flattened landscape of Berlin continue in the immediate wake of World War II.

Hoss has an extraordinarily expressive face, but even with that, she manages to perfectly mask Nelly's feelings on certain aspects of her life until exactly the right moment for a revelation. The reason she has a similar face to her original one is because she begged the surgeon to make it so; she had her choice of looks of famous actresses, singers, etc., and she wanted to look like herself so her husband could recognize her. And the more Johnny changes her to look more like his wife, the more stunned he is at the similarities. There's even a chance he's falling for this "new" woman. The complications boggle the mind, but not as much as that ending, which won't be discussed here.

The piecing together of a life and of a country after traumatic events are two very different journeys, but somehow director Petzold makes them feel similarly painful as they desperately want to emerge for the better. PHOENIX is easily in the running for one of the best films you'll see all year.


PEOPLE PLACES THINGS
Even with its dark corners and underlying sadness at the prospects of a broken family, the latest from writer-director Jim Strouse (GRACE IS GONE, THE WINNING SEASON), PEOPLE PLACES THINGS, is a warm and sweet effort that finds a way to make a divorce comedy that doesn't rely on spouse bashing as a primary source of laughs. In it, Jermaine Clement ("Flight of the Concords," WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS) plays divorced graphic novelist and art teacher Will Henry, who wants to play a much larger part in his young daughters' lives and ends up caring for them a great deal more while trying to maintain his workload and barely existent social life.

It's really nice to not only see Clement take on a lead role in any film, but especially in one with some substance, requiring actual emotional commitment. Will finds himself befriending a student named Kat ("The Daily Show's" Jessica Williams), who sets the teacher up with her single mom Diane (Regina Hall), a literature professor. The first date is full of wonderfully forced and awkward moments, but this pair seem to hit it off enough to try to continue dating. At about the same time, his ex-wife (Stephanie Allynne) decides she might like to give the marriage another try, despite her being pregnant with another man's baby and being engaged to said home-wrecking other man, forcing Will to make a decision and see how committed he is to the two women in his life.

PEOPLE PLACES THINGS has a charm that stems primarily from Clement playing a version of himself—a New Zealander living in Brooklyn, wanting to desperately to be the hip dad while getting a certain amount of emotional mileage from playing the jilted ex-husband. The film uses the gimmick of Will creating a comic book about his life to provide a little extra humor in the form of keenly observed panels about broken hearts and new potential love interests, but a little goes a long way in this fairly thin story populated by terrific actors. For Clement admirers, this one rates seeing certainly, but for those who have been through a painful split and feel like the worst is past them, the film may serve as a cathartic experience if they see some of themselves in these characters.


FORT TILDEN
If there were an award for the most annoying characters that I'm still glad I got to spend time with, the clear cut winner this year would have to be Harper (Bridey Elliott) and Allie (Clare McNulty), the Brooklyn-based Millennial lead characters of FORT TILDEN who spend most of a day avoiding all responsibilities to trek across their fair borough to spend time at the beach with a couple of young men they met at a party the night before. Allie is on the verge of leaving town for two years to join the Peace Corps in one of the scariest part of Africa, while Harper—a self-proclaimed artist—is making one of her regular calls to her rich, absentee father for a cash infusion. She's contributing nothing to society, and she couldn't care less.

FORT TILDEN is about two women who have no filter, which doesn't mean they're vulgar or otherwise overtly offensive; it means that once a thought enters their brain, it immediately comes out of their mouths. Observation, opinions, and above all judgements spew forth, revealing vapid, empty people longing for some kind of depth and meaning in their lives without a thought about anyone but themselves. Hell, they barely care about each other, as it becomes clear they both have eyes on the same guy, and a passive-aggressive battle of the wills that lasts the entire journey ensues. Allie never really seems committed to the whole Peace Corps thing, as she avoids the phone calls of the woman organizing her trip. Harper is even worse, using words to describe her art and artistic process, but never really committing to their meaning. If these two were not in a movie together, I wouldn't have the slightest urge to meet them.

And yet... and yet... there is something undeniably fascinating about watching these two creations walk their world, scared of the ghettos they must pass through, blissfully unaware of their worthlessness. At one point, Allie borrows a neighbor's bike for the trip to Fort Tilden, and when she grows tired of being responsible for it, she simply stashes it among a pile of garbage, hoping it won't get stolen, with no intention of retrieving it later. When she apologizes for effectively stealing the bike, she offers the poor sap no promise of going back for his bike or even giving a shit that it's gone. She's not mean about; worse, she's apathetic. These are two characters you're almost guaranteed to dislike, but that somehow makes them inexplicably watchable.

Directed by Sarah-Violet Bliss (who contributed a portion to the anthology film THE COLOR OF TIME) and Charles Rogers (his first feature), FORT TILDEN makes you laugh squarely at this pair, who sadly are made to be in each other's company, and maybe that's for the best because it means they won't be in mine ever. I'm not a fan of deliberately "hate watching" anything, but that's the feeling I got watching this movie—I somehow received pleasure from disliking these characters. If that was the mission of the filmmakers, congratulations... I guess.


KAHLIL GIBRAN’S THE PROPHET
Beginning when I was in college, I fed myself a steady diet of the works of Kahlil Gibran's poetic writings, chief among them “The Prophet,” filled with stories that provide life lessons in nearly every aspect of spiritually pure living (hey, I'm not saying I took these lessons to heart, but they're great stories from an exemplary writer). From these simple stories, an impressive animated film has arrived courtesy of a handful of esteemed artists and producer Selma Hayek. Written and directed by Roger Allers (THE LION KING), KAHLIL GIBRAN’S THE PROPHET tells the primary story housekeeper Kamila (voiced by Hayek) and her daughter Almitra (Quvenzhané Wallis) who make regular visits to the home of artist/poet Mustafa (Liam Neeson), who is under house arrest for his radical ideas that the powers that be fear will cause a revolution. He's about to be released, but there's a sense that this is almost too good to be true.

As Mustafa's final day of exile is drawing to a close, he offers Almitra various stories on all manner of topics, with each story being being brought to animated life by the likes Tomm Moore (THE SECRET OF KELSS), Nina Paley (SITA SINGS THE BLUES), Bill Plympton (CHEATIN’), and Joann Sfar (THE RABBI’S CAT). The film also has a soaring score from Gabriel Yared and features songs and additional music from the likes of Glen Hansard, Damien Rice and Yo-Yo Ma. Rounding out the voice cast with actors like John Krasinski, Frank Langella and Alfred Molina, KAHLIL GIBRAN’S THE PROPHET is a work of sublime substance and artistic value, with glossing over the painful fact that the world can be a supremely unjust place, even for the most righteous.

KAHLIL GIBRAN’S THE PROPHET is a mature story but one I think most younger audiences will appreciate. It's a vibrant work that works best when it sticks to the parables (eight of the book's 26 are offered here) and leans less on the story's more overt political overtones. The stories on life, death, children, marriage, even eating and everything in between are the true meat of this film and the sections that most closely follow the book. At a brisk under-90-minute running time, things move along without lingering too much on the lesser framing story. It's an elegant, heartfelt work that is certainly different than even the finest animated works in theaters now. If you're looking for something edgier and off the beaten path, consider it.


COP CAR
Watching director Jon Watts's (CLOWN) COP CAR was one of those rare instances of seeing a film and having no idea going in what it was about beyond the title and that it starred Kevin Bacon with a porn star mustache. No matter how many films I see in a given year, I still get a special thrill about sitting down to watch a movie and realizing just as the lights go down that I haven't had a single second of it previewed or otherwise ruined for me. It happens so infrequently, I should celebrate. It doesn't always mean the film is good, obviously, but it reminds me of a time in my life when I fell in love with movies, when the most I might have access to before going in to see a film was the poster and a single trailer.

That being said, COP CAR is solid no matter how much you know about it going in. Unveiling itself in an almost stream-of-consciousness manner, the film shows us two 10-year-old boys in the early steps of running away from home, when they stumble upon an abandoned sheriff's cruiser in a tucked away corner of a field. Upon further investigation, they discover that one of the doors in unlocked and the keys are still in the vehicle, meaning finders keepers, so they combine their knowledge of how to drive a car, and off they go.

The film jumps back to just a few minutes before the kids find the car, to when Sheriff Kretzer (Bacon) pulled into that secluded spot, pulled a body out of the car (leaving one more in the trunk) and dragging it to a place where he can dispose of it. When he gets back, the car is gone, and he must find the vehicle without tipping off his fellow officers that it's missing, lest a co-worker discovers it ahead of him and pokes around in the trunk.

What follows flows so smoothly, it's like it was destined to happen—a type of controlled, unpredictable chaos that someone feel inevitable and tightly controlled. And these two kids are at the center of gunplay, double crossing, blood (dried and fresh), and a bad cop who just wants his car back, and who's willing to promise anything to get it. Bacon is playing an absolute representative of bad news and he does it beautifully. The tension starts out present but barely registering, and once Bacon is introduced, it builds into a dark, sticky mess.

Also on hand are the great Camryn Manheim, playing a nosy neighbor whose busy-body ways come back to haunt her, and Shea Whigham as the man in the trunk, not dead but covered in blood, the result of somehow crossing the Sheriff. One of the greatest things about COP CAR is what we don't know. We don't know the details of how Whigham got in that trunk. We don't know if the boy's parents are even aware if they're missing. And we don't know if Kretzer's promise to let the boys go once he gets his car back is true. Because none of that really matters. If we knew any of those things, the film wouldn't be nearly as interesting.

Director Watts (who co-wrote the film with Christopher D. Ford) was recently announced as the director of the Marvel reboot of SPIDER-MAN, and I have no idea if the reasons COP CAR is so good will translate into a teenage superhero movie or not, but I'm willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. He takes a simple premise and twists it into something with a capacity for pain and retribution. It's a real talent, and I'm hoping his real gift for creating the maximum drama out of so little information isn't wasted in what he's up to next.


PRINCE
If you're a admirer of the website or HBO news magazine series "Vice," then you likely won't be surprised to see that they had a hand in getting the new film Prince released this week. The Vice staff are committed to covering news and showing parts of the world that the major networks and other new organizations won't touch. They go deep, get ugly and quite often put their correspondents face to face with people Americans perceive as the enemy. PRINCE actually only grazes the evil part, but that doesn't make it any less of a energetic curiosity, and it feels about as real a story about a the kids at the center of it as you're likely to see this year.

PRINCE throws a spotlight on teenager Ayoub (Ayoub Elsari), living in the projects of Amsterdam, who, like his three best friends dream big about the lives they would live with money. They fancy themselves little gangstas, but they're mostly just hormone-charged virgins without a clue about the real world. Ayoub is bullied and humiliated by an older kid for talking to the prettiest girl in the neighborhood, who happens to be the older kid's girlfriend, and this drives him to align himself with the local drug kingpin and insane person Kalpa (Dutch rapper Freddy Tratlehner—imagine Alfred Molina from BOOGIE NIGHTS, but actually dangerous), who takes a liking to the youngster and uses him for a job, which naturally leads to bigger and more life-threatening situations.

Not to make it seem like a complete downer, PRINCE is actually humorous and lovely at moments; it's fueled by a kinetic visual sense and a driving synth score that wears its love of '80s action films on its sleeve. The film also succeeds as a family drama, with Ayoub doing what he can to protect and support his struggling single mother, his junkie father, and his coming-of-age sister, who makes the mistake of falling for one of Ayoub's best friends. Much of the drama in the kid's life is self-inflicted and -generated, but he truly cares about those closest to him, even if he sometimes sees the need to punch them in the face.

PRINCE comes courtesy of first-time feature writer-director Sam de Jong, who is never satisfied with his film being just one thing or possessing just one tone. He's as passionate about it working as a love story as much as he sees it as a crime drama and story of a desperate family. The scenes featuring Kalpa as terrifying and strange, while the moments between Ayoub as his homeless father will cause a great pain in your heart. There's also the added bonus of Ayoub being half Moroccan, which earns him extra prejudice from those who torment him in the neighborhood. The film is a modest effort with goals as big as the movies allow it to be, not unlike the filmmaker's lead character. A work worthy of its royal title, PRINCE uses familiar teenage tropes to tell a very different type of story, and it does so with guts and compassion. How many films in theaters right now can say the same?

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter