Capone's Art-House Round-Up with SYNCHRONICITY, ALL THINGS MUST PASS, and MOJAVE!!!

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…


SYNCHRONICITY
Of all the sub-genres in science fiction, the toughest to get right (in my estimation) are time-travel films. But when a film does get it right, I fall deeply in love with it. In more recent years, I look to works like PRIMER, TIMECRIMES, and LOOPER as really fun time-travel experiences that work because they are trying something unique and thought provoking, within a familiar mold. Most recently, PREDESTINATION absolutely floored me, with its true crime elements mixed with themes of sexual identity. Now let’s add to the list SYNCHRONICITY, from writer-director Jacob Gentry, who returns to feature filmmaking (after spending some time working in television) after his ambitious previous work as co-director of THE SIGNAL.

Right off the bat, I’m going to suggest watching SYNCHRONICITY at least twice, not because the first time is confusing, but because you can tell almost immediately that this is a film that will resonate a bit more with each viewing. I’ll take a crack at giving you the introductory plot. In one of the nerdiest time-travel films since PRIMER, the story begins with three scientists led by Jim Beale (Chard McKnight, also from THE SIGNAL) along with Chuck (AJ Bowen from YOU’RE NEXT, THE SACRAMENT, and, of course, THE SIGNAL) and Matty (Scott Poythress), about to run their first test on a machine that will open up a wormhole for the purposes of time travel. The plan isn’t to jump back or forward in time, but to send something through the hole to themselves in the past, something easily recognizable as a message from them. They bring in their primary financier, Klaus Meisner (Michael Ironside), to show him the fruits of their labor and his money.

Sadly, the first test seems to be a failure, but nothing could be further from the truth as footage of the experiment reveals two things—a blurry figure can be seen at the heart of the time machine and a rare dahlia flower has been apparently sent from a few days in the future. Is this the sign they were looking for? As Jim runs after Meisner to inform him the experiment worked, he runs into Abby (Brianne Davis), whom Jim at first believes might have been the figure he saw running from the machine. When he realizes she probably wasn’t, he immediately finds himself attracted to her and she seems receptive, which complicates things since she happens to be Meisner’s mistress, but she’s also a key part of this story, and her knowledge about science and time travel and life in general is important to the plot.

Eventually, one of the characters goes back in time and revisits key moments in the story with fresh eyes and minor alterations that make SYNCHRONICITY as much a puzzle as a narrative. And, as if the time-travel story weren’t complex enough, Gentry includes a love story that is absolutely vital to the primary tale being told, but you may not realize just how much until the very end. I assume that the film is set in the future, but even that feels deliberately nebulous, especially when you factor in the film’s old-school vibe (including a fantastic synth score by Ben Lovett and lush cinematography by Eric Maddison) combined with a cityscape that feels as if we’re looking at the future through 1980s eyes (think BLADE RUNNER with less rain).

McKnight is the perfect combination of hero scientist and lovesick patsy. I’ve always gotten a vaguely Guy Pearce groove from him as an actor, never more so than in SYNCHRONICITY, and that’s absolutely a compliment. He wears many faces here, each of them meant to be distinct yet similar. Some may complain that the film wears its influences a little too loudly on its very long sleeve, but it’s for those very reasons that I adore it. It’s more about capturing an atmosphere than copying a classic.

The end of the film is spectacular and something I didn’t see coming, and the questions it brings up about the time-space continuum are going to haunt me for quite some time. With its pretzel-shaped chronology, SYNCHRONICITY has heart and humor to counter its periods of despair and angst, and it all blends together with touch of grace and ambition that science fiction lovers are going to devour. The is scheduled to open in some theaters this weekend and appear on various On Demand and streaming service beginning today; seek it out.


ALL THINGS MUST PASS: THE RISE AND FALL OF TOWER RECORDS
A documentary that is both informative and exceedingly heartfelt, ALL THINGS MUST PASS is the labor of love directed by actor Colin Hanks about the meteoric rise and rapid fall of the Tower Records franchise. As someone who visited both Chicago locations on an alarmingly regular basis, it brought back a lot of great memories hearing former Tower employees and famous customers talk about the unprecedented inventory, variety and overall vibe of the store in its earliest incarnations in California.

With its humble beginnings as an offshoot of a drug store, Tower Records was the brainchild of founder Russ Solomon who treated his business like a family operation and his employees like brothers and sisters, for better and worse. That usually meant he spent money that he didn’t have and was driving himself into heavy debt. The film tackles the Tower history from two angles: one as a bastion of every type of record on its racks—classic, jazz, Latin, comedy, sound effects, blues, R&B, pop, and of course rock. They also excelled at stocking imports from all over the world, something I used to take advantage of frequently. The other POV is as a business, looking at the slapdash nature of the executive suite and the colorful people who staffed the back offices.

I also love the focus on the famous musicians that frequented Tower, especially the now legendary Hollywood Boulevard location. Elton John is interviewed at length about being such a regular customer (who always spent a great deal of money during each visit) that the store would open an hour or so early for him to browse by himself, long list of new releases in hand. Bruce Springsteen talks about coming to the L.A. location when he was on tour in his early years because it was effectively the place where the cool kids hung out. And Dave Grohl talks about getting a job at the Washington, D.C., store when he was young because it was the only place that would hire a long-haired kid like him.

ALL THINGS MUST PASS chronicles the invention of the CD listening station, the wild parties held at many of the locations, the expansion into other U.S. and global markets, and the damage done to business after Napster launched. It’s a fascinating and ultimately quite sad story of a bunch of really good folks falling victim to changing times. The story of Tower moving into Japan (where it still exists!) could have been its own insane short film. The passing of Tower represents the passing of a certain type of music buying, and it acted as the pre-curser to the digital music age from which we’ll likely never recover. The film is lovingly put together, capturing the decades that Tower Records was open and the people that worked and shopped there. You have to seek this one out, but like a rare 45, it’s worth the effort.


MOJAVE
In-demand screenwriter William Monahan (THE DEPARTED) has taken a crack at directing with MOJAVE, one of the most singularly irritating films in recent memory with one of the coolest casts wasting minutes of precious time and energy trying to convince us that something of importance is happening.

Garrett Hedlund plays Thomas, a successful actor who, of course, is wildly unhappy and is contemplating killing himself. He wanders into the dessert where he stumbles upon a nasty piece of work named Jack (Oscar Isaac), who may be the devil or possibly Thomas’s dark thoughts. Either way, he grumbles a lot and calls everyone “brother” in a mildly threatening and utterly annoying manner. It becomes clear that Jack is going to kill Thomas (you can add serial killer to his list of might be’s), but Thomas gets the best of him and makes it out alive, heading back to his unfulfilling life, with a wife, a child and a hot girlfriend.

It’s not difficult to see why Thomas hates his life. He has a sleazy, nagging producer (Mark Wahlberg) on his ass, and a lawyer/fixer (Walton Goggins of THE HATEFUL EIGHT) on speed dial. Thomas fancies himself an artist, with deep thoughts and a cavernous soul, but coming face to face with this vengeful drifter brings out his true, primal nature. Jack manages to locate Thomas back in L.A. and torments him using everything from mild stalking to threats of killing loved ones. But in the end, we know these two are going to meet again and have it out like sweaty real men do.

MOJAVE is little more than overblown macho behavior in the guise of too much talking in circles about a whole lot of nothing. It actually pained me to watch Isaac waste his talents in this. Of course he gives a compelling performance; that’s in his nature as a great actor. But so much of what he’s going as Jack feels like dressing up a pig. He’s adding depth via his acting that doesn’t exist in Monahan’s anemic script. Hedlund has never really impressed me to any degree in the past, but he’s especially tedious here, whipping his greasy long hair around and then asking the hordes of admirers to leave him alone. He and the film are Hollywood clichés, giving more depth and meaning to actors with tough-guy images than they deserve. In many ways, Isaac’s Jack represents how a real tough guy acts and looks, but that doesn’t stop the film from being a vapid experiment in how to piss your audience off. Spare me and spare yourself.

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