Capone's Art-House Round-Up with FREE STATE OF JONES, TICKLED, THE WAILING and THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS!!!

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…


FREE STATE OF JONES
I’ll confess, I’m not quite sure I understand all the hatred aimed at FREE STATE OF JONES. Is it because it tells a Civil War-era story that involves slaves from the perspective of a white man? If so, that’s a fairly ridiculous take on this material considering that the story would never have happened without Southern farmer Newt Knight (Matthew McConaughey), who was tired of seeing small farmers have nearly all of their crops and other goods taken by Confederate troops, when they were only supposed to donate 10 percent of their goods to help keep the war going. As the war is violently grinding to a halt, Knight sparked a rebellion of his own against Southern plantation owners and other rich men, who were effectively able to buy their way out of serving in the war.

Hiding in the Mississippi swamps with a small group of runaway slaves, and eventually other small farmers who shared in his beliefs, Knight created the Free State of Jones (named after Jones County, Miss.), an organization that continued into Reconstruction, with one of its greatest struggles being keeping former slaves free and giving them the vote. If the stories are accurate, this rebellion and its principles regarding former slaves gave rise to the Ku Klux Klan in the region

Writer-director Gary Ross (PLEASANTVILLE, SEABISCUIT, THE HUNGER GAMES) occasionally lets this compelling story feel a bit too much like a stale history lesson, but McConaughey’s fiery, often angry, performance keeps something of a fire burning in the heart of the movie. Probably the least interesting aspect of FREE STATE OF JONES are flash forwards to a ’60s-era trial of a descendant of Knight’s, who is apparently one-eighth black, which means that marrying his white fiancée is illegal. But the question becomes whether he truly is the offspring of Knight and former slave Rachel (Gugu Mbatha-Raw of CONCUSSION and BELLE), or Knight and his legal wife Serena (Keri Russell). At one point, the three lived together harmoniously with their various offspring for quite some time. The flash forwards seem superfluous and irrelevant, and coming back to them breaks up the main story to such a degree as to be aggravating.

One of the most fully realized characters in the film is that of escaped slave Moses (Mahershala Ali of “House of Cards” and the two MOCKINGJAY films), whose only goal in life is to travel from Mississippi to Texas to find his wife, who was sold away years earlier. Also on hand is Bill Tangradi as Lt. Barbour, the tax collector and source of many hardships for the newly formed state. He’s a bit too mustache-twirling villain for my tastes, but there’s something so depraved about him, that you grow to despise him with all due affection.

Director Ross takes a fairly straight-forward, often artless, approach to the material, and while often the inherent drama of the events carries it through, in many cases, it feels like a certain spark is missing in this heavy-handed drama. The events that inspired FREE STATE OF JONES are an interesting footnote to the final days of the Civil War and the period that followed, but as film, the exercise feels hollow and something less than cinematic. This is unfortunate because the performances by McConaughey and Mbatha-Raw are exceptional, but they are not enough to elevate the material to where it deserves to be.


TICKLED
It begins innocently enough. New Zealand-based reporter David Farrier (who is credited as co-director, along with documentary vet Dylan Reeve), whose expertise is with covering strange and unusual stories—usually of the light-hearted variety—stumbles upon the online phenomenon of “competitive endurance tickling” videos. Clearly a fetish experience, these videos feature young men in various states of undress (although never nude, I don’t believe), holding or strapping down a subject and tickling him aggressively. As we learn in the film, the “victims” often get paid quite handsomely for taking part, and it seems like harmless fun.

But when Farrier reaches out to the company that produced the videos, Jane O’Brien Media, the response he gets is so vile, insulting and threatening (including attacks on his being gay) that it fuels the journalist to dig deeper and chronicle the entire experience, becoming the film Tickled. If the movie had just been about competitive tickling videos, it would have been an amusing 30-minute short that you’d likely never hear about. But TICKLED is about something far more dark and menacing. As Farrier begins to find subjects for his film, including former participants in the videos, he uncovers a web of deception and formidable cyber-bullying (commonly referred to as “doxing”), the likes of which I’ve never seen.

There are a great many genuinely surprising and shocking reveals in TICKLED, but the film’s greatest achievement is as a thoroughly researched cautionary tale about who you get involved with online without ever having met in person. You’ve certainly heard the warnings about giving out personal information to the wrong people, but this film is about the lure of easy money and the price some people pay for attempting to get out of a situation they no longer feel comfortable being a part of. The movie is confirmation that all of the paranoia associated with faceless evil on the internet is mostly justified.

Farrier and his team follow the carefully hidden breadcrumbs to America (of course) in the hopes of exposing the faces behind Jane O’Brien Media, and the resulting footage will make you hold-your-breath tense. The film takes us from secret tickling recording sessions and eventually gives a sense of just how vast and expansive the tickling empire truly is. It sounds ridiculous and funny, I know, but you likely won’t be laughing. The entire investigation and resulting film never stops getting stranger with each passing moment, and we even begin to wonder if Farrier has slipped too far down the rabbit hole to emerge unscathed (lawsuits and private investigators tracking Q&A screenings of the film have become a regular thing for Farrier and Reeve).

Shot beautifully by cinematographer Dominic Fryer, the film at times takes on the guise of a classic thriller, peaking around corners and shooting great distances at suspicious subjects. Short of spoiling some of the film’s great secrets, nothing can quite prepare you for the many turns this story takes. In many ways, it’s a classic American story about the lengths some will go to to keep their livelihood from being threatened. But it’s also about the corruptive nature of power and influence. And if you’re able to catch of double feature of TICKLED and WEINER, then you might have a clearer picture of just where our scrambled heads are right now in this country. TICKLED is a truly gripping and eye-opening work that almost dares you to laugh by the time its over.


THE WAILING
One of the biggest hits in South Korean box office history, THE WAILING is something of a mash-up of familiar horror films and genre tropes, combining elements from THE EXORCIST and just about every virus outbreak movie you can think of, with a side order of recognizable zombie behavior. From writer-director Hon-jin Na (THE YELLOW SEA, THE CHASER), THE WAILING is pure horror insanity that gets progressively more overwhelming—both in terms of its plot and its level of sensory scare ingredients—and the result is something that moves back and forth between brutal, outrageous (there’s a distinct Sam Raimi vibe as well, at times), socio-political, and downright graphic.

A series of violent killings in this small town sparks the story as fairly ineffective police officer Jeon Jong-gu (Kwak Do-won) does his best to solve these crimes that seems to stem from pure rage. When it is believed that a virus of some sort has infected a large number of people in the town (as evidenced by some truly gnarly looking blisters and rashes), suspicion begins to fall on a newcomer to the area, an elderly Japanese man (Jun Kunimura), who the locals are convinced is some sort of evil spirit that has cursed their area. With no evidence aside from a suspicion of strangers, police, thugs and even a priest confront the weird old man with disastrous results.

THE WAILING begins as a police procedural and slowly transitions over its two-and-a-half-hour running time into a paranoid tale of possession, when the officer’s daughter (Kim Hwan-hee) shows signs of having the devil inside her, prompting her desperate father to call in a powerful shaman (Hwang Jeong-min), whose elaborate exorcism rituals are the most fascinating portions of the film, and some of the most disturbing, since the young daughter is really taken through the possession ringer, as it were, with much screaming and contortions. Another great character in THE WAILING is that of a mysterious woman named Moo-myeong (Chun Woo-bee), who shows up occasionally to give important observations to the officer, both about the Japanese man and his daughter’s condition. She seems helpful, but in supernatural films, you never know who you can trust.

Hong-jin Na’s films seem to follow a familiar pattern of slowly ramping up without every really coming back down until the very end. The increasing amount of chaos, noise and violence is mind-numbing at times, to the point where it’s easy to get lost in exactly what is going on and who is truly good and evil. There are also far too many scenes of characters just staring into space, paralyzed by fear and panting like dogs. Watching someone who was scared a few minutes ago and is still feeling the residual effects is not nearly as compelling as you might think. But the film has so many genuinely terrifying moments (with that running time, it better) that the scenes that might not work don’t ruin the overall impact of the work. THE WAILING is high on atmosphere, melodrama, and under-the-skin creepiness, and it really deserves to be seen on the big screen.


THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS
If you’re looking for a complete and total change of pace from the usual summer fare and have fairly eclectic tastes in music, THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS might tick a few boxes for you. Told largely from the perspective of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the film tracks the 16-year history of The Silk Road Ensemble, an ever-changing line-up of musicians who gather together in a different country each year to create music from scratch and put on a massive concert with their resulting compositions, which blend music and instruments from Europe, Asia and Africa, with the idea that regardless of what nations may be at odds politically, music erases most of those designations, and the results are often quite beautiful and riveting.

Directed by Morgan Neville, who made last year’s fantastic BEST OF ENEMIES doc and won an Oscar for helming 20 FEET FROM STARDOM, THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS is far more of an emotional journey than one might expect, especially when the camera lingers on the lives of musicians from the Middle East, whose nations are being torn apart by radical violence and the resulting revolution. But I also loved the oddball players in the group, including one singer from a part of Spain where the musical foundation is Scottish bagpipes. The cameras allow us to hear both the individual players make music in their native regions, as well as discover how well they play with others.

At the center of it all is the very zen Yo-Yo Ma, who you can’t help but want to be friends with. He saw the importance of these artistic gatherings as a means not just to explore musical creation but also incorporate the visual arts and storytelling. As much as the ensemble might seem to be promoting cultural blending, there’s also a clear sense of each musician rediscovering their specific roots and birthing a newfound pride in their heritage. I’m can’t promise you THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS is going to convert you into a fan of this symphonic world fusion, but I have no real connection to this music at all and found it quite exemplary and rousing. The entire film might be too touchy-feely for some, but by not hiding the often devastating home lives some of these musicians have, the film avoid being a sugar-coated telling of these stories.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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