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Stories We Tell

Max Weiss — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 16:26:57 +0000

Rating:

3.5 stars

At first blush, Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell seems like a rather self-indulgent project. It’s about the director’s mother—a beautiful, talented, but quixotic woman, an actress, who died of cancer, and left many questions in her wake.

But it’s actually about so many things: It’s about families, in general, and how they inexorably shape our lives. It’s about perspective, and how the same story can morph and shift when told from different angles. It’s about the small lies we tell ourselves, the rationalizations, and the importance of self-mythologizing. And, for you cinephiles out there, it’s a deconstruction of the process of making a documentary film.

Polley, the pretty, but sad-eyed Canadian actress, had already made two exciting narrative films. Her Away From Her, about the painful slow descent of Alzheimer’s, was justifiably critically acclaimed. Her Take This Waltz—a wistful, insightful, sexy film about female desire—was well-received but deserved even more kudos (it made my Top 20 of last year—and probably should’ve been higher).

But with this film, I think she has announced herself as one of the most important young filmmakers working today. Polley pulls back the fourth wall (and later reinserts it, but that’s all I’ll say on that subject) and shows us the interview set-up. Her British actor father, with his wonderfully mournful voice, reads the narration from his own writings. (As a younger man, he was a bit remote. After Sarah’s mother died, he was forced to take on the parenting role—and the two have a closeness that he doesn’t share with his older children.)

“Dad, try that line again,” Polley says, sitting across a plate of glass from him, at the controls of the studio. Any illusion of the spontaneity of the narration is (intentionally) dissolved.

Polley sits down her brothers and sisters, too—all attractive and smart and witty, but some a bit more damaged by familial strife than others—and we watch as she sets up their mics and tells them to tell the story of their mother, in their own words.

There is another figure who comes in about halfway through the film, an outsider of sorts, who brings a completely different perspective, almost creating the sense of parallel universes. This may be the most profound aspect of Polley’s film: The notion that we are sometimes part of each other’s stories without even knowing it.

If I sound like I’m being intentionally vague, well, that’s because I am. Stories We Tell does unfold like a mystery of sorts—there are surprises at every turn and I don’t want to spoil them.

The film is visually arresting, as well. It has a hazy, longing quality that seems to animate memory itself. You’ll be riveted and moved right until the end—although I can’t totally disagree with those who felt the film may’ve hung around for about 15 minutes too many. (There are a few false endings.).

Also, I must confess to being slightly baffled by one of Polley’s narrative strategies. It sent me scrambling to imdb.com to figure some things out. Once I clarified, I gained even more respect for Polley’s film and her process. Three films in, and I would follow her anywhere.

Sarah Polley's deconstructionist documentary about her mother is just wonderful.

Frances Ha

Max Weiss — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 15:37:40 +0000

Rating:

2 stars

Did you ever wonder what Annie Hall might be like if the main protagonist was Annie and not Alvy Singer?

You have your answer, in a way, in Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha. And I have a bit of bad news for you: The film would be a lot less delightful.

If you don’t know, Greta Gerwig, who plays the titular character, is truly the Diane Keaton to Baumbach’s Allen. (They are even apparently dating in real life.) He loves her—his camera loves her. He’s completely besotted with her fumbling, awkward, faux-näif adorableness. It was Baumbach who first introduced the mainstream to Gerwig, previously a darling of the mumblecore movement, in his Greenberg. I liked her in that movie, even considered her a star in the making. Since then, I’ve grown less enamored.

It’s not that I don’t think she has a certain charm—or a certain natural ability as an actress—it’s just that I find the whole “look at this adorable, broken fawn of a girl, always adorably blurting out the wrong thing and being adorably clumsy yet paradoxically, bewitchingly graceful” thing a bit tiresome.

Now if you do find Gerwig as bewitching as Baumbach does (and many do), Frances Ha will be the film for you.

Because Frances Ha is basically all about the adorableness of Gerwig. Seriously, that’s the film’s subject.

I mean, ostensibly, it’s a film about how hard it is for a young person to find their way in Manhattan, especially if they aspire to be an artist. (In that sense, it’s Slaves of New York for the Twitter generation.) It’s also, ostensibly about a close friendship between two women—it’s a love story, really—but Baumbach loses interest in the other friend (she’s simply not Gerwig-y enough, I suppose) and the final moments of the film, meant to give us a satisfying sense of closure on their friendship, ring hollow.

I’ve loved a lot of Baumbach’s work, especially his brilliantly mordant The Squid and Whale. And while I certainly appreciated certain aspects of the film—its lightning-fast montage editing style in particular—it really didn’t work for me. Oh well. As Annie might say: La-de-da.

A director's love letter to his star only works if you love her as much as he does.

After Earth

Max Weiss — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 02:17:08 +0000

Rating:

2.5 stars

The critics have really crushed After Earth, calling it a vanity project and stealth propaganda for Scientology. (“Is After Earth the worst film of all time?” read one breathless headline.) (Spoiler alert: no).

I mean, is it a vanity project? I suppose. It was based on a story idea by Will Smith, who co-stars in the film alongside his 14-year-old son Jaden. But so what? Vanity in Hollywood? I am shocked, shocked, shocked!

Is it shilling for Scientology? Beats me. If it is, the message didn’t get through. I can safely say I have no desire to go to the bookstore and pick up a copy of Dianetics. (Although I just downloaded a bunch of Tom Cruise films—strictly a coincidence, I’m sure.)

What it is, really, is a children’s film—well, a tween and teenage boy’s film to be exact—about a young man who proves himself in front of his powerful and withholding father in a rather spectacular way.

It’s the future and the Earth is uninhabitable. Humans were largely wiped out by these sea monstery killer alien things who are blind, but smell fear. Will Smith plays General Cypher Raige (also the name of my new alt-country punk band, by the way), the only man who can “ghost” in front of these killer creatures—i.e., he’s able to master his fear so they can’t detect him.

Now I’m sorry, that may have something to do with Scientology—conquering one’s emotions is apparently a tenet of the religion—but it’s also a damn good concept for an action film. The killer creatures even leave scary traps (hanging corpses, for example) to set off fear pheromones to better track their prey.

Jaden Smith plays the General’s son Kitai, a young man haunted by something he did—or, rather, didn’t do—in his childhood. Because his father is often away on missions, he barely knows the man beyond the legend. And although Cypher loves his son, he can be aloof, as military men tend to be.

So, at his wife’s behest, Cypher takes Kitai on a mission, but something goes horribly wrong, and the space ship crashes—yes, on Earth.

Cypher has two broken legs, so he must send young Kitai off to retrieve a device that can send a signal back to the command station. He’ll be able to monitor his son as he makes the treacherous 100 kilo trek to the device.

And that’s the premise, basically.

It does have several flaws. For one, Jaden is a handsome young man—with cheekbones as high as mama Jada’s and his father’s lean, wiry build—and a perfectly decent actor, but he’s not quite ready to carry a movie like this. It doesn’t help that he seems to have the tiniest bit of a speech impediment. (He can’t say the word “ranger,” for one.) And he narrates the opening montage. Then there’s the fact that Will Smith, such an infectiously charming guy, is playing the stern, taciturn father role, mostly from a prone position. Kind of a waste of the Fresh Prince.

But you know what? I enjoyed After Earth. I found the scenes of Kitai’s quest to be involving. And I bought into the whole “proving yourself in front of daddy” conceit. Hell, I even teared up a bit at the end.

There’s perhaps another reason why critics have been so hard on After Earth. It’s directed and co-written by none other than M. Night Shyamalan—the former wunderkind whose ego ended up being bigger than his talent. Critics hate him, and I’ve come to refer to the gleeful piling on against him as Shyamalanfreude. This is the first time since The Sixth Sense that Shyamalan’s name has not come over the title. He’s not “presenting” this film, he’s just directing it.

The lousy reviews for After Earth haven’t launched Shyamalan’s post-auteur era in the most auspicious way, but he should feel good about this. He’s transitioning from a one-trick pony to an actual director (hint: there are no Twilight Zone-like surprise endings in this one.). Yes, he lays on the flashbacks a little thick and there are several pretentious but empty references to Moby Dick—but mostly he does a solid job.

Bottom line: The deck was unfairly stacked against After Earth. Ignore the haters; it’s not great sci-fi but it’s solid family entertainment.

Father and son Will and Jaden Smith team up in this family-friendly sci-fi thriller

REVIEW: Now You See Me

Max Weiss — Fri, 31 May 2013 16:15:31 +0000

Rating:

2.5 stars

It’s best to think of Now You See Me as a superhero movie, except instead of fighting with superhuman strength and speed, the heroes use their superhuman brains and wits.

They’re all magicians, and they’ve been recruited by a mysterious figure to join forces to gain, well. . .the film is never completely clear on that, but it has to do with achieving total clarity or somethin’. (So they’ve got that.)

I absolutely loved the opening of the film, as we meet each of the magicians: Cocky David Blaine-esque J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg, doing a variation of his Mark Zuckerberg, only with emo hair); crafty mentalist Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson); Atlas’s assistant-turned-sexy-headliner Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher); and an Artful Dodger-style street magician named Jack Wilder (Dave Franco).

In those opening scenes, at least, their magic seems credible, grounded in some sort of semi-believable reality.

But once they join forces—nicknaming themselves The Four Horseman—their tricks become increasingly over-the-top and incredible. They immediately perform an astonishing trick where they “teleport” a man to France and have him rob his own bank. Then, they give the money to the audience. (A tiny nitpick: The audiences always seem remarkably sanguine and calm when money is falling from the rafters in this film. In real life it would be a clawing, scratching, every-man-for-himself free-for-all.) Now they’ve become folk heroes—kind of the Robin Hoods of illusion.

The Four Horsemen are bankrolled by a shady real estate mogul (Michael Caine) and watched closely by professional magic debunker Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman). (And can I say, for the record, that I completely approve of this new trend of Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine appearing in films together? Those two wily old pros make scene-stealing seem effortless.) Mark Ruffalo is the dogged FBI agent who is on their trail; and French actress Melanie Laurent is his untested new partner, from Interpol.

Unfortunately, as the film goes on, the battle of one-upsmanship between the magicians and the Feds becomes tiresome. If the heroes don’t seem real, or vulnerable in any sort of genuine way, the stakes are never truly raised. (Even Superman had his kryptonite.) We know The Four Horseman will be able to wiggle out of any trouble simply by performing some sort of preposterous magic trick.

Still, I enjoyed Now You See It for what it was—a snappy and superficially clever piece of slick entertainment. And seriously? Making a summer film about brains instead of brawn is a kind of magic trick unto itself.

It's a superhero film. . but with magicians!

Fast & Furious 6

Max Weiss — Fri, 24 May 2013 16:07:12 +0000

Rating:

2.5 stars

Generally speaking, I don’t bother to see films with the number 6 after their title. In fact, I usually check out after number 3. I figure such films are critic-proof—either you’re a fan of the series or you’re not—and my attendance is not required.

And yet, true confession: I have seen every single Fast & Furious movie (I particularly dug the last one). My loyalty even predates the ampersand. They’re something of a guilty pleasure.

Partly this is because of director Justin Lin, who took over the franchise with the third movie, Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift (if you’ll recall, this was the one installment that didn’t feature Paul Walker and Vin Diesel, because they apparently had much bigger fish to fry) (no comment). Lin stages expert chase and fight sequences that are ridiculously over-the-top, but strikingly lucid as well. You can actually follow the action. How novel.

But the series has other draws:

There’s, of course, Vin Diesel himself, who acts so rarely these days you can almost believe that he is Toretto, spending his days up to his arms in engine grease and babes (although his magical karaoke rendition of Rihanna’s “Stay” would suggest otherwise). He’s not so much an actor at this point as a poser and a grunter. But to me, he holds a strange allure.

Last film, they wisely added Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, one of the few men who can out-alpha good ol’ Vin, as Detective Hobbs. How Johnson manages to resemble something human beneath all that girth and muscle is beyond me—but lately his body is so cartoonishly bloated with steroids (allegedly!), the other characters are compelled to comment on it (otherwise, his bulk would be the 800-pound Hulk in the corner).

And then there are the women. Of course, women are treated as objects in this series—the men are, too, by the way—prone to wearing tight pants and low-cut shirts (and distractingly awesome leather jackets that need to be in my closet right now). But in some ways, the series is downright progressive in its treatment of female characters. Women in these films are smart and strong and kick major butt. They know how to fix—and drive—suped-up cars and they get into rip-roaring fights that are as visceral and vicious as those of their male counterparts.

There’s no better example of this alpha girl than tough-minded, unsentimental Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Toretto’s one true love, who died in the fourth movie. It’s not much of a spoiler to say that she’s back (with amnesia!) and she’s a welcome presence here, along with Gina Carano (of Haywire), who plays Hobbs’s new partner, and series regulars Gal Gidot and Elsa Pataky. (Jordana Brewster’s Mia, who is almost always treated as the delicate nice girl in need of protection, is the one exception to this rule.)

With all that said, I wish Fast & Furious 6—called the far cooler Furious Six by series fans—was a little bit better. It’s still pretty good. It has a nifty new villain—handsome Luke Evans, playing Shaw, an international criminal—and virtually all the elements that made Fast Five so good, but it feels a little derivative.

In this installment, Hobbs is teaming up with Toretto and his crew to take down Shaw, who has managed to insinuate Letty into his gang of criminals. Hobbs knows that Toretto is terminally loyal to those he loves—according to Shaw, it’s his Achilles heel—so he correctly guesses that Toretto will help him.

The fun sidekicks are all back—including Ludacris, as the genius tech guy, and Tyrese Gibson, as the handsome goof. But the wisecracks aren’t particularly sharp here, except for one genius bit involving a vending machine.

The action is great, as expected (they do this thing with an airplane. . .well you have to see it to believe it) but a few times it compelled me to suspend my disbelief a little more than I was willing to suspend it (wait! There’s no way he could jump out of that speeding car over the bridge, catch her in mid-air like that, and survive, right?).

I have a feeling that the series may have peaked with Fast Five. The descent has clearly begin with Fast & Furious 6. But it’s not a steep decline—just a slight dip. Then again, this is reportedly Justin Lin’s last film of the series, so I worry. Guilty pleasures don’t grow on trees, ya know.

Not quite as good as the last installment, but still a guilty pleasure.

Review: It Felt Like Love

Max Weiss — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:55:10 +0000

Rating:

4 stars

So, sigh. . . Is there anything more annoying than a glowing review of a film you can’t see? I know, I know. . . But I saw this film at the Maryland Film Festival this weekend and fell in love with it and just needed to write about it. If there’s any justice, it’ll be coming soon to an independent cinema house near you (hint-hint, film distribution companies).

The noted philosopher Britney Spears once famously sang that she was “not a girl, not yet a woman” and that paradox perfectly describes the status of Lila (Gina Piersanti), a 14 year old spending a long, listless summer on the beaches of Brooklyn.

Her best friend Chiara (Giovanna Salimeri) may only be a year older but she’s miles ahead in terms of her own sexual development. A dancer, Chiara has a knowledge of her body and its seductive powers. She’s already slept with boys and nonchalantly mentions that her new boyfriend, Patrick (Jesse Cordasco), needs practice in the oral sex department.

“I hate when they need practice,” Lila says, tentatively.

Lila’s own burgeoning sexuality has put her in a kind of fugue state—everywhere there is flesh, skin, and heat, and first time director Eliza Hittman creates a mood that is both innocent and erotically charged, just like Lila herself.

Lila’s next door neighbor Nate (Case Prime) is a precocious 7th grader—he might very well be the most self-aware person in the film—but he’s a child compared to Chiara and her grownup-seeming friends. Lila is literally stuck between the child next door and the almost-woman her best friend has become.

Her grieving father is no help. Lila’s mother has recently died of cancer and he feels so ill-equipped to advise a daughter going through puberty, he barely bothers to try.

In some ways, and more than any other film I can remember, It Felt Like Love is about the female gaze. Lila gazes at Chiara for clues to her own sexuality, but soon she becomes fixated on a new subject: The handsome, college-aged Sammy (Ronen Rubinstein), a decent enough kid, but hardly worthy of such worship. Lila starts hanging around him at the pool hall where he works, awkwardly flirting with him. He seems amused and slightly nonplussed by her presence. She convinces herself he might become her boyfriend.

There is a bit of sexual menace in the film, mostly from Sammy’s bored friends, who see the needy Lila as ripe for the plucking. One scene in the den of Sammy’s home veers close to unwatchable, but Hittman’s film is too gently affectionate toward its heroine to put her in real peril.

Hittman coaxes unbelievably natural performances out of her young cast, mostly non-actors, and gets the cadence of their voices and conversations just right. (The boys unself-consciously chant rap songs on the bus, as the girls watch adoringly, and the texts between Lila and Sammy are written in hilariously indecipherable codes of teenspeak.)

And Hittman gets the cadence of lazy, hazy, sensuous summers of self-discovery just right, too. To see a sexually frank coming of age story from the perspective of a teenage girl feels downright revelatory.

A 14-year-old girl has a summer of self discovery

Review: The Great Gatsby

Max Weiss — Fri, 10 May 2013 21:30:07 +0000

Rating:

2.5 stars

The official title of Baz Luhrmann’s new film is not Gatsby! or The Great Gatsby 3D or even Baz Luhrmann Presents The Great Gatsby, but it could very well be any one of these things.

The best film adaptations of novels help us see and experience the book in a new way. Luhrmann’s gorgeous, gaudy, overstuffed Gatsby merely answers one question: What would The Great Gatsby look like as a Baz Luhrmann film?

Well, it would look a whole lot like his Moulin Rouge, mixed with a generous dose of his Romeo + Juliet (Leo is even in it!) and a dab of his Strictly Ballroom.

So the question remains: Is Luhrmann’s gonzo, over-saturated cinematic world actually a good fit for Gatsby? Yes and no. Like Jay Gatsby, Luhrmann sure knows how to throw a party. And the parties here are decadent, eye-popping affairs—with champagne flowing and roaming acrobats and giddy flappers mixing in with the society swells (all in 3D! It’s like you are there!). It’s the rest of the film that falls a little flat. All of this carefully orchestrated stimulation can be a bit stultifying—the film doesn't give us any room to breathe. (And the hip-hop infused soundtrack, while catchy, makes no sense. It's just another Luhrmann tic.)

DiCaprio is no longer the beautiful golden boy of Titanic or Romeo and Juliet (when co-star John Leguizamo famously called him “that talented little shit”) but his slightly dissipated good looks actually work well here. Gatsby, of course, desperately wants to recreate his own past—or at least, his myth of his own past—and DiCaprio’s faux old money affections (cheerfully calling everyone “old sport”) have a proper edge of paranoia and sadness.

Carey Mulligan does what she can with the role of Daisy Buchanan, who, even in Fitzgerald’s novel, is less a character than a fantasy projection. Mulligan plays her that way—a woman used to being admired and coddled and projected upon.

It’s poor Tobey Maguire, stuck in the role of the wide-eyed, neutered (here at least) Nick Carraway, who doesn’t fare quite as well. All he does, basically, is fanboy over Gatsby. It’s slightly embarrassing. (I loved however, Elizabeth Debicki’s Jordan Baker. She’s so cool and fabulous and louche she would make Downton Abbey’s Lady Mary blush.)

The Great Gatsby is certainly worth seeing, but I can’t heartily recommend it. In America, Fitzgerald’s novel—with its tragic but appealing characters and its big ideas about American reinvention and optimism—is considered nearly perfect. Luhrmann apparently sees it as an excellent backdrop for his work.

This Gatsby adaptation says more about its director than the novel.

Review: Downloaded

Max Weiss — Wed, 08 May 2013 20:34:11 +0000

Rating:

3.5 stars

Hey film fans! The Maryland Film Festival starts tonight! This is the last film I’ll be sneak previewing. It’s sort of great.

Before Facebook and Twitter—hell, before MySpace and Friendster—there was Napster, the music file sharing company that revolutionized, democratized, and completely freaked out the music industry.

Downloaded, the documentary on Napster, directed by Alex Winter (yes, that Alex Winter, from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure), is about the rise and fall of this audacious start-up. But it’s also about the seismic generational divide between those who grew up expecting free things from the Internet and those who didn’t.

Napster started, as revolutions often do, in the mind of a young person—in this case, teenager Sean Fanning, a coder and music lover who wanted to find a more efficient way to share music with his friends. He developed the code for Napster and watched it take off like wildfire. First a few hundred people using it, then thousands, then millions.

He eventually joined forces with Sean Parker (later to be played by Justin Timberlake in The Social Network), an entrepreneurial-minded buddy he’d met online. They hired a few more music-loving friends who were good at writing code and off they went.

This was the day of Internet startup businesses—the guys from Google, for example, idolized Napster and hoped to emulate its success—when venture capitalists were throwing billions at companies with 21-year-old CEOs in blue jeans who didn’t necessarily have a way to make money.

The record companies didn’t get it at first—saw Napster as a nuisance, not completely unlike the bootleg music you would see being sold in the streets. “We were ambushed,” says one record company exec, in hindsight. When they realized that Napster was allowing hundreds of thousands of people to download and share music for free, they pounced. Lawsuits were filed. Congressional hearings were held.

As for the artists themselves? Their reactions were mixed.

The Spice Girls, shown in archival footage, claim ignorance (convincingly). “We’re not that into computers,” says Posh Spice.

The jam band Dispatch, interviewed today, feel they owe their success to Napster, which allowed their music to reach a much larger audience.

While instinctive iconclasts Henry Rollins and David Bowie both embraced the Napster revolution, the file sharing site also had some surprising and powerful musician foes—namely, metal band Metallica and gangster rapper Dr. Dre.

“Metal and gangster rap,” Sean Parker muses in the film. “The two least likely to be going after us.”

Downloaded, which is being distributed by VH1, has access to MTV’s frontline reporting of the Napster controversy. (The scenes of Lars Ulrich from Metallica holding a sit-in of sorts in front of Napster’s offices are priceless—possibly the least metal thing anyone has ever done.) There are also clips of Jon Stewart cracking wise about the greed of record companies on The Daily Show.

In the end, Napster’s model was unsustainable. Sean Parker, who made the mistake of using the word “pirated” in an internal memo (lawyers instructed them to use “shared” instead) was scapegoated and fired (ironic in light of his treatment of Eduardo Saverin—if you believe The Social Network’s version of events, that is) and the company was forced to file for bankruptcy and eventually folded.

Of course, Napster may have failed, but online music sharing is here to stay. (Steve Jobs, visionary genius that he was, was the first to truly monetize it, with iTunes.)

And Sean Fanning, a poor kid from suburban Massachusetts who had no idea what he was getting himself into, still seems shell-shocked, even 10 years later.

He’s able to talk about his experiences articulately, but he has a far-off look in his eyes, as if contemplating a digital horizon that should’ve belonged to him.

To find out when you can see Downloaded, and all the other films at the Maryland Film Festival, go here.

Smart doc on the rise and fall of Napster

Good Ol' Freda

Max Weiss — Tue, 07 May 2013 16:51:07 +0000

Rating:

3 stars

Another solid offering from this year's Maryland Film Festival.

When she was 17 years old, Freda Kelly took a job as a secretary—and that job made her the most envied girl on the planet.

You see, her bosses went by the names John, Paul, George, and Ringo (“Richie” to her). Okay, technically, she worked for Beatles manager Brian Epstein (“Eppie”), but she hung out with the lads all the time—her crushes rotating based on who was nice to her on a given day.

Good Ol’ Freda tells the story of this smart, sensible, capable girl from Liverpool—a Beatles fan, but not an overly breathless one—who got a front-row seat to Beatlemania. A dedicated, protective employee, she ran the Beatles fan club—which included writing their newsletter and handling their sacks and sacks of mail (featuring all sorts of arcane requests for locks of hair and pillowcases that Ringo slept on)—like a tight ship.

Good Ol’ Freda also gives us a somewhat priceless glimpse at the Beatles when they were first starting out—just a bunch of fun-loving, wide-eyed blokes from Liverpool, prone to clowning around Freda’s desk, with no idea of what was in store for them.

In a world where it seems that everyone who came into even the slightest contact with the Fab Four has tried to cash in on their name, Freda has never exploited her ties to the band. (This documentary is really her first time discussing her past at any length.) She gave away most of her priceless collector’s items to fans (for whom she felt an eternal solidarity) and kept just a few tucked away in her attic. Even some close friends and family have no idea she was once the “good ol’ Freda” referenced in a Beatles Christmas recording.

If there’s one complaint I have with the film it’s this: I appreciate that Freda’s tact and reserve is what made her so indispensable to the Beatles. But at times, I wish that filmmaker Ryan White had told us a little more about her life. (There is mention of an ex-husband as well as a son who died tragically —but no further explanation.) To the film’s credit, we’ve come to care about Freda—even separate from the Beatles—and we want to know more.

We do, however, know this: Now in her 60s, Freda is still working as secretary in Liverpool. She no longer gets requests for her bosses’ locks of hair.

Beatles fans won't want to miss this documentary about their fan club secretary

16 Acres

Max Weiss — Mon, 06 May 2013 14:53:20 +0000

Rating:

4 stars

Here's an absolute can't-miss from this year's Maryland Film Festival.

This astonishing documentary—part Greek tragedy and part absurdist comedy—takes a look at the 16 acres in lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center once stood. (“The most valuable 16 acres on earth,” as one observer describes them.)

Consider that space, if you will. Even under the best of circumstances, developing such priceless real estate in Manhattan would be quagmire of zoning regulations and various financial and political agendas. But when you consider that the space didn’t just have to be big and profitable and safe from future terrorist attacks—it also had to essentially heal a nation, you can imagine the depth of conflict. “It’s not just a commercial site,” says Philip Nobel, the architect and critic who serves as a priceless voice of perspective and insight in the film. “It [has to be] a symbol of defiant renewal and healing.”

Oh, is that all.

So what we’re left with is, basically, a fiasco. And that’s what the film gives us a front row seat to.

For starters, there’s Larry Silverstein, the developer who had fulfilled a lifelong dream of buying that property a mere six weeks before 9/11. Silverstein doesn’t come across as unusually craven—he lost employees that day and his grief feels genuinely heartfelt—but he is a businessman, with a businessman’s expected concerns. (His most creative trick is trying to convince the insurance company that 9/11 was two separate catastrophic events, and therefore, he’s owned twice the settlement. Okay, maybe that is a bit craven.)

There are gigantic town hall meetings, to get the feedback from the people of New York. There are international design competitions, egos, grandstanding, name-calling, photo-ops.

The politicians, in particular, come across as shamelessly opportunistic.

Every time there’s a bit of public restlessness over the delay in the construction, then-Governor George Pataki would don a hard hat and have a new naming ceremony or release a dove or, in one so-absurd-you-couldn’t-make-it-up piece of political theater, install a cornerstone on a spot where, it was later decided, the new towers could not possibly be built. Also? “Towers don’t have cornerstones,” Noble offers, ironically.

(At some point, once the project is moved elsewhere, the cornerstone is literally removed from the premises in the dark of night.)

Well! I’ve given away too much already. The film really needs to be seen to be believed. (I spent most of 16 Acres slapping my forehead in disbelief. )It’s a monument to the perils of bureaucracy, but also to the unprecedented complexity of this 16 acres of consecrated space.

To filmmaker Richard Hankin’s credit, 16 Acres also has some extraordinarily moving scenes—especially those focusing on the sister of a fireman who lost his life in 9/11 and her pilgrimage to the dedication of the site’s memorial. (Even that memorial, sacred and beautiful as it is, was wrought with political infighting.)

Oh, in case you were wondering, the new One World Trade Center is apparently almost complete. It will be the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.

For a complete festival schedule, go here.

On the bureacratic and moral quagmire of developing the site where the Twin Towers once stood