NYLON - June 2008 - (Page 130) FILM STRIPS EDITED BY LUKE CRISELL american teen Teen The Sundance documentary American mines adolescent archetypes straight out of The Breakfast Club, but instead of ’80s Brat Packers we have Colin, the basketball star hoping for a scholarship; Megan, blonde and privileged, with the overdeveloped ego of a budding sociopath; Jake, the sad-sack whose self-deprecation dips frequently into self-loathing; and Hannah, the cute, quirky misfit. Despite the familiar models, we come to care for these kids, who live out the days and nights of their senior year in what could easily be mistaken for a Real World marathon, only with a younger cast. Filmmaker Nanette Burstein (The Kid Stays in the Picture) spent 10 months at Indiana’s Warsaw High, shooting every day, and it shows: the kids allow her an amazing level of intimacy. We’re right there for the teary breakups, the drunken benders, and a game of Spin the Bottle that ends, as it must, in protracted make-outs and jealous glares. The only difference between their real world and ours is the wireless mic on the girl climbing on the boy. Moments like this might raise some intriguing questions about what it’s like to come of age in America right now, but Burstein doesn’t pursue them; she’s content to keep rolling long enough for her kids to realize the full potential of their clichés. Burstein and Brett Morgan (they shared a directing credit on The Kid Stays in The Picture) are largely responsible for a new breed of documentary, employing pop music, animation, and graphics to cover holes, punch up sequences and help make points. The problem with American Teen is that it has no point, other than, perhaps, that nothing has changed since 1985. Twenty three years later, high school still sucks. MIKE HARVKEY THE WACKNESS It’s a little odd that the main venue of the Sundance Film Festival, where the international press and film industry elite gather for world premieres, is a high-school auditorium that, one presumes, is most often used for assemblies and pep rallies. And yet the room, covered in plastic-looking fake wood and outfitted with some of the most uncomfortable seating outside of the public transport sector, seemed to be an apt location for director Jonathan Levine to unveil his film The Wackness, earlier this year. The movie is youthfully earnest, and you can practically hear Levine egging on his principal characters—played by newcomer Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby, and Sir Ben Kingsley—from behind the camera; some of the dialogue sounds like it could actually have been written by a bored student; and the basic plot—Peck plays Luke, a high-school student who deals marijuana to a panoply of aggravatingly quirky New York City inhabitants circa 1994, starts to trade pot for therapy (with Kingsley), and falls in love with his therapist’s daughter (Thirlby)—suffers from Levine’s obvious nostalgia for the period. You can’t help but wonder if it might have benefited from a writer at a greater distance from the subject matter. Nevertheless, I’m glad that I didn’t sell my ticket for the $100 offered by the lady wearing the pink earmuffs and red North Face who was standing in the slush outside before the screening, because, among all the predictable drug gags and “I’m so high, watch me do something zany” moments, there’s a lot to like about The Wackness. The gift Levine showcased in his debut feature All The Boys Love Mandy Lane, for creating beautiful, memorable visuals (such as when Thirlby and Peck are making out in a shower on a Fire Island beach) is on display here and his evocation of the long hazy New York summer, with its soundtrack of Golden Age hip-hop, is stunning. Kingsley’s performance is very funny, and Thirlby is as on-point as ever, but the humor and, dare-I-say Juno-esque dialogue afforded them is occasionally at odds with Peck’s often maudlin situation: One minute you’re laughing and the next you’re, if not crying, definitely feeling a bit down. All in all, though, the film, which has moments of genuine, heartfelt emotion, is worth watching, despite it being overlong (by about 20 minutes) and, let’s not ignore the fact, encumbered with one of the worst movie titles in recent memory. LUKE CRISELL GONZO On flm, Hunter S. Thompson has been portrayed by both Bill Murray (Where the Buffalo Roam) and Johnny Depp (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), and has been the subject of several documentaries, and Gonzo, a new film by Alex Gibney and narrated by Depp, again revisits one of the 20th century’s most iconic Americans. Gibney—who wrote and directed the Oscar-nominated film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room—focuses on the late ’60s and early ’70s, when Thompson was at his most active and influential. The film includes interviews with Thompson’s friends and contemporaries, such as Pat Buchanan, who surprisingly speaks of him very fondly, and Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, who footed the bill for a Cadillac when Thompson protested against covering the American Dream in a Volkswagen (the resulting story became Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). Thompson was both an outspoken critic and champion of American politics, and Gonzo makes it clear that this was because he ultimately believed that it could be a force for good. The author, of course, committed suicide in 2005, and watching Gonzo in the middle of a heated presidential campaign amplifies just how much his voice is missed and also raises a somewhat tragic question: For the first time in decades, millions of people have a candidate they can believe in; what would Thompson have thought? KATE WILLIAMS tell no one (ne le dis a personne) This superbly crafted film by Guillaume Canet (Mon Idole), begins with quiet tenderness… Then slams it with a club. That one-two punch—a careful rendering of relationships offset by exhilarating tension—sets Tell No One (based on the novel by American writer Harlan Coben) apart from most Hollywood thrillers. That, and the fact that it was made in France. The result—aside from a barrage of beautiful faces—is a decidedly romantic air that, juxtaposed with moments of brutality, makes the whole thing feel fresh. But although the movie is grounded in relationships, it’s driven by action. One night, while Alexandre Beck (François Cluzet) is skinny-dipping with his new wife (Marie-Josee Croze), he is clubbed into a coma. He wakes a grieving widower, which he remains for the next eight years until he receives an e-mail link to a seeming livestream of his presumed-dead wife. “Tell no one,” a message reads. “They are watching.” Canet, an actor himself, directs performances skillfully, but, like most suspense movies, the best part is not knowing, and when the film tries too hard to wrap up, it disappoints with unnecessarily complex revelations. This, though, is easily outweighed by the superb performances, taut script, and striking cinematography that make this an early contender for best thriller of the summer. JOSH WEIL Boy A How does a brutal criminal live with himself? Will society let him? These are interesting questions, and they’re tackled competently by the British director John Crowley (Intermission) in Boy A. We first meet the boy of the title 14 years after his incarceration for a vicious crime he committed when he was just 10. Now he’s being released, and his caseworker, Terry—a very good Peter Mullan (Trainspotting; My Name is Joe)—is helping him choose a new name. It’s the first step in keeping him alive in a world still haunted by what he did. If anyone finds out who he is—including new friends, even a girlfriend—he won’t survive. Andrew Garfield (Lions for Lambs) plays the lead well and bids in earnest for our sympathies, but unlike 2004’s The Woodsman (Nicole Kassel’s film about a pedophile released from prison), issues like whether an aberration is ingrained in someone and can emerge again are given brief nods instead of driving the story. The reactions to the main questions of the film are predictable and squeezed into the last minutes. This is indicative of the movie as a whole: Boy A is a solid film—ably constructed, adequately acted, aesthetically satisfactory—that takes on a very tough job and, despite some missteps, gets it done. JW
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