dale-lover

Here's a first for yours truly: a review of a yet-to-be-released film that's currently making the festival circuit. The 'secret movie' and highlight of Brooklyn's Nitehawk Cinema's Halloween 'Nite to Dismember'celebration turned out to be director Joe Bego's follow-up to "Almost Human," the very 80's (particularly Steve Moore's wall-to- wall electronic soundtrack) "The Mind's Eye." What "Turbo Kid" is to 80's post-apocalyptic movies "The Mind's Eye" is to David Cronenberg's "Scanners": a contemporary homage that looks/sounds like the genuine article, right down to the ugly-looking logo of the institute at the center of the intrigue. Per Begos' representative at the screening, the director's aim was to make the sequel/follow-up to "Scanners" that he feels the actual "Scanners" sequels didn't live up to. It takes an awful lot of trouble for "The Mind's Eye's" psychokinetic characters to flex their mental muscles. A simple ax or gun seems to do the trick better for most of the film. Even though it mercilessly teases early on that big exploding heads and psychokinetic duels are coming, it's not until the final act that "The Mind's Eye" truly goes berserk in a good way. You know, like "Rabid" and "The Brood" and, yes, "Scanners."

Personally I feel "The Mind's Eye" has some shortcomings in the casting of its leads. Either that or Begos deliberately went with actors that feel miscast (Graham Skipper) or way over the top (John Speredakos) to match similar bad casting in Cronenberg's late 70's/early 80's films. That would be an even more meta tribute to the Canadian master of body horror than the "Videodrome"-like opening titles/fonts that start the movie. At least the supporting cast is populated with low-budget horror luminaries, from Larry Fessenden ("I Sell the Dead") and Jeremy Gardner ("The Battery") to Noah Segan ("Starry Eyes") and Lauren Ashley Carter ("The Woman"). For a 2015 low-budget film that sets its story in the early 90's (which makes it feel closer to Cronenberg's prime decades) the action is decent and the deaths/gore off-the-charts groovy, something "Scanners 2 & 3" definitely skimped on. For fans of body horror missing the old Cronenberg now that the genuine article is doing mostly psychologically-heavy stuff (not that I'm complaining), "The Mind's Eye" will make for a pleasant and entertaining evening's entertainment. Me and the Nitehawk Halloween crowd really dug it.

Caught a 35mm screening of this rarity at NYC's Anthology Film Archives' Bridges in Argentinian CinemaRetrospective a few days ago. Disowned by its creator Edgardo Cozarinsky since '71 and not exhibited publicly until 2012 (which explains why the 35mm print was perfect and blemish-free, it hasn't been projected that much), this was the true discovery of last month's retrospective.

Deliberately episodic and disjointed, the through line of "(...)" is a priest (Jorge Alvarez) searching for something, which turns out to be a repressed homosexual desire that may be real or a projection of his repressed sexuality. Before reaching its anticlimactic climax this nameless priest runs into a pretty girl (Marcia Moreto), a bourgeois couple (Ernesto Schoó and Niní Gómez), a crazy general (Roberto Villanueva) and the perpetual presence of the Catholic Church in everyday Argentinian life.

The first 45 min. of "(...)" wallow in Godardian disregard for the conventions of cinema (not a surprise since Cozarinsky spent most of his adult life in Paris) and are so strong you tolerate that it runs in circles and out of gas by the end. If it had been widely released it would have been considered the start of many contemporary cinematic trends that have been adopted since. Between the crew cheering/jeering the pronouncements of an actor switching from nationalist military to capitalist businessman ("Shit, Brazil's so huge!"), the narration of a Calcutta documentary applied to footage of Buenos Aires circa 1970, a Lynchian dinner in which a crying baby doll is the main course and a Eucharism ceremony that dispenses color-coded contraceptive pills instead of bread you get the sense anti- clericalism and love of cinema ("Pausa!") are pillars of "(...)" as much as its homosexual identity politics and appreciation for the cultural movement in Argentina in the early 70's.

Good luck finding this film, but if you do tell it I said hi and thanks for the fun Saturday afternoon I spent in a dark room with it. :-P

Caught a rare 35mm of this movie at NYC's Anthology Film Archives during their 'Bridges in Argentinian Cinema Retrospective.' The highlight of this series of Argentinian movies curated by director Matías Piñeiro ("Viola," the upcoming "Princess of France") just happened to be a French movie that happens to be made, features and is about Argentinian exiles living in Paris.

A 35mm theatrical screening is as good as it gets to watch this otherwise-unavailable B&W drama revolving around world-class accordion player Fabian Cortes (Rodolfo Mederos, excellent), whose diva-like disappearance for days without warning is tolerated by his French girlfriend Danielle (Bérangère Bonvoisin), his fellow musicians, friends/artistic collaborators and admirers who regularly come see him play. That Fabian claims to speak to a long-dead patron saint of Argentinian accordion players is shrugged off, even though he swears he's not dreaming or talking to a ghost. Whenever they're not rehearsing, cooking, waxing philosophically, playing impromptu soccer matches or bitching about politics Fabian and their friends reminisce fondly about a Shangri-La type mythical version of Argentina named Aquilea they've made up. Then Fabian's guerrilla-involved sister Marta (Andrea Livier Aronovich) suddenly shows up, setting in motion a possibility that fills Fabian and his clique with both delight and fear: a chance to go to Aquilea for real.

Imagine of Jean-Luc Godard had directed "Midnight in Paris" as a B&W series of musical vignettes with a slow-burn conspiracy movie taking shape and you'd get a decent (though nowhere near accurate) idea what "Trottoirs de Saturne" feels like. At its core this is another love letter to Paris but an intellectual one. The city's welcoming arms to artists the world over is a romantic notion that is shown to only go so far in quelling an artists' innate need to reconnect and be loved by a nation's power structure that has rejected them. In one of the film's highlights Danielle (who is an immigration lawyer and helps Fabian's fellow immigrants) confronts her boyfriend about why Argentinian exiles should feel any different than other immigrants who also miss their homelands. That Fabian is willing to turn Danielle into the very exiled life he's rejecting by asking her to go with him to Aquilea speaks volumes about both their characters, which doesn't take away from the movie's cheerful embrace of artificiality as a means to tell its rather-unbelievable but rooted-in-reality story.

Good supporting performances (including director Hugo Santiago in a prominent non-credited role), gorgeous B&W cinematography, great music and some honest-to-goodness suspense and tension as the movie's final act unfolds makes "Les Trottoirs de Saturne" a small avant-garde gem.