#Phoenix Film Festival

[moorheadthanyoucanhandle]

MOTHERS, SONS, DAUGHTERS

Opening this weekend...

Evil Dead Rise--This fifth feature in the beloved horror series that began in 1981 moves most of the action out of the woods and into the city. An earthquake uncovers a copy of the "Book of the Dead" in the bowels of a decaying L.A. apartment building. Near the tome are a couple of vinyl records on which a priest has recorded the incantations necessary to invoke the evil spirits that re-animate dead bodies to torment the living. The kid who finds all this is an aspiring DJ, so he has turntables, so...

Through this laborious set-up, the lissome tattoo-artist single mother (Alyssa Sutherland) ends up possessed by a malevolent force. It's up to her guitar-tech sister (Lily Sullivan) to defend her nephew and two nieces. Gruesome mayhem ensues, hitting on the obligatory tropes of the series--grinning, leering, levitating corpses, oceanic amounts of gore, hurtling demonic POV, the repeated phrase "dead by dawn!"--as well as nods to Kubrick's The Shining and to Fargo.

I'm afraid I've run out of patience with this style of horror flick. Watching a woman's corpse terrorize and murder her children probably wouldn't be my idea of entertainment in any case, but here it's not only unpleasant but tedious. I've grown weary of films in which characters stand transfixed as something ghastly happens in front of them. After a while one begins to suspect that all the interminable gasping and whimpering and slowly backing away may not even really be about generating terror or heightening suspense, but rather about padding a thin script out to feature length.

Sam Raimi's original Evil Dead trilogy was not inconsequential cinema. The "shaky cam" techniques that Raimi and his cronies developed on those indies, out of economic necessity, were highly influential on the Coen Brothers and Barry Sonnenfeld and others. But beyond the realm of technical innovation, Raimi's movies, especially the marvelous Evil Dead II of 1987, had a low-tech vigor, a whimsical sense of macabre comedy and a guileless campfire-story gusto that, combined with the one-of-kind slapstick acting of star Bruce Campbell, made them classics.

Raimi and Campbell are listed as executive producers on Evil Dead Rise, but almost none of the twisted magic of their early work can be felt here. There's some elegance to the production design, and leading ladies Sutherland and Sullivan are stunning, Bukowski-style L.A. goddesses. There's a sweet line in which the youngest niece tells her aunt why she thinks she'll be a good mom someday. And the Hieronymus Bosch-like horror into which the demon's victims conglomerate themselves is a decent Raimi-ish idea, though the CGI renders it soulless.

I'm told that this film, directed by the Irish Lee Cronin, was originally slated to open on cable TV but got a theatrical release after test audiences took to it. So it may be that I've just aged out of this sort of thing, and the movie will truly please audiences. If so, even though it's not for me, I nonetheless find it cheering that people still want to scream in company.

Somewhere in Queens--Less than a month after opening the Phoenix Film Festival, Ray Romano's feature directorial debut opens theatrically here in the Valley. Romano, who co-wrote the script, also stars as Leo Russo, a bedraggled hangdog sad sack who works for his family's contracting business in the title borough. Leo isn't the favorite son, however. His father (Tony LoBianco) shows more respect to Leo's slick brother Frank (Sebastian Maniscalco). Maybe everybody loves Raymond, but nobody loves Leo.

Well, that's not true. His siblings and his wife Angela (Laurie Metcalf) love him well enough, but they don't take him seriously, or listen to him. A sultry widower (Jennifer Esposito) on a jobsite seems to take a shine to him, but he's not the adulterous type.  Leo does have a source of pride, however: his quiet son "Sticks" (Jacob Ward) is a high school basketball star. One night at a big game, Leo and Angela are surprised to learn that Sticks has a girlfriend (Sadie Stanley) they didn't know about. The same night, they learn that he may be good enough for a college scholarship.

Though it's often funny, a forlorn atmosphere hangs over the early scenes of this movie that had me bracing for some sort of wretched tragedy that would leave the characters standing around emergency rooms or something like that. But the story, though it stings, doesn't drag us through the mud; it takes off in unexpected and painful yet believable and sometimes exhilarating directions.

The feel for the setting is convincing, and so is the large cast. The ensemble scenes are well-executed, especially the girlfriend's debut at a big family dinner, where she both irks and impresses the relations with her nerviness. Romano plays Leo as a toned-down version of his stage and sitcom persona, cowed and slow-witted, and his tentative, apologetic boyishness is poignant, even when you can see how his family could find it irritating.

For a while it seems like the film is underutilizing the mighty Metcalf, but finally Angela gets her big moment. Romano lets her articulate the theme of the movie, admitting probably the most frequent emotion of the parenting experience: Fear.

Also opening this weekend, at Harkins Chandler Fashion 20 and Harkins Arrowhead, is Tom Huang's fine comedy-drama Dealing with Dad...

It's slated to play at Harkins Shea and at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre in Sedona starting April 28.

I reviewed it last year, after it made the rounds of several festivals including Phoenix Film Festival. It's very much worth checking out.

[puterboy1]

To think that last year, I starred in a commercial.

[thecampfirescene]

short clips of River Phoenix at Venice Film Festival, 1991

[luckydiorxoxo]

Joaquin Phoenix attends the "Joker: Folie à Deux" red carpet during the 81st Venice International Film Festival.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Brendan O'Neill

Every now and then you see an event and you think to yourself: ‘This will go down in history.’ Last night’s revolt of the Jews of London against a ‘pro-Palestine’ mob is one such event.

Jews and their allies gathered at the Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley to defend its showing of a film about Hamas’s fascistic massacre at the Nova music festival on 7 October. Unbelievably – or not, perhaps – the ‘Palestine solidarity’ set wanted the screening to be cancelled. No way, said the Jewish rebels, loudly and proudly, many of them draped in the Israeli flag. It was truly stirring stuff, a bold act of people’s defiance against cancel culture and the slow, lethal creep of a new anti-Semitism.

Let’s call it The Battle of Phoenix Cinema. On one side there was a motley crew of Palestine flag-wavers, curiously irate that a cinema was showing a film about the evils of Hamas. And on the other side a boisterous gathering of Jews and their supporters. Two thousand of them. ‘I’m still standing’ by Elton John blasted from a loudspeaker. Many young Jews were there, some clearly angry, pushed to their limit by the ceaseless demonisation of the Jewish State and the left’s shameful lack of solidarity with the Jewish community as it has come under attack these past seven months. These people really have had enough.

Some of the younger Jews chanted ‘Terrorists supporters off our streets’. It felt like a brilliant modern twist on the slogan of The Battle of Cable Street in 1936 – ‘They shall not pass’. Back then, Jews and their working-class allies gathered in East London to see off Oswald Mosley’s fascists. Yesterday they gathered to see off that mob that obsessively hates Israel and which seems hell-bent on hiding the truth about Hamas’s fascist-like crimes. You shall not pass, the protesters were essentially saying, as they protected a cinema from the McCarthyite rage of the Israelophobes.

The Phoenix Cinema’s ‘crime’ is that it agreed to host the Seret film festival, a festival of Israeli cinema that is supported by Israel’s culture ministry. This is a mortal sin in the eyes of anti-Israel activists who boycott everything that emanates from Israel; who seem to believe that moral cleanliness entails exorcising every Israeli film, foodstuff, product and even person from your life and your community.

Ken Loach and Mike Leigh resigned in a huff as patrons of the Phoenix in response to its hosting of Seret. Loach, of course, gets funding for his films from the British Film Institute, which itself is government-funded and distributes lottery cash. So he’s happy to get cash from an organisation backed by a government that waged catastrophic wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya but he’ll run a mile from a cinema showing films backed by the Israeli government? Make it make sense, Ken.

[ladyxgaga]

Lady Gaga, Todd Phillips, and Joaquin Phoenix strike a pose at the 81st Venice International Film Festival for the press conference of “Joker: Folie à Deux” in Venice, Italy, September 4th 2024

[probablygayattorneys]

So for my birthday, one of my best friends got me this.

As I understand it, it was a pre-order bonus for the crossover game and had five tracks from the soundtrack and also came with a snippet of film from a cutscene that was made but then cut or something? My friend wasn’t very clear.

Here’s a better look at my snippet. Anyone have any ideas what it might have been of?

[disarmluna]

[joaquinphoenixupdates]

Joaquin Phoenix with Rooney Mara at Venice Film Festival in 2019. Photography: Greg Williams

[thishadoscarbuzz]

284 - The Sisters Brothers

If you think we are too dismissive of westerns, allow this week's episode to contradict that notion! In 2018, Jacques Audiard made his English language debut with an adaptation of Patrick deWitt's novel The Sisters Brothers. John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix starred as gunslinging assassin siblings in 19th century America, with both on the pursuit of a detective and a scientist (played respectively by a reunited Jake Gyllenhaal and Riz Ahmed) with a plot for gold. Despite the reputation of everyone involved, the film received a mild reception at fall festivals before a quiet September release.

This episode, we talk about the struggles of Annapurna to successfully switch from being a production house to a distributor. We also discuss the career of Reilly with the hopes of a career reappraisal, our feelings about the western genre and the attempts to revive it, and Audiard's French submission contender in A Prophet.

Topics also include surprise Carol Kane, queercoding, and Jake going weird.

The 2018 Academy Awards

The 2018 Venice Film Festival

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[severalowls]

Brief thots on everything I saw at Scotland Loves Anime 2023:

Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door - Pretty cool I should actually watch the anime some time. The world doesn't seem Ultra Interesting but I see what people mean about it seeming genuinely "lived in" and I dig that.

The Concierge at Hokkyoku Department Store - Heartfelt and funny throughout, only a little distracting that it's about the delights of retail. This one isn't out in the US until next year but defo recommend it.

(I didn't see the other new ones on Saturday, one full day seemed like enough but maybe next year)

Galaxy Express 999 - For a story about a like 8 year old going on themed adventures on a space train this had some genuinely resonant things to say about like, life and regrets and paths untaken. Granted I think part of this might have been because I was interpreting almost every secondary character as a "version" of one of the main duo, aided by the art making a lot of people look very similar but I think this was in part absolutely intentional? It helps that one of the main antagonists has a time machine castle.

Macross Plus - The Top Gun stuff with Space Tom Cruise didn't do much for me but Sharon Apple is a very cool villain. I get it.

Phoenix: Reminiscence of Flower - Lovely animation, very fairy-tale like story (the boundary between sci fi and fantasy is a near total blur here). A little bit of distracting incestuous implications which are VERY 70s sci-fi. Suffers from being a movie-version of a series based on a long manga I think.

The Animatrix - Some really cool segments which unfortunately doesn't involve the bookend Matrix Bits which are, first a not particularly interesting take on "robots rise up" extermination war stuff, and then what feels like just a huge CGI animation flex (Which seems genuinely impressive for 2003 but has a very basic matrix-stuff plot).

[moorheadthanyoucanhandle]

YES THEY CANYON

Check out my review, online at Phoenix Magazine...

...of Joe Raffa's moving documentary Bad Indian: Hiding in Antelope Canyon, playing this weekend at Phoenix Film Festival.

[news-magazine]

Venice. Joker 2, the return of Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in Venice Festival

[thecampfirescene]

River Phoenix at Venice Film Festival, September 1991 (pics shared by Sue Solgot on ig)

Bonus:

(x)

[luckydiorxoxo]

Lady Gaga & Joaquin Phoenix in Venice for ‘JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX’

[stefanoavvisati69]

Lady Gaga in Harley Quinn: le parole di Francine Maisler su Joker: Folie à deux

Cari appassionati di Batman e del mondo di Gotham, oggi abbiamo delle notizie entusiasmanti direttamente dal set di Joker: Folie à deux. La nostra amata Lady Gaga ha ricevuto dei complimenti stellari per la sua interpretazione di Harley Quinn. Sì, avete capito bene! La direttrice casting del film, Francine Maisler, non ha potuto fare a meno di elogiare la popstar per la sua performance accanto al…