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American Hardcore
 American Hardcore—calm down, it's not about porn—is
a relatively thorough examination of the hardcore punk movement
in this country from 1980 through 1986. Set against Reagan's ‘50s
vision of the 1980s, these bands— from SoCal to Vancouver,
Minneapolis to New York, D.C. to Boston—channeled their
youthful rage into an industrial buzzsaw angst that politicized
American homogeneity, and paved the way for the triumph of
Nirvana and the “alternative nation” of the nineties.
Paul Rachman's documentary, based on Steven Blush's book
American Hardcore: A Tribal History, plays a lot like the
music sounds: lo-fi, blurry, energetic, confused, and often
very funny. A lot of screen time is given to two of the best
bands from the movement—SoCal's Black Flag and D.C.'s
Bad Brains—but the live performance clips, most of
them from lo-tech sources, don't give the lockstep rhythms
and passionate intensity of the music its due. The grungy
footage is distant, historical; it places a gauze around
the chaos of the time. Considered in perspective, too many
of the bands sound similar, the effect monochromatic and,
ultimately, uninteresting.
Which is too bad, because many of the major players from
that period—the two mentioned above, as well as Flipper,
Minor Threat and Hüsker Dü—left behind seminal
work. If the filmmakers could have used snippets of the actual
recordings, the movie might have been more cohesive and involving,
and envisioned the next phase of this endlessly regenerating
culture. Documentaries, regardless of subject, should expand
their subject. American Hardcore often feels as insular as
the underground community of dissenters it features. But
for music lovers—who should include this subgenre on
their list of interests—it's refreshing to be reminded
how technical expertise and craft can pale in the face of
true passion.—Dan Loughry The Black Dahlia
A scene with kd lang singing “Love For Sale” in
a sprawling 1940s, Weimar Republic-esque lesbian fantasy
nightclub is one of the strange delights to be found in The
Black Dahlia, director Brian De Palma's fictionalized take
on the investigation of one of Hollywood's most gruesome,
headline-grabbing, and unsolved murder mysteries.
Los Angeles, 1947. The mutilated corpse of 22-year-old aspiring
actress Betty Short (Mia Kirshner)—and not just run-of-the-mill
mutilated, but detached at the waist, organs removed, blood
drained, mouth carved into a permanent grin—is discovered
in a vacant downtown lot. The case becomes a point of obsession
for detective Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart) and, to a lesser
degree, his partner, Dwight “Bucky” Bleichart
(Josh Hartnett). During the course of their investigation,
which takes them to Hollywood's glamorous lesbian clubs,
Dwight finds himself enamored with his partner's girlfriend,
Kay (Scarlett Johansson), and a sultry bisexual, Madeleine
(Hilary Swank). Could either of these women hold a key to
the case… and a deeper, insidious conspiracy?
Adapted from L.A. Confidential writer James Ellroy's 1987
novel, The Black Dahlia is a complex, rich tapestry more
involved with its characters than the mysteries and crimes
they pursue (or become complicit in). To a degree, the film's
title is misleading: The Black Dahlia, which the murdered
Betty Short was dubbed in the press, is less our focus than
Dwight and his plunge into a mire of lust and deception.
De Palma (Dressed to Kill) yet again dishes up a couple of
Hitchcock-influenced set pieces, the best of which involves
a race up a staircase to stop a shadowy killer, and a smattering
of visceral gore. De Palma also bubbles over the top with
his depiction of lesbian nightlife, replete with a kd lang
musical number. But it's actress Fiona Shaw who rises highest
with a beyond Baby Jane/Edie Beale/Faye Dunaway-in-Mommie
Dearest turn as Madeleine's disturbed, martini-sucking rich
mother. If the Oscars were handed out for best Grand Guignol
performance, she’d be a shoo-in—revel in it,
queens!
As for the rest of the cast, Hartnett is fine but generic.
More distinctive are Swank, in a vampy sort of role she hasn't
occupied before, and The L Word's Kirshner as the determined
yet not exactly talented victim who literally died for Hollywood
fame.—Lawrence Ferber Haven
In Haven, a crazy-quilt of stories set on the Cayman Islands,
debut director Frank E. Flowers demonstrates an energetic
use of camera movement and a willingness to experiment
with fractured narrative. These qualities may some day
serve him well. But in his debut feature, he shows no special
gift for empathy, and a few of the actors are left stranded
with nowhere to go in this torrid, Crash-like intersection
of money-runners and luckless lovers.
It's hard to say which storyline is more irrational—the
one about an American businessman (Bill Paxton) fleeing Miami
with his daughter (Agnes Bruckner) to avoid an undefined
and underdeveloped federal persecution; or the update of
Splendor in the Grass with the rich island girl (Joy Bryant),
the dockhand Shy (Orlando Bloom!), and the racial and class
tensions of their forbidden love. Both narratives feature
fractured timelines which would be better served by a chronological
telling—filmmakers with slight or incoherent stories
have a tendency to pump them up with flash-forwards and flashbacks
and all sorts of prismatic technique. Yet even told straight,
these Cayman Island accounts would require more precise motivations
and different performances to fully come alive.
The film is being sold as an Orlando Bloom vehicle and he
doesn't dishonor himself, but he's a lightweight presence
adrift in melodrama. Zoe Saldana is dreadful. She throws
herself around the screen as the disgraced daughter of the
island mogul like a strenuous combination of Bette Davis
and Mariah Carey in Glitter, but without the thrill of camp.
Haven—the title and the movie —is meant as irony.
It's dripping with it. In fact, it's smothered by it. For
all the talent that went into it, this debut is stillborn. —DL
The Science of Sleep
Gael Garcia Bernal is a man who won't grow up. Particularly
onscreen. If you've been following his career as closely
as I have (and why wouldn't you?), you recall that Bernal
came to our attention as part of three-way teen love affair
in Y Tu Mamá También and later, in perhaps
his best work, he allowed an older man to exploit him in
Bad Education—he's a poster boy for arrested development.
In The Science of Sleep, Bernal plays an aimless young
man who returns to his childhood home in Paris because
his mother has found him a job. He thinks he'll be designing
the artwork for calendars, instead, he's just a lowly typesetter.
Bored, his mind begins to wander and he starts to daydream—vividly.
Because he's been sleeping in his old room, he's been playing
with the toys of his youth and they come to life when he
closes his eyes. Stephane imagines himself on the set of
his own talk show, but the set is surreal, complete with
cardboard cameras and construction paper walls. In writer-director
Michael Gondry's wildly creative vision, water is represented
by plastic wrap, clouds are cotton balls and stuffed animals
grow to full size and prance around. Most directors would
just film dream sequences to project Stephane's subconscious,
but Gondry creates elaborate, whimsical dreamscapes giving
life to a myriad of inanimate unexpected objects with the
tools of children. He may try your patience, however, because
dreams don't always make sense. (A small dose of illicit
pharmaceuticals might help.) As he trips the light fantastic,
Gondry seems to be asking: Why do dreams have to be a relic
of our younger days? And why can't we live our dreams during
the day? Stephane does. Especially when the lovely Stephanie
(Charlotte Gainsbourg) moves in next door. Soon he's playing
arts and crafts with her, then dreaming about her (and,
bully for us, sleepwalking around his apartment naked).
By the end of Sleep, Gondry shows his hand: He's not detached
from reality, just an incurable romantic (see his story
for The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). You see,
Stephane and Stephanie don't just fall in love, they begin
sharing the same dreams.—Anderson Jones
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