The writer/director Harmony Korine might have been -- and might still be -- one of the most audacious and terrifying new American talents in some time. At the age of 19, he wrote the script for Larry Clark's Kids (1995) and made his own directorial debut with Gummo (1997), a film so astonishing that most reviewers panned it simply to get it out of their heads. He then made the first official American Dogme 95 film, Julien Donkey-Boy (1999), and cast one of his biggest fans, director Werner Herzog, in a starring role.
All three films conjured up images that inspired the gag reflex. It was hard to look away, though. They were odd and sad and not a little repulsive. From there, he retreated into other art forms, such as photography and music (he directed music videos for Cat Power and Sonic Youth), returning to features only to write Clark's Ken Park (2002), which was so lurid it failed to secure a U.S. distributor. Indeed, like many of the most cutting edge American directors, most of Korine's fans, and financiers, currently reside outside the U.S.
The low-key Spanish import Fermat's Room falls into that (very small) sub-genre that I've just now designated as "math horror." (Vincenzo Natali's Cube also belongs in this group, and maybe even a few other movies that I can't think of right now.) This is a strange but engaging Spanish thriller in which four well-established mathematicians convene after receiving a mysterious invitation, and then find themselves trapped inside a shrinking room. The only way out is to solve a bunch of math riddles, but the biggest question is this: Why the heck is someone trying to kill four mathematicians in the first place?
Handsomely shot and boasting fine work from its five main only actors, Fermat's Room is the sort of mystery / thriller that will appeal to folks who enjoy a good mind-bender as much as they dig a good foreign flick. It's certainly not as bizarre (or nearly as bloody) as Natali's Cube, but I'm betting the films would make for a pretty interesting double feature all the same. And while some of the in-movie puzzles are relatively obvious (hell, they even borrow one from Jim Henson's Labyrinth!), the movie as a whole proves to be sort of a puzzle in its own right. The third act revelations might not be all that shocking, but they work well enough in the low-key context of the piece.
A solid handful of indie titles vie for your attention on the DVD shelves this week. I've already written about the marketing for Joe Swanberg's Hannah Takes the Stairs, my pick of the week, but that shouldn't overshadow the intrinsic quality of the film itself. The DVD from IFC includes Thanks for the Add!, a short film by Swanberg, an audio commentary by Swanberg and actors / co-writers Greta Gerwig and Kent Osborne, behind the scenes footage, and SXSW video production diary spots.
I watched Juan Antonio Bayona's The Orphanage (pictured) with expectations set perhaps too high. I thought it would be a thrilling Spanish ghost story; instead it's a rather pallid drama about a mother and a lost son with just a smidgen of suspense and supernatural overtones. Jette Kernion had a response similar to mine, but others liked it much more, including our own Scott Weinberg, who praised it as "entirely captivating from start to finish." The DVD from Picturehouse includes three featurettes and something on the somewhat misleading marketing campaign.
Family dysfunction and elder care may not sound like sexy subjects, but Tamara Jekins "simply takes us into the story of her fascinating characters, and the integrity with which she handles it makes it ring true throughout." That was the reaction of Kim Voynar to The Savages; she was especially impressed by the performances of Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The DVD from Fox Searchlight includes an extended scene, director's snapshots, and a featurette entitled "About the Savages."
How do you sell the merits of an indie film to the masses? Scott Macaulay raises the question at the Filmmaker Magazine blog in connection with the release of Joe Swanberg's Hannah Takes the Stairs on DVD tomorrow. The film debuted at last year's SXSW and then received a brief theatrical release last summer. Macaulay posted pictures of the theatrical release poster, in contrast with the home video box cover.
Which is more effective? Chris Thilk at Movie Marketing Madness commented on the poster last summer, describing it as "a very cool poster that manages [to] mix the starkness that identifies it easily as an independent, character-driven film with some wacky visuals that play the same sort of tune the trailer did. I love it." The DVD cover, with the titular character of Hannah (played by Greta Gerwig) almost fading into the background, makes it look more like a mainstream ensemble romantic comedy.
But, wait! The photo on the cover was one of the original publicity photos and can be found on the film's official site. It may not be the most representative, though, since the film is all about Hannah and how she flits through relationships rather quickly. The Chicago city 'scape background was obviously added later. The blurb is snipped from Owen Gleiberman's review in Entertainment Weekly. The theatrical poster featured a quote from Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe. Is one critic's quote more appealing than the other?
College professors rule! Well, at least the one that Richard Jenkins plays so well in Tom McCarthy's The Visitor (Overture Films). The comedy-drama expanded to 18 theaters in its second week of release and averaged $9,055 per-screen to remain in the #1 position, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. Check the film's web site to see where it will be opening in the next couple of weeks (click on "in select theaters now").
Debuting indie films did not fare so well, judging strictly by per-screen averages, but it's notable that Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Rocky Mountain Pictures), opened on more than 1,000 screens and made $2,997 per location for a total of more than $3 million for the weekend. The doc follows Ben Stein as he chases down Ferris Bueller ... oops, wrong movie! This one's about "intelligent design" in the classroom.
Opening on just one screen, Anamorph (IFC Films) grossed $3,000. Willem Dafoe stars as an NYPD detective investigating a serial killer. Critics were not kind: Anamorph scored just 28% positive at Rotten Tomatoes. David Hudson at GreenCine Daily rounds up pertinent quotes.
Two other holdovers did better as they expanded their runs. Young At Heart (Fox Searchlight), the "elderly folk chorus that sings modern rock songs" documentary, increased its theater count to 33 and averaged $4,393 per screen. Hou Hsiao-Hsien's gentle drama The Flight of the Red Balloon (IFC Films) proved its appeal beyond New York City, making $3,572 per-screen at 11 locations.
"A damn fine film with a good heart and some really excellent performances" finished atop the indie weekend box office charts. The quote is from our own Scott Weinberg's review of Tom McCarthy's The Visitor (Overture), and I agree wholeheartedly. The film earned $22,000 per-screen at four theaters, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. Richard Jenkins stars as a college professor who strikes up a friendship with an immigrant couple he finds living in his NYC apartment. It's even better -- and deeper -- than that description might sound.
An elderly chorus sings a repertoire of modern pop and rock songs in Stephen Walker's documentary Young @ Heart (Fox Searchlight); audiences responded to the tune of $13,075 per screen at four locations. Cinematical'sJames Rocchi wrote: "Even for all its flaws and failures it still succeeds in showing us friends who -- through song and art and community and, yes, love -- are doing their best to face it with everything that they've got."
David Ayer's Street Kings (Fox Searchlight) should be included, I suppose, because it's distributed by an studio specialty division known for its indie releases, though not much about the police drama screams "indie." By the per-screen numbers, it finished third, earning an average of $4,864 at each of 2,467 engagements. "As yet another tale of dirty criminals and even dirtier cops," Scott Weinberg opined, "Street Kings works well enough, albeit strictly in a 'been there, seen that' sort of way."
Imagine if The Dark Knight or Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull initially opened in limited release, and then took a month or so to reach you in "flyover country." But on the same day that they hit those first theaters in New York and L.A., they were also available on your television, via Video on Demand. Would you wait a few weeks to see the blockbusters on the big screen or would you lack the patience and go ahead and download the movies to your cable box? Of course you would choose the VOD route. I probably would, as well.
Despite this column, I cannot claim to be a purist when it comes to theatrical film exhibition. I subscribe to Netflix and even sometimes watch old movies on the Watch Now streaming player. I now own a video iPod, and while I haven't yet tried watching a feature, I have had no problem watching shorts and television episodes on its small screen and am not totally against eventually downloading a whole movie from iTunes. And although New York's Film Forum is currently showing a ton of United Artists classics, many of which I've never seen at all and a number of which I've never seen on the big screen, I haven't been able to make my way to Manhattan to appreciate the retrospective.
A Taiwanese filmmaker's tribute to a celebrated French short soared easily to the top of the indie charts this weekend. Flight of the Red Balloon (IFC Films), directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien, averaged $17,450 at the two screens where it played in Manhattan, according to estimates compiled by Leonard Klady at Movie City News. Jeffrey M. Anderson wrote: "Like Hou's more recent work, Flight of the Red Balloon moves a little more toward international accessibility and away from his early, uniquely Taiwanese stories." Juliette Binoche stars as a frazzled writer and performer with a troupe of puppeteers who hires a Taiwanese film student as a nanny for her young son.
Surprisingly, My Blueberry Nights (The Weinstein Co.) finished #2 for the weekend, grossing an average of $11,380 per screen at six locations. Wong Kar Wai's first English-language film met with lukewarm reaction at Cannes last year; the director tinkered with the editing, but the end result is still not very satisfying, according to Nick Schager. He wrote that the "lovelorn dilemmas [of the female characters] ... consistently come off as precious and trifling, which is dispiriting considering that Wong and [director of photography Darius] Khondji make everything look and feel so rapturous and enticing that one wants to believe the proceedings are of consequence." Nora Jones, Jude Law, Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman are featured.
Astonishingly, the master Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien and the brain-dead American comic Dane Cook now have only one degree of separation between them. Juliette Binoche jumped from her role opposite Cook in the awful Dan in Real Life to a starring role in Hou's new film, the wonderful, whimsical Flight of the Red Balloon. In 1999, the Village Voice critics' poll chose Hou as the director of the decade, and three of his films placed in the decade's top 100: Flowers of Shanghai (#3), The Puppetmaster (#16) and Goodbye South, Goodbye (#61). That same year, a touring retrospective of Hou's work had the critical community all abuzz, and apparently sold a great many tickets. But Hou's films never found U.S. theatrical distribution until 2004, when his Millennium Mambo opened, with little fanfare, three years after it was made. And then, it was probably due more to beautiful star Shu Qi (The Transporter) than to Hou. Yet I somehow doubt Hou's new brush with fame will help him become any less obscure.
Nearly a year after its international premiere at Cannes, My Brother is an Only Child (ThinkFilm) opened at the top of the indie weekend box office returns, according to Box Office Mojo. Playing at just one theater in Manhattan, the film grossed $10,500. My Brother "follows two brothers through years of Italian history, with their personal and political travails echoing down the years," Cinematical'sJames Rocchi wrote last year. "Even with it's merits as a light-but-sentimental story of family in 1960's Italy, it also reminded me of the soaring, sweeping, astonishing La Meglio Gioventù (The Best of Youth) -- and wound up completely winning me over." The film will roll out to other cities over the next three weeks, per the distributor's web site.
Immigration family tale Under the Same Moon (Fox Searchlight / The Weinstein Co.) continues to perform well, earning $5,771 per screen as it expanded to 390 theaters in its second week. Leonard Klady at Movie City News commented that the film is "playing in a mix of Hispanic, art and mainstream locations but with rare exception is working best in the former venues." Also in its second week, Love Songs (IFC), Christophe Honoré's French-language modern musical, held onto most of its audience, averaging $6,800 at two Manhattan theaters.
The big story of the weekend was the success enjoyed by Under the Same Moon (Fox Searchlight / The Weinstein Co.), which earned $8,910 per screen playing on 266 screens, according to estimates compiled by Leonard Klady at Movie City News. Our own Jette Kernion described it as "essentially an old-fashioned family melodrama." She pointed out that the film has an "overt agenda" in its message about U.S. undocumented workers, but concluded: "Despite its flaws, Under the Same Moon is an entertaining film that knows how to charm an audience."
Playing at one theater in New York and one in Los Angeles, Planet B-Boy (Elephant Eye Films) made $14,500 per screen, giving it the highest per-screen average. Benson Lee directed the documentary, "which weaves the stories of numerous crews from 18 nations vying in the Battle of the Year championship in Braunschweig, Germany," in the words of Ed Gonzalez in The Village Voice. "What most sticks is Planet B-Boy's aesthetic, which feels jocked from the school of Michael Moore."
Faced with the prospect of checking out several new releases or luxuriating in a new print of Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt, audiences overwhelmingly chose Godard's 1963 classic. Playing at a single location (Film Forum in New York City), Contempt earned $13,100 over the weekend, according to estimates compiled by Leonard Klady of Movie City News. Distributor Rialto Pictures has the film booked at Film Forum until March 27, and then perhaps will tour the print, though no details are provided on their site.
Indie holdovers also did better than the newest offerings. David Gordon Green's Snow Angels(Warner Independent) made $8,666 per screen at three theaters in its second week out, per Box Office Mojo, while Oscar winner The Counterfeiters(Sony Pictures Classics) pulled in $6,263 per-screen at 72 locations in its fourth week. Ira Sachs' Married Life(Sony Pictures Classics), Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park(IFC) and Jacques Rivette's The Duchess of Langeais(IFC) also performed well; the first two in their second week of release, and the latter in its fourth week.
Michael Haneke's remake of his own Funny Games(Warner Independent) did very little business, grabbing just $1,800 per screen at 289 engagements, which is disappointing since our own James Rocchi called it "a great film ... it's hard to say which Funny Games stirs up more -- your guts, or your brain." Meanwhile, Bill Maher's Sleepwalking(Overture) was right behind at $1,640 per screen at 30 locations. In the review by Cinematical'sJeffrey M. Anderson, he concluded: "Worst of all is that title, which is exactly the kind of title that filmmakers should stay away from if they want to avoid a fairly obvious one-word film review."
In a quiet post-Oscar week, Austria's The Counterfeiters (Sony Pictures Classics), winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, kept its position at the top of the charts, earning $10,050 per screen at 18 locations, according to estimates compiled by Leonard Klady at Movie City News. Klady noted that the film "doubled its playdates and box office but appears short of the commercial traction (or social vibrancy) of last year's triumphant The Lives of Others."
Chop Shop (Koch Lorber) performed very nicely at its single-theater engagement in New York City's Film Forum, grossing $8,900. Kim Voynar described it as one of her favorite films from last year's festival circuit; filmmaker Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart) follows a 12-year-old orphan struggling to survive on the mean streets of New York. Chop Shop continues its run at Film Forum through March 11.
Other new indie releases struggled to find audiences. Chicago 10 (Roadside Attractions), "appreciable as one of the most creative and entertaining documentary films in years," did the best, pulling in $3,030 per-screen at 14 locations. Playing on 75 screens, City of Men (Miramax), "neither as stylistically fresh nor as powerfully raw as City of God," scratched out $1,570 per engagement, while Bonneville (SenArts), "a road trip movie for spunky older chicks" starring Kathy Bates, Joan Allen and Jessica Lange, and Romulus, My Father (Magnolia Pictures), "an incredibly slow-paced film that relies on the strength of its actors to thrive" starring Eric Bana, trailed behind, earning $1,410 and $1,070 per screen, respectively, in limited engagements.
Analyzing the weekend box office returns, Leonard Klady of Movie City News saw "no great Oscar box office surge," though No Country for Old Men enjoyed an upward swing; based on his estimates, Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar winner The Counterfeiters(Sony Pictures Classics) topped the indie charts. Hailing from Austria, The Counterfeiters tells "one of the most interesting stories to come out of World War II," wrote Christopher Campbell, though he felt it was "not quite a great film." The Counterfeiters averaged $12,330 per-screen at the seven locations where it played.
French master Jacques Rivette's latest, The Duchess of Langeais(IFC Films) struck Ryan Stewart as similar to La Vie en Rose "in that it works just well enough to support a dynamic performance but contains too many structural oddities, fights too many directorial idiosyncracies and stifles its own momentum too much to succeed on the whole." Rivette's fans came out at both theaters where it opened, averaging $11,250 per screen, according to Box Office Mojo.
On a quiet weekend for new indie films, several stories merit attention. Let's begin with Caramel, a film from Lebanon that our own Kim Voynar quite enjoyed, calling the comedy/drama set in and around a Beirut beauty salon "funny, heartwarming, and sensitive." Distributor Roadside Attractions opened the picture at 12 locations, where it earned a tidy $6,210 per screen, according to estimates compiled by Leonard Klady at Movie City News. That was tops among new limited releases.
Kim also recommended Eric Byler's Tre, a relationship drama. I haven't seen Byler's latest, but I agree with Kim that he's a very talented filmmaker; she says that he's "at the top of his game" with Tre. Playing on just two screens in Los Angeles, the film grossed $1,800 at each for distributor Cinema Libre. I'm hoping more people will get to see it as it opens in other cities in the coming weeks. The official site has a trailer and more information on future engagements in Chicago and San Francisco.
U2 3D got thoroughly dusted by the Hannah Montana phenomenon, but I would imagine there was no crossover in the audiences. And earnings of $12,620 per screen at 61 engagements is nothing to sneeze at -- that's good enough for second place in the overall per-screen standings, though far behind Hannah's $43,550 per-screen juggernaut. Have two G-rated 3D concert documentaries ever been 1-2 like that before? I think not!
Speaking of face-offs, Junocontinued its remarkable run, dropping just 28% in its ninth week of release while playing on 2,475 screens. Its cumulative total is $110 million for distributor Fox Searchlight. Meanwhile, IFC Films expanded Romanian abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days into 17 theaters where it made $7,176 per engagement, according to Box Office Mojo.
A solid handful of indie titles vie for your attention on the DVD shelves this week. I've 
College professors rule! Well, at least the one that 
"A damn fine film with a good heart and some really excellent performances" finished atop the indie weekend box office charts. The quote is from our own 
A Taiwanese filmmaker's tribute to a celebrated French short soared easily to the top of the indie charts this weekend. 
Nearly a year after its international premiere at Cannes, 
The big story of the weekend was the success enjoyed by 
Faced with the prospect of checking out several new releases or luxuriating in a new print of Jean-Luc Godard's 
In a quiet post-Oscar week, Austria's 
Analyzing the weekend box office returns, 
On a quiet weekend for new indie films, several stories merit attention. Let's begin with 
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Full 'G.I. Joe' Cast Photos!
