an american crime Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Suffering from the Hollywood blockbuster blues? Have I got some indies for you! All three are newly available this week on DVD.

Kim Voynar called Vadim Perelman's The Life Before Her Eyes "a lovely, nuanced film packed with imagery, and bracketed by an intriguing storyline." The story revolves around the survivor of a school shooting; Uma Thurman plays her as an adult and Evan Rachel Wood as a teenager. Kim wrote in part: "I'd expect the director's commentary on the DVD to be intriguing." The DVD does indeed feature an audio commentary by the director, joined by production designer Maia Javan. Also included are deleted scenes, an alternate ending, and several other mini-features. A Blu-ray edition is also available.

Kim also reviewed Tommy O'Haver's An American Crime when it debuted at Sundance last year. Based on the true tragedy of teenage Sylvia Likens (Ellen Page) who was "brutally beaten, burned, starved and tortured to death" in 1965 Indiana, Kim said the film was difficult to watch. "The real question ... is not just how the Sylvia Likens case could have happened, but why situations like this happen at all -- and still do." Catherine Keener and James Franco also star. The DVD doesn't appear to have any supplemental material.

On the lighter side, Bharat Nalluri's Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day "is a nearly perfect piece of entertainment for grownups," according to James Rocchi. Frances McDormand plays a down-on-her-luck British governess and Amy Adams essays her employer, an American singer / actress in late 1930s London. The DVD includes a "making of," deleted scenes, and "Miss Pettigrew's Long Trip to Hollywood."

Although I read Libertas and other conservative sites regularly, on the premise that it's a good idea to know what the barbarians are up to before they get to your gate, I rarely post about stories I read there. This piece they had up yesterday, though, is so blatantly misinformed and misguided that I felt compelled to address it.

The piece is yet another conservative rant against the liberal Hollywood machine. It starts out by linking to an article over on The Daily Standard, deemed by Libertas an "insightful piece on a disturbing trend." That alone set off my inner alarm bells, but I gamely went off to see what insights the Standard had to offer. In his piece, titled "Hollywood on the Offensive -- Child Abuse Hits the Silver Screen," Kevin Kusinitz starts out by attacking two films from Sundance 2007 -- Hounddog, starring Dakota Fanning as a young rape victim, and An American Crime, a dramatization of the murder of Sylvia Lukens in 1965, starring Ellen Page. Kusinitz then goes on to attack Page for her role in Juno thusly:

If you read these pages with any regularity, you already know that I'm quite a fan of Ellen Page. Her work thus far, in Hard Candy, An American Crime, and, most recently, in the lovable, fabulous Juno, has been superb. I noted a while back that Page has several films warming up in the bullpen, and one of them is Jack and Diane, in which she's set to costar opposite Olivia Thirlby, who plays her best friend in Juno.

Now let me tell you about Jack and Diane (oh, you knew I had to go there, c'mon). According to its website, the film, which is supposed to be directed by Bradley Rust Gray (Salt), is about: "Jack and Diane, two teenage lesbians, meet in New York City and spend the night kissing ferociously. Diane's charming innocence quickly begins to open Jack's tough skinned heart. But, when Jack discovers that Diane is leaving the country in a week she tries to push her away. Diane must struggle to keep their love alive while hiding the secret that her newly awakened sexual desire occasionally turns her into a werewolf."

Lesbian teenage werewolves? Holy jeepers, what's the world coming to? This excerpt from the director's statement gives a better idea of what Gray has in mind: "I see JACK & DIANE as an investigation of love. It's unapologetically romantic. Love is the most instinctive way for us to understand other people regardless of cultural background, race, or sexuality. Everyone has the same desire to love and to be loved." (You can read a lot more about the film at its official website.)

As The Shadow was fond of saying: "The weed of crime bears bitter fruit." Crime may not pay, but it often makes for compelling cinema. This week on trailer park we look at some recent trailers in which people, for one reason or another, find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Shooter
Mark Wahlberg plays a retired sharpshooter pressed back into service to prevent a Presidential assassination. His attempts to foil the hit go wrong and he ends up framed by his former employers and on the run. The story is nothing we haven't all seen before, so it all comes down to the execution (pun most definitely intended). Wahlberg has developed a formidable screen presence, and I suspect he'll be able to pull it off. The most interesting thing about seeing the rapper formerly known as Marky Mark up there on the screen, is the fact that you no longer care that it's Marky Mark. This film is not to be confused with the similarly-plotted The Shooter starring Wesley Snipes. You can read Chris Ullrich's take on this trailer here.

Smiley Face
Regardless of your views on marijuana, possession and use of it remains a crime here in the U.S. Martha Fischer first mentioned this film here on Cinematical back in March. This stoner comedy is from Gregg Araki, the director behind The Doom Generation, a nightmarishly messed up but fascinating film. Smiley Face stars Anna Faris as a young actress who really likes pot. After mistakenly eating an entire batch of cupcakes laced with the stuff, things start to get silly. Faris is probably best known for the Scary Movie series, and she does a pratfall in the trailer that will remind you of that fact. As sophomorically stupid as those films can be, I like Faris, and she's usually memorable in even small roles like the ones she played in Lost in Translation and Brokeback Mountain. I think this will be one to look out for.

One of the questions I've most heard being asked about An American Crime by those who haven't seen it is: Why would anyone want to make a movie about the brutal torture and murder of a 16-year-old girl? The answer, at least as director Tommy O'Haver gave at the world premiere of the film at Sundance, was two-fold. First, that the case happened when he was a teenager living in Indiana, and the murder of Sylvia Likens has haunted him his entire life; and second, that he wanted to explore and try to understand how such a horrific series of events happened. The basic facts of the tragic death of Sylvia Likens are well-known; numerous books and case studies have been written about the case. Sylvia (Ellen Page) and her younger sister Jenny, who had polio, were left in the care of Gertrude Baniszewski (Catherine Keener) by their father Lester, a carnival worker, so that he and his wife could go work the circuit. Lester Likens had only met Gertrude one time before he agreed to leave his daughters in her care for $20 a week.

The girls were only supposed to be there a few weeks, but their parents extended their circuit and then stopped sending the money they had promised to pay for the girls' care. Before they got around to picking their girls up, it was too late for Sylvia -- she had been brutally beaten, burned, starved and tortured to death in the basement of the Baniszewski home. That alone was bad enough to rivet a nation in 1965, but what made the case even more complexing was that much of the torture of Sylvia Likens was committed by Gertrude's five older children, along with neighbor children -- kids who had known Sylvia, however briefly, from school and church. How could such a horrible crime take place, with children involved? Other adults had heard that Sylvia was being abused -- the next-door neighbors heard her screams as she was burned and beaten -- and yet no one intervened to help her.

When I saw Hard Candy, I was blown away by Ellen Page's carefully controlled performance as a young girl who embarks on a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with a man who trolls the internet for 14-year-old girls. I knew when I saw her in that film that she had a good career ahead of her, if she'd make some good choices around future scripts. Looks like she's done just that (I'm generously overlooking her role as Kitty Pryde in X-Men -- she was underused there), because she has no fewer than six films lined up.

Page is making some really smart decisions with her scripts -- she's mixing it up enough not to get herself boxed into one type of role, she's got a Sundance film, a mainstream film, and some decidedly edgier fare all upcoming. Page is one of the actresses I'll be watching with the most interest in 2007; here's what she has upcoming, so you can get her on your radar (if she's not there already):

First up for Page is An American Crime (pictured above), which debuts at Sundance. Film is based on a true story from 1965 Indiana about a housewife who kept a teenage girl, Sylvia Likens, locked in her basement. Page was reportedly the only choice to play Likens, and she co-stars with Catherine Keener, who plays Gertrude Baniszewski, the 37-year-old woman who led a pack of teenagers and children as young as 11 and 12 (some her own kids, and others just kids in the neighborhood) in the escalating beating, torture and eventual death of the 16-year-old, in one of the worst torture-murder cases in American history. In an interesting bit of casting, typically "nice boy" Jeremy Sumpter, who was fantastic in the title role in 2003's Peter Pan, takes on the role of Coy Hubbard, the 16-year-old boyfriend of Stephanie Baniszewski, who was one of the worst of Syliva's abusers, repeatedly practicing Judo on her by throwing her into walls.

We're just over six weeks away from the Sundance Film Festival, and it's shaping up to be a fun fest. I love film festivals, and thankfully, haven't yet gotten so jaded that I don't get excited when fest lineups are announced (seriously, if I ever get to the point that I'm not excited about the possibility of finding a wonderful film or two a fest, someone please just shoot me and put me out of my misery). We've already told you about the competition films and the Midnight offerings, which Scott Weinberg will be covering extensively for us at Sundance, once he recovers from his deep disappointment at the lack of horror there this year.

Now it's time to unwrap the big, shiny packages labled "Premiere", "Spectrum" and "New Frontier" and take a peek at what's inside ...