Newsletter: Indie Focus: The silly and the serious with ‘Sausage Party,’ ‘Hell or High Water’ and ‘Little Men’
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen, and welcome to your weekly field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
This week is another with more movies worth checking out than I really have room for here. (This newsletter is intended to be more of a thoughtful, sharp curation than a completist’s laundry list, out of respect for readers’ time and my own sadly limited brain space.)
The new film “Pete’s Dragon” was made by director David Lowery, a favorite around these parts for his poetic, emotional “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints.” So it is exciting to see him able to take his style forward to an accessible, wide-release film.
In his review, Kenneth Turan said the film was “made with integrity as well as sweetness … it traffics in the kind of magic we don’t see often enough, the magic of innocence.”
And as for fans of his earlier work not sure whether to see his take on the family film, as Lowery told our Meredith Woerner, “they’re going to recognize me all through and through.”
And we have our event this week with a screening of “The Intervention,” followed by a Q&A with director-writer-actress Clea DuVall. Check events.latimes.com for more info.
‘Sausage Party’
The team of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg has long worked a line between smart and silly, with films such as “This Is the End,” “The Interview” and now “Sausage Party,” an R-rated animated film about the secret lives of the food in a supermarket. The characters believe that when they are taken from the shelves and carted out of the store they are going to some Great Beyond but then come to find out a more sinister truth.
I reviewed the film for The Times and, despite a few reservations, found it overall “a rudely uproarious joy … not only a comic delight but also an unlikely beacon of hope.”
At the New York Times, A.O. Scott noted, “Animation offers Mr. Rogen, Mr. Goldberg and their squad new ways to be naughty, and also blunts the potential offensiveness of some of the older ways.”
Lindsey Bahr at the AP said, “It’s a wild good time that will offend, shock and even delight … There is no one out there making comedies quite like Rogen and Goldberg. They are putting their definitive stamp on the modern American comedy one decency-smashing double entendre at a time.”
L.A. Times colleague Josh Rottenberg interviewed Rogen, who co-wrote the film and also voiced the character Frank. Rogen talked about the freedom that animation allowed.
“We were able to get away with stuff that I wouldn’t even have attempted to do in a live-action movie because it would be pornographic,” he said. “But because it’s food and it’s not real and it’s not anatomically correct, it gives you that leeway. I think you almost have to push things a little further in order to arrive at the same place in animation because of how cute and not real the scenarios are.”
‘Hell or High Water’
“Hell or High Water” is the kind of spare, simple story — two brothers on a desperate crime spree and the lawman chasing them down — that hides the complexities of its storytelling and emotions. From a script by “Sicario” screenwriter Taylor Sheridan and directed by David Mackenzie, the film is anchored by fine performances by Chris Pine, Ben Foster and Jeff Bridges. Honestly, it’s the kind of movie that is just so quietly good that it leaves you wondering why there aren’t more movies like it.
In his review for The Times, Glenn Whipp called the film “a gripping heist drama keenly attuned to the outsider politics of our times.”
For the Chicago Tribune, Michael Phillips wrote, “Like Sheridan’s ‘Sicario’ script, ‘Hell or High Water’ has one foot in pulp conventions, and the other in some stimulating, morally tricky contemporary answers to those conventions. What the movie has, above all, is a dramatic line, clean and straight.”
At MTV, Amy Nicholson added, “We don’t live in an era of white hats and black hats. Maybe we never did … The past is a mirage, the present is pitiful, and the future might be even worse. At least the dinosaurs keep today’s getaway cars running. These dead towns might just be forgotten. ‘Hell or High Water’ demands they won’t.”
I interviewed Mackenzie, Sheridan, Bridges and Pine for a story that will be publishing soon, honing in on the movie as a modern Western.
‘Little Men’
Ira Sachs is a previous winner of the Sundance Grand Jury prize who has carved out his own distinct corner, a world of storytelling rooted in the hyper-specific details of everyday life that open up to larger vistas of emotional struggle.
His new film, “Little Men,” continues that streak, as it tells a tale of two families thrown into opposition by circumstances of death and real estate.
I interviewed Sachs and Greg Kinnear (who plays parent Brian Jardine in “Little Men”) about the scale of Sachs’ filmmaking and storytelling.
“I guess to me it feels precise,” said Sachs. “It feels present to these characters, so when it works for an audience, the effect is not small. It’s quite large.”
In her review for The Times, Sheri Linden recognized the film’s two young break-out performers when she wrote, “Ira Sachs’ beautifully observed ‘Little Men’ zeros in on teen-spirit qualities that might, by conventional standards, be considered less cinematic: creativity and innocence, a tender spark brought to life by terrific newcomers Theo Taplitz and Michael Barbieri.”
At IndieWire, David Ehrlich called the film “a crushingly beautiful coming-of-age story that suggests the director only grows sharper as he narrows his gaze.”
In his review for Variety when the film premiered earlier this year at Sundance, Peter Debruge called it “a little movie brimming with little truths about modern life. It won’t change the world, but it does understand it.”
Women of Cinefamily Weekend
We mention films screening at Cinefamily quite often here, because they regularly present some of the most adventurous and creative programming to be found anywhere in the country. Los Angeles is lucky to have such a venue. Women of Cinefamily is an ongoing program of events created by guest female programmers. Women of Cinefamily weekend runs Aug. 18-21.
Recent Oscar winner and Women of Cinefamily co-founder Brie Larson will host an event that includes a screening of the “The Hunting Ground,” Kirby Dick’s documentary on sexual assault on college campuses. The screening will be followed by a conversation with End Rape on Campus co-founders Annie Clark and Andrea Pino moderated by Larson.
Another event will find Kate and Laura Mulleavy of the fashion label Rodarte hosting a 35mm screening of Dario Argento’s high-style horror classic “Suspiria,” with an appearance by the film’s star, actress Jessica Harper. There will also be a 35 mm screening of “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains,” starring Diane Lane and Laura Dern as struggling teenage punk rockers, followed by a performance by Sky Ferreira.
The celebration will conclude with the L.A. premiere of “Antibirth” with director Danny Perez and actresses Natasha Lyonne and Chloë Sevigny appearing for a Q&A moderated by musician Kim Gordon.
Email me if you have questions, comments or suggestions, and follow me on Twitter @IndieFocus.
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