ATLRetro

EIGHT (2014); Dir. Peter Blackburn; Starring Libby Munro; Screened at the Atlanta Film Festival, IMDB.

By Andrew Kemp
Contributing Writer

The term “high-wire act” is sometimes deployed by critics to describe a film or a performance that’s particularly high-risk, implying disaster should the performer slip up or go too far. EIGHT, an Australian film that just had its North American premiere at the Atlanta Film Festival, pivots on a performance that seems less like a high-wire act than a bungee-cord plunge. Star Libby Munro is in a perpetual state of free fall in the film, without a net to catch her, and the only question is just how hard she’s going to hit the pavement. Only when she doesn’t does the full weight of her accomplishment become clear.

Munro stars as Sarah, a woman crippled by agoraphobia and OCD that appears to have completely shut her in to her home. The entire film follows Sarah as she attempts to begin her day, and if that sounds like a premise that can’t support a feature, then be grateful for your perspective. Movie characters written into sweeping, plot-driven adventures rarely suffer as Sarah does just in the simple act of trying to get dressed. Her illness has trapped her in a paralyzing cycle of eights. She must tap her feet eight times to put on her slippers, make eight taps on the fridge door before opening it for water, and wash her hands violently eight times in a sink before she can convince herself they’re clean. Sarah’s body bears the scars and bruises from her daily struggle with tasks as simple as taking a shower, cleaning the sink, or making breakfast.

The film doesn’t reveal much about Sarah. We see she has an absent family, but we never learn what triggered her condition or how long it’s been with her. What we know for certain is that she wants to get better. Her house is papered with encouraging notes, and an occasional caller checks in with her progress over an answering machine. With this knowledge every lapse, every small mistake that repeats a cycle becomes all the more tragic. Sarah is not insane, she’s ill. She’s fully aware of her condition, but trapped by it, and EIGHT honors the grip of her illness by refusing to cut away from it. Indeed, EIGHT is shot as a single, uninterrupted take that keeps Sarah in the frame for almost all of the film’s 82 minutes. Far from being a showy gimmick, EIGHT’s ambitious single-take style is essential to the understanding of what the film wants to convey. Sarah has no escape, and the film provides a small glimpse of what it means to actually live that kind of life. The film can be brutal, unflinching, and, quite frankly, difficult to watch, but it evokes sympathy for mental illness in a way a more traditional film could not. Unlike other famous one-shot films (ROPE, BIRDMAN), there is no editing trickery on display. It actually is one single, punishing take providing only rare moments of audience relief (words cannot express my gratitude when the camera decided not to stay on Sarah for a third painful, compulsive shower. The camera instead chooses that moment to glide past pictures of the family Sarah has lost to her illness, twisting the knife in another way.)

After the AFF screening, director Peter Blackburn talked about how mental illness—especially OCD—is too often used as a comedic character quirk in Australian film. (Americans who’ve seen Jack Nicholson’s hammy, Oscar-winning performance in AS GOOD AS IT GETS (1997) can relate). Blackburn hoped that EIGHT would put the focus back on the reality of the disorder, and in that his film is a success. Munro’s performance is so raw and tortured that audiences will find themselves cheering for each tiny bit of progress Sarah makes. A stage actor in Australia, Munro masterfully depicts Sarah’s breakdown between the life she wants and the life her compulsions force her to live. Almost entirely without words—over 20 minutes passed before the first voice reminded me that the film is Australian—Munro is able to make Sarah a complete and pitiable human being. Her work here is remarkable, and despite that bungee-cord feeling that disaster could strike at any moment, she confidently sticks the landing.

I’m not entirely convinced that EIGHT does the same, saddled as it is with an ending that, although welcome, is a bit too tidy after the struggle that came before. But the film must still be considered an accomplishment, both in completing its incredibly difficult single shot and for depicting the real heartbreak of OCD through the power of the splendid, fearless performance that anchors the film.

Andrew Kemp is a screenwriter and game designer who started talking about movies in 1984 and got stuck that way. He can be seen around town wherever there are movies, cheap beer and little else.

FRAME BY FRAME (2015); Dirs. Alexandria Bombach, Mo Scarpelli; Documentary; Atlanta Film Festival; Trailer here.

By Andrew Kemp
Contributing Writer

Farzana Wahidy sifts through the books in her apartment, searching for one particular image among many. At last she finds the right one and holds it up for the camera. The picture is black-and-white and depicts three young, pretty Afghan women wearing shorts and loose blouses, their heads uncovered, arms cradling books. They are on their way to class at the university in Kabul. The picture is captioned: “Afghanistan in the 1970s.” When compared to modern Afghanistan, the picture seems to come from an alternate reality, not the relatively recent past. After the photo was taken came war, revolution, and the Taliban. Soon, taking another photo like it would become illegal. A generation of Afghan culture vanished under a Taliban regime that considered photography a crime. Today, without the archive of their struggles, people like Farzana sift through old books and wonder how they got here, and how they left so much behind.

FRAME BY FRAME, a new documentary from Alexandria Bombach and Mo Scarpelli, is a look at a nation awakening to find itself. When the Taliban ruled in Afghanistan, they came as redeemers and reformers under a banner of peace and with a mission to return the nation to the true Afghan people. As with too many such movements, it ended in suffering when the regime revealed its narrow, strict idea of who the true Afghans were. To retain control, the Taliban limited the media and made taking photographs a crime punishable by imprisonment, torture or even death. After the U.S. invasion ousted the Taliban from power, a few took up cameras and began to take pictures once again and now, for the first time in decades, the visual history of Afghanistan is back in the hands of its people. Challenges remain. The Afghan media is still new, standing on shaky legs and trying to gain momentum. In the face of an uncertain future, FRAME BY FRAME attempts to mark the moment and legitim
ize it for the world.

The documentary follows four Afghan photographers as they travel the country and encounter distrust, opposition, and bigotry. One man visits city slums to capture the face of opiate addiction. Another runs a photography school to develop the camera skills of the next generation. A journalist, Massoud Hossaini, runs into harm’s way to capture staggering images such as the photo of grief and violence that won him the Pulitzer Prize. Each faces cultural challenges as the lingering grip of the Taliban is still felt, but perhaps none more so than Farzana Wahidy, who seeks journalistic access and respect in a country where the rules work very differently for  women. Journalism is no longer a crime in Afghanistan, but even an act as simple as taking a woman’s photograph carries a deep social stigma, one that Wahidy bravely, and too often unsuccessfully, confronts.

Bombach and Scarpelli know what they have here. They’ve stated in interviews that the film began as a short subject, but refused to be contained, eventually swelling to feature length. There is something intoxicating about watching an oppressed people discover that the rights to their heritage are theirs. This is what the Taliban took away, the ability to define their country’s reality. Without photography, without media, there is no document of the now and no story of today except that which those in charge decide upon. This is the foundational idea behind a free press, that an informed populace can look past a false narrative and take action. By stealing away their right to document, the Taliban denied the Afghan people the ability to self-identify, made them conform to an identity of religious zealotry that still lingers at the edges of the frame. The film’s subjects point their lenses at poverty, addiction and bloody violence, but also at smiling children, marvels of Afghan architecture and an old man voting in his first election. There is both the destruction of the past and hope for the future—the country exactly as it is.

But with hope comes anxiety. Afghans nervously discuss the upcoming exit of US troops, and with it the possibility of civil war. Warlords still rule and hold sway in the outskirts, and the new free press could disappear if the Taliban returns to power. In one of the film’s episodes, Farzana visits a hospital in a western Afghan town. Women are said to be self-immolating at an alarming rate. Although she’s arranged the proper permissions, she’s greeted at a hospital by a male doctor who speaks over her, talks down to her, and tells her that she will not be able to take the pictures she’s there to take. His concern is for his own life. If the local warlord hears that a woman has been taking sensitive pictures of other women—who, the film implies, are not self-immolating but are instead the victims of abuse—then the doctor could be killed or the hospital burned. Farzana tries to explain that the people have a right to hear the story, that it’s her job to report the news. He has no problem with her reporting the news, he says, just so long as the stories are about men. Even in freedom, progress is slow and precarious.

FRAME BY FRAME mirrors its subject by becoming a snapshot of an Afghan moment in time—informed by, but unmoored, from its past and anticipating an unknown future.

FRAME BY FRAME screened at the Atlanta Film Festival. Click here for a schedule of upcoming films. For more information on FRAME BY FRAME, visit the film’s website for more information.

Andrew Kemp is a screenwriter and game designer who started talking about movies in 1984 and got stuck that way. He can be seen around town wherever there are movies, cheap beer and little else.

THE EDITOR (2014); Dirs. Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy; Starring Paz de la Huerta, Udo Kier, Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy; Trailer here.

By Andrew Kemp
Contributing Writer

Giallo is a firecracker of a word. Sure, for most people, it doesn’t mean anything at all. If you speak Italian, you know giallo means “yellow,” but beyond that it’s just a word. It lies there on the page, dormant. But for the initiated—mostly cinephiles and lovers of pulp (including our ATLRetro editor)—giallo absolutely explodes with meaning. The word doesn’t just deliver a definition, but an entire state of mind. It’s music and color. It’s operatic and sleazy. Giallo is a complete reality, flung forward from a skuzzier past.

THE EDITOR, a new horror-comedy screened at the Atlanta Film Festival and presented by Buried Alive Film Festival, is drunk on giallo. The movie takes pains to replicate the peculiar charms of a 1970s Italian slasher film, hilariously sending up the genre’s goofier tendencies. It’s all here—the bad dubbing, the hilariously on-the-nose exposition, improbable moustaches. But multi-hyphenate creators Adam Brooks and Matthew Kennedy (who wrote, produced, directed and starred in the film) aren’t satisfied with an easy genre spoof. Beneath the corny riffs on Italian machismo and candy-red blood lies a vein of deep strangeness in THE EDITOR. Any homemade fan film can walk and talk giallo, but THE EDITOR’s beating heart pumps pure yellow.

Our moustachioed protagonist is Rey Ciso (Brooks), the titular editor who once had a promising career in prestige cinema before a freak accident cost him his fingers. Now Ciso, sporting a set of wooden replacement fingers, toils in the mucky world of low-budget slashers, searching for sublime truth in the jump cuts between a swinging axe and its doomed target. As fate would have it, life soon begins to imitate art, actors start dropping to a serial murderer, and Ciso finds himself living inside the type of film that he so thanklessly cuts. Even worse, missing fingers on the victims lead the presiding detective (Kennedy) to suspect that Ciso is cutting much more than film.

THE EDITOR is the latest genre exercise from ASTRON-6, a Winnipeg-based outfit who’ve staked claim on film festival midnight slots with romps like MANBORG (2011, which screened at Buried Alive) and FATHER’S DAY (2011). Over this cycle, Astron-6 perfected the art of taking a genre apart and reassembling it to suit their needs; with a bit more grain on their image, there would be little to distinguish THE EDITOR from the kinds of movies that it’s aping. Their style of meticulous homage jives with a larger trend in the indie scene that includes movies like BLACK DYNAMITE (2009) and HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN (2011), films use camera tricks and careful craftsmanship to copy the cheapo feel of yesterday’s trash cinema. The irony, of course, is that those old movies looked crappy on accident. Bargain filmmakers of the 70s and 80s would have flipped for today’s clean and easy digital technology, but guys like Brooks and Kennedy are working harder to look worse, rejecting the digital sameness often found in the independent scene in favor of styles that made even the worst films teem with an inner life.

Not everything lands perfectly with THE EDITOR. An actress’s hysterical blindness gets easy laughs; a running gag showing the male characters slapping their girlfriends does not. The movie also loses its narrative momentum somewhere in the middle, lingering perhaps a bit too long for audiences who get tired of the surface-level spoof. But a shorter run time would rob THE EDITOR of its best idea. Simply pointing at giallo’s singular tics would have made the film an empty execution of style—basically, an extended sketch. Where THE EDITOR earns its credentials is the sheer insanity it gets up to in its late stages as Ciso—who may very well be going insane—begins to question his own innocence, existence, and role in the murders. Haunted by the loss of a colleague, Ciso takes a bizarre inward journey through the cinema he loves, crawling into his editing machine, wandering through the landscapes of celluloid and peering out through the screen at those who would edit him. I

t turns out that there are real existential ideas at the heart of THE EDITOR, and the movie’s abject weirdness that elevates it to the surreal terrain that the best of the old giallo films sometimes played in. I’m not certain these sequences make sense, or that an already too-long movie absolutely needed them, but I do have the distinct feeling that I liked them, and that’s always the first rule of giallo—give the people what they want.

SATANIC PANIC 2: BATTLE OF THE BANDS (2015); Dir. Eddie Ray; Writer Max Fisher; Starring Matthew Gallo, Marlinda Phillips, Kevin Vickery, Cherry Delrosario; Friday, March 27 @ 6:30pm; 7 Stages; Tickets $10; Trailer here.

By Andrew Kemp
Contributing Writer

On Friday night, the Atlanta Film Festival is going to unleash a Satanic Panic.

I’m talking about the band, of course. The brainchild of local filmmaker and Kool Kat Eddie Ray, Satanic Panic is a world famous dance band who happens to throw their allegiance in with the Dark One himself, at least as long as the cameras are watching. After barely surviving a brush with real Satanists in their first short film, the band’s new adventure is taking the AFF stage.

We asked Eddie if he’d answer 666 questions, and well, he answered nine about the band, the movie, and that time he was mistaken for a Satanist.

ATLRetro: Where did Satanic Panic come from? Do you remember when you first got the idea?

Eddie Ray: The original concept came from me and a friend of mine named Matt Gallo. He plays B. Elza Bob in both films. We were watching JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS, and I said what about a Satanic Dance Band? Then we both got really excited about the characters and the concept for the first one and I sat down and wrote it. We came up with characters and costumes pretty fast. The sequel was written and directed by me and Max Fisher.

This is the second Satanic Panic adventure. How would you sum it up for people who may not have seen the original?

The first one is about a band called Satanic Panic, and they are the number 1 band on the planet. Their dance songs are about Satan and all things unholy, but offstage they are just normal people who are not into that Satan shit at all. They are just about the money. Their producer, Dick Dano, is up to no good and adds a subliminal message to one of their songs “6-6-Sexy” that tells real Satan Worshippers that they need to sacrifice the band. Luckily the Government steps in and forces Satanic Panic to secretly work for them. Now the chase is on. Why does Dick Dano want them sacrificed? Will the Satan Worshippers get them? Will Satanic Panic still be the number 1 band on the planet and government spies?

Satanic Panic stomp on a Satanist in SATANIC PANIC 2: BATTLE OF THE BANDS (2015).

A new band, When Tempers Flare, is challenging Satanic Panic. Are These The Misfits to Satanic Panic’s Jem and the Holograms? Where does the new band stand on the Satan issue?

Yes, When Tempers Flare is out to get Satanic Panic! They are The Misfits to Satanic Panic’s Jem for sure. When Tempers Flare is tough, and they don’t take no shit from nobody. Especially from no honkeys. They are not into Satan or Satanic Panic at all, and they want to be Number 1. Satanic Panic now has one more thing to worry about. An evil female rap group! The girls who play them are amazing, too.

These characters seem like spoofs on the 1980s, back when people saw Satanists everywhere, especially in the music industry. Were you trying to flip the script by putting the Satanists in the suburbs?

Totally, in the ’80s and early ’90s there was a “Satanic Panic” going on. Everyone was afraid they were going to be sacrificed or killed by Satan worshippers. I remember the principal in my school coming over the loud speaker saying there will be no talk of Satan in this school because the day before some cheerleader got a death threat from a “Satan Worshipper.” They literally brought people, who they thought might be Satan worshippers, up to the office to be interviewed. Even me! I was so offended. I wore a lot of black because it was fucking slimming. Let’s be real. The principal said this to me, “we know you worship Satan, son, tell us!” I just said, “Call my fucking mother!” I am serious. I was pissed. They called her, and she came up there and raised hell! She was like my son is not a goddamn Satanist! Haha. We found out days later it was a jock that sent the death threat to the cheerleader because she didn’t put out. I am serious. There were no Satan worshippers. I love that story though. Haha.

When Tempers Flare.

In a recent podcast, you talked about planning out the story beyond the current film. Is there a planned conclusion, or will Satanic Panic keep going for as long as you’re interested?

Yes, while we were writing and filming part 1, we were talking about part 2 and 3. Max Fisher and I know what happen in part 3. We knew the ending for 3 while doing part 1. Yes, there is an ending! The ending is amazing too. Well we think so. YOU WILL LAUGH AND SHIT YOUR PANTS!!!!!

Did you feel any pressure to try and top the first film’s humor and insanity?

I don’t know about pressure, but sequels should always be bigger and better than the first. They should change and take you in new directions and not be the same as the first films. Throw some surprises in there so you and the audience stay interested. Keep shit fun! When Tempers Flare keeps things fun for sure in part 2. There are a few more surprises, too. You will seeeeeeeee. The cast and crew do such an amazing job in the sequel they will blow your mind! Me and Max Fisher really gave you all the bells, whistles and cartwheels in this film.

Satanists conspire via seance to bring down Satanic Panic.

The Satanic Panic music videos are key moments in the films. What’s the process for developing the music? Do the songs influence the script, or do the scripts determine the songs?

I think it’s both. In the first film we show their music video for “6-6-Sexy” and how crazy and violent it is. Then later right before they shoot their music for “I Put A Hex On My Ex,” their real lives turn crazy and violent. So now their real lives become their music videos. That continues in part 2. Life imitates art and vice versa. I love how music influences all our lives and our emotions in the real world. Dan Foley writes our music, and he is a genius. Without his music, we would be lost.

These films resemble live-action cartoons, with bright color and madcap, rapid-style humor. Would you say your work at Adult Swim influenced your style?

I think so, in some ways. I think I came to Adult Swim because of those reasons to begin with. I love cartoons and animation, and I view life through those eyes. I wish people walked around with big hair and bright costumes.  The world would be more fun for sure. My office at Adult Swim looks like a Tiki Hut. I like to pretend I work on the beach in a SCOOBY DOO episode.

Are there any ideas you just deemed too out there for these films? Or just too difficult to shoot? If so, care to share one?  

I don’t know if we ever think anything is too much. I always say, “Too much? Umm not enough!” Fight scenes are always difficult to shoot. If we had the money or time, we would’ve had everyone on fuckin’ wires flying around kicking and punching like in THE MATRIX probably. That would’ve been amazing.  I also wish we had the band getting out of a helicopter.

SATANIC PANIC 2: BATTLE OF THE BANDS plays at the Atlanta Film Festival on Friday, March 27, @ 6:30 pm. Click here for more details.

Andrew Kemp is a screenwriter and game designer who started talking about movies in 1984 and got stuck that way. He can be seen around town wherever there are movies, cheap beer and little else.

By Andrew Kemp
Contributing Writer

Alongside the first appearance of flip-flops and the musk of Bradford Pears, the arrival of the Atlanta Film Festival at the Plaza Theatre (and other venues) is becoming a new annual rite of Spring. Starting Friday, the AFF is bringing another year of offbeat and engrossing titles, and you can bet that ATL Retro is going to be all over it, providing coverage, features, and reviews of the best of what the festival has to offer.

For Retro-inclined readers out there, we’ve taken the liberty of targeting a few productions that may be relevant to your interests. Every screening at the AFF is likely to be a great time at the theater, but consider this your retro primer. In fact, let’s make that official:

OLD SOUTH

Kick off your AFF experience with a little crowd participation by visiting the folks from Lips Down on Dixie as they present their extremely popular performance of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975). Although a Plaza staple for years, the show gets even better when seen with a festival crowd of fervent movie fanatics. You could even decide to see the show twice during your festival-going, if you just can’t get enough of the good Doctor Frank-N-Furter’s “hospitality.” There’s another midnight screening the following Friday. (THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW plays at midnight, March 20 & 27, at the Plaza).:

Retro is a broad category, and it can sometimes mean a state of mind. In OLD SOUTH (dir. Danielle Beverly) contemporary values collide with a damaging stereotype from the past as a college fraternity in Athens “known to fly the Confederate flag” attempts to mount an antebellum-style parade in a historically black neighborhood. The film plays with PEN UP THE PIGS (dir. Kelly Gallagher), a film described as “handcrafted, collage animation” that explores connections between old slavery and present-day racism. (OLD SOUTH plays 3/21 at 12:45 @ the Plaza)

Meanwhile, HOLBROOK/TWAIN: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY (dir. Scott Teems) explores a more positive representation of the old south. Hollywood legend Hal Holbrook’s most famous role is that of Mark Twain, who he’s performed on stage in a one-man show for most of his life. This new documentary looks into the special relationship Holbrook has with his version of Twain, and features new interviews from stars like Sean Penn and Martin Sheen discussing Holbrook’s life and legacy. (HOLBROOK/TWAIN plays 3/21 at 8:00pm @ The Inn at Serenbe Pavilion, with an encore screening on 3/29 at 4:30pm @ 7 Stages)

THE EDITOR

Finally, for retro horror lovers, don’t miss THE EDITOR (dir. Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy). In this Canadian comedy-horror film, a shlock film editor with wooden fingers is accused of a string of murders and must clear his name. The production comes from the demented minds of Brooks and Kennedy, two members of the ensemble who brought the world MANBORG (2011), and features genre mainstays Udo Kier (SUSPIRIA) and Paz de la Huerta (NURSE). (THE EDITOR plays 3/21 at 9:45pm @ The Plaza)

Musician Frank Morgan’s life can be used as a cautionary tale about how great talent is no defense against the traps of the world which, in Morgan’s case, manifested as a drug addiction that sent his life and career spiraling into bankruptcy and incarceration. SOUND OF REDEMPTION: THE FRANK MORGAN STORY (dir. N.C. Heikin) chronicles Morgan’s struggles beginning with the ups (when the saxophonist was considered a successor to Charlie Parker) all the way to the downs and the back again. The documentary features extensive concert footage featuring the likes of saxophonist Grace Kelly and pianist George Cables, both of whom will appear in a live performance preceding the film. (SOUND OF REDEMPTION screens 3/25 at 7:30pm @ The Rialto Theater at Georgia State University)

THE KEEPING ROOM

THE KEEPING ROOM (dir. Daniel Barber) is a Civil War drama that places the spotlight squarely on a trio of strong, Southern women in a tough situation. When their father and brother go off to fight for the Confederacy, two sisters and their slave must defend the homestead from marauding Union soldiers who are in advance of Sherman’s infamous march. THE KEEPING ROOM is a tense, claustrophobic drama that features known stars Hailee Steinfeld (TRUE GRIT), Brit Marling (ANOTHER EARTH), and Sam Worthington (AVATAR). (THE KEEPING ROOM screens 3/26 at 9:30 @ The Plaza).

Atlanta director and ATLRetro Kool Kat Eddie Ray follows up his 2011 short film SATANIC PANIC: BAND OUT OF HELL with the in-demand sequel, SATANIC PANIC 2: BATTLE OF THE BANDS. The sequel finds our heroes, electronic dance band who pretend to be Satan worshippers for marketing reasons, preparing for a huge band battle while their manager plots to sacrifice them to the Dark One himself. In their new adventure, the band must contend with “secret government spy missions, band rivalries, and growing egos.” Look for an exclusive interview with Eddie Ray here at ATLRetro.com next week. (SATANIC PANIC 2 screens 3/27 at 6:30pm @ 7 Stages)

BLACK SUNDAY

The folks from Splatter Cinema join the festival this year with a special presentation of the Italian horror classic BLACK SUNDAY (dir. Mario Bava). Banned in the UK for years—a true badge of honor in the horror world—the film stars the immortal Barbara Steele as a witch burned at the stake who returns 200 years later for bloody revenge. Featuring memorably grotesque and frightening scenes, BLACK SUNDAY is a slam-dunk classic of the genre that is well worth the effort to see on the big screen. (BLACK SUNDAY screens 3/27 at 10:00 pm @ 7 Stages)

LOVE AND MERCY (dir. Bill Pohlad) is an unconventional biography film about the life and career of singer/songwriter Brian Wilson. The film chronicles the young Wilson’s struggles with his musical ambitions, as he seeks to throw off the “surf music” label he had become known for as part of the Beach Boys, and with his overuse of psychedelic drugs. Paul Dano (LOOPER) plays Wilson as a young man, while John Cusack (GROSSE POINTE BLANK) plays Wilson as an adult, on the other side of experiences that left him a broken man. (LOVE AND MERCY plays 3/29 at 12:15pm @ The Plaza)

LOVE AND MERCY

And finally, there’s a documentary that has sadly gone retro, as one of our favorite downtown eateries is sadly no longer with us. DANTE’S DOWN THE HATCH (dir. Jef Bredemeier) is a profile of the famed restaurant and its owner, Dante Stephensen. Far more than a place you could eat fondue while watching the alligators lounge in their pool, Dante’s became a landmark for many of us an integral part of the Atlanta landscape, and this documentary ensures that legacy is not forgotten. If you missed ATLRetro’s Kool Kat interview with Dante about his unique decor, you can find it here. (DANTE’S DOWN THE HATCH plays 3.29 at 4:30pm @ The Plaza)

Of course, these films represent just a tiny portion of the events, shorts, seminars, and screenings taking place as part of the festival. For a complete list, you need to check out the official Atlanta Film Festival Schedule. And keep an eye on ATLRetro throughout the fest for coverage on all the fun and films. Enjoy this year’s AFF, movie lovers!

Andrew Kemp is a screenwriter and game designer who started talking about movies in 1984 and got stuck that way. He can be seen around town wherever there are movies, cheap beer and little else.

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951); Dir. Robert Wise; Starring Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal and Hugh Marlowe; Thursday, Oct 23 @ 7:30 p.m.; Cinevision Screening Room (visit the event page for address and directions); All tickets $10 (Atlanta Film Festival members save 20%); Tickets here; Trailer here.

By Aleck Bennett
Contributing Writer

Let’s kick off the Halloween season in retro style, and take a trip to 1951 and THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. Ben Ruder’s Enjoy the Film has partnered with the Cinevision Screening Room for a series titled Monsters in Black and White, delivering three classic features screened in optimal presentations. Special guests introduce each picture, and the series promises to give an intimate “film club” type experience that is sure to make viewers wish that every film they see could be shown with as much care.

In the years immediately following the media coverage of 1947’s mysterious crash in Roswell, New Mexico, the “flying saucer” became a symbol of mankind’s fears and hopes for the future. After seeing both the possibilities and dangers of science entering the atomic age at the close of World War II, and with nations looking toward the skies as they ushered in a new era in rocket technology, we gazed into the unknowable distances of space and wondered what an advanced technology might usher onto our tiny planet. Sure, there had long been stories of alien visitors landing on our world, ranging from H.G. Wells’ THE WAR OF THE WORLDS to Siegel and Shuster’s SUPERMAN comics. But the speculation around the events in Roswell brought the topic of extraterrestrial invaders directly into pop culture’s field of vision. And while so many of these tales dealt with hostile attacks from Little Green Men, one stands out as a plea for peace from the heavens: THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL.

The film sees alien Klaatu (Michael Rennie) and his robot sentry Gort arrive on Earth to warn us against using our growing technological capabilities as a vehicle for greater violence, yet in a familiar turn, the benevolent visitor faces nothing but violence, resistance and persecution from the time of his arrival. The Klaatu-as-Christ metaphor (Klaatu—who also dies, is resurrected, and then ascends into heaven—even takes on the pseudonym of “Major Carpenter”) somehow escaped director Robert Wise’s view, but screenwriter Edmund North was clever enough to make the metaphor merely an emphasis of the movie’s universal themes. After all, the worries expressed in the movie knew no religious boundaries. We had just put the horrors of World War II to bed when the Cold War began, with tensions escalating between East and West. America had involved itself in the Korean War. Meanwhile, the US and USSR had started working seriously on competing space programs, and both sides had concerns that these programs would be of primary use as respective platforms of attack. All of these elements came together and formed the subtext of this film. And while the roots of the film’s themes are set deeply in the 1950s, the larger message of the movie—a call for understanding and cooperation between competing nations and ideologies—is something that never loses its poignancy.

…All of which makes the film seem far preachier than it actually is, when you get down to it. The movie itself is more than simply its message; it is also a compelling drama with nuanced performances from Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal. It is also thrilling, quickly paced, gorgeously photographed and full of groundbreaking special effects (few “flying saucers” of the era look as impressive as Klaatu’s, and Gort’s streamlined design is timeless in its elegance). Not to be overlooked is Bernard Herrmann’s classic score: a masterpiece of eclectic orchestration utilizing two theremins and a variety of electric instruments. It, along with the scores to 1950’s ROCKETSHIP X-M and ‘51’s THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, would forever link the theremin with the eerie sounds of science fiction.

A movie this impressive should be seen in the best conditions. And a well-preserved 35mm print with stunning sound, viewed with an eager audience, is the best way to experience THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. Lucky for you, then, that Ben Ruder, Enjoy the Film and Cinevision are giving you the chance to see it under precisely those conditions. Don’t miss out on catching this, one of the most impressive of all the classic 1950s sci-fi yarns in its natural habitat.

Aleck Bennett is a writer, blogger, pug warden, pop culture enthusiast, raconteur and bon vivant from the greater Atlanta area. Visit his blog at doctorsardonicus.wordpress.com

By Andrew Kemp
Contributing Writer

The Atlanta Film Festival kicks off this Friday with 10 days of screenings and events and, as usual, plenty of local talent will have their work on display. Among the screenings is the new Southern Gothic horror film, THE UNWANTED, written and directed by local badass Bret Wood, and playing on Monday, March 31 at 9:30 pm at The Plaza Theatre. Wood has had a long career in and among the movies, finding time to direct darkly erotic features like PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS (2006) and THE LITTLE DEATH (2010) when he’s not knee deep in the business of film restoration and distribution as vice president of special projects at Kino Lorber. Wood also devotes time to researching and writing about cinema history. Among his credits as a writer and editor is an edition of the QUEEN KELLY (1929) screenplay by the legendary Erich von Stroheim; HELL’S HIGHWAY, a documentary about those infamous highway safety films; and a book on exploitation cinema appropriately titled FORBIDDEN FRUIT.

With THE UNWANTED, Wood returns to a world of repressed erotic desire. The story, inspired by a famous Sheridan Le Fanu vampire novella, concerns a young woman named Carmilla (Christen Orr) who drifts into a small Southern town on the hunt for a missing loved one. What she finds instead is a sheltered girl named Laura (V/H/S’s Hannah Fierman) held close by her disapproving father (William Katt, THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO). As Carmilla and Laura become drawn to one another, their passion uncovers a nest of dark family secrets that lead to a bloody, deadly confrontation.

Wood recently spoke to ATLRetro about his new film and his career exploring in the darker corners of cinema.

ATLRetro: THE UNWANTED transplants Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic Gothic novella CARMILLA into a Southern Gothic setting. What does moving the location to the South add to the story?

Bret Wood: The change of setting didn’t greatly alter the tone of the story. Rural 19th-century Ireland is not SO different from modern-day rural Georgia. The key thing is that, in both versions, events unfold in an isolated setting in which the people are somewhat disconnected from the world around them.  That sort of geographic space tends to mirror itself in the psychology of those who live there – isolated, insulated, and not in touch with the world beyond the community. It can be very comfortable to live in a place like that – surrounded by people who share your values – but a certain closed-mindedness is almost inevitable. A suspicion of outsiders, a distrust of those who are guided by a different moral compass, a setting in which a visitor would be immediately viewed with suspicion.

And the ingredients of the Gothic work just as well in the 21st Century as the 19th: themes of a family curse, a poisoned bloodline, dreams haunted by spirits, the sublime beauty of nature, the decaying family estate, the menacing lord of the manor. We just did it without corsets, carriages and candelabras.

Engraving from a 19th century edition of CARMILLA.

Your film takes a very naturalist approach to CARMILLA’s horror elements. Can you talk about the process of adapting the story away from the supernatural while retaining its core?

I love Le Fanu’s story, but I don’t believe in the supernatural – and I didn’t want to make a movie about something that I don’t believe in. So I had to find a plausible variation on conventional vampirism. There’s no such thing as vampires in the sense of a person becoming immortal or being capable of transforming into an animal, but there ARE people who engage in recreational bloodletting. My 2006 movie, PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS, dramatizes two real-life examples from the Victorian era in which the exchange of blood was a sort of sex substitute.

So the challenge was to create a form of emotionally-charged bloodletting that two people might engage in – and this bloodplay could, from an outsider’s perspective, appear to be vampirism. In my version of vampirism, the blood isn’t for drinking. I’ll leave it at that. People will just have to see the movie.

Your film grapples with gender and gay/lesbian themes in the midst of a horror tale. How does the horror genre help you to tackle these types of important contemporary issues?

Even though it does have lesbian/bisexual characters, I wouldn’t necessarily call THE UNWANTED an LGBT film. It deals with a more universal experience:  the choice between staying in one place and following the traditions and values of one’s family, versus cutting the emotional cord and following one’s own path. Conformity versus individuality.

You might say that THE UNWANTED is about the painful process of “coming out” – whether from an emotional cocoon or the closet. On second thought, maybe it’s more of an LGBT film than I thought.

As far as horror goes, I had to tread a narrow line. In CARMILLA, the horror lies in the lesbianism of the two central characters -Le Fanu only suggests that they are lovers. And in my retelling, the father still needed to perceive the lesbian relationship as monstrous, but it was crucial that the audience view the relationship as loving and harmonious, even when there’s blood flowing between them.

For a while, I thought about calling the film WATER AND BLOOD to contrast the difference between friendships vs. family relationships, but I figured that was stretching the blood symbolism too far.

THE UNWANTED stars William Katt in a fairly dark and menacing role. How did he come to be involved in the project and what did he bring to the character?

I met him through executive producer Eric Wilkinson, who had worked with him a couple of times (THE MAN FROM EARTH (2007), SPARKS (2013)), and who told me Bill enjoys working on indie projects. He was very enthusiastic about the script, and had a significant impact upon the role. Originally, the character of Troy (Laura’s father) was an unequivocal villain, whose purpose it was to thwart Carmilla. Bill cultivated Troy’s human side, asked me to write a scene in which Troy and Laura spend time together, so we see they have a healthy, loving relationship. That was the inspiration for the horseback riding scene.

To Bill, as an actor, it was always important that the audience understand that Troy loves his daughter, and loved his wife, and the acts of violence he commits arise from his genuine desire to protect them. This inner conflict really shines through in his performance. And it’s so effective that we decided to further downplay his villainy by removing at least one really creepy sequence – which will no doubt appear on the DVD. We decided that rather than showing the audience what horrors this guy is capable of, we should let them wonder.

You’ve had a role in restoring and championing classic movies through your work at the Blu-Ray and DVD distributor Kino Lorber. Is there an overlooked title you would recommend, perhaps one that would make a nice pairing with THE UNWANTED?

I love classic film – the older the better – and am lucky that I get to spend much of each day mastering, packaging and writing about great films, whether it’s silent American films or European horror cinema of the 1960s and ’70s. I was watching a lot of Jean Rollin while working on THE UNWANTED, and would say that traces of his 1975 film LIPS OF BLOOD definitely found their way into my movie. Bill Gunn‘s erotic vampire film GANJA AND HESS (1973) and Jess Franco‘s FEMALE VAMPIRE (1973) were big influences as well. All of them were made by indie filmmakers with limited resources, but who attempted to dig deep into complex emotions that don’t get touched by the typical horror film. And, lest you think I was only influenced by vampire films, you don’t have to look to hard to find shades of Michael Haneke‘s THE PIANO TEACHER (2001) or Rouben Mamoulian‘s APPLAUSE (1929). Did I mention I love my job?

Bret Wood on the set of THE UNWANTED.

Between THE UNWANTED and your earlier films, PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS and THE LITTLE DEATH, you’ve explored sex on the fringes. What draws you to the subject?

I’m sure the short answer to that question lies in my conservative, religious upbringing.  But let’s not get into that.

Regardless of how I became the way I am, I will say that, to me, the most fascinating thing about sex – in films – is not the nudity or the act of copulation, but the mystery surrounding the act – sex as a revelatory experience – maybe I’m still channeling the curiosity of my thirteen-year-old self. There’s nothing less erotic than gratuitous nudity. There’s nothing more boring than a sexually active character with no inhibitions, for whom sex is simply a physical act of pleasure.  Where’s the drama in that?

I’m fascinated by the psychology of sexuality, by the fringe-dwelling people for whom sex has mutated into something slightly abnormal. By the person who is emotionally tight-wound, who is struggling against their own repression, or struggling against moral oppression, looking for some means by which they can relieve this overwhelming urge that’s gnawing at them from the inside. THAT’S interesting to me. There’s mystery there. And conflict. And tension.

You co-authored a book on exploitation cinema titled FORBIDDEN FRUIT. Exploitation films were meant to be cheap and disposable, and yet they linger on in our film culture. What should we learn from that?

One never knows which films will stand the test of time. Look back at all the lousy Oscar-winners in the past 20 years and you’ll know what I mean. The films celebrated by one generation will be dismissed by the next and vice versa.

Exploitation films of the 1930s and ’40s – sensationalized treatments of hot-button topics like venereal disease, drug abuse, prostitution, polygamy -were crude and, on the surface, badly made. But they were tackling subjects the major studios wouldn’t touch, and they were made with a sort of reckless creativity that is a welcome change from the restraint and technical perfection of a studio film of the same era. In the same way, people who are into horror films are nowadays attracted to the schlock of the 1960s and ’70s, the grindhouse fodder once casually dismissed as garbage. And the same goes for 16mm classroom films of the 1950s – ’70s. Maybe it’s because today’s DIY filmmakers can relate to the struggles of no-budget production, maybe it’s a reaction against the over-produced, over-budgeted, over-hyped films that are suffocating the multiplex.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a paleontologist. Part of me today still thinks that way, I love sifting through film history to see what treasures I can find buried in the mud.

What’s next for you?

I have several scripts I’d love to make – for example, a dark comedy about a womanizing stage magician (IN HER RIGHT MIND), a drama about a psychiatric hospital in the 1960s (THE CONTROL GROUP). And there are others. For me, writing is relatively easy. The difficult thing is raising the funds to actually make something. I usually keep a handful of scripts ready to film, and then choose which project to pursue based on the resources available to me. Right now the front-runner is a grim ghost story/revenge film, based on 19th-century literature, very much in the same vein as THE UNWANTED.

THE UNWANTED screens at the Atlanta Film Festival on Monday, March 31, at 9:30 pm at The Plaza Theatre. Tickets for the screening may be purchased here.

Andrew Kemp is a screenwriter and game designer who started talking about movies in 1984 and got stuck that way. He can be seen around town wherever there are movies, cheap beer and little else.

Mike Malloy. Photo credit: Andramada Brittian.

Video may have killed the radio star, or so that ’80s song goes, but it launched a lifelong passion for cult action movies in Kool Kat of the Week Mike Malloy. Now he’s paying homage to the format that revolutionized the way people accessed and watched movies from the late 1970s to the 1990s in the documentary series PLASTIC MOVIES REWOUND: THE STORY OF THE ’80S HOME VIDEO BOOM, for which he is seeking funding through a Kickstarter campaign. The timing couldn’t be more perfect with VHS tapes, like 33rpm LPs, enjoying a renaissance among collectors, both old and new.

From his slicked-back hair to his Retro bowling shirts, Mike looks like he ought to be playing the stand-up bass in a rockabilly band. Instead he’s devoted himself to “playing” tribute to a side of cinema that often doesn’t get a lot of love from mainstream critics. At age 19, he signed his first book contract to write the first published biography of Spaghetti Western star Lee Van Cleef (for McFarland & Co.) Since then, he went on to write articles for a wide spectrum of national film magazines, served as managing editor of fan favorite Cult Movies Magazine, has spoken about movie topics at universities, ghost-wrote several fim books, and served on the selection committee of the 2006 Atlanta Film Festival.

In the past few years, Mike has moved increasingly both in front of and behind the camera. He has acted in more than 25 features and shorts. He co-produced the Western THE SCARLET WORM (2011) and directed the short, LOOK OUT! IT’S GOING TO BLOW! (2006), which won the award for best comedy short at MicroCineFest in Baltimore. But he’s garnered the most acclaim, both national and international, for EUROCRIME! THE ITALIAN COP AND GANGSTER FILMS THAT RULED THE ’70s, a kickass documentary homage to that B-movie subgenre which he wrote, directed, edited and produced.

ATLRetro caught up with Mike recently to find out more about how home videos fired his fascination with film, his unique vision for PLASTIC MOVIES REWOUND, some really cool incentives he’s lined up for his Kickstarter campaign which collectors will love  and what’s up next for Georgia’s Renaissance man of cult action cinema.

Having written Lee Van Cleef‘s first published biography at age 19, you’ve obviously been into rare cult and B movies since an early age. What triggered your passion for the less reputable side of cinema and why does it appeal to you so much?

I’m a rare guy who’s deep into cult and genre cinema without caring much for horror or anything fantastic. For me, it’s all about a desperate Warren Oates shooting it out in Mexico. Or Lee Marvin with a submachine gun. For some reason, I’m just drawn to gritty tough-guy cinema – which is not necessarily the same thing as action cinema.

Videophile Magazine; Jim Lowe and Mike Malloy on the set of PLASTIC MOVIES REWOUND.

In Atlanta, Videodrome seems to be the last independent rental retailer still in business and it’s even hard to find a Blockbuster left. And of course, they now just stock DVDs. Now you can order up a movie online and watch it instantly. Do you think we’ve lost something by no longer going in to browse, and was there a particular video store that became your home away from home?

One of our interviewees said something interesting: The mom-and-pop video store business model was based on customer DISsatisfaction. That is, you’d go in to rent CITIZEN KANE, it would be checked out, and you’d somehow end up leaving with SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED (1974). Being forced to browse leads to an experimental attitude in movie watching. That’s a good thing.

VHS is experiencing a major comeback. There are about 20 little startup companies that have begun releasing movies to VHS again. A certain old horror VHS – of a film called DEMON QUEEN (1986) – sold recently on eBay for $750.00. VHS conventions are springing up all over the country.

I’ve always thought that the format is superior for horror films. If you watch THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974) on a soft old VHS poorly transferred from a faded film print, that makes you feel as if you’re watching some underground snuff film obtained from a shady guy in a trench coat. Watch that same movie on a pristine Blu-Ray, and you don’t get that same grimy feeling.

Michael Perkins films a scene at Videodrome, Atlanta's last great independent video store.

There have been other documentaries about home video, such as ADJUST YOUR TRACKING (2013) and REWIND THIS (2013). What will PLASTIC MOVIES REWOUND add to the topic that hasn’t been covered already?

PLASTIC MOVIES REWOUND will be a three-hour series, spanning six half-hour episodes. Those others just have a feature-length running time. So if mine isn’t the most definitive word on the subject, I’ve really screwed up. I’m sort of glad those docs exist as companion works, because it frees me up to explore some of the weirder corners of the phenomenon I find fascinating. Things like video vending machines and pizza-style home delivery of VHS tapes.

Gary Abdo and Mike Malloy. Photo credit: Jonathan Hickman.

Moviemakers, and artists of all ilk, have always seemingly been ripped off by others who pocket all the money. What distinguishes the video era in that regard, and are there any lessons filmmakers can apply to the current wild west of digital camerawork and online distribution?

I think the potential for ripping off artists is greater when an industry is in upheaval, when the rules and the financial models are unclear. And you’re right, VOD and streaming have caused the same type of upheaval that the videocassette did in its day. So I love all the anecdotes we captured of swindled ’80s filmmakers fighting back against their underhanded distributors. And I hope today’s filmmakers realize that distributors are now becoming largely unnecessary at all. For instance, I hope Vimeo OnDemand – with its 90-10 split in favor of the filmmaker – is a total game changer.

Left to right: a video vending machine; Mitch Lowe, founder of Netflix.

How different would the world be today if Cartrivision had caught on instead of VHS?

Well, Cartrivision was an early attempt at rights management for movies. The Cartrivision rental tapes couldn’t be rewound at home; that could only be done at Sears, where you rented them. It limited you to one viewing per rental. So it would’ve started the concept of video rentals off on a very different attitude and philosophy. I think part of the reason the ’80s home video phenomenon was such a boom was the freedom associated with it – you could rent a movie of your choosing and watch it at a time of your choosing. You could watch it a number of times before returning. Hell, you could use your rewind button to watch a jugsy shower scene over and over.

Since ADJUST YOUR TRACKING and REWIND THIS both successfully kickstarted, I knew this would be an uphill battle. My only chance was to turn what is normally a beg-a-thon into a reward-a-thon. So I created a $75 level for the collectors where they could get so much more than just a copy of the documentary. The very first expense I’ll cover, if I get successfully funded, will be an 8 terabyte hard drive. I really can’t cut another frame until I get it.

PLASTIC MOVIES REWOUND tells it like it was: Mike Malloy deals videos out of his van.

You’ve got some mighty cool incentives for donors, including actual vintage VHS cassettes. Tell us a little bit about them.

Not only have many of our filmmaker interviewees donated signed VHS and DVDs of their movies (to say nothing of rare, unused artwork and such), but a lot of these new startup VHS companies have also donated rewards. I’m feeling very supported.

Unlike your Italian-centric EUROCRIME documentary, you’re trying to involve Atlanta as much as possible in PLASTIC MOVIES REWOUND, aren’t you?

Local documentarian Michael Perkins (THE BOOKER) is my second-unit director, and Atlanta-based musician/engineer Matthew Miklos is my primary composer. His ’80s synth sound is so authentic. An associate producer (Jonathan Hickman) and at least one interviewee (filmmaker Gary Abdo) are here too. Videodrome has been very cool about letting me shoot re-enactments in the store. I tried to document the closing of another Atlanta institution of the video-rental industry, but it didn’t work out.

Anything else on your plate right now or next as a writer, director, producer or actor?

Later this year, I’m acting in HOT LEAD, HARD FURY in Denver and BUBBA THE REDNECK WEREWOLF in Florida. I wish someone would cast me locally so my pay doesn’t keep getting eaten up by travel expenses!

Editor’s Note: All photos are courtesy of Mike Malloy and used with permission.

Ed. Note: INTERIOR. LEATHER BAR.  played Thursday March 21 at the Plaza Theatre. Today’s the last day of the  Atlanta Film Festival (Sun. March 24), and you can still catch encore screenings of festival winners and attend a party at the Plaza starting at 9 p.m. Check out our top Retro picks here.

Retro Review by Andrew Kemp
Contributing Writer

Here’s the pitch: The release version of William Friedkin‘s 1980 oddity CRUISING is incomplete. The, um, problematic film stars Al Pacino as an undercover cop hunting a serial killer in New York’s gay underground, and it’s known today more or less as an ugly, backwards-thinking misfire that depicts gay men as craven lust monsters and deviants. In fact, some footage in the original cut was deemed to be too graphic and contained enough sexual material to land the film the deadly X rating. Cuts were made, 40 minutes of cuts, and since this happened in the era before home video and director’s cuts and special features, that footage is lost forever. Three decades later, directors James Franco and Travis Mathews imagine their own version of that footage and hire a batch of young unknown actors to recreate it. Franco and Mathews encourage the actors to find their own boundaries with the material, to go as far as they’re comfortable. For some of them, this means unsimulated sex on camera.

That’s a fascinating premise, but it begs so many questions. Franco and Mathews can reimagine this footage, but why? What point are they trying to make? What do you do with the footage when you separate it from the context of the film that inspired it? And what’s to be gained by shooting material almost certainly more explicit than the footage Friedkin shot? The actors Franco and Mathews hire ask those exact same questions throughout INTERIOR. LEATHER BAR., but they never get any real answers. Neither, I’m afraid, do we.

INTERIOR. LEATHER BAR. is several movies at the same time. One movie is the recreated footage. Another is a documentary about the making of that footage depicting Val Lauren, a friend of Franco’s and the actor portraying the Pacino role in the new footage, as a confused actor trying to make sense of the project. The last film is a meta-doc about the making of the doc, revealing that all or most of that material is scripted or staged. The result is a film that never seems to get its bearings about what exactly it’s trying to do, when the obvious answer is everything.

Val has the most screen time as the actor asks questions, stares wide-eyed at the sex happening in front of him on the set, and fields calls from a man who is likely his agent complaining that he’s doing “Franco’s faggot movie.” Franco appears in the film as himself, or at least a version of himself who appears gleefully willing to spoof his persona as a Hollywood big shot and all-around weird guy. Val convinces the nervous actors (and himself) that Franco must have a purpose for shooting this footage, but Franco himself can’t muster more than a few incoherent points, basically throwing up his hands and saying “why not?” whenever Val asks why.

INTERIOR. LEATHER BAR. takes a few well-aimed potshots at Hollywood hypocrisy, both in the content that it produces—sex, especially gay sex, can banish a film to obscurity, but bring on all the murders and gore you can carry!—and the people who claim to have artistic ambitions, but don’t really know what that means. But those points are the stuff that stuck after so many other things were thrown at the wall. Franco and Mathews want to declare that sex is beautiful and belongs in mainstream film, but their film is an outsider because of the explicit sex. For all of Val’s agent’s bigotry, he makes one valid point. People will see this film or hear about it, and immediately assume it’s a porno.

I must admit that there’s a certain thrill to seeing something so far on the fringes conceived by and starring a man who right now, today, is starring in a huge, Disney blockbuster at the local multiplex. But INTERIOR. LEATHER BAR. feels like cameras were turned on and footage shot without a plan. Franco (the character) doesn’t seem to have any idea what he’s trying to say. Franco (the actual) seems to want to say too much. Hollywood types, amIright?

Andrew Kemp is a screenwriter and game writer who started talking about movies in 1984 and got stuck that way. He writes at www.thehollywoodprojects.com and hosts a bimonthly screening series of classic films at theaters around Atlanta.

Ed. Note: THE SAPPHIRES played Sunday at The Plaza, but with the Atlanta Film Festival running through Sun. March 24, there are still plenty of movies to come. Check out our top Retro picks here.

Retro Review by Andrew Kemp
Contributing Writer

Wayne Blair’s THE SAPPHIRES is a true-life story about race, war, music and love, a tale about four Aborigine women who rose above hatred and tragedy to represent Australia to the world just months after the country began acknowledging their people’s rights. It’s an incredibly compelling story that’s unfortunately resulted in a less than compelling film that distills the events down to their most obvious, predictable bullet points. The movie carries a tune, but there’s no feeling in the song.

Late-60s race relations in Australia weren’t much better than in the United States, and in some respects, the situation in Australia was worse. A government policy (dubiously presented as protecting black culture) endorsed the outright theft of fair-skinned Aborigine children, who were then raised in the cities as whites—the so-called Stolen Generations. Two 1967 amendments to the Australian constitution granted Aborigines a bank of basic human rights, as up to that point, the official position of Australia, dating back to colonization, was that the people were part of the country’s “flora and fauna.” Unfortunately, there as here, progress was slow to change minds. Deborah Mailman, Jessica Mauboy, Shari Sebbens, and Miranda Tapsell star as a quartet of rural Aborigine country and western singers struggling to find a white audience for their music in 1968. An Irish musician (BRIDESMAIDS‘ Chris O’Dowd, playing the Buttermaker role of the curmudgeonly drunk) discovers the girls at a talent show, and the group is soon off to Vietnam to entertain the American troops, but not before using a montage to learn the far sexier and, as the movie puts it, blacker sounds of soul music.

Audiences in love with soul will have the most fun with THE SAPPHIRES as the soundtrack of period tunes is by far the most engaging part of the film, and the production doesn’t skimp on period costumes and 60s flair. Unfortunately, as drama, the movie doesn’t offer very much. THE SAPPHIRES is built as a pleasant crowd-pleaser, coasting along on charm and good music, without a hint of dramatic urgency. Blair and Briggs thankfully ditch the band movie tropes, so there’s no big venue the girls are trying to reach, no agent to impress and no money needed to save the farm. But the filmmakers never find another story on which to hang the film’s characters and themes. Instead, once the gang arrives in Vietnam, the story splinters out into a series of romantic subplots that all play out more or less as you expect. Only once in the film do the girls brush up against the reality of war in Vietnam, and the rest of the time is spent romancing soldiers, singing songs and bickering about who’s in charge.

The Sapphires perform. Hopscotch Pictures, 2013.

Which is a shame, because the film does boast some fine performances from actors who deserved more to do. There’s no movie star, no Beyonce, hiding in the group of girls, and so they’re allowed to blend together as a true ensemble. If there is a standout, it’s Mailman, who plays the toughest of the women and the least willing to be bullied by a world that she sees as inherently unjust. She makes for an unlikely and refreshing romantic lead, and her pairing with O’Dowd is charming and believable. Also making an impression is Shari Sebbens as a person struggling with her racial identity after growing up in Melbourne as one of the stolen children, and her racially-charged tension with Mailman’s character provides an occasional dramatic spark.

In fact, THE SAPPHIRES is most affecting when it takes the time to explore the thorny racial issues of the 60s, including one touching scene that shows the reaction in Vietnam to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, a reminder that the path of racial justice here in the south had many observers around the world. Unfortunately, the film never quite finds its footing in the personal stories as it does in the grander themes. The performances and music are nice enough, but those looking for a deeper or more enriching experience may be disappointed. THE SAPPHIRES is all melody in search of a hook.

Andrew Kemp is a screenwriter and game writer who started talking about movies in 1984 and got stuck that way. He writes at www.thehollywoodprojects.com and hosts a bimonthly screening series of classic films at theaters around Atlanta.