THE COOLER BANDITS (John Lucas, 2014)
Aaron Davis Hall, City College
160 Convent Ave.
Thursday, September 11, $11, 7:00 (all-day Thursday pass $25)
Festival runs September 10-14 at City College, Maysles Cinema, and Columbia University
www.coolerbandits.com
www.harlemfilmfestival.org
Most prison documentaries are about drugs, violence, race, systemic abuse and corruption, politics, and social justice, focusing on frightening crime statistics. But first-time director John Lucas takes a different approach in the thoroughly engaging new film The Cooler Bandits. In 1991, Ohio teenagers Charlie Kelly, Donovan Harris, Richard “Poochie” Roderick, and Frankie Porter pulled off a string of restaurant robberies in which they locked employees in refrigeration rooms or freezers. Caught, tried, and convicted, the four friends got vastly different sentences; while Harris accepted a plea bargain and got 16 to 50 years, the others went to trial: Kelly and Roderick received sentences of 60 to 150 years and Porter 200 to 500 years. But Lucas, a longtime Ohio photojournalist, doesn’t concentrate on the men’s past, their fair or unfair treatment, or their experiences behind bars; instead, the film follows them from 2006 to 2013 as Harris adjusts to life outside and his release before the others, Kelly and Roderick prepare for possible parole, and Porter faces much more time in prison. Kelly and Roderick, in particular, speak openly and honestly about their plans for their future, thinking about education, careers, and family, fully accepting their punishment without any chips on their shoulders despite sentences that even the prosecutor agrees were far too harsh. They refuse to turn themselves into victims, making for a surprising and refreshing film. Lucas also speaks with their parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins, who are much more emotional than the four men; while standing by their family members, they recognize that the group committed serious crimes that deserved jail time, but they also want them to still be able to have a chance at a good life on the outside. The Cooler Bandits is screening September 11 at 7:00 at Aaron Davis Hall as part of the ninth annual Harlem International Film Festival; it will be preceded by Melanie Hibbert’s Coalition for Women Prisoners: Harlem NYC and Indrani Kopal’s The Game Changer and followed by a performance and Q&A with the filmmakers. Among the other films at the five-day fest, consisting of nearly one hundred shorts and features from more than two dozen countries, are Jason Paul Laxamana’s Magkakbaung (The Coffin Maker), Tim Wilkerson’s Oracles of Pennsylvania Ave., Joel Lamangan’s Kamkam (Greed), and Kevin Chu’s I See Love.
Writer-director Ari Folman imagines a sad but visually dazzling future in the spectacular fantasy The Congress. Inspired by Stanislaw Lem’s 1971 short novel The Futurological Congress, the film follows Robin Wright playing a fictionalized version of herself, an idealistic actress about to turn forty-five who has let her career come second to raising her two children, daughter Sarah (Sami Gayle) and, primarily, son Aaron (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who is slowly losing the ability to see and hear. Wright’s longtime agent, Al (Harvey Keitel), has a last-chance opportunity for her: Jeff Green (Danny Huston), the head of Miramount, wants to scan her body and emotions so the studio can manipulate her digital likeness into any role while keeping her ageless. They don’t want the modern-day Robin Wright but the young, beautiful star of The Princess Bride, State of Grace, and Forrest Gump. The only catch is that in exchange for a substantial lump-sum payment, the real Wright will never be allowed to act again, in any capacity. With no other options, she reluctantly takes the deal. Twenty years later, invited to speak at the Futurological Congress, she enters a whole new realm, a fully animated world where men, women, and children live out their entertainment fantasies. Shocked by what she is experiencing, Wright meets up with Dylan Truliner (Jon Hamm), who has been animating her digital version for years, as a revolution threatens; meanwhile, Green has another offer for her, even more frightening than the first.
To many, the fall of Saigon immediately brings to mind images of men, women, and children climbing the gate at the U.S. embassy, desperately trying to board American helicopters and escape the country as the North Vietnamese army approached. Director and producer Rory Kennedy takes viewers behind the scenes of that madness in the harrowing and revealing documentary Last Days in Vietnam. Kennedy, the youngest daughter of Bobby and Ethel Kennedy, and editor Don Kleszy have woven together remarkable footage from 1970s Vietnam as more than a dozen insiders share their compelling stories, which play out like a gripping thriller with a surprise, emotionally powerful ending. At the center of it all is the late U.S. ambassador Graham Martin, a stubborn patriot who continually refused to vacate the embassy until it was almost too late. U.S. Army captain Stuart Herrington gets personal as he talks about trying to help potential refugees. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and White House press secretary Ron Nessen discuss President Gerald Ford’s attempts to persuade Congress to fund a major evacuation. CIA analyst Frank Snepp and Special Forces advisor Richard Armitage delve into the military’s plans, while South Vietnamese Navy captain Kiem Do, South Vietnamese Army lieutenant Dam Pham, and Vietnamese student Binh Pho tell what it was like from their vantage points. USS Kirk chief engineer Hugh Doyle, USS Kirk captain Paul Jacobs, and Marine pilot Gerald Berry reveal stunning stories of bravery and daring during the evacuation on land and sea and in the air. If you think this is old news, you’re mistaken, as the film offers a whole new perspective on this seminal moment in the history of two nations — and it’s nearly impossible to watch it without thinking that something similar might occur in Iraq and Afghanistan soon. An American Experience production, Last Days in Vietnam opens September 5, with Kennedy (Ethel, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib) participating in Q&As following the 6:20 screening on Friday and 11:30 and 1:50 shows on Saturday at Lincoln Plaza and after the 7:15 screening on Friday and 2:30 and 4:45 shows on Saturday at the Landmark Sunshine.
A turning point in his career, John Waters’s Desperate Living is an off-the-charts bizarre, fetishistic fairy tale, the ultimate suburban nightmare. Mink Stole stars as Peggy Gravel, a wealthy housewife suffering yet another of her mental breakdowns. In the heat of the moment, she and the family maid, four-hundred-pound Grizelda Brown (Jean Hill), kill Peggy’s mild-mannered husband, Bosley (George Stover), and the two women end up finding refuge in one of the weirdest towns ever put on celluloid, Mortville, where MGM’s The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Toyland meet Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (with some Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, and Douglas Sirk thrown into the mix as well). “I ain’t your maid anymore, bitch! I’m your sister in crime!” Grizelda declares. Peggy and Grizelda move into the “guest house” of manly Mole McHenry (Susan Lowe) and her blonde bombshell lover, Muffy St. Jacques (Liz Renay). Mortville is run as a kind of fascist state by the cruel and unusual despot Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey), an evil shrew who enjoys being serviced by her men-in-leather attendants, issues psychotic proclamations, and is determined that her daughter, Princess Coo-Coo (Mary Vivian Pearce), stop dating her garbage-man boyfriend, Herbert (George Figgs). (Wait, Mortville has a sanitation department?) Camp and trash combine like nuclear fission as things get only crazier from there, devolving into gorgeous low-budget madness and completely over-the-top ridiculousness, a mélange of sex, violence, and impossible-to-describe lunacy that Waters himself claimed was a movie “for fucked-up children.”