Pentagram leader Bobby Liebling struggles through some very hard times in LAST DAYS HERE
LAST DAYS HERE (Don Argott & Demian Fenton, 2011)
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Opens Friday, March 2
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While doing work for Philly record label Relapse, hard rock fan Sean “Pellet” Pelletier became obsessed with Bobby Liebling, lead singer and songwriter for the 1970s Virginia doom metal band Pentagram. Over the course of four decades, the highly influential but deeply troubled group had gone through myriad lineup changes and constant breakups, never achieving mass success primarily because of the wildly unpredictable and self-destructive frontman. In his mid-fifties, Liebling was a casualty of the classic sex, drugs, and rock and roll story, living in his parents’ basement, smoking crack, and picking at the horrific oozing scabs on his bandage-wrapped arms. He is the unlikeliest of heavy metal heroes, but Pelletier is so determined to help bring Liebling and Pentagram back into the public limelight that he becomes their manager, trying against all odds to get the band back together to make a new record and go out on tour. But when he finally convinces Liebling to give up the pipe, the singer turns to another addiction, the love of his much younger girlfriend, Hallie Miller, an extremely strange and inexplicable relationship. For Last Days Here, an almost hard-to-believe combination of VH1’s Behind the Music and Bands Reunited, directors Don Argott (Rock School, The Art of the Steal) and Demian Fenton followed Pelletier and Liebling around for three years, speaking with Liebling’s parents, such former Pentagram members as Geof O’Keefe, Greg Mayne, Gary Isom, and Joe Hasselvander, über fan Callae Gotz, and music producer Murray Krugman, who share personal tales about the rise and many falls of Liebling and Pentagram. Liebling gives the filmmakers access to every part of his life, resulting in an intimate portrait of a bizarre existence; it is almost impossible to equate the basement-dwelling, near-death Liebling with the metal madman responsible for such songs as “Be Forewarned,” “When the Screams Come,” “Livin’ in a Ram’s Head,” “Relentless,” and “Day of Reckoning.” Argott and Fenton focus on Liebling while not getting overinvolved with the music itself, which is kept to a minimum; you don’t have to be a fan of heavy metal to appreciate this compelling tale of survival. Last Days Here opens March 2 at the IFC Center, with Argott and Fenton appearing at the 7:55 and 9:55 Friday-night screenings.
“You call this a film?” Jafar Panahi asks rhetorically about halfway through the revealing documentary This Is Not a Film. After several arrests beginning in July 2009 for supporting the opposition party, the highly influential and respected Iranian filmmaker (Crimson Gold, Offside) was convicted in December 2010 for “assembly and colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic.” Although facing a six-year prison sentence and twenty-year ban on making or writing any kind of movie, Panahi is a born storyteller, so he can’t stop himself, no matter the risks. Under house arrest, Panahi has his friend, fellow director Mojtaba Mirtahmasb (Lady of the Roses), film him with a handheld DV camera over ten days as Panahi plans out his next movie, speaks with his lawyer, lets his pet iguana climb over him, and is asked to watch a neighbor’s dog, taking viewers “behind the scenes of Iranian filmmakers not making films.” Panahi even pulls out his iPhone to take additional video, photographing New Year’s fireworks that sound suspiciously like a military attack. Panahi is calm throughout, never panicking (although he clearly does not want to take care of the barking dog) and not complaining about his situation, which becomes especially poignant as he watches news reports on the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan. “But you can’t make a film now anyhow, can you?” Mirtahmasb — who will later be arrested and imprisoned as well — asks at one point. “So what I can’t make a film?” Panahi responds. “That means I ask you to take a film of me? Do you think it will turn into some major work of art?” This Is Not a Film, which was smuggled out of Iran in a USB drive hidden in a birthday cake so it could be shown at Cannes, is indeed a major work of art, an important document of government repression of free speech as well as a fascinating examination of one man’s intense dedication to his art and the creative process.
Based on Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling 2009 debut novel, The Help is an overly melodramatic, emotionally manipulative film about the relationship between the white homeowners of Jackson, Mississippi, and their black maids. Set in the 1960s just as the civil rights movement was beginning to gain ground, the plot centers on a recent white college graduate named Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (Emma Stone) who decides that something must be done about the way the whites treat the blacks in her town. An aspiring writer, Skeeter tries to convince black maids Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) and Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer) to share their stories for a book that a New York publisher (Mary Steenburgen) might be interested in, but the women are terrified that speaking out could cost them their livelihood as well as jeopardize their physical safety. But as things get worse in Jackson, led by such snooty rich women as Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard), Elizabeth Leefolt (Ahna O’Reilly), and even Skeeter’s mother, Charlotte (Allison Janney), the truth starts becoming more and more difficult to suppress. Adapted and directed by Tate Taylor, The Help undercuts what it is trying to accomplish by making the conflict, well, as black and white as possible, overplaying the sympathy card and laying on the white liberal guilt. While the white men in the film are all powerless cardboard cutouts, there are virtually no black men at all, save for the local preacher (David Oyelowo ) and a counterman (Nelsan Ellis). The only white Jackson housewife who doesn’t treat her maid like a slave, Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain), is a ditzy blonde who can’t take care of herself. Taylor (Pretty Ugly People), who was born and raised in Jackson and is a close friend of Stockett’s, offers the same scenes repeated over and over, going on for nearly two and a half hours. Nominated for four Academy Awards — Best Picture, Best Actress (Davis), and two Best Supporting Actress nods (Spencer and Chastain) — The Help, though well acted, is a major disappointment, a simplistic and condescending movie about an extremely important subject that deserved better treatment.