Audiences are invited to curse along with the characters as Trey Parker and Matt Stone lay waste to international terrorism in TEAM AMERICA
TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE (Trey Parker, 2004)
92YTribeca
200 Hudson St. at Canal St.
Saturday, November 21, $13, 10:00
212-415-5500
www.92YTribeca.org/film
www.teamamericamovie.com
Nothing is off limits for SOUTH PARK dudes Trey Parker and Matt Stone in this marionette musical actioner that mixes TOP GUN, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, and THE MATRIX with that old classic television puppet show THUNDERBIRDS. Kim Jong Il is determined to unleash his weapons of mass destruction on an unsuspecting world, and it is up to Team America and its newest member, actor Gary Johnston, formerly of the hit musical LEASE, to stop the North Korean leader’s heinous plan. But Team America is a reckless bunch that has a tendency to destroy major cities and landmarks (the Eiffel Tower, the Sphinx) as it attempts to take out terrorists. Meanwhile, love threatens to complicate the success of their mission. Parker and Stone skewer international politics, the military, celebrity, and the media in this very dirty, very funny flick; among their victims are Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Peter Jennings, Hans Blix, George Clooney, and, mercilessly, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. There’s lots of blood and gore, a very hot puppet sex scene, and the best description ever about the three kinds of people in the world. Although it often misses its target or goes way too far – it could have been a classic like SOUTH PARK: BIGGER LONGER & UNCUT – it’s still a good way to spend a Saturday night out at the movies. And on Saturday, November 21, it will be offering even more, as the 92YTribeca screens it as part of its “Sing-along” series, adding the words on-screen so you can curse along with the characters to your heart’s delight – and they’ll even include a free beer to help get things going.
Twenty-three-year-old writer-director Damien Chazelle has expanded his senior thesis at Harvard into an unusual black-and-white musical that mixes John Cassavetes’s SHADOWS and FACES with Jacques Demy’s THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (and a little French Nouvelle Vague) as seen through the modern lens of mumblecore. An accomplished jazz drummer, Chazelle (who makes a cameo in the film behind the kits) casts real-life jazz trumpeter and first-time actor Jason Palmer as Guy, a jazz trumpeter in a relationship with Madeline (Desiree Garcia), whom he met on a Boston park bench. But when Guy strays following a chance encounter on a train with a stranger named Elena (Sandha Khin) — an electrifying scene filled with heat and passion — Madeline leaves him, instead dreaming of making a new life for herself in New York. But as the two of them go their separate ways, they still imagine what could have been. The film features such actual musicians and dancers as Andre Hayward of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, tap-dancer Kelly Kaleta, and teenage saxophone prodigy Grace Kelly. (Look for Chazelle’s father, Benard, as Paul.) Justin Hurwitz wrote the music for five of the original songs, with Chazelle supplying the lyrics. A slow-paced, heartfelt drama, GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH, which played the Tribeca Film Festival, has the improvisational feel of a quiet jazz solo, a soft, tender film about love and loss and how fragile meaningful relationships can be.
An official selection of the Brooklyn Film Festival, THE LOCAL is a gritty crime drama set in parts of Brooklyn not usually shown in the movies. Dan Eberle (JailCity) wrote, directed, coedited, and stars in the film, playing Noname, a man searching for a new life, trying to escape from his past. But the streets are all he knows, and soon he is working at the bottom of the ladder for dirtbag drug dealers he could chew up and spit out in his sleep, but he decides it is better to play the game at least for a while as he regains his footing. And soon he’s hired by a detective to rescue the man’s daughter from the gang, but she’s so drugged out she doesn’t know what’s going on. Noname is a charismatic character, his eyes boring through whatever or whoever gets in his way, but Eberle can’t decide whether he’s hero or antihero. One moment Noname is kicking the crap out of people, and the next he is getting the crap kicked out of him, so it’s often difficult to figure out which character is going to show up in the next scene. And the supporting cast, which includes Maya Ferrara, Karl Herlinger, Paul James Vasquez, and Beau Allulli, is never fully developed either, upping the confusion. But there’s still something about Eberle that keeps you watching to the very end.
After playing film festivals around the world, Philippe Diaz’s THE END OF POVERTY? opens a one-week run at Village East, bringing its critical take on the global financial crisis. Speaking with Nobel Prize winners, economists, writers, politicians, researchers, and other experts, Diaz attempts to get at the heart of international poverty – particularly by tugging at the audience’s heartstrings. He intercuts shots of talking heads discussing slavery and colonialism, the World Bank, the free market, the International Monetary Fund, and government bailouts with portraits of men, women, and children living in squalor in Africa, Latin America, the United States, and elsewhere. He supplements the film with a barrage of statistics that, individually, are infuriating but, taken as a whole, get lost in a whirlwind of numbers. Adding to the overkill is Martin Sheen’s over-the-top narration, which piles up yet more information and outrage. But even as the film sometimes feels like a Sally Struthers save-the-children infomercial, its crucial message does manage to pull through and take root – the money is out there, but its incredibly lopsided distribution in a warped system is basically set up to keep the imbalance that has led to such a tragic situation.
Malaysian-born Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang’s WHAT TIME IS IT THERE? is one heck of an existential hoot. When his father dies, Hsiao Kang, who sells watches on the street in Taipei, becomes obsessed with a strange woman who insists on buying Hsiao’s own watch and then leaves for Paris; with Truffaut’s THE 400 BLOWS (Tsai’s “all-time favorite film”); with urinating in whatever is near his bed instead of going to the bathroom; and with changing clocks to Paris time. Meanwhile, his mother is determined to follow ridiculous rituals to bring her husband back, and the woman in Paris goes through a number of bizarre events as well. There is not a single camera movement in the film (except for in the 400 BLOWS film clips); the scenes are shot by Benoît Delhomme in long takes, often lingering before and after any action – when there is any action. The dialogue is spare, ironic, and hysterical. If you like your movies straightforward and linear, then this is not for you. But we loved this riot of a film, so we suggest you give it a shot. And yes, that person sitting on the bench in the cemetery is exactly who you think it is.