Movies You May Have Missed: 7/8/08
Ramin Bahrani’s Chop Shop. A movie you may have missed, now on DVD
If it’s Tuesday, it must be DVD day. Here are a few DVDs of movies that may not have played in a theater near you.
Chop Shop (****). Ramin Bahrani’s follow up to his critically popular Man Push Cart is a little gem of a film buoyed by surprising performances from non-actors Alejandro Polanco and Isamar Gonzales as a pair of orphaned siblings. The two eke out an existence in a 20 block area of Queens near Shea Stadium made up entirely of wrecking yards and auto body repair shops.
Alejandro is a firecracker of a kid; hard working, motivated, crafty and quick learning. He and his sister have been given no advantages in life, but their dreams of moving up in the world have not been snuffed out. The two love each other and rely on one another, but the pressures of surviving and the things they have to do to get by threaten to pull them apart.
Every step of the way, writer/director Bahrani avoids obvious melodrama and is content instead to simply paint a neorealist portrait of life on the fringes of civilization. Those who like their movies thick of plot and heavy of action won’t find much to appreciate with Chop Shop, but those with attention spans greater than a retarded monkey on LSD will be rewarded.
The film was only released into 3 theaters in the United States and it earned about $120,000 for its trouble. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 1/1000th the total haul so far of The Incredible Hulk. For those of you with no head for figures, that sucks cinematic balls.
The Tracey Fragments (*** 1/2). This is Canadian filmmaker Bruce McDonald’s experimental film based upon Maureen Medved’s novel of the same name. Ellen Page plays a disaffected 15-year-old searching the barren winter streets of Winnipeg for the little brother she feels responsible for losing. She’s abused at home and mocked at school and quite possibly a little out of her mind. She’s what you might describe as a Holden Caulfield type and a classic unreliable narrator.
In order to capture the stream-of-consciousness style of the book, the story is revealed out of chronological order. What’s more, the screen is frequently divided into multiple images, anywhere from two to more than ten. In some cases the images are different angles on the same scene, sometimes they’re the same scene at different moments, sometimes they’re different scenes altogether and sometimes they’re combinations of all three.
It requires a lot of attention and effort by the audience, but the editing trickery has a galvanizing effect and somehow a story manages to emerge from the chaos. For the right tastes, it’s definitely an interesting watch and recommended to people who wonder if the girl who played Juno is the real deal. I think she is. Even as a teen she had a maturity and screen presence not unlike a similarly aged Jody Foster. Having said all that, a fair number of people who see this are going to find it fruity and pretentious.
Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten. I never caught Julien Temple’s documentary about the Clash frontman, but Joe Strummer is on the “LiC List of Things That Are Good” (#304 is the book James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl). The film features interviews with people who aren’t nearly as cool as Joe, including Bono, Johnny Depp, John Cusack and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, as well as old interviews, concert footage and tapes of Strummer’s radio show.
Filed under: Miscellaneous
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I really wanted to see Chop Shop but it never came around here. It annoyed me greatly but now that I see it only unspooled in three theatres, I don’t feel so bad. Guess I better see it on DVD soon.
I officially love this feature, Craig. Great job filling a certain vacuum, yet again.
I have yet to see “Chop Shop” or “Tracey Fragments” but I have wanted to see both for a while now. If you get them on DVD today, I’ll get them soon enough.
I really do hope so.
CHOP SHOP is one of those little-seen gems that is rescued from obscurity by a DVD release, and I fully agree with Craig’s stellar estimation and his review of a few months ago. Alexander, I suspect this will be one you will want to review. This is surely the week’s top “A” release in a scant lineup, maligned by the three day weekend.
Of course there is a bonafide cinematic masterpiece streeting today–the beautiful Criterion edition of Claude Jutra’s 1971 MON ONCLE ANTOINE, a film that is widely acknowledged as the greatest Canadian film of all-time, based on decade polls conducted by critics in three successive decades. I concur with this assessment, and have found the film to be a perceptive, subtle and emotionally devastating portrait of pre-Revolution Quebec. Tracing the personal and political fissures about to tear open the rural Catholic heartland, Jutra’s episodic narrative structure and inspired use of landscape render unforgettable this portrair of a sad wintry town and the end of innocence.
MON ONCLE ANTOINE is one of the very greatest coming-of-age films from any country and is simply an essential purchase in this lovely two-disc set with a number of worthwhile extras.
After MON ONCLE ANTOINE, I would say that Arcand’s JESUS OF MONTREAL, Egoyan’s THE SWEET HEREAFTER and Cronenberg’s DEAD RINGERS would be the next greatest Canadian films of all-time.
For those with a taste for the old Universal horror series, there is rarely a time when some new edition isn’t being planned and this week, the series repeats itself again with THE LEGACY MUMMY COLLECTION, which house the five old Mummy films, including the 1932 film with Boris Karloff that is rightfully considered a horror classic. The transfer is a modest improvement on the existing DVD.
I regret that I haven’t seen the two films that Craig has featured here after CHOP SHOP, but at the very least I think netflix copies should be secured. And I second Alexander’s praise for this great weekly column.
Not to be obnoxious with a triple posting, but I deem it somewhat worthwhile to draw attention to David Kehr’s weekly DVD column in today’s New York Times, where his lead-in (typical for Kehr) is an obscure title. This week, he makes reference to the streeting of a film by classic British director Thorold Dickinson, who is largely known for the gothis thrillers, GASLIGHT (1940) and THE QUEEN OF SPADES (1949).
The much lesser-known HILL 24 (1955) says Kehr “has no obvious gothic elements, but manages to be just as claustrophobic and doom-laden as Dickinson’s more famous films. Kehr goes on: “Dickinson begins with a series of shots of bodies face down in the dust, suggesting that all will not turn out well. Then he shifts into a complex flashback structure, as three members of a small Israeli unit trying to claim a hill overlooking Jerusalem in the last days of the 1947 conflict recount how they came to be there……….A former British officer (Edward Mulhare) is drawn to the Israeli cause by his infatuation with a beautiful student (Haya Harareet); an American tourist (Michael Wager) becomes obsessed with visiting the Old City of Jerusalem; an Israeli officer (Arisch Lavi) finds himself face to face with a former German soldier fighting on the Palistian side………..if the film was meant as propaganda, it’s a particular perverse kind.”
But here’s the catch: The film does not have a sell-through price, as it goes for $40, being geared more to institution than to personal purchase!
If there’s a way to copy it, it would be worth a look-see, but even if it were three times as more accomplished and significant, it wouldn’t come within hailing distance of MON ONCLE ANTOINE, as the week’s premier DVD release.
Wow, Sam. Hardly obnoxious at all. Your Criterion edition additions should definitely be part of this weekly list.
I think I ultimately enjoyed Chop Shop more than Man Push Cart, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed it at all had I not seen Man Push Cart. Does that make sense?
Craig you saw Chop Shop last November, right? In what year does it belong? It could only add to the glory of 2007 or boost the early credentials of 2008. I’ve been keeping it current, but maybe it’s not.
I missed all of these. I’m particularly looking forward to catching up on Chop Shop, but I was interested in The Tracey Fragments as well. And Joe Strummer has been in my reserve queue on Netflix for months. :-)
The film features interviews with people who aren’t nearly as cool as Joe, including Bono, Johnny Depp, John Cusack and the Red Hot Chili Peppers
The Red Hot Chili Peppers are definitely cool (especially Flea), as is Bono, but Joe definitely pwns them all. Or maybe you’re being sarcastic, Craig, and don’t really agree with me on that. :-)
Thanks Dan! I am not certain, and Craig will make the final decision, but I do believe CHOP SHOP had that early 2008 theatrical opening at the Film Forum in Manhattan (as well as a theatre in LA) so it may well be considered 2008, especially since it made no lists for 2007.
Thanks so much for that entire rundown of releases, Sam. You’re certainly right to champion Mon Oncle Antoine, and I also love Jesus of Montreal, Dead Ringers and The Sweet Hereafter. Certainly all pinnacles of Canadian cinema.
Your eloquent unearthings and righteous paeans have also left me anxious to see Hill 24. Terrific job…
Alexander, you are a scholar and a gentleman! We seem to agree on so much.
Hats off to Craig for giving us all the opportunity engage in this wonderful DVD discourse.
Alexander. I’m glad you like it because I’m really warming up to the idea, though the information is easily available elsewhere, I like to pass it through the LiC filters and put my own spin on it.
Apologies however for recycling things that I’ve already written. It’s difficult to be fresh and original with some of these movies I may have seen months and months ago at a film festival.
Daniel. Yeah, Chop Shop was officially released in 2008. I saw it at the AFI Festival in 2007. For the record, I also liked Chop Shop better, but I didn’t see MPC until afterward. For me it boiled down to Alejandro being a more relatable, sympathetic character. The guy in MPC was a little frustrating.
Alison, you read me exactly right. All of those people are super cool in my book, but Joe is the one ring who rules them all.
I never saw the Clash play, but my older brother did a few times and back in October of ‘01 he was in town visiting and I took him to The Troubadour to see Strummer play with his band The Mescaleros. The Troubadour is a tiny little club and It was a friggin’ great show and it would turn out to be the last group of dates Joe would ever play in the US before he died.
It was one of those rare moments that felt like it couldn’t happen anywhere else and it made me happy I was in LA.
Sam I knew you’d pull through with the Criterion report and thank you for it. I eyed Mon Oncle Antoine but didn’t have anything to say about it. I knew you would. And you’re smart to point out Kehr’s column. I gave him a shout out last week in the comments section and I checked him out this time before posting the column.
Nick do you have a region free DVD player or do you just have to wait until the South African version comes out? I think you’ll either love or hate Tracey Fragments with nothing in between.
I have a region free player, I’m still bummed about the not being able to order DVDs from Amazon, as I have only ever bought from there. I need to broaden my horizons indeed. I would rather not wait forever for my rental store to order stuff from the US, which is what I normally have to do. Another thing is the money issue, which wouldn’t be an issue if I wasn’t so obsessive compulsive. I’ll get a job, and then I’ll order “The Tracey Fragments,” I have a feeling I will love it.
Nick, why can’t you order from Amazon? They do ship worldwide.
Chop Shop is already on the way from Netflix, although I forgot about the Strummer doc and will have to add that now. I liked Man Push Cart quite a bit. I’d classify Chop Shop as 2008 because I believe that was it’s true theatrical release. Earlier showings were just festival previews to get distribution support.
I have no real interest in the Tracey Fragments but I might see it at some point if I do an Ellen Page retro (I’ve missed most of her work).
I have not seen Mon Oncle Antoin either, but it sounds worthy of a viewing.
I’ve purchased CDs from Amazon.fr so I don’t see what the problem could be.
Thank you for the kind words, Sam, and as usual all I can say is, likewise.
The difference is Jeff that the pipeline travels fine in this direction because we are the land of easy consumer goods. Amazon apparently has had difficulty delivering packages in SA so they’ve stopped. Or maybe Nick can ’splain it better.