DETACHMENT

DETACHMENT
Written by Carl Lund
Directed by Tony Kaye
Starring Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden and Christina Hendricks


Henry Barthes: That bag is empty. It has no feelings. You can’t hurt it. I’m just like that bag.

I don’t know what any of us ever did to piss Tony Kaye off but I’m pretty sure that whatever it was, it did not warrant DETACHMENT as retaliation. Kaye’s third feature film is a relentlessly bleak look at the American education system, designed to open the eyes of its viewers to a situation they are already well aware of, while simultaneously driving those same eyes mad with some of the most scattered, unfocused and plainly amateurish filmmaking I’ve seen from a supposed auteur.

Adrien Brody, who also executive produced this insult of a film, stars as Henry Barthes, a professional substitute teacher who takes the bus every day to work like a poor slob and feels nothing anymore as he walks morosely through life. To be clear, life according to Kaye, is not worth feeling anything for. In Kaye’s universe, every student is either a bully or a thug or a prostitute or a budding sociopath or just plain uninterested in learning. There is no hope to find in the halls of this school. Even the teachers are either  on happy pills or being spit on or so far gone that they simply laugh off the loss of their students when they kill each other. I have nothing against bleak and hopeless. There are situations out there that fit the bill. When these very harsh realities are exaggerated to such extremity to prove a point, it presumes a lack of intelligence on the part of the viewer. We do not need to go to the far, painful end of the spectrum to understand the urgency of this problem.

Perhaps it would all be easier to digest if Kaye trusted himself more as a filmmaker. His biggest success to date is AMERICAN HISTORY X, a film he infamously wanted his name removed from but that is also infinitely better than DETACHMENT. Between the poor quality of the video camera / cinema verite aesthetic and the constant need to cut up scenes with intensely hideous close-ups and the random inserts of chalk drawings to accentuate his already obvious intentions, its a wonder how Kaye was able to get people like James Caan, Lucy Liu or Bryan Cranston to sign on to the project. I’m sure none of them knew going in that they would end up making such fools of themselves. Because aside from how clear it is that Kaye lacks confidence as filmmaker, DETACHMENT proves beyond a doubt that he doesn’t understand how people connect to each other or the world around them.

The Black Sheep Summer Movie Previews

With THE AVENGERS now officially smashing records in theatres around the world, there is no denying that the summer movie season is officially upon us. As a film critic, the summer is always an iffy time for me. I am all for big budget blockbusters; I like to shut my mind off and chill out just like the rest of you. Unfortunately, turning off these days is often not good enough for Hollywood. It seems to enjoy some of today's summer movies, one has to actually lower their intelligence to get on board. That's where I usually draw the line, y'know, while I still know how to do so. And so I scoured this summer's calendar and the following is a list of 10 titles I am betting will prove that a great summer movie doesn't have to be dumb to be enjoyed. In order of expected release ...

MOONRISE KINGDOM
Directed by Wes Anderson
May 25




I'm a big Wes Anderson fan so anytime he comes out with a new film, I'm going to be excited for it. With a cast like this, how can I not be?

SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN
Directed by Rupert Sanders
June 1




After that last Snow White movie, I'm ready to see the story be given a real chance to be re-imagined.

PROMETHEUS
Directed by Ridley Scott
June 8




I'll see anything with Michael Fassbender in it these days. And I love this viral video!

BRAVE
Directed by Mark Andrews
June 22




After Pixar's last offering (CARS 2), it will be refreshing to see them get back to their original roots again. Well, I hope it will be anyway.

TO ROME WITH LOVE

Directed by Woody Allen
June 22




Woody continues to travel the world and I am ready to follow him anywhere. Side note: I'm so happy to see the words, "Written & Directed by Woody Allen" to finally be proudly displayed in a trailer again.

MAGIC MIKE
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
June 29




A Channing Tatum stripper movie directed by Steven Soderbergh. Need I say more?

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
Directed by Marc Webb
July 3




Amazing, indeed. Too soon for a reboot? Who cares?! It's Spider-Man! I love the cast and I'm very curious to see how the (500) DAYS OF SUMMER director holds up in the big leagues.

TED
Directed by Seth MacFarlane
July 13




MacFarlane brings his FAMILY GUY humour to the big screen for the first time and I'm skeptical but intrigued.

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
Directed by Christopher Nolan
July 20




This is the big one! It might be the only movie that really matters this summer. Will it match the grosses of THE DARK KNIGHT? I doubt it. Will it be even better? I'm seriously hoping!

PARANORMAN
Directed by Sam Fell
August 17




I still haven't seen an animated film this year that I liked. My money is riding on this one.

And that's it! 10 whole movies I actually want to see all summer. I'm sure there will be more that pop up along the way but that's it for now. Geez. I might actually have to spend some time, gulp, outside! Getting fresh air! And playing sports! Or I can just see THE DARK KNIGHT RISES over and over again.

Bon cinema!

Black Sheep interviews Mark Ruffalo

RUFFALO SMASH HULK
An interview with THE AVENGERS star, Mark Ruffalo

When one thinks of veteran character actor, Mark Ruffalo, one might think of his 2000 breakout film, Kenneth Lonergan’s YOU CAN COUNT ON ME. Or perhaps of all the directors he’s worked with, from Michel Gondry (ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND) to David Fincher (ZODIAC) to Martin Scorsese (SHUTTER ISLAND). Most probably remember his Oscar-nominated supporting turn in Lisa Cholodenko’s THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT. I think it’s fair to say though that a giant franchise superhero movie would be the last place people would expect to see him. Well, that’s all about to change.

“My first reaction was to try to talk Joss out of casting me,” Ruffalo recalls of the moment director, Joss Whedon, told him he wanted him to replace Edward Norton as The Hulk in this summer’s mammoth comic book movie, THE AVENGERS. “Then I started to think, if I can get past all of the baggage of the part, I could maybe do something different and cool with it.”

Still, Ruffalo’s time on set was a challenge at first. “I was really nervous. My overall feeling on the set was probably not so dissimilar to Banner’s in the film. What am I doing here? Do I belong here? Look at how cool all these guys are!”

Ruffalo may now be one of the cool kids, which also includes Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Chris Evans as Captain America, but The Hulk has always been hit or miss, mostly miss, with film audiences. Ruffalo’s take though is resonating so much with fans that Marvel is now considering another standalone Hulk movie in the future.

The success of the character is something Ruffalo attributes to working with Whedon. “My first rehearsal with Joss was literally an hour in a room just wrestling,” Ruffalo explains of Whedon’s unorthodox approach to bringing out the beast in the man. “Joss and I definitely felt that this was a continuation of the last Hulk movie, with this idea that he might have some control over it. This next version of Banner, has been on the run for another 3 or 4 years, is getting into his 40’s, getting tired, longing for a life, maybe a family, and has a sense of humour about himself and a level of acceptance for this side of himself. Maybe he can finally face himself.”

That’s an awful lot of depth for a character who is most famous for smashing things.

Ruffalo has signed a 6-picture deal with Marvel to appear as The Hulk on screen. While thrilled at the possibilities, Ruffalo, who used to read Marvel comics as a boy, is also a realist. “I mean how much longer can I play The Hulk? If it takes three years to make the next Avengers and then another three years to make a Hulk, I’ll be in my 50’s,” Ruffalo, now 44, admits. “At some point, there is an obsolescence to a 6-picture deal. I’ll be happy if I end up just doing three.”

In the meantime, Ruffalo finally has a movie he can watch with his kids, three with his wife of 12 years, Sunrise Coigney. “I do realize that most of the movies I’ve made, my kids won’t be able to see until they’re in their teens,” Ruffalo quips. “This is something I felt like they could see. It interests me; it isn’t dumb; it doesn’t glorify violence just for the thrill of it. And at the same time, I don’t feel like I’ve compromised my artistic integrity. So it kinda just fit all the right boxes.”

Perhaps Ruffalo’s integrity is in tact because THE AVENGERS is not just mindless popcorn fluff but rather a genuine smash of a film. “Everything was grounded in character and in a reality that you really wouldn’t expect from this movie,” Ruffalo states with evident pride and satisfaction in the project. “If you can bring something real and naturalistic to this totally fantastical, unnatural world, then you stand out from the rest."

THE AVENGERS

THE AVENGERS
Written and Directed by Joss Whedon
Starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johannson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston and Samuel L. Jackson


Captain America: Stark, we need a plan of attack.
Iron Man: I have a plan. Attack.

Comic book movies or superhero movies or whatever you want to call them, all inherently have a very difficult task to accomplish. They all have to cater to a notoriously picky niche market, made up of detail oriented fanboys, while still remaining broad enough to appeal to the masses. They cost a fortune so they cannot afford not to attract the widest audience possible, but if they play it too broad, the fanatics will denounce the film and ruin any chance it has of making any money back. THE AVENGERS is the mecca of superhero movies. It reportedly cost $220 million to make. It features no less than seven iconic Marvel comic characters. And, given just how darn good it is, it actually stands the chance to become the biggest superhero movie of all time.

If you’re like me, the first ten minutes of THE AVENGERS might be a little bewildering. The script presupposes that you’ve seen all the Avenger related movies leading up to this one. As it turns out, I have, with the first IRON MAN (Robert Downey Jr.) and THOR (Chris Hemsworth) being my favourites.  Still, that doesn’t mean that they are always freshly at the forefront of my mind. So once I pieced together that Thor’s brother, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) was working with an alien race to take over Earth by harvesting the energy from what is known as the Tesseract, I was good to go. (I’m sure the history behind this premise is far more rich than I’ve just described but for casual Avenger fans like myself, this description is more than adequate to get your bearings.) What follows the initial and inevitable set up though is two hours of non-stop excitement with a surprisingly solid amount of depth and character study to make THE AVENGERS the perfect popcorn movie to kick off the summer.

It is Loki’s mission to force the people of Earth into submission by using great force. His belief is that freedom is the world’s greatest lie, that pursuing a life of slavery and worship unburdens the individual of feeling any sense of failure. Without any unique goals, there is only the common to pursue. You should know that Loki has a bevy of his own daddy issues to work out and vanquishing Earth is just his way of dealing with things. You should also know that Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), the leader of S.H.I.E.L.D. (which stands for Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division) is not going to just allow this to happen. So he enlists the help of six individuals, all of which possess a particular power or skill that makes them a definite asset to have in an intergalactic war of this magnitude, and dubs them The Avengers. Unfortunately for Fury, The Avengers are all also intense loners who do not play well with others.

Perhaps the greatest honorary Avenger out there is writer/director, Joss Whedon. Marvel entrusted a film they have been building up to for years now to a man who has built a reputation for creating deeply engaging yet still highly entertaining genre fare on television, like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, but whose only feature length film (SERENITY) tanked. Whedon is right at home here though and he has a seemingly easy time balancing the screen time between all these heavy hitters, from Chris Evans (Captain America) and Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye) to Scarlett Johannson (Black Widow) and Mark Ruffalo (taking over the role of The Hulk from predecessor, Edward Norton), while simultaneously juggling all of their individual arcs and development. The genius of Whedon’s work here is that he has them all subtly fighting against each other and against the idea of working together long enough to forget they were fighting so hard against themselves before any of this started. And when they start fighting together, that’s when THE AVENGERS goes from being a great comic book movie to being a great movie, period.

THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT

THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT
Written by Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller
Directed by Nicholas Stoller
Starring Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Chris Pratt and Alison Brie


Susie Barnes: You know I don’t believe in kids and marriage and shit but when I see the two of you together, I get what the whole situation is about.

A comedy called THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT promises a cute couple who will inevitably run into a number of obstacles on their way to the alter. You half expect disasters with the florist, catastrophes with the caterer and unexpected happenings to happen just in time to postpone the wedding a little while longer. Instead, what you get in the Nicholas Stoller (FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, GET HIM TO THE GREEK) version of this movie, is one where only one thing gets in the way of the titular engagement becoming a wedding - life. And this particular life is likely a lot more real than you would ever guess.

Tom and Violet (Jason Segel and Emily Blunt) are absolutely adorable with each other on screen. They met on New Year’s Eve at a costumed superhero party of sorts and then are engaged a year later on the same night. He is a promising sous-chef on the hot San Francisco restaurant scene and she is a bright academic, who is awaiting placement at a prominent San Francisco university to pursue her doctorate. They are the envy of their friends and family and why shouldn’t they be? They have the real deal, the kind of love that is increasingly only found in the movies. Segel and Blunt make you believe you can still find a love like this in real life even in today’s cynical times and this is partly thanks to all the real life garbage that these two get dealt that derails their wedding plans. Trouble with the seating arrangement is one thing; figuring out how to compromise in a relationship so that both parties are happy with their lives, now that’s a whole other trick to master.

The hard times Tom and Violet go through on their way to their wedding make THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT a much more sombre comedy than one would expect. Still, when its funny, it is uproarious. It’s hard not to be with such an incredibly strong supporting cast, from Chris Pratt and Alison Brie, as the disastrous counter couple to Tom and Violet, who seem to get everything right without even trying, to recent Oscar nominee, Jacki Weaver, as the driest of future mother-in-law’s that there ever was. Director, Stoller, along with his writing partner, Segel, continue to prove that they can find great laughs in some of life’s more sobering experiences. And in doing so here, they prove how little significance a wedding truly has when weighed against the marriage itself.

Black Sheep interview Kim Wayans

A MOTHER’S SCORN
An interview with PARIAH actress, Kim Wayans

This article was originally published in Ottawa Xpress.

Mothers are supposed to be the great protectors of their children. To this day though, homosexuality still seems to be a decisive issue that can tear a mother and child clear apart from each other, making the mother what the child needs protection from. In PARIAH, an excellent coming of age story from director, Dee Rees, this exact breakdown takes place and breaks the viewers’ hearts.

How can a mother turn her child away like this? This is the question Kim Wayans, a veteran actress who is not in fact a mother herself, must ask herself. “She is making a mistake. This is against God, according to Audrey,” Wayans begins to explain to me of how she felt her character might be feeling after discovering her 17-year-old daughter, Aike (Independent Spirit nominee, Adepero Aduye), is a lesbian. “So she is in danger now of being banished to hell. There’s that. Then there’s a mother’s disappointment of all the hopes and dreams she had for her daughter disappearing.”

Wayans attributes this disappointment to the emptiness in Audrey’s world. “It’s coming from a person who is not happy in her own life. She is ostracized from everyone. She is a pariah herself,” says Wayans, who was not involved in the original short film PARIAH was adapted from. “This shell of a woman has projected so much onto this little girl. As a mother, I failed because she is not what I wanted her to be.”

Having gotten her start on the Cosby Show spinoff, "A Different World", Wayans is perhaps best known for her work on her brother, Keenan Ivory Wayans’ sketch comedy, "In Living Color". Her experience in comedy has posed some challenges for Wayans attempts at dramatic acting. “The funny thing is the challenge doesn’t lie with the performance. The challenge lies with the labeling and putting people in boxes.” It was easy to tell she was relieved to have gotten the chance to play this part. “I’m either telling a comedic story or I’m telling a dramatic story but I’m still telling a story.”

As painful as PARIAH can be at times, it is a genuinely uplifting and honest film. It is Wayans’ hope that when people see the film that it opens a dialogue so situations like this can be avoided in the future. “People are in denial. So many children in the gay community are being hurt every day just by the sheer denial of who they are. We all crave being loved and accepted for who we authentically are, so when you come into opposition and rejection when you’re just trying to express that authenticity, I can’t think of anything more damaging.”

Spoken like a real mother.

THE INNKEEPERS

THE INNKEEPERS
Written and Directed by Ti West
Starring Sara Paxton, Pat Healy and Kelly McGillis

It takes about 50 minutes before anything remotely close to scary happens in THE INNKEEPERS, a ghost story movie with a homegrown feel. Even then, the scary moment takes place in a dream so it doesn’t really count. Up until this point, our time is spent with Claire and Luke (Sara Paxton and Pat Healy), the front desk clerks at the Yankee Pedlar Inn. The inn is entering into its last weekend in business. Apparently no one wants to stay there any more. This could be because the inn is haunted but I doubt it. As someone who has spent some time at the inn, and very little at that, I can tell you that it was one of the worst hotel stays I’ve had in my life.

THE INNKEEPERS somehow managed to generate enough indie buzz to register on my radar despite only playing on all of 27 screens during its theatrical run. The trailer sold it as stylish and psychological, like one of these underground horror gems that might one day be sold to and devoured by the masses. It was downright chilling but these particular thrills only come near the end of the film, leaving an awful long time to lose all interest in seeing them. I felt trapped watching this film, like I was a guest at this hotel who had already paid up his stay and didn’t want to waste the money by leaving. I also experienced an odd curiosity as to whether the film was ever going to get better. It doesn’t.

The problem with THE INNKEEPERS is writer/director, Ti West. He obviously has a very high opinion of his abilities and a very low opinion of our intelligence. Not only does he subject us to scene after painful scene of Claire and Luke waffling back and forth between wanting to know whether the inn is haunted or being too scared to find out, but he does so with what seems like the most simple of direction to his actors. Be pouty here, Claire. Be sarcastic here, Luke. Now be silly! Now be drunk! Now be scared! It’s all so stiff and it most certainly didn’t get there by being scared.

Oh, and what did Kelly McGillis do to deserve this?

Review copy provided by eOne Entertainment.