ART SAVES US FROM LIFE... 

Never Gonna Snow Again: Consumerism, Communism, And The Weather

 

 

"There definitely needs to be a balance struck between the financial sector and scientists. Because the way it's affecting certainly climate change and just generally, I think people's lives - everything is becoming, I feel with the consumerist culture, people are losing control, and losing connection." ~ Alec Utgoff

Actor Alec Utgoff masterfully weaves his way through the lives inhabiting a humorless Polish community, as an inadvertently seductive masseur - the ethnic Russian Ukrainian immigrant Zhenia on an elusive psychological or even political mission.

Perhaps cynically equating all longings for a better world with magical thinking, whether political, emotional, obsessive consumerism or the fleeting frustration of a massage, the film teases then seems to settle on a fateful dystopia in store for the human race. But in any case, a combo playful and sobering prophetic perspective on the way things are, or progressively will be.

 As for Zhenia, his rare revelation in the evasive narrative proceedings regarding his favored sports players back home as the Donetsk team - that ethnically Russian breakaway self-declared communist republic currently at war with Ukraine - may indicate a surprising clue to the entire preceding mystery at work. Or considering everything else that has transpired, maybe not.
Written and directed with subversive nihilistic glee by Małgorzata Szumowska.

 Here's Alec Utgoff, phoning in from London in a decidedly enigmatic conversation about the film.

ALEC UTGOFF CONVERSATION 

Prairie Miller

Painkiller: Not Simply Another Vigilante Thriller, Though That Too

 

 "The main premise is that there's a conspiracy by the big pharmaceutical companies. And that's what motivates the character, is that it's not just one person - so he goes after the whole idea - the whole concept of government sanctioned drug dealing." ~ Michael Pare

Michael Pare, best known for his starring role in Eddie And The Cruisers and its sequel, is on a very different dramatic detour these days, as he delves into his current film targeting those legal drug peddlers profiting off the other pandemic, that has unleashed deaths from prescription drug overdoses across the country. That is, those pharmaceutical corporations and doctors reaping the profits off popular misery precipitated by late stage capitalism. And not simply another vigilante revenge thriller, though that too.

Starring horror vet Bill Oberst Jr. as a combo podcaster prophet of doom and the masked medication avenger in question, Painkiller has much more on its mind beneath the sensationalistic surface. Namely, that lawyer turned screenwriter and co-star Tom Parnell has dedicated this film and its narrative emotionally and politically to his own young son in real life - a victim of prescription drug addiction. And that brewing tension as Parnell's character confronts Pare's evil doctor, is an undercurrent simmering under the surface of this reality fueled film.

A Cinedigm Release May 4th.

Six Minutes To Midnight: Nazi Intrigue - Intentional And Otherwise

 

                                The Duke and Duchess of Windsor visit Hitler in 1937

 A British spy thriller based on the actual pre-WW II existence of a Nazi Germany finishing school located, in of all places, on the British coast, Six Minutes To Midnight may be said to harbor as much mystery as what the vintage noir setting does and doesn't explore. 

Starring and co-written by Eddie Izzard who has cast himself as the targeted undercover espionage agent Miller at the actual Bexhill-on-Sea Augusta-Victoria-College finishing school for female children of Nazi Germany's military and economic elite back then, the narrative is fueled by a second covert German operation to airlift the students out of Britain as WII looms - to prevent their arrest and detention.

The plot - in multiple senses of the word - is fueled by robust performances all around. From Izzard impersonating an instructor at the school to Judi Dench as the fiercely dedicated and progressively bewildered headmistress, and Jim Broadbent and James D'Arcy as enigmatic figures whose respective motives for the sake of mystery, are best left unsaid. On the other hand, the girls themselves tend to more generic representations, perhaps owing to a less defined pursuit of cultural distinctions or awareness.

But what mystery Six Minutes To Midnight does summon to the clouded surface, though perhaps more by unintentional inference than otherwise, is historical intrigue. And not just the unanswered question -  what was a Nazi college doing in Britain in the first place. In other words, a WW II ideological confrontation that was indeed not as clear-cut as the historical record has formalized by the victors. 

 

That is, European countries including Britain, who had their own far from isolated fascist elements within - and existing into the present time. And that includes the following research explored in the SBS documentary, Spying On The Royals:

'...The British Royal Family have never been able to escape the spectre of their unsavoury historical Nazi connections – the Nazi sympathisers the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, alleged WWII plots to install a pro-Nazi government and that controversial footage of Queen Elizabeth apparently making the Nazi salute as a child.

 

Now the question remains: just how far reaching were their Nazi connections? With the Royal Family refusing to release historical documents that would bring greater clarity to the issue, alternate evidence has come to light and theories abate.

The Windsors – former monarch Edward VIII and his American love, Wallis Simpson, for whom he abdicated the throne – were a pesky thorn in the Royals’ side, not least because they were thought to be Nazi sympathisers. Intelligence given to the FBI claimed the Nazis were using the Duke and Duchess to glean information that would scuttle the war effort of the allies - Edward at the centre of an alleged plot to overthrow the Winston Churchill government in favour of a pro-Nazi one.'

Prairie Miller

 

Willy's Wonderland: Battling The Demons Beneath US Consumer Paradise

 

Turning up just in time as anarchistic antidote to the artificially soothing sappy Oscar bait like Nomadland and Minari, Willy's Wonderland brashly sabotages American Dream consumer paradise tall tale antics while let's just say, irreverently subverting its own intentions as well. Not to mention seemingly hitching a ride on the current wave of red state versus blue state pandemonium in progress finding its way from this crisis ridden country to the screen.

That never disappointing perpetually in perfected character surreal maniac Nicolas Cage takes charge of the narrative and this movie without uttering a single word. Literally. Billed as The Janitor, Cage is hoodwinked by a depraved rural community in the Deep South while passing through, and set up as that Wonderland sacrifice to local serial killers, seemingly cousins of Cookie Monster animal robots within. Don't ask.

Goaded by the local mayor into scrubbing clean the dilapidated funland premises overnight behind locked doors in exchange for fixing up his car they've just trashed, The Janitor wordlessly obliges hyped up on endless cans of energy juice, while fending off the homicidal cuddly robots by murdering them instead - in large part resolved with smashing their internal batteries one by one to bits.While an annoying sidebar gang of rowdy teens infiltrating the depraved establishment to hopefully burn it down, could have well been left on the cutting room floor.

And eerily a reflection of the growing divisive showdown in this country between the red states and blue states, outsiders to this pathological southern tribal culture must be sacrificed to maintain their threatened stability and disappearing way of life. What that metaphorical threat may be - intimated most recently in Buck Run and Let Him Go - a majority tidal wave threatening rural values, religious fundamentalism, and black people as the sacrificial lambs to deflect from economic instability since Jim Crow - or even increasingly capitalist feeding frenzy, unattainable rabid consumerism. In any case, the Capitol Hill decked out fantasy fashion statements siege may be just the symptom of what's in store.

 

Prairie Miller

Flinch: Cathy Moriarty Return Match Comes Out Swinging

 A more offbeat window into women saving themselves, while shaking up the seemingly forever set in stone macho mob genre - Cathy Moriarty unconventionally rules in Flinch as a senior citizen gunslinger protecting her shabby downscale turf, along with her reluctant hitman son, Joey. Costa Rican born actor Daniel Zavatto who'd rather be communing with his pet goldfish - sulks his way through when not staging hits as the reluctant mobster, and apparently as a debt owed by his incarcerated dad to a West Coast crime syndicate.

The veteran feisty actress with working class roots best known for standing up to Raging Bull's deranged domestic violent boxer Robert De Niro as Jake LaMotta when she was just seventeen years old, and not too successfully as a battered wife - what was Scorsese thinking - is back this time around still swinging as an over-protective to say the least, take charge badgering gangster mom. And handling a mix 'n match identity crisis, divided between dodging cops and culprits alike, when not tough love mothering Joey who gets nagged to brush his teeth before bedtime, refrain from cursing, and 'no cell phones on the dinner table.'

Meanwhile, the possible femme fatale of this combo mob noir satire, seems to be juggling assorted contradictory identities herself - and portrayed with elusive, inventive flair by Australian actress Tilda Cobham-Hervey. While impressing as well this past year as iconic singer/songwriter Helen Reddy in the feminist biopic, I Am Woman. Let's just say Flinch, though showcasing the conventional crime genre, is owned by the women this time around.

 

Prairie Miller

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