Cine

It’s been a couple of years since two-time academy award nominee Joaquin Phoenix renounced acting, gained forty pounds, grew a face-engulfing beard that makes him look like Zach Galifianakis after a three-day bender, and began to pursue a career as a rapper. To pile crazy on top of bizarre, Phoenix’s friend/collaborator/brother-in-law, Casey Affleck, started following him around with a camera to document his rise to hip-hop fame, but instead captured endless footage of JP (that’s his rapper name) losing his mind. The result of the fiasco is the new film “I’m Still Here” that serves as proof of Phoenix’s slide into madness. Or so Affleck and JP would have hoped. The validity of the project has been suspect from day one, and the nagging question that preoccupies the mind while enduring this excuse for a documentary is simple: is it real? And having contemplated all the material and facts presented, it seems the glaring answer is another question itself. Who cares?

To attempt the standard structure for a review and present a nice and tidy synopsis at this point is near impossible. All has pretty much been revealed already. Joaquin Phoenix quits acting. Then he tries to be a rapper. He isn’t good at it. He tries to meet with Sean “P. Diddy” Combs to discuss the possibility of joining forces to create an album. He isn’t good at that either. He’s late for meetings and misses phone calls and much time is spent waiting in hotel rooms. Once they do occupy the same space together, Puffy verifies the obvious; the rapping is horrible. There is some drug use and hookers and a little bit of defecating, but the majority of the movie is Phoenix yelling and ranting about himself and how those around him directly affect him.

(Terrible Drinking Game Idea: Take a shot every time JP utters a sentence that DOESN’T include the words “I,” “me” or “my.” You could make it through the film’s 108 minute running time and not taste a drop.)

Both Phoenix and Affleck share a “written by” credit for the film—something unheard of in legitimate documentaries because these films are supposed to be spontaneous and natural. I’m Still Here is filled with false moments and almost every aspect feels staged and preconceived. It rings about as true as any episode of the “Jersey Shore” or “The Hills,” and would have been better suited as one hour special on MTV wedged in between repeats of “Jackass.” Various celebrities show up and only add fallacy by playing too much to the camera and nearly smirking into the face of what is supposed to be a lost soul on the verge of breaking down completely. Why Affleck would exploit his friend’s mental demise idly sitting back and filming it makes no sense.

Authentic or not, “I’m Still Here” is a tremendous bore of a movie that goes nowhere. Amateurish and maundering, there really isn’t enough here to constitute a feature film. Directed by Affleck, the film suffers from a lack of any tension and spends its time following an actor who doesn’t have anything to say. Both Phoenix and Affleck have worked with art house auteur, Gus Van Zant, and there are moments in the film that are pulled directly from his style of filmmaking. When Van Zant fixes his camera on someone walking aimlessly through a landscape it can be thought provoking (“Gerry,” “Elephant”). When Affleck does it, it is yawn inspiring.

It could be argued that “I’m Still Here” is an experimental performance art piece that exists to poke at celebrity ego and grotesque behavior. A sort of Andy Kaufman fused with Sacha Baron Cohen parodying Brando and Crowe. That might be true, but Affleck and Phoenix keep their cards so close to their chest that they never let us in on the joke. What is left is a vanity project that neither enlightens or entertains.

Documentary filmmaker Dana Brown sure has it good. During his entire moviemaking career he has made fun and insightful films that document subjects for which he obviously has a passion. Following in his father’s footsteps (Bruce Brown created the surf movie in 1966 with “The Endless Summer”), Dana has generated exciting documentaries about the surf culture (“Step into Liquid”) and off-road racing (“Dust to Glory”), and now, with his new film “Highwater,” he adds another work that establishes his signature technique of talking heads and wonderful footage of crashing waves being tamed by the world’s best surfers.

The film chronicles the Rip Curl Pro Pipeline Masters' 35th anniversary of the Triple Crown surf competition that takes place in Hawaii’s beautiful North Shore. “Highwater” showcases the ten mile stretch of shoreline that features a wild and awe inspiring assortment of waves that attracts surfers from all over the planet who all share a passion for danger.

Through one-on-one interviews, we meet some interesting and seemingly dangerous figures of the competition such as Vincent “Sonny” Garcia, the returning champion, who will be retiring after this year’s festivity. Sonny is an interesting dude who tells us, completely straight faced, that he doesn’t like all the people coming to his homeland and wishes for a hurricane to wash everyone away. It’s a no-nonsense moment, and the film is filled with them. Other people come and go, telling stories that range from interesting to boring. The best segment of the movie ponders the question “Who is Eric Haas?”—the answer is a mysterious man who just may be the best surfer in the universe.

The interviews are intercut with some great surfing footage, and the competition is chronicled meticulously. Brown must have had a thousand cameras covering the event. This is a must see for any surf fan who loves this sort of thing. If you are not a fan, it may be a tough sell. It was hard to follow who was winning which leg of the competition, and there never is anyone to clearly root for during the length of the film. It is as if you need to have some base knowledge of what is going on and who is doing what to fully appreciate the film.

“Highwater” opens a limited engagement September 3rd in New York, Maui, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego and San Francisco.

For more information check www.highwatermovie.com

Este artículo también está disponible en español.

In “The Last Exorcism,” we meet Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian), a professional man of God who has been up on the pulpit thumping the good book since he was a child. He is accomplished at the job, whipping his followers into a frenzy and passing the basket to harvest the rewards. Cotton has also taken on the practice of exorcism that has been in his family for generations. With a calm conviction, he looks at the camera and assures us that, “If you believe in God, you have to believe in the devil.”

The problem is that Cotton isn’t sure if he believes in God anymore. He has been performing these exorcisms to expose the practice as a scam carried out on blind believers. To prove his claims, he invites a small, two-person camera crew along with him to the rural town of Ivanwood, Louisiana, to document his final exorcism.

There, at a small, secluded farmhouse, he meets Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum) who is convinced that his sixteen-year-old daughter, Nell (Ashley Bell), is being overtaken by the devil, and only the good preacher can save her soul. He meets Nell, who is about as sweet and innocent as any backwoods farmer’s daughter can be, but seems to be blacking out at night and slaughtering the cattle. Cotton decides, with a wink to the camera, that an exorcism is the only way to free the girl of the beast within.

After rigging her room with moving picture frames and a rattling bed, Cotton performs the faux ceremony to the gaping-jawed joy of the father. Unfortunately, Cotton soon realizes that there is something indeed hiding behind Nell’s lovely grin that will challenge the preacher to rediscover his faith.

A sort of cinematic collage, “The Last Exorcism” is fashioned from ideas and images that have grown to be commonplace. It is, at first glance, merely “Paranormal Activity” meets “The Exorcist” meets “Rosemary’s Baby” meets “The Blair Witch Project” meets…the list goes on. But to transcribe them all from my notes would make for a hell of a boring review. Let’s merely sum up by stating that many aspects of “The Last Exorcism” is familiar ground “borrowed” from other sources.

It is easy to dismiss this sort of film and write it off as lazy storytelling, but “The Last Exorcism” has a few facets that make it worthwhile. The film is an example of the relatively new sub-genre known as a “Found Tape Film” that plays as if someone just pushed the record button on a camera and we see what is captured. This sort of fare is usually kept simple (people lost in the woods, monster destroys city), but “The Last Exorcism” possesses a good, well-told plot. You come to know and care for just about everyone on screen. Motivations are constantly questioned as the story unfolds.

Patrick Fabian does an excellent job making Cotton likable and engaging. It would have been easy to hate a man who is essentially a con artist preying on people that believe in him, but Fabian gets us to root for him. Ashley Bell’s performance is no small feat either. Without the benefit of special effects, Bell is convincing as a girl possessed, twisting and writhing in pain. Nothing is more frightening in the film than her haunted gaze.

“The Last Exorcism” is rated PG-13 and, by the constrictions that the rating brings, is better because of it. The movie shows you very little as many of the shocks and scares are shown out of focus, off-camera, or only briefly revealed. This, mixed with the realistic handheld look, makes for a very effective, tension-filled fright flick.

Where the film missteps is in logic and resolution. Despite the fact the movie is supposed to be footage from a documentary crew, there is ominous music inexplicably played during some of the uneasy moments. Also, there are times when the action is captured from more than one camera, which isn’t possible either. These are small mistakes, to be sure, but they make it difficult to invest completely in the film. Where the movie takes us in its final act is also lackluster and disappointing. Some of the last moments seem to be directly culled from stock footage of “The Blair Witch Project” to the point that it is distracting. The result is an unsatisfactory ending to an otherwise solid film.