The Tenth Man (El Rey del Once)

The King of Buenos Aires!

(2016) Drama (Kino Lorber) Alan Sabbagh, Julieta Zyllerberg, Usher Barilka (voice), Elvira Onetto, Adrian Stoppelman, Daniel Droblas, Elisa Carricajo (voice), Dan Breitman, Uriel Rubin, Dalmiro Burman. Directed by Daniel Burman

 

There are those of us who embrace our roots. Then, there are others of us who want to disconnect ourselves from our roots entirely. Much of that has to do with our childhood and how we feel about it. The traditions of our upbringing can be a prison – or set us free entirely.

Ariel (Sabbagh) is an economist currently living in New York but who grew up in El Once, the Jewish quarter of Buenos Aires. He is dating a ballerina (Carricajo) and things are getting serious between them. He is returning home to Buenos Aires to introduce his girl to his father Usher (Barilka) who runs a charitable foundation in El Once, serving the poor of that area and providing them with prescription medicine, clothes, food and even arranging for shelter.

Things start going wrong before he even leaves for the airport. His girlfriend has to stay behind because she’s wangled an audition for a major ballet company, so she will be arriving a few days late. Usher asks Ariel to find a size 46 shoe with Velcro instead of laces for a bed-ridden client of the foundation, and although Ariel searches everywhere, he can’t find shoes with Velcro in the short amount of time that he was allotted by his father, who sprung that on him just hours before he had to board his plane.

Once he gets to town, Usher is nowhere to be found although his Aunt Susy (Onetto) shepherds him inside the foundation which is surrounded by angry clients, looking to get meat for the upcoming Purim celebration; the Foundation has none due to a payment dispute between Usher and Mamuñe, a local butcher. Finally Usher calls and has Ariel deliver the shoes, then go to the apartment of a deceased client to find unused prescriptions to take back to the Foundation to redistribute. He is accompanied by Eva (Zylberberg), an attractive but mute Orthodox Jew whose hand he cannot even shake due to the proscriptions of their brand of the faith. It’s this kind of thing that drove a wedge between Ariel and Usher to begin with.

As the week progresses, things begin to fall apart for Ariel who continues to be avoided by his father and who gets roped into performing errands for the Foundation. However, Ariel begins to be inspired by Eva’s spirit and sweetness, and slowly he begins to succumb to the charm of his old neighborhood. What will this mean for the fractured relationship between father and son, and more to the point, between the son and his faith?

Burman has a history of films that deal with the Jewish faith in Latin America that explore similar subjects as he does here, although not quite in the same way. The early part of the movie is a little bit off-center, even a bit surreal as the two most important people in Ariel’s life – his father and his girlfriend – are nothing more than voices on a cellular phone and he wanders about El Once, a bit lost and befuddled. Gradually, though through the rhythms of the neighborhood and its rituals and particularly through the sweet and gentle Eva (who actually does have a voice), he finds a sense of purpose and connection and that journey is at the heart of the movie.

Sabbagh spends most of the movie on the phone, and that can be fairly boring cinematically speaking but the actor, who resembles Jason Alexander a bit to my mind, pulls it off. He plays Ariel as a fairly low-key individual; there are no histrionics, only a sense of frustration that grows as the movie begins, but the more he becomes involved in the neighborhood and with Eva, the more he changes and finds himself. It’s a stellar performance and one you may not want to miss.

I have to admit I was squirming a bit through the first half of the film but the longer it went on, the more it appealed to me. Burman clearly feels a connection with El Once (he is also a resident of the area) and just as clearly a real affection for it. The movie was filmed in the neighborhood and many of the people who live there show up as extras or in small roles.

Most of the time when we see movies about the Jewish experience, we are seeing it either in New York, Eastern Europe or Israel. Burman’s films provide us a look at what Judaism means in Latin America, a predominantly Catholic region but certainly with a fairly large Jewish population. The movie isn’t necessarily a love letter to El Once, but it certainly plays a role in the film and is a large part of why I liked it so much.

Given the charm of the neighborhood and Ariel’s evolution (or de-evolution from a certain standpoint) this is the kind of movie that generally appeals to me. It’s low-key, charming and provides a look at life somewhere that I probably will never see. Movies like this give us perspective into our own daily lives and even if you’re not Jewish, you will likely find this as heartfelt and warm as I did.

REASONS TO GO: This is the kind of movie that grows on you as it plays. Sabbagh plays it low-key and gives a tremendous performance.
REASONS TO STAY: Some might find this a bit overly out there, particularly at the beginning.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some sexual content.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The scene filmed in the Mad About Fabrics store was filmed in the actual store with the owner of the store playing himself. Usher Barilka, who runs the charitable foundation in the area that the one in the film is based on, provides his voice as Ariel’s father.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/6/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 73% positive reviews. Metacritic: 66/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Putzel
FINAL RATING: 7.5/10
NEXT: The Secret Life of Pets

The Croods

Eep reaches for her dreams.

(2013) Animated Feature (DreamWorks Animation) Starring the voices of Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Catherine Keener, Clark Duke, Cloris Leachman, Chris Sanders, Randy Thom. Directed by Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco

At the dawn of time, everything was new. Even change was new. Survival was the only motivator for anything and those who were able to change, survived.

Eep (Stone) is a young cave girl whose father Grug (Cage) has lived life by a strict rule; fear everything. Grug has depended on brute strength and caution to keep his family alive, including his wife Ugga (Keener), son Thunk (Duke), feral baby Sandy (Thom) and his mother-in-law Gran (Leachman), the latter of which he wouldn’t mind seeing violate a few of his rules. Eep chafes at the restrictions placed upon her, longing to see the world outside the cave but there are too many dangers in the prehistoric world for her to do that on her own.

Then one night she sees a light outside the cave. What was the sun doing out at this hour? But it wasn’t daylight. She must investigate! She follows the light and runs into Guy (Reynolds), a step up on the evolutionary ladder. He has invented fire and is running around the countryside with it. After some time, she gets that he has a lot of interesting ideas and might be a valuable addition to the family (most of their neighbors have fallen to pestilence and predators). He also has a cute little mammal named Belt (Sanders) who provides quite a few functions, not the least of which is providing appropriately dramatic musical accompaniment.

However, Guy has a warning; the world is changing and tearing itself apart. They’ll need to get to high ground in order to survive. Grug pooh-poohs the idea; they can ride anything out in the safety and security of their cave. However, when the cave is destroyed, Grug has to rethink his position (and believe me, that’s quite an accomplishment for Grug). The family will have to make its way through an increasingly hostile landscape facing all sorts of bizarre and fearsome threats before they reach safety.

I have to admit, my expectations weren’t very high for this one. It seems that of late there’s been a surfeit of mediocre animated features (some very successful I might add) that really seem to be little more than an attempt to create characters that can be marketed as toys, happy meals, TV shows and whatever money-generating idea the studios can think of. And I don’t doubt that there is some of that involved here too

But still this one has plenty of heart. Yes, the message seems to be “try bold new things” which is something most kids have trouble doing. However, the filmmakers borrow liberally from such things as the old Looney Toons Roadrunner cartoons. Some critics have complained about it; either because it’s ripping off a classic or because the classic is so violent and outrageous to begin with. However, as one who grew up on them, I can say that you couldn’t pick a better source to rip off from. And homage is the sincerest form of flattery is it not?

The voice cast is pretty small for one of these things which works out nicely. Cage, normally an actor who can lose it in an instant, plays the dad with comparative restraint. He actually has some very nice scenes with the spunky Stone as their fractured parental bond is repaired in the crisis. Da Queen shed more than a few tears and I have to admit to being misty eyed myself. That was completely unexpected.

It was also nice to hear Leachman, who last year attended the Florida Film Festival and then tended bar at the Eden into the wee hours of the morning, doing her thing. She announces with that tone that tells you she knows how irritated Grug is with the fact that she’s still alive that she is indeed, still alive. It’s Cage however who gets the best line of the film: “Release the baby!!” You had to be there I guess.

Funny and endearing, this is the kind of animated feature that the kids will love and their parents won’t mind. In fact their parents might end up liking it more than the kids, which doesn’t happen often. The Croods relies on slapstick humor, a bit of pathos and a can-do attitude to be successful, tuning out the cheap potty humor which seems to be creeping into kid flicks more and more these days (and how did I start sounding like my Dad?) which is appreciated. The first major animated feature of the year (not counting Escape From Planet Earth which I haven’t seen yet but admittedly it comes fro a mid-major) may turn out to be the most surprising – and one of the best. Who’da Thunk?

REASONS TO GO: Surprisingly moving and well-animated. Fun for the whole family. Road Runner-esque.

REASONS TO STAY: Nothing particularly new or daring.

FAMILY VALUES:  Some of the scenes in the film depict some peril that might be a bit too scary for the really young.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: After a long run with Paramount, this is the first DreamWorks Animation film to be distributed by 20th Century Fox.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 3/28/13: Rotten Tomatoes: 67% positive reviews. Metacritic: 55/100; the reviews were pretty mediocre trending towards the negative.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Incredibles

FINAL RATING: 7.5/10

NEXT: Red Planet

Kinky Boots

Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.

(Miramax) Joel Edgerton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sarah-Jane Potts, Nick Frost, Linda Bassett, Jemima Rooper, Robert Pugh, Ewan Hooper, Stephen Marcus, Mona Hammond, Kellie Bright, Joanna Scanlon, Geoffrey Streatfield, Leo Bill. Directed by Julian Jarrold

Sometimes our biggest problem is not knowing where we fit in the grand scheme of things. We flail around, trying to find answers but really, the answers are in ourselves for the most part. However, it is also true that life can simply be a process of finding one’s own niche and dwelling within it comfortably.

Charlie Price (Edgerton) doesn’t want his own niche. His father Harold (Pugh) is the owner of Prince and Sons, a Northamptonshire shoe factory that has been in the family for generations, and expects Charlie to pick up on his passion for quality men’s footwear. Charlie, however, would much rather move to London with his sophisticated fiancée Nicola (Rooper) – in fact, the two of them are moving into a gorgeous flat that’s not too expensive, but not too far from it either. Life is going exactly the way Charlie wants it to.

Then his father dies and Charlie must return to Northampton and take over the factory. The workers, who have known Charlie ever since childhood, are leery. After all, he has essentially rejected a way of life that they have known all their lives and takes over the business without knowing all that much about it. The bullheaded, opinionated Don (Frost) expresses what the workers are feeling.

As the days go by, Charlie finds to his horror that the business that he thought was strong and stable was anything but. People don’t look for quality shoes that last a lifetime; retailers want shoes that will force customers to come back over and over again to replace them, and the population is buying things from Nike and Reebok in any case. When he is unable to get a big sale from one of their biggest clients, Charlie is forced to lay off some of his workers, including the loud and brash Lauren (Potts), who chides him for not doing anything to save her job or even finding a new niche for the company.

Depressed and not supported by his fiancée in any way whatsoever, Charlie goes to a bar to get drunk. Staggering home, he witnesses what appear to be several rough men molesting a beautiful black woman in a back alley. Charlie’s attempts at intervening, however, are ill-advised at best and he winds up unconscious and the thugs flee thinking they might have killed him. The woman, however, turns out to be a man dressed as a woman, a highly-regarded female impersonator known as Lola (Ejiofor) who has a show in London. When she remarks after breaking a heel that it’s a shame that there aren’t any sexy boots of women’s style created for a man’s weight, Charlie is struck by brilliant inspiration; there are an awful lot of transgenders, cross-dressers and drag queens out there and they are a market not being served by anyone. Price and Sons could create their own market – a new niche. He recruits Lauren for the scheme and together they pitch Lola to be their designer. After some reluctance, Lola agrees.

However, there are some obstacles. First of all, the working class of Northampton isn’t quite ready for the flamboyant Lola, who tones down her act at Charlie’s urging, but even then, she is not taken to by the workers, especially Don. The financial situation for Price and Sons is dire, and Charlie needs to have samples ready for the Milan Shoe Fair, where prospective buyers would be gathering, in just a matter of weeks. On top of that, Nicola is getting antsy and wants Charlie to walk away from what she senses is impending disaster. Charlie is getting pressured from all sides, and he begins to take it out on those around him. Can he beat the odds?

This is, incredibly enough, loosely based on actual events. The very real Kinky Boots Company served as inspiration for the movie, and quite frankly, I didn’t expect it to be as charming and as heart-warming as it was. Director Jarrold and his cinematographer Eigil Bryld have a nice eye for the dreary industrial landscapes of Northampton, the sophisticated swinging hangouts of London and the classical fashion capital of Milan.

He also cast Lola brilliantly. Ejiofor delivers the kind of performance that I would consider Oscar-worthy if it only had occurred in a movie being released in the latter part of the year. He is brassy, ballsy and charming, with just enough self-doubt to make him human. He also has a surprisingly good singing voice, which he uses to good effect during the musical numbers.

There is a clear message for tolerance, but the filmmakers aren’t preachy about it. They prefer to force the audience to come up with their own ideas of what being a man is all about, and in fact, they seem to say, there is certainly room for more than one picture of what real manhood is. You may not come out of the movie ready to march in the next Gay Pride parade, but you will come out of the movie entertained.

WHY RENT THIS: Ejiofor’s performance is brilliant. The movie is charming and unexpectedly heart-warming. Well-photographed with an eye for the dreary industrial landscapes of Northampton and the glitz and glamour of London and Milan.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Edgerton, a fine actor, is overwhelmed by the flamboyant Ejiofor.

FAMILY VALUES: The thematic material might be a little difficult for some, and there is plenty of salty language to go around.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Director Jarrold is descended from the founders of England’s Jarrold’s Department store, which was founded in 1770.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: There’s a look at the actual factory that inspired the movie, and a short but fascinating look at all the steps that go into the making of a single shoe.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

TOMORROW: The Messenger