Conviction is the story of Betty Ann Waters, whose brother, Kenny, was wrongly convicted for murder in a dirty trial filled with manufactured testimony from dirty ex-girlfriends and a dirty cop. To free him, Betty gets her GED, puts herself through college and law school – all while raising two boys and keeping a full time job. The film, which stars Hillary Swank and Sam Rockwell, opens with the most melodramatic of flashbacks as we see Kenny and Betty as children – suggesting a bond that is unbreakable. Nearly everything about Conviction, from its irritating title to generic presentation, suggests a trite, formulaic snoozer that would be pleasantly at home on Lifetime. Tony Goldwyn’s film, however, is absorbing in the oddest way, presenting Betty’s story so passionately that I was able to put the eye rolls in check and give it an honest chance.
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Tonight at 10pm the annual Brooklyn Film Race is on! In only 24 hours teams of filmmakers are expected to write, shoot, edit and score an original short film based on a shared theme and (as all worthy competitions must have) a surprise element. The completed films will then be shown on the big screen on October 21st at Brooklyn Heights Cinema. Up for grabs is $30,000 in prizes, dozens of “Best of” awards and an intense case of agida.

Launched in Manhattan in 2002 to inspire and gain exposure for independent filmmakers, Film Racing now has competitions in 21 cities, with last year’s Best Film winner screening at the NYC Gen Art Film Festival.

You can register a team online until 8:00 tonight. To find crew members and actors, the Race suggests looking here here and here. And after a nice, long nap on Sunday remember to send me a link to your film and I will post it to FreeWilly next week.

When a friend tells me, “Oh hey, a movie theater just opened underneath my apartment,” and that apartment is on South 3rd and Bedford, my interest is piqued. The Spectacle is a not-for-profit theater that’s been open for just under a month and they’re focusing on “rare films and live theater.” Their October schedule includes Louis Malle’s Black Moon and Philip Ridley’s hard to find The Reflecting Skin, starring Viggo Mortensen. All movies are $5 and the menu is simple: popcorn and beer. Thanks to Spectacle and the recent opening of IndieScreen, residents of Williamsburg are receiving some unique and much-needed moviegoing options.

From their website:

Spectacle Theater is a not-for-profit independent theater in Willamsburg, Brooklyn. We show hard-to-find, out of print, and rare independent, foreign and locally made films, as well as lectures, performance arts, and panel discussions. At the end of every month, we put on performances from Dome Theater.

A trailer for The Reflecting Skin is after the jump.

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With three minutes of interview time remaining, the suddenly irritated Dean of Columbia Business School tells Inside Job’s director, Charles Ferguson, “Give it your best shot!” Ferguson does. Much like that interview, his film begins as a light, friendly discussion about the current financial crisis and quickly becomes an infuriating and unfiltered brawl between director and subjects. Though the recession may technically be over, the economy is still an enormous mess – one that Inside Job is ready to blame on everyone remotely accountable. “This is how it happened,” an opening title confidently proclaims. What follows is not only Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time,” but also the best and most essential documentary I’ve seen all year.

The financial meltdown of 2008 didn’t begin with Bush II, Clinton, or Bush I; it began even earlier, and the feat of clearly and comprehensively explaining who is to blame and why is a hefty one. Ferguson takes on this challenge, however, and (with Matt Damon at the microphone as narrator) interviews members from two camps: 1.) the people who say those involved in the meltdown did so out their own greed and committed indefensible acts and 2.) a selection of high-profile people actually involved in the meltdown who are incapable are defending their actions.

Smartly, Ferguson makes it clear that the breadth of the crisis is, in fact, difficult to grasp, and that admission is a major factor of Inside Job’s success as a slick and engrossing documentary. It never attempts to over-simplify the situation, instead choosing to treat its audience like adults. Snazzy graphs and charts are used (and animated) well, explaining complicated elements like derivatives in a way that admits their complicated nature while still defining them well enough to both follow the film and get angry while doing so.

And yes, despite its ultra-polished appearance, Inside Job is a very angry movie, but thankfully, not an obnoxious one. Whereas documentarian Michael Moore uses gimmicks on his subjects to make a point, Ferguson merely asks them questions. Lured into a false sense of security by the high production values, good lighting, and initial discussion, his subjects spend a great deal of the film’s final segments angrily fumbling through their responses or reacting with a stuttering silence to the questioning as it grows more direct, personal, and damning. This is a man who treats his subject and audience with the same amount of intelligence, making sure that both do some heavy thinking – and research – after the movie is over.

Inside Job was released today, which is also the day you should probably see it.

The Social Network was, unsurprisingly, #1 at the American box office last weekend. But a common sentiment by critics and audiences has been, “Where were all the women?” OK, sure, there were women in the film, but the ones who had the most screen time did little more than service Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield in a public restroom and complain about men not responding to text messages.

Many bloggers and entertainment news sites, such as Jezebel and Entertainment Weekly have blasted writer Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher for both presenting demeaning stereotypes of women and trivializing the historical roles of many women involved with facebook’s creation. Jezebel’s Irin Carmon writes:

The opening scene of The Social Network is so wordy, it begins while the Columbia Pictures logo is still on screen. We hear a young (he’s still young, by the way) Harvard undergrad named Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) repeatedly, though articulately, say the wrong thing to the girl he’s currently dating, a BU undergrad named Erica. It’s the first of The Social Network’s breathless moments, during which you have to remind yourself not to guffaw too loudly for fear of missing the next brilliant quip or secondarily embarrassing blunder. Though David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin have turned facebook’s “creation story” into one of the most entertaining movies of the year.

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Tonight at Arts@Renaissance, three short films about development in North Brooklyn will be screening. The event tonight will last from 7:30 – 9:30PM, but if you’re afraid of the rain, the exhibition, entitled “Common Ground: Imaging North Brooklyn”, will be on display through October 15.

From Sarah Nelson Wright:

DREAM HOUSE by Laura Grace Chipley

Dream House is an experimental documentary about desire, memory and loss. After happening upon a derelict Victorian house in Williamsburg, a young couple becomes obsessed with moving in and starting a life there.

OPEN HOUSE by Diane Nerwen
“Readily visible under the thin veneer of real estate ads pushing Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s future as a destination for the moneyed, yet “hip”, classes is an urban renewal project on a scale not seen since Robert Moses’ “slum” clearance of the 1960’s. Documenting the brutal nature of the development spree which occurred as a result of the neighborhood’s re-zoning from light manufacturing/residential to the loosening of codes that allowed for forty story towers on the waterfront, Nerwen’s video offers stark evidence against the cheerful notion that the unrestricted laws of free markets are “good for everyone”.

OUR HOUSE by Greg King & David Teague
On Dan Taylor’s first day out of prison he had nowhere to go, and faced one of the most important choices of his life: to return to his past of drug addiction or to try for something better. Through a chance encounter the next day, he met Derek, a young Christian anarchist, who invited him to move into a new and very unusual community called “Our House.”

And they’ve teamed up with Jeff Bridges again. I’m looking forward to this, even though something about seeing Matt Damon in a Coen Brothers movie doens’t qite fit.

If you’re in Williamsburg this evening – and even if you’re not – make you’re way to the Knitting Factory at 10:00PM for a screening of Jen Senko and Fiore DeRosa’s new documentary, The Vanishing City. It chronicles the recent transformation of New York into a city dominated by luxurious property development – a trend that has left smaller, local business and property owners suffering.

From the website:

Told through the eyes of tenants, city planners, business owners, scholars, and politicians, The Vanishing City exposes the real politic behind the alarming disappearance of New York’s beloved neighborhoods, the truth about its finance-dominated economy, and the myth of “inevitable change.” Artfully documented through interviews, hearings, demonstrations, and archival footage, the film takes a sober look at the city’s “luxury” policies and high-end development, the power role of the elite, and accusations of corruption surrounding land use and rezoning. The film also links New York trends to other global cities where multinational corporations continue to victimize the middle and working classes.

For tickets, head to Willifest’s website.

Based on the 2005 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go follows the lives of three friends from their childhood at Hailsham, a mysterious boarding school, to their adulthood as “donors.” Set in Great Britain in the 60s and 70s, the story is part sci-fi and part romantic drama. In the language of movie pitches, much like people called Speed “Die Hard on a bus,” one could call Never Let Me Go “Can’t Hardly Wait in a creepy, ethically-questionable alternate reality where clones are created for the purpose of harvesting their organs.” It’s a thoughtful movie, but ultimately lacking in the emotional depth needed to gain our empathy.
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