Merrick is relieved The World Taco Eating Championship was broadcast in High Def…
Here’s MiraJeff with a look at two films from the Tribeca Film Festival.
One of them is from Steve Barron, who directed the first TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES movie, CONEHEADS, and NBC’s MERLIN mini-series a while back (Trevor Jones’ score for MERLIN is fantastic, by the way…)
Here’s MiraJeff who, besides hitting Tribeca, is grappling with his final two weeks of school. Best of luck, MJ!
Greetings AICN, MiraJeff here with my first report from this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
For those of you who don’t live in New York City and haven’t been inundated with Tribeca articles and cover stories in every daily, weekly, and monthly magazine and newspaper, this year’s festival is especially special. Robert DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal’s labor of love was born out of hatred, and began as a community response to 9/11.
It is appropriate then, that as Tribeca celebrates its fifth anniversary, the opening night film will be United 93, which my colleague at Towson University has called “one long punch in the gut.” As controversial as the film is (trailers were pulled from the Lincoln Sq. theater), it may be the single most important movie of the year, and I’ll be seeing it Wednesday night. Aside from that Universal release, other studios seem to be viewing this year’s Tribeca Fest as the East Coast Sundance, with premieres of Mission: Impossible 3, Poseidon, and Over the Hedge.
But we here at AICN leave the big movies up to the big reviewers so for now, I’ll be reporting on some of the smaller, finer (in some cases) gems Tribeca has to offer, beginning with Kettle of Fish and Choking Man.
Kettle of Fish
Melvin (Matthew Modine) is a saxophone-playing ladies man who just can’t seem to make a lasting connection with a woman. On nights when he isn’t seducing girls who are ten years too young for him, he sits at home with his loyal fish. Mel’s whole world is turned upside down when he takes a job playing in a band at a wedding. One hell of contrived coincidence puts him on the ferry with a beautiful bride Diana (Christy Cashman), who hopped onboard at the last minute fearful of traffic. Mel is immediately smitten with the woman who is marrying an obnoxious yogurt tycoon (Fisher Stevens).
The wedding forces Mel to reevaluate his life. He’s not getting any younger, so he proposes to move in with his immature girlfriend Inga who he has little in common with. Their living situation is a trial run, so Mel decides to sublet his apartment, just in case things don’t work out. Enter Ginger (Gina Gershon), a beautiful British scientist who agrees to take Mel’s apartment for at least a month. At Inga’s, Mel can’t get the bride out of his head, and he bolts, afraid to commit to a girl who although beautiful, is also awfully boring. Thus, Mel has to break back into his apartment and reclaim his territory. However, Ginger has signed a lease so she strikes a deal with Mel to let him live in her place and split the rent, on the chance that when the month is up, Ginger can keep living there if she can’t find another apartment. In the meantime, as his obsession with Diana grows, Mel takes a job as an elevator operator in her fancy apartment building, just so he can get a few minutes alone with her each day. It isn’t the best job but Mel doesn’t seem to mind doing it because it allows him to see the unhappily married woman he loves.
The supporting cast includes Isiah Whitlock Jr. (the “shiiit” guy in 25th Hour) as Mel’s sagely best friend who also plays in the band, Kevin J. O’Connor (Casey from Color of Night) as a nerdy scientist who rivals Mel for Ginger’s affections, and Eddie Kaye Thomas as another labcoat no less. Writer/director Claudia Myers has a few short films under her belt but Kettle of Fish is her first full-length feature. The film is a nice, light romantic comedy that doesn’t require too much thinking or strive to be greater than the sum of its parts. The material is inherently predictable and there’s little Myers could have done to change that. The performances are for the most part likable, and it’s good to see Modine back in action. He plays the character of Mel as his own age, and I suppose it was nice to see a breezy rom/com with fairly older leads. Gershon is gorgeous, as always, and when you add that British accent, she just drives me crazy. Gershon is a prime example of an actress who deserves more work, and I’m not just talking about guest spots on Curb Your Enthusiasm. This chick was bad-ass in movies like Bound and Face-Off. Why can’t she get a role like Famke Janssen’s in X3?
Kettle of Fish won’t win any awards for originality, but it is a well-made indie with decent production values and a reliable cast of veterans. It might just be the perfect vehicle for a middle-aged couple looking for a date movie at this year’s festival. Give it a chance if you’re in the mood for love, and don’t mind the usual contrivances of the genre.
Choking Man
In 1990 Steve Barron directed one of my favorite childhood movies, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” From there, he moved on to one of the better SNL adaptations, “Coneheads.”
Since then he’s just been doing his own thing, including the NBC miniseries Merlin back in 1998. Choking Man marks his return to the big screen, although the result isn’t quite as successful as his previous efforts.
The film follows a shy Ecuadorian dishwasher named Jorge (newcomer Octavio Gomes-Berrios) who works in a diner and falls for a new pretty Asian waitress named Amy (Eugenia Yuan). Choking Man begins with a fantastic animated opening title sequence before we’re introduced to our protagonist as he treks home one night on the subway. We follow Jorge into his modest neighborhood where sneakers hang from phone lines, and up the squeaky staircase that leads to his humble abode. He lives with a mysterious guy who constantly puts him down. There is more to this man, whoever he is, than meets the eye, and he seems to know things about Jorge that would be difficult for anyone besides Jorge to know, if you catch my drift.
The next day, Jorge goes to work at the Queens diner owned by Rick (Mandy Patinkin), who speaks in a barely comprehendible accent, though I did manage to understand that “more languages are spoken per square foot in Jamaica, Queens than anywhere else in the world,” which is an interesting fact to know. The diner itself is filled with a variety of colorful characters, from the man who puts sprinkles on his sandwiches, to an elderly woman dressed in all pink who dances outside in the street all day.
At work, Jorge has to put up with the obnoxious antics of a cook named Jerry (Aaron Paul), a charming ladies man who also happens to have his eye on Amy. Jerry harasses Jorge everyday for being shy, and Amy always comes to his defense, although sometimes Jorge gets so nervous, he burrows beneath a fence and hides in the shrubs at night. During the day, as he washes the grease and ketchup off of plates, Jorge has to rely on his imagination, envisioning the colorful patterns as a series of cartoons, including one with a little bunny rabbit.
The cartoons are obviously meant to represent Jorge’s subconscious desires, and while his creativity is clearly bursting at the seams, it’s unclear what context we are supposed to view them in because Jorge hardly says anything. The subtext of the cartoons is not enough to explain his inner thoughts and feelings so we’re not sure why it seems that Jorge experiences everything in life with a profound sense of wonder. From his spot washing dishes in front of the sink, he stares all day at a Choking Victim sign that gives instructions on how to give the Heimlich Manuever in case of emergency. Jorge yearns for the kind of physical connection the Heimlich demands, and like the anonymous choking man on the sign, Jorge feels anonymous and invisible. He even talks like he’s choking.
When Amy gives Jorge a Spanish language newspaper that a diner left behind, he is moved by her kind gesture and instantly falls in love, setting his sights on a toy dragon to surprise her with. In the store trying to buy the dragon, Jorge is so nervous that he can’t communicate what he wants. The only time he seems to come alive and take his eyes off the floor is when he chases a meddlesome cat out of the kitchen. After Jorge gives Amy the dragon, Jerry predictably one-ups him by taking Amy out of work to visit a “magic” carpet store, where a terribly stereotypical Indian man enchants them with various tales of mystical oriental rugs. Jerry also tries to charm Amy by singing “Fly Me To the Moon,” but she is wise to his attention-grabbing shtick. At work, Jorge is basically invisible, and his own boss doesn’t even give him any vacation time because “he practically lives here anyways.” Amy herself volunteers to work over the holidays because she doesn’t celebrate them anyways and needs the money to send to her sister who is looking after their mother back at home.
This sets up a quaint Thanksgiving dinner between Jorge, Amy, and a couple of other employees including a bull-headed waitress named Teri (Kate Buddeke) who has some strong scenes of her own when her personal problems follow her into the diner with unfortunate consequences. Another “nice” scene follows Jorge walking Amy to the subway. From a separate platform, Amy waves goodbye, but by the time Jorge decides to return the gesture, a train comes and it’s too late. Jorge’s biggest fear is that he is worthless and means nothing to Amy or anyone else.
The script tries to use Amy’s fondness for rap music to communicate something about language barriers, but the message gets lost in translation. Barron does have a good ear for dialogue and his story presents a fair balanced account of a multiethnic love triangle. There are some clever one liners and the mostly unknown cast is surprisingly good, although personally the film wasn’t my cup of tea. About halfway through I began wondering what the point of all this was, because the film is often too slow, and Jorge is such a quiet protagonist, it’s hard to get a handle on where he is emotionally because he wears a perma-scowl the whole movie and doesn’t take his winter hat off until the end.
It’s hard to root for a character that only spits out a few words at a time and looks like it’s painful for him to talk. Barron’s attempt at a small-scope story about real people, not characters, is noble, but ultimately half-hearted and unnecessarily abstract. At its heart, Choking Man is about two people from two different worlds who share a bond as outsiders and immigrants. It’s a story about the little things we do that make us feel alive, because sometimes our jobs keep us caged like animals. The person Jorge lives with might represent his self doubt, but he disappears and the cartoon shatters when Jorge gains confidence after saving a choking customer. It took drastic measures, but once he becomes a hero, Jorge is finally noticed. He’s sick of being invisible, and he had to do something to make Amy “see” him. Jorge’s heroics release him from his own prison, and as he puts the final touches on the paper bunny he plans to give to Amy to remind her of her childhood, it’s clear he’s turned a corner in his life.
The second half of the film tries on religious metaphors for size, as Jorge visits a church to pray to God for inner peace and confidence, and later, desecrates a statue of the Virgin Mary, perhaps denouncing his faith because of the hardships he’s fallen on at work. When he tries to put the statue back together, he is overwhelmed and scared by his own emotions, and starts to cry and freak out. When we finally get a rise out of him, his possibly imaginary adversary urges him to “make her feel something.” There is also a gimmick about Jorge’s broken clock that causes him to lose two minutes each day that goes absolutely nowhere. In the end, Choking Man strives for an ideal it never achieves. It’s an ambitious project, the work of a mature filmmaker, but overall, something feels missing.
Choking Man might be up some peoples’ alleys, but most will find it too predictable, too boring, and ultimately more confusing that it has to be. The climax gives us some closure but leaves the door open for Amy’s possible rejection of Jorge, so in the end, we’re kind of left scratching our heads. The story suffers from its own narrative limitations, and while this type of story may have a broad international appeal to the diverse crowds at Tribeca, it’s not likely to win any audience awards anytime soon. Choking Man is a difficult movie to get behind and even harder to enjoy, but if you’re open minded and patient, you may find yourself satisfied in the end.
That’ll do it for now, folks. This is gone be a hell of a busy two weeks here at AICN New York, but the fearless Sheldrake and I will no doubt have you covered. Personally, I’ve got reviews coming for Tribeca movies including Farewell Bender, loudQuietloud, Blue Blood, and Marvelous, as well as non-Tribeca films such as Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes’ Art School Confidential, the Ed Norton picture Down In the Valley, and An American Haunting, plus lots more, so keep your eyes peeled for all the AICN goodies.
‘Til next time, this is MiraJeff, signing off…
