COCOTE: Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias' Dominican revenge/art film opens

Is it possible to create a genuine art film around the themes of revenge and religious fervor? On the basis of COCOTE, the new movie from the Dominican Republic written, directed and edited by Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias, the answer is absolutely not. Don't even bother. Of course, another filmmaker might easily manage this combo, but regarding TrustMovies' taste and viewing patience, this may be the worst and most foolish example of pompous, ridiculous movie-making that I have had to sit through in my close to fifteen years of reviewing. It is, in fact, this year's sterling example of a "fart" film (or failed art film: a movie that is mostly comprised of hot, smelly air).

Almost nothing works, and yet almost everything calls heavy-handed attention to itself in Señor de los Santos Arias' bizarre endeavor (the filmmaker is shown at right) -- which alternates black-and-white and color cinematography, a small-screen then wide-screen ratio, a father and a funeral, religion and revenge (with way too much emphasis on the former) to tell a tale that offers barely enough content for a half-hour television segment yet goes on for a punishing 106-minute length. I held on for the entire film (my spouse gave up two-thirds of the way along), but I must admit to growing angrier as time wore on.

The director has certainly cast a striking, handsome and impressive looking actor, Vicente Santos (above and below), in his leading role -- and then deliberately refuses to let us get a very good look at the guy. Few facial close-ups are to be seen, and though much is made of the actor's large stature, don't expect to view him full-frame more than a time or two -- or from such a distance or in such darkness that the figure you're seeing might just be your next-door neighbor. Yes, de Los Santos Arias appears to delight in withholding.

Ditto regarding the "dramatic" scenes. There are three of what you might call "big ones" here: two involve our hero and his female relatives urging him on toward revenge and another that has him speaking to a local policeman and getting reams of exposition as to how and why things work they way they do in the Dominican Republic (and most of the world, actually: it's simply less subtle here).

In two of the three scenes (above and below), the filmmaker pulls his camera back about as far from the actors as possible and just lets us hear the dialog so that we'll understand that this is, yes, "art."

Worst of all is how long and how often de los Santos Arias insists on showing us yet another religious ritual/service to the point that any supposed Christian watching will surely forthwith beg to become a Muslim or Jew. These scenes are all foisted upon us with zero context, yet they go on and on and on.

We get our lesson on class difference via the rich family for whom our hero works. Absolutely nothing new here (or, for that matter, old that is shown in any depth). Everything about the revenge and the family situation is also offered in such broad strokes that what we learn in this movie makes the Death Wish franchise look deep.

Eventually, something does indeed happen -- hooray! -- and then we get an ending in which, oh, joy!, the filmmaker gets to do his let's-shoot-from-as-long-a-distance-as-possible so the viewer won't know what the fuck is going on. But, come on, guys, it's art!

Do I sound angry? You have no idea. Some of the glowing critical response for this film indicates to me that a handful of my compatriots are so eager to embrace what they see as "new and different" that, once again, the infamous emperor's nakedness goes either unnoticed or unremarked upon.

From Grasshopper Film, in Spanish with English subtitles, Cocote opens this Friday, August 3, in New York City at the IFC Center and in Los Angeles on August 17 at the Laemmle Music Hall 3. To view the half dozen or so playdates, cites and theaters currently scheduled, click here, then scroll down to click on Where to Watch. 

Short take: Scott Cooper's endlessly annoying HOSTILES proves this year's favored "fart" film

Or maybe last year's, as HOSTILES, the new movie from Scott Cooper, was released in limited fashion on December 22, in the rather ridiculous hopes of becoming an Oscar contender. "Fart" film, for those new to this site, is TrustMovies' special name for a failed art film, and few I've sat through in the past 12, maybe 24, months, have failed on the level that this one does. Oh, its themes and intentions are all good -- pointing up unfairness of the treatment of our Native Americans, while allowing that, yes, some of them, did some pretty nasty things to those white settlers.

Unfortunately, filmmaker Cooper (shown at right), who both wrote and directed the film (after giving us, also in the writer-director category, Crazy Heart and Out of the Furnace), is a fellow who insists on making certain we get the point. Every single last lick of it. Over and over. And as slowly as possible so that it has to SINK IN. Lasting two hours fourteen minutes, Hostiles may seem to you, as it did to me (and others in our audience) about as slow-paced a movie as you'll have so far seen. At one point in the theater, a patron near me asked, and very loudly, "When it something gonna happen here?!" This was followed by several voices adding, "Yeah!" and "Right!" I tend to keep quiet most of the time in movie theaters, but I must say I could not blame them. Though in all fairness, the movie does begin with an action scene, as a family of white settlers is summarily massacred by a group of wild Indians, with only the wife (the always excellent Rosamund Pike, shown below) barely surviving.

From there we go to a military fort, where an officer (the also always excellent Christian Bale, below, center, surrounded by his men) who has a multitude of reasons for hating the "red man" is given the assignment of bringing an Indian chief and his family (the Chief is played by Wes Studi, at left, two photos down), who had formerly slaughtered a number this officer's friends and has now been imprisoned for years, to an out-of-state Indian burial ground, where the Chief, who has been graced with terminal cancer, will surely die.

If you maybe feel that this rather oddball situation smacks of heavy-handed manipulation -- does it ever! -- just wait. Along the journey, Bale and his crew discover Pike, in mourning for her own family, and of course they must bring her with them. Their journey is fraught with a couple more Indian attacks, but mostly it is burdened with a whole bunch of angst on Bale's part. And while this actor is often particularly good with angst, here the stuff is piled on so hot and heavy that it drags the film consistently downwards. The screenplay, dialog and the visuals are as heavy-handed as the themes, and this tends to make even those few scenes that resonate emotionally hit you over the head so hard you'll want to run for cover.

At least half the film's "moments" last far too long, as well, so that you're muttering throughout, "We get it, we get it." Robert Aldrich and Alan Sharp, in their excellent Ulzana's Raid from 1972, managed much of these same ideas so much better and stronger. Plus, their movie is a half-hour shorter. If you know that film, it will make sitting through this one all the more difficult. Finally, it is Hostiles' undue length, resulting in a kind of constant, overweening pomposity, that most thoroughly does it in.

Yes, indeed, as the poster at top declares, We are all... HOSTILES, in yet another example of "we-insist-that-you-fully-understand-this-idea" mode. And the movie does finally bring whites and redskins together at last (while killing most of them in the process). But if, considering all that has now been done to the Native American population, you can actually buy the sweet/sad finale without wincing, you're a better man I am, Gunga Din.

From Entertainment Studios Motions Pictures, the movie has now opened in a number of cities around the country. Click here to find the theater(s) nearest you.

New horrors on video: GOODNIGHT MOMMY and COOTIES -- exploitation vs "fart" film

It's interesting to have two very different horror movies making their DVD and Blu-ray debut this past week. Neither set the box-office afire, but one, GOODNIGHT MOMMY, comes lauded with critical acclaim and is, in fact, Austria's submission for this coming "Oscar" race for Best Foreign Language Film, while the other, COOTIES, is one of those comic/horror exploitation items that appear with some regularity these days. Oh, yes: And the subject of both films involves some very, very naughty children.

TrustMovies was looking forward to both in his own way but, surprise, it's the silly-but-lots-of-fun exploitation film that brings home the bacon (or, in this case, the chicken) while the gorgeously photographed, ridiculously attenuated arthouse horror item turns out to be, yes, a "fart" film--TrustMovies' special moniker for the failed art film, usually one that's full of hot air. At 100 minutes, Goodnight Mommy is at least 20 minutes longer than its minimal content can bear; it is also so slow that I found myself dozing off at several points along the way.

The film's single surprise is telegraphed so early and so obviously that you will sit there waiting impatiently for the other shoe to drop. And finally it is one of the ugliest movies -- endurance-test torture ending in horrifying death -- I've had to sit through in a long, long time. If this were a good film in all those other ways, I could easily have borne the horror, but it's so bad so often that it ends up seeming simply pretentious -- little more than an excuse for the ugliness it ponderously builds toward. Yes, it's beautifully lensed and provides an object lesson in the hidden dangers of cosmetic surgery, but the fact that Austria would see fit to submit this piece of shit as a BFLF contender rather boggles the brain. Goodness: That country hasn't gifted us with anything this delightful, since, uh, Adolf Hitler.

Cooties, on the other hand, is low-level but rather juicy fun, well-cast and cleverly written and very speedily plotted, as it tells its all-too-possible tale of a bird-flu virus gone haywire. It comes from chickens and attaches itself, in tried-and-true movie style, to humans -- in this case children, turning them into blood-thirsty little demons. The opening scene that details a chicken's route from life in one of those horrible "bins" to death and onward into chicken-nuggetdom is alone worth the price of the movie rental: fast, funny, nasty and capped with a moment that should put you off those nuggets for good. The rest of the film -- featuring Elijah Wood, Alison Pill, Rainn Wilson and directed by a couple of smart guys and written by four more -- keeps the humor, scares, gore and thrills coming fast and furiously, right up to the clever, quick finale that offers a terrific last line paving the way for maybe a sequel. Had this one done better at the box-office. that sequel would have been insured. Still, even a straight-to-video would be acceptable by me.

Bruno Dumont's latest, HORS SATAN, gets ten days at NYC's Anthology Film Archives

Bruno Dumont is back. He of Hadewijch, Flanders, Twentynine Palms, Humanité and The Life of Jesus has now returned with HORS SATAN (which translates to something like Outside Satan). Here we go again with the "spare" dialog: "I can't take anyone," says she. "There is only one way," notes he. Oh, yeah? One way to what? Skin a cat? No, actually: to get rid, as is going on below, of an unpleasant father (or maybe he's a step-father). Who knows? Who cares? Certainly not the moviegoer who sits through yet another pile of ordure from the pretentious shit-king of cinema, M. Dumont.

The fellow with the rifle, above, is yet another of this filmmaker's very odd "heroes," a man, as usual, of mystery. Is he saint or sinner, healer or killer, chocolate or vanilla? I'll have a scoop of both, thanks. Because, as usual, things are so loosey/goosey, whatever-you-want-to-make-of-them in this Dumont film that you (and he) can have that cake and eat it, too -- along with the accompanying ice cream.

In his new movie, the filmmaker (shown at right) proves he has as little understanding of how a police investigation works as he did of a religious order (Hadewijch), wartime (Flanders) or the operation of an ice cream stand (Twentynine Palms). In the universe of this writer/director, everything and anything happens solely because M. Dumont wants it to.  'Nuff said. My big question in all of his films (since the better Humanité) is this: When have you ever seen people, living in anything approaching a recognizable society, act like this? The answer is never, and that, I suppose, is the appeal of Bruno's work. You want something different? (And don't bother me with questions of logic.) Here it is.

Symbolism, metaphor, and what have you are all fine. But if you are going to present something with a veneer of the real -- like the lovely French countryside, shot so vibrantly by Yves Cape -- it might help to people it with some reality, too.

Here we get that taciturn hero, played on one note by David Dewaele, given to praying, slaying and maybe some healing (though that last one's kind of iffy). This poor guy is constantly being offered a little sex by our insistent heroine (played with a bit more life by newcomer Alexandra Lemâtre) -- whose dad he has already rubbed out and whose would-be boyfriend, a little-too-pushy older guy, he also takes care of in nasty, bloody fashion.

After several tries at seducing our sinner/saint, and repeatedly being put off by him (I guess you could call him "the loner sans boner"), our girl remains frustrated, and our guy plods on gloomily. At this point in the film --- about 75-80 minutes into it -- the DVD I was sent ceased to function. I tried everything I knew to get it to continue to play, including ejecting it, inserting it and starting all over again (you can image how happy that made me). But still, when the disc reached the same point, it simply shut down again.

Now, I realize that M. Dumont seems to think of himself as a movie-maker who deals with religion.  Or spirituality. Or something. So perhaps he will take this as god's punishment on TrustMovies for my profane attitude. I, of course, see it as something else: a kind of reprieve for which I can only mutter, Merci, mon dieu.

Hors Satan, from New Yorker Films and running 109 minutes opens this Friday, January 18, and will play through Sunday, January 27, at New York City's Anthology Film Archives -- with screenings at 6:45 & 9:15 nightly with additional showings on Saturday & Sunday at 4:30. Click here for tickets, and here for directions.