THE MIMIC -- Thomas F. Mazziotti's smart little ode to identity, grief, friendship, sociopaths and more -- opens in theaters and via VOD

While it may not be quite as smart, or even as deep, as it thinks it is, THE MIMIC -- the new film written and directed by Thomas F. Mazziotti -- proves fast, funny and enjoyable enough to keep us entertained for all of its 82 minutes. 

The movie also boasts a first-rate cast, each of whom uses whatever screen time he or she has (some roles are very brief) to nail character, while keeping us alert and often pretty delighted with what we see and hear.

This is the first of Mr. Mazziotti's movies I've seen (the filmmaker is shown below) and the first he has both directed and written, and it's good enough for TrustMovies to hope for more. However, it's only his third film in 20 years, so I am not holding my breath.

As I finished watching the film and then noted the many famous cast members listed in the end credits, I immediately went back to the beginning of the film so I could pick out certain actors. But then I quickly found myself enjoying the witty dialog and performances so much that I just kept watching. Had there been more hours in my day, I'd have viewed it all a second time right on the spot.  

That cast is led by one actor I always enjoy -- Thomas Sadoski (shown below) -- and another, Jake Robinson, whose career I've only just noticed. Both are quite good in roles that mirror each other in ways that prove especially interesting because of their contribution to both the movie's themes and its entertainment quotient.

Mr. Robinson (shown below) looks at times enough like a younger version of Mr. Sadoski that the two could almost be related, and since one of the movie's themes concerns identity, mimicry and character, this certainly adds to the fun.

Further, as much as these two g uys are clearly attracted to each other, the question keeps cropping up whether one of them is a sociopath or merely a mimic, so their physical, as well as psychic connection allows for a maximum of homoerotic (though not homosexual) frisson. Both actors play into all this with considerable finesse and zest.

Sociopaths seem just about every-fucking-where in our current movies and TV, and Mazziotti makes wonderful fun of all this via so many of the movie's various characters calling humorous attention to the fact. Like serial killers (even more prevalent in our entertainment culture) that exist in fiction exponentially more than in real life, sociopaths too are maybe a tad over-rated and over-exemplified these days. (On the other hand, we've just finished four years of a U.S President who is one, so maybe this is understandable.)

Stylistically the filmmaker tries some tricks that mostly work -- moving from color to black-and-white, and using a fun clip from Gaslight. He also breaks the fourth wall and, in one scene featuring M. Emmet Walsh and Doug Plaut, he breaks a lot more. Gina Gershon (above, left) and Austin Pendleton (below, right) each get their own fun camero, too, and Matthew Maher is especially good in the role of restaurant owner/bartender.

Mostly, though, the movie belong to Sadoski and Robinson, and these two score nicely. If you're expecting some big reveal at the finale, don't. There's a little something, but fortunately, Mazziotti's doesn't make too much of it. Or of anything much else, really. This is a small little indie film that, in its own way, simply delivers its ideas and entertainment with enough wit and skill to pass muster.

From Gravitas Ventures and running, as I say, just  82 minutes, The Mimic opens in theaters in limited release and via VOD today, Friday, February 5. Take a chance, particularly if that cast intrigues you. Click here for more information.

Re-viewing THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY and mourning Anthony Minghella's untimely demise

Watching THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY again, almost fifteen years after its initial release, turns out to be a major pleasure, for reasons both expected and not so. Having just recently seen once again, Purple Noon, the original film adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel, and then coming upon the version written and directed by the late Anthony Minghella, suddenly available via Netflix streaming, a chance to view this film again proved irresistible. And worth every one of its 139 minutes.

It's a gorgeous piece of work in so many ways, from its depiction of Italy circa the late 1950s to the scenery, sets, costumes and all the rest -- jazz clubs, seaside towns, yachts, an apartment in which adding a refrigerator was a big deal, and mid-century Rome -- the movie is almost consistently, eye-poppingly beautiful.

Then there's that cast: Matt Damon (two photos up), in his best role yet, as the sociopath Tom Ripley -- so bright, so intuitive, and so incredibly dangerous; Jude Law (above) as his "idol," golden-boy Phillip Greenleaf, who has everything Tom wants, including his girlfriend Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow, below) in one of her best roles, too.

Then there's Cate Blanchett (below) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (two photos below) for major support, plus a roster of terrific actors, American and Italian, in the more minor roles. As good and as groundbreaking as was Purple Noon in its day (1960), this later version of the novel was able to do much more with the Highsmith property, thanks to the change in mores and movie "morals" over the 40-year span between the two. Minghella also allows much more psychology and character(s) into the mix, broadening and deepening the story.

Mostly though, this movie may remind you of the filmmaker and his fine career, and sadden you all over again that these were cut so short. Minghella (shown at bottom) died suddenly and quite untimely at the age of 54 in 2008. Known perhaps more as a screenwriter (20 credits) than a director (only nine), those nine films include classics like this one, as well as one of the finest love stories/ghost stories/rom-coms ever made, Truly Madly Deeply, and the award-winning The English Patient, which garnered the filmmaker his Oscar (along with eight others).

Minghella had such a wide range of interests, along with the ability, it seems, to bring them to wonderful life. The man had some misses (Nine, anyone? Didn't think so. Anyway, he wasn't responsible for the ham-fisted direction but only co-wrote the screenplay for that second-rate musical) and he did a few films that were good but not great. Yet imagine what he might have given us had he lived another couple of decades.

Meanwhile, see (or re-see) The Talented Mr. Ripley and bask in its beauty, surprise, and the terror of being this close to someone who possesses no conscience. None at all. But hey, he's moved by opera and its uber-theatricality. (Remember that scene -- used in the movie's trailer to throw us off-base -- of the spectacular, operatic blood flow? Whew!)

Talent simply abounds in this version of Ripley, and the movie is streamable now via Netflix and is also available elsewhere and on DVD and Blu-ray. (And that's Mr. Minghella, at work, below.)

Ben Wheatley's dour SIGHTSEERS opens, offering life and death and dolts and dogs

Ben Wheatley's back. The unique (if that's quite the right word) filmmaker who, in 2009, graced (that is definitely not the right word) us with the "family" film Down Terrace, and in 2011 gave us the genre-jumping (while occasionally tripping over those genres) Kill List, is back again with SIGHTSEERS, a lovers-on-holiday movie that is closer in form and spirit to his first film than his second, as these lovers are (or eventually become) murderous sociopaths. And the audience has reams of fun watching them do it. Well, some audiences, anyway....

If you detect a note of distance in TrustMovies' mild appreciation of Mr. Wheatley's work, you're on the mark. (You can read my review of his earlier two films by clicking on the appropriate links in the paragraph above and then scrolling down.) Wheatley, shown at left, is relatively original, I'll give him that. You probably won't mistake his work for that of another filmmaker's. He's dark and dirty and comedic, but he doesn't seem to want to hang around the usual suspects: the career criminal types that first enticed Tarantino and his ilk. Wheatley prefers the British lower-middle- class family guys (and gals) who have become or are in the process of becoming socio/psychopathic. These are who he shows us in Down Terrace and Sightseers; in Kill List he gives us contract killers who work for and are (for a time, at least) sanctioned by their government.

Of his three movies, Sightseers is my favorite, so perhaps I am becoming something of a fan. The two leads Steve Oram and Alice Lowe -- project just the right amount of deadpan, along with the necessary charm, creepiness and barely-buried anger their roles require. The two also did the film's screenplay.

The movie has a great dog, too (this is a big month for terrific dogs: See also Starlet), who goes first by the name of Poppy and later morphs into Benji. (Did the same dog play both roles; I don't know.) Poppy/Benji adds some lift and lighter moments to the proceedings, which grow increasingly murderous and dark, as Wheatley provides his own special blend of black comedy.

The plot is basically a litany of murders, with who and why part of the "fun." This fun comes from a sociopath's POV, of course, which is part of the filmmaker's problem: You have to pretty much embrace "sociopathy" to have a good time.

Our antiheroes'/lovers' road trip take them and us around some of the more unusual of Britain's tourist spots: sometimes scenic and always a trifle odd. Class enters the picture (this is a British film, after all), along with envy and entitlement.

Sightseers is also perhaps the first of Wheatley's film in which you might say a character changes and grows. Into what, of course, is another matter. And, yes, I am being deliberately remote here in order not to spoil any of the ugly/funny surprises along the way.

The movie, from IFC Films and running 89 minutes, opens this Friday, May 10, in New York City (Landmark Sunshine Cinema) and Los Angeles (the Landmark NuArt). Three days later, on May 13, the film will hit VOD.

An American (sociopath) in Paris: Antonio Campos' second feature, SIMON KILLER; plus short Q&A with the auteur & his actor

Don't we all want to go to Paris? I sure did. Most of us will have had a better, more enjoyable, maybe even enlightening visit (it's the "city of lights" in the country of philosophers, after all) than does Simon, the anti-hero of Antonio Campos' sophomore effort, SIMON KILLER. Simon's a narcissistic cutie-pie and lady-killer (the latter metaphorically, if not by the finale, in actuality) who needs to be the center of someone's attention -- if not the American girl he left behind, then any of the few he manages to meet during his stay in France. I don't think I'm giving away spoilers here: One does not add that second word to a film's title without serving up a certain expectation for the audience.

Mr. Campos, at right, is the talented filmmaker who gave us a few years back AfterSchool -- a look at the way we live now in one of our "better" private high schools -- a movie as uniquely conceived and executed as it was appalling to witness. (It also gave us one of our first up-close-and-personal views of that very good actor Ezra Miller.)  AfterSchool was both hypnotic and exotic (in a kind of sick way), and so is Simon Killer, though for me it is not quite as interesting a movie, stylistically. Nor is its universe as "special" as that of the former film. It's leading character, Simon, as played by actor Brady Corbet, below, consistently puts us off, as befits the socio-unto-psychopathic personality this fellow inhabits.

This makes for an interesting, if frustrating experience, for we generally want to try to identify with and follow our hero (even our anti-hero) to some extent. Yet every time we try, Simon's behavior puts us off. When we would normally go left, but Simon turns right. If we want to zig, Simon zags. Eventually, we must just step back and watch at a safe distance, as our boy grows crazier and crazier.

Though we see various sides of Simon -- his interactions with a relative whose flat he occupies briefly, a couple of girls he meets, a prostitute or two (one of whom becomes his "amour"), a bully in the street, his mom via computer camera -- none of these makes him any more likable. In fact, each encounter has the opposite effect. This is distancing, to say the least. Our "hero" in AfterSchool may have grown up to become Simon, but in that earlier film it seemed as if there might be a little hope for him lying around somewhere.

Campos tries some interesting visual effects in his new film: his opening shot of Paris, then colors and shapes; crass color filters over his relationship with his hooker, too, as they seem to grow closer. At times the cinematography is grainy, smudged, almost always dark and unclear, not unlike Simon himself. But the sex is certainly hot. At one point, Simon gets finger-fucked by his girl (the lovely Mati Diop, of 35 Shots of Rum), although we might wish that Campos had been a bit more egalitarian in his use of full-frontal. As usual, the female anatomy gets the once-over, while the male remains discretely covered.

Another thing: the film moves too slowly. Campos seems willing to extend a scene past its sell-by simply to get more of a song he likes onto the sound track. And yet there are some indelible moments along the way. It's been awhile since we've had a movie so dedicated to exploring a sick personality. You may not much like Simon Killer, the young man or the movie he inhabits. On the other hand, you won't easily forget either of them.

The film -- from IFC and running 101 minutes -- opens today, Friday, April 5, at the IFC Center in Manhattan, then hits VOD the following Friday, April 12.

*****************

TrustMovies met with filmmaker Antonio Campos (shown below) and actor Brady Corbet (further below) in the restaurant of the Crosby Street Hotel for a brief Q&A earlier this week. Both men were pleasant and as eager to talk as you could expect from folk who've been doing the this meet-your-public thing for probably a little longer than they might like.

(In the following, 

TM's questions appear in boldface, 

Campos' and Corbet's answer in standard type.)

When I saw Simon Killer, I couldn't imagine that it had come from the same guy who did AfterSchool. They seem so different, beginning with their location and style....

I feel like the two movies are cousins. If you'd seen my short films, as well, you might find a through-line.

I'll have to do that. Still, style-wise, the difference is pretty immense. What were the biggest differences in filming the two? 

Well, this is a lot more intimate a film, I think. And then, filming in Paris, of course, and having only a outline script which the actors then improvised on. The script is a blueprint, rather than... gospel.

(To Corbet) How do you feel about improv. Do you enjoy it?  

Well, no. Not really. The thing is that I am terrible at improv. It's not my forte. I was just working on a movie last week, and the director says, 'Just say this and this and this...' And I tell him -- 'No, you've gotta write that down.'  With this film, we had some scenes that were loose, but that by the time we were shooting, we would have improvised at rehearsals, and then Antonio would transcribe what was working well during those rehearsals. Some scenes were half improvised, where I knew generally were we were going. The thing that's really hard is when you are in a position where the director wants you to be really angry, and then you run out of things to say after about 15 seconds. There's nothing I hate more than seeing an actor searching for words, because it shouldn't be about the words. People have this thing about improv, where they think it'll be more realistic. But it's not.

Watching your film, it didn't seem to be improv. It seemed real -- but not improvised.

Antonio adds, "If anything, this is more like the Mike Leigh approach to improv."

To Corbet: How did you deal with working on a character who is so dark? 

Because of the nature of this character's psychology, we tried to be true to him in every moment. Like when, early on, he's a victim of aggression. But then, the thing is, an hour later, he will no longer be that victim..

No, he's the victimizer.

Yes, he is living in a psychology where he isolates everything, moment by moment.  I didn't have to internalize anything that's going on with anybody else in the film. Just stay with Simon. And there he is, having a good time.

Hee's a narcissist. 

Sure, he a narcissist, a sociopath, all of those things. Or maybe none of them. He's so slippery, it's hard to give him a label. I think those things are impossible to speak summarily of. The best example of this, I think, would be something like in Camus' The Stranger. That scene in which the people are constantly pleading with the character: 'Why did you do it? Why did you pull the trigger six times?' When he finally talks about it, he says, 'It was hot that day! There was sweat in my eyes. I saw a figure standing in the distance and suddenly I had this chill run up my spine and it went into my right hand and I pulled the trigger over and over and over again.' So, like sometimes, you can blame an atrocity on the weather. (I laugh)

To Campos: Do you have another film in the works? Or maybe you've already finished it?

Not yet, but I am writing a second draft of something right now. It's a feature based on a documentary about a murder trial.

So you are staying within this sort of dark realm?

I guess so, yeah.

Well, it's the world we're living in right now.

It's always been the world we live in.

Hmmm.  Maybe the speed now....

The speed and the access to it. The technology makes things happen faster. Technology has made it easier and quicker to hurt each other. (Brady laughs and agrees with that assessment. As does TrustMovies.)

On that note, we have to leave our dark prince 
of independent film, and his actor, and await his next 
foray into death, shadows and troublesome personalities....