The Black experience--from slavery onwards--is captured rather amazingly by Jeffrey Wolf's unusual documentary about an outsider artist, BILL TRAYLOR: CHASING GHOSTS

 Bill Traylor, the subject of the new documentary BILL TRAYLOR: CHASING GHOSTS, was already 86 years old back in 1941, the year that TrustMovies, the fellow who is writing this review, was born. Mr. Traylor himself was born in Alabama as a slave in 1853 (that's how far back this doc goes), and yet his art -- however you might describe it: "outsider" "folk" or "primitive" -- also resonates as surprisingly contemporary, if also somewhat befuddling. Traylor's story, however -- his history, his life and his art career -- resonates without a bit of that befuddlement.

The film's director, Jeffrey Wolf (shown at left), and its writer, Fred Barron, have put together in a mere 75 minutes, a movie that offers us as fine an example, via the life and work of a single individual, of the Black experience here in the USA as any I've seen. 

Whether this was the original goal of the film or not, I've no idea. But the achievement is certainly there. Of course, no single individual can truly act as a stand-in for an entire race. But, boy, does Mr. Traylor come close, thanks to the splendid archival footage, including interviews with folk long dead and some still alive -- especially, eventually, generations of the progeny of Mr. Traylor.

Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts is primarily about this man's art, which has, since the late 1970s and early 1980s, been recognized by the art establishment as significant. (MOMA, ever the sleazy institution, actually tried, via its then director, to purchase a chunk of  Traylor's art in the early 1940s at a ridiculously low price.) 

We view plenty of this art (shown above and below) during the course of the film -- enough, actually, to be able to form our own conclusions about it. For me, the art is fascinating in its simplicity, even if its meaning proves more elusive than anything else. Instead, it is the life of this man -- as a slave who was greatly appreciated by his original "owner," so much so that that owner, the head of the "white" Traylor family, made certain that the further care of the black Traylor family was provided for in his will -- that resonates most strongly.

As one of the many highly intelligent and thoughtful narrators points out early on, as horrible as slavery was, "it had plenty of 'gray' areas, rather than always being, no pun intended, something black and white." These black and white Traylors were one such instance, as Bill Traylor and his family continued to work for the white Traylors for 40 years after slavery had been abolished -- and only left, once the white family was taken over by a particularly unjust Traylor offspring.

We see how Traylor's art came about, and how the man (shown above and below) -- quite the womanizer -- came to sire perhaps 20 offspring, all of whom he managed to care for as well as he could, while living and working during slavery, reconstruction, the Jim Crow south and beyond. 

Talk about a "survivor"! 

Once we meet the generations that came after him, while seeing and understanding how his art slowly accrued its reputation, we're simply amazed and ever more appreciative of his accomplishments. Bill Traylor: Casing Ghosts turns out to be a wonderful memorial to a man, his art and to a time long gone that has now been returned to us via this unusual and remarkable movie.

From Kino Lorber and running 75 minutes, the documentary opens tomorrow, Friday, April 16, in New York City at Film Forum, and the in Los Angeles area at Laemmle theaters, as well as elsewhere around the country. Click here and scroll down to view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theatres (virtual or otherwise).                                                                          

VOD/DVDebut for traumatized adolescent numbskulls in Amanda Kramer's LADYWORLD

Whew! Characters, situation, scenario, dialog, behavior and movies in general do not come much dumber than LADYWORLD, a film co-written (with Benjamin Shearn) and directed by Amanda Kramer that hit theaters earlier this month and is now available on VOD/DVD.

The pre-visual opening -- in which we hear the sounds of what might be the apocalypse or perhaps just a large, out-of-control land-mover -- is by far the best thing about the movie, after which we see the apparent results of this "event," which strands a group of girls who seem not to know each other yet one of whose birthday they are soon celebrating (as below). Ah, kids!

If you are at all familiar with the blog of TrustMovies, you'll know that he does not generally direct his ire at fledgling filmmakers, and he is trying his best not to do so here. But this is a losing battle, having just sat through what seems like the worst film he has seen in his adult life so far. It does not work on any level -- realistic, symbolic, as fable, prediction, warning, nor even, god help us, as camp.

As conceived by Ms Kramer, shown at right, these girls make almost no intelligent effort to get out of the house in which they're suddenly trapped. Even if we decide that the film is not meant to be taken realistically, then why do they seem to care so much but do so little? Except, of course, scream and yell and act in an utterly insufferable manner -- even for teens (who, as is often the case, look a decade older that they ought).

I cannot recall a movie with worse dialog. It's almost as though Kramer and Shearn are deliberately trying to set our teeth on edge, while giving their characters ever more reason to be "dramatic." There is enough screaming, yelling and stupidity here to fill a dozen Dumb and Dumbers but only a single trace of humor. (Even of the unintentional sort: Yes, it's that bad.)

Normally I'd point out a movie's cast members, but I don't want to inflict any more damage. Maybe I'm just a typical man who can't or won't appreciate what women must go through in this world, though I do wonder how many women would get behind something this wrong-headed? Comparison has been made with this film and a certain classic entitled Lord of the Flies. Well, OK. But then please refer to this one as Lord of the Gnats.

To its credit, the film does have one moment of humor, as either the filmmaker or her cinematographer (Patrick Meade Jones) captures a parody of da Vinci's The Last Supper. From MVD Entertainment Group and running 94 minutes, Ladyworld hit the street on DVD and digital yesterday, August 27 -- for purchase and (maybe) rental. 

Mads Mikkelsen: on ice in Joe Penna's endurance test, ARCTIC, and prone to more cold weather and murder in Jonas Åkerlund's ugly, envelope-pushing POLAR

Mads Mikkelsen is one of TrustMovies' favorite living actors. We'll watch him in just about anything, and now, after his two current endeavors, we feel that we have. ARCTIC, the better -- if still pretty tiresome to sit through (unless you're a glutton for punishment) -- of the two films finds the actor stranded in that titular locale after a plane crash. Except for its frozen wasteland, the film has oodles in common with the earlier survival-at-sea movie, All Is Lost, which was infinitely easier to sit through because there was so much more going on and we learned more about the film's single character than we ever do here.

As directed and co-written (with Ryan Morrison, who also edited the movie) by Joe Penna (shown at right), what's mostly going on in Arctic is a lot of trekking and trudging across frozen vast white spaces, as our hero hopes to be rescued or reach some kind of civilization.

That's it, plot-wise. To even begin to describe the very few "incidents" that try to enliven that plot would be to give away the minor spoilers the film offers. Best to concentrate on Mr. Mikkelsen, below, who proves, as usual, quite watchable.

The character he plays, Overgård (we know this only from the name on the jacket the man wears), is clearly highly intelligent and resourceful -- de rigueur for this kind of film -- which of course will help him in his quest/journey. Yet the most interesting thing we note about Overgård is his his concern and caring for life -- in whatever form it takes. This is clear early on, as he catches a fish, and later come to further fruition via his treatment of one of the only two other humans we (vaguely) meet in this movie.

If you are a fan of lone survivor movies -- and not those of the horror/thriller/slasher sort -- Arctic may be quite to your taste. I found it slow going, with a finale (spoiler just ahead) that, while welcome on one level, utterly disappoints on another, via its obvious nod to the necessities of feel-good, commercial cinema. Overall, while I admired things about the film, I didn't actually enjoy it much.

From Bleecker Street and running 98 minutes, Arctic opened February 1 on the coasts and will hit South Florida tomorrow, Friday, February 22. In Miami, it will play the AMC's Sunset Place 24 and Aventura 24 and Regal's South Beach 18, in Fort Lauderdale at The Classic Gateway, in Boca Raton at the Regal Shadowood, in Boynton Beach at the Cinemark, in West Palm Beach at the AMC City Place 20 and Cobb's Downtown at the Mall 16 in Palm Beach Gardens, and in Jupiter at the Cineopolis. Wherever you may live around the USA, click here to find your nearest theater(s).

We get to see lots more of Mr. Mikkelsen in POLAR, the junky, envelope-pushing, let's-out-Tarantino-little-Quentin movie directed by Jonas Åkerlund (shown below), with a  screenplay by Jayson Rothwell, from the graphic novel by Victor Santos.

In the film, Mikkelsen plays Duncan Visla, the world's best assassin-for-hire (a profession that is not exactly "heroic," right?) who, when retirement time comes, is betrayed by his "boss" so that said boss can have what ought to have been Visla's multi-million-dollar retirement bonus.

The boss (played by an over-the-top Matt Lucas, below), by the way, is doing this to all his retirement-age assassins. Perhaps an assassins' union is in order? In any case, this nasty guy has sent out his supposedly best set of young assassins to murder the old ones. But in trying to reach their prey, these "kids" decide to murder a whole bevy of those whom they find "in between."

While watching this increasingly florid crock of shit you can't help wondering: Did the filmmakers somehow imagine that because they've dressed their kids in cutesy costumes and chosen perhaps the weirdest set of victims so far seen -- the most horrible is the character who seems to have stumbled from My 600-Pound Life into his or her (not sure which) 600-Pound Death.

This is envelope-pushing, all right, and it stinks of near complete inhumanity and sleaze. Ooooooh: Let's laugh while we watch these folk being "creatively" murdered. It's not dark, it's dreck. Ah, but there is that attempt at humanity provided by our Duncan's near-constant flashing back to a murder episode that he clearly regrets. Oh, so sad.

In the supporting cast is Vanessa Hudgens as the sweet but clearly unhappy neighbor who lives across from Duncan's hide-out home. Hudgens, above, right, with Mikkelsen, is very good (compare this performance with that of her Maureen in the recent Rent: Live on TV), and so, I suppose, are many others in the large cast. But to what avail?

Mikkelsen himself (above, further above, and torso-wise below) seen mostly in black eye-patch, is reliable as always, and in this film, unlike Arctic, we get to see much more of him -- killing, cracking-wise, fucking in the nude, and so forth. At age 53 he still looks fabulous and seems to grow more versatile, acting-wise, with each new year. He even executive produced this film (he must have been impressed by the success of his envelope-pushing Hannibal TV series). But again, to what avail?

Streaming now via Netflix, Polar runs just under two full hours. The film's finale actually proved a nice surprise (to me, at least; you might have guessed the connection) that even made good sense. But, boy, how I wished there had been a decent movie in front of that interesting ending.

Death becomes her: The Widers' moving testament to the life and demise of Linda Bishop, GOD KNOWS WHERE I AM

Let's admit it up front: GOD KNOWS WHERE I AM -- the new documentary by Jedd and Todd Wider about a woman whose decomposing body, back in 2007, was found in a closed-up house just off a relatively busy New Hampshire highway -- is a grueling experience. But it is also a fascinating and emotionally moving one that will be worthwhile for audiences who care about mental health and the question of how much responsibility the state has in both diagnosing and protecting those of its citizens who are mentally ill.

The body in question belonged to a woman named Linda Bishop (above, left), a divorced mother who, for much of her life at least, appeared to be a happy, smart, relatively popular girl and woman. What happened when and why to change all this is something the movie can only hint at, but eventually, Linda had clearly grown mentally ill (the medical diagnosis was schizophrenia), abandoned her daughter and older sister Joan (above, right), was eventually confined to a state mental hospital then released after some time and left to her own devices.

Those devices allowed her to become so paranoid and out of touch with reality that she eventually starved to death in the cold New England winter, writing daily all the while in a journal (pages of which are shown below) that she kept and which was found along with her body. It is this that the Wider brothers -- shown above (flanking Lori Singer, who provides the film's voice for Linda Bishop's journal), with Jedd on the left and Todd on the right -- make use of in telling this woman's sad story.

The filmmakers also probe family and friends of Bishop, as well as the medical/social services establishment, to discover as much as possible about who the woman was and how she came to die as she did. Their film is a blending of long past with the more recent past, of memory, desire, hope and pain. Lots, especially, of that last one. Along Linda's journey -- which grows ever more fraught and crazy, as she goes on then off her necessary medications, over and over again -- we go from New England to Florida, even to New York City post-9/11 (which offers by far the most surprising moments in the film).

The Widers' accomplishment, aside from telling a story that is both utterly bizarre and predictably horrific yet expected, is in the manner in which they brings us close to Linda Bishop.  They begin their film with the final entry in Linda's journal, which we see and hear but without any real context. Then they fill that context in -- slowly and carefully (this is not a fast-paced movie) -- so that when, at the end, we see and hear this same journal entry once again, the effect is suddenly and quietly heartbreaking. We know this woman now, and yet we also know that, given who she was and how she "played the system" in her own crazy way, there really was little hope for her survival.

God Knows Where I Am is beautifully filmed, the events reconstructed in simple, often stunning ways that never try to hide their "re-creations" while also making them seem part and parcel of Linda' life. Ms Singer's readings are spot-on, and though, during the many interviews included here, you may look for a villain or two, I doubt that you will find one. Everyone -- including, yes, Linda herself -- seemed to do his or her best under difficult circumstances. The movie brings us closer to understanding, even experiencing, mental illness that almost any I can remember.

From Bond/360 and running a rather lengthy (for this kind of film) but never boring 103 minutes, the documentary opens tomorrow, Friday, March 31, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema; on Friday, April 7, at Laemmle's Monica Film Center; and then in the weeks to come, across the country in another 16 cities and even in London, England. To see all currently scheduled playdates with cities and theaters, click here.