There have been many myths and legends of creatures that have been sighted around the world. Creatures such as the Jersey Devil, the Loch Ness Monster and Even the Sasquatch otherwise known as Bigfoot or even Wildmen have been sighted and encounters have been talked about for years. However, out of all the supposed creatures which are reported to be roaming wooded areas or lakes, the Sasquatch seems to be one of the most documented creatures around.
Sightings have come from North America, Russia and Tibet where they’re known as Yetis and so it’s theorised that these ‘wildmen’ are in fact hominids, a subspecies of homo-sapiens (the human race) and that their existence, albeit rare, is still very real.
Sasquatch Among The Wildmen is a documentary that aims to explore the truth behind the supposed sightings that have been reported from around the world. With interviews from various people who all claim to have been close to a Sasquatch and some who even claim that they’ve made contact. Going into great detail to prove the existence of the creatures, some of the interviews and footage do drag a little bit, making it feel that Sasquatch Among Wildmen may only be for those who are interested in the stories on a forensic level.
After all the first-person accounts and shaky camera footage that you may expect from a show on this subject, the documentary does indeed get forensic and with the help from experts and enthusiastic investigators the documentary does go over things with a fine tooth comb. However, as this may delight some and may even tip the balance for some of the sceptics, it may bore others as it feels at times that the mystery behind the existence of some beings is more fun than the reality.
Sasquatch Among The Wildmen is a documentary that feels like it was a special episode of a television series rather than something that stands up by itself. So, as people may watch the show with varying degrees of interest, some may wonder if there were other such shows on different mythical topics that go into as much detail.
While he will always be known for his music career, RZA has established himself as an inspired voice in the film industry. Along with scoring memorable character actor parts (Funny People and American Gangster), the Wu-Tang Clan legend has established a visceral voice behind the director’s chair.
RZA’s debut (the hokey, but enjoyable Man with the Iron Fist) playfully conjures Wu-Tang’s kung-fu sensibility, while his follow-up (the overlooked Love Beats Rhymes) offers an emotionally-charged depiction of an aspiring rapper. Both efforts, while admittedly flawed, display a sharp and personal perspective, a foundation RZA ably builds upon with his latest endeavor Cut Throat City. While shaggy in its wide-eyed ambition, this heist-drama packs a potent thematic punch alongside its pulpy elements.
Cut Throat City follows four boyhood friends from New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward (Shameik Moore, Demetrius Shipp Jr., Denzel Whitaker, and Keean Johnson) who return after Hurricane Katrina to decimated homes, no jobs, and no help from FEMA. Out of options, they reluctantly turn to a local gangster, who offers them one shot at turning their situations around—by pulling off a dangerous heist in the heart of the city. When the job goes bad, the friends find themselves on the run, hunted by two relentless detectives and a neighborhood warlord who thinks they stole the heist money.
While the plot employs several heist movie cliches, screenwriter P.G. Cuschieri introduces an inspired narrative crux to center his devices around. The Hurricane Katrina zeitgeist isn’t an empty ploy, with Cuschieri utilizing the setting to confront the growing class divide pushing improvised communities away from a prosperous future. This is well-trudged territory, but RZA and Cuschieri seem well-aware of its circular nature. They wisely frame their narrative through the anvils of history and folklore, connecting the distinctly modern struggles to a lifetime of inequality. At it’s best, this well-flavored approach reaches grand and oftentimes poetic sentiments, presenting generational conceits through RZA’s alluring visual lens (his saturation of colors and kinetic framing leave a strong impression).
Cut Throat City’s massive cast features a bounty of assured performances. Most of them range from dramatically sincere turns (Shameik Moore and Demetrius Shipp Jr. display solid acting chops) to downright campy showcases (T.I., Terrance Howard, and Ethan Hawke chew the scenery with an infectious glee). This electric mixture would be tonally confused in the wrong hands, but RZA’s deft handling blends these elements cohesively. He meshes pulpy thrills with genuine dramatic steaks, thoughtfully building dimension for the film’s four underdog figures to flourish with.
Similar to RZA’s previous efforts, Cut Throat City presents itself in a shaggy final form. Cuschieri’s thematic ambitions often clash with the jam-packed narrative, as the massive rogue’s gallery of characters distract from the script’s finite thesis (Eiza Gonzalez has nothing to do as a straight-laced cop). New subplots are introduced at a nonstop pace in the second half, bloating a web of threads that Cuschieri never gets complete hold of. I also wish RZA refined the film’s focus, with our affable leads taking a backseat role in the second half to the grander plot elements.
That being said, Cut Throat City‘s falterings still register a certain earnestness, with RZA and company displaying a bold roller coaster ride that cleverly subverts genre conventions. It’s encouraging to see continued growth from RZA onscreen, and I can’t see what the star has in store next for audiences.
Visual Acoustics: The Modernism Of Julius Shulman – Review. By Hugues Porquier.
Total discovery for some, vibrant tribute for others, “Visual Acoustics, The Modernism of Julius Shulman” (2008) directed By Eric Bricker, retraces the history and career of Julius Shulman. Specialized in the modernism of the south of California and more precisely of Los Angeles, Julius Shulman, born in 1910 and who died in 2009, is still today the most influential architectural photographer who ever lived on this planet.
He was mainly known for his photographs of mansions built by renowned architects and containing elements of nature such as mountains, trees or water. In this documentary, narrated by Dustin Hoffman, we discover the work of Julius Shulman, but also the man he was.
Through the various testimonies of his family and friends, but also through Julius Shulman himself. Shulman seems to be a smiling man, who laughs easily. He is a real enthusiast and a nature lover. The trigger for his career came from his meeting, in 1936, with Richard Neutra, an architect who was looking for a photographer to document his work and with whom he worked until his death in 1970. This meeting allowed him to work with many other very influential architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, John Lautner or Albert Frey.
Through the life of a man of that influence, who lived almost a century, the documentary also linger on modernism in architecture thanks to Shulman’s photographic archives. The documentary looks back on historical aspects such as the emergence of modernism, which is the idea that says that form follows function, the form of a building should be related to the function it’s supposed to have.
The film also offers an exploration of his iconic Case Study House photos, and some of the photographs for which he is famous. It allows us to look at stunning photographs of Los Angeles or Palms Springs. In the end of the 1950s, thanks to the architectural press, such as “House and garden” or “Modern Home”, he will be able to develop his influence on the American public and to present an innovative lifestyle to the world.
Shulman’s work may seem complex to fully understand. This is why there is interventions from professionals such as Tom Ford, Ed Ruscha, Dante Spinotti or Frank Gehry who help us to have a better comprehension of Julius’ talent. They allow us to grasp the aestheticism and the vision of the world that Shulman presents to the world through his work.
Julius Shulman defines the way we look at modernism. His whole life has been devoted to documenting and illustrating the evolution of build environment in architectural form.
This entertaining and educational documentary allows us to discover an architectural movement but also a genius of photography.
Heist films rank among my personal favorite subgenres, with great filmmakers often juxtaposing the methodical initial planning stages with an equally unhinged and ferocious final climax (Den of Thieves and American Animals are some recent favorites). First-time writer/director Seth Savoy looks to strike a similar blend with his debut feature Echo Boomers, a film that combines its heist machinations with the often-maligned milieu of discontented millennials. While intriguing in its conception, Savoy’s film fails to impress on a technical or thematic level.
Based on a (loosely) true story, Echo Boomers follows Lance Zutterland (Patrick Schwarzenegger), a recent college graduate who leaves school in debt, realizing everything he had worked towards was built on a lie. When he is pulled into a criminal underground operation, he finds his peers fighting the system by stealing from the rich and giving to themselves. With nothing to lose, they leave behind a trail of destruction, but with the cops closing in, tensions mount and Lance soon discovers he is in over his head with no way out.
To Savoy’s credit, enhancing his heist film formula with personal ruminations on a disenfranchised generation has potential on paper. His script makes an earnest effort to dissect millennial’s mindsets, an age group that feels failed by a society that preached a formula of success that rarely comes to fruition. The issues arise from Savoy’s inability to present this conceit with dramatic grace. Monotone voiceover often serves the purpose of displaying these concepts, spelling out their core meaning with a forward clumsiness. Echo Boomers’ throughline reads with a cheesy rah-rah attitude, never matching its fast-and-furious narrative with nuanced ideas.
After stripping away the intriguing thematic flavoring, Echo Boomers stands as your typical run-of-the-mill actioner. Savoy never engages with his alluring rise-and-fall material in visceral ways, often relying upon chaotic edits to provide a semblance of style. The flat camera work is rarely spiced up with peppy execution choices, making the apparent budgetary restrictions all the more obvious in the process. I am extremely partisan to low-budget filmmakers who utilize their limited assets to the fullest, but there’s nothing present on-screen that capably displays much filmmaking vigor.
Perhaps what derails Echo Boomers is the weightlessness that permeates each frame. Savoy’s script provides no characters to truly attach to, as they often range between blandly earnest do-gooders (Schwarzenegger and Hayley Law’s roles) to flavorless villains that lack real weight (Alex Pettyfer and Michael Shannon, with Shannon deserving so much more than the thinly-conceived role he’s given). The acting isn’t up to snuff to elevate the contrivances either, with Schwarzenegger having similarly flawed acting chops as his father. Where Arnold was able to mask his weaknesses with movie star charisma, Patrick doesn’t yet have the gravity to grab audiences’ interest. The narrative also lacks any genuine surprises, traversing through well-traveled territory without employing inventive wrinkles (audiences can seemingly set their watch to when each plot beat will appear).
Floating through its 94 minutes run time while barely registering an impression, Echo Boomers’ mere competence can’t deliver a thrilling experience.
Documentary “Fly Like a Girl” from filmmaker Katie McEntire Wiatt follows women who went against the patriarchy and pursued a career in aviation, a field where women were long considered taboo or just an anomaly. The film frames itself around an 11-year-old girl, Afton Kincade, whose dream is to have a career in aviation. The innocent hopes and dreams of this girl were made possible by the brave women who came before her; paving the way for her and every other little girl who dreams of spending their lives near and in an aircraft.
The film then explores the stories of these women. Each story is unique and from different historical eras, showing all levels of advancement towards and for women in the field.
Some familiar faces include US senator and veteran Tammy Duckworth from my own personal home state of Illinois, Patty Wagstaff, the first woman to become a US national aerobatic champion, Nicole Stott, a flight engineer and NASA astronaut, Shaesta Waiz, a woman who immigrated to the US as a refugee from Afghanistan and the youngest woman to fly solo around the world, Captain Venice Armour, the first black female naval aviator in the Marine Corps, and Bernice Falk Haydu, a female airfare service pilot who broke down huge barriers for women during World War II. Haydu had to wait 60 years for the government to finally award her with her wings and recognize her for the service she provided to our nation; the multi decade wait was all because she was, of course, a woman. All of these stories are edited back to back and intercut before we loop back around to Afton Kincade’s story.
If it seems like there’s a lot of fragments of stories that are being told here that are intermixed into an hour and a half long film, it’s because there are, and this is really my main criticism. Although I loved learning about each woman individually, particularly Tammy Duckworth who I have always admired for her bravery, I almost wish they had zoned in on less women so that we could delve more in depth into their lives. It’s like we only got to see a snapshot or the edges of their interesting stories and didn’t quite have the time to fully capture their achievements, struggles, and rich emotional lives they developed as they battled into a field dominated by men. Moreover, although an interesting idea, there wasn’t really a clear tie in to Afton Kincade. I feel like she could have just been a clip, and the film really should have focused more on the women. There were just too many things going on and that part didn’t really make much sense editorially.
This is where the film’s edit could use a polish. It is almost like the audience is being bombarded with so much information that we miss the truly inspirational feel we are supposed to get out of the film because we are too busy trying to keep track of which woman achieved what. This should not be interpreted as a slam on the film, which I do think was very inspirational, rather what I believe was an oversight in the direction. Where the film went wrong was that it shot off into too many storylines, it really could have benefitted much more from something much more linear.
That being said, aviation, like many other careers, that were once incredibly sexist towards women, have improved considerably, and yet still seem to have a long way to go. There was absolutely no reason, for instance, that a woman could not compete in the national aerobatic championship, because, as Patty Wagstaff said, the aircraft doesn’t know your gender. This quote really stuck with me, and made me think of the struggles women face everyday, in every field, and in daily life.
Even in today’s progressive world, women who work in any sort of male dominated field are still seen as a fluke or an accident with their talents and achievements being downplayed. Everything a woman does is scrutinised; but when we can look to the strength of women like the ones seen in this film, it shines a light on hope. I was encouraged that we as women can fight to be everything we want and are created to be without feeling like we have to dumb ourselves down or not pursue our dreams just because someone else is uncomfortable with them. We must fight another day, support each other, and keep marching forward.
