THE STEPFATHER Was not screened in advance of our publication deadline, but a review will appear here next week and can be found online at laweekly.com/movies. (Citywide)
GO VISUAL ACOUSTIC Just about everyone in Eric Bricker’s festschrift seems to love Julius Shulman, including (adorably) the unstoppable old gent himself. What’s not to like? Ninety-three years old at the time of filming, the great photographer of modernist architecture was still working (“What else is there?”), laying down the law and running around in red suspenders to bask in his celebrity. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, Visual Acoustics shows off the stark beauty of flat-topped Southern California homes — with their pools and low couches designed by architectural titans from Frank Lloyd Wright to Frank Gehry — and then shows how they’ve been reinterpreted and romanticized by Shulman. Though he dismissed contemporary L.A. as “a pile of junk,” the passionate early environmentalist believed in the integrity of things in their natural place — preferably, the desert. His pictures refresh the region even for those of us who live here. Enjoyable as it is, Bricker’s giddy hagiography could have used a little pushback, especially in the matter of Shulman’s airy dismissal of the postmodernism that, he claimed, forced him into “retirement.” Shulman died this summer at 98, doubtless sounding off as he went. If Visual Acoustics doesn’t make you envy his life and his legacy, you haven’t been paying attention. (Nuart) (Ella Taylor)
WARNING!!! PEDOPHILE RELEASED This latest feature from 24-year-old actor-writer-director Shane Ryan (Amateur Porn Star Killer) begins with the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl named Echo (Kai Lanette, who wrote the script with Ryan). Beaten and bloodied, Echo stumbles away, then wanders, aimlessly and maddeningly, for a good 40 minutes of screen time. At a snail’s pace, we eventually learn that Echo, who is kicked out of the house by her father after the rape, was wooed at age 12 by 18-year-old named Malachi (Ryan), who may or may not have molested her but was sent to prison for the crime. In the film’s third act, he’s released and promptly greeted by Echo, who never stopped loving him. Victim falls for molester — a provocative plot line that’s inspired a stupefyingly dull film, unless one counts the many (often explicit) shots of Echo peeing and washing herself. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a nonporn movie where the camera lingers so often on a woman’s crotch, both naked and clothed. Whether Ryan means this as art or exploitation, I can’t say, but it’s definitely a theme more disturbing than the buzzword in the film’s title. (Grande 4-Plex) (Chuck Wilson)
