Movie Reviews: Broken Embraces, Paa, A Single Man, Armored

TRANSYLMANIA Humping the vampire trend, straight-to-DVD director bros David and Scott Hillenbrand get some multiplex action by shoehorning their usual teen-sex farce into a hoary Draxploitation spoof. Won’t audiences be confused if they haven’t followed the antics of these wasted college kids from National Lampoon’s Dorm Daze 1and 2? Franchise, schmanchise — we’re all gonna get laid! Spending a semester abroad in a Romanian castle that doubles as a rave-ready campus, the usual gaggle of horny losers, potheads, sluts and “brainy ones” get loaded with silicone-enhanced vamps, a pint-size dean hiding a diabolical scheme to fix his daughter’s humpback, and all the filthy, sleazy locals with ridiculous accents you can stomach. The jokes are mainly of the slamming-your-dick-in-a-laptop variety — think Porky’s with ’00s references — and predictable innuendos about biting and sucking. There is, however, something surprisingly old-timey about the perfunctory screwball plot points: When a demonic music box is opened, a reawakened sorceress possesses a busty cheerleader; a fratty blowhard is forced to become a vampire hunter after pretending to be one; and the evil Count is an undead ringer for the lead virgin. With stronger actors and real writers, this might’ve been a vintage comedy you could sink your ... nope, not going there. (Citywide) (Aaron Hillis)

UNCERTAINTY David Siegel and Scott McGehee’s Uncertainty opens on the Brooklyn Bridge. A young couple (engagingly played by Lynn Collins and Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is seen from afar, discussing some problem we’re not privy to. Then he takes out a coin. She says, “We can’t,” but they do, and then run at breakneck pace, each in opposite directions. It’s the sort of sequence the Irving Thalberg character in Elia Kazan’s The Last Tycoon could have had in mind when explaining the movies to a snotty newcomer from the East. In spite of his hauteur, the playwright can’t help asking  the mogul: “What happened to the dime?” What happens to Bobby and Kate, depending on whether they rush off to Brooklyn, or to Mahattan’s Chinatown? In many ways, this small, well-crafted picture is also a flip of the coin for its authors. Let’s call them SM, as not many filmmakers, frustrated by too many deals gone south and stalled productions (in this case a kidnapping movie they were going to make in Istanbul with Ben Kingsley), have had the nerve or the folly to take a leap meant to restore their own faith in movie magic — and maybe themselves. They scripted and shot this small-budget film, which is also a viusal paean to New York and summer in the city like you’ve never seen before, literally in a matter of months. Just as the Manhattan-side story is mostly mayhem, and the Brooklyn-side story is about family ties and creating new ones, SM could also be talking about themselves as filmmakers: Siegel has even said that one day he’d like to make an action film, and the duo does demonstrate a surprising nimbleness in the shoot-out and pursuit sequences. Uncertainty, SM are quoted in the press book as saying, is about decisions and their consequences, but could it be the two were also thinking about the uncertainty (and consequences) of career moves? Uncertainty’s premise is not unlike the even larger conceit that made SM’s first feature, Suture, so arresting. You either swallow it and learn to love it, or you start running. (Fairfax) (Philippe Garnier)

The Lovely Bones

Uncertainty

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UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US The subject of Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell’s documentary is Norwegian Black Metal, a scorched-earth subset of thrash that materialized around 1990 and gained international attention when churches started burning. Until the Light Takes Us defines Norse Black Metal as a combination of image (morbid corpse paint), philosophy (rejection of post-A.D. 600 history; anti-Judeo-Christian, pro-Odin), and music. As with any sect, arguments supersede doctrine — and the primary divide is illustrated via two elder statesmen: Gylve “Fenriz” Nagell, drummer for the long-lived Darkthrone, and “Varg” Vikernes, of the equally venerable one-man-band Burzum. Fenriz is supposedly apolitical, an aesthete who compares his music’s dredging horror to Edvard Munch. Varg is the hardcore lived-it Thoreau of the movement’s early years, a self-styled ultranationalist prophet, interviewed while in prison for arson and internecine murder. Since this film’s completion, Varg has been released and announced a new album, The White God. The cover art is borderline Tom of Finland; unfortunately, the homosocial/homophobic schizophrenia of Black Metal is herein unexplored. (As is the actual music.) Maybe the filmmakers “don’t judge their subject,” but in giving Varg a soapbox, while being too timid to dare him out of his comfort zone and push him to articulate the less palatable aspects alleged of his philosophy (enthusiasms for Quisling, eugenics, etc.), they only indulge his cult of personality, letting Varg — and the audience — off easy. (Sunset 5) (Nick Pinkerton)