San Francisco Weekly August 1, 2012 : Page 17

sfweekly.com | Contents | Letters | suCka Short Takes Adam O’Brian as Frédéric Bourdin, but since it’s The Imposter this really could be anybody. West Dallas detective who moonlights as a hired killer. The Smiths don’t have money for a down payment, but they have something more precious: Dottie is a virgin. No longer content to gigolo along on his looks, McConaughey again shows new depths in an auteur’s film: “His eyes hurt,” says Dottie of Joe, and indeed they do, while the click of Joe’s Zippo sounds like an unsheathed dagger. Friedkin has always been an envelope-pusher, most famously with The Exorcist , and Killer Joe contains one particular scene that is as difficult as any I’ve seen. It is not, however, egregious — in fact, it synthesizes Joe’s double life as cop and killer, revolving around the horrible discord that occurs when interrogation-room psychological warfare is unleashed in a domestic setting. nick Pinkerton Free City T The Imposter Rated R. Opens Friday at the Lumiere. his deft, atmospheric Errol Morris-style tour through the phenomenon that is “se-rial imposter” Frédéric Bourdin homes in on one brief episode from the man’s berserk career: the period in 1997 when the 23-year-old Frenchman convinced a Texas family he was their disappeared teenage son. This is already well-trod territory, hashed over in a 2008 New Yorker article, a 2010 fiction film starring Famke Janssen and Nick Stahl, tons of press coverage, and even Bourdin’s own YouTube channel, but the story still harbors queasy mysteries at its center, as true-crime TV pro Bart Layton micro-analyzes every step of the case, via interviews with the Texans, Bourdin, and the FBI. How Bourdin manages to pull off this charade is the first conundrum, but the question of how credulous this wounded American family really is eventually becomes subsumed by oth-ers — as in, what really happened to the vanished boy? Why is the mother, Beverly Dollarhide, such a zombie? (The clan’s troubles with addiction and the missing son’s budding criminal career are fac-tors Layton largely avoids.) And what’s buried out back, literally and figuratively? Thick with reenact-ments and cute cutaways, the movie evolves into a cultural inquisition, following this stranger through the strange land of bad-news America, where the truth is still waiting to be exhumed. Michael atkinson Killer Joe Rated R. Opens Friday. | night+Day | Film | eat F Searching for Sugar Man Rated PG-13. Opens Friday at the Embarcadero. | A t one point in Killer Joe , based on Tracy Letts’ play, a hideously funny tabloid noir set on the outskirts of Dallas County, Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch) is let into the family double-wide by a relation whose face has just been pummeled into a Rorschach blot of dried gore. He doesn’t stop to ask what happened — such is the milieu of casual violence in which the film takes place, where it’s easy to slip imperceptibly into perdition. In to some bad men for money, Chris enlists his father, Ansel (Thomas Haden Church), in a plan: Kill Momma and collect on the life insurance policy she has made over to teenage daughter, Dottie (Juno Temple, a peroxided sprite who’s more than a little touched). They enlist the services of “Killer Joe” Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a luid, open-ended documentaries that de-mand more of an audience than foregone assent or fleeting bouts of passive outrage are rare these days, which is what makes Malik Bendjelloul’s Searching for Sugar Man such a gift. In telling the tale of Sixto Rodriguez, a Mexican-American balladeer from Detroit who cut a couple of tepidly received LPs in the late ’60s, vanished amid hazy rumors of onstage suicide, and subse-quently became an Elvis-sized rock god in South Africa, the Swedish filmmaker sidesteps arthritic VH1-style “where are they now” antics in favor of a more equivocal interrogation of celebrity culture. Bendjelloul interviews pertinent Rodriguez-saga parties in standard rock-doc style, including the hilariously combative former Motown bigwig and Sussex Records (Rodriguez’s label) founder Clarence Avant, as well as the singer-songwriter’s charming, touchingly loyal grown daughters. It’s no huge surprise when Rodriguez himself turns up, still living the same modest existence as before his brush with micro-fame, but it does dispel the impression that Bendjelloul has been punking us. Better still, Rodriguez’s casual disinterest in P.R.-blitzing his resurrection and apparent contentment with an ordinary working life lets Searching for Sugar Man hold up a mirror to what we’ve come to expect — and cynically refuse to accept — from artists in an age of pervasive, entitled notoriety. Mark holcoMb MusiC | SF Weekly A ugust 1-A ugust 7, 2012 COLUMBIA PICTURES PRESENTS AN ORIGINAL FILM PRODUCTION A FILM BY LEN WISEMAN “TOTAL RECALL” BRYAN CRANSTON JOHN CHO AND BILL NIGHY MUSIC BY HARRY GREGSON-WILLIAMS EXECUTIVE INSPIRED BY THE SHORT STORY PRODUCERS RIC KIDNEY LEN WISEMAN “WE CAN REMEMBER IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE” BY PHILIP K. DICK SCREEN STORY BY RONALD SHUSETT & DAN O’BANNON AND JON POVILL AND KURT WIMMER SCREENPLAY PRODUCED BY KURT WIMMER AND MARK BOMBACK BY NEAL H. MORITZ TOBY JAFFE DIRECTED BY LEN WISEMAN STARTS FRIDAY , AuGuST 3 CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS FOR THEATERS AND SHOWTIMES SEE IT ON A BIG SCREEN 17 2 col. (3.65") x 11" = 22" wed 8/1

Short Takes

Adam O’Brian as Frédéric Bourdin, but since it’s The Imposter this really could be anybody.<br /> <br /> The Imposter <br /> Rated R. Opens Friday at the Lumiere. <br /> <br /> This deft, atmospheric Errol Morris-style tour through the phenomenon that is “serial imposter” Frédéric Bourdin homes in on one brief episode from the man’s berserk career: the period in 1997 when the 23-year-old Frenchman convinced a Texas family he was their disappeared teenage son. This is already well-trod territory, hashed over in a 2008 New Yorker article, a 2010 fiction film starring Famke Janssen and Nick Stahl, tons of press coverage, and even Bourdin’s own YouTube channel, but the story still harbors queasy mysteries at its center, as true-crime TV pro Bart Layton micro-analyzes every step of the case, via interviews with the Texans, Bourdin, and the FBI. How Bourdin manages to pull off this charade is the first conundrum, but the question of how credulous this wounded American family really is eventually becomes subsumed by others — as in, what really happened to the vanished boy? Why is the mother, Beverly Dollarhide, such a zombie? (The clan’s troubles with addiction and the missing son’s budding criminal career are factors Layton largely avoids.) And what’s buried out back, literally and figuratively? Thick with reenactments and cute cutaways, the movie evolves into a cultural inquisition, following this stranger through the strange land of bad-news America, where the truth is still waiting to be exhumed. Michael atkinson <br /> <br /> Killer Joe <br /> Rated R. Opens Friday. <br /> <br /> At one point in Killer Joe, based on Tracy Letts’ play, a hideously funny tabloid noir set on the outskirts of Dallas County, Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch) is let into the family double-wide by a relation whose face has just been pummeled into a Rorschach blot of dried gore. He doesn’t stop to ask what happened — such is the milieu of casual violence in which the film takes place, where it’s easy to slip imperceptibly into perdition. In to some bad men for money, Chris enlists his father, Ansel (Thomas Haden Church), in a plan: Kill Momma and collect on the life insurance policy she has made over to teenage daughter, Dottie (Juno Temple, a peroxided sprite who’s more than a little touched). They enlist the services of “Killer Joe” Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a West Dallas detective who moonlights as a hired killer. The Smiths don’t have money for a down payment, but they have something more precious: Dottie is a virgin. No longer content to gigolo along on his looks, McConaughey again shows new depths in an auteur’s film: “His eyes hurt,” says Dottie of Joe, and indeed they do, while the click of Joe’s Zippo sounds like an unsheathed dagger. Friedkin has always been an envelope-pusher, most famously with The Exorcist, and Killer Joe contains one particular scene that is as difficult as any I’ve seen. It is not, however, egregious — in fact, it synthesizes Joe’s double life as cop and killer, revolving around the horrible discord that occurs when interrogation-room psychological warfare is unleashed in a domestic setting. Nick Pinkerton <br /> <br /> Searching for Sugar Man <br /> Rated PG-13. Opens Friday at the Embarcadero. <br /> <br /> Fluid, open-ended documentaries that demand more of an audience than foregone assent or fleeting bouts of passive outrage are rare these days, which is what makes Malik Bendjelloul’s Searching for Sugar Man such a gift. In telling the tale of Sixto Rodriguez, a Mexican- American balladeer from Detroit who cut a couple of tepidly received Lps in the late ’60s, vanished amid hazy rumors of onstage suicide, and subsequently became an Elvis-sized rock god in South Africa, the Swedish filmmaker sidesteps arthritic VH1-style “where are they now” antics in favor of a more equivocal interrogation of celebrity culture. Bendjelloul interviews pertinent Rodriguez-saga parties in standard rock-doc style, including the hilariously combative former Motown bigwig and Sussex Records (Rodriguez’s label) founder Clarence Avant, as well as the singer-songwriter’s charming, touchingly loyal grown daughters. It’s no huge surprise when Rodriguez himself turns up, still living the same modest existence as before his brush with micro-fame, but it does dispel the impression that Bendjelloul has been punking us. Better still, Rodriguez’s casual disinterest in P.R.-blitzing his resurrection and apparent contentment with an ordinary working life lets Searching for Sugar Man hold up a mirror to what we’ve come to expect — and cynically refuse to accept — from artists in an age of pervasive, entitled notoriety. Mark holcoMb<br /> <br />

Total Recall
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