Ray Pride

For anyone who's ever rued the lack of febrile, singular movies in an indie scene dominated by timid themes and reticent filmmaking, times may be changing. Azazel Jacobs' painful, acute, so-darkly-funny-you-can't-breathe psychological study, "Mama's Man," is due this fall, and sometimes film projectionist Ronald Brownstein's shot-on-16mm "Frownland" is up to bat now. My mind's clouded a bit after reading David Carr's "The Night of the Gun," in which a manipulative, abusive crack-addict loser works his way day by day to sobriety and a column in the New York Times. Brownstein's gritty, grimy study of a manipulative, abusive loser named Keith Sontag (Dore Mann) is a collection of notes on crap, an unstinting look at a sweaty, fumbling, inarticulate, inexplicably troubled man in his 20s. Or, as his roommate calls him, "a burbling troll." (And, as Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay aptly dubbed it: "sludgy miserablism.") One rises, another falls: big city, small world. In the most squirmy aspect of the movie's abrasive miseries is the underlying sense that Sontag is a New York everyman: that city could drive anyone into the basement, quivering wetly onto filthy couch cushions. Brownstein cites Mike Leigh as a key influence, but there's less vaudeville here and more authentic self-loathing. It's a singular achievement: this is a searing anecdote of rage, terror and tragedy that's hard to tear your eyes away from. With Brownstein's wife, Mary, as a troubled female friend of Keith's. 106m.

"Frownland" opens Friday at Facets.

(2008-08-05)

Also by Ray Pride

Dil Doings
Chicago has an ample, august history of activism and smoke-stoked malarkey. One such vivid centerpiece of early Gold Coast "hobohemia" began in 1914, spurred by Wobblies, a Chicago Renaissance socio-cultural efflorescence known as "The Dil Pickle Club"—a post-millennial edition inaugurates late afternoon at the Zebra Lounge, tucked away in an apartment building near State and Division
(2008-07-29)

Tip of the Week
"Contempt," a couple years on from its theatrical revival, is a revelation, an overlooked, shockingly accessible masterpiece amid Godard's oft-challenging canon
(2008-07-29)

I Am Curious, Yella
The best movie you can readily see this week traffics in the same approach to drama, in a calmer, steadier fashion, and the likenesses were even more apparent last week when I watched Christian Petzold's glassy dream-thriller "Yella" for the third time
(2008-07-29)

Reality Bites
"American Teen" debuted at Sundance 2008, and some viewers begrudged the sale of Nanette Burstein's eminently entertaining, beautifully constructed snapshot of the lives of several teenagers across a senior year at a Warsaw, Indiana high school
(2008-07-22)

Tip of the Week
(2008-07-22)

Scarlet Diva, Scarlet Empress
(2008-07-15)

Tip of the Week
(2008-07-15)

Tip of the Week
(2008-07-08)

Hancock Towers
(2008-07-01)

Tip of the Week
(2008-07-01)

An Inconvenient Cartoon
(2008-06-24)

Bourne Again
(2008-06-24)

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