Simon Killer is a well-acted, well-directed film that’s going nowhere, slow.

I mean, somewhere – somewhere deep inside – there may exist some subtle subtext regarding the way American aristocrats treat their French brethren like whores. But, otherwise, the entire movie’s nothing more than a well-acted, well-directed screenplay that – once again – is going nowhere, slow.

Watch the first 10 minutes. Watch the last 10 minutes. Fast forward past the dead air in between.

(Simon Killer arrives in limited release this Friday, April 5th, and will be available via Video OnDemand as of next Friday, April 12th.)

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“I don’t think about the reader; I think about the book. I think about the sentence. I think about the paragraph. I think about the page. I go over it, and over it, and over it. The book begins to make its demands. The demands are intellectual, they’re imaginative, and they’re aesthetic … I’m a very bad judge of how people will respond to my work; how the general reader will respond to a book. And I’m always surprised by the responses that a book elicits. I don’t think I’m the only writer who experiences this. There’s a kind of dummy who lives [inside] here, y’know? And you don’t know what you’ve done.”

Ryan Gosling has not so much reimagined the strong, silent type as he has made it his own. Drive, Blue Valentine, Half Nelson, Lars and The Real Girl – These are all unique, well-constructed character studies in a signature mold. The good news is, The Place Beyond The Pines continues in that vein, providing one of the most visceral performances Ryan Gosling has elicited to date.

Pines is a brilliantly-adapted cautionary tale about fathers and sons, good guys and bad, and the very thin – sometimes even nonexistent – line that separates one from the other. Ben Mendelsohn is noteworthy, Bradley Cooper is superb, and Eva Mendes, well, Eva Mendes is just fucking fantastic, boy. That’s what Eva Mendes is.

Mendes is so spot-on, in fact, that you may even find yourself resenting her good looks. I mean, sure, the same can be said for most of the leading cast here. But it’s Mendes, more than anyone else, who always seems to be afforded such short shrift. Perhaps that’s because Mendes is a spokesmodel, and, as such, it makes it chauvinistically acceptable for the media to simply accept her on those terms. But Mendes is so much more than that, really. And, to that end, she is absolutely fantastic in this film – a welcome female presence in a veritable sea of virile men.

Above and beyond that, The Place Beyond The Pines is a pretty remarkable motion picture. It’s the kind of vehicle that a lot of mainstream critics might dismiss as being unnecessarily dark or uninspiring. But those are probably the same critics who’d be quick to point out just how fucking hot Eva Mendes looks throughout. So my advice would be to ignore them, ignore that, and treat yourself to one sprawling king-hell-bastard of a film – a penetrating reminder that we’re all paying for the sins of our fathers, and we’ve been doing it so long we almost languish in the foil.

(The Place Beyond The Pines arrives in limited release in New York City and Los Angeles today, with a national rollout to follow.)

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It was just past 1 am when the ocean breeze came pressing down, forcing rusty hinges on the porch to bend and squeal like aching joints. I was alone in my apartment, drinking Mad Dog from the bottle; listening to the cut and buzz of cables in the storm.

When out of nowhere came a clap so loud it set me rolling on my heels. I recognized that clap on spec, having heard it several times before.

I pulled the plug out on my Tiffany, assumed a foothold near the door. I pressed one ear up to the woodwork, genuflected on the floor. I swept both knees across the threshold, turned the doorknob like a dial. Then I eased the chain-lock open, slithered low into the hall.

It was out there – in the darkness – that my world, it set to shifting. And my head, it set to spinning, like a tape set on rewind. I was floating through the cosmos, flitting high above the jetties; past the coastline and the inlet, past December and the new year; past re-enrollment for the Spring term, past four buses every weekday; past student loan funds meant to finance, past mid-term essays meant to bolster; past the fall of Tonya Harding, past the death of Kurt Cobain; past preseason on the boardwalk, past one year spent dating Meghan; past it all until I drifted down into that pitch-black cauldron – a musty hallway where my feet went numb and my legs could hardly feel for burning.

I could smell the ripe asbestos now; could hear the dying smoke alarms.
I could feel the mounting pressure; could sense the stiff hairs on both arms.
The corridor ran 100 feet, with splintered doors down either side.
I swept the starboard with my fingers, caught the flood box with my arm.
I ran my palm along the base; found a button, pushed it hard.
What followed was a blunt-force clap, much like the punching of a card.

Then a blinding flash of light so bright, it took 15 seconds to adjust.
I turned one eye toward the entrance, saw a black man bathed in dust.
This man was wearing crushed velour, over cutoffs and brown Uggs.
He held one hand toward me; squared both feet upon the rug.
“Can I help you?” I then shouted, my body planted to the floor.
“Can I help you?” I then shouted, a second time, and then once more.

The vagrant propped himself up, let out the snarl of a boar.
Then he let his weak hand falter, exposed a rash of open sores.
He was sweating like a hound now, charcoal embers through his pores.
And so I made a break for it; held that button, nevermore.
I was scrambling in cold darkness, tracing a hard line to my door.
Strobing freeze-frames marked each footstep, pounding boot-prints shook the floor.

He was ambling toward me, bone-snarl slow-building to a roar.
I caught the doorknob with my shirt sleeve, forced the issue with my core.
I dove head-first into my bedroom, pulled the chain-lock, tight and sure.
Then I fell hard to the carpet, crabwalking backward on the floor.
I could hear each boot-step fall now, could sense him circling the fore.
He was there now, waiting for me. He was the Beast of 1994.

***

(Moving On is a regular feature on IFB)

©Copyright Bob Hill

There’s something so stunningly sedate about the pieces on display at Gallery Henoch through this Saturday, it’s almost worth the visit just to let the whole damn thing wash over you. The artists are eclectic, and the pieces are, as well. But there’s a common thread throughout here – one that captures subtle nuances set throughout the urban sprawl. Five-floor walk-ups, first-floor lobbies, Midtown diners and Mexican delis – all present and account for, in an altogether tranquil exhibition.

(Gallery Henoch’s Winter Group Show runs through this Saturday at 6 pm, free, 555 W. 25th Street)  

Five More For the Offing:

• Gotham and Beyond by Luca Campigotto @ Laurence Miller Gallery (Free, through 4/21, 20 West 57th Street)
• Film Noir by Bill Armstrong @ ClampArt (Free, through 4/6, 521-531 West 25th Street)
• Artists of Atlantic featuring work by 15 deifferent artists @ Atlantic Gallery (Free, through 4/20, 210 11th Avenue at 25th Street, Suite 801)
• Now and Now by Daido Moriyama @ Steven Kasher Gallery (Free, through 5/4, 521 West 23rd Street)
• Passion and Resurrection Motets at the Renaissance by Pomerium @ The Cloisters ($45, 3/30, 1 & 3 pm, 99 Margaret Corbin Drive, Fort Tryon Park, NY)

Poor poor Jimmy McAvoy – forever playing second fiddle to a star. First came Keira Knightley in Atonement. Then a surging Michael Fassbender in X-Men:First Class. And now, in a more recent twist, McAvoy’s been taken to the woodshed once again.

Yet the problem – in almost every case – is that McAvoy absolutely insists upon doing his Little-Big-Man routine. He’s constantly yelling, or stewing, or harumphing to no end. Consider, for example, McAvoy’s role in Welcome to The Punch – a mid-range thriller, featuring a pair of taut performances by Johnny Harris and Mark Strong. What brings The Punch down to its knees – time and time and time again – is Mr. McAvoy’s whole stammer-stammer-kick routine. I mean, on the one hand, it seems like McAvoy was specifically cast to elevate Strong. On the other, it’s McAvoy’s consistent lack of anything that ultimately diminishes his role. It’s like watching a poor man’s Jeremy Renner, despite the fact no one wants to watch the real Renner at all.

And the utter shame of it – at least in so far as Welcome to The Punch might be concerned – is that poor poor Jimmy McAvoy just tends to feel more like a liability. For it’s not only Strong that outshines him in this film. The entire supporting cast does as well. And that, well, that certainly does not bode well for the Napoleonic Mr. McAvoy, regardless of where B-List celebrity should take him from here.

(Welcome to The Punch arrives in limited release today, and will be available via most OnDemand platforms as of March 30th.)

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There are layers to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and then there are LAYERS to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. So many of them, in fact, that it’s often difficult to separate true fact from fiction.

Therein lies the sweet spot known as Room 237.

Equal parts gambit and goosechase, Room 237 succeeds because it is both in on the joke and wholly fixated on the punchline. Was The Shining a stark treatise on the Holocaust? An homage to the American Indian? Was it some multi-layered work of genius? Or just a weak-ass romp about some asshole in the woods?

The truth – according to most die-hard conspiracy theorists – is that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is more than likely all of the above. Keep in mind, we are dealing in deep shades of psycho-babble here, some of it so absurd as to reduce the magic bullet to a jumping bean. And yet there still appears to be a subtle grain of truth to the affair; some subtle nuance, perhaps, that suggests an air of possibility.

The lasting value of Room 237 is largely based upon its depth. An average poster represents the fate of Theseus? an Adler type-set, Nazi Poland? 237 hits its mark because it allows stark-raving inmates ample run of the asylum. The end result feels like some meta-satire, if not a brilliant commentary on the allure of motion pictures themselves.

(Room 237 arrives at The IFC Center in New York City this coming Friday, 3/29, with a rollout in most major markets set to begin on April 5th.)

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“Look, it’s all good. I’m not telling anyone what to think. I’m not trying to even defend it in that way, or say that this was my intent or that was my intent, or that this is what I was trying to say. That’s not for me to argue. I’m trying to make something that’s amazing, something that’s beautiful, something that lasts. Since I was a kid, I stayed to myself, and I was always just paying attention to the light at the end of the tunnel. There can be all those types of interpretations, it’s all part of it. I enjoy it. There is purposefully a large margin that’s left undefined. If it was something I could just articulate or explain or say this or that, I probably wouldn’t do it anyway. But I also wouldn’t make the film like the film is.”

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“I remember a musician once saying to me that he wanted to create the perfect sine wave. And the interesting thing is that the most boring sound in the universe is probably the perfect sine wave. It’s the sound of nothing happening. It’s the sound of perfection, and it is boring. As David Byrne said in his song, ‘Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.’ For me, perfection represents the absence of character. If I get anything even close to a perfect sine wave from my synthesizer, I send it to an amplifier so that it starts to get imperfect and becomes distorted. Distortion is character, basically. In fact, everything we call ‘character’ is the deviation from perfection. So perfection to me is characterlessness.”