Ben X

Ben X, Belgian director Nic Balthazar's film debut, is an ambitious drama exploring the autistic mind and how far harassment can go before the victim loses control.

  At the beginning, we are introduced to Ben (superbly played by Greg Timmermans), a teenage boy with Asperger's Syndrome who lives with his well-meaning mother and younger brother. Ben spends all his free time playing Archlord, a fantasy role-playing game where he becomes Ben X and plays alongside Scarlitte, a teenage girl who is impressed by his gaming skills. The game gives him a sense of purpose in a world that becomes increasingly out of control.

 Ben's life at school, quite simply, is hell. He is relentlessly tormented by two repugnant teenage boys. His teachers try to help him but are ineffectual. The situation worsens when an embarrassing prank perpetrated on him is videotaped and posted all over the internet.

   Feeling that he has no where to turn, he hides what happened from his family and teachers and becomes increasingly disturbed and suicidal. Finally, close to breaking point, Ben decides to meet with Scarlitte, who is interested in visiting him in real life. Together with Scarlitte, his divorced father, and his desperate mother, he comes up with a bizarre plan to get back at his tormenters.

    I waited a long time for this movie, and as it generally is in this case, was disappointed. Which isn't to say that Ben X is a bad film. On the contrary, it has many good qualities. The main thing that struck me was that this is one of the first times a character on the autistic spectrum takes center stage and is treated as a person, not a plot device. Often, the character with autism is used to evoke feelings from the other people in the movie or to teach them what is really important in life.

   This film, without avoiding the family's perception of the situation, concentrates on Ben and his reactions to what's happening around him. Secondly, the acting in Ben X is top-notch, especially from Greg Timmermans and Marijke Pinoy, as Ben's mother. Greg Timmermans has excellent facial expressions and mannerisms, and in his and the directors hands, the main character becomes a real person.

    Many scenes and situations in Ben X, however, are very melodramatic and over-the-top, but the ending is its greatest weakness. Alternately bizarre and unrealistic, it detracts from an otherwise good movie. The director seems to think that neatly tying things up is more important than realism, and it shows.

   The film builds up a great deal of suspense and a foreboding that something terrible will happen, but seems to wimp out toward the end. I don't enjoy depressing endings, but I felt that the conclusion wasn't believable at all. I am bound to cut this film some slack, because there are so few movies about high-functioning autism and because I waited a long time to watch it. Although I think it was ultimately disappointing, it also did many things right and tried to do what most directors haven't done effectively before.

 

Long Pigs

    Long Pigs is a film that shouldn't work. Shaky cam? Done? Serial killer thriller? Done? Faux snuff film? Done, done. Regardless, through its incisive writing and strong performance by Anthony Alviano, who plays the killer, it succeeds in being both consistently interesting and profoundly disturbing.

    Two low-life filmmakers, John (John Terranova) and Chris (co-director Chris Powers) come upon a deal of a lifetime -- they will make a documentary, using serial killer Anthony McAlister (Alviano), who likes to eat his victims, as a subject.

    Didn't your mother ever tell you to avoid scary people? Apparently not. Undeterred, the two accompany Anthony on a ride-along. His first victim is a prostitute named Lucy, who he makes into a stew. From step one, the fate of the filmmakers is as violent as it is inevitable.

    Anthony justifies his eating habits to the extreme. He doesn't seem to be as much emotionless in that Michael Myers way as utterly and completely shallow in his response to wrongdoing. Something, as they say, just doesn't go to the top floor.

    Long Pigs asks the question -- can people who carry out monstrous acts change? Should they forgive themselves when no one else can? Although not reaching the same heights playing a sociopath as Noah Taylor in Simon Rumley's Texas thriller Red, White & Blue, Anthony Alivano, who looks like a more rounded Jason Segel, is effective, dynamic, and chilling.

   Paul Fowles also stands out as the grieving father of Ashley, McAlister's only child victim. His deadened smile as he greets the filmmakers and eventual breakdown ring true. The film also incorporates interviews with a callous radio show host (Roger King), stressed cop (Shane Harbinson), and an uber-Liberal serial killer expert. Through discussions of Ed Gein, fictional killer Norman Bates, and different archetypes of serial murderers, she pleads sympathy and integration into society for their kind. Her words show mercy, but she hasn't seen the things the cop has.

    The documentary-style technique does not become strained or distracting. That's the thing. Sporting the odd and the unusual, this surprisingly good first feature throws common cinematic techniques out the window. In doing this, it gets away with murder.

 

 

Botched

...Mostly bloody. And when an armor-clad direct descendant of Ivan the Terrible shows up to hack and slash our beleaguered anti-heroes, borderline ridiculous.

   In this pseudo-horror, pseudo-comedy, the pseudo-plot follows a thief named Ritchie (Stephen Dorff) who, when a jewel heist goes badly awry, pays a visit to his crime boss Mr. Groznyi (Sean Pertwee) who forces him, under duress, to pull off another crime.

   Ritchie joins forces with sociopath Peter (Jamie Foreman) and his whimpering brother Yuri (Russell Smith) in a high-rise in Moscow, Russia. Their mission: to steal an expensive cross that once belonged to royalty.

    No one ever wanted to watch a movie about a safe and simple jewel heist, however, and things get complicated -- fast. Although he is a thief, Ritchie has a moral code.

    Peter, on the other hand, doesn't, and pretty soon a woman is dead and they have a cluster of hostages, among them shy pacifist Dmitry (Hugh O'Conor), attractive Anna (Jaime Murray), and a strange, religious group of women led by Sonya (Bronagh Gallagher).

  When one of these people pulls a gun and it is revealed the entire floor is booby-trapped and policed by a madman, things get bloody. Although it has some funny moments, Botched dishes out sequence after comic sequence that simply doesn't work, among them the stolen sandwich, the pissing rat, and the scene where Dmitry is slapped.

  On top of that Jaime Murray, as Anna, is mediocre at best and the idea that she would even consider hooking up with Ritchie is really pushing it. Stockholm Syndrome, anyone? The performance of Edward Baker-Duli as the mad slasher is exaggerated and uninteresting, like a role in a stage play -- a really bad stage play.

   Although I did like the Russian music and the hyper-kinetic cinematography, Botched was neither funny nor involving enough to hold my attention. On the back of the box, Slasherpool.com calls it a "brilliant horror-comedy" and compares it to Shaun of the Dead. Fat chance, skippy.

  

Mister Foe

     Welcome to the life of Brit teen Hallam Foe (Jamie Bell), whose many odd habits include using his late mother's makeup as war paint and turning a pair of binoculars on women breastfeeding babies, sexual acts and whatever else he can find.

   Ever since his mum, Sarah, was found at the bottom of the loch beside their home, Hallam has refused to consider the incident a suicide but instead blames dad's new wife Verity. Plus, he lusts after new mom despite his suspicions and writes about his fantasies up in the tree house where he has decided to live. Malajusted doesn't begin to cover it.
 
   When a violent confrontation with step-mom turns disturbingly intimate, Hallam decides to bail from his family's large estate and flee the repercussions. He ends up in the city, sleeping in a derelict part of the hotel and making money working a grimy kitchen job.

     When he meets a woman who resembles (who else?) dear dead mum, he turns his voyeuristic gaze toward her and becomes involved in a nasty sexual triangle of blackmail and adultery, all while trying to get Verity turned in for the murder he is convinced took place.

     Jamie Bell, who has done quite a bit of growing since his role as a ballet-dancing youngster in Billy Elliot, turns in an excellent performance as a clearly disturbed young man who veers between creepy beyond redemption and pitifully sad.

     I was surprised by a reviewer's claim that this film was inferior to the slightly silly Shia LeBeouf thriller Disturbia. While decently made, the latter film had a certain tackiness that made it hard to take seriously. The director treats the story of Mister Foe with a seriousness that helps the viewer buy into it.

   If I had detected a smirk in the production, it would have sunk fast. Although this movie is ultimately has a riskier construction, is more disquieting, and has better-drawn characters than Disturbia, it was not without scenes of ridiculous implausibility. To prove my point, ladies, I present a scenario.

    The Situation: An unbalanced young man grabs you by the throat and accuses you of murder.
Your Reaction:
a. Try to talk some sense into him.
b. Fight your assailant by poking his eyes, pushing, or kicking him in the balls.
c. Jerk away and scream for help.
d. Consider his closeness liberation for your lust and grope him.

     Only a die-hard masochist would pick d, so when the normally rational Verity uses the situation as a chance to cross forbidden boundaries, the originally disturbing situation becomes perversely silly. Do things like that happen outside of S&M soap operas?

    I've always been a sucker for cinema that avoids formula, so I'll give the gaping problems in the film a break. I'd say the best thing about the whole movie was Bell, who is an actor worth watching. The director? We'll see.
    
   By the end, the scarily intriguing character of Hallam avoids seemingly inevitable catastrophe, and the viewer thinks the story would have probably ended in a disaster similar to Ken Loach's Sweet Sixteen. Like Ben X, Mister Foe takes the happy route, but since that it's unlikely to happen except through a director's mercy, it seems a hollow victory (Rated R)

rating- **