DARK STAR: H.R. GIGER'S WORLD

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H.R. Giger (pronounced ghee-gur) was a true artistic genius of the 20th and 21st centuries. His innately original “biomechanical” visual style contributed to the “Alien” sci-fi movie franchise that director Ridley Scott launched in 1979.

Giger’s gothic reptilian alien monster designs for the film exemplify the morbid nightmare-inducing quality of his monochromatic art. Birth, death, and sex have never enjoyed a more modern gothic celebration of evil erotic necromantic possibilities of psychosexual designs. BDSM and satanic imagery also plays a part in Giger’s flesh-meets-metal designs.

Giger won a Best Achievement in Visual Effects Oscar for his work on “Alien,” but by the time Hollywood discovered his prolific wealth of paintings and sculptures, the surrealist was already a household name in his hometown of Chur, Switzerland. Giger’s work on Alejandro Jodorowsky’s abandoned “Dune” movie informed design aspects of “Star Wars.”

Debut documentary-feature director Belinda Sallin was fortunate to film Hans Ruedi (as his friends and family affectionately call him) at his sprawling live/work studio during the artist’s final days. He passed away shortly after filming was completed.

It takes some getting used to seeing the master artist barely able to speak or move freely after suffering from an apparent stroke. Archive footage of Giger painting shows him working with phenomenal speed and precision.

Sallin extracts fascinating stories depicting Hans Ruedi growing up in his loving parents’ home, which came equipped with a genuine mummy occupying the basement. Racked with fear due to the ancient preserved corpse occupying his home, Hans Ruedi was nonetheless compelled to visit the basement alone at the age of eight to face his fears. Old footage reveals the mummified cadaver in its coffin-like case. The creepy experience stuck with Giger and contributed to his anxious psyche. Like his encouraging mother, Hans Ruedi was constantly racked with fears related to the unknown. Painting and sculpting were the only way to alleviate his angst.

Surprises abound. Psychiatrist Stanislav Grof takes the viewer on a backyard tour of Giger’s “Ghost Ride,” a creepy adult rollercoaster that takes the passenger on a perinatal journey through tunnels adorned with the faces of sculpted infants, reptilian creatures, and skulls.

Giger’s three-dimensional reflection of the “trauma of birth” is far scarier than anything in a circus sideshow. A dynamic aerial view rises from the tree-and-shrub concealed area to reveal its proximity on the edge of town, adjacent to an active railway and mini skyscrapers. An especially joyous moment arrives when the camera follows Hans Ruedi taking the ride. He yells at his beloved Siamese cat Muggi to get off the track.

Giger’s dark sense of humor comes across when he takes the oldest skull from his collection off a shelf, and describes how, after his father gave it to him when he was six years old, he would pull it down the street on a piece of string. The unpleasantness of death gives him, and us, a fuzzy feeling. Delightful.

"Dark Star: H.R. Giger’s World” provides an intimate window into the creative process and vibrant workplace of an artist whose originality and boundless imagination is beyond the beyond.

Not Rated. 95 mins.

MR. TURNER — NYFF 2014

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Paining With Celluloid
Mike Leigh Puts Hollywood To Shame

Mike Leigh’s reputation as an unrivaled inventor of cinematic dramaturgy once again over-delivers on his promise. How, you might ask, is that possible? Such is the nature of Mike Leigh’s incomprehensible genius as a truly visionary auteur.

Leigh’s celebrated rehearsal methods involving months if not years of improvisational preparatory work on the part of his cherished actors, renders astonishing results in the telling of J. M.W. Turner (1775-1851), the English Romantic landscape painter who greatly influenced the Impressionist movement.

More in-depth character study than partial biopic, the exquisitely executed period film connects the painter’s tormented inner-emotional experience with the people, locations, and social conditions that informed his paintings — from technique, approach, and inspiration.

Leigh’s frequent thespian ally Timothy Spall puts head, heart, and loins to the character of Mr. Turner, a corpulent man tormented by his past relationship with his cruel and deceased mother. A finer performance you may never witness during your lifetime. Timothy (or “Tim” as his fellow actors call him) Spall is cinema’s best-kept secret, but not for much longer. Measured, generous, and rich in emotional depth, Spall’s portrayal of Mr. Turner is a thing of priceless glory. The years that Spall spent learning to paint, specifically for the part, have surely paid off in this tremendous film.

The filmmakers’ brilliant use of natural lighting give the audience a vibrant visual sense of existing in the proximity of visual reference points of Mr. Turner’s lush paintings, many of which carry a marine theme.

Breathtaking attention is paid to every aspect of period detail, toward immersing the viewer in 18th century London and its nearby coastal environs of Margate, England where Mr. Turner frequently travels for artistic and romantic inspiration.

Still, nothing is overwrought. Perspective and composition exist in context.

Turner’s complex relationship to women provides the story with a wealth of psychological subtext that nonetheless is subservient to the painter’s daily work, which takes center-stage. The rebellious painter's proclivity for visiting the same seaside bed-and-breakfast guesthouse is inspired in part by the home’s thrice widowed owner Sophia Booth (Marion Bailey), with whom Turner eventually strikes up a romantic relationship that serves the couple well during the later years of his life.

The death of Turner’s painting-assistant father proves a turning point for the painter, and for the film. After his father’s funeral, the abject Turner chooses to visit a brothel whereupon he releases his emotions rather than any sexual energy he may possess. The scene allows Timothy Spall to dig deep into his character’s well of pent-up anxiety and remorse.

J. M.W. Turner was a misunderstood artist during his lifetime, but with the help of Mike Leigh, Timothy Spall, and a cast of infinitely gifted actors, audiences can begin to comprehend the life, purpose, and experiences of that tremendously inspired soul.

It is worth noting that the stellar performances from Leigh’s stable of actresses such as Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey, and Ruth Sheen are all of an elevated quality rarely experienced by modern movie audiences.

Is “Mr. Turner” the best film of 2014? I would answer, yes.

Rated R. 150 mins.

JODOROWSKY'S DUNE

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Genius Denied
The Greatest Sci-Fi Movie Never Made

Alejandro Jodorowsky is much more than a mad genius of cinema. The Chilean-born artist/filmmaker who created “El Topo,” the experimental surrealist film that started the Midnight Movie craze in 1970, has lived a life full of such enthusiastic artistic creation that his very existence defies all expectation.

Apart from creating some of the most transgressive films ever made (see “Holy Mountain” and “Santa Sangre”), he has directed over 100 plays and written more than a hundred books, plays, and comic books.

“Jodo,” as his friends call him, developed his own form of tarot-derived therapy entitled “psychomagic,” after the death of his third son Teo at the age of 24, in order to “heal psychological wounds suffered in life.”

At 85, Jodorowsky has the energy and drive of a young man. He wants to live to be 300. A more articulate and forceful mind, you are not likely to find. You would have to combine Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski, and Paul Verhoeven into the same person to even get close.

It will come as a great surprise to many avid filmgoers that before David Lynch directed the cinematic abomination “Dune” in 1984, it was Alejandro Jodorowsky who was originally slated to make the film version of Frank Herbert’s celebrated science fiction novel. Having made a million — ‘70s-era — dollars on “El Topo,” and having received global critical praise, Jodorowsky had carte blanche to tackle any project he wanted. Based on a friend’s glowing impression of “Dune,” Jodorowsky chose his next movie without even reading the book. He set about putting together the most talented production designers, artists, musicians, and actors he could find. Jodorowsky spent the next two years storyboarding the entire film frame-for-frame.

Documentarian Frank Pavich struck cinematic gold when he got the blessing from Jodorowsky and “Dune’s” former producer Michel Seydoux to make a movie about Jodorowsky’s journey to make the film. Here is the alternate history of two doomed films — the awful one released to audiences and the brilliant one that was never made.

An interview clip with Nicolas Winding Refn finds the Danish enfant terrible director of “Drive” telling about an evening that he and his wife spent with Jodorowsky in his home. After dinner, Jodo took out a large thick book that contained concept sketches, color design-drawings of costumes, spaceships, and pencil-sketched storyboards for every single frame of the film that Jodorowsky never made. Refn describes the personalized experience of “seeing Dune” through Jodorowsky’s book-assisted verbal explanation as “awesome.”

Like Refn, the audience is shepherded though Jodorowsky’s “Dune” via the director’s exuberant descriptions, given during animated interview sessions — set mainly inside his Parisian apartment. The white-haired Jodo switches between French, Spanish, and English as he displays his copy of the legendary, all but priceless, “Dune book” — copies of which were given to the heads of every major American film studio in a pitch-effort to obtain the missing $5 million necessary to meet the film’s projected $15 million budget that would allow for American distribution.

Jodorowsky commissioned the French graphic novelist Moebius (a.k.a. Jean Giraud) to draw the film’s storyboards, which Pavich utilizes in close-up to take place the viewer in a full-screen version of how the film would have looked. The effect is convincing.

Interview clips with Moebius describe the close friendship he developed with Jodorowsky that gave free-reign to his artistic imaginings. Screenwriter Dan O’Bannon (“Alien”), H.R. Giger, and Jodorowsky all comment on Moebius’s incredible speed at drawing renderings of the filmmaker’s vision.

Tales of Jodorowsky convincing David Carradine, Mick Jagger, Udo Kier, Orson Welles, and a haughty Salvador Dali to act in the film, give credence to the director’s sensitive gift of charm to tame even the most outrageous personalities.

This documentary’s hook lies in the incontestable influence that Jodorowsky’s book version of Dune had on so many films that followed — the most obvious of which is “Alien.” Although Jodorowsky was never able to bring his ambitious vision to fruition, seeds of his and his artist’s ideas continue to bloom. “Jodorowsky’s Dune” is the closest any audience can come to experiencing that vision, and a damned impressive adventure it is.

Rated PG-13. 85 mins.