I TOUCHED ALL YOUR STUFF

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Co-directors Maira Buehler and Matias Mariani have anti-establishment world traveller, con man, and convicted felon Christopher Kirk narrate his bizarre account of falling in love with an “exotic” woman to whom he only refers as “V.”

How the object of Chris’s romantic subplot relates to his current incarceration is the elephant in the room that this ersatz documentary only obliquely answers during the film’s final moments. The movie is one big tease that doesn’t pay off as much as you’d hope, but there’s still much to enjoy through the material’s intrinsic suspense. Chris is, in the end, a gifted storyteller even if he’s an unreliable narrator.

Seated in a Sao Paulo prison, dressed in standard-issue orange garb, the good-humored Kirk leans forward to talk with his gently hands clasped on a small table; a blank chalkboard fills the drab space behind him. An I.T. expert from Flint, Michigan, Chris Kirk comes across like your friend’s nice-but-creepy uncle from the Midwest. He’s fun to talk to for a little while but there’s something not right about him — something a bit menacing.

The nerdish Chris (nicknamed Goose) describes going to Bogota, Columbia to see wild hippos, the last remaining vestige of deceased drug kingpin Pablo Escobar’s legacy. The giant creatures are breeding in the waters of the long-abandoned fortress estate. Coincidentally, we’re told, Chris was friends with an air force captain living at the embassy in Bogota who picked him up at the airport in an armored truck. A visit with the “captain” to a local bar introduces Chris to V, an “exotic” (half-Japanese-half-Columbian) economics student with an aversion to cameras. This femme très fatale is a vampire. One of the documentary’s weakest aspects comes from a dearth of images of the film’s most important secondary character. The only images we see of the mystery girl are a “hazy photo of V on the beach,” a shot of her back at a club, and an artist’s abstract portrait.

Dating V hardly reveals much of her inner character to Chris, but she was evidently great in the sack. V inexplicably always carries two cellphones, but with only one battery to switch between them. V’s odd behavior and stories, related to other men, cause Chris to become suspicious and hack into her computer looking for answers. Chris has secrets of his own, and clandestine motivations as well.

Although plagued with inept editing techniques and an irritating overuse of screenshot imagery and repetitive B-roll footage “I Touched All Your Stuff” is a fascinating character study even if you don’t walk out feeling like you had some epiphany.  

Early in the movie, Chris reads from his own lush writings, “Where does the explorer go when it’s all been explored?” The one thing we’ve learned about Chris Kirk is they he was looking for trouble in all the right places.

Not Rated. 91 mins.

 

BLACK SOULS

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Mafia movies have changed since Francis Ford Coppola’s Hollywood-epic “Godfather” trilogy. Matteo Garrone’s brilliant 2008 gangster picture “Gomorrah” was a take-no-prisoners look at how the mob in southern Italy abuses and enslaves its citizens, corrupts its culture, and poaches its natural resources.

Now Francesco Munzi is taking a more personal approach, via Gioacchino Criaco’s novel about a decades-old rift reopened between rival “'Ndrangheta" mafia families in Calabria.

As the world’s most influential criminal organization and one of its most lucrative (it brings in $72 billion annually) the 'Ndrangheta mafia far outweighs the more widely known Sicilian "Cosa Nostra" Mafia that has folded into the 'Ndrangheta.

The Barracas and Carbone families are connected by the murder of a Carbone padrone by the Barracas several generations earlier in the bucolic region of Africo Vecchio. Teenager Leo Carbone (Giuseppe Fumo) chafes under the yoke of sheepherder father Luciano (Fabrizio Ferracane); he longs to join the family business with his Uncle Luigi (Marco Leonardi) in Milan.

Leo sews a few wild oats by shooting up a local bar before leaving for Milan to seal his plan, hopefully with Luigi’s blessings. Little does the tough-minded Leo realize the imminent consequences that his thoughtless actions against the local club will have on his family’s relations with the Barracas clan. Leo’s ember of hostility will soon engulf his family.

The brilliance of “Black Souls” lies in its minimalist approach to elucidate the mafia mindset of intimidation and long-held grudges. This seemingly low-key picture provides a historic context of the dichotomy between the mafia’s past of traditional values and the sped-up expectations that the modern world demands. As much as Leo’s sensible father attempts to distance himself from the violence of his family members, he is just as apt to reach for a gun when circumstances seem to demand it. 

Francesco Munzi exerts a graceful restraint in the way he constructs the story (Munzi was a co-screenwriter), and how he frames the Italian landscape with a sense of dramatic vérité to reflect the impoverishment of the characters’ backgrounds.

Munzi exemplifies the influence of the late Francesco Rosi, whose commanding use of Italian terrain contributed to the lasting effect of such majestic films as “Salvatore Giuliano.” The scrupulous Munzi also matches Rosi’s talent for casting naturalistic actors whose subtle performances leave indelible impressions that resonate with hostile silence. “Black Souls” hurts.

Not Rated. 103 mins.

FOXCATCHER

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What’s Behind the Mask?
True-Crime Drama Shows the Underbelly of Blueblood America

‪ John Eleuthère du Pont‬’s transition from politically connected right wing patriarch of “America’s wealthiest family” to deranged murderer, via a self-appointed Olympic wrestling coach position, is the mysterious progression of Bennett Miller’s nuanced true-crime drama.

Look deeper into the film and you’ll find a sobering allegory for a ubiquitous sort of willfully ignorant, privileged, blueblood Republicans buying power in exchange for fleeting moments of futile glory. A machine gun fetishist with his own military tank on an 800-acre estate in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, John du Pont could be the Republican Party’s ideal poster boy. Like George W. Bush, du Pont also had a fondness for cocaine and serious daddy issues.

A dialogue-free scene observes Olympic wrestling brothers Mark and David Schultz engaged in their daily physical activity of mano y mano wrestling practice in a dingy gym in an economically distressed U.S. town. Throughout the sequence, and the whole of the movie, Bennett Miller artfully uses film language to allow the audience to fill in the open spaces of the narrative form he creates. It’s as if the filmmaker leaves room for the viewer to stand inside the story.

Mark (Channing Tatum) carries a heavy emotional burden that causes him to violently lash out at his brother David (Mark Ruffalo) in a temperamental way that reflects the intimate bond of siblings reliant on one another for their sole source of familial support. Some blood is spilled. No comment is made. Wrestling is a tough sport. David has a wife and kids, but Mark is a profoundly unhappy person. Channing Tatum juts out his lower jaw to display his vulnerable character’s troubled psychological state. Tatum’s acting range is tested in a demanding role that proves him capable of creating complex characters that belie his apparent beefcake persona.

After Mark gives a solemn paid-speech ($20) to a group of school kids about his recent 1984 Olympic wrestling win and the significance of the medal he proudly wears, a school staff member confuses him with his older brother David who also won Olympic Gold in ‘84. Mark’s status as an underachiever living in his brother’s shadow has not gone unnoticed by a certain wealthy exploiter with a strategy for hiring the Schultz brothers to head up a private wrestling program on his family’s Foxcatcher estate. Why does a wealthy dilettante care about having a lot of sweaty young guys in tight-fitting uniforms around him when his controlling mother (exquisitely played by Vanessa Redgrave) considers wrestling a “low” sport? John du Pont exerts that, “Coach is father. Coach is mentor. Coach has great power on an athlete’s life.”

An unexpected call from du Pont interrupts Mark’s daily ramen meal, requesting a meeting for which Mark will be flown first-class to du Pont’s estate. Du Pont shrewdly lets Mark name his price ($25,000) to come live on Foxcatcher Farm to train in the estate’s spacious private wrestling gym in preparation for the upcoming 1988 Olympics in Seoul. Unable to convince his brother David to move his family to Du Pont’s estate to train together, Mark moves in to a well-appointed cottage on the du Pont grounds and begins to train under John du Pont’s dubious tutelage.

In the months that follow, du Pont manipulates Mark into a kept boy with frosted hair and a newly acquired addiction to cocaine. While no sexual overtures are made, a clear homoerotic tension exists in John’s “friendship” with Mark. Their odd relationship is made public during a political dinner in Washington D.C. where Mark publically acknowledges du Pont’s influence as a father in a speech written by du Pont. The intersection of mainstream Republican politics and John du Pont’s carefully orchestrated public relations campaign regarding his self-appointed place in the sports world, points out the ways in which American power glorifies and sustains itself. As Arthur Miller once stated, “Power is power because it doesn’t listen.”

“Foxcatcher” presents a game-changing role for Steve Carell as John du Pont. With the assistance of master makeup designer Bill Corso, Carell’s face becomes unrecognizable. Beady setback eyes peer over a beak of a nose in a face that’s even more blood curdling than Mitch McConnell’s famously repulsive visage.

Steve Carell fills the role so completely that you never for an instant question his character’s authenticity. The transformation is complete. More dramatic roles should open up to Steve Carell as one of Hollywood’s better-kept secrets. 

Over the course of 16 years, Bennett Miller has traversed the terrain of a rapturous documentary (“The Cruise”), an in-depth biopic character study (“Capote”), a big-budget sports biopic (“Moneyball”), and now a true-crime saga that draws together everything that made his previous films unique, a rigorous approach that provokes questions rather than gives pat answers. “Foxcatcher” is a movie that functions on multiple levels to observe how the American elite use and abuse power toward the destruction of everything it touches.

Rated R. 134 mins.