Cinema Salem and BIG BAD WOLVES

Since my last post, I’ve been from Denver to Miami to Englewood, FL to Miami to a Caribbean cruise to Miami to Boston. That’s a lot of Florida. To go from sun-n-fun to dreadful faw-king cold is dreadful faw-king dreadful.

No likey.

So on my day off, I plotted a regrettably un-scenic course to nearby Salem and Cinema Salem, a four-screen theater that turned out to be in a semi-shabby shopping mall. Not a good sign. Theaters in semi-shabby shopping malls tend to make for lackluster viewing experiences. While in Miami, I caught the MONUMENTS MEN in a semi-shabby shopping mall theater and it was the worst movie-going experience I’d had in a long time. Elderly people talking throughout the movie. Elderly people answering their cell phones with “What?! I’m in the movie theater right now!” and then just continuing the conversation like they weren’t in the movie theater. Elderly people wheezing behind us throughout the movie. And, of course, bored teenagers texting and playing video games in front of us.

BUT THIS WAS WAY DIFFERENT.

(Apologies for shitty iPhone photos.)

Three of the four screens at Cinema Salem feature regular movie fare using Sony 4k projectors. The other screen has just 18 (!) seats and apparently screens only indie and obscure flicks. I asked one of the managers how they pick which flicks get the “Screening Room” treatment.

Her reply: “Distributors send us movies and if we like them, we screen them in there.”

That’s a killer approach. Three screens showing mainstream, revenue-generating movies and one tiny screen for films that maybe no one else is playing.

In fact, Cinema Salem is the only theater in either the Boston or NYC areas that’s showing BIG BAD WOLVES, the Israeli black comedy/thriller I caught today.

With the screen, seating area, and sound equipment shrunk down to almost a living room level, it was a unique viewing experience. But I loved it.

Again: an eighteen-seat screening room that shows first-run indie films that aren’t appearing elsewhere. And they use real butter on their popcorn. Fucking amazing.

BIG BAD WOLVES was also great. Written/directed by Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado, it’s a pitch black comedy. Or a thriller with moments of absurdity. I just glanced at a review that basically calls it a failed Tarantino flick, but that’s not an accurate judgement. It’s much less stylized and talky and self-obsessed. It is, though, kinda hard to describe.

I admit the tone was a bit jarring at first, what with the movie veering from truly grim shit like the rape and decapitation of young girls to broad comic moments like the tazering of a small yappy dog. But it (mostly) worked. Why? Because the directing was confident and the script stays (mostly) a step ahead of the audience.

BIG BAD WOLVES opens with a beautiful and ominous and ultimately unsettling slow-mo sequence of children playing hide and seek in an abandoned building. It’s a bit of bravura film-making. These dudes know what they’re doing. In some moments, the camerawork is self-conscious (lots of movement and, especially in the first fifteen minutes or so, dramatic angles that can lend an unnecessary weight to shots) but they seem in command, and conveying their vision, rather than just dicking around.

Anyway anyway anyway. A young girl is kidnapped. And we follow three men involved. The father. The cop. And the suspect. The father and the cop are both convinced that the suspect is guilty. And we end up in some brutal situations where various parties try to prove their guilt or innocence.

The film has some great surprises and twists (you’ll probably figure out the big twist at the end, but maybe not quite how it’s delivered).

What was most striking about the movie, to me, was its commentary on internet culture. How the internet gives us a medium to ignorantly indict, judge, and punish people. What propels the plot forward is that the cop is caught, on video, “questioning” (with his fists) the suspect and that video is immediately posted on YouTube. People in the community see it. The cop is fired for bringing bad PR to the department. The suspect, a teacher, is fired when students and teachers assume he’s a pedophile rapist/murderer because he’s a suspect being interrogated by the cops. (They’re apparently unconcerned about the illegality and viciousness of the “questioning”.) Everything unravels from there.

I love this because the movie isn’t overtly about damage the internet can cause. It doesn’t dwell on it. It just assumes that this is a fact of life in 2014. Moments in the real world are captured, processed online, and the results in turn impact the real world. It’s a daft cycle. And it’s representative of how characters in the movie act. The cop and the father KNOW the suspect is guilty. They don’t mind beating him and torturing him and humiliating him. They don’t have any clear proof. But they’ve judged him and are ready to punish him. Much like how trolls and YouTube commenters and the mindless among us judge and demean celebrities and athletes and anyone caught up in the endless/meaningless content cycles that power Facebook and Twitter and BuzzFeed and etcetcetcetc.

I mean, the mindless among us (probably) aren’t going to buy a house in the middle of nowhere just so we can rip someone’s toenails out. But they have their verbal knives out. Always. And they’ll use them. Always.

Not bad thematic work for a thriller.

Good movie. Good theater. Good day.