Ray Pride

(Send a Bullet) Twenty-seven-year-old Eric Kohn is a protégé of Errol Morris. While Morris remains a singularity, a similar portmanteau, go-for-the-goofy-and-grab-for-the-glory sort of filmmaking is on display in Kohn's feature debut, the renegade, runamok mural of a movie, "Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)," a documentary that won the top prize in its category at this year's Sundance outing. "Manda Bala" is a wicked eyeful, but I wouldn't count on it for absolute veracity, even while discounting the keepers of cinematic purity and of the Brazilian soul that have been perturbed. (It is a mere calumny, and not an oath against the criminal industries in that nation.) The largest frog farm in the world, in Central Brazil, and kidnappings of businessmen in a generally lawless São Paulo are a couple of the subjects the movie seems to be about in its first moments, but the ongoing informational assault is more in the wake of "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control": here's a bunch of viscerally observed materials, flashy and eye-widening as can be. What can you, the viewer make of it? It's not traditional vérité, but there are metaphorical truths in Kohn's brilliant, bravura mosaic. Heloisa Passos' slick photography is integral. 85m.

"Manda Bala (Send A Bullet)" opens Friday at Pipers Alley.

(2007-09-25)

Also by Ray Pride

Tip of the Week
A much, much better movie than "The Yes Men," Czech film students Filip Remunda and Vit Klusak manage to pull off something more in the vein of that group of social provocateurs’ ongoing pranks-cum-critiques-of-capitalism with their "Czech Dream"
(2007-09-18)

Mush From The Wimp
The Toronto Film Festival came and went, and I couldn't go. I read first dispatches from Canada way, where more than 300 programs would allow any attendee to find a ready twenty or so movies that make any filmgoer's year. From the flood of studio prestige releases to potentially fine new work from Europe and Asia, 2007 will have as many sources of lasting joy as any cinematic annum. Yet a lot of recent writing and posting shows a strange resentment in the air which writers are constantly, compulsively confessing and describing and concerning themselves with their process rather than that of filmmaking
(2007-09-18)

Long Live the New Flesh
David Cronenberg's latest movie is about many things. Superficially, "Eastern Promises" is his second gangster thriller, after "A History of Violence," and it provides the most succinct definition yet of "balls-out action"
(2007-09-11)

Tip of the Week
In the first half hour or so of Jennifer Fox's epic navel-gaze, "Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman," you will think either of suicide or murder, depending on your disposition
(2007-09-11)

Tip of the Week
(2007-09-04)

Pulp Infraction
(2007-09-04)

Bitter Biter Bit
(2007-08-28)

Tip of the Week
(2007-08-28)

Under My Umbrella
(2007-08-21)

Needing the Eggs
(2007-08-21)

Tip of the Week
(2007-08-21)

Mclovin It
(2007-08-14)

about Newcitychicago | about Newcity magazine | advertising | privacy policy | FAQ | employment