‘The New Year Parade’ ***
Divorce in the movies tends to be ignored completely or exploited for narrative hysterics, with little sense of the gray perplexity in between. “The New Year Parade” is a welcome exception. A true indie, writer-director Tom Quinn’s project was researched, shot and edited over several years, blending non-actors and professionals. In South Philly, a tradition-bound Irish-American community devoted to the annual Mummers Parade provides the backdrop for one longtime marriage’s rupture. Mike (Andrew Conway) and Lisa (Maryann McDonald) break up, beginning an unsteady phase of separate living quarters and flying accusations. Twenty-five-year-old bartender son Jack (Greg Lyons) conducts shuttle diplomacy, watching out for his teenage sister, Kat (Jennifer Walsh), as best he can. As both children deal with where to live, and their own budding relationships, the question nags at them: If our folks couldn’t cut it together, what chance do we have in our own lives?
The film is not hopeless, however, and Quinn’s glancing verite approach minimizes the less effective acting and keeps the behavior honest. Some of the lines are just right, as when Jack and Kat talk about a strained Christmas celebration. “The gifts were confusing,” Kat says. “Yeah, they all said: ‘From Santa,'” replies Jack. What emerges from this small but sure picture is a depiction of a revered multigenerational tradition, the Mummers Parade, which is part of every character’s life in one way or another — yet separate from the messier, vital demands of a working marriage.
Running time: 1:27. No MPAA rating. Plays Friday-Thursday at Facets Cinematheque, 1517 W. Fullerton Ave.; facets.org.
— Michael Phillips, TRIBUNE NEWSPAPERS CRITIC
‘Collapse’ ***
As a documentary-portraiture complement to the recent release of the end-times blockbuster “2012,” there’s Chris Smith’s “Collapse,” an alternately frightening and mournful talkathon starring the conspiracy theories of ex-LAPD cop-reporter-author Michael Ruppert. Filmed in a spare basement made to feel like an interrogation chamber, the cigarette-smoking, mustached Ruppert — whose fringe notoriety can be traced to his 1970s claims that the CIA asked him to run drugs — unloads a byzantine, impassioned case for society’s full-speed-ahead doom. The two big reasons: waning oil supplies and a pyramid-scheme economy.
The unseen Smith, who occasionally tosses in a provoking question, is less interested in testing Ruppert’s bona fides than in creating a zoo exhibit feeling that segues into a therapy session. The latter vibe emerges when Ruppert, perhaps exhausted from relentlessly harping about humankind’s stupidity, venality and treacherous policies, gets emotional about his own relationship to bucking the system and even allows hopeful tips to color his apocalyptic monologue. (Save seeds, people.) With a formal elegance that often feels like a tribute to Errol Morris’ character studies, “Collapse” is a grueling peek at a doomsday prophet’s rigorous mind but in a sly way also a compassionate look at the strain Ruppert endures from knowing he has only ever been right.
Running time: 1:22. No MPAA rating. Opens Friday at the Music Box Theater, 3733 N. Southport Ave., musicboxtheatre.org. Filmmaker Chris Smith will be present for discussion following the 7:20 p.m. show Friday.
— Robert Abele, Special to Tribune Newspapers
‘Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead’ ***
The latest from director and co-writer Lloyd Kaufman (“The Toxic Avenger”) is a heaping helping of political incorrectness gleefully spiced to offend just about every sentient being. And it comes with sides of musical numbers and a tender love scene between a man and a fresh, young, whole chicken. There’s an Indian burial ground, the ghosts of fowls tortured by the KFCs of the world and a goofy young guy whose one true love has, with her new girlfriend, become a radical protester against corporate demons. Actual demons follow. But all this is really just an excuse to uncap fountains of gore, unhook some brassieres and uncork a few off-color songs.
Leads Jason Yachanin and Kate Graham actually display some musical-theater chops and play the style to the hilt. The script is a series of crimes against nature and decency, strung together by some pretty funny one-liners: When the Colonel Sanders-ish boss leads reporters into the kitchen and finds it covered with human blood, he quickly says, “Hope you like our My Lai Massacre wallpaper.” The moral, if one is discernible in this giddy carnage, may be: You are what you eat, or what eats you.
Running time: 1:39. No MPAA rating (cautions for pervasive violence, gore, nudity and sexual situations). Plays at midnight Friday and Saturday at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave., musicboxtheatre.org. Filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman will be present at both screenings.
— Michael Ordona, Special to Tribune Newspapers
‘Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America’ **1/2
Tony Stone’s “Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America” is not a documentary but an ambitious imagining of events drawn from the Vinland Sagas, the mythic story of the Norse exploration of America. Stone’s admirable and persuasive evocation is unfortunately marred by his self-defeating resort to flurries of claustrophobic, fragmented hand-held shots that obfuscate just about every crucial plot development in the film. Reviewers are lucky, for Stone has provided an excellent synopsis of his film, but without it one could surely never be certain what was actually happening in this inherently demanding and austere film’s most crucial moments.
It’s a shame Stone didn’t trust in straightforward clarity because the story he tells is solidly constructed and psychologically acute. The year is 1007 and members of a Viking expedition have been left slaughtered on a North American beach by Abenaki Indians — called the Skraeling by the Vikings. Two Viking scouts, Orn (Stone), who has long, flaming red hair, and the dark, bearded Volnard (Fiore Tedesco), having already gone deeper inland, are left stranded. Their slim hope for survival is to head north at all costs, where another Viking expedition just might come along to rescue them. They are skilled at living off the unspoiled land, but their destinies are shaped by encounters with two Irish priests enslaved by the Norse and inadvertent survivors of a shipwreck, and with the Abenaki.
Running time: 1:49. No MPAA rating. In Old Norse and Abenaki with English subtitles. Opens Friday at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St., siskelfilmcenter.org.
— Kevin Thomas, Special to Tribune Newspapers
