“The Sarnos–A Life In Dirty Movies” isn’t really about dirty movies at all. The filmmakers have obviously learned a trick or two from their subject Joe Sarno on how to sell a film. As the prolific writer/director of 75 sexploitation movies, Sarno felt that the most important element of his features was their titles: “Warm Nights and Hot Pleasures,” “Vibrations,” and “The Wall of Flesh” promised salacious delights but were actually more character driven pieces about female emotions. True to form this documentary is really a touching tribute to Sarno’s marriage to his remarkable wife Peggy as the ageing auteur tries one last time to direct another movie.
Peggy and Joe live out their retirement between New York and Stockholm, both homes stuck in a time warp, a testament to Joe’s heyday in the 60s and 70s before hard-core rendered his artistic viewpoint on sexual liberation impotent. Often dubbed, “the Ingmar Bergman of porn” Sarno also had that John Cassavetes feel, stark black and white and authentic. Wictor Ericsson’s film also echoes Sarno’s own preference for a strong female lead as Peggy gradually takes centre stage. She has been cocooning Sarno from their dire financial situation as well as proof reading his latest scripts and rewriting a pay phone as a cell. “I protected him so well he doesn’t have a sense of reality anymore,” laments Peggy as Sarno merrily taps away on an electronic typewriter oblivious to his wife’s sacrifices.
Fast-forward to 2013 and Sarno’s legacy can be keenly felt in Bryan Poysner’s no-holds-barred rom-com, “The Bounceback.” The opening features ex-partners Stan and Cathy climaxing coast to coast in L.A. and New York respectively. A deft credit sequence features Facebook photos setting up the couple’s demise as Stan fails to make it as director whilst Cathy excels as medical student. Both fly back to their hometown of Austin, Texas to hook up separately with their best friends, Jeff and Kara. This is no happy coincidence as Stan has indulged in some online stalking and wants to win back his unsuspecting ex. To further complicate matters Jeff and Kara, a combustible couple in their own right are in the middle of their own super-charged break up.
Poysner’s rom-com feels like a companion piece to Kevin Smith’s “Chasing Amy.” Both have that raw, comic intensity, even insanity that by-pass most films in this genre. The dialogue crackles with Kara’s zing, “I live with Jeff’s dick-it’s so familiar,” and, “If it wasn’t for sluts no one would get laid.” Stan and Cathy spend most of the film circling one another, cell phones poised just over the horizon, in the next bar or across town, a cab ride or a walk away. Stan and Cathy each stumble across random suitors on their drunken night out, turning the stereotypical payoff to shuffle. Like life we can’t be certain of the outcome but there are plenty of random tunes along the way, the raucous Air Sex World Championship and the sedate, quiet and satisfying ending.
Far from satisfying is the English ghost story, “Blackwood.” Adam Wimpenny’s film starts promisingly enough with a tetchy job interview as college professor and TV historian Ben Marshall tries to put his well-documented breakdown behind him. “Once I’m into something I don’t let go,” Marshall warns his would be employers like a very English Jack Torrance. Job secured Marshall’s young family move into a rambling country spread that screams haunted house. Doors knock, lights flicker and trees menace the lead windows but like an uninvited vampire, the scares refuse to cross the threshold. Instead “Blackwood” evaporates into a spectral mist of insubstantial ideas: a little of “The Shining” here, a touch of “The Haunting” there, even ‘Donnie Darko” gets a nod. Unfortunately the ghosts of great films past cannot hide the fact that “Blackwood” is a movie more at home as an ITV drama.
In contrast Rick Rosenthal’s “Drones” oozes tension. Deep in the Nevada Desert Lt Sue Lawson starts her first mission at the controls of an unmanned drone thousands of miles away in Afghanistan. Her co-pilot is 22-year-old airman Jack Bowles, an X-Box generation warrior who never made college. Lt Lawson on the other hand is the daughter of privilege; her father is a four star general, a highly decorated fighter pilot in Vietnam. This class dynamic makes their maiden mission together as awkward as a first date. “Did you wash out of fly school?” asks airman Bowles to which Lawson takes offence, “I was top-stick!” she snaps back before revealing her damaged retina, “Partially detached and fixed.”
Their mission resembles a flight simulator stuck inside a metal hut, a gamer’s wet dream, paid to play with pizza and Coke on tap. Signs encourage the patriotic spirit, “You Can Stop The Next 9/11” as video images of potential targets and their children fill the screen, all blissfully unaware that they are just button push away from annihilation. Rosenthal plays his film mostly in real time as the drone’s fuel slowly ebbs away. The Al-Qaeda suspect is a top priority but Lawson and Bowles growing mistrust of one another and the military chain of command turn a routine flight into a moral minefield of doubt. What are the implications of a war fought by remote control without risk to one of the combatants? One dominated by the news networks and their clinical euphemisms. And the question remains, “Are the drones machine or human?”