Guru

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

The beauty of Wah-Wah - actor Richard E. Grant's first go at writing/directing is based on the story of his boyhood in Swaziland, Africa - is that the movie manages to honor everything it touches: family love, first love, estrangement, coming of age, death, theatre, puppetry, "Camelot," the British Royal Family, and most surprisingly of all, Africa itself. Grant (Withnail and I; How to Get Ahead in Advertising) accomplishes his task by simply being truthful, letting events speak for themselves instead of underscoring or politicizing them. He's assembled a crack cast, every one of whom nails the character that s/he is playing and has fun with it, to boot. This is not a deep film, skimming surfaces like a stone skipping the water, but that is also its strength. There is plenty of skill here - in the acting, directing, writing, editing, photography, sets and costume design - so that a fast pace, succinct build-up of events and characterization, and a lightness of touch carry us effortlessly over well-tread territory. The difference in Wah-Wah is the setting: the African of Grant's boyhood remains beautiful amidst a coming political transition that appears more peaceful and measured than many during the past century.

I continue my running countdown of favorite character actors glimpsed on DVD this year with a favorite Brit.

9.

Tall, gaunt Bill Nighy never fails to make an impression in any film he's in, even if it's for only a few moments - as in his cameo in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as the nonplussed planetary designer Slartabartfast - or in an earnest supporting role, such as as Cate Blanchett's husband in the fine new drama Notes on a Scandal. This year's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest was a perfect example; Nighy practically stole the film from Johnny Depp, even under a heavy layer of squid-squishy makeup as the look-what-the-tide-brought-in Davy Jones. Nighy also gave added weight and depth to what by all rights could have been an underwritten role as the stepfather of Simon Pegg's Shaun, and object of his resentment, in the zombie spoof Shaun of the Dead. And broke my heart as the eccentric, helpless writer's-blocked patriarch in I Captured the Castle. In a rare lead role, Nighy was lovely in the romantic comedy The Girl in the Cafe, falling for an odd woman to form a mismatched relationship.

Even when not aided by makeup, Nighy often physically inhabits his parts, sometimes to the point of looking like death warmed over - as in the rehabbing rocker in Still Crazy (for which he also sun his own songs).

Nighy is in his fifties but while he's been acting since the seventies, after a lengthy career on stage and in BBC productions, he's only recently begun to make an impact in film. In a recent interview he half-jokingly remarked that he's been getting good parts ever since he lost his looks, but there's no denying his features - long hazel hair, drooping face, resigned expressions - are one-of-a-kind.

Also known as: That tall, gaunt British guy; "Slarti.. Slatri..Slartibartfarst...Slart... Well, whatever."

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

[Note: See Van Maanen's entire Best Gay Films on DVD 2006 list, now up on GreenCine.]

You've got to give Spanish director Manuel Gomez-Pereira credit (or maybe blame) for beginning his movie Queens with the most obvious and laborious few minutes you're likely to watch all year. No matter. Slowly and delightfully he and his oft-times writer Yolanda Serrano wrap you up in this story of a multiple gay wedding ceremony during the year that Spain -- still a Catholic country, so far as I know -- made such a thing legal. As different and amusing as are the several gay grooms (the "butch-est" of whom is played by Daniel Hendler, star of Daniel Burman's popular Argentine movies), it is really the young men's parents who interest the moviemakers most, and rightly so. None of them really approve of their offspring's sexuality or marital plans, and so we watch -- surprised, amused and occasionally moved -- as the "old folk" learn some lessons. Fortunately, the teaching route that Gomez-Pereira and Serrano choose to travel is full of twists that, more often than not, stand stereotypes wittily on their heads.

I continue my running countdown of favorite character actors seen in 2006 with an entry that is a testament to a career and an untimely passing.

8.

I still can't believe Bruno Kirby, one of the better comedic "supporting/character" actors around, is gone. He had leukemia, which was kept fairly secret from the world. I'd wondered why I hadn't seen him in much this year after re-watching Albert Brooks' Modern Romance - which did just arrive on DVD this year, and Donnie Brasco. In honor of his passing and his film career - and despite the fact that his only appearances in 2006 were as producer Phil Rubenstein in Entourage and in an obscure crime film called Played - the raspy voiced, quintessentially New Yorker Bruno Kirby gets an honorary nod on my running list.

In addition to his more famous roles - as Billy Crystal's best friend in When Harry Met Sally... (and as one of Crystal's sidekicks in City Slickers), and as the young Peter Clemenza in The Godfather II, Kirby was also bang on in the vastly underrated comedy The Freshman - which sends up The Godfather magnificently - as the crook who robs Matthew Broderick in the latter's "Welcome to New York" moment. ("The safest neighborhood in New York," he assures Broderick as a gunshot rings in the background.)

"You know how big this is? Bacio di tutti baci... the kiss of all kisses."

Kirby also shined as a bitter limo driver for Spinal Tap in that classic mockumentary; his reaction when the arrogant metal band rolls up the window on him while he talks is priceless.

From Modern Romance, in which he played Jay, Brooks' co-worker and friend, Kirby made an indelible impression, a perfect foil to Brooks' medicine-cabinet-full-of-neuroses:

Robert [Brooks; on phone;] "Jay, listen -- I didn't tell you this before, and I think I should tell you now. I love you. I mean, in the right way. I think you're an amazing guy, and I -- I think I just love you." Jay [Kirby]: "The ludes kicked in, right?"

Bruno Giovanni Quidaciolu Jr., you shall be missed.

GreenCine's Julie Newcomb has contributed her own list of the Best Anime of 2006. Some of these are new volumes in a series, while some - such as Paradise Kiss, the first volume of which is out this month - are first time on DVD. All of them are unique, above par, and well worth a look.

Read on >>

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

Australian filmmaker Sarah Watt has heretofore made only short films, most of these animated. To call her full-length, live-action debut Look Both Ways auspicious is an understatement. This ensemble "dramedy" about how we come to terms with death is ever so light on its feet: witty, elliptical and full of odd charms. Especially odd and charming are its fast and funny animated moments, often given to ruminations about one's own death as a kind of awful -- though humorous -- fantasy of ghastly things that could happen but won't because we've first imagined them and thus staved off their arrival. Watt's heroine Meryl (winningly played by Justine Clarke) is a talented artist, and her hero is a photographer (brought to fine life by William McInnes) who also does thoughtful, professional work. Both brush up against the Grim Reaper, as do their friends, co-workers and family, and we viewers follow gladly along.

You know him as that Texan who has long been a champion of drive-in theaters and B-movies, of "aardvarking," fu, counter of breasts. But he's also author of several fine film books, co-publisher of a renowned religious satire magazine, actor, cable TV host and, now, head of programming at a new horror network. We've got some short attention span interview fu working and Joe Bob says check it out. Interview with Joe Bob Briggs >>

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ****

David Zieger's Sir! No Sir! is not only a well-crafted documentary, but certainly timely: it was released with My Lai once again on our (hearts and) minds, given revelations from Iraq on the "November massacre" and as more and more members of the American military come forth to question our motives and tactics in Iraq.

Sir! No Sir! is one of the best documentaries about American protest movements since Mark Kitchell's Berkeley in the Sixties. Just when you think you've heard every last bit, every possible anecdote about Vietnam, comes this film to serve as a reminder that the story of the soldiers movement to end the war has up until now been a buried one. As with Berkeley, the film uses a mix of striking archival footage, modern interviews, newscasts, and newspaper stories - backed, of course, by music from the period - to get out this story (and its many subplots - the film does go on perhaps ten minutes too long).

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***

Difficult to embrace but ever harder to dismiss, Oskar Roehler's Agnes and His Brothers offers one of the most dysfunctional bourgeois families on record, from whom the writer/director slowly draws function. That the pathway/minefield toward said goal is long, somewhat labored and often licentious may prove as off-putting as it is enticing. Much attention has been paid to one brother's choice of office rather than bathroom for an evacuation. Yet, given the time (midway into a political phone conversation in which he's calling in his chits), health and history (environmental/Green Party demonstrations), even this oddity might be accepted as understandable, if bizarre. And what to make of another brother's sex obsession? Whatever we make of it, he ends up putting it to surprisingly astute use. Third bro, the titular Agnes, is fairly far into a sex change when nature--via hormones or disease--changes the course of things.