Guru

Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): **

The middling and awkwardly titled British drama Shaking Dreamland starts as a high-pitched fairy tale. A wedding in a striking cathedral with beautiful flower girls and a bride and groom so gorgeous they can't even make it to the altar; they must run to embrace each other halfway down the aisle. Minutes later the new bride takes her husband to the crest of a waterfall to inform him they're about to have a beautiful baby. But soon after this announcement the groom is haunted by ghoulish nightmares about having sex with underage prostitutes and molesting his future son. As the missus gestates (all the while humming the theme song from Disney's Snow White) he partakes in a steady diet of long walks, self-mutilation and psychotherapy before coming to the realization he was molested by his father who is now dying of cancer and wants to spend his last few months with his new grandchild. His descent forces the wife to recognize that her parents were raging alcoholics who beat her and each other on a regular basis.

British cinematographer Martina Nagel makes her directorial debut with this zestless psychodrama that despite plumbing into almost every imaginable neurosis about sex, relationships, family and commitment, does so with such austerity that there is no one emotional uptick. Couple this with the near-constant, obtrusive musical cues and Shaking Dream Land becomes an exercise in balancing patronizing boredom with dull voyeurism. The performances are all solid and the cast includes a few faces that will be familiar to an American audience; Jesper Christensen (Casino Royale) is particularly good as the charming, porn-addicted child abuser and newcomer Cloudia Swann manages to retain sympathy and strength despite having little more to do than sigh woefully and shift the angles of her french braid.

See also: I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, The Conformist, Gideon's Daughter, Mystic River, Separate Lies, The Woodsman, Mysterious Skin.

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

To watch the original School For Scoundrels (1960), particularly after viewing last year's atrocious "remake" with Billy Bob Thornton and Jon Heder, is to rediscover the glories of good old British comedy at very near the top of its form. The story in both films is basically the same: put-upon milquetoast turns the tables by becoming nastier than his nemeses. Yet there is simply no point to comparing the two films in terms of writing and directing because the original is so incredibly superior in every tiny facet. (Interestingly, the performances in the remake are good, even though the actors group had almost nothing to work with.) The British penchant for understatement and irony, especially in matters sexual, is put to delicious use here. Situations that generally turn silly, shrill or nasty in modern renditions remain funny, sexy and sweet in this plum of a film that also manages, by the finale, to seem surprisingly ahead of its time.

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): **½

Live Free or Die is not only New Hampshire's cranky state motto but the name of a new independent film [trailer; currently only playing in a handful of theaters] set in that cinematically neglected New England state (it's also close in name to the latest Bruce Willis disasterpalooza - Live Free or Die Hard). This decidely un-Hollywood film stars Tadpole's likable Aaron Stanford as Rudgate, a.k.a., "Rugged," a former juvenile delinquient turned overconfident but mostly incompetent petty thief who aims to make a big score, but can't seem to get anything right. Along the way he picks up an old acquaintance, the slow-witted Lagrand, played by favorite David Gordon Green actor Paul Schneider, doing a 180 from the romantic lead in Green's All the Real Girls. Nothing goes quite according to plan, of course, and while much of the proceedings are watchable and even - on a few occasions - quite funny, the mistaken belief plot that takes center stage becomes enervating before the end.

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½

The fun, low-budget Color Me Kubrick snuck into a few theatres (and the following week onto DVD--let's have more of these near-simultaneous releases!), a mere fortnight prior to this week's relatively big-budget The Hoax. Both films deal with a scam artist who uses as his centerpiece to snare victims a well-known recluse--Stanley Kubrick, in the former film, Howard Hughes in the latter. Evidently, celebrity has its price whether you court it or shun it. (Not having seen The Hoax, I still must mention the lame-brained print ad in which some cretinous art director, with approval from Miramax executives, has seen to it that the ad appears to read verbatim, "The Richard Gere Hoax." This caused my partner to ask, quite understandably, "Is it about that gerbil thing?")

Color Me Kubrick, though it offers no rodents, is gay as a goose and twice as entertaining. John Malkovich is in fine form as an absolutely unrepentant con man posing as the famous film director and taking everyone from a fledgling architect and a rock group to a pharmacist (Henry Goodman) and a would-be restaurateur (Richard E. Grant) for very bumpy rides.

Reviewer: Walt Opie
Rating (out of 5): ***½

What's great about the baseball documentary Bottom of the Ninth (2002), directed by Chuck Braverman, is that it isn't about hype. It's about heart and a genuine love of baseball that is palpable on the players' faces as they talk about their ongoing season with the minor league Somerset Patriots and the course of their lives to date. All of them appear to have sacrificed a great deal for their dream of playing professional baseball, and quite a few, if not most, have had to reluctantly give up the fantasy that they will some day make it big in the majors. With a running time of only 50 minutes, Bottom of the Ninth plays out more like a feature-length film and delivers the big picture of life in the minor leagues with simple clarity and a somewhat unexpected sense of compassion for the players caught in the throes of their passion for the game.

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½

Candela Peña is so good so often that I wonder when American audiences are going to catch on. (We're often slow, particularly when critics aren't paying enough attention.) Ms. Peña is quite different from film to film, though she usually looks rather similar: Torremolinos 73, Take My Eyes, God Is on the Air, No Shame, What Makes Women Laugh, All About My Mother, Mouth to Mouth--to name a few of her 20 appearances so far, often in lesser roles in which she is never less than wonderful. In Princesas, winner of three Spanish Goya awards but which came and went theatrically in the blink of an eye, she plays a prostitute. The actress won several awards for the role, but her version is no whore-with-a-heart-of-gold: she's angry, frightened-but-determined and oddly decent. This decency infuses the entire film and is likely to do the same for viewers.

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

The title of the new film written by Gen-X novelist Douglas Coupland and directed by Paul Cox, Everything's Gone Green [trailer] may disappoint those looking for a film about environmentalism but it does have a double-meaning, to amusing effect. The story centers around a self-described "loser" named Ryan (played by Paulo Costanzo) who, in typical Coupland style, struggles to become a real adult and discover meaning in his life. While a few of the set-ups seem lifted straight from Coupland's novel "jpod", to its credit Green is more cinematically inclined than Coupland's often plotless, talky novels and director Cox has a keen eye for the Vancouver surroundings while letting scenes build naturally.

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): *** {add a star if you’re a Ninth Symphony fan}

Music is front, center and as gorgeous as you might expect in Copying Beethoven, one of Agnieszka Holland's (Europa Europa, The Secret Garden) more commercial efforts that, sadly, didn't find the classy mainstream audience who might have embraced it. That the movie is also terribly flawed by dialog occasionally both stilted and foolishly vernacular ("He mooned me!" notes the heroine about her composer/boss) will give nay-sayers ample opportunity to dismiss it. But if you're among those who consider Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to be one of the world's musical treasures, I urge you to give the film a shot.

Reviewer: Isaac Bernhard
Rating (out of 5): **** (Full series)

The essentials of Elfen Lied are as follows. A teenage girl, having suffered horrible abuse and deprivation for most of her life, develops multiple personality disorder. One personality is a gentle, pre-verbal little girl who communicates entirely by meowing like a cat. The other is older and has lost all ability to empathize with most humans. She can talk, but rarely does, and seems incapable of dealing with others without lashing out at them.

Of course, her abusive family is not really a family, it's a shady, top secret government project. And she doesn't exactly live at home, it's more like a hidden fortress. And when I said she "lashes out," well, she mostly does this with her uncanny ability to decapitate people from a distance just by thinking about it. As she's understandably a bit angry at the world by now, she does this quite often.

Elfen Lied is extremely well made and very effective, but it's not quite a work of high-minded seriousness. When this girl runs away from home (i.e., lays waste to the government fortress she's imprisoned in) she is eventually taken in, while in her cat-girl incarnation, by a boy who, for some reason, owns a large house. This house is apparently a magnet for girls, because two already live there with him.

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

The shock of Sleeping Dogs Lie comes early on. If you’ve heard about the movie, you're likely to be "in" on its singular event. But what will surprise--nay, flabbergast--is that the film was written and directed by stand-up comic Bobcat Goldthwait. That's right: the director of Shakes the Clown. Given that exceptionally screechy, over-the-top movie and the subject matter of this new one, you could be forgiven for expecting something witless, ugly and unappetizing in the extreme. And if you are one who gives points to filmmakers who handle tricky subjects tastefully, forget it. Goldthwait isn't tasteful here, either. Better than that, he gives you everything you need to see, hear and consequently feel without going one step too far--or not far enough. It's been sixteen years between Shakes and Dogs, and while Goldthwait has directed only a handful of entertainments--all for television--he's managed to learn quite a lot. Maybe it's the ton of acting jobs he's essayed (more than 70 of them in his 22-year career) that's led him to this point.

Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): ****

At the beginning of Linda Linda Linda, the end of school is nigh and the annual Holly Festival is just three days away. Due to a P.E. injury and in-fighting, Kei, Kyoko and Nizomi's band is in shambles. They decide on a new song for the festival (the titular "Linda Linda Linda" by the Blue Hearts), to switch up instruments, and to find a new singer by sitting in the courtyard after school and picking the first person who walks by. The first is a boy (no go), the second is Rinko (recently kicked out of the band, double-no go), and the third is Son (played by Du-na Bae, The Host, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Take Care of My Cat) a Korean foreign exchange student who speaks so little Japanese she's not even sure what she's agreed to until the band's first practice -- which is a total disaster.

It's a little jolting to see a punk rock high school movie told in Nobuhiro Yamashita's deliberate, Altman-esque fashion. As the girls practice and go about their lives, the camera never moves, the takes are long and the dialogue authentically awkward.

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ***½

While it's certainly not a superb film, Xavier Beauvois's Le Petit Lieutenant got a rather scathing review in Variety and I feel compelled to defend it (after I saw it at the San Francisco International Film Fest last year). The policier stars Nathalie Baye - whom I remember most vividly from The Return of Martin Guerre ages ago, though she was also seen here in Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can - and she's remarkable playing a recovering alcoholic police commandant who joins a precinct at the same time as the titular cop fresh out of the police academy (a pouty Jalil Lespert). Together they work to investigate a case involving clochards, illegal immigrants and the Russian Mafia, before things take a tragic turn. But while it may remind one a bit of Prime Suspect á la français, this is less about the mystery than it is about the characters. And even a borderline cliché turning point as Baye's temptation to return to drinking is rendered with such acute humanity by the actress that it is still profoundly moving. The film works as a procedural and as a rendering of the life of a cop. It's to the film's benefit that it is presented so matter-of-factly and acted so earnestly, and I found myself forgiving it's occasional flatness.

Beauvois has been more prolific in France as an actor than as a director - this is his fourth film, with the previous efforts well-reviewed but little seen in the States, and it's likely Le Petit Lieutenant won't break that streak. But it's well worth seeking out, because of Nathalie Baye - who won a César for Best Actress for this - and the rest of the cast, and as an example of making something fresh and authentic out of relatively common material.

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****½

How is it that the Diebold company still exists? In a country in which the citizens were more interested in their real well-being (rather than in being entertained into oblivion), any firm that provided completely "hackable" (perhaps intentionally so) voting machines that provided wrong results and then lied again and again about this fact would be out business, its leaders jailed, and its machines placed on the junk heap where they belong. Not here in the U.S., of course, where, these days, political connections trump ability, decency, common sense and all the other positive virtues. The documentary Hacking Democracy, first shown on HBO, tracks the course of one surprised, inquisitive and steadfast PR woman who begins to question voting results from Diebold's machines and turns this into full-time work that may yet pay enormous dividends to the American public. We watch, mouths agape, as Bev Harris and her co-workers track down more than enough evidence of wrong-doing (intentional or merely stupid?) at various poll sties across the country.

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

We could create a subgenre of documentaries that are about the filmmaker's estranged, or strange, relationship with their artist father - Tell Them Who You Are, Mark Wexler's film about his father, famed cinematographer Haskell, not to mention the superior My Architect, come to mind - but Lucia Small's unsettling little film My Father, the Genius, winner of the documentary jury prize at 2002's Slamdance Film Festival, is even more personal than most. What at first seems like a gentle salute to the man's undeniable talents and eccentricities gradually becomes something more interesting, and disturbing.

Reviewer: Walt Opie
Rating (out of 5): ***½

The Hours and the Times could almost be called a "speculative documentary" as it takes a real event in the lives of John Lennon and founding Beatles manager Brian Epstein, namely a private four-day holiday to Barcelona in April of 1963, and speculates as to what might have occurred between the two close friends behind closed doors in their hotel room. Of course, the result requires an opening disclaimer stating that everything we are about to see is "entirely fictitious," but perhaps the best indication that it is successful is that somehow it feels as if this is quite likely what did happen, that perhaps by some form of witchcraft writer/director Christopher Munch managed to get it exactly right, even though we know rationally this would be impossible. Wonderfully shot in old-school black and white, it even brings to mind the D.A. Pennebaker documentary of Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of England, Don't Look Back.

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½

The kind of tiny independent movie that really does seem independent, despite two stars such as Morgan Freeman and Paz Vega in the leads, 10 Items or Less works just about perfectly because of their performances and because it sticks to what it knows: the actor's life and craft, and the relationships that might develop from them. Writer/director Brad Silberling (of whose earlier City of Angels I was not enamored) bites off exactly the right amount of theme and events for his movie's 80-odd minutes and, together with an ace cast, fills them up with rough-hewn charm and grace. How and why good actors care about their craft comes through beautifully, and Freeman's deliciously sly take on the lesser moments of his generally splendid career comes through with nary a trace of pomposity or exploitation. Paz Vega again shows why she's so popular (Sex and Lucia, Solo Mia, The Other Side of the Bed) in her native Spain. Eventually she'll hit on an American film that will be both good but also appreciated by the masses and there will be no stopping her. Meanwhile, queue up for this sweet treat; a light supper rather than a full-course meal, it'll still leave you surprisingly satisfied.