Guru

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): ***

The great Beat poet Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) lived on the fringes, unwilling and unable to accept the humdrum. Jerry Aronson's documentary The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg marches steadfastly down the middle, following all the accepted rules of documentary filmmaking. Sure, it's a very good journalistic presentation of facts, and things that happened to Ginsberg during his life, but it doesn't do much in letting us know just who he was. It's a shame because Aronson actually had access to Ginsberg in person over many years, and the best he manages to get is a few poetry readings. The litmus test for this kind of film is Crumb (1995), in which the subject became so comfortable in front of the camera and his director, Terry Zwigoff, that he laid bare his soul.

Reviewer: Diana Slampyak
Rating (out of 5): ****½

The Postwar Kurosawa box set from Criterion's Eclipse collection shows an artist in tune with his country's plights, pronouncing them out loud and stimulating thought on what's to be done about them. We see an Akira Kurosawa not dealing with the samurai past, but with the there and then after the war. Themes such as economics, "insanity," protest, and privacy come into play in these often extremely powerful films, films we can still relate to. We might, for example, watch The Seven Samurai to get a sense of Japanese history, but we watch these films to not only understand Japan in the late '40s and early '50s, but also to correlate their events with those in our own lives. Thus, each film in this series should be watched with a critical eye ready to easily absorb the conflicts and trials within and see the validity of these today.

One Wonderful Sunday (1947) is a paean to poor, young lovers everywhere, a plight we all can understand and empathize with. Yuso (Isao Numazaki) and his fiancée, Masako (Chieko Nakakita), meet up for a usual Sunday date, only to discover that between the two of them, they have only 35 yen. Even that's not much in 1947, so they do what they can, finding free or nearly free things to do. Yuso remains mostly depressed as the more cheerful - and ever-resourceful - Masako invents ways to entertain him. First they go to an open house, where she tries to get him interested in playing house. But he'll have none of it. They eventually go see about renting a real apartment together, almost hook up in his apartment, and then run into an abandoned amphitheatre. As Masako cheerleads Yuso on to play baseball with some kids, take her for coffee and to a dancehall, and otherwise try to engage him and will away his depression, Yuso only becomes more sullen. Until, that is, they get to the amphitheatre and forces conspire to change his demeanor - and ours. Though a little hokey at the end, the film offers a very realistic view of post-war Japanese economics and the problems it forced upon the younger generation. Only Kurosawa could pull off this sort of romantic comedy with social commentary - and he does it nicely in this treasure. **** stars out of five.

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

One of the more pleasurable movie experiences I've had of late, Ladron Que Roba A Ladron (Thief Robs Thief) is so much better than Ocean's Eleven, Twelve or Thirteen--faster, funnier, shorter and infinitely more meaningful--that's it's hard not to over-praise what is basically a by-the-numbers heist film. But because it's about Latinos in the USA, immigration and its uses/misuses, labor unions and sleazebags who make millions of dollars off the backs of the poor, the movie offers a kick in the pants that its more glamorous and expensive predecessors don't come near. If you detest those lying "infomercials" (and the folk who grow rich off them) that promise everything and deliver zilch, you're gonna love what writer JoJo Henrickson and director Joe Menendez do with this so-ready-for-a-take-down subject.

As obvious as the film appears initially, it offers plenty of small, charming surprises along the way, culminating in a satisfying finale that is as compassionate as it is clever. The cast, many of whom have appeared in Hispanic tele-novelas, is good-looking and competent: While all the characters are drawn broadly, they're also performed well. Menendez will win no prizes for film technique; his movie looks like television. Yet he does his worthwhile job professionally, with plenty of zest and enough panache to carry us along. Films like this one and the upcoming La Misma Luna (due out in March) that dare to address subjects such as immigration and Latinos as both predators and prey should ring bells with mainstream audiences across color and culture lines. Grab this one--and have fun while your consciousness is being raised.

Reviewer: Monica Peck
Rating (out of 5): ***½

This 22 minute animated short based on Mike Mignola's award winning comic book has quickly ascended the 'steampunk' cult classic ladder. Ripe with 19th century banter, mystical artifacts, and technological anachronyms, The Amazing Screw-On Head takes viewers back, then sideways, to a time when the world was simpler, and yet, more bizarre.

It's no wonder that Mignola of Hellboy fame, won another Eisner Award (the "Oscars" of the comic book industry) in 2003 for The Amazing Screw-On Head under Best Humor Publication. And this is a rare brand of humor - surrealist, ironic, tongue so deep in cheek it hurts - coupled with campy plot-lines: a missing manuscript, a vile zombie villain, and a taste of apocalyptic horror. A wealth of talented comic performers add to the fun, including Molly Shannon, Patton Oswalt and Paul Giamatti. Built as a television pilot, the film stands very well on its own--perhaps too well for producers to see a series, hence the lack of follow-up from SciFi/Pulse. Producers Bryan Fuller and Jason Netter, with director Chris Prynoski and Mignola as art director, successfully matched the look and feel of the comic, much to the satisfaction of fans. In fact, the loudest complaint seems to be that television executives dropped the series. Still, there hasn't been an official word on the subject, so perhaps we can continue to hope for another installment.

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

Accumulating yet more evidence for the rising reputation of Spanish cinema, DarkBlueAlmostBlack is also a movie about which you'll want to know very few plot particulars prior to viewing. Reading a synopsis of events makes the film sound relatively ridiculous, and yet writer/director Daniel Sánchez Arévalo tells his story so cleverly and interestingly that you will most likely go along with each bizarre step in this tale of two families fractured by everything from prison to proper employment, homosexuality to infertility. Arévalo hooks you on feelings first, so that--no matter how strange events become--you'll care too much for the characters to object too strenuously to what they do. Given the manner in which the movie proceeds, in fact, their actions are actually not so far afield.

Reviewer: Maria Komodore
Rating (out of 5): ****½

Even though Swedish director Alf Sjöberg made his first film--The Strongest--in 1929, it wasn't until the 1940s that he really focused on movies. Before that he was more renowned for directing plays for the Royal Dramatic Theater, establishing himself as one of Sweden's most important stage directors. It shouldn't come as a surprise then that Miss Julie, one of Sjöberg's most celebrated films, is an adaptation of August Strindberg's 1888 one act play of the same title.

Made in 1951, Miss Julie shared with Vittorio De Sica's Miracle in Milan that year's Grand Prix at Cannes Film Festival--an honor that Sjöberg had also received in 1946 for his Torment, Ingmar Bergman's first official screenwriting credit. According to several film reviewers, Bergman once admitted that Sjöberg was sort of a mentor to him. Whether or not that's fully accurate, in Miss Julie (for which Sjöberg himself wrote the script) one can certainly detect a resemblance to Bergman's affinity for disconcerting subject matters, and strikingly acute directing methods.

As a Shakespearean literature and film scholar (it was one of my areas of concentration in getting my Ph.D.), I love to see films that update the Bard's plays cleverly, such as Scotland, PA, 10 Things I Hate About You and O. So I really looked forward to seeing what I think is Shakespeare’s worst play revamped again (Baz Luhrmann's version is genius, but not for the plot or the acting). But Romeo and Juliet Get Married gives us middle-aged co-stars acting out a world football fantasy ridiculous in nature.

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

No, it’s not a documentary exposing the underside of America's real estate market. Director and (with Gal Uchovsky) co-writer Eytan Fox's The Bubble is about the denizens of a mostly gay enclave in Tel Aviv, Israel. This cordoned-off area (not literally, perhaps, but figuratively--by being liberal, secular and "other" in a country not particularly noted for these attributes) is the "bubble" of the title, and its citizens--young, good-looking, smart and self-aware--are not oblivious to the fact that they are living in a kind of homogeneous "closed society." The thing about bubbles is: They tend to burst, and rather easily, too.

Reviewer: Henry Leineweber
Rating (out of 5): ****

For a while, I mulled over whether to limit my recommendation of American Hardcore to just fans of the music. And decided firmly against it.

American Hardcore is a great film, and, like the genre of music it showcases, too many Americans missed it the first time around. For the unaware, Hardcore Punk (or simply Hardcore) arose out of the more familiar Sex Pistols/ Ramones school of punk rock from the late 1970s. Characterized by speed, loudness, violence, an aversion to any attempts to lump it into mainstream arena-rock, and a visceral hatred of Ronald Reagan, hardcore emerged as a true grassroots, underground force in the music scene, and has had a tremendous influence on rock music ever since.

Reviewer: Maria Komodore
Rating (out of 5): ****

Anyone who has seen Hayao Miyazaki's extraordinary Princess Mononoke, marveling over its breathtakingly beautiful and imaginative visualizations, or enjoyed the striking look of The Animatrix, won't be surprised to hear that Tekkonkinkreet director Michael Arias was involved in both those films (and also had a hand in the visual effects for The Abyss (1989), The Prince of Egypt (1998), The Road to El Dorado (2000), among others.) This wonderfully dreamy anime marks Arias' feature directing debut.

Based on the manga by Taiyo Matsumoto, Tekkonkinkreet focuses on two young orphan boys, who look after each other in an effort to survive in Treasure Town, a rapidly evolving city somewhere in Japan that's becoming less and less friendly with every passing day. White (wearing his outrageously shaped hats) and Black (steeped in negative feelings and a certain blood thirst), spend their days roaming around the city, hopping on roofs, and climbing up electricity poles. That is until Mr. Snake (representing real estate interests that want to transform Treasure Town into a Disneyland of sorts), and old yakuza leader Suzuki (representing the good old times when the crime world was kinder), engage in a power struggle. The two youngsters inevitably find themselves in the middle of this mess, in which fighting change proves unfruitful.

With its realistic, busy, and rigorous background, its weird camera angles, and its masterfully dark and magnificently innocent inner-state and dream sequences respectively, Tekkonkinkreet comments not only upon economic interests devouring the humanity of the world, but also on big city isolation, life on the margins of society, and most of all on the choice one has to make between immersing oneself in unhealthy consuming feelings, or adopting a sunnier attitude towards life.

The DVD also includes a fun interview with British band Plaid, whose soundtrack works well for the film; an informative short documentary/diary shot during the making of Tekkonkinkreet; and Arias' own audio commentary.

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): ***½

Christian Slater has always been a likable actor, ever so slightly nutty and cool and the star of several bona-fide cult classics, but unfairly relegated to a career just below the "A"-list. Lately, it has been painful to see him suffer through so much junk (Who Is Cletis Tout?, Hard Cash, etc.). So watching this "comeback" performance was a real pleasure. Sadly, 2007's He Was a Quiet Man -- great title, that -- went straight to DVD following a few film festival dates; it deserves a lot more.

Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Ratings (out of 5): Undying Monster ***; The Lodger ****; Hanover Square ****½

Erin reviews the trio of films that were part of Fox's newly released Horror Classics Collection.

It's a real shame that John Brahm is such a little-known name in film history that even when three of his finest films are given the super deluxe DVD treatment, the box set has to be generically named as "The Fox Horror Classics Collection". But film lovers have been long told to take it where they can get it so that will be the last complaint registered about this wonderful collection of once-lost gems. Brahm, a German emigree courtesy of Adolf Hitler, came to America in 1937 to apprentice for D.W. Griffith (and given the latter's world viewpoint, that must have felt to Brahm as only a marginal improvement). Before embarking on a 25-year television career, he used his pension for Expressionistic style filmmaking to create psychologically dark portraits emphasizing fear of the unknown and the terror created by a single twisted mind over actual physical danger. His films were typically with B-level budgets and scripts brought to an A-level with strong actors, haunting cinematography and dry wit.

Undying Monster ***

In The Undying Monster, a wealthy but cursed family is plagued by an ancestor believed to have sold his soul centuries ago to the devil (or so the legend goes). This monster now attacks people who wander the woods alone on moonlit nights. Creating the template for British crime procedurals for generations to come, a sardonic and weathered detective (James Ellison) agrees to help a brazen and skeptical heiress (played by cult icon Heather Angel) to get to the bottom of the curse while a twitchy, doomsayer butler warns them all of the grave, unspeakable things the curse has wrought.

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

As a writer/director, Marshall Lewy had made only three short films before his full-length debut with the remarkable Blue State, about as timely and daring a movie as you are likely to see. It's not perfect, and it probably bites off more than it can properly chew, let alone digest. Yet, after all the documentaries we've viewed over the past eight years, during which has occurred the steepest, most noticeable--from without and within--decline in the reputation of the good ol' USA, someone has at last had the balls to make a narrative feature about this. It almost seems beside the point that Lewy has turned out a good movie--funny, decent, political, romantic, humane. The fact that he's managed to address pointedly and honestly what so many of us felt after the 2004 election is wonderful. But there's more to it than that.

Reviewer: Diana Slampyak
Rating (out of 5): ****

This funny, irreverent film by Danish director Anders Thomas Jensen (The Green Butchers, Flickering Lights, screenwriter of Mifune) will keep you laughing from its start, as soon as Adam (Ulrich Tomsen) steps off a bus, keys it as it passes by, and then meets Ivan (After the Wedding's Mads Mikkelsen). We immediately know Adam is a bad-ass con fresh out of prison, sent to Ivan's care for 'rehabilitation,' and that things will quickly go awry. Adam, you see, is a Neo-Nazi while Ivan, a devout reverend, is as Christian as they come.

Add to the mix the two other ex-cons, Gunner and Khalid, and a host of comedic clashes come to pass. Gunner is an alcoholic who's supposedly on the wagon, but who drinks every moment on screen. He steals Adam's mobile phone repeatedly, and gets a beating each time. Meanwhile, Khalid is a would-be reformed terrorist who nevertheless goes hunting for humans every chance he gets. Ivan turns a blind eye and claims success in his program of reform because of a past trauma he can't get over.