Guru

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

The subject of unwanted, or unplanned, pregnancy was quite a hot one for US and foreign films alike last year. But with the exception of Romanian Cristian Mungiu's abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2007), all of the others, even if apolitical, have essentially been "pro-life."

In the U.S., in addition to Jason Reitman's indie hit Juno (2007), there was the late Adrienne Shelly's Waitress (2007), and of course Judd Apatow's supposedly comedic Knocked Up (2007). No matter how different in inception and presentation these films might be, they all have one thing in common: abortion is out of the question. The female leads decide to, respectively, keep their babies even if that means giving them up for adoption after they're born, bringing them up all by themselves, or settling down with an immature slacker.

Although made in 2006 and by a Mexican filmmaker, Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, the independent film Bella deals with the same subject matter and in a similar kind of way to the other films. Soon after she finds out that she's pregnant, Nina (Tammy Blanchard), a waitress in an upscale Mexican restaurant in New York, loses her job--a humiliating scene where her boss Manny (Manny Perez) fires her in front of her colleagues and friends. Jose (Eduardo Verástegui), the restaurant's cook and Manny's brother, is so affected by the incident that he deserts his kitchen in the midst of lunch-hour craziness, and starts following her around the city doing everything possible to persuade her to keep the baby. Turns out, before becoming a cook, Jose was a successful soccer player whose career got destroyed when he accidentally killed a little girl in a foolish car accident.

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

According to her own commentary on this new DVD, Czech filmmaker Pavla Fleischer decided to make The Pied Piper of Hutzovina after taking a drunken car ride around Prague in 2004 with Eugene Hütz—the frontman of gypsy punk/hip-hop, New York-based band Gogol Bordello. Apparently she was so smitten by his boisterous but lively personality (not to mention his incredible sense of fashion), that making a film about him was the only excuse she could come up with to draw his attention and make him spend some time with her, hoping that he shared the same romantic interest towards her as she did for him.

To believe that Fleischer went into all that trouble, just so that Hütz would return her affections is somewhat far fetched. Yet, watching this documentary that takes us from London (where the director resides) and New York, to Kiev, Moscow, and Siberia where the successful band leader attempts to reconnect with his gypsy roots, one soon understands where Fleischer is coming from. Hütz has plenty of charm and charisma, and following him in his musical exchanges with gypsies who live in camps in Carpathia, and in meeting with his heroes, friends, and family, is truly an enjoyable experience.

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

If you're already a fan of the films of Henry Jaglom, you'll need no further encouragement to see his latest arrival on DVD. If not, or if you're lukewarm, or know nothing of this fellow's rather "special" oeuvre, then Hollywood Dreams is probably as good a place as any to begin. Unlike some of his earlier work—Eating, Babyfever, Going Shopping (which deal with pretty much exactly what their titles suggest), or other films like Someone to Love, Déjà Vu and Always, in which love and relationships are front and center (whatever else they're about, Jaglom's movies are all always about love and relationships)--his latest is perfectly conceived and calibrated to demonstrate his "take" on the film's title.

We're in that territory where dreams of stardom collide with dreams of love and a lasting relationship. But nobody covers this territory in quite the manner of Mr. Jaglom. Once again, he overdoes just about everything, as well as allowing his cast to do the same. (If you've ever experienced the feeling of wanting to equip Karen Black with a good set of emotional and verbal brakes, you'll feel it doubly here.) Funny thing is, in going overboard, both he and his cast manage to wrest odd truth from this collision of ambition, romance, humor, coincidence and silliness.

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

If I were to tell you the plot of Lost in Beijing, along with its various twists and shocks (don't worry, I won't), you would tell me that this was soap opera worthy of Dynasty or the Lifetime channel. But because the film takes places in contemporary China, with its imploding social, economic, cultural and political morass, what happens here seems not only likely but possibly even typical. As directed and co-written (with Li Fang) by Yu Li (Fish and Elephant), the movie simply bubbles along from scene to scene so quickly and deftly that, even if you question something, you'll end up going with it because of the momentum--and the remarkably fine performances from the four actors who make up one of the unhappier quartets in memory.

Silent Ozu: Three Family Comedies
I Laughed, But...

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

The Criterion Collection continues their outstanding and very welcome "Eclipse" series, but only one director has thus far been deemed worthy of two box sets: Yasujiro Ozu. Last year, the Late Ozu set made #1 on my list of the year's best DVDs, and this year's Silent Ozu (Eclipse #10) set is also a strong contender. These early works, made between 1931 and 1933, show a younger and more rambunctious Ozu, whose films actually have occasional camera movements and moments of melodrama. Though sound film was perfected in 1927 and established in 1929, Ozu kept making silent films up through 1934 for two reasons. He felt that the form still had room for artistic improvement, and that adopting sound would force him to start all over. And also the Japanese film industry had a good thing going with Benshi, or live storytellers, who would talk over the silent pictures. (Some Benshi became celebrities in their own right, and fans would come to see them specifically.)

Tokyo Chorus (1931) shows Ozu already establishing the style he would keep until the end of his days, although a bit looser and lighter; there's a touch of Lubitsch here with some quiet comic asides. The opening sequence, with a flashback to the hero's carefree youth, is fairly overt and almost slapsticky. A clerk at an insurance firm, Okajima (Tokihiko Okada) looks forward to his bonus so that he can buy a bicycle for his son. But when he stands up for a wronged co-worker, he loses his job and his bonus. It's the setup of a hundred Hollywood comedies, but Ozu is more interested in the intricacies of the situation, rather than the situation itself. Okajima tries to make amends by buying a scooter, and finds himself conflicted at the prospect of taking a job that's beneath him. The ending doesn't neatly wrap everything up, but also doesn't leave us in the lurch. It's a beautifully sustained piece of filmmaking.

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

Writer/director Tom DiCillo will always hold a place in my heart for his wonderful movie-about-making-movies Living in Oblivion (1995). Everything I'd seen from him since has proved disappointing to one degree or another. Until now. Delirious--made in 2006, released in 2007 and this month finally appearing on DVD--shows DiCillo at his peak, offering a charming, original story with characters both dark and light. The movie is full of coincidence but it's used with such charm and effervescence that it actually helps ground it.

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2008)
Rating (out of 5): ***

Revolver (2007)
Rating (out of 5): **½

As unlikely a pair as cinema has ever thrown together, Jason Statham and Ray Liotta appear in two (bad) movies, both recently released to DVD. Revolver, Guy Ritchie's follow-up to his 2002 Madonna fiasco Swept Away, took two years to make it to the U.S., and promptly disappeared. It starts out like Ritchie's earlier crime pictures, and again stars Ritchie vet Statham. He plays Jake, who is released from jail after seven years and plots his revenge against casino owner Macha (Ray Liotta). When Macha tries to kill Jake, a couple of loan sharks (Vincent Pastore and André Benjamin) offer to protect him in exchange for all his money. Then they treat him like a lowly employee. I couldn't figure out why Jake would take this offer, since he seemed perfectly able to take care of himself. Then things get weird with a lot of talk about egos and rules and a number of chess games. Psychologists appear during the end credits to help explain what Ritchie was trying to get at. It's not worth the bother. Luc Besson is credited with adapting the story, but adapted from where is anyone's guess.

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

The Delirious Fictions of William Klein

This remarkable trio of films - now out on DVD thanks to the Eclipse Collection, a director-centric arm of Criterion -- needs no introduction to those already familiar with the ultra-fabulous visual oeuvre of William Klein, whose satirical visions have been called prescient by so many. Yet, perhaps any artist of note is in some way prescient, and prescience itself is neither virtue nor vice in a world without grand narrative.

So, what is so remarkable about Klein? These three movies pry open claustrophobic worlds with all too familiar social and political structures - and familiarity breeds contempt. What keeps us watching is the energy, the sheer aesthetic force that empowers each frame, each worthy of a Vogue cover, sent into our drab-weary retina. From the runway models clad in swirling metal in Who Are you, Molly Magoo? to the 'fashionably green' Ikea-esque furniture in The Model Couple to the stars-and-stripes retail cheerleaders in Mr. Freedom, Klein uses our perceptions of what is chic - and consumable, as such - to point out inequities, injustices, and hypocrisies that occur simply through the structure of systems themselves. By virtue of the very fabric of his vision, Klein coerces us into examining our own ways of being in the world, as citizens of a post-industrial, televised (and now streaming) universe.

Reviewer: Maria Komodore
La Chinoise (1967)
Rating (out of 5): *****
Le Gai Savoir (1969)
Rating (out of 5): *****

Filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard has always been considered one of the foremost representatives of the French New Wave. And not without good reason; his feature debut Breathless (1960), along with the contemporaneous releases of movies by his peers François Truffaut and Alain Resnais, pronounced and shaped the beginning of one of cinema history's most important movements. But Godard's extremely prolific career never stopped evolving, adapting to the personal changes and struggles the director was going through or engaged in.

Made shortly before the May 1968 events that broke out in France, La Chinoise reveals Godard's interest in the communist and anarchist ideals, while very accurately, almost prophetically, capturing the pulse of late 60s French youth. Set in a bourgeois apartment in Paris (presumably emptied for the summer by one of the character's parents), Chinoise's very loose plot centers around five "comrades" living in a Maoist cell. Anne Wiazemsky (with whom the director was at the time romantically involved), New Wave idol Jean-Pierre Léaud, and Juliet Berto, all essentially play themselves here, as through their different personalities and backgrounds they try to embrace a new way of living.

Reviewer: Dylan de Thomas

Moolaade
Rating (out of 5): *****

Xala
Rating (out of 5): ***½

I'll admit it: I felt a little dread at the prospects of watching Moolaade – the last film by the "Father of African cinema," Ousmane Sembene. It sat on top of my DVD player, looking every bit like the "vitamin movie" that litters many a GreenCine queue – movies that you know are good for you, but which you also feel disinclined to watch. There are even studies (beware: PDF) on the avoidance of watching movies that you should watch.

But Moolade is a startlingly humanistic film about female genital mutilation set in a small village in Burkina Faso, a land-locked nation in Western Africa. As grim as that may sound, the film itself is an absolute wonder to behold. From literally the first frame, the movie is engaging and involving; Sembene created a colorful, fascinating world in which the drama in the film unfolds in a deliberate, tantalizing way.

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

Has Francis Ford Coppola ever been much of a screenwriter? Don't his real strengths, such as they are, lie in his conceptions, and sometimes in his visuals? (Conceptions more admired, perhaps, for their attempts than for their actual successes.) In any case, with most of his more prominent movies, he's had a lot of good help and/or source material--from Puzo's Godfather and Grisham's The Rainmaker to S.E. Hinton's Rumble Fish and The Outsiders, and John Milius on Apocalypse Now. Though I didn't much care for The Conversation when it was first released (a rare time that Coppola doesn't share screenplay credit), I know it's considered one of his best and plan to re-see it soon. I admit to not being an enormous fan of the filmmaker, but that is no reason to heap contempt on his latest work to arrive in the video bin: Youth Without Youth (which is based on an outside source, too -- the book by Romanian author Mircea Eliade -- but scripted by Coppola). No, indeed -- not when there are so many other good reasons for denigrating it.

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

Anthony Mann may be the most underrated Hollywood director of all time. His career went through four distinct phases, from unremarkable "B" films to remarkable "B" films (the noirs T-Men and Raw Deal among them), to exceptional Westerns starring Jimmy Stewart (Winchester '73, The Naked Spur, etc.) to epics. During the same period, many of the most highly skilled Hollywood workhorses eventually found themselves directing oversized epics: George Stevens (Giant), David Lean (The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia), William Wyler (Ben-Hur), George Cukor (My Fair Lady), Vincente Minnelli (Gigi) and Robert Wise (West Side Story and The Sound of Music). The Academy has always been impressed with scale and spectacle, and these filmmakers all won Oscars for their large-scale work, but for some reason Mann's epics never turned them on. Mann was fired from his partly-completed Spartacus (1960) and he later dismissed his Cimarron (1960), but El Cid (1961) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), both recently released on DVD by The Weinstein Company's Miriam Collection, look like they ought to have turned a few heads.

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

Among the dozen or so excellent reasons to watch Carve Her Name With Pride is the fact that this film--about a WWII hero who happened to be woman--holds up marvelously. From its romantic scenes to its suspense, from the surprise at seeing a classic British beauty being put through a set of karate moves, to the heartfelt moments that bring a sudden reminder about "duty to country" in what was arguably--screw it: what was clearly--the last war that needed to be fought for reasons of right, wrong and necessity, this movie works.

And another reason is to acquaint, or for the older viewer, reacquaint oneself with a marvelous actress named Virginia McKenna. Best known for the international hit Born Free (about the Kenya couple Joy and George Adamson, who raised the famous lion sub Elsa to maturity), McKenna had much of the beauty, class, talent and breeding of our own Grace Kelly (but with more a spirited, natural, country-girl appeal than the highly made-up, fashion-conscious "Country Girl" that Kelly usually essayed), McKenna was an oft-nominated BAFTA winner (for the 1956 version of A Town Like Alice). Awarded an O.B.E. (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 2004, and she's still with us, a grandmother who continues to act--mostly on British television, most recently in a "Miss Marple" episode filmed in 2005.

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

Ingmar Bergman was the one-man Swedish film industry for so long that sometimes it's hard to imagine anyone else working there, much less making a sci-fi/comic book/computer nerd movie like Storm. Even the younger generation like Jan Troell and Lasse Hallström were content to follow in Bergman's art-house footsteps, although they tended to overlook his penchant for exploring darkness and nightmares. Who can forget that horrific sequence in Wild Strawberries, or shake off the effect, in Fanny and Alexander, of the world's nastiest screen villain (Jan Malmsjo's bishop)? Then there's Persona, with its slowly unraveling grip on reality, and The Virgin Spring and Hour of the Wolf, both pure horror show. And so it appears that the true students of Bergman are more daring filmmakers like Roy Andersson, Lukas Moodysson, Mikael Håfström and now perhaps the team of Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein, the men behind Storm, made in 2005 and now released on DVD by TLA Releasing.

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

Having first explored humanitarian crises while starring in the eye-opening Hotel Rwanda (2004), actor Don Cheadle is once again one of the main characters in the real-life stories around which the documentary Darfur Now, also a film about genocide, revolves.

The film by Ted Braun follows six different people in their very different but equally crucial efforts to deal with the horrible atrocities taking place in Darfur, Sudan: Cheadle uses his celebrity status to make people aware of the situation encouraging them to get involved in whatever way they can; International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is struggling to come up with the necessary evidence in order to bring the culprits before justice; relief worker Pablo Recalde hassles with securing the safe delivery of food rations in the camps hosting the incredibly large number of dislocated people; UCLA student and activist Adam Sterling is successfully fighting for the passing of a bill that prohibits the state of California from doing business with Sudan; and Hejewa Adam joins the Sudanese armed rebel force after losing her young child.

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

Whatever you end up deciding about Reverend Billy, the star and guiding force of What Would Jesus Buy?, it will be easier to dismiss the good Reverend himself than it will be the many ideas and questions raised by this movie about him. He's a performer, first and last, and he seems to love it. Whether his performances actually help him and his little group of acolytes/choristers achieve their goals is questionable. But the goals themselves, I think, are not.

Reverend Billy, his wife and congregation, would like you, me--all America--to stop shopping, at least to the unruly and crazy extent that our country is doing it these days (or was, before the housing meltdown/gas-price upturn). And so he acts just like a nutty televangelist, declaiming, shouting and carrying on to beat the band. Billy dances, he sings, he preaches with the best of them (or nearly). But his message is subversive and necessary--compared to the babble and slop most of those guys are feeding us.

Catch the bus with Vince Vaughn (Swingers, Wedding Crashers) and four hand-picked comedians as they tour the country in Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights – Hollywood to the Heartland [official site], arriving on DVD June 3, 2008, from New Line Home Entertainment. Take a backstage look at the comedians' lives on the road as they take their LA-based comedy to regional audiences across the United States to perform in 30 cities in 30 nights. The film features Justin Long (Accepted, Dreamland), Peter Billingsley (A Christmas Story, The Break-Up) and four of Vince Vaughn’s favorite young comics: Ahmed Ahmed, John Caparulo, Bret Ernst and Sebastian Maniscalco. DVD extras include feature-length audio commentary from Vaughn, the comedians and the filmmakers, plus behind-the-scenes featurettes showcasing Jon Favreau, Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens.

And now, thanks to GreenCine and New Line, you can win a copy of the Wild West Comedy Show DVD to have your own rootin', tootin' gigglin' good time if you're one of the 5 (five) lucky winners in our new contest.

To enter the drawing, send an email to contest@greencine.com, including your name, email address and, if you're a GreenCine member, your username in the email, and "Wild West Comedy Show" in the subject header. Entries without all this information will not be considered. (You will not be added to a mailing list!)

5 winners will be selected at random from all valid entries. The deadline is Friday, June 13. Winners will be notified by e-mail and announced in future editions of the GreenCine Dispatch newsletter.

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

If you ever thought that Buddhist Zen preachers are unassuming people who hold the secrets to happiness, and who lead quiet lives, devoting themselves to meditation in order to achieve enlightenment, then How To Cook your Life might convince you otherwise. The film's subject, well-known Bay Area-based “zen chef” Edward Espe Brown (a zen preacher himself), appears not only to have achieved relative stardom status, but also to be a successful businessman.

Having studied under Japanese Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, who ordained Brown as a priest in 1971, the zen chef has traveled all around the US and Europe giving his famous cooking classes and leading meditation retreats, and has also published a number of books (“The Tassajara Bread Book,” and “Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings”) that, just like How to Cook your Life, fuse the art of cooking with Zen teachings.