Guru

Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): ****½

Paul Schrader -- having internalized the criticism he faced after Taxi Driver of pouring his obsession with ritualistic suicide into an illiterate, mentally ill Vietnam veteran -- explores the real life (and gruesome death) of one of Japan's most revered literary figures, Yukio Mishima. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters exists in Schrader's eclectic directorial body of work squarely between the Cat People re-make and the odd Joan Jett/Michael J. Fox vehicle Light of Day. And even though he would go on to direct the widely commended Affliction and the intriguing Auto Focus, Schrader has always maintained (rightfully so) that Mishima was his greatest work.

The film follows the traditional trajectory of a biopic: his dysfunctional upbringing, romantic endeavors, romantic failures, political radicalization and self-discovery but the wikipedia-approach is not the main objective. Schrader (always more respected as a screenwriter than director, then and now) understands that a writer's work and fantasy life hold the key to understanding the choices they make in the terrestrial realm.

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

Patriotism (also called "The Rite of Love and Death") is a 27-minute silent film directed by Yukio Mishima, the subject of Paul Schrader's film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (re-released by Criterion on the same day and which I reviewed here). The film was shot in secret and screened in France in attempt to raise Mishima's profile in Europe as he believed he was in the running for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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

While fans of the work of the French writer/director André Téchiné will queue up for his newest film, The Witnesses, this first-rate study of a time (the early 1980s), place (Paris) and people (a disparate group connected by everything from friendship and love to employment and sex) also makes a fine entry-point for anyone new to this moviemaker. I've never seen a Téchiné film I did not like, but I admit that some (Wild Reeds, My Favorite Season, Thieves) are more immediately accessible and enjoyable than others (Loin, J'embrasse pas, Changing Times).

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

Even though The Tracey Fragments, an offbeat Canadian film starring Ellen Page, was made before the wildly successful Juno, it was only after viewers and critics were left dumbfounded by the actress's spot-on, deadpan performance in the latter film that Tracey could get a theatrical (and a subsequent DVD) release in the US.

As with Juno, Page's Tracey is an intelligent, out-of-the-mainstream, teenage girl who's dealing with important issues. But the overall sunny outlook on life that governed Juno is utterly absent in Tracey. Instead, dark and fragmented, the film is the chronicle of a young girl's sick psyche.

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

Politically progressive, consistently independent writer/director John Sayles takes his sweet time with Honeydripper, which has a rather slight story and still runs over the two-hour mark. Fortunately, the operative word here is "sweet" -- as in gentle, satisfying and dulcet, rather than sugary or saccharine. This sweetness comes in so many forms--from the wonderfully genuine performances in the redolent tale Sayles tells, to the music that weaves it way--insinuating, sexy, and finally charmingly explosive--throughout the film. It's especially apparent in some of Sayles' writing. Watch for the exquisite scene in which a character muses about how the first slave to learn piano-playing might have managed this: It's thoughtful, specific, wonderfully imagined and executed.

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5):

Paddle to the Sea: ***½
The Red Balloon: ****½

I have the vaguest of recollections of the Canadian short film Paddle to the Sea, from probably around the time I was in elementary school in the late 70s, probably rolling my eyes at the start -- "what's this dumb movie about a carved Indian in a canoe?" -- until becoming, many years later as an adult, completely engaged and enraptured by the story. Then, it was probably a jittery, wobbly film print played on a dirty projector, the voice over narration skipping and the sound warbling; now, thanks to Criterion and Janus, Paddle to the Sea has been digitally remastered, likely looking as good as it ever has, even if a bit faded, and is as lovely as ever. The simple story follows a wood carving from its inception, created by a Native boy living in remote Canada, who sets the little figure - a man in a canoe - free above a river, with a request carved at the bottom to return the boat to the water if found. The film follows the progress of the little boat - called "Paddle" - from body of water to body of water, through the seasons, found by various people, set free again and again, making it through various hazards.

It's surprising how touching the simple film is, and there are little messages to be received by willing children, too, as Paddle sludges through mucky, polluted water near industrial plants, and as kids learn to respect the boat's wishes. But it is the marvelous photography, which combined with the film's overall documentary-like feel, that makes viewing it such a breathtaking experience.

Reviewer: Steve Goldstein
Rating (out of 5): **** (for all 3 films)

When MGM first paired its rising musical star Gene Kelly with the heartthrob crooner Frank Sinatra, audiences must have expected Kelly to take the dancing turns and Sinatra to take the vocal spotlights. Instead, Kelly and Sinatra took the route of Paramount's then-current hit team of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. MGM's boys would share everything-the singing, dancing, joke telling and skirt chasing. There would be a difference, though. Hope and Crosby's movies conformed, often surrealistically, to their comedic personas. Kelly and Sinatra, in the three movies collected in the DVD box set "The Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly Collection" (Warner Home Video), served the genre - in this case, the movie musical. Their three movies together chart the development of the genre, as well as Kelly's expanding creative freedom as a dancer, choreographer and, ultimately, director.

In his foreword to Clive Hirschhorn's "Gene Kelly: A Biography," Frank Sinatra wrote that his movie career up until the point that he was teamed with Kelly had not added up to much. He saw himself as merely a crooner who perhaps did not belong in movies. Kelly's dismissive attitude at the start of their partnership gave Sinatra no reason to think otherwise. But Kelly was a workhorse who drove himself and everyone around him to heights of perfection. He rehearsed with Sinatra for eight weeks before they ever danced in front of a camera for Anchors Aweigh [previous edition]. Sinatra was physically a wreck after those eight weeks, and had lost weight he couldn't afford to lose. Even at that early stage in his career, he disliked rehearsal and felt he was at his best in his spontaneous first or second takes in the recording studio. He was not in charge here, though. Kelly transformed Sinatra into a dancer; he forced a recalcitrant, pugnacious and, worse, insecure, singer to become an important gear in a beautiful machine called the Hollywood musical. Sinatra said he had never worked so hard. It's unlikely he ever worked as hard again, once his creative partnership with Kelly ended. In return, Sinatra said he learned to believe that he did, indeed, belong in movies.

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

Any review of a new movie by the Portuguese master filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira must mention his age -- 99 years old as of this writing -- as well as this factoid: he's the only living filmmaker to have begun working during the silent era. That much, let alone his output of austere and literal, yet poignant films, has pretty much earned him the right to make any movie he feels like making. And so he set his sights on a sort of sequel to Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour (1967), and although it reunites two of the main characters from that masterpiece, it actually becomes more of a mysterious, moving epilogue. In that, Belle Toujours is probably closer to Oliveira's Voyage to the Beginning of the World (1997) and I'm Going Home (2002) than to Bunuel's original.

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

Can a foreign-born filmmaker come to Hollywood without selling out? When established international filmmakers make their English language debut, the general consensus decrees that they've succumbed to the siren call of Hollywood, a longing for more money and fame. Another view is that Hollywood lures original talents to its shores so that it can squash them, keeping them under control so that it can still look like the movie king of the world. Of course, many other directors make a smooth transition and learn how to play the system. So what of Wong Kar-wai? He's certainly one of the world's most unique talents and seemingly not cut out for Hollywood rules and regulations. His English-language debut My Blueberry Nights was mostly received with disappointment. The general consensus is that it's not as good, or as deep, as his Hong Kong films. This view automatically assumes that "light" is inferior to "heavy." But the important thing is that My Blueberry Nights contains all of Wong's signature touches and that Hollywood did not strip any of them away.

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

Just as it surprised me that Under the Same Moon (La Misma Luna) was not as popular as it ought to have been with mainstream audiences, so it is with Chop Shop and independent film lovers. Both films deal with a young protagonist on a quest, who must somehow make America help him achieve his goal. The former is mainstream feel-good, the latter is, if not exactly feel-bad, certainly something this side of an "upper." So, how is it that an energetic, intelligent, funny and moving little film like Chop Shop did not reach more of its target crowd?

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

Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr has always been notorious for his long, slow, and exceedingly bleak cinematic explorations of life in the former Soviet bloc. But the mere two hours and twenty five minutes that one of his most celebrated films, Werckmeister Harmonies (made six years earlier, in 2000), takes for its poetically bizarre visual symbolisms to unfold, are nothing compared to Sátántángo.

With a total running time of seven hours and fifteen minutes, Sátántángo ceremoniously deserves to be called "epic." Nonetheless, as skeptical as the film's duration may make a viewer, Tarr's rendering of the last days of a collective farm during the end of communist-era Hungary is so engaging and so breathtakingly beautiful that one barely notices the hours go by.

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

One of the all-time great filmmakers, the Danish-born Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889-1968) made what Paul Schrader termed "transcendental" films. That is, they attained something a little greater than the drudgery of the everyday, and in Dreyer's case, something close to the divine. In this country, he's primarily known for five films: The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Vampyr (1932), Day of Wrath (1943), Ordet (1955) and Gertrud (1964). Vampyr is typically ranked the lowest of these first five masterworks. It was produced with a comparatively lower budget and may not look as professional as the others, and it also has the loosest, most ramshackle plot of the five.

But I suspect the real reason for its lower status is the fact that it's a horror film. Myself, I generally rank it not only as one of the four or five greatest horror films, but also as one of the greatest films ever made, regardless of genre. It's a masterpiece that still gives me the chills.

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5):
Disc (Season) One: ****½
Disc (Season) Two: ****
Bonus Disc: ***½

After several years of hearing about a wonderfully quirky British show called Spaced, and then hearing still more about it when its creators went on to make the highly regarded genre-busting film comedies Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and then finally seeing some bits of said show on a bootleg DVD someone had sent me, made from the fairly barebones UK region 2 release, now at long last comes a proper US release of the entire series. Fans of those films should rejoice, for herein is the germination of everything director Edgar Wright and company would subsequently produce, and yet may never quite top.

For those many of us who are already familiar with how sharply funny Simon Pegg and his frequent compadre Nick Frost can be, it is Jessica Stevenson (who now uses her married name, Hynes) who might be the real revelation to Americans here. In the UK she's quite well known as a comic performer on stage and in TV (and has been a collaborator with Pegg for some time), but it's a delight to see her here at her likable best, a semi-spastic but earnest wonder, the perfect foil for Pegg's manchildish character. The show centers around Pegg's Tim and Stevenson's Daisy, two strangers who meet when apartment hunting and decide to make a go of searching for a flat together. They discover it's easier to find a place they love if they pretend to be a married couple. And if that sounds like the set-up to a terrible American sitcom, it very well might, but in Spaced it is the perfect set up for Wright, Pegg and Stevenson's loopy humor and (cornucopia) of loopy characterizations -- which generously lends itself all the way down to a rich supporting cast.

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

Made in 1991, The Exile (La Frontera) marks Chilean director Ricardo Larraín's first attempt at feature filmmaking, a debut so impressive that when it was screened at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1992 it won the Silver Berlin Bear for outstanding first film.

The story revolves around a math teacher from Santiago, Ramiro Orellana (wonderfully played by Patricio Contreras, Sexo con amor), who's sent to internal exile in a secluded part of Chile for signing a petition regarding the abduction of a colleague. There he meets a group of peculiar people who have been trying to rebuild their lives after a big flood devestated the village and caused many casualties. While two of the locals harass Ramiro, making him report to them several times throughout the day, he forms a special bond with Maite (Gloria Laso) a middle aged woman who, having lost her child and husband in the flood, has dedicated herself to taking care of her senile father.

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

The miracle managed by Out of The Blue -- a New Zealand movie about a mass murder that took place there in the early 1990s -- is simply that it is not exploitative. While the film offers violence, suspense and shock, along with a bit of humor, it never "plays" its audience nor gives in to the sleazier impulses of so many current filmmakers to spin ugly thrills out of human misery. Yet, under Robert Sarkies' precise direction (he also co-adapted, with Graeme Tetley, the book on which the film is based), there is not an uninteresting moment in the whole endeavor. This is due to the documentary-like feel and the tight look of the film, but also to something more.

Reviewer: Dylan De Thomas
Rating (out of 5): **½

An uneven melodrama filled with lurches and starts, Never Forever is highlighted by a strong performance by Vera Farmiga, who is still waiting for her breakout role after shining in The Departed a couple of years back. Though impressive - and a must-see for fans of Farmiga's doe eyes and pliant, oft-downturned mouth - this is not the movie that will launch her into the greater public's consciousness.

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

There's a palpably thick layer of sadness and melancholy that envelops Canadian filmmaker Claude Jutra's Mon Oncle Antoine (1971). A lot of it has to do with the setting; it's Christmas Eve in a small asbestos-mining community in 1940s Quebec, nature is dressed in white, and the workers gather in the town's general store to celebrate the frozen and endless winter in an alcoholic stupor. But adding to the melancholy is the knowledge that, at the untimely age of fifty-six, Jutra decided to take his own life after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Nonetheless, as the case often is with films that feature kid protagonists (some obvious exceptions do pop to mind), Mon Oncle Antoine is also gentle, charming, and touching. Just like its famous and beloved influence The 400 Blows (1959, François Truffaut), Jutra's semi-autobiographical film plunges into pre-adolescent disillusionment and renders a tender portrait of a youngster's inevitable and irrevocable fall from grace; a fall tightly related to the harsh conditions rural Québec's working class endured under the regime of conservative politician and Union-Nationale party leader Maurice Duplessis, which ultimately led to the province's Quiet Revolution.

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Ratings (out of 5):
The Curiosity Of Chance: **
Down the River: **½
Love My Life: ***

For gay and lesbian filmmakers (and, it would appear, their audiences), the hot topic remains "coming out" and/or learning to live with that decision. It's not difficult to understand why: unlike most minorities, those of us whose sexuality is focused on our own gender can hide this "difference" if we choose -- more easily than can those in the categories of race, religion and country of origin. Hiding seems a less-used option these days, but it's still there, and, clearly, still fascinates. (The "Salvatore" character -- played quite well by Bryan Batt -- on the current Emmy-nominated show Mad Men is but the most current case in point. Even though the series is set in 1960, Salvatore's dilemma seems oddly au courant.) Three movies making their DVD debut this month—two gay and one lesbian—offer up their individual "take" on this ever-popular situation. None succeeds completely but each has its merits.

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

The most recent, yet least-known, film from Criterion's Agnes Varda box set, Vagabond, produced over 30 years after her first feature, marks the beginning of Varda's career-long experimentation blending documentary style storytelling with a fictional narrative.

Mona (Sandrine Bonnaire) is the titular vagabond girl, backpacking around the southern coast of France with no real destination or purpose. She draws water from people's wells, sells pints of blood for easy cash and scams meals from flirtatious men in cafes. Unlike the romantic figures in Kerouac novels, Mona has no idealogical reason for dropping out of society nor is she particularly interested in meeting the people who inhabit the new towns she blows through. She's perfectly content to sleep outside, read books and stare at the barren landscape of France's wine country in the off-season.