Guru

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): Hair ****
Chicago 10 ***

A film-loving friend of mine insists that the first half-hour of Milos Forman's version of the musical Hair constitutes the best 30 minutes in movie history. That's quite a claim, but after watching the film again recently, I'm amazed at how very well it has held up--and not simply those first 30 minutes. From the quiet beginning, as John Savage's "Claude" leaves the family farm and heads for the army's NYC induction center, Forman is on track. As Claude's bus nears its destination and the New York skyline comes into view, the brass instruments suddenly surge on the soundtrack, and the first of many magical moments occurs.

Forman was wise to keep his film a period piece. Though made a dozen years after the time it depicts, the movie is so very much of that time that there is really no way to "update" it. Burning drafts cards, be-ins, the long hair and the hippie attire are so specific to their day that I cannot imagine any way to recreate them for another era. The talented director handles the drug-hazed “happening” in Central Park in fast and frisky style, full of surprise and delight. Forman also found a way to bring his film to a meaningful and moving close – something that neither the off-Broadway original nor the glitzier, shallow Broadway transfer ever came close to. (The just-concluded summer revival of the musical in Central Park, greeted with rapturous reviews and packed audiences, is now planned for a move to Broadway, where, for $100-plus, audiences can either recapture their youth or be introduced to a pivotal time in their parents or grandparents lives.)

Reviewer: Dylan de Thomas
Ratings (out of 5): ****

Who doesn't love Cool Hand Luke? Paul Newman, at what is arguably the peak of his stardom, playing one of the most likable anti-establishment characters ever put on celluloid against one of the most risible, drawling villains ever. Toss in some great dark camerawork from Conrad Hall, one of the more quotable screenplays in film history, and George Kennedy in an Oscar-winning role - his name is Dragline, fer chrissakes - that is the veritable definition of lovable lug. The greatest Saturday afternoon movie ever.

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Ratings (out of 5):
Redbelt: **½
88 Minutes: **

David Mamet, martial arts, and a cast to die for (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Emily Mortimer, Tim Allen, Mamet regular Ricky Jay, Alice Braga, David Paymer, Joe Mantegna and more!) should add up to one fine movie. Redbelt, however, disappoints. Let's just say that Mamet has stacked his deck with a little too much coincidence and allowed himself an ending so full of macho sentimentality that you'll be torn between the urge to hoot or puke.

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

With rueful pleas for corporate regulation, doomsday global warming scenarios, references to Alaskan corruption and even an off the cuff remark about how fuel efficiency can be improved by adjusting tire pressure, The Last Winter is a supernatural horror film that provides us yet another lens to examine our national political conscious. Pitting blue state against red state in the form of male sexual jealousy it's to writer/director Larry Fessenden's great credit that he seems largely indifferent to humanity's unity or survival. Or, at the very least, takes great pleasure in ripping it to shreds (as any good horror director would).

The film opens with a jubilant internal corporate video (voiced by Patricia Clarkson) championing the success of opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling as a monumental human achievement. An only modestly exaggerated wink that none of this would be possible without a troubling intertwining of corporate greed and governmental corruption.

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

The Unforeseen is a mostly terrific, beautifully shot documentary that uses a microcosmic story of development in Austin, Texas, to tell another of a more cosmic environmental struggle affecting us all. The film splits focus between an ongoing battle between environmentalists and developers over Barton Springs, a longtime favorite site of sunbathers and swimmers, as well as a place where some even find religion (Baptists long used it as a spot for baptisms, while another woman interviewed in the film talked about the spiritual nature of being at the spot itself); and the way development encroaches on rapidly shrinking farmland in the area, focusing on one old-time corn farmer who sees the open space and agriculture around him disappearing.

While the film's leanings undeniably lean environmentalist (not that I have a problem with that), director Laura Dunn (in her first "big" documentary) does a reasonable job of at least trying to find balance in the debate by interviewing developers, conservatives and a young couple who eagerly move to the edge city for the lower housing costs. But the crux of the film is Austin and the battle to protect its few remaining natural, open spaces. One of the central characters is real estate developer Gary Bradley, a native Texan who struck it rich and had designs on developing Barton Springs. His own career crash ruined his life but ultimately didn't ruin the transformation of that once sacred area.

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

NOISE: Scourge of Urban Life

While Noise will confirm many of the prejudices country folk feel about the big city, the movie should have those of us who actually live in the latter frothing at the mouth within minutes. Why? Because writer/director Henry Bean's (The Believer) new film delivers up a picture of one of the more crazy-making though least recognized (it is not, after all, mugging, murder, robbery or rape) urban problems: noise pollution. Due to his clever premise, an almost believable follow-through and a first-rate sound department, Noise makes the most of the titular annoyances and ends up seducing you into cheering for a vigilante like never before. (It helps that our "hero" is fighting noise, rather than a bunch of Death Wish-inspired rapists/murderers.)

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Ratings (out of 5):
Saturn: ***½
Heaven: ****

Stylistically, two new films with similar themes by international moviemakers with strong ties to Turkey could hardly be more different, yet both deal strongly and thoughtfully with the subject of loss, grief and guilt.

Ferzan Ozpetek, born in Turkey in 1959, came to Rome to study film and has now become one of Italy's most recognized moviemakers. Fatih Akin's parents emigrated from Turkey to Germany in the 1960s; he was born in Hamburg in 1973. The land of Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, its culture and religion come up again and again in both filmmakers' work -- more in Ozpetek's early films like Steam and Harem than is his latest Saturn in Opposition (but how often he uses the wonderful Turkish actress Serra Yilmaz!). Akin seems to be drawn to Turkey more strongly with each successive film: In July, Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul, and now The Edge Of Heaven.

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

There are those who see writer/director David Gordon Green's career improving, with Undertow (2004) as his best work, and others see it in decline, with his debut George Washington (2000) remaining his finest to date. His fourth feature Snow Angels should at least have both camps in agreement; it's not his best, but it's an accomplished, wrenching, satisfying drama of the highest order. (It's every bit as good as -- but 180 degrees from -- his subsequent film, Pineapple Express, released just a few months later.)

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½
 
Anyone remember the old Peter Shaffer play "Five Finger Exercise"?  Highly "theatrical" (code word for a-tad-too-coincidental-and-heavy-handed), this London success made its Broadway debut in 1959 and ran for nearly a year.  Directed by John Gielgud, it starred Jessica Tandy, with a very young Brian Bedford and Juliet Mills making (I think) their Broadway debuts.  For the movie version, which Columbia released in 1962, the location shifted to the USA and Rosalind Russell replaced Ms Tandy.  Enough said.  Ms Russell had her moments -- and her films -- but subtlety was seldom part of her repertoire.
 
I bring all this up because I had completely forgotten about Five Finger Exercise until I saw the recent German film Pingpong, which takes the play's situation of placing an young, budding outsider inside a nuclear family and watching the tension, sexual and otherwise, heat up.  It also goes the Shaffer script one better by making the outsider a seldom-seen family member, adding a whiff of near-incest to the mix. Directed and co-written (with Meike Hauck) by Matthias Luthardt, the movie is cast extremely well, and each of the four protagonists -- mom, dad, son, nephew -- make their moments strong and their sub-texts stronger. (The family's dog also plays quite a role in the proceedings.)

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

Last year, while making my way through Criterion Eclipse's five-disc Late Ozu DVD box set, I had a small revelation, and window to understanding this great master's work opened. I had always experienced a kind of relaxed bliss while watching his films, but I suddenly understood that this kind of tranquility comes only from acceptance -- acceptance of life's inevitable imperfections and disappointments. Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963) dealt with these things by comfortable repetition, casting the same actors again and again, hiring the same crew, using the same angles (low, just above floor level), and the same methods of cutting. He mastered the use of "pillow shots," which give the viewer time to breathe and meditate between scenes. Even his opening titles, with their simple burlap backgrounds, are familiar. Over the years, Ozu made only two major changes in his work: he converted from silent to sound and from black-and-white to color (both decisions made several years after everyone else).

That said, An Autumn Afternoon, has some striking departures. It turned out to be Ozu's last film -- the director died exactly on his 60th birthday in 1963 -- but it's also a remarkable example of a "last film." It sums up a career's worth of work, while simultaneously looking ahead and coming to terms with new ideas. The film begins by eradicating the burlap backgrounds over the titles, and then using industrial images (polluting smokestacks, etc.) rather than more innocent ones, like his usual clotheslines. Shuhei Hirayama (Chishu Ryu) works in an office; outside his windows, we can glimpse more (red) smokestacks, belching smoke. Hirayama is pre-occupied with marrying off his 24 year-old office girl, but is more reluctant when it comes to his own daughter, who is the same age. Since the death of his wife, his daughter Michiko (Shima Iwashita) has been looking after him and his youngest son, Kazuo (Shinichiro Mikami). The implication is that the men would be helpless without her. (Of course, Ozu also explored this theme in the great Late Spring as well as in several other works).

Reviewer: Walker Koppelman-Brown
Ratings (out of 5): ***

Those of you who who are looking for a fast-paced pop-centric, behind the scenes musical documentary may want to skip The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose. However, if you consider yourself a folk music fan, this humble film should sate your deep-rooted folksiness. It follows the 40-year struggle between a stubborn corporate music industry and a sub-culture that is now largely left behind. At the center of the struggle stand Holy Modal Rounders founders Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber.