Guru

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

That age-old question "How can you live with yourself?" takes on new and urgent meaning in The Trap, which is now out on DVD courtesy of Film Movement. An award-winning Serbian/German/Hungarian co-production (in the Serbo-Croatian language), directed by Srdan Golubovic from a screenplay by a trio of writers, the film is beyond "dark." But the film is not just some "artsy" Eastern European concoction; among its several prizes is an Audience Award for Best Film at the Trieste Fest. Audience awards are mostly given to films that are easily accessible -- which The Trap most definitely is. But it is also an artful, tightly-made (even at 106 minutes) movie that quickly rivets you.

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

One of the most famous unknown films of all time finally comes out of the shadows of bootleggery and gets the Criterion treatment. Samuel Fuller's White Dog, a story about the re-programming of a dog that's been trained to attack black people, was considered such volatile subject matter in 1982 that the NAACP threatened boycotts while the film was still shooting. Paramount Studios eventually cowed and shelved the film entirely which only served to generate a long-lasting ignominy against Fuller. Eventually the director was forced to relocate to France where at the very least, people actually watch movies before labeling a film-maker as a virulent racist. Even then he was only able to make one more film, the extraordinarily bitter Street of No Return, about a great opera singer who has his throat cut out by powerful mobsters.

White Dog's genesis was nearly as seedy and tortured as its (to date) shelf life. Adapted from "Chien Blanc", Romain Gary's semi-autobiographical novel about he and his wife actress Jean Seberg's adoption of a stray dog that they later discovered had been trained to attack black people. Seberg became committed to curing the dog and Gary used the incident, as well as his wife's former involvement with the Black Panther movement, as a jumping off point to examine the need to quash bigotry. The story went through the usual studio channels (at one point set to be directed by Arthur Penn), eventually being assigned to Roman Polanski who had to abandon the project after fleeing criminal charges for sex with a minor. It was screenwriter Curtis Hanson (who would go on to direct Wonder Boys, L.A. Confidential, 8 Mile) who suggested the studio brass consider the legendary B-movie director Samuel Fuller, who'd had a minor hit with his World War II film The Big Red One. With a writers' strike looming, Paramount was confident Fuller could get a script in working shape and complete the film on time and on budget.

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

When I interviewed actor/director Guillaume Canet shortly before the American theatrical release of his Tell No One (a movie that has gone on to become America's most successful foreign-language release of the past year; out on DVD next March), I asked him why we had never been able to see his earlier and first full-length film Mon Idole. Canet seemed surprised that his film was not available here, but Tell No One's enormous American success may have remedied that. Better late than never, for -- even in a mediocre DVD transfer and bearing the undistinguished "international" title of Whatever You Say -- it was worth the wait.

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

Made in 2000 and given a marginal release in the UK (where it was made) and Singapore the following year, Another Life was then sold to TV in only few countries. It's an odd little film that is finally now, thanks to DVD, able to be seen here in the states. Some of its cast members -- Ioan Gruffudd, Imelda Staunton and Tom Wilkinson -- well-known back then, have only grown starrier over time, while others -- Natasha Little, Nick Moran and Rachael Stirling -- though working consistently, have failed to hit the big time. All six are excellent actors, elsewhere and here, and their film, based on a scandal that made headlines back in the early days of the twentieth century, is worth seeing.

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

A good example of a film with a "hot" topic (rape) that handles its subject with intelligence, tact and almost no prurience, Open Window also -- unfortunately -- exemplifies failure due to lack of "art."  After watching the interview with writer/director Mia Goldman on the DVD extras, my companion noted correctly that everything Goldman says (the movie is based to an extent on her own rape experience) seemed truthful and correct -- and yet her film still did not work.  It is worth seeing, however, and I do not mean this backhandedly, as much for its faults as for its attempt.

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

The documentary Up the Yangtze is a perfect companion piece to Jia Zhang-ke's Still Life. They both deal in certain ways with China's humongous, controversial Three Gorges project, although neither film ever goes into detail as to what the project is supposed to accomplish (presumably it will bring a huge amount of hydro-electrical power to China). Meanwhile, there will be lots of flooding and some two million people will be displaced. Still Life tells the story of two people -- who never meet -- who turn up in one of the riverside towns to locate loved ones. Up the Yangtze likewise focuses on a smaller story, rather than the uncertain, unwieldy larger story of the dam itself and China's future. The film was made by an outsider, Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang, who becomes a fly on the wall and observes two young people, the sixteen year-old "Cindy" Shui Yu and the nineteen year-old "Jerry" Bo Yu Chen. They both go to work on the tourist riverboats that roam up the Yangtze River. (These are supposedly "farewell tours," so that people can see the vistas before they sink completely underwater.)

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Anamorph: Rating (out of 5): ***
A Man Named Pearl: Rating (out of 5): ****

I would never think of linking a pair of movies like this were it not that both use art as their central metaphor (and I happened to watch them, one right after the other). In Anamorph, an unusual serial killer film (not my favorite genre by a long shot), the art come via the killer, and I have to say that, ugly and dark as it often is, it looks damn good, as it brings to mind a host of dark artists, empty to brilliant, from Damian Hirst to Frances Bacon. The fine documentary A Man Named Pearl tell the story of a black gardener in the town of Bishopville, South Carolina, who creates unusual artistic topiary in a striking variety of shapes and patterns.

Reviewer: Alan Hogue
Rating (out of 5): ****

As someone who has seen all of the famous western-samurai remakes too many times to count, I can assure you that the last thing I was looking forward to was yet another remake (Japanese or American) of Yojimbo. That, of course, was because I never thought to wonder what it might be like if Takashi Miike, notorious madman-filmmaker extraordinaire, made one. Now I know; this is one of Miike’s most entertaining movies, an absolutely gonzo gem of irrational, exuberant style.

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

In Bejing, an American married couple Roy (Woody Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer) has just finished up with a church mission. A happy, simple train nut, Roy wants to ride the famous Transsiberian Express, which runs through to Moscow, before taking a plane back home. Jessie, an amateur photographer, goes along with him. The train crosses through remote, snowy terrain, a great place for something devious and sinister to happen. They meet a young backpacking couple, Abby (Kate Mara) and Carlos (Burnt Money's Eduardo Noriega). Carlos shows Jessie his collection of "nesting dolls" and they kinda/sorta flirt a little. The train pulls away from its latest stop and Roy is no longer aboard. Anderson hints at some kind of foul play, and leaves Jessie to fret and worry about whether her husband is dead or alive. Ben Kingsley co-stars as a Russian narcotics detective who further complicates things.

Writer/director Brad Anderson (Session 9, The Machinist) next uses expert sleight-of-hand to juggle drugs, murder, and various shades of villainy at precisely the right times. Even if you've seen lots of movies of this type and can figure out exactly what's going to happen, with Transsiberian Anderson takes great pleasure in the pure form and execution of it. The film also scores points simply by using Jessie as its film's driving force rather than the genre's usual male hero; she's far richer and more deeply developed than most thriller heroines, and Mortimer comes away with the film's most mesmerizing performance because of it (Kingsley's great Russian accent notwithstanding).