Guru

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

Menage starts off with a bang: a couple in a bar, Antoine and Monique, are having a nasty argument into which an unknown third party, Bob, suddenly intrudes.  Bob slaps Monique silly then hands Antoine a knife, encouraging him to use it, as Bob bares his massive chest to the blade.  Bob, a petty criminal just out of prison, introduces his new friends to burglarizing the homes of the wealthy – which the pair takes to quite readily. Soon they take to Bob, as well (and he to them), in even more startling fashion. Because Bob is played by Gerard Depardieu, and Antoine and Monique by Michel Blanc and Miou-Miou – three icons of French cinema – and the movie itself is written and directed by Bertrand Blier, France’s long-time bad boy of the movies, you can expect something transgressive and tasty.  Even so, you have no idea.

Originally titled Tenue de soirée, or Evening Dress (for once an American title change proves felicitous), Menage goes places and does things that were not only ground-breaking back in 1986, when the film was first released, but remain so today.  One week after the theatrical release of the much-talked-about Humpday, here’s a movie that, 23 years earlier, covered somewhat similar ground in a manner that proves funnier, wittier and much more stylish.  

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

John Gilbert (1897-1936) wasn't as strong a swashbuckler as Fairbanks, nor as strong a lover as Valentino, but he had a little of both qualities, and he was quite good in his own right. He was a major star in his day, but died young, from the bottle, and today if he's known at all, it's as one of the parade of men with whom Garbo wiped the screen. (He can be seen in Flesh and the Devil and Queen Christina). Now a new two-disc DVD set from Flicker Alley hopes to set the record straight. It contains two films originally thought lost and newly restored, and though they're very different works and each showcases the star in a different way, they're both vastly entertaining.

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

A throwback to earlier days, styles, plot devices and modes of transportation, Night Train just manages to provide a good time both despite and because of its adherence to old-fashioned formula. From the beginning -- as two train conductors (Danny Glover and Matthias Schweighoefer) debark from adjoining cars at the same moment – writer/director Brian King provides a nostalgic and rather appealing “look” to his film. Despite a budget that I suspect was on the small side, King maintains a consistent style and enough suspense to the proceedings to keep us, if not on tenterhooks, at least willing to go along for the ride. The movie was shot in Bulgaria. Everything from costumes to sets looks attractive but slightly strange, which befits the film’s odd “nowhere” location. While the station-names the conductor uses all sound North American, clearly, that’s not our territory.

Where we are is on a train, speeding through the night, filled with only a handful of passengers (that budget again) but the few on view are bizarre enough to turn your head. Leelee Sobieski (a med student, cramming for exams), Steve Zahn (a failed traveling salesman), an uptight Britisher (Richard O’Brien) with a little dog, two Japanese tourists (Takatsuna Mukai and Togo Igawa) -- and a final character (played by an actor with a memorable visage, Luca Bercovici) racing either from someone or against time to catch the train. We soon find ourselves with one dead body, a mysterious (and apparently quite valuable) little box, followed by greed, betrayal, severed limbs (one particularly grisly but funny scene) -- and the supernatural.

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ***

Jerichow, Christian Petzold's follow-up to his acclaimed Yella is loosely inspired by James M Cain's  Depression-era crime novel "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (and subsequent films), but rather than go full noir, it becomes a more nuanced -- but no less intense or menacing -- romantic triangle story. Set in Northern Germany -- the titular town where the film is set is about 50km west of Berlin and was formerly part of East Germany -- the film has the added subtext of modern-day Germany's struggles with multiculturalism and socio-economic desperation.

Benno Furmann (The Princess and the Warrior), who bears a passing if a bit disconcerting resemblance to Dwayne The Rock Johnson, plays Thomas, a drifter who was dishonorably discharged from the German forces in Afghanistan and returns to live in his recently deceased mother's home. As we learn in a beautifully filmed opening sequence, Thomas also owes a fair amount of money to a gangster. When he bails out Ali (Hilmi Sözer), a Turkish-German businessman with a bit of a drinking problem, Ali offers Thomas a job as his driver (and unofficial bodyguard, as it turns out). But the third point in this triangle is Ali's abused wife Laura (Nina Hoss), and when she and Thomas find each other mutually appealing, well, trouble brews. The tension also comes from within the characters, as in how Thomas instantly becomes loyal to his boss while also finding himself just as quickly tempted to betray him.

Ali may be arrogant and paranoid (though not without reason), a drunkard and occasionally prone to violent outbursts -- but he's hard not to feel sympathy for, and in most ways more interesting than primary characters Thomas and Laura. That's one of the actor Sözer's and the script's greatest strengths, making a character who has been unforgivably abusive to his wife still ultimately sympathetic. [Interesting aside: in Cain's "Postman" novel, the husband, Nick Papadakis, is Greek (and nicknamed same), but in the 1946 film adaptation he became Nick Smith, played by the decidedly not Greek Cecil Kellaway.] Hoss's Laura (the name surely a nod to the film noir classic) is certainly a more down-to-earth, realistically weary but still sexy creation than was Lana Turner's Cora in the original film -- Turner was memorable but always struck me as a bit too glamorously sexy for that role.

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

I'm usually a fan of anthology films, even if they only have one good segment, such as New York Stories (1989) or Eros (2005). But though I adore all three directors in the new Tokyo!, I found little worthwhile here, except for some empty exercises in strangeness and discomfort. All three filmmakers are outsiders visiting the titular city, and each brings his own brand of disorientation to his tale.

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

Nikita Mikhalkov's 12 received a 2007 Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language film, though it wasn't released to U.S. theaters until March of 2009. Probably the same elements that appealed to the often annoyingly inexplicable foreign film committee -- a long running time and a certain "Russianness" -- also scared off potential distributors. It's also a remake of a beloved American classic, Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men (1957) -- written by Reginald Rose -- which may or may not sit well with some cinephiles. But all that aside, Mikhalkov turns in a surprisingly energetic, kinetic and gripping film, filled with an enviable selection of great character actors; it's easy to become absorbed looking at these twelve magnificent faces.

Reviewer: Jeremy Hatch
Rating (out of 5): ****

Harlan Ellison is both famous (if not infamous) and obscure; it depends on who you ask. Over the past week, whenever I'd mention the documentary, Harlan Ellison: Dreams With Sharp Teeth, I'd get one of three reactions: "that's the science fiction writer, right?" Or if they knew a little more: "Oh, that asshole." But most often, it was a blank "who?" All of which suggests that Ellison is the ideal subject for a documentary: important and influential in a realm most viewers know little about, and just enough of a, well, jerk to make for compelling cinema.

One of the last living members of that amazing generation of science-fiction authors whose heyday was the 1960s and 1970s, Harlan Ellison is probably best known as the author of the Star Trek (Original Series) episode, "The City on the Edge of Forever." Like many of his contemporaries -- Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, Ray Bradbury -- he has produced a mind-boggling number of stories, books, and scripts, and has won a proportional number of awards.

Reviewer: Jeremy Hatch
Rating (out of 5): *** overall (**** for Red Rubber Boots and Cowboys in Kosovo)

The nine short documentaries on the After the War: Life Post-Yugoslavia DVD are inevitably dark, given their subject matter: the aftermath of genocide and civil war in the former Yugoslavia. The four films from Serbian director Zelimir Gvardiol are probably the darkest: about an hour of unrelenting grimness (subjects include a man who accidentally killed his wife and a sequence about elderly people waiting to die) makes for important documentary, but it's not something I'd recommend for a first date. Similarly dark is Sheila Sofian's "Conversation with Haris", in which an 11-year-old boy describes the massacre of most of his family to an animated background that illustrates his words.

Acclaimed director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy; Lady Vengeance) returns with his highly anticipated vampire film Thirst, an official selection at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival. Song Kang Ho plays a respected priest who turns into a vampire after a medical experiment gone wrong. His newfound thirst for blood and deadly attraction for his best friend's wife (Kim Ok-bin) drives him down a road of lust and depravity. For the Thirst soundtrack -- the score draws from Bach's Cantata BWV 82a Ich Habe Genug and original compositions, as well as 1930s and 40s Korean music--Park Chan Wook teams up again with music director Jo Young-wook, who also provided the music for many of Park's other films.

And now, thanks to GreenCine and Focus Features, you can win the film's soundtrack CD and poster in our Thirst-y new contest.

 One (1) Grand Prize Winner will receive a poster autographed by director Park Chan-wook and the official movie soundtrack CD; three (3) additional winners will recieve the soundtrack CD.

To enter, email contest@greencine.com and include your name, email address, mailing address, and, if you're a GreenCine member, your username in the email, and "Thirst" in the subject header. Entries without all this information will not be considered. (You will not be added to a mailing list!). 4 winners will be selected at random from all valid entries. The deadline to enter is August 14th. Winners will be notified by e-mail and announced in future editions of the GreenCine Dispatch newsletter.

See the Thirst trailer here.