Guru

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

The brilliant writer, self-promoter and publisher Dave Eggers makes the inevitable leap to screenwriting with Away We Go, co-written with his wife, novelist Vendela Vida. Perhaps not surprisingly, the film is very funny when broken into individual scenes, but it takes too many easy potshots at low targets and thereby fails to come together as an emotional whole.

Burt (The Office's John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph, SNL, Idiocracy) are a happy thirtysomething couple, living a simple life. Burt sells insurance and Verona is a graphic designer. But everything changes when they learn that they're expecting their first child. Hoping that Burt's parents (Catherine O'Hara and Jeff Daniels) will lend a hand, they're shocked to learn that his parents instead will be moving halfway around the world. Burt and Verona realize that they're not really tied down to any particular place, and so take a road trip to find a new place to live, preferably near some friends or family.

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

When they were thirteen years old, Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Robb Reiner formed a band -- they called it Anvil -- and promised to rock together forever. But unlike virtually all of those who make this vow, they've actually managed to keep it for over thirty-five years, despite crushing setbacks that would have broken up most groups long since.

In the opening sequence of Sacha Gervasi's documentary about the band, we're introduced to an Anvil poised for a career as a marquee metal band. Archival footage shows Anvil in the early 1980s, touring and performing in Japan with the likes of Scorpions and Bon Jovi, playing before an audience of tens of thousands, and interviews with various rock luminaries (including Metallica's Lars Ulrich and Anthrax's Scott Ian) indicate that their 1982 album Metal on Metal influenced an entire generation of rock musicians. But then something happened, and they fell from view. As the film opens, Lips and Reiner have fallen very far indeed. Two of the original band members left long ago for greener pastures (to be replaced by talented superfans thrilled to be in the band), Lips works a job delivering food to school cafeterias, and Reiner, appropriately enough for a metal drummer, is operating a jackhammer of some sort when we first see him.

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

Another in Film Movement's seemingly endless array of worthwhile movies, The Window, a co-production of Argentina and Spain, is the second fine film I’ve seen from Argentine-born Carlos Sorin (Intimate Stories being the other) that tells a small tale quietly and exceedingly well.

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

Famed, multiple-Academy Award-nominated animator Bill Plympton made his second live-action film, Guns on the Clackamas, during the early-90's boom of mock documentaries -- which included such notable features as Bob Roberts, Fear of a Black Hat and Forgotten Silver. The latter, Peter Jackson's faux-doc about a long-lost New Zealand filmmaker, a good, and superior, reference point for Plympton's movie which focuses on Holton P. Jeffers Jr., a famed Western director making a cursed movie, the titular "Guns on the Clackamas."

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

Don't you hate it when your parents go away for the weekend and you accidentally open up a portal to hell in the backyard? But it's always good when your best friend has a special heavy metal album (imported from Europe, of course), complete with liner notes filled with helpful information and spells. And when all else fails, it's good to have a model rocket to launch at the bad guys.

If only The Gate knew how silly it really is, but as directed by Tibor Takács, it plows straight through its ridiculous story and dialogue as if it were an "After School Special." It seems vaguely interested in following in the footsteps of hits like Poltergeist (1982) and Gremlins (1984) -- focusing on kids and families rather than sexually exploratory teens -- but instead it comes across as unsatisfyingly tame. The movie's most interesting character, the older sister "Al" (Christa Denton), must eventually decide between the love of her pesky younger brother or the teenage hunk she wants to make out with, but the movie fumbles this potentially emotional situation.

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): Trick R' Treat ***
The Children ***½

Halloween is just around the corner so queue up now for a couple of U.S.-debut creep-fests, both of which, provide enough shivers to have deserved a better fate than to have gone straight-to-DVD. Their styles could not be more different, however: The Children adheres to a strict British mode of seemingly realistic, near-documentary verité that’s long on suspense-filled tracking shots (and, yes, they’re quite suspenseful), while Trick r' Treat goes the comic book route, complete with animated credits, primary color palette and terrific, juicy cinematography (by Glen MacPherson) – with performances to match.

You may remember, more than a year ago, theatrical previews for Trick ‘r Treat appearing on various DVDs and, I believe, in theatres, too. Yet the film was never released. Rather than being the bomb some might have expected from that, the movie is quite entertaining, as it links separate stories of townspeople in a small hamlet that, yearly, celebrates Halloween in a big way. These tales deal with both the supernatural and the natural (but very evil).

Reviewer: Jonathan Poritsky
Rating (out of 5): **½

Give Atom Egoyan 110 minutes and he’ll give you a handful of unrealized MacGuffins and a whole big piece of his mind. Adoration, just out on DVD, spends more time dabbling in the soft art of misdirection than actually resolving a plot. In fairness, the film does portray our current technological moment (and the teenagers who are its biggest beneficiaries) quite accurately. If only the film's overarching message of our tech-induced de-sensitivity weren’t so 1995 (hello The Net).

The skeletal plot takes off at a saunter as orphaned high school student Simon (Devon Bostick) begins telling his friends a tale of his father’s supposed terrorist tendencies, which resulted in the near-bombing of an airplane and the death of his mother. Living with his financially strained Uncle Tom (Scott Speedman, The Strangers, Underworld), Simon’s story attracts an ever growing internet audience of kids, pundits, intellectuals, ideologues and other talking heads. Can fundamentalism be legitimized? Humanized? Are the people who survived the non-plane crash victims in their own rite? These questions and more grow alongside a confused plot regarding Simon’s family history and his mysteriously doting French teacher, Sabine (Egoyan's wife and frequent star Arsinée Khanjian).

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

Design is all around us, as anyone who has ever been responsible for creating a design realizes early on. While many of us most often think about design in terms of the art we observe –- paintings, magazines, movies, home interiors -- it is present and every bit as important in the everyday things we use: toothbrushes, computers, potato peelers and the like. Gary Hustwit, the guy who gave use the fine documentary about typeface called Helvetica [review] (after the famous font), is back again with an equally wonderful example of the genre, Objectified, that turns our attention to the many objects we encounter in our daily lives and then shows us how vital good design is to how these objects work -- and how they affect us for better or worse.

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

Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding, just out in a new 2-DVD set from Criterion, is the India native's contribution to the unofficial canon of directors' final works from the homeland before emigrating to the United States. Like Milos Forman's Fireman's Ball, Louis Malle's Murmur of the Heart or Susanne Bier's After the Wedding, Monsoon presents the complex story of a multi-faceted, changing nation through a single tight-knit community. The community here being an upper-middle class Punjabi family converging in New Delhi for an elaborate wedding.

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

Rich, inventive, black-and-white animation (of the sort that puts to shame the neither-fish-nor-fowl, million-dollar color stuff that makes Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf such a bore) gets a go-round in Fears[s] of the Dark (Peur(s) du noir). This most interesting compilation of stories - some are self-contained while others wrap around the movie in strange and witty ways - is artful, often gorgeous to look at, and clever in the manner in which it makes its points and ties things together.

What it is not is scary. At all. Which is fine by me. I'll take my scares in live-action movies, thank you. Perhaps I am no longer able to be frightened by animated films. I recall being so by Disney's Fantasia when I saw it as a very young boy, but the flat, two-dimensional artwork on view in this movie will appeal more to animation connoisseurs than to folks looking for a fright. Yet there is plenty to enjoy for ancillary reasons.

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

Goodness exists! You'll find it in a documentary recently released to DVD entitled Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox, directed by first-timer Sara Lamm, which not only made me a fan of the film but of the product itself -- a line of castile soaps -- that originally put the titular Dr. Bronner on the map. I would not be surprised to find other viewers, if they finish the film and watch some of the equally fascinating DVD extras, becoming fans of the docs (the documentary and the doctor), and of the soap.

In The Men Who Stare at Goats, a comedic look at real life events that are almost too bizarre to believe, a reporter (Ewan McGregor) discovers a top-secret wing of the U.S. military when he accompanies an enigmatic Special Forces operator (Academy Award-winner George Clooney) on a mind-boggling mission. The film's outstanding cast also includes: Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey, Robert Patrick, Stephen Root, Stephen Lang and Rebecca Mader. Men Who Stare at Goats, which opens November 6, is directed by Academy Award-nominated Grant Heslov (Good Night, and Good Luck) from a screenplay by Peter Straughan (How to Lose Friends & Alienate People) based on the book by Jon Ronson. And now, thanks to GreenCine and Focus Features, you can win our new Men Who Stare at Goats contest.

 One (1) very lucky winner will receive a copy of The Men Who Stare at Goats book and a movie T-Shirt.

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 "Men Who Stare at Goats" in the subject header. Entries without all this information will not be considered. (You will not be added to a mailing list!). One winner will be selected at random from all valid entries. The deadline to enter is November16. Winners will be notified by e-mail and announced in future editions of the GreenCine Dispatch newsletter.

See the official trailer below.

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

Fados shouldn't have worked; veteran Spanish director Carlos Saura (Cría cuervos, Tango) assembles a collection of fado singers and films them singing in front of colored backdrops. Sometimes the backdrops become more elaborate (such as a nightclub) and sometimes dancers accompany the music. These famous Portuguese ballads (currently undergoing a revival) have a long history, and are specifically related to poor and urban artists who expressed their yearnings in the most bittersweet ways. There is a certain structure to the songs and certain rules that must, more or less, be followed. Any lesser filmmaker would have traced the history of the music, dissecting it and trying to burrow inside all the songs.

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

[Note: This review originally appeared on GreenCine Daily when film premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival. The widescreen DVD is out from MPI Home Video.]

I was wary of Barry Jenkins's film even before I even saw it. That's not his fault: I've simply gotten to the point, sadly, where I dread low-budget/indie films shot in my hometown, San Francisco, having sat through too many recently that made me want to claw my eyes out - and then having to nod and smile at the makers afterwards when the lights come on. And in the press notes for this film, "The City of San Francisco" is listed as one of three main characters, which made me worry even further. What's more, the very title is a bit tacked on - Jenkins confessed in an interview that he saw a character in Chloe in the Afternoon reading Ray Bradbury's book and thought it made a fitting title. Nothing inherently wrong with that; I was only disappointed there wasn't more to the reference in the film.

Despite my fears, Medicine for Melancholy, flawed though it may be, is a low-key revelation.

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

In his autobiography, filmmaker Samuel Fuller wrote that he did not speak a word for the first several years of his life, and then suddenly, at age 4 or 5, he blurted out the word "hammer!" The abruptness of this word, and its punchy imagery, practically defines Fuller's work.

He was a hard crime reporter as a teenager, and then a dogface soldier in World War II. He wrote books and stories and screenplays -- he called them all "yarns" -- filled with hammer-like dialogue and phrases and ideas. Due to the lurid subject matter and low budgets of his films, he rarely earned the respect and admiration he deserved (he never received a single Oscar nomination). Many of his films are still AWOL on DVD, but Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has taken a major step toward righting that wrong with The Samuel Fuller Collection, their extraordinary new seven-disc DVD box set.