Guru

Reviewer: Jonthan Poritsky
Rating (out of 5): ****

Even in an artform as ever-changing as cinema, films from what many consider one of Hollywood's strongest, richest periods -- the late 60s/early 70s -- still feel remarkably fresh. And it's not just the famous examples, from The Graduate to The Parallax View, Chinatown to The Godfather, it's some of the lesser but still important films from that period that make it such a deep and endlessly fascinating era to study. And in that group I'd add Michael Ritchie's Downhill Racer, which is now out in a sparkling new Criterion DVD. Featuring some of the most innovative sports photography for its day and remarkable performances from Gene Hackman and Robert Redford, it's a wonder that this film isn't more well known. Thankfully, Criterion has reminded us to give it another look.

On its surface, Downhill Racer is a simple story about a man whose only life goal is to win for the sake of winning. Redford plays David Chappellet, a Colorado-born farm boy who quickly rises through the ranks on the U.S. ski team. He is a man-child in many ways, dealing with his daddy issues while chasing after women without any regard for his own (or anyone else's) well being. But because Redford is Redford, he doesn't come off as a complete schmuck. Even as he takes the woman off the arm of one of his teammates, he is suave and genuine. Eyes deep enough to drown in, it's no wonder he has made generations swoon.

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

How long can you play "adorable" before it curdles? I suspect each viewer will have his own limit.

For me, Charlyne Yi, whose adorable quotient is somewhere off the charts, hasn't come close to souring yet. From the first moments right through the finale of Paper Heart, the film that she stars in and has co-written (with director Nicholas Jasenovec), I just wanted to pull her to me, hug her ever so gently, tell her I love her and make everything aw-wight. Of course, she would run fleeing from this, as she probably would from most people's declarations. Which is part of her charm -- and believability. I am unfamiliar with her stand-up routine (we see a little of it in the film), but I venture to guess that this persona she shows us – sweet and innocent yet not that naïve – is so finely honed by now that's her schtick and her soul may have merged.

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

Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale opens with the death of a child, but there's actually a reason for it beyond cheap audience manipulation. In fact, the child's death - which is depicted with shadow puppets - is eulogized in a profoundly joyful way by the boy's father (played pitch-perfectly by Jean-Paul Roussillon). In a tribute with language borrowed from the poet Emerson, he sees his son's death as the well from which the rest of his own life is to spring. It's surprising and complicated and, at risk of sounding bathetic, puts a smile on your face at the same time as putting a tear in your eye.

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

The admirable, well-made Argentine film Lion's Den features no performers you’ll probably have ever heard of, and that's to its benefit; it adds to the film's documentary-like realism. At the beginning of Pablo Trapero's film (he also did the underrated Rolling Family), a young woman awakens in something of a stupor, looking bruised and bloodied; she showers, still in that stupor, and goes to work. Later, at her job, when her head begin to bleed, she returns home to find her roommates dead and wounded. She calls the police, but with no suspects other than herself on tap, she ends up incarcerated in prison.

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

Things don't start out so promisingly in The Hangover [official site]. Not just for the protagonists - a quartet of guys heading to Vegas for a bachelor party weekend - but for the audience, because the first act sets up rather obviously a series of things that clearly will later go horribly awry, while also revealing that the women in the film will either be: beautiful and bland; controlling nags; or strippers. Add to that the fact that the central bride and groom characters aren't especially interesting, and it's cause for worry.

And yet, thankfully, the story centers around the mismatched, oddball trio of men who quickly get up to their necks in trouble, and The Hangover goes off in blessedly unpredictable and often riotous directions as soon as they hit the road.

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More and more families have been tucking into a good flick at home as a cheap alternative to going out, and meanwhile, with DVD box sets are now available for most popular TV shows and movie series. There’s something comforting about the familiarity of re-watching our favourite shows -  the shows that you can watch over and over again and they somehow retain their entertainment value.

With this in mind, (and Christmas just around the corner), here are some of the hottest TV show box sets coming out this December.

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

Art lovers – particularly modern art lovers – will not want to miss Herb & Dorothy, Megumi Sasaki's splendid documentary about the title art-collecting couple. What's so special about them, you ask. There are many collectors throughout the world who do the same. Ah, yes, but they, of course, are rich. Herb and Dorothy Vogel are resoundingly middle-class, but have a passion for art that has resulted in their acquiring the kind of collection most museums would kill for. And they did it all on their middle-class salary and life-style (until their retirements, he worked for the US Post Office, she for the Brooklyn library system).

How in the world could a couple who made that little money and lived in a relatively small, rent-controlled New York apartment become the doyen/doyenne of modern art, particularly the "minimalist" variety? Sasaki leads us on a fascinating and surprising journey that begins with the couple's early years together, then takes us through their own personal stabs at painting non-figurative art themselves but deciding, fatefully, that they might be better at collecting it than creating it.

Reviewer: Jennie Rose (with son Jackson)
Rating (out of 5): ***½

The kids fantasy Shorts shows us what can happen when a magic wishing rock falls into the hands of a host of characters: the nerdy loner, a band of brothers who wish for a Castle of Doom, and the always-distracted parents. Apparently, the panoply of problems brought on by having your wishes granted is staggering.

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

If you've ever watched Battleship Potemkin (1925), you might wonder what the original audiences for the film might have been like. Sure, there were a lot of art-aware Americans who saw it on these shores, but what did the Russians think of it? Were they offended? Cheering in the aisles? It turns out that the seats were rather empty. Instead, citizens shelled out their hard-earned rubles to see another film, Miss Mend, directed by Fedor Ozep and Boris Barnet. Critics and the cultural elite sneered at the film, not only because it was a pure entertainment with no redeeming social value, but because it was a deliberate copy of a Hollywood entertainment, and influenced by evil "Western" culture. (It was based on a novel by a writer called "Jim Dollar," actually a Russian woman.) But, as seems still the case today, no amount of critical bashing can keep away enthusiastic audiences, and the film was a massive hit.

Miss Mend is hugely entertaining, though it reminded me not so much of American films, but rather equally lengthy silent fare like Fritz Lang's German adventures The Spiders (1919), Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922) and Die Nibelungen (1924) and Louis Feuillade's French serials Les Vampires (1915) and Judex (1916). It appears to have been released in three feature-film sized chunks of roughly 90 minutes apiece (complete with cliffhangers at the end of each) totaling 4-1/2 hours of running time. Into this large canvas, Miss Mend packs chases and escapes, slapstick humor, disguises, secret hideouts, secret messages, a cranky newspaper editor and a train wreck (a real one, not a figurative one).

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): **½ (Mike Judge die-hards can add a half-star)

Some of us have a soft spot for the work of writer/director/producer/actor Mike Judge, who handles all of the above in his new film Extract which, unlike his penultimate work, Idiocracy, at least received a decent theatrical release but failed to do any better than the film -- Office Space -- that originally put Judge on the map. The latter, at least, became a cult classic. I don’t think Extract will see similar results.

Consistently interesting, well-acted and quietly thought-provoking, the movie never quite takes off. It’s not funny, nasty, original or unusual enough to fly, and yet I enjoyed it enough to marginally recommend it, particularly to fans of the filmmaker. Judge seems primarily interested in how we human beings are devolving, especially in the workplace – where people are divided into stupid bosses and stupid workers. Subdivisions include the somewhat less stupid, the deliberately nasty, the scammers, the thought-free drones and those few – often immigrants – who want to learn and get ahead.