Guru

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

The Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour is a giant of world music, already a superstar in Africa and Europe, and with a growing following in North America, and the director of Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I love, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, introduces us to him with a clip that makes for a pretty good summary of his career to date: he's onstage, mesmerizing an enormous crowd with beautiful but didactic singing about pan-African unity, hard work, and self-sufficiency, exactly the kind of messages rooted in secular social activism that N'Dour has been bringing to audiences for decades.

The accompaniment to this particular message, however, is not the kind of music that made him famous, a blend of pop rock and dance sounds with traditional elements, which is referred to as mbalax music. In this clip the backing is soft and droning, and his singing has almost a liturgical sound, as if he were a muezzin reciting a prayer.

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

René Clair (Under the Roofs of Paris, À nous la liberté) was once considered to be among the finest directors in the world, but his reputation has fallen since the latter half of the 20th century. With the masterful silent-era comedy Italian Straw Hat, Clair captures something of the spirit of Chaplin and a bit of Lubitsch, but manages something unique. It's a madcap, sophisticated comedy of the highest order.

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

I've long been in love with the work of Todd Graff, starting close to 30 years ago, when the then-actor appeared on Broadway opposite Liz Callaway in the terrific (if over-produced) little musical, Baby. Graff was delightful in the show: funny, moving, real and immensely talented. His work as an actor in films (The Abyss, Opportunity Knocks) has been somehow disappointing: Always good, he's not nearly been used to full advantage. Writing and directing have put him on the movie map, however. He did the screenplay for Angie (the sweet, tart film that starred Geena Davis and gave James Gandolfini a first burst of recognition) and the unnecessary American remake of the classic Dutch thriller The Vanishing. But then, as writer/director, he's come up with two winners: the splendid Camp, a one-of-a-kind musical based in part on Graff's own experience at a camp for budding musical theater performers, and now another musical of sorts: Bandslam.

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

Marcus Dunstan has dabbled in everything from acting to producing, though most of his credits are for writing scary movies. He’s given us the much-better-than-average Feast plus a few from the Saw franchise (IV, V and VI, with VII on the way: I stopped viewing after number two). His first foray into directing is The Collector, an under-rated and under-seen creep-out, which he has co-written with Patrick Melton. It is an excellent example of a fast, tight and economical slasher/chiller film – as bloody and vicious as the genre demands (yet not overdone: Dunstan knows when to turn his camera elsewhere) – but also surprisingly intelligent, featuring protagonists and victims for whom you can, for a change, root.

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

It's 1966, and though the Kinks, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and The Who are making great records, rock 'n' roll has been mostly banned in England. Due to a loophole, however, it's legal for radio stations to broadcast from offshore. In Pirate Radio, Richard Curtis, screenwriter (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill) turned director (Love Actually) focuses on one boat, the Radio Rock, filled with an assortment of nuts and outcasts.

These include the boisterous American Count (Philip Seymour Hoffman), tubby Dave (Shaun of the Dead's Nick Frost), seductive Gavin (Rhys Ifans), Thick Kevin (Tom Brooke), Simple Simon (The IT Crowd's Chris O'Dowd) and the mysterious Midnight Mark (Tom Wisdom), who has hoards of women fans by managing a neat trick: he's a deejay that hardly says anything at all. Quentin (the always reliable Bill Nighy) is the devil-may-care captain.

Reviewer: Steve Dollar
Rating (out of 5): ****½

Nicolas Cage has committed such heinous sins against the actor's craft that he's practically self-condemned himself to that special purgatory reserved for high-priced washouts: Making movie after movie that might easily go direct-to-DVD, were his name not featured prominently on the one-sheet. It's a sorry fate for a guy who once enjoyed untouchable status as a risk-taking wunderkind, someone whose attenuated mania fired up mainstream romantic comedy (Moonstruck, Peggy Sue Got Married) and the Coen Brothers at their Loony Tooniest (Raising Arizona).

That history makes Cage's turn in Werner Herzog's not-really-a-remake of/sequel to Bad Lieutenant exceptionally resonant. The movie, whether you're talking about Abel Ferrara's 1982 cult classic or this more recent variation on its themes, is about redemption. It's also about crazy.

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

In my own adventures in movie viewing, I’ve learned that the more impressive the opening or closing credits (swooshes and swipes, 3D rejiggering and whatnot) in a low-budget film, the worse the film is. It’s not an exact science, but I am yet to find an exception to this rule. Godspeed, a new independent thriller from Robert Saitzyk, has absolutely amazing closing credits.

But the trouble starts pretty early on when the film opens in a flash forward, then goes to an extended flash back. The narrative doesn’t really pick up pace until twenty some minutes in, when Charlie Shepard (Joseph McKelheer), a retired spiritual healer, meets Sarah Roberts (Courtney Halverson), a girl whose mother Charlie was unable to save years earlier. She throws herself at him in hopes he will come to try to heal her father, who has not gotten over the loss of his wife.

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

In some circles, Jean-Luc Godard is considered the greatest living filmmaker in the world, perhaps even the greatest filmmaker in the world, living or dead. But in other circles, he's not considered at all. He's a ridiculously active filmmaker, making a legendary 15 films between 1959 and 1967, and going strong today. Yet his films are rarely distributed in the United States. There have been two in the last ten years, In Praise of Love >(2001) and Notre Musique (2002), both of which garnered some ecstatic reviews, and went on to earn a few hundred thousand dollars. Even those who saw them probably emerged with the nagging feeling that we hadn't quite got everything.