Reviewer: Maria Komodore
Rating (out of 5): **

The subject of unwanted, or unplanned, pregnancy was quite a hot one for US and foreign films alike last year. But with the exception of Romanian Cristian Mungiu's abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2007), all of the others, even if apolitical, have essentially been "pro-life."

In the U.S., in addition to Jason Reitman's indie hit Juno (2007), there was the late Adrienne Shelly's Waitress (2007), and of course Judd Apatow's supposedly comedic Knocked Up (2007). No matter how different in inception and presentation these films might be, they all have one thing in common: abortion is out of the question. The female leads decide to, respectively, keep their babies even if that means giving them up for adoption after they're born, bringing them up all by themselves, or settling down with an immature slacker.

Although made in 2006 and by a Mexican filmmaker, Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, the independent film Bella deals with the same subject matter and in a similar kind of way to the other films. Soon after she finds out that she's pregnant, Nina (Tammy Blanchard), a waitress in an upscale Mexican restaurant in New York, loses her job--a humiliating scene where her boss Manny (Manny Perez) fires her in front of her colleagues and friends. Jose (Eduardo Verástegui), the restaurant's cook and Manny's brother, is so affected by the incident that he deserts his kitchen in the midst of lunch-hour craziness, and starts following her around the city doing everything possible to persuade her to keep the baby. Turns out, before becoming a cook, Jose was a successful soccer player whose career got destroyed when he accidentally killed a little girl in a foolish car accident.

Continue reading "Bella" »

Posted by at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: Monica Peck
Rating (out of 5): ****

This filial drama from writer/director Philippe Falardeau reveals the bizarre story of Belgian engineer Michel Roy who learns at age forty-one that he was adopted and actually born in a barn in rural Quebec. Played by Oliviér Gourmet (L'Enfant, Les Fils), Roy embarks on a journey to uncover his lost familial roots. Humor and poignancy intermix as Roy begins to learn the truth about his birth through a series of unlikely serendipities. Out of respect for your enjoyment of Falardeau's brilliantly woven divulgences, I dare not reveal anything more of the plot. Suffice it to say, this cinematic puzzle deserves more than one viewing, if only to admire the deft way Falardeau uncovers its many-layered secrets. It is no wonder that Congorama won a Genie for Best Screenplay from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television in 2008. As a doctor remarks in the movie, "It is all so unlikely, it can't be anything but true."

Continue reading "Congorama" »

Posted by at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

No, it’s not a documentary exposing the underside of America's real estate market. Director and (with Gal Uchovsky) co-writer Eytan Fox's The Bubble is about the denizens of a mostly gay enclave in Tel Aviv, Israel. This cordoned-off area (not literally, perhaps, but figuratively--by being liberal, secular and "other" in a country not particularly noted for these attributes) is the "bubble" of the title, and its citizens--young, good-looking, smart and self-aware--are not oblivious to the fact that they are living in a kind of homogeneous "closed society." The thing about bubbles is: They tend to burst, and rather easily, too.

Continue reading "The Bubble: Hard to shake off" »

Posted by at 9:36 AM | Permalink

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

The fiction-film debut of Spellbound director Jeffery Blitz, Rocket Science is, like its non-fiction predecessor, a finely wrought and authentic portrait of the world of unusual and gifted kids. Instead of plumbing the depths of the world of spelling bees this time around, Blitz tells a story about - among other things - high school debate teams.

The film follows one Hal Hefner, a high school outcast marked by a profound stutter, played to squirming perfection by Reece Thompson, as he tries to overcome his speech disorder by joining the competitive debate team at his New Jersey suburb's high school.

Continue reading "Rocket Science" »

Posted by at 2:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

Writer-director Michael Cahill's King of California is a "little film" with a solid script that came and went from theaters in the blink of an eye - not a big surprise, given the oddball plot. While no classic, it certainly deserves an audience on home video.

Michael Douglas plays Charlie, a wayward father and former jazz musician whose estranged, and much more together, teenage daughter Miranda (a most-appealing Evan Rachel Wood) picks him up upon his release from a mental hospital. She's been working at McDonald's instead of finishing high school because someone's got to bring home the McBacon. Her mother, his ex, a former hand model, ran off too. Charlie may have issues, but at least he cares. It doesn't take all that long for Douglas to present his character as a major league eccentric, but to his credit he doesn't overdo it (except for a few wild-eyed moments), and he quickly garners our sympathy for his obvious love of his daughter. The plot - centering on Charlie's obsessive belief that Spanish treasure is buried underneath the local Costco - requires some suspension of disbelief to be sure, and yet Cahill's on to something, too.

Continue reading "King of California" »

Posted by at 11:38 AM | Permalink

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

A big, fat "thank you" to Martin Scorsese for his championing of Golden Door, which is up there among (if not THE) best-ever renditions of the immigrant experience. It makes "Titanic"--for all its multi-million-dollar budget and billion-dollar gross--seem something paltry in comparison. Scorsese gives a short intro to the film on the current DVD, and his name was associated front-and-center with the theatrical release in May of 2007. Reviews were generally respectful, but the movie soon disappeared into the usual foreign film obscurity which bedevils our current times, particularly where Italian movies are concerned. (Earlier in the year, Golden Door had been Italy's submission for Best Foreign Language Film but, shockingly, did not make the final five nominees.) Now that I've finally seen it, I must place it near or at the top of the list of last year's best films.

From its first frame, the film jars then compels you because its visuals are so strong, bizarre and immediate. Yet writer/director Emanuele Crialese, prefers to show, not tell. There is little exposition as we follow three generations of a poor Sicilian family making their difficult way toward America, with their tag-along companion, a somewhat mysterious British woman, played by the elegant and odd Charlotte Gainsbourg. Both the large events and small moments throughout the film are so specific and completely imagined that--real or not--they come across as truthful. Based on Crialese's earlier film, Respiro, I would not have pegged him to create anything this amazing, and because so much of the reason the movie works is due to its visual beauty and imagination, I suspect that its cinematographer Agnès Godard (Beau Travail, Backstage, The Intruder) bears at least some of the responsibility.

Continue reading "Golden Door: The immigrant experience writ large, and fine" »

Posted by at 12:49 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: Walt Opie
Rating (out of 5): ***½

Somewhat surprisingly, the sport of ice hockey has inspired very few decent films over the years. You might be able to count them on two fingers: 1977's Slap Shot starring Paul Newman, and Disney's Miracle about the 1980 U.S. men's hockey team winning the gold. So it's nice to be able to add to this list The Rocket, a thoughtful biopic about the life of legendary Montreal Canadiens scoring machine Maurice "The Rocket" Richard (who retired from the NHL in 1960 and died in 2000).

Directed by Charles Binamé (Seraphin: Heart of Stone), it stars popular Canadian actor Roy Dupuis, who had already portrayed Richard for two previous projects (including a two-part French-Canadian miniseries). Dupuis reportedly did his own skating in the film, and the hockey scenes—which depict the NHL in the 1940s and 1950s before players wore helmets—have an admirable gritty quality of verisimilitude. Binamé has said of his inspiration for the hockey scenes, "I really wanted to capture hockey the way (Martin) Scorsese had captured boxing with Raging Bull."

Continue reading "The Rocket: The Legend of Maurice Richard" »

Posted by at 10:31 AM | Permalink

Reviewer: Henry Leineweber
Rating (out of 5): ****

The Road to Guantanamo is not what I expected. In a market flush with post-9-11 documentaries, I was expecting more of the same: interviews with experts, former government officials, a brief history lesson, some stock footage, a few classic rock songs, and maybe a stunt or two thrown in to spice things up.

Instead, The Road to Guantanamo presents us with the firsthand accounts of three former detainees from Tipton, England. Asif, Shafiq and Ruhel, along with their cousin, are arrested in war-torn Afghanistan after haphazardly deciding to become fighters. Using reenacted scenes and interviews with the three young men, filmmakers Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom present the viewer with a savage and suspenseful tale of mistaken identity. The film is still timely, too - the three men are tortured (in brutal re-enactments) by American and British intelligence trying to get a false confession out of them.

Continue reading "The Road to Guantanamo" »

Posted by at 12:53 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: Walt Opie
Rating (out of 5): ***

The Criterion Collection recently released a double-disc special edition set of the 1984 John Huston film Under the Volcano, starring Albert Finney as an alcoholic ex-British consul named Geoffrey Firmin. Firmin loses his official post in Mexico and is drowning himself in alcohol as he laments the loss of his straying wife Yvonne (Jacqueline Bisset), who suddenly reappears before him at a Mexican cafe to witness what will be his last day--on the Day of the Dead, no less. Finney was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of writer Malcolm Lowry's tragic figure (the film is based on Lowry's novel of the same title), and legendary director Huston (The Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre) remarked of Finney here, "I think it's the finest performance I've ever witnessed, let alone directed."

Continue reading "Under the Volcano (Criterion): Finney erupts" »

Posted by at 8:09 AM | Permalink

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

Spaces and places, their relationship to each other and to people who are in love: This rather odd subject matter seems to interest Danish writer/director Christoffer Boe to an extraordinary extent. Based on his 2003 Reconstruction and now Allegro (made in 2005 but released to DVD this past October), I'd say Boe is quite an unusual young filmmaker. His use of symbolism, too heavy for some, works just fine for me because he often twists his clichés, allowing them to surprise us by including more than what we initially expect. He also uses sci-fi/fantasy tropes less obviously than many current moviemakers.

Allegro tracks a world-class concert pianist who loves, loses, and must break through into a parallel world to find… well, all sorts of things. Boe keeps his movies short, which is wise; I don't think they could stand up to much increased length. He also appears to shoot (in Super-16 and DV, blown up to 35mm) rather quickly, which adds to the sense of immediacy and urgency (the cinematography is by Manuel Alberto Claro). Here, Boe combines some simple animation with his mostly live-action story to set things up and propel them along. This works, too.

In the lead role, Boe has cast one of Denmark's best and most oft-seen actors Ulrich Thomsen (The Celebration, Brothers, Mostly Martha), with attractive model Helena Christensen as his love interest. But the movie belongs to Thomsen--who brings a fine combination of gravity and confusion to the proceedings--and to Boe's bizarre but consistently interesting take on life and love. Some lovely classical selections, plus original music by Thomas Knak, help keep the film airborne.

Posted by at 9:33 AM | Permalink

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

At this year's Film Society of Lincoln Center Latinbeat Festival, a special sidebar was devoted to screenings of, as the FSLC put it, "Four Breakthroughs from Mexico's New Cinema": Amores Perros, Japón, Duck Season, and Violet Perfume: No One Is Listening. The first two, and to some extent the third, are well-known to most movie buffs, but the latter, outside of festivals, has hardly made a ripple in the USA. Now that Violet Perfume is here on DVD, audiences have the chance to see and understand why the film is indeed a breakthrough of sorts. It's also a mega-downer, which may account for its not finding theatrical release.

Continue reading "Violet Perfume: Feminist breakthrough from Mexico" »

Posted by at 11:38 AM | Permalink

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

I must admit to some shock at the mostly devastating criticism received by Evening (a 26% score on Rotten Tomatoes!), and I can't help feel that expectation has more than a little to do with this. Here is a "dream" cast by any literate moviegoer's standards: Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Vanessa Redgrave, Claire Danes, Eileen Atkins, Toni Collette, Natasha Richardson (Redgrave's daughter), Mamie Gummer (Streep's daughter), with Patrick Wilson and Hugh Dancy holding up the male side. Add, as the director, Lajos Koltai, one of the world's great cinematographers whose first directorial job resulted in the memorable, devastating, yet strangely beautiful Holocaust tale Fateless. Finalize with a screenplay by Susan Minot (from her well-regarded novel) and Michael Cunningham (the popular novels "A Home at the End of the World" and "The Hours"). How could expectations not be sky-high? And while there is reason for disappointment in the end result, there is also much to savor in this elegiac film.

Continue reading "Evening: A tapestry of past and present" »

Posted by at 1:09 PM | Permalink

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

In a recent New York Times op-ed piece, Judith Warner wrote, after attending a recent screening of the friendship/revenge/road film Thelma and Louise (a screening hosted by Sen. Susan Collins R-MN and Rep. Jane Harman D-CA... huh?) that the 1991 film's portrayal of the sexual politick already seemed incredibly dated. She noted that the interim changes haven't actually been useful evolutions, but merely the development of many, many shades of gray.

With Stephanie Daley, writer/director Hilary Brougher achieves a mighty feat of making a film about religious education, child abandonment, miscarriage, infidelity and teenage sexuality that's neither lurid nor a polemic. And even with one character fighting for her life there are no Oscar-baiting monologues of hysteria (in fact, the most powerful scene in the film is completely silent). Like Brougher's debut film, Sticky Fingers of Time, Stephanie Daley uses a fragmented narrative to show how the interactions of two people stuck in a morass of denial inspires the other to lift themselves out of their stasis.

Continue reading "Stephanie Daley: Neither lurid nor a polemic" »

Posted by at 8:50 AM | Permalink

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

First shown in 1997 but never seen on American television nor available on video until now, A Dance To The Music Of Time offers what seem to me the most effortlessly entertaining characters, conversations and story that may ever have appeared in a miniseries. Lavish praise, but these four discs--totaling around 7 hours of time--scale the heights in terms of providing a literate, ironic view of upper-class England over several decades. That this is due to the series of novels by Anthony Powell, from which Hugh Whitemore adapted his simply amazing script, is beyond question. But putting it all together as elegantly, speedily and bracingly as Whitmore manages is a major accomplishment. Over the decades this journeyman writer has given us many fine pieces, winning BAFTA, WGA and Emmy awards in the process. Remember 84 Charing Cross Road, Return of the Soldier, Utz, Pack of Lies, Breaking the Code (he wrote the play), The Gathering Storm, My House in Umbria--to name but a few? This prolific gentleman is pretty much the "adapter" nonpareil for our time.

Continue reading "Dance to the Music of Time sings" »

Posted by at 4:53 PM | Permalink

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

Canadian filmmaker Alison Murray's feature debut (she's done terrific work in shorts) Mouth to Mouth, an imperfect but striking effort, is of a wholly different universe and energy. Based on Murray's own experiences as a teenage runaway, the film depicts the troubled relationship between a mother and the teenage daughter she had too young. The girl, Sherry (played with ferocity by Ellen Page, who jarringly reminded me here of an ex-girlfriend, but never mind), runs away to strike out on her own in Europe and hooks up with an charismatic group of partying activists who call themselves SPARK (Street People Armed With Radical Knowledge). They work to get people off of hard drugs, making them part of a family, travel in a sort of "Burning Van" eventually to their own compound at a vineyard, where, well, when you put the words "compound" and "family" together, you can see where this is going, and not some place good.

Continue reading "Mouth to Mouth: Shows a lot of spark" »

Posted by at 5:14 PM | Permalink

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

In terms of providing the world with benign movies--kind, compassionate and benevolent--I would call Canada the champ. From Don McKellar's Last Night (the most benign of all the films about the end of the world) to one of the great television series (Slings & Arrows) from Wilby Wonderful to Falling Angels and so many more, our neighbor to the north insists on showing us that normal life comes with enough major problems that we humans don't really need to make things worse. Forget the serial killers and the ultra-violence: Simply dealing with each other and what life throws us is enough of a challenge. Snow Cake, the near-magical movie from Marc Evans (who, back in 2002 gave us--on a budget of about $1.98--one of the most disturbing films I've ever seen, My Little Eye) and writer Angela Pell, is the latest in a long string of humble Canuck wizardry.

Continue reading "Snow Cake: Magic from Canada" »

Posted by at 1:35 PM | Permalink

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

Parker Posey's Nora in Broken English exists further down the continuum of roles she played in the nineties in films like Daytrippers, Clockwatchers, Party Girl and Kicking and Screaming: neurotic, sarcastic, and sort of unambitious. But in your thirties these things are no longer cute (or "quirky", as Posey is so often called) but sort of annoying and self-defeating. In the new Broken English, she's single among married friends, working at a barely above entry-level (but "cool") job in a stable of trust fund-insulated successful artists. She's in crisis and the people in her life think crappy blind dates will lead to fairy tale solutions. But by now she's become so accustomed to isolation and condescension that she no longer trusts her own instincts and has become her own worst enemy. She meets a similarly burnt but far less cynical French dreamboat (Melvil Poupaud of Time to Leave) and they have a weekend romance before he leaves for Paris.

Continue reading "Broken English: An assured debut" »

Posted by at 2:53 PM | Permalink

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

What constitutes a "sleeper"? I'd always thought a movie required at least a short theatrical release in major cities to qualify for this overused label. After viewing The Big Bad Swim, however, I'd have to say that any film this good--and this unheralded--is a shoo-in for sleeper status. A dramedy about a group of Connecticut adults (of all ages and professions) taking a swim class, this first full-length film from director Ishai Setton and writer Daniel Schechter simply sneaks up and knocks you--sweetly, quietly--off your feet. Granted, Setton and Schechter have not broken any new ground with their movie, yet neither a visual moment nor a line of dialogue rings false, is pushed to excess or wasted. Many longtime filmmakers, even some who’ve won major awards, don’t get this close to perfection when they try to create a batch of interesting, real human beings.

Continue reading "The Big Bad Swim: Lapping it up" »

Posted by at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Reviewer: Dylan de Thomas
Rating (out of 5): ****½

With Tony Blair stepping down as the long-time Prime Minister of Great Britain and his replacement, Gordon Brown, spending the weekend with W. at Camp David, I thought it would be a good time to recommend the excellent House of Cards trilogy of miniseries, starring veteran British actor Ian Richardson as the fictional Prime Minister Francis Urquhart.

House of Cards, the first of the three series (the other two are To Play the King and The Final Cut), with its perfect blend of Macbeth and Richard III, of humor and drama, is the best--though once you start watching, stopping is hardly an option. The most obvious influence on the character is the aforementioned Richard, with his gleeful, cool, perfectly-reasoned badness and regular catchy audience-addressing. One halfway expects Urquhart to start speaking of his winter of discontent at any moment.

Continue reading "House of Cards" »

Posted by at 3:54 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: James Van Maanen
Puccini: Rating (out of 5): ****
Sweet Land: Rating (out of 5): ***½

We watch a lot of movies in our household; even our cat is starting to develop critical tendencies. But when my companion did not realize that the same young woman had played the lead role in two new-to-DVD films we'd watched within three days of each other, I realized that there might well be other movie-lovers out there not making this rather extraordinary connection. The films are Puccini for Beginners (released on July 3) and Sweet Land (July 10) and the actress is the pretty, petite Elizabeth Reaser, who creates two utterly disparate characters with conviction and aplomb. Reaser has worked more in television ("Grey's Anatomy" and "Saved") than in film, but since I watch almost none of the former, I found myself a virgin to her rather extraordinary talent.

In Puccini, Reaser is the narrator and lead, a young NYC lesbian named Allegra who bemoans her fate as one who consistently chooses the wrong mate. The most recent of these choices is Julianne Nicholson, and soon she becomes involved with a young man played by Justin Kirk and a young woman (Gretchen Mol of The Notorious Bettie Page)--both of whom are currently seeing each other, which, of course, Allegra is unaware. We are in the sub-genre of the NY-relationship comedy, lesbian-bisexual style, complete with witty, racy repartee that offers ideas and remarks on everything from life and opera to eating habits and art. Some critics were as keen on Puccini as others were cool, but I found it lively, funny, fresh and a big step up from writer/director Maria Maggenti's movie outing of the decade previous: The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love.

Continue reading "Elizabeth Reaser two-fer: Puccini and Sweet" »

Posted by at 6:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

"One person in the 60s fascinated me more than any I'd known." So says artist/pop-culture icon Andy Warhol of Edie Sedgwick, the subject of this flashy, if fractured, art-biopic. While the film looks good and features a memorable turn by Sienna Miller as an eerily spot-on Sedgwick, the art student who hooked up with Warhol in New York in the 60s, the film overall is a disappointment, managing to be both colorful and yet curiously muted.

Sedgwick's bumpy past, struggles with mental illness, trauma, and drug addiction is the focus, even if the film isn't quite - focused. Even if her UK accent occasionally slips forth (which, in a way, matches her background, she came from American faux-aristocracy), Miller is the best reason to see Factory Girl. With her performance here and in the new, also uneven, film Interview, she should finally prove herself as more than just fodder for tabloids. Guy Pearce embodies Warhol's quirky fey charm, hiding behind glasses, white hair and pasty skin. "I'd love to work with her," he sighs early in the film, "I've never seen a girl with so many problems." Yet Pearce plays it so low-key at times when he's on screen the film becomes almost as somnambulant as one of Warhol's films. The film interweaves flashforwards to heartfelt Sedgwick - from a hospital - in the early 70s reflecting on the wild years in the New York art scene and her subsequent breakdown.

Continue reading "Factory Girl: 15 minutes of fame in 99 minutes" »

Posted by at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

Perhaps it's fitting and unsurprising that a small, quiet (Canadian, natch) film about the lingering effects of war, strife and torture was unable to permeate the membrane of spangles and schmaltz that make up the awards frenzy over December releases. But people who stand up and applaud when our presidential hopefuls beat their chest demanding more torture would be well served to acknowledge the longview of becoming indifferent to state-sanctioned violence.

Isabel Coixet (My Life Without Me) revisits the themes of dysfunctional introversion as coping strategy with her third film The Secret Life of Words. Sarah Polley plays Hanna, a Yugoslavian factory worker living a monastic lifestyle of repetition and solitude in grimy Belfast. The factory's manager is so bothered by both her foreignness (at one point hastily mentions "my wife is also... an immigrant!") and her unwillingness to socialize that he forces her to take the vacation she's accrued.

Continue reading "Secret Life of Words: Quietly powerful" »

Posted by at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

Kids gone bad and the parents who enable 'em have been movie staples probably since Reefer Madness and certainly since I was a kid gone bad (the Rebel Without a Cause era), so you can be forgiven for imagining that Alpha Dog will not add much to the canon. And at first, so it seems. The assortment on display of Southern California twinkies masquerading as raw sirloin--oh, the posturings, the potty mouths, the "acting" opportunities given this up-to-the-minute ensemble of young Hollywood!--is enough to induce you to grab that remote. I swear I reached for mine a number of times before realizing midway that I was beginning to care about what might happen.

Continue reading "Alpha Dog: Takes "difficult viewing" to new heights" »

Posted by at 4:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Theatrical release: May 11
DVD Release: TBD

Retelling the real story of a landmark British case in which a Punjabi woman kills her husband, burning him alive after ten years of abuse both physical and verbal, Provoked (opening in select theaters today) often feels a bit like an earnest Lifetime movie but the appealing cast and the intrigue of the Indian-British culture clash raise it above that level, at least.

Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai is truly luminous, if a little inert at times, as Kiranjit, the victim and accused, even when her character remains, in the film's first half especially, frustratingly passive. But the meek, reserved nature of her dutiful wife is part of the point, as her culture, as in many, emphasizes the subordinate role of women in marriage and how most societies do little to protect them, even if they - and their children - are physically threatened by the husband. Her story becomes one of gradual awakening and empowerment.

Continue reading "Provoked: A British-Bollywood Burning Bed?" »

Posted by at 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

If I made up a list of the trends in American cinema that if continued over time could eventually turn my love of the medium into a distant memory and a dull headache scoring high would be Behind the Music-ification of the biopic (pronounced to rhyme with 'myopic' with no irony intended). In the past, these formulaic twaddles would have been pipelined for television (and eventually, righteous obscurity) but now with slightly improved cinematography and a flush of new credibility they now make the sky turn black with raining Oscars.

Part of this is no doubt due to our ease to accept that accomplished people's lives can be boiled down to two or three elements that are worth remembering: John Nash was crazy and smart, Queen Elizabeth doesn't smile and is very British, Idi Amin was totally scary and from Africa, Ray Charles sang and was blind, June Carter was married to Johnny Cash or something, Edward R. Murrow was really serious, Capote talked kind of odd = Cut. Print. Exalt.

With that in mind, Fur, an original story that shirks all previous biographies and expectations about one of American's most controversial photographers setting her in a 1950s Greenwich Village fairy tale, held much promise.

Continue reading "Fake "Fur"" »

Posted by at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): **½ (nostalgia and noir buffs may want to add a star)

Admiring, as I do, so many of the films of Jules Dassin, I find myself surprised that Brute Force (which I had never seen until the arrival of this new Criterion release) does not rank as highly. Though I can understand its being hailed for style, believability and originality in its time, time is the very thing that has left this film in the dust. Despite good performances and superb black-and-white cinematography, the writing and direction are so doggedly of their time and often overly didactic in terms of calling attention to class/economic differences and the dangers of unbridled power that, finally, it's hard not to snicker now and again. When, toward the end, what looks like the entire prison population is given some bad news, their reaction, I swear, sounds exactly like that of Oprah's audience when it learns something sad. (The prisoners have deeper voices, of course.) Granted, this was 1947, yet the entire penitentiary appears to house but a single black inmate. And he sings. Any hint of homosexual behavior is quite veiled, in the character of the villain, 'natch, well-played by a relatively young Hume Cronyn.

Continue reading "Brute Force: Was prison ever like this?" »

Posted by at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Even though they essentially agree on the film, we thought it'd be fun to get two reviewers' takes on this one, two perspectives for the price of one! First Erin, and then James. -- ed.]

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

[Note: Release date changed to May 15.] A more cynical viewer could see the recent popularity of vignette storytelling as a desperate move for cash-strapped productions to attract big name talent to their films with the lure of a small time commitment and big showpiece scenes without the burden of having to carry an entire narrative. But the flipside of that coin is that to effectively tell those stories a director needs very good actors who can quickly engage our imaginations.

Writer/director Karen Moncrieff's film was inspired by her experiences as a juror on a murder trial after seeing the temporary community that had sprung up around the witnesses called to testify. The Dead Girl is the story of a murder that's become ghoulish normalcy in almost any part of the country: a drug-addicted prostitute is randomly killed, her mutilated body dumped in a field and discovered a few days later by a passerby. The discovery creates a small stir in the local media, but there is very little outrage and no one is ever arrested for the crime.

Continue reading "The Dead Girl: the slivers of universal truth" »

Posted by at 3:30 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: Walt Opie
Rating (out of 5): ***½

The Hours and the Times could almost be called a "speculative documentary" as it takes a real event in the lives of John Lennon and founding Beatles manager Brian Epstein, namely a private four-day holiday to Barcelona in April of 1963, and speculates as to what might have occurred between the two close friends behind closed doors in their hotel room. Of course, the result requires an opening disclaimer stating that everything we are about to see is "entirely fictitious," but perhaps the best indication that it is successful is that somehow it feels as if this is quite likely what did happen, that perhaps by some form of witchcraft writer/director Christopher Munch managed to get it exactly right, even though we know rationally this would be impossible. Wonderfully shot in old-school black and white, it even brings to mind the D.A. Pennebaker documentary of Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of England, Don't Look Back.

Continue reading "The Hours and Times: The fifth Beatle and Lennon fall gently in Spain" »

Posted by at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): *** {add a star if you’re a Ninth Symphony fan}

Music is front, center and as gorgeous as you might expect in Copying Beethoven, one of Agnieszka Holland's (Europa Europa, The Secret Garden) more commercial efforts that, sadly, didn't find the classy mainstream audience who might have embraced it. That the movie is also terribly flawed by dialog occasionally both stilted and foolishly vernacular ("He mooned me!" notes the heroine about her composer/boss) will give nay-sayers ample opportunity to dismiss it. But if you're among those who consider Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to be one of the world's musical treasures, I urge you to give the film a shot.

Continue reading "Crossing Beethoven" »

Posted by at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Candela Peña is so good so often that I wonder when American audiences are going to catch on. (We're often slow, particularly when critics aren't paying enough attention.) Ms. Peña is quite different from film to film, though she usually looks rather similar: Torremolinos 73, Take My Eyes, God Is on the Air, No Shame, What Makes Women Laugh, All About My Mother, Mouth to Mouth--to name a few of her 20 appearances so far, often in lesser roles in which she is never less than wonderful. In Princesas, winner of three Spanish Goya awards but which came and went theatrically in the blink of an eye, she plays a prostitute. The actress won several awards for the role, but her version is no whore-with-a-heart-of-gold: she's angry, frightened-but-determined and oddly decent. This decency infuses the entire film and is likely to do the same for viewers.

Continue reading "Princesas: Beyond the "hookers with heart of gold" cliche" »

Posted by at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

The middling and awkwardly titled British drama Shaking Dreamland starts as a high-pitched fairy tale. A wedding in a striking cathedral with beautiful flower girls and a bride and groom so gorgeous they can't even make it to the altar; they must run to embrace each other halfway down the aisle. Minutes later the new bride takes her husband to the crest of a waterfall to inform him they're about to have a beautiful baby. But soon after this announcement the groom is haunted by ghoulish nightmares about having sex with underage prostitutes and molesting his future son. As the missus gestates (all the while humming the theme song from Disney's Snow White) he partakes in a steady diet of long walks, self-mutilation and psychotherapy before coming to the realization he was molested by his father who is now dying of cancer and wants to spend his last few months with his new grandchild. His descent forces the wife to recognize that her parents were raging alcoholics who beat her and each other on a regular basis.

British cinematographer Martina Nagel makes her directorial debut with this zestless psychodrama that despite plumbing into almost every imaginable neurosis about sex, relationships, family and commitment, does so with such austerity that there is no one emotional uptick. Couple this with the near-constant, obtrusive musical cues and Shaking Dream Land becomes an exercise in balancing patronizing boredom with dull voyeurism. The performances are all solid and the cast includes a few faces that will be familiar to an American audience; Jesper Christensen (Casino Royale) is particularly good as the charming, porn-addicted child abuser and newcomer Cloudia Swann manages to retain sympathy and strength despite having little more to do than sigh woefully and shift the angles of her french braid.

See also: I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, The Conformist, Gideon's Daughter, Mystic River, Separate Lies, The Woodsman, Mysterious Skin.

Posted by at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

While Wondrous Oblivion often approaches the first word of its title and never comes near the depths of the second, it does not, unfortunately, live up to its initial promise. There is a great deal to savor here, however, beginning with the time and the place: a lower-middle-class London neighborhood in 1960. In its center are two families: one Jewish, that has lost most of its progenitors to the Holocaust; the other Jamaican, ready to put down stakes in a changing England. The sport of cricket figures prominently in the film, yet this is no standard "sports" movie, for it deals as much with coming-of-age, racism and passionate, forbidden attraction as it does winning and competition. Writer/director Paul Morrison (whose 1999 film Solomon and Gaenor helped push Ioan Gruffudd toward stardom) and his production staff have recreated the time and place impeccably, and Morrison has cast his film equally well.

Delroy Lindo has perhaps his best role ever as the Jamaican patriarch, and he is splendid--as is every cast member down the line. The film is also to be congratulated for taking the road less traveled where sex, sin and infidelity are concerned. But after setting up a rich situation, peopling it with unusually decent but problemed primary characters, and giving it all such a gorgeous gloss, the filmmaker allows a certain predictability to slowly drain the movie of some--though not nearly all--of its energy and strength. Toward the close, there is almost a sense that Morrison is simply diddling, as the pretty visuals and effects go on and on when a less sentimental close would have been appropriate. Perhaps he was finding it difficult to say goodbye to these people whom he cared so much about. Whatever--I recommend you see Wondrous Oblivion because its strengths easily outweigh its flaws as it tells its nostalgic yet still-timely story about some of our favorite topics: race, religion and class.

Posted by at 8:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Paying as much tribute to Douglas Sirk as her previous film But I'm a Cheerleader did to John Waters, Jamie Babbitt uses a sort of magic carpet ride of hyper-stylization to explore grief, sexual abuse, drug addiction, physical disability and sexual repression. What could have easily slid into teenage (read: inane) psychosexual dramagedy nonsense plays instead like an interesting little character piece drenched in syrup.

Recently orphaned deaf-mute Dot (Camilla Belle) goes to live with her godparents (Hal Hartley go-to's Martin Donovan and Edie Falco) and their cheerleader daughter Nina (Elisha Cuthbert). Since everyone believes Dot cannot hear (and thus not judge) under the guise of condescending inclusivity they use her as a constant human confessional to unburden their souls.

Continue reading "The Quiet: Hush hush, sweet cheerleader" »

Posted by at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Set in a lakeside campground in the hot, still air of summer, Wild Camp was supposedly based on a true story, for what that's worth, and if the film's plot - an odd mix of creepy horror and romance seems fairly straightforward and predictable, it does a better job of creating the atmosphere of pending doom under the surface while leading up to a fairly shocking resolution.

Denis Lavant (Lovers on the Bridge, Very Long Engagement), who looks like a French Robert Davi, with a face that's been around the block - or smack into it - a few times, or as more than one critic noted, with a little Billy Bob Thornton mixed in, plays an ex-con trying to start a new life as a sailing instructor. He quickly falls under the spell of Isild Le Besco's Camille, a sultry, sulky teen bored by her surroundings and troubled by her family in ways the film never attempts to fully explain.

Continue reading "Wild Camp: Not So Wild or Campy" »

Posted by at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Red Doors, Georgia Lee's undeservedly obscure independent film about an Asian American family looks even better after seeing the coming attraction for another Asian family-themed drama previewed on the DVD, Close Call, which looks entirely overwrought and muddled.

The story, such as it is, centers on three sisters in a Chinese American family, the parents being first generation immigrants, with the oldest daughter (Jacqueline Kim) in an emotionally distant relationship with a white man but soon to be married to him, and the youngest, teenage Katie, a completely American-cultured riot girl (Kathy Shao-lin Lee, wearing homemade tshirts and multicolored hair) participates in a flirty battle of pranks with a boy in her class (an amusing running story though it begins to overstay its welcome). Believably, the middle daughter, a winning Elaine Kao, is caught in between everyone's needs and neuroses. She attempts to please her parents - getting a medical degree and going out on blah dates with Asian men, while secretly discovering she may lean another way sexually. The father (Tzi Ma, a familiar face to American TV-watchers, and The General in The Ladykillers remake), depressed middle aged Ed, only finds happiness in the culture and place he misses dearly, in nostalgia for the past. He contemplates suicide, only to be interrupted each time by the nonchalant Katie. Ed's attempts to find some meaning in his life, rooted in his culture's traditions, form the main spine of the story, though part of the problem with the film - or charm, depending on your attention span - is its episodic structure, with all the family members' stories getting nearly equal weight.

Continue reading "Red Doors: Asian family comes undone" »

Posted by at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Sleeper pick of the week:

Once in awhile you encounter a small movie to which the adjective "dear" is applicable, and Dreamland is one of this increasingly rare breed. An ensemble piece heavy on character and short on plot, it is beautifully directed by first timer Jason Matzner. Screenwriter Tom Willett's dialog is real, funny and moving, while the location -- a trailer park in the American southwest -- seems just offbeat enough to entice. The filmmakers treat these quirky individuals as worthy of our time and attention, rather than as the film trailer-trash we so often encounter.

Continue reading "Dreamland" »

Posted by at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Australian filmmaker Sarah Watt has heretofore made only short films, most of these animated. To call her full-length, live-action debut Look Both Ways auspicious is an understatement. This ensemble "dramedy" about how we come to terms with death is ever so light on its feet: witty, elliptical and full of odd charms. Especially odd and charming are its fast and funny animated moments, often given to ruminations about one's own death as a kind of awful -- though humorous -- fantasy of ghastly things that could happen but won't because we've first imagined them and thus staved off their arrival. Watt's heroine Meryl (winningly played by Justine Clarke) is a talented artist, and her hero is a photographer (brought to fine life by William McInnes) who also does thoughtful, professional work. Both brush up against the Grim Reaper, as do their friends, co-workers and family, and we viewers follow gladly along.

Continue reading "Look Both Ways" »

Posted by at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

War is not a subtle subject nor is Joyeux Noel ("Merry Christmas" to us non-Frenchies) a particularly subtle film. But it's a beautiful one: intelligent, heartfelt and perhaps as pure as a relatively mainstream movie on this subject can manage. Writer/director Christian Carion (The Girl from Paris) begins with a shock: nothing bloody, mind you, but something I have not previously encountered in a film. This sets us up nicely for what follows: a worthy addition to the canon of films that are anti-war, anti-government and anti-organized religion. This story of an impromptu "truce" that occurred between battling armies (Germans, French and Scots) on a Christmas Eve during World War I is full of joy, beauty, sadness, irony - and only a little carnage (but what's there does indeed make its point).

Continue reading "Joyeux Noel" »

Posted by at 2:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Fixing Frank: Rating (out of 5): ***½
Hard Pill: Rating (out of 5): ***½

Gay film has come such a distance from the days of not being able to utter its own name (see or read The Celluloid Closet) to the likes of award-winning mainstream movies from Philadelphia to Brokeback Mountain that gay/bi moviegoers, interested women and the very few straight men fearless enough to venture into this realm of entertainment can be forgiven for not always being able to keep abreast of what's happening in this growing genre. Yes, there's a lot of mindless schlock making its way onto movie and TV screens, and sitting through even a few hours of this can be enough to turn off intelligent filmgoers indefinitely. Consequently, I want to call attention to two smart little straight-to-video films - Fixing Frank and Hard Pill - that deserve a look from savvy genre buffs. Neither is a fun-and-frolic camp fest nor a brainless soft-core turn-on. Both address the possibility of changing one's sexual identity from gay to straight, the idea of which is certain to drive heavily politicized gay men to frenzy. Yet, because both movies deal with this subject intelligently - addressing morality (I mean right and wrong, not gay and straight); the importance of filling emotional, as well as sexual, needs; and the desire for inclusiveness (and being included) that haunts all of us - each provides a surprisingly rigorous and thoughtful experience.

Continue reading "Gay love, shame, blame, pride, change: Take your pick, try 'em all!" »

Posted by at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two of us who review for this blog with some regularity have both taken a look at John Sayles' last film, Silver City, and, while I found more fault with it than did James, we both agree it's been unfairly maligned in some circles, and worth a watch in particular this week - with the election coming right up.

My look at Silver City

James Van Maanen's review of Silver City, as seen on GreenCine (see "Talltale").

Posted by at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

How odd to discover Tickets the same day that Terence Rafferty's interesting piece on "auteur-itis" appeared in The New York Times (as referenced on Greencine Daily). Rafferty tells us of the war between the director (Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu) and the screenwriter (Guillermo Arriaga) of Babel and 21 Grams over the question of who's really the auteur. Perhaps this tiresome twosome can muster the intelligence and humility to watch Tickets, an auteur-less inspiration that makes use of three different directors (Ermanno Olmi, Abbas Kiarostami and Ken Loach), three different writers (Olmi, Kiarostami and Paul Laverty) and three different cinematographers (Olmi, Mahmoud Kalari and Chris Menges) to create a surprisingly seamless film that parcels out four stories amongst these nine world-class moviemakers (including the writers and cinematographers here).

Continue reading "Tickets" »

Posted by at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

There's something about Kelly Reichardt's minimalist film Old Joy that puts one at ease, as if reminding us that there are places we can go - mentally as well as physically - to take some comfort in a world that's essentially gone insane.

Old Joy's plot is hardly enough to hang one's hat on - two old friends connect for an overnight camping trip and a search for a hidden hot springs - but needless to say, the plot is not the thing here. Actor-musician Will Oldham (whose unique, haunting singing voice has garnered him global recognition) plays Kurt, a drifter who drifts back to Portland, Oregon, and looks up his friend Mark (the willowy Daniel London). While Mark is on the precipice of a more domestic life - his wife is pregnant - Kurt is clearly more frail, child-like, but both men are grappling with their roles in an increasingly alienating world. It's to the film's great credit that both characters feel immediate, like people we know - or maybe even are - even if the actors are not completely polished. Their conversations together as they wander around the Cascade Mountains serve as the spine of the film. With the confines of the story comes an intimacy rarely achieved; even rarer, for American films at least, to see that intimacy expressed between two men. While it's of that uniquely American genre, the road movie, Old Joy is more European in sensibility.

Continue reading "Old Joy" »

Posted by at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)