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

Any movie that knocks about your most cherished belief, say, that Capitalism--or, what the hell, Communism, Christianity, the Internet, the motion picture industry--is the greatest achievement of the modern world, is to be treasured. Doubting one's dream is generally salutary, and Czech Dream leaves us doing just this—and more; this little (less-than-90-minutes) documentary is a knockout.

The concept is certainly original and funny: Filmmakers Vít Klusák and Filip Remundathe use modern marketing techniques to wage a massive promotional campaign for a super-supermarket in the Czech Republic--only it's all a ruse. The film is full of surprising and meaningful moments, all along the way: the ad man explaining why he can't "lie" is wonderfully ironic, even touching, in its naiveté. But the best is the last half hour, once the hoax has been unmasked. Seeing/hearing the various Czechs give us their thoughts and feelings on the matter forces us, too, to stop and think about how we are all manipulated, by all the media--left, right and center--all the time. These two Czech filmmakers, bless their hearts and minds, have opened the door a crack wider so that we can begin to see and understand this influence/control of the people by the powers that be and by society itself, our ever-loving peers.

Continue reading "Czech Dream: A welcome consumer nightmare" »

Posted by at 2:09 PM | Permalink

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

Seeing The Man of My Life a second time within the year (it was originally part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Rendez-vous with French Cinema 2007) has made me appreciate even more its richness, intelligence and subtlety, while also alerting me to some flaws in its structure. First time out, I was so blown away by the film's beauty of conception and place (it is brilliantly edited and set during a vacation in the Provence countryside), not to mention its relevance to my own life (a marriage sundered by one mate's sudden attraction to a new acquaintance), that I was more than willingly drawn along by the situation and the spectacularly persuasive performances of Charles Berling, Bernard Campan and Léa Drucker.

Continue reading "The Man of My Life: Gorgeous love story, flaws and all" »

Posted by at 4:11 PM | 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): **½ (add a star if you're an opera buff)

Not being an opera fan, I have seen Carmen maybe twice in my life (and the ballet version a couple more times), so I am not the best judge of this South African film version, in which the actors speak and sing (or are perhaps dubbed) in Xhosa. The time is now and the place a South African township where the women labor in that ubiquitous cigarette factory and the men are either townspeople or police. Some of this works quite well, and the transfer from Spain to South Africa is a perfectly good one.

Continue reading "U-Carmen: Bizarre Bizet adaptation works, off and on" »

Posted by at 12:25 PM | Permalink

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

Although not everyone will agree, to my mind few films yield as much satisfaction upon repeated viewings as recently departed Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni's 1960 existential masterpiece L'Avventura. It gains on second and third viewing, because at that point you already know that the alluring yet troubled Anna (Lea Massari), who has mysteriously disappeared in broad daylight on a tiny island off the coast of Italy, [[**spoiler alert**]] will never be seen again (not that the characters seem too concerned about this by the end), and you see there is no hope of redemption for Anna's wayward lover Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti).

In addition, you will have realized this film is really an epic visual love poem to both Monica Vitti, who plays Anna's close friend Claudia, and who also succumbs to Sandro's apparently irresistible charms--as well as to the pure joy of cinema itself, a medium Antonioni obviously relished more as a canvas for his art than merely a vehicle to tell a linear narrative. In this way he can be compared to his fellow countryman Fellini, as was often the case throughout his career, although such comparisons are somewhat hollow-both men were inspired originals and therefore irreplaceable in their own right.

Continue reading "L'Avventura: Antonioni's art" »

Posted by at 1:28 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: Liz Hille
Rating (out of 5): ****

The beautifully shot film To Be and To Have started, admittedly, a little slow for me, but bit by bit I became hypnotized. French documentarian Nicolas Philibert takes us through a year in George Lopez's classroom--about a dozen kids, ages 4-11--in a rural section of Auvergne. Anyone who's taught is familiar with the chaotic scenes presented, and Philibert does a spectacular job of catching the quiet, banal moments that, when looking closer, are actually sublime. Nothing special happens in class: there are fights, dictations, distraction, but the patient and direct way Lopez deals with the kids is at the center of the film. He doesn't coddle nor lie to them, instead, he lovingly prepares them for the harsher world they'll soon be entering (for some, that's a larger, bureaucratic middle school).

Continue reading "To Be and To Have: To learn and to teach" »

Posted by at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

My personal award for "Most unusual while remaining intelligent, enjoyable and accessible" movie of the year goes to Missing Victor Pellerin, an ain't-seen-nuttin'-like-it wonder from Canada--a land which continues to wildly impress for spawning unique winners (anybody seen Slings and Arrows?). To try to explain this singular film is to try to pin down a changeling that keeps on evolving, right up to its staggering finale.

All due praise must be given to one Sophie Deraspe, who is credited with the writing, direction, cinematography and editing (she probably did the catering, as well). There are a few other names listed in the crew, but's basically a one-woman show. Ms Deraspe has created something else. But equal praise must be heaped upon the movie's cast of unknowns, all of whom manage to nail their characters beautifully and succinctly, even as the film keeps evolving right out from under them. Did the cast know from the beginning exactly where their stories and the movie were going? How did they manage to create such complete and complex characters so elliptically and wittily, when these characters are also changing?

And speaking of change, the movie jumps genres, too--from documentary to fiction, mystery, satire -- as it follows the path of Pellerin, a young star of the Art scene who disappeared from Montreal without a trace. I suspect the film will stay with you long after it's over, if only because you'll keep filling in the pieces. Yet, as weird and all-over-the-place as events become, stick with them, because they do coalesce. And if you know anything about the state of our current "art world"--which is one of the film's major themes--you're probably going to love and appreciate Missing Victor Pellerin even more. It possesses that elusive combination of a great concept and amazing execution.

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

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

Summary: A terrifically gripping WWII drama that manages to balance introspection with bursts of battlefield action.

Days of Glory was likened by some critics to Saving Private Ryan, but this is a bit simplistic, as the film deals with a racially oppressed underclass, the Algerian soldiers who fought bravely for France against Germany without getting their due. Like Private Ryan, Glory does end with a modern day tail, but here it's more moving because the subtext is these men were not given any acknowledgment for their heroism, and the ending while equally emotional, is that much more bitter. It took until 2002, and then with this film, for these men to be given the respect they deserved all along, when the French government paid the surviving soldiers and their families the pension they had previously given French citizens for their efforts.

But separate from that history, this film by Rachid Bouchareb (a Frenchman born to Algerian parents) never feels like a polemic. Lead by the remarkable cast of unknowns, who won an ensemble award at Cannes for their collective performances and are heartbreakingly empathetic, Days of Glory does what all great war films should do: have us rooting for the protagonists and praying for their survival, even when knowing in your heart that they won't all make it. They are lead by a staff sergeant (the hollow-faced Bernard Blancan) who is stern, even fascistic at times and yet supportive of his men, too. He hides a secret that reveals him to be a deeply conflicted man. And in a particularly heartbreaking story thread, when one of the soldiers, Messaoud (Roschdy Zem), meets a woman after arriving in France, their brief but deep relationship is doomed by the French army's censoring their correspondence due to the "taboo" nature of their relationship.

The film is terrifying at times - the feeling of being isolated on the battlefield is expertly captured - and climaxes with a harrowing battle with German soldiers in a town in Alsace. By the end, you will be properly moved by their efforts fighting Nazism despite having understandable conflicts over the meaning of patriotism. At least we see the French people appreciating their heroism even if the commanders and government could give a damn.

An assured work.

Posted by at 3:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

Movie-watchers looking for an old-fashioned but absolutely riveting piece of fictionalized history could do no better than The Tunnel. Yes, it lasts two hours and 47 minutes, but I wager, once you've begun, you will savor every one of those minutes--particularly the final hour which builds an accumulative suspense that is breathtaking. Director Roland Suso Richter (he made a so-so The I Inside here in America after the success of this German film) may be no knock-out stylist, but everything he does is in service to the tale at hand. He draws fine performances from his cast (one of his actors, Sebastian Koch, starred in last year's Best Foreign Film The Lives of Others), and the look of the film is wonderful: in period, while using all of today's movie technology to create that period.

Continue reading "The Tunnel: Another Great Escape" »

Posted by at 3:06 PM | Permalink

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

With Family Law, the fourth and finest film I've seen from Argentine writer/director Daniel Burman, this increasingly graceful and family-oriented filmmaker completes his trilogy about coming of age and finding one's place in relation to kin and community. It's a warm film, full of wonderful specifics--funny and real--about the life of 30-something, haute-bourgeois Argentines that should easily translate to a U.S. audience who either understands Spanish or is willing to read subtitles. And, although this film is the last in a kind of trilogy connected by theme and lead actor, it can be viewed separately with no loss of enjoyment or understanding.

Burman hit the international film festival circuit and limited U.S. exposure with his 2000 film Waiting for the Messiah, which garnered some nice reviews but was little seen. In it, lead characters Ariel (played by Daniel Hendler) and Santamaria bounce around frenetically (as does the movie), dealing with love, sex, family, work and religion. Buenos Aires' Jewish community plays a large part here, as do the effects of globalization on an increasingly broken economy. As bad as things seem, however, hope--the unspoken staple of Burman's work to date--never entirely disappears.

Continue reading "Family Law: The capper to a splendid little trilogy" »

Posted by at 10:57 AM | Permalink

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

I am not sure, given a limited knowledge of film history and my rather circumscribed life, that documentaries come much weirder than The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On. The film won half a dozen awards at various film festivals at the time of its release. Now, twenty years later it comes to DVD. Though it deals with events that happened during WWII, on the island of New Guinea among the Japanese troops just after the official end of war, I suspect it has lost none of its immediacy or--to western eyes--its strangeness.

Continue reading "The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On: And what did you do in the war, daddy?" »

Posted by at 2:05 PM | Permalink

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

Czech surrealist, filmmaker, painter and celebrated animator Jan Svankmajer has crafted a number of fantastic films over the decades but arguably none finer than his latest, Lunacy, now finally available on DVD. Adapted loosely from the writings of Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis de Sade, Svankmajer's "philosophical horror film" explores the ripe territories of the infamous Theatre du Grand Guignol where inmates don't merely take over the asylum but surround us everywhere. Although seemingly set in the eighteenth century, the film accurately embodies our contemporary culture of collapse.

Actors Pavel Liska and Jan Triska, unfortunately little-known in this country, are used to great effect as the proverbial cat and mouse of the tale. But who is the cat and who is the mouse? Lunacy is Svankmajer's masterpiece, surpassing even his exceptional Faust in pure inventiveness.

(See also Michael Guillen's concise review.)

Posted by at 10:42 AM | 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: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

[Note: See Van Maanen's entire Best Gay Films on DVD 2006 list, now up on GreenCine.]

You've got to give Spanish director Manuel Gomez-Pereira credit (or maybe blame) for beginning his movie Queens with the most obvious and laborious few minutes you're likely to watch all year. No matter. Slowly and delightfully he and his oft-times writer Yolanda Serrano wrap you up in this story of a multiple gay wedding ceremony during the year that Spain -- still a Catholic country, so far as I know -- made such a thing legal. As different and amusing as are the several gay grooms (the "butch-est" of whom is played by Daniel Hendler, star of Daniel Burman's popular Argentine movies), it is really the young men's parents who interest the moviemakers most, and rightly so. None of them really approve of their offspring's sexuality or marital plans, and so we watch -- surprised, amused and occasionally moved -- as the "old folk" learn some lessons. Fortunately, the teaching route that Gomez-Pereira and Serrano choose to travel is full of twists that, more often than not, stand stereotypes wittily on their heads.

Continue reading "Queens" »

Posted by at 6:17 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)

GreenCine has a lot to be thankful for this year, but in our film geeky way we are feeling especially thankful about the home video release of a bunch of great films that had formerly been missing in action on DVD. We've compiled some of our picks for the best films to finally see a DVD release in 2006.

Top 10 Formerly MIA DVDs of 2006 >>

Posted by at 9:24 AM | Permalink

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

Who is The Uninvited Guest? This question, along with a number of others, may stick with you after viewing this rich, engrossing Spanish film that does not easily give up its secrets. The first full-length feature from writer/director Guillem Morales (he's done a number of short films), the movie is a visual stunner, beautifully composed, and with a musical score that captures mood without being overly intrusive. Intellectually, it stimulates and teases. Emotionally, it pulls you quickly in then jerks you back and forth between acceptance and rejection. If you are looking around for something somewhat scary and original (very!) for Halloween - yet not a blood-and-gore fest - this might be your movie.

Continue reading "The Uninvited Guest" »

Posted by at 6:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

For obvious reasons, Go for Zucker, a German Jewish comedy (three words not often linked over the last half century), is something of a landmark. This very funny dysfunctional-families farce appeals by setting a number of people and plots in motion and then spinning them nearly (but not quite) out of control.

Headed by a performer new to me but evidently quite popular in Germany - ex-East German Henry Huebchen - the cast is particularly well-chosen. Each member comes through with a fine performance that captures the humor and the humanity of his/her character. Director/co-writer (and sometimes actor: La Repetition) Dani Levy does a commendable job of balancing the rollicking comedy with bits of reality that keep cropping up to catch us - and his characters - off guard. Indeed, while this movie qualifies as "feel-good," it reaches its goal in a sometimes surprising and circuitous path. And since it keeps you laughing consistently along the way, you should enjoy the trek.

Continue reading "Go for Zucker" »

Posted by at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Moviegoers tempted to venture into a theatre to take a look at the Tony Goldwyn/Paul Haggis remake of The Last Kiss ought to be sure they see the original Italian version first. Superior in every way, this 2001 gem was writer/director Gabriele Muccino's international breakout, capturing better than most films (from any country) that scary period when men approaching thirty start settling into permanent relationships. We see this via the lives of four friends (and their women) in various states of pre- and post-marital bliss (or something less), as well as the parents of one of the women. The movie is by turns funny, surprising, moving and incisive, as it looks at relationships from many angles. It sees the reasons to hold on to what we have and build on it, but it also acknowledges how difficult this is, given our innate sense of selfishness and hypocrisy.

Continue reading "The Last Kiss (Original vs. Remake)" »

Posted by at 5:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

With Paul Verhoeven's new film, Black Book, also centered around the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and his first film shot in his native country in decades [read David D'Arcy's review of the film which premiered in Toronto], it seemed a good time to revisit Soldier of Orange.

Epic in length and scope, but also a character-driven piece, Verhoeven's masterfully entertaining WWII film Soldier of Orange is the most polished of his early Dutch films (though the more subversive The 4th Man is perhaps his sharpest). It makes it all the more apparent how far he eventually fell in his more recent Hollywood forays (B-movie masterpiece RoboCop notwithstanding). Soldier also catapulted Rutger Hauer to stardom, charismatically playing real life heroic (and, eventually, flying) Dutchman Eric Lanshof, a bit of an anti-hero who was initially apolitical during WWII but eventually found himself figthting in the resistance after Holland was overtaken by the Germans. The recognizable, always solid Jeroen Krabbe plays Lanshof's longtime friend who gets caught up along with him in trying to save the country they love, long after their Queen (whom they eventually meet) has fled to England.

Continue reading "Soldier of Orange" »

Posted by at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (2)

Reviewer: Marc Barrite
Rating (out of 5): ****

In his first feature, French director Louis Malle struck cinematic gold with this film noir, an adaptation of a novel by Noel Calef. There are many faces appearing here who would become fixtures in French cinema but it's the lovely Jeanne Moreau who leaves the most indellible impression; she gives a stand-out performance as the bourgeois Florence Carala helplessly wandering the streets of Paris at night in search of her lover. Moreau's travels are masterfully captured by cinematographer Henri Decae, who employs many of the groundbreaking, budget-conscious techniques that would be used more overtly in the subsequent French new wave movement, including the sole use of available light, which in this film results in a beautiful array of natural shadows cast about in each scene.

Elevator's success and timelessness was further sealed by having jazz trumpet legend Miles Davis perform the unforgettable soundtrack. The improvised score is a shining example of the cool and seductive sound Davis purveyed during the rise of his career. The spare instrumentation and smoky atmosphere of the recordings are hypnotic, complementing the film perfectly.

Though nearing its 50th birthday, Elevator holds up with the best of its contemporaries. The pacing and plot complexities will keep today's less-than-patient viewer attentive, there's enough isolation and paranoia to satiate even the most hardened Hitchcock and noir fans, and the screenplay (by Malle and Roger Nimier) is at once sharp, romantic and political. The Criterion bonus disc offers interviews with Malle and Moreau from 1975 and 2005 respectively, rare footage of Miles Davis performing the soundtrack, and Malle's rarely seen film school short, Crazeologie, to boot.

Posted by at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (41)

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

Yes, some Samurai action does figure in The Hidden Blade but action lovers best be warned that this mostly quiet, thoughtful and lovely movie is more about justice, kindness, decency and - especially - love. Call it a classy chick flick with some swordplay. Director and co-writer Yoji Yamada has now made nearly 100 films (including the recent Twilight Samurai). His new one steeps you in the time and habits of 1800s Japan, as western influence - particularly in weaponry - was beginning to assert itself. At the outset, we meet three samurai: one of them leaves for fame and fortune elsewhere, and we remain behind with the family of one of other two, watching as love grows between master and servant, and the story twines around loss, politics (particularly greedy incompetent overlords). Though lengthy, the movie is never slow or uninteresting because the scenes of daily life are filled with such fascinating detail and the plot strands come together gracefully and believably. While Yamada integrates all his themes beautifully, it is the love story that attains most impact: Here is a film that demonstrates what real love is - how it grows and survives against heavy odds - about as well as any I've seen. The swordplay arrives rather far along: a riveting and suspenseful climactic battle and a denouement featuring the blade of the title that is quietly shocking. Despite some violence and a bit of gore, I'll bet most women will love this film. Men - along for the fights and thrills - may learn a number of useful things about communication and caring in a foreign culture that applies quite well to our own. The Hidden Blade, a very special movie, was nominated for multiple Japanese Academy awards. Though it won only for its art direction and actresses, it's hard to imagine anything topping it in the other realms.

More reading: Samurai primer >>

Posted by at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (898)

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

One of my favorite Russian comedies (which admittedly may not be saying much), this 70s classic is also a touching fairy tale, perfect for New Year's Eve. In fact, it has become a holiday classic in Russia in much the same way that Miracle on 34th Street or It's a Wonderful Life has here in the States. But it is more accurately a Russian cousin of When Harry Met Sally. The main story centers on a New Year's Eve mishap that puts a drunken man on an airplane in place of his friend; he ends up in the wrong city but in an apartment that looks an awful lot like his own. When he wakes up on the couch of a complete stranger's apartment, the stranger turns out to be a woman named Nadya, and, well, guess what? But it's the getting there that makes the film a sheer delight, and a host of wonderful Russian songs further enhance the enjoyment.

Director Eldar Ryazanov, now 75, is still working today. Sadly, most of his other films, including the Cannes Golden Palm-nominated A Railway Station for Two, are currently unavailable on video here. But both Irony of Fate and the equally first-rate A Cruel Romance are, so take advantage of a rare opportunity to see an underrated director at top form.

Posted by at 8:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)