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

If you're already a fan of the films of Henry Jaglom, you'll need no further encouragement to see his latest arrival on DVD. If not, or if you're lukewarm, or know nothing of this fellow's rather "special" oeuvre, then Hollywood Dreams is probably as good a place as any to begin. Unlike some of his earlier work—Eating, Babyfever, Going Shopping (which deal with pretty much exactly what their titles suggest), or other films like Someone to Love, Déjà Vu and Always, in which love and relationships are front and center (whatever else they're about, Jaglom's movies are all always about love and relationships)--his latest is perfectly conceived and calibrated to demonstrate his "take" on the film's title.

We're in that territory where dreams of stardom collide with dreams of love and a lasting relationship. But nobody covers this territory in quite the manner of Mr. Jaglom. Once again, he overdoes just about everything, as well as allowing his cast to do the same. (If you've ever experienced the feeling of wanting to equip Karen Black with a good set of emotional and verbal brakes, you'll feel it doubly here.) Funny thing is, in going overboard, both he and his cast manage to wrest odd truth from this collision of ambition, romance, humor, coincidence and silliness.

Continue reading "Hollywood Dreams" »

Posted by at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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: Greg Birkel
Rating (out of 5): **½

The 4th Dimension started out as a twenty minute Temple University film school project for the two writer/directors, Tom Materra and Dave Mazzoni. Shot on a shoestring budget, the feature film is beautifully photographed, largely in black and white, and set in an indeterminate historical period populated with 19th century costumes and artifacts mixed with anachronistic items like refrigerators and console television sets. Adrift in this black and white world is Jack, played by Louis Morabito, a young man afflicted with obsessive-compulsive disorder, who is seriously distracted by his musings on the nature of time and Einstein's general theory of relativity. At one point, Jack dreams that Einstein concealed a notebook, full of musings on the grand unification theory of physics, in an old clock that he (Jack) has been asked to repair. Since many of Jack's dreams tend to come true, it isn't long before he discovers the hidden notebook, deepening the intrigue.

Continue reading "The 4th Dimension" »

Posted by at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Like all great love stories, Wristcutters starts out with a suicide. Patrick Fugit (Almost Famous, Saved!) plays Zia, a young man so devastated from a recent break up he wakes up one morning, tidies his apartment, climbs into the tub and slashes his wrists. While drifting into death he fantasizes about his ex-girlfriend living the rest of her life in total devastation. Unfortunately, instead of being left to rest in peace, Zia wakes up in a Purgatory, a colorless wasteland inhabited by the entire population of people who ever committed suicide. Each of them is forced to live out what would have been the term of their natural life in a place described as "just like life, but crappier."

Zia then gets a minimum wage job at a pizzeria (called "Kamikaze Pizza" natch), constantly bickering with his aggressive roommate and spending most of his time staving off boredom too scared to off himself again for fear he'll wind up some place even worse. And in keeping with Croatian writer/director Goran Dukic's dark sense of humor, a disproportionate number of Russians are in residence.

Continue reading "Wristcutters: A Love Story" »

Posted by at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

As a writer/director, Marshall Lewy had made only three short films before his full-length debut with the remarkable Blue State, about as timely and daring a movie as you are likely to see. It's not perfect, and it probably bites off more than it can properly chew, let alone digest. Yet, after all the documentaries we've viewed over the past eight years, during which has occurred the steepest, most noticeable--from without and within--decline in the reputation of the good ol' USA, someone has at last had the balls to make a narrative feature about this. It almost seems beside the point that Lewy has turned out a good movie--funny, decent, political, romantic, humane. The fact that he's managed to address pointedly and honestly what so many of us felt after the 2004 election is wonderful. But there's more to it than that.

Continue reading "Blue State" »

Posted by at 5:57 PM | Permalink

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

Christian Slater has always been a likable actor, ever so slightly nutty and cool and the star of several bona-fide cult classics, but unfairly relegated to a career just below the "A"-list. Lately, it has been painful to see him suffer through so much junk (Who Is Cletis Tout?, Hard Cash, etc.). So watching this "comeback" performance was a real pleasure. Sadly, 2007's He Was a Quiet Man -- great title, that -- went straight to DVD following a few film festival dates; it deserves a lot more.

Continue reading "He Was a Quiet Man" »

Posted by at 4:21 PM | Permalink

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

One of the more pleasurable movie experiences I've had of late, Ladron Que Roba A Ladron (Thief Robs Thief) is so much better than Ocean's Eleven, Twelve or Thirteen--faster, funnier, shorter and infinitely more meaningful--that's it's hard not to over-praise what is basically a by-the-numbers heist film. But because it's about Latinos in the USA, immigration and its uses/misuses, labor unions and sleazebags who make millions of dollars off the backs of the poor, the movie offers a kick in the pants that its more glamorous and expensive predecessors don't come near. If you detest those lying "infomercials" (and the folk who grow rich off them) that promise everything and deliver zilch, you're gonna love what writer JoJo Henrickson and director Joe Menendez do with this so-ready-for-a-take-down subject.

As obvious as the film appears initially, it offers plenty of small, charming surprises along the way, culminating in a satisfying finale that is as compassionate as it is clever. The cast, many of whom have appeared in Hispanic tele-novelas, is good-looking and competent: While all the characters are drawn broadly, they're also performed well. Menendez will win no prizes for film technique; his movie looks like television. Yet he does his worthwhile job professionally, with plenty of zest and enough panache to carry us along. Films like this one and the upcoming La Misma Luna (due out in March) that dare to address subjects such as immigration and Latinos as both predators and prey should ring bells with mainstream audiences across color and culture lines. Grab this one--and have fun while your consciousness is being raised.

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

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: Maria Komodore
Rating (out of 5): **½

The Man With the Screaming Brain marks B-Movie sensation Bruce Campbell's first attempt at filmmaking (the actor had previously directed several Hercules and Xena episodes but never a feature film), and if it's perhaps not the actor's most triumphant achievement, at least he finally realized a project that, along with producer and pal David M. Goodman, he had been struggling to finance for a little over two decades.

For some of Campbell's fans, Man might be something of a disappointment. This quite wacky film fails to stand up to the camp magnificence of the Evil Dead series, for which the actor is beloved. But the hard-to-wrap-one's-mind-around plot and the confusing, disturbing, and mind-boggling implications it makes, should not be taken lightly. Campbell plays William Cole, a pharmaceutical company CEO who travels all the way to Bulgaria in order to make an investment in an unfinished subway project that will give him a major tax break. He drags his Jackie O-look-alike wife (Antoinette Byron) along with him, thinking that the trip might refresh their dying marriage. Little does he know that they'll be joined by their former-KGB-agent taxi driver Yegor (Vladimir Kolev) and a gypsy woman named Tatoya (Tamara Gorski), to form an unruly quartet.

The overly complex story of how and when it all happens makes it hard to connect with. Suffice it to say that thanks to cuckoo Professor Dr. Ivan Ivanoff (Stacy Keach) and his recent transplant surgery breakthrough, Cole and Yegor, and Jackie and Tatoya, come to literally share the same body and brain respectively. A comment on the possibility of a peaceful co-existence between capitalism and communism? A suggestion that getting married means taming one's wild side? Or perhaps it's all simply an excuse to give Bruce Campbell an opportunity for physical acting.

Posted by at 5:29 PM | Permalink

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

One of the marks of a strong film director is one who can make something greater than the sum of its parts. In Between Days has a micro budget, non-professional (teenage) actors, a bleak Toronto winter setting, very little dialogue and an entire universe of ennui all under the banner of a title taken from a Cure song.

First-time writer/director So Yong Kim, already an established painter, film producer and multi-media artist, pays special attention to the visual and sound design of her feature film debut. Teaming up here with cinematographer Sarah Levy, the film has a syrupy quality that enlarges and minimizes the things happening around her to suit Aimie's emotional state. In Between Days is a well-paced yet detailed account of the day to day life of teenage immigrant at the threshold of sexuality and national identity. Kim deftly sidesteps cliche and preciousness by focusing with careful precision on the root beginnings of the deceptive nature of gender communication and the all-encompassing frustration of being a non-English speaker in a teenage world where conformity is key.

Continue reading "In Between Days: A teenage immigrant's so-called-life" »

Posted by at 12:48 PM | 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: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): ****

School's out and unlike the fantasies of liberation depicted in Dazed and Confused, Fast Times, et al, the kids in Richard Wong's Colma: The Musical are in paralysis. With no ambition to leave, no community to build an identity with and not even a car to get out of town (it's set in a suburb south of San Francisco famous for having many more dead people than living), these three friends are left with nothing but time to weigh upon their own turgid angst.

And it's this middling stage of life that lends itself so well to indulgences of their imagination: the dull commute to your deadening mall job is vastly improved with a dancebeat; a boring party is livened up with a sassy proclamation of how lame everyone else is; scoring a fake ID leads to a beerhall shanty; and a lonely walk through one of town's many cemeteries becomes a waltz with memories of the dead.

Continue reading "Colma: The Musical" »

Posted by at 10:56 AM | Permalink

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

After the debate and controversy surrounding the recent Darjeeling Limited (did everyone just suddenly realize en masse Wes Anderson had racial issues?), Criterion's release of Gus Van Sant's directorial debut Mala Noche serves as a fine reminder that it is possible to make films about romantic relationships between people who are on unlevel playing fields without rendering one of the people (psst, the brown one) mute or a ridiculous caricature.

Based on the autobiographical novella by Walt Curtis, Walt (did I mention autobiographical?) is a cashier in a seedy liquor store obsessed with Johnny (Doug Cooeyate), one of the young Mexican immigrant rentboys who works the streets of downtown Portland. Johnny is uninterested but has fun hanging out and toying with Walt (played by Tim Streeter). Johnny endures the trials of his legal status with humor and good spirit, he's constantly hungry, getting evicted and being chased by the police. Walt offers him safe (albeit somewhat lecherously) harbor with no small amount of white- and class-guilt-induced smugness about the nature of his generosity. Walt isn't always an easy character to like but his youthful pretensions and ignorance are well-balanced out by his painfully earnest lust and his ability to laugh at himself when Johnny gets the better of him.

Continue reading "Mala Noche" »

Posted by at 3:41 PM | Permalink

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

From Tugboats to Polar Bears

Recommending experimental short films can be a tough business. As so much of liking a regular movie is about taste, it seems that with shorts it can even be more so. They're the pinncale of the vitamin movie in your queue - the one that's in there that you should watch because it's "good for you," even if the thought of watching it is grim business. Well, while Portland filmmaker Matt McCormick's From Tugboats to Polar Bears is indeed a compendium of short films, some of which did even making their debuts in art galleries, it could hardly be thought of as anything but fine, engaging entertainment, with only the bare minimum of vitamins.

The best known of the collection - and the finest of the lot - is definitely The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal: a funny, thought provoking short narrated by Miranda July, of Me and You and Everyone You Know fame. The short posits that the city employees that drive around painting over graffiti with paint-rollers are they themselves the unwitting, subconscious members next step of abstract expressionism. It's laugh-out-loud good, poking gentle fun at graffiti artists, well-meaning governmental types and art theorists as well as giving you something to think about later while you stare at the blocky mis-colored boxes painted over tags or stencils on overpasses or warehouse walls.

Continue reading "From Tugboats to Polar Bears" »

Posted by at 3:17 PM | Permalink

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

Michael Kang's lovely independent film The Motel is set in, yes, a motel run by a Chinese American family, but it's not a family film per se - it doesn't at all shy away from the seedy aspects of this place, with its hourly rates (and weekly rates - both with their own depressing qualities) nor from its protagonist's budding sexual curiosity.

The motel manager is a gruff woman who carries a baseball bat to bust her own place's doors down when a customer is late with hourly payment and slaps her son for the smallest transgression. She has two kids who help her out and the eldest, 13 year old son Ernest (Jeffrey Chyau, who would be right at home in an episode of Freaks and Geeks), is a pudgy bespectacled introvert - some might say, nerd - who longs for Christine, the girl who works as a waitress across the street, but is stuck scrubbing toilets for his hard-to-please mother.

Continue reading "The Motel" »

Posted by at 10:13 AM | Permalink

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

If you're looking for a light romantic-comedy/coming-of-age flick, you could do worse--much, much--than renting I'm Reed Fish, which fills this bill nicely, even adding extra charm due to the movie's location: a tiny Pacific Northwest town in which everybody knows everybody (and their business). And then, once you're settled in for something sweet and happy, in a single moment of surprise, director/co-writer Zackary Adler (along with Peter Alwazzan, Rhett Wickham and, yes, Reed Fish) turns this movie into a supremely sophisticated take on "true" love, reality and the process of maturation--all without giving up any of its sweetness or charm.

Continue reading "I'm Reed Fish: Charming little indie" »

Posted by at 5:48 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: 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: James Van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***

It's relatively rare to find a low-budget sci-fi film that fires on all cylinders (the last one I can recall was Primer), and if Puzzlehead doesn't detonate the entire bunch, it does manage more than most science fiction. Taking an everyday locale and turning it into a strange, unpleasant and futuristic spot by mere association, filmmaker James Bai (who wrote, directed and produced) also keeps his cast to a minimum: His two lead characters are played by a single actor, and there is basically only one other major speaking part in the entire film.

Economy can't count for everything, however. Fortunately, Bai's story is an interesting one, conflating robots, doppelgangers, and what it means to be human. These are not new topics, but here they're given a pretty intelligent work-out. Specifics are often minimized (perhaps for economy's sake), and while this sometimes works in the film's favor, it also accounts for its inability to rise above the level of... an interesting, low-budget sci-fi film. Surprisingly, Bai has not done another movie since finishing Puzzlehead three years ago. A debut this assured would seem to demand an encore. We're waiting...

Posted by at 5:14 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: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): ****

Directed in 1982 by then NYU film student Susan Seidelman (Desperately Seeking Susan, Sex and the City), Smithereens is an inverse love story about a group of borderline homeless, fame-seekers in the wake of a punk rock scene that has just reached its high watermark. Wearing its French New Wave and Fellini influences on its sleeve, Smithereens was the first American film to be included in the Palme d'Or competition at the Cannes film festival.

Continue reading "Smithereens: Desperately seeking Seidelman" »

Posted by at 1:21 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: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****½

Once in a while a movie, little seen theatrically, snowballs into something approaching a classic. I would nominate Zerophilia for this category, except for the fact that I suspect its transfer to DVD was botched. When "Play Movie" is pressed, it keeps giving you the "Special Features." And since I have now rented the film twice, from two different sources, I feel confident that something went wrong. If this should happen to you, I beg you to struggle until, by pressing every button on your remote and your machine, you entice the "Play" to actually play. It's worth the effort, for this little diamond-in-the-rough--an American independent of which everyone connected should be proud--has more originality, intelligence, spunk and sass than maybe anything else released to DVD this year. (There I go, damning it with faint praise.)

Zerophilia is a teen-age sex comedy about love and gender, with emphasis on the latter. And that makes all the difference. There are so many surprises along the way that the less you know about the plot, the more you'll enjoy its clever twists. Writer/director Martin Curland has made only one other film--a short--but he has managed here to come up with an idea that is simply brilliant, and which he takes in directions witty, loopy and meaningful that no one else has attempted--let alone succeeded in so boldly and entertainingly. The very homemade quality of the movie belies its achievement and allows it to sneak up on you. And the cast, with the exception of Taylor Handley (mostly TV: "The O.C." and "Hidden Palms") and Alison Folland (All Over Me, Things Behind the Sun), are complete unknowns to me. Yet they all do a remarkable job of capturing these most unusual characters--and the bizarre hoops through which they must continually jump--with believability and charm. A special word must be said about Gina Bellman, from the Brit TV series Coupling, who moves from seducer to doctor to oh-my-goodness with beauty, aplomb and finesse.

Continue reading "Zerophilia: Change is Good" »

Posted by at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Fay Grim is a follow-up to Hal Hartley's 1997 indie hit Henry Fool, but if you haven't seen that film (and I certainly recommend that you do), don't worry. You'll be caught up with who's who rather quickly in this fairly fast-moving (for Hartley), playful and sophisticated espionage comedy, which is uneven but still one of his more enjoyable films in years.

Parker Posey's Fay married the titular philosopher Henry (the underused Thomas Jay Ryan) in the last film, sired a child (now 14), then disappeared. Fay Grim, picking up seven years later, opens with Fay discovering via two CIA agents (Jeff Goldblum, who should be in more Hartley movies; The Wire's Leo Fitzpatrick) that Henry is dead. Or so they tell her. Believing Henry's entire literary work was in fact a secretly encoded history of international atrocities committed by multiple governments, they want Fay to find his notebooks (don't ask why, just go with it); in exchange, she wants her brother, Simon Grim (perfect Hartley abettor James Urbaniak) to be sprung from prison. Of course, that's only the beginning, and while the plotting may seem overly complicated it is likely that way on purpose.

Continue reading "Fay Grim: Hartley being neither grim nor foolish" »

Posted by at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep, certainly the only MFA thesis film I can name that made the Library of Congress' National Film Registry on the first ballot, really is a national treasure.

Shot in Watts over a year of weekends for less than $10,000, the film has both a timelessness and an appropriate aimlessness to it. This is an everyday world, blue-collar and poor and real, where acquiring a used engine is an all-day proposition (and the moment where the men lose the engine in an accident is the one frustrating moment in the whole film for me). The main character is Stan (Henry Gale Sanders, one of the few professionals in the cast), a sensitive father of two who has become detached from his life, and from his wife, while working too long in a slaughterhouse. He comes home crabby, and you would, too, if you worked on the killing floors, cutting up sheep for a living, being poor and tired and trying to feed your family. The film is filled with indellible images: the boy wearing a hound-dog mask; the little girl (played by Burnett's real-life daughter) who, with her doll, listens and claps to soul music; the windshield-less car; the boys throwing rocks at trains and the battered ruins of abandoned buildings in South Central L.A. (and at each other); the silhouetted dance between Stan and his lonely wife.

Continue reading "Killer of Sheep/Charles Burnett" »

Posted by at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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

The Canadian film Things To Do is marketed as reminiscent, if not a culmination, of other well-received indie coming-of-age films such as Garden State and Napoleon Dynamite, but it can actually be thought of as an antidote of sorts to those films. While it does tread similar thematic terrain and contain some of the same essential ingredients - malleable male lead, calculated idiosyncrasies, awkward interactions, and a quirky indie-folk soundtrack - director/co-writer Theodore Bezaire maintains a uniquely casual yet centered approach, resulting in a simple and satisfying film with more heart and honesty than those two more famous indie films.

That isn't to say Things is a masterpiece by any standard. Much like their characters, the actors are clearly in their formative stages, but the performances in Bezaire and co-writer/lead actor Mike Stasko's minimalist script, show great promise. Daniel Wilson is particularly memorable as Mac, the freewheeling, inspirational sidekick to Stasko's Adam, providing warmth and comic relief while managing to avoid overstatement. Indeed, Wilson's character even bears some resemblance to his better-known cousin Owen's in Bottle Rocket, a film more appropriately compared to this one.

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

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

Cevin D. Soling's mini-budget satire The War on the War on Drugs is already five years old, yet it is surprising how little the movie appears to have dated. But then, with nutty US government drug policy remaining the same--or worse--from year to year, decade to decade, this movie will probably seem hilarious eons from now. Often silly and almost always good-natured (despite the dark subject matter), Soling's parodies, musings, imaginings and comparisons are apt, thoughtful, amusing, alternately inspired and clunky, and occasionally gut-busting fun. Brevity is among his virtues, as well, so few scenes last longer than necessary. Toward the end, one does begin to sense that the filmmaker has begun to exhaust his supply of targets and/or ammunition. But all in all it's amusing, and, hey, a little experimenting never hurt anyone.

Posted by at 4:35 PM | Permalink

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

The kind of tiny independent movie that really does seem independent, despite two stars such as Morgan Freeman and Paz Vega in the leads, 10 Items or Less works just about perfectly because of their performances and because it sticks to what it knows: the actor's life and craft, and the relationships that might develop from them. Writer/director Brad Silberling (of whose earlier City of Angels I was not enamored) bites off exactly the right amount of theme and events for his movie's 80-odd minutes and, together with an ace cast, fills them up with rough-hewn charm and grace. How and why good actors care about their craft comes through beautifully, and Freeman's deliciously sly take on the lesser moments of his generally splendid career comes through with nary a trace of pomposity or exploitation. Paz Vega again shows why she's so popular (Sex and Lucia, Solo Mia, The Other Side of the Bed) in her native Spain. Eventually she'll hit on an American film that will be both good but also appreciated by the masses and there will be no stopping her. Meanwhile, queue up for this sweet treat; a light supper rather than a full-course meal, it'll still leave you surprisingly satisfied.

Posted by at 2:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

The title of the new film written by Gen-X novelist Douglas Coupland and directed by Paul Cox, Everything's Gone Green [trailer] may disappoint those looking for a film about environmentalism but it does have a double-meaning, to amusing effect. The story centers around a self-described "loser" named Ryan (played by Paulo Costanzo) who, in typical Coupland style, struggles to become a real adult and discover meaning in his life. While a few of the set-ups seem lifted straight from Coupland's novel "jpod", to its credit Green is more cinematically inclined than Coupland's often plotless, talky novels and director Cox has a keen eye for the Vancouver surroundings while letting scenes build naturally.

Continue reading "Everything's Gone Green" »

Posted by at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Live Free or Die is not only New Hampshire's cranky state motto but the name of a new independent film [trailer; currently only playing in a handful of theaters] set in that cinematically neglected New England state (it's also close in name to the latest Bruce Willis disasterpalooza - Live Free or Die Hard). This decidely un-Hollywood film stars Tadpole's likable Aaron Stanford as Rudgate, a.k.a., "Rugged," a former juvenile delinquient turned overconfident but mostly incompetent petty thief who aims to make a big score, but can't seem to get anything right. Along the way he picks up an old acquaintance, the slow-witted Lagrand, played by favorite David Gordon Green actor Paul Schneider, doing a 180 from the romantic lead in Green's All the Real Girls. Nothing goes quite according to plan, of course, and while much of the proceedings are watchable and even - on a few occasions - quite funny, the mistaken belief plot that takes center stage becomes enervating before the end.

Continue reading "Live Free or Die: A New Hamsphire caper comedy" »

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

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

What an odd bird, is Adam Vardy's Mendy. An independent film about a young Orthodox Jew who leaves the cloistered world of Williamsburg, New York, and attempts to navigate his way through the often bewildering modern city, Mendy, just as its main character, appropriately keeps one foot in the secular world and one foot in the questioning world of the Jewish faith (and all its many incarnations). If you can get past the occasionally amateurish DV look - just as the film gets better as it goes along, it looks better as it goes along, too - Mendy is a brave, original piece of work. At its center is the performance of Ivan Sandomire as Mendy - he's at once vulnerable, questioning, innocent and rebellious.

Continue reading "Mendy: On a wandering Jew" »

Posted by at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Despite some of its fashion and political aberrations, the early nineties were a good time for filmmakers and artists of limited means. Analog lovers who managed to track down the scratchy black and white film Half-Cocked, which barely saw the light of day in 1994, were in for a treat. The film had a soundtrack that informed the last pre-Internet generation of alienated punkers that there was still an alternative to cheesed out "alternative rock" in the form of earnest, low-fi music that was equally inspired by avant-garde, country and punk; and was informed by only having access to gear bought at pawnshops.

Continue reading "Half-Cocked: Fully loaded" »

Posted by at 3:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

GreenCine is giving away copies of the new-to-DVD film Apartment Zero to five lucky winners of our new trivia contest. The 1988 black comedy/erotic thriller, directed by Argentinian Martin Donovan (no, not that one), is set in Buenos Aires and centers around two disturbed roommates (played by Brit Colin Firth and Canadian Hart Bochner). "Creepy and original," wrote Christopher Null on Filmcritic.com. "Donovan's direction recalls Polanski and his and [David] Koepp's script exudes Hitchcock. A better combo I couldn't give you."

To be eligible for the prize, send an email with the correct answer to contest@greencine.com, including your name, email address and, if you're a GreenCine member, your username in the email, and "Apartment Zero" in the subject header. Winners will be selected at random from all correct entries. The deadline is Friday, February 23, at 12PM PST. Winners will be notified by e-mail and announced in future editions of the GreenCine Dispatch newsletter, and right here on this space.

The Question: What epic 80s mini-series did Hart Bochner star in?

Posted by at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

A strange and sad love letter to a "disappeared" New York City, Lustre actually has a good deal of that titular quality, even though, cinematically speaking, the budget must have been too low to manage the kind of sharp photography that is needed. What's here is often out of focus, grainy or bleached. But due to the marvelous Victor Argo--who died soon after the film was completed and whose face, voice and spirit are in front of us for almost the entire running time--we are pulled in and held fast. The story--or non-story--concerns the lead character's ruminations on his checkered past and present (he's a loan shark), but it's as much about what no longer exists in New York City as what's gone from his life. There is sweet humor and a lot of sadness here, and occasionally the movie rises to poetry and art. Even in its lesser moments writer/director Art Jones offers plenty to contemplate. That it most likely will not compare to anything else you’ve seen also helps Lustre pass muster, and then some.

Posted by at 6:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Made in 2001, shown at the Sundance Festival in 2002, released theatrically (and ever so briefly) in 2006, Victor Nuñez's Coastlines finally makes it to DVD and--no big surprise--it's worth a look, likely followed by some thoughtful post-viewing conversation. Set on Florida's Panhandle, the movie straddles genres--crime, noir, and a three-way love story--in a manner that will put off viewers expecting/demanding that the thriller eclipse the rest. While it does not, the film's revenge crime elements still work with enough believability and force to pull you along. The noir requisites, too, are in place without being unduly pushed (Nuñez is not a "pusher," to his great credit and the enjoyment of those of us who appreciate discovery and subtlety in films). But finally it is the love story--a surprisingly strong one involving two men (without a trace of overt homosexuality) and the woman who loves them both--that deservedly takes precedence.

Continue reading "Coastlines: Multi-genre indie deserves a look" »

Posted by at 4:56 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)