2004 Foreign, Alternative and Independent Films

All posts about Fahrenheit 9/11 belong in the official review and discussion threads.

M.

I spent some time Saturday (July 3) re-watching the current crop of controversial documentaries: Fahrenheit 9/11, Control Room and Super Size Me. Some overall thoughts:

Super Size Me pales in comparison to the other two movies. To be fair, I watched this last, and since it is not concerned with matters of national or international importance, it is at a bit of a disadvantage in comparison to the other two. Even so, I found the premise interesting, but the execution not particularly compelling. I was not looking for proof positive that eating a diet of nothing but fast-food is bad for you, but a bit more data than one person’s experience (that by all accounts appears to be exceptional and not representative) would have been helpful. Plus I found the overall presentation of the material was not really that interesting—I found myself looking at my watch, hoping that everything would be wrapped up soon.

Control Room, will not be seen by nearly so many people as either of the other two documentaries. But it should be seen by us all. Much more even handed than Moore, Jehane Noujaim gives Americans perhaps their first objective look at Al Jazerra. Here too, we are allowed to see the effects of the war on an individual. While Noujaim was not in a position to provide conclusive proof as to the US’s determination to wipe out Arab media’s ability to cover what was happening in Baghdad independently, there is no question in my mind that is exactly what happened.

The deer in the headlights moment here came on a very minor incident on the playing cards.

Lt. Rushing, as others have mentioned, was the most compelling as he was seen coming to an understanding of another side of the issue.

Seducing Doctor Lewis -- as a number of reviewers have pointed out it can be pitched as Local Hero meets Northern Exposure. This does have it's good points -- the filmmakers have imitated the best. The one area in which it improves on its sources is to make the Quebec fishing village where it takes place and its inhabitants real (which often translates to really ugly). Their lot is much less romanticized as well.

Otherwise, while a very enjoyable way to spend two hours, Seducing Doctor Lewis breaks no new ground.

Ted

That's true. Here's a good article about that, which quotes Rushing's wife:







Kline's voice is still fantastic. He purposely sang badly in the movie because Porter was a bad singer.

While it held my interest for majority of its running time, Control Room didn't fully work for me until the end. I couldn't help but reflect on Lt. Rushing's earlier musings on American vs. Iraqi war footage while watching
Warning Spoiler! Click to show

As an American, I know which event "should" have had the greater impact on me, but it was exactly the opposite, and I felt the ending actually dragged a bit after hitting its true emotional high point several minutes before.

Excellent filmmaking, and likely my new favorite of 2004.

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead - ¾

Croupier was a movie that gained more notoriety for its release pattern than its actual merit; more ink was spilled over Clive Owen not being eligible for an Oscar than whether he really deserved one. Now, five years later, Owen reteams with his Croupier director (Mike Hodges) for another grimy, modestly entertaining flick.

This time, Owen plays Will Graham, who has been living out of the back of his van for three years, working odd jobs and keeping a low profile. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers plays his brother Davey, an affable young man who sells a few drugs at parties but is far from the hard man Will used to be. That's before a brutal attack, though, and in the aftermath, the Grahams' friend Mickser (Jamie Foreman) is unable to find Will, so thoroughly has he cut himself off from his old life. That's okay, though, because Will has been trying to call Davey, and comes to London to investigate. And once he's there, he's going to be looking for some explanations.

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead has a great hard-boiled title which has very little to do with the movie. It's got a nifty noirish title sequence (there should be an Academy Award for those; call it the Saul Bass Award or something), and early on establishes a kind of modern noir atmosphere. There's some lip service given to whether Will can come back and not fall into his old ways, along with some decent scenes which reminded me why I like British gangster movies much more than American ones; the criminals in UK movies seem much nastier and less romanticized than the ones Hollywood (or even US indies) give us. The pieces for a fine tough-guy movie are all there.

It never comes together as a thriller, though. There are some machinations by local tough Frank Turner (Ken Stott) that, by the end, seem rather disconnected from the rest of the movie. And what kind of hardcase takes a moment in the middle of his movie to talk with a kindly grief counselor, whose purprose is basically to tell the audience what was going through the minds of Davey and his attacker. It's not something we can't figure out, and in the end gives Malcolm MacDowell much less to do as Boad, the villain in question. That's probably deliberate, as getting to really see what makes Boad tick would probably divert attention from Owen's Will, but it might have also given the audience someone to compare Will to.

Clive Owen inhabits Will nicely. For most of the movie, Will is shaggy and unshaven, and it's only Owen's strong, harsh voice that really clues the audience into his past history as a thug. when he emerges as a sleek-looking killer later, it's a nifty transformation, almost like a different character emerging from the first. It's necessary, since his confrontation with Boad would have had a completely different vibe if he still looked like a pikey.

Advertising I'll Sleep When I'm Dead as "the new thriller from the director and star of Croupier" is somewhat disingenous. Don't get me wrong; the low-key stuff works, for the most part. I wonder if perhaps Trevor Preston's script was a fairly standard, Get Carter-style revenge flick, with Hodges deciding at some point while shooting or in the editing room that watching Will deal with how Boad attacked Davey was more interesting. The end result is a fine little crime movie, if not an exceptional one.

America's Heart and Soul - ½

This film is like a trip to Silver Dollar City!*

I almost hate to rank this down, this was such a joyous cinematic experience, but I have a few issues with the film that prevent me from giving it a full four stars.

The biggest problem is simply that the film is too short. Oh not the segments, most of those are beautifully put together. However a few feel way too abrupt and there a two or three clumsy compilation scene transistions. Not only the compilations whet our appetites for what's ultimately not in the film, but they break the overall rhythm of the film, of it's storytelling.

My other major complaint is that they seem to have forgotten stories about America's asian communities, gay communities, hispanic communities, arab/middle easter communities, East Asian communities and the whole muslim faith.

I also think the premise of the film should have been carefully rethought and mapped out to give it a bit of more oomph. The ordinary people doing incredible things is lovely, but I think a stronger premise would have focused on people and communities who have deliberately set their head against the wind--against the status quo of mainstream life, in the greatest American fashion of pig-headed determination and ornery stubbornness.

Show us stories where instead of just seeing the incredibly touching relationship between the son and father on a dairy farm but we also see why he decided to produce hormone free raw milk, and what he's had to struggle to achieve these results. (and I don't know if the milk he produces is, but finding someone that's done so might be interesting). Look into organic farming, holistic medicine, etc etc and give the documentary a bit more punch--but then that'd be a different movie entirely so the suggestions are really valid because they wouldn't help this film.

Salt of the Earth people full of life and charm, incredibly enjoyable experience, one I'll highly recommend to my family.

THe photography is absolutely incredible, STUNNING wonderful work. I've never seen the Appalachian/Ozark mountains look that good on film, still not quite as stunning as in person, but damn if it didn't arouse a huge swell of emotion from me to see that beauty so lovingly displayed.

*Silver Dollar City in Branson Missouri is the Disneyland of the midwest. Like Disneyland, it is a theme park--it is not a soulless amusepark like six flags--with 1890s America as the key theme. My reasons for returning every year are food, crafts, shopping, and rides, in that order; favorite crafts are watching the glassblowers and the damascus steel knife smith. A great place to go, and I'll be there Wednesday, I can't wait!

I have no comment on the film, I'm just stunned that you're so enthusiastic about Silver Dollar City that you go every year. Of course it's been over 20 years since I've been so I would think they've improved the experience in that time.

I thought the first part of Lucas Belvaux's Trilogy I've had the chance to see - On The Run was a fine, thought provoking film, though not really the "thriller" it is billed as. But since all the reviews say that the trilogy has a cumulative effect and the films can't really be evaluated separately, I'll wait until I've seen the other 2 in the coming weeks before commenting further. I'll have to go back and look at Jason's reviews as well.

Calling On The Run the "first" film is kind of arbitrary; it was released second in France, a week after An Amazing Couple (which also played first during the series in which I saw them). It is unfortunately impossible to experience viewing them for the first time in more than one order, because I'd be interested in how it plays if you see After The Life first.

Or did like Coppola did with the Godfather movies and edited them into one five-hour chronological presentation. That would be interesting, especially considering that all three come from different genres.

Yes, you are right Jason about the order.

I'm pretty sure that each is playing for one week here, so I'll see The Amazing Couple this weekend. One day towards the end of July they are going to show all 3 in one day, but I can't spend that much time at a theater.

I agree with Adam on the cinematography of America's Heart and Soul, but I'm afraid that's the only praise I can give the film. The scenery is, more often than not, the only thing of interest on the screen. San Francisco and the Appalachian mountains, as mentioned earlier, are particularly gorgeous.

However, the storytelling is lifeless for the most part, on par with any given program on The Travel Channel. Whether it's the fault of the individuals or the editor, I cannot say. Did additional details that flesh out the individual stories end up on the cutting room floor, or were there no additional details to divulge? Some of the traditionally inspiring stories (like the blind climber and the marathoners) stand on their own quite well, some stories (like the salsa dancers and the acrobatic pilot) are saved by the cinematography and choreography, and some (like Ben Cohen and the Cajun musicians) fall flat because they're given no time to tell their stories.

It's a disappointingly uneven effort with some inexcusably stale musical selections, but the camerawork prevents me from giving it a thumbs down.

Is De-Lovely opening wider? It's available at one of the local Landmarks this week and beyond, but none of the major theaters.

It will be adding another 166 theaters this weekend, mostly in the top 50 markets.

~Edwin

It still hasn't hit Atlanta yet. Maybe this weekend, hopefully at the Landmark since I'll already be there to see An Amazing Couple and there isn't much else there that interests me.

The Dreamers dir. Bernardo Bertolucchi

How can I not love a movie that has the following sequence:
1. Two characters arguing the merits of Chaplin vs. Keaton while Janis Joplin plays on the soundtrack.
2. A movie guessing game whose answer is "Top Hat" and we see a clip of Fred Astaire dancing.
3. His cinephilia cemented with his answer, the American character is invited by his French friends to see if they can break the Louvre-race record as seen in "Bande a Parte"
4. After the record is broken he is serenaded with one of us, one of us while we see clips from "Freaks"

I was already enjoying this movie about a young man drawn to Paris in '68 because of his love of film and this sequence put me over the top into loving it. Unfortunately what follows is mostly inert philosophizing as the characters don't leave the apartment set for a good hour or more and engage in mildly disturbing sex games.

I get the point of it all - "The Dreamers" obsessed with a child-like reality that is better than life, but other than the lead actresses ample breasts, it doesn't make for compelling viewing. The vitality and celebration of cinema is jettisoned in favor of watching weakly drawn characters who are nothing but unfulfilled need. The idea of what happens is much more interesting than actually watching it happen. Perhaps better actors could have carried this off, but the film is saddled with Michael Pitt who doesn't fit the material and 2 French actors who are little more than pretty bodies.

Outstanding soundtrack when it's used, I loved the film references and the bit of political material contained in the film; but the characters remain uncompelling bores when engaged in the sexual material that gave this film its hype. B

Fans of Napoleon Dynamite have been quick to compare it to Wes Anderson films, which is unfortunate, as there's only one Wes Anderson, and a host of imitators. The main difference is this: Wes Anderson films are effortless. Napoleon Dynamite, well...isn't.

That's not to say the film doesn't have its moments; it certainly does, more than I expected, but not as many as the rest of the audience would have me believe. There's little plot to speak of, but the "slice of life" approach works well, given the rural Idaho setting. It's highly quotable, which contributes to the feeling that much of the humor is forced, even if the delivery isn't. The deadpan style doesn't always work with characters as over-the-top as these, making them alternately annoying and entertaining...undesirable when the desired effect is clearly the latter only.

Still, there are a number of solid, well-earned laughs, enough for me to recommend it, however unpolished it may be. Expect dorks everywhere to begin tossing out catchphrases in the coming weeks.

"Your mom goes to college!"

The Clearing -

When The Clearing was shot in late 2002, the television program Without A Trace was just coming on the air. Whether or not its depiction of how the FBI tracks missing persons is accurate, it became a hit and put the image of a ticking clock and a meticulously tracked timeline into the general consciousness. That The Clearing lacks such things would have seemed odd then, but today's crime fans will pick up on it right away.

There's an argument that this isn't really a crime movie, but a story about the relationship between Wayne Hayes (Robert Redford) and his wife Eileen (Helen Mirren), which is intended to be brought into sharp focus by how they react to Wayne's kidnapping and the subsequent investigation. Unfortunately, we get very few scenes with Wayne and Eileen together, and Eileen's feelings are unclear. She seems rather unperturbed, at one point going shopping for a birthday present for their grandson, at others taking a break to go swimming in her pool. She is quite good when her reserve cracks the slightest bit, but there is little tension in most scenes; it's enough to make us wonder if she and Wayne's abductor Arnold (Willem Defoe) are in cahoots.

The performances are pretty good. Almost all are understated; in addition to the people mentioned, there's Alessandro Nivola and Melissa Sagemiller as the Hayes' grown children. I like Sagemiller's warmth and the little-girl fear that shows on her face, along with how Nivola occasional seems to wonder if anyone else is worked up about this. Matt Craven exudes professional calm as the FBI agent in charge of the investigation.

They're not given much to work with, though. Both writer Justin Haythe and director Pieter Jan Brugge appear to be first-timers, and the personality they describe for Wayne in the dialogue doesn't quite seem to match the one Redford gives the character. The biggest issue is the structure of the script. The two plot threads (Eileen/FBI and Wayne/Arnold) are shown in parallel fashion, but the attentive audience member will soon recognize the limits to just how parallel they can be. At that point, the play-out becomes fairly obvious.

It's a curious case of the two perspectives weakening each other. There's a good story to be told about a man and his kidnapper, or about a wife waiting for news about her kidnapped husband, but together they're less than the sum of their parts.

David, re: Napoleon Dynamite

One of my friends said it best, I think.

"I can understand the comparisons to Wes Anderson's work, but I think they're unfounded. On the surface there are some similarities, such as the opening titles, the quirky characters, and the use of music, but the directors treat the characters and comedy totally different. Napoleon doesn't endear you to the characters; Anderson's pics very much do.

And the comedy in Anderson's films is much more clever; the dialog is very intelligent. In Napoleon, he relies more on the fact that you knew this guy; you went to school with him. The dialog isn't expecially clever, but it's very funny due to the familiarity."

And you're right about the quotability and the attention given to make it such. However, while it is easy to see it, I don't really think it detracts all that much from the comedy.

A freakin' twelve gauge, what do you think?

Okay, just got back from the New York Video Festival, and while most of the programs were short film compilations (usually experimental, but some accessible works as well), I did catch three features.

War at a Distance (Harun Farocki) - Big thumbs up on this one. I think that Farocki is one of the most significant video essayists working out there today, and his work is comparable to that of Chris Marker. His films are often about the nature of images, the impersonalization of war, and the dehumanization of mass production. War at a Distance operates on all three levels to some extent, using the infrared targeting images of the Gulf War as a springboard into what is the meaning of cognition and recognition when the apparatus is not human - What is the meaning of "seeing"? Very thoughtful and engaging, and at about an hour, the duration is just right.

Peep "TV" Show (Yutaka Tsuchiya) - Recommended, but with some reservations: it's a roughly edited DV feature, there's a lot of dead time, and characters are not likeable at all. This one works a similar thin line as Gus Van Sant's Elephant in blurring the disctinction between documentary and fiction. The "Gothic Lolitas" (who dress up in baby doll clothes) of the Shubiya district in Tokyo are real, but the story about creating a website called "Peep TV Show" is fiction. It does however, illustrate the sense of disconnection in that these people spend most of their waking lives on the internet looking at webcams and basically engaging in acts of surveillance and voyeurism. Not an entertaining subject, but a provocative one.

Thème Je (The Camera I) (Françoise Romand) - Romand makes very thoughtful films about the meaning of identity, so I had high hopes for this one. Unfortunately, this one turned out to be somewhat of a loose assembly of things around Romand's periphery at the time of the film shoot: her family, her lovers, her trip to Harvard, a bizarre episode where a man acts out a slave fantasy in the kitchen. Anyway, this was supposed to be a rough cut of the film, and while it does have some interesting moments, it does feel severely underformed. The film has been announced to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival Festival next; I'm hoping that she does some re-editing by then.

I’m Not Scared

Director Gabriele Salvatores successfully combines the elements of a thriller, mystery and coming of age in a delightful little film. Seen through the eyes of a 10-year old boy, the challenge here is to present the comings and goings of certain adults and kids that a boy would normally interact or play with both in dialogue and comprehension at such a young age.

Giuseppe Cristiano plays the young boy with such innocence and whole-hearted tenderness. I’m Not Scared is a film about childhood – one summer in the life of a 10-year-old boy, where time seems endless, where the age of innocence is endearing and understanding how adults behave is as much of a mystery as understanding life itself.

~Edwin

Touch of Pink - ¼

The "coming-out comedy" is a curious little subgenre. It requires a certain minimum acceptance of homosexuality in society to be believable, but also a certain maximum acceptance to create comic tension. Eventually, the form will burn out as the idea of "coming out of the closet" becomes an anachronism. With any luck, that will happen quickly enough that audiences won't have enough time to notice that even movies as clever as Touch Of Pink look vaguely like In & Out.

That's not bad company to have, and Touch of Pink has enough creativity to distinguish itself from the pack. It borrows the lavish wedding background from other recent movies featuring Indian protagonists (Bend It Like Beckham, Monsoon Wedding, Bollywood/Hollywood), but its most entertaining feature is that Amil (Jimi Mistry) has, in addition to his boyfriend of a year Giles (Kristen Holden-Reid), an imaginary friend, and this imaginary friend is Cary Grant, played with gusto by Kyle MacLachlan.

As Grant, MacLachlan exists to pump up Amil's confidence when he's feeling intimidated, to pepper the film with one-liners when it threatens to slow down, and serve as a father figure when one is called for. Clearly, Grant's movies have loomed large in Amil's life: He quotes Charade while in bed with Giles and works as a still photographer on a London movie set. Meanwhile, in Toronto, his mother Nuru (Suleka Mathew) is feeling jealous as her sister plans an elaborate wedding for her son Khalil, which leads to Nuru giving Amil a visit.

I gather writer/director Ian Iqbal Rashid has a fondness for old movies, too, as Touch of Pink features a fair amount of the sort of rapid-fire dialogue that distinguished thirties comedies, my favorite being an exchange between Nuru and Amil )"They say laughter is the best medicine." / "Then I must be in the placebo group."). And while early on it seems as though Rashid has simply traded gay stereotypes in for Indian ones, he and his cast do a good job of making his characters individuals. Nuru, especially, is more than she initially appears.

It's a nice cast; while MacLachlan is probably the only immediately recognizable member of the cast for Americans - relatively few saw Mistry in The Guru, though many including Suleka Mathew and Brian George (as Amil's uncle) will seem familiar from appearing on TV shows which shoot north of the border - everyone gives their characters what they need. It's a somewhat stylized farce at many points, a deliberate throwback to a different period, so a few somewhat exaggerated performances are forgivable. I personally saw perhaps a little Tony Randall slipping into MacLachlan's Cary Grant, but that doesn't make it a less entertaining performance.

It's a shame that this movie is the type that tends to fall between the cracks. A mainstream audience may overlook it because "it's a gay movie" or "it's an Indian movie", when it is basically a comedy that centers on gay/Indian characters, while the boutique audience can easily dismiss it for having few ambitions beyond making people laugh - it's not about being gay or a minority in straight white Toronto.

What it is, is funny. It may not quite have Grant's effortless charm, but it certainly does all right with what it has.

Garden State - - solid movie
Natalie Portman - - great

I'm not one for flipping out over individual actresses, but this film would be absolute waste of time and complete crap without her character and her performance.

I've no patience for the tired woe is me travails of rich young assholes who think there's no meaning in their lives because they get nothing out of life because everything is handed to them on a silver platter and spend the rest of their time wondering why it seems there's nothing. Garden State isn't quite like that but it's the same similar story that just makes you want to slap a few people around and tell them to stop reading Salinger as though it's gospel (fwiw I find little relevance or meaning in these sorts of stories but then I've never hated my parents, or had any reason to hate my parents, or hate my family, or be dissatified with them; my ideal life would be living with all my extended family nearby). Fifteen minutes into the film I was very very seriously considering walking out, everyone else seemed entertained watching stupid uninteresting people act like barbaric fools (read college kids) while pissing on responsibility and family. Luckily then there was a rack focus and the whole screen lit up on the laughing face of an intervening angel. That the rest of the film is about showing the bland main character what value can and does exist in life, culminating in a wonderful scene in a houseboat on the edge of an abyss, managed to redeem most of the damage of those first fifteen minutes. And the filmmakers did go for the strong ending.

So it's not a complete waste, there are some striking images, everysingle one used in the trailer, and Natalie Portman is almost worth a ticket price on the strength of her own performance, but if you want to see a much better movie walk in fifteen minutes late, and maybe you won't have to spend the rest of the film learning not to loath and despise all the other characters.

Adam

Maria Full of Grace - ½

I like movies like Maria Full of Grace, which function almost like documentaries in how they give me a glance into a world outside my own experience. In some ways, they're better than a lot of documentaries, since the directors can get all the images that they envisioned when starting the project - or which they couldn't get, due to the extra-legal nature of the subject matter.

Of course, Maria is not just an examination of how drug mules get recruited and go about their business. It's about Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno, in her first role), and she's fairly interesting herself. She's intelligent and strong-willed, and that's both a blessing and a curse. She can see how, at seventeen, her life is already dead-ending, but the choices she makes to escape that dead end are rather self-serving and often dangerous, whether it be quitting her job, rejecting the help of her boyfriend after revealing that she has missed two periods, or, of course, swallowing sixty-two tiny ampuoles of heroin to smuggle past US Customs.

The mechanics of this are intriguing to watch; many movies pay this little attention, prefering to focus on the later revelation that - gasp! - the 17-year-old girl is smuggling drugs in her stomach. The systematic, practiced manner in which it plays out is more disturbing. Ms. Moreno and writer/director Joshua Marston are careful with how they portray Maria; she's a strong enough character to gain the audience's sympathy, but not quite to the point where we're hoping she delivers a bunch of drugs successfully.

The film is well-cast, with many of the actors appearing in their first feature. Moreno is the standout; she's attractive but keeps it dialed down, and doesn't shy away from the more unpleasant aspects of her character. Also good is Orlando Tobon as Don Fernando, the harried leader in New York's Colombian community whom Maria encounters in the film's second half.

Maria Full of Grace could have been a lecture, but deftly avoids that. It's easy to take away a better understanding of the pressures that will lead someone to do something as risky as working as a mule, but also succeeds in making that incidental. The poster says "based on 1,000 true stories", but there are other mules being followed, and it's Maria as an individual that elevates this film above the pack.

Intimate Strangers

For about two-thirds of its running time, Patrice Leconte's Intimate Strangers (French title: Confidences trops intimes) sustains a mood of mystery and tension leavened by humor that few directors besides Hitchcock have ever mastered. Then a character who's been talked about but previously unseen shows up, and you can feel the film deflate. You stay with it, because by that point you want to know what becomes of the characters, and while the ultimate resolution is satisfying, it takes far too long to arrive. You're there about 10 minutes before the movie is.

Anna (Sandrine Bonnaire) goes to consult a shrink but ends up in the office of William the tax attorney (Fabrice Luchini). Their first meeting is cut short before William can disabuse her of her mistake (or is it a mistake?), but William is so intrigued by Anna that he schedules a second appointment. Leconte wisely doesn't try to sustain the charade for the entire film but quickly turns to the exploration of the unlikely relationship between these two characters who would otherwise never meet. Their histories gradually emerge, and William's in particular is filled with amusing touches (which I won't spoil). Among the film's high points are William's conversations with Dr. Monnier, the psychiatrist down the hall whom Anna was supposed to see. William thinks he's seeking professional guidance from a neighbor, while Dr. Monnier looks on bemusedly at what, to him, is just another patient. Their exchanges provide the biggest laughs in the film.

Like Leconte's The Man on the Train, this is ultmately a character study, but it's somewhat less satisfying because Leconte essentially runs out of plot before he's reached the end. Recommended, but with reservations.

M.

Thanks Michael, I'll definitely be checking it out as I'm a fan of both Leconte and Sandrine Bonnaire. She was outstanding in Rivette's Secret Defense

De-Lovely

Strip away Cole Porter’s music and his life becomes not much more exciting than the average Joe. I have a feeling that most who will enjoy this autobiographical musical of Cole Porter will appeal mostly to those who are familiar with his music and other works. For me, that’s enough to recommend the film along with a very strong performance by Kevin Kline.

Irwin Winkler’s concept and delivery works as he presents both the public and private life of Cole Porter incorporating the elements that made him so memorable in the minds of so many people – his music.

~Edwin

I don't have time today for a full review of Stander, but on the whole I'd recommend it. It takes some odd turns in the second hour, and some might feel (as did both Ebert and the pretty lady I saw it with) that the movie loses its focus. But Thomas Jane and Debra Kara Unger do extraordinary work as the title character and his long-suffering wife, and the early sequence in which Stander, the youngest captain in the history of the South African police, leads his riot troops in a brutal action against an anti-apartheid demonstration is both gripping and terrifying. When Stander turns to bank robbery as a form of protest (the film portrays the decision as casual and spur-of-the-moment -- almost a joke), the film shifts gears and turns comic. By the end, when Stander and his gang go on a legendary crime spree, the political dimension has dropped out of the film, and we're left with a character study of a man who has lost his way. I don't think it would work if Thomas Jane weren't so good in the role, but for me he held it all together.

M.

The Saddest Music In The World has the markings of a silent film when it is not so silent and a black and white film that is not so, well, black and white. Guy Maddin’s wonderful style and visuals brings to life and gives believability to a world that is so preposterous and populated by some eccentric characters.

It is the story of a beer baroness (Isabella Rossellini) who holds a contest on who can come up with the world’s saddest music. The winner ends up with $25,000 in Depression era dollars and she gets to promote her beer and potentially increase its sales.

I’ll have to agree that the film’s style is its substance. Maddin’s delivery and execution is so clever. He emphasizes the art and accompanies it with a story with a slight touch of comedy and period melodrama.

~Edwin

----

On a side note, when I purchased my ticket at the counter, I said to the clerk, “One for Saddest Music”, please. This little old lady behind me said, “Wow, they are playing “The Sound of Music”? That is one of the best films ever made!” I walked off with a smile on my face.

We Don't Live Here Anymore

When the source material for a movie is by Andre Dubus (father or son), you know going in that the people on screen will not be happy. This film, adapted from two stories by Dubus Sr., drops you right into the middle of a social evening between two couples that is already well-advanced and fraught with subtext. Jack (Mark Ruffalo) and Hank (Peter Krause) both teach at the same university. Their wives, Terry (Laura Dern) and Edith (Naomi Watts), stay home, raise the children and keep house (or, in Edith's case, let the place go to hell, as Jack is constantly complaining). Five minutes or so into the film, Jack and Edith have made a date for the next afternoon to start an affair.

What follows is an intense, almost-too-close-for comfort experience ("examination" would be too detached a term) of two marriages in crisis. The film doesn't stop for a lot of exposition or backstory. You get a few details about circumstances and history, but most of what you learn about the characters comes just from watching what they do and listening to what they say to each other. This is not a film for viewers who look for themselves on screen and judge movie characters by the standard of "what would I do?" These characters are not us, except in the sense that they're flawed and struggling with daily life. These aren't even people you might want to know, but thanks to the acting talent on display, they're fascinating to watch.

Dern is amazing. I can't think of a film since Wild at Heart that so effectively used her ability to light up the screen. Here that light is used just occasionally, as a contrast to the darkness of disappointment and disillusionment that Terry's life has become. In odd moments, especially in Jack's memory, we see what she was, and it makes the embittered woman of the present both moving and frightening. When Terry discovers her husband's infidelity, Dern plays out a virtual symphony of emotions. None of it is particularly novel, but it feels so raw and immediate that it manages to be surprising.

Watts is, well, Watts. Her ability to dominate the screen is well-established by now. She reportedly passed on Dern's part because she had just finished 21 Grams and was reluctant to put herself through yet another emotional wringer. Edith is a steadier character and tougher at the core. If there is any resolution to the film, it is Edith who provides it.

Ruffalo has his best part since You Can Count on Me. He'd probably be a major star today if illness hadn't forced him to drop out of Signs (Joaquin Phoenix took the part). His Jack is constantly looking around at his wife, his children, his home and his students with a look that says, "How the hell did I end up here?" Ruffalo manages to make Jack look like he's constantly twitching, even when he's just sitting still. He's the least admirable of the four and arguably the most interesting because, from the moment we see him, he's on the verge of exploding. There's a scene with Jack and his children near the end that had me on the edge of my seat. You'll know it when you see it.

Peter Krause's Hank is in many ways the simplest and shallowest of the group. His self-aborption may remind you of Nate on Six Feet Under, but Nate is a picture of selflessness next to Hank. A frustrated novelist, Hank thinks nothing of making a pass at a student and then devastating her in class with a critique of her work. Hank's reaction to everything that happens in the film is consistently the calmest -- one of the privileges of detachment from everyone but himself.

The film is edited to keep you off-balance. Scenes switch abruptly and unexpectedly, often leaping forward in time so that you're startled and forced to reconsider where you are, how much time has passed, and what's happened in the interim. I like this kind of editing when it's well done (as it is here), because it asks the viewer to do some of the work of creating the story.

This film will stay with me. Highly recommended for fans of adult drama who are willing to take characters as they find them, without judgment.

M.

I wrote the above review of We Don't Live Anymore before reading any published reviews and before watching the most recent Ebert and Roeper show, where they both gave the film thumbs down. The film has a 75% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes, but the critics who don't like it really don't like it. So fair warning. (I was shocked at Ebert's review; it was superficial in a way I've come to expect from his colleague. Is callowness contagious?)

I've been trying for some time to decide what I think about Spike Lee's She Hate Me, which has been so universally panned that I doubt it will get much distribution. It's a problematic film, but not nearly the disaster critics have made it out to be. If I can ever sort out my thoughts, I'll post them.

M.

Please do, Michael. She Hate Me doesn't start screening here until September 3rd.

~Edwin