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 May 12, 2008 REVIEW | Book Smart: Joachim Trier's "Reprise"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Norwegian Joachim Trier directs his debut feature, "Reprise," with such assured kineticism that it's only a matter of time before Hollywood gets his hands on him and turns him into an anonymous hack. That's not merely cynicism or a judgment call on Trier's foregrounded visual flair, which, unlike most other flashy films pitched at the speed of youth, actually contains more true invention than gimmick; it's just a sad fact of a ravenous industry that subsumes European directors the same way it snatches up the new foreign, art-house ingenue and plunks her down as the latest Bond girl--it only sees the surface sheen. Trier's considerable talents will be easy to exploit: "Reprise" courses on the amiable full-tilt thrill of first-time filmmaking. And though the film perhaps tries a mite too hard to ingratiate itself to the viewer (rarely does it leave an emotion not underlined), its rhythms are well matched to its two main characters' restless pursuits for niche fame and artistic fulfillment. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] May 11, 2008 REVIEW | Father Figurines: Christopher Zalla's "Sangre de mi sangre"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] If writer-director Christopher Zalla's intent in "Sangre de mi sangre" was to sympathetically and realistically depict the plight of impoverished Mexican illegal immigrants trying desperately to eke out anonymous existences in urban U.S. areas, why does he litter his workmanlike debut film with characters directly out of Hispanic-cliche central casting? Though it's infinitely better than last year's execrable "Trade" (the worst movie...ever?), Zalla's film similarly traffics in south-of-the-border stereotypes, opening, of course, with the usual touristy-dangerous shots of Mexico, set to "indigenous" rhythms, which only prove to further distance the viewer from what should be a more intimate, humane experience. [ read more in Movies ] [ 6 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] May 7, 2008 REVIEW | Embedded: Nick Broomfield's "Battle for Haditha"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] "What do you wanna know?" A young Marine casually utters this question at the outset of "Battle for Haditha," and it's a fitting epigraph to Nick Broomfield's blistering, ambitious film. The query prefaces the PFC's offhand account of his service and the conditions of his barracks in Haditha, Iraq, but it could easily be Broomfield's own inquiry to his audience: In a singularly brutal and cloudy episode of the war, a group of Marines is attacked by insurgents and retaliates by unleashing their notion of justice on a small residential enclave, killing some twenty-four people. What do you want to know about these events, and what means do you have to figure them out? [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Reviews ] May 6, 2008 REVIEW | Imagine That: Tarsem Singh's "The Fall"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Playwright John Guare must have had Indian director Tarsem Singh (or as he's often simply known, Tarsem) in mind when he wrote about the increasing exteriorization of the term "imaginative": "Why has 'imagination' become a synonym for style?" Singh makes films that inspire a bevy of similarly misused adjectives: "sumptuous," "surreal," "eye-popping," "hallucinatory." He specializes in audacious compositions, shoots in exotic locales, fits his actors in unique costumes that appear simultaneously futuristic and old-fashioned, and in only two features, including the new and fifteen years in the making "The Fall," has shown a predilection for stories about, yes, "the power of the imagination." [ read more in Movies ] [ 3 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] April 30, 2008 REVIEW | Changes: Lucia Puenzo's "XXY"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Though it's as sullen and damp-grey as its morose 15-year-old protagonist, Argentinean filmmaker Lucia Puenzo's directorial debut "XXY" doesn't really get inside the mind of young Alex as much as watch her with an awkward combination of fascination and empathy. It's both a success and a failing on the new filmmaker's part; her intention in making "XXY," to humanely depict a character who might in other films or literature be relegated to oddball supporting status, is undoubtedly noble. Yet by focusing almost exclusively on Alex's differences (she was born with both female and male genitalia), rather than offering other facets of her life for consideration, the film slightly shortchanges what could have been a beautifully full portrait of a teenager going through radical inner and outer turmoil. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] April 29, 2008 REVIEW | Let's Go to the Videotape: Garth Jennings's "Son of Rambow"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] There's rarely a moment in "Son of Rambow" that isn't polished or primped for prime demographic impact; a whirlwind for those who get nostalgic for British school-chum pictures, Sylvester Stallone actioners, early Eighties camcorders, and breakdance-era outre outfits, Garth Jennings's ingratiating lark would seem to court snorts of recognition more than active engagement. Yet this backward-looking pint-sized "Ed Wood" often sails by on the charms of its formula - it's an appealingly rambunctious boy's adventure in the guise of a paean to the artistic process (not the other way around). Along with "Be Kind Rewind," Jennings's film may be on the crest of a wave of fondness for the days of videotape, although unlike Michel Gondry's film, which infantilized a community of urban dwellers by placing them in a cultural vacuum, "Rambow" uses the creation of taped home movies as a coming-of-age vessel. The children in "Rambow," set around 1983 or thereabouts, might as well be wielding digital cameras or pocket-sized cell-phone cams (and in fact, the film might have been less self-consciously precious had it been set in the present). [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Reviews ] April 28, 2008 REVIEW | The Archaeologist's Dilemma: Jeremy Podeswa's "Fugitive Pieces"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Nostalgic, deeply felt, and refreshingly astute, "Fugitive Pieces" is something of a rare bird these days -- a big-budget, transnational historical drama that actually justifies its scope and subject matter with more than visual opulence. On the surface, it looks like the kind of mainstream art-house fare that marries historical romance with a superficial exoticism; with its meandering sense of space and time and its rich sensual engagement, Anne Michaels's novel has drawn comparisons to Ondaatje's "The English Patient," and similarly Podeswa's adaptation will draw comparisons to Minghella's film. But what might have been an overly sentimental romance for uptown crowds is saved by its clear intelligence and its readiness to tackle the history and representation of the Holocaust in ways that are not at all facile. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Reviews ] April 23, 2008 REVIEW | Knock Off: Claude Lelouch's "Roman de gare"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Sixties art-house standby Claude Lelouch is, as it turns out, alive and well and living in Paris. He's even directed a new film; the title, "Roman de gare," incessantly punned with in the film, apparently refers to those cheap paperback thrillers available at train stations, tawdry stuff good for a vacation perusal. A glance at my unusually thick press kit shows an interviewed Lelouch defensive about his alleged status as a "popular" or "mass" director (everything is relative) -- hence his adoption of X material. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Reviews ] April 20, 2008 REVIEW | Seeing Is Believing: Errol Morris's "Standard Operating Procedure"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Often when it comes to Errol Morris, the more you see, the less you know. Some documentarians aim to answer and resolve, but Morris is almost too content to leave us adrift in ambiguity, regardless of the political, moral, and epistemological repercussions. After a New York Film Festival screening of his last film, the Oscar-winning "The Fog of War," the woman seated next to me was angry -- violently, vocally angry -- at what she perceived to be the film's sympathetic treatment of Robert McNamara (or should I say, its failure to unequivocally indict him?). I wondered then: why the vitriol? Was it because she disagreed with the film, or because it challenged something she had previously thought she knew to be true? Uncertainty can be an upsetting thing. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Reviews ] April 16, 2008 REVIEW | I'll Be Seeing You: Vadim Perelman's "The Life Before Her Eyes"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Diana and Maureen are in the girls' room, gossiping about boys and bio between classes, when shots ring out. It's the sound of an assault rifle wielded by Michael Patrick, the school nerd, on a violent, Columbine-like rampage. How do we know? "Yesterday in trig he told me he was going to bring a gun to school!" Diana explains, just as Michael Patrick bursts through the door. The two girls are cornered, and the lanky gunman, taking some time to reload a weapon that's bigger than he is, gives the girls a choice: Which one should he kill? [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] April 10, 2008 REVIEW | Growth Factor: Sue Williams's "Young & Restless in China"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot With the controversial Beijing Olympics just around the corner, the eyes of the world continue to attentively watch the rapid and profound changes taking place in the social, cultural, and environmental life of China, currently staking a claim as the global market's most powerful economy. "Young & Restless in China," a documentary in the vein of the ongoing "Up" series, examines how these radical transformations are affecting the latest Chinese citizens to enter the workforce, a dislocated and confused generation of young people awkwardly caught in the move from, as director Sue Williams puts forth, "idealism to materialism." It's a shift directly influenced by the political and economic reforms that have turned strict, repressive communism into destabilizing, still repressive quasi-capitalism, and Williams gets close to a wide range of subjects who illumine the challenges now facing this generation and the future of China. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] April 9, 2008 REVIEW | Strange Fascination: Ari Libsker's "Stalags"
An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Many Americans have never heard about the Stalag fiction phenomenon; Ari Libsker's short but valuable documentary, simply titled "Stalags," makes for a troubling, though thoughtful, introduction. Stalags constituted a genre of cheap exploitation novels that briefly thrived in Israel in the early Sixties during the period of the Adolf Eichmann trial, when the atrocities of the Holocaust were initially and tentatively broached in the public sphere. Stalags usually stuck to the same tried and true formula, pawning themselves off as translations of memoirs by American or British soldiers who had been imprisoned during World War II by the Nazis and subjected to sexual humiliation and violence by SS she-devils. In the end the soldier gets to turn the tables by raping and killing his inhuman torturers. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Reviews ]  REVIEW | Weird Science: Shi-Zheng Chen's "Dark Matter"
An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] "Dark Matter" begins with a shot of Meryl Streep practicing tai chi, and therein lies a precise encapsulation of the film's attitude toward the intersection of Eastern and Western cultures. In its 90-minute duration, the film grapples with a number of weighty themes: the origins of the universe, the importing of Chinese scholarly talent by American universities, even the deep causes of incidents of campus violence, like those at Columbine and Virginia Tech. But ultimately, the film's approach to these issues is as suspect as an American movie star going through the motions, however gracefully, of the thirteen postures. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] April 8, 2008 REVIEW | Compassion Play: Tom McCarthy's "The Visitor"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Tom McCarthy's surprise indie hit "The Station Agent" was something of a minor miracle. A touching, big-hearted character study propelled by three vibrant performances, "The Station Agent" distinguished itself with its sensitivity and grace, qualities sorely lacking in an independent film culture that too often prizes the clever, the glib, the cute, and the smug. With his sophomore effort as a writer-director, "The Visitor," McCarthy once again proves himself to be refreshingly out-of-step with the indie mainstream, taking an improbable set-up and patiently observing as his damaged but likeable characters work their way through it. Despite its contrivances, the film is a work of quiet, restrained empathy. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] April 6, 2008 REVIEW | Old Joy: Stephen Walker's "Young @ Heart"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Can rock music and colostomy bags mix? (Insert your own hilarious "Shine a Light" joke here.) The subject of Stephen Walker's new documentary is Farmingham, Massachusetts' "Young @ Heart" chorus, a 24-member group with several international tours under its belt. The singers' median age, we're informed, is 80. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Documentary, Lead Story, Reviews ] March 29, 2008 REVIEW | Such Great Heights: Hou Hsiao-hsien's "The Flight of the Red Balloon"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Like his 2004 film "Cafe Lumiere," Hou Hsiao-hsien's sublime new movie "The Flight of the Red Balloon" finds the director in a foreign country paying homage to another filmmaker. With "Lumiere," Yasujiro Ozu was Hou's reference point and Tokyo his canvas; here, Hou reimagines Albert Lamorisse's classic 1956 short "The Red Balloon" as a Parisian family melodrama. Hou's film, much like Lamorisse's, opens with the magnificent titular object hovering barely out of the reach of seven-year-old Simon (Simon Iteanu); as he gets on the Metro, it floats just above the station, drifting up into the trees. The balloon, and by proxy Lamorisse's film, serves as our point of departure -- our way into Simon's world and our guide through the streets of Paris -- but the delicate, charming, quietly heartbreaking portrait of childhood and family that follows is distinctively and unforgettably Hou. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Reviews, World Cinema ] March 27, 2008 REVIEW | Tuckered Out: David Schwimmer's "Run Fatboy Run"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Since the "chick flick" moniker continues to stick, it's only fair that male-targeted incarnations of the romantic comedy receive an equally derogatory nickname now that they're all the rage. I nominate "dick flicks" over David Denby's more diplomatic "slacker striver romance" designation -- certainly the subgenre's preoccupation with penis jokes earns the label. As outlined by the New Yorker critic in an article last year heralding the crop's crystallization with "Knocked Up," the flicks typically focus on an unmotivated and immature man as he kicks and screams his way towards reformation for the love of a good (and hot) woman. "Run Fatboy Run" fits so uncomplicatedly into this mold, you can imagine how paint-by-numbers it plays. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] March 24, 2008 REVIEW | Wistful Thinking: Morgan Neville's "The Cool School"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] "The Cool School" is one of a subset of documentary biographies that might best be called "Scenes of Yesteryear." Like the recent "Weather Underground," "Commune," and "American Hardcore"--whose respective subjects include radical terrorists, hippie collectives, and indigenous, anticommercial punk rock--"The Cool School" weaves testimony from participants of a faded fringe movement with footage from its heyday to take stock of the legacy of the marginal subculture in question. These are nostalgic, sometimes commemorative films employing a similar functional style to deliver content as practically as possible, and they're so close to each other in quality that a misfire ("American Hardcore"'s harried mess) usually isn't all that far from a triumph ("Weather Underground"'s precise portrait of revolutionary fanaticism). [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] March 21, 2008 REVIEW | Family Feud: Jeff Nichols's 'Shotgun Stories"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] The presence of David Gordon Green's name in "Shotgun Stories"' billing block is probably both a blessing and a curse for the reception of Jeff Nichols's feature film debut. On the one hand, it broadcasts what sort of film this is -- an earnest character study with a touch of that neo-Southern Gothic quirkiness that Green has made his own. But on the other hand, it will probably authorize some unforgiving comparisons to a style of filmmaking that -- judging by the maddeningly uneven "Snow Angels" -- even Green himself seems to have exhausted. With a trailer for Green's Seth Rogen-James Franco stoner comedy "Pineapple Express" and head-scratching rumors of a "Suspiria" remake circling the internet, it's becoming clear that even Green is anxious to move on from the type of filmmaking he patented, even as a cottage industry of similar films flourishes. [ read more in Movies ] [ 1 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] March 20, 2008 REVIEW | Gross National Product: Olivier Assayas's "Boarding Gate"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Olivier Assayas's "Boarding Gate" arrives on these shores like a battered shipment of cheap goods. True, it's only sat moldering for ten months in its film canister since its Cannes premiere -- a relatively short period in these hazy days of distribution -- but it shows a distinct lack of freshness all the same. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing: there's a tantalizing whiff of mediocrity to "Boarding Gate," and it's consistently set off by high levels of self-awareness and undeniable craft. Assayas's later career has been a heady stew of class and crass, yet not even in his terrific, audience-baiting pseudo-technothriller "demonlover," with its corporate-girls-gone-wild for the smart set, did he flirt as heavily with exploitation as he does here. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] March 18, 2008 REVIEW | Over the Borderline: Patricia Riggen's "Under the Same Moon"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] The main question "Under the Same Moon" poses is whether its story, which follows the basic outline of a separated mother and son fairy tale, befits its subject, the plight of illegal Mexican immigrants. The immigration issue has in the last few years become a hot one in part due to economic angst and homeland security paranoia, but Mexican director Patricia Riggen and screenwriter Ligiah Villalobos don't use their film to explore the larger political picture of fence-hopping workers and the varied American responses to their increasing numbers. Instead "Under the Same Moon" remains at ground level, showing audiences the unique backgrounds of individuals forced by circumstances to leave their homes and risk their lives north of the border. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Reviews ] March 16, 2008 REVIEW | Sweet Nothings: Christophe Honore's "Love Songs"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] As in last year's "Dans Paris," 37-year-old filmmaker Christophe Honore ventures back to that lost Eden known as the French New Wave, this time to punch up a featherweight tale of young love and loss with high-concept tomfoolery. And though "Love Songs" (or, if we could please use its original, more melodic title, "Les Chansons d'amour") better evokes that era's carefree cinematic spirit, it's similarly bound by dictates and referents, twice-removed and over-rehearsed. Hence "Love Songs" is not merely a musical -- in which passionate, lost twentysomethings wend their way through difficult times by breaking into pop tunes with puppy-love ingenuousness -- but also a riff on musicals, performance, play-acting, etc. Part of this is just by postmodern design, yet often the result is simultaneously ingratiating and distancing. Those looking for the exhilarating crescendos of "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (the film's declared inspiration: Honore borrows Jacques Demy's structure, separating his narrative into the same three distinct chapters -- Departure, Absence, and Return) might be put off by the film's less dramatic swooniness; "Love Songs" is the brief dalliance to "Cherbourg"'s intense affair, perhaps too shy to fully take the plunge, but nimble enough to give off a flirtatious buzz. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] March 11, 2008 REVIEW | Dead Again: Michael Haneke's "Funny Games"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Michael Haneke's 1997 "Funny Games" always seemed more like an instruction manual than a thriller, with the famously dyspeptic Austrian auteur hesitantly going through the genre motions only to teach us something he feels we really ought to learn. Now, as if to put all doubts of his intentional didacticism to rest, Haneke has returned to the scene of his crime (against art?) for his first English-language film, a stringent remake that, in theory at least, takes the guise of the sort of Hollywood product he always intended to deconstruct. The implication is that those who most needed this movie medicine (namely us mindless drones known as Americans) didn't swallow the first time, so perhaps now, unencumbered by nattering subtitles and unfamiliar European faces, we will unwittingly flock to the multiplex for a punishing lesson in audience humility and media critique posing as a home-invasion suspenser. [ read more in Movies ] [ 3 comments ] [ filed under Reviews ] March 10, 2008 REVIEW | The Road Well Traveled: William Maher's "Sleepwalking"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] When a film opens with shots of a straight and anonymous American highway -- that most overdetermined of American film locations -- as "Sleepwalking" does, one must be braced for a story about emotional journeys. A ribbon of asphalt stretching to the horizon is immediate shorthand for personal growth along the road of life (for, to paraphrase Tom Cochrane, life is a highway); this is as true for Captain America and Billy as it is for Steve Martin and the late John Candy. Though "Sleepwalking" offers little variation on the modern automotive odyssey to maturity (as its protagonists carpool their way to catharsis and fulfillment, sensitive pop songs play in the background and the camera's lens flares with orange sunsets), its earnestness and acting at least provide the momentum necessary to avoid stalling, whether or not the viewer is content to ride along. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Reviews ] March 9, 2008 REVIEW | A Winning Argument: Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp's "War Made Easy"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Though the early to mid-aughts documentary boom has recently died down, it's still difficult to believe there hasn't been a serious nonfiction indictment of the collusion between the government and the media in selling the invasion of Iraq to the American public. This accounts for a somewhat shameful omission in the ever-growing Iraq War doc catalogue--the sheer amount of lies, distortions, and fear-mongering titillations on display in a typical CNN or Fox News broadcast circa 2002 (and today) would offer enough evidence on the sorry state of our national media for a book-length study, let alone a feature film. Columnist, critic, and antiwar notable Norman Solomon has now, remarkably, provided both: his 2005 volume "War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" has been adapted into an explosive, compact 73-minute documentary by filmmakers Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp. If a few years ago Solomon was a lonely voice in the wilderness, with this film he has a major stage from which to educate a potentially greater audience. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Documentary, Reviews ] March 6, 2008 REVIEW | Quiet Anger: David Gordon Green's "Snow Angels"
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Steve Ramos reviewed David Gordon Green's "Snow Angels" following its world premiere at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.] The moment in "Snow Angels" that qualifies stand-alone filmmaker David Gordon Green as the most artful of film masters occurs when Glenn (Sam Rockwell), a broken man, dances with two drunken patrons at a rundown tavern in the small Pennsylvania town he calls home. A birthday cake sits on a nearby pinball table without explanation. The room is dark, so dark that it's hard to say if one of the shuffling patrons holding Glenn is a man or woman. But everything is placed with the same attention to perfect detail as his previous three feature films, "Undertow," "All the Real Girls" and his best film, "George Washington." [ read more in Movies ] [ 4 comments ] [ filed under Reviews ] March 5, 2008 REVIEW | Like, Actually: Bharat Nalluri's "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] A middle-aged, getting-your-groove-back Cinderella story: Miss Pettigrew, an unsuccessful domestic used to taking her meals in breadlines, maneuvers a job with a flighty American "actress" abroad, Delysia Lafosse. Just like that, prim Pettigrew is off the streets and hovering around the nexus of the London smart set, where her self-possession and propriety are suddenly rare and valuable commodities. It doesn't take long for a reasonably handsome suitor to notice. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] March 4, 2008 REVIEW | Aural Examination: Gus Van Sant's "Paranoid Park"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Gus Van Sant's so-called "Death Trilogy" may have culminated two years ago with crowning achievement "Last Days," but to judge by his latest film, "Paranoid Park," the entropic weight of mortality is still very much at the center of the filmmaker's concerns. Moving beyond the Death Trilogy's Bela Tarr-grafted stories of self- and other-inflicted violence, Van Sant now tinkers with his trademark stylistic oddities, nonlinear narrative devices, and thematic ideas to fashion a heterogeneous, experimental grab-bag that even for him and his death obsession becomes seemingly familiar and evocatively strange. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] March 3, 2008 REVIEW | "Burbs of a Feather . . . " : Ira Sachs' "Married Life"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] "Married Life," the third feature from Ira Sachs, marks a major departure for the Memphis-born filmmaker. The first of his movies to take place away from his native South, and his only period picture, "Married Life" stakes out new thematic ground for a director whose previous efforts, "The Delta" and "Forty Shades of Blue," focused resolutely on outsiders, people on the margins trying to navigate their way through an unfamiliar, unfriendly, and even hostile social environment. By contrast, "Married Life," tackles a far more commonplace -- and rather banal -- subject: suburban heterosexual partnership and the mysterious, often unspoken undercurrents that both threaten and sustain ostensibly happy marriages. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Reviews ] February 28, 2008 REVIEW | Son of God: Paulo Morelli's "City of Men"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] 2000's art-house megahit "City of God" has officially attained franchise status -- after spawning a made-for-television series, "City of Men," it's now passing a licensed spin-off of the same title along to theaters. Director Paulo Morelli, who had a hand in the TV show, looks at the favelas of Rio de Janeiro through a scrim of hissing high-contrast grain, the camera swaying with heatstroke wooziness over swaggering neighborhood kingpins. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] February 27, 2008 REVIEW | Malignant Growth: Laura Dunn's "The Unforeseen"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Due to the onslaught of environmental documentaries that prioritize urgency over intelligence, Laura Dunn's "The Unforeseen," an inquisitive, elegant rendering of the battle between land development and dwindling natural resources in Austin, might get lost in the shuffle. And what a shame that would be, for Dunn's refreshingly thorough look at the encroachment of capital on untouched land is smart enough not to treat its subject as a horror show. The film is more sobered than alarming, yet it's hardly defeatist. An impressionist's portrait of contemporary American economic life, "The Unforeseen" is for nature both a paean and an elegy, and for contemporary American nonfiction a challenge, in both scope and aesthetic. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Documentary, Reviews ] February 25, 2008 REVIEW | Street Poetry: Ramin Bahrani's "Chop Shop"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Scraping for a living in the shadow of that holy of professional baseball holies, Shea Stadium, twelve year-old Alejandro (Alejandro Polanco) does everything an impoverished, parentless, out-of-school 12-year-old can do to survive in the lowest depths of one of New York City's strangest and direst areas, Willets Point, Queens. He calls his boss Rob's (Rob Sowulski) auto body shop both his workplace and home, hustles pornographic DVDs, robs U.S. Open patrons, steals hub caps from Shea's parking lot for extra cash, and saves up precious money to buy a used mobile-food van along with his 16-year-old prostitute sister, Isamar (Isamar Gonzales), in order to, as they dream, start their own business. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] February 21, 2008 REVIEW | Holding Court: Jacques Rivette's "The Duchess of Langeais"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] A chamber piece for two tragic almost-lovers, a coquettish Duchess and a noble French General. A chance flirtation at a Fauborg St-Germain party initiates an arduous campaign of romantic outflankings, accomplished through feigned illnesses, epistolary sallies, evocations of God, and threats of force. Abstemious with close-ups, "The Duchess of Langeais" is a two-shot duet for Jeanne Balibar and Guillaume Depardieu. The performances are precise in the extreme, the combatants' war games regulated by elaborate rules of engagement, incremental charges and retreats. In visits to the Duchess's residence, they push and pull their conversations between the bedchamber, drawing room, and foyer, the camera softly slipping after. The Duchess, however, has underestimated the fortitude of this suitor, whose continual, nauseous glowering at his loose forelock hides a master strategian. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Reviews, World Cinema ] February 20, 2008 REVIEW | Money for Nothing: Stefan Ruzowitzky's "The Counterfeiters"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Let's get it out of the way first: Stefan Ruzowitzky's "The Counterfeiters" was nominated for a Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar, controversially at the exclusion of a handful of borderline masterpieces, from Cristian Mungiu's "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days" to the upcoming "Silent Light" and "Secret Sunshine." Though it feels disingenuous to bring up the most notoriously boorish, nonsensically designed of all Academy Award categories when discussing a film's merits, perhaps it's productive to point out all the reasons why a film such as "The Counterfeiters" gets that slot over more difficult, rewarding, and harder to categorize films that would need the recognition to make any waves outside of small, cinephilic circles. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Reviews, World Cinema ] February 19, 2008 REVIEW | Prep Rally: Jon Poll's "Charlie Bartlett"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Who is Charlie Bartlett? A quirky know-it-all, a likeable dweeb, a guileless Ferris Bueller for our overmedicated age. Director Jon Poll and writer Gustin Nash's movie is about a teenager who gets kicked out of prep school, joins the hoi polloi, makes a name for himself as the student body's resident therapist/pharmacologist, and wins over the girl and the school by the end. Bullies are swayed by his dime-store analysis; a hottie buys his eccentric, overprivileged shtick. A good guy? Sure he is. In fact, he hangs out with a developmentally disabled kid, one of those ostensibly hilarious retards with weird facial tics and involuntary hand gestures that somehow always pop up in the frame when the movie needs a laugh. So yeah, he's pretty cool. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Reviews ] February 12, 2008 REVIEW | Shooting the Messenger: George A. Romero's "Diary of the Dead"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] There's a tendency in some high and low circles to instantly enshrine any new work from classic horror-meister George A. Romero, good-natured, jocular guy that he is, as a way of validating not only his formidable zombie oeuvre but also the seventies horror movie canon itself. Always the most overt of that bunch in his penchant for toothy sociopolitical commentary, Romero has often traded in rather glib social satire since the revelation of his 1978 "Dawn of the Dead"; whereas Tobe Hooper and John Carpenter's genre work has mostly been greeted with retrospective praise and analysis, Romero's never made any bones about his intent. His easy-to-bottle concepts have always had a clever ring--the pop-allegorical purity of brain-devouring zombies shambling through a shopping mall was a great idea waiting to happen. The pitch for the latest incarnation of his series of pre-apocalyptic undead films, "Diary of the Dead," in which he has a group of nattering film-schoolers wielding cameras to capture the mayhem as it unfolds, is likewise, a no-brainer. [ read more in Movies ] [ 1 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] February 9, 2008 REVIEW | Soldier Boy: Newton I. Aduaka's "Ezra"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] No sugarcoating it: "Ezra" is a difficult film to watch. It isn't particularly graphic or gory, but its dramatization of children being kidnapped and forced into fighting--or, really, raping and pillaging--by rebel armies in Sierra Leone is extremely upsetting, and all the more terrifying for alluding to greater and more incomprehensible crimes occurring in reality. As directed by Nigerian filmmaker Newton I. Aduaka, "Ezra" is often messy and awkwardly told, but even its amateurishness lends a sort of raw power to its harrowing depiction of dehumanization, exploitation, senseless violence, and the post-conflict attempts at "Truth and Reconciliation" as promoted by the series of human rights hearings set up to make some sort of sense of the devastation of a decade-long civil war. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] February 7, 2008 REVIEW | Grace Notes: Eran Kolirin's "The Band's Visit"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Though it's both a predictable culture-clash comedy and a gentle plea for people of different political backgrounds to "just get along," "The Band's Visit" nevertheless manages to use its central contrivances and inevitable cliches to its favor, and becomes something ethereal and winning. This debut from Israeli filmmaker Eran Kolirin, in which the soft-spoken members of an Egyptian brass band (the stodgy Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, to be precise) find themselves stranded in a small Israeli town on the way to a gig, parlays its initial good-natured dullness into surprisingly robust drama. Kolirin's schematics, both in its narrative turns and its overtly stylized compositions, threaten to reduce politics to bromides -- yet the filmmaker is wonderfully keyed into the subtleties of human behavior, and evinces a splendid love for all of his characters that borders on infectious adoration. "The Band's Visit" may wear its quaintness too much on its sleeve, but for a dose of what is essentially movie medicine, it goes down awfully easily. [ read more in Movies ] [ 2 comments ] [ filed under Reviews, World Cinema ] February 6, 2008 REVIEW | Remote Lands: Nacer Khemir's "Bab'Aziz"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] It drops by the local art house every few months without fail--the "challenging" exotic import, too maddeningly slow and nonlinear for the "Pan's Labyrinth" crowd to cross it over to mainstream success, yet too naively earnest and moppet-dependent to impress a critical community taken with the more avant-garde and minimalist likes of Apichatpong Weerasethakul or the Dardenne brothers. An unfortunate situation, perhaps, but don't shed too many tears for a foreign film caught between a rock and a hard place like "Bab-Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul." Tunisian director Nacer Khemir's latest internationally co-produced effort--the last in his "Desert Trilogy" and the first to find theatrical distribution in the States, though the first two will be released on DVD this month--will likely have supporters able to see in its fairy tale platitudes and vague beauty something "life-affirming" and indicative of the dervish culture it purportedly represents. But without wholly dismissing its unpretentious spirituality, it's still difficult to praise "Bab'Aziz" merely on the basis of good intentions. Khemir is going for the mythical and transcendent, but "Bab'Aziz" too often feels fluffy and antiquated. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Reviews ] February 5, 2008 REVIEW | Hit Me Baby, One...More...Time: Martin McDonagh's "In Bruges"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] "It's in Belgium," a frustrated voice-over informs. In the aftermath of a botched job, two London-based hit men are cooling off in the title city. It was the maiden murder for Ray (Colin Farrell), the narrator, a new kid who's still ill over catching a bystander in crossfire; Ken (Brendan Gleeson), fiftyish and settled into the habitual trudge of middle age, is the industry veteran who took the boy through initiation. There's the odd-couple stuff that goes with the age difference--Ken, an affable enough sort, wants to make a holiday of their hideout, seeing the sights in the perfectly intact medieval city, taking the canal tours, absorbing the altarpieces, strolling the galleries. Ray, hating the town and himself, wants to go get pissed on framboise and fuck or fight the local baraki trash (Clemence Poesy and the Dardenne Brothers' fixture Jeremie Renier, respectively). [ read more in Movies ] [ 1 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Reviews ] February 1, 2008 PARK CITY '08 REVIEW | Broken Mountain: Matthew Stanton's "North Starr"
Park City coverage sponsored by BE KIND REWIND. [ read more in Movies ] [ 1 comments ] [ filed under Park City, Reviews ] January 31, 2008 REVIEW | True Dedication: Ilana Trachtman's "Praying with Lior"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] No film critic would dare print a negative word about a film as well-intentioned as Ilana Trachtman's affable, purposely enriching documentary "Praying with Lior"; the reassuring news is that they'd have no reason to. One may be compelled to note the film's unremarkable visual textures, yet more apropos to mention would be Trachtman's commendably unintrusive style, both in her film's shooting and construction. And certainly such tender subject matter warrants this gingerly approach: an assured, straightforward video portrait of a devout Jewish prepubescent with Down syndrome, the film manages to avoid exploitation of its subject matter at every turn. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Documentary, Reviews ]  PARK CITY '08 REVIEW | Chit-Chat Love: Geoff Haney's "The Last Word."
Park City coverage sponsored by BE KIND REWIND. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Park City, Reviews ] January 30, 2008 REVIEW | Caught in the Middle: Andre Techine's "The Witnesses"
[An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.] Once again, with his new film "The Witnesses," great French filmmaker Andre Techine surveys the intersections of sexuality and politics, while offering up a compelling study in human strength and weakness. Instructive without ever falling into cheap bromides, dramatic without ever veering into overzealous melodrama, "The Witnesses" is a penetrating, even essential narrative. Techine is fascinated by the ways in which lives interact, personalities cross-pollinate, wounds are compounded, exacerbated, or even healed, yet never in that increasingly mundane American style of overlapping stories that prize fate or coincidence; he paints specifically, creating not vague character sketches but full lives, however defined by enigma or contradiction. Here, as in his superlative (and admittedly more vivid) "Wild Reeds," Techine introduces complicated people who may evolve throughout the course of the narrative but who are also unavoidably wedded to their specific time and place in history. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Queer Cinema, Reviews, World Cinema ]  PARK CITY '08 REVIEW | Crazy/Beautiful: Anthony Haney-Jardine's "Anywhere, USA"
Park City coverage sponsored by BE KIND REWIND. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Park City, Reviews ] January 29, 2008 PARK CITY '08 REVIEW | American Wine: Randall Miller's "Bottle Shock"
Park City coverage sponsored by BE KIND REWIND. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Park City, Reviews ] January 28, 2008 PARK CITY '08 REVIEW | Love Rollercoaster: Dennis Dortch's "A Good Day to Be Black & Sexy"
Park City coverage sponsored by BE KIND REWIND. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Park City, Reviews ] January 27, 2008 PARK CITY '08 REVIEW | Dancing Fool: Stanley Tucci's "Blind Date"
Park City coverage sponsored by BE KIND REWIND. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Park City, Reviews ] January 26, 2008 PARK CITY '08 REVIEW | Kicking and Screaming: Azazel Jacobs' "Momma's Man"
Park City coverage sponsored by BE KIND REWIND. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Park City, Reviews ]  PARK CITY '08 NOTEBOOK | Slamdance Docs "Dear Zachary" and "My Mother's Garden" Offer Personal Stories; "Portage" and "Jetsam" Thrill
Park City coverage sponsored by BE KIND REWIND. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Park City, Reviews ]  PARK CITY '08 REVIEW | Cat's Out of the Bag: David and Nathan Zellner's "Goliath"
Park City coverage sponsored by BE KIND REWIND. [ read more in Movies ] [ 2 comments ] [ filed under Park City, Reviews ] January 25, 2008 PARK CITY '08 REVIEW | Up, Up and Away: Paul Schneider's "Pretty Bird"
Park City coverage sponsored by BE KIND REWIND. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Park City, Reviews ]  PARK CITY '08 REVIEW | Hope Despite A Cold Despair: Tom Hines's "Chronic Town"
Park City coverage sponsored by BE KIND REWIND. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Park City, Reviews ] January 24, 2008 PARK CITY '08 REVIEW | Scary Ha-Ha: Jay and Mark Duplass' "Baghead"
The laughs outweigh the scares in "Baghead," a clever horror/comedy hybrid and the latest good time movie from filmmaker brothers Jay and Mark Duplass. The fact that there are shocks throughout the film confirms "Baghead's" best attribute. The Duplass Brothers, much admired for their 2005 Sundance film "The Puffy Chair" and standout figures in the cultish "Mumblecore" film movement, are growing as filmmakers. They're trying new things in "Baghead" and building upon their strengths as craftsmen of approachable characters, zippy dialogue and warm romance. As a result, "Baghead" premiering in the Spectrum program at the Sundance Film Festival, is the Duplass Brothers' best film yet. [ read more in Movies ] [ 1 comments ] [ filed under Reviews ]  PARK CITY '08 REVIEW | Surprisingly Ordinary : Clark Gregg's "Choke"
Park City coverage sponsored by BE KIND REWIND. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Park City, Reviews ] January 23, 2008 PARK CITY '08 REVIEW | True Grit: Trygve Allister Diesen's "Red"
Park City coverage sponsored by BE KIND REWIND. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Park City, Reviews ]  PARK CITY '08 NOTEBOOK | International Films Shine At Sundance: "Abu Raed"; "Absurdistan"; "Mermaid"; "Stranded"
Park City coverage sponsored by BE KIND REWIND. [ read more in Movies ] [ 0 comments ] [ filed under Lead Story, Park City, Reviews ]  PARK CITY '08 REVIEW | Bittersweet Dreams: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck's "Sugar"
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