Michael Clayton

Director: Tony Gilroy

Blame it on Danny Ocean. The onscreen film persona of George Clooney is hard to separate from not simply the suave and debonair characters he plays in Ocean’s Eleven and other films but also George Clooney in real life adorning the covers of countless magazines on a given grocery store rack. Of course, it doesn’t help when even in a film like Michael Clayton where he plays a “fixer” of problems (an associate calls him a miracle worker) for a top New York law firm with a weakness for high stakes poker, when the makeup artist applies copious amounts of eyeliner and mascara to make him all the more Vanity Fair ready and a book lying casually out in the open for the camera to pan across is entitled Alpha Male. This being said, Clooney is, as always, an engaging and commanding screen presence, turning in a fine portrayal but it’s the supporting players, most notably the fierce and taut performances by Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson that steal the film. Michael Clayton, which was nominated for the 2007 Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, marks the directorial debut of writer Tony Gilroy who penned the wildly popular Bourne scripts for the blockbuster Matt Damon trilogy. After Arthur Edens (Wilkinson), his colleague stops taking his bipolar medication and flips out unprofessionally, Clooney’s Clayton is sent for damage control, later realizing that Edens may have been onto something much larger in scope in his sabotage of a class-action multimillion dollar lawsuit settlement facing agricultural corporation U/North, whose legal head Swinton is trying to control as well by any means necessary. Employing a crisp muted color scheme in its cinematography by Robert Elswit (Magnolia, Good Night, and Good Luck)—the film is sophisticated fare for adults that recalls high quality Grisham thrillers popular in the 90’s and indeed Firm director Sydney Pollack co-produces and stars in Clayton, but the film has been a bit overrated by critics all clamoring under the star power of the vehicle in trying to predict Oscar season. One thing remains certain, however and that is if Oscar comes calling, there is no one worthier in Clayton than the impressive but often overlooked Wilkinson who shows us the same passion and precision evidenced in his previous Oscar nominated turn for In the Bedroom.

Rare Birds

Director: Sturla Gunnarsson

In the tradition of Saving Grace, Waking Ned Devine and The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain, comes this offbeat Canadian comedy drama centers on a talented New York chef named Dave (William Hurt) whose Newfoundland restaurant The Auk is facing closure due to lack of interest. In order to prevent his best friend from leaving, Dave’s clever, paranoid and scheming dreamer sidekick Phonce (Andy Jones) concocts an ingenious plan to attract clientele by faking the sighting of an extremely rare bird. After the plan is set in motion and the popular local radio show vouches the fake tale, the tiny town is flooded by arrivals hoping to spot the bird and of course, sample Dave’s cuisine along the way. Meanwhile Dave finds himself falling for Phonce’s beautiful younger relative, college student Alice (capable character actress Molly Parker) and involved with a more dangerous plot involving Phonce’s discovery of a large quantity of drugs he’s found ashore. Written by Edward Riche who adapted the script from his own novel, the critically acclaimed production suffered a misfortunate fate in scheduling as it was set to make its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival on September 11, 2001 according to critic Roger Ebert. While there was a makeup screening, understandably due to the horrors surrounding that terrible event, it was ill-attended and Rare Birds was carted off to a few festivals (earning the Audience Award at the Atlantic Film Festival) before being dumped onto DVD shelves. However, it’s worth tracking down for fans of Hurt looking for a fun ensemble piece that benefits greatly from the homey feel of the Newfoundland setting and can be screened 24/7 online as part of Netflix’s new Watch Instantly feature.

Fun fact: according to IMDb, the production was completed in just thirty days save for the final shot which was postponed seven months due to a snowfall. While the bulk of the budget had been spent on the production, the Lasse Hallstrom production of The Shipping News was filming nearby and the News crew shared some of their own manpower and equipment to help finish Rare Birds.

See It Now

Jane Eyre

Director: Susanna White

Nominated for more than a dozen British and American Emmy awards, Bleak House director Susanna White crafts this sweeping two part miniseries for Masterpiece Theatre based on the 1847 novel by Charlotte Bronte. Adapted by Sandy Welch, the classic tale of a young headstrong girl who endures cruelty as a child at the hands of her aunt and a severe boarding school for girls to become the governess of a wealthy Englishman’s ward when she is old enough to leave is given an exquisite retelling with beautiful gothic imagery, sweeping panoramic views and a sensuality that was always lacking from other versions. Ruth Wilson makes a convincing Jane in her first role (according to IMDb) opposite the impressive Toby Stephens as Edward Rochester who at times threatens to overpower the quiet young actress but the two instead have excellent chemistry and form a romantic dynamic that radiates off the screen. Made by the partnership of the BBC and PBS television and now released on DVD, Susanna White’s adaptation of Jane Eyre is the most complete one in recent memory and well worth a look for lovers of the Bronte sisters and devotees of English period literature.

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Big Nothing

Director:
Jean-Baptiste Andrea

In a role that couldn’t be further away from his Friends character Ross, actor David Schwimmer stars in this dark crime comedy about inept blackmailers who decide to try for one big score wherein anything and everything goes horribly, violently wrong. With his police officer wife (Natascha McElhone) bringing home the bulk of the family income, struggling writer Charlie Wood (Schwimmer) reluctantly takes a job at a computer technology call center to help provide for his wife and daughter. After being fired on his first day, he is approached by coworker Gus (Simon Pegg) to blackmail Reverend Smalls, an avid user of adult websites with membership to some especially unsavory online addresses. They team up with former beauty queen Josie (Alice Eve) after she overhears the two planning their scheme in a bar, which most audience members agree should be the first sign that they’re not quite cut out for a life of crime. After a quirky and surprisingly humorous opening, everything disintegrates into a shocking and sometimes disturbing fashion. Set in Big Falls, Oregon, writers Billy Asher and Jean-Baptiste Andrea (who also directs) will attract fans of the indie crime genre looking for something different however the film’s maddeningly vague ending makes viewers question the fate of the main character in a way that lacks solid resolution. Overall, Big Nothing is far more entertaining than one would expect and a film that definitely shines a whole new light on the talent of Schwimmer who had previously been typecast as Ross.

Cautiva

Director:
Gaston Biraben

After what feels like only a few minutes into this unnerving portrait sure to rattle parents everywhere, Argentine teenage student Cristina Quadri (Barbara Lombardo) is removed from her Catholic school and taken to see a judge who informs her that her real name is Sofia Lombardi and she is the daughter of two political activists who were among the estimated thirty thousand people who “disappeared” during the country’s “dirty war” and last dictatorship. Sent to live with the biological grandmother she's never met, Cristina understandably struggles with the revelation but after befriending another girl (one of the roughly seventy-four recovered) begins looking into her genealogy and what happened in the 1970’s during that tumultuous political era that is so vast that most of the participants haven’t been caught, still remaining in Argentina and as the film states, protected by governmental laws. Obviously a highly personal and passionate film from first time writer and director Gaston Biraben, a former sound department contributor on movies such as Return to Me, The Fugitive and My Cousin Vinny, Biraben’s film triumphs due to its emotional impact and impressively mature young actress in the lead role but Cristina/Sofia’s acclimation to her new environment feels a bit rushed. Cautiva, now released on DVD and available for both rental and instant watching on Netflix earned five international awards and six nominations.

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Mr. Brooks

Director:
Bruce A. Evans

Following in the footsteps of actors like Harrison Ford in What Lies Beneath, Tom Cruise in Collateral and Tom Hanks in Road to Perdition, All-American actor Kevin Costner (most famous for Ron Shelton sports comedies and the bad haircut from The Bodyguard) takes on the role of a killer in Mr. Brooks. Seemingly inspired by Jekyll and Hyde, the film opens as Costner’s box factory owner Earl Brooks wins an award as Man of the Year. Soon after the ceremony, Earl is prodded by his alter ego Marshall to come back from his two year hiatus and commit more murder as the Thumbprint Killer. Marshall is played by William Hurt who gets the film’s best lines time and time again, recalling that even in small roles like this and History of Violence he remains one of our most fascinating players. After the double homicide, the troubled Earl tries one more time to go clean from his murderous addiction by attending AA meetings in his Portland, Oregon community but four characters seem to prevent him from doing that. The first is Marshall who whispers sour nothings into his ear on a regular basis and seems to have keen insight into the arrival of two more characters early on—Dane Cook as a genuinely creepy engineer and voyeur who, having snapped photos of the latest crime, wants to be Brooks’s sidekick for the next murder, and Jane, Earl’s daughter who suddenly returns home from her freshman year of college with more than a few shocking revelations that seem to indicate that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Demi Moore shows up looking determined and justifiably angry as the foremost expert on the Thumbprint Killer and, having caught numerous notorious criminals in her detective career has a hard time separating her messy divorce from her money hungry soon to be ex from not only the Thumbprint case but another serial killer who’s arrived back in town. If it sounds overly complicated, it is—too many characters make the narrative focus uneven and we feel cheated by some of the more interesting characters—especially the Jane storyline—being left to the sidelines. While this may have been the director’s intention all along as Costner stated, according to IMDb that Mr. Brooks is the first in a trilogy of films, audiences will feel a let down from the rushed film and a few gaping plot holes and logical questions that don’t ring true such as Mr. Brooks’s unintelligent choice to change his disguise in broad daylight or even more hard to believe, his picking up Cook’s Smith in the same vicinity several nights in a row at the exact same time for their strange killer camaraderie of Mr. Smith and Mr. Brooks—or what one could call the yuppie sociopath version of Reservoir Dogs.

Double Whammy

Director: Tom DiCillo

Former Jim Jarmusch cinematographer turned writer/director Tom DiCillo made a huge independent film splash with his Sundance favorite Living in Oblivion in the early 1990’s. Several years later he still proves a penchant for crafting larger than life satirical comedy capers such as this one which stars comedian Denis Leary as New York Police Detective Ray Pluto, who, after the tragic loss of his wife and daughter in a hit and run years earlier spends most of his weeknights getting stoned while watching cheerleader exercise videos. When the film opens, he and police partner Jerry (DiCillo regular Steve Buscemi) debate over which one should go into a fast food place to order lunch with Jerry citing his bum knee as his reason to wait. Suddenly a crazed shooter kills six people in broad daylight and while trying to intervene, Pluto suffers an extreme back spasm, accidentally knocks himself out cold and his gun slides across the floor where it’s picked up by a child who uses it to take out the murderer. After the press dubs him “Loser Cop,” Pluto is assigned light duty with a majority of his cases being given to chief’s pet Chris Noth, while he reluctantly tries to overcome his chiropractor prejudice and eventually breaks down to see gorgeous chiropractor Elizabeth Hurley who not only manages to help cure his back pain but captures Pluto’s heart as well. Colorful and fast paced—Double Whammy seems like a live action cartoon that borders on the ridiculous at times with the introduction of far too many quirky characters and some whom we as an audience never warm up to such as two aspiring screenwriters who wear brightly colored suits and plan their seemingly Tarantino-inspired screenplay and dream about a Cannes victory and the annoying daughter of building super Luis Guzman who hires some thugs to get her father when he refuses to grant her permission to be tattooed. Still, DiCillo’s film is fresh and funny with enough good material to keep us watching and one that does successfully blend hip dialogue and crime comedy together in this now overly popular independent film subgenre.

Starter for Ten

Director: Tom Vaughan

Fun trifle produced by Playtone’s Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman in association with the BBC and HBO brings viewers to 1985 England where a young working-class boy packs off to attend Bristol University with the hopes of becoming a champion on TV’s University Challenge. Adapting directly from his own novel, David Nicholls’ intelligent screenplay provides a wonderful alternative to American coming-of-age in college films about fraternities and sex by taking a more realistic, yet hilarious look at insecure Brian Jackson (a terrific James McAvoy) who finds himself torn between blonde bombshell Alice (Alice Eve) and brainy beauty Rebecca (Rebecca Epstein). Featuring a terrific soundtrack of 80’s new wave classics and painful wardrobe and hair choices, Starter for Ten is forgettable but likable entertainment in the tradition of Hanks’ other Playtone productions My Big Fat Greek Wedding and That Thing You Do. Look for a nice supporting turn by up and coming star Dominic Cooper (who also made a splash in The History Boys) in his role as Brian’s rebellious friend. Tom Vaughan’s film netted the director and writer an Advance Screening award from the Austin Film Festival and was also nominated for the Best British Film of 2007 from the Empire Awards, UK.

A Mighty Heart

Click Here to Read the In-Depth 2009 Blu-ray Review of the Film

Director:
Michael Winterbottom

For what Variety called his first studio film, director Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People) tackled the true and heart-wrenching story of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping and eventual murder that took place in the winter of 2002. Based on the book written by Mariane Pearl and adapted by Band of Brothers screenwriter John Orloff, A Mighty Heart is a devastating and tense docudrama cinematically similar to The Constant Gardener that features a dynamic yet subtle performance by Angelina Jolie as Mariane who, very pregnant, kisses her husband goodbye as he steps into a cab, never to see him again. Officials, government specialists and colleagues and others wait alongside Mariane while trying to follow Daniel’s final story in Karachi, Pakistan that led to his disappearance and shocking end that horrified citizens around the globe. Editor Peter Christelis and Danish cinematographer Marcel Zyskind heighten the already tangible tension as we hold our breaths—and although we know what’s coming, it’s all the more upsetting when we are placed by Winterbottom in the house of his soon to be widow. A finely crafted film that features Jolie’s best work since her Academy Award winning turn in Girl, Interrupted.

Novel Romance

Director: Emily Skopov

Sharply written (sometimes overly so) chick flick stars Traci Lords as Max Normane, a brainy fast-talking, highly successful editor known for her incredible taste and ability to transform mediocre writing into the stuff of legends in her literary magazine URBANITY. After realizing that her love life isn’t as easily controlled as the pages she can attack with her trusty red pen, she sets a peculiar plan in motion to have a baby by offering a decidedly indecent proposal to a young up-and-coming writer Jake Buckley (Paul Johansson) whom she will publish provided that he agree to not only her rewrites and editorial notes but also if he provides a much needed donation in her quest for artificial insemination. After a clumsy start that made Novel Romance feel like a Sex and the City version of a Lifetime or Oxygen network movie, the film becomes a surprisingly entertaining time-waster—a fluffy beach read from television series staff writer Emily Skopov set to film and while we’re never sure we’re in agreement (at any time) with Lords’ domineering perfectionist, it’s still a humorous concept to see a woman wielding power to demand a favor, which goes against the Pretty Woman, Indecent Proposal Can’t Buy Me Love (and the list goes on) mindset of American movies.

Things We Lost in the Fire

Click Here to Read the In-Depth, Updated 2009 Blu-ray Review of the Film

Director: Susanne Bier

Returning to the harrowing personal drama he perfected in 21 Grams, Academy Award winning Traffic star Benicio Del Toro takes on another intimate and demanding role in Danish director Susanne Bier’s first English language film, Things We Lost in the Fire. Bier, whose most recent movie After the Wedding was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film award, works from a script from debut screenwriter Allan Loeb that plays off her interest in personal tragedy and family dynamics most evident in not only Wedding but also Brothers and Open Hearts. The result is an uneven but powerfully acted and intelligent drama that seems to recall the classic women’s weepie cinema of Douglas Sirk in the 1950’s (which was brought back to the big screen a few years ago in Haynes’s Far From Heaven). Halle Berry makes the most of her difficult role as Audrey Burke, an upper class Washington state housewife whose picture perfect marriage to David Duchovny is cut short when he intervenes in a domestic quarrel and ends up shot in a tragic murder/suicide. Left reeling from the horror of the unexpected death and trying to keep up appearances for her two young children (Alexis Llewellyn and Micah Berry), Audrey reaches out to the troubled Jerry (Del Toro), her husband’s lifelong best friend and former successful lawyer, now living in a seedy motel addicted to heroin. After Audrey instinctively but surprisingly invites Jerry to live in her vacant garage, he tries once again for sobriety while bonding with the children and helping Audrey work through the pain. Del Toro and Berry’s scenes together are explosive and filled with the kind of performances sure to draw Oscar attention (and deservedly so, especially in Del Toro’s case) but despite that, the film still feels a bit too cut off from reality and Lisa Schwarzbaum’s review in Entertainment Weekly attacked the lack of authenticity head on with her thoughts that it’s “still a TV-scaled tear-duct drama about a beautiful woman who pushes past sadness in her House and Garden home.” While I still felt that it was a worthwhile film, especially for fans of Bier (and Sirk for that matter), I do hope that in Bier’s next film, she’ll contribute to the screenplay herself given her vast experience and roots in the Dogme film movement and bring more of her unique style of shooting to the finished product that go beyond a few impressionistic reaction shots.

Hot Fuzz

Director: Edgar Wright

Bad Brits, Bad Brits, Whatcha Gonna Do?

In this inventive spoof of American buddy cop films, the Shaun of the Dead duo (Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright) reunite for Hot Fuzz bringing their distinctive blend of hyper cuts, ironic dialogue matched with contradictory images and witty banter to a film that I liked even more than their previous one.

Pegg stars as Nicholas Angell, the literal "Goody Two Shoes" London police officer (the song even plays during his introduction) whose arrest record is 400% higher than any other officer in the entire department. In the simplest terms, the prodigy with the badge is not only a criminal’s worst nightmare but that of his coworkers as well and, tired of looking like slackers, they give him a promotion and send him off to a country department in Sanford, a town with low crime but increasingly deadly accidents that Nicholas quickly believes to be foul play, making him unpopular in his new community.

Of course, this isn’t helped by the fact that on his first night there, he arrests what seems to be half the town for various offenses, only to realize that one of the men he apprehended is to be his new partner, the eager and hilarious Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), son of the Inspector who plies his partner with questions about carnage and danger.

In a humorous play on the homoerotic subtext of cop films made in the states, Butterman invites Angell in for a night of drinking together on the sofa during a cozy double feature of Point Break and Bad Boys 2 that seems all the more entertaining after discovering on IMDb that early drafts of Hot Fuzz had given Angell a love interest who was cut from the shooting script but lots of her original dialogue was given instead to Butterman “often without any changes.”

Featuring great bits by Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, Steve Coogan and two nearly unrecognizable cameos by Cate Blanchett and Peter Jackson, the film also offers up two juicy roles for Timothy Dalton as a sadistic grocery store owner and Jim Broadbent as the Inspector unsure of how to deal with his new employee, other than making sure he enforces the swear box policy. A movie that, like Mike Judge’s Office Space, is sure to draw an even bigger following on DVD, Hot Fuzz is best shared with friends, especially those up on their 80’s and 90’s American cop movies.

This Is My Father

Director: Paul Quinn

Inspired by a story the mother of the Quinn brothers overheard as a girl growing up in Ireland, This Is My Father marks the impressive filmmaking debut of writer/director Paul Quinn with this heartbreakingly moving and tender love story. Despite an overly long set-up featuring the always charismatic James Caan as burned out high school teacher Kieran Johnson, the film quickly finds its footing once Johnson along with his nephew depart present day Chicago and return to their ancestral Ireland to try and learn more about Kieran’s father whom he never knew after discovering an old picture and inscription in a book of poems in his ailing mother’s belongings. Once in Ireland, Kieran and his nephew meet up with fortune teller Moira Deady and her money-hungry son (Colm Meaney) who begin to tell the men the story of their free-spirited, rebellious mother Fiona back when she was a seventeen year old girl and fell in love with the elder Kieran O’Day an introverted orphaned famer played by the always effective Aidan Quinn. Beautiful and bold newcomer Moya Farrelly admirably holds her own opposite veteran Aidan Quinn in a difficult role as the lovers begin an awkward courtship that’s threatened by the overbearing and guilt inducing hellfire and brimstone sermons at the local Irish Catholic parish and Fiona’s bitter alcoholic mother, the Widow Flynn (Gina Moxley). In spite of the Widow’s efforts to prevent her independent daughter from continuing to frolic with Kieran, the two begin spending more time with one another and on a memorable trip to the city, find themselves surprised by the arrival of the man in the sky—John Cusack who brings a much needed air of joyful energy to the film as a Life Magazine photographer who lands on the beach and befriends them for an evening. Although we know that the love story will end tragically, this gorgeous and sweepingly old fashioned tale is made all the more memorable thanks to Declan Quinn’s gorgeous cinematography, who as he did in Monsoon Wedding, In America and Leaving Las Vegas reminds us once again that he’s one of the greats. While Paul Quinn was criticized for “barely mask[ing] his contempt for organized religion,” by Variety’s Leonard Klady who felt that This Is My Father “comes to the dark conclusion that there is no reward for decency,” I found the deeply heartfelt and personal movie to be a fitting one for its genre and time period, reminding me of a tragic Thomas Hardy or Charles Dickens novel. Quinn’s Canadian and Irish coproduction which premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival is one that shouldn’t be missed on DVD.

Heights

“Everything looks perfect from far away.”

– Iron and Wine’s “Such Great Heights”

Director: Chris Terrio

Call it Magnolia on a smaller scale without the rain of frogs. Chris Terrio’s ambitious Altmanesque drama centers on a handful of New Yorkers all grappling with relationship issues over a period of twenty-four hours. Based on the play by Amy Fox (who co-wrote the film with Terrio), the film explores the adage usually given to men of the sins of the father going to the son but with the gender reversal it’s a look at the intimate lives of a mother and her daughter that captures our hearts in Heights. Glenn Close portrays Diana Lee—a famous actress (much like Close herself) who divides her busy schedule with teaching, directing and acting while trying not to fixate on the fact that her husband has broken the bounds of their casual open relationship by falling in love with Close’s younger, beautiful understudy. On the same day, we meet Diana’s daughter Isabel (the likable Invincible star Elizabeth Banks), an ambitious and talented photographer who seems to be having second thoughts in her upcoming marriage to handsome lawyer Jonathan (James Marsden) whom she chats with back and forth via walkie-talkies, in a unique and cute alternative to cell phones. We also meet Jesse Bradford’s Alec, a gifted young actor who catches the attention of Diana along with Peter (John Light), a writer working on a famous photographer’s memoirs journeys to New York from England where he meets with the exes of his own male lover (including a small but capable turn by Rufus Wainwright) for an intimate story he’s working on for Vanity Fair only to stumble on some of the same characters in the film who aren’t quite receptive to his questioning. Although some of the film is easy to predict, it still feels true and is so exquisitely crafted by writers Fox and Terrio along with a talented cast that we’re completely taken in by yet another sophisticated and involving Merchant Ivory production—especially considering that this time it was refreshingly made for twenty-first century audiences.

Tell Them Who You Are

Director: Mark S. Wexler

Midway through the emotionally charged documentary Tell Them Who You Are helmed by the son of two time Academy Award winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler, Haskell tells son Mark and viewers that he believes most directors are stupid and states, “I don’t think there’s a movie I’ve been on that I didn’t think I could direct better.” While such arrogance is shocking to say the least, it’s even more so when faced with Haskell Wexler’s enviable filmography which reads like an impressive history of some of the most important American filmmaking including Nichols’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Ashby’s Coming Home and Bound For Glory, Jewison’s In The Heat of the Night and George Lucas’s American Graffiti. This isn’t even taking into account the impressive films in which Wexler senior was removed from during the shoot such as Coppola’s The Conversation, Forman’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Malick’s Days of Heaven. When faced with the sweepingly gorgeous scope of these films, it’s easy to become entranced by Wexler and given to hero worship as he is one of the greats of all time, responsible for innovative techniques such as helping to pioneer cinema verite, mount cameras to capture tracking and dolly shots on his own long before the equipment was there and his innate ability to play with light, shadow and color that’s all the more astounding considering his partial color-blindness. However, Medium Cool director Wexler wasn’t interested in a standard mythic biography filled with glowing anecdotes and sunny memories—instead, in the hands of his son who has followed in his father’s footsteps in becoming a filmmaker (documentarian) and noted photojournalist but adopted the opposite political views of his liberal father’s background, there’s a lot of pain in their relationship that’s evident from the opening as a simply request to establish scene brings about a downward spiral of profanities and judgment. The tone of Tell Them Who You Are is best described as uneasy—it’s not a by-the-numbers documentary by any means and there’s a lot of anger and attitude that charge each frame (sometimes the men explode back and forth) yet there’s also a large amount of love and respect and while you feel a bit as though you’re catching a glimpse of a family fight you want to creep back away from, it’s hard to ignore. Filled with balanced interviews from some famous associates who range in their views from adoring to irritated, Mark tracks down Michael Douglas, Jane Fonda, Norman Jewison, George Lucas, Paul Newman and others, Wexler’s film which played at the Toronto International Film Festival is a must for classic American film buffs and for those curious about the usage of the medium of documentary filmmaking for exploratory and challenging portraits.

Jam

Director:
Craig Serling

Last month, I found myself trapped in a Phoenix elevator during the one hundred degree heat with five other people and a nine month pregnant woman. While it was alarming to say the least, the entire situation seemed so unreal that for the twenty minute ordeal, we found ourselves both trying to resourcefully come up with ways out, use humorous defense mechanisms and mostly stay stagnant in disbelief. This being said, it felt like something out of a movie and since then I’ve found myself intrigued by movies that arbitrary stick people together and watch how they respond. While it seems like a great opportunity for characters to open up, the strangers and I never shared as much as a first name although no doubt that would’ve changed had the woman gone into labor so it was entertaining to watch how quickly the fictitious characters in Craig Serling’s Jam began exchanging extremely personal information. Craig Serling (whose relative is the legendary and imaginative television pioneer Rod Serling) followed in Rod’s footsteps editing television shows ranging from Survivor to The Amazing Race and eventually created a short film in 2004 entitled Jam.

Working with co-writer Nicole Lonner, he took the premise of the short about a lesbian who goes into labor during a traffic jam and she and her partner try to deliver the baby safely and decided to revisit the same imaginary jam and explore the stories of other drivers and passengers on a hot day when stalled on a rural mountain road after a dog darts into traffic, causing a swerve and crash that brings dangerous live power lines to the ground.

Ironically, the plot of the short film is the least believable of the longer version of Jam as the two hippie women enlist the help of criminals hiding out in a stolen RV to deliver the child au natural and instead we find ourselves drawn in to a few of the more powerful stories including one about a good-natured and hard-working father who, divorced from a wife he still may have feelings for, tries to let his kids know that he’s accepted a promotion and will be seeing them even less. Taking place on Father’s Day, this admittedly episodic film has some moments that are too preposterous to be believed and characters who seem to be cardboard cutouts going through the motions but the script is admirable and the goal of introducing us to fifteen wildly diverse travelers at major crossroads in their own lives undoubtedly helped the screenwriters earn the 2006 Independent Spirit Award from the Santa Fe Film Festival.

The cast includes some familiar faces and impressive newcomers including Christopher Amitrano, Alex Rocco, Jonathan Silverman, Gina Torres, Tess Harper, and Marianne Jean-Baptiste that all help remind us that—similar to the REM song by the same name that also featured a huge traffic jam in its popular 90’s music video— everybody hurts.

Brooklyn Rules

Director: Michael Corrente

As a part Italian film buff, I grew up with the family tradition of watching The Godfather trilogy every single year. To my family, it’s not a film about the mafia; it’s a film about family that uses the mafia as a Shakespearean and operatic backdrop. This being said, sometimes I’m accused of looking to Coppola’s epic far too often but in regards to this film, I think it’s not only warranted but it’s damn near impossible to watch Brooklyn Rules without comparing it to other mob films especially The Godfather. Yes, The Godfather—not just because Brooklyn stars Scott Caan who is the spitting image of his father James and in this film Scott plays a character very similar to his dad’s Sonny Corleone but also because the other two main characters in the film recall the other Corleone brothers Michael and Fredo and one is even named Michael. Although penned by Sopranos writer Terence Winter and often compared to De Niro’s A Bronx Tale, this film chronicles the story of three tight knit Brooklyn friends whose lives change during the fateful year of 1985 as they struggle with decisions involving loyalty and love. Freddie Prinze Jr. manages to wipe all of his bad 90’s teen movies from our memory with his portrayal of Michael, the attractive and intelligent Columbia student who, nearing graduation uses a cocky narration to tell of his artistry in scamming his way through essays and his goal to attend law school and get out of his doomed environment where far too many of his neighbors are ending up involved in the escalating crime wars that result in the bold, infamous murder of Gambino boss Paul Castellano by Gotti’s men on December 16. After he meets beautiful Ellen (Mena Suvari playing a Kay Corleone like WASP), Michael feels the strain in his relationship with the friends he considers brothers—womanizing Carmine (Scott Caan), who grew up idolizing local mobster Caesar Manganaro and has started to become involved in this thing of theirs and Jerry Ferrara as Bobby, the sweet but slightly slow friend whose goals are far les ambitious and consist of marrying his longtime girlfriend and becoming a postal worker. While Bobby is the butt of many jokes in regards to his frugal spending and movie musical knowledge, those of us who have seen too many mob movies know exactly what’s going to happen to him but Winter’s clever script breaks our hearts all the same and as Mick La Salle said in his San Francisco Chronicle review that when it comes to accurately depicting life in Brooklyn, Corrente’s film can be added “to the short list of movies that get it right.” While the narration near the beginning sets us up for what we believe is going to be a B movie—some of the dialogue seems to be a nostalgic crib of GoodFellas, the film works because we believe the relationship we’re seeing between the three men, not only when trying to sort out the rest of their lives but also in the lighter moments such as a hilarious and eye-opening analysis by Caan as he debates the logic of the end of Zemeckis’ Back to the Future with Prinze.

Jesse James

Complete Title:

The Assassination of Jesse James

by the Coward Robert Ford
Director: Andrew Dominik

Despite Brad Pitt’s highly publicized and surprising win as Best Actor from the Venice Film Festival for his role as Jesse James, the film with the ten word title (a marquee nightmare) belongs to Casey Affleck. In the past, Casey has turned in fine if mostly understated supporting roles in independent movies but in 2007 with a role in this film and his brother Ben’s directorial effort Gone Baby Gone, he’s ready for his close-up. Recalling the introspective, sensitive and painful emotions expressed by Dean in the 50’s or Newman in the 60’s, his role as Robert Ford also brings to mind the performance that launched his good friend and brother-in-law Joaquin Phoenix in the 90’s in Van Sant’s To Die For. While the burden of a title that sums up the climax of the movie is that the audience knows exactly what’s going to happen (also because it’s the stuff of American infamy), clocking in at an exhaustive one hundred and sixty minutes admittedly wears on the patience of audiences who recently enjoyed the faster paced 3:10 to Yuma and weren’t game for a Sergio Leone styled western opus, we are enraptured due to the impressive performances of a cast filled with character actors and the lush cinematography by Roger Deakins. Deakins who has served as the frequent collaborator on Coen Brothers movies with his exquisite photography (the only saving grace in The Man Who Wasn’t There, for example) has dazzled audiences for decades but some of the visuals in Jesse James will leave you breathless with their artistry by blurring the edges of the shots like we’re in the middle of an optometrist’s shop playing with lenses to better study certain scenes and getting us lost in the western landscape (with Canada standing in as America). However, the acting and the visuals can’t make up for the bloated running time that had audiences shifting in their seats after only twenty minutes of slowly paced scenes that were summed up by The Hollywood Reporter as follows, “pointlessly long takes, repetitive scenes, grim Western landscapes and mumbled, heavily accented dialogue,” coupled with their belief that, “word of mouth may kill the movie faster than Robert Ford killed Jesse James.” While I do agree that the complicated and as Ebert pointed out homoerotic relationship between hero-worshipping Ford with his idol the abusive Jesse James, whom Pitt intriguingly plays as bipolar in a stereotype busting role, does get a bit lost throughout, the turns by the rest of the cast including Sam Rockwell (always a joy) as Charley Ford and Paul Schneider as Dick Liddl help add fuel to New Zealand writer/director Andrew Dominik’s adaptation of the novel by Ron Hansen. Although it’s worth the theatrical investment just to see Deakins’ majestic sequences on a large screen, staying highly caffeinated may help keep you awake through this film that does rival Days of Heaven and The New World for ponderous, leisurely and overly contemplative scene after scene that’s an admirable if unsuccessful antidote to another summer of Guy Ritchie-esque MTV action films.

SPL Winter Series Films Announced

After taking into consideration all of the wonderful feedback from patrons during our summer run, I'm happy to announce the next batch of titles selected for my Sunday Film Discussion Series at Scottsdale Public Library. I've already received notes and information regarding more title suggestions from some of you for the spring if the series is extended so keep those ideas coming. Note: as of now, we don't have an agreement with Sony Pictures Classics, The Weinstein Company, or Fox Studios to show their films so unfortunately I wasn't able to get Once or a few of the other ones we were shooting for.

Here's the details:

CC Winter Film Discussions Sundays at 1:30 pm
Scottsdale Library: Civic Center Branch

Main Auditorium (Lower Level)
Hosted by Jen Johans

December 2: Stranger than Fiction
(Directed by Marc Forster)

December 9: What’s Cooking?
(Directed by Gurinder Chadha)

January 6: Two Family House
(Directed by Raymond De Felitta)

January 20: Matchstick Men
(Directed by Ridley Scott)

February 3: You Can Count On Me
(Directed by Kenneth Lonergan)

February 17: Finding Forrester
(Directed by Gus Van Sant)


Thanks! Hope to see you at the movies!

Click Here to Register

The Darjeeling Limited

Director: Wes Anderson

The literary aspirations and inspirations of the films of Wes Anderson have always played a large part of his oeuvre. While on a lesser scale in his debut Bottle Rocket, they were at the forefront of both Rushmore and his masterpiece The Royal Tenenbaums, which were co-written by Owen Wilson. Anderson made a misstep with his Tenenbaums follow-up The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, co-written not with Wilson but The Squid and the Whale auteur Noah Baumbach and that’s when film lovers began to turn on the overly hip and stylized films—colorful movies with art direction that was likened to dollhouses, bright theatrical sets and characters with obvious costumes all placed in the center of the frame a la Roman Polanski. Suddenly, Anderson became a precocious and overeager student, kind of like Rushmore’s Max Fischer (played by Jason Schwartzman)-- the annoying but undeniably talented youngster who is obviously a little too impressed with himself and his purported importance. While I never completely bailed on the Anderson bandwagon, I was very disappointed by Life Aquatic but just attributed it to be an example of artistic excess and freedom run amok. Anderson re-teamed with Rushmore star Jason Schwartzman who, along with Roman Coppola (Francis Ford Coppola’s son and Schwartzman's cousin) banded together to write his newest film, The Darjeeling Limited which is much more successful than its predecessor. However, ultimately it’s still hard to separate "Anderson the reputation" from "Anderson the filmmaker" given the shots that call attention to themselves and an unbelievable storybook sensibility with an overabundance of metaphors laid on extremely thick throughout the otherwise affable film that make Darjeeling feel like an ideal candidate to be analyzed in Introduction to Film classrooms or high school honor's English. In addition, the film is a fascinating work of Hollywood family analysis as it’s nearly impossible not to wonder about the Coppola involvement and metaphors to their own family along with the Wilson brothers as Owen Wilson is the film’s main star and when he appears onscreen covered with bandages, the audience does gasp in sad recollection of his recent tragic suicide attempt.

With a prologue entitled Hotel Chevalier that can be seen for free on iTunes and on the web (that, despite being separated from the ninety minute feature will no doubt appear on the DVD), the ambitious and sprawling Darjeeling tells the story of three brothers who haven’t spoken to one another in a year since the funeral of their father. When the film opens, long-legged and skinny Peter, played by Adrien Brody (looking appropriately nerdy) races to board the Darjeeling train in India where he reunites with bossy itinerary minded eldest brother Francis (Owen Wilson) battered from a near-death experience and his youngest brother Jack (Jason Schwartzman), sad-eyed from a recent tryst in his troubled relationship that’s far past its expiration date. Peter comes with his own baggage literally and figuratively as he has escaped his pregnant wife in what seems to be a personal responsibility crisis and with his many designer bags that had belonged to his deceased father (all eleven pieces of luggage were designed by Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton). During the trip through India, the three agree with much prodding from Francis to undergo a spiritual journey and become closer in their relationship but ultimately result in gossiping amongst each other with prefaces not to tell the absent brother whatever information is being transpired, only for the confidant to break that promise moments later and betray the information. Abusing Indian pharmaceuticals while trying to fake their way through praying at shrines, the story is best when dealing with the interplay between the brothers in an understated manor and at its worst when forcing the many metaphors (baggage that should be abandoned, prescription glasses that make Peter see the world through his dad’s eyes, Francis’s bandages indicating his need for healing and Jack’s sublimation through art) down our throats or trying overly hard to fit in with Anderson’s other films in its obligatory inclusion of a well-timed slow-motion shot, Rolling Stones songs and other painstakingly choreographed moments. All in all, a return for Anderson back to the right direction of his career (heading closer to Tenenbaums and Rushmore territory than Life Aquatic) but like the brothers in Darjeeling, we do get the feeling that an entirely different journey would be beneficial for his filmmaking and while the Coppola family make excellent screenwriting partners, we do long for another collaboration with the gifted Wilson.

Download Hotel Chevalier and the Soundtrack

We Own the Night

Director: James Gray

Set in 1988, this New York police drama feels like it was crafted in the style of American filmmaking popular a decade earlier and after only a few minutes into the film, we begin to realize that We Own the Night is precisely the type of film that actors like Al Pacino or Robert DeNiro would have gravitated to in the 1970’s. Filmed with a gun metal color palette with moody interiors, dark grays, blues and blacks and dim lighting—this Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and Mean Streets hybrid takes a little while to get going but gets our hearts racing in some bravura sequences, most notably one that surpasses The French Connection with a car chase under New York bridges. Reuniting with actors Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg whom writer/director James Gray had worked with on The Yards a few years earlier, We Own the Night tells the story of the men of the Grusinsky family who are on both sides of the law. Father Robert Duvall is the highly regarded Deputy Chief Burt Grusinsky, who, as the film begins states how proud he is to have his son, the lieutenant and family man Joseph (Wahlberg) following in his footsteps and also heading up the drug task force to combat the new far deadlier influx of drugs that has turned New York City into a war zone. Brother Bobby (Joaquin Phoenix) has hidden his ties to the police by taking his mother’s maiden name in his role as club manager for El Caribe, living the life of blissful and irresponsible hedonism with beautiful Eva Mendes, card games, booze and drugs until he learns from his family that the Russian mob may be running drugs out of his Brooklyn club. When his brother Joseph is shot and left for dead, Bobby realizes that he can’t ignore his family loyalty any longer and tries to get involved in the dangerous situation. Thrilling filmmaking benefits from the credible performances of the leads and top-notch execution (the previews alone made it look like The Departed 2) but it gets slightly derailed in a final act that feels inauthentic and actually had some audience members in the theatre I saw the picture in walking out in disbelief after having been so engrossed for the first eighty minutes. After some research and consultation, I learned that what happens in the film could actually happen in the world of law enforcement, however it is a bit unlikely and Gray’s sudden twist feels forced. Still, the whole film can’t be penalized for its finale and police and crime film fans will not be disappointed in Gray’s film which was nominated for the 2007 Golden Palm award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Iceberg

Alternate Title: L’Iceberg
Directors: Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon & Bruno Romy


While serving as the blog-master and Festival Ambassador at the 2007 Scottsdale International Film Festival, I met a lot of friendly movie buffs whom I enjoyed dishing with regarding all things foreign film. From movies to see, ones to avoid, ones that we loved in recent memory to anything that entered our heads—there’s no beating festival atmosphere for fun discussion. I left with a mental list and a few e-mails as well with a majority telling me that their favorite SIFF film in recent memory was the Belgian comedy L’Iceberg which I finally found on Netflix. In what seems to be a fusion of Triplets of Bellville and Mon Oncle with the air of classic American silent film masters (the holy trinity of Lloyd, Chaplin and Keaton) thrown in for good measure, Iceberg tells the story of Fiona (director Fiona Gordon), a manager at a fast food restaurant who as the film opens, accidentally locks herself in the large walk-in freezer overnight. After discovering that Julien, her perpetually yawning and dull husband (co-director Dominique Abel) along with her two children failed to even notice her absence, she finds herself oddly drawn to all things frozen, finally embarking on an adventure that she hopes will lead her to a real life iceberg when she becomes attracted to deaf-mute sailor Rene (Phillippe Martz) who agrees to let her share his tiny boat. The boat which, when translated appears to be named The Titanic is one that ironically aims to head for the iceberg and although Julien tries desperately to track down his wife, she’s single-minded both in her fascination with ice and also the wild looking Rene. Increasingly bizarre, the film is one you must see to believe—film students will delight in the uneven achievement of some truly awe-inspiring blends of clever deadpan choreographed action with the visuals (that may indeed impress ultra-stylized filmmaker Wes Anderson) but it still seems to be more of a fascinating puzzle to be admired than a wholly successful film. Iceberg was the winner of the award for Best Film at the Bogota Film Festival along with a richly deserved accolade for Fiona Gordon as Best Actress from the Seattle International Film Festival.

Vacancy

Director: Nimrod Antal

In Vacancy, bickering soon-to-be divorced couple Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale find themselves stalled on a deserted back road in the middle of the night. Despite the influx of such films as Psycho, The Shining, Identity and 2007’s other horror flick 1408, they decide to wait out the night until the car can get serviced by checking into a seedy motel. Although there are numerous red flags—the first and most important would be that the initial sound the two hear when entering the office is a blood curdling scream and what seems to be a graphic adult film playing in the back office—they forge ahead. Wilson, exhausted from driving all night while abusing truck driver uppers and fighting with his wife along with the ultimate emasculation of getting lost and having to ask directions at a gas station, reluctantly checks into the “newlywed suite” with Beckinsale who lashes out at her husband when a past tragedy enters the conversation and self-medicates herself into a strong sleep by the aid of a Zoloft-Prozac cocktail. When the two find that the TV of the dingy bug-infested room plays only static, they insert one of the mysterious videotapes found only to realize after a few initially horrifying images that the amateur horror and exploitative flicks are crude documentaries shot in their very room of previous guests getting slaughtered. Faster than you can say “you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave,” (Eagles, Hotel California), the two begin realizing that there may not be a way out as they try to prevent the imminent attack and outsmart the villains. Better than it should be—Panic Room with more gore—the film is elevated by the disbelieving and peeved Wilson and emotionally drained Beckinsale who, like characters in Panic and other intelligent thrillers, do come up with a variety of diversions and decoys that audience members who can barely resist yelling at the TV are thinking of in their own heads. Horror fans won’t be disappointed—it’s a B movie that knows its roots well and uses them to great effect without overstaying its welcome in less than ninety minutes.

Even Money

Director: Mark Rydell

For gamblers, the thing about addiction is that it’s never satisfied. Players are only ahead for so long but in the end, the house always wins, even if gamblers lose their own house in the process. This is exactly the risk facing Carol Carver (Kim Basinger), a married novelist who claims she’s spending her days working on book number two but in reality is spending her time losing her teenage daughter’s college fund and husband Ray Liotta’s trust while playing the slot machines. Mark Rydell’s gloomy portrait of addiction emphasizes gambling as the root of the character’s problems but he’s also careful to include the addictions of love, power and money as we meet a group of desperate characters whose lives are beginning to unravel. Loss of control in contemporary society is a recurring theme for Crash producer Bob Yari’s films and while Even Money is no Crash, the increasingly impressive Yari Film Group managed to produce the film with an equally impressive ensemble cast including Danny De Vito, Nick Cannon, Carla Gugino, Forest Whitaker, Grant Sullivan, Jay Mohr, Tim Roth and a nearly unrecognizable Kelsey Grammer. While some critics were justifiably irritated by the film’s decision not to explain the reasons for the character’s addictions or even how or why they became gamblers in the first place, there’s enough good performances to help keep the film afloat and some of the stories are more successful than others such as the tale about college basketball star Nick Cannon who is persuaded into throwing games to help his indebted older brother Forest Whitaker. Although Basinger’s twitchy and shaking pathetic addict made me want to throw in the towel whenever she was onscreen due to her underwritten characterization, she reminds us of her Academy Award winning power in her scenes with DeVito as a tragic dreaming has-been magician who wants to start anew. All the while we’re drawn into a mystery surrounding the death of a bookie at the beginning of the film and the possible involvement of the often discussed but unseen mastermind Ivan who many of the characters want to track down until a rushed finale that doesn’t quite have the emotional kick for which the film and the constant dialogue about the man had prepared us.

Two Brothers and a Bride

Alternate Title: A Foreign Affair
Director: Helmut Schleppi

Released in theatres and in the film festival circuit as A Foreign Affair, Helmut Schleppi’s surprising indie film has been renamed Two Brothers and a Bride to better appeal to DVD buyers intrigued by the popularity of numbers in movie titles. However, it doesn’t matter what name the film is given—Schleppi’s charming and heartfelt work sneaks up on viewers who begin the film expecting one thing given the sardonic tone and sexist straightforward remarks of our lead character played by Tim Blake Nelson, only to find themselves moved by the end of the work. Taking place somewhere in the unnamed Midwest, impressive character actor Nelson disappears into his role as Jake Adams, a farmer who finds he has to fend for not only himself but his younger brother Josh (David Arquette) as well after their beloved ma (Lois Smith) passes away. Since mom darned their socks, kept the home clean and prepared hot meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner, the grown men realize that they must find another woman to take her place but quickly realize that a professional housekeeper will cost them too much in the long run. Nelson decides the next best thing is a wife but preferably one who won’t ask too many questions interfere in their lives or expect romantic entanglements and soon he packs his brother up and they venture to Russia on a two week romance tour to meet eligible mail order brides from what they hope is a subservient culture. Inspired by the real life tours that draw men from all walks of life over to foreign lands, viewers find the premise both funny and uneasy given their questionable moral issues but realize that Schleppi and writer Geert Heetebrij (who along with the actors did take the tours for research) will not mislead American audiences and provide a balanced look at the phenomenon which is helped by the character of Angela Beck, played by likable Emily Mortimer as a British documentary filmmaker who is following around the men and women involved. The men quickly begin to learn that once in a foreign environment different aspects of their personalities emerge when they’re not solely preoccupied with farm life as Josh enjoys dating for the first time in his life by becoming a player and Jake must rethink his stereotypes and attitudes as he begins spending more and more time with Mortimer that makes him realize that what he knows about women (which admittedly came from the farm and his mother) may be misguided as he honestly approaches each woman and creates a list, takes notes and tries to select a wife with scientific methodology. A likable film that is sure to fool viewers expecting a by-the-numbers romantic comedy, Two Brothers and a Bride (or A Foreign Affair if one prefers) is sure to delight viewers and cause discussion.

Pittsburgh

Directors: Chris Bradley & Kyle LaBrache

Local boy makes good. Naturally, it helps when that local boy is Jeff Goldblum. Jurassic Park star Goldblum, who made his stuttering quirky persona irresistible long before Hugh Grant did the same thing on the other side of the pond and made it fashionable, seems to be an unlikely choice for a lead role in a theatrical production of The Music Man. Nonetheless, Goldblum did take a break from film acting to return to his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to play the part and later, Goldblum collaborated with directors Chris Bradley and Kyle LaBrache on this mockumentary that walks a nearly invisible line between fiction and nonfiction as we watch Goldblum (as himself) take a role to help his leading lady, twenty-three year old Canadian fiancé (Catherine Wreford) get a work visa to stay in the United States. Going against the advice of his agent and being kicked to “second guest” on Conan after he plugged his regional theatre turn on The Late Show with Craig Kilborn, Goldblum enlists the help of good friends Ed Begley Jr. and Illeana Douglas who decide to perform in the show as well. In addition, people who own any of Moby’s CDs will definitely want to check out his creepy cameo as Illeana’s lecherous boyfriend who dumps her while in a mermaid parade so that he can shag fans on tour. Hilarious and eye-opening—the film which was the Spotlight Premiere at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, has received numerous comparisons to the work of Christopher Guest and while fans of his movies will no doubt be at home here, Pittsburgh plays even better to the film buff crowd. Although relegated to playing on the Starz channel, Pittsburgh has been recently released on DVD and the brief film (roughly ninety minutes) is augmented by several deleted scenes featuring other stars playing (hopefully) fictitious or exaggerated versions of themselves such as Scott Caan who has a memorable scene with Goldblum while he’s getting his hair cut for the period Music Man.

Jindabyne

Director: Ray Lawrence

“I once caught a fish this big.” Fishermen are famous for their embellished tall tales of adventure on the high seas or in the quest for the biggest catch of the day. But Stewart Kane (Gabriel Byrne) and his three male friends get much more than they bargained for with this haunting tale that’s so filled with quiet lurking menace and existential questioning that not even Ernest Hemingway would have dared to tell it. And indeed Hemingway did not—based on the story “So Much Water So Close to Home” by Raymond Carver that was first adapted and woven into the meandering, compelling yet overrated Short Cuts by Robert Altman, this time the setting is moved to the desolate, windy fields in Jindabyne, Australia. Lantana director Ray Lawrence helms this harrowing tale based on scripter Beatrix Christian’s work which finds four men justifiably ostracized by their community and accused of moral bankruptcy after they discover the nude murdered body of attractive teenager Susan (Tatea Reilly) on Friday, yet wait days later when they’re set to leave their fishing expedition before phoning the police. How could four very different but grown adult men behave in such a shocking way? Issues of racism and sexism are raised as the victim was not only female but also Aboriginal and the aftermath finds both marriage and family bonds put to the test, especially in the home of our main characters Gabriel Byrne and his wife Laura Linney who share a small yet emotionally overcrowded house with their young son and Byrne’s overbearing mother. Even more unsettling in the film’s narrative is the fact that Susan’s killer is hiding in plain sight and aside from the general feeling of unease we have in watching the disintegration of characters’ facades that crumble after the unspeakable horror, director Lawrence avoids going with a typical thriller mode by never resolving the murder or even showing an attempt to locate the “thriller” aspect which, if the film had been made in America may not have simply been the main plotline but you can guess that Byrne and Linney would have tracked down the man with guns blazing. While it shouldn’t be that simple, not even addressing the foul play in Jindabyne is far more unbelievable than the concept of people in contemporary society so desensitized to violence that they’d be able to tether a victim to a tree and continue on their merry way—not to perhaps catch a fish “this” big but to avoid an even bigger body that reminds them of their unimportance in the scheme of things in the vast, unforgiving Australian environment.

Inland Empire

Director: David Lynch

Some studios take out expensive full page ads in Variety or plaster the faces of actors on Hollywood billboards in order to remind members of the Academy to nominate the people involved in movies during Oscar season. David Lynch prefers to use cows. It’s been widely reported that after his three hour experimental opus Inland Empire wrapped he became a one-man public relations machine on behalf of Laura Dern, literally taking his method to the street by standing on the corners with a cow and a dream. Although she didn’t receive the nomination, it has to be the most eccentric campaign ever created and we’d expect nothing less of Lynch. While I’m not sure whether Dern should be offended or flattered that a cow was involved, one thing is for certain and that is his affection for Dern and likewise her trust in the director which explains her involvement in the frustrating yet intoxicating Inland Empire. Another postmodern nightmare that should endear him to his fans, Empire made me take a step backwards as I’d always been on the fence regarding Lynch but was blown away by Mulholland Drive. Of course, as established—he’s not one to play by the rules but I wasn’t sure just how off the deep end he’d go with this rambling and incoherent but beautiful work. We’re never quite sure exactly what’s happeneing—we believe it’s about Nikki Grace (Dern), a married blonde actress who takes a role on a film that she later learns may be cursed after discovering it’s a remake of a doomed incomplete Polish production that found the two leads dead. She begins to let her imagine run away with her while simultaneously becoming attracted to costar Justin Theroux. After a bizarre opening, the first hour of the film is compelling and even easy to decipher but that’s when Lynch reminds us once again he’s running the show and takes us further into the nightmares and dreamscapes of his subconscious mind with a meandering hybrid of fantasy and horror involving a carnivalesque stable of freaks and people living on the fringes of society—life sized rabbits living out a domestic drama in front of what appears to be a live studio television audience, hookers who enjoy doing the locomotion, a scary old woman, lots of Polish speakers, and a film crew. Co-produced by Dern who inspired the title of the piece after sharing that her husband musician Ben Harper is from the area nicknamed that, the film co-stars Jeremy Irons, Harry Dean Stanton, Diane Ladd, William H. Macy, Julia Ormond, Mary Steenburgen and also utilizes the involvement of Nastassja Kinski, Laura Harring and Naomi Watts. Lynch, who told Joe Huang at the AFI Dallas Film Festival that the film’s “episodes” were never supposed to be edited together for a feature but were rather just film short stories he wrote and shot on digital video, earned a Special Award from both the Venice Film Festival and also the 2007 National Society of Film Critics Awards for what they called his “labyrinthine Inland Empire, a magnificent and maddening experiment with digital video possibilities.” Overall a film to be experienced rather than sincerely admired such as Mulholland or his other works, Inland Empire’s three hour running time is daunting indeed but for those ready to take the journey, go ahead and follow along and try your best to keep up.

2 Days in Paris

Director: Julie Delpy

Try as we might, sometimes there’s no getting around the “it’s not you, it’s me” diplomatic paradigm in breaking up with a lover. However, in writer/director Julie Delpy’s unflinching look at thirty-somethings who try to revive their two year relationship with a trip to Europe, it’s both of them and audiences cringe throughout in recognition that not only should they not be together, we can’t imagine just who the unlikable, narcissistic characters would actually be right for. At first, we’re instinctively on Delpy’s side—she is after all Julie Delpy, the sophisticated beauty who enchanted the world with her roles in Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Before Sunset and proved to be a cool femme fatale in Kieslowski’s White—and in 2 Days in Paris, she seems to be playing a very thinly disguised version of herself. Like Delpy, our main character Marion has weak eyesight and she also had been in a relationship with our leading man, Adam Goldberg, and even went as far to shoot some scenes in her family home casting her own parents along with her cat. The humorous character actor Goldberg is in full Woody Allen mode, hypochondriacally suffering from a new ailment every other minute after admittedly coming down with very real food poisoning in Italy but his foul mood quickly transforms the city of love to the city of dissatisfaction when they land in Paris and he begins numerous arguments. Playing an interior designer named Jack, Goldberg is a tattooed bohemian prima donna who complains about dial up internet, numerous conditions inside Delpy’s tiny Parisian apartment and spends all of the time he's outdoors wanting to keep his travels at arm’s length by photographing the entirety of the trip, despite the fact that Europe is fully documented and his girlfriend Marion is a professional photographer. Soon after they meet up with her blunt parents, Marion and Jack bump into several ex-lovers of Marion’s with Jack’s mind running overtime in trying to translate subtle glances and conversations with thoughts of infidelity dancing through his head. Quickly, the scenes of his discomfort soon become the only thing with which we can identify as the film goes on and becomes increasingly unlikable, irritating (so many characters appear out of nowhere just to argue, shock or crudely discuss sex in ways that would freak out Kevin Smith) and bizarre. He plays his odd man out status well and pretty soon it’s Marion whom we’re blaming for the situation because most of us watching (at least in the theatre I saw it in) are Americans experiencing a decidedly unromantic version of Paris in a strange cross between Scorsese’s After Hours and Allen's Deconstructing Harry. I really wanted to admire the film, having looked forward to it not only because it seemed like a delightful yet painfully real look at relationships that may actually be authentic (it’s far from it) but also because Delpy not only wrote and directed in the film but also starred in, co-produced, and worked on the soundtrack but it may in fact be too much of a singular vision. You know things are not going well when we meet up with characters that Jack had cruelly sent in the wrong direction because they were Da Vinci Code reading Bush voters later into the film and they reappear to be spray painted and most likely attacked by vandals, yet we can’t help thinking that, despite their opposite politics and attitudes, if we had followed those characters we may have had much more fun than trailing around Jack and Marion.

Mr. Woodcock

Director: Craig Gillespie

Former television commercial director Craig Gillespie tackled the script of first time writing duo Michael Carnes and Josh Gilbert which centers on a young man who has overcome his youth as an overweight student mercilessly bullied by his middle school gym teacher and channeled it into a successful career writing a hit self-help book. When we first meet him as an adult, John Farley (Seann William Scott) seems to have the perfect life—traveling around on book tours with his no-nonsense business handler Maggie (the always hilarious Amy Poehler) and finally getting the key to his small Midwestern town but he’s in for a nasty surprise when he returns back to his childhood home to find his widowed mother Susan Sarandon engaged to his nemesis Coach Woodcock. As he proved with his roles in the inane but surprisingly funny School for Scoundrels and the joyously sleazy Bad Santa, nobody plays the tough, sinister yet oddly double-sided villainous antihero better than Billy Bob Thornton. Thornton is what makes this film work—he elevates Scott’s performance with his challenging dialogue and demeanor yet also reveals the oddly charming side (most evident in Bandits) that makes it believable to audiences that Sarandon would have become involved with him in the first place. After a failed attempt to apologize, clear the air and start from scratch, John ends up teaming up with another tortured classmate Nedderman (Ethan Suplee), to spy on Woodcock in order to get the dirt that will prevent the nuptials and break up the couple in a sort of twisted Parent Trap in reverse. It’s refreshing to see a male character try and fight so hard for his mom as usually films are overpopulated by the gender clichéd mother and daughter or father and son bond and while I do agree with other critics (most notably Roger Ebert) that the contrived ending wasn’t nearly satisfying enough and we wanted a darker payoff to fit Woodcock’s evil character, it’s still a much more entertaining film than I was expecting. However, there are some pure Hollywood moments that do get in the way of the performances and hilarity as the LA Times reported that director David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers, Fred Claus and Shanghai Knights) was hired for three weeks of reshoots to retool the film.

Shanghai Kiss

Directors: David Ren and Kern Konwiser

Film buffs will remember the following paraphrased joke from Annie Hall: a guy goes to the doctor to report that his brother thinks he’s a chicken. The doctor asks why the man doesn’t turn him in and his reply is, “I would but I need the eggs.” Woody Allen used this quip in the epilogue of Hall in expressing his feeling that despite the agony and pain, there’s much joy to be had in relationships and we keep on giving love a chance because frankly we need the eggs. The same can be said for the films of Woody Allen which get released once a year and despite the fluctuation in quality over the past decade, one thing is for certain and that is the unrivaled and unquestionable influence he’s had on filmmakers around the globe. Everyone from major directors and celebrated auteurs of today to up and coming independent filmmakers seem to have drawn inspiration from his work and although the resulting movies range in their cinematic success, the man’s life and movies are utilized to strong effect in the unfortunately named debut film from directors David Ren and Kern Konwiser, Shanghai Kiss. Before she became the cheerleader to be saved in order to save the world in TV’s Heroes, teen actress Hayden Panettiere shot the role in Shanghai that later earned her an award for Best Actress in a Feature Film from the 2007 Newport Beach Film Festival. In the film she plays the sixteen year old Adelaide or “Adi” for short—a bubbly, artistically talented, mature yet childish, free-spirited self-proclaimed natural genius who latches onto Liam Liu (Ken Leung), a hapless twenty-eight year old Chinese American out of work actor struggling to get past both Tinsletown and his own self-loathing Asian stereotypes in landing a role. Serving as Liam’s unlikely ally, Adi harbors a major crush on her new friend. Although, in the tradition of those who have escaped from their culture out of anger, Liam must learn to get a better sense of self and his place in the world and accept himself before he is good for anyone, let alone a younger female sidekick whom he prefers to accompany to harmless outings to movies, Laundromats, coffee and car rides so that she doesn’t have to ride the L.A. bus to and from her Beverly Hills high school alone. When he isn’t spending time with Adi, Liam devotes his time to the occasional one-night stand and complaining about his situation to good friend Joel David Moore in Allen styled witty, self-deprecating dialogue. After the grandmother he’s never met dies and leaves him the ancestral home in Shanghai, Liam impulsively goes to China where he falls for the polar-opposite of Adi in Kelly Hu’s Micki, a sophisticated grown woman who makes Liam realize he may want to return to his cultural roots and permanently move to the foreign land with a language he doesn’t speak. Of course, that’s when he must stop running and start facing not only his friends in California but also the father from whom he’s been estranged back in New York to address the reason for his bitterness. Leung makes the most of a difficult role with a character who uses humor to disguise his every emotion, coming off as a callous creep at times and a wounded soul in others in a fully realized portrayal which also earned him a Special Mention for his Breakout Performance from the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival where the film premiered. While it definitely calls to mind Manhattan in the romantic triangle between an age appropriate woman and a young artistically talented girl with a man undergoing a self-identity crisis, not to mention using some direct quotes from Allen and paying homage to numerous films in other scenes (in one deleted example on the DVD there’s a hybrid of two famous speeches from Annie Hall and Manhattan), Shanghai Kiss is still a wonderful little find and deserves a better audience than its direct to DVD fate. Although burdened by a title that doesn’t really apply, the poster of the film which features Panattiere should instantly attract fans of Heroes but don’t let the youth-appeal of the box fool you—it’s a film that plays best to adults (especially the twenty or thirty-something crowd) rather than teenagers thanks to the intellectual script of David Ren.

Next

Director: Lee Tamahori

Fans of John Woo’s Paycheck will enjoy Next, which like Woo’s film is also a science fiction action romance inspired by a short story penned by Philip K. Dick. Next, which is loosely based from the main concept of Dick's “The Golden Man,” by Gary Goldman (who also worked on Dick adaptations of Total Recall and Minority Report) along with co-writers Jonathan Hensleigh and Paul Bernbaum who also drew on creative contributions including the occupation of the main character from actor Nicolas Cage who also serves as a producer. Cage plays Cris Johnson, a Las Vegas magician who performs under the name of Frank Cadillac hiding behind the seedy atmosphere by performing cheap tricks for the tourists who don’t realize that he takes advantage of his natural ability to see a few minutes into the future in his act—thereby hiding in plain sight. Johnson uses his knack to help him win small fortunes in the casinos for whatever he may need without trying to call too much attention to himself but soon, he’s “discovered” by gaming authorities whose jurisdiction is usurped by government agent Callie Ferris (played by Academy Award nominee Julianne Moore). Ferris tracks down Johnson to try and lure him back into helping the government he’s avoided since he was a child when he was taken in for extreme medical and supervised testing after his gift was first identified. Cage tries to escape with the aid of attractive Liz Cooper (Jessica Biel) until he gets roped into helping Ferris stop a bomb threat to Los Angeles. While admittedly you must shut off your common sense to even begin to suspend disbelief enough to accept that a man can look into the future and see an infinite number of possibilities for each action and simultaneously coexist and carry on conversations in the present, Cage’s charm helps make this film work and he provides some nice humorous moments such as when he tries to come up with the perfect opening line to Biel in a diner in a scene that makes viewers instantly recall Bill Murray trying to seduce Andie MacDowell in Groundhog Day. To quote Orlando Sentinel’s Roger Moore, “Who says preposterous junk can’t be fun?” And as much as was the case with the preposterous Paycheck, the sheer style of the special effects sequences along with the appeal of Next’s trio of main actors keeps things fun indeed.

Cashback

Director: Sean Ellis

In 2004, British writer/director Sean Ellis crafted an eighteen minute film also named Cashback that earned numerous short film accolades from festivals including Tribeca and Chicago, while also receiving the prestigious Academy Award nomination for the Best Short Film Live Action of that particular year. Two years later, Ellis decided to lengthen the piece into a feature length film, while keeping his original intact (and it plays seamlessly in the new version) that finds art student Ben Willis (Sean Biggerstaff) battling insomnia after breaking up with his long-term girlfriend Suzy. Now with an additional eight hours of his life to fill, he decides to stop channel surfing and get an overnight job at the local supermarket where he and his fellow employees spend their time coming up with a way to deal with the drudgery of an eight hour shift in a fluorescent light filled market. Ben’s method is a bit disturbing as he takes his love of art and the female form to extremes by “stopping time” and freezing moments in his mind while he mentally undresses shoppers and sketches them in his workbook. While it begins similarly to numerous other "art student tries to find himself and overcome lost love" films with a bit of the dark ensemble humor of Doug Liman’s Go thrown in for good measure, after the repetitive beginning (which will admittedly wear on the nerves of some female viewers including myself), the film evolves into a more interesting character piece when Ben develops feelings for checkout girl Sharon (Emilia Fox) whom he feels may help solve his inability to sleep. Although it probably makes a much better short film than a long one—it’s stylistically impressive with a few awe-inspiring shots including one of the best in recent memory that echoes Mike Nichols’s The Graduate that finds Ben falling from a payphone back into his dorm room bed which IMDb shared took one full day of the shoot’s twenty-five days to film and was completed entirely in camera.

Sorry, Haters

Director: Jeff Stanzler

“A head scratcher supreme,” was how Variety’s film critic Robert Koehler described writer/director Jeff Stanzler’s disturbing indie film which played at both the American Film Institute Los Angeles Film Festival as well as the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival. Featuring one of the most underrated and consistently impressive character actresses, Robin Wright Penn in her Independent Spirit Award nominated performance as an alternately sad, mysterious and horrifying New York career woman with a screw loose, Stanzler’s film will remain in the memories of viewers long after it ends. Flying by in a little over eighty minutes, the movie is deceptively set up as a political thriller that soon evolves into an unnerving psychological portrait of post 9/11 paranoia and the way it affects a mentally unstable character several years later. When it begins, we meet Syrian cab driver Ashade (Abdellatif Kechiche) who, despite holding a chemistry Ph.D. in his native country is relegated to spending his time chauffeuring busy New Yorkers in his yellow cab while alternately looking after his sister-in-law and her baby and fighting to get his brother back to the states after he was placed into U.S. custody and sent back to Syria. Penn, who works for the hip hop television station Q-Dog, gets into his cab one evening and turns what may have been just a routine fare into something much more when they become involved in each other’s domestic dramas. Shot in just fifteen days on digital video, the film with its unfortunately forgettable title has since been released by IFC onto DVD (with a wonderful extra featurette with film personalities discussing the movie in a round table conversation hosted by Tim Robbins) and contains some truly awe-inspiring performances by its two leads and supporting players such as Sandra Oh and Elodie Bouchez. However, the low-budget does hinder the overall production value and therefore some of the believability of the piece which veers off into a not entirely successful third act. As the film nears towards a conclusion, structural problems arise that should have been rectified if not in the script process than during the shoot as the ending of the piece seems a bit abrupt and convenient and as Ebert pointed out in his review overly explained and analyzed in one particular speech by Penn that, while delivered phenomenally, seems to make the movie more self-aware. Definitely not a film to watch before bed and one that raises enough questions and shocking arguments that make it ideal for viewing with others or at the very least, you'll want to be sure to explore the DVD’s features to listen to Penn and Stanzler’s commentary track and explore the revealing round table discussion as a few of the points made by Mary Louise Parker and companions help make one see other sides of a few of the more puzzling scenes.

Across the Universe

"All You Need Is Love"

Director: Julie Taymor

Ever since I first saw the previews for Across the Universe that featured Jim Sturgess seated on a white sandy British beach singing “Girl” before launching into an addictive and magical tapestry of Beatles music and dazzling visuals, the film has become the movie event I was most anticipating in 2007. More than most films, musicals must be seen on the big screen and Across the Universe is one of those movies that I know I’ll remember seeing for the first time for years to come.

A wholly satisfying work-- Frida director Taymor utilizes her roots staging operas and the Broadway version of The Lion King with this epic period film set in the turbulent 60’s that uses more than thirty Beatles songs for its inspirations in character, story and locales that span Liverpool, Princeton, several states, Vietnam and most prominently the lower east side of Manhattan.

In the film, Jude, a twenty something dock worker (played by an exceedingly charismatic Strugess) journeys from Liverpool to locate the biological father he’s never met. While on the Princeton campus, Jude befriends the mischievous and charming Max (Joe Anderson) who takes him home for his family’s Thanksgiving celebration where he first lays eyes on the beautiful teenager Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) whose sheltered existence is shattered after both her first serious boyfriend and soon her brother Max learn that they must go to Vietnam.

After a tragedy, she joins her brother in New York where Jude falls even deeper in love with her and the two begin a relationship while living in the same apartment along with a Janis Joplin inspired Sexy Sadie (Dana Fuchs), sweet Midwestern Prudence (T.V. Carpio) battling a sexual orientation issue, Max, and the Jimi Hendrix clone JoJo (Martin Luther McCoy) a guitarist and ‘Nam veteran.

From the opening moments of Taymor’s awe-inspiring masterwork, music and psychedelic visuals come spilling out of each scene and while it begins to veer slightly off course during the free-wheeling "I Am the Walrus" and "Mr. Kite" segments (featuring Bono and Eddie Izzard), the film gets back on track with the sheer power of its ambition, likable leads and inviting Beatles songs that enchant audience members throughout.

Some of the choreography is remarkably inventive and warrants a second viewing just from the overwhelming finished product that marries both live action with animation along with perfectly synched movements including a memorable scene set to “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” as Max reports to the taxing medical and psychological evaluations of the U.S. Army before heading off to Vietnam.

According to IMDb, 90% of the songs available on the deluxe edition of the soundtrack (that can be found on iTunes) were actually recorded live and on-set during the production instead of the usual post-production recordings and filmed dubs of most musicals, including the heartbreaking “If I Fell” which Evan Rachel Wood reportedly completed in one perfect take.

After playing at Toronto Film Festival, Across the Universe received mixed reaction, saved for a four star review by Roger Ebert and glowing praise from The New York Times, and despite a limited release that will prevent it from playing at as many American theatres as say the latest offering from the Farrelly Brothers, I’m hoping audience members looking for something remarkable and bold will flock to the film (driving as I did more than thirty-five minutes to see it) and it will get an even greater re-release after award season begins.

Additionally, if there’s any justice, it should also begin raking in the accolades and nominations for a much deserving Julie Taymor whose work recalls the same kind of Oscar for Special Recognition that Gene Kelly received for the epic ballet sequence in An American in Paris. While as a musical buff, it’s not lightly do I put another individual in the same category of cinematic genius as Kelly, keep in mind that he received the award for an approximately ten minute sequence whereas Taymor’s film runs a stunning two hours plus.

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Fired!

Directors: Chris Bradley & Kyle LaBrache

Sacked. Canned. Laid off. Axed. In the English language, there seem to be an endless number of slang terms for finding oneself out of work— in fact several times more than the phrase for actually getting a job in the first place. While we all have horror stories of life in the concrete jungle, very few of us would want to share stories of losing a job… but then again, we’re not all actors and we don’t all have the flair for relishing in our dismissal, as witnessed in this conversational documentary about being given the boot starring actress Annabelle Gurwitch. It’s universally known that most New York actors dream of working with Woody Allen and while only a chosen few get the chance to have an Allen anecdote to share, an even smaller number can say that not only did they work with the legend, but they were also fired by him as well. Likable, bright and bubbly actress Annabelle Gurwitch unfortunately fits into that latter category. After being let go by the neurotic auteur after being told that she looked “retarded” in his play, Gurwitch understandably suffers a depression of self-pity and booze for a few weeks until she decides to sublimate her disappointment with art. She turns to numerous friends—fellow actors and comedians including Tim Allen, Andy Borowitz, David Cross, Andy Dick, Tate Donovan, Illeana Douglas, Jeff Garlin, Anne Meara, Bob Odenkirk, Fisher Stevens, Ben Stein, Sarah Silverman and Fred Willard—who share their stories both on camera and in her creative efforts including a popular monologue driven show and a book also called Fired. The stories included in the overly long documentary range from painful to hilarious and are destined to become classic including Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Jeff Garlin lamenting the numerous jobs he was kicked out of, Andy Borowitz’s Facts of Life screenwriting job from hell that ended because he just “didn’t get Tootie” and Fred Willard who had been hired for a pilot and mistaken by everyone on the set for a popular actor with a similar name from WKRP in Cincinnati. Celebrity anecdotes aside, there’s a few uneven skits that fall flat including a puppet show and a segment in a food truck with Andy Dick but Gurwitch’s film gets even more interesting as she stakes out Michael Moore territory (save for the controversy) and begins to visit workers at a GM plant who are scheduled to be terminated from their long-time jobs along with other hard working Americans being let go in the name of “economic progress” and global competition. While the film doesn’t amount to enough as either a political piece or a dishy celebrity gossip piece, Gurwitch’s charm and enough fascinating moments keep us invested and we feel like we’re sitting with a good friend, sharing a story we can hardly believe about another wild day at the office.

The Secret Lives of Dentists

Director: Alan Rudolph

A few years ago when showcasing the work of critically acclaimed Afterglow director Alan Rudolph, the Independent Film Channel referenced a quote by the director stating that he’s spent the bulk of his career remaking the same film over and over. With The Secret Lives of Dentists, based on Jane Smiley’s novel The Age of Grief and adapted by playwright Craig Lucas (Prelude to a Kiss), Rudolph returns to familiar territory of marital drama, secrets and infidelity. After ten years of marriage, Campbell Scott (who co-produced the film) is the mustached, seldom-smiling Dave Hurst who leads a life overflowing with tasks from taking care of his three young, high-spirited daughters and sharing his private practice with his wife and fellow dentist, Dana (Hope Davis). After he catches a glimpse of his wife in compromising circumstances—namely seen in a familiar looking embrace in the arms of a dashing musical director—Dave fears the worst and chooses not to confront his wife about his suspicions because as he puts it, then he would have to act. Instead, we delve into his subconscious with darkly comical fantasies and fears of the actions his wife is taking when she says she’s going to the store or working late and we watch Dave slowly unravel, which is aided by the fact that he’s imagined his worst dental patient with impacted wisdom teeth and a gloomy disposition (Denis Leary relishing in his role) as his sidekick in the ordeal. Throughout the film Leary’s Mr. Slater appears in automobiles, underneath the bed, and in the kitchen of the Hurst’s home running a fascinating commentary on the situation and Dave’s actions which he considers both less than masculine and heroic, resulting in Dave’s shocking outbursts that further alienate his wife. An unusual film and one of the most wholly successful of Rudolph’s in visiting his recurring themes but blending humor and tragedy at the same time. Overall, the real stars of the film, aside from the wonderful cast filled with character actors, are the unique bits of dialogue penned by Lucas from Smiley’s novel which earned Lucas the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay and Hope Davis the honor of Best Actress for her work in both Dentists and American Splendor.

An Unreasonable Man

Alternate Title: Ralph Nader: An Unreasonable Man
Directors: Henriette Mantel and Steve Skrovan

Like a majority of the children of the baby boomers, most of my knowledge of Ralph Nader came from the past several years and his widely analyzed campaigns as a third party independent candidate for the U.S. presidency. However, thanks to the 2006 documentary An Unreasonable Man, nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, we are given a very in-depth (122 minutes worth) look at the career and life of consumer safety advocate and political activist Ralph Nader. Mantel, who formerly worked for Nader, along with co-director Skrovan, manages to create a refreshingly balanced portrait of the man and his legacy although the film still devotes an overly long amount of time to the controversial 2000 election which led to one of the most confusing, debated and questionable outcomes in recent memory. The film works well especially in its earliest scenes in establishing Nader’s drive to help keep consumers safe with his efforts in securing seat belts and air bags, promoting a cleaner environment and in his work with crafting reports and bringing about change with his “Nader’s Raiders,” some of whom are interviewed in the documentary. Although it’s hard to convince those disinterested in politics or American history to spend more than two hours watching a documentary, those who take the time to do so will be greatly surprised and it’s a vital document about a courageous risk-taker that helps educate viewers to look past the sensational commentary and headlines of the past few years and realize just how indebted we are in our daily lives from grocery shopping to driving and more to the legacy of Ralph Nader.

Bad Faith

Director: Roschdy Zem

When it came to the four year relationship between Clara (rising star Cecile De France who won a Best Actress accolade for her role) and Ismael (Roschdy Zem), religion was never much of an issue. However, things changed when Clara learned she was expecting a child. In Roschdy Zem’s film which has been likened to a twenty-first century global version of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, a successful Jewish physical therapist and her Muslim piano instructor boyfriend must face their respective families, beliefs and analyze the importance of religious tradition when dealing with the unplanned pregnancy. Zem, whom Variety reports has appeared in more than thirty films in the past decade, earned a 2007 Cesar award nomination for his debut directorial work which was chosen as an official selection at the Scottsdale International Film Festival. Although there are some political and topical debates intertwined in this story of a couple facing the evolution of their relationship, it’s benefited largely from the sheer likability of the two leads that help make up for a sometimes hurried script and slightly contrived ending that detract from the unique plot-line of this succinct eighty-eight minute film that overall shows the importance of love in overcoming vast differences that seem to get even larger when the two take their relationship outside their apartment and begin to become influenced by the expectations and prejudices of others.

Waydowntown

Director: Gary Burns

Jerry Seinfeld once told a joke—and I’m paraphrasing—that basically at work you’re surrounded by people who all filled out the exact same application with little regard to actual similarities in personality. Within the first few minutes of this multiple award winning darkly comic satire Waydowntown, our narrating main character Tom (Fabrizio Filippo) echoes Seinfeld’s sentiment. At his first real job after graduation, Tom laments the fact that there should be an entire class at university regarding how one can work in close proximity to not only coworkers that you having nothing in common with but whom you may even despise. His nearest coworker whom Tom privately refers to as “Sadly, I’m Bradley,” (Don McKellen) has been at his job for far too long and as we are introduced to him, realize that he’s long overdue for a change of scenery. However, being dissatisfied and ready to snap at work has been done before but in director Gary Burns’ hands, we witness something far more extreme. Four of the employees have bet an entire month’s salary ($10,000) over who can stay inside the longest without leaving as the downtown center where they work is all interconnected against Calgary’s harsh winters so they can get to their apartments, shopping, food courts and work without leaving the large enclosed building. As the film opens it’s day 24 of the bet and the four participants are all at various stages of losing it with Tom resorting to smoking pot in his parked car he can’t drive away in and playing escalating pranks on others, Sandra (Marya Delver) is forced to spend her lunch hour tailing her kleptomaniac employer while being panicked about the recycled air she’s been inhaling for a month, and the engaged office man-whore Curt (Gordon Currie) tries to seduce a vulnerable otherwise engaged employee, while Randy (Tobias Godson) schemes to get outside by enlisting the help of a security guard to complete a work related mission. Taking place over a lunch hour that gets trippier (thanks to the hallucinations of Tom that don’t ever quite pay off) and even more disturbing as Bradley begins stapling clichéd corporate affirmations to his chest, the film is a wonderful concept that results in an ultimately uneven payoff. Shot on digital film entirely inside the chosen location of the fluorescently lit claustrophobic downtown Calgary that reminded me of a gigantic snow globe, the film makes some interesting and valid points about homogenized work environments and employs a nice allegory with Tom’s ant farm that serves as symbolism for workers who feel stuck inside glass and concrete bland economic “prisons.” Co-written by director Burns along with James Martin, this acclaimed Canadian film manages to suck viewers so convincingly into the enclosed world of the setting that after its ninety minute running time, viewers will be craving the outdoors as well.

Chalk

Director:
Mike Akel

It’s never a good sign when a high school teacher visits the school library where he works for books on classroom management as a last ditch effort to gain control of his classroom. In Mike Akel’s funny, uncomfortable, and painfully real mockumentary, we take a look at the over-stressed state of education in America in writers Akel and Chris Mass’s quest to uncover why 50% of teachers quit within their first three years on the job. Drawing on their own experiences as teachers in Austin, Texas, Chalk earned five awards including one for its Outstanding Ensemble Performance at the Los Angeles Film Festival where it gained a supportive fan in Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock. Spurlock used his pull in the independent film world and knowledge of the festival circuit to help get the film a wider audience due not only to his affection for the film and individuals involved but also because of the special place in his heart for the piece since most of his relatives growing up were teachers as he explains in the introduction to the film on the DVD. Using some of Akel and Mass’s former students as cast members, Chalk follows around four main characters during a challenging school year such as the aforementioned man who realizes he is out of his element, the new and uncomfortable teacher Mr. Lowrey (Troy Schremmer). Afterwards we encounter educational veterans including choir teacher turned Assistant Principal Mrs. Reddell (Shannon Haragan) who must juggle the politics and daunting schedule of her new position along with the military minded principal, the pushy but well-meaning Coach Webb (Janelle Shremmer) who develops a crush on Lowrey proving that all physical education teachers are not gay, and the hilarious scene-stealing Mass as Mr. Stroope who campaigns like mad, even prompting his students not to seem smarter than him in the classroom in his dream of becoming the teacher of the year at Harrison High School. While the budget restraints and self-conscious cinematography to make the film look amateur may have hindered a more ambitious cinematic epic, it suits the mood of Chalk very well, seeming like it is comprised with footage leaked out from a classroom project and placed on youtube.com. There’s some worthwhile extras on the disc but mostly, you’ll find yourselves wanting to watch the feature again as some of the humor (much like NBC’s The Office) is so excruciating the first time around that it warrants a second glance to fully appreciate the impact and those of us who have any experience with the world of education will recognize it at once.

1408

Director: Mikael Hafstrom

In order to better illustrate the method to his revision madness in his nonfiction work On Writing, master of horror author Stephen King created the first few pages of a story inspired by parapsychologist Christopher Chacon’s study of the haunted Hotel Del Coronado with a piece King named 1408, only to find himself wanting to finish it afterwards. A few years later, it was adapted in screenplay form by a team of three writers and brought to life by Swedish director Mikael Hafstrom (Derailed). Although it’s impossible to escape its roots as a short piece of fiction, the film—which is essentially a one-man show—benefits greatly from the casting of John Cusack as author Mike Enslin, who, after a heartbreaking family tragedy, turns his attention to paranormal phenomena as a ghost buster of sorts, staying in some of the spookiest purported haunted hotels to try and uncover supernatural secrets. Although he’s grown cynical and disbelieving after having never been genuinely scared or greeted by a ghost, he gets a postcard from New York’s Dolphin Hotel advising him not to stay in room 1408 (the numbers of course equal 13 as many of the numbers in the film do as well). Despite the hotel manager (Samuel L. Jackson), who does everything in his power to dissuade the author and warns of the horrors of the room and the over fifty people who have died under bizarre circumstances in the increasingly dangerous 1408, Mike and publisher Sam Farrell (Tony Shaloub) threaten a lawsuit unless he can stay there and eventually he gets his way. The room seems pretty uninteresting and even dull for the first few minutes but then soon enough the clock radio turns on the Carpenters song “We’ve Only Just Begun” and the room begins to come alive. Overly long as we watch his struggle against the supernatural room—it’s Cusack’s show the whole way and his likability keeps us engrossed even when it begins to overstay its welcome, and although it still feels about fifteen minutes too long, it’s still a satisfying ghost story and another worthy King film.

I'm Reed Fish

Director: Zackary Adler

The key to making oneself immortal is writing a script where the main character not only has your exact same name (following the old adage to “write what you know") but also uses your very life as jumping off point for a plot worthy of cinema. However, keeping your name in the title may be a slight turn off as witnessed in the forgettably titled I’m Reed Fish, an otherwise surprisingly charming little indie brought to DVD thanks to Netflix. Jay Baruchel earned a Film Discovery Jury Award from the 2007 US Comedy Arts Festival for this delightful, loosely autobiographical coming-of-age romance about a young man in his early twenties who must decide the direction he wants to go in life instead of simply following in the footsteps of his deceased father and trying not to let down his entire small town. When we first meet Reed, he’s nearly late for work as he runs nearby and slides into the chair of the local radio station where he hosts the same talk show his father had for as long as the town of Mud Meadows can remember. Engaged to beautiful Kate Peterson (Alexis Bledel) whom he is scheduled to marry in three weeks, Reed’s world is turned upside down by the arrival of Jill (Sissy Spacek’s daughter Schuyler Fisk), the girl he’d been in love with back in high school who begins spending time with Reed and stirring up old romantic feelings. While admittedly a young love story that develops into a triangle prior to a wedding is nothing new in independent cinema, this film sneaks up on you—it’s a light, sunny and welcoming picture that benefits from its homey setting. Although shot on location in Big Bear, California, Reed’s home of Mud Meadows seems like it would make a great setting for a television show and calls to mind other favorite locales such as Northern Exposure’s Cicely, Alaska and Ed’s Stuckeyville, Ohio or even Gilmore Girls’ Stars Hollow, Connecticut (also starring Bledel). All of this warm and inviting aura along with an entirely likable young cast help keep us watching, especially lead actor Baruchel who is quite a find, fully embracing his nerdy, stuttering but sweet character. Unfortunately Reed is bogged down by a strange plot structure which calls attention to itself after twenty minutes or so as we learn that we’re dealing with the ambitious (but rarely successful) attempt to make a movie within a movie. While it should be applauded that the filmmakers tried to break the mold of a traditional or clichéd young love story, the film was a minor but addictive story on its own accord and would’ve done much better without any of the forced twists or irony.

The Flying Scotsman

Director: Douglas Mackinnon

If it weren’t based on truth, the story of a bipolar Scottish cyclist who creates his own bike with scrap metal and parts from his wife’s washing machine would be nearly impossible to believe. In director Douglas Mackinnon’s moving film which manages to delight in the same way that World’s Fastest Indian did, Jonny Lee Miller (a talented actor and oft-referenced first husband of Angelina Jolie) turns in a remarkable performance as Graeme Obree. In flashbacks to his youth as a bullied student made the target of cruel beatings by classmates because his father was a policeman, we see the young Graeme’s face brighten with the Christmas gift of a bicycle from his parents which helps aid in his escape from trouble. As a married father, Graeme struggles with a failing cycle shop that closes, thus leaving him unemployed save for sporadic jobs as a bike courier, until he finally decides to take his unique riding style, manic energy and determination to train for Norway despite the bipolar disorder he struggles with privately. With the aid of some trusted loved ones including his loyal wife Anne (Laura Fraser), best friend and manager Malky (Billy Boyd) and new friend Douglas Baxter (Brian Cox reminding viewers once again that he’s a master character actor), Graeme manages to set world records only to have the prejudice of the World Cycling Federation hinder his progress in their shady quest to change rules to try and prevent the Scotsman from not only succeeding but riding altogether. Nominated for five BAFTA Scotland Awards in all of the major categories, this winning export from the UK has sneaked onto the new release DVD shelves here in the states where I can only hope it will gain a greater audience from a country that definitely appreciates underdog sports tales.

Sweet Land

Director: Ali Selim

Based on Will Weaver’s short story, “A Gravestone Made of Wheat,” screenwriter and director Ali Selim’s gorgeous and subtle love story earned three audience favorite festival awards and also earned Selim the Independent Sprit Award for Best First Feature. Sweet Land tells the story of Inge (Elizabeth Reaser) a foreign mail order bride in the 1920’s who journeys to southern Minnesota to wed Norweign farmer Olaf Torvik (Tim Guinee). However when Inge is brought to the church by Olaf and his loyal friend Frandsen (Alan Cumming), Minister Sorenson (John Heard) refuses to perform the ceremony when it is revealed that Inge is of German descent and the small farming community is prejudiced against a country that Americans are fighting against. The film, bookended by current day events surround the death of Inge and another flashback to Olaf’s death in the 60’s, takes awhile to get interested in as the many ambitious jumps in time and place and melancholy opening may confuse audience members the first time around. Sweet Land succeeds brilliantly when we finally get a solid sense of time and place with the extended flashback that comprises most of the film, which helps reveal the awkward courtship between the high-spirited and gorgeous Inge and the shy, mannered Olaf. Minneapolis native Ali Selim is the son of a first generation immigrant himself and he fills Sweet Land with authenticity, beauty and charm and David Tumbletys breathtaking and sweeping cinematography has drawn numerous comparisons to Days of Heaven. In fact, despite its structural flaws, Land seems like the more accessible of the two works due to the sheer likability of the actors involved and winning characterizations. A stellar sleeper movie that made an independent film splash when it was released in select cities in 2006, now that the film has been released on DVD, I’m hoping it will finally receive the audience it deserves. Selim, much like his leading lady Elizabeth Reaser who earned a Best Actress award from Newport Beach Film Festival, fully deserve more future cinematic projects and it will be interesting to see what both individuals choose next for their careers.

The Dog Problem

Director: Scott Caan

After shelling out nearly event cent of the money he earned from writing a successful but admittedly trashy novel on intensive psychotherapy, depressed Solo (the charismatic and likable Giovanni Ribisi) is advised two things by psychiatrist Dr. Nourmand (Don Cheadle). The first piece of advice echoed throughout writer/director Scott Caan’s film The Dog Problem is that life is a delicate negotiation and the second is that now without the money to pay for therapy, maybe it would be best for Solo to get a pet. Solo takes the advice to heart, dragging his wildly philandering photographer pal Casper (Caan) to the local mall where he purchases a dog, only to realize that his new four legged friend isn’t actually magically going to solve all of his problems and instead may indeed create more as Solo realizes that for once, he needs to be in charge when his relationship with the unnamed adorable toy dog becomes mixed up in the seedy dealings of his life. Soon we meet the eccentric characters who populate his world including Casper’s friend Jules (obviously based on Paris Hilton) and played to perfection by Mena Suvari as a poor little rich girl who spends her time spoiling unwanted dogs while calling the humans around her “bitch,” along with Benny (Kevin Corrigan), a small time thug to whom Solo owes money. Both parties take an unexpected liking to the dog and Solo is also led down a possible romantic path after the puppy is attacked at a dog park and he tries to find a resolution with Lola (Lynn Collins) the woman responsible who is also a good-natured stripper that becomes an unlikely ally to Solo. While the film is a far-fetched male fantasy, it’s also silly, high energy fun made with style that announces itself from the innovative opening credit sequence to the movie’s score by Mark Mothersbaugh (Rushmore, Royal Tenenbaums). Caan (son of actor James Caan and Sheila Ryan) proves to be someone to watch with this clever second film that was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival.

As You Like It

Director: Kenneth Branagh

All the world may indeed be a stage but when it comes to the plays of William Shakespeare, the stage is best replaced by cinema, especially when the work in question is adapted by passionate, innovative scholar Kenneth Branagh. As he did with the twentieth century musical backdrop for Love’s Labour’s Lost, Branagh made the intriguing decision to change the setting of As You Like It to nineteenth century Japan which found British inhabitants and other profiteers setting up mini-empires in their adopted land. Noting in the DVD featurette that he now feels more comfortable moving scenes around for the best effect, As You Like It begins with a cinematically impressive and surprisingly violent opening that finds the home of the Duke Senior raided by Duke Frederick, sending Senior and others into the Forest of Arden. With her faithful cousin Celia (Romola Garai) in tow, Senior’s daughter Rosalind (a completely convincing Bryce Dallas Howard) poses as a boy named Ganymede after falling in love with the dashing Orlando (David Oyelowo). Of course when the girls come across Orlando, this leads to more delightful, romantic scenes of mistaken gender identity courtesy of the Bard and while Branagh’s work never comes close to his master comedy Much Ado About Nothing, it’s a visually stunning and emotionally positive adaptation that brings out the best in not only his lead actors but also supporting players such as Alfred Molina, Janet McTeer, Kevin Kline, Adrien Lester and others. The Shakespeare Film Company production crafted for HBO in 2007 has just been released on DVD and it makes a wonderful companion piece to Branagh’s other adaptations, not to mention a must for high school students just becoming acquainted with the Bard’s plays.

Lars and the Real Girl

Director: Craig Gillespie

Lars Lindstrom is lonely. Having lost his mother during his birth, Lars (Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling) grew up with an emotionally devastated father and seems to have inherited his father’s sense of quiet and solitude, preferring to spend the time he’s not at work or in church alone in his makeshift garage home he shares opposite the main house where his brother Gus (Paul Schneider) and pregnant sister-in-law Karen (Emily Mortimer) reside. As the film opens Karen tries to make good on the recurring five dollar bet she shares with Gus, by repeatedly trying and failing to lure Lars over for a meal. While most of the inhabitants of his snow-bound small Midwestern town wish the sweet and good-natured twenty-something would begin dating, Lars shocks everyone one night by knocking on the door of the main house with the request of not only a dinner invitation but his wish that his relatives put up his girlfriend whom he’d met online. Eager to please, Karen gets out the new towels and a delicious meal only to be stunned with Lars introduces his Brazilian and Danish missionary girlfriend, the wheelchair bound Bianca, who is shockingly both scantily dressed as well as a life-sized plastic doll. Worried that Lars is suffering from mental illness with his fierce determination that Bianca is a real-life human, Karen and Gus take him and Bianca to their family doctor and psychologist Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson) who recognizes the young man as a functional individual suffering from a self-created delusion that will he will eventually rectify if they all go along with it. The entire town, dedicated to Lars and his family, agrees to participate with the delusion and welcomes Bianca into their hearts as she begins to “volunteer” for the school board, story time and at the hospital putting her skills as a nurse to good use, despite her failing health. Six Feet Under writer Nancy Oliver takes what was an admittedly “lurid premise” and turns it into “a gentle comic drama grounded in reality,” according to Variety’s Alissa Simon who notes that the supporting characters grow along with Lars as “they help him through his crisis.” As a way to keep the talented Gosling in character, Canadian director Craig Gillespie and the entire crew treated Bianca like a real person, giving the doll her own trailer where she was dressed privately and having her appear on set only during the scenes she was scheduled to shoot, as noted on IMDb. While the film would no doubt have suffered without the charming screenplay and sensitive direction, the believability of the piece is owed to the entire cast, most notably the chameleon Gosling and also Mortimer and Schneider who struggle to look after their loved one and his “real girl.” Screened as part of the Scottsdale International Film Festival, Lars and the Real Girl will be released in theatres in the fall of 2007.

The Missing Star

Director: Gianni Amelio

After stealing our hearts with his role in Mostly Martha, Sergio Castellito starred in this Venice Film Festival award winning film by director Gianni Amelio that has drawn numerous comparisons to Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. In The Missing Star, Castellito who also starred in Va Savoir, The Last Kiss and Paris je’taime plays Vincenzo Buonavolanta (whose name according to Variety actually means goodwill). Vincenzo, a handsome, contemplative maintenance worker, travels to China after failing to convince brokers and their young translator of the potentially deadly structural flaw of an Italian blast furnace that they purchased from a closed steel mill. Once in the foreign land, he realizes he’s unprepared for not only the language and cultural barrier of his new surroundings but also the vast poverty and humanitarian issues he encounters after he manages to convince Liu, the young fired translator (Tai Ling) to aid him in his quest. At first, understandably reluctant to go on a wild goose chase looking for an unknown mill with the man who had cost her a job, Liu grudgingly goes along. Although Liu is initially secretive, soon we learn of her own personal struggles as they follow many wrong turns and dead ends while managing to bond during the voyage. As Variety’s Deborah Young noted, “armchair travelers will find paradise” in the “gliding camera” utilized in Luca Bigazzi’s sweepingly gorgeous cinematography and love of “deep focus panoramas” that make “every shot a knockout.” Based on Ermanno Rea’s novel, the film goes further in depth into both the emotional and literal journey of the characters than the book did, helping to strengthen the plotline and outline the importance of the plight. While the comparisons to Translation indeed seem warranted, unlike the admittedly self-obsessed characters in Coppola’s work that were going through identity crises on foreign soil, the two complex personalities in Missing Star seem more concerned with the bigger picture by their goal in trying to prevent death. Their attempt not only endears them more successfully to the audience but in addition makes the storytelling arc all the more rewarding, despite the slight vagueness of the ending that some critics disliked. One of the greatest and most deceptively quiet surprises of the 2007 Scottsdale Film Festival, this beautiful work drew comparisons to Don Quixote and Marco Polo in Variety’s assessment of its lead character and will hopefully find an even larger audience when the Lionsgate production is released on DVD.

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies

Director: Michel Hazanavincius

Proving we aren’t the only film industry digging up past pop culture successes for filmmaking fodder, this delightful and extremely popular French box office hit is the latest film featuring Jean Bruce’s comical James Bond inspired character which was used in 256 novels and 7 movies after its creation in 1949. Although it’s likely to draw comparisons to Austin Powers, OSS 117 thankfully does not go headfirst into the raunchy toilet humor that the funny, albeit overly juvenile Mike Myers series did. Creative and consistently comical, Jean Dujardin recalls the charm of the bumbling Peter Sellers character Inspector Clouseau in his award winning turn as Hubert Bonisseu de La Bath (aka OSS 117). Shortly after the film begins, Hubert travels to Cairo to monitor the Suez Canal while posing as a poultry farm head to try and make sense out of the country’s nest of spies and above all tackle the idea of creating peace in the middle east, which he figures should not be a problem. Hubert’s “suave self-importance is topped only by his phenomenal ignorance and dumb luck” (Variety) while attempting to carry out his plan. Director Hazanavincius sets up the film’s tongue-in-cheek tone with a hilarious black and white opening sequence set in World War II Berlin. In fact, some of the humor is so fast paced that the film will benefit from a second viewing to fully appreciate the well-constructed and often over-the-top jokes. Although the film will entertain audiences who aren’t versed in foreign affairs, the director noted in his Scottsdale International Film Festival summary that his goal was multi-layered, stating that, “on a superficial level these clichés are the clichés of fifties movies, and at a deeper level, they are the clichés of the controlling western philosophy.” Nominated for numerous Cesar awards in its homeland and earning the Grand Prix at the Tokyo International Film Festival, OSS 117 is filled with cheery, bright and sophisticated humor and memorable performances in a movie that seems to fly by even faster than its ninety-nine minute running time.

The Rocket: Maurice Richard

Director: Charles Biname

Some actors spend hours in the makeup chair and the wardrobe department getting just the right combination of latex noses, fat pads, wigs and other elements of disguise to successfully pull off the transformation from movie star to the character they’re playing in a biopic. However, when it came to the role of legendary hockey player Maurice Richard who heroically helped his team win five back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in Charles Biname’s multiple Genie award winning Canadian film, actor Roy Dupuis was the naturally perfect choice to play the man whom he uncannily resembles. In this inventively shot period film, cinematographer Pierre Gill captures the look of Depression-era Quebec by punctuating certain colors (blues, maroons and greens) in this finely crafted and visually stunning work that tells the story of the French-Canadian hockey player who must overcome the overwhelming prejudice against himself and other French speaking players by referees, coaches and other NHL players who sometimes shockingly encouraged one another to take down the impressive skater. An eye-opening look at racism and competition, the blood and gore evidenced in the fast paced hockey match recreations is definitely not for the squeamish but it’s a moving and fascinating story about equal rights that not only I was unfamiliar with but is not usually the subject matter of most “underdog” sports films. One of the bigger hits at the 2007 Scottsdale Film Festival that had some audience members returning to see the film again benefits largely from leading man Dupuis who turns in a moving performance that earned him the Best Actor Award from the Tokyo International Film Festival.

2007 Scottsdale International Film Festival

The festival kicked off last night with the highly anticipated screening of Marc Forster's The Kite Runner. To learn more about this year's acclaimed films, check out the links below or read some of my reviews on this site (noted by an SIFF label).

The Official Website

All Film Intuition SIFF Reviews

My AZCentral Blog

The TV Set

Director:
Jake Kasdan

“The more seriously you can take a ridiculous thing, the funnier it is,” actor David Duchovny shared with film critic Elvis Mitchell on KCRW’s The Treatment, when talking about his role in Jake Kasdan’s semi-autobiographical comedy drama that takes you behind the scenes of network television’s pilot season. Shot in just twenty-five days at a breakneck speed that suits television more than film, this independent gem was released in select cities in the spring of 2007 and finally hit DVD shelves in September. Kasdan’s brilliant writing—sharp, incisive, painfully uncomfortable, funny and true provides ample fodder for the actors to play the absurdly humorous dialogue seriously, which per Duchovny, provides even greater laughs as he also proved on The Larry Sanders Show (that TV Set producer Judd Apatow worked on as well). Kasdan, who made an instant fan out of this reviewer with his witty and ingenious film debut Zero Effect worked on a few television series (along with Apatow) including Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared that always seemed to suffer through the painful first years and the dumbing down of his original vision until finally, as the tagline for the TV Set promises, “dreams are canceled.” Although it's not as easily to imagine repeat viewings of this film as it was for Effect, it’s still a highly original film that provides an excellent showcase for a nearly unrecognizable Duchovny (decked out in a beard and fat suit) along with the hilarious Judy Greer (from Arrested Development), Siguorney Weaver, Ioan Gruffudd, Fran Kanz, Justine Bateman, Lucy Davis, and Lindsay Sloane. The film follows writer Mike Klein (Duchovny) as his television series that blends humor, tragedy and pathos is changed into a crass comedy to appeal to the lowest-common-denominator of audiences with short attention spans as it goes through the entire process of rewrites, casting, filming and finally airing. While some of the jokes will be lost on viewers unfamiliar with the television process, it’s still a must for fans of Kasdan and the actors. Weaver is particularly good, blowing the rest of the cast nearly off the screen with her hilarious tour-de-force as network television executive Lenny, in a part written for a man and not changed at all when she took it on. The DVD is loaded with extras including commentary from the filmmakers and a behind-the-scenes featurette.

Evening

Director: Lajos Koltai

When he was working on the film version of his novel A Home at the End of the World, Pulitzer Prize winning writer Michael Cunningham was given the screenplay version of Susan Minot’s Evening which the writer had adapted from her own work. Soon after, Cunningham called Minot to say that he was interested in working on the script but wanted her permission to make some serious changes in order to get himself invested in the story and Minot agreed. In addition to changing states (for budgetary reasons), dropping some characters and promoting smaller ones to lead roles, Cunningham crafted a script that does include some of his frequent issues such as a love triangle between a woman and two men (similar to A Home) and called on some of the feelings and situations he’d recently dealt with in the final days of his own mother’s life. In Evening, actresses Toni Collete and Natasha Richardson play siblings who reunite in the family home for the death of their mother (played by Richardson’s own real life mother Vanessa Redgrave). As Ann (Redgrave) dreams in her fevered, medicated state, we are whisked back in time to a few fateful days in the 1950’s when Ann journeyed to her old college friend’s wedding. Now played by Claire Danes (always excellent although she never quite fits the “period film” mode), Ann rides along with Buddy (a wonderful Hugh Dancy), as they arrive at Buddy’s home for the wedding of his sister Lila (Mamie Gummer) where her mother (Glenn Close) is in a frenzy over seating charts and Lila seems to have cold feet, still somewhat in love with her girlhood crush on the servant’s son, Harris (Patrick Wilson). As Harris, Wilson has the thankless role of playing the beautiful larger than life character that virtually everyone is in love with and while that doesn’t sound like a challenge, he isn’t given enough time to create a worthwhile character of his own and we realize what a waste the talented Wilson (so amazing in Little Children and the shocking Hard Candy) is in the piece. While it’s easy to predict and the film’s entire plot was given away in the trailer (if you haven’t seen it, try to fast forward through it if you’re ever faced with it), it’s still a luscious, beautifully crafted piece with extraordinary acting, however it seems to have suffered from the overwhelming pomp of the people involved including the award winning writer, cast (I’ve neglected to mention that Gummer’s own mother, Meryl Streep plays her character as an older woman), Being Julia’s Hungarian cinematographer turned director Koltai, and enough moments that recall Fried Green Tomatoes and Bridges of Madison County to try and force us to weep, but it’s still an entertaining soap, although nowhere near worthy of all of the talent involved and would make a fine weekend matinee film at home. Note: for the best of Cunningham, check out the unjustly ignored A Home at the End of the World and the Academy Award winning The Hours (which stars some of the finest members of the cast of Evening).

Broken English

Director: Zoe R. Cassavetes

Shot in just twenty days, Broken English marks the writing and directing feature film debut of Zoe Cassavetes (the daughter of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands) who tackles the emotional terrain explored in not only the films of her parents but her brother Nick (Unhook the Stars) as well. Parker Posey stars as thirty something Nora Wilder—an intelligent, attractive but hard drinking, cigarette smoking New York singleton who pops pills to counteract her anxiety attacks and insomnia. Working by day as a guest relations coordinator who supervises a staff that caters to the spontaneous and often ridiculous whims of wealthy celebrity clientele, Nora spends most of her free time lamenting her status as a lonely single woman. At the beginning of the film, she celebrates the anniversary of the couple for whom she’d played matchmaker—her best friend Audrey (Sopranos star Drea de Matteo) and husband Mark (Tim Guinee)—which prompts more obsessions with her solitary status by Nora, her friends, her mother Gena Rowlands and stepfather Peter Bogdanovich. After a few disastrous dates with all the wrong men including a fix-up from her mother and a childish celebrity from her hotel, Nora meets a slightly younger Frenchman named Julien (Melvil Poupaud) at a party she nearly skips hosted by a coworker. Although she’s reluctant to take the man seriously, the two have a whirlwind fling that may indeed develop into lasting love, although Cassavetes is an astute director never content to let her characters take any shortcuts along the way. Nominated for Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize and winner of an award from the Moscow International Film Festival, Cassavetes’s earnest character piece provides a wonderful chance for independent film star Parker Posey to shine but her abrasive and whiny character does grate on our nerves early on into the film and we find ourselves much more fascinated by de Matteo’s bored housewife, especially when she and Nora venture to France to track down Julien to try and earn themselves a happy ending.

Mother of Mine

Director: Klaus Haro

Finland’s official submission for the Best Foreign Film category of the Academy Awards finds critically acclaimed and award winning documentarian and filmmaker Klaus Haro tackling his dream subject matter concering the emotional and devastating true terrain of the more than 70,000 Finnish children evacuated to neutral Sweden, Denmark and Norway to avoid conflict during World War II. For Mother of Mine, now thankfully released in America thanks to the wonderful cinema lovers at Film Movement, Haro set his fictitious story in 1943 as we meet Eero (an excellent and mature Topi Majaniemi) whose father dies in the front lines of the war, causing his mother to make the harrowing decision to send him to Sweden until their homeland calms down. Once in Sweden, he’s taken in by a farm family who were hoping for a daughter and we witness Eero's difficult time adjusting to the abrupt and curt Swedish mother Signe (Maria Lundqvist), whom audiences quickly realize is dealing with the aftermath of a tragedy of her own. Like Zhang Yimou’s The Road Home, the film is book-ended by black and white clips showing the characters living in present day society and cutting back in time to the vivid, breathtaking color of the past with heightened sound (thanks to the exquisite DVD transfer that plays even better on larger screen televisions with stellar surround sound) and astute, intimate and quietly minimal portrayals by the leads. The 2005 film was an official selection at over thirteen film festivals around the world and earned three Jussi Awards (the equivalent of Finland’s Oscars), a Best Foreign Language Film Satellite Award and the Audience Award from the Palm Springs International Film Festival.

Lucky You

Director: Curtis Hanson

Postponed twice after its initial theatrical release date (which is never a good sign), Lucky You is worth a look simply for the talent roster comprised of L.A. Confidential director Curtis Hanson who co-wrote a script with Forrest Gump and The Horse Whisperer scribe Eric Roth, and cast Munich’s Eric Bana, alongside Robert Duvall and Drew Barrymore. Proving there is such a thing as too much talent, this beautifully photographed and crisply edited work never fails to engage us beyond much of a casual interest and ultimately disappoints in its story of a gambler who must (as is the recurring character theme of most of Hanson’s oeuvre) change the direction his life is headed and rectify his personal issues. Set in the fake, smoky, brightly lit casinos of Las Vegas, we first meet Huck Cheever (the gorgeous Bana) as he pawns a few items in a seedy shop, managing to talk the woman behind the counter into giving him the most money for each for his quest to return back to the tables, first battling the guppies until getting into the high stakes waters with the sharks, including his main Achilles heel-- namely Huck's father L.C. (Robert Duvall). Duvall makes the most out of his underwritten role as an English professor who was a perpetual disappointment to Huck and his mother growing up but whose love of gambling and playing for pennies, nickels and dimes on the kitchen table spread into a compulsive need in his now-grown son who still harbors some major father issues that would even make quintessential James Dean inspired characters wince, although admittedly the audience may be more readily accepting of his preoccupation if we were given more than just the slightest hint of a few lingering arguments and events. L.C.’s career as an English professor is barely mentioned but literature majors and those who love books will immediately begin to draw some parallels between the intriguing name of Huck and the last name of Cheever with some parts of the storyline. Set during the World Series of Poker in 2003 as Huck tries to get a seat and nearly secures one twice save for bad luck with a dealer and vanity with his father, he’s also given romantic complications by having the “offer” of a love interest in the form of the thankless character of Billie Offer (Drew Barrymore who is given a tongue-in-cheek name as well), a Bakersfield California native who comes to Vegas to stay with sister Debra Messing and become a crooner. Quicker than you can say “know when to fold ‘em,” Huck manages to lose Billie’s money and finds that she isn’t as interested in a love triangle especially when competing with the man’s father and while the female character in a poker film is almost always forgettable and thankless, the one benefit that Billie “offers” is not being a stereotypical tart or showgirl. The maddening film has all of the elements of great storytelling and comes close to hooking us several times but unlike Huck’s weakness with his father, the major Achilles heel for Lucky You is the overly technical poker terminology utilized throughout the film. For those of us who barely understand more than a few of the basic principles of poker, there are literally chunks of time that are wasted with in-depth analysis of various hands and percentages—all of which we keep thinking may help illuminate the goings-on better than the dialogue but which are a complete loss to most audience members looking for a worthwhile story instead of a doctoral level dissertation on the intricacies of poker. All in all, a forgettable film of Hanson's and fans of his movies should stick with Wonder Boys and In Her Shoes for similarly themed but superior work.

After the Wedding

Director:
Susanne Bier

Winner of numerous awards around the globe including the prestigious honor of being nominated as one of the five films for the Best Foreign Film Academy Award, director Susanne Bier crafts another tense family drama about emotional upheaval, past indiscretions and secrets with her superb film After the Wedding. Mads Mikkelson-- a veteran of the Danish Dogme film movement, acting in Bier’s earlier film Open Hearts-- is excellent as Jacob, a middle-aged man who has spent the better part of his life helping young children in India. When the orphanage he helps run is in desperate need of funds, Jacob reluctantly leaves his beloved home in India and the young children to whom he’s grown attached to return to his native Denmark to meet Jorgen, a Danish millionaire businessman (played by Rolf Lassgard) who is offering to help fund the center, provided that Jacob stay in the country for a few days in order to attend the wedding of his daughter Anna (Stine Fischer Christensen). Once at the wedding, Jacob realizes he’s in for much more than he bargained for when past connections are revealed and he must come to grips with the path his life has taken and the people whom he may have hurt along the way. Fascinating and intimate, the performances of the cast are heightened by the naturalistic photography completed on digital video and the believable turn of events that manage to engross us throughout the entire length of the two hour film. Although those familiar with Bier’s work in Brothers and Open Hearts will find a few of the plot points predictable to the Dogme style and its recurring themes, it’s never clichéd and remains one of her most focused and tightly crafted pieces of film that deserves to be in the same company as her aforementioned titles.

Closing Escrow

Directors:
Armen Kaprelian & Kent G. Llewellyn

After three years of producing the TV show House Hunters for HGTV, Armen Kaprelian teamed up with co-writer Kent G. Llewellyn to create this mockumentary. In the vein of Christopher Guest’s work with Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman, Closing Escrow takes a documentary styled approach to comedy as the actors stay in character throughout the entire film, having one-on-one confessionals with the camera that get more outrageous and hilarious with each passing moment given the film’s improvised free-wheeling environment. Although it isn’t quite in the same league as Guest’s work and some of the humor is forced, anyone who has ever been involved with the inconvenient, shocking, surprising and exciting housing market—whether it’s buying or selling a home, will find certain situations and personalities may ring an all too familiar (and therefore painful) bell. Quickly into the film we are introduced to three sets of couples all looking to move—the first is a young, power-driven African American husband and wife who want to get out of their tiny apartment and take advantage of their astronomical salaries as lawyers to move into a cool downtown loft. They are paired up with an odd, new-age, shallow and increasingly ridiculous and unhinged realtor named Hillary, played by the gifted comedienne Wendi McLendon-Covey who earned a Best Comedy Performance in Film Discovery Jury Award at the 2007 US Comedy Arts Festival for her turn in both this film and Cook Off. Mary and Allen, a nice, meek suburban couple hire their neighbor to find them a similar place with a more convenient location to Allen’s work so that he won’t miss out on quality time with his wife and daughter only to get cold feet and continually change their house-hunt criteria much to the dismay of realtor Peter. A terrifying Patty Wortham is pitch-perfect as the stalker Dawn who met her husband after scaring his previous wife away by setting his lawn on fire while serenading him. They hire Richard, a mercenary lawyer who likes to bring prices down by wreaking havoc on the homes with power tools and breaking things along with his backup trick of raiding the homeland security threat level. The funniest characters in the film, namely the realtors Hillary and Richard, help keep things consistently funny when the film threatens to veer off course and while it’s a breezy short work that still feels a bit long and unfocused, it’s worth the look just for the great performances and a few laughs that are as surprising, true and well-earned as finding the right home.