Away From Her

The first film written and directed by 28-year-old Canadian actress Sarah Polley, adapted from an Alice Munro story, is amazingly mature, assured, and accomplished. Julie Christie captivates as a woman succumbing to Alzheimer’s, deep blue eyes and good bone structure last even while the mind goes. Gordon Pinsent is thoroughly convincing as her husband of 44 years, no saint but still in love with the woman who no longer recognizes him. The patients and staff of the nursing facility are all well portrayed, and Olympia Dukakis makes the most of a small role as the wife of a man with whom Julie engages in a blank-slate institutionalized romance. A time-fractured editing scheme successfully conveys the disorientation of dementia, and the heart-tugging loss of memory and relationship is both astringent and powerfully moving, allowing for humor and sharp observation along with well-earned tears. This is no “movie of the week” but one of the best of the year. (2007, Images, n.) *8+* (MC-88.)

Our Daily Bread

Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s look at industrialized food production in Europe is aestheticized rather than muckraking, but effective nonetheless. There is no narration, dialogue, music, or other form of contextualization -- just classically composed and lingering shots of machines and humans at work, along with animals and vegetables subjected to massive and highly mechanized procedures. This open-ended visual meditation allows you to take away an appreciation of ingenuity and impressive rationalization, or horror at denaturalization, institutionalized cruelty, and excessive use of fossil fuels. For myself and most viewers, the reaction to agricultural inhumanity is likely to be a vow to obtain as much food as possible grown locally and organically. A good companion to Richard Linklater’s docudrama, Fast Food Nation. (2006, Sund/T, n.) *7* (MC-86.)

The Good Shepherd

Well-upholstered but overstuffed and lumpy, Robert DeNiro’s film -- from an Eric Roth script -- is earnest and well-meaning, but a chore to sit through or on. It endeavors to tell the story of the CIA through a character based on James Jesus Angleton and played by Matt Damon, from Skull & Bones initiation at Yale through development of OSS in WWII to the Bay of Pigs and beyond. The cast rounds up a talented bunch of the usual suspects, from Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, and Michael Gambon, to Billy Crudup as the Kim Philby-type and Angelina Jolie as the suffering wife of the close-mouthed and withholding main character. The film tries for a LeCarre-like depiction of spycraft and counterintelligence, but winds up muddled and befuddling, while also mounting Godfather-like set pieces, from weddings to Bonesmen rituals. There’s good stuff in it (confirmed by recent release of CIA's "family jewels"), and good points about the liabilities of secrecy and disinformation, but it’s all too much. Or too little, when it comes to emotional involvement with characters or story. (2006, dvd, n.) *6-* (MC-61.)

Waitress

Plenty of reason to root for this little indie, what with writer/director Adrienne Shelly’s subsequent fate and her poignant postmortem acclaim at Sundance. But I’ll be as cold as the film itself left me -- it just doesn’t have the snap-crackle-&-pop to be a successful comedy, or the authenticity and perception to be an effective drama. Keri Russell is not without appeal as the reluctantly pregnant but ecstatically pie-baking young woman at the center of this story. The supporting cast is intriguing but makes for an out-of-key ensemble -- Cheryl Hines, Shelly herself, Andy Griffith, Jeremy Sisto (making his “Six Feet Under” character Southern and a little more degenerate), Nathan Fillion (trying to flip his image from the ultimate demon in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”). The credit sequence suggests the film might be classic food porn, and the pie-baking trope works pretty well throughout, but most of the effort to work against type makes the film of no type at all. Honorable effort and all, too bad Ms. Shelly won’t be able to move on to better work, but this is a crowd-pleaser only for a crowd that resolutely wants to be pleased. (2007, Images, n.) *6-* (MC-74.)

Come Early Morning

First off, let me confess to a little crush on Ashley Judd, starting with Ruby in Paradise (but not encompassing all the crap Hollywood product she has “graced” with her presence.) Here’s another indie in which she gets to play a real woman, instead of a femme-in-jeop or female revenge fantasy, and a film made by another woman to boot. Joey Lauren Adams is probably best known as the Amy of Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy, but here makes a creditable debut as writer and director. The film is a little schematic in showing how a strong but believably flawed thirtysomething woman deals with the men and the women in her life on the way to finding a life of her own, and furthermore the sense of place amounts to little more than “down south” without further specification. The country music soundtrack is a plus, however, and figures into the story with meaning, climaxing wordlessly in a tune played quietly by Ashley’s uncommunicative Dad. She’s been holding off other men, emotionally if not sexually, in the futile hope of re-connecting with her father, and avoiding the fate of her disappointed and delusional female relatives. But she’s strong, and will find a way to be her own woman. That’s the template. But hey, the lines are colored in vividly by Ashley and a good supporting cast. It will not surprise you much, but you won’t mind the company. (2006, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-64.)

Army of Shadows

I don’t get it. Not the film itself, which I get well enough, but the reaction of critics. While I would call this film good but not great, some hailed it as the best film of the year, and it received the highest Metacritic rating I’ve seen yet. Certainly the film is well acted and directed, meticulously made and psychologically probing, but it is also long and slow and implausible in parts. Jean-Pierre Melville’s career was somewhat swamped by the New Wave, but his work has been in a process of restoration lately and Army of Shadows is certainly worth the U.S. distribution it never received before last year. A story of the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of WWII, it’s characters are morally compromised to be sure, and one prison break fails utterly, while another is swift and chancy, but yet another is something out of Mission: Impossible. Ultimately the maquis operate more like a gang with omerta, rather than a political movement based on patriotism, a self-fulfilling and self-destroying conspiracy that seems to have no connection to public action or the populace at large. The careful mise en scene and consistent blue-green palette that can seem almost monochrome give the film an air of quality, but it’s not thrilling enough to be a thriller, nor consistent enough to be profound. IMHO. (1969/2006, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-99.)

Documentary checklist

I’ve always been a lover of and advocate for documentaries, so I am happy to agree that we are in a golden age of documentary filmmaking, though I tend not to care much for those cited as most successful. So I want to speak up for some truly worthwhile nonfiction films that you may or may not have heard of.

On of my first posts to Cinema Salon was “33 docs to watch instead of Michael Moore” and I thought it opportune to update that list with all the documentaries I have reviewed and recommended since. Typing “33 docs” in the search box above will bring up the prior list, and similarly, you can call up my reviews of any of the titles below. Reviews of further well-regarded documentaries will follow forthwith.

Perhaps I need to re-emphasize the subjectivity (informed or not) of my ratings, a reaction to a particular viewing at a particular time, subject to change on re-viewing, but not as much as you might think. The Leonard Cohen is a case in point; a second time around the film’s flaws might register more, when at first I was dazzled by the subject himself, an introduction that felt revelatory.

*9+*
Hoop Dreams (1994)

*8+*
Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man (2006)

*8*
49 Up (2006) (“7 Up” series as a whole = *10*)
Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing (2006)
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)
Grey Gardens (1976)
Jonestown: The Life and Death of the Peoples Temple (2006)
My Flesh and Blood (2003)
Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006)
Rivers and Tides (2001)

*8-*
When the Levees Broke (2006)

*7+*
Bearing Witness (2005)
Born into Brothels (2004)
Bright Leaves (2004)
Festival Express (2004)
Gimme Shelter (1970)
Grizzly Man (2005)
Mad Hot Ballroom (2005)
No Direction Home (2005)
One Bright Shining Moment (2005)
Paradise Lost (1996) and Paradise Lost 2 (1999)
The Real Dirt on Farmer John (2005)
Street Fight (2005)
Unforgivable Blackness (2004)
Unknown White Male (2006)
Wordplay (2006)

*7*
The Corporation (2004)
Deliver Us From Evil (2006)
The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2006)
Iraq in Fragments (2006)
March of the Penguins (2005)
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004)
Michelangelo: Self Portrait (1989)
Murderball (2005)
The Road to Guantanamo (2006)
Sunset Story (2003)
Two Days in October (2005)
The White Diamond (2005)
Why We Fight (2006)

*7-*
Darwin’s Nightmare (2005)
Girlhood (2003)
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater (2006)
Sketches of Frank Gehry (2006)

Two indie faves

I caught up with two recent film festival phenoms, but had only a lukewarm reaction to either. They’re different, to be sure. And sincere, modest in means, local in flavor, well-meaning. But definitely not among the best films of the year.

Old Joy. The Pacific Northwest, with its lush landscape and post-hippie politics, is almost the third character in this two-hander, in which a pair of thirtysomething friends try to re-bond on an overnight camping trip to a hot springs in the Cascades. Kelly Reichardt’s direction, and Daniel London and Will Oldham as the two old buddies, have some appeal, but finally not enough. A certain Zen minimalism might have been the effect sought, but my response was “Eh? That’s all you got?” The film doesn’t overstay its welcome, but left me with no feeling of resolution. Other viewers reacted differently, as the Metacritic rating will show. (2006, dvd, n.) *6-* (MC-84.)

Quinceanera. This Sundance winner is firmly located in the Echo Park area of L.A., where gentrification and commodification is supplanting the traditional Mexican neighborhood. Emily Rios is indeed winning as the soon-to-be 15-year-old who gets pregnant without having intercourse, and has to deal with her family and friends' disbelief in her “virgin birth.” James Garcia is also effective as the cousin who is not as tough as he seems, and bonds with her as one outsider to another. The writer/director team of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland promises more than it delivers, wants to say more than it can articulate, but still expresses some honest caring for the characters and the complex life of family and neighborhood. (2006, dvd, n.) *6* (MC-72.)

The Painted Veil

This self-consciously old-fashioned drama was produced by its stars, Edward Norton and Naomi Watts, and they are indeed the guarantors of value in this enterprise. John Curran’s direction, the location shooting in China, the music and all the rest are competent support to the two central roles, which hold the screen admirably. Norton is a stuffy British bacteriologist who woos the flighty Watts, and wins her by providing escape from her familty to faraway Shanghai. But then of course she needs to escape from him, and takes Liev Schreiber as a lover. Norton discovers the affair and offers to let her go, but when that avenue is closed, insists she accompany him inland where he is going to combat a cholera epidemic. It’s not entirely clear whom he wishes to punish more, her or himself. Alone together in an isolated and deadly situation, they are forced to come to terms with each other, to know each other for the first time. Their relationship is beautifully and subtly and even wittily delineated, and their romantic doom is sealed with intelligence and passion. It’s all a bit stodgy, but moving nonetheless. (2006, dvd, n.) *7-* (MC-69.)

Talk about holding the screen admirably -- no one does it better than Garbo. TCM recently showed the 1934 adaptation of the same Somerset Maugham novel, starring Greta Garbo and Herbert Marshall and directed by Richard Boleslawski. It doesn’t explain the title any more than the other Painted Veil, but makes for an instructive comparison. The China is this film is strictly soundstage, to the point of having “Charlie Chan” as the army colonel, and the story is sanitized and given a happy ending. Doesn’t matter -- it’s Garbo, and therefore fascinating to watch.

While referring to TCM, I should also take note of their recent documentary, Brando, which was quite an interesting review of the great but reluctant actor’s life and work.

Dreamgirls

Well, that was disappointing. And as usual, I blame it on the film’s theatrical origins. The songs and story are lacklustre, might have made it on Broadway but are revealed as empty by Hollywood. Everybody in the film tries too hard, as if to make up for the weakness of the material. It’s a familiar showbiz story, with an exceedingly obvious transposition of The Supremes into The Dreams. Now I’ve always been a fan of The Supremes, but the songwriting here comes nowhere near the magic of Holland-Dozier-Holland. It’s neither R&B nor Disco in turn, but pure show tune. And the placement of the story in a cultural moment is perfunctory at best. It’s utterly lame, and almost offensive, when the characters step out of the world of the would-be Hitsville recording studio into the inferno of Detroit on fire in the 1968 riots. On the basis of Gods and Monsters and Kinsey, I expected more from writer/director Bill Condon, whose work here is frantic and too all-that-jazzy. All the actors substitute energy for shading or subtlety. Eddie Murphy comes off best, as he transitions from James Brown type to Marvin Gaye clone, losing his soul along the way. Jamie Foxx is wound tight and under wraps as the Berry Gordy character. Beyonce Knowles may or may not be another Diana Ross -- she is certainly effective as eye candy and in different styles of performing. And Jennifer Hudson is powerful but overwrought and narrow in her characterization, as the girl with the big voice and the big body who is forced out of the group when it goes from soul to pop (cf. Flo Ballard.) It’s clearly the lead role in the movie, but there is a certain justice in her winning an Oscar as supporting actress. She does provide some moments, but can’t carry the film on her own. So there are some showstopping performances, which do exactly that, they stop the flow of the movie. They may carry the day on stage, live in person, but without a story or characters to care about, the film never comes alive, despite working up a sweat. (2006, dvd, n.) *6-* (MC-76.)