Crossing the Bridge

Apparently the success of Buena Vista Social Club has paved the way for other films in which some music industry veteran goes to some exotic locale and brings back a variety of indigenous music. Here we get “The Sound of Istanbul,” and because it’s made by Fatih Akin, director of the marvelous Head-On, we get an intimate cross-section of contemporary Turkey, emerging from the oppression of military rule, with a flourishing diversity of ethnic and popular music. Unfortunately we get way too much of this German dude lugging his recording equipment around and hovering at the edges while the various groups are performing. But when the performances are allowed to run uninterrupted, they can be transfixing -- from politically minded rappers and street buskers on a mission to longtime pop stars, from Romany dance music to Kurdish laments. Istanbul is of course the crossroads of the world, where Europe and Asia meet, with the Bosporus as an ever-present reminder. This film presents the bridge across, in the actual span and in music. (2005, dvd, n.) *7-* (MC-73.)

Venus

Lots of notable talent here -- director Roger Michell, writer Hanif Kureishi, and of course Peter O’Toole and Vanessa Redgrave -- but all their labors depend on the success of newcomer Jodie Whittaker, who plays the rough northern teenager whom O’Toole woos in a climactic episode of geriatric satyriasis. And she’s good, unfolding from sullen brat into worthy goddess of love. O’Toole is fully convincing as the rascally old goat, engaging in antic byplay with old theatrical friend Leslie Phillips and wistfully pursuing the girl while treating her with a respect she’s never received before. Much of the film seems dark and smudgy, which is probably intended to deglamourize London and its theatrical milieu. Even the seaside escape is gray and cold. But there’s a little pilot light of lust, which ignites a steady flame of affection, and the tea gets made, though there is nothing cozy about it. (2006, dvd, n.) *7-* (MC-82.)

Now that the baseball season has ended for me, as a stranger in the strange land of Red Sox Nation, I will have more time to watch films. I polished off a double feature by watching McCabe & Mrs. Miller for the umpteenth time, with particular attention to the use of Leonard Cohen’s songs, since they are my passion of the moment. It was also striking to revisit the young Julie Christie after recently seeing her lose her marbles in Away from Her, plus appropriate homage to Robert Altman after his recent passing. There’s no surprise to be had in seeing McCabe yet again, just confirmation of its frame by frame perfection and its place in my pantheon of transcendentally great films.

Chalk

Mike Akel’s modest indie mockumentary about teachers in a Texas high school, is presented by Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) and owes a good deal to the films of Christopher Guest. But it’s still a pleasantly homegrown effort, with convincingly local performers, which will resonate with those who frequent the teacher lounges of America. We follow several teachers and a novice administrator through a school year, as a fly on the wall in their classrooms, as an intimate of their confabs, and even as the voyeur of their afterhours webcams. Most of the jokes are funny and/or true, but the whole goes no place in particular, neither quite a celebration nor a satire of high school teaching. (2005, dvd, n.) *6-* (MC-70.)

In the Shadow of the Moon

Rave reviews got me out of the house to see David Sington’s documentary about the Apollo space program. And while it was certainly watchable, I could easily have waited to see it on the home screen. Some of the footage is dramatic and beautiful, but after decades of CGI space travel in movies, it looks less than spectacular. It’s ultimately more an interview piece with the surviving moon mission astronauts, and they are indeed interesting characters. There is some but not enough effort at historical context, from JFK’s initial invocation of the moon as the goal of the decade, through the tarnishing of grand Cold War gestures in the debacle of Vietnam, along with domestic unrest. For a long time the space program has seemed to me a government boondoggle for the military-industrial complex, but this film did resurrect the moment of “wonderful but ephemeral” achievement “for all mankind.” From the perspective of today, it seems inspiring yet foolish, an enormous waste of resources though a celebration of human resourcefulness. The film made me remember, but didn’t make me rethink. (2007, Images, n.) *7* (MC-84.)

Critical summary of 2006

This a compilation of my ratings of films released in the U.S. during last year, in comparison to four different critic polls. The basic ranking is taken from the Indiewire survey, which in seven previous years appeared in the Village Voice. It’s more offbeat than other lists, and incorporates many more documentaries and foreign films. Its numerical ranking is supplemented by the shorter and more mainstream lists of Premiere Magazine and Entertainment Weekly. That is followed by the decimal ratings of Metacritic (averaging critical scores on a scale of 100) and our very own Cinema Salon score on a scale of 10.

To summarize for those looking for films to put on their Netflix queue (where all these films are now available on DVD), here’s my ranking in rough order of the top features and top documentaries receiving official American theatrical release in 2006:

The Queen; Pan’s Labyrinth; Tristram Shandy; Volver; United 93; Days of Glory; Children of Men; Marie Antoinette; Fast Food Nation; Clean; Heading South.

49 Up; Neil Young: Heart of Gold; Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing; Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple; Street Fight; Wordplay.


Going down the list, you will find a number of others with a rating of *7*, which is my threshold of firm recommendation. For more information, you can reach my review easily by typing film title in search box at top of page.



1. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. MC-84 *7*
2. L'Enfant. MC-87 *6+*
3. The Departed. PM #6 EW #3 MC-85 *6*
4. Inland Empire. MC-72 *NR*
5. Army of Shadows. PM #3 MC-99 *6+*
6. Three Times. MC-80 *6*
7. Old Joy. MC-84 *6-*
8. United 93. PM #7 EW #4 MC-90 *8*
9. Children of Men. PM #8 MC-84. *8-*
10. Half Nelson. PM #13 MC-85 *7*
11. The Queen. PM #1 EW #1 MC-91 *9*
12. Climates. MC-72 *6+*
13. A Scanner Darkly. PM #66 EW #32 MC-73 *6*
14. Pan's Labyrinth. PM #2 MC-98 *9*
15. Borat. PM #11 EW #5 MC-89 *7*
16. A Prairie Home Companion. PM #23 EW #16 MC-75 *7*
17. Volver. PM #12 EW #6 MC-83 *8*
18. Battle in Heaven. MC-56. *5*
19. Letters From Iwo Jima. PM #9 EW #2 MC-89 *7*
20. Mutual Appreciation. MC-84 *6+*
21. Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. MC-80 *8+*
22. Gabrielle. MC-79 *7-*
24. Clean. MC-75 *7+*
25. The Proposition. PM #26 MC-73 *6*
26. Inside Man. PM #16 EW #14 MC-76 *5+*
27. The Science of Sleep. PM #67 MC-70 *5*
28. Miami Vice. PM #57 EW #25 MC-65 *6*
29. Iraq in Fragments. MC-84. *7*
30. Woman Is the Future of Man. MC-63. *6+*
32. Casino Royale. PM #15 EW #8 MC-80 *6*
33. Brick. MC-72 *6-*
34. The Prestige. PM #61 EW #29 MC-66 *7-*
35. Flags of Our Fathers. PM #17 EW #15 MC-78 *7*
36. Little Children. PM #39 EW #12 MC-75 *6*
37. Our Daily Bread. MC-86 *7*
38. Neil Young: Heart of Gold. MC-85 *8*
39. Shortbus. PM #37 MC-64 *5+*
40. Le Petit Lieutenant. MC-71 *7*
41. Dave Chappelle's Block Party. EW #9 MC-84 *7*
42. Little Miss Sunshine. PM #18 EW #20 MC-80 *5+*
43. Marie Antoinette. PM #46 EW #35 MC-65 *8-*
44. Duck Season. MC-74 *6+*
48. An Inconvenient Truth. EW #7 MC-75 *7-*
50. The Devil and Daniel Johnston. MC-77 *7*
54. Days of Glory. MC-82 *8*
55. The Road to Guantanamo. MC-64 *7*
57. Deliver Us From Evil. PM #4 MC-86 *7*
58. Thank You for Smoking. PM #29 EW #13 MC-71 *6-*
60. Fast Food Nation. MC-64. *7+*
61. Babel. PM #50 EW #22 MC-69 *6*
64. C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America. MC-62 *5+
67. Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. MC-79 *8*
69. The Good Shepherd. PM #32 EW #31 MC-61 *6-*
70. Notes on a Scandal. PM #20 MC-73 *7-*
74. 49 Up. PM #5 MC-84 *8*
76. The Illusionist. PM #38 MC-68 *6*
79. Water. MC-77 *6-*
80. Our Brand Is Crisis. MC-69 *6*
82. The Last King of Scotland. PM #25 EW #18 MC-74 *5+*
86. Tsotsi. MC-70 *6*
87. The Aura. MC-78 *6-*
88. Fateless. MC-87 *7*
99. Friends With Money. PM #28 MC-56 *5+*
100. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. PM #69 MC-56 *6-*
101. Quinceanera. PM #35 MC-72 *6*
103. Why We Fight. MC-78 *7*
105. Shut Up and Sing. PM #10 MC-77 *8*
120. House of Sand. MC-70 *6+*
123. The Ground Truth. MC-71 *5+*
125. The History Boys. PM #33 MC-74 *7*
126. The Painted Veil. PM #30 MC-69 *7-*
127. Street Fight. MC-85 *7+*
129. The Dead Girl. MC-65 *6+*
135. The Puffy Chair. MC-73 *6*
137. For Your Consideration. PM #48 MC-68 *7*
165. Heading South. MC-73 *7+*
167. Infamous. PM #34 MC-68 *6+*
175. Bobby. PM #81 MC-54 *6*
177. The Devil Wears Prada. PM #31 EW #30 MC-62 *6-*
179. This Film Is Not Yet Rated. MC-75 *6-*
180. Blood Diamond. PM #72 EW #34 MC-63 *5+*
NR. Jesus Camp. PM #19 MC-62 *7-*
NR. Dreamgirls. PM #22 EW #10 MC-76 *6-*
NR. Wordplay. PM #41 MC-73 *7+*

The Dead Girl

Writer-director Karen Moncrieff follows her promising debut in Blue Car with a grisly but honest inquest into the murder of young hooker, and the other “dead girls” whose lives intersect with the incident, in five discrete segments: The Stranger, The Sister, The Wife, The Mother, The Dead Girl. Toni Collette is the repressed woman who finds the body, browbeaten by her invalid mother (Piper Laurie, in full Carrie mode.) Marcia Gay Harden is the estranged mother who comes to identify the dead girl and learns that she has a granddaughter. Mary Beth Hurt discovers she is the wife of the murderer. Brittany Murphy is the dead girl herself, and the final episode leads up to her demise. Each part is populated by familiar names and faces, who can really act. The film came out of Moncrieff’s own experience on the jury of a murder trial, and it reeks of authenticity rather than exploitation, but there is still a heavy odor of sadness and waste about it. Not a fun night at the movies, but a truthful excavation of tragically limited lives -- and deaths. (2006, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-65.)

Thank goodness this film completes my review of films on the Indiewire poll for 2006, and now I can tardily put that year in film behind me. I watched as many of the 200 films on the list as I could bear, excluding only unappealing genre exercises or gorefests. My next post will summarize my own ratings, in tandem with four different tabulations of critical consensus.

Prince of the City

This was one of those films that rose to the top of my Netflix queue after such a long time that I forgot why I put in there in the first place. Maybe I was revisiting the high points of Sidney Lumet’s long, varied, and distinguished career as a director. This film implicitly is a sequel to Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon, with Treat Williams stepping in for Al Pacino and more than living up to the role. It’s based on the true story of a young go-getting NYC detective who seeks absolution by selectively informing on police corruption, and is crushed between two institutions in self-protective mode. Long but not too draggy, even though there is more psychological gamesmanship and bureaucratic infighting than action, this Prince is a gritty and evenhanded tragedy of a man caught in the middle, enmeshed in his environment and entangled in his own missteps. Seriously intended and thoughtfully made, it's a police story with weight. (And yet another film by which The Departed suffers in comparison -- there is some truth to the cliche, “They don’t make ’em like they used to.”) (1981, dvd, r.) *7+*

Broken English

Parker Posey is ready for her close up. I’m a big fan of the indie queen, but here she goes deeper than the shiny, brittle, manic demeanor of many of her roles -- more natural, more naked, but still neurotic in her own inimitable way. So I was highly disposed to like this film, and debut writer-director Zoe Cassavetes didn’t mess it up too badly with her own neuroses. You sort of give away the autobiographical game when you cast your mom (Gena Rowlands) as your mom! Zoe -- daughter of John and sister of Nick in the indie director game -- goes awry when an honest look at the romantic panic of a youngish New York career girl devolves into rom-com convention and wish fulfillment. And then she really loses it by clipping her ending from Before Sunset -- a great model, but where is the line between appropriation and plagiarism? And where is the honest resolution to the questions you profess to address? I understand some viewers’ impatience with these proceedings, but I confess I’m a sucker for Parker. (2007, dvd, n.) *7-* (MC-61.)

Private Fears in Public Places

I have had a keen appreciation for a number of Alain Resnais’ films over the years (Hiroshima Mon Amour, La Guerre Est Finie, Mon Oncle d’Amerique, Same Old Song), but what strikes me most about his latest is how far the 85-year-old director has come from his most famous and my least favorite: Last Year in Marienbad. That chilly exercise in enigmatic style has yielded over the years to a warmth of understanding bestowed on characters who are themselves trying to thaw the ice of their personalities. Private Fears in Public Places is based on the Alan Ayckbourn play of that name, transposed from London to Paris (and called Couers in France.) It is a series of blackout sketches (or more accurately whiteouts, for the scrim of falling snow that dissolves one scene into the next) involving a half-dozen interlocking characters in stylish Parisian sets. The common theme is the attempt for men and women to break through to connection, sexual or otherwise. And the tone is both amusing and sad, ironic and worldly-wise. These characters wear their hearts on their sleeves at the same time they are careful to keep them covered -- except for the pious striptease lady who heats things up (long story, too complicated to retell here.) If you would enjoy a bittersweet romantic comedy for adults, this is worth seeking out. (2006, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-77.)

Duck Season

My rating has to be provisional on this pleasantly minimalist film about four kids hanging out on a Sunday afternoon in a Mexico City apartment. They play video games, eat junk food, and make messes of many kinds. There’s a lot of deadpan humor and sly characterization. The two 14-year-old boys, 16-year-old neighbor girl, and a slightly older pizza delivery boy who comes to stay, are all appealing performers while remaining true to life. The black and white cinematography is jazzy and acute, when it isn’t gaping slackjawed, and the film doesn’t try too hard or overstay its welcome. And in fact, my viewing was cut five minutes short by a defective disk, so I don’t have a settled opinion. But if you give this debut film from Fernando Eimbcke a chance, you’ll likely start noticing and laughing in a process of gradual amplification. (2004, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-74.)

House of Sand

This is an intriguing home movie of sorts from Andrucha Waddington, the Brazilian director previously known for Me You Them. It stars his wife, Fernanda Torres, and his mother-in-law, Fernanda Montenegro, leapfrogging roles as mother and daughter through a story that spans sixty years. The setting is a remote desert region of Northern Brazil, near the ocean, and the women are first dragged there in 1910 by a crazed patriarch who has come by a deed to an isolated patch of sand. They spend decades longing for escape, but never really do, as the sands of time seep through and bury their house and their lives. The widescreen cinematography is spectacular, and if the story is sketchy, the actresses fill the screen admirably. It’s Woman of the Dunes with a samba beat, not adding up to much but lovely to look at and memorably scenic and sensuous. (2005, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-70.)

Woman is the Future of Man

South Korean cinema is hot on the international film festival circuit these days, and last year this Hong Sang-Soo film got a rare though limited American release and wound up at #30 in the Indiewire critics poll, and now comes to DVD with an introduction by the relentless cinema enthusiast Martin Scorsese. I found it intriguing but no great shakes, somewhat reminiscent of the American indie “mumblecore” movement in exploring the sexual and romantic entanglements of half-formed young people in the decade after college. In this case it explores the ambiguous friendship between a filmmaker just returned from the U.S. and a novice art history professor, both of whom had been involved during college with a woman they decide to re-visit on the drunken spur of the moment. Scorsese speaks accurately of the film’s “unfolding” quality, as the characters and their relationships emerge by indirection and asides. The story is small-scale and presented mostly in stable mid-shot, with minimal cutting or camera movement -- which seems characteristic of Asian cinema aside from chopsocky -- but with careful patterning and depth of field. There’s a fair amount of sex but it seems sad and inconsequential, so it’s wry humor and painful unconscious self-revelation that carry the film. The unfamiliarity of South Korean settings gives it continuous interest, even when the characters lose our sympathy. (2004, dvd, n.) *6+* (MC-63.)

No excuses for sports spectating

I consider myself mostly a movie maven, but sometimes I’m a bit of a jock-head. And this has been a particularly gratifying season of viewing for a long-suffering Cleveland Indians fan with a subscription to MLB Extra Innings. So I’ve spent a lot of evenings watching Tribe games instead of films, and I hope to be doing more of the same deep into October (sorry, Red Sox fans -- and as for Yankee fans, tough luck!)

Other sports-related viewing that has occupied my time lately is catching up with the 22 hour-long episodes of the first season of Friday Night Lights on dvd. This NBC show has been critically-lauded and friend-recommended, though not widely watched and just barely renewed for a second season, which starts this coming Friday evening. But now I’m fully on board. The show may not be quite as good as the best HBO series such as The Wire, but does slot in with the all-time best network series dealing with high school life, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Freaks and Geeks -- high praise indeed! You may think you have no interest in Texas high school football, but this series has a depth and universality of characterization that opens its soap opera pleasures and intrique to a wider audience than has yet discovered it. The actors are appealing across the board, and the on-the-fly, three-camera filming of scenes shot without rehearsal or staging conveys a rare authenticity for network tv, and a genuine sense of community. Most of the actors are unfamiliar and thereby even more convincing, but the standout is the one carryover from the feature film (also quite good, and directed by Peter Berg who is the producer of the tv series), namely Connie Britton as the coach’s wife and high school guidance counselor. Kyle Chandler is tight-lipped but thoughtful as the coach, the players seem unusually true to life as teenagers, and the hotties that surround them are given significant substance. And I liked a lot of the football action -- though no fan of the game itself -- even if it was implausibly cliff-hanging week after week. My viewing partner, however, tended to sigh when the game started, the same way she used to sigh when Buffy started to kick ass, but despite the obligatory action sequences, she’s hooked on the series as well. And it’s a rare show I could share with my son, a recent college grad with lamentable taste in movies and no interest in football whatsoever. Give it a try, if you’re into regular tv viewing, or queue up the first season on Netflix.

Battle in Heaven

Though I am dragging out my final review of 2006 way too long, your humble scribe is still subjecting himself to films that are no fun to watch, so I can recommend the ones you ought watch anyway. This Mexican film by Carlos Reygadas (ranked #18 in Indiewire critics poll) is not one of them -- unless you hanker for fleeting but explicit glimpses of actual sex acts. To be fair, much of the film is hypnotically watchable (e.g. a sequence of soldiers raising a huge Mexican flag), but it’s hard to tell whether the story itself is odious or merely otiose. The use of nonprofessional actors is sub-Bressonian and the oblique action involves the death of a baby and the murder of a beautiful young woman, but not in any involving way, which suggests mostly sensationalism, rather than the political or even spiritual significance ascribed by some critics. It may be a good film to argue about, but is not otherwise edifying or enjoyable. Nonetheless, Reygadas might be a filmmaker to watch in the future, with a distinctive visual style. (2006, dvd, n.) *5* (MC-56.)

Foreign Correspondent

I remembered this as one of the better Hitchcocks but was surprised by the sweep of the staging. I usually think of him as indifferent to setting -- outside of his own narrow narrative purposes -- so that he repeatedly resorts to back projection or obvious stage sets. But here he offers vivid scenes of London and Amsterdam in the run up to World War II, as well as the set pieces that are his own motivation. With his background as set designer, Hitchcock exemplifies storyboarding technique. The point of the movie is truly to render such pre-visualized scenes as the escape of an assassin shot from above so all you see is a waving sea of umbrellas, or most impressively, a near silent sequence set inside a windmill, where intrepid reporter Joel McCrea spies on Nazi plotting while the huge gears of the windmill turn, and the camera keeps finding revelatory graphic perspectives. I remembered this famous sequence as the climax of the movie, but in fact it occurs less than halfway through. The other notable aspect of the film is its atypical topicality, capturing the moment when Britain went to war while the U.S. retained its uneasy neutrality, with Hitchcock the recent Hollywood immigrant offering moral support to his native England, though he is usually not blamed for the final propagandistic sequence evoking Edward R. Murrow’s broadcasts to America during the London Blitz. (1940, dvd, r.) *7*

Scoop

I used to think it admirable that Woody Allen could turn out almost a film per year strictly on his own terms, but I’m beginning to question the value of such sustained productivity. Maybe he should take a little longer, reach a little further. And he should definitely stop misusing Scarlett Johannson (here and in Match Point) and stop pairing himself with young lovelies. He has the ability to enlist superior performers, but apparently doesn’t give them adequate direction. Hugh Jackman, Ian McShane, and others are similarly wasted. Some of Woody’s own shtick is still wanly amusing, and the British settings convey some novelty, but we’ve basically seen this all before, better and sharper. I won’t bother to recapitulate the story, because it is utterly inconsequential. (2006, HBO, n.) *5* (MC-48.)