Another new dvd to mention is the resurrection of the barely-released Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, a fascinating time capsule from 1981 but not a very good film. This saga of a punkette band called the Stains features a 15-year-old Diane Lane and 13-year-old Laura Dern, with support from a not much older Ray Winstone, who becomes their guide into punkdom. Indifferently directed by music producer Lou Adler, with weak production values and a scattershot script, this still has an aura of authenticity and knowledge of the rock biz. (Not unlike how Payday knows country.) But let’s go back to Diane and Laura as nymphets, and you might have plenty of reason to watch this, or maybe you want to watch members of The Clash and Sex Pistols play backup. Punk is a style of music that passed me right by at the time, as have most subsequent styles, but I must say I have lately been finding out about it through some pretty good films. This isn’t one of them, but isn’t without interest.
Continuing with my half-hearted recital of films I’ve managed to squeeze into gaps in election or financial news, I should take note of one that slipped my mind almost immediately. Smart People (2008, dvd, MC-57) is a half-bright effort from director Noam Murro, about a curmudgeonly English professor played by Dennis Quaid. With support from Ellen Page as his smart-mouthed daughter, Sarah Jessica Parker as his implausible love interest, and Thomas Haden Church as his free-loading brother, this ought to have been much better than it is. The Squid and the Whale this definitely is not. The setting of Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh comes through pretty well, but the script is not nearly as witty as it imagines itself to be, and incidents pile up in sitcom fashion rather than with any organic development. It has some tasty bits going down, but more than Chinese food leaves you hungry a minute after you’re finished with it.
I’m going to close out these random updates with two last films, before going back to individual review and ratings. Both are recommended but with reservations. Snow Angels (2008, dvd, MC-67) is well-made but awfully sad. David Gordon Green halfway crosses over from his indie roots with this adaptation of a Stewart O’Nan novel, mixing thriller and even teen comedy elements into the pathos of small town lives gone astray. I like Kate Beckinsale and she does her best with the role, but seems out of place as a bereft working-class beauty in what was SE Pennsylvania in the 70s in the novel, but is now Nowheresville in an undefined present (actually Halifax). Sam Rockwell, however, fits right in as her estranged loser husband, out of jail and recovery and into evangelical Christianity. A subplot revolves around a highly believable and charming high school romance between Michael Angarano and Olivia Thirlby (Juno’s sidekick), two young actors to watch for in the future. The agonizing arc of the drama is marked by many moments of truthful observation, even when you want to resist the conclusion.
The Rape of Europa (2007, dvd, MC-77) is a conventional but absorbing documentary on art as one of the victims of World War II -- the looting by Hitler and Goering, the evacuations of art from the Louvre and the Hermitage, the collateral damage of the Allied drive up the boot of Italy, the eventual repatriation of Nazi booty to the Jewish heirs of Holocaust victims, and the heroic efforts of the “Monument Men” of the advancing Allies, committed to preserving what they could of the art history of Europe. The approach is miscellaneous but cumulatively powerful, “The World At War” from the perspective of art objects. This will be shown at the Clark next April.
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